Here's my story on the judicial races w/David Jackson. A key trend in these primaries is fewer people trying to be judges, which observers link to cost, a hotter spotlight & Democratic dominance. Some candidates have a glide path to power despite liabilities that might matter if they had opponents.

NEW: Ahead of the FBI’s raid of an election center in Georgia, the prosecutor overseeing the investigation met with several Trump lawyers, including Ed Martin and Kurt Olsen, who helped the president try to overturn the 2020 election.

JUST IN: Trump admin sues Harvard for allegedly slowwalking requests for admissions data from DOJ. Suit assigned to Judge Myong Joun (Biden). Doc: www.justice.gov/opa/media/14...

Don't Coast Guard personnel get blanket immunity?

“.. Noem and Lewandowski frequently berate senior level staff, give polygraph tests to employees they don’t trust and have fired employees—in one incident, Lewandowski fired a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane ..” @wsj.com www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Here’s a gift link to a well-written and perceptive story by Robert Draper in the New York Times. He’s 100% correct that the Epstein scandal has exposed the moral rot in America’s elite.

🚨In December 2016, Epstein invited Bill Gates to his island and informed him that “new administration people” were visiting. This was sent exactly one month before Trump was inaugurated for his first term.

The denaturalization project, no matter how it is cloaked in law, is inherently a politically targeted abuse of power until they go after the single most prominent case of naturalization fraud in the country: Elon Musk obtaining his citizenship by lying about his prior immigration status violations.

There's case after case now where you get quick charges, almost certainly demanded from political appointees. Discovery producers evidence that rules out guilt. Prosecutors usually aren't willing to hide that evidence. Charges dismissed.

Yeah, we definitely need more info here. CourtListener docket: www.courtlistener.com/docket/72164...

It is Donald Trump’s systematic campaign to stamp out dissent and punish those who disagree with him that will be remembered as among the most singularly un-American aspects of his disruptive tenure, @sbg1.bsky.social writes. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/6HGV6p

Trump and the DOJ are covering up for powerful world leaders who are named in the Epstein files—including themselves. From the glimpse I’ve seen in the files, it’s much bigger than we ever imagined. We won’t stop until the truth comes out and justice is served.

Here is the meat of it: "Defendants chose to operate a detention facility, so 'they must meet constitutional standards.'"

After looking at other cases from elsewhere, Brasel is brutal: "Under any explication of the due process analysis on this record, the obstacles the government has put in place at Whipple rise to the level of an unconstitutional infringement of noncitizen detainees' right to access counsel."

Also, I wonder if they waited on this dismissal until after Congressional testimony.

Two notes about this. This was the VERY rare case where an FBI Agent, rather than an HSI agent, filed the affidavit. I gotta believe there's still enough institutional culture among Feebs to REALLY hate having been lied to. HSI not so much.

BREAKING: Judge Nancy Brasel, a Trump appointee, has issued a TRO in the Minnesota access-to-counsel case about treatment at Whipple. "It appears that in planning for Operation Metro Surge, the government failed to plan for the constitutional rights of its civil detainees."

BREAKING: DOJ moves to drop criminal charges in alleged shovel/broom attack in Minneapolis that led ICE to open fire. "Newly discovered evidence in this matter is materially inconsistent with the allegations in the Complaint Affidavit," prosecutors say. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

Another shooting case falls apart (this time ICE, not CBP). These are the Venezuelans that ICE excused shooting by claiming they beat him w/shovels. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

BREAKING: The Trump administraiton has committed a mass violation of ICE detainees' constitutional rights in MN, effectively blocking their acess to attorneys in the Whipple building, a judge ruled tonight. The judge: Trump appointeee Nancy Brasel storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Update on this one from last year. On remand from SCOTUS, 8th Cir. again holds, 2-1, no QI for officer who shot a George Floyd protester in the head with a "less-lethal" round from between five and ten feet away as the protester was backing away from officer. ecf.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/26/02...

under questioning by Rand Paul, ICE officials confirm that yelling at officers is not assault and recording officers is not a crime

The sudden Alito retirement rumors feel like a signal that the GOP is worried about losing the Senate in the midterms. One way to read this is that this summer/fall is the last *guaranteed* window where Trump/GOP senate could confirm a far-right Justice. (eg what RBG could’ve done in 2012.)

The other problem with this is that those Trump policies described there aren't actually about "securing the border." They're about emptying *the interior* of immigrants. The media's casual conflation of "the border" with interior enforcement/policy is a big reason we are where we are today.

It would be the epic circus of all time to have Stephen Miller testify But if Republicans won't do it before the midterms, the Democrats must when they take charge The evil acts committed by ICE didn't occur in a vacuum. Someone in the administration gave the orders. Miller is the prime suspect

More Thoughts on the Authoritarian International talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-...

The People Who Believed that "Pro Worker Republicans" Were a Real Thing Were Massive Suckers, vol. 967: www.ft.com/content/19f8...

The potential foreign agent was Saudi foreign agent Jared Kushner. I mean, I was betting on Roger Stone but this is actually far more problematic.

This is important. The head of CBP says here that his agency did NOT provide the assessment that led DHS to label Alex Pretti a terrorist looking to inflict mass casualties. That appears to contradict Stephen Miller's claim that the initial assessment was based on CBP reports:

Two judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit have issued a ruling that, if allowed to stand, could result in the indefinite detention of millions of immigrants in inhumane, overcrowded facilities scattered across the United States. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/o...

This is exactly the kind of b.s. that makes me worry about the midterms. In some places these judges will be making consequential decisions about whether Trump can steal elections by deploying ICE around polling places, baselessly claiming fraud and seizing ballots, etc.

So @elienyc.bsky.social and @strictscrutiny.bsky.social have speculated that Alito may retire soon. I agree. Elie lays out the case here—it'd be odd to release a memoir in October if he's (a) still serving and (b) unable to promote it because he's hearing arguments. www.thenation.com/article/poli...

BREAKING Judge Boasberg ORDERS the Trump admin to facilitate the return of the more than 100 men spirited out of the country last year without notice or a hearing. Plaintiffs may also submit habeas petitions from abroad, he says. Doc buff.ly/rccakD7

Pam Bondi is now freeing accused drug dealers bc her demand that AUSAs do unethical things got all the prosecutors to quit. www.startribune.com/case-dismiss...

NEW: “CBS Evening News” producer Alicia Hastey sends a bombshell farewell note: Stories are “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.”

Great read. Spot on this: “…what we are dealing with here is a generation of European leaders who cannot admit that they have failed. The world they assumed was permanent, was not. However instead of admitting their failure, they desperately pretend that things are not changing beneath their feet.”

The speech is so well known, we often don't absorb its meaning. Lincoln speech opens stating clearly that the Revolution was to preserve equality and ends saying rule of, by, and for the people is what preserves it. See for yourself 2/2 constitutioncenter.org/the-constitu...

On Lincoln's birthday, it's useful to remember he believed the primary goal of the American experiment was to guarantee "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and the best way to achieve that goal was through free and fair elections. It's basically the thesis of the Gettysburg Address. 1/2

I said a year ago Trump was not choosing political martyrs wisely and not accounting for what tools defendants are accorded. I want to triple down on that. I think we're about to see revenge of the defendants--starting with Marimar Martinez. Marimar is a Montessori teacher. And holy hell, a hero!

Great idea!

When the CIA did this to the Senate it was one of the biggest intel scandals of the 21st century. But here it’s not just a huge scandal, it’s dumb: Pam Bondi is so bad at her job she brought the evidence herself to an open congressional hearing. www.theguardian.com/world/2014/j...

The Border Patrol agent who shot Chicago's Marimar Martinez once wrote that his superiors, like Kristi Noem and Greg Bovino, supported him "big time." Now officials say the agent "was placed on administrative leave." UPDATED @chicago.suntimes.com story: chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

Was "washed up loser lawyer" one of the insults they pre-loaded in her little "burn book"? Because I'm not sure it nails a Harvard law graduate who taught con law for 25 years before becoming a congressman who's now the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee -- and, um, likely its next chair?

Sketches from today's hearing: anntelnaes.substack.com/p/bondis-con...

Todd Blanche says “You are fired, Donald Kinsella.” Kinsella was just selected as the US Attorney for the Northern District of New York by the district’s judges, as permitted by statute.

In a moment that calls for courage, we get this:

JUST IN: U.S. Customs and Border Protection says Border Patrol agent Charles Exum, who shot Chicago's Marimar Martinez, "was placed on administrative leave":