President Donald Trump is racking up a string of courtroom victories that have helped sustain some of his most sweeping second-term policies, even as lower courts continue to block or limit them.
The Trump administration’s success in the appellate courts — and particularly before the U.S. Supreme Court — has allowed it to preserve disputed actions on immigration, federal employment, trade, and agency control while litigation plays out. The wins have largely come through emergency motions and procedural rulings that keep Trump’s agenda in place without resolving the underlying legal questions.
But they’ve added up to meaningful momentum for the president, who has relied on numerous appeals to counter early defeats at the district level.
“We’re starting to get acknowledgement from the courts that, you know, as a system, they come in without courts, and they go out after they want trials and everything else,” Trump said in the Oval Office on June 10, referring to litigation over immigration enforcement. “I think that’s starting to work out now. Judges are starting to see what a terrible situation it is.”
Legal experts say the trend reflects more than just favorable judicial ideology.
“What is becoming increasingly clear is that the Trump administration is not just seeking an unprecedented number of stays from the justices, but that it is doing very well in those cases,” said Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and expert on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket.
“The Court has now granted at least some relief to the Trump administration in 10 of the 12 applications on which it has ruled,” Vladeck wrote in his Substack blog, One First.
Appeals court lets Trump’s tariff policy remain in effect
This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit handed the administration a trade win by allowing Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs to remain in place while litigation proceeds. The case involves a sweeping 10% levy on imports from countries including China, Canada, and Mexico imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. A lower trade court had ruled in May that Trump exceeded his statutory authority.
But the Federal Circuit’s full bench agreed to take up the appeal and paused the lower ruling, ensuring the tariffs stay in effect pending oral arguments scheduled for July 31.
Supreme Court clears way for agency shakeups
In May, the Supreme Court granted emergency relief to the Trump administration in two cases involving independent federal agencies. The court allowed the removal of Democratic-appointed members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board, both of which the administration has targeted as part of its effort to restructure the federal workforce.
The justices issued short, unsigned orders allowing the firings to proceed while lower courts review whether such removals violate limits on executive power.
Appeals court halts district judge’s order on military deployment
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit quickly granted a stay in another high-profile case concerning Trump’s deployment of more than 4,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles under federal control. A San Francisco federal district judge had ruled the move violated the Tenth Amendment, but the victory for California officials was short-lived after the Ninth Circuit paused the ruling within hours.
The appellate court’s order allowed the deployment to remain in effect ahead of arguments scheduled for Tuesday before a three judge panel, which includes two Trump appointees.
Other key victories: Immigration and press access
The administration also won a temporary reprieve from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a case involving the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg had ordered the government to allow the deportees—many of whom are being held in a high-security prison in El Salvador—to challenge their removals in court.
The Justice Department argued that Boasberg lacked jurisdiction and that his order interfered with the president’s national security powers. The D.C. Circuit agreed to stay the ruling while the case moves forward.
The D.C. Circuit’s temporary pause is just one piece of a broader legal battle over the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, with a separate case set for argument later this month at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans.
In a separate First Amendment dispute, a divided panel of the D.C. Circuit sided with the administration last week in allowing it to continue excluding Associated Press reporters from presidential events while a press-access lawsuit is litigated. The case began after the AP declined to adopt certain language directives promoted by the White House.
Inside the high court’s approach: Why Trump is winning on emergency applications
In his detailed analysis of the Court’s emergency docket, Vladeck argued that the administration’s success is driven by three distinct trends: the justices’ abandonment of traditional “equities-balancing” in emergency rulings; the Justice Department’s strategic focus on procedural defects in district court rulings; and the political capital the Court appears to be preserving by avoiding repeated, high-profile confrontations with the president.
“If all that the Court is doing is previewing its views on the merits in contexts in which lower courts are told to decide something else, it is all the more understandable why President Trump would fare so well before this Court, in particular,” Vladeck wrote.
He added that the administration has been disciplined in choosing which losses to appeal, focusing on procedural vulnerabilities such as standing and judicial review limits, rather than asking the justices to affirm the policies themselves. “That lowers the costs of granting emergency relief,” he wrote.
The road ahead
Six emergency applications remain pending at the Supreme Court. Among them are efforts to enforce Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, deport migrants to countries such as South Sudan, and carry out mass layoffs under the Department of Government Efficiency.
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While lower courts have issued more than three dozen rulings against the administration this year, appellate courts and the Supreme Court have allowed many of the contested policies to remain in place, reinforcing the administration’s ability to govern through legal delays and procedural wins.
“There is very little downside to the government continuing to go to the well,” Vladeck wrote, “even though it is already seeking emergency relief from the justices at an unprecedented (and, it would seem, unsustainable) pace.”