Gallup recorded the Supreme Court’s lowest approval rating ever. This sharp drop in interest rates is the cause of a 21 point drop in Republican support.
President Trump talks about tariffs in State of the Union address
In his State of the Union address, President Trump called the Supreme Court’s decision on tariffs a “disappointing decision.”
Republicans are especially dissatisfied with the Supreme Court, with only one in three Americans approving of the way they carry out their duties, according to a new Gallup poll.
A July 2026 poll found that 33% of Americans support the high court, the lowest polling record in 26 years. Previously, the lowest bar for Gallup data collected in July 2025 was 39%.
The poor ratings from Democrats and independents likely reflect their dissatisfaction with the ideological leanings of the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, Jeffrey M. Jones wrote in Gallup. But Republicans may be disappointed that the conservative court didn’t do enough and that it actually blocked an important policy goal of the Trump administration, Jones said.
Only 58% of Republicans approved of the court’s performance in July 2026, compared to 79% in September 2025 and 75% in July 2025. Democratic approval for the court remained in a similarly low range, at 11% to 14%, for the same period. The combined approval rating for these three periods was 39% in July 2025, 42% in September 2025, and a record low of 33% in July 2026.
But experts say the sudden 21-point drop in Republican support for the majority-conservative court’s decision is striking.
The Supreme Court recently handed Trump a notable loss
The latest review took place from July 1 to 19, just days after the justices withdrew some of their key decisions before recessing for the summer. Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law’s Houston School of Law, said the tanker approval may reflect disappointment among Republican respondents with the outcome of a number of lawsuits brought by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Key rulings included a rejection of President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship restrictions and an attempt to fire Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook. The court also ruled against Republican efforts to block states from counting mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day and received later.
In February, the court struck down the sweeping tariffs that were the centerpiece of President Trump’s economic policy.
Blackmun said Republicans may not understand why a conservative-majority court would not fulfill their priorities and the president’s promises.
“They just don’t understand why they keep losing the cases that are probably the most interesting to them, like tariffs, birthright citizenship, and mail-in voting for voters,” Blackman told USA TODAY. “They’re looking at the types of Democratic appointees on the court, and they never break ranks. But Republican appointees do.”
In a May incident reported by NBC News, Chief Justice John Roberts said the justices were not “political actors.” He added that courts must make “unpopular” decisions “based on their best efforts to understand what the Constitution means and how it is applied.”
Still, Trump won some SCOTUS victories.
But Trump achieved some notable legal victories during his tenure on the court. The court accomplished a long-term goal of the conservative legal movement, overturning 90 years of precedent that limited the president’s power to remove the leaders of agencies designed by Congress to remain independent.
And Democrats decried the 6-3 decision to water down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act and eliminate one of the few remaining cash checks in politics.
President Trump has also won a number of emergency appeals filed by his administration, asking courts to move forward with policies while full-scale litigation takes place.
Critics complain that the court too often issues consequential decisions through these emergency requests, which are often referred to as “shadow dockets” because they do not receive a full brief or lengthy opinion on the case argued during oral argument.
Gabe Ross, executive director of the nonpartisan transparency group Fix the Court, told USA TODAY that many of the emergency appeals go far beyond anything attempted by previous Republican presidents and test Trump’s expansive view of presidential power, which goes against “the design of the Constitution that we all know so well.”
Ross said if the court allows one of President Trump’s controversial policies to continue, even temporarily, it “puts a lot of people in a bad position.”
“By comparison, district courts and their circuit courts are often issuing 50-, 80-, 100-page opinions on why the Trump administration’s policies are unconstitutional,” he said, especially when the justices don’t explain why.
The Trump administration has received favorable rulings through the emergency redistricting process, including rulings allowing redistricting in Texas and Alabama to introduce Republican-friendly maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. But another “shadow docket” ruling prevented President Trump from introducing federalism and deploying the National Guard to curb crime in Illinois.
Charles Franklin, director of Marquette Law School Polling, which regularly surveys public opinion on the court, said there is “a widespread perception that the court is on more of the president’s side than against him” when it comes to “shadow cases.”
Approval ratings measured in Franklin polls over the past year have been “consistently in the low to mid 40s,” although not as high as in Gallup polls.
Franklin doesn’t yet have the numbers from the law school’s July survey, so he can’t say whether he’ll find a recent decline. That data is expected to be released on Thursday, August 6th.
“This is a big drop in Gallup’s data, and it’s certainly eye-catching,” he said. “If the other polls on the court support that, that would be very interesting.”
Contributor: Maureen Grope
