The Supreme Court’s Secret Documents, and an Unusual Order From the C.D.C. Director

From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Will Jarvis, in for Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, September 1st. Here's what we're covering. Every year, the U.S. Supreme Court issues dozens of opinions, carefully composed and edited documents that lay out the justices' consequential rulings. But The Times has been looking into how their internal working papers can be locked away indefinitely. Those memos and drafts give behind-the-scenes details of how they pressured and persuaded each other to reach their decisions. In contrast with the White House, where federal law requires every last scrap of paper to be saved and eventually made public, working papers for the court are considered the personal property of each justice. So in recent memory, for example, one justice had his papers released when he died. One justice is only allowing his papers to be released when he dies. One justice is only allowing his papers to be released 50 years after he dies. And then another justice shredded his papers. Jodi Kantor covers the Supreme Court for The Times. She says that in recent decades, the trend on the court has been to impose much tighter restrictions on what happens to those working papers. For example, some details of the decision-making in the Bush v. Gore case from 2000 likely won't become public until 2075 because of one justice's choice to delay the release of his papers. The lack of transparency, the lack of transparency, and the lack of transparency has fueled criticism of the court, with one legal scholar saying that the justices are simply protecting themselves from being second-guessed, calling it, quote, reputation management. And Jodi says that dovetails with criticism of the court's growing use of the so-called shadow docket, where crucial emergency rulings come down, often without any immediate details about the justices' reasoning. There's a uniform feeling that judges and justices need privacy to deliberate. It gives them privacy. It gives them freedom. It gives them independence. The question is why the timeline is so long for release. A lot of people are calling on this court to be more transparent, but what we can see is that actually they've gone in the other direction between the shadow docket decisions that don't have opinions, and by withholding these papers for a long time to come, the court seems very committed to secrecy. Jodi says that people she interviewed who are familiar with the court's operations worry that some of its most revealing deliberations are not being saved at all, since they happen over text and email, and her sources were unaware of any consistent process for saving those kinds of electronic records. In response to questions from the Times, a spokeswoman for the court did not offer any explanation of its practices and refused to provide information about its policies around retaining documents. Now, three quick updates on the Trump administration. First, the Times has learned that the Army Secretary, its top civilian leader, met with President Trump yesterday and turned in his resignation. The move was not a surprise. The official, Daniel Driscoll, had clashed repeatedly with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose purge of experienced generals has left the Army essentially rudderless. According to officials familiar with Driscoll's resignation, he told Trump he was frustrated by those firings. And by Hegseth's apparent refusal to promote officers who worked for Generals Hegseth doesn't like. Now, Driscoll's replacement will be picked by President Trump, though any nominee will need to be confirmed by the Senate. Also, the Supreme Court has ruled that President Trump's White House ballroom project can continue. In its 5-4 decision, the court didn't address whether the $400 million construction project is legal, but it ruled that the preservation group that was suing to stop it wouldn't have legal standing to do so. The structure of the ballroom is already rising above the White House grounds, and now, with the main legal challenge swept aside, Trump appears to be on course to complete the project. And in a remarkable move, the CDC is challenging state health officials in Pennsylvania, pushing back on a report of deaths from measles. The state is in the middle of a rapidly expanding measles outbreak, and last week, officials there said two people who were unvaccinated and tested positive for the virus had died. But the situation quickly became a political firestorm, with Pennsylvania's Democratic governor accusing Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of fueling vaccine hesitancy, and Kennedy hitting back, suggesting that the governor's staff was lying about the deaths being caused by measles. Now, the head of the CDC, who reports to Kennedy, has ordered officials to leave the two deaths in Pennsylvania out of federal measles data, in a break from the agency's normal procedures. Public health experts tell me that this is just an extraordinary situation for the CDC to be publicly questioning what the state of Pennsylvania has said, and saying that it still needs to review more information. Apoorva Mandavilli covers public health for The Times. They say that this is a very big deal because CDC and states work extremely closely together, and they're usually on the same page, and work behind the scenes to resolve any disagreements on the rare occasions that there are any. And so, to have this very public fight is not just rare and strange, but also extremely confusing for the American public. We have more measles cases this year than we've had in decades, and this kind of situation makes it very difficult for people, especially parents of young children, to know whom to trust and whether to vaccinate their children. In response to questions from The Times, the head of the CDC did not offer any comment. A statement from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, said that its federal, quote, reflects the best available information and our commitment to transparency and telling the American people the truth. Yesterday, in a Las Vegas courtroom, a jury convicted Dwayne Keith Davis of orchestrating one of the most notorious killings in music history. The 1996 murder of the rapper Tupac Shakur. Over the course of the three-week trial, prosecutors laid out their case against Davis, saying he'd provided the gun used to kill Shakur, and that it was an act of revenge as part of a larger gang war. They'd leaned on Davis's own comments about the killing that he'd made over the years, playing the jury hours of interviews from podcasts and documentaries where he talked about being part of the crime. Davis's lawyers argued that those statements shouldn't be trusted because he had a long history of embellishing the truth. But in the end, after just three hours of deliberation, the jury found him guilty. He'll be back in court next month for sentencing, where he faces up to life in prison. And finally. Messi flying forward. Lionel Messi! After more than 200 games with Argentina's national team, Lionel Messi, the soccer legend and national hero, has announced that he's stepping down. His control is brilliant. His finish is even better. It's sensational from Lionel Messi, and we would expect absolutely nothing less. In his home country, the news that he's retiring from the team unleashed a wave of grief and disbelief. For years, Messi carried the hope and pride of Argentina. And yesterday, sports broadcasts. fought back tears as they talked about his retirement. One reporter said Messi was, quote, Messi, who became a star playing for the club team Barcelona, initially struggled to win with his own national team. But he electrified the country back in 2022 when he scored seven goals during the World Cup and helped Argentina win his first World Cup title since the 1980s. The 39-year-old announced his retirement from the team in a handwritten letter posted to Instagram, where he wrote, He's set to play for at least another two years in the U.S. with the club team Inter Miami. Now, soccer fans in Argentina are hoping the country can produce another one of its world-class superstars. One person told the Times, quote, For the longest time, I was just annoyed at my dad for, like, being mad all the time, but he was really just struggling. How the daughter of one Coast Guard member who died by suicide connected the dots between his work in rough waters and severe brain injuries. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Will Jarvis. We'll be back tomorrow.