How the Supreme Court both checks and empowers Donald Trump

One of donald trump’s most enduring legacies will be his imprint on the Supreme Court. In his first term he appointed three justices—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett—creating a 6-3 conservative majority. The court has since delivered a series of landmark rulings cheered by the president and his supporters. The constitutional right to abortion is gone; affirmative action in university admissions has been curtailed; gun rights are more robust than ever before; and former presidents now enjoy broad immunity for acts undertaken in office. More recently the court has provisionally blessed Mr Trump’s policies on spending, immigration and the restructuring of the executive branch. The president has made it clear he thinks the conservative justices’ job is to advance his agenda; critics on the left accuse them of doing just that.