Sonia Pressmen Fuentes, an early women’s rights lawyer who told the feminist author Betty Friedan that women needed an advocacy group to fight for them the way the N.A.A.C.P. fought for Black Americans, planting the seed for the National Organization for Women, died on Dec. 20 in Sarasota, Fla. She was 97. Her death, which…
Secret memos obtained by The New York Times illuminate the origins of the court’s now-routine “shadow docket” rulings on presidential power. April 18, 2026 Just after 6 p.m. on a February evening in 2016, the Supreme Court issued a cryptic, one paragraph ruling that sent both climate policy and the court itself spinning in new…
Over five days in the winter of 2016, the justices of the Supreme Court exchanged an extraordinary series of confidential memos about how the court should address an ambitious climate change initiative from President Barack Obama. The debate yielded an order halting the program by a 5-to-4 vote — without any explanation. Legal scholars have…
