Mamdani on Nadler: Just read that last sentence. Perfect.
Personal account. Personal views. Frank G. Millard Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School & Arlene Susan Kohn Professor of Social Policy, University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy. Former General Counsel, HHS and OMB.
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Mamdani on Nadler: Just read that last sentence. Perfect.
I think we have multiple good candidates for each of those positions. I have hosted events for Aghogho for SOS, including one coming up next week.
Jerry Nadler ends his remarkable career, conceding that his brand of politics on the Middle East is over. “I don’t know what to say at this point,” he said. “I can’t defend what Israel is doing.” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/n...
Agreed!
And look, this whole Belichick thing is very likely to end up as a trainwreck. But at least it will be interesting to watch UNC football again!
This is the right call, but let's take a few minutes to honor what a fighter for justice Rep. Nadler has been. Just an amazing leader.
I love teaching at the University of Michigan, and the Big House is a unique experience. But you'll never convince me there's a better place to watch a football game than Kenan Stadium.
Really excited to have a full draft of this piece I'm presenting in a few weeks at the Wash. U. Law Review symposium on Taxing, Spending, and the Constitution. The conference is being held four days before government funding runs out, so what I say will be both timely and in flux!
A powerful song from @billybragg.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/braggb/p...
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...
Always listen to @sifill.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/sherrily...
The most perverse outcome of this dynamic: The more extreme and deranged rightwing politics gets, the more elite Democrats/liberals react with ritual self-flagellation. “They are elevating RFK? Wow, we really must have angered those good folks with our crazy liberal/woke/leftist overreach!”
So much of the regime’s OBSESSIVE targeting of this Maryland dad stems from it simply not being able to admit that his purging to CECOT was totally wrongful. Recall that a judge appointed under the first Trump admin thoroughly vetted his background 👇🏽 open.substack.com/pub/americas... #FreeKilmar
Under Trump, conditions for meatpacking workers could soon return to those chronicled in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle".
From the U.S., Kier Starmer really does come across as a perfect example of you cannot successfully try to ape reactionary conservative politics in the long term. Labour got a single win and Starmer proceeded to drive the party into its worst polling in generations by courting the right.
Judge Sooknanan is giving a master class in judging during the Trump Administration -- but really in how judges should always value the people whose lives are affected by their decisions.
Kudos to Teamsters Local 705, fighting to protect immigrant brothers and sisters. As federal immigration enforcement set to ramp up, strike over immigration protections in Little Village continues this Labor Day share.google/nZ7ljXQjhSut...
Agree. @aaup.org is on the front lines fighting for higher education, academic freedom, and solidarity among academic workers, students, and our surrounding communities. Join up!
Labor Day is a very good day for my fellow academics to joint their local @aaup.org and if your school doesn't have one you should start one!
Yep. ‘He’s brazenly anti-worker’: US marks the first Labor Day under Trump 2.0 www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
I'm proud that @aaup.org has been on the front lines fighting this administration's abuses. Trump is, indeed, an aggressively anti-labor president, despite the "workers party now" bs. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
That's what law clerks are for, in my experience handling death penalty cases back in the day.
When I was in MO and had to satisfy CLE, my law review articles counted, and I would work hard to write something plausibly about legal ethics so I could get ethics credit. Now, barred in MI and CA, I don't have to worry about any of that.
wow
Once more for those in back: They were never going to be able to implement a mass deportation program without prioritizing people like this. Criminals and gang members are too hard to find and apprehend. Regular folks who show up to work, church, and their scheduled immigration appointments are not.
Okay. I just came back to this and you aren’t calling these efforts resegregation yet, you absolutely should be
What is Vinay Prasad afraid of? Coward.
At the schools where I've taught, I'd bet close to 100% of professors with JDs have been admitted to practice somewhere at some point. I don't have a sense of how many maintain active status, but I think it's well north of 25%, and 75% is not implausible.
This whole thread is just appalling. The hearing arises from the Trump admin conspiring with a foreign country to violate a federal court order in the middle of the night so it can deny due process to children who escaped dangerous circumstances.
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.
🤷♂️
Dissertations could be written about this prospectus for re-colonizing Gaza and what it reveals about our elites: www.washingtonpost.com/documents/f8...
Also remember: we beat him and his enablers before, and we will beat them again
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.
There is a real crisis in childrens' health in the US. And Trump and RFK are only making it worse. www.vox.com/life/421703/...
Outstanding point.
open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...
Hard to get into the heads of the sadists at the Home Office who sat round drawing up a list of "luxuries". Just one more method of humiliating some of the most vulnerable people. No doubt the unemployed will be next.
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.
The extent to which ICE is ignoring all civil rights and due process is astounding — and indicative of a culture where they’ve been told they can do literally no wrong. Agency and admin leaders must face sanctions and legal consequences.
Such a good book.
One thing about never-Trump Republicans, during Trump II particularly: They understand that the world they knew is dead. They have no investment in either reviving the former GOP (because they understand it's impossible) or maintaining the pre-2016 Democratic Party (because it's not their party).
It was a great block!
This is a terrific thread.
Logging off. This post made my year.
Always my favorite issue. Thanks to @michlawreview.bsky.social for remaining committed to publishing scholarly book reviews at a time when so many journals have stopped.
"The reality is that Secretary Kennedy has profited from and built a career on sowing mistrust in vaccines. Now, as head of H.H.S., he is using his authority to launch a full-blown war on science, on public health and on truth itself." Truth from @sanders.senate.gov. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/o...
This makes sense. They raided a HS football game too. It makes sense if you see it as an assault on joy, community, or the virtue of being a good person. Trump isn’t a good person, and never will be, and he is still threatened by all the positivity and goodness he doesn’t understand and never will.
“A respected network of hospitals and cancer centers is halting enrollment in clinical trials for children with brain cancer after the federal government said it would no longer provide funding to the group.” This is on Trump. Gift link here: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/w...
Thread.
"Trump and his ilk aren’t only keeping immigrants out, they’re setting up a new social hierarchy that places the most predatory, bloody-fanged among us at the top and seeks to subordinate caution and compassion wherever they’re found." www.liberalcurrents.com/let-it-burn-...
It is less a mass deportation regime as it is a mass kidnapping and indefinite detention regime
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:
The long run comes for some of us pretty fast these days.
I miss being able to walk there from home!
I guess everybody['s political career] dies. thehill.com/homenews/cam...
Blue states can also buy vaccines in bulk and distribute them via their chief medical officer or via doctors, says @sbagen.bsky.social. The idea would be to make vaccines available to all, including those restricted under RFK lunacy. Great stuff from Sam here: newrepublic.com/article/1998...
Yeah, the Constitution in Exile bit was maybe an unfortunate flourish! But the point holds. Anti-UET needs to be something every future Dem appointee is socialized into. (Similar point could be made about other cases. Roe is a sucky opinion, but all Dem appointees are properly pro-abortion rights.)
states have very expansive public health legal authority, derived from their police powers — unlike federal powers, which are enumerated/limited by the country's constitution. we are just starting to see states flex some of those powers.
I think the Trump Administration is giving us lots of proof points that some degree of agency independence (structured appropriately) can be much more democratic than UET.
Totally.
And I think a crucial piece of that is showing how the non-unitary executive can be *more* democratically responsive than the unitary one. Which is some of what I'm trying to grope toward.
Humphrey's Executor needs to be part of left-liberals' Constitution in Exile. Future Dem appointees shd be socialized to oppose UET and to work to overturn it and permit democratically responsive but independent agencies. We need to build an intellectual and political infrastructure around that now.
Super important piece on how states can help fill the gaps created by RFK's anti-vax policies. We desperately need RFK out of the job, where he's doing immense damage to public health, but Dem Governors can take effective steps here if they want to. (So can R Governors! Not sure they'll want to.)
"The move forces members of Congress to confront a question that has lingered over the legislative branch all year: What is the point of the two parties negotiating a federal budget if the executive branch insists it has the power to unilaterally determine what funds get spent?"
I have a piece in process that I hope will be an entry in this conversation, actually.
This is the subject of a lot of my scholarly writing that I expect to publish over the next year.
“Journalists have a choice: They can continue propagandizing for autocracy, or they can tell the truth. And Democrats have a choice: They can take advice from the likes of Chris Cillizza and cower in fear of speaking out against an unpopular president, or they can follow JB Pritzker’s lead.”
We stand with trans students, faculty, and staff across the state. 🏳️⚧️💙✊
Yes, and -- it's a clear and direct consequence of this Supreme Court's highly ideological "unitary executive" agenda of extirpating independent judgment from the administrative state.
Black's impeachment book is the first work of constitutional law scholarship I can remember reading, back in middle school when I picked it up off my mom's shelf. I probably picked it up b/c it was skinny, but reading the book certainly encouraged a kid's interest in the structure of government.
Apropos of nothing, I reread Charles Black's book on impeachment this morning. He was such a sharp, smart thinker, focused on the arguments that actually matter. I wish there were more public law scholarship like that today.
" ... because where such Democratic officeholders act in accord with the text, it's akin to when a babysitter, handed a credit card and told 'Make sure the kids have fun,' takes the kids on a road trip to an amusement park where they spend two days on rollercoasters and one night in a hotel."
Right?
"Major Questions Doctrine, noun: a legal rule holding that presidents elected from the Democratic Party may not apply statutes to the full extent of their text."
Too bad we're stuck with it because the Vesting Clause of Article II uses the definite article.
Gosh, maybe the extremist ideological unitary executive theory is bad, actually? www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/u...
Terrific post.
(And the idea that Labour is failing to live up to the moral standards of Tony f-ing Blair, at the moment Blair is working with Jared Kushner of all people on Gaza, is both incredibly disheartening and disturbingly persuasive.)
This @iandunt.bsky.social piece is about the UK Labour Party, but it has lessons for US Dems. open.substack.com/pub/iandunt/...
Extreme Salvador Allende energy in this quote from a "Trump adviser' about Maduro.
That's how it feels to me.
I think there's a lot to this.
I'll admit that I think of that joke multiple times a week.
[I use that Old Man Yells at Cloud GIF too much, so let's just stipulate that I used it here.]
Far from the most important thing here, but I hate the word "dissental." I think it fails the test of a good portmanteau: Can you understand what it means just from hearing the word? "Brunch" is easy for the uninitiated to understand. "Dissental" (short for "dissent from denial") is obscurantist.
Outstanding piece from @radleybalko.bsky.social
We're living through Redemption again.
Resign or impeach him.
Such pathetic negotiating. The correct way would be to say, "Check this out, fellas. If you want our votes to keep the government open, and you want to avoid blame for shutting it down, then we're gonna need a coupla things. Here's what they are."
Dr. Deb Houry (resigned from CDC yesterday) is giving live media interviews now outside the CDC. From what I can hear, she's speaking forcefully in favor of public health and against the nonsense the CDC is facing. Understand: She is a very cautious person. This means a lot! #USAnotRFK
Tae Heung “Will” Kim, a doctoral student at Texas A&M University and longtime US permanent resident, has been in ICE detention for OVER one month. The AAUP stands with the Texas AAUP state conference in demanding Mr. Kim’s release. www.aaup.org/news/aaup-st...
They're openly calling to lock up every trans person by force. We need every ally to speak out forcefully against this because trans folks cannot do this on our own.
“The message seems to be pretty clear that if you have an ongoing grant that’s been terminated and you want to go to court to keep the money flowing, you’re out of luck.” Professor @sbagen.bsky.social in @insidehighered.com www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...
"the dangerous logic of abdication: the belief that, faced with a rising threat to democracy, surrender is strategy, cooperating with an autocrat is survival, and sparing oneself or one’s party from immediate punishment is worth opening the door to long-term authoritarian rule."
Outstanding @dziblatt.bsky.social piece on "the dangerous logic of abdication" www.foreignaffairs.com/germany/hitl...
My friends tell me I yell "fuck" too much. So I won't say anything here.
I donated. You should, too.
Thanks @ianbassin.bsky.social "To “fight the long defeat” is not to surrender to futility but to locate dignity and meaning in the struggle itself — and to recognize that what feels like defeat in one moment may seed the victories of another." What @sifill.bsky.social refers to as a time to plant
+1000