SCOTUS has two big calls to make soon. One is whether Colorado can disqualify Trump via the 14th amendment, and the second is whether he is immune to prosecution in his election case.
As I never tire of saying, SCOTUS is a political committee more than an legal body. But the reasoning they will use is interesting to me from the perspective of a rhetorician.
My expectation is that they will follow the easiest path, which is to reverse the Colorado SC but deny Trump immunity, as it would open the smallest can of worms of the four possible futures. My reasoning follows.
State’s rights nonsense aside, I suspect the justices in any written decision won’t touch upon the actual dispute at hand (which is whether Trump attempted to subvert a presidential election) with a pole of any length. Instead, they will insist upon a federal procedure for invoking the 14th by an act of Congress, parallel to passing a bill without the President. And since Congress can’t even pass the simplest aid package at the moment (I am tempted to write “can’t even wipe its own backside with either house,” and so I will do both), the 14th is therefore shoved back into its post-Reconstruction role as a paper tiger. Ignoble, but at this point, inevitable.
The immunity case offers a way to salve the hack job on the Colorado decision; it’s a straightforward no. If the justices grant Trump immunity, they also grant Biden and Obama immunity, and no Trump appointee will be allowed to make that call. The immunity case, like all of Trump’s appeals, is just a delaying tactic.
Rhetorically, it’s the easiest path. SCOTUS comes off fairly neutral to most, even if it’s anything but.