Ruth Marcus, a columnist for The New Yorker and author of *Supreme Ambition*, dives deep into the turbulent relationship between Trump and the judiciary. She discusses how Trump's legal strategies seem to be backfiring in lower courts while the Supreme Court exhibits surprising deference to presidential power. Marcus highlights crucial immigration cases and the implications of recent rulings, questioning the Court's checks on Trump. With a conservative majority, she explores what this may mean for the balance of power moving forward.
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Supreme Court's Power
Trump's legal strategy has backfired in lower courts, facing rebukes and overturned orders.
However, the Supreme Court's ultimate authority poses a significant challenge.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Trump's Courtroom Conduct
The Trump administration displayed rudeness in court, including accusing a judge of micromanaging.
Chief Justice John Roberts criticized Trump's call for the judge's impeachment.
insights INSIGHT
Supreme Court Ruling on Deportations
The Supreme Court instructed Venezuelan plaintiffs to file their case differently.
This change in legal approach could disadvantage the plaintiffs.
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In 'Supreme Ambition', Ruth Marcus documents the thirty-year mission by conservatives to win a majority on the Supreme Court and Brett Kavanaugh's lifelong ambition to secure his place in that victory. The book explores the intense political maneuvering, secret meetings, and partisan warfare surrounding Kavanaugh's nomination and confirmation. It also examines the implications of his confirmation for the future of the court.
Ruth Marcus resigned from the Washington Post after its C.E.O. killed an editorial she wrote that was critical of the paper's owner, Jeff Bezos. She ended up publishing the column in The New Yorker, and soon after she published another piece for the magazine asking "Has Trump's Legal Strategy Backfired?" "Trump's legal strategy has been backfiring, I think, demonstrably in the lower courts," she tells David Remnick, on issues such as undoing birthright citizenship and deporting people without due process. Federal judges have rebuked the Administration's lawyers, and ordered deportees returned to the United States. But "we have this thing called the Supreme Court, which is, in fact, supreme," Marcus says. "I thought the Supreme Court was going to send a message to the Trump Administration: 'Back off, guys.' . . . That's not what's happened." In recent days, that Court has issued a number of rulings that, while narrow, suggest a more deferential approach toward Presidential power. Marcus and Remnick spoke last week about where the Supreme Court—with its six-Justice conservative majority—may yield to Trump's extraordinary exertions of power, and where it may attempt to check his authority. "When you have a six-Justice conservative majority," she notes, there is"a justice to spare."
The Political Scene | The New Yorker 
