Top recent posts by Legal Academics on Bluesky

You may have heard of a "pollster" that recently admitted to fabricating data for a "social experiment". We have discovered that another firm, TPSI, falsified data to produce results more favorable to a candidate it did undisclosed partisan work for blog.fiftyplusone.news/suspending-t...

Guess who reduced the debt/GDP ratio by adopting a set of policies that created the conditions for unprecedented job growth & the strongest economic performance among the G7 coming out of raging global pandemic? 🤔🧐

Texas Gov. Abbott is refusing to extradite to Minnesota an ICE agent charged with firing into a home there, "at least until Minnesota 'step[s] up and [repays proceeds of] fraud that they’ve committed in their state through federal programs.'” It's a meritless stand. [@stevevladeck.bsky.social]

The usual political programming is interrupted to share that Maude just responded to hearing the phrase “perfect creature.”

I'm not terribly concerned about the debt, but let's be serious: Republican tax cuts, wars, and mismanagement gave us the $40 trillion debt. deanbaker22.substack.com/p/40-trillio... That's not being partisan; that's reality.

Ukraine is paying the cost of Trump’s reckless decision to attack Iran, thereby dangerously depleting Patriot stockpiles. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/20/w...

Requisite Tony Judt quote about the single greatest institutional achievement in 250 years of the Republic:

Seems like something our university presidents should be screaming about

The racial politics of this administration are so hard to decipher. www.cnn.com/2026/08/20/p...

"unintentionally" www.denverpost.com/2026/08/19/m...

“We are terrified that given distance and a proper education, you will begin to see us for what we are and hold us in contempt.”

🧵 Really great, then, that our now-departed chancellor - the one who totally failed to speak up publicly about the authoritarians cancelling all of our Title VI/FLAS area/language studies grants - decided that ~all of our scarce $$$ should go to new faculty & a new school dedicated entirely to AI.

I'm as curious as anyone as to why Harry and Meghan want to move back to the UK. My current hypothesis is that living in the UK and dealing with one of the most famously emotionally difficult families in the world began to seem safer than just hanging around in the USA in 2026.

Love to see it. Make the relevant members of Congress own this illegal war and their refusal to exercise their constitutional responsibilities.

On Earth, life may have emerged not once, but twice. A new study pinpoints ancient genetic differences between our planet’s earliest organisms, bacteria and archaea, which hint at a common origin from a single, deep-sea source that was itself not yet truly alive.

It’s crucially important to keep noting that the debt/GDP ratio <declined> during Joe Biden’s presidency, bc this renewed debt hysteria is 100% a test balloon for the media re-running the “we can’t afford that” playbook once Democrats control Congress again & propose any new non-defense spending.

Congrats again to the elites who told us this guy was a credible Treasury Secretary because he had the right degrees & went to the right cocktail parties.

These are frankly disastrous numbers for the future of 🇺🇸 democracy. We cannot be a full democracy w/o major SCOTUS reform & addressing the egregious malapportionment of the Senate & EC. Democrats, & democrats, have a ton of hard work ahead to convince voters of the necessity of the top 4 reforms 👇

To be fair, I wrote letters to George W. as well. Mine might have had expletives.

Expert race ratings are great on Election Day but tend to be a lagging indicator, especially in midterms. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/the-texas-...

Random trials is the one to do.

On vacation till end of August. For court coverage please follow my terrific colleagues @annabower.bsky.social , @ericcolumbus.bsky.social & @mollyroberts.bsky.social !

I'm beginning to wonder about the sincerity of POTUS's humanitarian motivations for attacking Iran...

Skimming Uber's terms of service, as one does. Congress banned mandatory predispute arbitration for sexual assault at the height of #metoo, so Uber excepted sexual assault from its arb clause. But ... and I could be wrong ... this is new: www.uber.com/us/en/legal/...

Got 2 pounds of marinated pork for carnitas that cost 6.99. Simple pleasures.

Yay financial "innovation," America is back

Timeline cleanser: black sands beach on Kauai, 2025.

Reading this article and grinding my teeth at the disgraceful role of the State Department in this man’s persecution. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

UPDATE from Mr. Jose Mejia Hernandez's attorney: Today, he was unable to eat because of the significant pain in his mouth, particularly around the area where he required seven stitches following the injuries he sustained... he went to see his dentist who noted signs of infection. More in thread.

It’s true. They managed to launch a war even more self-harming, unnecessary, and illegal than Bush’s Iraq fiasco. Amazing accomplishment.

Transformative public performance of the day:

Official shirt of fathers on college move-in day 😂😢

Plaintiffs in the Kennedy Center litigation have filed an emergency motion for an injunction to block the Trump-aligned Board from refastening Trump's name to the marble exterior (twice!) and rename the grounds for him too. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

If you didn’t already dislike power-hungry data centers popping up on Earth, just wait till you see what they could do to the night sky. A new study suggests proposed megaconstellations of orbital data centers could outnumber the visible stars and blot out the Milky Way.

What is the political instinct to come out against taco trucks in Los Angeles? Baffling

Watch Pennsylvania -- a barometer of the nation's political temperature, which is becoming decidedly cold to Republicans.

You gotta get those numbers down.

If only the US had waved the magic military wand at Iran to start with, it would have won. Easy peasy.

This is precisely why the fascists are going to keep eating your lunch

NV Secy Aguilar to me last week: “Their ability to tell the truth and be trustworthy doesn’t exist so we have to assume that they’re going to do the craziness that they’re going to do. They’re very reactive, they’re very emotional and that is because they are trying to appease one individual.”

Ghost hunters are occasionally entertaining and mostly socially harmless.

We should never name anything after anyone until at least 50 years after their death, with only the most minimal exceptions (ex: Zampa Bridge) and never if they were politicians. It's everyone's infrastructure. We don't all agree on who we like. And may need time to decide how we feel about them.

No one is growing their way out of 40 trillion. I'm sorry.

someone has been reading their shelley www.wsj.com/world/middle...

Re: the constitutionality of Japanese internment: "To a Wall Street lawyer, the Constitution is just a piece of paper." --John J. McCloy, Chief Deputy to Secretary of War Henry Stimson

The Oxford University Press dishwasher, so named because purchased with my first royalty check when my old appliance broke, is doing very well. 😆

When you ask yourself, "but why," that's because you don't think like a modern Republican. The answer is always either: "because it's efficient," "because it'll make somebody rich richer," "because it'll make a liberal cry," or "because we can bitch."

Human beings are very bad at remembering their past

Once again, the central cleavage in American politics is “Who was <actually> president in 2020?”

I am always saying that the audience gets a vote but like actual voters they often vote very stupidly. Case in point, liberals are always communists to a segment of the audience, yet Donald Trump has been penning love letters to Kim Jong Un in public since his first term and no one GAF

First day of class as a law prof at Southwestern Law School!

So Much Not Winning www.newyorker.com/news/global-...

New episode! **Trump’s Presidency for Sale?** @johnfugelsang.bsky.social and I look at Trump selling early access to Truth Social posts, his new Supreme Court election fight, ICE shock gloves, and the rollback of anti money laundering rules. Listen here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

So much for GOP claims that Democratic dominance was killing California’s economy. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/cali...

The state of California needs to get involved in this.

Derek Guy is the hero we need

we hand down a whole economy and society to our kids. If we skimped on education or the environment, so that we could lower our debt, we will not have done our kids a favor.

Was researching Basque cheesecake recipes and stumbled on this cheesy recipe list, so now you have to see it. www.theguardian.com/food/2021/ma...

"You are all that matters to me. I don't ever want to let you down. Thank you for being my Guardian and Protector in this Life." "With all my heart," -a cultist Also refers to the July 2025 Scotland trip as a "Coming of Age." She was 33 or 34 years old at the time. Creeeeeepy.

Another day without a SCOTUS ruling on the "emergency" voting case that the Trump Administration brought to SCOTUS on July 27 requesting immediate relief. Hmmmm

Don't worry about the $40 trillion debt, worry about an economy that is being turned into a cesspool of corruption cepr.net/publications...

Spotted on this morning's DC trail run Hand-lettered banner hanging from a pedestrian bridge reading: CORRUPT!

For my birthday dinner I requested one of Steve’s fish soups, and this might have been the most delicious yet. It has 3 kinds of fish, shrimp, saffron, tomato, white pepper, potatoes, fennel and its chopped tops, white wine, and orange peel, based on a shrimp-shell stock. So good. #CookSky #FoodSky

If you've been following the Kennedy Center litigation, DOJ erroneously filed the wrong resolution as passed by the Board at the August 13 meeting. They filed the corrected version tonight. Also, plaintiffs' motion for relief is due by today. Keepin an eye out for that.

Top presidential priorities: An unnecessary, illegal war. Monuments to himself.

Taking psilocybin—an active ingredient in magic mushrooms—causes brain networks that typically process the self and the outside world separately to become integrated, leading to a profound sense of "oneness."

Glad to see others are exploring the dynamic @schaller67.bsky.social and l discussed in White Rural Rage, that the Republicans who control every lever of power in rural America make their constituents' lives worse, then successfully blame Democrats for the results. Not only that...

Somehow, Maximum Pressure returned

The man is focused on spectacles. The national interest, not so much. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

U.S. solar protectionism "has now spanned two decades with little to show for it." Solar panel prices here are more than twice the global average, yet "the solar manufacturing industry here still hasn’t boomed." [@scottlincicome.bsky.social, Chad Smitson, and Eli DeLuca, Cato]

The CFTC is supposed to be made up of five commissioners, "appointed by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to serve staggered five-year terms." No more than three of them may be from the same political party. Right now, it's just one guy.

This is true, except I've run into a small set of people in my life who *love* being in litigation as the litigant. They're like Cookie Monster in a field of cookies.

A response you give when the Iran War is definitely going great.

Trump is getting close to that record high diesel price, $5.55 qa gallon gasprices.aaa.com No one thought it could be done!

Echoing @scottlgreer.bsky.social, this is actually worrisome since restoring American democracy requires actions that would be coded as 'democratic backsliding' by some prominent definitions—e.g. SCOTUS reform breaking its lawless supermajority is 'diluting horizontal checks on executive power.'

The GOP got what it wanted for 50 years. Health, safety, and environmental regulations slashed. Inspectors fired. Government bureaucracy shrunk until it could be drowned in a bathtub. And what happened? Our food became immediately unsafe, yet costs twice as much. Total policy failure.

They understand that scene at the start of Brazil was satire, right?

Really great piece from @paulwaldman.bsky.social here. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/how-democr... (Though I will say that what Biden did on health care remains way too poorly appreicated -- getting us closer to universal coverage than ever before (or since), lowering drug prices, shots in arms ....)

Reading the wisdom of the ancient tonight www.intechopen.com/chapters/56761

Poor Mike Johnson. He's on the campaign trail, telling voters they need to pay high prices because Iran was about to get a nuke. Meanwhile, Trump is bragging that he wiped out Iran's nuclear threat last year. So this year's war was unnecessary. My video on Trump screwing his party in the midterms.

You have to understand, though. He wore a Tan Suit: bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Motion for Extension of Time Exhibit A

Hidden wire problems are so overdone on TV it's practically a discredited trope. And yet, here we are.

This is another authoritarian assault on a #FreePress In solidarity, all national newsroom leaders should make THIS a #FrontPage story. NYT- AGSulzberger, Joe Kahn WSJ- Emma Tucker WaPo- Jeffrey D'Onofrio … (To not do so is normalizing and being complicit in assaults on press freedom).

Talking about fake polls on the podcast this week, live at 2 PM ET with my colleague at 50+1 Mary Radcliffe. There have been some … interesting development on this front this week

www.programmablemutter.com/p/who-really...

Genuinely amazing to me that this is not the headline every day: AMERICA LOSES WAR Every day www.newyorker.com/news/global-...

Wake up babe

👇🧵 “That’s one hell of an act you’ve got there. What do you call it?” “The Kakistocrats!”

These pair have some hallmarks of intimate partner abuse. The desperate repeated apologies. Asking him to correct her if it does happen again. Telling him he's the most important person in her life. The desperation is distressing. Does she not have any friends?

Trump's job approval in the highly-rated American Research Group poll: Approve: 30% Disapprove: 66% Trump job approval on the economy: Approve: 28% Disapprove: 69%

Trump, Vance, Bovino et al. grossly inflate the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. But if their numbers somehow were accurate, it would actually undercut their own policy case for mass deportation. [@davidjbier.bsky.social]

Another cost "hyperscalers" are imposing on mere mortals is that of their borrowing binge which - along with the massive borrowing Trump's Treasury is doing to fund tax cuts for the hyperscalers - is doing catastrophic damage to the US's greatest economic asset: Access to debt markets at low rates.

“What’s the optimal health care system?” and “What should Democrats advocate NEXT?” are different questions. Which is why campaigning on a Medicare buy-in is the best option in 2028. The latest at my newsletter: paulwaldman.substack.com/p/how-democr...

well then www.mediaite.com/media/news/n...

Thread with an update tonight on Jose Mejia Hernandez's condition.

If I had 30 seconds of the Treasury secretary’s time, I’d ask him why he decided to use “prestidigitation” instead of “legerdemain.”

Four-year-old girl dies from suspected diphtheria after parents failed to vaccinate her. www.unionesarda.it/en/italy/fou... H/T @aboutpediatrics.bsky.social

The entire English language press is embarrassing itself by sowing misinformation about LARGE NOMINAL NUMBERS and meaningless "milestones" about US government debt. Please do better. bsky.app/profile/mcop...