Yesterday was an exchange of rhetoric from both sides
But now Orban seems to have escalated into outright hostage taking in order to pressure Ukraine to restore the damaged Russian oil pipeline
This is madness and the EU needs to come down on Orban like a ton of bricks
“Giving in to bullies has its own costs, not least because bullies are never satisfied with just a single capitulation. Especially when, as with the law firms, the bully — that is, the Trump administration — was obviously playing a weak legal hand from the start.”
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/o...
Yeah, this clip will certainly be shown as evidence at the trials.
excellent deep dive into all of the ways that the Trump administration has used the federal budget to keep punishing critics and trying to bend them to his will. FWIW, this is precisely how Viktor Orban crushed the opposition in Hungary 15 years ago. The national budget is a powerful weapon.
💥New post | The majority of UK academic institutions now no longer post on X
✍️ @andytattersall.bsky.social
#AcademicSky #X #AcademicSocialMedia
Sorry. Just seeing this. Let’s ask @jakubjaraczewski.bsky.social as currently too busy myself drinking ☕️ in the 🌞😎
What and who enables elite impunity in the United States? and what explains the shamelessness?
Once again, I think 13 Justices is the wrong way to do it. It appears like "packing" the court. If you go with *100* Justices, who handle cases on panels of 9, you fix the underlying problem of a small number of justices. www.techdirt.com/2026/01/16/t...
All you need is the willingness to follow orders; being actually smart or good at the law is irrelevant.
Hannah Arendt spent years arguing that authoritarians put personal loyalty above merit, and in fact prefer appointing mediocrities, since their incompetence helps guarantee their loyalty and serves authoritarian goals by further hollowing out institutions, and Liberty U. Law made it career advice.
If any of the quisling firms have any balls (in a gender-neutral colloquial sense) at all, they'll run right into court and sue to set aside they deals they made as coercive and unconscionable
abovethelaw.com/2026/03/doj-...
On Monday at Law Dork, I covered DOJ’s decision to drop the law firm executive order case appeals and the SCOTUS oral arguments over the federal law barring gun possession by users of illegal drugs.
Or to be associated with Orban's autocratic regime in any situation
verfassungsblog.de/how-the-dest...
Spot-on analysis.
As long as one gives the EU plausible deniability, authorities pursuing an autocratisation agenda or in this instance, further consolidating autocratic structures, the EU will look other way/take no action re de facto authoritarian judicial "reforms". The VC has also largely failed at this task too
For the record I don’t think Orban will cancel the election. But I hope that my esteemed colleagues rushing to give talks at Mathias Corvinus Collegium ask themselves whether it is the right time to be associated with a Fidesz academic front.
“We cannot say that the United States’ actions are against international law, but we condemn Iran’s retaliatory actions as against international law,” is neither a coherent nor a compelling position.
Asserting international law only when it is in your own/allies interest means not being committed to international law at all. Being dragged into a war by more powerful allies against direct interest and better judgement means having no strategic autonomy. The UK Govt is in a mess.
European leaders have acquiesced to the end of international law. They can no longer credibly speak of upholding it. This has implications for 🇺🇦.
We need to be realistic about this, and decide where we go from here.
There is no more international law.
Rhetorically at least, Merz’s statements are a green light to Putin in Ukraine and to Trump himself in Greenland. They also consign the resounding success of the JCPOA, including Germany’s laudable participation in it, to the dustbin of history.
the United States is now the most destabilizing global force, with Russia, and transatlantic leaders know it. yet they stand by, either approving or expressing milquetoast concern. Absolutely pathetic, self-defeating & dangerous.
New: Pentagon briefers acknowledged to congressional staff in a briefing Sunday that Iran was not planning to strike US forces or bases in the Middle East unless Israel attacked Iran first, multiple sources to @NatashaBertrand , @jmhansler & me. Why this matters: It undercuts Trump admin’s argument on Saturday that Iran was planning to potentially strike the US preemptively & posed an imminent threat:
No legal basis under either U.S. or international law to attack Iran.
No attack upon the U.S., nor imminent threat of one, nor any congressional authorization.
And the USG ought to be able to restrain the principal recipient of U.S. military assistance from provocations.
All utterly lawless.
It’s worth emphasizing that the Supreme Court has propped up this presidential lawlessness.
When Congress enacted limits on presidential power in 1973, it included an enforcement provision. If the president said there’s an “emergency from attack” and Congress disagreed, it could order troops home.
Why are we attacking Iran?
*they are amassing nuclear weapons which Trump said he destroyed last year, after abandoned a successful Obama-era agreement to stop production
*they interfered in our elections - like China and Russia?
*Trump supports the oppressed Iranian people - like the Venezuelans?
“To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
Judgment of the international Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany.
this is so weak, passive, & unconvincing.
Yet another war in violation of international law. Without the pretence of seeking UN approval.Unleashed while talks ongoing, making a laughing stock of diplomacy. Trump’s foreign policy is sickeningly predictable, with the only predictable effect being a decline of US power
illegal use of force by every measure, domestic & international
CNN reporting that the strikes on Iran tonight are joint US and Israeli strikes.
Which means Donald Trump should be impeached for a third time.
What he has done tonight is illegal under the US constitution and the UN charter.
