The Supreme Court is going to have a very busy second half of June, and they know it.

In fact, with all the attention that is currently on SCOTUS after the Alito draft opinion leak in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, it almost feels like the justices are slow-walking the opinion releases. As the Washington Examiner points out, there are still 29 (!!!) decisions to be announced by the end of June, but they only plan on releasing decisions this coming week on Monday and Wednesday. And a huge complicating factor is the ongoing investigation into the draft leak.

Officials investigating the leaked draft opinion have escalated their search tactics into unprecedented territory, requiring law clerks late last month to provide cellphone records and sign affidavits making it illegal to lie to investigators seeking to find the origins of the leak.”

“I don’t know how on Earth the court is going to finish up its work this term,” a source close to the justices told NPR earlier this week in the wake of the Supreme Court marshal’s investigation into the leak.”

While it is unclear how much of the delay to finalize the remaining 29 opinions is attributable to the leaked draft, the Supreme Court has dealt with higher caseloads at the end of terms in past years.”

This SCOTUS session has been a heavily loaded one, both in number of total cases and in number of attention-getting cases. We knew this going in to 2022, and the Court has already had to deal with ruling on the Biden administration’s attempt to use OSHA as an end-run to implement a COVID vaccine mandate. And that doesn’t even add in Justice Breyer’s retirement at the end of this session.

But add in the new tensions both within and without SCOTUS, and the remaining cases – especially Dobbs – now take on a whole new significance. Consider the fact that New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen is still yet to be announced, and this case (which concerns whether or not New York state can demand a “proper cause” for applying for a concealed carry permit) likely will affect the crackdown on gun rights promised by Governor Kathy Hochul after the horrific Buffalo shooting.

However, Dobbs remains the hottest of the anticipated cases, especially after both the draft leak and now the attempted assassination of Justice Kavanaugh – which the mainstream media is doing its utmost to ignore or reclassify into a “local crime story.” Even Bill Maher pointed out the obvious bias of the New York Times in regards to the attempt on Kavanaugh’s life, by reminding everyone that if this had been a liberal justice, it would have been front page news.

And we ALL know that Bill Maher is correct in this case. Just look at how the Sunday shows decided to not-cover the attempted assassination of a sitting Supreme Court justice today.

Would anyone like to claim that if a MAGA supporter were arrested outside of Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan's house with a huge arsenal of weaponry, saying he wanted to murder them to stop their votes on Roe and gun control, that this media data would be the same? Anyone? https://t.co/qeW8fpyrxw

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 12, 2022

THIS is what we’re talking about when we talk about news fitting “the media’s narrative.” The attempted murder of a SCOTUS justice the media loathes? They don’t care. A shooting that doesn’t push their agenda? Flushed down the memory hole. A criminal that isn’t the right color for them? Not going to keep talking about it. What about the impending protest threatening to “shut down” Washington D.C. and the Supreme Court on Monday?

Last spokes council, grounding ourselves in why we’re going to #ShutDownSCOTUS tomorrow. These unelected extremists are trying to steal our rights and roll us backwards on issue after issue – abortion, guns, environment, due process, &c. They are illegitimate & the people say no.

— ShutDownDC (@ShutDown_DC) June 12, 2022

Well, they sound nice and rational, don’t they? Will the media bother to cover these protests if things get violent? Is this is “whirlwind” that Chuck Schumer once promised, that other Democrats are attempting to cover for now?

On the steps of the Supreme Court, Chuck Schumer said of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh: "You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you."

Democrat Sen. Chris Coons says it's okay because Schumer was "upset and alarmed." pic.twitter.com/p3dJXRzO6U

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 12, 2022

At some point, SCOTUS is just going to have to start releasing decisions. Are they just going to release every decision in the last week of June? That would be one strategy – simply dump everything all at once and run for it. We shall have to wait and see which decisions they choose to release this week, but the clock is definitely ticking.

Featured image: Mark Thomas via Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license