Recent posts by Legal Academics on Bluesky

I legit think this is the first time I've fully laughed out loud at this gif. It's so painfully accurate.

Even Texas hates the Nazis

Wordle 1,688 3/6* 🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I think a fascinating alternate history setting would be a world where Epstein was still alive and Trump sued him and we all ended up in pretty much the same exact place as we are now but with even more instances of Trump shooting himself in the proverbial face. @hntdove.bsky.social get on it.

This weekend I successfully completed scheduling 12 summer camps for 2 children AND disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling all the fans, air purifiers, and space heaters in the house, and I think I feel more accomplished in those two things than in almost anything I've ever done as a lawyer.

Hey @lizdye.bsky.social @stevevladeck.bsky.social I think I might've found the way Mizelle got Attachment A

Once again, I’m just a small-town political scientist, & it’s still relatively early, but it appears that The Actual Democrats do not Need To Do any of the Things or Learn any of the Obvious Lessons that Ezra Douthglesias said they Must Do & Learn 🤔🧐

Those seven Democrats thought they were beholden to the Republicans in their district. Even the Republicans weren't beholden to Republicans tonight...

If the Dem had lost in a squeaker we would still be celebrating. That he didn't lose, and he didn't lose by THIS MUCH...

I don't think he's getting it through Congress. And while I think he could get it through the Tx legislature, there's still time to enjoin. (But, still something to watch for.)

Did anyone hide the ketchup?

The last point is the important one. They clearly do not have the capacity to fully corrupt elections. We have the institutions to claw back democracy

Trump only won in 2016 because of Jim Comey and the electoral college He lost in 2020 by a wide margin when incumbents did well He won in 2024 by a narrow margin during a major global anti-incumbent backlash He has never been popular

This is going to make state-level Republicans more wary to support Trump's electoral shenanigans IMO. Tying themselves to him and face losing safe gerrymandered seats will make a lot of them want to distance themselves from him IMO

One way you know America is not/no longer an actual democracy is that the Republican Governor managed to delay this election for almost a year, giving the GOP an artificial advantage in a narrowly divided parliament. This is something that does not actually happen in real democracies anywhere else.

This is why you build local political mobilization organizations and not light millions of $$$ on fire in ads

Still think @drannieandrews.com can’t win against the ultimate example of Trump DC business as usual, Lindsey Graham?

So the question is whether Republicans bail on Trump or double down and try to finish killing democracy before November. This is entirely uncertain and there is no way for us to know at this point who and how many will choose these options

You know who really ought to pay attention the result in TX Sen 9? Democratic leadership in Congress.

So, the immediate question: does this change Cornyn's votes...? Or other GOP Senators? Can we redo the Bernie Amendment on recouping the money already given to ICE?

Losing massively in the Fort Worth suburbs + massively pissing off Hispanic voters including along the Border + greedily screwing with the House districts and forcing your candidates to run in districts where people don’t know them is an epic self-own by Trump & Vance in Texas.

A lot of white liberals on here who never set foot in the South wanted to saw off Texas because they have no understanding of how complex the South is and how it’s changing.

looks like people are losing interest in the neo-Nazi pedoguy

$75 million plus for the favor of the dictator and $8 million. Great deal.

$8 m for $ 75 m, and the approval of the Dictator. Great deal.

these are senator james talarico numbers

This is it right here 👇🎯 Multiple things can be simultaneously true, which is why the backlash to those of us pondering worst case scenarios (bsky.app/profile/mcop...) is overwrought. We'll stop doing that when we're a full democracy again, & the probability of the tail outcome is ~0% once again.

Not unhinged enough and not enough cash in the CAVA bag 💰

Next up: White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt says residents of suburban Fort Worth are Marxists who hate America.

The kind of big victory that could have real effects on national politics.

When will he get sworn in...

👇🎯🧵 He's been violating the emoluments clause in plain sight since the second he first walked into the WH. He spent Biden's entire presidency not being punished for a coup attempt. Etc. Things have accelerated rapidly since January 2025, but democratic backsliding was well under way before that.

Is Texas going to do a PRI and just unplug the computers?

Some "age gap" discourse: when I started dating the DH he was 23 years old. I was 32. Come May we'll be celebrating our eleventh year together and our ninth year married.

The originalist case for tear gassing children

Sigh. www.tmz.com/2026/01/31/g...

Needless to say, I'm looking up campaign ads to see what could have produced this massive pro-Democratic shift in the Texas state Senate race. It looks like they directly tied Wambsganss to Trump and his hate. youtu.be/-f_rVwxEhvM?...

Looking at the precinct results in TX's 9th Senate district election and the shift is a consistent ~40 points on margin vs 2022 in the outlying areas, matching the pattern of persuasion and Republican dropoff we've seen in special elections for the 2025-26 election cycle.

Had to tell @busbyj2.bsky.social to follow @taniel.bsky.social for election news, so apparently I still have work to do.

Democrat Christian Menefee has been elected to Congress. Who knows when Christian nationalist Mike Johnson will swear him into office?

Proposed new cabinet-level agency for a future administration: Department of Tacky Autocratic Cult Objects Removal

2nd Amendment is the only one they recognize

Proposed new cabinet-level agency for a future administration: Department of Tasteless Authoritarian Cult Objects Removal

A driver in a car with a Trump 2024 flag hit a high school student protesting ICE at a Nebraska anti-ICE rally and then sped away. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/u...

If I do the child's hair, the dog sticks his whole butt between us so I have to brush his tail. If I scritch the dog, the child threads her entire stringbean self between us. If one of them climbs on my lap… They are each about 70lbs of affection times spite and there is no winning for me.

This one is on Apple TV+, btw, fam.

Again, it all should have ended when he started monetizing the presidency at his hotel in 2017, three blocks from the White House. But everyone in Congress decided that he is One Special Boy, & so here we are. Unprecedented corruption in plain sight.

Y'know, it's not like a rule, or anything, but I find (here and back on the bad site) that there's really no point in responding to or @-ing an account that has fewer than, say, 500 or 1000 posts.

Was having the most annoying issue with VS Code struggling to paste anything from the browser. It worked, but it was causing persistent hangs. Was driving me nuts. Turns out the problem was that I needed to set VS Code to X11. github.com/JaKooLit/Hyp...

Lindsey Graham doesn't just support this 34-time convicted felon who's doing this, he's easily one of his biggest enablers in America. South Carolina needs to do so much better than Trump & Graham & can with @drannieandrews.com

A nice tour of one of my favorite cities, Greenville, SC. youtu.be/f0uk_ACNwEE?...

Who would have guessed Mini-Hitler would feel this way? I’m sure this administration’s deep commitment to fighting anti-semitism will mean they take immediate action. HAHAHAHAHA.

Minneapolis

From Jeff Ruland to Roy Hinson to Shawn Bradley to Larry Hughes to Keith van Horn to Andrew Bynum to Nerlens Noel to Evan Turner to Jahlil Okafor to Ben Simmons to Markelle Fultz to Doc Rivers to James Harden to Joel Embiid's knees to this, haven't we poor Sixers fans suffered long & hard enough?

As they always say, there is no peace deal like a Trump peace deal!

From Jeff Ruland to Roy Hinson to Shawn Bradley to Larry Hughes to Keith van Horn to Andrew Bynum to Nerlens Noel to Evan Williams to Jahlil Okafor to Ben Simmons to Markelle Fultz to Doc Rivers to James Harden to Joel Embiid's knees to this, haven't we poor Sixers fans suffered long & hard enough?

Chief Justice Roberts says the Constitution allows the president to take as much money as they want from taxpayers. The provision is right there under the presidential immunity clause.

Me refreshing the Texas election results.

Seeing images of children gassed on the streets of an American city and recalling how in Trump 1.0, POTUS bombed Syria due to images of gassed children.

I have been trying to write an essay for four weeks now about Article II under the Trump administration and I keep having to restart because the draft never appropriately conveys the insanity of whatever happened during the last week.

Texas A&M "University" (www.npr.org/2026/01/30/n...) & UNC Chapel Hill (dailytarheel.com/article/univ...)

Talk about a high crime or misdemeanor. Abusing his sacred public trust, his duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to openly help himself to billions of the people’s hard-earned tax dollars. (As for the “charity” remark, please.)

The unitary executive as license to loot the U.S. Treasury.

“It’s gonna go to numerous, very good charities.”

Your moment of Vermont zen, full moon edition

I fully agree, but I’ll also note that it would be better if the Jewish Senator who once was deeply concerned about Democrats’ language didn’t use the antisemites’ own code words & stopped posting back at the antisemites’ own Nazi Bar: 🤔🤷‍♂️ bsky.app/profile/mcop...

This notebook is absolutely horrifying.

Maybe now we know why Musk is so intent on Republicans keeping control of Congress...

Apparently liberalism is saying that Jews who don't believe in ethnonationalism are Vichy French

Tarrant County, TX (Fort Worth), where Taylor Rehmet is trying to pull off an upset tonight, is a county that's been trending Democratic in recent years. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarrant...

People on Bluesky who know nothing about politics: Schumer caved, he's a terrible Minority Leader, he has to go. The facts: 👇

This will make you cry. Fellow students of Liam, the little boy in the bunny hat, have messages for ICE. 💔 www.nytimes.com/video/opinio...

Once again, three decades after he & his obnoxious & useless “faculty lounge” nonsense stopped being relevant, I remain a single issue voter 🤦‍♂️:

The nation isn't talking enough about Clint Pressley, the President of the Southern Baptist Convention, cheering on the arrest of journalist Don Lemon.

The bit of local context I should give to all the furore about Judge Biery’s (entirely understandable) habeas order is that he is known for unusual opinions, e.g. scholar.google.com/scholar_case...

Not particularly important, but Bill Wambsganss made an unassisted triple play in the 1920 World Series.

The right-wing Manhattan Institute's new college rankings are out.

Big lead for Christian Menafee in the all-Democratic special U.S. House election in Texas with nearly half the vote in.

One of the things I love about this special election for the State Senate in the suburbs of Fort Worth is guess which one is the Democratic candidate and which one's the Republican :). The South's much more interesting & complex than folks who've never been here think it is.

The early vote in for the Texas Senate District 9 special election has Democrat Taylor Rehmet up 56%-44% over Republican Leigh Wambsganss. This is a Trump +17 district. #txlege

Seconded! We are so far into Niemöller's "and then they came...." Any news org, journalist or editor who does not make THE story of journalists being arrested by the DoJ a major story - are themselves undeserving of First Amendment protections. The First Amendment. Use it or lose it.

Luis Arraez is a 3-time batting champ, has a career .317 batting average, the highest of any current player, and will already be playing for his 4th different team at the age of 29. Baseball has changed in recent decades.

What are the odds that whoever they do hire will get ranked at a salary level they don't have the credentials to meet?

And ... not to belabor the obvious, but the fact that these X pleas for applicants come from the people who brought you "we only care about MERIT." Good luck getting smart and talented candidates who can pass the "I am Loyal to Dear Leader" litmus test.

Nothing says "this is a serious matter" more than issuing an order on February 31st.

So weird. I’ve been hearing all this talk about “heritage Americans” on the right.

I kept hearing about some level at which Bitcoiners who bought on margin (?) or something would be forced to sell? Is that right? Is that still a thing? Are we anywhere near it?

Can't believe a Nazi hates Jews www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/u...

Some heroes wear capes

And Trump & Vance have been banning wind and solar projects that were scheduled to come online soon. Trump & Vance are raising your electricity prices intentionally.

JD Vance believes that toddlers belong in detention camps and antisemites belong in the Republican coalition.

From “Hey Bulldog” to “I Saw Her Standing There.”

The Onion never misses

Rewatching Argylle. How did people not love this movie? Look at this shot where I paused. It’s so over the top.

USC students turn snow day into celebration day on campus

Benedict XVI was such an unapologetic right-winger who did so much damage to the Catholic Church that he had the author of this article, Fr. Thomas Reese, fired as editor of America magazine years ago. Thank goodness we’ve had two great Popes in a row after the disastrous Benedict XVI.

Maine clergy form spiritual 'shield' outside workplaces to protect immigrants from ICE

Any engineers here have an idea how much it would cost to tear down this junk heap? www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Some of our students sledding on campus today :) Looks like we’re “only” going to get 2-5 inches of snow here. www.thestate.com/news/weather...