The Memo: Trump’s Supreme Court shows its seismic impact

The impact of former President Trump’s Supreme Court on American life is becoming clearer every day.

Trump nominated three of the justices on the current court, delivering a 6-3 conservative majority that can carry all before it — even on deeply contentious issues.

On Thursday, the court struck a huge blow against affirmative action, finding that colleges and universities should not directly consider race as a factor in their admission process.

The following day, the court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, finding that the administration had exceeded its authority with a program that would have erased around $400 billion in debt.

Those two decisions come on top of the seismic Dobbs decision a year ago, which struck down the constitutional right to abortion that had stood since 1973’s Roe v. Wade.

On Friday, the court waded into the culture wars again, ruling that a Christian website designer in Colorado had the right to refuse to design sites celebrating same-sex marriages.

The decisions removed any sliver of doubt that the court will be Trump’s lasting legacy, shaping many of the hottest issues in the United States for years to come — regardless of how the former president fares in his efforts to win back the White House in 2024.

The court is also, of course, a large and painful thorn in the side for Biden.

The president hit back on Friday, after the student loans decision, alleging the court was “wrong” and had “misinterpreted the Constitution.”

Biden also sought to tie the GOP as closely as possible to the court’s decisions, contending that the student debt issue had revealed that “these Republican officials just couldn’t bear the thought of providing relief to working-class, middle-class Americans.”

Those comments highlight the political complexity in some of these issues — and the possibility that the court may have misjudged public opinion in a way that causes Republicans serious problems.

That’s especially true on abortion, where polls have consistently shown the decision that overturned Roe is unpopular.

Even so, the court’s decisions are a reminder to many conservatives that the bargain some Trump skeptics made during his 2016 campaign paid off.

Back then, many conservatives who were unenthusiastic about Trump’s colorful personal life and penchant for crudeness backed him anyway, in part because he held out the promise of delivering lasting change through the judiciary.

That’s exactly what happened.

Now, Republicans who back the former president know he holds a powerful card in the 2024 GOP primary, which he currently leads by about 30 points over his closest challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“Politically, all of these big wins at the Supreme Court since [the striking down of] Roe v. Wade last year are a godsend for Trump, because it’s a constant and continued reminder to GOP voters that Trump delivered for them,” said one Republican consultant supportive of the former president.

“Republican voters have long memories and know all too well that it’s not an automatic given to get strong conservative justices just because you have a GOP president.”

Some GOP officials and conservative commentators rushed to praise Trump in the wake of the latest decisions.

Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) proclaimed on Twitter that “The Trump Court is the greatest Supreme Court in American history.”

Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas), apparently referring to the cases on affirmative action, student loans and the Christian website designer, gleefully tweeted about “Three straight wins for America thanks to President Trump’s Supreme Court.”

Commentator and podcast host Megyn Kelly characterized Friday as “a spectacular day for Donald Trump whose three conservative picks for [the Supreme Court] were integral to the historic decisions.”

Still, there is a whole other side to the story.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) contended that “if right-wing Supreme Court justices want to make public policy they should quit the Supreme Court and run for political office.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) blasted “six right wing politicians, masquerading as judges” who he said were “gleefully imposing their politics on the country by fiat.”

Beyond the Democratic Party, some Trump critics predicted that the court’s decisions could deepen problems for the GOP.

Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, told this column that the affirmative action decision “makes it more difficult [for Republicans] to go into Black neighborhoods and communities when you are having opportunity taken away from those communities.”

Steele, who is Black, added of the conservative justices’ rationale: “This notion of a colorblind nation is just bullsh*t. Let’s call it what it is. This country has never been colorblind since the day the first Africans came to its shores and they enslaved them.”

Meanwhile, progressive strategist Jonathan Tasini contended that the court’s recent decisions were so far out of step with public opinion as to hand Democrats a political gift.

“If the Democrats cannot make hay from this, then the Democratic Party is bankrupt and should cede the stage,” Tasini said.

The battle over the court and its decisions is raging.

The abortion issue was widely credited for Democrats avoiding bigger losses in last November’s midterms. Biden on Friday announced several measures intended to ease the pain for people paying off student loans, and the full ramifications of that issue are yet to play out.

Some voices caution against believing the most recent decisions will fundamentally change the calculus.

GOP pollster Glen Bolger said that if the 2024 election ends up as a Biden-Trump rematch, “I don’t know voters are going to say, ‘I am undecided between these two so let me look at these Supreme Court decisions and make up my mind.’”

On Thursday, after the decision on affirmative action, the former president asserted it was “a great day for America.”

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

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