Calvin Duncan, a man imprisoned for 30 years before he was exonerated, won an election in New Orleans promising to fix a judicial system that failed him Now, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and the GOP-controlled Legislature are racing to eliminate his job before he can be sworn in

He also introduced a bill that would codify Bivens (i.e., let you sue federal agents who violate your rights) and it’s gotten surprisingly little press

Update: the judge in the Stanford case has declared a mistrial, with jurors "hopelessly deadlocked" on both felony counts – a big embarrassment for the Santa Clara DA, who has already said he'll retry the case.

"Trump will just defy court orders, what's even the point of litigating" This, this a point

from "The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy" by Ray D. Madoff

Extremist murders by ideology, 2013 to 2022. www.pbump.net/o/reassessin...

"Harvard can't use race as a factor in admissions, but ICE can use race as a factor in detentions" is a retrenchment essentially to a pre-Civil War understanding of the Constitution. It's vanishingly few steps removed from "Latinos have no rights which the white man is bound to respect."

"It's a new day, it's a new administration, and everything's going to come out to the public" Attorney General Pam Bondi, who oversees the Justice Department, to Sean Hannity, March 2025

I've read and coded every War Powers Report ever sent to Congress (check them all out, with interactive graphics and a searchable database 👇), and this one on #Trump's attack on an alleged drug smuggling vessel in the Caribbean stands out. I'll explain below: warpowers.lawandsecurity.org

"Building local networks of support, learning to rely on those who are different from us — in direct defiance of the forces intent on dividing us — is the exact kind of infrastructure we need to defeat fascism."

The propagandists running the @DHSgov account are deliberately pushing thinly-veiled neo-Nazi material through the official communications channels of the U.S. government. Their goal is stirring outrage (to which they will express fake outrage) and signaling to their followers where they're going.

Ethnic cleansing www.euronews.com/2025/08/12/i...

"The party that claims to defend democracy is systematically deceiving the very people who believe in it most." @adambonica.bsky.social data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-mother...

Paul Ingrassia—a 30-year-old former right-wing blogger and newly minted lawyer who was admitted to the bar in 2024—is Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Special Counsel. Ingrassia has called Jack Smith a “disgusting man,” accused him of “election interference,” and said he should be jailed.

Aid groups report that Israel is refusing to allow any olives or other “fruits or vegetables with pits or seeds that could be planted” into Gaza. They will only allow in pitted olives.

New — I wrote about Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Aguilar, a former contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, and his harrowing stories of what he witnessed while being there under the guise of distributing food aid to starving Palestinian civilians:

doesn't make the headline for some reason but the Trump administration confirmed on the record that they are running an explicitly whites only refugee program, if you're wondering how things are going in the year 2025

Capriglione authored Texas' "trigger" law that effectively banned abortion after Dobbs, and now leads the state's spinoff of Elon Musk's DOGE.

“Starvation forces the body to consume its own muscle and organs for energy... It also destroys communities by turning people against each other in their desperation for food and forcing them to do shameful, humiliating or violent things to survive.”

I'm old enough to remember when the prevailing argument against affirmative action was that it failed to consider the "real" form of unfairness, which was income disparity

I have no words. Everyone prepared for the constitutional crisis of the President defying the SCOTUS. The crisis is the SCOTUS being fully aligned with Trump’s vision of presidential power. So here we are.

Since April 4, #SCOTUS has issued 15 rulings on 17 emergency applications filed by Trump (three birthright citizenship apps were consolidated). It has granted relief to Trump ... in all 15 rulings. It has written majority opinions in only 3. Today's order is the 7th with no explanation *at all.*

According to this Supreme Court, President Biden's Department of Education was exceeding its power by trying to forgive peoples' student loans. President Trump, on the other hand, has the power to just completely dismantle the entire Education Department.

798 people have been murdered at 'aid' sites in Gaza in just six weeks. www.reuters.com/world/middle...

We're going to need Nuremberg trials when this is over, yes, and to send a significant number of people currently in the federal government to prison. But we're going to need an unwavering commitment to ostracizing the supporters of it, as well. Never accept them again in polite society.

If the bill passes this week, it will give ICE enough money to become, by 2029, the nation's largest federal interior law enforcement agency with enough funding to become the nation's largest jailer.

NOTE TO SELF: Next time google “what does this political party believe” before giving them $277 million

Per this lawyer, the mother of 3 US citizens, among others, has been abducted by “bounty hunters” at gunpoint, brought to CBP, where they demanded she sign deportation papers without seeing a judge. When she refused, she was literally disappeared by the armed “bounty hunters” at the behest of CBP.

Republicans may lie about what's in their budget bill but the numbers sure don't.

🚨 ICE disappeared a woman on Wednesday night. She was grabbed by men in plainclothes and taken to an unidentified location. ICE is refusing to say where she is being held. It’s 72 hours later and not even a dedicated team of lawyers can find her. This is WRONG. We can’t let this be the new norm.

Mahmoud Khalil nails U.S. law: “If you have money, there is rule of law. If you are abiding by the very narrow definition of what this administration is defining an American value to be, you may get rule of law. Otherwise you have to fight tooth and nail to get your due process and your rights.”

Skrmetti most reminds me of Scalia's dissent in Lawrence, particularly the portion where Scalia argued Texas's anti-sodomy law didn't violate EP because it punished gays and straights equally for engaging in same-sex sodomy. It's the same specious reasoning based on bigotry.

Melissa Hortman, who was assassinated last night, was the Speaker of the Minnesota House in the 2023-2024 session, when Democrats ran the state government. That means she had a leading role in shepherding the many landmark reforms that Dems adopted in that period—an important legacy. Brief 🧵.

The Senate bill aims to effectively end all civil rights lawsuits against the federal government except by entities rich enough to potentially pay million/billions in fees. I am not making this up.

We are currently ruled by a bunch of people who think the tragedy of Anne Frank is she wasn’t found sooner

Via "One First," my quick write-up of President Trump's "Presidential Memorandum" purporting to federalize 2000 California National Guard troops; the relevant legal authorities for doing so; and how the move is both a modest *and* dangerous escalation of what's going on in and around Los Angeles:

500K Mexican-Americans served in the U.S. armed forces in WWII, as did millions of 1st and 2nd-gen immigrants, and 109K noncitizens. Mexican immigrant Macario Garcia won the Medal of Honor in Normandy. When he returned to the US, he was was arrested for trying to eat at a segregated restaurant.

This man is a green card holder. The white supremacists in the Trump regime are going after anyone and everyone deemed a threat and an invader. variety.com/2025/music/n...

rule of law is endangered, says man who made the president a king

NEW: As the Trump admin is flying Afrikaners here today to be resettled as "refugees," @Sec_Noem is terminating Temporary Protected Status for Afghanistan — meaning they may start deporting women and allies who protected our troops to the Taliban to be persecuted or killed!

context, from March:

The asymmetry of allowing the government lawyers to use laptops but not Khalil’s lawyer is outrageously unfair. Another way due process is being trammeled.

Mahmoud Khalil case update: A federal judge asked the DOJ for three precedents. What they gave: Two other times Rubio invoked the statute against students for speech, and a 2004 case against someone believed to have *participated* in violence in Somalia. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

the silliest thing I learned while researching for this article is that California had enough self-awareness about the February Bar Exam being a disaster that they offered would-be test-takers refunds for withdrawing but not enough awareness to cover any bank fees ballsandstrikes.org/legal-cultur...

The "moderate" $500 billion Medicaid cut being pitched here would finance a $500 billion tax cut for millionaire business owners and the heirs of estates worth over $28 million per couple. There is nothing moderate about cutting low-income Americans' health care to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

Last transmission from Earth: “Maggie Haberman reports that the launch code was a ‘mistake’, DOGE intern to blame.”

A direct strike on her home.