People looked way older in the past, right? Very important conversation broke out at the end of this week's episode. @jodyavirgan.com @kcarterjackson.bsky.social @pastpunditry.bsky.social offer their theories -- what's yours?

I'm working on a piece I'm slightly behind on for @liberalcurrents.com on reconstruction. And I'm always struck by the fact that we only needed the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, and Fair Housing Act because the state and federal governments just ignored the Reconstruction Amendments.

NYC may have the tall ships but Boston has This Day live! Plan your 250th celebrations accordingly.

Boston! We're bringing @thisdaypod.com to WBUR's City Space on June 24th, talking all things America 250. Will be there with @pastpunditry.bsky.social @kcarterjackson.bsky.social and more. A great way to kick off your summer semi-quincentennial happenings... www.wbur.org/events/10850...

I know it’s early, but I think the conservative legal movement’s Serious Intellectual starting a tweet with “Let’s be real” and then arguing that the Supreme Court actually decided the presidential immunity case so it could protect *Joe Biden* is the funniest shit I will read all week

You do, however, confirm that he is full of shit: Denies saying things they roll tape of him saying. Denies saying things he *just* said. When called out, says he never meant to say it, & moves on to another disingenuous, incoherent statement, dripping with contempt for those who dare pose questions

spoiler: you do not find out what tucker carlson really believes

Where are the student protests? The real answer isn’t that students decided to shut up. It’s that universities, and a hostile federal government, have expended massive resources trying to ensure they do.

1. Expanding the Court wouldn’t “weaken” it. 2. Some reforms, like removing the Court’s jurisdiction to overturn federal laws, would “weaken” it by restoring Congress’ power --> a good thing 3. Nobody wants to to eliminate an independent judiciary! Courts should enforce fed. laws, not gut them.

The Callais ruling is the latest evidence that the real problem with #SCOTUS is that it can do whatever it wants without any fear of pushback from Congress. The way to fix that is by making the Court *accountable* again, something that expanding it or imposing term limits won't actually accomplish:

theres just no coming back from this without a complete tear down and rebuild of some of our most major institutions

yes. one of the reasons why The Originalism Trap focuses on changing the way we read and interpret the Constitution is because clearly changing the text of the Constitution alone is not enough often necessary, yes, but insufficient on its own www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735353...

Accountability is not just about convinction. It is also about the public documentation of his crimes, the historical record and building a case for action later, all of which the last impeachment accomplished. And no one said anything about November.

We've updated our habeas tracker again, and more than **40,000** new cases have been opened since Trump took office again. projects.propublica.org/habeas-track...

as dystopian as having ai read bedtime stories to your kids sounds, this isn’t even a good use-case! we’ve had technology to read to kids for decades! i had a little fisher-price record player that read books. we have audio books and podcasts with real human voice actors. we don’t even need this

The problem is not that older faculty are sticking around - it’s that they are not being replaced. The argument of this piece is quite pernicious as it substitutes a class war btw workers and a neoliberal administration w an age war btw different ranks of workers

if you post this clip, you should also post clips from the same episode of him saying the 2020 election was stolen, the civil rights movement was “disgusting,” and trump can’t be racist bc he has sex with black women. tucker didn’t have a change of heart over trump; he had a change in strategy

People post this NYT piece to prove how gullible and easily manipulated the MSM is. I am the one that interviewed Beck, the day after the 2016 election. I regret not being even more suspicious and cynical and, even more, pushing back on platforming. Especially bc, haha, he warned me.

if you post this clip, you should also post clips from the same episode of him saying the 2020 election was stolen, the civil rights movement was “disgusting,” and trump can’t be racist bc he has sex with black women. tucker didn’t have a change of heart over trump; he had a change in strategy

EXCLUSIVE: The SPLC indictment, the Klan history behind it, and the ignominy of Todd Blanche. Another dark day for DOJ. Tonight, at Law Dork:

WOW: Jodi Kantor & Adam Liptak have the memos that describe the origins of SCOTUS shadow docket - the 2016 order halting Obama’s Clean Power Plan @jodikantor.bsky.social @adamliptak.bsky.social @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...

“viewpoint diversity” is a right-wing political project, as lisa siraganian explores in great detail here: www.aaup.org/academe/issu...

It’s infuriating when a woman comes forward about a man raping her in his hotel room after drinking and the response is “Why would she go to his room?” “Why would she drink with him?” This is Mike Pence logic. Women should be allowed to hang out with men without expecting they will be raped.

Have complex feelings about America’s 250th anniversary? So does Ken Burns. In this moment from @thisdaypod.com, @unumkenburns.bsky.socia tells us to embrace ambiguity–everywhere. Feat: @jodyavirgan.com, @pastpunditry.bsky.social, & @kcarterjackson.bsky.social Listen: harkaudio.com/april-10-202...

wrote about why you don’t have to hand it to tucker carlson (and why you shouldn’t!). www.ms.now/opinion/tuck...

good to see trump making life hard for both his catholic and protestant fans tonight

It's time to read the Church Committee Report! Published by a major press for the first time for it's 50th anniversary, we abridged it to its most jaw-dropping findings chronicling the abuses of the FBI, CIA, and Military from the 1950s to the 1970s. Order here: bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

Orban's loss has financial and organizational consequences for the far right worldwide.

Up next in our America250 series "50 Weeks That Shaped America" -- the battle at Ft Sumter sparks the Civil War. We get into the last-ditch efforts to avert war, the chess match between Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, and how both North and South rallied around the flag after the battle.

Bipartisan commitment to feel-good lies about the American past and present, I think this is a sickness of the soul

Trump exceptionalism is an insidious thing.

Making tenure count, for MSNOW I wrote about my employer, The University of Iowa, creating a center for intellectual freedom. It's a reactionary project built on decades of conservative propaganda about higher ed.

Zohran presents himself like a character on Parks & Rec, and I'll bet money this is a deliberate choice.

Same John O'Sullivan (former Thatcher speechwriter) who is now one of Orbán's house shills. Hayek's bastards abound! danubeinstitute.hu/en/authors/o...

The creation of a mythological National Review (high-minded, intellectual, virtuous conservatism) despite the wide availability of the real, continually publishing National Review (reactionary, chortling bigotry with a good vocabulary) is a load-bearing fiction in our political system.

Brimelow wrote a cover story for National Review in 1992 that became his very racist book, Alien Nation! (Also Buckley wasn't nearly as much of a force at NR by the 1990s; he handed editorial control over to John O'Sullivan in the late 1980s.)

New Yorker this week: "In the 90s, William F. Buckley had tried to keep paleocons like Brimelow and Buchanan out of mainstream conservatism by banning such ideas from the pages of National Review." Brimelow was a senior editor of NR in the 90s and wrote many articles including cover stories.

I’m very proud of my wife for sharing the details she did. I’m disgusted by all of it. She found herself in one of those moments where she didn’t care what she lost if it helped one other person. The reality is the truth don’t care who tells it, but she told it. Love you @allysammarco.bsky.social

A woman who worked for nearly two years for Rep. Eric Swalwell, a leading candidate for California governor, said she had sexual encounters with him while he was her boss and alleged he twice sexually assaulted her when she was too intoxicated to consent.

Philly and @oah.org visitors: join us next Wednesday for a conversation with @danielle-wiggins.bsky.social and the great Marcia Chatelain on BLACK EXCELLENCE, Danielle Wiggins' terrific new book on Black liberalism. Free and open to the public and no need to register

exactly so. trump weighing in on sandy hook conspiracies has nothing to do with what he thinks about the conspiracies, and everything to do with how he feels about the person making them

In his tirade against MAGA war critics, Trump blasted Alex Jones for calling Sandy Hook a hoax. This seemed odd. So I went back and checked. At the time Trump hailed Jones as "amazing" and rebuffed demands that he denounce lies about the shooting. New from me: newrepublic.com/article/2089...

EXCLUSIVE at the newly relaunched @informant.news: We've obtained secret documents showing that a former Navy SEAL whose testimony helped overturn a war crimes case against his platoon leader has recently joined the white supremacist group Patriot Front. www.informant.news/patriot-fron...

Public university professors in Texas say a new law restricts their academic freedom www.npr.org/2026/04/08/n...

good info here. plus: I don't think they're on here but if you look up Liberation Martial Arts you can find some very thoughtful analysis on how the way that you train should relate to your politics and vice versa

UPDATE: Letters from Leo can now independently confirm that the meeting took place — and that the Vatican was so alarmed by the Pentagon’s tactics that Leo shelved plans to visit America. Some officials saw their reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.

you hated them while they were happening!!!

I watch the same in areas I follow. The next problem is: so long as the Supreme Court can rewrite constitutional and administrative law on the fly to reflect Republican desires, no reconstruction is possible. The route to real public policy in any area runs through Court reform.

It’s hard to overstate how much of this moment is driven by people who got a taste of accountability and were very, very mad about it.

Y’all, the preorder links for The Political Supreme Court are here! Direct from UNC Press: uncpress.org/978146969713... Bookshop: bookshop.org/p/books/the-... Amazon: a.co/d/08lXOMa7 Barnes & Noble: www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-politi...