Public opinion polls fielded and released this summer showed a by-now-familiar partisan gap in views on the Supreme Court. Republicans are not only more likely than Democrats to approve of the way the court handles its job (74% vs. 22%, according to a Marquette Law School Poll); they’re also less likely than Democrats to say the court has too much power or that it has given the president too much authority.
Democrats’ more negative views on the court, as well as the fact that justices appointed by Republican presidents currently outnumber Democratic appointees 6-3, explain why Democratic lawmakers are leading the current charge to reform the institution. They’re behind bills aimed at adding justices, imposing term limits, and changing how the Supreme Court selects and decides its cases.
But that’s not the whole story: To say that Republicans are more supportive than Democrats of the Supreme Court and less supportive of reform efforts is not to say that Republicans are entirely satisfied with the court. Indeed, many of this summer’s polls included signs of growing Republican unrest, most notably a Gallup report, released late last month, which showed that Republicans, not Democrats, were responsible for the court’s approval rating dropping to a record low of 33%.
In September 2025, 79% of Republicans said they approved of the way the Supreme Court was handling its work, a near-record high, according to Gallup. Yet by last month, that figure had fallen to 58%, a decrease of 21 percentage points. Over the same period, the court’s approval rating among Democrats (12%) was “essentially unchanged.”
Gallup pointed to President Donald Trump’s high-profile losses during the 2025-26 term as a possible explanation for the decline in Republican support. In February, the Supreme Court struck down his signature tariffs. In June, it declared his executive order limiting access to birthright citizenship to be unconstitutional and barred him from removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from office while her challenge to her firing continues. To be sure, Trump was triumphant in other major cases on immigration policy and the president’s removal power (as well as on much of the court’s emergency docket), but, as Politico put it in an analysis of the term, Trump “keeps losing the Supreme Court cases he seems to care about the most.”
A survey report released last week by the Marquette Law School Poll showed that Trump’s losses do loom large for many Republicans. The poll found that 63% of Republicans now believe the court “rarely” or “never” rules for Trump. The figure has increased eight percentage points since May, when 55% of Republicans said the justices rarely or never side with the president.
Trump’s comments on the Supreme Court since the court struck down his signature tariffs in February have also likely played a role here. In speeches and social media posts, the president has repeatedly criticized the justices who ruled against him, particularly Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, whom he appointed during his first term. When asked about Gorsuch’s and Barrett’s votes in the tariffs case during a Feb. 20 press conference, Trump described the ruling as “an embarrassment to their families.” On April 22, he took to Truth Social to again complain about his loss in the tariffs case and predict a loss on birthright citizenship, asserting that “certain ‘Republican’ Justices have just gone weak, stupid, and bad.” On May 10, Trump wrote that Gorsuch and Barrett “were appointed by me, and yet have hurt our Country so badly!”
Perhaps because she, unlike Gorsuch, also voted against Trump in the birthright citizenship case, Barrett has borne the brunt of Republican vitriol in recent months. Data from the Marquette Law School Poll shows that the share of Republicans who hold a favorable view of Barrett fell from 34% to 27% from January to July, a seven-percentage-point drop. Over the same time period, Republican support for four of the five other conservative justices either increased or remained stable. (The fifth, Chief Justice John Roberts, saw his favorability rating drop by a more modest amount, from 32% to 29%.)
After the birthright citizenship ruling was handed down on June 30, several prominent conservative commentators took to social media to complain about Barrett specifically. “It turns out that Amy Coney Barrett is a DEI hire, little better than [Ketanji Brown] Jackson. Terrible pick. When’s the last time we had a Republican president who didn’t put a liberal justice on the court?,” wrote podcast host Matt Walsh. Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, said Barrett “should be removed from the Bench.”
Barrett has also been featured in fundraising emails sent out this summer by conservative groups. In a campaign titled “Amy Coney Barrett DROWNING in regret,” Homeland PAC called on “patriots” to “keep up the pressure” on Barrett to reconsider the birthright citizenship ruling. “Deep down, Justice Amy Coney Barrett knows she made the WRONG decision. And now she has the power to REVERSE her ruling and safeguard our American sovereignty for CENTURIES to come,” the email said. (As SCOTUSblog reported on July 28, the deadline for asking the court to reconsider the case passed without the Trump administration filing a petition for rehearing.)
Barrett also faced a good deal of criticism after she testified before Congress alongside Justice Elena Kagan on July 14. Barrett’s descriptions of having to speak to her kids about security concerns and a recent swatting incident at her home prompted a flurry of tweets about how she has been compromised by fear and should resign from the court. Trump appeared to encourage these critics on July 29 by reposting a tweet about Barrett’s voting record before and after security threats increased following the court overturning Roe v. Wade. “Amy Coney Barrett is clearly terrified of the left,” the original post said.
Although some conservative commentators and outlets have spoken up to defend Barrett, the backlash may only grow in the term ahead, when the Supreme Court will likely consider several more cases involving Trump. The president has asked the court to review the $83.3 million verdict against him in a defamation case brought by journalist E. Jean Carroll, and his administration has urged review of one of its signature immigration policies, among other issues, as I recently reported. Additionally, the Trump administration has pushed back against the court’s rulings on tariffs, birthright citizenship, and firing Lisa Cook by imposing new worldwide tariffs, issuing a new executive order on birthright citizenship, and launching a new effort to remove Cook from office. All of these moves are fueling additional litigation, which could very well reach the Supreme Court.
The justices’ decisions in these cases and others involving Trump’s policies will likely influence whether Republicans’ approval rating for the court begins to climb back up – or continues its fall, creating a situation in which both Democrats and Republicans demand some sort of court reform or grow even bolder in challenging the current court’s institutional integrity.
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