I'm not hopeful

Conservative disgust with Republicans is rooted in the widely held belief that the old-guard, non-MAGA, neocon Republicans have lazily ridden the MAGA wave but have retained their inability to seal the deal, i.e., to aggressively prosecute leftist malfeasance and shenanigans, and to create right-friendly legislation. Is the supposedly Trump-stacked, right-leaning Supreme Court any better? Only a small fraction of the nine justices seem to be on board with the MAGA project; three of them (Sotomayor, Kagan, Brown Jackson) are brazenly leftist; three of the "conservative" judges seem to be, at best, squishy rightists—Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett. That leaves Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch as the only solid right-conservatives on the bench. This looks bleak to me, and it's an aftereffect of Trump's poor judgment, during his first term, in picking people like Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett. Kavanaugh, in particular, after the hell he went through during his nomination hearings, ought to have hardened his heart against his leftie interlocutors, but no: he's got leftie sympathies. Which brings us to this headline:

Supreme Court Poised to Grapple With Nationwide Injunctions on Trump’s Orders
Three judges have blocked the president’s order restricting birthright citizenship.

One of the many lawsuits contesting President Donald Trump’s agenda will hit the Supreme Court for oral argument for the first time on May 15.

The case arises from a challenge to Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. The hearing is unusual in that it stems from a preliminary appeal in which the Trump administration is challenging a federal judge’s use of nationwide injunctions to block the president’s agenda.

The Trump administration argues that district court judges are exceeding their authority by imposing broad blocks on government policy, rather than applying them to the parties in the lawsuit. Three lower court judges had issued nationwide injunctions blocking Trump’s policy of ending birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants.

With more than 100 lawsuits against Trump’s policies, lower court judges have issued a raft of nationwide injunctions halting parts of the administration’s agenda, from federal spending freezes to immigration enforcement to canceling diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

The injunctions are highly controversial because they impose policy changes for the entire country rather than offer relief only for plaintiffs in the lawsuits, drawing scrutiny from some Supreme Court justices and members of Congress.

Trump has said they are detrimental to the nation’s future.

“These Judges want to assume the Powers of the Presidency, without having to attain 80 Million Votes. They want all of the advantages with none of the risks,” the president wrote in a March post on Truth Social.

“STOP NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. If Justice Roberts and the United States Supreme Court do not fix this toxic and unprecedented situation IMMEDIATELY, our Country is in very serious trouble!”

Meanwhile, the hearing may also touch on questions about the constitutionality of Trump’s order on birthright citizenship. The order challenged the idea that birthright citizenship allows an illegal immigrant’s child to receive citizenship if born in the United States.

In January, Trump signed an order to stop granting citizenship to individuals if a person’s mother was unlawfully present in the country and the individual’s father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of the person’s birth.

It also states that the privilege of U.S. citizenship does not apply to an individual whose mother’s presence was lawful but temporary and whose father was neither a citizen nor a lawful permanent resident at the time of that individual’s birth.

The issue of whether judges have been exceeding their authority in nationwide blocks on policies has previously been raised before the Supreme Court.

Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris told the Supreme Court in March that it should say “enough is enough” on the practice and that the blocks on Trump’s birthright citizenship order were needlessly broad.

“While the parties litigate weighty questions, the Court should ‘restrict the scope’ of multiple preliminary injunctions that ‘purport to cover every person ... in the country,’ limiting those injunctions to parties actually within the courts’ power,” she wrote in a filing.

Competitive Enterprise Institute attorney Devin Watkins told The Epoch Times that the dispute before the high court on Thursday “really doesn’t have anything to do with the merits of the government’s position on birthright citizenship.”

Rather, the key question of this appeal, he said, is whether lower courts have the power to issue blocks that affect those who are not parties to the lawsuit.

The administration’s position might receive sympathy from Justices Neil Gorsuch, Elena Kagan, and Clarence Thomas, who have each criticized nationwide injunctions in previous years. In discussing nationwide injunctions, the justices could ask about the source of judges’ authority in Article III of the Constitution and federal law.

In a 2020 concurring opinion, Gorsuch said there was a problem with “the increasingly common practice of trial courts ordering relief that transcends the cases before them.”

There's a lot more. Read the rest. I'm not hopeful.