Note the date

"Stop criticizing us or will keep murdering people" is just a jaw-dropping thing for a government official to say.

Democrats have stopped talking about climate. Strategists say that's smart—but they're wrong. Making climate a top priority wins votes, and barely 1 in 10 voters will vote against climate action. Read all about it in my newsletter, "Notes from the Electric Era." electricnotes.news/p/yes-democr...

ICE will keep murdering random people until Democrats stop criticizing them is... well... quite a take.

i mean, it kind of is a black-and-white answer

In those 6 months, crime in the neighborhoods around those libraries went down. I’ll reiterate that NOTHING changed except that the local library was open until midnight, and crime went down (3/ )

I am yet again getting on my soapbox to tell y’all about how my previous job (public library) received a grant once to keep branches in some neighborhoods open until midnight on Fri and Sat. The neighborhoods were picked specifically because of higher crime rates and lack of support services (1/ )

"Since 2002, more than 1,200 counties have invested more than $42 billion to expand their carceral footprints" The U.S.'s commitment to jail construction is an absolute financial and moral failure.

"They just want to turn it off." A fascinating story of the librarians who have started teaching classes showing people how to remove AI "features" from their phones and apps. www.bangordailynews.com/2026/07/02/m...

‘Polarization’ has become the master concept for diagnosing our current democratic crisis. But this is not polarization. It is the radicalization of the political right. By misdiagnosing it, we risk becoming complicit in the crisis. 🧵 Just out in Perspectives on Politics doi.org/10.1017/S153...

NEW: You should know about this lawsuit in Maine. Basically, it's testing whether states can pass laws that'll allow you to sue ICE agents (even in federal court!). Learn more, it's fascinating and complex — but at bottom, it's all about whether there are basic mechanics of accountability.

data visualization is my passion.

if you have feelings about SCOTUS after today, and after the last week, and after the last months and years, remember that at least you can vote for state supreme courts in many places this year, and those matter a ton too my state-by-state guide to every state supreme court contest:

It is difficult to read the Supreme Court's opinions over the last week and not see the general trend toward accretion of Court power. Interpretive philosophies like originalism give way to "plain text" readings (by judges) and historical "standards," without any specific guidelines. /1

The ICE wing of the Allen Parish jail has the longest average stay of any immigration detention center in Louisiana. It has faced serious allegations of mistreatment and racist abuse of detainees. Advocates say “it's where people go to disappear.” Critical reporting from @delaneynolan.bsky.social

ICE is violating rights at every level – including now obtaining individual voting records from counties in Texas and North Carolina. The Trump-Vance admin is trying to scare and intimidate eligible voters with these tactics. We'll continue to fight the efforts at every turn. https://bit.ly/4oEaR2L

Justices Gorsuch, Sotomayor, and Jackson concur in Hunter v. US to get pretty close to saying that plea bargaining is unconstitutional. Worth a read.

The problem is that the system was intentionally designed to be legal from the get-go. Driving behind or near a car containing federal agents is not a crime. Telling your community that the car contains federal agents is not a crime. Taking a log of where they are is not a crime.

The achievement of Minnesotans is to set up a massive, coordinated, LEGAL system of observation intended to monitor the movement and activity of hidden federal agents in our communities. The feds, thwarted in their ambition to be secret police, despise this, and want to de facto criminalize it.

DOJ's indictment today of anti-ICE protestors in Minnesota suggests that "opposing the authority of the United States government" is illegal www.startribune.com/live-federal...

Who needs podcasts when you can listen to federal court of appeals oral arguments on the subject of your choice, thanks to the good people at the Free Law Project. www.courtlistener.com?q=%22fourth%...

Daphy Michel, a Haitian asylum seeker with untreated mental health issues, died of hypothermia after being released by ICE. Security footage shows Michel sitting on a bus stop bench for days in cold temperatures. Her death has been ruled a homicide.

BREAKING: A federal judge temporarily blocked a bathroom ban in Idaho that threatened transgender people with up to 5 years in prison for using a bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. This is a win for trans rights.

Next week’s cover, “After the Comeback,” by Pierre-Emmanuel Lyet, captures the joy on the streets of New York City after the Knicks’ historic win in Game Four of the N.B.A. Finals. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/PiB0E9

Egregious constitutional violations without meaningful accountability are a hallmark of this Trump administration but, of course, are nothing new. Fred Smith & I wrote about civil rights deserts in Mississippi & strategies to address them wherever they exist. harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-13...

Over 40 years ago, a federal court ordered Kentucky to treat incarcerated women the same as men. So why hasn’t it happened yet?

In 2024, New Yorkers adopted an Amendment that expanded the state constitution’s Equal Protection Clause to bar discrimination based on ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender expression, pregnancy status, reproductive healthcare & more. Learn more at 50constitutions.org/ny

SCOTUS's Purcell jurisprudence, which discourages courts from changing election rules too close to an election, could magnify the impact of the Callais ruling, writes @wuc3.bsky.social. But state courts can help stave off democratic erosion by resisting the urge to invoke Purcell.

Trump may already be deporting newborn Americans while the Supreme Court dawdles on birthright citizenship: pregnant teenagers in immigration detention having been giving birth to U.S. citizens but those girls and their babies are now missing ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/birth...

"The Court’s behavior in the Louisiana and Alabama cases over the past six weeks can’t be reconciled with or explained by any coherent understanding of what Purcell supposedly stands for. ... The overall pattern reveals justices behaving in a way that has no obvious explanation other than politics."

because of woke you cant even denigrate an entire nationality wholesale anymore without being called a racist

BIG NEWS! New podcast coming out THIS MONTH! Native people have been left out of the story of America—but without us you don’t know what happened. FIRST AMERICA tells the true story of how this country started and how we got here. Subscribe now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Mail voting is under unprecedented federal pressure ahead of the 2026 midterms. From the White House to the Supreme Court to Congress, the threats to this widely used form of voting are mounting. Our new Explainer explores what's happening and what states can do about it: go.wisc.edu/622s38

In the Kansas Law Review: Anti-McCarthyism and the Right to “Fair and Just Treatment” in State Constitutions People treated unfairly during executive or legislative investigations often lack a remedy. But two state constitutions guarantee "fair and just treatment." papers.ssrn.com/abstract=687...

The U.S. Postal Service last week proposed a new rule that would block states from sending mail ballots to voters whose names weren’t shared with the federal government ahead of time.

Hypothetical vote dilution claims are part of a coordinated attack on voting rights across the country. They seek to make voting harder or remove people from state voting rolls altogether. And they are increasingly relying on state constitutions to do so. A quick thread on my latest report 🧵1/

ACLU attorney Maria DeLiberato was in the room with her client Tony Carruthers as Tennessee tried to execute him for 90 minutes. Her account of what happened that day is devastating. The barbaric practice of the death penalty must end. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/o...

It’s not over until they leave or vote, but SC Sen Richard Cash indicates redistricting is dead. “South Carolina citizens are going to the polls today. And neither my conscious or common sense is going to let me stop an election that is already underway” Cash said.

🧵 The Supreme Court's Callais ruling made it harder to prove in court that a legislative map dilutes minority voting strength. But a three-judge panel today confirmed that intentional racial gerrymanders can still be struck down by federal courts. Here’s what you need to know about Alabama 👇

A network of fake academic journals masquerading as legitimate publications has published more than a hundred AI-generated papers in recent months, in some cases using the names of real professors at top universities without their knowledge.

Oh man it’s on

Reminder: Get your abstracts in before May 31 for our state public law workshop in August!

This is a fantastic example of "ChatGPT didn't do my homework, okay it did, but it also ate it." A gasp a post.

It's not too late to register for our panel, "The Work of State Supreme Courts", taking place on Friday, May 29, from 9-10:30 am. You can join us virtually or in person. Register here: go.wisc.edu/h2ef9d

Students Lisa and Aaron want YOU to know your constitutional rights! Get to know the students of Eastman-Baldwin Junior High in our new animated series, Know Your Rights University, and follow along with educational resources. 🧢🎓👒

9. The ruling answers the question public officials have been grappling with in terms of state anti-discrimination law: whether vague federal threats, unaccompanied by any law, are enough to nullify a state’s civil rights protections. The Colorado Supreme Court’s answer was firmly: no.

8. The most consequential portion of the ruling addressed whether federal threats could override state civil rights law. The district court had reasoned that ordering the hospital to resume care would compel it to violate federal law. The Colorado Supreme Court flatly rejected that framing.

Now: About 100 rank and file Legal Aid Society attorneys and allies are rallying outside Brooklyn Criminal Court after a woman was forced to give birth in arraignment. They’re discussing other instances of clients dying in custody & harsher punishments for NYC’s poor.

Excited to share my article, Disenfranchisement Creep, was published Friday in the Virginia Law Review! It argues that state constitutions offer an underexplored way to rein in overbroad criminal and capacity-based disenfranchisement schemes. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

As states explore options for addressing federal corruption, state criminal laws may offer one avenue. We've added an appendix of existing laws to our report here: statedemocracy.law.wisc.edu/our-work/sta...