News
Legal Expert Accuses the Supreme Court of Expanding the ‘Shadow Docket’ to Do Trump’s Bidding
According to Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas Law School, the Supreme Court experienced a sea change when it came to issuing emergency rulings that helped Donald Trump get his way without the court having to explain their legal reasoning.
In an interview with Politico, Vladeck, whose book “The Shadow Docket” explains how the court is hiding how they arrive at the rulings, said that under the Trump administration emergency petitions for rulings went through the roof, with the court repeatedly siding with the former president.
Speaking with Politico’s Ian Ward, the legal expert explained that Trump circumvented lower court rulings by rushing to the nation’s highest court for relief.
As he told Ward, “…the real shift in 2017 was that all of a sudden, the court was inundated with a flurry of applications for a particular type of shadow docket ruling — application for emergency relief — from the Trump administration.”
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He then added, “Across two very different two-term presidencies, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the federal government [went] to the court for emergency relief eight times in 16 years — literally once every other year. Then, all of a sudden, Trump goes back to the court again and again and again — 41 times in four years — trying to get the court to let him carry out policies that lower courts had blocked.”
He also admitted that he was stunned by how often the Supreme Court sided with the ex-president, telling Ward, “What’s remarkable is the court has repeatedly acquiesced and acquiesced, almost always without any explanation, in ways that [marked] a pretty sharp break from how the court would have handled those applications in the past.”
Asked what the implications were for what has become an activist court, he explained, “The real innovation we saw was using the shadow docket as a way of allowing the administration to carry out policies that lower courts had blocked based on no irreparable harm, other than the fact that the policy had been blocked.”
“In older cases, the argument was usually that the reason for the Supreme Court to intervene was that something really, really bad would happen if the court didn’t intervene. But [during the Trump administration], the really, really bad thing that would happen without intervention is just that the president would be frustrated in carrying out his policy goals,” he elaborated before adding, “That argument seems to work because the court kept granting relief. That set the idea that the shadow docket could be a place to make policy without making law — that the Trump administration could carry out policies that no lower court ever upheld for years on end, without any conclusive adjudication of their legality.”
You can read more of his interview here.
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A federal judge chastised the Trump administration for defying his order issued last week to fully distribute SNAP payments by Monday, or at least partially by Wednesday. The administration had said it would release 65 percent of the funds but offered no timeline for doing so.
Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island sharply rebuked the Trump administration “for what he said was defying his order to make full SNAP payments by Nov. 5,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported on Thursday. “He has ordered USDA to make the *full* payment to states by tomorrow.”
“It’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here,” McConnell said, according to Cheney.
READ MORE: ‘Make Lots of Trump Babies’: Dr. Oz Highlights Midterm Goals
The judge alleged that “Trump and his allies have admitted to withholding SNAP benefits for ‘political reasons’ rather than to preserve child nutrition programs, which the judge said was a pretext,” Cheney also reported.
Judge McConnell cited a Truth Social post President Trump made in which he vowed to hold up the SNAP funds. The President wrote that food stamp benefits “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”
The White House later walked back the President’s remarks, claiming he was referring to any future shutdowns.
The judge “said Trump’s Truth Social post was essentially an admission of his ‘intent to defy the court order,'” according to Cheney.
“The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund SNAP,” McConnell said, according to the Associated Press. “They knew that there would be a long delay in paying partial Snap payments and failed to consider the harms individual who rely on those benefits would suffer.”
READ MORE: Democratic Rep. Interrupts Speaker Johnson — Accuses Him of ‘Lies’
Image via Reuters
Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, shared a few of his goals for next year’s midterms with reporters.
Speaking from the Oval Office on Thursday, Oz promoted Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” platform.
“We’ve dropped the [price of] infertility drugs to make lots of Trump babies — I’m hoping by the midterms,” he told reporters, as HuffPost reported.
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Praising President Donald Trump’s plan to lower prices on popular GLP-1 weight loss drugs, Oz said, “America will have to get fit in order to rightsize the health care system.”
Dr. Oz has talked about making “Trump babies” before.
“Now I know what you’re all thinking, and you’re probably right, that there are going to be a lot of Trump babies,” Oz said in October at a White House event focused on making in vitro drugs more accessible. “I think that’s probably a good thing.”
“But it turns out the fundamental, creative force in society is about making babies,” he continued. “It’s about creating. And this country, the one that President Trump is leading so beautifully has been a country of abundance, not scarcity.”
Oz: We’ve dropped in fertility drugs to make a lot of Trump babies hopefully by the midterms pic.twitter.com/LxdPEasSns
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 6, 2025
READ MORE: Democratic Rep. Interrupts Speaker Johnson — Accuses Him of ‘Lies’
Image via Reuters
As the federal government shutdown enters its 38th day with no end in sight, the Speaker of the House and the House Democratic Minority Leader appear united — on one aspect only: blaming the Senate.
Amid reports that a few Senate Democrats might agree to vote to reopen the government if Republicans guarantee a date-certain vote on restoring the Affordable Care Act subsidies, Speaker Mike Johnson appeared to attempt to scuttle that potential bargain on Thursday.
Asked if he would assure that the House would vote on restoring the Obamacare subsidy funding, which would be the basis of a Senate deal, Johnson refused.
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“No, because we did our job, and I’m not part of the negotiation,” the Speaker told reporters on Thursday. “The House did its job on September 19th” when it passed a continuing resolution to fund the government through November 21. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has effectively declared that legislation is dead, unless he can change the end date.
“I’m not promising anybody anything,” Johnson continued. “I’m gonna let this process play out.”
Over on the Democratic side of the aisle, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted the Senate Majority Leader.
“Not a partisan thing, a patriotic thing: We have to decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis,” Jeffries declared.
“And John Thune is divorced from reality,” he charged.
“I mean, it’s a clown show over in the Senate,” Jeffries continued.
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“Fourteen, fifteen times, you bring the same partisan Republican spending bill?” he said, referring to the House-passed continuing resolution that Leader Thune has been putting before the Senate several times a week.
“Expecting a different result? That’s the classic definition of legislative insanity. Doing the same thing, over and over and over again,” he said while blasting Thune, saying he “has no ability to actually negotiate in good faith.”
Weeks ago, Jeffries told MSNBC, “what I’m saying is that we need an ironclad path forward that decisively addresses the Republican healthcare crisis.”
“In terms of the Affordable Care Act, you know, this is a group of people, Republicans, who have tried to repeal the Affordable Care more than 70 different times since 2010. They can’t be trusted on a wing and a prayer. We need a real path forward to address the crisis that Republicans have visited upon the American people in terms of healthcare, the cost of living, and affordability.”
Jeffries: “John Thune is divorced from reality. It’s a clown show over in the Senate. 14, 15 times you bring the same partisan Republican spending bill to the Senate floor expecting a different result? That’s the classic definition of legislative insanity. Has no ability to… pic.twitter.com/MqPUA1sIMJ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 6, 2025
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Image via Reuters
‘Make Lots of Trump Babies’: Dr. Oz Highlights Midterm Goals
‘Really Hurting’: U.S. Job Cuts Surge to Decades-Level High Amid Trump Recession Fears
Judge Rebukes Trump Admin for Defying SNAP Payment Deadline
‘Clown Show’: House Dem Leader Slams ‘Divorced From Reality’ Senate GOP Head
Judge Rebukes Trump Admin for Defying SNAP Payment Deadline
‘Make Lots of Trump Babies’: Dr. Oz Highlights Midterm Goals
‘Clown Show’: House Dem Leader Slams ‘Divorced From Reality’ Senate GOP Head
‘Really Hurting’: U.S. Job Cuts Surge to Decades-Level High Amid Trump Recession Fears
Trump to Talk About Cost of Living Next Year White House Says
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