It is.
Ken White, criminal defense attorney and First Amendment litigator. Co-host of Serious Trouble podcast and writer at The Popehat Report. Opinions here are my own. Signal: KenWhite.1969
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It is.
Count yourself lucky.
@sarahemclaugh.bsky.social knows what she did
/6 [SALLY is WEEPING. Two RIVERS of SNOT run down her face gleaming SILVER in the SPOTLIGHT. Her voice is TREMUOUS.] Give them support. Give them respect. Give them deference. Give them . . . hope. [VISUAL SLOWLY FADES OUT] [VOICE IN BACKGROUND] Tom . . . Cotton? Like the Senator? Seriously?
I’m going for subtle here
/5 [A FACE APPEARS ON SCREEN] SALLY: How can you look at this face and not feel pity? Is your heart made of stone?
/4 SALLY: For just pennies a day, you can give these pundits hope. You can show them someone is on their side. You can give them a place where they will be cherished. A place where they will not be questioned from the wrong side. A place called home. [BLUE TWITTER CHECKMARK APPEARS IN BACKGROUND]
/3 SALLY: Every day pundits are abused. Taunted. Disrespected. Their contributions are unliked. Their Substacks are unread. They are told that nobody cares. That nobody is on their side. Do you care? Will you be on their side? [VOICE IN BACKGROUND]: Chris Rufo. Elon Musk.
/2 SALLY: Bluesky. It can be a happy place. An exciting place. A popular place. [CLOSE UP ON SALLY’S FACE] But every day, for some pundits, it is not a safe place. [A TEAR FORMS IN SALLY’S EYE] [VOICE IN BACKGROUND] Jesse Singal. Bari Weiss. Richard Hanania.
[CUE MUSIC: “IN THE ARMS OF AN ANGEL” PLAYING SOFTLY] [FADE IN BACKGROUND SOUND: A solemn voice reads names] Nate Silver. Matthew Yglesias. Megan McArdle. Mark Cuban. [FADE IN: SALLY STRUTHERS sits on a stool in a pool of light on a minimalist set. She looks SAD.] /1
lawreview.vermontlaw.edu/wp-content/u...
Lots.https://lawreview.vermontlaw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Vol.-47-No.-4-03_LoMonte_Final.pdf
After banning visas for Palestinian children seeking medical care, the Trump administration is now banning any Palestinian passport holders from entering the United States. Extraordinary bigotry being converted into US policy. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/w...
This Weeks Editorial Cartoon: Causing a Führer
An 11-year-old boy who was shot while playing the “ding dong ditch” prank in Houston on Saturday night has died, the authorities said.
These people are unrepentant racists but also too cowardly to use the slur they so desperately want to.
Through its work in disease prevention, the CDC has saved millions of lives throughout the globe. Some of Trump's partisan critics question his plan to dismantle it.
NEW: 72 of the 76 Guatemalan children previously boarded onto planes have been returned to ORR custody, per DOJ, with the remaining 4 expected to be returned in the next 15 min. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Anna has had excellent coverage of this developing case in which the Trump administration tried to use the holiday weekend to secretly and illegally deport children.
Fifty-one of the 85 Federalist papers were written by a guy born in Nevis.
This should be a bigger story. A government official had the YouTube channel of a private citizen shut down bc he didn’t like what that citizen was saying. This administration’s version of free speech is a joke.
Exclusive: President Trump and international partners are discussing plans to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” on the rubble of Gaza. One plan would establish U.S. control and pay all of Gaza’s more than 2 million population to leave.
Judge Sooknanan: As I said at the start of this hearing, I got a call at 2:36 am [last night] because the government chose the wee hours of the morning on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend to execute a plan to move these children. That's why we're here.
"Sending away the 'others' to make way for white people to flourish is at the literal center of Gast’s painted vision of the West. That vision is reproduced in Homeland Security’s own videos." ICYMI:
OW fuck
Federal agents in DC have been starting dangerous car cases for small stuff like tinted windows. The chases violate DC police policy. Out of 10 cases, six ended in a crash. One car had a minor in back. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...
A website that lets you select a country or state and move it around a Mercator projection map to yield better size comparisons. thetruesize.com, created by James Talmage and Damon Maneice
NEW: my office has received disturbing whistleblower reports that the Trump administration plans to separate 700 children from their families, lawyers, and support systems. Disappearing vulnerable children beyond the reach of American law and oversight is beyond depravity.
Hello, I am furious www.liberalcurrents.com/let-it-burn-...
Exclusive: The Justice Department gave some senior career attorneys a choice: They could either quit or go to a new Sanctuary Cities Enforcement working group. Six months later, all of those attorneys have left DOJ. “The assignment was a sham,” one said.
But slim is still fine right
Making dinner. Clean and dice a fresh jalapeño to throw into part of the dish. Scoop up the diced pepper from the cutting board and throw into the pan. The fumes from the pan become quite spicy, causing my eyes to water a bit. I wipe them with the hand that just scooped up the pepper.
Wrote about Comer/Mace attempting to doxx and intimidate Wikipedia editors in an effort to force their own viewpoint onto Wikipedia.
I miss the old brand #CDC
I hate skinny ties and I have not enjoyed the times when they are in fashion. Is there a "classic" always-acceptable width that will always be acceptable?
me after the tariffs are struck down as illegal
By a 7-4 vote, the full Federal Circuit has *affirmed* a lower-court ruling holding that many of President Trump’s tariffs exceed his statutory authority. The ruling won’t go into effect until October 14, though—which gives the Trump administration plenty of time to seek intervention from #SCOTUS:
BREAKING 🧵: Divided appeals court rules against Trump's tariffs. 4 judges appointed by Bush I, Obama, & Biden (2) say IEEPA doesn't allow tariffs. 4 judges app. by Bush II (2) & Obama (2) - including chief - say it does. 3 judges app. by Clinton & Obama (2) say it doesn't allow *these* tariffs.
BREAKING: Social Security Administration chief data officer and whistle-blower Charles Borges has resigned after bombshell report that SSA put highly-sensitive data at risk. He sent out an email to colleagues moments ago. Here is the text of his email shared with me:
I mean, with a small l. Or “civil libertarian.”
I’m so grateful that I have tenure and the academic freedom to call it like I see it. “Dr. Kathleen Bachynski, a professor of public health at Muhlenberg College, described Kennedy’s comments as “absolute gibberish” and slammed the HHS secretary as a “dangerous buffoon” who is “threatening us all.”
Alan Dershowitz has become a querulous, lawless buffoon and serial abuser of the legal system. This lawsuit was indefensible and a contemptible example of the sentiment “I am famous and important, you can’t disrespect me.”
The Republicans give us the venomous power-hungry racism but you need to go a Libertarian to get “the government suggesting I shouldn’t eat raw chicken is as tyrannical as the age of consent”
Written order to come within 30 days (he issued it now bc the law is supposed to go into effect Monday. Rough holding is that it likely violates the 1A to compel companies issue disclosures related to DEI and ESG they don't think are true. Trump-appointed Judge Alan Albright.
/2. 3. Union Station is already a madhouse without cramming it with pre-gaming Dodgers fans trying to get on a goddamned sky tram. 4. I am not getting in a small enclosed space with drunk Dodgers fans after a game. If I want a drunken fistfight I will tell my wife America’s Got Talent is stupid.
1. There is no way I am getting into a fucking gondola managed by the City of Los Angeles. I would not get into a cardboard box on the sidewalk managed by the City of Los Angeles. 2. People are 100% going to shoot at those gondolas and I am not 100% against it.
Good news everyone we can all go back to shitting in the drinking water for freedom
"Serious about safety" is a frame cj reform folks use as an alternative to suggesting crime "isn't a problem" but short of calling for more policing and incarceration...Dems would benefit from using it more often
Lots of action from the D.C. Circuit just now on the foreign aid impoundment case. In a nutshell, the original panel amended its ruling (to narrow it significantly and let some claims go forward); the full Court denied rehearing given the amendment, and the new ruling goes into immediate effect:
The money doesn't matter. There is never any sustained backlash for spending money for death-making institutions.
Cops are great
This is actually less an "end-run" and more "example #145,436,884 of how Congress repeatedly gave away its powers and hoped norms would just hold everything together and now they aren't." Congress lets POTUS petition for a clawback and withhold funding for 45 days during the process. But here?
The only reason for Emil Bove to be still showing up for Trump administration photo opps (in this photo from Trump’s D.C. takeover, peeking out at top right) is that Emil Bove understands himself to be part of the Trump administration on an ongoing basis www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/u...
oh come on www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/u...
There's not really any way to explain the esoteric neo-Nazi death cult the Minneapolis shooter was part of without sounding like a complete lunatic, which sucks because all the people who want to turn this into Transphobia Kristalnacht don't care about sounding like lunatics at all.
A federal grand jury has declined to indict another person arrested as part of President Trump's D.C. crime surge. This was the only case we know of in which the National Guard participated in an arrest. After the grand jury declined to return an indictment, DOJ moved to dismiss the case.
On the new acting CDC director. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
8/28/25😳 second time this month, Justice Department dropped charges against a client represented by Pam’s brother abcnews.go.com/US/doj-drops...
Got up at 4 am EST, caught a plane, flew to LA, drove to office, got ready for afternoon of trial, drove to court, did afternoon of trial. Game Face Me: I am an unstoppable trial machine. I am an animal. Internal Me: I hope I can get to my couch before I die everything hurts
Someone tell DOGE a way that the gov't could have been more efficient, by not building a stunt concentration camp...
It is not just that these employees are risking being put on leave or even fired for standing up for science (see EPA/FEMA officials), they are standing in front of a workplace that was the subject of a terrorist attack a couple of weeks ago, by a man who believes what their boss believes.
Three senior CDC leaders who resigned told The Post they were asked to participate in an unscientific vaccine recommendation process that they believe could harm the health of Americans.
BREAKING: Big moment as CDC staff stage a mass walkout. They have lined the street outside its HQ to greet and salute the four top officials who have resigned in protest at RFK Jr’s attack on the agency’s science base. (🎥 AP)
[Bill Cassidy looking down at corpse of chicken he has fucked to death]: That chicken should not have been fucked that hard
Donald Trump's authoritarian power grab continues. Getting rid of independent regulators means higher costs and worse deals for working families. But Trump’s billionaire buddies? They keep winning big. Firing Robert Primus doesn’t help families. I’m glad he’s fighting back.
The gun that is believed to have been used in the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till is now on display at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, less than a week after the federal government released thousands of pages of documents related to the case.
Listening to a podcast where a well known tech world wannabe fascist calls journalism "nonconsensual invasion of privacy for profit" and thinks that's clever and my goodness does that reveal a lot of how completely brain wormed a bunch of these guys are once they faced a tiny bit of criticism.
"Researcher who has distorted voter data appointed to Homeland Security election integrity role" www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...
"Not a first amendment issue" vexes me because it's obscuring and imprecise because usually first amendment law is relevant to resolving the question and usually the speaker means "the first amendment does not prevent punishing this" which may or may not be right.
[considers taking bait about what "isn't a Fourth Amendment issue" means, declines]
wtf is this nonsense? He thinks he can understand kid’s “mitochondrial challenges” just by looking at them? This is an insane person.
Wow
We’re being governed by monsters. Just absolute monsters.
Grateful for amazing lawyers like @markzaidesq.bsky.social and Abbe Lowell who are fighting for truth and transparency. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
He's a republican so I assume his excuse is its only polite to get a kid high before you molest them
three guesses which party this guy is in
Il y a quarantie ans quand j'ai etudie votre annoying language monsieur
Explaining this: As a presidential nominee who was confirmed by the Senate, Trump has to fire her, and her lawyers say that has not happened yet, so she is still in office.
Cameroonian taxi driver wanted to talk so I spoke bad French at him until he stopped
I mean it's pretty safe because someone would have to actually read her book
@kenwhite.bsky.social is it generally a good idea for a client to confess to a remarkably outrageous and fucking trashy domestic murder attempt in her new memoir? And of course, an attempted murder in a state (NJ) with no statute of limitations on it. Asking for the author of "Eat, Pray, Love".
We had a chance to stick with making it punishable by death to be a Kennedy but we punked out
Wow you REALY don't want a security clearance do you
Hoo boy
🚨 The CDC as we know it is being severely altered tonight. In addition to the CDC director being ousted, the Post is reporting that several senior leaders are leaving as well. Here are from two of the resignations:
“I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health,” wrote Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
Terrible news for public health. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...
CHAOS ERUPTS AT CDC CDC Director Susan Monarez has been ousted after RFK Jr. demanded she change her policy on the COVID vaccine. Top officials from the Vaccine Unit, Zoonotic Division, and the Chief Medical Officer are resigning, per reports. Horrifying news for public health.
It's a visual assonance doctor
Yeah, like they revile and despise transgender people and we turn around and treat trans people as human because we're decent. Great point Matt Yglesias
I would call that a credible resemblance
I think those lawyers who have been suing colleges to shut down speech critical of Israel are going to have to sue the whole country.
Wow this is going to be a whole lot of people to be sued or jailed or expelled
The shooter posted a video that shows numerous neo-Nazi, anti-immigrant, and anti-LGBTQI+ messages on his weapons. Noem mentions that he also had a message to kill Trump but that appears to be in response to his failure to release the Epstein list (which was another message).
Here's what the third day of elementary school looked like in Mount Pleasant, Washington DC.