A handy Bloomberg chart on Trump's options on replacing the tariffs just struck down: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

the executive committee of the bourgeoisie comes to the rescue

We are a nation of laws, not of men. This banner symbolizes a disgusting betrayal of our values. www.cnn.com/2026/02/19/p...

Biggest event of the year, coming up in a month: @kimlanelaw.bsky.social www.mcgill.ca/lin-centre/c... 2026 Lin Centre Annual Lecture Kim Lane Scheppele Laurance S Rockefeller Professor of Sociology & International Affairs Princeton University Counter-Constitutions: On Being the Object of a Coup

Trump plans to send $10 billion in funds that Congress hasn’t appropriated from the US Treasury to an organization that he will continue to chair personally even after he is out of office. This is looting.

The University of Texas System’s Board of Regents unanimously approved a rule requiring its universities to ensure students can graduate without studying “unnecessary controversial subjects,” despite warnings it could leave them less prepared for the real world.

Tonight at Law Dork: A new DHS memo lays out an aggressive anti-refugee policy. www.lawdork.com/p/exclusive-...

EXCLUSIVE: Senior DHS officials double down on arresting and detaining refugees in new memo. Hours after DOJ filed the new memo in court in Minnesota, a magistrate judge denied Law Dork's request for greater public access in the case — including remote electronic docket access.

NEW — An obscure Navy contractor program is making Trump’s plans to quickly build out and supply immigrant concentration camps around the country a reality. Here I explain WEXMAC TITUS, an acronym you need to understand:

In this entire piece there is not a hint of even a semblance of a legal argument for how a war of this scale would be legal or authorized. There is quite simply no legal or constitutional authority for Trump to launch a war of choice against Iran. None. Zero. Nothing.

New — This was projected on the US Institute of Peace building this evening ahead of the first meeting tomorrow of Trump’s farcically-named “Board of Peace.” Photo taken by person who was over there tonight. Unclear who’s behind the projection.

DOJ acknowledges violating dozens of recent court orders in New Jersey

Why did The Justice Department DELETE these files? WE NEED ANSWERS NOW!

"The Shadow President," @andykroll.bsky.social's deep dive into Russell Vought, has just won a George Polk award for political reporting. The piece chronicles Vought’s rise from the Senate mailroom to his position as one of the most influential players in the Trump administration. Read it here:

When future generations study this moment, this will be one of the most read primary source documents. You can read it now, the day it came out. We are living history, and we have a job to do. Thank you Will McGrath and all of your neighbors. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/o...

Exclusive: The US State Department is developing an online portal to enable people in Europe and elsewhere to see content banned by their governments including alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda, sources told Reuters reut.rs/4cySsA6

On January 5, federal goons slammed the head of Isai Santos Caceras of Uniondale into a brick wall. Caceras went unconscious and did not receive medical care until days later. Caceras has no criminal record and was not resisting.

1. DHS surges 3,000 officers to Minneapolis without doing anywhere near enough prep first. 2. Hundreds of habeas cases overwhelm local courts. 3. Dozens of DOJ lawyers quit in disgust/anger. 4. The DOJ brings in JAGs to cover. 5. A JAG was just held in contempt and fined $500/day for ICE's failures.

"An Associated Press reporter was beaten by the police and detained along with three other journalists on Tuesday in Cameroon while reporting on a secretive Trump administration program to deport migrants to the Central African country, according to two of the people detained." (gift link)

I highly recommend reading this thread all the way through. Learned a ton about Ramadan and there’s a great little story toward the end - one that will be recognizable to people of all faith traditions. Ramadan Mubarak, friends!

BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide. This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.

NEW: DOJ told a judge in New Jersey that it had violated court orders about 54 times between Dec. 5 and this week — the latest accounting of a phenomenon that used to be rare and is now rampant. www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

www.liberalcurrents.com/america-if-y.... If you want to see how democratic renewal is done, look to Denmark! Of course, the US is deep into autocratic capture and they are not, so already it’s too late to pull this off. Still, it’s worth looking at how functional democracies stay functional.

Warrantless searches sparked the American Revolution. In the 1760s, Britain made complaints similar to this about policing American merchants & resorted to issuing blanket "writs of assistance" to customs officers to enter ships, businesses, and homes without a specific warrant or even any evidence.

The DOJ is hiding Epstein files So we @democracydefendersfund.org sued under FOIA & are moving for summary judgment It's a democracy 2 step: Art. I Congress leans in while we step forward in Art. III courts Explained on @ms.now 👇

The Dems are demanding that ICE honor the Constitution and the Trump administration is saying that this is out of the question. Think about that. Faithfully executing the law? substack.com/home/post/p-...

Missouri officials directed county election administrators to make voters temporarily unable to vote if they were flagged as potential noncitizens by a federal tool. But in hundreds of cases, the tool's determinations were wrong. With @texastribune.org

The SAVE act will provide deeply flawed proof-of-citizenship data for the upcoming election. It is a thinly disguised platform for purging voters--and of course, if the DOJ gets voters rolls with all of the data, they don't even have to guess or use demographic proxies to target Dems in particular.

"if you face things that threaten the stability of your country, I know that President Trump would be very interested" is an interesting thing to read weeks ahead of elections for which Orban is trailing behind badly.

terrific piece by the terrific Jacob Levy . . . a thoughtful consideration of why academic freedom is so crucial and also so hard to defend.

Rubio to Orban "...Because your success is our success. If you face financial struggles,. . . know that President Trump would be very interested because of your relationship with him and because of the importance of this country to us." Orban's election lifeline. www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

The BBC is an international treasure that should not depend on domestic political disputes. Fund the World Service before its funding dries up in 7 weeks! www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

New fusionism: “Citing their work, Brockman predicted in 2005 that the “dangerous idea of the next decade” would be that “groups of people differ genetically in their average talents”.” ht @libankerdc.bsky.social www.thenerve.news/p/epstein-bi...

This is a huge glaring issue right now. Courts generally ARE doing fairly well, even including significant number of Trump appointees. The corruption is concentrated in scotus.

Devastated to learn that Univ of Texas at Austin is closing the American Studies dept. The years I spent there earning my PhD were formative, making me the teacher, thinker, and writer I am today. I've passed on what I learned at UT to thousands of students over the past 20 years. Just awful.

Do former DOGE employees have the type of access to SSA’s database that wld allow them to make changes? I ask bc there seems to be no transparency, & Trump & Musk now want states to purge voters from the rolls by using the “SAVE” system to compare data in the rolls to the data in SSA’s database. 1/

Hungary: Magyar launches anti-Orban election campaign

Brilliant account of what's wrong with our politics -- which is that everyone is working from a model that ceases to reflect reality but that also hides the reality it is not reflecting. substack.com/home/post/p-...

The Dow was at 43,488 when Trump took office. It just hit 50,000. So if you had invested $43,488 in the US, you would now have $50,000. But if you had invested the same amount in the rest of the world, you would now be worth $60,000. Lemme do a expla-youtube-nation www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYL5...

Recruiters and propagandists who previously worked for Russia’s Wagner Group have emerged as a main conduit for Kremlin-organised sabotage attacks in Europe, according to western intelligence officials. The fighter group’s status has been uncertain since a failed rebellion against the top brass of

Wait what? Michael Flynn’s brother, Charles Flynn, is a Senior Advisor at Peter Thiel’s Palantir?? h/t @nadja72638243.bsky.social on X… 1/

This is a crucial tool for stealing the election: Misidentify citizens as non-citizens and demand they be struck from the voter rolls. And, of course, if the USG gets state voter data, they will have party ID among other things to more carefully target their mis-identifications.

White House stands by State Department nominee who complains that "white Americans are increasingly second-class citizens," warns of "white erasure" and says "the Jews love to see themselves as oppressed." @camcgrady.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/u...

A Reuters review found that immigration detainees have filed more than 20,200 federal lawsuits seeking release since President Trump took office, with hundreds of judges ruling more than 4,400 times that detentions were unlawful reut.rs/40gfILP

Makes sense to start thinking about de-magafication now rather than when opportunity presents itself. If the US is going to recover from this period, it’s going to need some root-and-branch change, rather than the usual ‘swing of the pendulum, brush the last lot under the carpet’ approach.

Really interesting post from @asharangappa.bsky.social tackling the imponderably difficult task of restoration at DOJ once the cavalry finally arrives and exploring a process akin to the "denazification" sorting that took place after WWII. open.substack.com/pub/asharang...

The kind of utter confusion Brooks is going to inflict on Yale undergrads.

On the time of monsters -- and the dilemmas of translation. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

An article in the NYT today revealed Meta’s plan to take advantage of current political turmoil to sneak facial recognition into their smart glasses without enforcement bodies or privacy advocates noticing. But EPIC has noticed—and is ensuring that enforcers do, too. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...