The art to what Mamdani does is that he doesn't assume you know anything of the story he's telling. But he also doesn't assume you don't know. He tells it in a way that is a compelling retelling to those that know and a compelling first telling to those that don't. (hint: this is very hard)

NEW: Three appointed judges were rejected by voters in the Cook County judicial primaries. www.injusticewatch.org/judges/judic...

Zohran campaigned on ending the NYPD's criminal enforcement campaign against bikers, but reading between the lines, it seems like the NYPD (still headed by Jessica Tisch) resisted any change. It took 2.5 months, but it seems like our elected mayor won out over the unelected police chief.

Portland pothole artists are seriously my favorite people. If you know one or are one and would be willing to talk about your craft, please DM

This is an issue that really fascinates me: What if a "principal officer" (eg US Atty) is not legally in office but staff in the dept take their orders? (Prob b/c the President told them too.) What happens? What's the remedy? Is there one? Kind of goes to places constitutional law has never trodden.

Narratively having Ever Given getting stuck in 2021 to set up Hormuz in 2026 is great foreshadowing. You want your audience to understand the basics of international shipping in a lower stakes context so you drop the real plot without a lot of saggy exposition about the minutiae of cargo logistics.

A NJ town council election in November produced an exact tie: 2,516 votes each for the Republican incumbent and an independent challenger. In some places they settle that with a coin toss or similar, but in NJ they hold a do-over election. This time, the Republican lost 1,888 to 770.

A thunderclap echoes across England as Adam Curtis clicks "download" harder than anyone in human history.

My home circuit holds that under recent Supreme Court precedents, states may lawfully refuse to provide gender-affirming care through Medicaid. This is very, very bad. In part because of endemic workplace discrimination, trans folks are almost 3x as likely to live in poverty.

State courts are the authoritative interpreters of state constitutions, but they often defer to the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of analogous federal provisions. This amicus brief urges the NM Supreme Court to take itself and its constitution seriously as independent from federal doctrines.

NEW: for @nytimes.com, I wrote about a new study showing that queen bumblebees can breathe underwater, surviving submerged for a week the “remarkable” study stems from a lab snafu, when a co-author thought she accidentally drowned several bees—but later found that they were alive 🧪 gift link 🎁

ICE detention peaked at roughly 73,000 people in custody in mid-January. Since then, my sources say total in detention has fallen to sub-63,000. That is a significant drop, reversing the trend back to where things were in early November. I am deeply skeptical of any major changes, to be clear.

This is the sort of thing a cashless society robs us of, the opportunity to try to get away with paying the bus fare in Carthaginian currency www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Relatedly, I always thought the USSR fell because of unresolvable contradictions in the Soviet economy/Cold War pressures/etc., but then I read the fantastic history Collapse by Vladislav Zubok and learned it was because of 6 years of nonstop fuckups by well-intentioned but naive Gorbachev.

I really wonder whether the confusion between “war crime” and “horrible thing that was done during a war” exists in non-English spaces. Because good lord folks are addicted to “war crime” as shorthand for everything they don’t like in war.

Something I've been wondering this winter: is the snow by the side of the roads all black and gross from internal combustion engine exhaust, meaning if there are no ICE vehicles on our roads in a decade or two this won't happen? Or is a lot of this pollution from tire debris, etc.?

DC’s highest court splits with every fed appeals court that’s reviewed high capacity magazine bans since Bruen. The full court may vacate this, but the fully and newly Trumpified 3rd Circuit is likely to strike down NJ’s similar law along with its assault weapons ban. So the issues are SCOTUS-bound.

The DC Court of Appeals did something very unusual today: it overturned a criminal conviction under the 2nd Amendment, striking down DC's ban on large-capacity magazines. The Supreme Court and lower courts have struck down many gun laws in the past 15 years, but rarely in criminal cases.

The future continues weird. This is a nice example at the now common intersection of “It’s remarkable that this is even possible”, “You can see the vistas it opens up”, and “Pretty sweet for the company to have people use their service in this very pay-as-you-go resource-intensive way”.

Under federal law, U.S. states cannot unilaterally adopt permanent daylight saving time. The start and end dates of DST are set at the federal level; states can choose to opt into DST, or not, but they cannot choose different start/end dates.

BREAKING - B.C. is switching to permanent daylight saving time, making this week's time change the last one in the province. Announcement is live here: www.cbc.ca/player/play/...

Putin's invasion of Ukraine has overall been mostly a disaster for him and shown the downsides of actually attempting to do traditional imperial shit where you take and hold territory, I think. vs the trump approach of darting in and breaking shit and grabbing people and then leaving

superb piece. among other things a really useful look into how apartment investing actually works www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/aft...

"Congress should have to vote to authorize wars" is one of those things that's overwhelmingly popular except for among the people who actually have the power to make it happen.

Have seen some people deriding elected Democrats’ statements that Trump has illegally started a war without consulting Congress as “process complaints,” but I think that gets it wrong. Yes, this unprovoked war is an evil thing they should unequivocally oppose on the merits. But also:

A judge just tossed out Columbia University's disciplinary actions against 22 students over the 2024 Hamilton Hall occupation, finding the school relied on sealed arrest records and held individuals responsible for group actions, violating its own rules. iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/Documen...

This is framed as “Manhattan DA drops assault charge,” but in fact there never was an assault charge. There was an NYPD press release accusing this man of assault. But that’s a lot like me tweeting that someone committed assault, in that it’s an allegation but not a criminal charge.

Judge Quraishi says that if ICE keeps arresting people and detaining them without bond under the legal theory that has been rejected by hundreds of judges, and any of those cases come across his bench, he'll immediately order DHS and DOJ personnel hauled into court to explain themselves.

TIL that movie Spider-Man can smoke, drink, torture, and kill if he's under the influence of the Venom symbiote, but under no circumstances can he be gay.

A bit unseemly that these judges are racing for the door now to ensure that Trump can replace them while Republicans hold the Senate. Though this kind of political calculus is inevitable when we give judges life tenure. It does seem to point growing concern that Republicans will lose the Senate...

Going to steal this passage for my next brief

Very excited for @daniwelch.bsky.social, a union sibling who’ll be a progressive champion in Congress. She’s challenging @tomsuozzi.bsky.social, one of the worst elected Democrats, whose constituents are so unhappy with him he was recently forced to send out an apology email for voting to fund ICE.

The past is a foreign country

I enjoyed this so much! I can read all the entries through 1300 without difficulty (I still read Chaucer for pleasure), can parse 1200 with some effort, and after that it’s picking out stray words and phrases.

Both of these judges are conservative Republican appointees, as well as chiefs of their circuit courts who might set an example for other federal judges. It’s disappointing they’re choosing to act as if everything’s normal and allowing Trump more vacancies to fill with lifetime appointments.

Incredible opinion. It holds that the common ICE tactic of jumping out of an unidentified rental vehicle and seizing suspected noncitizens while masked violates the Fourth Amendment because the *manner* of the seizure is incompatible with a free society governed by the rule of law.

As I say in this article, I think the DC government should vindicate its rights here. Any bill Congress tries to pass in response to this would be subject to a Senate filibuster. Every Democrat voted against the disapproval resolution. We have the votes to maintain a filibuster

A rhetorical question but why would firms not treat the tariffs exactly like Covid?

This isn't what SCOTUS *said* (they said nothing) BUT the Court's "passivity"-deciding not to decide or say anything - helps the executive branch aggressively characterize & implement the Court's orders. My draft paper "Passive Vices" goes into this (Law Review editors- it's looking for a home!)

It’s good that the Andrew Formerly Known as Prince is facing legal consequences but I worry people are getting a little carried away with the transatlantic comparisons. He’s the king’s brother, not the king. SCOTUS gave the president king-like immunity. The analogy would be Charles, not Andrew.

Look at my lawyer dawg I'm going to jail

These 3-yr drops are stunning. Absolutely stunning. New Orleans: -55% Baltimore: -60% Philly: -60% Chicago: -40% Buffalo: -55% Pittsburgh: -50% Albuquerque: -40% Newark: -40% San Antonio: -55% Portland: -45% The media coverage of these staggering drops, tho, is staggering in its relative silence.

25 years ago, a bunch of libertarians moved to NH to take over state government. Jason Osborne, one of those "Free Staters," has since risen to be majority leader in the state house. How is he fighting for "liberty?" By helping Stephen Miller build a 324,000-foot prison for migrants and refugees.

After NY prison guards beat a man to death on video in 2024, Hochul promised "significant culture change” & budgeted a couple million dollars for a prison oversight organization, allowing it to hire 10 new employees. Now that the story's out of the headlines, she's trying to zero out that funding.

The likelihood is that all of us have friends or family who will die years sooner because of what Kennedy has done in the past year as HHS Secretary.

A small thread about an AI-assisted at the SI Advance (same owners as cleveland-dot-com): I've been covering a court case about a boxer on trial for drug trafficking, a plot to bribe a juror, and a mob lawyer under investigation. Here's the last thing I wrote. www.nydailynews.com/2026/01/26/l...

Business opportunity: App that recruits people with low credit scores to shop for you

This is a serious problem for democracy and it would have been much easier to prevent it from happening than it will be to undo it.