As usual, @stevevladeck.bsky.social does a good job parsing out the moving parts to explain Jacksons administrative stay this evening.

So I'm glad that Gorsuch is worried about the "continual accretion" of executive power, but...come on. After Trump v. Hawaii, Trump v. US, Trump v. CASA and all of the shadow docket rulings that allowed the President to circumvent the spending clause of Article I,...

A clear demonstration of the power of framing. If you only saw this headline you probably would have a knee jerk aversion to Prop 50. Context matters. In a world where we know people aren't clicking past the notification we need to find ways to contextualize better.

I'm fairly convinced by the argument (made by KYE and others) that the buffoonishness of Trump's public appearances has greased the wheels of authoritarianism because it's hard to admit to ourselves or convince others that this person's administration is steamrolling over the republic.

Big Buckley Energy

This post from @benjaminjriley.bsky.social was lab grown to appeal to my interests: the dangers of AI for democratic self-government, the value of in person face to face dialogue in schools for democratic subject formation, and the danger that young men will just further retreat into AI sex paradise

Game 7 of the 2016 World Series broke the space-time continuum. Maybe this game 7 is resetting it.

It's time for a Grand Remonstrance!

But don't worry, it's the intolerant Left that needs to think more about how they can unite the country and engage with people who disagree with rather than isolating themselves.

Teaching about the value of an independent bureaucracy is a challenge because the ideas of "unelected bureaucrats" is persuasive within their folk political psychology - even for high school students.

I tried to give up on this game and go to bed, but my wife keeps texting me the play by play from downstairs...

Is this the MLB's plan to re-open the government? Keep this game going until the shutdown ends?

Imagine teaching US history and government to high schoolers.

I wonder if there are any historical examples of oligarchs buying off the military that might be instructive here? I wonder how they turned out?🤔

You love to see it

This is monstrous.

💯 These are all things I've added readings or topics on since I expanded the course from a one semester to a full year. I also added a whole unit on state and local governments, since it's not in the CED, as well as a day on immigration law, + brought in Chevron/Loper Bright into the bureaucracy

I actually think this is more upsetting to me. Using private money to transform something that is supposed to belong to the public is much more of a betrayal of democracy than just the demolition of the building or the claims of "wasting money while the government is shutdown."

Senator Merkley is on hour 20 of reading How Democracies Die, mixed w commentary, on u.s. senate floor

The last few days has really revealed how much casual Nazism there is just floating around...

I saw an ad for a "practical AI workshop" for teachers which promised to show you how to use AI for lesson planning and comment writing to free up time for "what's most important - teaching and engaging students." I cannot emphasize enough how this premise must be rejected.

This is always the challenge I have teaching 9th grade survey in early modern history, even with something like "the Renaissance" - in which a standard textbook would put Petrarch and Machiavelli in the same page (sometimes paragraph) despite being separated by over a century.

From @stevevladeck.bsky.social 's substack this morning on the real dangers of the admin 's 29th application to the Court for emergency relief - can the President make up his own reality and authority to use the military against citizens? open.substack.com/pub/stevevla...

One house of Congress should be determined by sortition/lottery rather than election.

The most powerful people in history have retreated to an elaborate cybernetic fantasy-world that they built for themselves so they can escape their fear of an imagined end of the world, and they demand you join them there because that is the only way they can maintain the illusion of control.

If you attend a No Kings Day event, please record the number of people in attendance in our crowdsourced crowd-counting sheet. We prefer official estimates above ad-hoc counts — if you count yourself, pls be conservative (people are bad at estimating crowd sizes). docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

My 5 year old: Daddy why does your shirt have a crown crossed off on it? Me: it says no kings, because I don't believe we should have kings in our country. 5 year old: But what about queens?

Also for K-12 education.

So let's be clear, when college students protest a visiting speaker or US foreign policy, it's a 5 alarm fire, but when 20 and 30 year old political operatives joke about the Holocaust, sexual violence, and racism "they're just kids."

One of my favorite classes every year is a seminar discussion looking at Machiavelli and More and every once in a while a student starts thinking about whether Machiavelli has an ulterior motive or if More is endorsing Utopia or satirizing it, and it's just such an intellectual delight.

So right now my list is: Trump v. Slaughter/ Trump v. Cook - Ind. Agencies Learning Resources v. Trump - Tariffs Chiles v. Salazar - conversion therapy and first amendment Case v. Montana - search and seizure Louisiana v. Callais – race conscious redistricting birthright citizenship pending.

This seems like a steal for any would-be philanthropist with too much money on their hands

Hey law/Court people, I'm putting together a SCOTUS term preview for my AP US Gov students, and was curious what you all thought would be the most relevant and accessible cases for high school seniors.

The rule of law means that civilians who commit crimes are prosecuted in courts of law with benefit of due process. Extrajudicial executions in international waters are an affront to our Constitution and the law of nations. It isn’t national defense. It’s murder.

This 100% - so much PD is focused on chasing whatever the latest fad in edtech or pedagogy-speak instead of giving teachers time to hone their craft by reading deeply and broadly in their fields.

On a similar point from some undergrads: www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Finally an LLM I can get behind.

Hmm, I wonder who was President in 2019 and if there are any common denominators?

If any other president in all of history said the military should use American cities as a training ground he would be removed from office that same day. The hardest thing to tolerate in all this is how relatively silent elected democrats are. It’s ridiculous.

I've never served, but this still seems astoundingly offensive to tell career soldiers that they are nothing but killing machines and tools for destruction.

Every general there is whispering "this meeting could have been an email"

the other half of this that I've never really gotten over: this all but explicitly amounts to valorizing being "asleep". people are really out here wielding "I have no idea what's going on, historically speaking" as a credential

If you have to say it, you’re not. The U.S. Supreme Court isn’t here to just perform a technical legal function. Its role is to explain to the whole public the application of the Constitution. It is meant to expound on the spirit and purpose of the Constitution. This court ain’t doing any of that.

This won't get nearly as much coverage as the Kimmel stuff but the Court considering whether the US should officially become a patrimonial state should be extremely troubling.

An absolute clown show. Avoiding chaos like this is one of the many reasons a for *not* having EOs be the normal method of legislating or regulating. You really want more careful review than “Steve Miller doodled it on a napkin and Trump signed it with a sharpie.” www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

"this isn't Nam, this is bowling. There are rules" open.substack.com/pub/chrisgei...

Casually joking (in a public speech) about military strikes on non-combatants in international waters that have killed at least 14 people. Surely this counts as the revelling in violence or belittling of human life that he explicitly stated deserves state coercion and punishment.

Every major publication in this country needs to have dedicated staffers or correspondents reporting on gaming, streamers, podcasts, and TikTok. Not as a once in a while thing. As standard beats. These are massive segments of American culture. No excuses for it anymore.

This 100%