U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg should remove themselves from cases involving him or his administration.
Trump’s call for the liberal-leaning justices to recuse themselves came during a news conference in New Dehli.
“I just don’t know how they cannot recuse themselves for anything Trump or Trump-related,” the president said. “What Justice Sotomayor said yesterday was highly inappropriate. She’s trying to shame people with perhaps a different view into voting her way.”
Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion late Friday criticizing the Trump administration for routinely claiming emergencies and asking the Supreme Court to act quickly to implement controversial policies.
Sotomayor also targeted her conservative colleagues in the dissent, saying they are too willing to accommodate the Trump administration on such requests.
Her dissent came in response to the court’s 5-4 decision allowing a Trump administration rule to take effect that will prohibit most legal immigrants from receiving public assistance and make them ineligible for green cards.
Sotomayor wrote in her dissent that the administration keeps “claiming one emergency after another” and “with each successive application… its cries of urgency ring increasingly hollow.”
Trump also took aim at Ginsburg Tuesday, claiming she “went wild” in criticizing him during the 2016 campaign season.
Ginsburg said in July 2016 that Trump, then a presidential candidate, was a “faker” who “says whatever comes into his head at the moment.”
Trump’s call for the justices to recuse themselves comes as the Supreme Court is gearing up to hear issues involving him. The court will hear arguments on whether Trump must abide by congressional subpoenas for his financial records and whether he is exempt from criminal probes while president.
