Supreme Court clears the way for Trump administration to massively reduce the size of the Department of Education

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

• Federal workers face mass firings this summer after Supreme Court ruling (Emily Peck, Axios)
• How some Supreme Court decisions fractured the conservative supermajority (Maureen Groppe, USA Today)
• Muslim inmate who won US Supreme Court beard case claims retaliatory transfer by Arkansas officials (Andrew DeMillo, ABC News)
• Supreme Court Reiterates: Judges Don’t Run the Executive Branch (Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review)
• Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Ban Faces New Peril: Class Actions (Adam Liptak, The New York Times)

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.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to allow Florida to enforce a state law that makes it a crime for anyone who entered the United States illegally to enter or remain in the state. In a brief unsigned order, the justices left in place an order by a federal district judge in Miami that bars the state from implementing the law. The groups challenging the law had argued that the state had failed to “adequately explain why, especially given Florida’s extensive and ongoing collaboration with federal enforcement efforts, the State must also be allowed to enforce its own state immigration system outside of federal supervision and control while this expedited litigation proceeds.”