Joyce White Vance

No More Benefit Of The Doubt Last Sunday, we discussed a number of cases pending in front of federal district judges in Minneapolis.

Some judicial opinions have to be read in full, like the one I parse for you to night, from Judge Tunheim in Minneapolis.
open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

Noem is gone, sort of, but there are lessons to be learned from her tenure, how she was fired, and why it didn’t happen earlier, why the Senate confirmed her in the first place, that we can”t afford to ignore joycevance.substack.com/p/fired-but-...

Fired, But For the Wrong Reason Today, Donald Trump fired DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

I’m not mad she’s gone, but let’s talk about what’s really at stake here. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

There Is More Than One Way to Kill Mail-in Voting On Tuesday in Texas, Democratic voters in Dallas and Williamson Counties, Texas, had their work cut out for them if they wanted to vote.

We shouldn’t have to fight just to be able to exercise a right, but primary night in Texas made it clear we will have to. Here’s what you need to know and how to get ready to do it.
open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

House Oversight Committee subpoenas Attorney General Pam Bondi Bondi has faced criticism from Democrats, and some Republicans, over the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files.

Writing & calling your elected officials, even your Republican ones really does work: House Oversight Committee subpoenas Attorney General Pam Bondi www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Karoline Leavitt: The President can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Americans: 😎

DOJ now just doing whatever Trump says. joycevance.substack.com/p/doj-change...

A Pirate’s Life For Us

It’s Wednesday, which means the drop of the new Sisters Sidebar where we answer your questions. www.politicon.com/podcast-epis...

DOJ Changes Course Last night, I wrote to you about reporting that the Trump administration would stop defending the clearly illegal executive orders the president issued last March.

DOJ is supposed to be slow and deliberate when it makes decisions—take the time to get it right. It’s rare, in fact, I can’t remember any other time when we’ve seen the sort of whiplash change in position we’re seeing right now. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

holy hell, what *could* possibly go wrong?

Measles. In 2026. In the US of A. 🤦🏼‍♀️

This is what happens when the Secretary of HHS is a guy who snorts cocaine off of a toilet seat

What did House Republicans hope to gain by calling Hillary Clinton to testify about Jeffrey Epstein? @preetbharara.bsky.social and I discuss on a new episode of @cafedotcom.bsky.social Insider. Listen: cafe.visitlink.me/PIayIQ

More detail here: www.ms.now/news/justice...

The Deputy Attorney General just rescinded the policy against no knock warrants in most cases. That policy was an important public safety measure. Restricting their use saved lives. Breonna Taylor died because of one. www.cnn.com/2022/02/22/u...

"The answer is not to dehumanize us." -- Judge Salas

Really looking forward to this from @weissmann.substack.com!

Another Big Loss for the Little Bully Today, the Trump administration delivered a loss in court to itself.

Why go after Big Law? Courts can’t act on their own, they need lawyers to bring them cases. During the first Trump administration, that happened regularly. The new administration wanted to put a stop to it. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

Hilarious in a really sad way, though.

"Who gets to decide when the end justifies the extra-legal means and when it’s acceptable to ignore a [war powers] law that stands in the way of certain actions?

"Is it you? Me? Donald Trump? Stephen Miller?"
-- @joycewhitevance.bsky.social | joycevance.substack.com/p/the-law-of...

www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

US moving pregnant immigrant girls to Texas to avoid providing abortions, critics say Ex-official calls transfer of unaccompanied girls as young as 13, many pregnant due to rape, a human rights violation

“White added that ‘making the decision for these girls whether they will give birth to their rapist’s baby’ is ‘an extraordinary human rights problem.’

‘Everyone attempts to write their politics on the bodies of these children,’ he said.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

It’s not “the Department of War”

The Week Ahead February 27, 2026

Lots of tails wagging lots of dogs this week. Trump clearly wants you to forget there are documents about him missing from the Epstein files. But I devote most of this piece to a quiet phenomenon: federal judges, declaring war on ICE open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

The Sunday Morning Wrap-Up Here’s the highlight reel of the past week’s posts and events.

Here are all of this week’s Civil Discourse columns, collected in one place in case you missed anything. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

The Law of War I am not a law of war expert.

What does it mean if the administration's strike on Iran wasn't lawful? It's not an abstract debate. First principles, like the rule of law, determine whether we live in a country governed by laws or by impulse. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

Live with Ruth Ben-Ghiat & Joyce Vance No one speaks more eloquently about the art of resistance and why we shouldn’t give up than historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the author of Lucid here on Substack.

Authoritarianism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat explains why she believes Americans are succeeding at developing systems to resist the slide into authoritarianism and why we shouldn’t give up. joycevance.substack.com/p/live-with-...

THIS.

Look where so many people falling for the excuse that “it was only locker room talk” has gotten us.

Five Questions with Alabama Journalist Kyle Whitmire And why you should care about a local story from Alabama

Who is John Wahl? Why should you care? Read on.
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