In an unsigned and unexplained order, the Supreme Court yesterday granted the Orange Tornado's bid to halt pay for 1,400 Education Department employees while his administration pushes forward with plans to dismantle the agency amid a legal showdown with Democratic states. Via Courthouse News Service:

In an apparent 6-3 decision, the high court sided with Trump in the now-familiar fight between executive authority and judicial branch oversight, this time in the context of job cuts at the Education Department.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor led the three liberal justices in dissent, calling the decision indefensible. The Barack Obama appointee said the high court had allowed Trump to usurp congressional authority by firing the employees necessary to carry out democratically passed laws.

“When the executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” Sotomayor wrote.

Sotomayor said her colleagues had misused the emergency docket and warned that allowing Trump to dismantle the Education Department would have grave consequences.

“The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave,” Sotomayor wrote.