This piece by Michael Waldman at the Brennan Center is important. If you had any hope for the Supreme Court left this will cure you of it:
All knew that a great clash over presidential power would unfold at the Supreme Court this year. Donald Trump has smashed through laws and constitutional boundaries. What would the justices do?
They might cave and endorse this sweeping call for expanded presidential power. Or they might stand up for checks and balances. Perhaps they would try to avoid acting altogether. We had every reason to expect big debates and major rulings.
Instead, the justices found another path — a sneakier one. Repeatedly, they have let Trump amass vast new power, and they have done so without putting their names on it. They are proving willing accomplices to a constitutional coup, all without leaving a trace.
That’s what happened on Monday in a case involving the Department of Education. The Court permitted Trump to move forward with his plan to effectively shut down the federal agency created by Congress and embodied in decades of law. Two lower courts had blocked this effort. The Supreme Court overturned those decisions in an order, with not even a sentence of explanation. There was no public argument. Not a single justice would sign their name.
[…]
Here, the justices never heard arguments. Just one friend-of-the-court brief was filed. The Court gave challengers only seven days to file papers. No explanation was offered either. “Owing to their unpredictable timing, their lack of transparency, and their usual inscrutability, these rulings come both literally and figuratively in the shadows,” explained Georgetown professor Steve Vladeck, the country’s leading expert on the shadow docket.
It was all over in the blink of an eye. We don’t even know how many votes this move got. The supermajority was silent. ..
This major ruling follows a disturbing recent pattern. In the past few months, the justices have used the shadow docket to let the president fire independent agency heads, in clear violation of 90 years of precedent. They’ve allowed the administration to deport people to countries where they never lived. And they’ve given effective approval to the Pentagon’s move to bar transgender people from serving in the military. All these measures involve a passive-aggressive jurisprudence: We aren’t making a big ruling, you see, just addressing something done by other judges. Though the rulings are technically temporary, the damage is done.
Here, because the Court allowed the administration to proceed with mass firings at the Department of Education, by the time a major ruling is issued (if one is), the offices will have long been emptied and the department effectively destroyed. Education experts discussed the implications of the Court’s actions and explored the protections that state courts and constitutions might provide against at least some of the administration’s policies at a Brennan Center live event yesterday.
That’s the clever trick, isn’t it? Delay, delay, delay until the dirty deed is done.
They are not going to save us. They are a huge part of the problem.