Supreme court

The latest Supreme Court term, which ended on Tuesday, surely must have been a deep disappointment for those who argue the court is in the thrall of political puppet masters. In decision after decision in the term that began October 6, the high court asserted a degree of institutional independence that undercuts the idea its jurists are merely politicians in judicial robes. At bottom, the issues before the court were characterized by Trump’s attempts to vastly expand presidential authority and efforts by states, political opponents and others to rein him in. In the end, the match was a draw.

E. Jean Carroll gets to keep her money. The Supreme Court has declined to review the $5 million sexual abuse and defamation verdict she won in federal court against Donald Trump. Carroll walks away enriched. Her financier – Reid Hoffman, a wealthy Democratic donor and LinkedIn co-founder who bankrolled the litigation – got his money’s worth too. But the rest of us are much poorer. We are left with a badly damaged legal system and a clarifying, disturbing lesson about American politics: lawfare works. Whether you love Donald Trump or loathe him, the wave of civil and criminal litigation targeting him over the past several years should alarm you.

Economist and former New York Times opinion writer Paul Krugman has called for a post-Trump “deMAGAfication” of America, and left no mystery about the comparison he was making. “And I’m not going over the top by using a word that’s very similar to the ‘denazification’ that we pursued successfully after World War Two in Germany.” Krugman remained vague about the nature of this “thorough purging,” but said it should include “not just the MAGA ideology, but the whole structure of hugely unequal power, hugely unequal wealth that made this horrific moment possible.” Today’s left – secular, post-Christian, postmodern and postcolonial, untethered from faith, tradition or national feeling – has few moral intuitions other than “Do not be Hitler.

The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Louisiana v. Callais et al has inevitably drawn strong criticism. In ruling that electoral districts cannot be redefined along racial lines, the Court stands accused of "gutting" the Voting Rights Act, crippling civil-rights law and effectively disenfranchising minority voters.  What the Supreme Court has "gutted" is not the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – but a nakedly racial form of gerrymandering But the Court’s decision was correct on the merits. It also represents a great retrenchment that’s taking place in American politics.

The real problem with US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson attending the Grammys wasn’t that it revealed her true colors as a liberal, but that it showed the slow and steady erosion of the court’s institutional reserve.Senator Marsha Blackburn, the Tennessee Republican, demanded that Chief Justice John Roberts launch an investigation into Jackson alleging she breached ethics rules by appearing at the anti-ICE event.“Americans deserve a Supreme Court that is impartial and above political influence,” Blackburn gravely pronounced. “When a Justice participates in such a highly politicized event, it raises ethical questions. We need an investigation into Justice Jackson’s ability to remain impartial.

America needs Donald Trump, badly. He is the bull in the china shop that every nation needs from time to time. He is testing his country’s constitution to destruction as well as its relations with the outside world. Such tests hasten the necessity of reform. The only question is how long will it take for reform to catch up and overcome him, as it surely will. Constitutional chaos may then break loose after midterms. This is America’s great opportunity In January alone Trump toppled the leader of Venezuela, mooted the conquest of Greenland and a 100 percent tariffs on Canada, insulted the British army and killed Americans protesting his immigration policy.

Rarely has the ideologically divided US Supreme Court seemed so much on the same wavelength. And that is not good news for President Trump.In arguments Wednesday in a case that centers on President Trump’s authority to fire members of the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, both Republican and Democratic appointees suggested giving the president unfettered control would harm financial markets and damage public confidence.“Your position – no judicial review, very low bar (for dismissal) and that the president alone makes the determination – would weaken if not shatter the independence of the Federal Reserve,” said Justice Brett Kavanaugh in an exchange with US Solicitor General John Sauer, representing the Trump administration.

It’s been a less than stellar year for trans activists. Shortly after taking office last January, President Trump signed an executive order withholding federal funds from any school that permits biological men and boys from playing on women’s sports teams. Then in June the US Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law banning the use of puberty blockers and hormones for the treatment of young patients suffering from so-called gender dysphoria and seeking to change their gender identity. And on Tuesday the Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases brought by transgender athletes seeking to overturn laws in Idaho and West Virginia barring biological boys and men from playing on female sports teams at the state and local level.

Each Supreme Court term typically includes at least one explosive case that inflames political passions and captures the public imagination. When the court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, or when it greatly broadened presidential immunity, as it did last year in Trump v. the United States, or when it ruled against race-based college admissions in 2023, it reaffirmed its centrality and reminded voters that it mattered. As it happens, very few Americans can name the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (surveys show it is consistently under 16 percent), but most know instinctively the high court’s opinions deeply impact governance, politics and culture.

In the great injunction sweepstakes that have followed Donald Trump’s second administration like a shadow, we have seen district court judges with a hankering for executive power attempt to play president in more than a hundred cases from immigration and tariffs to funding various executive branch agencies, so-called trans-rights, DEI and climate change. Some of these injunctions and temporary restraining orders are still pending. Many, perhaps most, have been resolved by the Supreme Court in ways that favor the Trump administration, not always categorically but usually by affirming the broad scope of executive power envisioned by Article II of the Constitution.

It’s becoming increasingly taxing for Donald Trump to defend his tariff policy. His latest gambit is to float the prospect of a $2,000 rebate to Americans from the tens of billions that the federal government has collected in tariffs. But will this prove any more successful than his previous attempts to justify his loopy tariffs?With the Supreme Court apparently poised to strike down his tariffs as a form of revenue collection designed to perform an end-run around Congress, Trump is scrambling. As usual, bravado prevails. On Sunday, he declared, “A dividend of at $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” the president said on Truth Social.” Trump also dismissed his detractors as “FOOLS!

The headwinds facing Democrats in Congress have been blowing powerfully for some time now. On culture, the economy, law enforcement and immigration the party is on the defensive as it casts about not only for a winning message, but leaders able to persuade the public the party remains relevant in the age of Trump. Add to that list of hurdles the Supreme Court. The court’s conservative majority has delivered one blow after another to treasured progressive causes including transgender rights, maintaining the federal workforce and presidential authority. Now the court is contemplating changes to the Voting Rights Act that could, if carried out, cause Democrats to lose a dozen or more seats in the House, all of them held by minorities.

President Donald J. Trump, burned in 2020 at the height of Covid by some states’ shenanigans ranging from rule changes regarding absentee voting to registration requirements, is now on a quest to reform mail-in voting and traditional ballot tabulation machines. On August 18, the President posted the following missive on Truth Social: “I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election.” Some of the voting practices the President has critiqued are unusual, to say the least.

L.W., a transgender girl, her parents, and her doctor agreed that it would be good and medically appropriate for her to receive gender-affirming hormone therapy. The state of Tennessee, where L.W. lived, passed a statute in 2023 prohibiting transgender minors from receiving such treatment. Did the statute discriminate against L.W. on the basis of sex? The US Supreme Court said it didn’t. In 2023, the British government planned to send to Rwanda people who tried to get to the United Kingdom on small boats and then seek asylum. Would that policy violate the asylum seekers’ human rights because the conditions in Rwanda were unsafe? The UK Supreme Court said it did.

The second coming of President Trump has brought an invigorated commander-in-chief asserting broad authority over the executive branch, reigniting debate over how much power the president has over his own subordinates, including US Attorneys. At present, the battle has focused on one US Attorney in particular. On March 24, 2025, the President named Alina Habba, his former personal attorney, the Interim US Attorney for the District of New Jersey. There’s a catch: Interim US Attorneys may serve only 120 days. On July 1, the President nominated Habba for Senate confirmation as New Jersey’s US Attorney; if confirmed, Habba could have served permanently at the pleasure of the President. Neither of her home state’s senators (both Democrats) supported Habba.

The Supreme Court has reined in the authority of district court judges by ruling unconstitutional the ever more common practice of universal injunctions, an abuse of Article III power that cried out for the Court’s intervention. Trump v. Casa is a long overdue vindication of the limits of constitutional power. Sadly, yet increasingly predictably, some progressives claimed the end was nigh… again. In dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s words fairly smoldered from the page: “It is not difficult to predict how this all ends. Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more.” She further lambasted her colleagues’ 6-3 majority decision as “an existential threat to the rule of law.