Bringing new meaning to "bargaining in the shadow of the law."

Not once does this story mention that the Supreme Court in 2007 rebuked the argument that EPA lacks authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Let's not let SCOTUS off the hook here: it will need to decide whether to change course, because otherwise this is likely dead in the water.

The new Washington Post should start a reader poll for what other ideological opinions they want the Trump administration to spoonfeed the Post’s editorial board.

Impossible for me to fathom how a publication like the @washingtonpost.com could survive the revelation that propagandists in the administration literally feed it the stories and opinions they want it to print--and the Post just does it.

I see we're back to being concerned about clear legal authorization for major agency action. I wonder what could explain that.

Taxpayers are going to keep the dirty, dying coal industry alive for a bit longer.

...

These people are completely incompetent.

I will say, it's also very possible that somebody in El Paso did something "woke" that pissed off Trump and this is the retaliation. This is just how our government works now.

Announced by social media post, no less.

Well this is weird. For whatever reason, I suspect this is not good. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/u...

So what do we think: does Sage exist?

There will never not be an existential threat to Texas's fragile self-conception.

"The agency claims that in the past it had offered only point estimates—that is, single numbers—for the monetized value of reduced ozone and particulate matter, obscuring uncertainty around the agency’s estimates. . . . But zero, alas, is a point estimate, too." www.theregreview.org/2026/02/09/c...

"The nearby Ambassador Bridge, one of the busiest border crossings on the continent, has been privately owned for decades by a Detroit trucking industry billionaire and his family, the Morouns." The what?

Ring getting us to help train their facial recognition algorithm (that they'll probably use to help ICE) by claiming to help find lost puppies is some sick, cynical stuff.

This is amazing.

So, first of all, of course it was Trump. But even if they were telling the truth, "We give staffers who post videos of the Obamas as apes access to the agenda-setting, decree-sending, market-moving account of the president of the United States" is not the exculpatory statement they think it is.

"The current reality is that the federal government is no longer a reliable source of widespread data collection." Which is really convenient when you want to just make stuff up that helps you politically.

OPM's Schedule Policy/Career rule just dropped, and apparently OPM is under the impression that the President makes a constitutional decision about whether to "delegate" his Article II authority to career civil servants. They think all he's doing now is reclaiming that constitutional authority.

Deeply shocked.

Sure, the best way to curb intellectually unserious research is to rob faculty of the time they need to do the research. Brought to you by the people who really understand how to develop intellectually unserious ideas.

One of the clearest and most compelling arguments I've read for what the Democratic Party needs to do in order to be competitive in this new era of politics. Ignore at your peril.

Long way to go, but maybe we're not cooked. This is my backyard and it is almost incomprehensible that this happened in a solidly conservative place. The only explanation is activation of a huge silent majority that will not tolerate the blatant incompetence, overreach, and corruption in the GOP.

If he does this, and isn't impeached and removed, it's a Rubicon moment where we are no longer a republic. Sorry, I don't care how much Republicans like his policies or fear his wrath, you can't just let a president cut checks to himself from the Treasury.

Readers, today is the exciting launch day for my book! How to Tax the Ultrarich bit.ly/4rk6wBM In partnership with the great economic policy team @rooseveltinstitute.org A few threads will follow. 1st, the key takeaway: even w/ *this* Supreme Court, we can tax wealth at the federal level. 1/12

I'm not sure if I prefer this or Justice Gorsuch's "you have your experts, and I have mine" footnote as a statement of where we are in legal epistemology.

I will simply never recover from reading this sentence: "Since Georgia implemented work requirements in 2020, they have spent twice as much on Deloitte consultants and administrative costs as on healthcare for people."

Worth noting you likely wouldn't have this pointed but helpful kind of interagency critique in a world without agency independence--at least not unless a president wants it. I don't think people realize how much we gain from structured conflict in the executive branch. www.npr.org/2026/01/27/n...

As it appears Trump understands now the political liabilities of this moment, it's more important than ever to remind America that accountability ultimately rests with the president, and nothing about the situation Minneapolis was unforeseeable. It was his choice.

Boeing over here just drooling at the idea that DOT/FAA are going to draft AI regulations that are (intentionally!) word salad. www.propublica.org/article/trum...

It's really telling that ICE/the administration would rather hold the line on an obvious lie than throw the individual agents under the bus. It's not about protecting those agents, but about publicly establishing that they will not answer to anything. We ought to be terrified at the implications.

If the theory of the administration is that Pretti was a threat simply for having a weapon, then they should also say that Renee Good was a threat simply for being in a car. They didn't say this because it sounds stupid.

Nonviolence is, in fact, working. This administration is weaker than it was a year ago. More and more of the public is becoming galvanized against it; its agents are being impeded.

Credit to whoever came up with this: the eight-person law enforcement scrum around someone is a pretty ingenious way of concealing who is doing what even if filmed, which of course always allows law enforcement to do whatever they want.

Let's be clear: it's "Everyone [except those who don't look like us or agree with us] should be allowed to carry a gun for their safety." If not, you're living on the wrong side of the "dual state."

As Jake notes, there are very serious, technical questions about Bruen's method in this case. But from my perch it's just a cold reminder of how wrong Bruen is to even go down this path. It's simply absurd to think that a democratically elected legislature couldn't switch a policy default.

My new article "Valuing Public Participation" with @briandfeinstein.bsky.social is featured, along with other great new scholarship on the "abundance" movement, on this new substack meant to track scholarship in the area. Definitely a great resource. open.substack.com/pub/markthom...

Today would be a great day for large-scale spontaneous protests across the United States in solidarity with the protesters in Minnesota. If you're going to call an insurrection in Minnesota, you're going to have to call it everywhere.

At least from afar, agents' obsession with apps and their phones seems to be a major driver of the mayhem in Minneapolis. Not sure I've seen anything like it before. ICE/DHS personnel acting like swarms of violent Amazon drivers.

This is where Trump is actually quite vulnerable. His entire game is this fragile sleight of hand where he rewards elites without losing cred with populist non-elites. There's no reason this should work except if nobody notices. Disrupt that informational slippage and you disrupt Trump's politics.

Venezuela, Greenland, Minneapolis, Iran--all in the course of a few weeks. Pretty clear the administration is flailing, trying to assert that it has power. Usually when that happens it's born of fear, and that this fear exists gives me a little bit of hope amidst the darkness.

More of this, please. "Superior technology ultimately wins out. By the time the automobile industry is dominated by E.V.s, G.M. and Ford may have fallen well behind China, thanks to the Trump administration. This isn’t industrial policy; it’s industrial suicide." www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/o...

For the legal perspective on this phenomenon, I highly recommend this paper by @profdanwalters.bsky.social papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Where there's smoke, there's fire. Little doubt that internal discussions are showing a side of the Trump DOJ that they'd rather not show publicly, which is something given what they are saying publicly.

There really is a book to be written about how we went from withering public outrage at Ford's decision to accept Pinto deaths as the cost of doing business to a general shrug when EPA does this. It's the same damn thing, just at scale.

Great piece by @nicholasbednar.bsky.social. One implication worth highlighting is that the idea of the "unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat" is largely a myth. There's almost always some accountability. The question we face is what kind of accountability we want. open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...

The lesson is shut up or get shot?

Maybe it's just the news cycle--I can't help but read this story and think about how Kristi Noem shot a being that was capable of cognition at the level of a toddler, and she bragged about it. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/s...