“The good news is that our institutions held,” Mr. Hasen said. “While many Republican legislators and attorneys general signed onto Texas’s antidemocratic effort, Republican election officials who count the votes and Republican judges did not.”

Yet even among those who celebrated the outcome of the case, many feared the longer term impact of Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on public trust in democracy and the mechanics of elections.

“Pleased with the SCOTUS ruling, but also immediately slightly terrified of where this crazy train goes next,” Brendan Buck, an adviser to the last two Republican speakers, Paul Ryan and John Boehner, wrote on Twitter. He later added, “We should know by now there’s a bottomless supply of crazy.”…

“With each loss we get to celebrate the Biden/Harris victory all over again,” Ken Martin, a vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the state party chair in Minnesota, said. “It’s like the gift that keeps on giving.”