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Sonia Sotomayor Tag

Pressure mounting for her to retire to avoid a Ginsburg scenario. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT): “We should learn a lesson. And it’s not like there’s any mystery here about what the lesson should be. The old saying — graveyards are full of indispensable people, ourselves...

The lower federal courts repeatedly have had their orders and injunctions against Trump administration programs halted by the Supreme Court. In the travel cases, multiple stays were issued and when the case finally reached the Supreme Court on the merits, Trump won. This is not a matter of pro-Trump bias, but of out-of-control lower courts, particularly at the District Court level, where judges have overstepped their bounds to substitute judicial preferences for those of the executive branch in which the constitution vests matters related to entry into the country, among other things.

President Trump's administration won a significant victory at the Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon. The NYT's Adam Liptak reports:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the Trump administration to bar many Central American migrants from seeking asylum in the United States. The court said the administration may enforce new rules that generally forbid asylum applications from people who had traveled through another country on their way to the United States without being denied asylum in that country.

In a complicated ruling, the Supreme Court substantially upheld the inclusion of a census question regarding citizenship, but procedurally held that more inquiry was needed into C0mmerce Dept. reasoning in seeking to add the question. So the bottom line is that there might be a citizenship question, but it's unclear if there is time to get it resolved under deadlines for printing census forms.

The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, and has ruled that the 1925 'Peace Cross' Memorial erected to remember World War I dead can stay on public land. The Opinion is here. Here is an explainer about the case from The Federalist Society:

The Supreme Court heard oral argument on the issue of whether the Commerce Department can add a citizenship question to the Census.  Various District Courts ruled against the Trump administration, and the administration sought the unusual remedy of direct review by the Supreme Court. We previously covered the issues in our post when the Supreme Court granted direct review, Supreme Court agrees to hear Census citizenship question case.

The Supreme Court issued Orders in two cases involving the Trump administration decision not to permit transgender persons to serve in the military. The Orders stayed District Court preliminary injunctions that had prevented the ban from going into effect. The votes split along ideological lines, with the four liberal Justices voting to deny the stay (i.e., allow the injunctions to continue).