I agree that that appears to be the tactic in use.

The Court could choose to act with the knowledge that Legislative won't do things, and so behave as the last bastion of relative non-partisanship across the Federal government by allowing the overall public opinion to influence what cases they choose to hear & their eventual outcomes. That would conflict with the letter description of their job, but arguably be in support of the spirit of the system as a whole.

They're not going to go that route, though, it appears.

A political supreme court would be a Republican supreme court, presently, meaning this is actually a high point for how happy Democrats should be about textual originalism.

I don't see a lot of Republicans annoyed by anything the Supreme Court is doing - every decision they've made since repealing Roe seems to favor the right and undermine the left. Trump's list for Supreme Court appointees was written by the Federalist society, which is politically biased in favor of Republicans, libertarians and Christian conservatives.

The question is whether the precedents established in these cases will be respected and "swing both ways" in practice as they do on paper, or whether the SC will conveniently discover new legal principles to avoid them when, say, the legality of NSA's programs eventually comes up.