Genuine question: did his on-going losing battle with a Chicago federal judge drive Bovino to harass another city? The Cook County prelim injunction won’t reach Charlotte. But if that’s right, also suggests hauling Bovino into court sooner than later, and points to real possible legal residence.

Easy to dunk on this like those guys who say “I didn’t sexism existed until I had a daughter,” like it wasn’t nakedly obvious. But. GOPers who went to prison and came out reformers have helped push for good, and not impeded others who have pushed even more. Change is good, whatever its origins.

Just struck me: the clerkship budget can be used as a form of retirement incentive, can’t it? All justices under the age of 65 get clerks, all those over get none. You can linger, but you’re on your own AND elite law profs no longer have an incentive to downplay your badness in op-eds.

There’s literally nothing more tedious or counter-productive than the smug “look, the future has to be like the past bc nothing can ever change so why try to change it” posts. You don’t know the future. None of us does. But I know it’ll be bad if we internalize this sort of preemptive defeatism.

Riding the circuit. No clerks. No building. No shadow docket. Nothing, until the Wizards In Robes stop ignoring the law, data, history, precedent, & the plain meaning of words in the Constitution. And there will be 25, with 9 chosen by lottery for any case.

Honestly the most realistic reform for this SCOTUS I've ever heard. Though given the current SCOTUS, I would change it from rural Kansas to a predominantly Black town in the rural South.

Critical to note that this is the Illinois State Police, not ICE or CBP. The lesson we take away from the past 10 months cannot be “wow, ICE and CBP are uniquely bad.” To the extent they are worse than regular police, it’s a matter of (slight) degree, nothing fundamental.

What I first said in sarcasm I increasingly think is a real thing to consider: Move SCOTUS to a strip mall in rural Kansas. We can’t fire them. Impeachment* is functionally dead. The 18-yr term thing is a fantasy. But we can kill a lot of their perks. Bet Kav would retire fast.

No justice, no peace is a fact, not a threat.

This is the right way to think about it—punish them along every margin possible. But here federalism is both feature and bug. I doubt the FL Bar will do this. They already refused complaints against her. (That’s the bug.) But every healthy state should deny her access. Freeze her out.

All sorts of states have “puppies behind bars” programs. So giving them puppies is something we already do and should keep doing.

Omg. The BU College Republicans guy who called ICE on car wash workers bc they are “stealing jobs from Americans” was born and raised in … another country.

Tell me you are unfamiliar with how I argue about prisons without telling me you are unfamiliar with how I argue about prisons.

Yeah, this. Two things can be true: 1. Maxwell def should not get special treatment. 2. The treatment Maxwell is getting likely barely qualifies as “acceptable” in many European prisons. But no one really wants to hear “the path to fairness is to treat everyone humanely!”

Spare a thought for the elected Republicans in Missouri, who every day have to struggle with the fact that they hate Missourians.

So we clearly are not in the Year of the Snake. It’s the Year of the Monkey .. ‘s Paw. “I don’t want to think abt the Epstein emails today.” “Ok, here’s a love letter to Olivia + RFKJr.” Every distraction is worse than the thing it is distracting from.

Looking at the 2024 NCVS, which came out in September, and this really stood out to me. The group with the highest rate of violent victimization (serious or not) are the separated. Bet the breakout by sex would be telling too. Seems to highlight a key role domestic violence plays in crime rate.

That mean homeless teenager, upending the career of Matt Gaetz. What on EARTH is @nytimes.com doing?! She did not “have sex.” She was raped. Because she was a child below the age of consent. SHE did not “set off a chain of events.” MATT GAETZ set off that train.

That mean homeless teenager, upending the career of Matt Gaetz. What on EARTH is @nytimes.com doing?! She did not “have sex.” She was raped. Because she was a child below the age of consent. SHE did not “set off a chain of events.” MATT GAETZ set off that train.

Social psych researchers find, for instance, that most people who change religious denominations initially don't actually know much about the distinctive tenets of their new denomination; they join for the community. If you ask them later on, once they've learned, they will retcon their reasoning...

Misinformation *is* central to democratic problems today, but the solution is *not* to correct such epistemic failures directly. Instead, we must address them at their roots, in social identity. Or so I argue in a new post for @apaphilosophy.bsky.social. blog.apaonline.org/2025/11/12/t...

Also, we literally change cops w homicide in some car chases. Like, this is both profoundly immoral AND wrong on its own terms. For example:

Did a @liberalcurrents.com podcast with @trentrichardnelson.bsky.social and @caitlinmoriah.bsky.social on ICE, mass incarceration, and all the uplifting stuff I spend my professional life studying. I thought it was a really good conversation!

Also, isn’t Broadview an ICE-run and ICE-managed facility? So no private company is profiting, right? I know the privates got excited (and their stocks went up) bc of Trump’s win. But how much capacity are they really using right now?

The damage done by treating Trump's victory as some sweeping mandate in the first eight months of his term really was massive, but ending that collective delusion - i think with the help of last week's elections - really is having profound impacts.

This is actually wrong, and I’m sure Vance as a politician knows this. Disagreeing w a false claim does not, psychologically, necessarily advance the truth. It can actually cement in ppl’s minds the wrong answer. That’s why when someone says “X,” which is false, you DON’T say “it’s not X, but Y.”

First, and most critically: so so gross a “defense.” But also? The age of consent in Florida is 18 (and in NYS, where he also lived, it’s 17). So even taking her gross, desperate arg on its own terms, 15 is NOT “barely legal,” but CLEARLY CRIMINAL. (Thus, you know, his FL CHILD sex conviction.)

I think this is a really interesting thread, but I want to add a friendly amendment. I think we believe we DO have a mech for contradicting the BS: the market. In a competitive market—which we like to tell ourselves we have—competition will eventually crush any BS. But!

Well, it's a little clearer now why billionaires are so invested in technology that produces better written emails.

I’m guessing if Trump had better numbers here the coverage would be about how he’s masterfully handling a scandal, not the substance of what he did? IT DOESN’T MATTER IF HE’S +50 OR -40! What matters is what he has been accused of, its moral repulsiveness, the blackmail risk, etc. My GOD.

Not the main point nor biggest issue, but I’m so tired of govt officials posting in such juvenile ways. It doesn’t matter how their civilian critic frames things. We should expect—demand—a level of maturity and respect from govt officials. Reflects a deeper level of disrespect for their offices.

During my post-doc, my office was next to a serious social psych person, who spent days, maybe weeks, debating if a survey should use a 1-5 or 1-7 scale, bc the shift in options could shift the results. Which is to say: surveys are HARD to design well. And if not, the question can CAUSE the answer.

Do Republicans not get that “wait, you don’t cover for your sexual abusers too?” is … not a good look?

Isaac Chotiner’s to-call list just got a lot longer yesterday, didn’t it? And the best part is that all the people I hope he calls are the sorts of coddled elites whose coddling will have misled them into thinking they can win toe-to-toe with him. C’mon Larry et al, when the phone rings:

Half the Answer #48: Trent and Caitlin speak with Professor John Pfaff, author of "Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration—and How to Achieve Real Reform." They talk about prisons, militarized police, and ICE in today's political climate. www.liberalcurrents.com/half-the-ans...

Does putting in easily-fowardable print “do not repeat this insight” reflect an absolute lack of foresight, an absolute sense of impunity, or an average of both? I’m a total nobody, and I write every email assuming it could someday be plastered on a Times Square billboard. Summers just … sends it.

… and The Onion had no choice but to admit it was bested by reality and shut down.

Been offline most of the day and … … like the day Trump caught Covid during, the next few days are going to be the sort that will produce minute-specific history dissertations, won’t it? “My dissertation is on emails 2 and 3. Yours?” “I’m looking at 8:14 to 8:17 pm on Nov 13. 200 pages so far!”

Ok, frustrated sarcasm out of my system: there’s a deeper depressing point here. NYC crime is hitting historic lows. By the NYPD’s metrics, it’s likely never been safer. But our coverage of crime is so appalling that the richest safest ppl in the city are losing it over free buses.

If I’m understanding these ppl correctly, all it takes to deter lethal and sexual violence is an almost-never-enforced $2.00 cover charge? That seems like a far more efficient solution to crime than Musk’s Personal Robot Stalker.

Not a “no.” Also, can’t prove a negative. But seriously: not a “no.”

Did a @liberalcurrents.com podcast with @trentrichardnelson.bsky.social and @caitlinmoriah.bsky.social on ICE, mass incarceration, and all the uplifting stuff I spend my professional life studying. I thought it was a really good conversation!

It’s just a variant of this. (And I miss Alien Loves Predator, a classic of the Golden Age of Webcomics.)

Do politics! It’s literally in your job title of “politician.” We don’t elect “listen to risk averse consultants-ians.” Do. Politics. It’s clear the country as a whole hates all of this. Even GOP suburbs in Cook County are berating ICE. Doing the right thing is popular!

In which he encourages Epstein to blackmail Trump should he win! The most mid-level intelligence official gets vetted for blackmail risks, but the man overseeing all of it is just a giant waking sack of blackmailability. Epstein can’t be the only guy w dirt like this!

This is terrible, but all too common a practice across the board. The NYT once ran three long in-print pieces on a large-scale bailout in NYC and didn’t interview a single person bailed out or from their community: just police chiefs, DAs, public defenders, etc. All elites, ignoring the impacted.

The structural protections of federalism. Not the laws, not the Constitutional provisions that six radical lawyers on SCOTUS can warp at will. The staffing. Our Balkanized and federalized crim legal system have given us a thinly-manned federal law enforcement system. Structurally weak.

Everyone outside NY: "we're tired of hearing about the NYC mayoral race!" Monkey paw gives them the finger and then curls it, cursing them to a year of hearing all about an election in just one PART of the city.

This is the rest of that "my kid doesn't need social growth bc -- in, mind you, pre-k, he's good at math" post. And I think it's far worse than the part going around. Focusing on social development "destroys their nature"? How? Think spelling that out would reveal something frightening or tragic.

I feel like we’d be better served investing hundreds of millions of dollars per year in some sort of labor and economic statistics bureau. But what do I know? On an unrelated note, according to the Wingstop Crime Report, arson is down 50% this year. So that’s something.