The Supreme Court Is More Broken Than Ever
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The relationship between the federal government’s executive and judicial branches in these early months of the second Trump administration is, in a word, fraught. The president outright ignores the decisions of federal courts in some instances, follows their orders in others, and increasingly relies on the Supreme Court to grant him unprecedented power.
This Supreme Court is, obviously, very conservative, but even now they don’t always rule the way Trump would like them to. They held that the Trump administration had to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, even if that was somewhat vague. But even when he doesn’t win outright the conservative justices give him wide-ranging powers: in a case involving his attempt to end birthright citizenship, Trump celebrated a ruling that largely ignored that specific policy but did say that federal judges could no longer issue nationwide injunctions—with some limited exceptions.
Is this new, or just more of the same from the Roberts Court? It can be difficult to tell whether the Supreme Court is moving in a direction that would further empower Trump, if they’re basically doing what they’ve been doing for the last few years — at least since granting then-candidate Trump broad immunity for “official acts” a year ago.
Leah Litman, a professor of law at the University of Michigan and co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, told Splinter that the Supreme Court seems to be taking Trump’s side more than it has in the past.