Four Supreme Court justices face Trump at State of the Union days after tariffs ruling

Days after publicly rebuking Supreme Court justices who ruled most of his tariffs were unlawful, President Donald Trump came face-to-face with four members of the high court at his State of the Union address in Washington on February 24, 2026, including Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Elena Kagan, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh who had dissented in the case. The three justices who joined the 6-3 majority to overturn Trump's tariffs were present alongside Kavanaugh, who wrote a dissenting opinion. Chief Justice Roberts authored the majority opinion that declared many of the president's trade tariffs unconstitutional, prompting Trump's furious response just days before the annual address to Congress. The attendance of Supreme Court justices at the State of the Union has become a tradition, though one that Chief Justice Roberts has previously criticized as creating problematic optics. 'To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally,' Roberts remarked in 2010, 'I'm not sure why we're there.' Typically, justices who attend sit stoically without applauding or showing outward support for presidential policies, maintaining their judicial neutrality despite the politically charged atmosphere. Unlike the 2010 incident when Justice Samuel Alito was seen mouthing 'not true' during President Obama's criticism of a court decision, the justices maintained their composure throughout Trump's address despite his recent blistering attacks against them. Trump's reaction to the tariff ruling was notably more personal than Obama's was in 2010, as the president labeled the majority justices 'a disgrace to our nation' and accused them of being 'very unpatriotic and disloyal to the Constitution.' He further suggested foreign interests may have influenced the court's decision, a serious allegation against the judicial branch. The irony of the situation was heightened by the fact that two of the justices in the majority, Barrett and Gorsuch, were Trump's own appointees to the bench. The president reserved special praise for the dissenting justices, particularly Kavanaugh, his third appointee to the court. The absence of conservative Justices Alito and Thomas, who typically do not attend the State of the Union, added another layer to the complex relationship between the executive and judicial branches during this particularly tense moment in American governance.