EDITOR'S NOTE

Hello,

This is Tucker Higgins, CNBC's Supreme Court reporter, filling in for Politics Editor Mike Calia.

Earlier this year, Chief Justice John Roberts crossed the street to the U.S. Capitol to preside over the president's impeachment trial in the Senate.

An impossibly long four months later, the most important political action to watch is back at the Supreme Court, which is dealing with a grab bag of the nation's thorniest business and cultural questions, involving abortion, LGBT rights, immigration and Trump's taxes.

With the White House and Congress laser-focused on coronavirus, what the justices are doing now in private could have broad impacts on the economy and reshape the political landscape for years to come.

The cases feature the first abortion dispute since Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joined the bench, a fight over the president's financial records, and a Trump administration effort to undo the Obama-era DACA program that shields hundreds of thousands of migrants known as "Dreamers."

Another essential business case before the court asks whether LGBT workers are protected by federal anti-discrimination laws. Gerald Bostock, a plaintiff in the case, told me that coronavirus-related job losses are exposing many Americans to the type of economic precarity that many LGBT workers deal with every day.

You can expect that the decisions will put a big spotlight on November's Senate races, where Republicans are starting to show signs of vulnerability in retaining their majority. That Senate majority has been key to Trump's nearly 200 judicial confirmations and two Supreme Court justices.

How effective will those justices be in pushing the law to the right, as Trump has advocated? We may see soon, as what could be the most important Supreme Court term of his presidency comes to its end.

You can find more coverage linked below and follow me on Twitter: @tuckerhiggins. Thanks for reading, and be sure to follow CNBC.com's comprehensive coverage of the coronavirus response.

Thoughts? Email Mike Calia at [email protected].  

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