Even Sotomayor bewildered by Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissenting opinion

A Clinton judge slapped the Trump administration with an injunction on May 22, blocking the president's Feb. 11 executive order aimed at "eliminating waste, bloat, and insularity" and barring 20 executive-branch entities and "any other individuals acting under their authority or the authority of the president" from executing any mass layoffs.

The U.S. Supreme Court gave the administration a big win on Tuesday with an 8-1 order in Trump v. American Federation of Government Employees pausing U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston's injunction. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter.

Conservative justices appear to have dropped the pretense that former President Joe Biden's DEI appointee knows what she is talking about.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, for instance, suggested in Trump v. CASA Inc. that the arguments in Jackson's dissenting opinion were not tethered "to any doctrine whatsoever" and were "at odds with more than two centuries' worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself." Barrett also knocked Jackson for her simultaneous critique of an "imperial Executive" and embrace of "an imperial Judiciary."

This time around, the deepest cut against Jackson came from fellow liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who intimated her colleague may have misunderstood the assignment.

In her lone dissenting opinion in AFGE, Jackson picked up where she left off in CASA — insinuating that the president was some sort of power-hungry menace and that those on the bench who failed to stop his "wrecking ball" were sycophantic enablers whose decision was both "hubristic and senseless."

RELATED: Justice Amy Coney Barrett humiliates Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson over her apparent ignorance of American law

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Jackson claimed at the outset of her 15-page opinion that the Clinton judge's injunction — supposedly a "temporary, practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo" — was "no match for this Court's demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President's legally dubious actions in an emergency posture."

"This Court lacks the capacity to fully evaluate, much less responsibly override, reasoned lower court factfinding about what this challenged executive action actually entails," continued Jackson.

She asserted that the high court's decision not to leave "well enough alone" would ultimately "allow an apparently unprecedented and congressionally unsanctioned dismantling of the Federal Government to continue apace, causing irreparable harm before courts can determine whether the President has the authority to engage in the actions he proposes."

"This was the wrong decision at the wrong moment, especially given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground," wrote Jackson.

Sotomayor volunteered a one-paragraph concurring opinion in AFGE to point out the issue with Jackson's long-winded line of attack, namely that the court was not considering the legality of the Trump administration's specific plans.

RELATED: Supreme Court gives Trump major victory on mass federal layoffs

Photo by JACQUELYN MARTIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

After signaling agreement that "the President cannot restructure federal agencies in a manner inconsistent with congressional mandates," Sotomayor noted that Trump's executive order explicitly directs agencies "to plan reorganizations and reductions in force 'consistent with applicable law' ... and the resulting joint memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management reiterates as much."

'I'm doing my best work.'

"The plans themselves are not before this Court, at this stage," continued Sotomayor, "and we thus have no occasion to consider whether they can and will be carried out consistent with the constraints of law."

Sotomayor was here echoing the court's unsigned opinion, which stated, "We express no view on the legality of any Agency [reduction in force] and Reorganization Plan produced or approved pursuant to the Executive Order and Memorandum."

"Imagine how much of a drag it must be to have the DEI justice embarrassing your side," Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said of Sotomayor's response.

Sean Davis, CEO of the Federalist, noted, "I don't know what happened behind closed doors in the Supreme Court over the last month, but it seems like everyone has had more than enough of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nonsense."

"I think I am aware that people are watching," Jackson told ABC News' Linsey Davis in an interview on Saturday. "They want to know how I am going to perform in this job and in this environment, and so I'm doing my best work as well as I can do because I want people to see and know that I can do anything just like anyone else."

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