Jew. Mostly leftist. Most people refer to me with the pronouns "he/him" and I acquiesce in this.
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And to be clear there are some sincere free speech true believers who were critics of woke cancel culture etc. and are now critical of the Trump Administration, but that principled view has essentially no political juice on the right and very little apparently in centrist elite media
Turns out it was grievance politics all the way down, the Bari Weiss mentality where censorship is people having political views you really dislike--that this was a big part isn't exactly shocking to people paying attention but even I am kind of stunned by the extent
The opinion of a very substantial group of people, including no small number of liberals, flipped on a dime from "censorious campus culture and college administrators is a huge social problem" to "campuses need to more aggressively enforce speech codes" and like... what!
I really very sincerely want a reckoning with how we had a whole years long moral panic about free speech on campus driven mostly by people who manifestly do not believe in the principle at all
bsky.app/profile/homo... fwiw the Jan 6 pardons were bad but this is the wrong reason to oppose them
x.com/jonfavs/stat... it's a bit about the Jan 6 pardons I guess
I don't understand the policy argument here. No parole ever? Or is it about universal pretrial detention? Mandatory maximum sentences?
UPDATE: Of the indictment unsealed Monday, @hrc.org President Kelley Robinson says that "what we are seeing in Alabama is not new .... We saw it during Jim Crow, and now, it's being used to go after a civil rights lawyer fighting to protect the rights and lives of transgender Alabamans."
Yikes (tbc, very much not unprovoked)
You should read the whole first tweet (and the tweet it quotes), not just the first part of the first sentence in it
Perfectly fine to say that being "sort of open" to a show-your-id-card regime is dumb, I agree (guy makes a lot of bad tweets). I hope he wouldn't stand by it in a more considered way.
Yglesias is not contradicting himself or reversing his position. He's saying the same thing in both tweets: there is no presently available means to readily identify yourself as a citizen if you are stopped by ICE. That is the point of the first tweet and it's the same thing he says in the second
Like, the way you'd do this is something like: Mamdani-supporting leftist YIMBYs (Brad Lander, Indiscreet Function) [[handshake]] Eric Adams and his plot to expand mayoral power
I think this business of dunking on people you don't like based on stuff you misunderstand and/or take out of context makes everyone stupider. It makes everyone stupider even if you dislike them for good reason. And I have a principled objection to making everyone stupider
I feel like this instance of the meme doesn't understand the meme
IDF sniper from Chicago who says he killed Gazan teenager just for trying to retrieve his brother's corpse: “They’re thinking, ‘Oh I don’t think [I’ll get shot] because I’m wearing civilian clothes and I am not carrying a weapon' and all that, but they were wrong. That’s what you have snipers for.”
Feels odd that Altshul is unmentioned in this article
WE WON!!!! @BOENYC just voted UNANIMOUSLY to approve the 4 housing ballot questions!!! Thanks to hundreds of calls and emails from Open New York members, these historic housing questions will be put to voters—and they’re going to pass.
I mean I would not assume there won't be prosecutions
Houthis
That wasn't the only thing or the most important thing going on with the 2020 BLM protests obviously! And I'm actually substantively pretty sympathetic to it. It was a terrible time. I went months without feeling the touch of another human being. That can drive you insane
I would not underrate the importance of the last bullet in my first skeet. For high-conscientiousness liberals for whom adhering to COVID safety protocols was important, the BLM protests were an opportunity to meet emotional needs for in person contact that would not make them feel guilty
Stuff like Gavin Newsom going to that restaurant gala was imo worse than the BLM protest letter
But they made a lot of choices based on limited info, some of them were in hindsight wrong (outdoor recreation and socializing should have been encouraged throughout), and when you do these kinds of restrictions you need to be very sensitive to anything that threatens their descriptive legitimacy
I don't like this discourse because I think the actual level of intentional discrimination was pretty low, contrary to what you hear in some circles it's not that public health decisionmakers were driven by hatred for churches and love for BLM
Second tweet is not about a national ID card at all. His point in the first tweet is that there isn't one so the proposal is unworkable. Which is also what he's saying in the second tweet (that the proposal is unworkable).
A lot of things at once going on here: - plenty of public health guidance that large gatherings were a bad idea - increasing evidence by summer 2020 that outdoor things like protests were much safer - some ideological motivated reasoning by some public health people - people really sick of lockdown
They accepted an older proposal for a partial deal (which Israel was insisting on), then Israel switched positions to insist on a comprehensive deal and the US in recent days put forward a deal with a full hostage release on day 1 that it sounds like Hamas was poised to reject
Yeah maybe! Which is shitty! But not inconsistent
A US passport is not a national ID card, it's far from universal and there's no expectation that you carry it on your person (and it can be risky to do so since it's harder to replace than an ID card).
He is very annoying and recently he has had a string of terrible takes but yes you are right!
Not only are those two tweets not inconsistent, he's actually saying the same thing in both!
BREAKING: @lambdalegal.org strongly criticizes the federal indictment of one of its lawyers in Alabama, calling it "an outrageous act of governmental overreach" that followed "unprecedented and abusive judicial proceedings." "We unequivocally stand behind Carl and all of our attorneys ...."
I don't fully get it because it sounds like Hamas was posed to reject the US proposal, but maybe they got worried that Trump would eventually lose patience with them
I think this was the goal
Also: the injunction is phrased a little confusingly but if you read c to mean a particular *type* of location (as opposed to a specific site where there is specific evidence), do you think there's a substantial set of constitutional stops
Or in other words, if there's standing (because some plaintiffs or org members have sufficient likelihood of being unlawfully stopped under the govt's policy) isn't Sotomayor's approach exactly the right one--given the facts on the ground, is the injunction justified?
This is a bit confusing to me. Lyons is about standing, not about factual heterogeneity. And district courts are allowed to do prophylactic injunctions (and Kavanaugh doesn't indicate otherwise). So maybe there's a problem if DC and CA9 got standing wrong. But how does that relate to heterogeneity
He just forgot it happened (common!) and then expressed excessive certainty about his recollection when pressed (also unfortunately common, a classic witness mistake that you try to prep out of them) and the Trump Administration is going to try its best to ruin his life over it
The charge here is that Charles misstated that he hadn't made a phone call that in fact he had made alerting a judge to a TRO motion in a case that the team thought was or would be assigned to that judge. There was nothing improper about the call and no reason for him to lie about it
This is an absurd, politically vindictive, transphobic prosecution whose point is to attack the LGBT rights movement. There is no reason to believe that Charles lied and no reason to think this is an appropriate exercise of prosecutorial discretion even if he did
Israel probably just doomed a ceasefire but that's the point right? Maybe they were worried Trump would actually force them into one
It's newsworthy because for better or for worse (probably for worse) Starmer seems obsessed with them
I mean it literally, it's a relative comparison. Who did it better
The politics of it had to be not, we are hurting Trump and helping Biden, but we are hurting Trump to make room for DeSantis
This is part of why going slow on prosecuting Trump was a disaster. The Supreme Court might have tolerated the prosecutions before he was the presumptive nominee. Once he was, they were going to protect him
This is exactly right. I'm not sure any of them are actually all that Trumpy. But they are all strong R partisans
I'm not saying it's a likely outcome but like, without external pressure there will be no solution at all.
I don't agree with "reject numeracy" but it did make him make lots of bad takes well outside his wheelhouse, which was a very bad choice for which he is of course responsible
Israel should become a pariah state unless it abandons the occupation.
The only way to make it happen short of war (which I don't want) is meaningful international pressure--leveraging aid and arms exports obviously but also trade relations. Israel is very dependent on its economic connections to the West
I guess I'm not sure why that is. To be clear, I'm talking about a robust two state solution: full sovereignty, the West Bank with minor territorial swaps, the settlers not included in swaps either removed or absorbed into the Palestinian state
The alternative to giving up on support for the two state solution is to support it more meaningfully by actually exerting external pressure to get Israel to implement one. And the prospect of that actually seems much more realistic today than 5 or 10 years ago.
And if you care about Palestinian self-determination it's not a solution either but more like a new twist on the status quo. I am not sure it's fair to the book, which may not be accurately summarized, but it sure reads as something that takes Israeli domestic politics as an inexorable constraint
From the standpoint of domestic Israeli politics this is more "realistic" than a two-state solution. From the standpoint of Arab regimes who don't want to be caught between Palestinian insurgents and the IDF while managing an unpopular occupation, it seems rather less realistic.
She mentions that the prospect of a Palestinian confederation with Jordan, apparently a proposal in the book. Many decisionmakers in Israel would like to subcontract control over the Palestinians to friendly Arabs, though it's an ambivalent desire (see e.g. Netanyahu insisting on "security control")
But these are not solutions, at least for anyone who accepts bare minimum liberal commitments. So what are the alternative solutions? As Goldberg points out, if realism is the concern, the prospect of a binational state is less realistic, not more
Then there is a separate set of claims that the two state solution is now obsolete or unrealistic. Perhaps this is true--its short term prospects seem very dim. Maybe the status quo limps on for decades more. Maybe the Israel right succeeds at its plans for ethnic cleansing.
I don't understand this NYT op-ed. There are people whom for principled reasons believe the two-state solution is an unacceptable compromise of liberal values or Palestinian rights. I don't agree but it's a principled position. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/o...
Nate Silver is the GOAT at one thing in particular and he spent his first several years in public life being attacked by innumerate people for correct calls he made about it, it would alienate anyone and it's not surprising it reinforced some bad thinking habits
The experience of 2016, in which a certain discourse flipped on a dime from attacking him for overstating Trump's chances to attacking him for understating them, probably was not very pleasant for him either
huge trigger warning for this piece (and extract) but I do think - as someone who really is liberal on a lot! - that the "oh any attack on mainstream online porn is inherently conservative/dangerous/a slippery slope" just doesn't hold anymore, this stuff is horrific www.404media.co/michael-prat...
There may be some violations of immigration law that merit criminal punishment. Deportation is not a criminal punishment.
Also there is no longer anyone on the Court from California, let alone LA County
Protecting people who are vulnerable because they have come from another place is a core duty of human solidarity--particularly, but not only, when they have come fleeing persecution. It's a traditional religious value for a reason, notwithstanding that it's one often honored in the beach
The political constraints here are real and important and I don't know what to do about them but you can't figure it out if you don't start in the right place.
Morally speaking the right starting point for thinking about ICE deportation raids is that the entire enterprise is immoral and illegitimate from top to bottom. You cannot ethically cooperate with it. The only morally legitimate stance is firm opposition.
SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in a college applicant's file is blatantly unconstitutional ALSO SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in targeting whom to detain and deport is cool cool cool
#SCOTUS all-but overruled a unanimous, 90-year-old precedent through an unexplained "administrative" stay this morning, and that's only the second-most-problematic thing it did before lunchtime.
I am sure there are particular workplaces where the number of undocumented workers is very high but that's what actual evidence is for
Grease the wheels of the mass kidnapping machine
Just taking the pathologically dishonest government's word as always
עשה משפט יתום ואלמנה ואהב גר לתת לו לחם ושמלה
Certiorari petitions to the Court of Heaven unfortunately remain largely unresolved but
Not to religion post on main but it's Elul so it seems worth mentioning that there is a higher court than the United States Supreme Court and I do not think the Judge who rules it thinks well of people who abuse immigrants and refugees
Yikes
Cuomo: if I become mayor, I will fold to Trump like Columbia and Paramount because I'm too cowardly to stand on the city's rights and fight his authoritarian bluster
The better vaccine analogy for what Trump did would be drone striking unvaccinated people on the ground that their contribution to a deadly pandemic makes them combatants in a war.
This morning, six Israelis were killed and dozens wounded near a bus stop in a horrible terror attack in Jerusalem. We’re heartbroken for the victims and their families and friends. Targeting civilians anywhere is always inexcusable – Israelis or Palestinians. (1/2)
Still true bsky.app/profile/homo...
Probably my biggest frustration with psychiatrists is not warning me about how hard it is to come off stuff
I don't want to underplay the due process piece. Due process is very important. But in a way the due process criticism understates things! It's a violation of due process if someone gets an unfair trial. It's something else, something worse, when the state just assassinates someone
Just premeditated murder committed in cold blood, an intentional act of wrongful killing to deter others--something that in other contexts we call terrorism
Every person criminal or noncriminal has dignity and rights. What the Trump Administration did to those people on that boat was not criminal punishment, or self defense, or the use of force against combatants in wartime; it was simple murder. Murder is always wrong.
This is absolutely correct. I think it's also important to say though that even real criminals who we are 100% sure are criminals cannot just be murdered
They had the choice to destroy the ship or intercept it; Trump chose to destroy it; if Trump had made a different choice they would not pretend to believe this
This is not the most important problem with this, but one problem is that JD Vance obviously did not believe this ten years ago and it's not clear to me he believed it two weeks ago. It's just, Trump did this, so come up with a self righteous pretext
This is a good penalty default approach even if it's not Bayesianly correct (and I'm not sure if isn't)
it is always worth remembering that vance made a conscious decision to be a person of low character. he has eagerly contorted himself into evil for the sake of what amounts to a whiff of power.
You may have seen, but they posted that they were looking into moving all of it elsewhere in anticipation of the shutdown
Tbf looking back I'm not sure the new commentary is all that ideologically skewed but I stand by a lot of it being not very good and also not well suited for SCOTUSblog
The degree to which SCOTUSblog is now producing extra content through second rate conservative editorializing has surprised me and the live blog late last term was so annoying as to be unusable
Some of the points I made in this thread were good but this sure turned out to be a bad take (not just for this reason, though it would be sufficient) bsky.app/profile/homo...
Sure looks like this SCOTUSblog post on developments in Hecox carefully avoids using pronouns for the plaintiff www.scotusblog.com/2025/09/lind... Not a great change in editorial style (they did not used to do this in the pre-Dispatch era)
I think they are influenced by the bipartisan success of the YIMBY movement but this strategy is always harder the less it's a narrow concrete policy demand and the more it's a broad policy approach
ACB in Skrmetti: it is not apparent that there is a history of de jure discrimination against trans people (by which I think she means, laws expressly singling out trans people rather than merely targeting gender deviance or non-conformity) Donald Trump: hold my Diet Coke
Good option
It's Nazi Twitter, just as Nazi Germany and Vichy France were in some sense Germany and France
I do it just because he doesn't want me to
(he is not going to do this)