By ANDREW CHUNG Reuters
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For two of the most powerful men in the United States, Donald Trump and John Roberts, it has been a delicate dance from the start.

In 2015, the man who would become the chief executive of the United States assailed the integrity of its chief justice, calling Roberts “disgraceful” and “disappointing” — and, later, an “absolute disaster” — for earlier upholding the Affordable Care Act, the Obamacare law that Trump subsequently sought to repeal. A little more than a year later on the U.S. Capitol steps, Roberts, an enigmatic conservative Supreme Court justice from the American Midwest, swore in Trump, a brash businessman-turned-politician from New York City, as president. Any lingering tension had evaporated under smiles, handshakes and a backdrop of applause. Since then, the dynamic between the two has remained complicated, marked by dramatic legal wins for Trump as well as painful losses, and punctuated by clashes between the two as Trump shattered norms by aggressively pushing his policies while brooking little dissent — including from the coequal branch of government that Roberts leads: the judiciary. The tension has risen once again, culminating in an extraordinary public statement by Roberts on Tuesday rebuking the Republican president for urging the impeachment of a Washington-based federal judge who faulted the administration’s actions in a dispute over the legality of deportation flights.

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“For more than two centuries,” Roberts said, “it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

For Roberts, who is seen as deeply conservative but also concerned about the institutional credibility and perception of the Supreme Court, chastising Trump puts him in a difficult spot. It has drawn sharp criticism from Trump’s allies and comes as the court braces for the flood of legal challenges to Trump’s myriad executive actions.

“I suspect Roberts has a certain measure of contempt for Trump and the way he treats judges,” said University of Michigan law professor Richard Friedman, a Supreme Court historian. “Roberts is an establishment Republican, but I think he’s horrified.”

While Roberts and Trump often may converge on legal and substantive goals, there are sharp divergences emerging, according to University of Chicago constitutional law expert Aziz Huq.

Through his flurry of executive actions to shutter federal departments, fire thousands of federal employees, target perceived enemies and eradicate policies he dislikes such as diversity mandates from the public and private sectors, Trump is “proceeding as if legal constraints don’t matter,” Huq said.

“If presidents are not bound by statutes, if they’re not bound by regulations, if they’re not bound by the (U.S. Constitution’s) First Amendment, then it’s not really clear what the job of the Supreme Court is,” Huq added.

Huq said that the “casting into institutional doubt of the court’s role is I think the hard nub of conflict between the two.”

Since Trump first took office in 2017, Roberts has figured prominently in the president’s fortunes, and in many ways, vice versa. Trump appointed three justices in his first term, creating the 6-3 conservative majority that Roberts needed to deliver landmark rulings rolling back abortion rights and affirmative action practices, expanding gun rights and curbing federal regulatory power. Roberts, meanwhile, presided over the first of Trump’s two impeachment trials — he was acquitted both times — and has penned Supreme Court rulings that both boosted the president — including by granting him broad immunity from criminal prosecution — and constrained him at key moments. The landmark immunity ruling authored by Roberts last July involved federal criminal charges against Trump over his efforts to undo his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, bolstering his bid to regain the presidency by effectively delaying a trial that ultimately never took place.

Trump thanked Roberts as Supreme Court justices attended the president’s address to a joint session of Congress this month.

“I won’t forget,” Trump added.

The president later stated that he was thanking Roberts for swearing him into office.