Newly leaked documents obtained by The New York Times this week have thrust the Supreme Court and Chief Justice John Roberts into an awkward spotlight. Roberts “broke precedent” by blocking the Obama administration’s 2016 Clean Power Plan from going into effect, even though a challenge to the plan “hadn’t yet been addressed” by the appellate court, according to the report, said Bloomberg. And the appellate court had “turned down” a request to “block the regulation in the meantime.” The chief justice’s reputation as a court “institutionalist” has “long been overblown and undeserved,” said MS NOW. The Times’ report “reminds us that Roberts has been an activist all along.”

Rather than handling cases with its typical “stately pace that encouraged care and deliberation,” the court under Roberts was “sprinting to block a major presidential initiative,” said the Times. The partisan-line 5-4 vote came “before any other court” had tackled the legality of the issue and was delivered using “legal boilerplate, without a word of reasoning.” The chief justice and court conservatives were “concerned not just with Obama’s policy itself” but with the “possibility that the Clean Power Plan could reshape the power sector before the justices could fully review whether it was lawful,” said Fox News.

Ultimately, the Times’ report highlights a court “at war with itself” and “completely out of the control” of Roberts, said Esquire. Even if the documents obtained by the Times don’t show the “entire discussion” between justices, said The New Republic, it’s “nonetheless damning for them and for the shadow docket itself.”

Despite “no credible threat” that Islamic religious law is “being imposed” in Texas, anti-Sharia politics are “going prime time” in the Lone Star State, said Texas Public Radio. Sharia law is increasingly used as “shorthand” for a “broader cultural and political warning about Islam itself” in Texas GOP messaging that has “sharpened in 2026.” Some Republican candidates have made “anti-Muslim messaging central to their appeals,” including Rep. Chip Roy, now running for state attorney general, who posted about Muslims, Islam and the alleged threat of Sharia law “more than 240 times this year” while framing anti-Muslim policies as a “core mission.”

As undocumented border crossings have fallen during the Trump administration, it “made sense for GOP candidates to drive at another immigration-related concern,” said Republican strategist Vinny Minchillo to CNN. Centering those concerns on Sharia law, “in particular, was a winner in primaries.” The focus on Sharia law is “playing as well as anything I have ever seen with Texas Republican voters,” said Minchillo. “It’s solid gold.”

“Islamophobia played a leading role for Republicans” in last month’s midterms and is “becoming a defining issue” in the upcoming Senate runoff race, said Talking Points Memo. Republicans “put a proposition on” to criminalize Islamic religious law in Texas to “galvanize people,” said far-right strategist Steve Bannon at Semafor’s World Economy Summit. “Is that funny?” he said after comments provoked laughter from the crowd. “OK, fine. You are going to see how funny it is.”

The Trump administration considers adding monetary munitions to its martial tool chest