Wrote about the border search exception: a massive loophole in the Fourth Amendment that allows border officials to search through your phone without a warrant, the exception provides an easy pretext for the Trump administration to target its political enemies. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Trump Should Need a Warrant to See Your Phone

Federal officers can too easily comb through the most intimate details of your life.

theatlantic.com

NEW: DHS wants to pay private contractors bounties to hunt down people who already left the country, photograph their homes, and demand money. It told them leaving the US would wipe out fines. It was the pitch for self-deporting. Experts tell WIRED this is a pointless escalation of tactics.

DHS Is Hiring Bounty Hunters to Find and Photograph Deported People’s Homes Abroad

Homeland Security told immigrants that leaving the US would wipe out fines it claims they owe. Now it wants private investigators to find them in their home countries and collect.

wired.com

Recruiters keep finding me to try to get me to train AI and the more time that goes by without a job, the more I'm tempted by the money. But I'm resisting.

This is HEINOUS. Actually chilling. These poor kids

Gabe Ortíz@tusk81.bsky.social · 12h ago

“The Trump administration is set to award a multimillion-dollar contract to a small Texas law firm without immigration expertise to provide legal representation for thousands of unaccompanied migrant children in government custody during immigration proceedings.” abcnews.com/US/small-tex...

In addition to having no experience in immigration, their website shows Ilya Shapiro (!) and disgraced former law prof Joshua Wright (!) as Senior Counsel. I don't think this massive contract was awarded to give immigrant children effective, zealous advocacy. burkegroup.law/our-team/

Our Team - BURKE LAW GROUP, PLLC

Our Team

burkegroup.law

Politico@politico.com · yesterday

26-employee Texas law firm gets $150M to represent 24,000 children in immigration court

a passenger on alaska airlines had their pee-wee herman shirt, quoting 'i don't need the police. i don't need you,' deemed offensive. required covering up.

Alaska Airlines Passenger Told to Cover Pee-wee Herman Shirt Due to 'Offensive' Slogan

An Alaska Airlines passenger on a flight from Portland to San Jose was asked by a flight attendant to turn her Pee-wee Herman t-shirt inside out because its quote, "I Don't Need The Police. I Don't Ne

liveandletsfly.com

A paramilitary group plotted to overthrow the Constitution then conducted a violent attack on America. They were convicted in court of seditious conspiracy, and jailed. Then the leader they aimed to illegally install got power and let them out, their records wiped clean. The Jan. 6 attackers won.

Judge Pained as He Grants Dismissal of Jan. 6 Charges Against Oath Keepers

The judge, Amit P. Mehta, blasted the administration’s request for a dismissal in the case, saying it bestowed “unearned grace” on the Oath Keepers defendants “by wiping their records clean.”

nytimes.com

i think that everyone should know about the ways this government is trying to criminalize dissent and protest -- not because it should scare us into inaction, but because understanding how it works is how we stop it from working. wrote about it for @thenation: www.thenation.com/article/poli...

The Chilling Trump Order Threatening All Americans

Why National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 is so important.

thenation.com

the lesson of tonight is that everyone needs to lock the fuck in for @peggyflanagan.bsky.social

McMorrow would have won this, and between Mills and Stevens, the DSCC / senate leadership seems to be misjudging the D voter base right now

#StupidSuez@diplomatofnight.com · 3d ago

Is Gillibrand on crack? Why was she telling donors, without a shred of evidence, that Mallory McMorrow is a DSA member???

Republican power grabs in Kansas and Missouri are going down in flames with 18-25% of votes reported so far. Missouri's Amendment 4 aimed to make citizen-initiated constitutional amendments practically impossible. Kansas' Amendment 1 was designed to flip the state Supreme Court to ban abortion

Kansas voters sent a strong message tonight - they want a judiciary that stands up to the legislature, not one controlled by it or shaped by big money judicial elections

Kansas Voters Crush a Measure to Elect Supreme Court Judges

The rejection of a measure to begin electing justices was a victory for abortion rights groups who defended the Kansas high court’s ruling that abortion was protected in the state constitution.

nytimes.com

Update: Kansas voters appear poised to overwhelmingly reject a proposal to rewrite the state constitution and elect Kansas Supreme Court justices, spiking a plan long coveted by Republicans who want more conservative rulings on issues like abortion #ksleg kansasreflector.com/2026/08/04/e...

Early results show Kansans rejecting constitutional amendment by wide margin • Kansas Reflector

Kansas voters were set to evaluate a proposed constitutional amendment that would spike a 68-year-old system for selecting justices for the highest court

kansasreflector.com

Expect her minions in DC media and Maine media to dutifully portray this as a bold move when it's the same old story if Thune needed her, he'd have her. See, for example, Brett Kavanaugh Any Hill reporters who uses "🚨 Breaking News" on an expected Collins vote is pretty much on her comms team

Collins Watch@collinswatch.bsky.social · yesterday

Susan comes out against Todd Blanche now that he's got the votes. So tiresome. (We called it: tinyurl.com/3bepafkz) #MEpolitics

Exclusive: Bad actors have used Flock's massive camera network as a powerful weapon for intimate surveillance. Authorities have charged or accused at least 50 law-enforcement officers of using license-plate readers for unauthorized purposes.

You could grow a spine and do your damn jobs.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · yesterday

Cornyn: "There's nothing we could do to rein in the president"

They know voters hate this shit. So they wait until Blanche has the votes for Collins to come out against him. So she can claim to be a moderate. So she gets reelected. So she can spend the next two years voting for more Todd Blanches.

Collins Watch@collinswatch.bsky.social · yesterday

Susan comes out against Todd Blanche now that he's got the votes. So tiresome. (We called it: tinyurl.com/3bepafkz) #MEpolitics

Oh my god the dietician who is telling everyone in the White House to only eat steak and sauerkraut doesn't wipe his ass.

honestly can't stress enough, as a former family law attorney, how depressingly common Max Miller's behavior and words are, right down to the petty fixation on custody procedure and rules when faced with allegations of shocking violence.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · yesterday

Rep. Max Miller: "When I was reported for child abuse of my daughter for a broken collarbone, my daughter was in my ex-wife's care 9 out of the last 11 days and she took her to the emergency room, which is a contempt violation from our shared parenting plan."

The last thing I want to do tonight is go to improv. Ugh.

Emely Suaza and her dad have been released from the Dilley Trailer Prison! I am glad that she is back with her mom, little brothers, and the rest of her family. When ICE detained Emely on her way to church, they asked her dad to come pick her up. When he showed up, they locked him up too.

tl;dr this should dim our outlook for a post-Trump American revival. www.offmessage.net/p/senate-dem...

Senate Democrats Dodge Last Pre-Election Opportunity To Fight Trump

They won't take a big stand to protect the election, or resist Trump's broader lawlessness, before the midterms.

offmessage.net

I was appalled (though not surprised) when I learned Sunday that Senate Dems intend to help Republicans fund the government through the election, with one minimal concession that has nothing to do with election subversion or ongoing Trump theft of federal dollars from blue states. And I remain so.

Senate Democrats Dodge Last Pre-Election Opportunity To Fight Trump

They won't take a big stand to protect the election, or resist Trump's broader lawlessness, before the midterms.

offmessage.net

🔥 Here's Whitehouse's entire remarkable speech opposing Blanche: "What's left of this committee when we don't demand straight answers? How many times has DOJ been asked what became of the $50k that the FBI reported it handed to Homan? ... our R colleagues see no evil, hear no evil, & speak no evil."

Whitehouse on Blanche: "Today is a sad and embarrassing day"

YouTube video by Aaron Rupar

youtu.be

It's a public records LAW, not a public records SUGGESTION. But here we have a "law enforcement" agency routinely violating the law, flouting the will of the people. Towards what end? Hiding their activities from the public and from criminal defendants. Shameful. www.masslive.com/news/2026/08...

Mass. judge finds State Police engaged in pattern of records law violations

A Suffolk Superior Court judge found Massachusetts State Police engage in a “pervasive” pattern of violating public records law. The agency has been ordered to develop proposed reforms to improve reco...

masslive.com

Ever have an anxiety attack at the thought of... renting a car to drive to a furniture store? Something you did a month ago? Because I just did.

It would be great if the person setting a legal precedent in the UK that anti-Zionist beliefs are protected were not someone whose anti-Zionism is ragingly antisemitic. But that’s not the timeline we’re living in. David Miller called Mamdani a “Zionist” for condemning a swastika on an NYC synagogue.

It’s a sad day for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The autopsy was a fucking mess of a document but also yes

Amanda Becker@amandabecker.bsky.social · 2d ago

And it pointedly raised the concern that most senior Democratic strategists in 2024 were “financially secure” and thus removed from the challenges facing many Americans. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/u...