Donald Trump’s unprecedented expansion of the powers of the US presidency will be put to the test when the Supreme Court returns for its fall term on Monday.”The crucial question will be whether it serves as a check on President Trump or just a rubber stamp approving his actions,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School.If past is prologue, the Republican leader is in line to notch up more legal victories from a conservative-dominated bench that includes three of his own appointees.On the docket are voting rights, state bans on the participation of transgender athletes in girls’ sports and a religious freedom case involving a Rastafarian who had his knee-length dreadlocks forcibly shorn while in prison.But the blockbuster case this term concerns Trump’s levying of hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs on imports and whether he had the statutory authority to do so.Lower courts have ruled he did not.But the Supreme Court has overwhelmingly sided with Trump since he returned to office, allowing, for example, mass firing of federal workers, the dismissal of members of independent agencies, the withholding of funds appropriated by Congress and racial profiling in his sweeping immigration crackdown.”You’ve seen the court go out of its way, really bend over backwards, in order to green-light Trump administration positions,” said Cecillia Wang, national legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).- ‘Legal equivalent of fast food’ -Many of those decisions have come on the controversial emergency or “shadow” docket, where the court hands down orders after little briefing, without oral arguments and with paltry explanation.Samuel Bray, a University of Chicago law professor, described it as the “legal equivalent of fast food” and the court’s three liberal justices have condemned the increasing use of the emergency docket.Chemerinsky noted in an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times that using the shadow docket, the six conservative justices have “repeatedly and without exception… voted to reverse lower court decisions that had initially found Trump’s actions to be unconstitutional.”The high-stakes tariffs case, on the other hand, will involve full briefing and oral arguments and will be heard on November 5.Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to unilaterally impose his extensive tariffs, bypassing Congress by claiming the country was facing an emergency due to the trade deficit.”At least hundreds of billions of dollars or more are at stake and they may need to refund those billions of dollars if they lose in the Supreme Court,” said Curtis Bradley, a University of Chicago law professor.Other high-profile cases involving the power of the president are to be heard in December and January when the court weighs in on Trump’s bid to fire members of the independent Federal Trade Commission and Lisa Cook, a governor of the interest-rate setting Federal Reserve Board.- Voting rights -On October 15, the Supreme Court will hear a voting rights case in which “non-African American” voters are contesting the creation of a second Black majority congressional district in Louisiana, claiming it is the result of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.A victory for the plaintiffs in the case would deal a severe blow to a section of the Voting Rights Act that allows for creation of majority-minority districts to make up for racial discrimination.”The stakes are incredibly high,” said the ACLU’s Sophia Lin Lakin. “The outcome will not only determine the next steps for Louisiana’s congressional map, but may also shape the future of redistricting cases nationwide.”Another notable case on the docket concerns challenges to state laws in Idaho and West Virginia that ban transgender girls from taking part in girls’ sports.A religious freedom case to be heard on November 10 has unusually brought together legal advocates on both the left and the right.  Damon Landor is a devout Rastafarian whose hair was forcibly cut while he was in prison in Louisiana.He is seeking permission to sue individual officials of the Louisiana Department of Corrections for monetary damages for violating his religious rights.The Supreme Court is generally hostile to approving damages actions against individual government officials, Bray said.At the same time, he noted, the right-leaning court has tended to side with the plaintiffs in religious liberty cases.

The bitter tribalism that drove the United States into a government shutdown is putting compromise out of reach, analysts say — and threatening to turn a staring contest between the Democrats and Donald Trump’s Republicans into a protracted crisis.As the nation enters its second week with federal agencies paralyzed, multiple strategists with vivid memories of previous standoffs told AFP the president and his foes could be in it for the long haul.”It’s possible this shutdown drags on for weeks, not just days,” said Andrew Koneschusky, a former press secretary for Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader at the center of the latest deadlock.”Right now, both sides are dug in and there’s very little talk of compromise.”At the heart of the showdown is a Democratic demand for an extension of health care subsidies that are due to expire — meaning sharply increased costs for millions of low-income Americans.On Sunday, Trump blamed minority Democrats for blocking his funding resolution, which needs a handful of their votes.”They’re causing it. We’re ready to go back,” Trump told reporters at the White House, sounding resigned to a shutdown dragging on.Trump also told reporters Sunday his administration has already started to permanently fire — not merely furlough — federal workers, again blaming his rivals for “causing the loss of a lot of jobs.”In March, when the threat of a shutdown last loomed, Democrats blinked first, voting for a six-month Republican resolution to keep the coffers stacked despite policy misgivings.But Schumer — the top Senate Democrat — was lambasted by the party’s base, and will be reluctant to cave this time around as he faces potential primary challenges from the left.- ‘Maximum pain’ -For now, Senate Republicans are banking on their Democratic opponents giving in as they repeatedly force votes.”I could see a temporary agreement coming from both parties by the end of October,” said Jeff Le, a former senior official in California state politics who negotiated with the first Trump administration.”Anything beyond two months would halt government operations seriously and potentially impact national and homeland security considerations, casting blame on both parties.”A shift in the strategy would likely depend on either side noticing public sentiment turning against them, analysts told AFP.Polling so far has been mixed, although Republicans have been taking more flak than Democrats overall. Trump presided over the longest shutdown in history in 2018 and 2019, when federal agencies stopped work for five weeks.This time around, the president has been ratcheting up pressure by threatening liberal policy priorities and mass layoffs of public sector workers.- The Trump factor -James Druckman, a politics professor at the University of Rochester, sees Trump’s intransigence as a reason to believe this standoff could rival the 2019 record.”The Trump administration views itself as having an unchecked mandate and thus generally does not compromise,” he told AFP.”Democrats have been critiqued for not standing strongly enough and the last compromise did not result in any positive outcome for Democrats. Thus, politically, they are inclined to stand firm.”The 2018‑2019 shutdown cost the economy $11 billion in the short term, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — and $3 billion was never recovered.US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has warned that the latest shutdown could wreak its own havoc on GDP growth.For California-based financial analyst Michael Ashley Schulman, the economic realities of the shutdown may be what end up forcing compromise.”If Wall Street gets spooked and Treasury yields spike, even the most ideologically caffeinated will suddenly discover a deep commitment to bipartisan solutions,” he said. Not all analysts are gloomy about the prospects for a quick resolution.Aaron Cutler, head of the congressional oversight and investigations practice at global law firm Hogan Lovells, and a former staffer in the House, sees the shutdown lasting 12 days at most.”Senate Democrats will blink first… While the shutdown continues, there will be no congressional hearings and a lot of work at the agencies will be paused,” he said.”That’s a win for many Democrats in Congress but they don’t want the blame for it.”