Justice is normally about not putting a thumb on the scale for anybody.
But if you’re going to have a principle that puts a heavy thumb on the scale for the president, it shouldn’t toggle depending on which party controls the White House.
Jamal is too nice to say "utter hypocrisy," but that's what this is.
Today's #SCOTUS treats *all* coercive relief against the executive branch as imposing irreparable harm on the government. For that proposition, they cite a 2014 opinion by ... Chief Justice Roberts.
Its absence here is deafening.
Most striking to me about these memos is the radically different assessment of the harm imposed by the president not being able to pursue his initiatives. Over the last 15 mos., that harm has in numerous cases been treated as almost per se serious and irreparable. Here, it gets no analysis at all.
Legislation requiring local and state agencies to verify immigration status for adults seeking public benefits — and mandating reporting of individuals without legal status — is headed to the governor’s desk after clearing the Tennessee House on Tuesday. From @anitawadhwani.bsky.social.
JD my man never thought this day would come but thank you bro great help great success
The US Senate takes power from urban voters and overweights rural populations. It is our most egregious gerrymander. Somehow these people never complain about that.
"In the first major case in which the Court granted emergency relief as a means of shaping nationwide policy, it turns out that the justice who led the charge was the one who was doing quite a bit more than calling balls and strikes."
Me on Saturday's @nytimes.com scoop in today's "One First":
Delighted that Steve could join to talk about the memos the NYT obtained - that show the behind-the-scenes goings on that went into SCOTUS staying the Clean Power Plan on the shadow docket 10 years ago.
Tune in!!
“To say that President Trump is corrupt is to somehow understate the size, scope and magnitude of his corruption.
It is as if you were to describe a modern thermonuclear device as a ‘bomb.’ That is true enough, but it is not quite the truth. It does not capture the nature of the thing in full.”
The number of Republicans crashing out about getting nakedly gerrymandered is, unironically, a sign that we need to do more of it. You guys are correct! This shit sucks! Welcome to the party, pals! We can all stop doing it any time you like!
Alright, I’m home now so here’s the Norm update. Yesterday at 4pm, I got a text from a family I’ve been helping who had a loved one abducted a couple of days after Renée Good’s murder. This was the family that Norm Nation kept from being evicted (and you delivered). ICE had released their loved one.
I would submit that a gerrymander by politicians saying fuck the voters and one by voters saying fuck the politicians are two wholly different animals
So much false equivalence in media on gerrymandering in Texas vs California & Virginia. California and Virginia maps approved by the voters. That's a huge difference not enough people pointing out
The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted Tuesday on federal fraud charges alleging it improperly raised millions of dollars to pay informants to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said. I have so many questions! apnews.com/article/sout...
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is out with a new (very bad) decision, and it's a doozy.
The Fifth Circuit says that Texas can require the Ten Commandments in classrooms. But somehow it gets worse.
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
I feel like Sun Tzu really missed out on "Invent Pete Hegseth and give him to the enemy"
"This impressive, continuing coverage exemplifies investigative reporting at its best."
WIRED won the Hillman Prize for our coverage of DOGE's takeover of the federal government! I'm so so proud of our team, and so honored!
Screenshotted excerpt from linked article reading as follows: "In public, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has cultivated a reputation for care and caution. The papers reveal a different side of him. At a critical moment for the country and the court, the papers show, he acted as a bulldozer in pushing to stop Mr. Obama’s plan to address the global climate crisis. When colleagues warned the chief justice that he was proposing an unprecedented move, he was dismissive. “I recognize that the posture of this stay request is not typical,” he wrote. But he argued that the Obama plan, which aimed to regulate coal-fired plants, was “the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the power sector,” and too big, costly and consequential for the court not to act immediately."
OOP
New York Times got receipts on John Roberts being like, 'I know this isn't how anything works, but a Democratic president is about to implement a policy!!'
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...
I'm reminded of something Matt Sitman said long ago on the Know Your Enemy podcast...on the US right, nothing ever is just what it is. The layers of absurd fabulism are not a bug, but a feature of US conservative political culture, and it's long been that way. www.wired.com/story/maga-i...
The SPLC has long monitored and exposed white nationalist and Christian nationalist hate groups, so it makes sense that an administration staffed by many people sympathetic to one or both of those movements would use the DOJ to go after them.
Conservatives think the state should protect them from the traumatizing experience of encountering people unlike them. For some reason this never came up in the heyday of “snowflake,” “trigger warning” or “safe space” discourse bsky.app/profile/kiss...
1. Boy, Amazon is in a heap of trouble. Evidence made public yesterday by California AG @agrobbonta.oag.ca.gov shows blatant price fixing. And there are so many examples. Here's Amazon scheming with a pet food supplier to get Chewy to raise its prices.
How a blooming good idea brought international recognition to a Kentucky social worker.
@sarahelizabethladd.bsky.social
kentuckylantern.com/2026/04/20/h...
I wrote this on the parallels between Suez 1956 and Iran 2026 – and how we should not presume that leaders in the past acted in more sophisticated or dignified ways than leaders today
The author of South Dakota's new law redefining abortion said he underestimated how difficult it would be to codify in law exactly when pregnancy termination is medically necessary: stateline.org/2026/04/13/a...
Abortion opponents keep neglecting to vet the plaintiffs behind their abortion-pill lawsuits. And the cases keep blowing up in their faces.
A clip from The New York Times reads: "But only the entities that officially paid the tariffs are eligible to recover that money. That means that the fuller universe of people affected by Mr. Trump’s policies — including millions of Americans who paid higher prices for the products they bought — are not able to apply for direct relief. The extent to which consumers realize any gain hinges on whether businesses share the proceeds, something that few have publicly committed to do. Some have started to band together in class-action lawsuits in the hopes of receiving a payout."
The average American family paid $1,700 in tariffs last year, according to the bipartisan Congressional Joint Economic Committee. Few will ever see any of that money back. The refunds will go to companies, if doled out at all. What a joke.
what
The fact that every major police union endorsed Donald Trump is under appreciated in our political discourse.