In an appearance on Thursday, Justice Elena Kagan discussed the Supreme Court’s handling of emergency docket rulings and said the court could be doing more to explain its reasoning on such cases.
The court has allowed the administration to fire tens of thousands of government workers, discharge transgender troops, end protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants from war-torn countries and fundamentally shift power from Congress to the president.
The University of Michigan was the latest school accused of failing to report large foreign donations amid a wider pressure campaign from the Trump administration.
Within an hour of the Supreme Court ruling on Monday, workers fired from the Education Department received an email informing them that their official last day would be Aug. 1.
Cuts have hit most of the department’s main functions, which include investigating civil rights complaints, providing financial aid, researching what works in education, testing students and disbursing federal funding.
The move by the justices represents an expansion of executive power, allowing President Trump to dismantle the inner workings of a government department.
The emergency application to the justices stemmed from efforts by the Trump administration to sharply curtail the federal government’s role in the nation’s schools.
Providers say after-school programs and other services for the coming school year are threatened without the federal money, which was abruptly withheld.
Children play during aftercare for the Head Start program, an early education program for low-income children, in Miami, earlier this year. The Department of Health and Human Services said it would no longer allow unauthorized immigrants to enroll in Head Start.
The Department of Homeland Security issued administrative subpoenas seeking data about the university’s international students, while two federal agencies challenged Harvard’s accreditation.
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