Chavez-DeRemer seems to have been one of the best cabinet secretaries of Trump's second term, in that her tenure has been defined by absenteeism and minor scandals rather than attempts to destroy her agency, political opponents, or the rule of law. Whoever replaces her will likely be worse.
I dunno, I listened to a reconstruction of Neanderthal flute music at a museum in Ljubljana and it sounded pretty good
Why do the Japanese like their buns askew (2026)
Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court finds that abortion access is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Pennsylvania Constitution, and a ban on public funding for abortion is unconstitutional.
Man, Billy Corgan has gotten a lot more boring
Schwalb is up for reelection this year. If he had a serious primary challenger, which he doesn't, that person might be making the case that, in the context of Congress and the President trying to trample all over DC's autonomy, the DC AG shouldn't also be seeking federal overruling of local courts.
I don't know if the conservatives have figured out what rule they want to replace the "neutral laws of general applicability" rule, and I think the big question in St. Mary Catholic Parish will be whether 5+ of them can agree on one
Employment Division v. Smith is a Scalia opinion that conservatives have come to hate. It's become an important block in the wall of separation between church & state: your religious views don't exempt you from complying with generally applicable laws. I expect the conservatives to overrule it.
This book, published in 1986, doesn’t spend as much time on the ecological impact of damming and irrigation as a book might today, but it’s still got some stories. Here’s what happened when the VP went to inaugurate a dam on the Columbia in 1967 and the fish ladders weren’t ready yet:
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.
Over the last decade, the Supreme Court has wielded the shadow docket left and right to advance conservative policy & its own power, undermine Congress, & protect Trump. Courts, especially SCOTUS, were powerful but slow & deliberative; now SCOTUS is just powerful.
The @nytimes.com obtained secret memos showing how the Supreme Court decided to block Obama's Clean Power Plan & created the modern shadow docket, and they show it all happened like world-historical decisions usually do: without much thought or deliberation, and no appreciation for the consequences.
If you want to defend denigrating transplants, please go ahead and do that! Obviously "putting yourself forward as an expert when you don't know the basic histories of the places you're pontificating" is bad whether you're from here or not. You know that's not the controversial thing here!
You're omitting the "transplant" thing because you don't want to defend it. I think that kind of nativism is wrong anywhere, but it's frankly embarrassing here in New York.
It seems like a real bad sign for Espaillat that, facing the most serious primary challenge of his career, he presumably busted his ass fundraising and still got outraised
That timing is definitely unfortunate, but it’s a good decision that I think will be a useful precedent in the future! Good job preserving it.
Fair enough! I think in the context of the other vetoes she issued and amendments she demanded this week, this paints a portrait of a basically law-and-order prosecutor-minded governor, which is disappointing but not surprising.
Thanks. Without looking up those statutory provisions, I’ll trust that this amendment means Virginia authorities can still hold people past their release date, so long as they’ve been convicted of a felony, purely because ICE asks for them. As I said above, I don’t think ICE should have that power.
Where are you seeing that? I've seen contradictory reporting about what changes the governor actually demanded.
I certainly don't want to distort anything. This is the only explanation I've seen of Spanberger's amendment request. Can you explain more?
Also today, Spanberger sided with the prosecutors' lobbying group and vetoed this bill, limiting prosecutors' coercive power during plea bargaining, that was supported by every Democrat in the legislature.
It's been a bit of a mixture, I'd say! bsky.app/profile/tani...
I've already explained above why this is wrong. If you like, you could say she's insisting that jails be allowed to do this. But you can't frame what Spanberger herself is doing as "allowing"; the legislature passed a bill, and she's insisting it be amended or she'll veto.
You're welcome to your view, although obviously this is about way more than just serial rapists. My own view is that ICE is not acting like a legitimate law enforcement agency and their request to imprison someone otherwise entitled to release should be worth less than a request from, say, me.
I'll defend the word choice, though I won't get into a long argument about it. Spanberger refused to sign the bill without the amendment; that's insisting. Virginia sheriffs & jails are currently collaborating with ICE in this way. That's the status quo, which she's insisting be allowed to continue.
The sufficiency of arguments and evidence presented during the course of a hearing will inform whether a closing argument is necessary, and a party may request to make a closing argument.2 But parties in Immigration Court have no right to give a closing argument unless they demonstrate that the denial of such argument would constitute a due process violation. To establish a due process rights violation, a respondent “must prove that there was a deficiency or violation and that he was prejudiced by it.” Matter of R-C-R-, 28 I&N Dec. 74, 77 (BIA 2020). Given the many opportunities the parties have to present evidence and argument before the Immigration Judge, we are unaware of any example where the denial of a closing argument, by itself, would render a hearing unfair and result in prejudice. From Matter of A-M-Z-F-, 29 I&N Dec. 551 (BIA 2026)
today in "immigration court isn't real court":
The Board of Immigration Appeals has just held that parties before an immigration judge have *no right to make closing arguments* unless denial of this request would "constitute a due process violation"
Matter of A-M-Z-F-, 29 I&N Dec. 551 (BIA 2026)
It's a bad sign that Spanberger, elected on a wave of opposition to Trump and his swollen militarized secret police force, is insisting that Virginia sheriffs and jails continue to imprison people past their release date in order to hand them over to ICE. This grants ICE power it should not have.
I can tell you're pissed about opposition to the tort reform bill, and maybe you're right, I haven't delved into it enough. But can you flesh out the argument that this bill going down would kill the scaffold law reform? Seems like separate coalitions involved here.
I think this is true and important, and I'd add that NYC is a field-centered campaign's paradise because it's so dense, PLUS it's got matching funds for city elections!