Coverage of Thursday's Supreme Court order in the Texas racial gerrymandering case seems to have devoted little attention to the (dearth of) justification. I wonder whether that is because of typical horse-race journalism or because of an attitude that if the Court says something it must be right.

The aspect of the Texas racial gerrymandering saga that really has not received attention is that the racial gerrymandering doctrine is not some liberal thing. It is a doctrine developed by conservatives that largely exists to prevent states from engaging in minority-protective redistricting.

Counterpoint: the House of Lords is pretty harmless.

They're not conservative. They have no consistent judicial philosophy. They're simply partisans. The only check on their rabid loyalty to the Republican party is their commitment to outright plutocracy.

This is really important. The problem with the Roberts Court is not that they are conservative. It's that they are bad judges.

In predicting Roberts Court decisions, one needs to ask only two questions: (1) what result aligns with the policy preferences of the Republican Party? (2) What result will help the Republican Party electorally? Only if there is cross-pressure between those objectives is there ever really any doubt.

Texas & DOJ said that’s what was going on! So apparently the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to … allow some discrimination on the basis of race when it’s to secure Republicans electoral advantage. Just lawless partisan hackery. No fact finding deference. No legal basis.

As big a fan as I am of rulemaking, future Democratic presidents -- at least 3 terms' worth -- should prioritize strategies for policymaking through adjudications as much as possible. Until the entire administrative state infrastructure can be rebuilt and capacity restored.

“It’s quite rare for the state to announce that it has a racial objective behind a redistricting plan,” he said. “In fact, announcing that the objective of a redistricting plan is to reallocate political power on the basis of race is exactly what a state is not supposed to do.”

"There was a fairly explicit racial gerrymander here. They said it was about race before they said it was about politics." - University of Houston law professor David Froomkin www.houstonpress.com/news/uh-law-...

In which Josh Blackman and I disagree about the effects of Judge Smith's dissent. My take: "the rhetoric of Judge Smith's dissenting opinion increases the likelihood that a stay from the Supreme Court would be understood as a partisan intervention." www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/new...

I think it is hard to read the Smith dissent as anything other than sending a message that conservative judges will face consequences for following the law when it does not further conservative movement goals. How Roberts was treated for his vote in NFIB v. Sebelius but on steroids.

I dunno, man, if I began an opinion with a 3+ page "Preliminary Statement" complaining about disrespectful conduct by the other two judges on the panel, I would not immediately follow it up with this:

The different approaches taken in the Texas redistricting case by two Republican-appointed judges, Judge Brown (following the law) and Judge Smith (deranged conspiracy theorizing), provide a pretty good microcosm of our legal culture.

That's the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act of 1966, 5 U.S.C. § 7342, under which Trump doesn't get to keep foreign gifts unless he buys them at fair market value. Do we think Trump doesn't know this? Or do we think he just steals them, and assume this is as dead a letter as so many other laws? 2/2

None of us should be pretending that the Constitution has not completely collapsed.

The main thing I want you to understand is that if you're like an unironic Bluesky liberal the people who control the heights of American culture and the intelligentsia genuinely despise you and would prefer the company of fascist pedophiles.

Kids taught to "read" without processing the words on the page. In a world of AI, the next step is being taught to "think" without processing any ideas.

A horrifying read, based on NYT interviews with 40 people the Trump administration sent to an infamous prison in El Salvador. (Gift Link) www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/w...

Unlike you, I can read and that’s why I know what the constitution says.

Possibly the most horrifying explanation. If true, it means that Senate Dems are taking a big loss now in order to preserve their ability to take big losses in the future.

People are saying there's no upside to this deal. Wait a second. Isn't the end of Chuck Schumer's political career an upside?

reminder to any ambitious Dems waiting in the wings: announcing a primary challenge right now to a squishy Democrat who’s up in 2026, whether they voted tonight to shine Trump’s shoes or not, will almost instantaneously be awash in cash. fortune—and a primary challenge—favors the bold.

I don't understand what is even the conceivable upside of this deal. Is the collaboration the point?

Dems backed Trump into a corner where he’s advocating for starving Americans and hemorrhaging support. If they vote to let him off the hook in exchange for nothing it’s a cataclysmic failure. I know people are in pain but insulating Republicans from political consequences is not the answer.

The problem with urging triangulation as a political strategy is that it is myopic. If Democrats are relentlessly focused on chasing the median voter while Republicans are instead focused on moving the median voter further to the right, then there will be an inexorable rightward drift in politics.

Not sure how many Cheney obits will mention this murderous legacy of his.

One could say the same thing about practically every Republican interviewed on TV. Why bother interviewing any of them? That time could instead be spent informing viewers.

Look, this is what any attention-seeking news outlet would do if they were honest and not captured by ref-working

Recently my brother in law explained what gerrymandering was to a coworker and they didn’t believe him because if that were really happening there would be riots in the street

What is happening is the consequence of failing to hold Trump accountable for his crimes. People cannot comprehend that someone who has done such awful things would not be in prison, so to reduce cognitive dissonance they infer that Trump cannot be as bad as Democrats say.

I use Claude (an AI) to scan my posts for spelling and grammar errors. On the most recent post (about the East Wing, link below), I got a really amazing addendum. www.pbump.net/o/yes-most-a...

This is probably the single biggest problem with our constitutional design—worse even than the odious Senate and Electoral College.

It should go without saying that these mass internment camps will be much, much more expensive to operate than just giving the homeless free or subsidized housing would be.

I'll be teaching criminal law again next semester, and I've been thinking about the complicated sociology of crime in the US. OT1H, voters cite crime as a preeminent issue. OTOH, true crime is popular entertainment. OT1H we stigmatize people who commit crimes. OTOH, the President is a felon.

Most TV news is just nonstop stories about violent crime. No wonder we have a systematically misinformed electorate.

Strengthening Congress is absolutely the right project, but we have to confront the structural challenges. Congress has the most substantial powers of any branch, but it also faces the greatest hurdles to exercising those powers because of the profusion of veto players in the legislative process.

As the authors acknowledge, this report is focused on the low-hanging fruit of reforms to the regulatory process. But the most vital reforms will concern election law and the legislative process. For election law, there is already a blueprint in the For the People Act. Fixing Congress is harder.

Republicans' Project 2025: bring elections under fascist control, bring economy under fascist control, gut regulatory capacity, make US society much whiter Democrats' Project 2029: somewhat reduce red tape in the regulatory process Full Roosevelt report here: rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/u...

"Après moi, le déluge"

Another justification to tax billionaires out of existence is that there shouldn't be people who are in a position to fund a private army.

A consistent problem? With progressive stewardship?? Of American cities???

It makes perfect sense that ordinary people should value democracy more than elites. Democracy is a tool for empowering ordinary people collectively to counterbalance the disproportionate power of elites.

I stood outside the White House for a few hours this week interviewing tourists. Four of them hadn’t heard about the East Wing demo until I asked.

It's easy to forget that people who aren't on Bluesky often don't know anything about events that receive a lot of attention here. Yesterday I caught up with a friend who hadn't heard anything about the demolition of a third of the White House.

It seems quite perverse for the Speaker to have the power to prevent Reps from being seated. If a Speaker were elected 217-216 in a House with two vacancies and after special elections the Speaker would be removed 217-218, can the Speaker stay on simply by preventing the new Reps from being seated?

MAMDANI, on Bill Ackman: “.. He's spending more money against me than I would even tax him!" @casestudyqb.bsky.social #NYC

Most people are rightly asking why someone would want to be associated with Nazi iconography. I have a prior question: why do Nazis want to be associated with skull iconography?

Lotteries are immoral.

My favorite thing about Barrett is that she always defends the impartiality of the Supreme Court in the most partisan spaces imaginable.