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This is now so quaint that I saw the “Secretary of Education Omarosa” joke in the corner and my first thought was that she seems way too qualified and reasonable to be appointed now.
By my count, there are now over 50 House Democrats, along with two Senate Democrats, who have called for Trump to be impeached or removed via the 25th Amendment for his post on Iran.
More here: www.axios.com/2026/04/07/t...
More, faster.
This is an appropriate statement.
If you find yourself plotting political violence online, best case scenario you are talking to a Fed.
Worst case scenario is you are involved in a Pooh Shiesty wearing an ankle monitor to the robbery stupid-level plot that could get people—including you—hurt for no good reason.
Don’t do it.
A screenshot of a mobile webpage from The Telegraph's Health section. The headline reads, "Have mental health labels like ADHD and autism gone too far? Some experts think so," followed by a subheadline stating, "As a new report reveals skyrocketing autism and ADHD rates, some experts believe self-diagnoses are overshadowing those in real need of help."
Right after they finish with trans youth, their moving on to target youth with ADHD and autism to satisfy their austerity driven eugenics project.
They don't even dignify us with new talking points.
Despite coming out on April 1, this is not an April Fool’s joke.
Here, that means that it is not costless for SCOTUS to strike down this law. The more protests, op-eds, academic work, popular media, political organizing, etc. makes clear just how costly striking it down would be; the less obvious it becomes to SCOTUS that it’s worth spending the capital to do it.
So if you’re a lone district court judge who’s going to do something that might make the President order his subordinates (including all of the law enforcement officials that implement your orders) to stop listening to you, you better make your shot count.
That’s part of the reason courts have been so hesitant to do things like hold government lawyers in contempt. If you’re a judge, all you’ve got is your words and the hope that other people have enough respect for your position that they’ll do what you say.
Admittedly, I wouldn’t predict that’s what will happen, but also the secret is that courts generally hate making powerful actors like states do big, policy shifting things. So they prefer to set litigants down a road and hope the litigant will get the hint to walk to the end of it on their own.
That is an important distinction because it means there is still time to put pressure on the courts so that they realize this law should survive strict scrutiny. It is still possible for the lower courts to do the analysis SCOTUS requires and uphold the ban. Then SCOTUS might just let the case go.
I guess I’ll join the chorus of lawyers explaining that SCOTUS didn’t strike down CO’s law yesterday, they said courts have to more closely interrogate it before upholding it.
This, to be clear, is BAD for anyone who thinks CO’s ban is good and legal. But the fight in the courts is not over.
After the argument it’s hard to see the first possibility, but it says a lot about the state of the Court if they can’t even get unanimity in the “does the universal citizenship amendment actually create a huge class of noncitizens and we just didn’t realize it for 150 years” case.
When they granted cert, I thought they were either seriously considering limiting birthright citizenship, or wanted to tell a Brown v. Board, 9-0 unity story with a politically salient, but legally slam dunk case.
A related fact people are surprised by:
I’m part of the first generation of my family to be an equal citizen of this country.
I was born in 1989.
CHIEF JUSTICE TODD OPINION No. 3 WAP 2024 Appeal from the Order of the Superior Court entered June 13, 2023, at No. 1008 WDA 2021, Affirming the Order of the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County entered December 19, 2016, at No. CP-02-CR-0016878-2014. : : : : : : : : : : : ARGUED: October 8, 2024 DECIDED: MARCH 26, 2026 In this appeal by allowance, we granted allocatur to consider whether a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for a felony murder conviction violates the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution or Article I, Section 13 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.1 For the reasons that follow, we determine that a mandatory life without parole sentence for all felony murder convictions, absent an assessment of culpability, is inconsistent with the protections bestowed upon our citizens
under the “cruel punishments” clause of our Commonwealth’s organic charter.2 Thus, we reverse the order of the Superior Court, vacate Appellant’s judgment of sentence, and remand for resentencing. However, as we have done under similar circumstances, we stay our order for 120 days to provide a reasonable amount of time for the General Assembly to consider remedial measures.
BREAKING: The PA Supreme Court holds that mandatory life without parole sentences for all "felony murder" convictions -- a sentence more than 1,000 people in PA are serving -- violates the state constitution's "cruel" punishment ban. This is GROUNDBREAKING: www.pacourts.us/assets/opini...
Incredibly excited and proud to share that last night, the Federal Criminal Justice Clinic’s groundbreaking litigation to end ATF’s discriminatory stash house stings—spanning four years and dozens of clients—was featured on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver!
Watch the segment here at 9:05 (1 of 4)
The Court had done much less of this sort of reaching out to bolster qualified immunity post-George Floyd. If they’re back to their old habits, we’re seeing yet another line of attempted retrenchment from that brief flash of civil rights gains.
At some point I want to collect all of the warnings that the liberal justices have been putting into their dissents about the conservative majority.
This one’s less dramatic than some others, but Sotomayor noting that this is a “resurgence” of protecting violent cops is right.
New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...
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I consider reading your rambling as additional helpful reading, so thank you for the suggestions on all fronts
Well that’s fascinating.
Who would you recommend I start reading to learn more about this? Because the idea that the US saw the risk of (in its view) biased use of a criminal legal system and decided the best course of action was to opt out is, you might’ve guessed, relevant to my interests.
If you want to learn more about how all this works, you can read my articles Administrative Enslavement, and No Exceptions: The New Movement to Abolish Slavery and Involuntary Servitude.
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www.columbialawreview.org/content/admi...
lawreview.uchicago.edu/print-archiv...
The TL;DR here is simple.
If Polis believes his prisons don’t use involuntary servitude, there are lots of ways to give legal effect to that belief.
Of course, much of this was taken out of the governor’s hands by Colorado voters in 2018 when they passed a slavery and involuntary servitude ban without an Except Clause.
My point is that Polis is leaving the creation of a state free of involuntary servitude to the courts, but he doesn’t have to.
