“Police are investigating the cause of a fire that burned down the home of South Carolina Circuit Court judge Diane Goodstein, who had reportedly received death threats for weeks related to her work,” Time reports.

The Supreme Court said it would not hear the appeal of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking related to the sexual abuse of underage girls by Jeffrey Epstein, CNBC reports.

New York Times: “The court’s action ends Ms. Maxwell’s attempt to overturn her conviction, meaning her only chance of an early release from prison is likely to be clemency from President Trump, with whom she used to socialize in the Florida and New York party scenes.”

“When the nine justices of the Supreme Court return to their raised mahogany bench each year on the first Monday of October, it typically marks the end of a three-month stretch of rest and reflection,” the New York Times reports.

“But this summer’s traditional recess was anything but a cooling-off period.”

“Instead, the justices churned through emergency requests from the Trump administration that sharply divided the court along ideological lines, in a reflection of how much President Trump’s agenda has consumed their calendar.”

Semafor: Trump cases to dominate Supreme Court’s coming term.

“The Supreme Court and President Donald Trump are headed for a reckoning,” the Washington Post reports.

“After months of terse emergency rulings that largely avoided major confrontations with the new administration, the justices will open their new term on Monday faced with the need to render full, final verdicts on policies at the core of Trump’s presidency.”

Gallup: “Forty-three percent of Americans think the current Supreme Court is too conservative. Though that proportion is not meaningfully different from 2022-2024 readings, it is the highest Gallup has measured by one percentage point.”

“The remainder of Americans are more inclined to say the court is ‘about right’ (36%) rather than ‘too liberal’ (17%).”

“President Donald Trump asked the US Supreme Court to uphold his planned rollback of automatic birthright citizenship, setting up a high-stakes showdown as he seeks to topple what for more than a century has been widely understood to be a constitutional right,” Bloomberg reports.

“The fate of many of President Trump’s tariffs hangs in the balance at the Supreme Court, but he is rapidly building out a backup plan,” the New York Times reports.

“The Supreme Court is set to begin considering whether the tariffs that Mr. Trump has placed on countries including Switzerland and India earlier this year are unconstitutional. But the Trump administration has been erecting another system of tariffs that is impervious to the legal challenge.”

“The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider expanding President Donald Trump’s power to shape independent agencies by overturning a nearly century-old decision limiting when presidents can fire board members,” the AP reports.

“The justices have allowed the Republican president to carry out some high-profile firings while lawsuits play out, signaling the conservative majority is poised to overturn or narrow a 1935 Supreme Court decision that found commissioners can only be removed for misconduct or neglect of duty.”

New York Times: “A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed President Trump to fire one of the leaders of the Federal Trade Commission, the latest in a series of emergency orders enabling the president to remove Democratic members of several independent agencies.”

“The Supreme Court said on Thursday that it will hear arguments in a critical case that challenges much of President Trump’s trade agenda on Nov. 5,” Axios reports.

“The high court will determine whether the White House can unilaterally impose tariffs on a significant share of foreign goods, the linchpin of the president’s economic agenda.”

“Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can no longer oversee the prosecution of President Donald Trump in the 2020 election interference case, according to a decision issued Tuesday by the state’s highest court,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

“The ruling casts doubt on the future of the last remaining criminal prosecution of Trump.”

“Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh stressed the importance of the separation of powers in government during a rare appearance at a Texas community college Thursday, despite mounting criticism against the court for decisions favoring President Trump’s administration,” The Hill reports.

Said Kavanaugh: “The framers recognized, in a way that I think is brilliant, that preserving liberty requires separating the power. No one person or group of people should have too much power in our system.”

“Frustrated federal appeals court judges publicly wrestled Thursday with how to follow vague ‘signals’ from the Supreme Court contained in tersely worded — and often unexplained — orders handed down on the justices’ emergency docket,” Politico reports.

“Some judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals even questioned whether they still had a role to play or were expected, at least in some cases, to simply reiterate the high court’s orders and leave it at that.”

“The Supreme Court announced Tuesday it will take up whether President Trump can use emergency powers to justify sweeping tariffs on trading partners across the globe, agreeing to the administration’s request to hear its appeal — and fast,” The Hill reports.

“The expedited schedule will have the justices take the bench for oral arguments in the first week of November, a late addition to the calendar.”

“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

— Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissenting opinion.