“这些人不是我面试任用的人。”特朗普总统认为，人们批评最高法院应该是违法的。别人不行，但他可以。
“These are not the people I interviewed to serve.”President Trump thinks it should be illegal for people to criticize the Supreme Court. Other people, though. Not him.
“我相信他们所做的是违法的，”特朗普在2024年竞选途中谈到那些批评法官裁决的人时说。“我认为他们在‘施压裁判’。他们不断批评我们一些最伟大的大法官和许多优秀的法官。”他接着说，“对我们的法官和大法官‘施压裁判’应该处以巨额罚款，甚至更严厉的惩罚。”（特朗普可能想说的是“施压裁判”——体育比赛中常见的策略，试图给裁判施压，让其做出有利于己方的判罚。）
“I believe it’s illegal what they do,” Trump said on the campaign trail in 2024, about those who criticized judges’ decisions. “I believe they are playing the ref. They’re constantly criticizing some of our greatest justices and a lot of great judges.”He continued, “Playing the ref with our judges and our justices should be punishable by very serious fines and beyond that.” (Trump may have meant “working the ref”—a common strategy in sports of trying to pressure a ref to make decisions in your team’s favor.) Trump criticizing the Supreme Court, however, is perfectly fine and not illegal at all.
然而，特朗普批评最高法院却完全没问题，根本不违法。本月初，在大多数大法官驳回了特朗普限制中期选举邮寄投票的努力一天后，特朗普在帖子中猛烈抨击：“这些人不是我面试让其在美最高法院任职的人，他们只是原本模样的空壳。”特朗普指责大法官们“被激进左派欺凌和哄骗”。正如总统的指控几乎总是如此，这是一种令人深省的投射。
Earlier this month, a day after a majority of the justices rejected Trump’s effort to restrict voting by mail in the midterms, Trump lashed out in a post: “These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves.”Trump accused the justices of being “bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left.”As is nearly always the case with the president’s accusations, this was an illuminating projection. Trump fears that public pressure on the Supreme Court can sway the justices and how they rule.
特朗普担心公众对最高法院的压力会影响大法官及其裁决。所以当他们不站在他这边时，他就认为是这种情况发生了，并抨击法院，希望下次法院能站在他这边。他对待批评最高法院的态度，很像他对待法律的总体态度：当特朗普或其盟友想做某事时，比如用纳税人的钱制作邪教般的竞选广告，那就是合法的；当他的对手想做某事时，那就是非法的。
So when they don’t side with him, he assumes that’s what happened, and he trashes the Court in the hope that it will side with him the next time. He views criticism of the Supreme Court much as he views laws in general: When Trump or one of his allies wants to do something, such as use taxpayer dollars for cultish campaign ads, it’s legal. When his opponents want to do something, it’s illegal.
公平地说，各党派或多或少都指望自己任命的法官在重大争议中作出有利于本党的解释。法律记者杰弗里·图宾在《九人》中提到，2005年，保守派法律活动家曼努埃尔·米兰拉曾建议时任总统乔治·W·布什：“别再让苏特和肯尼迪进最高法院了。”他的意思是，布什应该任命可靠的右翼人士，而不是那些可能远比预期更自由派的大法官（戴维·苏特），或看似保守、但保守得不够彻底的大法官（安东尼·肯尼迪）。
In fairness, all partisans more or less expect the jurists they appoint to interpret the law in a favorable way in salient disputes. As the legal reporter Jeffrey Toobin recounted in The Nine, in 2005, the conservative legal activist Manuel Miranda advised then-President George W. Bush, “No more Souters and no more Kennedys,” meaning that Bush should appoint reliable right-wingers, not justices who might turn out to be much more liberal than expected (David Souter) or conservative but not conservative enough (Anthony Kennedy).
继续沿用体育类比，如今的最高法院看上去颇像意大利2006年的“卡乔波利”足球丑闻：豪门球队被指控通过确保获得对自己有利的裁判来操纵比赛——然而，这在体育界是一桩丑闻，在美国最高法院却是常态。保守派法律运动花了数十年才掌控司法系统，可不是为了最终让几个立场不稳的大法官脱离阵营。
To continue the sports analogy, the Supreme Court today looks a lot like Italy’s 2006 Calciopoli soccer scandal, in which big teams were accused of influencing matches by ensuring they got assigned sympathetic referees—except what was a scandal in sports is standard for the highest court in America. The conservative legal movement hasn’t spent decades capturing the judiciary just to have a few squishy justices go rogue.
特朗普把这层弦外之音如此直白地挑明，多少有些令人难堪，但他说的话并没有超出美国人早已知道和理解的范畴。
The fact that Trump makes this subtext text is a little embarrassing, but it’s not like he’s saying anything Americans don’t already know and understand.
更重要的是，特朗普在邮寄投票问题上的要求完全无视法律。3月，特朗普发布一项行政命令，指示美国邮政署根据选民的姓名是否与新建的联邦选民登记名单相符，决定哪些选民能够收到邮寄选票，而这些名单很可能并不完整。简而言之，这等于允许美国邮政署决定谁有资格通过邮寄方式投票。
More important is that Trump’s demands in the voting-by-mail case were utterly lawless. Trump issued an executive order in March directing the United States Postal Service to decide which voters receive their mail-in ballots based on whether their name matches newly created federal voter-registration lists, which are likely to be incomplete. In short, it would have allowed the USPS to determine who gets to vote by mail.
特朗普经常指称邮寄投票充满欺诈。事实上，选举欺诈极为罕见，也没有任何证据表明特朗普的命令能够防止欺诈。尽管他已将这一议题政治化，但各政治阵营的选民都在使用邮寄选票，特朗普本人也是通过邮寄方式投票。
Trump has frequently accused voting by mail of being rife with fraud. Voter fraud is, in fact, extremely rare, and no evidence suggests that Trump’s order would prevent it. Although he has politicized the issue, mail-in ballots are actually used by voters across the political spectrum; Trump himself votes by mail.
一份由选举法律专家提交的文件指出，特朗普的主张“站不住脚且充满猜测性”。该文件强调，这一规定实际上会对选民造成严重损害：“该规定可能会剥夺数百万老年选民、残疾选民以及所有依赖邮寄投票方式投票的选民的选举权，这些选民既包括共和党控制的州，也包括民主党控制的州。”不过，无论特朗普提出的论点多么“站不住脚”或充满猜测性，大法官塞缪尔·阿利托（Samuel Alito）和克拉伦斯·托马斯（Clarence Thomas）仍有可能支持他的主张。
A brief filed by election-law experts calls Trump’s claims “weak and speculative.”The real damage, the brief states, is to voters: “The rule threatens to disenfranchise millions of elderly voters, disabled voters, military voters and all others including the most vulnerable who depend on mail voting, in both red and blue states.”It doesn’t matter how “weak and speculative” a case Trump makes, though; Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are still likely to vote for it.
他们正是本月最高法院裁决中唯一公开表示反对的两位大法官（有趣的是，那些最支持特朗普的大法官其实并非他亲自任命的）。目前来看，美国邮政服务局（USPS）制定的选民名单管理制度似乎不太可能在中期选举之前得以实施；不过特朗普仍有可能在2028年之前再次尝试推动这一政策的实施。
They were the only two justices to publicly dissent from this month’s decision. (It is somewhat strange that the Trumpiest justices aren’t the ones he appointed). As it stands, the USPS voter-list scheme seems unlikely to be implemented before the midterms, though Trump may try again before 2028.
最近，特朗普在最高法院遭遇了几次重大失利——尤其是在关税案和公民身份相关案件中——但大多数时候，最高法院仍然非常愿意听从他的意愿。根据《纽约时报》7月份发表的分析报告，特朗普在第二个任期内在最高法院的胜诉率为62%，这一比例高于乔治·W·布什（George W. Bush）以来的任何一位总统，并远高于他在第一个任期内的胜诉率。在那些他败诉的重大案件中，特朗普往往会抨击那些持反对意见的大法官，试图迫使他们屈服。
Trump has taken a few high-profile losses at the Supreme Court recently—in the tariffs case and in the birthright-citizenship case—but the Court has been more than willing to do his bidding most of the time. According to an analysis published by The New York Times in July, Trump’s second-term win rate at the Supreme Court was 62 percent, higher than any president since George W. Bush and far higher than in his first term. In the rare big cases he loses, Trump tends to lash out at the justices, hoping to bring them to heel.
“最高法院真的让我们的国家失望了！”特朗普在邮件投票相关的裁决公布后通过社交媒体抱怨道。“这个最高法院将会被铭记为美国历史上作出过最具破坏性、最具伤害性、最具危害性的裁决的法院。”正是这个最高法院在“路易斯安那州诉卡莱斯案”中彻底废除了《投票权法》；在“穆林诉多伊案”中纵容特朗普对海地人的公然种族歧视；在“特朗普诉美国案”中凭空制造出“总统享有豁免权”的说法（而这一权利实际上并不存在于宪法中）；同时还让特朗普对那些本应保持独立的政府机构拥有了完全的控制权。
“The Supreme Court has really let our Country down!”Trump complained on social media after the voting-by-mail decision. “It is a Court that will go down as having rendered some of the most destructive, hurtful, and damaging decisions in our Country’s history.”This is the Supreme Court that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, sanctioned Trump’s overt racial discrimination toward Haitians in Mullin v. Doe, fabricated a right to presidential immunity that appears nowhere in the Constitution in Trump v. United States, and gave Trump unfettered control over agencies that are supposed to be independent.
鉴于这样的记录，几乎没有人会否认这些大法官确实“作出了美国历史上最具破坏性、最具伤害性、最具危害性的裁决”。特朗普真正的抱怨在于：他们做得还不够“彻底”。
Considering that record, few could disagree that the justices have “rendered some of the most destructive, hurtful, and damaging decisions in our Country’s history.”Trump’s real complaint is they haven’t done that enough.