NEW: SCOTUS majority says Trump can ignore precedent if the majority doesn't like it. A 90-year-old precedent meant nothing to the majority allowing Trump to fire an FTC commissioner during litigation. This is no way to run a court, let alone a country. Tonight, at Law Dork:

Couple things here. (1) The DH said the story was on the TV at the gym. (2) By setting him up with Ingraham, they have recognized they've got a problem here. (3) Homan didn't specifically deny taking the money.

This is a good thread that I recommend people check out, but I would add two notes: 1. The Roberts court has sanded down the law to make corruption prosecutions much more difficult (something they don't do in virtually any other area of criminal law).

Lawgeeks, Kilmar Abrego Garcia's reply filing in support of his motion to dismiss the criminal case in Tennessee for vindictive and selective prosecution is an excellent, powerful (and short) read. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

I don't have time to be as angry at the Supreme Court as I need to be; I'm too busy being furious at my health insurance company.

In his entire answer he notably never once denies taking the $50,000.

Additionally, official government discrimination encourages *private* discrimination.

This is lawless. It is, however, not much different than what the SCOTUS far-right majority did when it allowed Texas's SB8 vigilante abortion law to go into effect in 2021 despite it clearly being unconstitutional under Roe/Casey.

My sense of things (curious if @stevevladeck.bsky.social agrees) is that the dramatic rise in cert before judgement is the result of two interrelated factors: 1. The dramatic increase in executive actions of sweeping import that stretch the law 2. The dramatic decline of Congress doing anything.

I have a longer piece in last December's issue of the Harvard Law Review on how a Court that used to insist it was one of "review, not first view" is, in fact, leapfrogging everyone in lots of cases, including through cert. before judgment: harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/u...

Prosecutors defended the case against Abrego under the "presumption of regularity," but another judge presiding over Abrego's civil case said: “[F]rom day one…have taken the presumption of regularity and…destroyed it.”

the strangeness of the current moment lies in how the administration is consolidating authoritarian power while also being extremely weak

In dissent as to the stay, Justice Kagan — joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson — lays out the lawlessness of the majority plainly. "Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars." Order/dissent: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

Another poll by the American Research Group out today is just brutal on the economy. The percent of people who think the economy is going to get worse has gone from 25% in September 2024 to 61% in September 2025! americanresearchgroup.com/economy/

I feel like her lawyer should just use oral arguments as an opportunity to berate the justices for their hackery.

Kagan, of course, is correct that the Supreme Court will soon overturn Humphrey's Executor and allow the president to fire leaders of any independent agency (other than the Fed—maybe?!). She's also right to bemoan the fact that SCOTUS effectively overruled Humphrey's on the shadow docket already.

Removal protections are gone. Humphrey's Executor is overruled in all but name by the Shadow Docket. Rest in peace to the Presidency, and long live the Monarchy.

Justice Kagan, dissenting, says the majority will clearly overturn Humphrey's Executor soon—but objects that "our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars," or to "transfer government authority from Congress to the President."

#BREAKING: Over dissents from Justices Sotomayor, Kagan & Jackson, #SCOTUS grants a stay in the Slaughter case (allowing President Trump to remove the last Dem member of the FTC), *and* grants certiorari "before judgment" to decide whether to formally overrule its 1935 ruling in Humphrey's Executor.

I heard earlier today that ICE has let go of all of its community liaisons. Guess you don’t need those under the Trump admin; who cares about community relations?

I don’t see how this — which would be via Trump under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 — is possible under the law. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

NEW: A former Ball State University staff member is suing the university president after she was fired for a private Facebook post about the death of Charlie Kirk. She is being represented by ACLU of Indiana @acluindiana.bsky.social. READ THE COMPLAINT: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

UPDATE: Another judge, the Reagan-appointed Sarah Evans Barker, ruled today that the administration's use of the "automatic stay" — to keep locked up a man who had been ordered released by an immigration judge on $7,500 bond — was illegal. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

In his column for @lawfaremedia.org yesterday, Ben Wittes asked why Trump is in such a rush to prosecute his perceived enemies. “The answer is that—at least as regards Comey—a key statute of limitations is about to run.” www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...

A lot of federal judges I know will be very glad to hear this. GSA cutbacks had resulted in chaotic and opaque decisions that negatively impacted the courts, the judges said. via @jheckmanWFED federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/20...

JUST IN: Trump admin asks full bench of 5th Circuit to take up Alien Enemies Act case, says 3-judge panel made serious errors in concluding that Trump's invocation of the law was legally defective. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... Earlier: www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

Turns out Niece No. 1 was totally correct when she decided to go to a university outside Texas bc she feared Texas schools would become hostile to LGBTQ students.

I will give Trump one compliment. When a lawyer or a judge tells him he has the authority to do something, he never ever forgets it.

I have a @techdirt.com podcast coming out soon about this FTC order, with @mmasnick.bsky.social and @berinszoka.bsky.social - stay tuned.

Waiting to see whether Kimmel had to agree to be muzzled as a condition of going back on-air, because that's something the public needs to know. It's not a victory if he goes back on the air with a list of things he's secretly never allowed to talk about anymore, guests he can't have on, etc.

I recently asked DOJ if they'd consent to service via email (in a matter where I'm pro se, not using ECF, and serving via US Mail) and they said no. Just so I keep having to spend the cost of a stamp mailing them something they won't even open since they do get it via ECF once the court dockets it.

speculation but I think if Harris had won they’d have pulled the trigger on conspiracy to commit bribery

"kristi noem and corey lewandowski, who we can confirm are not only dating but running DHS together" absolutely cursed sentence

Because it isn’t artificial ‘intelligence’ at all…

Holy shit

not enough money to protect Ukraine's democracy but plenty to bail out this crypto dork after he tanked his economy

WASHPOST: Surveillance in DC from the air: Nearly 80 helicopters were identified flying over D.C. as Trump crackdown continues, with the flights most intensely focused on majority Black neighborhoods. www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

My doctor is at a rural Virginia health clinic. Consolidating them means longer wait times and the degradation of care. Rmember: everything the GOP says is a lie.

Good Lord. People ask me why I don’t cover sports like I used to, and it’s because of stuff like this and Matt Shaw skipping a game for Charlie Kirk’s funeral. If you care about things like “human rights” and “racism” and “violence against women,” sports media is a tough place.

The Tylenol stuff is wild because high fever in pregnancy IS linked to adverse outcomes. Tylenol is one of very few medications pregnant people can take to manage pain and fever & they are cutting programs for kids with disabilities simultaneously? this is about mandating stay at home motherhood

Viktor Orban has made Hungary one of the poorest countries in the EU www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

"Do it for Charlie!" 🙂

Reminder that in the Trump immunity ruling, the Supreme Court ruled specifically that the president has total immunity when it comes to his communications with Justice Department officials:

Policy process: 1) Issue legal pronouncement without adequate legal or policy review. 2) Read legal pronouncement for the first time. 3) Consider policy implications for the first time. 4) Begin issuing clarifications. 5) Begin (maybe) an interagency legal and policy review of underlying issues.

OLIVER: “F*ck! Sh*t! — It was fun while it lasted, guys.” John Oliver says he’s lucky Warner Bros. Discovery doesn’t have to worry about the same things as CBS & ABC — then realizes the MAGA billionaire Ellisons are planning to swallow them too.

Even though roughly half of Black children in the US grow up in 2-parent households, social scientists have largely ignored these families for decades. I talked with @christinajcross.bsky.social about her new book—and what her research means for debates about marriage kids and inequality

Seriously how hard is it to say “This is an outrageous attack on our friends and neighbours who are in this country legally and have followed all the rules to get settled status, who are valued members of our communities, get to fuck frog-face”?

New research reveals the profound impact on mixed-status families—where at least one family member lacks legal immigration status. 🧵 Marrying a U.S. citizen does NOT automatically grant a green card. These families face deportation threats that fundamentally reshape how they live, parent, and cope.

For 10s of millions of Americans, politics is just "shopping with your vote for people who will play pretend & act as if your preferred conspiracy theory is real." The fantasy could be "immigrants are taking our jobs" or "random chemical causes all our problems"--the process is the same.