Article I Problem

OUTRAGEOUS behavior from the Department of Justice; a seasoned prosecutor was fired for reminding a Stephen Miller ally that he was required to obey the Constitution and the valid orders of a federal court.

This headline says it all about where we are on the rule of law. “Trump Fired a U.S. Attorney Who Insisted on Following a Court Order” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/u...

Breaking news from Des Moines: ICE has detained Dr. Ian Roberts, the superintendent of Iowa's largest school district. The Des Moines Public Schools said "We have no confirmed information as to why Dr. Roberts is being detained or the next potential steps." www.bleedingheartland.com/2025/09/26/i...

#EconSky Are Economists Architects or Auditors? https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/what-happened-to-big-thinking-in-economics-by-ricardo-hausmann-2025-07#EconSky Economics seems to have shifted away from creative problem-solving and policy design towards a more narrow, auditing approach 1/3

But let’s be clear: Lawless action by ICE agents is taking place every day. Ms. Moreta-Galarza’s husband had just been abducted. They are still separated—like many thousands more families. And we still haven’t been allowed to see the 10th floor detention center.

From the newly released Epstein docs submitted to congress "Elon musk to island Dec. 6"

From LA to Chicago, the feds continue their horrid practice of aiming high and directly at press. When these agencies get to uncritically claim that videotaping is violence, this is the outcome: reporters getting hit in the face with “less lethals.” Unconscionable.

courts and state bars need to become willing, and quickly, to disbar govt attorneys for bringing these blatantly political prosecutions

Here's my new Cato post on Trump's executive order declaring a broad law enforcement crackdown on a range of speech and political activity by his opponents, much of it plainly protected by the First Amendment, on the pretext that it promotes, incites, or justifies violence. @cato.org /1

I will say “wow“ again if McLaughlin keeps her job

Returning to a subject I was discussing this morning on X, I think a single video like this does more to radicalize people against ICE than any loaded rhetoric any politician has ever used, and DHS should think very hard about the consequences of supporting this kind of behavior from its agents.

This is, I think, the natural result of a nation that elevated capitalism to the level of national religion: an entire administration of people who don’t think bribery is wrong or even worth hiding

for years when academics warned about the problems with letting media consolidate at the hands of one of two companies people yawned, now every day there's another vivid example of why they were right

A cynic might say Trump is using his leverage to shut it down in order to screw former investors in favor of his friends who are new investors.

The government shutdown began January 20. Billions in taxpayer dollars have become virtually untraceable. In many cases, there’s no publicly available evidence that appropriated money is being spent at all.

ICE has erected a gate to keep protesters out. They are blocking a public street, despite the Broadview Fire Department ordering ICE to tear it down. Join us at 1930 Beach Street. 7-9 AM. Tell Broadview to tear this fence down.

Let’s spell this out. Trump fired a qualified U.S. attorney who refused to do his bidding and installed his own personal lawyer to punish a perceived opponent. Justice needs to follow the law, not politics. This is an attack on the rule of law. Full stop.

"No hate, no fear! Immigrants are welcome here!" Absolutely massive crowd at the New Yorkers Against ICE march. Blocks long!

This will be quite a match-up: Trump's personal attorney who has never tried a case vs former Chicago U.S. Attny Fitzgerald who among other things "went after the Gambino crime family, al-Qaida and even the White House in court — not to mention several Illinois politicians"

ABC News: "The charges against Comey are the most dramatic escalation yet in what critics have described as a campaign of retribution by Trump to use the powers of the federal government to enact revenge against those he believes have wronged him." abcnews.go.com/US/former-fb...

NEW: Hawaii's Supreme Court keeps releasing opinions that denounce the U.S. Supreme Court. The latest? A new ruling that requires the police to record all interrogations from now on. The author took it as an opportunity to say Hawaii's court will protect due process—while SCOTUS isn't:

the exact right question if you ask me

“without a stated reason” www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital. (🎥: Elias Eliahu)

DOGE is about stealing data not efficiency: "DOGE operatives could edit and delete data in this system and potentially share it with private entities or foreign actors" So grateful to investigative journalists like @makenakelly.bsky.social & @telliotter.bsky.social

Y'days post: Farage and the BBC mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/09/fara... On Monday 22nd September I watched a party political broadcast on behalf of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party. It was on the BBC, and it was entitled ‘News at Ten’.

Today, Ally Coll and Justin Gravlee explain how the Supreme Court’s NIH v. APHA decision, by forcing plaintiffs to file duplicative lawsuits in different courts, will prevent them from attaining adequate relief from illegal government action.

I do not follow this argument. There is no “infinite money pit.” A Trump Fed can destroy the dollar via hyperinflation and de facto theft from the American public, but there is no way to bail out crypto and maintain the value of the dollar.

Amid reports that newly appointed USA Lindsey Halligan will seek to indict James Comey on bogus charges of lying to Congress after her predecessor declined to, it’s a good time to do a reset ahead of the wave of Trump-driven political prosecutions. talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...

I think this is right, but the insight cuts both ways: the resentment about PC culture *was* in part about the fact that it felt imposed on some by cultural outsiders, but also that it was imposed by the sort of outsiders who bigots think really ought not have a say in what counts as acceptable

"a major break from decades of past practice meant to insulate the Justice Department from political interference"??? How about "a blatant violation of a core principal that differentiates banana republics from countries that adhere to the rule of law"? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/u...

JUST IN: A new class action lawsuit challenges ICE's warrantless immigration arrests in Washington, D.C., which they say are occuring without probable cause and based largely on perceived ethnicity. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

All my best to this FEMA employee, and may they succeed in their mission:

everybody hates these guys, their ideas are stupid, and you do not have to fall into the trap of assuming trump’s win says anything meaningful about what americans actually want. for instance, americans actually don’t want to ban vaccines. they want this guy banished to a desert island

It's said of totalitarian societies that anything that isn't compulsory is forbidden. Using the same logic, Putin is saying that anything that isn't capitulation is war. That's actually helpful because it shows European policymakers there's no area of compromise with Russia.

NEW: Jeremy Carl, a top Trump nominee, deleted 1000s of social media posts, many w/inflammatory commentary — including incendiary posts about race, claiming “peaceful coexistence” w/Democrats is impossible - even a call for a political opponent to face the death penalty. www.cnn.com/2025/09/25/p...

How long before we start seeing super-senior tranches of collateralized debt obligations on AI data center bonds?

Italy has moved me to tears for 3 days straight. Bravo ❤️

Thread providing important context for FIRE's annual college rankings:

This seems to be their angle. If there’s a shutdown they won’t furlough employees they’ll fire them permanently. The fact that this is illegal kind of isn’t the point these days. I don’t see why this is much of a threat. They don’t have to do this. It’s a choice. They run the govt. when things …

Has anyone asked a Fed governor if they've been involved in any discussions with Treasury over establishing a swap line with Argentina? If not, they should.

"Yeah, it was clearly illegal, but what are going to do?" becoming the defining legal mantra of the Trump era. All of this conditioned by SCOTUS refusing to act with any sort of urgency until the damage is done *except* when Trump asks them to jump in to facilitate the damage.

It has never been about the technology or any real innovation in digital money and payments. It has always been about regulatory arbitrage.

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it). But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

UCLA’s funds reinstated after yesterday’s court order! Thanks to the brave researchers and their amazing counsel, including Dean Chemerinsky, who brought suit. This is just another turn in the ongoing fight, but a great result for now.

I really do not like our ongoing epidemic of high-ranking public officials leaving office feet-first, after months or years of extreme disability to the point they are unable to do their jobs, because they couldn’t bear to just fucking retire.

Ric Grenell, who runs the Kennedy Center, appears to have set aside tickets for hecklers to disrupt the K-Center performance of an artist who got in a heated exchange with him months ago: