What Is the Supreme Court’s ‘Shadow Docket,’ and How Has Trump Used It to Advance His Agenda?

The Supreme Court keeps handing President Donald Trump quick wins through its emergency, or "shadow," docket, even as he faces mounting resistance from lawmakers and voters elsewhere. Two recent orders illustrate the pattern. On Tuesday, the justices temporarily lifted a lower court's block and let the administration resume deportations to countries other than the migrants' own. Several days before, they cleared the way for officials to run voter eligibility checks through a disputed Department of Homeland Security database ahead of the November midterms. Neither order was signed or disclosed how many justices backed it, and the three liberal members registered public dissents, according to Time.

The administration has filed far more emergency applications than any recent president and is not letting up; a new one arrived Monday, concerning a policy on gender-affirming care for transgender federal inmates that a Washington district judge had stopped. Legal experts told TIME the Court has become much more receptive than in earlier eras. Carolyn Shapiro of Chicago-Kent College of Law said the Court rewrote the standards for executive-branch relief and the administration accepted the opening. Kate Shaw of the University of Pennsylvania argued that such situations are rarely true emergencies.

Summarized by PolitiKool from Time’s reporting. Read the full story at Time →