The Power of the Supreme Court

In this article, the author argues that Republicans are "aggressively bypass[ing] the appeals process to get issues before the conservative Supreme Court." Examples of this include rulings on DACA, climate change, police brutality, and the possible addition of a question about citizenship status on the 2020 Census. In some cases, Republican appeals to the Supreme Court have been useful; the court has put a hold on the deposition of the Commerce Secretary and prevented a lower court from obtaining documents concerning DACA. One lawyer who often appears before the Supreme Court  said that the Republican party's actions are unprecedented.  Jeff Sessions argues that this is a good change, and that the judiciary had been encroaching into executive power by ruling on these issues (a strange argument).  Meanwhile, liberal judges argue that Republicans using the court in this way has overly-politicized the Supreme Court and actually encroaches on the judiciary's ability to check the executive. This reminded me of the Federalist Papers, and the argument that the Supreme Court must remain separate from the other two branches in order not be overrun. Are the republicans' actions really a large shift away from the traditional appellate process? To what extent can Republicans actually push through cases or get the Supreme Court to intervene in lower court processes?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/trump-officials-aggressively-bypass-appeals-process-to-get-issues-before-conservative-supreme-court/2018/10/23/ce38b9da-d612-11e8-83a2-d1c3da28d6b6_story.html?utm_term=.be8242661f74