I get why people respond to the “legal arguments” for the unitary executive. But since the real theory is obviously “a president I agree with should be above the law, a president I disagree with is even more restricted than the law says,” the “legal” discussion takes place inside a surreal fiction.

I have a longer piece in last December's issue of the Harvard Law Review on how a Court that used to insist it was one of "review, not first view" is, in fact, leapfrogging everyone in lots of cases, including through cert. before judgment: harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/u...

Certiorari "before judgment" is how #SCOTUS takes up a full appeal *before* the intermediate federal courts have heard it. It used to be exceedingly rare. For instance, there wasn't a *single* grant of such expedited review b/w August 2004 & February 2019. This is the *23rd* such grant since then.

The independent redistricting commission used public comment as a standard for what constituted communities of interest. The legislature ought to give it a try.

Last night I went to a talk at our church by Matt Soerens of World Relief, author of this book about the Christian attitude towards immigration. He’s a good speaker and blended facts with Biblical analysis./1 www.ivpress.com/welcoming-th...

🧵Let’s take a close look at the proposed “partisan bias test” by Rep. Brammer in the #utleg. Link to the current proposed bill: le.utah.gov/interim/2025... Apologies for lack of alt text in images in this thread. They are all screenshots of the bill text linked below.

Even with their convoluted "fairness" formula they weren't satisfied, so they had to find a way to still count independent write-in Lyman voters as Republican votes

This deserves major pushback. If a party candidate decides to buck the party and go independent, and gets votes as an independent against the party nominee, those voters were explicitly choosing not to vote for that party in that race! #utpol

1/ I think a lot about this passage from Seila Law: "[T]he Framers made the President the most democratic and politically accountable official in Government. Only the President (along with the Vice President) is elected by the entire Nation."

We need to be very clear what this is that Trump is describing. The word is terrorism. He is a terrorist. He directs the murder of civilians in international waters and causes ordinary people doing ordinary things to fear for their lives.

This congenitally dishonest administration is using a lie (drug interdiction) to conceal its actual objectives (naval blockade to provoke war). But Trump feels uninhibited and blabs out the real goal.

Once more: the best evidence shows that Tylenol taken during pregnancy is not harmful. **This question is settled.** The benefit of reducing discomfort and fever is extremely important at a time when the fetus is developing. Pregnant women - Tylenol is safe. sciencebasedmedicine.org/tylenol-and-...

Old: memorial services New: political rallies masquerading as memorial services

I do not enjoy having the Klan running the United States government tbh

These are contradictory messages because Trump and Vance are not interested in consistency but are propagandizing to two different audiences. (1) is aimed at the domestic audience to justify these summary executions at sea; (2) is aimed at striking fear in Venezuelans and inhibiting fishing.

Trump and Vance’s contradictory messages on these killings: 1: Our glorious military carried out hyper-precise attacks on dastardly drug smugglers. 2: If you’re an innocent fisherman, watch out because we might kill you by mistake!

There’s a simple answer. “Democrats won’t vote to fund this regime as is. It’s up to the republicans if they want to shut down the government. They’re in the majority.”

Executive orders cannot supersede federal law or the constitution. Federal law sets visa fees, including for H-1B visas. And the maximum fee is $4,500, according to the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016 (Public Law 114-113). Current State Dept. site: travel.state.gov/content/trav...

Utah! Let's show up Monday morning! Demand fair maps! September 22, 2025 in Salt Lake City at the Utah Capitol building. Room 120 in the Senate building, on the east side.

… so treat people the way you want them to treat you. Model the behavior you’d like to see from them. Yes, this has been said a million times before. But only because it’s true and it works. And goodness knows we could use some more love and kindness in the world right now. /fin

“should we reach out to Trump voters” conversations are always a mess because they’re just a bunch of people talking past each other one side is like, why are you trying to reach the hardcore MAGA base and the other side is like, why would you not want to flip the marginal voters both are correct

Literally this cartoon

There is no world in which it is normal for the president to publicly call upon his attorney general to hurry up and prosecute his political foes. It’s like the Watergate tapes but posted on social media. Let’s get a grip on what’s happening here.

Don’t want to get called the Gestapo? Stop acting like the Gestapo.

Democrats need to seriously consider an impeachment inquiry into now-Judge Emil Bove if/when they take back the House. He led the brazenly corrupt Eric Adams quid pro quo. He facilitated the Tom Homan bribery cover-up. And there’s probably more! He was Trump’s hatchet man at DOJ for months!

In a less insane time, if it was discovered that the President of the United States said this privately to their AG, it would’ve triggered an all-encompassing, impeachable corruption scandal. Here, Trump is saying it publicly and it’s just another Saturday.

*taps the sign*

In light of the increasingly apparent pattern of extortion that Trump engages in as his way of doing business or wielding power, we ought to ask what he has extorted, and from whom, outside the public view. Especially, how many Republicans are under his thumb bc of blackmail?

I worry that some folks will miss the real significance of this: Donald Trump knew that his border czar was a criminal when he hired him, and one of the reasons he hired him is that he knew his border czar would do *whatever he was told* in order to avoid having an FBI and DOJ investigation proceed.

The White House may call it deregulation, but in reality, it's replacing written rules with unwritten rules. (Rule 1: "Don't upset the President.") It's swapping transparent, tested rules for secret, shifting ones. One set serves the public interest, the other reflects the President's whims.

Trump just enacted the largest cuts to food assistance in history. Now he's cancelling the government survey that measures hunger in America.

Congress already decided "the point of immigration," and it isn't this lawless shakedown

Critical part of the President's new $100,000 charge for H1-B visas: The Administration can also offer a $100,000 discount to any person, company, or industry that it wants. Replacing rules with arbitrary discretion. Want visas? You know who to call and who to flatter.

🚨🚨🚨🚨Without explanation, BLS has indefinitely delayed a key data release used to calculate inflation. Annual Consumer Expenditures data is used to determine the weighting of specific goods and services in the Consumer Price Index for the year ahead. www.axios.com/2025/09/19/b...

From President Lyndon B. Johnson to the Smothers Brothers, who had a popular, bold, and very funny political satire TV show in the late '60s. I'm old enough to remember it. They regularly skewered Johnson (Vietnam War era), and for all his faults, was elegant enough to respond thus.

If someone goes from a media outlet to a government agency and then implements a policy attempting to prevent the media from reporting on the agency, what does that tell you about their media outlet?

Absolute full court press against the first amendment.

Trump posts on Truth Social that he’s ordered another strike on what he claims is a drug trafficking boat. He’s presented no evidence that his victims in the three previous strikes were running drugs. Drug trafficking is also not a capital crime. Trump is murdering people in international waters.

The new $100k/year H1B fee is pure economic self-harm—workers making **5 times the median US income**, who contribute massively to the US, would still basically be unable to afford this fee Oh, but never fear, the White House reserves the right to dish out exemptions as favors!

This is wildly illegal and he has no authority to do this

The FAQ posted online for this program claims that this would be an EB-1/EB-2 visa. That is EXTREMELY illegal. Those visas are, by law, ONLY for people with “extraordinary” or “exceptional” ability, or advanced degrees (MAs or PhDs) who are being hired by an American business.

To drive this point home, if anyone were to get a green card through this program, a future administration would be entirely within their rights to strip the person of their legal status and deport them.

US Constitution Article III, section 3: “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them”

Again, the idea that “healthy people don’t need vaccines” is BACKWARDS. The sickest people *can’t* safely get vaccinated, and must therefore rely on the inoculation of as many other people around them as possible.

Now here is my summary of the ACIP meeting itself. 1. The chair permitted people to present harmful misinformation about vaccines throughout the entire meeting. 2. Retsef Levi and several other members appear to have no understanding of basic public health principles and IMO should be removed.

I like this. Since under RFK Jr, Covid shots are now for people with underlying conditions that put them at risk, Michigan’s chief medical executive Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian states that not having the most recent Covid shot constitutes such an underlying condition. www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/inside...

In Global Health Council, Roberts *alone* has had the district court injunction on hold under a single-Justice administrative stay. That stay may be allowing Trump to effectively retroactively veto congressional appropriations that expire on 9/30.

It has been five weeks since my kids brought covid home from school. I am recovering from this breakthrough case at a considerably faster pace than the last one. But it still hit me so hard that, 5 weeks later, I can’t go on a walk with my son. And RFK Jr.’s HHS wants more of this.