[Gormo]

More to the point, it's why our political system does not give unilateral control over most of this stuff to the executive branch. That's the reason why the courts are regularly ruling against the administration -- they're pretending to legal authority they don't have in the first place.

[koolba]

> That's the reason why the courts are regularly ruling against the administration -- they're pretending to legal authority they don't have in the first place.

Lower courts. The track record of this administration at the SCOTUS is 90%.

[dragonwriter]

> The track record of this administration at the SCOTUS is 90%.

Its not quite that high of cases (21 out of 25 where the administration is a party in 2025, per [0], with one additional loss since the beginning of 2026 (Tangipa v. Newsom [1] seeking an injunction barring the CA redistricting map, where the administration wasn't in the heading but was a party as a plaintiff-intervenor.) Note that all of the decided cases at issue are interim orders (orders concerning actions before the final decision on the case, where the Administration either wants an injunction or wants to not have an injunction against it, mainly), and reading the track record of the cases that actually get decided on the interim docket neglects the effect of the Administration's losses there on which cases it could appeal it chooses not to so they never reach the docket at all, as argued in [2].

[0] https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/looking-back-at-2025-the-...

[1] https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/tangipa-v-newsom...

[2] https://www.scotusblog.com/interim-docket-blog/#the-federal-...

[Hugsun]

SCOTUS is indeed compromised.

[randomfrogs]

The Republican majority on the SCOTUS announced that Trump is immune from all laws, which is insane and not supported by the Constitution in any way, but directly lead to what's happening. If you tell somebody they won't ever be held accountable for breaking laws, why follow them (except for your internal moral compass, and we've established that Trump doesn't have one).

[dragonwriter]

> The Republican majority on the SCOTUS announced that Trump is immune from all laws

This is factually untrue; the Court, in Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), held that the President has:

(1) absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for exercises of core constitutional powers, (2) presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for all official acts, (3) no immunity from criminal prosecution for unofficial acts.

This is—while still problematic—very far from the President being “immune to all laws”.

[ecshafer]

Lower courts have a lot more activist judges than SCOTUS. SCOTUS has fewer activist judges than they used to, and are now busy interpreting the law based on the constitution, not on what their own personal grievances are.

[Hikikomori]

5 current scotus judges are part of the federalist society. Do you believe only "leftist" judges are activist judges?

[ecshafer]

Federalist society is supporting textualist interpretation of the law. If you want the law to be different, then change the constitution. Having overly expansive interpetations of the constitution to make the law what you want is being an activist. Textualism is just going by what the law says.

[Hikikomori]

Presidential immunity ruling is textualism? Get off your horse.

[randomfrogs]

They decided that the 14th amendment prohibition on insurrectionists being able to hold Federal office did not apply to Trump because he is not an officer of the United States (despite the fact he holds the "Office of the Presidency"). If that isn't deliberately misreading the actual words of the statute to get the result you want, what is?

[opo]

This was a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court and I think a large part of it was that an individual state could use this for political gain. As Kagan said during oral arguments: "I think the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States..."

[array_key_first]

They're interpreting the law based on how much they can contort the constitution to divert as much power to King Trump as possible while not completely thrashing their credibility.

[disgruntledphd2]

Importantly, they're using the shadow docket so that they don't need to decide officially, as that would bind their hands with a future Democratic administration.

Like, whatever happened to the Major Questions Doctrine?

[dragonwriter]

> Importantly, they're using the shadow docket so that they don't need to decide officially

The Supreme Court doesn't choose which docket to “use”; the interim docket (sometimes calls the “emergency docket” or “shadow docket”) is where applications for immediate action on cases that have not reached a final decision in lower court are handled. Decisions on the interim docket are more likely to be unsigned orders, but that's as true of the ones the administration has lost as the ones it has won.

[MichaelZuo]

The fact that it’s possible at all to inject plausible doubt, for even a few weeks, means that counterparties will be much more wary.

They will simply have less goodwill when an American team is on the other side of the table, and give less benefit of the doubt. (as compared to say if a Swiss team is on the other side of the table)