About the courts; good news, ominous news

The good news is that a US Court of Appeals has blocked a scheme by Trump's polluter-friendly Environmental Protection [sic] Agency to suspend clean air standards put in place during the Obama years:

An appeals court Monday struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s two-year suspension of new emission standards on oil and gas wells, a decision that could set back the Trump administration’s broad legal strategy for rolling back Obama-era rules. 

In a 2-to-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded that the EPA had the right to reconsider a 2016 rule limiting methane and smog-forming pollutants emitted by oil and gas wells but could not delay the effective date for two years while it sought to rewrite the regulation.

The bad news is that when Trump's people appeal rulings like these to the US Supreme Court, there may be before the end of next year yet another Gorsuch-style right-winger on the bench because Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, a swing vote, is dropping hints that he may leave in the fall of 2018 and provide Trump with another callus from the Federalist Society's deep and deep red bench.

We've learned the hard way in Wisconsin what a solid right-majority on the highest court looks and feels like, and it's awful.