Welcome to the Thursday, July 17, Brew.
By: Briana Ryan
Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:
- U.S. Supreme Court grants the Trump administration’s 16th emergency order
- A look at the July 15 election results
- On the Ballot examines partisan and non-partisan school board elections
U.S. Supreme Court grants the Trump administration’s 16th emergency order
On July 15, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education, et al., Applicants v. New York, et al., allowing President Donald Trump’s (R) administration to proceed with large-scale layoffs in the U.S. Department of Education.
The decision was 6-3, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting. Republican presidents appointed the six justices in the majority, and Democratic presidents appointed the three justices in the minority.
In March 2025, Trump issued an executive order directing the layoffs. As of July 13, Trump had signed 170 executive orders during his second term. Thirteen of those executive orders are related to education.
Following the executive order, 20 states and the District of Columbia, two school districts, and several labor unions sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, challenging it and associated layoffs.
Judge Myong Joun, who Joe Biden (D) appointed to the Court, issued a preliminary injunction on May 22, temporarily preventing the federal government from taking action to carry out Trump’s executive order. The federal government appealed the injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which upheld Joun’s ruling. On June 6, the federal government filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Court to stay the preliminary injunction.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in this case came a week after its ruling in a similar case. On July 8, the Court issued a decision in Trump v. American Federation of Government Employees allowing the administration to proceed with large-scale layoffs in the federal workforce. The decision was 8-1, with Jackson dissenting.
So far during Trump’s second term in office, the administration has filed 20 emergency applications with the U.S. Supreme Court. An emergency application to the Court is a request for immediate intervention in the Court’s emergency docket, also called the shadow docket or the non-merits docket. These applications do not fully progress through the ordinary procedures required for the Court to issue a regular opinion. As a result, they are usually resolved in unsigned orders with no oral argument.
This application was the 16th from the federal government that the U.S. Supreme Court granted. The Court denied one application as moot in Bessent v. Dellinger, granted in part and denied in part one application in Noem v. Abrego Garcia, and the federal government withdrew one application. One additional application is currently pending before the Court.
The number of emergency applications the Trump administration has filed so far during his second term is higher than the total applications during George W. Bush’s (R), Barack Obama’s (D), and Biden’s tenures. During his first term, the Trump administration filed 41 applications.
Click here to read more about the 2025 U.S. Supreme Court orders related to the Trump administration.
A look at the July 15 election results
In the July 15 Daily Brew, we told you about the battleground elections happening across the country that day. Today, we’re breaking down the results from those races.
Arizona
Adelita Grijalva (D) defeated four other candidates in the Democratic primary for Arizona’s 7th Congressional District. As of 3:00 p.m. on July 16, Grijalva had 62% of the vote to second-place finisher Deja Foxx’s (D) 21.1%.
The primary was the first step towards the Sept. 23 special election to fill the vacancy created when the previous incumbent, Adelita Grijalva’s father, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), died on March 13. Arizona’s 7th Congressional District is one of five districts where a special election has been called to fill vacancies in the 119th Congress.
Grijalva will now face Daniel Butierez (R) in the Sept. 23 special election. According to Roll Call’s Daniela Altimari, “The winner of the Democratic primary will be heavily favored” in the general election. In the 2024 general election for the district, Raúl Grijalva defeated Butierez 63% to 37%. Additionally, in the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris (D) won 61% of the vote in the district to Donald Trump‘s (R) 38%.
Georgia
Peter Hubbard (D) defeated Keisha Sean Waites (D) in the Democratic primary runoff for District 3 on the Georgia Public Service Commission, which regulates the state’s utility services. As of 3:00 p.m. on July 16, Hubbard had 58.2% of the vote to Waites’ 41.8%.
Hubbard, Robert Jones (D), and Waites advanced from a June 17 Democratic primary. In the primary, Waites received 47% of the vote, Hubbard received 32%, and Jones received 21%. Since no candidate received 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters—Hubbard and Waites—advanced to the runoff.
Georgia Recorder’s Amber Roldan wrote, “As a statewide election, Georgia voters who did not cast Republican ballots in last month’s primary were eligible to vote in Tuesday’s runoff. Despite over 7 million active voters across the state, voter turnout remained low.”
Hubbard will now face incumbent Fitz Johnson (R) in the Nov. 4 general election. Also taking place that day will be the general election for District 2 between incumbent Tim Echols (R) and Alicia Johnson (D).
According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s Mark Niesse, these will be the first general elections “following three years of canceled races and a court battle over the legality of statewide voting that has elected only one Black candidate to the board.”
Washington, D.C.
Trayon White (D) defeated three other candidates in the special election to represent Ward 8 on the Washington, D.C. Council. As of 3:00 p.m. on July 16, White had 29.7% of the vote to second-place finisher Sheila Bunn’s (D) 24.3%.
The vacancy occurred after the Council voted unanimously on Feb. 4 to expel White, who represented the ward then. White’s expulsion came after federal agents arrested him for allegedly accepting bribes to influence government contracts. White has pleaded not guilty, and his trial begins in January 2026.
On the Ballot examines partisan and non-partisan school board elections
In this episode of On the Ballot, we’re looking at partisan and non-partisan school board elections. Our host, Norm Leahy, sits down with our school board guru, Samuel Wonacott, to discuss Indiana recently becoming the fifth state to require partisan school board elections and how other states approach their school board elections.
Across the country, there are 13,024 public school districts governed by a total of about 82,600 board members. More than Over 90% of those school boards are elected in nonpartisan elections, which means party labels for school board candidates are not displayed on the ballot.
To listen to this episode and more, click here. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to On the Ballot on YouTube or your preferred podcast app. Finally, click here to learn more about the rules governing party labels in school board elections.