Love him or loathe him, Donald Trump was good for outrageous and sometimes laughable sayings. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump made one of his biggest statements that brought both ridicule and good-natured ribbing when he promised “so much winning.”
“We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with the winning,” Trump said at a rally on Sept. 9, 2015. “Believe me, I agree, you’ll never get bored with winning. We never get bored. We are going to turn this country around.”
We conservatives threw that line around when we got our victories during the Trump era and referenced it sarcastically when things didn’t go so well. The left used it as a cudgel when it thought the “walls were closing in” on Trump and his administration.
But who knew that “so much winning” would truly become a thing 18 months after Trump left office?
One of the former president’s biggest legacies has been his effect on the Supreme Court. One-third of the justices on the court are Trump appointees. He and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell deftly maneuvered the confirmation process, and those appointments led to tremendous victories in the current term, which just ended.
Let’s take a look at some of that winning that the Supreme Court has brought us.
The court gave us a double dose of religious liberty victories. The Carson v. Makin decision ruled that “Maine’s ‘nonsectarian’ requirement for otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments to parents who live in school districts that do not operate a secondary school of their own violates the free exercise clause of the First Amendment,” as reported by SCOTUSblog. Winning!
Just a few days later, the court handed down a ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that “the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect expressions” like prayer after a football game, to quote Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion. Winning!
Last week, in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the court ruled that citizens have the right to carry a firearm for self-defense and states can’t arbitrarily deny that right to law-abiding citizens. Winning!
On the last day of the term, the court ruled in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency that executive branch departments cannot make major policy decisions without deferring to the lawmaking power of Congress. More winning!
And then there was the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. That case was the culmination of nearly half a century of work for the pro-life movement. It’s a victory to strike down Roe and Casey, but it’s just the beginning. Nevertheless, SO MUCH WINNING!
Related: The Legacy of Donald Trump
Even the final ruling of the term, Biden v. Texas, which overruled the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy for illegal immigrants, still tees up an opportunity for Republicans to highlight the Biden administration’s border failures.
“Due to the huge numbers of aliens who attempt to enter illegally from Mexico, DHS does not have the capacity to detain all inadmissible aliens encountered at the border, and no one suggests that DHS must do the impossible,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his dissenting opinion. “But rather than avail itself of Congress’s clear statutory alternative to return inadmissible aliens to Mexico while they await proceedings in this country, DHS has concluded that it may forgo that option altogether and instead simply release into this country untold numbers of aliens who are very likely to be removed if they show up for their removal hearings. This practice violates the clear terms of the law, but the Court looks the other way.”
Cue the campaign ads highlighting the flow of illegals. Somewhat winning.
Are you tired of all this judicial winning yet? There might be more. In the next term, the court is taking up the case of Moore v. Harper, which, as SCOTUSblog reports, concerns “Whether a state’s judicial branch may nullify the regulations governing the ‘Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives … prescribed … by the Legislature thereof,’ and replace them with regulations of the state courts’ own devising, based on vague state constitutional provisions purportedly vesting the state judiciary with power to prescribe whatever rules it deems appropriate to ensure a ‘fair’ or ‘free’ election.”
This case has such potential for common sense and conservative victory that Vox breathlessly calls it “perhaps the gravest threat to American democracy since the January 6 attack” — which brings me to my next point.
Y’all, the left is apoplectic over all this winning on the part of conservatives. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has declared, “to Hell with the Supreme Court,” and Joe Biden has even called for bypassing the filibuster to allow Congress to circumvent the Dobbs decision. Joy Reid of MSNBC has said that this year’s Supreme Court has managed to “functionally drag the U.S. back to an era where old, white, rapacious Christian men controlled everything.”
There’s something delicious about making the left this mad. It’s fun to watch the meltdowns, and I’m sure that Donald Trump is enjoying every minute of it. The Supreme Court has shown us that Trump’s legacy really is “so much winning.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member