After the Trump administration asked the supreme court to issue an unusually quick ruling on the Pentagon’s policy of restricting military service by transgender people, critics said the request was likely only to complicate a deteriorating relationship between the president and the federal judiciary. Joshua Matz, the publisher of the liberal Take Care blog, said the timing of the move could hardly be worse for chief justice John Roberts and other justices who have sought, under attack from Donald Trump, to dispel the notion the court is a political institution, especially since the politically fraught confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.