Marathon? I’m sure every hour in JD’s presence must feel like an eternity - but come on, he just got there.

The PA Supreme Court has decided, in large part based on a law student note authored in 2023, that our state constitution's protection against cruel punishments is based on a more robust understanding of cruelty than the US Constitution.

That note from Kevin Bendesky (HLS '23) is here:

Recently the DOJ sued UCLA, arguing that we are such a "hotbed of campus antisemitism"—primarily because of pro-Palestinian student protests—that it's a hostile work environment for Jewish faculty and staff.

Well, many actual Jewish faculty and staff vehemently disagree and we wrote this letter:

Legal writers: I've posted to SSRN a short user's guide about how to use the Zotero citation manager and its Word plugin to automatically generate Bluebook citations that are 95%* compliant. The paper explains which fields to use for which type of source, and examples of generated citations.

What to Know About Clerking on a State Supreme Court Judges from high courts across the country share insights for law students and recent graduates.

Are you a law student or recent graduate looking for clerkship opportunities?

State Court Report is hosting a free virtual event on everything you need to know about clerking on a state supreme court. Judges from high courts across the country will share insights. RSVP today:

The Deportation Data Project is hiring a fulltime senior research analyst to work with us on obtaining data on immigration enforcement in the US.

Competitive salary, excellent University of California benefits, and work on a small, collaborative team. Join us!

deportationdata.org/hiring.html

Concerned about ICE's $45 billion plan to convert warehouses into immigration detention centers? This is what they'll look like inside. From ICE's plan for the Social Circle, GA facility. Each little dot: a person. www.socialcirclega.gov/home/showpub...

Devil in the Grove

So after Trump pardoned Honduras's narco-president, the admin didn't just let him out--they canceled an immigration hold and sent a specialized team to **chauffeur him to the $1k/night Waldorf Astoria.**

“It's "absolutely fucking nuts,” said one official

www.propublica.org/article/trum...

This is how you live a life

Trump administration drops appeal of court order blocking $1.2-billion UCLA settlement The Trump administration dropped its appeal of a major higher education case in which a federal judge blocked its $1.2-billion settlement proposal to UCLA over alleged civil rights violations. It will...

This is a genuinely huge, sweeping victory today for the University of California—or rather, for us, its faculty, acting through our faculty associations, while the UC itself maintained a strict policy of deer-in-headlights silence.

The Trump admin has given up its appeal of a powerful injunction:

“Find the cost of freedom
buried in the ground.
Millions more will honor you.
We will not back down”
#JewsAgainstICE

The idea of a bill rendering people deportable for following religious law should make every Jew ill

Good to see that many Dem elected officials now want to be seen getting involved in the cases of immigrants who have been wrongly detained by ICE.

Let's spare a word for @vanhollen.senate.gov, who did this for Kilmar Abrego Garcia back when wise pundits said this was politically dangerous.

Note from the editors: ProPublica is publishing the names of the two federal immigration agents involved in the fatal shooting of Minnesota protester Alex Pretti. We believe there are few investigations that deserve more sunlight and public scrutiny than this one, in which two masked agents fired 10 shots at Pretti as he lay on the ground after being pepper-sprayed. The Department of Justice said it is investigating the incident, but the names of the two agents have been withheld from Congress and from state and local law enforcement. The policy of shielding officers’ identities, particularly after a public shooting, is a stark departure from standard law enforcement protocols, according to lawmakers, state attorneys general and former federal officials. Such secrecy, in our view, deprives the public of the most fundamental tool for accountability.

A note from our editors:

Bonus 206: Legal Scholarship and the Dual State A few thoughts on the responsibilities of legal academics in a time of increasing governmental lawlessness.

For today's bonus issue of "One First," I wanted to follow up on a post from last August that looked at legal pedagogy and the dual state by reflecting on the relationship between legal *scholarship* and governmental lawlessness—with a particular focus on how I think about my own work:

Scrolling through the photos of Pam Bondi's "Minnesota rioters," it's just hero after hero. Every photo includes a cowardly DHS agent with their back to the camera.

Bondi thinks she's going to win the propaganda war with this shit, but it's never been more clear that they're losing.

I grew up with Alex Pretti The kind-hearted ICU nurse shot by ICE agents was my childhood best friend.

I wrote about my childhood friend Alexi Pretti. Please read it and share it and remember him as a human being. @theverge.com

In Criminal Justice Elections This Year, ICE Contracts Are on the Hot Seat - Bolts With roughly 2,400 elections for prosecutor and sheriff this year, Bolts reviews the map and early hotspots that will shape criminal punishment and law enforcement practices.

NEW: There are 2,400+ elections for DA & sheriff this year.

These matter hugely to criminal justice & policing—including: *these are often officials who decide ICE collaboration.*

So I took a dive into these 2,400+ races to identify early hotspots and battlegrounds.

Read, & check out our maps:

The people of Minnesota have executed one of the most impressive civil resistance campaigns I can remember:

- Organized a city wide general strike
- Maintained nonviolent discipline amidst violence
- Mobilized 10,000s in subzero temps to protest and watch ICE
- Flipped public opinion against ICE

Woman on the right was using her walker to advance into the tear gas

Let us all have the courage displayed by the residents of Minneapolis.

You have to read this. Firsthand affidavit from one of the women who was there and recording the video. She talks about how Alex Pretti was directing traffic when she arrived. She watched him be killed in front of her. She's afraid to go home, worried she'll be arrested.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. — Frederick Douglass

🚨HOLY CRAP. An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS's own legal training materials say is unconstitutional!

ICE then hid the memo from the public, passing it along by word of mouth and private conversation.

It’s ironic that they’re like “if we do ethnic cleansing we’ll have a high trust neighborly society” and then Minneapolis is literally doing high trust neighborly society and they’re like nooooo

This is like a satanic parody of the best moments of Reconstruction, which saw the DOJ using federal power to break up white supremacist conspiracies against civil rights. Here, white supremacists in the DOJ are using conspiracy law to attack civil rights.

Statement from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell Good evening. On Friday, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas, threatening a criminal indictment related to my testi

Change a few words and this could have been the statement every university president had the opportunity to make last year.

www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...

Opinion | The Simple Way Congress Can Stop Federal Officials from Abusing Protesters The Supreme Court gave people the right to sue federal officials for violating their rights. Now is the time for Congress to make it law.

Federal officers do not have absolute immunity, but there is a web of doctrines that make civil suits against them nearly impossible to bring successfully. Congress knew they needed to fix this in 2020, and new reasons why they should are coming fast and furious now. www.politico.com/news/magazin...

"We must come together to build a world where we all come home safe to the people we love." — Becca Good