The answer to that question may impact how they vote in two huge cases.

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Whenever the dignified Supreme Court brushes up against bare-knuckle politics, strange little sparks begin to fly. And it’s been a particularly sparky few weeks, between Hillary Clinton’s call for a Citizens United litmus test for future Supreme Court nominees and President Barack Obama’s warning shots at the court this week, more or less spanking them for even agreeing to hear the Obamacare challenge King v. Burwell.

It is never a surprise when politicians insert themselves into the life of the court, although, as Jess Bravin at the Wall Street Journal reports, Obama has made it something of an art form. But more interesting are the ways in which the court has, intentionally or not, inserted itself into the heart of the 2016 presidential election. In a way we have not seen since five justices in Bush v. Gore picked the president in 2000, the court may be making itself the cornerstone of the upcoming election.

Despite the justices’ mandate to ignore the politics of the day, there must be some real pressure on the court—and perhaps more specifically the conservative justices—to contemplate the potential political fallout from at least one of the term’s blockbuster cases: the Obamacare challenge. There is an emerging consensus, across ideological lines, that if Obama loses on King v. Burwell in the next three weeks, the bigger loser will be the GOP. As the National Review put it last week, “If a Supreme Court ruling against Obama turns into a hollow victory for conservatives, congressional Republicans could be in for a bloodletting.” Why? If the court rules that only those on state-created exchanges are eligible for subsidies, and Republicans in the statehouses and on the Hill don’t find a fix, nearly 6.4 million Americans would be impacted, and their health care costs could spike by almost 300 percent. And if they do come together to build a fix? As former GOP strategist John Ullyot told the Hill, “Republicans are in the position of having to create a fix that would be seen as a problem by their most conservative supporters.” Propping up Obamacare is the last thing their base wants to see them doing, especially in an election year.

There must be some real pressure on the justices to contemplate the potential political fallout from their decisions. And it’s not just the mostly Republican governors, or the GOP senators who have to defend their seats in those 34 states that may see their exchanges collapse, who are concerned. Prospective GOP presidential nominees are also worried about what happens if millions of Americans—many Republicans—lose their health care in the next two weeks. As David Frum put it after oral arguments, if the court strikes down the subsidies in King, there will be “an ever-greater number of people for whom the risk of loss of health coverage will be an overwhelming consideration. It would seem an obviously [sic] urgency for Republicans to relieve as much of their anxiety as they can. Yet few Republicans perceive that urgency and even fewer are acting on it.” Both Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia hinted at those same oral arguments that this urgent political and social crisis could be fixed—by delaying the effective date of the decision, or congressional action, respectively. The latter idea was met with outright laughter in the gallery.