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The Supreme Court handed down four major rulings today that neatly map onto three of the court’s top priorities: protecting big business, expanding gun rights, and deferring to Donald Trump—especially when it comes to making life miserable for immigrants. But before we get into each case, there’s something that the decisions show us right away. Three of the four were 6–3 rulings, and they come after a slew of other 6–3 decisions the court released earlier this week.

What’s so important about these decisions being split 6–3? 

In all but one of today’s rulings, the six justices in the majority were Republican presidents’ appointees, while the three in the minority were Democratic picks. What’s alarming isn’t just the clear ideological split, but the fact that the court’s conservatives went as far as they possibly could. As my colleague Mark Joseph Stern explains, the justices repeatedly reached expansive conclusions that did maximum damage to precedent, congressional authority, and civil liberties in ways that even previous Republican appointees once shied away from. The problem isn’t just that the court regularly divides 6–3; it’s that among those six conservatives, none seems inclined to check the others’ most sweeping ambitions.

Not great. But turning to the cases themselves, which big corporation did SCOTUS throw a lifeline this time? 

That would be Bayer, which makes the weedkiller Roundup. A Missouri man had sued, claiming a chemical in Roundup called glyphosate........

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