The Supreme Court’s scant explanation in recent emergency decisions backing President Trump is sparking increasing debate among lower judges — and even the justices themselves.

The Supreme Court has issued emergency decisions without explanation well before Trump took office, and several justices have long defended them.

But the Trump administration’s staggering flood of emergency appeals have put the practice in the limelight. The administration filed its 25th application Monday, more than the Biden administration brought during its four years in office.

The growing friction came to a head when the justices last month enabled the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in grants the administration said ran counter to its fight against diversity programs.

Justice Neil Gorsuch accused the district judge who blocked the cuts of defying the Supreme Court’s earlier emergency ruling in another grant cancellation case. Gorsuch said he felt compelled to write his separate opinion because it was not a “one off” situation.

“Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Gorsuch wrote, joined by fellow Trump-nominated Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

When the case returned to the district judge, William Young, he offered an apology.

“I really feel it’s incumbent upon me to, on the record here, to apologize to Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh if they think that anything this court has done has been done in defiance of a precedential action of the Supreme Court of the United States,” Young said at a hearing last week.

Nominated four decades ago by former President Reagan to the federal district court in Boston, Young oversees several major lawsuits challenging Trump administration actions.

He also manages a case brought by Democratic-led states whose federal education grants have been threatened. Young this week will convene a hearing on whether to block the Environmental........

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