A Trump-sized shadow looms over the Supreme Court's new term
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The Supreme Court's next chapter begins Monday, with the justices set to decide key questions involving President Trump's immigration agenda, climate-change litigation and gun control in their new term.
The big picture: But one of the most closely watched fights may be on Truth Social, rather than the docket, as an increasingly agitated Trump chastises the high court he helped shape.
- The executive and judicial branches are set for another round in the white-columned ring with a president who moves at breakneck speed.
State of play: The court recently agreed to hear two major immigration cases, one over mandatory detention for certain immigrants and another over deporting immigrants to third countries where they lack ties.
- On the latter, the high court allowed the administration to restart its fast-tracked third-country deportations late last month while it considers the underlying legal questions in December.
- The court agreed Thursday to take up the detention case, setting the stage to test the Trump administration's legal interpretation that noncitizens who entered the country illegally, but have been living in the U.S., are to be held without bond.
- While federal appeals courts have been divided on the issue, a vast majority — nine of the 11 — have rejected the Trump administration's interpretation.
Flashback: While the Supreme Court shot down Trump's attempt to undermine birthright citizenship last term, it handed him a number of immigration wins and green-lit policies on its shadow docket.
- Those victories for Trump allowed the administration to end temporary protected status, enforce stricter asylum rules and use a revamped tool to check voters' citizenship.
Zoom out: Before those cases come to the bench, the court will hear arguments Monday in a key climate case that could determine the fate of state-court lawsuits nationwide seeking climate damages from oil giants, Axios' Ben Geman reports.
- The court also added two other cases to its lineup Thursday, on top of the mandatory detention debate: One is about a federal law protecting land use by religious groups brought by a missionary organization, and the other is about military benefits in divorce settlement agreements.
- Later this year, the court will weigh the constitutionality of bans on AR-15-style weapons and consider whether Arizona can mandate proof of citizenship for people registering to vote.
- More disputes over other Trump policies are sure to reach the court this term.
Friction point: Though the high court has inflated executive power and gave the president a number of summer shadow docket wins, it also checked some of his most audacious actions last term. He didn't like that.
- After the justices blocked the administration's pre-midterm attempt to rewrite mail-in voting rules, the president raged against his own Supreme Court picks.
- "These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves," he wrote on Truth Social.
In a recent interview with Time, the president said he regretted nominating them, saying, "I gave them the chance of a lifetime, and it's unfortunate what they did."
