Interested in a state supreme court clerkship? @statecourtreport.org has a database featuring clerkship opportunities from 25 states and more than 80 justices. We hope it's a good starting point for applicants! statecourtreport.org/state-judici...

#polisky share far and wide: @apsa.bsky.social Statement on the Proposed Elimination of the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate at the National Science Foundation apsanet.org/wp-content/u...

CBS News has a bombshell interview with a U.S. soldier who survived the deadly attack in Kuwait on the first day of the way -- he says Pete Hegseth is lying about the attack and that the base "was unprepared to provide any defense for itself." www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-wa...

After Trump wrote, in reference to Iran, “A whole civilization will die tonight,” the entirety of the House Democratic leadership issued this joint statement:

Waiting for the Americans -- my notes on being here, out of control

💯 my sentiment today

"The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes... It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched." —Robert Jackson, Nuremberg

Cool cool cool cool cool

13 minutes 🤡 @nytimes.com

NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Directorate has awarded only 16 grants since October. No big budget cuts went through. No freeze. The courts have acted to keep funds flowing at every turn. The money just isn't going out. Why...? 1/x source: grant-witness.us/funding_curv... 🟦🧠 #academicsky

“.. More Republicans are retiring ahead of the midterms than at any point in nearly a century, according to an ABC News tally ..” abcnews.com/Politics/rec...

Social movement scholar here to comment on No King again. a 🧵: These protests are important b/c: 1.) as sustained image events, protests offer evidence of continued disapproval of the direction the country is going and disavowal of the country's leadership.

Alexandra Petri: "This is like asking a tarantula to watch your laptop. It won’t help, and now everyone is scared. No, I’m sorry. This is unfair to tarantulas, who are not known for their racial profiling."

1/2 This memo identifies absolutely no source of legal authority for paying TSA. It does not point to an appropriation that is available for this purpose, nor does it point to any legal authority to transfer some other appropriation to TSA. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

1/ It's not just that unilaterally paying TSA agents is illegal. It's that Trump has now repeatedly undermined the core of the congressional power of the purse. He's not spending money that has been appropriated by law (impoundments) and he's spending money that has not been appropriated.

Whenever a news story about something Trump is doing declares that it's "a first for a sitting president" or "a change from tradition," replace it with "yet another authoritarian move from the president," and see if it sounds more accurate.

Answer: it is a flagrant violation of federal law. Full stop. End of conversation (under 18 U.S.C. § 592, which bans armed federal forces from election sites). see @brennancenter.org info here: www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...

Not sure whether you should show up on Saturday? @timothysnyder.bsky.social (an expert on authoritarianism) explains why historic protests like No Kings Day really matter.

"An American Problem" is now available for pre-order at online bookshops! The project traces the rise of the Voting Rights Act. And then we show all the ways that SCOTUS's Shelby County decision has been a disaster. As the Court considers attacking the VRA again this term, we hope it's insightful.

Same

When a federal judge (finally) put ICE officers under oath, they admitted that they are given daily detention quotas and rely heavily on a Palantir-supplied AI tool to select targets, without warrants and without enough evidence to obtain one. They simply go into neighborhoods and round people up.

The 2026 National Science Foundation budget is $8.75 Billion.

“Constitution destroyed in plane crash” feels like a VEEP joke that they scrapped for going too far.

Gorsuch also tries to conscript Kagan to the major questions camp in his concurrence, prompting Kagan to write this very funny footnote saying she is not, in fact, a convert to his cause. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

The 6-3 ruling is a major blow to the president's signature economic policy. n.pr/3OtEZ2E

Heads up, judicial peeps!

A very detailed explanation of how FBI bamboozled a magistrate into authorizing a raid on Fulton County’s election offices by omitting critical information that would have totally undermined any probable cause claim. Pretty clear-cut case of calculated deception of the courts.

Belated happy Valentines -- this is pure gold!

Likely-historic photo by NBC News of all the Epstein victims asked to raise their hands if they've not yet been asked to meet with the DOJ as Bondi testifies in foreground

This is why domestic "shuffle" flights between ICE detention centers have skyrocketed, much moreso than ICE deportation flights. When you are moved to a different jurisdiction, you have to refile your habeas petition all over again. They want to wear people down so they'll give up on their cases.

Playing the grinch at the 250th. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/02/05/p...

Spot on, from @petridishes.bsky.social: "For a while...we, as a nation, thought to ourselves: Life is too short for everyone to inspect their own food. Let the government handle this. But then along came the Trump administration to wonder: What if we didn’t?" www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Floored by this story. A man wrote a pollite email to a federal prosecutor objecting to the deportation of an Afghan seeking asylum. DHS responded with an administrative warrant to get the man's info from Google, then visited his home to intimidate him.

The last time he started talking like this, his allies minimized the risks and we ended up with January 6. This time we must take him literally and seriously. These comments are a five-alarm fire for democracy. In a functioning republic, he would be impeached and removed from office today.

Steve Levitsky, the co-author of How Democracies Die, on the dangerous place we have reached as Trump escalates: “Orbán doesn’t arrest journalists,” he said. “And in Hungary if you walk the streets of Budapest or other Hungarian cities, you will not find heavily armed masked men abducting people."

I have NEVER EVER read a judicial opinion that is as pissed off as this is. Wow wow wow

GEORGIA — @ossoff.senate.gov : “This is a SEISMIC event. This should have people across 🇺🇸 absolutely shook. This is an FBI raid on the Fulton County elections office… this is a shot across the bow at the midterm elections.” (H/T @atrupar.com )

Whoa. D.Minn's chief judge Patrick Schiltz dockets a list of "96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases." www.courtlistener.com/docket/72120...

Reminder that in Egbert v. Boule the Supreme Court specifically said that Border Patrol agents cannot be sued for violating someone's constitutional rights. My deep dive from 2023: www.nbcnews.com/politics/sup...

Alex Pretti’s coworkers take a moment of silence this morning

New resource: We're tracking all 25 DOJ lawsuits seeking states' sensitive voter data, including status, key decisions (2 dismissals + 1 tentative dismissal so far), and upcoming hearings. Check it out here: go.wisc.edu/93o421 Read our deep dive on the legal issues here: go.wisc.edu/070765

The @thegreenbag.bsky.social Justice Scalia bobblehead, as you probably know, has him stabbing a pencil into a Lemon per his Lamb's Chapel concurrence. (And, of course, "this wolf comes as a wolf," per Morrison v Olson.) greenbag.org/v8n4/v8n4_ex...

“As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air...lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” #WilliamODouglas

It would take a two-word amendment to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to subject ICE agents and other federal law enforcement officers to the same liability for constitutional violations that local and state officers currently face. If Congress actually cared about what it's seeing, it could pass that overnight.

Archaeologists: D.C. Capitol May Have Once Been Used For Legislating https://theonion.com/archaeologists-d-c-capitol-may-have-once-been-used-for-legislating/

BREAKING: Minnesota investigators say they can't access evidence after fatal ICE shooting and the FBI won't work jointly on probe. Follow for live updates.

Big setback for the White House as 5 GOP Senators join all Democrats in voting to start debate on a war powers resolution re: Venezuela. Murkowski AK Young IN Paul KY Collins ME Hawley MO

This one is resonating today. #Andor