As the national guard cases head to the Supreme Court, two passages from Ernst Frankel’s The Dual State stick with me:

I used to focus on left versus right. Now I’m much more worried about the money at the top. But while it might seem strange to say it, I think this is a hopeful way of looking at the world that opens the door to coalitions that seemed impossible before. My first for the @newrepublic.com:

Former FTC Commissioner @bedoyausa.bsky.social's new piece in @newrepublic.com gives a glimpse of what’s at stake for Americans if SCOTUS allows the president the authority to fire FTC officers without cause.

How W. E. B. Du Bois responded to government policing of "anti-American" sentiment during the 1910s: "I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, 'We are seeking to have the Constitution of the United States thoroughly and completely enforced.' ”

What we might refer to as a "Kavanaugh Stop"

It can’t just be on us to make time every week to unsubscribe from whatever billionaire is behaving badly. Our elected officials NEED to step up to the plate to break up the billionaire conglomerates that made this censorship possible.

My amazing sister just got an article published in the Journal of Roman Studies! Check it out if you want to hear about how the Scipios spoke, heard, felt, and even smelled their funerary rituals

Dear journalists: The President has not fired Lisa Cook. The President is *trying* to illegally fire her. Your words shape people’s reality. Please be accurate in your reporting.

DDC Judge Sooknanan rightfully blocked the FTC’s CID to @mmfa.bsky.social as unconstitutional. The opinion is worth a read ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

I don’t even know what to do with this news. The University of Chicago, home of a world-class museum on West Asian and North African antiquities, may be seriously curtailing or shutting down its languages and area studies departments. A cultural crown jewel in my home town is destroying itself.

Happy to see FIRE and Stanford Daily teaming up on this lawsuit against the administration’s despicable censorship crusade against immigrants. It’s a righteous case. I worry a bit that standing will be used to attack it by dishonest judges. www.thefire.org/research-lea...

INBOX: Union for Reform Judaism, Central Conference of American Rabbis & American Conference of Cantors issue a lengthy statement declaring: "Starving Gazan civilians neither will bring Israel the 'total victory' over Hamas it seeks, nor can it be justified by Jewish values or humanitarian law."

There are a lot of horrifying and embarrassing things about Trump’s SLAPP against WSJ but the former paralegal in me finds it very funny that the firm he hired doesn’t know how to take a proper screenshot.

Here is the full letter Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, sent to colleagues: www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

Instead of focusing on protecting consumers, the FTC is hosting a virulently transphobic workshop next week. Because the President illegally fired all the Democratic commissioners, there is no one within the agency to speak out against this hate-filled exercise www.ftc.gov/news-events/...

The 1L curriculum, which remains basically unchanged since the late 1800s, is broken. One key missing piece is a total absence of political science and history. We don’t teach our students to think about the law as *inherently* political—both in terms of what it does, and how it is shaped.

When we throw up our hands and say none of it matters, we're doing the fascists’ work for them. They don't need to hide their corruption if they can convince us it's pointless to look. They don't need to silence truth-tellers if we've already decided truth is meaningless.

As reported by @nytimes.com, the frivolous @mmfa.bsky.social investigation is indeed something the FTC is dedicating real resources to. Absolutely absurd and dangerous. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/t...

Commissioner Slaughter and I issued a statement about the new FTC majority's decision to drop the lawsuit against Pepsi.

In @theslingutah.bsky.social, I argue Chair Ferguson has sacrificed the FTC's credibility and independence by pursuing Musk's vendetta against @mmfa.bsky.social. I am deeply disappointed in the agency where I began my career. www.thesling.org/the-ftc-shou...

In @theslingutah.bsky.social, I argue Chair Ferguson has sacrificed the FTC's credibility and independence by pursuing Musk's vendetta against @mmfa.bsky.social. I am deeply disappointed in the agency where I began my career. www.thesling.org/the-ftc-shou...

This is getting a fair amount of scorn, and I’d say it deserves it. The hidden premise is that “corruption” requires the specific proof that the Supreme Court has decided (controversially) is required for certain very specific federal criminal statutes. /1

applying for jobs again

What an image! Venezuelan men who narrowly avoided being imprisoned by Trump in El Salvador without trial (saved by the Supreme Court) spelled out an SOS to a @reuters.com camera drone observing the Bluebonnet ICE facility. 11 days ago, buses to the airport were turned around at the last second.

Tomorrow's SCOTUS arguments address whether the Constitution allows church-run charter schools and whether states can refuse them. The Court may also answer a vital Indian law question:whether it will use the US's treatment of Natives as "history and tradition" to set constitutional rules elsewhere.

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

My sister is very impressive!

A colleague at Stanford’s business school used The Stanford Daily to argue—poorly—against DEI. The piece was riddled with historical errors and left one searching for fact, so I broke my public writing hiatus to respond. I hope you’ll read and share the piece. stanforddaily.com/2025/04/22/w...

I will be thinking about this quote from the end of @benjamincarterhett.bsky.social’s The Death of Democracy for a long time. I would highly recommend the book. (Apologies if the punctuation is wrong, I transcribed the quote from the audiobook)

It is affirmatively good for elected republicans to acknowledge that this administration is targeting its political opponents in scary ways, as long as they *then* say they are going to fight back anyway

I am proud that Stanford is standing up for academic freedom and the first amendment. I wish President Levin and Provost Martinez would do more, but this is a good start. stanforddaily.com/2025/04/15/l...

PRELOGAR PUSHBACK: The US government's top #SCOTUS lawyer under Biden, Elizabeth Prelogar, is urging law firms (& universities) to 'stand up' to the Trump administration and 'to do it together.' More: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

As the First Amendment cases proudly proclaim, "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted by customs and border protection"

Anyone who thought Trump might be a friend to labor was fooling themselves. He just picked an attorney from a top union-busting firm which has argued the NLRB is unconstitutional to be NLRB General Counsel. news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-...

NOW: Press call with FTC Commissioners Bedoya and Slaughter regarding Trump's attempt to fire them illegally: Commissioner Bedoya: "This is corruption plain and simple...This opens the door for a law enforcement apparatus that is controlled not by the law, but by money."

It's impossible to fully express the frustration and sadness at Trump's decision to illegally fire @bedoyaftc.bsky.social. Commissioner Bedoya is the best boss I have ever had. He sees the potential in everyone & works to find common ground with those with whom he profoundly disagreed every day.

It's impossible to fully express the frustration and sadness at Trump's decision to illegally fire @bedoyaftc.bsky.social. Commissioner Bedoya is the best boss I have ever had. He sees the potential in everyone & works to find common ground with those with whom he profoundly disagreed every day.

I am a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. Earlier today, the president attempted to illegally fire me. This is corruption, plain and simple. I will see the president in court. My full statement:

Wild stuff going on in this hearing. I’d recommend reading @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social’s play-by-play in full.

When our friends, students, and colleagues can’t travel without fear of detention or deportation, we don’t live in a free society. I’ll never understand the silence of leaders who won’t use their power to say—out loud—that this is wrong. And I won’t soon shut up about it.

Among the material devastation to everyday people, Senate Dems have now blown a hole in their ability to work with the House. We had an agreed upon plan, House took immense risk, then Senate turned around midway and destroyed it w/ a fear-based, inexplicable abdication. They own what happens next.

“Government efficiency.” I was a federal government paralegal for 3 years. If you took away my Adobe Acrobat I would have been at least 30% less productive.

Growing up, I never believed this quote would apply so perfectly to my country. We are at the beginning but we know how authoritarians end things. We’ve seen it before, and we have promised not to forget. encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/a...

Big deal—after correcting, it turns out that moderate candidates do not perform better than extreme candidates in general elections. Kudos to Andy, Dan, and Adam for updating a key question in political science

From the NTEU v. Vought (CFPB case), 1:25-cv-00381 (D.D.C) hearing...

Using my “personal liberties” to repost this

If you’re passionate about fighting corporate power and a rising 2L, then make sure you apply for @openmarkets.bsky.social Louis Brandeis Law & Political Economy Fellowship. Spend 10 weeks researching & drafting cutting-edge research with the best people in the business. Link and process 👇

1/ Dear everyone who just went grocery shopping and saw this, There’s a person in government who could flick his pen and investigate what the hell is going on with eggs. No, not your congressman. His name is Andrew Ferguson. He’s the new head of the @FTC. Has he done that? No

Mitch McConnell got us here, now he gets to vote his conscience after it is too late.