so what’s getting shot down are executive orders. unilateral decisions made by the President. they aren’t very strong and can basically be overturned by any federal judge. in the past we all pretended they judges were not partisan and that the judiciary was somehow above politics. recently there has been a strong reversal on that stance from our political right. in the past it was unusual for judges to overturn executive orders without good reason. right now it’s expected that this court specifically week more or less try to overturn anything Biden tries to do.

originally the executive order was meant to be used sparingly and have very little power. that has changed greatly over a long time, but lately they’ve mostly been getting used to get past deadlock in the house and Senate. these days we more or less can’t pass any laws because the Republican party always has at least enough control to block one part of the process and had taken a stance of “block everything the Democrats do to make them look bad until we have unilateral control and can do what we want”. they just finished that plan.

so lately legislation that can’t get past the deadlock created by bad actors in our checks and balances system. the balance against that which we had settled on in the past was executive orders. lately the thing that has changed is that Republicans stopped pretending the judiciary was sacred and started using it as another arm of obstruction. in the past it was understood that such a gross lack of decorum and breaking of political mores would cost a political their career. trump proved that wrong so now they can blatantly use partisan judges to obstruct anything worthwhile that might have snuck through.