"The biggest tea leaf is probably what Justice Alito did the last time when he denied the stay without even referring it to the whole court," Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said Wednesday. "Republicans are essentially making a variant of the same argument, so unless Justice Alito has changed his mind, it's hard to see how you get five votes for a stay — and he may even decide again that this is not something that even needs to go to the whole court."