With the court slated to issue a flood of rulings by early July, the justices have an important choice: to bend to Trump or to grow a real backbone
With the most authoritarian and lawless president in history sitting in the White House, the US supreme court is no doubt worried about looking weak in one of two ways. First, the court fears it will look pathetically weak if it becomes the first supreme court in history to have a president defy its rulings in a wholesale way. With that in mind, the court seems to be taking pains to avoid provoking Donald Trump’s defiance – it has issued several decisions upholding the president’s actions while in other cases, it has given him lots of wiggle room even as it objected to his administration’s moves.
Then there’s the court’s second, big worry – that it will look pathetically weak if it doesn’t stand up to the most authoritarian president in US history. Many legal experts criticize the court for not standing up more to Trump, even though he has brazenly attacked the court and many lower-court judges, has defied several judicial orders and has, according to numerous judges, repeatedly violated the law – whether by deporting immigrants without due process or by freezing funds approved by Congress.
