Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday defended the federal judiciary in a rare rebuke of comments from President Trump, saying there are no “Obama judges” as the president had claimed.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in a statement distributed by the Supreme Court. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them."

He went on to say an “independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for."

The statement, coming one day before Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, marks the first time Roberts, the head of the federal judiciary, has pushed back against comments from the president.

The statement from the chief justice was in response to an inquiry from the Associated Press after Trump rebuked a federal judge in California who ruled against his administration’s new asylum policy.

Obama nominated the judge, Jon Tigar, to the U.S. district court in San Francisco in 2012.

“This was an Obama judge, and I’ll tell you what, it’s not going to happen like this anymore,” he told reporters Tuesday before leaving the White House for his Florida property, Mar-a-Lago.

Trump has railed against courts that have ruled against his administration’s policies in the past and frequently takes aim at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Last year, for example, Trump referred to a federal judge who ruled against his travel ban as a “so-called judge.”