The Supreme Court finally decided to move cautiously into the 20th century on Monday, announcing that several of its next oral arguments will be broadcast live.
The notoriously opaque court revealed the history-making change in a brief news release explaining plans to break with several precedents during the coronavirus outbreak.
The decision is by far the biggest win for government transparency advocates brought about by Covid-19, which has so far been cited much more often for pushing state and local governments to conduct emergency business in the relative shadows.
Half the remaining cases of the term will be argued on telephone conference calls, another first for the court, with the justices and lawyers calling in remotely "in keeping with public health guidance in response to Covid-19," the statement said. "The court anticipates providing a live audio feed of these arguments to news media."
Several of those outlets reported the audio feed for the 10 arguments in May would be made available to the general public although few details were provided immediately.
Many state and local courts have long allowed audio and video broadcasts and a limited number of federal district and appellate courts have experimented with the idea and continue to allow it on a limited basis.
It wasn't until 2010 that audio recordings for all of the Supreme Court's arguments were posted on its website at the end of the week,
The high court has resisted the idea of live audio or TV, with some justices concerned that such coverage would detract from the court's somber atmosphere and cause attorneys — and perhaps even some justices — to grandstand.
Justices Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan testified in March 2019 before a House Appropriations subcommittee, the first time justices had appeared before a congressional committee since 2014. Both expressed reservations about audio and video coverage of court proceedings.
"We don't want access at the expense of damaging the decision-making process," Alito told the subcommittee.
Anthony Marcum with the R Street Institute, a conservative good government think tank, lauded the court's decision as sending "a powerful message that the court remains open for business."
"After this current health crisis is over, there is little reason why the court should not continue this practice," Marcum said.
The response from the group Fix the Court, which advocates for transparency and other reforms in the judicial system, was a bit more pointed. Said Executive Director Gabe Roth: "Supreme Court arguments going live next month? And all it took was a global pandemic."
"The court will have no excuse come next term to maintain a live audio policy for every argument, and we'll do our part to make sure that live video is not too far behind," Roth said.
Among the cases that will be heard live, which were originally supposed to be argued in March and April, are two involving President Trump's efforts to withhold his tax returns and other financial records from Congress and a Manhattan prosecutor. Another involves whether presidential electors may be required to vote in December for the candidate who wins the state's popular vote in November.
Decisions in these cases will likely be issued during the current term, which normally ends in June but may need to be extended into July. The other cases from March and April that won't be heard in May will be carried over to the next term.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.