The Dictatorship
The week at SCOTUS: Maps, mifepristone and more divide justices on the shadow docket
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. Waiting is a big part of Supreme Court reporting. The court is notoriously opaque about what it’s doing, when it’s doing it and, sometimes, due to its lack of explanations for significant rulings, why it’s doing it. But let’s put a pin in that last “shadow docket” point for now. It’ll make a surprise cameo later.
We were in familiar waiting territory on Thursday afternoon, as the clock ticked toward 5 p.m. ET. That was the latest arbitrary deadline that Justice Samuel Alito had set in the emergency litigation over nationwide mail access to mifepristone. If that deadline were to pass without word from the high court, then an unprecedented lower court order from the 5th Circuit halting such access would take effect. A company that makes the abortion pill warned that the order would unleash “chaos for patients, providers, pharmacies, and the drug-regulatory system.”
Five o’clock came and went. No word from the court. It wasn’t until closer to 5:30 that the justices decided — over dissents from Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas — to maintain mifepristone access while the litigation continues in the lower court. It could come back to the justices again, but the status quo access stands for now.
It’s unclear what real effect the time gap had, if any, when the 5th Circuit order was technically live for about a half hour. But what was clear, in those moments approaching the deadline and increasingly as the postdeadline minutes mounted before the court finally ruled, is that this is no way to run a modern legal system. Due to the court’s outsize influence on American life writ large, it’s no way to run a country.
Instead of imposing an arbitrary deadline that caused needless confusion and effectively handed an unearned win to the losing party (Louisiana), albeit a very brief and possibly meaningless one in retrospect, Alito could have simply halted the circuit order indefinitely until the full high court was ready to act. He had to have a sense that his dissenting view would be in the minority even on this court, so an indefinite stay pending the full court’s review would have done no harm. The arbitrary deadline, on the other hand, risked serious confusion at the very least.
Turning to the dissents, Alito said all this stemmed from “the perpetration of a scheme to undermine our decision in Dobbs,” the 2022 opinion he authored that overturned federal abortion rights. Thomas wrote his own dissent, explaining whyin his view, mifepristone manufacturers not only failed to make a case for the emergency relief that the majority granted but also were, in fact, profiting from a “criminal enterprise.”
What did Alito and Thomas’ colleagues in the majority think? Besides the obvious fact that none of the other seven justices joined either dissent, we don’t have much to go on. In the typical fashion of the shadow docket orders that Alito and Thomas have joined over dissents from Democratic-appointed justices, the majority’s unsigned order gave no reasoning. It only said that the 5th Circuit’s order would be halted pending a full ruling in that appeals court and whatever the Supreme Court decides on any further appeal back to the justices.
Alito took a swipe at that lack of explanation in the very first sentence of his dissent. “The Court’s unreasoned order granting stays in this case is remarkable,” he wrote. Putting aside the merits of the argument that followed, it’s “remarkable,” to use his word, that he would think to call out the “unreasoned” nature of the order — an order that, it bears emphasizing, maintained the status quo rather than upend it and unleash the chaos that the dissenters would have risked had their view prevailed.
It’s remarkable not only because of the hypocrisy it required, given Alito’s past joining of such majority orders and his public defense of the shadow docket (or “emergency docket” or “interim docket” or whatever term one prefers for these fast-track orders). It’s even more remarkable because, moments after the mifepristone order came down on Thursday, the GOP-appointed majority issued its latest unexplained order lifting a lower court’s stay, allowing Texas to execute Edward Busby that night for the 2004 murder of Laura Crane, despite unresolved questions about whether Busby was too intellectually disabled to be executed.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent recounted the extraordinary backstory: The state’s own expert had agreed with Busby’s expert that he was intellectually disabled, and so Texas had joined him in asking the state courts to deem him ineligible for execution. But the Texas courts refused, and then the state changed its mind.
Yet a 5th Circuit panel (a different one from the mifepristone case) granted Busby a temporary stay, with one of the circuit judges noting that the Supreme Court is about to issue a ruling this term in a case called Hamm v. Smith that could be relevant to Busby’s appeal. That judge, Obama appointee Stephen Higginson, wrote that in “a matter of life and death, we must be certain that we apply the proper constitutional rule as to whether and how to determine intellectual disability before states may execute defendants for capital crimes, especially when it is a rule that the Supreme Court imminently will clarify.”
The Supreme Court majority wasn’t bothered by that. “Today, the Court finds itself unable to tolerate even a brief delay,” Jackson wrote in her dissentjoined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. (The third Democratic appointee, Elena Kagan, noted her dissent but didn’t join Jackson or explain her disagreement.) Jackson wrote that the majority insisted on immediately backing the state’s “current inclination (that it must execute Busby tonight)” over the state’s “former one (that it could not execute Busby at all).” The Biden appointee concluded by observing that, in death penalty cases, the justices “rarely intervene to preserve life. I cannot understand the Court’s rush to extinguish it, much less in the circumstances of this case.”
And that was just an unexplained shadow docket example from that same night. Earlier this week, on Monday, the GOP-appointed majority issued yet another “unreasoned” order, as Alito would call the mifepristone order later in the week, in yet another redistricting win for Republicans, when the majority granted Alabama emergency relief to let it use a congressional map that was previously deemed discriminatory.
As we head into the weekend, we’re awaiting court action on Virginia’s emergency bid to save its Democratic-friendly redistricting effort. I explained in this piece why it’s a long shot, the bottom line being that it’s mainly a state issue and the justices deal with federal issues, though, to be sure, state officials make a federal pitch for relief. Still, the most likely outcome at the high court is a denial and therefore another win for Republicans this election season. But unlike this week’s Alabama order and the recent voting rights ruling in Louisiana v. Callais that sparked the latest GOP map maneuvers, this Virginia appeal might not prompt all three Democratic appointees to dissent. The question is more likely how many dissents, if any, accompany denial, than whether it’s denied.
But, once again, we wait.
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Over the course of June, Donald Trump spent nearly every day focusing attention on assorted construction and beautification projects, emphasizing the unavoidable conclusion that the president takes his renovation crusade very seriously.
His allies aren’t necessarily pleased. The Hill recently reported that Republican officials, worried about the midterm elections and maintaining partisan control, have been “thrown off-balance” by, among other things, Trump’s focus on “pet projects” instead of more meaningful national priorities.
The list of projects keeps growing nevertheless. It includes (but is by no means limited to) the ballroomthe Reflecting Poolthe “triumphal arch,” the fountainsthe horse statuesthe “Trump Promenade,” the “statue garden” and the dozen or so additional renovation projects he’s prioritized in and around the White House complex.
But let’s also not forget the helipad.
A couple of months ago, The Washington PostThe Wall Street Journal and The New York Times separately published similar reports about Trump hoping to build a permanent helicopter landing site on the White House grounds. Evidently, those plans have now advanced to the construction stage. The Post reported this week:
President Donald Trump has begun construction on a new White House helipad, his latest change to the historic grounds, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the project publicly.
Construction crews worked into the night Monday on the White House’s South Lawn, with the project blocked off by a large fence.
The report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, added that the project hasn’t yet been formally announced by the White House, even as construction is apparently underway.
It’s not yet clear how much the project will cost, who will pick the tab and whether this has joined the growing list of no-bid contracts.
Unlike some of the president’s other priorities, there is a legitimate issue here — the latest generation of helicopters really do damage the White House lawn — although this doesn’t answer the other lingering questions or explain why Team Trump hasn’t acknowledged the existence of the project.
What’s more, this almost certainly won’t be the last of the Republican’s projects.
Earlier this week, the president used his social media platform to promote an artificial intelligence-generated image of a gold eagle affixed to the White House exterior. Trump added in his online image, “A Golden Gift to the White House for its 250th Birthday Year!”
The text (which erroneously said the White House is celebrating its semiquincentennial) suggested the president intends to add this gaudy addition to his ambitious renovation agenda.
Recent polling has found two-thirds of Americans are convinced their unpopular president simply has the wrong priorities. Trump could take steps to change their mind, but he apparently doesn’t want to.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The Dictatorship
Hegseth blasts protesters at ceremony for D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force: ‘Ingrates’
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday derided protesters at an event in Washington, D.C., tied to the America 250 celebrationscalling the demonstrators “ingrates” who are “blinded by ideology.”
The D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force event in Meridian Hill Park was set to begin at 9 a.m. ET but did not start until roughly 30 minutes later, as members of the National Guard waited for Hegseth’s arrival amid a brutal heat wave. Protesters shouted during his brief address, in which he said he was to blame for the delay and praised the troops for their service.
“In fact, this background noise this morning is perfect,” Hegseth said about the protesters, with White House adviser Stephen Miller and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche standing behind him.
“It’s the sound of ingrates, of ingratitude of people who are so blinded by ideology they can’t see law and order and common sense in front of them,” Hegseth said. “That there’s nothing ideological about this group, there’s nothing political about this exercise.”
Some protesters could be heard shouting “Shame!” and “Guard, go home!”
Pete Hegseth: “This background noise is perfect. It’s the sound of ingrates, of ingratitude, of people who are so blinded by ideology they can’t see law and order and common sense in front of them.” pic.twitter.com/aWt5ciuRG3
—Aaron Rupar (@atrupar)”https://x.com/atrupar/status/2072679604184109222?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>July 2, 2026
National Guard troops have been deployed to assist with America 250 celebrations in the capital, though some Democratic governors have warned against their guard members being utilized for a larger federal joint task force to tackle what the Trump administration has called“rampant crime” in Washington.
Many Washington residents are not thrilled with the National Guard’s presence. The controversial America 250 festivities have also sparked criticism from Democrats who accuse President Donald Trump of putting himself at the center of the celebrations.
At the Thursday ceremony, Hegseth suggested the protesters were not from Washington.
“These ingrates will fade away; they’ll go back to wherever they came from,” he said, before asserting that National Guard troops have brought the crime rate down in the capital — a claim that at least one study has found to be inaccurate.
“The crime rate here has dropped in staggering amounts, and the media won’t want to admit it because, of course, they’d have to give credit to President Trump, and then they’d have to give credit to the Department of War or to Stephen Miller,” Hegseth said. “But courageous men like President Trump and Stephen, who said enough is enough, are the reason why this city is a safe and beautiful place.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
Stephanie Ruhle said she was left “almost speechless” after the release of Donald Trump’s new financial disclosureswhich reported he raked in more than $2 billion since returning to the White House. “Man, it looks good to be president,” the “Money, Power, Politics” host said Wednesday.
According to the 927-page document released Tuesday, Trump’s income has only increased since retaking the White House. The president reported almost $575 million in real estate and golf-related income and another $68.6 million in royalties and licensing fees.
But, as Ruhle pointed out, $1.4 billion of Trump’s 2025 total comes directly from one industry: crypto.
Despite having called that industry a “scam” and a “disaster waiting to happen” in 2021, Trump has in recent years appeared to have a change of heart about digital currency.
“That was just five years ago, but now he is a major crypto industry operator and essentially its top policy maker,” the MS NOW host said. “Remember, he is the one who appointed regulators that changed the rules to hugely benefit the crypto industry, and since he came back to office, he has either completely dropped or settled a whole lot of cases with crypto companies.”
As Trump rakes in more cash, Ruhle said the American people are not experiencing the same kind of prosperity, in part because of the administration’s policies. “[They] are suffering, whether it’s because of tariffs, whether it’s because of inflation, whether it’s because of increased costs, because of the war in Iran,” she said.
While Ruhle noted the president has said he does not choose his investments and has said they are in a “blind account,” she said the American people should not ignore how much Trump has profited since returning to the White House.
“Here’s what you need to know: All of this would be a major conflict of interest — a huge scandal — if it were any other presidency,” she argued.
You can watch Ruhle’s full breakdown in the clip below.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
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- Stephanie Ruhle breaks down what to know about Trump’s financial disclosures
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