obvi nobody needs to shed any tears for John Bolton, but Trump1.0 did pull petty shenanigans Intelligence personnel are supposed to submit book drafts for "prepublication review" of their content, and the Trump1.0 Admin conspired to slow-walk the review of his manuscript, so he published w/o review

Amazing

how is this not ClickHole

I still sometimes have to doubletake at this dissent lineup Broken clock, I guess (also, shows the risks of a 6–3 supermajority. winning over Clarence Thomas isn't enough) www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20p...

Just think of the hall of mirrors SCOTUS has raised for vindicating individual rights: •can’t sue any feds w/o Congress’ say so •can’t sue state/local officials w/o overcoming QI •Congress can’t authorize lawsuits against state/local officials beyond bill of rights under 14A§5 or spending clause

The jury verdict that led to today’s SCOTUS ruling re product labeling of glyphosate somehow found Monsanto liable for failure to warn (ie, bad label), but not liable for product design defect or negligence

Welcome to Dumb Nixon-In-China

In sum, One Big Beautiful Bill capped fed. loans for grad & professional degrees with pro degrees having a much higher cap, & defined "professional degree" Now gov't wants to narrow the definition of "professional", effectively lowering borrow limits, and the court says no, that's Congress' job

Right off the bat Alito begins with anachronism. As @maureenebrady.com brilliantly showed in her recent SLR piece, the Court is projecting modern property categories backwards. www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/prope...

and now for a take that will be less popular On Here: the Monsanto decision was correctly decided the question of law: can a plaintiff sue under state law for failure to warn re herbicide-caused cancer, when EPA already has specific labeling rules & expressly says states cannot add more rules

Deputy Sec'y of State Chris Landau has a habit of wearing a diagonally striped coordinated tie to an event, so, he wore an India flag tie for India trade talks, wore a Kosovo flag colored tie when meeting with Kosovo 'spresident, and wore an Apartheid flag when greeting white S. Africans at Dulles

Alito's decision in Mullin v. Doe (DHS Sec'y "determination" that Haiti and Syria are no longer unsafe is unreviewable) effectively overrules the Wilbur Ross census questionnaire case, which had left room for judicial review of determinations made in bad faith www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

these decision days should put to bed Barrett's contention that "the 6–3 Court" is a media creation: Blanche v. Lau: 6–3 Pung v. Isabella: 9–0 Landor v. LDOC: 6–3 Exxon v. CIMEX: 6–3 Cisco v. Doe: 6–3 Monstanto v. Durnell: 7–2 Wolford v. Lopez: 6–3 Mullin v. Al Otro Lado: 6–3 Mullin v. Doe: 6–3

In sum, One Big Beautiful Bill capped fed. loans for grad & professional degrees with pro degrees having a much higher cap, & defined "professional degree" Now gov't wants to narrow the definition of "professional", effectively lowering borrow limits, and the court says no, that's Congress' job

DC things: on a public bus with a guy carrying an International Atomic Energy Agency totebag

Two ICE agents tracked down a woman *inside a polling place* yesterday. Why? They demanded that she take down an Instagram post in which she named Jonathan Ross as the man who shot & killed Renee Good (after the Star Tribune identified Ross). www.syracuse.com/news/2026/06...

According to the British Museum, this Mills guy was investigated in 1766 in a City of Westminster inquest into the death of one of Mills’ employees after been bitten by a bear www.britishmuseum.org/collection/t...

A few years ago I read this book about Britain in the 1970s and how awful everything was Broadly, Labour were led by moderate front-benchers, and leftist back-benchers, and the moderates hated the left—and these were not small differences, the Labour left wanted a centralized state-owned economy

Oh my god 💀😱 The patent holder for the genus of compounds including paxlovid lost their infringement case against Pfizer because of a typo!! www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-ord...

an utter mockery of the law & precedent respect is earned, not freely given, and jurists who treat law like nothing more than a logic puzzle to incant do not deserve respect fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldoc...

tbh I'm not miffed at a retail price of $100, but I am annoyed that Rockstar couched it behind a phony "ultimate edition" with a bunch of stuff artificially stripped out from the "standard edition", but the lack of a disc is a dealbreaker for me kotaku.com/physical-cop...

Oh my god 💀😱 The patent holder for the genus of compounds including paxlovid lost their infringement case against Pfizer because of a typo!! www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-ord...

TIL the seal of the US Senate has both fasces (a symbol which came to lend its name to fascism), as well as a Jacobin Phrygian cap on it

appreciate the grassroots on-the-ground mythbusting Now if someone could plz head over to the Teddy Roosevelt building by l’Enfant Plaza to verify whether there’s a TR banner with a fake quote on it… 🙏

this whole ethnography of the American Right is filled with ppl saying they want a “protector” from depredations of “tyranny of the majority” (citing vaccines as a prime example) big red flag for Dems that Donald Trump will not be the end of American authoritarianism

lol

Law professors rejoice as the U.S. government sues a former president for replevin www.law.cornell.edu/wex/replevin

lol

”we did a deep-dive ethnographic study of American conservatives and by some weird coincidence found ideas & attitudes straight out of a 1930 Italian fascist manifesto“

For the record, y'all, this is fake. There is no tarp around the reflecting pool. It's AI-generated crap. And the OP is blocking folks for saying so.

It’s difficult to summarize SCOTUS rulings in 240 characters & a headline but I feel like you gotta mention SCOTUS *struck down* Congressional authorization of the law suit and broadly cut down Congress’ power

RLUIPA was introduced by Orrin Hatch, and passed unanimously by voice vote in both the House & Senate Moreover, SCOTUS itself, including the Roberts Court, has struggled mightily to decide the judicial bounds of free exercise cases. *Congress* decided. SCOTUS now undecides bsky.app/profile/mjsd...

this Gorsuch decision in Landor v. LDOC is very very bad The SCOTUS conservatives, Gorsuch especially, are always on their high-orse about the administrative state taking over legislative responsibilities from a do-nothing Congress, but then they cut Congress down at the knees Awful decision

If it’s really true that Donald Trump is receiving injections of retatrutide, then this would align with reporting that the “compassionate use” patient has pulmonary hypertension and obstructive sleep apnea, I mean, Dems should be beating a drum on this

Peroxymandias

I’m launching an all-reflecting-pond-updates news service: Algae-zeera.

Under Roberts Court 1st-amendment Free Exercise jurisprudence in Fulton v. Phila., a gov't CAN'T condition foster care funding on acceptance of LGBTQ marriage equality, bc it discriminates against Christians OTOH, now Congress CAN'T require state officials to respect prison inmates' religions

this Gorsuch decision in Landor v. LDOC is very very bad The SCOTUS conservatives, Gorsuch especially, are always on their high-orse about the administrative state taking over legislative responsibilities from a do-nothing Congress, but then they cut Congress down at the knees Awful decision

A lot going on at SCOTUS today In this case, one thing that jumps out is SCOTUS' hostile relationship to federal trial courts beneath it Between the lines, Barrett's decision here is saying "in 2023 we left the door open just a smidge, but federal courts can't be trusted to carry it out properly"

the doctor who reportedly prescribed the mystery-patient with this experimental drug has co-authored a bunch of papers on mifepristone as a treatment for insulin resistance www.niddk.nih.gov/about-niddk/... www.ovid.com/journals/jce...

Incredible

Tech industry employment vibes in 2012 vs. tech industry employment vibes in 2026:

The 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 11th Cirs. have already held the existence of internal BOP admin complaints renders modern context "new" from Carlson, and therefore 8A prisoner claims against feds are foreclosed Further, the 1st, 10th, and 11th have held "Carlson context" only covers *lethal* injuries /16

This case relates to 8th-amendment "conscious disregard of substantial risk to health" prison inmate claims The law does permit such claims against state & local prisons & jails and their officials The question here is whether the law permits such claims to be heard against *federal* prisons 🧵/1

once again, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) is low-key some of the worst federal legislation currently on the books, and conservative judges interpret it very strictly as forbidding even highly meritorious petitions for federal courts to review state-court errors

Media analysis on Twitter be like:

Sanction waiver sure seems illegal to me Statute requires congress to get a 30-day review period, during which "the President may not waive, suspend, reduce, provide relief from, or otherwise limit the application of statutory sanctions with respect to Iran under any provision of law"

This case relates to 8th-amendment "conscious disregard of substantial risk to health" prison inmate claims The law does permit such claims against state & local prisons & jails and their officials The question here is whether the law permits such claims to be heard against *federal* prisons 🧵/1

once again, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) is low-key some of the worst federal legislation currently on the books, and conservative judges interpret it very strictly as forbidding even highly meritorious petitions for federal courts to review state-court errors

From outside looking at the UK, not _all things_ are Brexit, but _everything_ is tinged by Brexit David Cameron foolishly committed Britain toward a path for which there was no coherent vision, and despite the formal settlement, there still is no coherent vision, especially so for Labour