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Supreme Court lawyers often build their arguments around points to which they think the justices will be most receptive. If a lawyer thinks that the justices will be friendly to their caseif they represent, say, a religious person with a Free Exercise Clause claim or a state trying to carry out an executionthen they may be more inclined to swing for the fences. If, on the other hand, they think that the Supreme Court might be divided on the issue based on past rulings or on intuitive understandings of each justice, they might make a narrower argument that could appeal to more skeptical members of the court.

Trumps lawyers, for reasons known only to them, made claims that most of the justices could not stomach. One of them, Jay Sekulow, argued in Vance that any criminal process that touched the president was unconstitutional, a point that even the Justice Department arguing on behalf of the Trump administration did not make. That argument was resoundingly rejected by all nine justices, including the two justices who dissented from the courts decision in Vances favor on narrower grounds. Trump did score a partial victory in the Mazars case, where the justices laid out a balancing test for congressional subpoenas of a presidents personal information, but he only succeeded in running out the clock until his term ended.

On policy issues, the Supreme Court also rejected some of the Trump administrations major initiatives when the process that led to them was sloppy or deceptive. Some of these defeats were narrower than others. The court rejected the Trump administrations bid to place a citizenship question on the 2020 census only when Chief Justice John Roberts broke ranks with his fellow conservatives, citing evidence that the Justice Departments stated rationale for adding the question was a lie. Roberts also joined with the courts four liberals at the time to defeat Trumps bid to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program because the administration had not properly followed the Administrative Procedures Act.

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Donald Trump Keeps Getting Rejected by the Supreme Court - The New Republic