Do the Supremes work for Voldemort?

OMG, if it's not one thing, it's another. Trump this, Trump that, no summer vacation. Everything's a fricken emergency.

I had once sported aspirations for a seat on this bench, but no more. In fact, I've dropped my application to Harvard Law School.

How the Supreme Court Dipped Its Toes in Trump 2.0

The president has only begun to add to the court’s workload; its summer break might be short-lived

By Brent Kendall, WSJ

June 29, 2025 5:00 am ET

The Supreme Court, in its annual term that wrapped up Friday, gave states room to restrict transgender medical care for minors, bolstered parents’ rights in objecting to LGBTQ themes in their children’s classrooms and, in its biggest act, clipped the power of federal judges to block President Trump’s policies nationwide.

The justices also got an early look at the long line of Trump cases that lie ahead, giving the president a number of early, though temporary, victories. Here are some top takeaways as the court retreats for a summer break.

The conservative majority isn’t drifting to the center

The six justices who comprise the court’s conservative majority aren’t a monolith, and there have been times when the court’s three most conservative members—Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch—have staked out positions that differ from those embraced by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. But in the cases that matter most, there has been little in the way of fracturing—or drifting to the middle.

The rulings on transgender care and parental rights in education came on 6-3 votes, with the court’s liberals in dissent. So did the court’s decision that judges generally can’t issue nationwide injunctions against a president’s policies. That decision, at least for now, narrowed lower-court rulings against Trump’s bid to limit birthright citizenship. There were several other instances in which the conservatives granted emergency requests from the Trump administration over the objections of the liberal minority.

Barrett’s jurisprudence has drawn hints of concern from some of Trump’s most ardent supporters because she hasn’t been with them in every case. But she wrote the court’s decision on injunctions, which was easily Trump’s biggest victory of the term.

Trump has enjoyed good fortune, but it’s early

Hundreds of cases against Trump administration efforts are working their way through the lower courts. Judges have issued a range of preliminary rulings putting Trump’s actions on hold, finding that the president likely overstepped and that his legal opponents would suffer serious harm during the time it takes to litigate a case to its conclusion.

In nearly 20 cases, the Justice Department has sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court, asking that Trump be allowed to move forward in the interim. Many of those requests have been granted. Among them, the court for now has allowed the administration to ban transgender service members from the military, fire probationary federal employees, remove high-ranking officials on government boards and commissions, deport people to countries other than where they are from and strip protections from some immigrants who enjoyed temporary legal status in the U.S.

The court in a handful of cases did tell Trump no. It declined to allow the administration to pause certain foreign-aid funding and temporarily blocked the deportation of a group of Venezuelan migrants whom the administration wanted to remove under a rarely used wartime law. It also instructed the administration to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a migrant mistakenly sent to a Salvadoran prison.

But here is an important thing to know: Across all of these cases, the court has yet to give full consideration to the legality of any of Trump’s actions.

The court’s rhythms and workload are changing

The crush of emergency requests has come through what is often called the court’s shadow docket. Unlike cases that proceed to the court after final rulings from lower courts, these emergency matters arrive on tight time frames, and the justices consider them without full legal briefing and oral arguments. They often rule on the requests without delivering a written opinion explaining their reasoning.

Court observers have long said the institution isn’t at its best when it is rushed. And now it is rushed more often. For the 2024-25 term, the cases on the court’s emergency docket were arguably more important than most of what was on its regular calendar, which proceeds in an orderly fashion—with many months of deliberation—from October to June.

The spigot of emergency appeals doesn’t shut off during the summer, which means the court’s break isn’t what it used to be. Even as the justices are leaving Washington for vacations and other summer commitments, Trump administration requests are pending on efforts to proceed with more federal layoffs and shrink the Education Department.

Roberts, Barrett and Kavanaugh hold the keys

Though they aren’t traditional moderates, Roberts, Barrett and Kavanaugh are at the center of the court’s ideological spectrum, meaning they control the overwhelming majority of its outcomes. Rarely were their views on the losing side.

The chief justice was the most firmly in control, finding himself in the majority for 95% of the court’s cases this term, according to data compiled by Scotusblog. Kavanaugh came in at 92%, while Barrett was at 89%, according to the data. Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch each came in at 78%.

There are fewer surprises at the court than when the ideological balance was closer a decade ago, but it is still possible for the justices to find unusual alliances on occasion.

Roberts and Kavanaugh joined liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson in overruling an Oklahoma court that ordered a death-row inmate executed over the objection of the state’s attorney general. Barrett, meanwhile, was on the same side as the liberal wing in a handful of divided cases.

In a case in which Barrett was recused, the court split 4-4 on whether Oklahoma could allow state-funded religious charter schools, meaning the state plan couldn’t move forward. Liberal justices were clear during oral arguments that they believed the state’s move was unconstitutional; the deadlock meant that one other conservative justice agreed. The court didn’t say which justices were on each side of the tally.