Courts still matter.
Writing about law and democracy at The Atlantic, previously Lawfare. Not a lawyer. It's KWIN-ta. signal: qjurecic.32
80,328 followers 1,775 following 6,111 posts
view profile on Bluesky
Courts still matter.
Minute Order: The court is taking a nap
Revitalization of nostalgic jugband styling in the wale of stomp-clap-hey? Irregular formations with anti-neoconfederate intent? Combat fashion as contrast and spectacle? Oh band of brothers, where art thou? It's time for someone in Washington to found the District Zouaves.
This is a real danger but to jamelle's point in this thread, folks often don't appreciate the scale of American elections: how many polling places, election workers, and decentralized redundancies, and how little of it is under any federal control. It far outstrips federal manpower in its vastness.
I know why it hasn't happened. I've been following it closely and reporting on it. This was a joke meant to direct attention to the action of the appeals court
Woulda been nice if we had some contempt proceedings underway by now
DEVELOPING: Advocates are seeking a court order to block the Trump administration’s effort to deport hundreds of unaccompanied minor children to Guatemala. Judge abruptly moved 3 pm hearing up to 12:30 after she was notified that some children “are in the process of being removed" today.
Executive Orders are not laws and do not rule Here’s what would rule: an affordable small plates bar near Lafayette Park in downtown DC serving a taste of the French countryside called: Executive Hors d'Oeuvres
I made a spreadsheet of all the federal cases filed as part of Trump's DC crackdown. It's not going great
I really need to read more on Poland! Though I’m hesitant to use any European comparisons bc I think a colonial society with a significant amount of ethnic/racial diversity is a big component of the particular issue here
Hungary is small, it’s ethnically homogenous, it gets money funneled in from the EU…
I continue to think that Hungary is not hugely useful as a comparative case study for the US and that India (h/t @polgreen.bsky.social) and perhaps Brazil are more useful comparisons
Also, Orban was able to cement his power early on thanks to a parliamentary supermajority that allowed Fidesz to rewrite the constitution to lock in their advantages (even though this may now be fading). There’s not really anything comparable in the US system
I wrote this weeks after trump won in 2016 and almost ten years later I still think there is basically nothing more to say, not because I am super smart but because this is all so very empty and stupid www.lawfaremedia.org/article/bull...
MEASUREHEAD - “THE PAST IS MADE OF STATIC IMAGES, DISTORTED MEMORIES, DEMENTED NOSTALGIA. THIS, THE PRESENT -- WITH ALL ITS POSSIBILITIES, INNUMERABLE HITS AND MISSES -- IS FAR SUPERIOR. IT IS A *LIVING* ORGANISM.”
"The Court And The Parties Discussed The Current Posture Of This Matter."
okay i should be logged off but incredible things are happening on the other site
BREAKING: Appeals court rejects Trump’s authority to impose sweeping tariffs under IEEPA. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Update from @maiaspoto.bsky.social: LA federal defenders, citing Alina Habba opinion (& our reporting on Acting US Atty Essayli "overruling the findings of the govt’s own agents & line prosecutors), asks court to disqualify Essayli as chief LA prosecutor news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/j...
Art depicting “Sandwich Guy” now at the scene of the alleged misdemeanor.
In 1 hour, join @benjaminwittes.lawfaremedia.org, @sranderson.bsky.social, @annabower.bsky.social, James Pearce, Loren Voss, and @qjurecic.bsky.social will discuss the legality of the White House canceling $4.9B in foreign aid, this morning's hearing over Fed gov. Lisa Cook's firing, and more.
This is THE question for a lot of lower court judges evaluating the administration’s power grabs, and it truly sucks
in fairness, those investigation take a long time, and we wouldn't necessarily know if there was one ongoing. the eastman disbarment took over three years and still hasn't been finalized
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.
This is illegal. www.gao.gov/blog/what-po...
This week, the Trump Administration (1) offered a military funeral with honors to Ashli Babbitt, a J6 rioter, and (2) hung a portrait of Robert E. Lee at the Pentagon. Makes sense. They both served the same cause: assault on the constitutional government of the United States.
oh come on www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/u...
I spent the last several days wandering around federal courthouses in NJ to see how a judicial ruling, which concluded Alina Habba had no authority to be the state’s top prosecutor, was affecting criminal cases. >> Here’s what I saw and heard. w/ @jonesieman.bsky.social
BREAKING: The U.S. Attorney's Office has charged "sandwich guy" Sean Dunn with a lesser misdemeanor version of the assault charge after a grand jury refused to indict this week. Case assigned to Judge Carl Nichols. More: www.wusa9.com/article/news...
Just out for an evening stroll in beautiful DC, wearing my Third Amendment T-shirt so the national guard knows they can’t come sit in my couch
The debate over how to classify the present regime in the US matters primarily because of its practical upshot. If the disagreement is really about the authoritarian “box score” (rather than direction of change), then what really matters is identifying (thus to emulate) successful resistance. (1/3)
On that we agree! Fwiw I think the particular usefulness of comparative thinking right now is to examine what does and doesn’t work to fix things. Laura Gamboa’s work is really helpful here
I mostly think that it's really hard to figure out where we are right now! comparative models are useful, but will only get us so far given the extent to which the US case doesn't quite match anything that's come before (previously fully consolidated democracy, very wealthy, huge and decentralized)
oh I totally agree, and we are way way farther toward the bad end of the spectrum than I would like to be
any argument that trump has fully consolidated authoritarian power has to contend with the fact that the government wants to deport kilmar abrego garcia to uganda but hasn't done so, because a judge told them not to
This is one of the examples where the decentralized nature of the us makes it harder to consolidate power, I think
state/local or federal though? morale in federal law enforcement is not good and the FBI will get even madder at him the longer he makes them write traffic tickets
Fwiw I don’t think he’s very popular with security services other than ICE ERO, and maybe not even them
the appearance of gen AI slop alongside this moment is just too perfect. it provides one of the big missing pieces of fascism that was absent from trump 1 in terms of reactionary modernism
when your politics are fundamentally aesthetic (per walter benjamin on fascism), but you lack the necessary thread of connection with reality to produce anything *besides* the aesthetic
i find this image so fascinating. it is both a literal example of authoritarianism but also a second-hand reproduction of the aesthetics of other authoritarian states. it's like a simulacra of authoritarianism whose purpose is to attempt to make the simulacra real.
In its invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government has so far tried to avoid a general mobilization, turning to convicts to fill its ranks in return for pardons. @emilyehoge.bsky.social evaluates the implications of releasing these individuals back into Russian society.
one thing i've taken away from surveys asking the public to evaluate trump's most authoritarian moves is that the ordinary americans have a much clearer sense of what's happening than most professional political observers
fwiw my understanding is that there's a real question whether throwing an object at someone constitutes "physical contact." genuinely not clear
I believe it was salami
Good opportunity to read this @qjurecic.bsky.social piece on how the legal system is quietly resisting Trump's weaponization www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
Second time we’ve seen this in DC. There were a spate of these in LA; I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more
GRAND JURY NULLIFICATION! Prosecutors Fail to Secure Indictment Against Man Who Threw Sandwich at Federal Agent www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/u...
It was and remains a very curious feature of the US presidential election that it was fairly transparently a "sufficiently many voters are mad about inflation" election but it was treated as a huge Zeitgeist Shift by both proponents and opponents of Trump. This led to some over-confidence from Trump
National Guard soldiers called into service for President Trump's law enforcement surge in D.C. have been assigned to spread mulch at federal monuments. Normally the Park Service does that, but the administration laid off the workers. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
National Guard is now tasked with picking up garbage in DC
Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024)
NEW: DHS agrees in principle not to remove Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the US while an immigration judge weighs his new asylum claim and Judge Xinis adjudicates his habeas claims, a process that will likely take weeks. Details to be resolved at hearing tomorrow. www.courtlistener.com/docket/71191...
did they miss the train
Federal judges are really going to have to get over this thing with believing the feds will comply with their orders in good faith
The Justice Department has filed felony assault charges against a man who prosecutors say scootered up to two National Guard soldiers at D.C.'s Union Station and spat on them.
or is that at the agency level as well
there's civil liability for privacy act violations though, right?
yesterday they charged someone with a felony for "causing [an HSI agent] to fall to the ground and scrape his knee"
tl;dr of Judge Cullen's ruling in the Trump admin's case against all Maryland judges: I see what you're trying to do here and I want no part in it storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Agree on this post, which if anything this is too cautious. Trump said, in his first term "Then I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president." You don't need to get in his head or speculate about his thinking, just read what he said out loud.
Initially there was a lot of public conversation around how the DOGE team's actions could expose them to individual legal liability. That kind of faded (for reasons I don't fully understand) but I do wonder whether at some point it will resurface
at what point does this generate a precedent re Section 230 that OpenAI really, really does not want?
BREAKING: Trump-appointed judge *dismisses* DOJ lawsuit against Maryland judges over their decision to automatically pause deportation cases for 48 hours He also calls Trump and his admin's attack on judges a "smear" that is "unprecedented and unfortunate storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
i just want to point out that, in doing so, lower courts are upholding their duty to faithfully apply the constitution and laws--and oftentimes, controlling supreme court precedent
'The most illegal search': Judges push back against D.C. criminal charges www.npr.org/2025/08/26/g...
Regarding the liberal fantasy of saving X by posting on it more — @pbump.com has it exactly right www.pbump.net/o/the-power-...
wrote this in 2023
professional ethics as a check against encroaching authoritarianism—many people are saying
new jersey is currently operating under purge rules
TIRED: The Radical Republicans were wrong to impeach Andrew Johnson WIRED: They should have impeached him for undermining Reconstruction, not for violating the unconstitutional Tenure of Office Act. INSPIRED: The TOA was constitutional & convicting him would have saved us a lot of trouble today
been offline for an hour or so to reflect on everything and decided that as long as the federal reserve remains independent and we keep getting commercial packages from japan that everything is going to be ok
the DC US attorney's office says that christian enrique carias torres, the moped driver arrested violently by logan circle, is a danger to the community because they saw him commit an unspecified traffic violation storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
bsky.app/profile/qjur...
Busy day at the US Attorney’s Office
this point—that this era is not forever and accountability can come in many forms—has for some reason proved bizarrely elusive for democrats
Who knows what comes from it but Trump has (1) moved DC statehood higher on the Dem priority list; (2) given it an obvious non-partisan justification; and (3) made it more likely that neutral types will buy the non-partisan justification. Still needs unified Dem gov'ment, but if that happens...
The federal system doesn't use cash bail. I fail to see how this proposal — the federal govt insisting that states use a system that the federal govt *itself* does not use — could survive even rational basis review.
the government has filed a motion to dismiss the case against Torez Riley storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Trump's four orders today contain both a lot of words and little clear meaning. There are several alarming aspects within them. At the same time, they also contain a lot of filler that either simply states reality or sounds like it's doing something but doesn't really change anything.
there's already an exception for violent crime, which is wht Trump says he's concerned about code.dccouncil.gov/us/dc/counci...
unless i'm missing something, I think there's a limit to what trump can do in terms of cash bail in dc code.dccouncil.gov/us/dc/counci...
Ironically the Trump DOJ is also dropping charges on real MS-13 leaders on whom they have actual extensive evidence, in order to deport them before they can testify about their pact with Bukele. In both cases the government fears what may come out in a criminal trial.
this is the new "cheering for robert mueller and the rule of law"
Trump’s immigration crackdown could be slowing the hunt for child predators online
Ideologically pro-bully
Trump doesn't have the capacity for ideological thinking in the traditional sense. But he *identifies* with leaders like Bolsonaro and Yoon, put on trial for trying to steal power. More broadly, he sees the very principle of accountability as a threat to him personally.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s new habeas petition has been assigned to Judge Paula Xinis, who presides over Abrego’s existing Maryland case.
First they came for the immigrants, and I did not speak out (because the message test performed at a low percentile rank compared to other messages in our testing bank for non college men who opt into online surveys through various consumer reward programs)
no worries!
it's a joke
ahh, I had completely forgotten about this pew study, ty!
if you are a blue-state governor trump hasn't threatened to deploy the national guard to your state, are you really in the running for the 2028 democratic presidential nomination?
New Jersey mentioned
historical question: when do we see the real rise of short-form video as a political medium? was it as ubiquitous in 2020 as it was now, or have tiktok and tiktok copycats gobbled up even more social media market share since then?
Fwiw, the Jan 6 prosecutions were way harder on the fed court in dc in terms of sheer numbers, and things held up ok (though it was a strain). Otoh at that point doj wasn’t hemorrhaging people
I've been wondering how long it would take for these cases to start falling apart www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/u...
George Pearkes 