Something’s brewing with the Supreme Court right now
We went into today knowing that the U.S. Supreme Court would announce its rulings in several key cases, and there was a good chance that it would include Donald Trump’s baseless claim of presidential immunity. Instead the Supreme Court issued an almost bizarrely correct ruling on abortion drugs. But it’s clear something is brewing, and the other shoe could drop as soon as tomorrow.
Remember, this Supreme Court isn’t just far right extremist. It’s also for sale. And it’s running scared. The usual pattern these days is that these right wing Supreme Court Justices rule corruptly on the specific cases in which their right wing mega donors have asked them to. Then the court rules correctly on about one-third of its high profile cases just to tamp down public support for expanding the court.
As I’ve said before, whenever this Supreme Court hands us a win, we have to take it and celebrate it. As a result of today’s correct ruling, numerous women will have better access to safer health care. So that’s a win for America. But these high profile “good” rulings are often timed to distract the public from a really corrupt ruling that’s coming out alongside it.
So something’s brewing here, and it’s probably not good. My guess is that when the Supreme Court issues its next batch of rulings tomorrow, there will be at least one “bad” ruling in amongst them. Of course that would mean that the court would likely issue a proper ruling on a high profile case tomorrow as well, in order to muddy the waters.
Given that Trump’s immunity ruling is now very likely to come down tomorrow, my guess is that the Supreme Court rules against Trump in order to generate headlines about how the court is reasonable, even as the court issues some terribly corrupt ruling on some other case.
But we’ll see. When it comes to this Supreme Court, predictions are always tricky. All we know for sure is that its rulings tend to be a bizarre mixed bag, driven both by the court’s desire to please whoever is pulling the strings on specific cases, and by the court’s desire to remain just under the general public’s radar by sometimes ruling correctly. In other words, never expect the best or the worst outcome. It’s always just a matter of which cases they screw us on, and which bones they decide to throw us.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report