President Trump has asked the Supreme Court for more time to challenge the dismissal of his lawsuit accusing Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee of conspiring to undermine his 2016 campaign, a case an appeals court called "frivolous" and that already cost Trump and his lawyer nearly $1 million in sanctions.
A filing made public Tuesday shows Trump requested an additional month, until September 9, to seek Supreme Court review of a November ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court, which covers Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, upheld the lawsuit's dismissal by a unanimous 3-0 vote and affirmed roughly $1 million in sanctions against Trump and his attorney Alina Habba. Two of the three judges on the panel were appointed by Republican presidents. One was a Trump appointee.
The appeal would focus on the lower court's conclusion that Trump waited too long to sue, SCOTUSblog reported. Bloomberg reported that Trump will ask the justices to revive the failed lawsuit, which accused Clinton, the DNC, and others of conspiring to tarnish his 2016 campaign with what Trump's team has called baseless claims of Russian collusion.
The 11th Circuit did not hold back. The three-judge panel described the Trump-Habba lawsuit as "frivolous," a designation that carries real consequences. Courts rarely impose sanctions on litigants, and nearly $1 million in penalties reflects a finding that the claims lacked any reasonable legal basis.
For Trump, the decision to press forward to the Supreme Court carries both legal and political dimensions. The high court takes only a small fraction of the cases petitioned to it each term, and a cert petition in a case already branded frivolous faces steep odds. But the filing keeps the issue alive and signals that Trump views the underlying allegations, that Clinton and Democratic operatives orchestrated a disinformation campaign against him, as worth pursuing regardless of what lower courts have concluded.
Clinton has faced legal scrutiny before without consequence. In 2021, the Supreme Court declined without comment to hear a petition by the conservative legal group Judicial Watch seeking to force Clinton to testify under oath about her use of a private email server as Secretary of State. That case stemmed from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit related to the 2012 Benghazi attack.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton criticized what he called a pattern of legal protection for Clinton:
"Hillary Clinton ignored the law but received special protection from both the courts and law enforcement."
The FBI had previously declined to charge Clinton despite finding evidence of violations of federal record-keeping requirements, as Breitbart reported at the time. A Reagan-appointed federal judge had originally granted the deposition request in March 2020, but the D.C. Circuit unanimously overturned that order, with one appellate judge likening it to a "fishing expedition."
The Clinton case is not the only high-profile matter Trump's legal team is pushing to the justices. Trump's lawyers and the federal government have also asked the Supreme Court to take up an appeal of the $83.3 million defamation verdict won by journalist E. Jean Carroll. A federal appeals court in New York upheld that jury award, and Trump has petitioned the Court to reverse it.
Together, the Clinton and Carroll cases represent an unusual posture: a sitting president simultaneously asking the nation's highest court to revisit two civil judgments entered against him, one involving sanctions for a suit deemed meritless and the other a nine-figure damages award. The Court has already shown limited appetite for some of these disputes. It previously declined to hear an earlier Carroll appeal, though the legal posture has since shifted.
Beyond the civil cases, the Trump administration filed a separate emergency docket request asking the Supreme Court to clear the way for full implementation of a March 2026 executive order on mail-in voting. The order, titled "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections," has drawn legal challenges from multiple states.
Alabama led a coalition of 12 states in filing its own application on Tuesday echoing the administration's request. Responses from the states challenging the order are due Monday by 4 p.m. Eastern.
The emergency docket, sometimes called the "shadow docket", allows the Court to act on urgent matters without full briefing and oral argument. Its use has expanded in recent years, drawing criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. The administration's decision to use it here signals that it views the election-integrity order as time-sensitive, likely tied to upcoming election deadlines.
The Court has been active on executive power questions this term. It struck down Trump's birthright citizenship order earlier, prompting the president to shift that fight to Congress. Judge James Ho of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, widely discussed as a potential future Supreme Court nominee, said publicly on July 17 that the Court was wrong to reject the birthright citizenship bid.
At that same July 17 event, hosted by the First Liberty Institute, Ho went further. He suggested the Supreme Court should reconsider its landmark same-sex marriage ruling, framing the issue in religious terms:
"For example: What about the Biblical truth that marriage is the union of one man and one woman?"
But Ho acknowledged reality. He said the Court is far from having the votes to act on the question:
"[W]e're nowhere near the four votes necessary to grant a cert petition, or the five votes needed to rule on the merits."
Ho also said he finds it "awkward" to discuss "judicial courage," given how federal courts have handled what he called "certain self-evident truths." The comments drew attention because Ho sits on the 5th Circuit, a court that has become a launching pad for conservative legal challenges, and because his name regularly surfaces in discussions about future Supreme Court vacancies.
Democrats have responded to the Court's rightward trajectory with their own institutional proposals. Some have introduced resolutions to expand the number of justices and abolish the filibuster, moves that would fundamentally alter the balance of power between the branches.
In a podcast appearance recorded in May with former First Lady Michelle Obama, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson offered a rare personal glimpse into life on the bench. Jackson described the toll of round-the-clock security on her daily routine:
"I can't go out in any meaningful way as I used to, and that can be a downside."
The two also discussed co-parenting, the adjustment to living under constant protection, and their experiences as Black college students at elite institutions. The conversation, reported by The New York Times, came as Congress weighs whether to approve additional security funding for the Supreme Court, a question that has taken on new urgency as threats against public officials have increased.
Away from the political headlines, the Court has scheduled a Fourth Amendment case for its September 28 "long conference", the session where justices decide which petitions to accept for full review. In Reel v. North Carolina, Quashaun Melsun Reel is challenging the legality of a police "knock and talk" at his home in High Point, North Carolina.
The facts are straightforward. Roughly six years ago, three officers from the High Point Police Department's street crimes unit drove to Reel's home after receiving two complaints about drug sales. Officer Brian Hilliard approached a woman outside the home and followed her to the front door. When Reel briefly opened the door, Hilliard detected the odor of marijuana. Reel then slammed the door shut.
Hilliard concluded he had probable cause and believed Reel and the woman would destroy evidence. Officers gave commands for the door to be opened, attempted to shoulder it, and ultimately kicked it in. Inside, they found a bag of marijuana, a bag of pills, and a digital scale in plain view. Reel was charged with multiple crimes, including possession with intent to sell schedule I and schedule VI controlled substances.
North Carolina Superior Court Judge William A. Wood denied Reel's motion to suppress the evidence, finding that "Officer Hilliard's approach to the front entrance of [Reel's home] was legal in every way" and that officers "had both probable cause and exigent circumstances to force entry." The North Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling by a 2-1 vote, and the state Supreme Court agreed.
Reel's petition to the U.S. Supreme Court argues that lower courts across the country "struggle to properly apply Jardines", the 2013 decision in which the Court held that police violated the Fourth Amendment by bringing a drug-detecting dog onto a front porch without a warrant. That ruling recognized that officers may approach a home's entrance to speak with a resident, as any member of the public might, but need a warrant when their purpose is to gather evidence.
Reel's petition contends that lower courts "are very confused how they analyze implied license to enter a home's curtilage, knock and talk investigations, and law enforcement purpose." North Carolina's response brief, filed in June, pushes back hard: "The alleged division and confusion is illusory." The state notes that of the nine courts Reel cited, four explicitly discuss officer purpose, and the remaining five "do not reveal any doctrinal division or confusion."
The case matters because "knock and talk" encounters happen thousands of times a day across the country. If the Court takes it up, the ruling could redefine how much latitude police have when they show up at a citizen's door, a question that touches the Court's broader interest in drawing clear lines around government authority.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, appearing virtually Tuesday at a forum organized by the Ronald Reagan Center on Civility and Democracy, called American democracy "very fragile" and said young people need to study an unvarnished version of the nation's history. The comments came without elaboration in the source but fit a pattern of Gorsuch speaking publicly about civic education and institutional resilience.
Wayne State University professor Christopher Lund, speaking separately to Courthouse News Service about an upcoming Ten Commandments case from Texas, offered a window into the Court's evolving posture on church-state questions:
"The court is talking about history and tradition in ways that make it seem more sympathetic towards the government taking positions on religion, maybe even advancing them in the public schools. That's the big question in the Ten Commandments case."
Texas passed a law requiring Ten Commandments displays in public school classrooms, and the case will test how far the Court's recent emphasis on historical practice extends into the classroom.
From the Clinton lawsuit to the Carroll verdict, from mail-in voting to police searches at the front door, the Supreme Court's fall docket is shaping up as a test of how far this Court will go, and how much of the country's unfinished political business will land on nine desks in Washington. For taxpayers and citizens who believe accountability should run in every direction, the question is whether the Court will apply the same standard to the powerful that it demands of everyone else.