Worker power in action! Let's get it!💜

As the Supreme Court term begins, keep this framework in mind: Autocratic Legalism. Instead of “rule of law” (law constrains the power), we get “rule by law” (law as a weapon for power). Authoritarians usually have to install allies. Trump started his second term with that step already complete.

An independent court doesn’t help one man evade justice. An independent court doesn’t silence voters, ban abortion, and purge independent agency watchdogs. This court has chosen sides—and it's not the people. We must remind them. This country is FOR and BY the people.

I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital. (🎥: Elias Eliahu)

Congress js a dead letter, because upper chamber bicameralism is an outdated relic, and the two-party system fails to represent most Americans. We are experiencing a system-wide failure.

generally speaking, and with the glaring exception of november 2024, the more directly democratic an institution has been, the better it has checked Trump (eg grand and petit juries); the more elite and insular, the less effective (the Senate, the Supreme Court, big business)

👇🎯 Folks look at you like you’re crazy when you say we’re in the midst of the worst Article I constitutional crisis in 🇺🇸 history, & then, well, 👇🤷‍♂️

It's almost like the fact that the US political system gives white, rural voters way, way more representational power than the rest of us has some kind of distorting effect on our national discourse.

Once again, we are in the midst of the worst, most unprecedented Article I constitutional crisis in 🇺🇸 history

On the slate gabfest this week, she discussed a revealing part of their strategy, which is to find takes that will generate engagement and reach, especially through arguments that generate intra-left conflict. I suspect you can create a successful business on this premise, but not so much a polity

Having a plurality of extremists in your electoral coalition is a huge problem when institutions empower them directly

I’m a fan of the fight in @chrismurphyct.bsky.social — but I live here, and it doesn’t feel like a distraction to me. It feels like they are preparing to occupy the city so it’s easier to maintain power after they lose the election.

Yep. As I try to argue in this pod chat, Trump's military occupation of DC and LA, his threat to end vote-by-mail via executive order, and the corrupt Texas gerrymandering scheme are part of the same big story.

checkpoints are by definition stops made without reasonable suspicion. They are presumptively unconstitutional. I don’t know what they’re saying this is about, but I’m certain whatever they say will be a pretext for general crime-detection and that that is not ok.

Watching video today of ICE agents roaming the streets of American cities and reading about the anger and fear of Bostonians during the Fugitive Slave crisis is a reminder of why it is so important that the institutions charged with interpreting the past be allowed to do so without interference.

lol

the thing everyone is going to have to accept is that the post-trump period, whenever it comes, will not and cannot be a project of national unity, it must be a project of partisan project of renewal, in the same way that reconstruction and the new deal were partisan projects of renewal.

"Strength lies in organisation, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations."

The reason for this asymmetry is in part because rural voters' votes are worth more than urban voters' votes. They count more than we do in our political system. In fact, they count disproportionately more than any other country in the world. www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

👇🎯 A lot of folks don't seem to understand that 90+% of our authoritarian problem is the total failure of Article I of the Constitution, not Article III.

From a director at the … American Enterprise Institute

I guess it will at least be amusing to watch the Roberts Court twist itself into knots to declare the new Texas map legal, moral, and virtuous, and the new California map a brazen perversion of democracy.

Again, the platform needs to be institutional reform. None of the policies can get through our failed, broken, incredibly anti-democratic electoral, legislative, & judicial institutions. And the guardrails of democracy have failed. Fixing that is first, second, & third order. 👆 is simply not it.

👇🎯 Norms and duct tape worked for a long time. Sort of. But we’re all out of norms, & we’ve shredded our last rolls of tape.

Folks look at you like you’re crazy when you say we’re in the midst of the worst, most unprecedented Article I constitutional crisis in American history, & then, well, 👇🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

This is part of the structural problem with Article I. It was always lousy, but it's especially bad now that parties have fully nationalized. Why?

I'm only seeing white men comment on the Epstein scandal. And while I see how the MAGA movement is animated by an anti-elite discourse, it seems like most takes are missing the role that protection against child sex predation plays in authoritarian movements and the populist right.

I was skeptical that the MAGA majority on the Supreme Court would ever rule that Trump could run for president again but after today’s ruling I think they’d probably roll over and do that too.

First day of Constitutional Law, August 2025. Can you count to 5? Excellent. Have a nice semester. See you in the spring.

Yes. But a reminder that the Article III constitutional crisis is really primarily an Article I constitutional crisis. If & when Dems ever govern again, there must be wholesale reform of SCOTUS' size, powers, & funding, until it stops acting as a lawless super-legislature. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

According to this Supreme Court, President Biden's Department of Education was exceeding its power by trying to forgive peoples' student loans. President Trump, on the other hand, has the power to just completely dismantle the entire Education Department.

Goal: Crush Fed independence Need a policy tool: Can replace Fed chair only if the chair is malfeasant, criminal, or derelict in duties. Need a violation to allege: Manufacture false concern about construction project management. It's pretextual and dangerous. www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

Your regular reminder that this could all end tomorrow if we had a minimally functioning Article I of the Constitution: bsky.app/profile/mcop...

if being part of the union does not entitle you to any of the benefits of the union, we do not, in any real sense, have a union

notice how strategically he says "we" and build that into your politics yesterday

And again, as long as Article I and Article III of the Constitution are completely failing, he is correct: bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Liberals say that Trump is threatening to end our democracy and bring back feudalism. They're wrong—he's threatening to end our republic and bring back feudalism.

Washington, D.C., has a population roughly equivalent to Alaska's. And it has zero senators. If D.C. had senators, the GOP megablil bill would have failed today. Instead, Murkowski got carve-outs and money for Alaska, and then voted to subject DC to the bill

Unprecedented constitutional crimes & failure of Article I of the constitution, happening daily right in front of us

Voters who supported Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso in their most recent general elections = 440,734 NYC voters who ranked Zohran #1 in the *primary* = 432,305 Perfect distillation of how unrepresentative the Senate is

There is extraordinarily wide consensus among everyone who's not a fascist that Congress needs to be strengthened to fulfill its proper constitutional roles. IMO strengthening Congress requires enabling it to operate unicamerally, which means doing something very big about the Senate

I'd say we need to have the conversation *now* & reach a rough consensus in the process of adjudicating who the party's standard bearers are going to be in the coming campaign seasons. It's obviously just wishcasting to say that but as a matter of how reform occurs, it's this kind of agenda setting

A few ideas: Inaugurate or adapt procedural mechanisms to allow for Congress to operate unicamerally. Imagine a mandatory joint session where items are voted on by members of both houses, so House majorities can overwhelm Senate malapportionment. Or binding conference committees favoring the House.

If you don't have a plan to abolish, fundamentally reform, or reliably circumvent the US Senate, you don't have a meaningful constitutional politics.

If you say that America is poised to institutionalize a police state - that the reality of concentration camps and regularized disappearances will become an ongoing facet of life - you'll still receive eye-rolls and clucked tongues. But that is not a possibility of this budget, it is the purpose.

“Avoiding despotism must start well before we turn to courts as a last line of defense. It requires expanding democracy, which in turn requires acknowledging how American-style checks and balances severely obstruct the will of the people.” A forum on our constitutional crisis:

Justice Jackson said today’s Supreme Court ruling is an assault on our democracy. She’s wrong, it is an assault on our republic.

The reason why the modern Republican party is so hostile to democracy is because their political goals are so unpopular.