One of the major narratives that has arisen from the U.S. Supreme Court's most recent term is how out of step the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is. The Fifth Circuit is based in New Orleans and hears appeals from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi before they go to the U.S. Supreme Court. The judges on the Fifth Circuit have mostly been appointed by Republican presidents—over a third of them by former President Donald Trump alone, and commentators have been saying for months that the court is too conservative even for the U.S. Supreme Court. USA Today recently ran a story titled "How the most right-wing appeals court was reined in by the Supreme Court this term."

This is quite a change from the usual narrative that follows Supreme Court terms. For most of my career, the narrative has been how the Supreme Court had to "rein in" the liberal Ninth Circuit based in San Francisco.