Police officers almost never pay settlements & judgments against them, but are denied indemnification more often than payout data suggests. This great @themarshallproject.org story describes two recent cases & here's my new draft article examining this phenomenon 👇 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

How and why police actually support the federal invasions—I have been working on this article for ~6 months, trying to make sense of Trump’s nationwide surge of DHS officers, how it has evolved, what brought us here, and what will remain after it ends.

In 1854, after watching the federal government deploy 2000 federal troops and spend $40,000 sending Anthony Burns back into slavery, Boston's Amos Adams Lawrence said “we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists.”

This is a genuinely huge, sweeping victory today for the University of California—or rather, for us, its faculty, acting through our faculty associations, while the UC itself maintained a strict policy of deer-in-headlights silence. The Trump admin has given up its appeal of a powerful injunction:

This is INCREDIBLE. What a win for public education. (And yet another reminder of the value of *standing up* and *not obeying in advance*!!!) Congratulations - and thank you - to the faculty in the UC system.

New Foreword up on SSRN, previewing new projects on the history of constitutional history and what it can teach about legal frameworks at the heart of our "constitutional crisis"-federal Indian law, territorial law, expansion, immigration, and executive power. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

When thousands of immigration agents flooded Minneapolis late last year, Garrett Guntly had an idea: a network of neighbor-owned security cameras that they could use to monitor ICE activity in the area. The system has helped neighbors interrupt around a dozen immigrant arrests, Guntly says.

"It is when we speak — when we argue, appeal, explain and testify — that we put into practice our belief in the ability of others to understand, reason and empathize...And the people we’ve wronged deserve their chance to speak and be heard." #GiftLink #GiftArticle

A good update of an article-type that has been written several times a year for the past 15 years and yet we just keep buying and deploying new policing technologies. www.salon.com/2026/02/08/p...

a powerful account of what’s happening in Minneapolis from Amna Akbar www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

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”:

The Supreme Court has restricted the right to sue federal officers in part because agencies' internal investigations are an alternative way to deter misconduct. That (already farcical) justification is downright ridiculous if the feds shut those investigations down. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/u...

News: Judge Vargas has stopped the Trump administration from freezing federal funds for construction of the Hudson River tunnel. Earlier today, she heard workers would otherwise be fired this weekend, abandoning “literally a massive hole in the earth” indefinitely ag.ny.gov/sites/defaul...

Here’s a link to the transcript fyi drive.google.com/file/d/1FnY2...

Happy Anniversary to those who celebrate cat attorneys.

3d Cir. holds that habeas corpus petitions challenging immigration detention are "civil actions," so prevailing noncitizens may be entitled to attorneys' fees and costs under the Equal Access to Justice Act. Gonna be a loooooooooot of these. www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/242...

This is the direct result of a judicial order. Law isn’t magic but it can be powerful stuff.

Great piece on Los Angeles cutting down trees to reduce shade out of some misguided belief it will reduce crime and not just make the city more inhospitable. This place could be so amazing if city leadership weren't such a mess. lareported.substack.com/p/shade-remo...

👀 Looks like the husband of the woman ICE abducted called his lawyer, lawyer called the cops, then the police chief went and got her & took her home Article says it may be the first time local Minnesota PD "intervened in a federal law enforcement action" since Trump started terrorizing the state

Extraordinary opinion for extraordinary times.

Judge Biery signed the order with a photo of Liam and two bible verses: The first is "But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." The second is simply "Jesus wept." Astonishing thing for a judge to do.

New from Professors Ellen Katz and @sbagen.bsky.social in @ssrn.bsky.social: The Dismantling of Civil Rights Protections and Thoughts on Rebuilding papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

THREAD: Important decision from the 10th Cir today in the Kansas Highway Patrol case. (disclosure: I handled the trials in this case). TL/DR: good opinion on standing, bad opinion on scope of injunctive relief avail to victims of police misconduct. (1/x) www.ca10.uscourts.gov/sites/ca10/f...

My New One @slate.com: "Trump’s Continued Obsession With 2020 Is a Joke. His Raid on a Georgia Election Site Is Not." slate.com/news-and-pol...

Also, CA11 refuses to hold that it was now clearly established, so the result will be exactly the same the next time. Of course maybe there are other remedies than 1983. I don’t know. But the refusal to rule on violations is a big QI problem.

I would like to connect the dots between the Supreme Court’s upcoming Chatrie decision on geofence requests and the growing authoritarian and aggressive deployment of law enforcement around protests and dissent.1/12

States have more power than many people realize to prosecute federal law enforcement for violations of state criminal law. I wrote about the legal framework governing these prosecutions in @statecourtreport.org. statecourtreport.org/our-work/ana...

Fascinating to see former Utah police chief Ken Wallentine cited here as a use of force “consultant” voicing concerns about ICE tactics. Wallentine spent years writing policies that protect cops who use force for Lexipol, and nearly all of his “consulting” in lawsuits has been on behalf of police.

Just ordered a t-shirt from this bar. Happy to promote any other business that does something similar. Let’s make Bondi’s mug shots a badge of honor.

I think these photos are not doing what Pam Bondi thinks they are doing

If you need a clear and cogent explanation of barriers to criminal and civil accountability for federal officers, listen to the first twenty minutes of this excellent @strictscrutiny.bsky.social episode.

Why it’s hard to sue #ICE officers for abuse. The civil rights law that's allowed lawsuits vs. local & state police doesn’t apply to feds. In 1871, bands of masked men were riding thru southern states, terrorizing Black people w/murders, beatings & rapes. www.themarshallproject.org/2026/01/27/m...

ICE detained hundreds of thousands of people last year, shuttling them between jails and detention centers around the country, limiting access to legal support.

JUST OUT: We have put a call for Qs about local & state responses to ICE. We're hearing you ask variations of what could be done about instances of brutality, about how police helps ICE. So let us know anything you're wondering; we'll do our best to answer: boltsmag.org/send-us-your...

Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

In today's @nytimes.com, @barryfriedman1.bsky.social and I argue that, with no *other* means of pursuing accountability for lawlessness by ICE, local/state prosecutions become not just legally viable, but necessary—both to punish past abuses and to deter future ones: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/o...

Congratulations to Jennifer! She was a fabulous colleague, then dean, at @law.ucla.edu and I'm thrilled for her and for Columbia.

Federal law enforcement agents shot and killed a man in Minneapolis on Jan. 24 according to local police officials. DHS told Fox News that the man was “armed with a gun”. A video of the shooting appears to show that a gun was taken from the man before the first shot was fired. x.com/BillMelugin_...

It's time to abolish Trump’s ICE.

OMG. "DHS said the episode began after a man approached Border Patrol agents with a handgun and they tried to disarm him. But footage from the scene shows the man was holding a phone in his hand, not a gun, when federal agents took him to the ground and shot him." www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01...

"Just like the killing of Renée Good, Saturday morning’s shooting once again raises the question of why it is so damned difficult to hold federal officers—and the federal government itself—accountable if and when they violate our rights." Me on the federal accountability gap—and how to close it:

You did not bear the shame. You resisted. You bestowed the eternally vigilant symbol of change by sacrificing your impassioned lives for freedom, justice and honour. — The German Resistance Memorial in Berlin

The Star Tribune reports that federal agents "attempted to order local police from the scene" where a man was shot and killed by feds this morning, but Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara refused and "instructed his officers to preserve the scene."

ICE’s new policy directing agents to ignore the 4th Amendment is one of the most frightening things we’ve seen yet. And there’s no telling where it could end up. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

The brazenness with which ICE violates the law (described in @radleybalko.bsky.social’s excellent piece) is a byproduct of zero civil & criminal accountability for officers. Part of the explanation is Trump’s lawlessness. But ICE officers have no reason to fear consequences for crossing the line.

Excellent @radleybalko.bsky.social piece on why what we are seeing in Minneapolis is, in fact, something qualitatively different than the police violence that happens all too often. This struck me as a key line: the OPEN contempt for accountability. Such explicitness matters.

Very interesting forthcoming article on state constitutional equivalents to the 4th Amendment, and how state courts do and don't interpret them, from Quinn Yeargain. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... #N