I agree, quite apart from the merits of the case. Alito could only defend the Supreme Court's authority to intervene by grievously misrepresenting the facts. The reality is that there's no plausible argument SCOTUS had the power to do what it did. Why didn't that matter to six justices?
There's been a lot of debate within the Democratic establishment about what rhetoric to use via ICE.
Well, an incumbent doesn't lose by 48 percentage points very often—and her vote on collaborating with ICE was the defining issue here.
This thread on Alito's outrageously misrepresentation of the facts in the NY voting rights case is so damning. Alito's account was misleading to the point of falsity. And there's nothing anybody can do about it. He gets to toss around bogus claims without any consequence.
This is how we do constitutional law now, fyi
NEW: There are a number of significant state oral arguments this month, covering mid-decade redistricting, ghost guns, access to voter data, gender affirming care for minors, and more. Check out @skess108.bsky.social’s roundup in @statecourtreport.org. statecourtreport.org/our-work/ana...
“Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year…Citing data that shows the risk of pedestrian fatality is cut in half by reducing a car’s speed from 40 to 30km/hr, city officials imposed the lower limit in most of Helsinki’s residential areas and city center in 2021.”
It’s crazy that it’s basically just a combination of the single worst most disastrous parts of every administration in history
Strongly recommend this excellent piece. It actually understates the US failure: Brazil and S. Korea aren’t outliers. Quite the opposite. Since 2010, 31 democracies have convicted or banned leaders from office. Accountability is the democratic norm. America is the sole outlier.
Wow. +7 majority support for court expansion—an eye popping +37 among Dems—is the BEFORE number, with little to no national messaging.
This stunt where ICE releases people far from home with no proper clothing and no way home should be treated as attempted homicide. In this case, actual homicide. These cases are not accidental or based on misunderstandings. They are deliberate attempts to inflict bodily harm.
the central problem of a set of economic promises significantly premised on homeownership as the asset which stabilizes and assures the security of people. How do you make that asset expensive (and increasing over time!) and yet avoid locking new consumers out of homeownership?
Painful to read this and think about the 2021 coup attempt, which was as blatant as it gets. An utter failure of US elites to seize the moment when everybody saw the threat right in front of their eyes.
If we have history books in the future, they will be unkind.
I found that this is wrong. Democracy actually is a powerful motivating force for a critical slice of the population *if they perceive a real threat*.
I call this the "legibility" theory of democratic backsliding: the more legible the threat, the more likely it is to prompt effective pushback.
“For years, companies have employed bots or orchestrated fake ‘AstroTurf’ campaigns to create the appearance of grassroots opinion on an issue, but the introduction of AI technology could make it even harder for elected officials to engage in earnest with the public.”
Incredible opinion. It holds that the common ICE tactic of jumping out of an unidentified rental vehicle and seizing suspected noncitizens while masked violates the Fourth Amendment because the *manner* of the seizure is incompatible with a free society governed by the rule of law.
A wide & growing range of laws are now subject to strict scrutiny if they burden a plaintiff's sincerely held religious belief. Current doctrine requires courts to defer to a claimant's characterization of her own beliefs & burdens when deciding a religious exemption request, making this threshold test exceptionally-indeed, many scholars argue, excessively-easy to pass. But a less deferential approach would risk making civil courts the arbiter of which religious beliefs are orthodox, reasonable, or true. This Article demonstrates that SCOTUS once had an effective solution to this double-bind. Historically, the Court expected religious exemption claimants to show that they were obligated to follow a religious "law" that shared basic features with secular laws, including generality, clarity, and administrability. The Article reaches this insight by reading religious exemption cases alongside a line of cases with which they are rarely linked: church property disputes. Starting in the late 19th c., the Court encouraged churches to give their religious commitments legally cognizable form in private law instruments like trusts and church "constitutions." During the 20th c., the Court imported this practice into the context of individual religious exemption claims. The source of religious rules of conduct could now be personal conscience rather than church doctrine-but believers still needed to frame these rules in legalistic terms when invoking the protection of civil courts. The choice between deciding religious questions or deferring absolutely to religious litigants, then, is a false one. From the 1870s through the 1980s, the Court's prophylactic legality requirement prevented courts from interfering in religious doctrine and minimized frivolous religious exemption claims. Recognizing this history reveals that the current "hands-off" approach to religious belief statements not only is not constitutionally required, but carries constitutional hazards of its own.
I’m thrilled, yes, & also stunned and bewildered, to announce that my job talk paper, Religion as Public Law, will be published in the Yale Law Journal next year. 1/6
Elimination of emissions standards was one of the pretty clear policy stakes of the 2024 election and it received about 1% as much coverage as whether Tim Walz retiring from the national guard after 21 years was cowardly.
The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering
The concentration of AI wealth into the hands of a few tech barons + plutocratic capture ==> unchartered territory
Last month, an 18-month-old at Dilley was taken to a regional children's hospital with dangerously low blood-oxygen levels after her parents had begged for weeks for someone at the facility to address her illness, the parents said in an emergency petition for her release. A 35-year-old woman released last week said medical staff initially refused to see her after she began hemorrhaging profusely, soaking through six sanitary pads in an hour; she was ultimately taken to a hospital. And last summer, a 32-year-old man died at the Florence center after being detained at the facility for roughly three weeks. The man had been detained even though he was seriously ill with diabetes and had recently been hospitalized with dangerously high blood sugar.
Whenever you read a horrifying list like this about people who are critically ill or died in ICE concentration camps it’s important to remember that these are just the stories that got out because they were lucky enough to have lawyers who could tell their stories.
The best case scenario is that Trump will waste $38 billion. The more likely outcome is that these will become warehouses of human suffering, and a permanent stain on America's history.
“It feels like someone just lit a match on your eyelid and put out a match on your eyelid”
This is a helluva reporting job by @nbcnews.com with videos, photos & eyewitness accounts of how the ICE rampage through American cities is inflicting "grievous injuries" on people. Read/share:
“Unfortunately, because Congress is not taking any steps to rein ICE officers in, there really is no option other than states protecting their constituents’ rights," said Joanna Schwartz, a law professor at UCLA.
I almost cried during the Bad Bunny show when I saw the workers repairing the electrical system. I spent years working on Puerto Rico's crisis, and this was the one thing I couldn't resolve before moving to the academy. Thanks to the @lpeblog.bsky.social and @lpeproject.bsky.social for sharing this.
For years, a cottage industry of political observers has contorted itself to obscure and occlude the obvious. That regardless of what others see in him, Trump’s entire political career — from his embrace of birtherism to his hatred of birthright citizenship — cannot be understood outside the context of his bitter, deep-seated racism. Trump is not profound. He has been the same person this whole time. The question is why so many others have refused to see what he has never bothered to hide.
This, from @jamellebouie.net is exactly right. And I think so many folks have refused to see or admit what Trump is because admitting implicates them, or their families, so denial is easier.
Legally here on a work permit. Arrested when he went to renew it. Not fighting his deportation. Yet he's been in detention 29 days. No access to a lawyer. Has been given no information about his case. Family inquiries also ignored. ICE only responded when local news requested comment.
Utah is the third state in the past decade where Republicans have packed their supreme court.
Arizona and Georgia Rs did it in 2016 to secure right-wing majorities.
North Carolina Rs tried it in 2018 to prevent the Dem court from overturning their gerrymanders, but voters rejected their power grab
As I've been saying: defending democracy requires being appropriately alarmed. "There won't be elections!!" is an absurd and counterproductive line, but "they can't possibly do anything bc the federal government doesn't run elections and they don't have the manpower" is unwarranted complacency.
10. Of the 104 delegates elected to the state constitutional convention, 24 were Black (depicted in the engraving below).Together these delegates were the framers of Virginia’s new constitution,which guaranteed voting rights, elected govt throughout the state, & a public school system for the state.
The Utah governor just signed a bill to expand his state's supreme court by two seats.
Conservatives have been angry at a series of judicial rulings, including one that safeguarded direct democracy in 2024 & one that struck down their gerrymander. 1st step of their retaliation.
It rules how every other government worker is subject to incredible scrutiny for like everything but if you're a cop you can just do blatant fraud and everyone kinda just shrugs at it
