"It is long past time to rein in not only counterterrorism, but also the concept of terrorism that fuels it." My op-ed in today's SF Chronicle on how Trump draws on a concept of terrorism that has been racialized & selective from the beginning. www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/open...

In case people tell you that public criticism of the court doesn’t matter, here’s Brett Kavanaugh trying to walk back what he said in the ICE roving patrol case - when he blessed racial profiling & called the stops prompt. He was lambasted; @akalhan.bsky.social coined the term “Kavanaugh stops”

Trump’s domestic deployment of the National Guard marks an area where he has diverged from the consensus of the conservative legal movement, with no plausible footing in Federalist Society dogma. And it is extremely telling that SCOTUS finally drew the line here. slate.com/news-and-pol...

The sanctions that Trump has imposed on the ICC and UN rapporteurs have been deterring American human rights advocates and scholars from exercising their First Amendment rights. This letter--obtained by @mesa1966.bsky.social & @knightcolumbia.org--should help. knightcolumbia.org/content/trum...

The crackdown is vast, the stakes could hardly be higher, and the response from Chicagoans has been profound and far-reaching. trib.al/USPmkQC

Outdated laws give presidents sweeping power to use the military at home to suppress protests and make mass arrests in times of war and domestic upheaval. Congress must repeal the Alien Enemies Act, close the loopholes in the Posse Comitatus Act, and reform the Insurrection Act. bit.ly/4oxXJLN

“As the Trump admin asserts national security powers to target foreign and domestic enemies at unprecedented scale, the Supreme Court will have to decide whether there truly are no limits to the racialized security state it has unleashed.” My new essay in Daedalus, www.amacad.org/daedalus/sup...

How has war shaped American democracy? 2024-25 CASBS fellow @ssinnar.bsky.social writes on "The Supreme Court & the Unaccountable Racialized Security State" in the new issue of Dædalus, the publication of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Open access: www.amacad.org/daedalus/sup...

I was happy to moderate this conversation on how Orientalism, the masterpiece of Palestinian American intellectual Edward Said, revolutionized academic inquiry around the world. Said's message to speak to power resonates even louder today.

Proud that my @ucirvinelaw.bsky.social colleague @veenadubal.bsky.social is on the papers - The national @aaup.org campaign is extraordinary, as is the number of unions and faculty associations brought together in defense of the UC.

Read this brilliant essay by my colleague, immigration law expert Jennifer Chacon, on the Supreme Court's shadow docket decision effectively permitting racial profiling in immigration raids: verfassungsblog.de/noem-ice-sup...

Denying Palestinian officials this same access breaks with that precedent. It isn’t just unusual, it’s a dangerous deviation from norms the United States has upheld for decades!

My law review article on the suppression of campus Palestine protests: “It is far easier to punish higher education institutions…and to disappear students from their dorm rooms…when campus protestors have been vilified over the course of more than a year.” scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcont...

If this continues, the most talented American students will want to study abroad, because they'll want to study with the most talented students and faculty from around the world, and those people won't want to come to the United States even if they can. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/u...

Read everything Ifill writes. "As we emerge from this difficult summer, we have the power to apply pressure, not only on this Administration, but on those whose cowardice has left our democracy in shambles. We know how to march, to boycott, to demonstrate, to petition, to litigate, to argue..."

🚨 150 University of California law professors (and counting) have now signed this open letter to the UC Regents and other officials, explaining the flagrant illegality of the Trump Administration’s UCLA funding cut offs, and urging the UC to fight back. sites.google.com/view/uclawfa...

My latest article, on how organizers & lawyers in three cities sought to “flood the courts” to protect homeless people and renters facing eviction. law.stanford.edu/wp-content/u...

Doctors without Borders joins 100 aid organizations in saying aid workers are now wasting away from the Israeli government's starvation policy, alongside the people of Gaza. msf.org.uk/article/gaza...

When Scotus demolishes one way of getting relief from courts, it often says, "don't worry, there are alternatives." Then it demolishes the "alternatives." So today, it demolishes nationwide injunctions & claims that class actions are an alternative. But it's already raised the bar on class actions.

Shredding the rule of law, one step at a time.

#BREAKING: Over a (sharp) public dissent from the three Democratic appointees, #SCOTUS clears the way for the Trump administration to remove migrants to third countries *without* giving them an additional opportunity to contest whether they face persecution or other forms of mistreatment there:

My colleague Amrit Singh writes in the Guardian how Trump's sending U.S. migrants to Nayib Bukele's El Salvador is emboldening a brutal wave of repression there. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

As UN warns that 14,000 children in Gaza under the age of five face severe malnutrition, Stanford students enter their tenth day of hunger striking in solidarity. www.sfgate.com/bayarea/arti...

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.

If your university is claiming it can't support noncitizen students for legal reasons, see this new legal analysis out from @aaup.bsky.social. www.aaup.org/news/institu...

1) State violence against brown & muslim people post-9/11 2) Kidnapping migrants to El Salvador’s deathly prison 3) Stop Cop City RICO case Something they have in common? Terrorism laws & lists. Tune in to ep. 4 to understand how they work & why solidarity is critical. Ft. @ssinnar.bsky.social

Writing in @slate.com, CASBS fellow @ssinnar.bsky.social examines a tax bill provision's "guilt-by-association logic" meant to "ensnare all sorts of organizations" the govt thinks are interfering w/its agenda - "a surefire way to delegitimize them & diminish their capacity to dissent" & even exist

I spoke with the Outlaw Podcast about the dangers that terrorism laws pose for protest movements -- and the importance of collective resistance and solidarity.

“…branding marginalized communities and their political opponents ‘terrorists’ is a surefire way to delegitimize them and diminish their capacity to dissent—and even to exist” warns @ssinnar.bsky.social slate.com/news-and-pol...

My new op-ed about the terrorism provision slipped into the budget bill: "At a time of growing American authoritarianism, the last thing Congress should be doing is granting new powers to the president to destroy civil society groups that stand in his way." slate.com/news-and-pol...

Incredibly inspired by Aarti Kohli at the Asian Law Caucus: "We often misunderstand courage. We think it means fearlessness... But that's not courage; that's either privilege or delusion. True courage is feeling the fear and taking action anyway." www.asianlawcaucus.org/news-resourc...

For 66 days the Netanyahu government has blocked ALL food and aid from going into Gaza. Now we're told it plans to seize and reoccupy huge parts of Gaza, as it pushes for Trump's plan to force 2 million Palestinians to leave. That would be ethnic cleansing by another name. We can’t stand for it.

NEW: Mohsen Mahdawi has been freed from detention. “We are pro-peace and anti-war,” Mohsen told a huge crowd outside court after his release. “To my people in Palestine: I feel your pain, I see your suffering; and I see freedom and it is very very soon.”

I already shared this to highlight a quote but realized I didn't use a gift-link. This is an excellent summary of the criminal conspiracy also known as the President of the United States. They are breaking things that are difficult to fix (like democracy). www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/o...

For nearly 60 days, no food, fuel, medicine or other items has entered the Gaza Strip, blocked by Israel. Aid groups are running out of food to distribute. Markets are nearly bare. Palestinian families are left struggling to feed their children.

The very construction of terrorism in the law embeds core ideas w/distinct implications for life, death & human rights, as @ssinnar.bsky.social explores in an upcoming book. In her CASBS fellows seminar, she focused on a chapter elucidating how terrorism entered the law yet 'excised state violence'

ICYMI: Georgetown Law students made a 853-row spreadsheet of Trump-caving firms. It drew national headlines. Recruiters noticed some talent looked elsewhere. Firms lobbied to change their designation. An organizer tells @www.AllRiseNews.com the background www.allrisenews.com/p/skadden-st...

Stanford is notably absent from this statement from hundreds of colleges and universities against "the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education." www.aacu.org/newsroom/a-c...

Devastated to hear this news, as I have known Sewell Chan to be a person of impeccable ethics and journalistic integrity.

BREAKING: On Friday, the federal government issued new demands of Harvard University. The university's lawyers just responded: back off.

I wrote about the surreal experience of teaching the First Amendment right now on a green card, teaching lofty doctrine while the government is rounding up people like me for things they say www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

AAUP has just published a memo laying out the many legal reasons why universities should not hand over the names & nationalities of their students or faculty, as the Trump admin has asked. Please share freely with your friendly university admin! @aaup.bsky.social www.aaup.org/news/institu...

Please tell your university leadership to do everything in their power to protect students from ideological deportation. Share this with your administrators and office of general counsel.

As a fan of Jeanne Theoharis' A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History, I'm so excited to read this new book!

We need more of this. Thank you, AAUP, for your leadership.

It's clear that the Trump administration denied due process to the migrants it banished to El Salvador *precisely because* any measure of judicial oversight would've proved their innocence immediately. Deported, imprisoned, and condemned to hard labor—for a soccer tattoo. slate.com/news-and-pol...

Resistance is "alive and well," says Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth. wagingnonviolence.org/2025/03/resi...

Another way of saying this is that Trump’s claims are so extreme that even judges appointed by Republicans agree As we show in a forthcoming JOP paper, this is an important signal to higher courts about the undelying merits of the claims

Must read: Mahmoud Khalil speaks out for the first time since his arrest by the Trump administration in an exclusive letter, dictated over the phone to his family, from ICE detention in Louisiana.

Another example of resistance rather than capitulation. We need far more of this, from the private sector, universities, and the media alike.