As she has done several times recently, liberal Justice Elena Kagan last week sounded the alarm after another bold emergency action by the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority again let President Donald Trump carry out one of his policies without taking the usual time or deliberation to review its legality.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, allowed Trump to withhold $4 billion in foreign aid despite a judge's decision that he cannot simply not spend funds appropriated by Congress. The emergency docket, with its scant briefing and lack of oral arguments, Kagan wrote in a dissent, was not appropriate for yet another high-stakes decision from the top U.S. judicial body given the "uncharted territory" of the dispute.
Since Trump returned to office on January 20, the court has acted in 23 cases on an emergency basis involving his policies, siding with him fully or partially 21 times, with one case declared moot.
In doing so, the court has expanded how it uses its emergency power, following at least six different legal paths to side with Trump, usually in decisions powered by the conservative justices, a Reuters analysis has found.
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