All of the nation’s legal historians are trapped in Banff. None of us can get home. The poor regular tourists here: they have no idea

Read @nickjudin.bsky.social’s fantastic long-form piece about @scolom.bsky.social ‘s victory and the white supremacy that blocked full Black political progress here until, well, today. www.mississippifreepress.org/scott-colom-...

Scott Colom Wins Mississippi US Senate Race, Will Be State's First Black Senator in 146 Years

Scott Colom, a 43-year-old Democrat, will be Mississippi's next U.S. senator and the first Black senator to represent the since 1881.

mississippifreepress.org

Definitive profile of Judge Richard Posner, who died today, by Larissa MacFarquhar in 2001. “[Posner] escorts his visitor to the waiting room of his personality, where the visitor will sit, lulled by the bland ambience of the place, until it is time for murder.” www.newyorker.com/magazine/200...

Richard Posner, The Bench Burner

Larissa MacFarquhar’s 2001 Profile of the “flamboyantly candid” judicial activist. How did someone with such subversive ideas become a leading influence on American legal opinion?

newyorker.com

Jensen Huang is out. He sure gives some wise advice: “Corporate culture in our case is about intellectual honesty. Intellectual honesty to us means that we have the ability to be self-critical, that we have the ability to recognize we’ve made mistakes.” www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Jensen Huang’s Icarus Complex

His rise and fall has been spectacular.

theatlantic.com

NEW: Over the past year, ProPublica has photographed some of the more than 500 U.S. citizens who have been held against their will by immigration agents and learned of the lingering impact the experience has had on their lives. These are their stories.

We Photographed U.S. Citizens Held Against Their Will by Immigration Agents — ProPublica

Over the past year, ProPublica has photographed some of the more than 500 U.S. citizens who have been held against their will by immigration agents and learned of the lingering impact the experience h...

projects.propublica.org

The rats are fleeing the sinking ship. Here, @gregggonsalves.bsky.social has written a masterful piece on the people who have spent two years destroying science and now will pretend like they were really never on board. “Don’t believe a word of it”.

I will be writing more about Judge Posner next week but for now here's a very personal piece I wrote about him when he retired. If you didn't know him, please do not believe most of what you heard: www.dorfonlaw.org/2019/07/dick...

Dick Posner: The Man Behind the Robe

By Eric Segall Now that the Supreme Court term is over, I decided to write a personal post about a much misunderstood legal giant whom I k...

dorfonlaw.org

It’s incredible. Black representation in the Senate (7) and in governor’s houses (5) today exceeds all of Reconstruction and the 20th century.

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 3d ago

Scott Colom has won the Mississippi Senate race, CNN projects

if you can break the back of reactionary politics in mississippi you can do it anywhere.

Voters demanded a system change and now, we could be on the verge of implementing one simple (but major) change to end gerrymandering for good — no constitutional amendment required. Farbod Faraji explains: https://www.ifyoucankeepit.org/p/video-how-congress-can-use-math-to

VIDEO: How Congress can use math to make gerrymandering impossible

See with your own eyes why a proportional system *can’t* be gerrymandered

ifyoucankeepit.org

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., concedes: “While this is not the outcome we worked for, or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters. I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well.”

Sahil Kapur@sahilkapur.bsky.social · 3d ago

🚨 Scott Colom (D) wins the Mississippi Senate race, NBC News projects. He defeats Cindy Hyde-Smith (R).

Scott Colom, a 43-year-old Democrat, will be Mississippi’s next U.S. senator and the first Black senator to represent the state in the U.S. Capitol since 1881. His historic feat comes just six years after Mississippi retired its old Confederate-themed state flag. Full story: buff.ly/4RlyTBv

Scott Colom Wins Mississippi US Senate Race, Will Be State's First Black Senator in 146 Years

Scott Colom, a 44-year-old Democrat, will be Mississippi's next U.S. senator and the first Black senator to represent the since 1881.

buff.ly

Historian and law professor @plombardo2024.bsky.social Paul Lombardo's "Buck v. Bell Centennial Resource Collection" is now live! Teachers, historians, scholars - take note! buckvbell.omeka.net

So important! I’ve examined that passage in Heller (2008) before and thought that it has to mean “dangerous or unusual” weapons because that’s the only way it makes sense. Turns out that’s what Blackstone *said* in 1769. Scalia misquoted Blackstone in Heller, and it’s led to a bizarre test that

How a Misquote by a Supreme Court Justice Imperils Gun Restrictions (Gift Article)

Justice Scalia incorrectly quoted an 18th-century legal scholar in a 2008 opinion — a decision with profound implications today.

nytimes.com

Trying to put some markers down in our university faculty meetings, creating an archival record of opposition as universities willingly hand over the keys of the kingdom to corporations fundamentally hostile to what we do and why we do it.

If this (from the last Dem gov nominee) is accurate then my God

Taniel@taniel.bsky.social · 3d ago

The combination of the mass erroneous purge, forcing voters to cast affidavits, & mass rejection of affidavits per strict rules, is such an indictment of voter suppression in Mississippi. Mississippi's Senate race not being that close is keeping this from exploding as a story.

Historians: a notoriously forgiving bunch.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 4d ago

Hegseth: "History will judge the Iran war quite differently than conventional wisdom right now"

Some thoughts on the collision of the past and present in the Mississippi Senate race

Mississippi Goddamn

We're still tabulating the final results of the 2026 midterm elections, but the biggest takeaway already seems quite clear – southern politics have been completely upended. Georgia has led the way he...

campaign-trails.ghost.io

the architect of the administration's the-cruelty-is-the-point politics (and the most likely to be a trump bitter-ender, which is why he got the role)

Trump names Stephen Miller his new chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles

The president announced Wiles’ departure and Miller’s ascension in a social media post.

nbcnews.com

From the "Gonna get worse before it gets better" Department

Barbara Welke's book, Writing with Fire: The Cowboy Suit Tragedy and the Course of a Life, is very brave. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Writing with Fire

A cultural and legal history intertwined with a deeply emotional meditation on the course of life, memory, and the documents that define us.During the 1940s and 1950s, an untold number of American chi...

press.uchicago.edu

Colom Campaign in Mississippi Senate Race Pushes Back Against GOP Demands for Ballot Segregation, Saying It Would Violate Voter Privacy, is Not Allowed Under the State Elections Code, and Violates the Equal Protection Clause under Bush v. Gore electionlawblog.org/2026/colom-c...

Colom Campaign in Mississippi Senate Race Pushes Back Against GOP Demands for Ballot Segregation, Saying It Would Violate Voter Privacy, is Not Allowed Under the State Elections Code, and Violates the...

You can find the letter here. Earlier: NRSC Sends Demand to Mississippi Election Officials to Segregate Provisional Ballots Likely for Potential Legal Action in the Colom-Hyde-Smith Senate Race; Not C...

electionlawblog.org

It's been clear for a long time that Obama's election caused a lot of white people to lose their damn minds. But there's another story: we are now seeing what a southern multiracial electoral coalition looks like, how it is organized, and how it wins.

It is also worth pointing out that three of the four non-Confederate slave states of 1860 (MO, AR, TN) remain unreconstructed.

After LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, he told Bill Moyers, "Well, I think we may have lost the south for your lifetime – and mine." Moyers passed in June 2025. If Scott Colom's lead holds in Mississippi, a majority of the former Confederate states will send a Democrat to the Senate in January.

2026 sets the stage. It puts Democrats within striking distance of a world where, with a Democratic president, they could set to work on the fundamental reconstruction of democracy in the U.S. That's the work of the next two years: building both the vision and the blueprint for that reconstruction.

jamelle@jamellebouie.net · last wk.

if alaska flips and mississippi holds then a 56 seat senate majority opens up the potential for a filibuster proof one after 2028. with that kind of majority, you can do real deal structural change. as well as reinstate the rights and protections stripped by the supreme court

KORNACKI: “That could take the cake as shocker of the night.” Steve Kornacki reacts to Victoria Broderick dumping Desjarlais in TN-4 👀

#ELB Post Edited: My New One at Slate: “Our Democracy Was Hanging By a Thread. Here’s the Real Reason It Held.” https://electionlawblog.org/?p=160101

It came four months late, but that was a heck of a Semiquincentennial we had last night!