Greetings from Washington DC

youtube.com/watch?v=IZjq... For all you Civil Procedure and Federal Courts nerds out there, the Federal Circuit channels Schoolhouse Rock.

Will no one rid me of this meddlesome Fed Chair? Trump Threatens to Fire Powell if He Does Not Resign From Fed www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/b...

Good news for plutocrats.

Even Dictionary.com is taking shots at our idiotic president and his administrative buffoons. I give you today's Word of the Day: perpend. www.dictionary.com/word-of-the-...

The world is watching he says, and boy is it embarrassing.

The federal government's war on fraud enforcement continues unabated. SEC enforcement personnel down 18%. Bigger declines in Investment Management, Trading & Markets, and, in a nice homage to 2008, Credit Ratings. GAO: these changes "could pose risks to the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission."

Will media ever abandon this terminology? “ICE-involved shooting” like “police-involved shooting” does nothing but obscure who is doing the shooting. ICE agents or police weren’t shot. They were the shooters. Just say it directly!

Hiring the dregs of Liberty Law School for the DOJ is the legal equivalent of drafting 13-year-olds into the infantry

How a Cryptocurrency Helps Criminals Launder Money and Evade Sanctions www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/t... Wow, really? Who would have guessed that a financial instrument designed to disguise illegal activity would be used to disguise illegal activity.

Prosecutor Used Flawed A.I. to Keep a Man in Jail, His Lawyers Say www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/u... I guess I shouldn’t be surprised but you’d think that after all the stories of hallucinations in legal briefs lawyers would begin to take a bit more care when using #ChatGPT.

This is…brilliant.

The Comey Case Is a Comedy of Errors www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/o... This is what happens when the only qualification is blind loyalty.

My paper with @vanloo.bsky.social and @lanemiles.bsky.social showing that more than 15% of US companies have potentially illegal interlocking board members is now published in the Columbia Law Review columbialawreview.org/content/anti...

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/u... Wait for it … and because there is an ongoing criminal investigation it would be inappropriate to publicly release any investigatory information.

"On the first question, several jury members struggled to stifle laughter as Lairmore expanded on the hoagie’s alleged explosive properties. 'It was like, Oh, you poor baby,' the juror told me." www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

The World According to John Irving www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/s... “I could not, would not, in good conscience go to my birth country when there is such an authoritarian bully in the White House, and when the craven Republicans in the House and the U.S. Senate are complicit in their silence.”

Democrats were winning in the courts and in the court of public opinion. They threw away all the political momentum and leverage for what? To avoid photos of stranded Thanksgiving travelers?

Vigilante Lawyers Expose the Rising Tide of A.I. Slop in Court Filings www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/b... Robert Freund “is part of a growing network of lawyers who track down A.I. abuses committed by their peers, collecting the most egregious examples and posting them online.”

To Preserve Records, Homeland Security Now Relies on Officials to Take Screenshots www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/u... Solution to avoiding record-keeping requirements by auto-deleting on Signal was not to automatically save messages, it was to ask officials to take screenshots? Not suspicious at all.

Yes!

Anyone notice the state seal of Virginia adorning the stage at #Spanberger HQ?

How Bad Is Finance’s Cockroach Problem? We May Be About to Find Out. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/o... Stayed tuned to the private credit market. “Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, warned, ‘When you see one cockroach, there are probably more.’”

Keeping the House Absent, Johnson Marginalizes Congress and Himself www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/u... Any psychologists want to comment on why you would expend all that time and effort to become Speaker only to cede all your power and make yourself servile and irrelevant?

The Rise of the Inflatable Chicken Resistance www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/o... “Frivolity and absurdity are kryptonite to authoritarians who project the stern-father archetype to their followers. Once the pants are lowered and the undies of the despot are glimpsed, there is no point of return.”

Coal Miners With Black Lung Say They Are ‘Cast Aside to Die’ Under Trump www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/c... “President Trump has been a cheerleader for coal miners. But these miners say his administration is failing to enforce limits on a lethal workplace hazard.” This should surprise no one.

Love this story so much. Student journalists ftw 💪

Well Trump and Santos both believe in the same things—lying habitually, fabricating a mythic past, and grifting at every opportunity.

Jack Smith speaks -- and he outlines a few of the horrors of Trumpism's assault on the Rule of Law, as a reminder of what has happened in the last 8 months (during two recent speeches): /1

Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/u... So much for welcoming the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

ICE Is Cracking Down on Chicago. Some Chicagoans Are Fighting Back. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/u...

Should They Just Go Ahead and Put Up a Gold Trump Sign on the Supreme Court? www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/o... “Give a president total firing power and combine it with his pre-existing pardon power over federal crimes, and you’d allow the federal government to be run as a criminal enterprise.”

The situation in America is not great. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

It’s important to flood social media and news channels with news about how ICE lies, so that potential jurors see it.

It's a pretty big deal that the NYC Bar Association--one of the most prominent and respected bar associations in the country--is accusing the President of ordering the "unlawful summary execution," i.e. murder--of civilians in violation of US and international law. www.nycbar.org/press-releas...

Judge Again Blocks Guard Deployment as Trump Expands His Targets www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/u... For Trump the rule of law is not something to be followed. It is something to be ignored, evaded, or overwhelmed.

“Untethered to the facts” strikes me as a great description of, not just this determination, but of Trump’s entire life and worldview.

I never met Judge Bazelon or Justice Powell. But Joel Klein is take-it-to-the-bank honest. The lessons here are that happily life can work out anyway (he found Powell, & vice versa), and that there’s no defense for judges who are abusive to staff, litigants, media, commentators, anyone.

U.S. Military Attacked Boat Off Venezuela, Killing Four Men, Hegseth Says www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/u... Legally disputed? How about this for a headline: Trump and Hegseth ordered the murder of four more Venezuelan nationals today.

"Trump's 'compact with universities is just extortion... the future of higher education in America requires that every university reject it." Very good from UC Berkley law dean Erwin Chemerinsky. Higher ed leaders should all do so, and donors, unions, anyone with influence should pressure them to.

Halligan may have obtained the indictment the president wanted, but it...one thing to get a grand jury to indict. Getting a conviction is an entirely different matter. New from me for @brennancenter.org A discussion of the flawed Comey indictment. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana...

The three liberal justices are diverging more when it comes to the emergency docket, reflecting differing views on when—and how aggressively—to critique their conservative colleagues’ approach, @justinfwise.bsky.social reports news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/...

Give In or Fight Back? Colleges Are Torn on How to Respond to Trump. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/u... This is both 100% correct but will never happen (and has in fact already not happened).

Animal Farm (1946). Orwell knew what was coming. #trump #JamesComey

Trump Administration Live Updates: President Predicts More Indictments and Claims It’s Not Revenge www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09... “Napoleon decreed that there should be a full investigation into Snowball’s activities.” George Orwell, Animal Farm

Thomas has an amazing double standard. In 2018, when he believed a majority decision was undermining one he wrote (one in which he made up a standard no court had ever before applied), Thomas complained bitterly about how the majority flouted what he “dreamt up.” www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18p...

Marco Rubio is the acting Archivist of the United States, as it happens

JFC