President Trump has lost nearly every round of the court cases challenging his ban on U.S. entry from selected nations with overwhelmingly Muslim populations. But on Monday he may have won the battle, or taken a big step toward winning it, by running out the clock.

A day after Trump issued a new order indefinitely restricting travel from eight countries — replacing the six-nation, 90-day ban that expired Sunday — the Supreme Court canceled its Oct. 10 hearing on the legality of the last order and asked for brief written arguments by Oct. 5 on whether the case is now moot.

Or, in other words, whether nine months of legal arguments by states, civil rights groups and refugee organizations have ended without a ruling by the nation's highest court, which meanwhile has allowed the government to enforce portions of Trump's order excluding thousands of immigrants, visitors and refugees.

And although opponents contend the president's new decree has the same flaws they challenged in earlier orders, some legal analysts say the administration has now offered rationales that courts will be reluctant to question.

Trump's first order, in January, and its successor, in March, solely targeted nations with populations that were more than 90 percent Muslim; followed an election campaign in which he had called for a ban on Muslim immigration to the United States; and stated little justification other than a need to combat terrorism. Federal courts had little difficulty finding those orders discriminatory, either by religion or by nationality.

But Sunday's order added three countries to the list: Chad, which is mostly Muslim, along with Venezuela — where the ban is limited to officials of the leftist government and their families — and North Korea, the target of much of Trump's overseas wrath. The other nations are Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, which were on the previous list, while Sudan has been dropped.

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