CNN
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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts criticized what he called “dangerous” talk by some officials about disregarding federal court rulings and emphasized the importance of an independent judiciary using an annual report weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Officials “across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open defiance of federal court rulings,” Roberts wrote in the report released Tuesday by the Supreme Court. “These dangerous proposals, however sporadic, must be firmly rejected.”

The chief justice gave no details about which officials he had in mind – and both Republicans and Democrats have indicated in recent years that they would ignore court rulings. Still, Roberts’ year-end message landed just days before the Jan. 20 inauguration of a president who has repeatedly described the federal judiciary as rigged.

Trump’s agenda – particularly on immigration – could put the new president on a collision course next year with a Supreme Court that he helped build by appointing three conservative justices in his first term.

“Every government suffers defeats in the court system – sometimes in cases with far-reaching consequences,” Roberts wrote. And yet, he added, “in recent decades, both parties have respected court decisions and avoided the kind of constitutional confrontations that arose during the civil rights era, when some Southern states rejected court orders to integrate.”

Roberts made particular reference to the decisions of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations to enforce school desegregation. For example, in 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to integrate its schools after officials tried to defy Supreme Court decisions that declared segregated schools unconstitutional.

Roberts complained that “officials,” whom he also did not name, had “regrettably” attempted to intimidate judges by “assuming political bias in the judge’s adverse decisions, without any credible basis for such allegations.” These attempts were ” inappropriate and should be combated vigorously,” he warned.

As in years past, the chief justice avoided direct mention of the controversies and challenges brewing within the Supreme Court itself — including ongoing questions about ethics, a weeks-long scandal this year over controversial flags displayed on Justice Samuel Alito’s grounds were hoisted, and the public’s declining trust in the nation’s highest court.

In a series of interviews before the election, Vice President-elect JD Vance expressed doubts about his allegiance to the Supreme Court’s decisions. In a 2021 podcast, as The New York Times previously reported, Vance called on Trump to respond to negative court rulings “like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his decision.’ Now let him enforce it.’”

The likely apocryphal quote came about in response to an 1832 decision by Jackson concerning Native Americans.

Trump himself has often criticized federal courts – including the Supreme Court – for negative decisions. A spokesman for Trump’s campaign criticized the “political weapon of our justice system” earlier this week in response to a federal appeals court ruling in New York that upheld a jury’s verdict that found the former president sexually assaulted writer E. Jean Carroll .

Democrats have also publicly toyed with opposing enforcement of court decisions. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew criticism last year for suggesting on CNN that the Biden administration would “ignore” a district court ruling that the Food and Drug Administration had stopped the abortion pill mifepristone. The Supreme Court overruled that decision and dismissed the lawsuit against broader access to the drug in June.

Roberts has repeatedly used his annual report to emphasize the importance of an independent judiciary and to sound the alarm about threats of violence against judges. Two years ago, he similarly emphasized that “a justice system cannot and should not live in fear.”

In this year’s report, Roberts added that “hostile foreign state actors” had accelerated attacks on the judiciary and other areas. In some cases, he said, “bots distort court decisions by using false or exaggerated narratives to foment discord within our democracy.”

The report comes at the end of a year in which the 6-3 conservative majority granted former presidents broad immunity from prosecution – and at a time that allowed Trump to avoid trial on federal charges in two cases before the November election. This fall, the court is considering bans on transgender care and a First Amendment challenge to a bipartisan ban on TikTok.

“The role of the judiciary,” Roberts wrote, “is to say what the law is.”

However, he added: “The independence of the judiciary will be undermined if the other branches do not steadfastly discharge their responsibility to enforce the court’s orders.”