Such an important piece. And this is such an important point.

Yes you're blowing shithole craters in your pants. But at least the acolyte didn't get a second season bsky.app/profile/phil...

To call it a puppet state would be too generous. Puppet states still have the pretense of more formal autonomy than this. He's just openly running the country with Rodriguez as his direct subordinate.

Interesting choice by NYT to publish an op-ed bemoaning America’s projected population decline by a guy who’s massively racist against immigrants and compares IVF to “Nazi eugenics.” The “pronatalists” only want more of a very specific kind of person in this country. It gives the game away.

another insightful post from chris rufo, good faith participant in the discourse

Another deeply sad qualified immunity case from CA5. Here, the Plaintiff loses his excessive force claim where he was shot and killed at exactly the same time as he was told to put up his arms. www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub... 1/

France has been faire le con for an hour.

Been against prohibition my whole adult life, and I do not think I am schooled enough on this (I have read some kind of sickness related to warmer waters has contributed to the Yukon run collapse) but it strikes any Alaska as per se unfair that I, a resident, can’t fish the run but companies can.

They’re trying to deport the men who witnessed the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. newrepublic.com/article/2129...

Found this fascinating post by a law professor named Randy Barnett, who said that the common law rule in England was about the Crown's jurisdiction. Oh, and it was in the context of a construction that benefited Ted Cruz's eligibility to run for president from 2013. volokh.com/2013/08/27/n...

New: Back in 2018, I published a summary of studies and surveys about the prevalence of racism in the criminal justice system for the Wash. Post. The idea was for it to be a regularly updated resource. The Post hasn't updated it since I left. So I've updated and reproduced it at The Watch.

The voter fraud was coming from inside the house.

Josh is right and should say it. Thinking it is doing Trump's bidding specifically is not only mistaken, it's a positive hindrance to any meaningful reckoning with the Court's power and why it is bad for democracy. When Trump is gone, it will still be bad for democracy.

This was eye opening. And hilarious. youtu.be/P6grAoS-muM?...

Bedlam in Jolly Old.

Whoa (in a good way)

Today's bonus issue of "One First" argues that one of the real unifying themes of #SCOTUS's October 2025 Term is the numerous opportunities the justices *missed* to appear to be above politics—and the (entirely unnecessary) wounds they inflicted on the Court's credibility along the way:

Polis should be impeached. Colorado Governor Fires Officials Who Opposed Freeing Election Denier www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/u...

Underlying unitary executive theory but really everything wrong about America's hyper-presidentialism is we act like the president has some unique sacred mandate as the voice of the people, to which Congress is at best a sideshow rather than our actual directly elected representatives.

I think what sets @stevevladeck.bsky.social apart from other commentators is although he says things like this he does not appear to enjoy saying it. I at least get the sense in his writing that all of *this* is deeply saddening but warrants direct confrontation like this.

Obergefell was a 5-4 decision. It's not vote counts that make SCOTUS decisions stick (or not). It's whether people at all levels and levers of power generally take them to be common sense, the price of admission into legit political conversation. That's the work ahead for birthright citizenship.

literally one day apart. goldfish would scoff at this lack of object permanence

Justice Thomas, also in dissent, similarly claims that it "devalues" citizenship to recognize the children of "birth tourists and illegal aliens" as citizens. Again, as if the quality of American citizenship depends on who else is a citizen.

Justice Alito, in dissent, says the constitution does not "degrade the concept of United States citizenship" by confering citizenship on the children of "birth tourists." Degrade. As if the quality of Alito's citizenship depends on excluding others from citizenship.

Every single word of this @joshtpm.bsky.social piece: talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-s... (I "grew up" as a lawyer in the Obamacare litigation, clerking on 2 courts, including SCOTUS, that heard the initial challenges. It forever shaped my perspective on courts, the law, & right-wing movements.)

Slaughter is pretty much what I think observers generally thought it would be, but I have to flag this one passage. Just, no. They're not one and the same. And the citation to Schick v. Reed is very misleading, because it definitely doesn't say that.

Slaughter belongs in the anti-canon, a decision so egregiously wrong it has zero precedential value and is self-discrediting. It is not a plausible reading of a constitutional ambiguity, it is constitutionalizing the structure of an autocracy.

this is absolutely wild. where does roberts think these agencies come from?!? who invested them with authority to act? whose mandate are they designed to execute? the president is the chief EXECUTive. his job is executing the will of Congress as it spells out in its duly-passed laws!

If you still think the Court is a real court, please compare the Cook and Slaughter opinions handed down within 10 minutes of each other. Utterly incoherent and contradictory. Consumers lose, bankers and the rich win. That’s all.

The whole premise of Slaughter has no basis in the text of the Constitution, early practice, or any kind of original intent. Congress has insulated some officers from at-will presidential removal as it sees fit for more than 200 years. I talked to @narosenblum.bsky.social about it earlier this year:

This is the most transparently absurd set of twin decisions in Cook and Slaughter.

At least we know that the 5th Circuit and Supreme Court will impartially and evenhandedly apply Mahmoud to protect religious rights of ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ba ha ha ha ha sorry it will just say people who object are anti-Christian bigots.

I know the list is endless but I genuinely think trashing the legitimate congressionally chartered org for celebrating the 250th to instead hijack our national assets and taxpayer funds for his personality cult grifter crap should, in and of itself, be fully sufficient to merit removal from office.

This is a really really weird way to be thinking about people I'm sorry

This is what canvassing looks like in Alaska 🎣

If Bari Weiss possessed the capacity for shame this public take down would have an impact on her.

In his decision for SCOTUS published this morning, Justice Alito dismissed the idea that the Trump administration would halt all asylum seekers as a mere "hypothetical" not even worth considering.

As promised, here is my post critiquing today's badly flawed Supreme Court ruling upholding Trump's withdrawal of TPS status from Haitian and other migrants. There is irony that majority's reasoning also allows future presidents to grant TPS without limit: reason.com/volokh/2026/...

I am one of few who think Court was very right in today's 2nd Amendment ruling, but badly wrong on Haitian TPS. This post deals with 2nd Amend case and explains why government can't require property owners to allow guns on their land, but also can't presumptively bar them: reason.com/volokh/2026/...

Both sides of this, celebrating and panicking, are vastly over-egging how much of a shift there has even been. There are currently two DSA-endorsed members of the House. Next Congress will have maybe a half-dozen or so, depending on how the rest of the primary season goes. The revolution it is not.

John Roberts will want you to forget everything that happened this week at SCOTUS after he confirms that the first sentence of the 14th Amendment means what it says, please do not fall for it

*loud audible sigh* of course Ken is right.

Another comparison should be to religious cases, think Masterpiece Cake Shop, where Alito found government to be hostile to religion based on statements from a government official.

i wonder what race neutral policy stance trump was expressing when he accused haitian immigrants of eating the pets of their neighbors

Give the people a taste of the Third Reconstruction and they’ll work for more.

One more, for the record. I kept it simple. substack.com/home/post/p-...

4th Cir. assumes without deciding that subjecting an inmate to 26 strip-searches in one month for visiting the no-contact video visitation room violated the 4A. But the reasonableness of those searches was not beyond debate. So, QI for prison officials. www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/256...

Aside from redistricting cases, two incumbent Dems have lost to primary challengers. Maybe another one or two or three yet to come. This is considered a shocking bloodbath from an enraged base in our system: a ~2% rate of losing renomination, about the same number who've died in office this Congress

this is a great illustration of one of the fundamental insights of democracy — that there is no such thing as "the people" and that majorities are elusive and ever shifting. no election, no decision, is final and treating an election as a final decision is profoundly undemocratic.

Same