Supreme Court games: A counterintuitive move

The three pro-democracy and pro-rule of law dems left on the USSC have little power. For the most part, they mostly write scathing dissents that authoritarian MAGA Republican judges blithely blow off. One of the dems, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, just pulled a sneaky move to try to defend the public interest. The lawsuit is about a lower federal court forcing Trump to pay SNAP food stamp benefits to poor people and Trump wanting to starve recipients a little (or maybe a lot). The detailed legal analysis by Trump critic and lawyer Steve Vladeck is at this link.

Germaine's summary of the legal analysis

Justice Brown Jackson issued a temporary pause on a court order requiring the Trump administration to fully fund food assistance during a government shutdown. That seems counterintuitive on its face, because that lets Trump block federal payments. But the unique conditions she imposed on her court order makes sense for someone who wants SNAP benefits paid out ASAP.

When the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court asking for a pause on tht lower court order to pay the food benefits, the request went to Justice Jackson because she oversees cases from that federal court region. Jackson, the most vocal critic among the three dem justices about how the Court handles Trump emergency requests, faced a difficult choice: either grant the pause herself or be overruled by the six MAGA judges who would delay the case until people died of starvation.

To take away the power of the six MAGA freaks to delay, Jackson granted the temporary pause. But she added strict time limits and detailed instructions to her order. Her order automatically expires 48 hours after the appeals court rules. She explicitly told that court to rule quickly. If the full Court had issued the pause instead, it could have been open-ended with no deadline, potentially freezing food assistance indefinitely. By handling it herself with tight deadlines, Jackson forced everyone, the appeals court and the USSC itself, to resolve the issue within days rather than the weeks, months or years that similar cases have taken.

Jackson chose a strategic brief pause that she controlled the timing of over a much longer indefinite pause that MAGA judges would have imposed. This ensures the question of whether November food benefits will be decided quickly, even though it meant temporarily blocking the lower court order to pay the benefits. 

Of course, the real problem here is that Trump could simply choose to pay these benefits without any court order, but he refuses because, in his boundless cruelty and sadism, he likes to see people suffer.

Q: Is Germaine's summary at least a wee smidge over the top hyperbolic, or is he a good boy? Who's a good boy? Yeah, you're a good boy! 

@apa4dogs Who’s a good boy? 🐾💙 #blinddog #rescuedog #pitbull #dogtrainer #dogtraining #heyarnoldray #beachday #whosagoodboy #happydog ♬ Prancing - Kitruh