On Thursday evening, in the case now captioned Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), the Trump Administration formally asked the Supreme Court to review the Fourth Circuit’s decision upholding a Maryland District Court’s preliminary injunction of President Trump’s second travel ban Executive Order. The government also asked the Court to stay the preliminary injunction pending disposition of the case and requested expedited briefing and argument, and it requested a stay of the District Court of Hawaii’s injunction of the Executive Order. All of the government’s filings in the Supreme Court can be found here.

Late on Friday, the Court ordered the IRAP plaintiffs to file a response to the petition for certiorari by June 12, although it did not order a response to the stay requests. It is, of course, always difficult to read the tea leaves, but this order suggests both that the Court is prepared to decide before the end of June, when the Court begins its summer recess, whether to grant cert, and that if it does grant, it will hold oral argument at the very beginning of — or even before — the next Term, which starts on the first Monday in October. But it would be quite unusual for the Court to grant a stay without ordering the parties opposing the stay to respond, and the Court has not yet done so. CORRECTION: The Court did in fact order responses to the stay applications, also due June 12.

Adam Liptak of The New York Times has a good explainer on what the Court can and might do with the petition and stay applications before it, along with background on what has already happened, and Josh Blackman likewise discusses the weaknesses of the Fourth Circuit’s opinion, through an analysis of the dissents, while also considering what the Supreme Court might do.. Mark Joseph Stern at Slate focuses on Justice Kennedy’s role in the future of the travel bans. Georgetown law professor Mark Tushnet argues at Balkinization that it would be appropriate for the Court to grant the stay of the Hawaii injunction, which (arguably) precluded the government from engaging in the review of the visa-application system that the Executive Order provided for, but that a stay of the Virginia order would be much more significant. And Kate Shaw, law professor at Cardozo, in a piece written before the government’s filings, analyzes the weight that the courts should give the President’s words, here.

In other, lighter news, the Supreme Court has had their new official photo taken with the addition of Justice Neil Gorsuch. As Time reported, the new “family photo,” is one of the rare times that cameras are allowed inside the Court. The shoot took only two minutes, and 11 photographers were allowed to photograph the Court. Christopher Morris, a photographer for Time, reported that “the atmosphere was light, as the justices quickly began joking with each other. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the only one who shows the gravity of who they are and what they represent.” Morris further remarked “I felt the other justices felt a little awkward and were injecting a lot of humor.” USA Today reported that the justices are ordered by seniority during their picture. After 23 years on the bench, Justice Breyer got to move to the front of the crowd. Check out Scripps Political Correspondent Mike Sacks’ Twitter thread for many more photos of the Court going back through the years.