Smirking and smiling: why America’s judges have made Trump gleeful

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On Monday, Donald Trump did something he has rarely done in the past few months: he heaped praise on judges.

“I want to start by thanking the supreme court for its unanimous decision today,” he said in remarks at his Mar-a-Lago home, shortly after the US supreme court ruled that he was wrongly removed from Colorado’s primary ballot, in a decision that guarantees he’ll be able to appear on every state’s ballots this fall.

“It was a very important decision, very well crafted. I think it will go a long way toward bringing our country together, which our country needs.”

In the past week, judges have given Trump a lot to smile about.

The supreme court’s ruling that he can’t be removed from the ballot came just days after the same court decided to effectively delay his Washington DC federal election interference trial for months, possibly pushing it past election day and derailing the trial entirely. On Wednesday, the court announced that it would hear arguments for that case on 25 April – the absolute final day of the court’s calendar for oral arguments.

Guardian US reporter Hugo Lowell writes that Trump “has been jubilant” over the supreme court’s move, and has repeatedly raised the topic “every day since” it happened, according to people close to him.

On Friday, Trump smirked and smiled as he watched Judge Aileen Cannon, a judge in Florida he appointed to the federal bench who’s now overseeing his classified documents case, make clear she was in no rush to get that trial moving and was likely to delay its start date.

Cannon told prosecutors that one part of their proposed schedule was