To explain: At the start of his opinion, Judge Young includes an anonymous note received by his chambers, which reads “Trump has pardons and tanks..what do you have?” Responding to the note, Young says we have our “magnificent Constitution” and “here’s how that works out in a specific case —“

OMG this William G. Young opinion that just dropped (12:30pm) in AAUP v. Rubio. It begins with a postcard sent to Chambers and Young's reply card: "Trump has pardons and tanks, what do you have?" WGY: "We the People of the United States — you and me — have our magnificent Constitution"

it took a judge nominated by Ronald Reagan to pen America's J'Accuse this is to my mind the most important, most eloquent, most moving, and most damning testimony of the ignominy of Trump's presidency yet storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Omg. I’ve never seen anything like this in a judicial opinion:

BREAKING A federal judge that the Trump admin's policy targeting pro-Palestinian students for deportation violated the First Amendment. His blistering, 161-page ruling starts with a threat he received in chambers and his response.

Judge SLAMS the masking of federal agents in ruling finding Trump admin violated pro-Palestine protesters' rights: "To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

JUST IN: Judge Lamberth has *blocked* a new wave of terminations at Voice of America, offering harsh words for Kari Lake and saying the Trump administration’s conduct in his case would support civil contempt proceedings, if only the plaintiffs had asked. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

JUST IN: American Oversight asks the 11th Circuit to vacate Judge Cannon's blockade of the special counsel Jack Smith's report on Trump's handling of classified material. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

Great new paper by Phil Howe, @davidsteinecke.bsky.social & Christina Zuber on voting behavior of deputies in the Imperial Austrian Reichsrat: doi.org/10.1111/lsq....

No, no, no ! The Habsburg Netherlands were not occupied by the Spaniards and Austrians. It was its own political entity in the Habsburg monarchy with it own laws, legal system, institutions and vibrant court life in Brussels.

JUST IN: Judge Simon sets a restraining order hearing for *tonight* on Trump's deployment of the National Guard in Oregon. Suggests he could issue a very quick order.

Bravo Moldova! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Insanely important win in Moldova tonight

JUST IN: Oregon sues to stop Trump’s deployment of the military, saying its pretextual and that ICE protests have been small and relatively contained since June. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

A simpler way to put it is that while the executive branch conducts relations with foreign governments, the foreign policy of the US in respect to commerce tariffs, and foreign aid is determined by Congress acting legislatively. It's not done by presidential diktat, fiat, or ukase.

As everyone knows, the window 1789–1991 contains the totality of all events that have occurred in world history. In fact, history is the Platonic ideal-typical unfolding of the only truly Historical event, the French Revolution. In this essay, I will…

Turns out it was pretty stupid of me to go to “law school” and pass the “bar” and practice “law”

Happy 120th birthday, special relativity! Albert Einstein introduced special relativity in the paper "On The Electrodynamics Of Moving Bodies," published in Annalen der Physik #OTD in 1905. 🧪 ⚛️ 🔭 Manuscript: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... English: www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einst...

Today is T. S. Eliot’s birthday. He was a poet, playwright, critic, & editor. From ‘Preludes’: “One thinks of all the hands That are raising dingy shades In a thousand furnished rooms.”

#OnThisDay in 1940, the philosopher, literary critic, and essayist Walter Benjamin died by suicide in the Spanish border town of Portbou whilst on the run from the Nazis. Here's Anca Pusca on the relevance of Benjamin’s oeuvre in a digital age: publicdomainreview.org/essay/o... #otd

BREAKING: The Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to withhold $4 billion in foreign aid funds b/c of Trump’s “pocket rescission” argument and b/c enforcing the injunction would affect foreign affairs. The Democratic appointees dissent. More to come at Law Dork: www.lawdork.com

BREAKING: Supreme Court lets Trump unilaterally freeze billions in congressionally appropriated foreign aid money apparent 6-3 vote with liberals in dissent @courthousenews.bsky.social

Visiting Portbou and the Walter Benjamin Memorial this past summer was quite an experience, and a very sad one indeed.

Walter Benjamin, 15 juillet 1892 - 26 septembre 1940. In Memoriam. "Il est plus difficile d'honorer la mémoire des sans-noms que celle des gens célèbres. A la mémoire des sans-noms est dédiée la construction historique" (c'est tout le sens du projet Wo, Walter)

Another Russian official has been found dead in Moscow. The body of Alexander Fedotov, former chairman of the St. Petersburg Committee for Transport Infrastructure. Russians claim he committed suicide. He was discovered yesterday under the windows of the Sheraton Hotel at Sheremetyevo Airport.

This was the count they couldn't get the grand jury to indict on (as is included lower in this doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... ) —>

Full text of the Comey indictment: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Link: buff.ly/MiWA0wu

JUST IN: A federal judge in Vermont has ordered the release of a woman in the US illegally who has applied for a visa as a survivor of human trafficking. She was arrested by ICE on her way to a mandatory "biometrics" appointment as part of that process. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

It was an absolute pleasure to contribute to The Parliament Magazine with some analysis of where the major problems in French politics are, and what we need to do to move past the current roadblocks. www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article...

Many former members of the Fed and former Treasury secretaries have filed a brief at SCOTUS urging the court not to allow the firing of Lisa Cook: www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...

NEW on MSNBC: Prosecutors in the EDVA presented new U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan with a memo explaining why charges should not be brought against James Comey — because there isn't enough evidence to establish probable cause, let alone enough to convince a jury to convict.

The most brilliant campaign in American military history, send skeet

JUST IN: Judge declines to give jobs back to 8 inspectors general Trump fired without giving cause or explanation required by law. Judge Ana Reyes (Biden) says they might be entitled to back pay but puts case on hold til #SCOTUS rules on FTC firing. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

JUST IN: The Trump administration's bid to coerce states to comply with immigration enforcement in order to receive disaster aid is illegal and unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled today. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

⚡️Ex-Prosecutor General Krasnov appointed head of Russia’s Supreme Court. Igor Krasnov, ex-prosecutor general known for his pivotal role in the Kremlin's crackdown on dissent, was the sole candidate for the role.

‼️ Russia: “The Ministry of Finance plans to increase domestic borrowing by 2.2 trillion rubles in 2025.” 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 www.interfax.ru/business/104...

BREAKING A federal judge found it "appears ... that multiple employees of the Department of Justice may have violated" local rules in SDNY guaranteeing Luigi Mangione's right to a fair trial. Full order here storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The decision by a small rural district in Poland to declare Jesus as its king has been annulled by the government-appointed provincial governor, who determined that local authorities do not have the legal authority to name Christ as their monarch.

If you’re planning to write something today, Roland Barthes would like to remind you that you will be in the realm of jouissance:

So @jimmykimmel.com's first words back tonight--"As I was saying..."-- were an homage to Tonight Show host Jack Paar, who used those words when he returned after walking out on his show in a censorship dispute with NBC. From 65 years ago: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrhQ...

I had missed this: In a small, rural Iowa county, Floyd County, a Democrat won one of the three seats on the county's board of supervisors tonight. He ousted the Republican who'd been appointed to replace the Republican supervisor who passed away.

Nogales, AZ 95% Hispanic Presidential 2024: D+38 AZ-7 Special Election: D+70 32 Point Shift Left!

D+43 with 80% in, D+22 in 2024 president, D+30 in 2024 senate so yet another big overperformance lol

RESULT: Adelita Grijalva is heading to Congress. The Democrat has won the #AZ07 special election very easily, and she will replace her father Raúl Grijalva. AP just called it. Among other things, Grijalva is expected to be the 218th person to sign the Epstein discharge position.

There’s something rather strange going down between Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov and one of Russia’s most influential judges. Krasnov is poised to head Russia’s Supreme Court, and his office is now targeting the Council of Judges chairman who just endorsed his promotion. meduza.io/en/feature/2...

Good morning.

NEW: SCOTUS majority says Trump can ignore precedent if the majority doesn't like it. A 90-year-old precedent meant nothing to the majority allowing Trump to fire an FTC commissioner during litigation. This is no way to run a court, let alone a country. Tonight, at Law Dork: