It's not an accident or an error that Texas waited until the 11th hour to file this suit immediately after the SCOTUS was preparing to hear the case from Pennsylvania, and it's also why the PA case was unanimously slapped off of the table and the Texas case was given a scheduling order. Scheduling orders
are not automatic. They are
specific to the relief sought, and they are given
manual approval. This is also one of the only circumstances where a court can have jurisdiction over all other states; the only court that can do that is the SCOTUS, and what's interesting about that is because it's the SCOTUS and because this is a dispute between states, it automatically becomes "original jurisdiction" instead of appellate jurisdiction.
The fascinating part about that is that it
essentially invalidates all of the decisions in the lower courts to toss out evidence. Every case that was sent off "with prejudice" and smashed into the floorboards before they could even present their evidence in a bid to lock whatever they brought to the table under lock and key is now functionally meaningless, because we're entering into an original jurisdiction, meaning that this is the first time the court will be hearing the case. This isn't "stepping up" from the lower courts, this is leaping directly over their heads and straight into the SCOTUS because of the nature of the dispute. This is something that
only states can do; not even Trump himself would have been allowed to present a case like this, hence why his lawyers told him he had no legal standing to do so,
because he doesn't.
Everyone had a good laugh over the lower courts tossing all of the lawsuits to the curb, and some more astute people would have pointed out that you can't introduce evidence into a Supreme Court case, because by their very nature they tend to be appellate having worked their way up through the court system, and they'd be correct.
However, there is a time when evidence is allowed to be introduced to a Supreme Court case: When it's an original jurisdiction case.
They've had an entire month now to bat all of this evidence around and gather up the best of what they can find, they've had all of it put through every ringer imaginable and the media played its role perfectly well by chasing the laser pointer around the room while the actual case was being crafted and prepared for the Supreme Court, hence why I said at the
very start of all of this that we're heading to the Supreme Court one way or the other, so not much else mattered in the interim unless you're some sort of incoherent screaming sommelier.
This is the part where I start getting
really interested in what happens, because this is a
very unique circumstance that you rarely ever get to see.
