I flagged this Seventh Circuit decision and this District of Massachusetts decision as reflecting a possible procedural trend: MAGA AGs pursue abusive criminal investigations, federal courts apply Younger‘s heretofore-rarely used bad-faith exception to avoid abstention.
Here is a different unusual procedural move in response: The full Seventh Circuit vacated the panel order refusing to stay the district court’s injunction, stayed the injunction, and ordered that the case be heard initially en banc under FRAP 40(g). The last part drew a dissent from four judges.
This is the Vladeck thesis trickling down to lower courts. Procedure is flexible and initial en banc is permitted. But when a rule states that a procedure is “not favored and ordinarily will not be ordered,” the application of that rule without explanation in a partisan-charged case looks suspicious and looks like a majority of the court forcing through its merits preferences (the district court should have abstained) without regard to ordinary procedure.