Also remember: we beat him and his enablers before, and we will beat them again
NY-17 Congressional Candidate. Democracy advocate. Former political-legal journalist. Retired competitive air guitarist. Second-Best dad ever. mikesacksforcongress.com
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Also remember: we beat him and his enablers before, and we will beat them again
REMINDER
Yes to all the “well actually he has no authority to do this” but that’s also beside the point: he’s creating the pretextual conditions for messing with our elections to retain power no matter the people’s will.
Whatcha gonna do SCOTUS
CA5 getting ready to turn this Oldham dissent into a majority opinion storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Anyway I was tracking all this on the other place (thread of threads here x.com/mikesacksesq...)
“Public and government officials continue to threaten libel suits, not for their common-law purpose of protecting one's character and image, but to threaten and silence dissenters and critics.” I wonder who he’s talking about…
“Public and government officials continue to threaten libel suits, not for their common-law purpose of protecting one's character and image, but to threaten and silence dissenters and critics.” I wonder who he’s talking about…
Judge Wilson reminds us that NYT v Sullivan emerged to combat segregationist states’ weaponization of their libel laws to bankrupt anyone who criticized their racist regimes.
And Wilson (Clinton) pushes back hard against the right-wing push to overturn NYT v. Sullivan
Fascists
Wow
We could stop all this but Republican politicians and judges don’t want to
I’m sure some right-wing bigot at Mar-a-Lago told him this thinking it was funny and now he’s accomplished the fascist difecta of defining for himself who is a Jew while committing slanderous racism
Almost every day there’s a Trump scandal that skates by that in any other moment of presidential history would launch endless follow-up stories, congressional investigations, and sink an administration. I zeroed in on just two of them from this week: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/a-watergat...
DOGE, you may recall, secured access to our Social Security data thanks to an unsigned, unreasoned shadow docket order. The Roberts Court dropped it on a Friday afternoon and barely anyone noticed.
Talked Trump’s war on history with @dblight.bsky.social for @courtacctability.bsky.social on @legalafmtn.bsky.social @meidastouch.com youtu.be/iWkj5XmuAc8?...
If confirmed to be a federal judge, judicial nominee Edmund LaCour could abuse his position to limit voting rights, access to healthcare, labor rights, and much more. Our latest in Tilted Scales: courtaccountability.substack.com/p/edmund-lac...
Also check out footnote 2:
Exactly.
The architects of this current moment recognize they cannot win elections when there’s no one with the charisma to command Trump’s cult of personality when he’s gone.
Fascists. www.masslive.com/news/2025/08...
As ever
PAY ATTENTION
Trump and Lawler promised to lower prices. They lied. And now Trump’s tanking our economy and sending tanks into our cities while Lawler cheers it all on. Get yourself a Congressperson who will fight these stagflationary fascists. mikesacksforcongress.com
This is different from the Wilcox case. Trump fired her *pursuant to* the Roberts majority’s own agenda. Trump’s attempt to fire Cook is *in spite* of the Roberts majority’s agenda. He just thinks they’ll give him a pass so long as he gives them any pretext to get their quisling on.
Lisa Cook is challenging SCOTUS to show some spine
Trump is pretty much saying to the Roberts majority that he thinks they’re his personal rubes in robes
Trump is pretty much saying to the Roberts majority that he thinks they’re his personal rubes in robes
Petty fascist who wants to illegally fire the white guy first trumps up charges to illegally fire the Black lady as a test run for the Roberts majority’s continued credulity
Did you see any foreign national or figurative fighting words?
Well that didn’t take very long
Fascists
For your final exam, not saying anything you don’t already know
Trump thinks Americans are frightened snowflakes because that’s what he and his terrified band of scairdy fascists are.
Trump and his terrified band of scairdy fascists are trying to get a court to say foreign nationals have fewer First Amendment rights than we Americans who, in Trump’s mind, are too fearful to fully exercise our own.
Trump thinks Americans are frightened snowflakes because that’s what he and his terrified band of scairdy fascists are.
Trump and his terrified band of scairdy fascists are trying to get a court to say foreign nationals have fewer First Amendment rights than we Americans who, in Trump’s mind, are too fearful to fully exercise our own.
This is the First Amendment version of his “invasion” theory of immigration to suspend due process.
So pretty much Trump hopes this SCOTUS will say Texas v Johnson doesn’t apply when foreign nationals burn the flag to scare Americans www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...
Thomas's replacing Marshall is the only conceivable flip from the five justices who voted to strike down the bans. So I'd say this SCOTUS would be 7-2 to strike down any new ban.
The dissenters in the 1989 and follow-on 1990 cases were Rehnqhist, White, Stevens, O'Connor. -Roberts replaced Rehnquist -Barrett replaced RBG replaced White -Kagan replaced Stevens -Alito replaced O'Connor. Among them, only Alito could conceivably vote to uphold a flag burning ban.
This EO is meant to encourage prosecutors to bring cases under the very laws SCOTUS declared unconstitutional in 1989. Those were both 5-4 votes. And the current SCOTUS may be even more lopsided if anything actually ever comes from this performative nonsense from Trump's addled permalate1980s mind.
These scared little fascists are constructing reality around their terrified imaginations and ideological priors.
Let’s be clear about what is happening: This man is being punished — and disappeared — because he embarrassed our pretender king. They trumped up a criminal case against him because he was embarrassing.
SCOTUS now being asked to take up this case and strike down large-capacity magazine bans nationwide www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...
This is the straight line from affordability to autocracy that I’ve been talking about on the campaign trail:
🚨NEW: With the Texas congressional map having passed in the wee hours this a.m., the first lawsuit over them has been filed. This one by the Gonzales plaintiffs. Here's the 67-page compliant: drive.google.com/file/d/1v7dG... #txlege
Who voted for this? www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/c...
Meanwhile in Amarillo
Now TX and FL are asking to get in the case too bc MO and ID’s abortion bans are blocked while also citing Project 2025’s junk science also getting peddled to the FDA storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Back in May, Trump’s DOJ told Emperor Amarillo that he should still throw out MO/KS/ID’s attempt to keep the mife challenge alive… storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
These footnotes from a month ago seem important for right now
The MD federal judge, among other things, said 72 hours doesn’t include weekends.
Except Trump’s now saying they’re gonna send him to Uganda in 72 hours.
Pardonseeker says what
www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
Justice Jackson is basically reporting live from inside a garbage fire www.ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/nih-c...
This sort of admission—the VP is involved in prosecutorial decisions, the "concerns" arise from political actors, and the administration knows they don't have probable cause—would have prompted the Founders to impeach everyone involved.
I've been making this kind of aggressive House hearing agenda a feature of my campaign talks. Spend every single day hauling in all the bad guys who hurt people, and don't be shy about exercising our inherent contempt power towards those who defy subpoenas.
i'll say it again, my loud and vigorous support for any democrat who calls for televised hearings and criminal charges for everyone involved in DOGE. this guy should never be able to live in peace again.
Correction: the IL challenge remains live, and CA7 will hear oral args next month. So far, however, the all-Republican panel has shown no appetite for striking down the ban: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
CA1, CA2, CA3, CA4, CA7, CA9 CA3's Trump's only flippable circuit with live challenges to state assault weapons bans. Only CA7 has a Republican majority, and it has already upheld Illinois's assault weapons bans, and SCOTUS denied cert in those cases. everytownresearch.org/rankings/law...
My gut read: CA3 Dems and at least a couple of its Republicans want to avoid the circuit split on state assault weapons bans that Kavanaugh so desires, and so are rushing to go en banc before Bove gets his commission.
cc @matthewstiegler.bsky.social @adambonin.bsky.social who can tell me I don't know CA3 procedure and am getting this all wrong
In other words: If CA3 let the panel issue its opinion upholding NJ's ban in regular order, then Bove (and, if confirmed, Mascott) would have been the deciding votes on the en banc court to strike down NJ's ban and create a circuit split. Perhaps CA3's rushing to avoid that scenario now?
The CA3 en banc arg breakdown is 7-6 Republican, but not all of the Republicans are gun zealots. Also, Bove is not included on the en banc panel. Curious move. So either they have the votes to strike NJ's ban down and create a circuit split or they want to avoid a circuit split without Bove.
Kavanaugh hinted that he voted against taking up the challenge to MD's assault weapons ban bc there wasn't yet a circuit split. CA3 heard args against NJ's ban in July with a Dem-majority panel. Just yesterday, the full court ordered en banc args. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Both Republicans join the Democrat's concurring opinion citing Kavanaugh to tell him they're being faithful to his history-and-tradition test that SCOTUS adopted in Bruen. This is a dare: Kav articulated that test on CADC to vote against DC's ban, and he now wants SCOTUS to strike down state bans.
CA2 upholds Connecticut's assault weapons ban. Unanimous, bipartisan panel (GHWB/GWB/Biden). storage.courtlistener.com/pdf/2025/08/...
When Republicans hold power, they hurt people, tank the economy, and then distort our democracy to preserve their power because hurting people and tanking the economy is unpopular.
Fascists.
💯
The fact that he’s so corrupt often overshadows how purely malignant he is, like, just for the love of the game. You know how hard it is to be anti-environment and anti-business at the same time?
Harlan was the juniormost justice deputized to deliver his colleagues’ vote of no confidence to Field, just as Field had to Grier 35 years earlier. www.npr.org/2019/01/23/6...
The one dissenter from the Civil Rights Cases? John Marshall Harlan. He’s a whole other rabbit hole. But I’ll just leave it with this…
Bradley was appointed by Grant, who championed Reconstruction, but then spent his time on the bench weakening Reconstruction, selecting a President who agreed to abandon Reconstruction, and then authoring the Civil Rights Cases, which gutted Congress’s power to enforce the Reconstruction Amendments.
By then, Bradley had made his mark as an awful justice: he let the white terrorists of the Colfax Massacre escape justice and denied women access to the bar: “The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.”
Grant then nominated William Strong to Grier’s seat, and Joseph Bradley for the reestablished 9th seat. Both men were Republicans, and served on the 1877 Electoral commission that delivered the Presidency to fellow Republican Rutherford Hayes by a party-line 8-7 vote.
But back to 1870: Grant had nominated Lincoln’s old Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to fill Grier’s seat, and the Senate confirmed him. But Stanton died before he took the bench. www.fedbar.org/wp-content/u...
By the time Field did retire, he had become the godfather of the right-wing laissez faire jurisprudence that his ideological heirs constructed in the Lochner era. Lots more to say about Field (right @stevevladeck.bsky.social?!) but not for this thread’s rabbit holes.
It took the justices deputizing the juniormost Justice Field—himself appointed by Lincoln as the then-10th Justice (yes, we once had 10 justices)—to deliver their colleagues’ vote of no confidence to their incapacitated colleague. 35 years later, Field’s colleagues attempted to do the same to him
The elderly Justice Grier’s retirement story is a doozy. Dude was totally incapacitated but he refused to step down until after Congress passed a law providing compensation for retired federal judges…but that wasn’t all.
Rabbit hole time! SCOTUS issued the decision striking down paper money on February 7, 1870. Justice Grier had resigned from the 8-member Court just a week earlier, but they counted his vote in the 5-3 decision.
The latter be as it may, Hepburn was decided by an 8-justice court. The elderly Grier had agreed to resign after the other justices sent then-junior justice Field to deliver their vote of no-confidence. Strong replaced him and Bradley filled the reestablished 9th seat.
Anyone arguing against SCOTUS reform should study the contraction and expansion of the court’s seats from Lincoln through Grant, and the significance appointments played in the constitutionality of paper money. Oh, and alls well that ends well: Chase still got his face on the $10k bill!
Fun fact: Lincoln’s law establishing paper money in 1861 was championed by then-Treasury Sec Salmon Chase, whose face then went on one of the bills. Lincoln made Chase Chief Justice in 1864 to neutralize his political threat, and then Chase voted greenbacks unconstitutional.
We have 9 justices bc Congress was mad an 8-justice court (shrunk down to spite Johnson) ruled paper money unconstitutional, so 1 justice was added and another replaced to reverse that ruling. That’s it. Americans liked greenbacks and Congress called it a day—or 150 years. But wait…there’s more!
Lawgeeks, this one is fascinating. It's an environmental law challenge to the Everglades detention camp. Ordered: (1) No party or person acting in concert with the parties can expand the camp. (2) No new detainees as of right now. (3) W/in 60 days the camp must be disassembled.
Serious answer: I think the key to understanding conlaw at nearly any point in US history is understanding the politics and personalities of the individual justices at those particular points in US history. So have your students describe how each justice would vote and why to a certain QP.
If you had told me 30 years ago that Michael Luttig and Bill Kristol would have a clearer understanding about what's going on than a lot of Democratic leaders, I'd have wondered whether you tried the brown acid.
Hey yo @mjsdc.bsky.social and I did a thing for @legalafmtn.bsky.social on @meidastouch.com
Something something Roberts Court is the ideological id to SCOTUS's institutional reality something something Roberts Court aiding our descent to a state of nature and/or (depending on where you stand) longing for an Absolute Sovereign
My god that is profound for our currently moment as a matter of psychology and political theory
