This President is already trying to stifle critical comments from comedians on terrestrial tv at midnight

Can we take a moment to highlight basics of this case: we should so fear a group of consumer protection experts taking over the world through the FTC that we must give all power to the President

The conservative justices have their talking point -- what if Congress turned every department into a multimember commission -- and it is totally absurd considering that has never happened under the existing law.

Do we all have to go back to law school if SCOTUS rewrites ALL of the basics of law school training? Tuition remission will be critical in this economy

Big if true

Justice Blackmun was savagely criticized for decades for saying this about the 14th Amendment in Roe.

stop trying to make the nondelegation doctrine happen gorsuch

Jackson: Can you give us a sense of what other agencies there are with similar removal protections? Sauer: about two dozen. we've challenged four of them in this Court. Jackson: commission on civil rights, sentencing commission, nuclear regulatory commission....

KBJ: how are agencies not answerable to Congress when they can disband them and/or remove funding? Sauer: 🤫 KBJ: if Congress decides experts, not political actors, should decide certain policies, how are dangers minimized? Why is this subjugated to Presidents desire to fire ppl? Sauer: 🤡

Kavanaugh now reading his opinion from the bench! Lotta justices not even pretending they haven’t made their decisions already

Every political actor seeks to enhance its own power indeed, Justice Gorsuch.

I thought maybe I misheard this, but nope: it’s unconstitutional under an opinion that didn’t garner even four other justices’ support” Kavanaugh doubles down by fanboying Scalia (with a “take that Sotomayor!” jab) which Sauer happily joins in deifying

Is Gorsuch reading his opinion from the bench during oral argument?

Kagan: I appreciate the formalist argument but it shouldn’t blind us to the real world consequences

Kagan gets to what to me makes so much of this discussion and technicalities superfluous: at bottom, founders didn’t want all the power in one branch, let alone one person. This is elementary basics of our govt that literal children (wherever civics is still taught) would understand

Interrupting my reactions to Trump v. Slaughter to register an independent source of dread

Kavanaugh: "Tell me how the Fed is different" Sauer: "It's different" Kavanaugh: Great! (implied.) Kagan steps in, voice near shaking with disdain/disbelief at what the Court is about to do - setting up a fight about which entities exercise enough exec power that POTUS must be able to fire them.

It’s insane and embarrassing to continuously ignore questions from Supreme Court justices by saying “give us the result we want and ignore the impact of the reasoning down the line” My public health students with no legal training other than listening to me blab know better

Landmark case up for argument at SCOTUS at 10am on the power of presidents to fire independent agency heads. Here’s my quick preview in Espresso, @economist.com’s daily app. I’ll be posting live analysis during the oral argument in this thread

KBJ often presents her questions as a request for help in understanding a key aspect of the case, as opposed to asserting her unimpeachable interpretation as other justices tend to do frequently

First Choice v. Platkin (crisis pregnancy center case) oral argument happening now

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Barrett - can we just say we’re clarifying Gingles (foundational precedent on the VRA) instead of modifying it? Trump admin lawyer- sure! You do you!!! As long as we’re making it impossible to enforce the VRA! (You do have to modify Milligan in one way tho, he acknowledges .)

Kavanaugh is trying to articulate his concurrence. He's going to say that Section 2 isn't unconstitutional, just everything that Section 2 DOES is unconstitutional.

Gorsuch: we have computers now Big if true

Not to be outdone, the Trump Solicitor General says you have to overturn Thornburg v Gingles, the 1982 precedent upon which all Section 2 claims are evaluated.

One of the most embarrassing opinions in recent Supreme Court history was Clarence Thomas insisting that when the post-slavery Congress protected “freedmen” they were protecting a “formally race-neutral category”

Lol. that was it. He was up for like 15 minutes of humiliation, and now he's gone. Last up is Hashim Mooppan. Deputy SG for the Trump administration. There's no real reason for the Trump admin to be here. But there's an opportunity for racism so I guess Trump wants to be involved.

Throwing all the bits and pieces of the worst discrimination jurisprudence never applied to voting rights at this - racial stereotyping (?); congruence & proportionality; has to be time-bound. We have a Court that is game. Let’s try it!

As a baby lawyer in the Reagan White House, John Roberts was writing memos arguing that violations of the Voting Rights Act should not be "too easy to prove." This is not just any legal issue that happens to come before him. This is his life's work. He just wants to finish what he started.

Everything about John Roberts's approach to the Voting Rights Act makes sense when you remember that John Roberts has has always been hostile to the Voting Rights Act, never believed it was appropriate, and has spent most of his 45-year legal career working to hollow it out.

The use of “stereotyping” is to imply that race-based remedies are actually racist, presumably suggesting there are Black people in Louisiana who would not want Black representatives in their government officials

Roberts and Alito skipped their chance to ask questions. Sooo... what's basically happening is that the Republicans have decided to let the Democrats absolutely dog-walk Ed Greim so they can feel better about this case that they're going to lose. Greim, meet bus, tell me how the wheels look.

Sotomayor: do bans on literacy tests to vote sunset as well? Subtext: y’all wanna make everything old new again, right? How far are you willing to go?

Isn’t there a new Netflix show on this guy?

‼️ this was a striking moment, to me Louisiana was basically like 'here come these Black people always asking for more' and Justice Jackson was like, 'that's not what the fuck they're asking for, they're saying: stop discriminating against us'

Justice Barrett really seems to want to say the congruence and proportionality test applies to VRA sec. 2. This is hardly obvious for a 15th Amendment statute, and I would say the existing blackletter law is that it's either rational basis or at most a kind of McCulloch reasonableness.

This may be a rare understatement from @elienyc.bsky.social

Kavanaugh must not have seen the news this morning while he was reminding himself in the mirror that the Constitution is neutral and answers no questions and that he’s a good boy that everyone loves

Kavanaugh has the most questions that start with or include some statement indicating everyone agrees on everything and loves everyone and he has nothing to do on the Court other than reminding everyone through binding decisions

Kavanaugh: Justice Jackson said the goal is equality, and we all agree on that completely Is that so???

Kagan: you’re relying on and using arguments used 2yrs ago in Milligan, problem being that we specifically rejected literally every single one of those arguments

Louisiana guy "If you look at the black population in Louisiana, they're all over the place." Again, the fundamental argument for why Louisiana (which has 6 congressional districts and is 1/3 nonwhite) should over-represent white folks is because black folks are "too spread out."

The Louisiana argument is essentially that you CAN use race to be racist but you CAN'T use race to ameliorate racism.

Alito focusing on the limitations of prior decisions based in a preliminary injunction posture is hilarious given what is happening on the shadow docket and SCOTUS literally scolding lower courts for not properly considering unexplained shadow docket decisions

Louisiana SG: we would never have written a map with a 2nd majority Black district if a court didn’t force us to It must’ve felt nice to get that out in the open