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Every year, Amicus co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern invite listeners to nominate the Supreme Court’s most egregious behavior, then choose their own “worst of the worst” to memorialize the most ignominious moments. In 2025, there was no shortage of contenders. In a preview of their conversation on this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Lithwick reveals the SCOTUS lowlight that still rankles her the most. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Mark Joseph Stern: We certainly had a bumper crop of bad decisions this year. What’s your nominee for worst of the worst?

Dahlia Lithwick: There were a lot of decisions in 2025 that immiserated huge amounts of people and made the world materially worse. But my pick is not one of those. Instead, I need to talk about NIH v. American Public Health Association. Yes, it has to do with slashing research grants, which does materially harm a lot of people. But more profoundly for me, this case is emblematic of every single level of destruction and mayhem coming out of the Supreme Court—all the arrogance bundled into one.

So let me take you back to August, when the justices handed down NIH. It’s another unsigned, incoherent shadow-docket order pausing U.S. District Judge William Young’s decision to block the Trump administration from canceling thousands of National Institutes of Health grants—including those supporting research into suicide prevention, HIV transmission, Alzheimer’s, and cardiovascular disease. The NIH is the largest funder of medical research in the world, but Donald Trump’s executive orders forced it to cancel all those grants because they allegedly promoted DEI, “gender ideology,” and COVID research. Young held a........

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