Federal employees urge Supreme Court to keep order in place preventing their firing

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Friday morning read:

• Federal judge issues new nationwide block against Trump’s order seeking to end birthright citizenship (Devan Cole and John Fritze, CNN)
• Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson says she worries about state of democracy (Jan Crawford and Caitlin Yilek, CBS News)
• Mike Lee wants Supreme Court to take case involving prayer at a high school football game (Lauren Irwin, Deseret News)
• Defense of the Constitution and Judicial Modesty Win the Term (Carrie Campbell Severino, National Review)
• A Supreme Court Justice Wrote the Greatest “No Kings” Essay in History (Gerard N. Magliocca, Slate)

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Thursday morning read:

• Anxiety floods federal workforce (Erin Schumaker, Ben Johansen, Sophia Cai, and Irie Sentner, Politico)
• After term jammed with Trump’s appeals, Supreme Court’s emergency docket may stay hot (Melissa Quinn, CBS News)
• Supreme Court ruling on Trump’s ‘large-scale’ firings is a win for common sense — and democracy (Editorial Board, The New York Post)
• SCOTUS: The highest (and only) court (Kelsey Reichmann, Courthouse News Service)
• The Supreme Court Can Save Women’s Sports (Suzanne Beecher, Newsweek)

Empirical SCOTUS is a recurring series by Adam Feldman that looks at Supreme Court data, primarily in the form of opinions and oral arguments, to provide insights into the justices’ decision making and what we can expect from the court in the future.

As Chief Justice John Roberts closes out his 20th term, the Supreme Court has entered a new phase – less defined by volatility and more by entrenched ideological structure. The 2024-25 term, while quieter than some expected, confirmed that the real story of the Roberts court is the steady narrowing and consolidation of control by a certain faction of the justices.

Over two decades, the court has moved from a shifting center – once held by Justice Anthony Kennedy – to a stable conservative supermajority that increasingly speaks through a few core voices. At the same time, the liberal justices have shifted away from a primary role of coalition-building to become more consistent dissenters, using their opinions less to persuade their colleagues and more to speak to the future.

ScotusCrim is a recurring series by Rory Little focusing on intersections between the Supreme Court and criminal law.

Welcome to the initial biweekly “ScotusCrim” column for SCOTUSblog, which we hope will help fill a gap in Supreme Court coverage. During most terms, public attention focuses on grand social-issue decisions (like this term’s United States v. Skrmetti) or cases with large “political” implications (like this term’s Trump v. CASA). Crime is a big seller in movies and television, but the criminal law system itself is far less dramatic and generally fails to hold the public’s attention. This column aims to bring the criminal side of the Supreme Court’s docket back into focus.

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Wednesday morning read:

• Climate Activists Use Supreme Court’s Samuel Alito’s Words to Boost Lawsuit (Jenna Sundel, Newsweek)
• The Supreme Court Says the President Can Fire People (The Editorial Board, The Wall Street Journal)
• The Inscrutable Supreme Court (Paul Rosenzweig, The Atlantic)
• Religion at the Supreme Court (Mark Movsesian, The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason)
• The Bleak Unifying Principle of This Supreme Court Term (Mark Joseph Stern, Slate)