I'm in no danger of having a Joker moment that negatively polarizes me onto the dark obsessively anti-woke path that so many right-of-academic-center academics have taken. But there are moments when I see the Joker grinning out of the corner of my eye.

Extremely relevant today - our new report on the state of the rule of law in America brightlinewatch.org/erosion-of-t... Most notably, 91% of legal experts say Trump's DOJ provides favors or benefits to his allies, including 56% of legal conservatives. Findings thread below; please read & share.

I've been an impeachment 3.0 skeptic, but I think there's a fair argument here that the slush fund is so bad it's worth pulling that trigger for

!!!

You get used to what you're used to, and I'm used to this, but I don't understand why the McGill/ Dartmouth rule isn't more widespread. It provides an immediate check on grade inflation at the level of the course instructor without external mandates or interference. It communicates good information.

Some fun/depressing napkin-math from The Economist on how much Trump's trade & immigration policies - and chaotic policymaking overall - are costing the otherwise-solid US economy (thanks mainly to the AI boom): www.economist.com/finance-and-...

had their project transferred to T&F only to find out that some of the key obligations contained in their AUP contract were no longer being honored by Routledge. In particular, Routledge now openly refuses to submit book manuscripts to peer review. Apparently the process is just too cumbersome /

pay-for-play presses which streamline their process to skim 40% of profit off of the (mostly publicly funded) intellectual labor of researchers for their billionaire owners. Some of our worst fears are now being confirmed. I just learned that one junior scholar with a book under contract with AUP /

Some people may remember that the majority of series editors resigned last summer in protest against Amsterdam University Press' sale of their film and media program to Taylor & Francis/Routledge. T&F and Routledge, while formerly respectable publishers, are now / mediastudies.hypotheses.org/6850

Share widely:

"If this settlement stands, future presidents will have a roadmap for turning lawsuits into spending programs and political grievances into taxpayer-financed payouts." [Tad DeHaven and Molly Nixon] /4, end

Instead, the level of generality is inflated high enough to give the fund broad discretion to reward friends and turn away foes. No appeal, no neutral third party administration, and of course zero court supervision from the get-go. Not much of a comparison to the dubious USDA settlements. /3

In his order creating the new slush fund, Acting AG Todd Blanche "cites as precedent several cases in which the USDA resolved discrimination claims brought by Native American, Hispanic, and female farmers, stating that those cases were 'settled on similar terms.'” No, they weren't. /1

some real “do i have to do everything myself” energy from ohtani lol

quote with a fictional band that is not spinal tap

“US Supreme Court’s uneven approach to election-map rulings boosts Republicans” electionlawblog.org?p=156275

Good job everyone.

TBQH this particular batch of gibberish isn't terribly different from the boilerplate gibberish of many commencement addresses.

Massie was useful on Epstein. He was absent on January 6. Both are true. Cassidy was brave in 2021. He was a collaborator from 2023 on. Both are true. My take on last night's primaries, up now. open.substack.com/pub/adamkinz...

RGCS Charles Taylor Student Fellow Tim Gulliver has been selected for a Supreme Court of Canada clerkship! www.mcgill.ca/law/article/...

I voted for it. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

Trump's Personal Attorney Todd Blanche Attempts to Pardon His Boss emptywheel.net/2026/05/20/t...

People defending this woman claim she’s only talking about Zionists, not all Jews. If you’re cool with her rants about how Jewish billionaires control Hollywood, run human trafficking networks & need to be put in internment camps & castrated because she also uses the word ‘Zionist’, you are an idiot

It’s the 1,701st anniversary of the start of the First Council of Nicaea which debated how divine yer man Jesus was compared to his old dad (I paraphrase slightly) – and at which St Nicholas (yes, that one, but pre-sainthood) got so angry with one speaker, he twatted him one 🧵

I don't actually remember how this came up, @gowder.io , do you? I mean, I remember the day, but not the context for the remark.

Many theologians cite MILF Manor as evidence of the doctrine of free will Because God definitely didn’t create that

Again, this Trump IRS thing is not a “settlement” or a “deal” or something with any legal basis at all. It’s pure corruption; colluding with his Acting AG to loot the Treasury; pay off his mob; and preemptively immunize himself and his heirs against investigation for fraud.

"how many lights are there, data" "ORANGE"

Data from Star Trek but he uses 5 billion pounds of water per day and any time you ask him anything he gets the answer wrong.

BREAKING: It took eight tries, but the Senate has voted 50-47 to advance a resolution to limit Trump’s war on Iran. Bill Cassidy flipped after losing his primary, joining Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul in voting with Democrats. John Fetterman was the only Dem to vote against.

Also, not for nothing, it says any matter that could have been pending before agencies, not before courts. Usually you don't think of a criminal cases pending before an agency. This may not even applied to all civil claims, just regulatory ones.

There is nothing about prison sentences, fines, probations, etc.

Prosecute often means civil claims as well. It's the list of potential remedies that completely lacks any hint of criminal applicability.

Would think that if it included criminal cases it would have to say so explicitly, especially since under the list of examples it uses, they are all civil claims.

Is... is this a blanket retrospective self-pardon for federal crimes that is trying not to call itself that? It is *not* limited to the IRS or to tax evasion/ fraud.

The US ... is hereby FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims, counterclaims, causes of action [etc]... whether presently known or unknown, that... have been or could have been asserted [by the US against Trump, his family, and his companies] out of.. Lawfare 1/

Ask yourself: Why would a settlement over leaked tax filings include a prohibition on examinations of previously filed returns? One answer, which lots of people are missing: For years, Trump has been fighting an IRS audit that could have resulted in a $100M bill. No longer, apparently.

It's getting really hard to design poll questionnaires that don't prime people against Trump, just because of how crazy all this is. You cannot ask a "neutral" question about the president of the United States directing the Department of Justice to settle his case against the IRS. This is just crazy

RGCS faculty member Yann Allard-Tremblay's book _Disjunctures: Indigenous Redirections in Political Theory_ (Oxford) has been shortlisted for the Canadian Political Science Association's CB Macpherson Prize for the best book in political theory.

From the reporter who scooped the news that Treasury's GC was quitting, IRS wrote a 25-page memo about why Trump's IRS lawsuit was dogshit. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/a...

Years ago Scalia provoked gasps in the gallery when he called the Voting Rights Act a “racial entitlement.” But turning American democracy back into a white racial entitlement, as it was for most of American history, is exactly what the Roberts Court is doing. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The big story is about the unappropriated, misappropriated funds being dumped into an account for the enrichment of (in some to-be-determined combination) Trump personally, his personal lawyers and political lieutenants, and his insurrectionist rioting henchmen. 1/

I am thrilled for this to come out. At @liberalcurrents.com, I work through what I had to understand about how I ended up standing where I was as the postliberal moment emerged, and I try to show the way that I found forward. It's for everyone who is where I was and needs a hand extended.