Holy shit, a real masks-off moment. Trump's IRS says churches can continue to claim tax benefits as a nonprofit even while explicitly endorsing candidates. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/u...

My mom and stepdad are from the same diaspora group as Zohran Mamdani’s dad (same like “my stepdad was kicked out of the same town and knows some of his classmates”) and apparently the New York Times doesn’t understand how diaspora works, so I am going to tell you a little about my mom’s people!

In calls with my mother over the last few weeks, it was clear she wasn’t doing well: entire body swollen; so tired she could barely function. Tears welled up in her eyes when she described her fatigue. Yesterday, my mother Googled her medications to check for side effects or interactions. 1/6

MY LATEST @latimes.com ‬⁩ COLUMNA: 'We're all just a bunch of Josés': Vance's dig at Padilla is a new low. Share, porfas!

Meant to mention this last week, but if you have a young person in your life who’s into history or graphic novels or just good books, buy them George Takei’s “They Called Us Enemy.” My oldest couldn’t put it down.

Someone at the company admitted to me that they only make money on the sale of wheelchairs. They don’t make money on repairs and have been trying to figure out how they to avoid doing repairs altogether. 🧵⬇️

This is where we are at this point in the decline of free speech rights. If California’s Senator can be roughed up, we are all in trouble.

McGovern: "You are literally taking food off kids' plates to buy Elon Musk another yacht. I guess he's getting a good return on his campaign donations ... this is not policy. This is theft."

THREAD: We recently heard that the Trump administration was leaning on the government of Gambia to help Elon Musk. For weeks, our team made phone calls, wrote letters and knocked on folks’ doors to try to confirm it. But we were stuck. So our reporters got on a plane to Banjul. 1/

I know there's a lot going on, but I would like to highlight that Mike Johnson slipped language into an otherwise routine House procedural vote yesterday that now blocks Democrats from forcing an investigation into Pete Hegseth’s Signal scandal, through October.

Truly awful; and yet, not new! Been the case for many years! What’s happening now is that Congressional democrats had FINALLY gotten support for legal services funding for unaccompanied migrant kids, and hundreds of lawyers were working on these cases — then Trump killed the funding in one day.

For this story, I reached out to 42 institutions to gather biomedical graduate admissions data. Those that said class size would decrease reported an average drop of about a third. “The future of the enterprise is jeopardized," Suzanne Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, told me. 👇

An autism "registry" culled from private medical records could potentially violate federal privacy laws and runs the risk of abuse. It also harkens back to a time when disabled people were labeled, segregated, and excluded. We won't go back.

Let’s dream up to ways to shit on women. Oh hey, let’s cancel the largest clinical trial ever for women www.science.org/content/arti...

Nightmare, indeed. Be on the lookout for state bills to have the DMV collect disability status for drivers and children. Model legislation has already been drafted and is posted on the ALEC website. See THE SAFEGUARDING AMERICAN FAMILIES EVERYWHERE (SAFE) ACT. alec.org/model-policy...

Fuck these people. Just that simple. May their names live in infamy for decades tocome.

NEW at @motherjones.com: HHS plans to cut federal funding to the state protection and advocacy agencies who investigate abuse in group homes. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Then you may want to make sure that your state legislature isn’t entertaining the SAFEGUARDING AMERICAN FAMILIES EVERYWHERE (SAFE) ACT, introduced in FL last year and listed as model legislation by ALEC. alec.org/model-policy...

Yikes!

Trump tried to bury this story on a Friday night, but it’s extremely important: He’s planning to take land on the border controlled by the Dept. of Interior and sign it over to Dept. of Defense so migrants “would have trespassed on a military installation,” resulting in harsher punishment.

🚨A U.S. born citizen was arrested in Florida for entering the state as an “unauthorized alien.” His mother and a community advocate showed his birth certificate during a hearing in Leon County. The judge said she had no authority to release him.

BREAKING: DOJ ends a key racial discrimination case, signaling an end to the Civil Rights Division as it existed. The lawsuit against the Mississippi state Senate alleged a brazen pattern of racial discrimination against a Black woman, but AAG Harmeet Dhillon ended the case. New, at Law Dork —>

Trump has denied Washington state’s application for disaster relief following November’s bomb cyclone that caused $34 million in damage and killed two people. FEMA did not offer an explanation. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

NEW: Federal investigators had identified at least eight police departments with patterns of unlawful behavior. But Trump’s freeze on oversight activities leaves many reform efforts in the hands of local leaders. By @tophersanders.bsky.social

Thanks so much to @theguardian.com for having me, and especially @estelletang.bsky.social for her fastidious edits. www.theguardian.com/global/2025/...

The Notice & Comment process helps reconcile the administrative state w the rule of law. It provides an important moment of public accountability & responsiveness, and improves agency decisions as a channel for information. It's an obstacle to lawlessness. Thus: www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

BREAKING — DOGE will descend upon Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) buildings tomorrow, an agency source tells me. FDIC is responsible for insuring all commercial/personal US bank accounts for up to $250k and regulating banks. Scary in light of Trump’s manipulation of markets this week.

Last week I was happy to join with many of my fellow faculty members at UCI Law in a statement communicating our support for our students and for the rule of law. tinyurl.com/UCI-Ltr-to-Students

BFD! Louisiana jury orders Chevron to pay $747 million for environmental damages, funds sorely needed for coastal wetland restoration. With no irony, Industry leader says this will have a "chilling effect" on economic (i.e., oil and gas) activity. Guest link. www.nola.com/news/environ...

No matter which state you live in, Trump’s dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau affects your ability to be protected from scams. We want to understand the fallout that comes with gutting the government’s consumer watchdog. Here’s how you can help us report: propub.li/43EycsC

One of the important things the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)does is measure its efforts in preventing EXCESS DEATHS, not just dollars .

The Office for Civil Rights has requested the names & nat'lities of students & faculty..involved in alleged Title VI violations. Today, the AAUP wrote to college & universities to clarify that they are under NO LEGAL COMPULSION to comply. Doing so enables deportations. www.aaup.org/news/institu...

🧵⬇️

Deep sigh of relief (at least for now).

An FDA worker confirms what I've seen out there. CDC's entire FOIA office is gone. The FDA's communications and web office were cut. "The FDA as we know it is gone."

Due process is an excellent tool for this moment, but won't be enough: Right now some of the strongest arguments challenging various administration policies are due process arguments. For me, this underlines how much of the New Deal/Civil Rights order was about procedural due process.

As Florida's special elections for the U.S. House loom, and Congress considers big cuts to Medicaid you can see what % of their constituents are covered by Medicaid: Florida 6 (Waltz seat) 45% of kids are covered by Medicaid! Florida 1 kids Medicaid = 29% ccf.georgetown.edu/2024/12/04/m...

I want us to study the history of resistance to slave catchers right now. I want us to study how slave catchers worked, how they were sanctioned, who paid them, and why they did what they did, right now. I want us to study the hyperlocal and networked ways slave catchers were impeded. Right now.

I asked an international human rights lawyer recently what red lines to watch for - he said, “when people start to disappear.” Well…https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/us/ice-tufts-student-detained-rumeysa-ozturk.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Health insurance doesn’t assure access to medical care. A new article by Deborah Lefkowtitz shows that arbitrary income thresholds and documentation requirements (and other administrative burdens) can delay or prevent needed cancer treatment for low-income patients: doi.org/10.1177/0261.... 🧵⬇️

Once again I ask: Do you get it yet, law firms? These orders aren’t isolated threats to Covington or Perkins or Jenner. They’re existential threats to the independence of the legal profession. You’re a fool if you think you won’t be next. Say something. Do something.

Important documentary airing this Tuesday (March 25) on PBS. A timely reminder of the solidarity that #disability rights defenders worldwide share with our American sisters and brothers. The inherent dignity and resilience of #crip lives extends across all boundaries of nation and era.

Clara Harter, Trump Administration Ends Funding for Legal Representation, Mar. 21 2025, www.latimes.com/california/s... “Many of these children do not read or speak in English, and some are too young to read or speak at all, according to Joel Frost-Tift, an immigration attorney with Public Counsel.”

I have the sense that this has been overlooked by a lot of news sources. A goal of Project 2025 is to overturn Plyler v. Doe. Okla Bd of Ed has already passed a rule requiring students’ proof of citizenship/status. Bills re non-citizen children now in 4 other states. www.edweek.org/policy-polit...

A Safe Place for Science program at Aix Marseille University for US scientists who "feel threatened or hindered in their research...dedicated to welcoming scientists wishing to pursue their work in an environment conducive to innovation, excellence & academic freedom" www.univ-amu.fr/en/public/ac...

The Army just deleted without explanation its page about the 442nd “GO FOR BROKE” infantry regiment—the Japanese American WW2 unit that is the most decorated in US military history. Archive is here: web.archive.org/web/20250304... Page was here: www.army.mil/asianpacific... Disgusting.