Supreme Court ‘more important than ever’ Trump says in 2020 election pitch after DACA setback

After the US Supreme Court delivered him a lemon verdict, President Donald Trump set out to make lemonade, announcing he would release a shortlist of SCOTUS nominees as part of his re-election pitch to make the court conservative.

A new list of “Conservative Supreme Court Justice nominees” will be released by September 1, the president tweeted on Thursday afternoon. “Based on decisions being rendered now, this list is more important than ever before,” he added, listing the right to bear arms, religious liberty and abortion as the issues that would depend on the court in the future.

Earlier in the day, the court ruled that the Trump administration failed to provide an adequate explanation under the Administrative Procedures Act for shutting down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2017. 

Chief Justice John Roberts, nominated by the Republican President George W. Bush, sided with the four Democrat-appointed justices in the ruling, leaving the other four conservatives – including Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – in the minority.

DACA is an executive program providing de facto amnesty for immigrants brought into the US illegally as children, enacted by President Barack Obama in June 2012. Trump argued that he has the right to rescind a program that is manifestly unconstitutional, since it usurps legislative authority from Congress. 

Trump has often pointed out the record number of federal judicial confirmations and the two SCOTUS seats as major accomplishments of his administration. However, the court’s decisions this week have done much to sour the Republicans on that argument.

On Monday, the SCOTUS refused to hear several challenges to Second Amendment restrictions in Democrat-controlled states, allowing them to remain in effect, while rejecting the Trump administration’s case against California over “sanctuary cities.”

The biggest blow was the reinterpretation of “sex” to mean “sexual identity and orientation” under Title VII off the Civil Rights Act, made by none other than Justice Gorsuch and joined by Roberts and the liberals.

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