Trump is in the middle of a power battle more important than the New York mayor

The young, energetic and articulate mayor-elect of New York – Zohran Mamdani – has captured the headlines this week, writes Jon Sopel. But the Supreme Court could cause the president much bigger problems

As an asthma sufferer you become acutely aware of things that are triggers for it: cats, horsehair, damp etc. But I swear I know to the day when summer turns to autumn (another irritant) because the air just feels different with that first morning chill.

There was a similar change in air quality in America this week, a year to the day that Donald Trump vanquished the Democrats – and left them wheezing and more or less breathless. But on Wednesday morning liberal America, where the last rites had been read, was heaving in great lungfuls of air and celebrating some rude health once again.

Understandably, nearly all the attention has been on Zohran Mamdani’s remarkable victory in New York. I mean, it is pretty remarkable. Thirty-four years old. Ugandan-born. Muslim. Socialist. In the city that doesn’t sleep, he’s giving a lot of the well-to-do even more cause for insomnia with his radical agenda.

But the real significance of the Democrat victories in the Big Apple – and New Jersey and Virginia were they found an issue that they could all rally around, regardless of whether they were from the centrist or progressive wings of the party. And that was affordability.

Because Donald Trump is such an astonishing self-publicist and a marketing genius when it comes to telling people how brilliant he is, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s true what he’s saying. But that’s not the mood in the US right now. Prices have not come down, voters don’t have more money in their pockets – and that is at the heart of why Republicans did so badly on Tuesday night.

Now let me put in the necessary caveats. These are off-year elections. The Dems were expected to do well. They were hardly going to lose in New York. Some of the Republicans who stood were right old duffers. So what that they’ve regained the governors’ mansions in New Jersey and Virginia; 2028 is still years away.

Yes, yes, yes. I accept all of that. But these results are not nothing either.

The president’s approval ratings are sliding, and the trendlines on cost of food, cost of living, the state of the economy are heading in the wrong direction. And say it quietly, there are those in the White House who know this, but fret about how to make Donald Trump accept the seriousness of the situation.

It’s not just that the Democrats have rediscovered the sweet, aphrodisiacal smell of victory, it’s having a profound psychological effect too. They have been so lost and bewildered since last year’s election defeat, and have been so intent on settling scores with each other, that they had stopped speaking to the American people.

I have written in this column of Donald Trump’s seemingly unquenchable thirst for power, and how – so far – he has encountered remarkably little resistance from anywhere or anyone. But maybe that is about to change.

One other vote that took place on Tuesday was the not very exciting sounding Proposition 50 in California. But it matters. You remember that brilliant soundbite from Michelle Obama when she said, “when they go low we go high”? Well, the Democrat Governor of Gavin Newsom is changing that so that if Republicans want to go low, he’ll go low too.

This vote will allow California to do some redistricting of congressional seats that should harvest an additional five seats for the Dems in next year’s midterms. He’s doing this in response to Texas’s Republican governor – at Donald Trump’s behest – doing the same in the Lone Star state. It’s gerrymander a go-go right now in the US. And you can be sure other states will be looking to do the same.

There is just this slight sense now that Trump is not invincible, that maybe he has a glass jaw. Tides (to mix metaphors) can turn quickly in politics. Whether it has been the legal profession, academia, the media, congress or the courts, the preferred position has been that of the supine crouch. But are these bodies going to stay like that if there’s a hint of vulnerabiity?

Which brings us to the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority – and three of those justices having been appointed by Donald Trump in his first term. This week, they heard a challenge to the president’s tariffs policies, and whether it was lawful for the administration to use emergency powers to bring in sweeping tariffs on countries across the world.

To be honest, I thought this would be a dull affair. It was anything but. A majority of the justices were sharp in their questioning of the solicitor general, who was representing the administration. The legislation Trump used – the International Emergency Powers Act – has nothing to say about taxes, tariffs or anything close.

Of course, the Supreme Court’s deliberations should be purely about the law, but their reputation has taken an absolute battering for their limp acquiescence to anything that the president wants. Could it be they’re about to show some resistance? It certainly sounded like it.

Just imagine if they did. Just imagine if they shredded Donald Trump’s signature economic policy. Just imagine how much weaker he would look in the eyes of America and the rest of the world if that happened.

I’ll insert the proviso one more time. This may not signify that much. But there is a sense of the resistance to Donald Trump feeling a little more emboldened. It may all peter out.

But there’s something in the air.