SCOTUStoday for Wednesday, March 4

On Tuesday, the court heard argument in Hunter v. United States, on whether a federal appeals court properly dismissed a Texas man’s appeal of a mandatory-medication condition when he had signed an appellate waiver as part of his plea agreement but the judge who imposed the condition told him that he had a right to appeal.

Also on Tuesday, the court denied a request for a stay of execution from Billy Leon Kearse, who was executed in Florida hours later.

As noted above, the court has indicated that it may announce opinions this morning at 10 a.m. EST. We will be live blogging beginning at 9:30 a.m.

About eight months ago, “President Donald Trump convinced Texas Republicans … to redraw the state’s congressional map,” sparking an unusual mid-decade redistricting push in several Republican-led states that was expected to net the GOP “as many as a dozen new House seats in November,” according to Reuters. But that redistricting effort has not played out as expected because “Trump’s push stalled in several Republican states, while Democrats’ own aggressive moves in states like California, and favorable court rulings, have allowed them to claw their way to a near-draw.” That said, the redistricting battle may not be over; a few Republican-led states could adopt new maps ahead of this year’s elections based on the Supreme Court’s ruling in its Voting Rights Act case.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump “threatened to end trade with Spain, citing a lack of support over the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran and the European nation’s resistance to increasing its NATO spending,” according to the Associated Press. However, it was not immediately clear how Trump would carry out that threat, since Spain is part of the European Union and “[t]he EU negotiates trade deals on behalf of all 27 member countries.” The AP noted that Trump’s comments on Spain were “just the latest instance of the president wielding the threat of tariffs or trade embargoes as a punishment.” After the Supreme Court struck down his signature tariffs, Trump claimed “that the court allows him to instead impose full-scale embargoes on other nations of his choosing.”

In an abrupt about-face, the Trump administration on Tuesday told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit “that it planned to renew its defense of executive orders that it had leveled against law firms,” which aim to force cooperation between the firms and the government, according to The New York Times. On Monday, the administration had requested “to abandon the fight” against four law firms that challenged the orders, but it has now asked to withdraw that request. Shira A. Scheindlin, a former federal district judge in Manhattan, told the Times that she expects the administration to “lose at the appeals court level,” but added that the executive orders “might have some faint hope at the Supreme Court.”

In a post for Reason’s Volokh Conspiracy blog, Josh Blackman reflected on the court’s Monday order in Mirabelli v. Bonta, an interim docket case concerning California policies on transgender students. The court’s ruling in favor of parents seeking to be notified if their children change the names or pronouns they’re using at school “represents an important installment in the Supreme Court’s developing emergency docket jurisprudence,” Blackman contended. “At this point … six Justices seem to agree when and why emergency relief is proper.”