there is a point here i want to amplify. the free speech defenders of the mainstream seem to have no awareness that actual free speech is often more fractious and destabilizing than civil and respectful. a society where speech is genuinely free isn’t the deferential space they want it to be.

Democrats need to seriously consider an impeachment inquiry into now-Judge Emil Bove if/when they take back the House. He led the brazenly corrupt Eric Adams quid pro quo. He facilitated the Tom Homan bribery cover-up. And there’s probably more! He was Trump’s hatchet man at DOJ for months!

Everyone should read this. You’ll learn something about Hawai’i history and get a very clear condemnation of the lawlessness of the Roberts court.

This kind of repudiation of the Supreme Court by a state Supreme Court justice is very rare. But — speaking as a former Alaska Supreme Court clerk — this is also part of their structural purpose. There’s a reason our rights can be, and often are, given *better* protection under state constitutions.

I am pleased to report that Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins has dropped another total evisceration of the Supreme Court. He says originalism is a fraud—and the Republican justices are shamelessly making up facts and history to impose radical Christian nationalism: slate.com/news-and-pol...

Nick Kristof went to talk to some of the moms losing their beloved children to Trump’s aid cuts. We are paying storage on already existing food rather than release it to starving kids. “I loved my child so much” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

I know this is nitpicky and irrelevant to Barro's piece, but please: In American English, "half-mast" is reserved for flags flown on ships and naval stations! "Half-staff" is the correct term for flags on land. www.joshbarro.com/p/your-disli...

New: The Trump administration asks the Supreme Court for permission to revoke Temporary Protected Status from 300,000 Venezuelan migrants. (SCOTUS is very likely to grant this request.) s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

This is a Rule 8 dismissal, which is not common when you’re represented by a lawyer, but is very common when you’re a sovereign citizen suing without a lawyer. This judge is treating the president of the United States as a pro se litigant.

The 2nd Circuit upholds several New York gun restrictions, including a ban on public carry, gun-free "sensitive places" (including Times Square and the subway), and a special permit for city carrying. It holds that none violate the Second Amendment. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

NEW: The Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to freeze a lower court injunction that requires the State Department to place an "X" gender marker on passports when requested by transgender and non-binary Americans. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

Hey Brett Kavanaugh, is this a “brief investigative stop”?

DC police and U.S. Marshals violently attempted to execute a warrant near a playground filled with preschoolers, terrifying the children with a totally gratuitous show of force. Oh, and they didn’t get the suspect. www.popville.com/2025/09/erod...

Over on the bad place, the usual suspects are smugly claiming that liberals set the precedent for Trump’s FCC to retaliate against Jimmy Kimmel’s speech. It’s a preposterous projection, and it doesn’t obscure their thinly veiled yearning for censorship of the left: slate.com/news-and-pol...

New: The Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board while her case makes its way through the judiciary. The lower courts have kept Cook in her seat, finding that her attempted removal was unlawful. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

The Supreme Court has amended its November argument calendar and will now hear the Trump tariff case on Wednesday, Nov. 5! www.supremecourt.gov/oral_argumen...

Witnessed a team of at least three FBI agents, two HSI agents, and two MPD officers, some in unmarked vehicles, making an arrest after what appeared to be a routine traffic stop. One HSI agent covered his face. A Dunkin’ Donuts themed patch on his vest says “Guns N’ Coffee.”

If Judge Katsas is correct that Trump can fire Cook “for cause” by lobbing unproven accusations of fraud without an iota of due process, then the Fed’s “for cause” removal protections are meaningless. This is a joke of a dissent.

Will be on @theweekendmsnbc.bsky.social in about half an hour to talk about the Supreme Court’s extremely awful week!

Charlie Kirk's murder is just the latest example of how our nation's love affair with guns is allowing the Second Amendment to swallow up the First. With @dahlialithwick.bsky.social: slate.com/news-and-pol...

Donald Trump thinks he has found a diabolical loophole through which he can rescind billions in foreign aid without congressional approval, and the chief justice gave us an ominous signal that the Supreme Court will agree. slate.com/news-and-pol...

This is better than the alternative. But the conservatives in the majority likely added that unusual caveat ("not a ruling on the merits") to clarify that they do NOT intend to side with the transgender boy in the end. They just don't think keeping him out of the bathroom is an emergency right now.

This is exceptional. Everyone should read it. At its core it’s inspiring and hopeful about the ability of determined lawyers and judges to use the law to protect those Trump and his followers would harm. But it’s also devastating. I never much believed in evil, but I do now.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court announces it will hear the cases over Trump's tariffs the week of Nov. 3. Briefing begins being due in 10 days.

NEW: Chief Justice Roberts freezes a lower court order that had obligated the government to pay out $4 billion in foreign aid appropriated by Congress. His freeze will last until the full court acts. Trump is trying to undertake a "pocket rescission" of these funds.

A few questions about Brett Kavanaugh: nymag.com/intelligence...

Chief Justice Roberts in SFFA just two years ago: "Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it." Yet when the government is EXPLICITLY using race & ethnicity to detain & question people, he gives it his blessing.

I'll be talking about this appalling decision on @11thhourmsnbc.bsky.social shortly

Sotomayor: “We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.” But we do. Because the Supreme Court traded the Fourth Amendment for the MAGA Constitution. slate.com/news-and-pol...

#SCOTUS all-but overruled a unanimous, 90-year-old precedent through an unexplained "administrative" stay this morning, and that's only the second-most-problematic thing it did before lunchtime.

BREAKING: By an apparent 6–3 vote, the Supreme Court halts an injunction that had prevented immigration agents from racially profiling Latinos in central California. Sotomayor, dissenting, says the decision is "unconscionably irreconcilable with our nation's constitutional guarantees."

NEW: Chief Justice Roberts has halted the reinstatement of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter—whom Trump fired in direct violation of federal law—while the full court considers the case. In other words, Slaughter just got booted from her job again. It's a worrisome sign for her ultimate prospects.

These bills amount to the greatest assault against DC home rule since it was established. A sweeping rollback of local self-governance through the imposition of MAGA policies on a city that almost universally opposes them. A stunning escalation in Republicans’ attack on the District’s democracy.

Judge Ali catches Trump DOJ’s attempted fraud on the court storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

With @dahlialithwick.bsky.social the growing—and possibly unprecedented—lower court revolt against the Supreme Court: slate.com/news-and-pol...

I'm very grateful to everyone who shared and responded to this post. With permission from my friend, we are now raising money for his small business to help address ICE's ongoing threat to him and his employees. We're close to our goal if you can chip in a little! gofund.me/622c80403

Thirsty bird

“The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman.” - Malcolm X

Something rare—maybe unprecedented—is unfolding in D.C.: Grand juries are refusing to indict Trump opponents whose minor acts of defiance have been inflated into felony charges. Washingtonians have few tools to resist the occupation of their city. This is one of them. slate.com/news-and-pol...

Amazing, unusually direct rebuke to Gorsuch and Kavanaugh from Judge Burroughs. She is, of course, entirely correct.

There is no constitutional reason why Congress couldn't do this, as laid out in the Harvard Law Review: harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-13...

The next Democratic president should declare that the National Emergencies Act and Article II of the Constitution allow him to: •admit D.C. and Puerto Rico as states •abolish ICE •grant citizenship to any immigrant •disband the 5th Circuit •expand the Supreme Court Seriously: Why the hell not?

It is still amazing to me that so many people on the left continue to use a platform whose founder actively pushes neo-Nazi ideologies like "remigration" AND constantly tinkers with the algorithm to favor his preferred worldview. It isn’t that hard to leave!

Judge Charles Breyer rules that the Trump administration brazenly violated the Posse Comitatus Act when it deployed soldiers to enforce domestic laws in LA. Breyer says Trump may not create "a national police force with the president as its chief." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

What is going on in DC is textbook racial profiling and it must be stopped

🚨ICE agents are racially profiling and arresting Hispanic drivers in the DC area today, targeting work vehicles like trucks and vans. A friend who was targeted sent me video today. Here’s a picture that shows one of two agents before he pulled on his mask. Unmarked black Ford truck, plate: NTV9211.

one sign that the “unitary executive” is less the restoration of an older constitutional order and more the imposition of a radical new one is that allowing the president to act untethered from most legal or congressional limits has largely just served to plunge the country into disorder

The Supreme Court’s conservatives bear SO much blame for this disaster. They really thought they could let Trump fire every agency leader EXCEPT members of the Fed, and Trump would abide by their stern admonition to leave the Fed alone. Embarrassing stupidity. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08...

In Colorado for the next week, don’t @ me!