FT.com [unpaywalled]: “The great thing about modern sports is that you can check decisions on replay. No amount of parsing could reconcile the court’s two decisions with a single set of rules. The common ground between the two is that they suit Trump’s purposes. The first was a form of judicial slow walk. Last December Jack Smith, the special counsel, asked the court to expedite the decision on Trump’s immunity. Given that Smith has charged Trump with trying to overthrow an election, the need for urgency was self-evident. The court seemed happy to leave that question to the federal appeals court, which in early February ruled unanimously against it. In the three judges’ biting opinion, there was no merit to Trump’s argument that a president can do what he likes, including assassinating political rivals. Nothing written by the constitution’s framers hinted that they saw the president as above the law. In spite of that, the Supreme Court decided last week it would hear the case after all. Yet it would only be able to do so in late April, which means its decision will probably not come out until late June. In total, the court will have swallowed about six months between Smith’s initial request and its ruling. What it ultimately decides is beside the point. The delay virtually guarantees that Trump’s trials will not finish before the election in November. An election-altering share of Trump voters say they would change their vote if he was convicted. In contrast, the court took just 10 weeks to unanimously overturn the Colorado ruling that struck Trump’s name from the ballot. A majority then signed a concurrent ruling that only Congress could enforce section three of America’s 14th amendment, which says that no one who has “engaged in insurrection” can run for federal office. That interpretation would allow those convicted in the January 6 2021 storming of Capitol Hill to run for office. That would likely include Trump, if his trials are ever finished. This sets up a “tails you lose, heads I win” situation for Trump. As Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, declined to convict Trump after he was impeached in 2021, saying that his actions were a matter for the courts to decide. The court is now saying that it is a matter for Congress. This is called whack-a-mole. Nobody with any knowledge of today’s Congress would expect it to pass any such law..”