What about Akhbari and Zaydi Shia, and those Sunnis who follow Sufi orders like the Chishti in South Asia? Would they be in the middle?
24.12.2025 04:30
👍 2
🔁 0
💬 0
📌 0
What about Akhbari and Zaydi Shia, and those Sunnis who follow Sufi orders like the Chishti in South Asia? Would they be in the middle?
1. presidential immunity even for criminal actions
+ 2. unitary executive
+ 3. VRA sec 2 voided
+ 4. partisan gerrymandering OK'd
+ 5. 2030 reapportionment
==> we are so cooked
NEW: ProPublica examined months of Fox News’ coverage and reviewed over 700 videos posted on social media.
The network used five-year-old footage, mislabeled other dates and implied footage from elsewhere was in Portland.
www.offmessage.net/p/the-suprem...
Only the military remains outside Trump’s grip. Despite the firing of several top officers—and his threat to fire more—the U.S. armed forces are still led by generals and admirals whose oath is to the Constitution, not the president. But for how long?
www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
When the Supreme Court struck down Biden's policies, it was tempting to think: "At least these limits on executive authority will bind Trump if he comes back into office." But no—the court's skepticism of executive power vanished on Jan. 20, 2025. This dynamic is obvious to anyone paying attention!
My New One at MSNBC Opinion on How the Supreme Court Seems Poised to Kill Off What Remains of the Voting Rights Act While Few Pay Attention–With Implications for 2026 Redistricting www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb... @msnbc.com
They have done so in reasoned and thoughtful written opinions—opinions that, in the nor- ‘mal course, we would get to parse, assess, and embrace or reject, while fully explaining our reasoning.
I really appreciate Justice Jackson contrasting the lower courts' meticulous and responsible approach to judging—extensive deliberations, written opinions—with the Supreme Court's slapdash, unreasoned work over the shadow docket. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
exigency or any other pru dent threshold limitation on the exercise of our discretion— and wordlessly override the considered judgments of our colleagues. We once again use our equitable power (but not our opinion-writing capacity) to allow this Administration to disrupt as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible.
Justice Jackson's sharp dissent accuses her Republican-appointed colleagues of abusing the court's shadow docket "to allow this Administration to disrupt as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible." She also takes a dig at their refusal to write opinions explaining their actions.
Thank you for your email. There is a temporary shutdown of the U.S. government due to a lapse in appropriations. I will respond to your message as soon as possible after the temporary shutdown ends. Please visit ED.gov for the latest information on the Department's operational status. Thank you.
Thank you for contacting me. On September 19, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. Due to the lapse in appropriations I am currently in furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume.
NEW—US Department of Education sent out standard Out of Office language to employees on Wednesday in light of shutdown. Later yesterday, workers tell me they found someone had updated their auto-responses without consent to a new one blaming Democrats.
Version of original on left, updated on right:
Donald Trump and Republicans fought hard to build this 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court. It’s paying dividends. www.nbcnews.com/politics/sup...
J. Kagan dissent: "Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars.Still more, it should not be used,as it also has been,to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation’s separation of powers."
Trump has done more to establish a unitary executive than all the judges or legal scholars in the world could ever do.
And Trump has done more to discredit and expose the unitary executive theory as lawless authoritarianism than any judge or legal scholar could ever do.
While we're all distracted by the domestic sideshow, Trump is sending the military out to kill people he says are "terrorists", in violation of US and international law. No wonder people at the Pentagon are checking in with their lawyers.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
I would call this “consciousness of guilt” in an eventual domestic trial or international war crimes tribunal.
One point I try to make in here is that Trump and Stephen Miller are trying to eradicate the very idea of legitimate guilt and innocence. All prosecutions are just a power struggle, there's only winning and losing, there's no such thing as justice. It's all power all the way down.
This has been the Supreme Court in a nutshell: where clear and immediate harm has been done by Trump to others, they delay and prevaricate, siding with Trump. Even if later deemed to be illegal, the damage is already done and Trump gets his way.
Here’s my write up on the most racist decision to come out of the Supreme Court in a while. The court approved of Trump’s racial profiling of Latinos with Brett Kavanaugh saying being harassed based on the color of your skin is “common sense.”
My latest in @thenation
#SCOTUS all-but overruled a unanimous, 90-year-old precedent through an unexplained "administrative" stay this morning, and that's only the second-most-problematic thing it did before lunchtime.
This is one good illustration why diversity on the court matters: Sotomayor can imagine a version of the world where this ruling would affect a younger version of herself, her family and people that look like her. Kavanaugh cannot.
Really important that district judges keep applying the law as best as they can interpret it and not worry about what SCOTUS is going to say (or not say! - in their often unsigned, unreasoned orders)
I mean what on earth are district court judges supposed to do at this point other than get the message from SCOTUS to let Trump do whatever he wants to no matter what the law says.
Ah- Trump is apparently going to be the guest of “Rolex, the Swiss watchmaker which may be looking to curry favor with Trump during his visit to their luxury suite in hopes of lowering the high tariffs he has imposed on imports from Switzerland.”
September 6, 1970
Jimi Hendrix made his final live appearance when he appeared at the Isle Of Fehmarn in Germany. The guitarist died 12 days later on 18th Sept 1970 after choking on his own vomit.🎸
Not the best video, but it was all I could find.
#ClassicRock
#RockNRoll
youtu.be/q7s_G_VZIfY?...
If you had told me 30 years ago that Michael Luttig and Bill Kristol would have a clearer understanding about what's going on than a lot of Democratic leaders, I'd have wondered whether you tried the brown acid.
Another read is not that SCOTUS is shy about confronting Trump but that they're basically on board with his project but would be embarrassed about the legal arguments they'd have to make if they upheld his actions on the merits, so they find procedural means to let him get his way.
This is getting very bad:
*FBI raids top Trump critic's home
*Trump loyalist gins up "mortgage fraud" pretexts for DOJ probes of Schiff, Letitia James, Lisa Cook
*Bannon says ICE will monitor 2026 voting
*DHS memo vows LA operations "for years to come"
New from me:
newrepublic.com/article/1994...
Born on this day 99 years ago: Moroccan writer Driss Chraïbi. His landmark novel "Le Passé simple" (1954), among other works, continues to be studied in Morocco & beyond. The English translation by Hugh A. Harter was republished in 2020 by @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social #DrissChraïbi #Moroccanliterature
Quote from a story on changes at the U of Chicago that notes they are "pausing" doctoral eduction in Classics, Comp Lit, Germanic studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Romance languages and literatures, and South Asian Studies.
Wow. The University of Chicago, a world-class institution whose humanities faculty in the past has included Homi Bhabha & Lauren Berlant & Ralph Ellison & Hannah freaking Arendt, is getting rid of basically every graduate department involving the acknowledgment that other cultures & languages exist.