Agree with this. But also note how far into the depths of presidential supremacy we have sunk that this Act is so often referred to as “Reagan’s” rather than the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. Need to bring back naming laws after the legislative sponsors. Hell, we need to bring back legislative sponsors.

Ten years ago today, #SCOTUS issued five unsigned and unexplained 5-4 rulings granting emergency applications to block President Obama’s Clean Power Plan—a completely unprecedented move that helped to usher in the Court’s modern … (mis)adventures … with its shadow docket. Me in today’s “One First”:

This is an incredible explainer thread. The artistic detail by Bad Bunny was amazing.

A latent super bowl pun by some editor at the NYT.

“Late Friday night, the Fifth Circuit adopted the extreme minority view—that the government can indefinitely detain without bond millions of non-citizens who have been here for generations; who have never committed a crime; and who pose neither a risk of flight nor any threat to public safety.”

If Anemona Hartocollis were serious about covering higher ed in Florida she’d report on this. Instead she does a puff piece on Rufo’s pet project at New College It’s Orban’s Hungary down here at public unis and the NYT is like “hey, maybe starting a baseball team is a good idea!”

#ForestFriday Forests are friends💚🤎 Thanks for looking! I appreciate all y'all✨️

I have been musing about the hypothesis that the ultimate consequence of SCOTUS's opinion in Trump v. U.S. will be the destruction of the rule of law in the U.S. This gift article helps to explain why, in part by emphasizing the evisceration of the Dept. of Justice. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/u...

Any opening ceremony that manages to include a version of this banger has my vote. vimeo.com/1071644859?f...

NBC angling for a Best Crowd Audio Remix in a Live Setting emmy.

Hear me out: a debtor and contract relationship with the US govt opens avenues for both civil and criminal penalties in the after times that might be harder to pursue with other forms of corruption.

Shaun White desperately trying to compete with Vance for Ugly American prize in Milan. (Every country is a story about him)

Old rules? Like colonialism? Fascism? The Cold War? Crony Authoritarian Capitalism? Basically a "water is wet" story.

New, from me: Trump finalized his Schedule F policy, allowing him to remove job protections from career civil servants. The new rule is dishonest and unmoored from reality in its effort to formalize the politicization of the federal government 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/trumps-sch...

We have been broken for quite some time.

Not great. bsky.app/profile/eric...

In my essay “Conscience Leave” I talk about the “should I stay or should I go” decision that lawyers working for a deviant government face. I’m starting to workshop a bigger paper called “The Law of Quitting” that picks on similar themes. scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/faculty-arti...

Workers of the world untie

Happy Anniversary to those who celebrate cat attorneys.

happening this morning in Minneapolis -- ICE agents drawing guns on observers. I reiterate again that it is only a matter of time before DHS kills more innocent people in Minnesota. Congress needs to shut this shit down right now.

Do not under any circumstances go to work for the current DOJ

The most predictable outcome of the Trump's hostility to immigrants is mass outsourcing of those jobs from the United States. This is another example of damage being done to the economy which will be hard to reverse in a few years when people finally figure out how badly Trump screwed things up.

Shit Midas is still the best nickname for him. We decided to let him touch all the things, knowing this is what happens.

If you’re surprised that a couple of longtime CBP employees have names of Hispanic origin, I recommend you keep that surprise to yourself and not turn it into a take. It’s incredibly common and longstanding; it’s been written on insightfully (see press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...). Learn things!

The most important part of the Rehmet campaign (in my humble opinion as a local political scientist whose opinion nobody asked for) is that Rehmet ran as a union man. Rehmet is a union president, and this was an unapologetically pro labor campaign.

It is going to take years---years!---to rebuild the United States Department of Justice after Trump is gone from office. A jewel of the justice system has been emptied out of institutional knowledge and wisdom.

The truth about dishonesty (and other immoral behavior)

An important piece on how Trump and the Supreme Court majority have sidelined lower courts and their own ability to safeguard constitutional rights: lnk.thebulwark.com/4am1or0

❤️

I like neither Ezra Klein nor shouting down speakers. I think Ezra Klein profits, metaphorically and literally, by being shouted down by Sarah Lawrence students, and that doing it to him was more or less like trying to discourage a dog by throwing bacon at it. /1

I get tired of saying it, but I’ll say it again: the nature of oppression in America is that they workshop it first on Black, Latino, Asian & Native people. But it is always, in the end, coming for everyone.

The labor theory of property, winter storm edition.

21st Century Schizoid Executive Theory

Boy am I glad we embraced the unitary executive theory.

Radley is so on the mark zeroing in on this: the creation of new "privacy" rights for federal police. The right to be anonymous to the public. The right not to have anyone know why they shot someone and tried to hide the evidence. "right to privacy" fascism addition.

we should think of means-testing like we do high tax rates. When you have very high tax rates, people or companies will spend lots of money to avoid or evade them. Similarly complex means-tests require large amounts of money to enforce.

One of the country’s highest-ranking Catholic leaders, and a top ally of Pope Leo, is sharply criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement, calling ICE a “lawless organization." https://to.pbs.org/3LRVzZd

21st century big dividing in politics is “do you believe all humans are born free and equal”

I will simply never recover from reading this sentence: "Since Georgia implemented work requirements in 2020, they have spent twice as much on Deloitte consultants and administrative costs as on healthcare for people."

So, here, I want to know the English rule and if and when there was a notable shift from that tradition. I’d argue the American shift was enslavement and racism. Dred Scott reflected that. The 14A turned back to the English rule but on American terms. And the Second Founders’ statements affirm that.

Corporations are extracting billions from America’s safety net and their payday is about to be supercharged by new rules. I lay out how programs like Medicaid have become vulnerable to corporate capture and what we need to build to stop it. @lpeblog.bsky.social lpeproject.org/blog/the-mea...

This is a very important and underrated point.

This is excellent. Starting a thread of some other songs responding to specific acts of tyranny in the US tradition.

Holy moly this chart: Cumulative US measles cases

My article, "Birthright Citizenship, Denaturalization, and the Specter of Statelessness" was published yesterday in the UCLA Law Review Discourse - just in time for all of the amicus briefs dropping. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

William Howard Taft writing to his wife during the Pullman strike, while he was a federal judge hearing some of the strike-related cases. Important to murder those protesters!

Downfall Bovino Edition. You're welcome.

It’s good to see them cover this. But tfw you are working on a story everyone says you are ignoring only to get scooped by The Atlantic a week before pub date. www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...