THE JOURNOLIST LIVES: As Supreme Court positions harden on union case, likely deciding justice is silent.

This WaPo writeup by Robert Barnes repeats a refrain you’ve been seeing all week:

In an hour-long, often caustic oral argument, the justices largely echoed their stances from two years ago, when a shorthanded court split, 4 to 4, on whether it is unconstitutional to require government workers to pay a fee to unions representing them even when they choose not to join.

But the justice likely to break the tie — rookie Neil M. Gorsuch, who in his short time on the court has consistently sided with conservatives — said nothing Monday to hint at his leanings in a similar case.

What Gorsuch decides will have major implications for the future of organized labor, which has become a pillar of Democratic Party politics, and for millions of workers in the nearly half of the states that require payments from nonmembers to cover the cost of collective bargaining.

If union dues only cover the cost of collective bargaining, then where do all those political donations (almost exclusively to Democrats) come from?

And why has almost every infotainment industry story I’ve read on this case include that same bit of legerdemain? Or is to ask the question to answer it?