The Met Gala, Kentucky Derby, and Miami Grand Prix are all this coming weekend — with hundreds to thousands of private jets expected to fly in. In a must-read paper, @wjm-air.bsky.social & @ashleynowicki.bsky.social explain how the ultra-wealthy flying private further congests airports👇

What we have here is the Executive endorsing a religious litigant's efforts to enact through the Judiciary a policy they failed to achieve in Congress. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The president's former personal lawyer taking over in a position he views as his personal lawyer.

Trump's first AG nominee, Matt Gaetz, was found to have paid 17 year olds for sex. Trump's first AG, Pam Bondi, illegally refused to release the Epstein Files. Trump's second AG, Todd Blanche, was his personal attorney and met with Ghislaine Maxwell while she was in prison. Quite a pattern!

Honestly the justices (particularly Justice Sotomayor) sound ... somewhat taken aback that they're even hearing this case. And ... same? Also - you didn't have to! You could have just issued a summary op saying "See the Fourteenth Amendment"! Even last year in the nationwide inujunction case!

One indication of congressional atrophy is that people turn to SCOTUS for the thing we should but don't get from Congress: an actual public debate on an important policy issue. Which of course isn't supposed to be a legislative debate, but we've stopped having any actual legislative debates.

Excellent Bouie piece on the birthright case. Especially how it points out that every academic backing Trump has either explicitly rejected Trump’s take in the past or somehow written extensively on the 14A without raising it (and implicitly rejecting it)… and have no new evidence now. Gift link:

was just reminded that tomorrow is april fool’s day and especially this year can we just… not, please

It was just 24 days between when Zuck went on Rogan and talked about how "never again" would he suppress info based on gov't demands (misrepresenting those demands) and when he texted top gov't employee Elon Musk to say "we're all set up to take down info you want removed." I wrote about it here.

It’s genuinely a challenge for legal journalists to cover the birthright citizenship case, because one side’s argument is “the Fourteenth’s Amendment intent and text and a century of uninterrupted Supreme Court precedent all support birthright citizenship,” and the other side’s argument is “nuh-UH”

Whoa whoa whoa. WSJ reports that Trump *personally* pushed the Justice Department to settle its antitrust case with Live Nation. Several sources for my NYT column speculated this was the case. The Journal says it's a fact. www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

“If you don’t approve this settlement, I will destroy you,” lobbyist Mike Davis told Gail Slater, then head of DOJ’s antitrust div. (Davis denies.)This gift @wsj.com article details alleged corruption/patronage in DOJ, starring Davis & others. ... 1/2 www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

also notice there's no mention that the Trump Supreme Court has issued several rulings that make it increasingly near-impossible to hold corporate power accountable for anything; that's just not deemed somehow relevant

A question this double-barreled seems specifically designed to get picked up by Third Way types. Equivalent to asking "Would you rather have policy A, or policy B that also does unpopular policy C that nobody is arguing for in the debate between A and B?" x.com/daveweigel/s...

Great to see the new House Oversight Democrats’ report on the schemes behind DOGE's creation, the benefits it offered the billionaire class, and the harms it brought to taxpayers, federal workers, and public services. 🧵 oversightdemocrats.house.gov/imo/media/do...

CNN confirms what MSNBC reported live a few hours ago: DOJ is surveilling Dem lawmakers when they go to the DOJ to search unredacted Epstein files.

You can joke about Pam Bondi’s ridiculous unprofessionalism all you want, but I’m deeply shocked by it: She acts as if she fears absolutely no consequences, convinced that there will be no more political power transfers. — This should shake everyone to their core.

Behold: the first-ever list of news outlets that have banned generative AI in their reporting. As of today, this is literally information that you cannot find on Google. My goal is to fill the starter pack, so please send over suggestions with supporting evidence! go.bsky.app/8cn1XfT

in fact you do not have to show your ID when you board a train in the united states, you only need to show your ticket (which can be purchased without an ID)

Plausibly. To be clear, I think there are certainly APA claims that can be brought. It's just a matter of thinking very carefully about which ones are likely to succeed in Court. Misstating the law is certainly a no-no, especially if the agency's rule substantively depends on the misstatement.

"Commenter 30426 speculates that the President will fire Schedule Policy/Career employees regardless of performance or conduct as he supposedly did to probationary employees. After considering these comments, OPM concludes that these fears are misplaced." The President would never seek mass layoffs.

"In general, the comments ranged from ardent support of the proposed regulation to categorical rejection of it. Approximately 5 percent of the overall comments were supportive, 1 percent neutral or mixed, and 94 percent opposed the proposed regulation." HUH!

The rule cites research that at will programs at the state level encourage the adoption of Schedule F. I wrote here why such a claim is nonsense: donmoynihan.substack.com/p/at-will-wh...

I was one of the commenters on the rule that pointed out that research shows that more politicized governments create information bubbles. The rule just says, no, we disagree. Have these people ever watched a Cabinet meeting? Do they really think people are offering "good faith professional advice"?

“'There's no such thing as lifetime employment,' Kupor said. He pointed to the widespread layoffs this week at The Washington Post as an example of workforce upheaval." Translation: Haha. We elites wield complete power over you human factors of production. subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eene...

“Our research found even America’s most congested commercial airports, which are effectively closed to low-fare airlines, allot space for the richest flyers to operate on behalf of a handful of privileged travelers." www.economicliberties.us/press-releas...

Read coverage in the Lever here: www.levernews.com/snakes-on-a-...

NEW: Ahead of the Super Bowl, one of the busiest private jet days of the year, a new paper from @ashleynowicki.bsky.social and @wjm-air.bsky.social details private jets' preferential treatment as they further congest airways — and policy solutions to fix it. As covered in @thelever.bsky.social 👇

"ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence"

I don't think, "I don't know how to govern" is the defense I would go for if I were a congressman up for reelection.

According to its new privacy policy, TikTok now collects more data on its users, including their precise location, after majority ownership officially switched to a group based in the US. www.wired.com/story/tiktok...

The US President is suing the nation's largest bank for $5 billion in damages over the bank closing his accounts following January 6th. One reason to have independent agencies is so that presidents can't use the regulatory apparatus as leverage to extract money from private businesses.

Here's what to know: Do not do this www.cnbc.com/2026/01/22/a...

“If the person is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

that’s a no.

Right: A lot of federal employees who were fired by "Article II" emails, and have no prospect of a fair hearing because SCOTUS has allowed purges of the Office of Special Counsel and the Merit Systems Protection Board, wonder why this standard does not apply to them. bsky.app/profile/stev...

This clearly is not going well for Trump, but it is very hard to hear the Republican Justices move toward an exception for the Fed when their reasoning in oral arguments applies just as well to other independent agencies. Why were they removed in such a hurried manner? bsky.app/profile/stev...

This is an excellent question, and also worth asking of the majority of the court when they allowed the removal of the independent agency heads while cases were pending. The urgency of irreparable harm to Trump was always a myth. bsky.app/profile/stev...

Weird tell on the part of Barrett. There is no legal reason to consider the risk of recession, and they have not accounted for tangible harms to public services when allowing Trump to gut the rest of the administrative state. Does reinforce the concept of an emerging "protect our 401Ks" doctrine.

This is pure Stephen Miller:

Handing SSA data to election deniers seems like more than a Hatch Act violation

Which types of welfare fraud are politely litigated between white collar lawyers, and which types of welfare fraud are used to justify an immigration purge and shutting off resources to the poor?

like here: notice how this story frames the insane 29% year over year price increases for streaming video as just something that ambiguously happens. Or they'll give in a cute nickname like "streamflation," to avoid acknowledging it's just predatory price gouging by shitty companies

none of this price gouging by shitty consolidated media is reflected honestly to consumers by our shitty press, whose inclination for pointed honestly is being devoured by the same consolidation forces responsible for streaming enshittification

Billionaires have so much money that they don't know what to do with it. I believe we can help them. We can tax away that money and ease their burden.

NEWS: In a heartbreaking video, after ICE shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis, a woman who was in the same SUV cries out: “They killed my wife. I don’t know what to do." “We stopped to videotape, and they shot her in the head,” the distraught woman sobs. www.advocate.com/news/minneso...

Great day to have functioning eyes and a working brain

please stop fixating on the fact we illegally renditioned a foreign leader, illegally took over the country at U.S. taxpayer expense, and are illegally stealing the country's natural resources

Elon does not fundamentally believe that any government or governing body should be allowed to constrain or regulate him in any way and he is deploying all of the vast resources at his command to make it so governments should act accordingly

the real story is the way the country's obscenely rich have hijacked new and old media to pour lemon juice in the country's unhealed race and gender wounds to divide the electorate and derail genuine progressive reform, justice-oriented taxation, and corporate oversight now THAT's a story