Liberals do not understand how our government works. That’s been clear for years. All remnants of society must be broken down to serve the will of the state. So, when documents like the Constitution or institutions like the Supreme Court hinder the progressive agenda, they must be eliminated. Both act as safeguards against unchecked government power.
The core of the Constitution defines what the government cannot do, but we stray from that point. The Supreme Court has serious problems with its staff. We saw this when the Dobbs decision was leaked. Now, there's the revelation of some secret docket or whatever, because a liberal staffer didn’t like the high court blocking Barack Obama’s extreme anti-coal agenda.
The leaks are the story, the New York Times reported on this, not these memos, which they say constitute the making of a “shadow docket” (via NYT):
OUTRAGE: Americans are DEMANDING answers after the The New York Times obtained and published “secret” internal memos from the U.S. Supreme Court — marking the third MAJOR leak from the high court in the last four years.
— RedWave Press (@RedWavePress) April 20, 2026
Kerri Urbahn: “Which is really unheard of from the U.S.… pic.twitter.com/g3LO1MI9xG
Just after 6 p.m. on a February evening in 2016, the Supreme Court issued a cryptic, one paragraph ruling that sent both climate policy and the court itself spinning in new directions.
For two centuries, the court had generally handled major cases at a stately pace that encouraged care and deliberation, relying on written briefs, oral arguments and in-person discussions. The justices composed detailed opinions that explained their thinking to the public and rendered judgment only after other courts had weighed in.
But this time, the justices were sprinting to block a major presidential initiative. By a 5-to-4 vote along partisan lines, the order halted President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, his signature environmental policy. They acted before any other court had addressed the plan’s lawfulness. The decision consisted of only legal boilerplate, without a word of reasoning.
At the time, the ruling seemed like a curious one-off. But that single paragraph turned out to be a sharp and lasting break. That night marks the birth, many legal experts believe, of the court’s modern “shadow docket,” the secretive track that the Supreme Court has since used to make many major decisions, including granting President Trump more than 20 key victories on issues from immigration to agency power.
Since that night a decade ago, the logic behind the Supreme Court’s pivotal 2016 order has remained a mystery. Why did a majority of the justices bypass time-tested procedures and opt for a new way of doing business?
We may not have a suspect on the latest SCOTUS leak, but we have a clue, notes @jadler1969: pic.twitter.com/i0xJQlUPte
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) April 19, 2026
Another major Supreme Court leak to a left-wing media outlet to support a left-wing narrative. Interesting. https://t.co/TiGd5X06uq
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) April 18, 2026
All of this aims to undermine the Court's legitimacy. The Left has been resolute about this because its agenda does not align with our laws. They want to pack the Court, prevent it from exercising its judicial review function, and become the ultimate authority, rather than elections or legislatures, over their broadly unpopular and unhinged policy proposals. That’s why the Left can’t be normal in these debates anymore. Everything they believe in is niche. No one wants it, and much of it doesn’t matter to most Americans. Only a leftist worries about stolen land or neocolonial tendencies—the rest of us, everyone who needs to work and not complain all day, have other responsibilities.
Meanwhile, Reason had a good summary about the NYT’s lengthy piece, adding that there is a clue as to who leaked these documents to the publication:
The documents confirm what a few of us suggested at the time: The Court's majority was concerned that, without a stay, the Environmental Protection Agency would get away with imposing unlawful regulatory burdens on electric utilities, as has occurred with the mercury regulations held unlawful by the Court in Michigan v. EPA.
As a memo by the Chief Justice notes, the EPA had crowed that the Court's Michigan decision was effectively irrelevant because utilities had been forced to spend billions of dollars to comply while waiting for the litigation to resolve, and there were reasons to fear history would repeat itself.
[…]
The NYT does not reveal where the memos came from, but the memos contain one potential clue. All of the memos appear to be photocopies of the original documents on letterhead with the authoring justice's initials or signature--save one. The memo from Justice Sonia Sotomayor's chambers is not on letterhead, has no signature or initials, and (the NYT notes) appears to have the wrong date (likely a typo--"16" instead of "6")[Alternatively, the 16 could have been autodated when printed later on plain paper.] This suggests the source had access to a non-final or non-circulated version of the Sotomayor memo, but the NYT gives no indication of why that might be.
I mean, it was going to be someone from that side of the aisle.