The U.S. Supreme Court, “nine angry men and women in black robes,” according to Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch, has gone “off the rails,” and is now “at war with itself.”

“Almost every day, there are new signs — from shocking news leaks to surprisingly indecorous public jabs, and legal opinions that read like cries for help — that the U.S. Supreme Court is at war … with itself,” Bunch argues. “Looming large over this soft civil war inside one of America’s three branches of government is our most fundamental liberty, the right to vote.”

Pointing to President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, amid its “shaky” ceasefire and “the daily unraveling” of the White House, “the biggest bombshell wasn’t dropped in the Persian Gulf but in the pages of the New York Times.”

Bunch is referring to the widely-cited scoop from the Times‘ Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak, that reveals the extreme steps Chief Justice John Roberts took to block President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan — and expand the powers of the Court via the “shadow docket.”

“For more than a decade now, these emergency rulings have largely constrained Democratic presidents and boosted the power of Donald Trump on major issues,” Bunch writes.

He notes that the Times published a batch of five justices’ secret memos, including those from Roberts, that “exposed the hypocrisy” of the Chief Justice, “who has argued during his two decades overseeing the court that its justices are not political actors but impartial umpires ‘calling balls and strikes,’ based on sound interpretation of the law.”

Bunch states these memos “reveal Roberts as less an umpire and more the manager of a team desperate to win the World Series for corporate America.”

The leaking of the memos, which, to many, cast Roberts in a negative light, “is just the latest in a series of news leaks and public statements coming from the Supreme Court that lack any precedent, legal or otherwise.”

Bunch says the court had already been facing a “crisis of credibility,” given the “revelations of alleged corruption” swirling about Justice Clarence Thomas, and the “billion-dollar efforts by wealthy conservatives to shape and then lobby the court.”

The Times’ report was far from the first leak.

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In 2022 came the “Mother of All Leaks” — the draft opinion that would ultimately overturn 1970s’ landmark ruling, Roe v. Wade.

The leaker was never discovered, but “there’s been much speculation that it came from the conservative wing hoping the news coverage would prevent last-minute defections.”

Meanwhile, since the Court’s 2024 decision granting President Donald Trump and all presidents sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts,” Bunch writes, “there has been even less decorum and more overt verbal warfare.”

Sometimes, justices publish their snipings inside their opinions, “as when Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in response to that ruling on presidential power that POTUS is now ‘a king above the law,’ signing off ‘with fear for our democracy.'”

Bunch says an even more “shocking” event occurred when Sotomayor “lashed out” at Justice Brett Kavanaugh, when she commented that one of his opinions had come from “a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”

She quickly apologized.

Like the 2022 leak, no one has publicly stated who leaked the secret memos to The New York Times.

But, Bunch surmises, someone “very high in the judicial pyramid is trying to send a ‘bat signal’ to the American public — that things at the nation’s highest court have gone off the rails.”

READ MORE: ‘Dropping Like Flies’: Which of Trump’s Cabinet Secretaries Will Be Next?

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A prominent House Republican is breaking with President Donald Trump on the state of the U.S. economy — which the president in recent months has called the “hottest” in the world and suggested that the inflation and affordability crises have been resolved. But she’s also placing the blame on former President Joe Biden, well over a year after he left office.

House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain “offered a rare acknowledgment from a GOP leader Tuesday that the U.S. economy might not be in tip-top condition,” Politico reported.

“Now, I know that even with bigger refunds, many families are struggling right now. And I get it,” McClain told reporters.

“But we also owe it to the American people to be honest about how we got here, to make sure we don’t ever go back again. So let me be candid, and let me refresh everybody’s memories,” she said, declaring that the Biden administration “killed” the Keystone Pipeline on “day one.”

The pipeline was never completed — Biden revoked a permit for it.

READ MORE: ‘Dropping Like Flies’: Which of Trump’s Cabinet Secretaries Will Be Next?

“Then,” she continued, “the Biden administration made it harder to ‘drill baby drill.'”

By the time President Biden left office, the U.S. was the world’s largest producer of oil and a net exporter of petroleum products and natural gas.

After praising the Trump administration for opening up more drilling permits, McClain scolded the press: “We need to tell the truth on truly what’s going on.”

“I’m not passing the buck, I’m giving you the facts,” she said.

“It’s crazy that Democrats closed the Keystone pipeline,” she reiterated. “It’s crazy to rely on our enemies for our oil and our natural gas. And it is crazy to sacrifice our national economic security for woke Green New Deal talking points.”

“So, no. Energy prices aren’t where any of us want them to be,” she acknowledged before praising Trump’s energy policies.

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After more than a year with no Cabinet Secretary exits, President Donald Trump has now seen three leave under various circumstances — Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer — in less than two months. The question now is: who might be next?

The Wall Street Journal says Trump’s cabinet secretaries are “dropping like flies,” and Politico reports that high-profile Trump officials are “sweating on their futures.” Politico also notes that the “Cabinet-level calm of the first 13 months of this presidency is over. Trump is in the mood for shaking things up.”

A president with approval ratings currently in the mid-to-upper 30s, Trump is “culling” those who have disappointed or are “distrusted” by his base, Politico writes, with an eye on the midterm elections.

“The campaign is not exactly going swimmingly, and the theory is that problematic members of the administration need clearing out now — still six months from the start of voting — to put sufficient distance between their departures and Election Day.”

The obvious common threads between those out the door — fired, forced, or otherwise leaving — are that all three are women, and were “embroiled in scandal” or distrusted by the base.

Politico suggests two officials who might be next to exit.

FBI Director Kash Patel has been embroiled in scandal and is distrusted by Trump’s base, according to Politico, making him a possible next contender.

“His reputation in MAGA world hasn’t recovered from his role in the initial handling of the Epstein files, while the list of colorful stories (and videos!) about his approach to the job of FBI chief gets longer every month,” Politico notes.

There is also Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who has “faced fierce internal criticism from Day One,” and “now has an Epstein-shaped problem of his own.”

“The contrast between how Trump treats the men and the women in his cabinet is notable,” The Bulwark‘s Bill Kristol writes, noting that “Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has surely done as much damage to his department and to the nation as Kristi Noem did. But Pete’s still on the job, strutting around and displaying his machismo at the Pentagon.”

Kristol also mentions Secretary Lutnick, who “has profited on a larger scale from the Trump administration than Chavez-DeRemer did. But Lutnick is still there, grifting as men in the Trump orbit do.”

He also points to Director Patel, whom Kristol says is presiding “in all his male adolescent glory as director of the FBI.”

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