Top recent posts by Legal Academics on Bluesky

I see the already historically unpopular president is exploring how to get the military invovled in “assisting” local law enforcement just a few weeks before the real shortages caused by his inept economic policy start hitting. Probably nothing to worry about.

Forget Canada — I don't think I've ever seen a poll shift this dramatic in *any* modern democracy. One of the most remarkable elections of my lifetime.

A consistent trend of Trump & his coterie is they're so thoroughly and amoral that they genuinely do not understand the thought processes of normal people with consciences.

On Friday, a WD Tex judge ordered the "release" of 2 Venezuelans after finding the govt's proof of their Tren de Aragua membership "completely & wholly unsubstantiated." DOJ/DHS have not released him. Judge wants to know why.

In the law firm executive order cases, DOJ takes the position that an injunction barring implementation will only be enforceable against the govt agencies named in the complaint. So Perkins Coie just amended its complaint to name all the relevant fed agencies. The case caption is now 40 pages long.

Jalen Hurts is, by all indications, the real deal. - A purposely all-female representation team, led by a Black woman. - Supports Black women business owners. - Speaks out publicly in support of Black women. - And now, refuses to go to the White House to meet Trump. Plus, you know, Super Bowl MVP.

Possibly incomplete list of Eagles with "scheduling conflicts" preventing them from being honored at White House: Jalen Hurts AJ Brown Devonta Smith Zach Baun Brendan Graham Jordan Davis Jalen Carter CJ Gardner Johnson Quinyon Mitchell Darius Slay Jake Elliott Nakobe Dean Nolan Smith Busy guys!

I’ve seen it enough, I’m ready to call it: Everyone hates America.

These guys are about to kick millions of people off their health insurance and they don't have the faintest idea of how these programs work, just throwing out numbers in an incoherent jumble. It's like a football coach saying "We've got a 10-yard redzone in our offside flea flicker so we'll be good"

Only authoritarians think calls for "protest" are "inciting violence" or "secessionist behavior."

Once again, marginal tax rates are too low & pose an existential threat to democracy

Tom Homan has great difficulty speaking English. So a career as a trucker will be out for him if he's fired from his current job threatening immigrants and ordering kids with cancer to be be deported.

FWIW: This is a new thing. Young folks in DC have always tended to cluster somewhat by political affiliation, but working for the Bush admin in the early aughts didn't automatically make you a social leper. People were friends and dated across party & ideology. www.politico.com/magazine/sto...

Consistent with my maintained belief that ~20-30% of any democratic polity will support far right authoritarians no matter what. The only question is whether a country has such egregiously anti-majoritarian political institutions that allow that minority full access to power to do a fascism.

It's not just Trump's approval taking a hit. Voters also say they care less than they did in 2024 about (formerly) GOP-leaning issues like crime and immigration. Concerns about the economy, social security, and health care are up. The thermostat comes for Trump www.gelliottmorris.com/p/the-thermo...

Greenland now considering invasion of America

when you say governors calling for mass peaceful protest are doing secession, you've lost

Suggests that the Houthi got close enough with a drone or missile strike to force the Truman to maneuver hard, tossing the Super Hornet overboard. This is the second F/A-18 lost in the past six months, along with at least 9 Predator drones. This "cheap" war in Yemen is starting to add up

At the end of this clip, Mike Johnson says "The President's approval rating is better than it was at this point in 2017, right, because people trust him." This is not true: www.gelliottmorris.com/p/data

Canada needs a needle. I'm willing to take this on

Folks look at you like you're crazy when you say we're in the midst of the most unprecedented & total constitutional crisis in American history, & then, well, 🧐🤷‍♂️

Life fast comes at you

Trump stooge calls Amazon's plan to disclose the actual cost of the TrumpTariffs a "hostile act." Well, facts are Trump's most dangerous adversary.

We often say Trump is unamerican because of his rejection of the diversity that makes us great, but he’s also a disgrace just by the standards of the revolutionary generation; many of the grievances in the Declaration apply to him, and Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton would’ve hated his ass.

I am a history professor at Penn State. Students in my classes come from a variety of backgrounds & voice a wide range of political views. They disagree about a lot. But almost universally they think public universities should be free; all should get the opportunity to learn w/out going into debt.

Excuse this personal post, but has anyone found a Navy Jet, I lost it around the Red Sea, DM me.

Here are my reporter's notes on Wednesday's hearing in the case challenging the executive order attacking WilmerHale. Judge Leon didn't seem to buying DOJ's defense. "It's retaliatory. There's no question in my mind." 1/4 www.lawfaremedia.org/article/our-...

Based on seat vote share swings, Liberals are definitely winning this. I think a high chance of a majority now. Median of 178 seats. Congrats to PM Mark Carney

"The president campaigned on this issue that he explicitly denied and lied about which is why we're going to do it" Yeah, imagine the election may have turned out if Trump said "I will fire veterans and make it harder for them to receive care".

THE HENCHMEN STRATEGY: My latest in-depth report for HuffPost looks at how the Trump administration has appointed numerous interim U.S. Attorneys — and it's all part of his quest to twist law enforcement agencies into his personal legal task force. www.huffpost.com/entry/the-he...

For most of my time living in Canada, people were resigned to Pierre Poilievre becoming the next prime minister. Yet not only did his party lose last night, be he lost his own seat! The reason? Poilievre acted like Canadian Trump — and that was a political death sentence www.vox.com/politics/410...

We simply can't keep doing "jobs for the boys" while the lawless authoritarianism is going on. Grind it all to a halt. Now.

We're still learning the underlying facts, but Judge Dugan's arrest and officials publicly harping on it must be seen as another dangerous attack against judicial independence from the Trump administration. This is a threat to our constitutional order.

Remarkable order by 2-1 DC Circuit panel restores Judge Amy Berman Jackson's ban on CFPB reductions in force pending appeal. Same panel had partially lifted that ban, for "particularized" RIFs, but CFPB immediately tried to fire 90% of force. 1 Trump appointee joins majority; 1 dissents.

I’ve got a piece up in the @nytimes.com this morning arguing that more than a constitutional crisis, we’re in a rule of law crisis. Gift link here: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/o...

De-naturalization, where the US gov can strip a naturalized citizen of their citizenship is in the news lately. There's an excellent book on the history of that practice by Patrick Weil. Not surprisingly, denaturalization's high water mark was WWII. My review of his book:

"I'm sorry to say" is just 🤌

It’s a fantastic idea, but also, Amazon is denying they’re planning to do it. Nothing about Bezos’ behavior to date remotely suggests he’s got the balls.

If Trump's idiocy reverses the global rightward trend in national elections, it will be the greatest thing he has ever done. By far.

Amazon is down 2% on the open after news that the President of the United States is upset at its private business decisions... What do you call a country where citizens and business leaders are afraid of retaliation by the executive if they don't publicly support his policies?

New Yorker cartoons FTW. @schumer.senate.gov

It's really hard to talk to reporters about what RFK is doing to HHS without breaking out into long strings of increasingly creative expletives. I try to keep it chill, but there's so much pointless harm.

This seems quite mad even by MAGA standards. Contempt is an essential tool in securing compliance with court orders. To spite Judge Boasberg and Judge Xinis, are they really proposing to undercut the power of court orders even in areas where they themselves approve of or benefit from those orders?

Harvard's on quite the winning streak.

On the other hand, our alliance with El Salvador has never been stronger

Other countries do 👇 all the time, without any of the needless & manufactured drama & nonsense we put up with. No lawsuits. No systematic voter suppression. No lies about nonexistent voter fraud. No fabricated delays in counting votes. We could just be a normal democratic country, too.

@hcrichardson.bsky.social: "Elon Musk donated about $290 million, giving four times as much money to political campaigns in 2024 as he paid in income taxes between 2013 and 2018."

YES, THIS. Along with all the other wildly illegal & unconstitutional things, hreatening to take territory from 🇨🇦 & 🇬🇱/🇩🇰 is a violation of both the NATO treaty & the UN Charter, & therefore (as treaties we've signed) US law, & it should immediately end this presidency. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Trump has gone from cheering on the polls and making up a fake approval rating of 70% to calling them rigged and saying pollsters should be investigated. I think that tells you a lot about how strong/weak he believes he is (and he's right www.gelliottmorris.com/p/data)

CTV projects a Liberal win. Whether a majority or minority government tbd.

I’ve said that in the international arena, Trump acts like a trust fund kid spending down an account he thinks gets refilled by magic. The same is true in the courts. Judges have long offered a LOT of deference (a “presumption of regularity”) to DOJ’s representations. That’s getting eroded fast.

We really need to resign ourselves to the reality that the modal voter is making a vibes-and-tribes choice, then rummaging through a remainder bin of half-recalled factoids, headlines, and talking points to rationalize that choice.

One thing I've noticed since 2024 is a lot of Democratic strategists think the Republicans have a better understanding of issue attitudes and voter priorities than Ds do (they often use this to argue for moderation). I think the last 100 days prove the White House has no idea what people care about

Truth bomb here. Let's not cut Medicaid. Let's cut the massive, unjustified payments to insurance companies under Medicare Advantage. open.substack.com/pub/healthca...

Someone should tell Congress that the President is sitting at a 39% approval rating.

"ICE agents’ separation of Sanchez from her infant daughter was so traumatic that the baby was taken to the hospital." From Jennifer Bendery: www.huffpost.com/entry/kathy-...

Jeff Bezos, Welcome to the Resistance!

Less than half of the Philadelphia Eagles team went to the White House to be with Trump. Jalen Hurts didn't go. But Ohio State University President Ted Carter went while 11 of his own international students had had their visas revoked by Trump.

New polling from Pew: Presidential approvals by ethnicity and religion. White numbers mostly evenly split, except for evangelicals who remain overwhelming approving. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

For no reason whatsoever, reupping that a well-known appellate practitioner accidentally bumped me with a shopping cart in the Friendship Heights Whole Foods circa 2011 and never apologized.

Govt just filed a sealed motion in the Abrego Garcia case. Remember, discovery was stayed until tomorrow under a mysterious consent order Judge Xinis issued a week ago, after a sealed motion from the govt.

Would be welcomed as liberators.

we are two weeks away from trump trying to do price controls on amazon flip-flops via executive order

If I had control of a nation-wide political party I would be setting up local offices at every Loves and Flying J to hammer home whose fault the impending collapse of the trucking industry is.

Also worth recalling that polygraphs are basically voodoo. One of many bits or pseudoscience that have become institutionally standard despite being wildly unreliable.

"heading somewhere" -- yes, down

What a disgrace that the courts have allowed Trump and Rubio to keep this student behind bars for nothing more than having exercised his constitutional rights. www.npr.org/2025/04/29/n...

Canada's Liberals went from a twenty point deficit in January to a win tonight because Canadians are *furious* at Donald Trump. That's not American provincialism: it's palpable on the ground here in Canada, and what every expert I spoke with told me.

Dear people who share "only x% of people oppose something awful" statistics - it's never going to be 100%. Reasons- some people aren't paying attention. listing something as an option on a survey suggests some amount of acceptability/social proof. some people are support the awful thing.

Best sign yet that generative AI is not going to deliver the value promised by its promoters: OpenAI is embracing surveillance capitalism. Having stolen all the personal data they could get their hands on, OpenAI is positioned to do as much harm as FB. www.wired.com/story/openai...

Congress is getting a ton of calls from constituents alarmed about ruinous tariffs. They could move to end the nonsense by embracing a one-sentence joint resolution by Sens. Rand Paul and Ron Wyden to end Trump's bogus national emergency declaration [Dominic Pino]

Rev. Barber’s “Jesus Wept” tattoo is suspiciously Tren de Aragua

👇🎯 Lets not lose sight of this. We have different results in large part because we’re not a full democracy & won’t be until we stop enabling hyper-gerrymandering, mass voter suppression, & all the other things that normal countries simply don’t put up with anymore. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

tech workers of the 2010s had such a charmed existence. not so much anymore www.wsj.com/tech/tech-ca...

False alarm everyone, Bezos is bad again

Is this the part where he is protecting women and children?

The longer you watch Scott Bessent the more he looks like Will Ferrell doing a Scott Bessent impression

@SethGJones: Russia’s average rate of advance has been slower than the most grueling battles of World War I, including the Franco-British offensive during the 1916 Battle of the Somme, according to estimates by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. www.wsj.com/opinion/trum...

The former intelligence official noted the emails from leadership that directed employees to report on colleagues who were engaged in diversity, equity and inclusion activities. “They did this in the Soviet Union,” the former official said. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

We, regretfully, are the baddies.

On the bright side, it's only because Musk knows how incredibly uncool he is that he is so pathetically desperate for people to think he's cool

That’s pretty pretty terrible. But, on the other hand, you can refuse.

I hope the capitulating law firms enjoy pro-bono defending cops against brutality claims. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm planning to lean in hard to the coming 4th of July celebrations. I will not let a small segment of the country define what it means to be patriotic and American for me.

Before, when we had Woke, F/A 18s didn't jump off the decks of aircraft carriers.

The Big Ten faculty senates continue to come through.

DOJ's Civil Rights Division "had around 380 attorneys when Trump began his second term in the White House. Approximately half have left, according to people familiar with the division..." www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

I was privileged to write, along with a group of illustrious 1A scholars, a brief in AAUP’s challenge to the Trump admin’s decision to cancel $400 million to Columbia & its faculty. The brief explains why this action violates core 1A principles in MULTIPLE ways. protectdemocracy.org/wp-content/u...

Aside from the FAFO schadenfreude here, this is great, because it will help make clear, in very concrete terms, to an enormous swathe of 🇺🇸 consumers the benefits of free trade. Let’s do this for everything. We already do it for sales tax, anyway.

Tariff talks going well… China on Tuesday vowed it would “never kneel down” in the face of President Trump’s tariff pressure because “bowing to a bully is like drinking poison to quench thirst,” painting itself as a champion for the international community. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

Trump take Prime Day

our limited minds will never fully comprehend the novelty of this innovative business model

I’m sure annexing Greenland or Canada will reverse Trump’s nosedive in the polls. Wait, hold on. New information coming in. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Me: Is your room clean? 4YO: Yes 4YO: Don’t check Me: …

CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION: I'm informed by @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social that these 2 Venezuelans are seeking to be "fully released" from custody. The 2 are out of detention and back in DC, but with ankle bracelets. Regret the misleading picture provided below.

Amazon is NOT actually doing this (of course they’re not), but it’d be a great idea for retailers. Not just on imported goods, but domestic producers who have to hike prices because their input costs have spiked.

A literal "more and more people are saying" article. www.chronicle.com/article/more...

New from me: there's a consensus among otherwise divergent legal scholars that Donald Trump and his appointees are breaking the law and overstepping the constitutional bounds of presidential power.

This is fascism. Truly.

With apologies to Zack, we're back on our bullshit again today www.liberalcurrents.com/unfit-to-be-...