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Dwight Professor of Law, Columbia Law School. Ex-DOJ/OLC. Becoming familiar with your game. How Rights Went Wrong available at Bookshop.org (https://tinyurl.com/se32my4r), Amazon (https://tinyurl.com/3vbcfwa4), or a decent public library.
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He doesn't live in the district. Which isn't a legal problem but is probably a political problem.
My question exactly.
No.
Biden wasn't a revanchist authoritarian.
I could definitely be wrong! And agree that it's striking, but also not surprising in light of the relationship between the administration and the briefing room press.
Just an astonishing, powerful op-ed that drives home what we are losing and what's already been lost. We are so incredibly fortunate to live with the advances modern medicine and health science. Destroying and stymieing it is just unforgivable. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
This will sound unduly credulous to some, but I would guess there are major outlets working on stories right now that will take some intense vetting before they can be published.
Stay for just a while. Stay and let me look at you. It's been so long, I hardly knew you. Standing in the door. . . .
The paralegal should put on her CV that Pam Bondi personally fired her.
CHIMICHURRI too! What are we doing here?
I agree with the main point, though, that Democratic leadership is not acting like this is the constitutional emergency it is. It’s as if they’re waiting for him to grow a mustache and put on a military uniform.
The appropriation process is real. It’s just that Trump treats it as discretionary. The federal budget is really big, and much of it he doesn’t care to disturb and never will. This is emblematic of authoritarian systems. Much of it hums along as before, unless and until the regime decides it won’t….
BREAKING: Appeals court rejects Trump’s authority to impose sweeping tariffs under IEEPA. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Read the letter.
A reminder that PhD students are also teachers. It'll be much harder to run undergraduate programs too with this change.
Trump admin planning to change student visas from lasting for duration of academic program to fixed 4-yr term, and then much harder to renew Could destroy US ability to attract global talent, particularly those seeking advanced degrees in STEM. The median time to complete a PhD is 5.7 yrs per NSF.
When I try to think of historical analogues for regimes as reckless as this one is with its own country's human, material, and intellectual resources, the warning lights for mass violence start flashing bright red.
The US has the widest age gap between lawmakers and citizens of any OECD country. In a new report with @dustinwahl.bsky.social we explore how winner-take-all elections fuel this divide & how proportional representation could help bring young people into politics www.newamerica.org/political-re...
The sun kisses this benighted corner at last.
This (whole thread) gets at what I was going for, and the point where there should be broad agreement, even as we might wrangle on details, terminology and degree of democratic collapse.
Will Baude is always rewarding reading. Here on the unconstitutional birthright citizenship EO. blog.dividedargument.com/p/complicati...
The clear trajectory is to make serious electoral interference feel like dog-bites-man rather than man-bites-dog. The boiling frog playbook.
Good thread. A term I once read someone (I no longer recall who) use and found appealing is "collaborative disagreement." The goal should be to leverage viewpoint diversity to produce a common good, not just to score points against each other or to be respectful for its own sake.
I know there's a lot happening today, but this is sneaking in under the radar. This proposed new rule would absolutely crush foreign PhD students, potentially making it impossible for them to enroll with any certainty of their ability to finish www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
A metaphor for where we are as a country: obsessed with deporting immigrants, no matter what the resulting damage to American society.
Over 125 economists signed the open letter calling on the President, Congress, and the American public to uphold the principles of Federal Reserve independence and not remove Lisa Cook without due process. There's still time to sign! And please share. #EconSky docs.google.com/document/d/1...
What are the legal questions raised by Trump's purported removal of Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board? A user's guide: balkin.blogspot.com/2025/08/what... @charliesavage.bsky.social @jacklgoldsmith.bsky.social
I was partial to "The Hurl of Sandwich," but yeah, gotta get "ham sandwich" in there.
What's happening in DC right now will, among other things, make its way into criminal procedure casebooks.
President Trump has issued more executive orders since January 20 than President Biden issued in his entire presidency.
“Pa. election conspiracy activist appointed to election integrity role at Department of Homeland Security” electionlawblog.org?p=151775
Just received this statement from Lisa Cook: "President Trump purported to fire me 'for cause' when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so. I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022."
I am steeped in the arcana of 2020 election denialism, and the name Heather Honey is familiar to me. lancasteronline.com/news/politic...
I'm sure they are. That doesn't mean they'll concede it.
I would be very surprised if the government doesn't make an Article II argument in the alternative, should it get litigated. And I would also be surprised if the in-the-alternative argument isn't joined, at least in the lower courts.
What was Andrew Johnson impeached for again?
Sure, I meant an "out" from the Court's subjective perspective. It would not be a satisfying resolution.
Not a dumb question. Assuming it gets litigated, that will be a possible “out.”
Looks like we'll get a test of what, exactly, SCOTUS meant in Trump v. Wilcox sooner than we thought.
To be clear, generating headlines and online bickering is a deadly serious agenda.
Agree with @kewhittington.bsky.social's thread in just about all particulars. This is engineered to generate headlines and online bickering without doing much of substance.
So, like, even if there hadn't been two Supreme Court decisons in living memory directly holding that flag burning is protected under the First Amendment, *new criminal laws cannot be created by executive order.*
That's exactly what it is. Between this and Brazil, it seems that Trump is practicing a kind of authoritarian identity politics — going after any democracy brave enough to punish its would-be authoritarians the way the US tried (and failed) to punish him
All of this is performative cruelty directed solely to avoid admitting they fucked up when they illegally sent him to cecot in March.
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Sorry, Catharine MacKinnon, your new name is 3 of 9.
Also, the *term* “critical theory” should go away? Which would accomplish what now?
Yikes.
I’m reminded somewhat of the “debate” over whether climate change is caused by humans. Even if it weren’t, it would still make sense to try to mitigate it so we don’t get annihilated.
That doesn’t mean we should misdiagnose the problem, as he says, or do things that are counterproductive, but it is a useful instinct to try to be solution-oriented and not just throw up our hands and say “propagandists gonna propagandize.” (Not that @volts.wtf was doing that.)
One reason for the habit @volts.wtf identifies is that the existence of impressionable people & those willing to exploit them is a predictable social problem that requires management, & just because something has an irrational cause doesn’t mean it can’t be rationally mitigated by our own actions. 🧵
There is clearly no going back. Our would-be political leaders should be talking now about what going forward must look like.
Extraordinary new detail about the FBI purge. *Senior officials were asked to fire lower level officials tagged by online right wingers as being anti-Trump. *When they asked for a reason - required by law - they were not given any. They refused. Then they were fired. www.cbsnews.com/news/politic...
me last week: “There was, and is, no external crisis facing the United States. But for reasons of both personality and political ambition, Trump needs a crisis to govern — or rather, to rule. And if the actual conditions of reality will not give him a state of exception, he’ll create one himself.”
Just throwing this out there—one of my classes for this semester has failed to make enrollment, so if anyone knows of a CUNY history (or history-adjacent) class that's looking for a last-minute replacement prof, I'd be pleased to learn of it.
. . . There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny." (3/3)
. . . Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference. . . . (2/3)
This, from FDR's 1936 convention speech bears repeating, as always, but especially now: "Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. . . . (1/3)
A quick 🧵 on this ruling, which as Steve notes, effectively requires grant recipients challenging grant freezes/cancellations in two fora - Federal Claims to recoup wrongfully withheld grants, and District Court to challenge the policy/basis on which the admin is illegally withholding grants ...
BREAKING: A new experiment in Philly shows cash rental assistance slashed homelessness rates by 57–67%.
Interesting analysis here.
Making it reliably representative requires creating safe seats, which is its own problem and could worsen polarization. I tend to think we should vote for the House at large by state (though it would require a change in federal law and some hard thinking about the right voting system).
This mayoral race, man.
The delegation at a given time isn't a great measure of a gerrymander. To take an extreme hypo, if, in a 42% red state you made every district 42% red, you could easily arrive at that 43-9 number in a given cycle. I'd measure it by whether the map is partisan-driven, which CA's is not, by law.
JUST IN: Judge Berman agrees that effort by DOJ to unseal Epstein grand jury files is a “diversion” when DOJ could just release a trove of far more comprehensive documents without court involvement. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
This, but also, note that most of the coverage is framed as tit for tat, when in fact it is “if TX gerrymanders *even more*, maybe CA will decide to gerrymander *at all*”. As if the status quo is some kind of tabula rasa.
But see Adarand Constructors v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200, 239 (1995)(Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment)(“In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.”)
Here is an image of the crowd of people that chased a dozen ICE agents out of Columbia Heights yesterday. I don’t see one “elderly white hippie” there. I do see a wide variety of ages, genders, and races; DC residents united in disgust at what Miller is cheering on.
If this continues, the most talented American students will want to study abroad, because they'll want to study with the most talented students and faculty from around the world, and those people won't want to come to the United States even if they can. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/u...
Thanks for considering my work. Duncan Kennedy discusses the CLS critique here: duncankennedy.net/wp-content/u.... Other places to look for at least conceptualizing "rights" differently would be Robin West's work & Mary Ann Glendon's Rights Talk, from a more "right" perspective.
Punishing universities for "fighting back"--that is, for petitioning the courts for redress of grievances--would be a serious violation of the First Amendment even if Trump's broader campaign against the universities was lawful, which it isn't. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/u...
Some of my forebears have been in NY for 200 years, likely escaping enslavement in NJ. Others migrated from the Carolinas to seek jobs and rights up north. I grew up going to a black church with a Muslim name, and I think immigrants are the best of us. I am America.
The president is entitled to his opinions about curating US history. Government lawyers issuing demand letters are not.
Attorneys?
This is incredibly important. But the scale of the money in comparison to what is lost gives a sense of the challenge. Millions vs billions. The big metros stations are probably fine in terms of survival. The irony I suspect is that the stations they're trying to keep from dying entirely ...
Joining with our friends @knightfoundation.org and others in a new philanthropic effort to help stabilize, support, and revitalize public media. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/b...
It raises the question of why a trigger at all, given that there’s nothing natural about a status quo in which, eg, FL and TX gerrymander but CA and NY don’t. I guess more likely to pass?
I’m not sure I would even interpret Trump’s own post as claiming the constitutional authority to do so.
General lesson about social media. Ignoring trolls is a form of combat.
"We're all historians now." -Elena Kagan #satire
An excellent #Appellatejob has opened up, at the Georgetown Law's @immersionclinic.bsky.social. Really a great job for someone wanting to work in an appellate clinic, it seems to me. perma.cc/CX9E-NSEJ
E.g., I don't think Mamdani is popular because he's a socialist. He's popular because he speaks and acts like a normal person.
My own view is that *sounding sensible* is not overrated; this translates into a bridge-building posture for some places/audiences/times but not others; a bridge-building posture & policy moderation aren't the same thing & are often confused; & some of this debate is ships passing in the night. . .
Friday: Trump says Putin claims voting by mail cannot be fair and it's how the 2020 was purportedly "rigged" against him Today: Trump announces executive order to ban mail voting and also voting machines Also today: Newsmax pays Dominion $67 million to avoid trial for lying about voting machines
No, President Trump Can’t Ban Mail in Ballots or Voting Machines, as His Truth Social Post Suggests He Might Try to Do electionlawblog.org?p=151633
Offering no-excuse mail-in voting: Canada, Germany, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland, S. Korea, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
For the record, dozens of countries (including, eg, Canada) have mail-in voting, the states are not an “agent” of the federal government in administering elections, and states emphatically do not need to do whatever the president tells them to do in this area.
New— Nazis with giant swastika flags marched in downtown Indianapolis on Saturday with two police escorts. They shouted “white power” and said to the woman who took this video (reshared here with her permission) “fuck you, n***** bitch.” Police did not intervene. I cannot find local news coverage.
if you don’t think the public will exists for an undertaking that large, then your political project should be to build that public will.
New signs were up this afternoon and bands were playing
I don't view it as a concession. The fact that it is done to distract makes it even more abusive, not less.
Got it!
I didn't watch the Murphy interview. If he said that, he's wrong, but *that's* the wrong part.
Porque no es trivial.
I don't find myself disagreeing with @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social much these days, but I think this is misconceived. Authoritarians have launched wars as distractions. Calling that out doesn't imply that war is trivial, it implies that the authoritarian is a manipulative sociopath.
We're still taking our shoes off & can't carry water past airport security because of a thwarted terrorist attack nearly a quarter century ago that killed no one. Last week a terrorist tried to murder hundreds of federal employees and killed an officer and the president hasn't said a word about it.
Only Marshall, Taney, and Fuller have had longer tenures as CJ.