Help me understand. Even leaving aside everything else wrong with this argument, wouldn’t a group of people leaving societies generally “unfit for liberal democracy” to come to countries known for their commitment to liberal democracy be affirmatively selected for affinity for liberal democracy?

Anthony Michael Kreis@anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 3w ago

Wurman: The English didn’t *demand* assimilation in 1215 but *needed* it for 800 years for liberalism to work. Then, responding to @jdmortenson.bsky.social, Ilan goes ethnonationalist, talking about “importing millions of people [babies]” who are unfit for liberal democracy. How’s that better?

Three true things: 1)There are six partisan Republicans on the Supreme Court; 2)some of them are more overtly MAGA than others; 3)the partisan makeup of the Court is historically disconnected from election results as the Dems won the popular vote 7 out of 8 times while the Reps built a ct majority.

Josh Chafetz@joshchafetz.bsky.social · last mo.

The discourse around the Supreme Court term would be much improved, I think, if people focused on the center of the Court as being very much part of the GOP coalition, rather than focusing entirely on whether it is or is not doing Trump’s bidding specifically.

The official Democratic Party position should be: “Like so much else the Trump administration has done, this is a crime. The Supreme Court gave Donald Trump vast immunity but that doesn’t apply to his subordinates. We look forward to prosecuting all of you to the full extent of the law.”

Jonathon Booth@jboothhistory.bsky.social · last mo.

What is a "warning letter"? This is just criminal intimidation and should be treated as such

Sam Alito continuing to demonstrate that his primary identity is not “federal judge” but “random aggrieved 80-year-old white guy who has Fox News on all day.”

Steve Vladeck@stevevladeck.bsky.social · last mo.

In the asylum case, Justice Alito apparently *responded* to Justice Sotomayor's dissent from the bench. That's ... unusual.

Thought experiment: if for whatever reason we used a first in, last counted system of announcing results and the Republicans gained every vote drop, would we hear one syllable about fraud?

Julian Sanchez@normative.bsky.social · 2mo ago

You did not have “changes in the results”; there were no results to change, because the ballots were still being counted.

Something that is consistently missed: Public opposition to FDR’s court-packing plan was galvanized by fear that he was in danger of becoming a dictator. In contrast, current support for adding Justices to the Court is motivated by a desire to prevent a right-wing dictator. Valences have flipped.

David Darmofal@daviddarmofal.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Republicans, like the activist academic Robert P. George, are in full-on freakout mode over @kamalaharris.com's call to reconsider the number of SCOTUS justices, which is set by law, not the Constitution. They're freaking out bc they know they use their Republican SCOTUS to legislate from the bench.

Henry Friendly’s greatest flaw was that he had no qualms treating the products of his judicial imagination as if they were apolitical. William Rehnquist’s greatest flaw was that he was a segregationist. They were John Roberts’ mentors. You do the math.

Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie@audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 3mo ago

John Roberts is a wildly successful partisan operative in part because he convinced people he's not a partisan operative nothing to see here, folks, just a normal judge doing normal judge things, no court reform necessary ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/john-...

Three weeks ago

Lawrence Hurley@lawrencehurley.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Roberts: "I think at a very basic level, people think we’re making policy decisions, we’re saying we think this is what things should be as opposed to this is what the law provides. I think they view us as truly political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do."

Every time he talks I can’t figure out whether he is really dumb or whether he thinks we are really dumb.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3mo ago

WELKER: On Amazon, there are dozens of "8647" products being sold and purchased right now. Should individuals selling or buying that merchandise be concerned they are going to prosecuted? BLANCHE: Of course not

We can argue about whether it is prudence or timidity that has prevented the broad use of jurisdiction stripping, but it is at minimum a break glass in case of emergency option and the building is on fire.

Sam Bagenstos@sbagen.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I want every one of my Dem friends to read this piece. The Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act and done so much other damage. The justices want to insist that they get the last word. But don't take for granted that they do. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/o...

I have spent my entire career listening to FedSoc types complain about liberal “activist judges” who “legislate from the bench,” and none of them are going to say a single blessed thing about Sam Alito rewriting the Voting Rights Act to say what he thinks Congress ought to have said

Six Conservative Activists Killed the Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court's conservatives have spent their careers working to kill the Voting Rights Act. They just did it.

ballsandstrikes.org

There are different kinds of Supreme Court dissents with different objectives: cataloging errors, demonstrating an alternative path, laying bare hidden motives, explainig the stakes, calling the public to battle. Justice Kagan just set a new benchmark for hitting all the bases in one opinion.

Steve Vladeck@stevevladeck.bsky.social · 3mo ago

"I dissent because Congress elected otherwise. I dissent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity. I dissent."

Two questions: (1) Does this letter violate the rules of professional conduct? (2) If not, how can we edit the rules to fix that oversight?

Eric Columbus@ericcolumbus.bsky.social · 3mo ago

DOJ writes counsel for plaintiff in the ballroom lawsuit demanding end to the suit: “Put simply, your lawsuit puts the lives of the President, his family, and his staff at grave risk.” Says DOJ will move to dismiss the suit in light of the WHCD unless plaintiff drops suit by 9am Monday.

For the many students, relatives, colleagues, and softball team parents who asked “WTF is going on here,” @jamellebouie.net has got you covered.

It’s genuinely a challenge for legal journalists to cover the birthright citizenship case, because one side’s argument is “the Fourteenth’s Amendment intent and text and a century of uninterrupted Supreme Court precedent all support birthright citizenship,” and the other side’s argument is “nuh-UH”

I co-sign all the procedural, jurisdictional, and hypocrisy points, but the most galling thing in these opinions is the way Alito and crew justify it all by dressing themselves up as civil rights crusaders while running roughshod over the rights and dignity of minorities and trans youth.

Steve Vladeck@stevevladeck.bsky.social · 5mo ago

As I explain via the latest “One First,” the only theme that unites the Supreme Court’s (unrelated) grants of emergency relief Monday night in the California transgender student and New York redistricting cases is what might be called “selective judicial impatience.” And that’s *not* a good thing:

The idea that the federal government through its military brought its coercive weight down upon a famously independent private association because the President and the Secretary of Defense didn’t like its values is one of the most totalitarian things I have heard in awhile.

Chris Geidner@chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The apparent Scouting move announced by Pete Hegseth today is more unacceptable capitulation. It is a truly embarrassing move by the Scouts in particular. The Scouts capitulating to a lawless murderer is the opposite of the lessons I learned during my time in Scouts.

This must be weird news to see if you’re one of the literally hundreds or even thousands of university administrators who preemptively censored faculty, scrubbed websites, changed the names of centers, etc.

Keung Hui@keunghui.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Trump administration drops legal appeal over anti-DEI funding threat to schools and colleges. This leaves in place a federal judge's ruling that the anti-DEI effort violated the First Amendment and federal procedural rules. (Via AP) apnews.com/article/dei-... #ncpol #nced

@atg.wa.gov, if the facts check out this looks like the easiest prosecution of ICE agents you will ever find. Can’t imagine a remotely plausible argument for any immunity doctrine.

LongTime🤓FirstTime👨‍💻@longtimehistory.bsky.social · 7mo ago

ICE detain father shopping on Christmas Eve—then steal his family's groceries. Then 3 agents divvy up his paid for food—taking what they want for themselves. "Can I just get the wife's number to call and let her know?" woman asks. "No, guess he should've complied," agent says. Yakima, Washington

This has been one of my biggest worries for awhile. Given their propensity to lie about basic facts and the courts’ invention of absurd deference, immunity, and remedial doctrines, it is not clear we could stop a cynical illegal push to indiscriminately deport citizens.

FT@fucktheory.bsky.social · 8mo ago

The US government has deported a US citizen with a Maryland birth certificate they claim is fake. This goes way beyond even denaturalizing an immigrant citizen. This person was born here.

Brilliant? Sure. Kind? More than you will ever know. But what made him special was the quiet confidence that motivated him to stand up against cheats, bullies, and bigots who threatened fairness, justice, and the rule of law. I hope his spirit lives on among his many Article III admirers.

Marin K. Levy@marinklevy.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Oh what a special one this is . . . Fifty years ago today — Dec. 19, 1975 — the great John Paul Stevens joined the Supreme Court of the United States. ❤️

The core arguments around many of the right’s pet theories are not serious but instead of dismissing them as such we relied on logical argument and voting to defeat them. The latter didn’t work, as consistent popular vote victories didn’t flip the court, and the former only legitimized them.

Mark Joseph Stern@mjsdc.bsky.social · 8mo ago

The conviction that a "unitary executive" guarantees "democratic accountability" is more like a civic religion or folkloric superstition than a constitutional theory. Federalist Society true-believers drill it into their acolytes and teach them never to question it, but it's fundamentally nonsense.

How do I explain the Trump-FIFA relationship to my soccer-obsessed children without ruining the hometown World Cup they have been looking forward to for years?

I literally cannot get non-lawyers to believe that we are stuck with a dangerous and illogical system of government because the framers used a definite article in introducing the office of the President.

Kyle Cheney@kyledcheney.bsky.social · 8mo ago

JUST IN: A 2-1 panel of the D.C. Circuit rules that Trump may remove members of the NLRB or MSPB regardless of laws meant to shield them from removal without cause. Majority: Rao (Trump), Katsas (Trump) Dissent: Pan (Biden) storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Another amazing and important essay from fabulous scholars. I still lament a world where we are focused on these questions. If the text and structure of the constitution allow for this crucial category with this historical evidence, they should also allow for it without.

Roasted by my former Con Law Student @bakarisellers.bsky.social

Kevin M. Kruse@kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 8mo ago

In case you were wondering how stupid and evil you’d have to be to marry Stephen Miller, just watch this

This is not an exaggeration. This is one of the five most consistent and important themes in American history, arguably number one. Every journalist or commentator who covers these comments but doesn’t call out this hypocritical bigotry is complicit.

James Fallows@jfallows.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Insulting to have to point this out, but if you have spent even 30 minutes reading US history, you realize that every decade has been dominated by racist hysteria that the "new" people won't ever fit in. This exact prejudice would have been applied to Miller's forebears, when they fled pogroms.

Guess the thousand movies, miniseries, and documentaries about Nuremberg weren’t enough.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 9mo ago

Mike Johnson on Trump calling for Democrats to be executed: "Attorneys have to parse the language and determine all that."

This newsletter pulls a few things together, including my Atlantic essay on working the referees, and @mantzarlis.com’s fantastic new analysis on what exactly is in Grokipedia.

What’s the problem? We’re just displaying a historical fact that this person is a Jew by forcing them to wear a yellow star.

Faine Greenwood@faineg.bsky.social · 9mo ago

I spit on the reputation of the U.S. Supreme Court, not that it can get much more degraded than it has already become by the repulsive actions of its disgusting GOP members. You can hear the transphobic sneer in these words.