We cannot let this stand.
John, the Supreme Court’s "shadow docket" was supposed to be for real emergencies. But now, it’s been weaponized.
When Trump loses in a lower court, he runs straight to the Supreme Court to use the "shadow docket" hoping the conservative justices will bail him out.
No hearing, no arguments, hardly any real explanation. Just a one- or two-line order that lets him keep doing exactly what a lower court just said he couldn't.
More often than not, it works. This is a loophole — and Trump is running through it faster than any president before him. He hit the same number of emergency appeals in about five months of his second term that it took the entire Biden presidency to reach.1
The result? Immigrants lose protections overnight. Civil servants get pushed out with no due process. The legal limits on presidential power quietly disappear.
This is what a captured Court looks like. Untethered from the Constitution, no transparency, and shifting their own legal standards in ways that make it easier for Trump and entrenched power to win.
Demand Justice PAC is exposing this scheme and building the public and political pressure to force real reform. Ethics rules, an expanded bench, and structural changes that end government-by-shadow-docket for good.
But exposing a rigged system takes resources. Building the pressure to actually fix it takes more.
Will you chip in $5 to Demand Justice PAC right now to help us keep dragging Trump and the Court's abuses into the light? A captured Court only stays captured if we let it.
Donate $5 ››
Thank you,
Team Demand Justice PAC
1 — Brennan Center for Justice
