In Printz v. United States, #SCOTUS held that the Constitution bars the federal government from forcing or otherwise compelling local or state governments to enforce federal law. The liberal squish who wrote the majority opinion in that case? Justice Antonin Scalia: tile.loc.gov/storage-serv...

Within 4 hours of ICE (actually CBP) killing Alex Pretti, the data suggested that the right wing spin machine was having trouble gaining traction, even on their home turf over on X. Here's a Substack I wrote analyzing X data from that time. katestarbird.substack.com/p/another-mu...

The people of Minnesota have executed one of the most impressive civil resistance campaigns I can remember: - Organized a city wide general strike - Maintained nonviolent discipline amidst violence - Mobilized 10,000s in subzero temps to protest and watch ICE - Flipped public opinion against ICE

On the weakness of state terror: once ppl internalize the regime's lawless brutality, that they are no safer in their homes than in the streets (& vice versa), and that their unwavering defiance is what confounds & disempowers the regime, they also realize they have nothing to lose but their fear.

Oh my God, what an incredibly real and incredibly terrifying story. These grown men were locked inside a restaurant? Wow. It's hard to say where that ranks next to the state-sanctioned murders and the kidnapping of children, but gosh, they were briefly locked inside a restaurant? Heaven forfend.

"Don't forget to add the bit about people only having rights if they agree with what the government is doing."

This week in the USA: * Trump is first prez not to acknowledge MLK holiday * Revealed Trump made at least $1.4B in 2025 * Speaker of the House endorses impeaching judges * Fed regulators threaten free speech of TV talk shows * US announces departure from WHO w unpaid bill

I do not understand why Dems (or someone) are not broadcasting wall to wall montages of ICE thugs abusing our neighbors, abducting children, terrorizing US citizens, invading homes w no warrant, or murdering mothers. This should be a massive exercise in ISSUE SALIENCE driven by Dem elites.

A five-year-old boy seized on his way home in Minnesota and now locked up in Texas. His family didn't know where he was for 24 hours.

Last year a whistleblower said DOGE had illegally accessed a Social Security database. SSA now acknowledges it's true—& that DOGE employees had secret agreement w/ unidentified political advocacy group to use SocSec data to help overturn election results. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Trump/US is clearly an extreme example. In terms of 1) psychological factors driving him, 2) degree of personalization of leadership, and 3) US relative power re: coercion. But Trump’s overarching approach to the international arena is one we’ve see from other populists: Erdoğan, Modi, Orban

The way this would be covered if a Democratic president was talking about doing something this unpopular… To start a quote from @mcopelov.bsky.social “Neither our media nor our political system…”

Not just here, but all over the world, people have actual problems to take care of and lives to lead, and they end up spending so much time and energy just dealing with the damage Trump needlessly causes every day. It's exhausting.

NEW: President Donald Trump’s redistricting arms race is wreaking havoc across the country, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. But in Missouri, the fight has grown into something that threatens to cut democracy to the bone. www.democracydocket.com/analysis/in-...

Again, I’m going to keep banging the drum that the fact we are threatening the territorial sovereignty of our closest allies is not only a gross violation of our UN & NATO treaty obligations & poses a massive threat to national security & world order but also should immediately end this presidency.

The Founders assumed that Members of Congress would jealously and zealously guard the powers and prerogatives of their branch of government against the grasping of an overweening Executive, and instead we got this supine GOP majority that yearns to lick the boot.

Even though there have been many criticisms of the Supreme Court, a higher percentage of our current problems are the fault of the Supreme Court and elites’ refusal to reform it than we typically acknowledge.

I’ve serious new evidence from London archives on birthright subjecthood— and it’ll make some of these nonsense arguments look even more foolish. It will take me weeks to think on and process before I include it in what I’ve been working on for a year. But that doesn’t get retweets from the DOJ.

Was just on w/ @chrislhayes.bsky.social talking about the impact ICE is having on public opinion toward immigration and Trump’s second term in general. The bottom line is that people hate the violence against Americans, and this is moving a significant number of people against Trump in a new way

A lot of government, especially at the federal level, is stopping bad things from happening. It is hard to explain its value when the bad thing does not happen. Take it away, and broader societal risks increase, but the effects may take a while to emerge, and will be contested by those cutting govt.

The intentional failure to render aid should be prosecuted, if nothing else.

the question to ask about this is, okay, he wants to cancel the midterms. how does he get the VA state board of elections to cancel the midterms? how does he get the georgia board of elections to do it? how does he convince republican house members to quit their jobs and give up their paychecks?

If all you're willing to do is say "We're cooked" on a social media site, maybe it is all over. If you're willing to struggle alongside your friends and neighbors for democracy, then we've got a chance.

six kids sent to hospital by an errant flash bang grenade thrown by federal law enforcement

As always I am 100% in agreement with @machete.gay that the existential struggle for humanity is for those of us who believe in society and civilization and the barbarians who do not and seek to destroy it.

I know people on Bsky know this but I hope it filters out: The feds are OCCUPYING the Twin Cities. This is a blockade, a siege. They are shutting down economic and civic activity. They are conducting "papers please" stops. They are criminalizing being a bystander/witness. You could be next.

ALSO! This is an example of a Language-Game in action! Even Thucydides could see how different groups changed the meaning of words to create their own realities all the way back during the Peloponnesian War!

It's wild to watch people like Joe Rogan come to grips that voting for the "mass deportations now" candidate meant voter for a literal war against your non-White neighbors. The entire discussion around the 2024 campaign was so fundamentally unserious it might as well have happened in a fever dream.

I can't believe we are living in a world where this needs to be said, much less reported as news in the New York Times

New Gallup figures in these charts. Well, so much for that emerging Republican majority people were writing about in November 2024. Was evidently a mass overreaction to Trump's win and failure to acknowledge softness of support, and thermostatic politics www.gelliottmorris.com/p/trumps-win...

Powell goes full Schattschneider 🤓! Expand the scope of conflict, get audience off the sidelines & into the game. Gambit to rally political support for Fed & put Trump on defensive. Reminder that Fed depends on political support (from lawmakers, markets, judges, POTUS) to secure its “independence”

Attempting to prosecute the Fed chair is bad. It should generate a massive backlash. But will that backlash actually happen? danieldrezner.substack.com/p/whither-in...

Authoritarian governments accuse their opponents of terrorism and otherwise try to criminalize protest and justify persecution of those who resist them

WHOA

If you haven’t caught on yet, the politics of a constitutional republic collapsing into fascism is friend-enemy politics, as @kjephd.bsky.social tells us. Although there will be occasional moments of cooperation, elected officials still insisting on normal politics are deluded or out of their depth.

One more good read on how protests influence mass opinion: bsky.app/profile/owas...

Also highly recommend @chrislhayes.bsky.social interview with @chenoweth.bsky.social: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

“‘People should know there are steps they can take to uphold democracy’ said Erica Chenoweth. This is a core tenet of civil-resistance theory, also known as people power—that citizens, working in concert, have more agency than they are led to believe.” www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

I can't believe I'm posting this video - but we actually have to have a conversation about the real world implications of America going to war over Greenland. Let me walk you through it. It doesn't turn out well for us.

At last night’s candlelight vigil for Renee Nicole Good, Bishop Rob Hirschfeld of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire announced he had asked the clergy of the diocese to get their affairs in order and to make sure they have their wills written ...,

Once again, I am begging supposedly serious people & societal institutions not to normalize violating all of our international obligations, threatening to seize/acquire our closest allies, & generally treating the One Special Boy as if our entire edifice of institutions, laws, & norms do not exist.

The Norwegian Nobel Prize committee has been forced to make a statement, declaring that the prize cannot be transferred. It's hard even to comprehend how stupid this has become

There is only one fraud ring that matters in the United States, and it's run out of the White House

Yes, JD. Let’s ask them if they think a stay at home mom, avowed Christian, and widow of a veteran deserved to be shot in the face and left to bleed out in her own car after dropping her 6-year-old off at school, for the crime of looking out for her neighbors. Let’s ask everyone running for office.

personally I think it would be great if his colleagues—including Dr. Sweet, the department chair who acted as a conduit for the censorship demand—had his back.

“These findings provide clear evidence that data collected on MTurk simply cannot be trusted.”

"We consistently found null results, not just for overall samples but for sub-groups that have been hypothesized as the most likely to be affected by moral reframing...the observed data are 100x more likely to occur under the null hypothesis (of no effect) than the moral foundations hypothesis."

I hate to break it to you, but heavily-armed government militias are roaming unchecked through US cities and shooting human rights observers dead in the streets. That's happening in our country.