Three months into the Trump administration, Republicans are understandably frustrated by the relative lack of reaction from the Supreme Court to the proliferation of nationwide injunctions from the lower courts (many under spurious pretext) to Trump administration policies. The Court is not immune from warranted criticism. But we should be careful not to miss the forest for the trees: the Court must prioritize the longer-term project of repairing the  wreckage of the Warren and Burger eras with an originalist jurisprudence, debates about which flavor of originalism nonwithstanding. Contributing to the decline in the Court’s credibility could harm that long-term project in the interest of short-term gains.

The major challenge to the Court’s standing comes from the Left. The Left has plumbed unprecedented depths to smear and harass the Republican-appointed justices on the Court over the past forty years. These efforts seek simultaneously to delegitimize the Court in the eyes of the public and to intimidate justices into “moderating” toward the Left’s preferred positions.

Public polling bears this out. According to Pew Research, “The gap between Republican and Democratic favorability widened dramatically, from roughly equal views in 2020 (75% vs. 67%) to a 39-point gap in 2024 (63% vs. 24%).” The Court’s current favorability rating (47% in 2024) is among the lowest in nearly four decades, comparable to 2015 (48%), and far below norms from twenty years ago. Of the three branches, the Supreme Court should be the branch least concerned with popularity. However, it does rely somewhat on positive perception, which affects the extent to which the political branches follow its lead in their own work.

With this in mind, how can Republicans navigate these troubled waters? They should resist the temptation to engage in scorched earth politics against the Court and allow the Democrats to continue in the role of the institution’s antagonists. I have hope that the public will grow weary of Democrat leaders’ intransigence. The Supreme Court is rarely at the front of the average voter’s mind; when it is, originalism described plainly has more appeal than the results-oriented focus of left-wing jurisprudence.