The Supreme Court Is Backing Trump's Power Grab
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How did the Supreme Court’s recent rulings change Trump’s ability to bypass lower‑court checks?
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Early in the second Trump term, as Donald Trump was asserting a level of nearly autocratic power that his predecessors certainly did not think they possessed, I released an essay, audio essay, video essay, called Don't Believe Him. And in that essay, I argued that he was asserting all this power because he was actually weak. He was moving so fast because everywhere else in the government, he was likely to be stopped, stopped in Congress and stopped in the courts. And so it was very, very, very important not to treat what Trump was doing as fixed, not to treat it as something that could not be undone, because it was only in assuming he had that power that he would really have it. Otherwise, he was going to get mired down in the same inertia and checks and balances that had mired all of his predecessors.
For a while, that bet looked sort of right. Trump was getting stopped in the courts. They were ruling against him overwhelmingly, over and over and over again. But that was the early months of the administration. We were still then waiting for the Supreme Court to weigh in. And in the last few months, it has weighed in. And it has weighed in overwhelmingly for Donald Trump and the powers he seeks. Even as a skeptic of the Supreme Court, even as a skeptic of this Supreme Court in particular, I thought Trump might get 20, 30% of the power that he wanted. So far, he's getting a hell of a lot more than that. I guess the good news here is that maybe we're not going to have the constitutional showdown many feared.
But the bad news is it's because Trump is getting what he wanted. Is it because the Supreme Court is submitting to him afraid of a showdown? Is it because the Supreme Court has wanted this kind of presidency, has in fact been building the constitutional structure and permission for it for years? To help me think this through, I want to bring Kate Shaw back on the podcast. Shaw is a former Supreme Court clerk. She is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the co-host of the fantastic podcast, Strict Scrutiny. She joins me now.
Kate Shaw, welcome back to the show.
Thanks for having me,
Ezra. So earlier this year, shortly after Donald Trump took office, I made the case that Trump was acting like a dictator but didn't actually have dictatorial power. In a bunch of subsequent episodes, people came on the show and said, look, the courts are stopping him. The system is sort of working. Now the Supreme Court has weighed in a number of times. Where are we now?
I think things look worse for the rule of law and better for Trump's dictatorial aspirations now than they did three or four months ago. So I think it's right that in the first couple of months of the administration, Trump is making these just wildly broad assertions of executive authority and executive orders and other kinds of actions. And he is running into the kind of buzzsaw of the lower courts applying settled doctrine, reading the Constitution and statutes, and saying, like, no, you can't do that. That's not how any of this works. And that is still ongoing. But starting in about April, the Supreme Court started to get into the mix. And in a series of rulings—so it's actually 16 in a row—
The Supreme Court has sided with Trump and against challenges to Trump and against lower courts that have ruled against Trump in this wild streak of victories for Trump that have largely happened under the radar because they are happening on the shadow
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did the Supreme Court’s recent rulings change Trump’s ability to bypass lower‑court checks?
0:00–7:08
2
What is the “shadow docket” and why does it matter for Trump’s emergency‑relief wins?
7:08–14:06
3
How has the Court allowed the administration to fire federal employees despite civil‑service protections?
14:06–21:20
4
In what ways did the Supreme Court enable the dismantling of agencies like USAID and the Department of Education?
21:20–27:40
5
What is the unitary‑executive theory and how does it support Trump’s expansive presidential power?
27:40–35:18
6
Why did the Court’s decision in Rucho v. Common Cause effectively hand partisan gerrymandering to politicians?
35:18–42:48
7
What future actions could the Trump administration take now that the Court backs its power grabs?
42:48–47:49
8
What reforms—court, legislative or constitutional—are suggested to restore checks on executive power?
47:49–58:28