1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

The Supreme Court is making some of the most consequential decisions in modern American history — on immigration, agency authority, voting rights, and constitutional rights — without oral arguments, without full briefing, and without written reasoning. This is the shadow docket. It is not a hypothetical threat. It is happening right now. The emergency docket was designed for narrow, urgent situations: a stay of execution, a temporary injunction while a case is briefed. It was never intended to rewrite constitutional law. In the first 20 weeks of the second Trump administration, the White House filed as many shadow docket applications as the Biden administration filed over four full years. The Court has considered more than 30 such applications and ruled in Trump’s favor 80% of the time — usually with no oral argument and no written explanation. Secret internal memos obtained by the New York Times in April 2026 show how this process became normalized, turning what began as an isolated procedural tool into a routine mechanism for reshaping the separation of powers. The results speak for themselves. The Court used the shadow docket to effectively nullify 90 years of precedent protecting independent federal agencies — without even naming the case it was overturning. It has silently abandoned its own longstanding test for issuing emergency stays, substituting a more permissive standard with no public acknowledgment. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent: “Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation’s separation of powers.” The Supreme Court is not self-regulating. It has no enforceable code of conduct, no binding transparency requirements, and no mechanism that compels it to explain its emergency orders. Congress has both the authority and the obligation to act. I am asking you to: 1. Require written reasoning for shadow docket orders with significant legal impact — no more unsigned, unexplained orders overturning decades of precedent 2. Mandate public disclosure of vote counts and dissents on all emergency orders 3. Support the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency (SCERT) Act, requiring justices to disclose gifts, travel, and financial conflicts 4. Oppose any use of the shadow docket to implement the birthright citizenship executive order before the Court issues a fully reasoned merits ruling 5. Speak on the record — in floor statements and constituent communications, not just closed hearings The shadow docket should not be the mechanism that quietly ends a 150-year-old constitutional right. If it does, Congress will share responsibility — because you had the authority to act and Republicans chose not to. The US Constitution does not run on emergency orders. Neither should the Court that interprets it. The unbelievable corruption on Trump’s behalf is astonishing and we the people — not just the NY Times — see it for exactly what it is.