“Since Trump’s three appointees gave Republicans a supermajority on the Supreme Court, the Republican justices have behaved as though they are all going down a GOP wishlist, abolishing the right to an abortion, implementing Republican priorities like a ban on affirmative action, and even holding that Trump has broad immunity from prosecution for crimes he committed using his official powers while in office. To be clear, right-wing litigants are not winning every case they bring before the justices, but on issues where the various factions within the Republican Party have reached consensus, the Republican justices reliably align with that consensus.
The lower courts, meanwhile, have become incubators for far-right policy ideas that often go too far even for a majority of the members of the current Supreme Court. Think, for example, of Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s failed attempt to ban the abortion drug mifepristone. Or an astonishing decision by three Trump judges that declared the entire Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) unconstitutional. Both of these lower court decisions were rejected by the Supreme Court.
That there are some positions too far right even for many Republican members of the Supreme Court is a reminder of the diversity that exists among Trump’s judges. Some, like Justices Brett Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett, are fully committed to using the courts to implement a long list of Republican ideas. But this cohort of judges also rejects at least some right-wing legal theories that would have catastrophic consequences for the country.
Both Kavanaugh and Barrett, for example, rejected the legal attack on the CFPB. They joined an opinion explaining that the plaintiffs’ legal theory had no basis in constitutional text or history, but they may also have been motivated by the fact that this theory could have triggered an economic depression if it had prevailed. Kavanaugh and Barrett also backed Trump’s claim that he has broad immunity from criminal prosecution for crimes committed in office, but on the same day they rejected a Texas law that would have given that state’s Republican legislature extraordinary authority to dictate what the media must print.
The other faction of Trump’s judges is more nihilistic. They include Kacsmaryk, who has turned his Amarillo, Texas, courtroom into a printing press for court orders advancing far-right causes. The nihilistic faction also includes judges like Aileen Cannon, the Trump judge who has presided over one of Trump’s criminal trials (and behaved like one of his defense attorneys), much of the far-right United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and Trump Supreme Court appointment Justice Neil Gorsuch.”
https://www.vox.com/scotus/373084/supreme-court-trump-judges-federalist-society