SCOTUS Watch: Now More Trumpy

Supreme Court Helps

The Supreme Court conservatives helped and will be helped by Trump. The liberals partially went along in Trump v. Anderson (insurrection). The immunity case (Trump v. U.S.) is all on the conservatives. 

Trump is not constitutionally qualified to be president. The Fourteenth Amendment addresses his engagement in insurrection. Nonetheless, as with his violation of emoluments rules, the courts found ways to ignore explicit text while making shit up on immunity. 

The emoluments cases were slow-walked and after his term was over became moot. This was a choice. When the Supreme Court wants to do so, it speeds things along or finds procedural workarounds. 

We can debate all that went into the American public's nauseating failure in electing Trump. The Supreme Court blocking a trial for his election crimes did not help. The patently unfit-to-preside Trump pick blocking the national security trial didn't help.  

The conservatives got their likely wish. Trump won. The chance for any judicial reform is gone. Alito and Thomas can retire at their leisure. 

The Trump Administration will advance more conservative positions satisfactory to the majority. There will be a certain mournful quality to one or more cases argued by the federal government before mid-January, particularly next month's trans cases.

How far Trump and his team will go remains to be seen. It won't be as fully horrible as some fear but the overturning of Roe v. Wade underlines it will be horrible in multiple ways. 

Lower Courts 

Trump, a convicted felon with multiple other pending indictments,* which now will go away, will have the ability to stock the courts with judges that will remain for decades. Republican control of the Senate will ease the way.  

President Biden and Senate Democrats did pretty well. There is still some left on the table, however, and the simple reality is that there was only one Supreme Court seat. Trump might have five.

Also, there will now be more judges to select with an expansion of the number of district judges. This adds to the results of the voting, many of whom did not act with this sort of thing in mind. But, it all is part of the whole, no matter if the people don't think or care.  

In 2016, the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica exploited the data of over 30 million Facebook users in connection with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. After Facebook (now Meta) knew of the breach, but before Cambridge’s widespread use of the data was made public, Facebook issued a securities filing disclosing to investors the hypothetical risk that a security breach might cause harm to Facebook’s business and stock price. That disclosure did not reveal that, as Facebook was aware, a large breach of that sort already had occurred.

The Supreme Court chose an apt time -- the day after the election -- to hold an oral argument in this case. Lest you forget, and there is so much skullduggery that it is easy to lose track, Steve Bannon was a vice president of the company. 

Upcoming 

A Friday conference will lead to a Tuesday (Monday is a holiday) Order List. There are some more not very exciting oral arguments next week. 

Any celebratory (or girls' night of drinking the sorrows away) events are unofficial.  

“Do not despair,” Harris concluded. “This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves.”

It is hard not to despair. I thought in 2016 that the death of Justice Scalia would bring balance to the Supreme Court. Garland was blocked and Trump was elected. Three tainted justices followed.  

Electing Trump after all that he did ... how can we not despair for our country? Chris Geidner citing a play about the AIDS epidemic (someone kept fighting even amidst the dying) does not make me feel much better.

Talk about "rolling up sleeves" after she congratulated a sexual predator for his victory (is this really necessary? "you killed my mom, but hey, you won the election ... congrats!") comes off as obscene on some level. And, President Biden is now helping a Putin puppet to take over the White House again. Charming.

But, as I said on Wednesday, what is the alternative? Endurance is a type of win. I am just tired thinking about how much people will have to struggle. Finding victories when you can, limiting damage, and fighting on. I thought of it as "triage" last time. Still do.  

We will see some of that in the courts too. 

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* There is also the footnote regarding his New York conviction for which final sentencing was delayed until after the election. Jack Smith is prepping to unwind the federal cases. [Expletive deleted.]

Michael Dorf has a blog post on the NY case. Without agreeing with him across the board, it has some good points. Overall, I think a fine and suspended sentence with token requirements would do the trick. 

I think the prosecution while in office thing is largely academic. I'm open to some extreme case -- yes, including murder -- but you know, we will worry about that when it happens.