Pro-democracy sign at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, in flagrant violation of the university administration's strict interpretation of institutional neutrality. Are authoritarian or apathetic members of the campus community being silenced?

It seems pointless even to say this, but the Fourth Amendment does not permit federal agents to kick down every door in an apartment building just because *some* people in that building are allegedly undocumented. Even in the unlikely event they had a warrant, warrants have to be specific.

My god. “Watson said she saw agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and into U-Haul vans. Kids were separated from their mothers…’It was heartbreaking to watch…seeing kids coming out buck naked and taken from their mothers, it was horrible.’”

Question: how do I “notice” that another patient in a waiting room is an illegal alien?

BREAKING: Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, delivers the most scathing legal rebuke of the Trump era, ruling that Trump and his cabinet illegally targeted pro-Palestinian students for deportation to "strike fear" into First Amendment protesters. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Relevant www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/u...

Citizens aren’t free if non-citizens aren’t free

In which a top US Border Patrol official, incredibly, tells my tall and Anglo colleague @chipmitchell1.bsky.social that he's not the type they're looking for as they go about downtown Chicago arresting people based on "how they look" chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

Really cool, conceptually simple approach here: cross-referencing grant proposal scores with literature citations and explicit acknowledgments in drug patents to identify patents linked to projects that wouldn't have been funded given a smaller budget

If they had a right-wing, “tough-on-crime” coded mayor there would be endless national profiles about him and how he finally brought sanity back to Chicago.

It's weird - but now in Oslo, there's so many EVs that you notice the noise and the smell from individual ICE cars, and you realise how much we've been normalising it for ever. You can smell them half a street away. And inside parking lots are just *quiet*.

During the first Trump Administration, they allowed every single case about congressional oversight to drag on until after Trump had left office. (Receipts at pp. 642-48 here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... )

Nearly 50 college instructors across #Illinois landed on #CharlieKirk's “Professor Watchlist.” @wbez.org reached out to all of them and found the list triggered hateful messages, threats of rape or death, and intensification since Kirk's killing. #twill www.wbez.org/politics/202...

Though it’s traumatic for me to bring this up, I was targeted by a group allied with Turning Point USA in 2018, with the help of Tucker Carlson on Fox. My home address circulated online and I got death threats. 1/

I think this is a typo for "books that I would absolutely recommend everyone run out and buy for themselves and their friends." (It's a good interview, about a good book!)

This is a remarkable article. Federal judges are increasingly speaking out against SCOTUS’s approach to the shadow docket. This isn't typical & underscores the impossible position for lower courts when SCOTUS makes new law on its emergency docket – especially when it doesn’t explain its rulings. /1

"Three rounds of interrogation lasted 10 hours, before Gu was told he was to be deported. No specific reason was given, he said, and the removal paperwork he provided to AP indicated inadequate documentation." dailynous.com/2025/09/02/p...

Taneyists gonna Taney.

In a June Democratic mayoral primary, Zohran Mamdani received more votes than 22 sitting US Senators received in their most recent general elections.

New piece on why it’s unhelpful to characterise COVID debate as ‘lockdowns are bad’ vs ‘lockdowns are good’ when it was really about people who claimed that COVID was 100x less fatal than it was + optimal to have a massive epidemic immediately before vaccine… vs those who sense checked these claims.

Politics theorists/philosophers: I’m writing a review article about relational egalitarianism. What work should I be aware of? I’m especially interested in stuff published after 2018, but earlier, under-appreciated stuff also welcome. Please feel free to self-promote!

Pope Leo: "The Church is brokenhearted at the cry of pain rising from places devastated by war, especially Ukraine, Iran, Israel and Gaza "In the name of human dignity and international law, I repeat to those in positions of responsibility what Pope Francis used to say: 'War is always a defeat!'

Politics theorists/philosophers: I’m writing a review article about relational egalitarianism. What work should I be aware of? I’m especially interested in stuff published after 2018, but earlier, under-appreciated stuff also welcome. Please feel free to self-promote!

ICE is an utterly lawless agency with no regard for accountability or oversight

Among these allies was a trustee of the University of Chicago.

Shut it all down, Senator. Demand Noem's immediate removal from office. Stop the Senate from doing anything.

Ryan Pevnick, “The Representation-Enabling Approach to Campaign Finance Reform,” argues that campaign finance rules in rep democ should be guided by anti-corruption & equal opp for influence, but also effective accountability, electoral selection, & voter competence. #poliphil #PolTheory #polisky

Great piece and highlights what we need to be making clearer.

There will be a huge loss to the training of new researchers, loss of opportunities to create new knowledge, loss of innovation and all of this will be very hard to measure.

NEW: Important Context spoke with a dozen people working at NIH about Director Jay Bhattacharya. The descriptions were universally unflattering, painting the health economist as ineffectual, dishonest, ideological, arrogant, and uncommitted to science. www.importantcontext.news/p/out-of-his...

To put these top-line budget numbers in context, cuts of this magnitude would effectively mean no new grants in FY2026. The entire extramural budget would go to existing, continuing grants. An abject failure of American ambition. And a betrayal of our global leadership in health science innovation.

Reading @michellegoldberg.bsky.social's excellent column makes me feel physically ill. The depth of the cruelty in Musk is simply unfathomable. He should never know another moment's peace. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/o...

Phenomenal piece by @michellegoldberg.bsky.social here. (Gift link)

Complementing other communications about the "Restoring Gold Standard Science" Executive Order, here is a statement from COS. Also, see the links to stories from previous attempts to co-opt open science for policies that undermine science and evidence-based policymaking. www.cos.io/about/news/c...

Read @joshtpm.bsky.social on the silence factor. "The Trump White House and The Great Quieting." Recommended. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-t...

To summarize the really important stuff: close bookshelf perusal shows that Bouie is a reader of the original (not revised) edition of A Theory of Justice.

New paper: "Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and Title VI: A Guide for the Perplexed" — with @hellmandeborah.bsky.social. Forthcoming in Harv L Rev Forum (ssrn.com/abstract=5271044) This is one of the first systematic analyses of the wave of Title VI claims over campus antisemitism. A quick summary 🧵:

I live in a liberal neighborhood and it's not unusual for (white) neighbors to say something to me like, "wow, you got that job despite being a white man, huh?", and I have to explain diplomatically that actually there is not a system of just handing out faculty jobs to women or people of color.

The Vice President of the United States did a podcast interview today where he pretended to have secret statistics about crime rates in communities with heft numbers of undocumented people. If he had such numbers he would share them. He is a liar. He is craven.

NEW: Andrew Cuomo is mounting a stunning political comeback despite 12 women accusing him of sexual harassment just 3 years ago. I spoke with several of the women whose claims were substantiated by three investigations. They feel betrayed & forgotten. www.huffpost.com/entry/andrew...

Here's the letter Noem sent Harvard, as posted on X. Nothing alleges ANY specific violation of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. Nothing. She cites no law violated, no regulation broken, no policy ignored. I don't care what you think of Harvard; this is clear weaponization of government.

"I care about social cohesion and social solidarity, which is why I tried to convince white people in Ohio that Haitian immigrants were eating their dogs." Naturally, Douthat does not challenge him at all on these lies.

i think it should be a bigger story that the president held a meeting with a foreign head of state where he ranted about the most gutter white supremacist propaganda you can find on the internet

People in Gaza are posting final messages.

this is a letter to the editor from a high school track runner who came in second to a trans girl in a race. her state house rep in maine started talking about it. so she wrote this: www.pressherald.com/2025/05/14/r...

Yesterday, the NIH R35 “Outstanding Investigator” grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab

putting people in cages because of where they were born is barbaric

I know that we’ve had a month worth of further constitutional crises but Kilmar Abrego Garcia is still in custody in El Salvador and that central crisis is a continuing fact.

A general tip, which I've condensed from studying and teaching the philosophy of racial justice: you weren't born yesterday, and you don't have to pretend you were.