Kash Patel's been enacting Trump's vengeance agenda since he got to the FBI. As Betty Medsger writes today, "This isn’t the first time an FBI director has been driven by a desire to suppress the rights of people perceived to be political enemies." theconversation.com/trumps-use-o... 1/

The suspension of Jimmy Kimmel is a serious threat to free expression – but not because the comedians’ rights were violated. Just last year a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that the government can’t legally pressure a corporation to suppress speech. buff.ly/BI13STP

Jimmy Kimmel's defenders called his suspension an attack on the First Amendment; one said it was the most "straightforward attack on free speech from state actors I’ve ever seen." Is it? @profunger.bsky.social explains what the 1st Amendment does/doesn't protect theconversation.com/why-jimmy-ki...

Not silenced yet. I wrote about Trump and how pettiness and authoritarianism are connected. theconversation.com/the-presiden...

Wrong: Assertions by Trump (& Stephen Miller) that the "radical left" causes "tremendous violence” and that “they seem to do it in a bigger way” than the radical right. Right-wing extremist violence is more frequent & more lethal theconversation.com/right-wing-e...

Harvard, like all Americans, can’t be punished by the government for speaking freely – and a federal court decision upholds decades of precedents saying so

I could spend all my time as a politics editor commissioning stories about attacks on the First Amendment. Here's the latest on how the First Amendment is not just about the right to speak without fear of jail, by Sam Martin ‪@boisestate.bsky.social‬ theconversation.com/harvard-like...

Lots of folks asking these days "What's the 'American experiment' and can it survive?" Tom Coens at The University of Tennessee explains the term & why there are "more fears that the experiment is at imminent risk of failing than complacency that it has succeeded" theconversation.com/why-franklin...

Repeatedly, "history’s advance has been imagined to depend on silencing or destroying a single figure. To claim that such shootings betray “who we are” is to forget that the U.S. was founded upon – and has been sustained by – this very form of political violence" theconversation.com/yes-this-is-...

Lots of headlines about how Trump's moves "echo an authoritarian handbook." But bupkis in hard news coverage about Trump BEING an authoritarian, writes political communication expert @kvanderson.bsky.social theconversation.com/why-journali...

Who said political parties enabled “potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men...subvert the power of the people and usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which lifted them to unjust dominion” theconversation.com/george-washi...

Hearing a lot about "Article 3" these days? And Articles 1 &2 as well? I asked John E. Jones III, the very smart former federal judge, now Dickinson College prez, why. And he tells a story about growing tension between fed'l judges, the Trump admin. & SCOTUS theconversation.com/federal-judg...

If it was a ham sandwich, maybe they could indict the sandwich instead? www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/u...

Borrowing from Wendell Berry, it's good to encounter the peace of wild things in the garden when the world feels like it's gone mad

Oh, those late-summer dispatches from out-of-state journos vacationing in Maine -- always good to check how the name of a place is spelled, as in SPRUCE HEAD, not SPRUCEHEAD, before publishing a story about it in the NYT

Trump, the Smithsonian & Orwell: ‪@fieryparticle.bsky.social‬ explains just how Trump's tirades against the Smithsonian are "deeply Orwellian" and explains just what that means, starting with "winners write the history" and then heading "down the memory hole" theconversation.com/the-orwellia....

"Peace deal" sounds like a good thing. But Don Heflin, a former diplomat now at Tufts' Fletcher School, explains why peace won't be achieved by skipping a ceasefire in Ukraine, & untangles even more of the post-summit confusion theconversation.com/trump-putin-...

Kaitlin Collins - an excellent reporter- is in Anchorage and at the end of a discussion with Jim Sciutto noted that Trump will be “going back to the United States” after the summit with Putin. Nope.

With the French version of our story theconversation.com/this-isnt-ho... & after living in Maine for decades, I can't unsee the image of Trump meeting not with a Russian leader but with a Quebecois dish - food Calvin Trillin would have called "stuff-stuff-with-heavy" - of curds, fries & gravy

Longtime diplomat Don Heflin, now at Tufts' Fletcher School, has low expectations for the Trump-Putin summit: "People who understand the process of diplomacy think that this is very amateurish and is unlikely to yield real results that are enforceable" theconversation.com/this-isnt-ho...

Ever heard of "dummymandering"? @charlesrhunt.com says it's when gerrymandering comes back to bite you in the kiester, and it could happen to the Texas GOP: theconversation.com/3-reasons-re...

Trump "wants to redefine what counts as libel and make it easier for public officials to sue for damages," says Sam Martin ‪@boisestate.bsky.social‬, who describes how protections in NYTimes v Sullivan are at risk, and so is critical press coverage of politicians theconversation.com/the-case-tha...

I'll get back to politics news in my next post, but could not resist posting this video from my trip to Denali, where we witnessed a very itchy grizzly scratching his back in a snow pocket

Will Trump's successful lawsuits mean he -- and anyone else with a lawyer -- can dictate how the press covers him? ‪@michaelsocolow.bsky.social‬ asks the big questions and previews the unsettling answers theconversation.com/abcs-and-cbs...

The sleeper #SupremeCourt decision that could have profound impacts on the #Trump administration agenda – and restore faith in the high court -- My latest on @theconversation.com theconversation.com/the-sleeper-...

The bad blood between the US and Iran goes back a long way, writes Jeffrey Fields @dornsife.usc.edu theconversation.com/us-and-iran-...

"While the Trump administration faces risks from protests, it also may see opportunities" -- how would-be authoritarians can use protests advocating democracy for their own, repressive ends. ‪@djpressman.bsky.social‬ explains theconversation.com/millions-ral...

Why today's massive and unprecedented military parade on Trump's birthday may still be second best for "the world's most powerful ex-New Yorker" theconversation.com/worlds-most-...

Lots of people use the term "Orwellian" but @fieryparticle.bsky.social helps you understand what it really means -- and how what George Orwell wrote 80 years ago perfectly describes today's Orwellian times under a president who aims to rewrite history theconversation.com/who-controls...

“The founders… were very careful to insert roadblocks that would make it difficult for the government to use troops to carry out its own programs.” A law professor who has written the book on domestic use of the military explains the laws: theconversation.com/trump-orders...

Today is a hard day for people like me who hate the word “bromance”

Trump's "unprecedented" actions to fight antisemitism? @mednic.bsky.social writes that the "federal fight against antisemitism in the U.S. may have more to do with the agendas of the American and Israeli governments than with the concerns of most American Jews" theconversation.com/reducing-ame...

Enough with politics. It’s time to look at beautiful things like these exquisite heads of Little Gem lettuce

Federal judge in Boston says Trump Admin. violated his order barring deportations without adequate notice. Here's ‪@ajreeves.bsky.social‬ on how legal limits alone can’t constrain a defiant president like Trump whose "pace & scale of defiance are w/o precedent" theconversation.com/trump-treats...

Kristi Noem may not know what Habeas Corpus is, but there's no reason for you to be in the dark about it. Here's @us.theconversation.com's primer on the right that is a barrier to unlawful arrest & protects anyone, citizen or not, from being illegally confined theconversation.com/habeas-corpu...

"Where's Congress?" would be the short-version headline for this terrific story by @charlesrhunt.com theconversation.com/congress-beg...

Trump advisor Stephen Miller says the administration is "actively looking" at suspending habeas corpus to deport migrants; here's a primer on the right which "stands as a barrier to unlawful arrest" & protects anyone, citizen or not, from being illegally confined theconversation.com/habeas-corpu...

The judges appointed by Trump and now ruling against him, says Paul M. Collins Jr. @umassamherst.bsky.social, are "an example of what happens when a president overreaches...and takes legal positions that even his own judicial appointees cannot support" theconversation.com/even-judges-... 1/

Thank god for gardens and the peace of not-so-wild-things (apologies to Wendell Berry) when the world’s going nuts

With Trump auditioning for the role of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas with his '2 dolls, not 30' comment, we wanted to know, what other presidents have uttered massively dumb things? Chris Lamb at IU did the heavy research: theconversation.com/what-is-the-...

Headlines from the early 1920 look like today's. That's because "current removal orders targeting student activists echo America’s long and lamentable past of jailing and expelling immigrants because of their race or what they say or believe," writes Rick Baldoz theconversation.com/from-the-chi...

Hungarian strongman Orbán told a CPAC conference that the key to conservatives reclaiming power in the US? “Have your own media.” Trump's taken his advice to heart, writes Adam Klein, "mimicking Orbán & moving swiftly to dictate the terms of his own coverage" theconversation.com/trumps-first...

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It's 2 Latin words, and it's crucially important: Habeas corpus protects any person, citizen or not, from being illegally confined. It's front and center in many of the lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s arrest and deportation of noncitizens theconversation.com/habeas-corpu...

‘I never issued a criminal contempt citation in 19 ½ years on the bench’ – a former federal judge looks at the ‘relentless bad behavior’ of the Trump administration in court buff.ly/rmwmV4Q

A former federal judge, GOP House candidate & current college president says government attorneys are "treating...judges like they’re just impediments to what they want to do. It is something that has not ever happened...in the annals of federal jurisprudence" theconversation.com/i-never-issu...

National politics journos now spend much/most of their time looking up federal court filings, and bless the good people of Courtlistener, Recap, @free.law -- so much gratitude for you making these filings free and accessible SO I NEVER HAVE TO DEAL WITH PACER AGAIN

Here’s why both sides are claiming victory in the case known as Trump v. J.G.G., what the SCOTUS opinion actually said, and what you can take away from it, from terrific @umassamherst.bsky.social scholars @rhamlin.bsky.social & Paul M. Collins Jr. theconversation.com/supreme-cour...

this is now a VERY IMPORTANT history to know theconversation.com/why-a-presid...