Why does the Supreme Court keep backing Trump?

The nation's highest court recently let US Immigration and Customs Enforcement resume aggressive immigration stops in Los Angeles based on criteria such as speaking Spanish or gathering at locations where day labourers often congregate - simply put, for being Latino and poor.

- George F. Galland Jr., Tribune News Service

This was the latest, and one of the most sinister, in a hailstorm of unexplained rulings paralyzing attempts of lower courts to rein in President Donald Trump. Lawyers who comment publicly on the Supreme Court tend to do it politely. I think it's time to stop pulling punches. If you took a secret poll of lower-court federal judges, I'd bet 90% would rate most or all of these rulings as wrong, if not lawless. So what's going on?

Here are my educated guesses, as a lawyer of 52 years' experience. Since the majority hasn't yet explained any of these "shadow docket" rulings, and since they've all had immediate and crushing consequences, the justices can't complain about people guessing why they made them. I believe four of the justices are deeply influenced by resentment, if not hatred, of the Democrats.

Clarence Thomas blames them for calling him out about Anita Hill and saying, correctly, that he's indebted to affirmative action. Samuel Alito blames them because he thinks they've shafted ethnic white people in favour of Black and Latino people - witness his seething opinion in the 2009 New Haven firefighters case. Alito and Thomas suspect or outright believe that Democrats stole the 2020 election - witness the stop-the-steal flag Alito allowed to fly over his residence.