The Supreme Court’s decision to hear Donald Trump’s claim that he should be shielded from criminal prosecution keeps the justices at the center of election-year controversy for several more months and means any verdict on Trump’s alleged subversion of the 2020 vote will not come before summer.
The country’s highest court wants the final word on the former president’s assertion of immunity, even if it may ultimately affirm a comprehensive ruling of the lower federal court that rejected Trump’s sweeping claim.
For Trump, Wednesday’s order amounts to another win from the justice system he routinely attacks. The justices’ intervention in the case, Trump v. United States, also marks another milestone in the fraught relationship between the court and the former president.
Cases related to his policies and his personal dealings consistently roiled the justices behind the scenes. At the same time, Trump, who appointed three of the nine justices, significantly influenced the court’s lurch to the right, most notably its 2022 reversal of nearly a half century of abortion rights and reproductive freedom.
If Biden wins, and the Democrats pull off a majority in the House and Senate, they need to pack the court, Fillibuster be damned. Expand it to 11 on July 2025, and 13 in July of 2027. The recent decisions, as unpopular as they are, should build up enough popular support for this.
Then they need to sit down with Republicans and say “Hey! We’ll give you a choice. Work with us to reform the Court to add term limits via amendment and make any single sudden vacancy less of a political football, or watch as Dark Brandon appoints 4 Liberal justices in their early 40s to lifetime appointments.”