News from our lawsuit against OPM/DOGE/Elon Musk for their massive unauthorized access to private data of millions of federal employees in violation of Privacy Act: Judge Cote yesterday granted our motion to make public names of the DOGE agents involved. 1/ storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

New at Can We Still Govern?: @unlawfulentries.bsky.social puts yesterday's oral arguments about birthright citizenship into historical perspective, noting how the Fourteenth Amendment took aim at internal migration laws that restricted movement. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/rememberin...

If folks are interested, I've just posted an updated draft of The Chadha Presidency, with revisions accounting for the Supreme Court tariffs case, Iran WPR resolutions of disapproval, and more. ssrn.com/abstract=536...

How should scholars who study American politics change what they do in a political time like ours? I'm skeptical it will get much circulation on this site, but in a new review, I critique the emerging turn toward a kind of political advocacy mixed with research. myumi.ch/w9R2W

Peyton and Amy deserve the lion's share of credit for this essay. (I'm barely treading water, and they definitely put in the work to make this happen.) We talk about what the MSPB got wrong in its recent decision which... is a lot.

Peyton Baker, @nicholasbednar.bsky.social, and Amy Wildermuth explain the Merit Systems Protection Board's recent opinion that concluded immigration judges were not protected from at-will presidential removal and its implications for the civil service.

If you have never read Herbert Kaufmann's The Forest Ranger, it is one of the absolute best books in public administration. It gives you an appreciation for what the agency does and how it does it. Incredible loss to our capacity to manage federal lands.

Open access...new from me. www.emerald.com/pap/article/...

What this shows is that a staggering 63%(!) of people arrested by ICE in Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge (from December through February) had no criminal record at all.

For those unaware, hiring now starts around October in 1L. It's one of the worst things to have happened to legal education, and I'm not convinced that there are any labor market benefits to the firms. I have students getting post-grad offers with firms paying them to find other summer work.

I just got my copy of State Constitutional Law, by @yeargain.bsky.social, Marcus Gadson, and Jonathan Marshfield! Congratulations on getting it to the finish line! Looking forward to using it when I teach state constitutional law next fall!

The Trump administration is moving to cut a Treasury office that helps flag financial risks, shrinking its staff by more than half and raising questions about weakening an early warning system for the #economy. Reporting by Eric Katz buff.ly/0uKJbc1

Really great team. My students who have worked with Lawfare have had a blast.

In lighter news, my colleagues and I took the opportunity to be roasted by our students in @umnlawschool.bsky.social's theater production: "Moot Girls"---a spoof on Mean Girls. Job well done to the T.O.R.T. students this year for another great performance.

Family on Immigration and Adjudicator Independence Jill E. Family (Widener University - Commonwealth Law School) has posted The Sky Is Falling: Immigration Law and Agency Adjudicator Independence (2026 Utah L. Rev., forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This article examines the degradation…

Every Justice Department or FBI employee who worked on the criminal investigations into President Donald Trump has been fired, resigned, or took early retirement, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said. https://cnn.it/4ddkUrI

Late out of the BIA: DHS has the burden of proving alienage and it meets that burden unless you prove otherwise. Just groundbreaking burden-shifting jurisprudence.

“The Interstitial Executive” is forthcoming in the BYU Law Review! Historical officer commissions show that the Founding generation recognized Congress’s power to insulate executive officials from political control. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Two really important civil service pieces dropped on @ssrn.bsky.social this week. Both are important to understanding the broader context of what happened at the MSPB on Monday. 1/5

New to SSRN: @Aaron_L_Nielson and I have posted a draft of our new paper, Article II and the Civil Service, which the Virginia Law Review will kindly be publishing. Plenty of time to incorporate feedback. Link here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Minnesota Law is pleased to welcome Lyle Cherneff as a visiting assistant professor of law beginning in fall 2026.

Legal writers: I've posted to SSRN a short user's guide about how to use the Zotero citation manager and its Word plugin to automatically generate Bluebook citations that are 95%* compliant. The paper explains which fields to use for which type of source, and examples of generated citations.

For the past year or so, I've been working on a project for the Administrative Conference of the United States on best practices for drafting regulatory preambles in light of recent developments in judicial review. The draft report is now available here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... 1/

The debates about DHS and Iran appropriations assume the long term slush funds the OBBA gave the president for ICE and military ops are constitutional. That premise is mistaken, as @marknevitt.bsky.social and I explain in our draft, now forthcoming in GW Law Review! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

MSPB ruling could strip immigration judges—and potentially other federal workers—of protections against at-will firing. Attorneys are already challenging the ruling in federal court. Reporting by Erich Wagner

Two former immigration judges who were fired after President Trump took office filed a petition before the Federal Circuit on March 23, seeking to reverse a federal labor board ruling that upheld the US Attorney General's authority to terminate them reut.rs/4d77JbN

Update on litigation over inferior officers: In Jackler v. DOJ and Jaroch v. DOJ, the MSPB has concluded that (1) IJs are inferior officers and (2) Article II allows the Attorney General these officers at will (i.e., the tenure protections are unconstitutional). www.mspb.gov/decisions/pr...

Terrifying numbers in latest annual survey of federal workers from @ourpublicservice.bsky.social. For example, DoD workers' trust in Hegseth is in the toilet. Only 11.5% of Army employees say their dept's political leaders "maintain high levels of integrity." Similar numbers for Navy, Air Force

"Professor, what were you like in the 90s?" The hair z"l 😢

I am very humbled that the University has awarded me this professorship. I owe a great deal to my mentors, my colleagues, and the folks who submitted letters on my behalf. I also owe my spouse, @gracemakesmaps.bsky.social, a vacation for putting up with me---especially over the last year.

I served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Education and Training for three years before the office was disestablished last year. I owned the policy on professional military education for all five services. I have listened to Secretary Hegseth's announcement. I have thoughts. 🧵

I once asked my judge about their preferred voice in opinions. Well written, but cut and dry. They abhorred the lightest quip. They explained that every case has two sides and until you've lost in court you won't understand just how much those jokes ultimately undermine the integrity of the court.

Trump is likely the only president since 1960 not to have been advised by or read Neustadt. Threat and retribution are not sub-entries in Neustadt's index under bargaining.

Congratulations to Professor Christopher Federico @chrispps.bsky.social on receiving the 2026 Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education! cla.umn.edu/polisci/news...

A huge honor to tape for the Amicus podcast with Dahlia, airing this Saturday. If you want a trailer version of my book out on March 24. We start with why US migration history matters to constitutional memory (b/c it shapes our support for constitutional arguments) & end w/ birthright citizenship.

I'm musing over writing a piece about public workforce training and tort law, and I can't believe that I am going to need to address this...

Let me tell you about grim trigger strategies....

Crowdsourcing: I am starting to track news articles that mention a connection between staff reductions in federal agencies and concrete consequences (i.e., not mere speculation of those consequences). I welcome links to any that I may have missed or that you are particularly following.

Without this Education Department oversight, borrowers could "be placed in the wrong loan repayment status, billed for incorrect amounts" and more, the U.S. Government Accountability Office says. n.pr/4cATsE1

An unfortunate twist on my usual posting about DOJ capacity. AUSA uses GenAI to draft court filings. Gets show cause order. Likely the result of increasing caseloads and declining numbers at AUSA offices.

Reporting like this--establishing a direct casual line between managerial decisions and avoidable catastrophes--is so essential to tracking the concrete costs of this administration's assault on government capacity. Thanks to @propublica.org for this work.

Every year, I come into the office on Spring Break and am reminded that facilities (rightfully so) uses this week to complete its maintenance backlog. I greatly appreciate that facilities holds off on these tasks until we are expected to leave the building, but maybe it is a sign I should vacation.

“We probably have some skills that we now need to hire back, quite frankly,” Scott Kupor, the head of the OPM said... “There’s no question anytime you do restructurings … sometimes you over-restructure, sometimes you under-restructure.” www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

OPM has proposed a new RIF rule that changes the priority of performance versus tenure. The problem being OPM has also proposed rules that change the way in which performance is evaluated. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Tunheim orders petitioners’ attys to prepare claims for lost property within 5 days, including resulting lost wages. Orders claims reimbursed in 30 days. DHS must replace lost work permits for free within 5 days. New hearing set for 4/6. ... 2/4 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Announcing our new podcast: Minnesota Law Now! In Ep 1: Presidential Power in the Trump Era, @wmcgeveran.bsky.social asks @nicholasbednar.bsky.social ’16 and @alanrozenshtein.com how executive actions, court challenges, and institutional resistance are redefining the presidency. z.umn.edu/b4cv

5 USC 2301(b) (2) All employees and applicants for employment should receive fair and equitable treatment in all aspects of personnel management without regard to political affiliation ... and with proper regard for their privacy and constitutional rights.

@nicholasbednar.bsky.social www.reddit.com/r/fednews/co...

(Gift link) Admin is wise to drop what would've been a big loss on appeal. But given the limited scope of the trial ct rulings (only reaching the firms attacked), it keeps the possibility of more threats above other firms' heads. The threat remains acute, as does the damage of BigLaw's response. 🧵