What does the Supreme Court think it’s doing today?
Another day, another batch of rulings, another enigma. On Thursday the Supreme Court released its first scheduled batch of major rulings, including a solid ruling in favor of abortion medication, but there was no sign of the Trump immunity ruling. On Friday the Supreme Court released its next scheduled batch of major rulings, including a corrupt ruling on gun bump stocks – but still no Trump immunity ruling.
To be clear, that ruling is still coming soon. There’s no such thing as magically waiting forever to release such a ruling, even for this Supreme Court. But given this court’s propensity to rule corruptly when its donors want it to, and its propensity to rule correctly on about one-third of its cases in order to keep the public from electorally revolting, this is getting a bit odd.
I still suspect that, after this long wait, the Supreme Court will issue the kind of ruling that will allow Trump’s federal criminal trial to get underway. Why? This court has a history of only being willing to help Trump to the extent that it’s not sticking its own neck out. It’s also difficult to imagine this power-hungry Supreme Court handing absolute immunity to the presidency, which it wouldn’t be able to give to Trump without giving to Biden.
I was expecting that perhaps the Supreme Court would issue a proper ruling on Trump’s immunity at the same time as one of its corrupt rulings, so that the good news would drown out the corrupt news. I still suspect that might happen next week. Perhaps the court is planning to rule corruptly on its big environmental case, and is planning to use the Trump immunity ruling to distract everyone from that.
We’ll find out soon enough. It would be shocking if the Trump immunity ruling doesn’t come down next week. And I still expect that it’s a ruling we’ll mostly like – not out of any optimism, but simply because that’s how this Supreme Court operates. It cares less about protecting someone like Trump, and more about doing the bidding of its biggest gift-givers. But we’ll see.
