Here is a more serious take: confidentiality is one of those norms that is respected within systems in which everyone agrees on the rules of the game and trusts that others are following the rules in good faith.
Pronatalism is a force in the conservative far right and Christian Nationalist movements. Learn more about the "pro-birth" ideology with @nwlc's Emily Martin. She explains the history of racism, sexism, and eugenics, the alarming support it has, and what true pro-family policy looks like.
I'll believe it on Jan. 1, 2027.
Fox News is suggesting that young women want to ditch their careers and submit to their husbands. The data says otherwise. In this episode of #StandingRoomOnly, @amandamarcotte.bsky.social debunks a Fox News segment promoting the “tradwife” myth and explain what Gen Z women actually want.
We should figure out how to make paying taxes a status symbol for rich people, similar to how it how can work for some nonprofits. For example, the Mayor could acknowledge and publicly thank people that contribute the most in taxes.
NEW: Trump's lawyer and 8th Circuit nominee Justin Smith just had his hearing and was asked about his election denial, legal representation of Trump, connections to Leonard Leo, and far-right extremism.
Democrats were not pleased with his responses.
nominationnotes.substack.com/p/trump-lawy...
UPDATE: in this long-running case, the Montana Supreme Court holds that the state constitution provides more equal protection and nondiscrimination protection than the federal Constitution.
Upholds the PI.
juddocumentservice.mt.gov/getDocByCTra...
“My understanding is that there were students in my section who, through Fed Soc, had clerkships lined up the fall of 1L,” Kaufman said. “There is no liberal student for whom that’s the case.”
This has been an open secret for years among everyone at Harvard Law but we're not supposed to acknowledge it officially.
It's completely perverting the entire profession and ensuring ideological capture.
Genuinely funny to watch Justin Smith, Trump's Eighth Circuit nominee, solemnly promise to decide all cases "fairly and impartially" when he STILL hasn't scrubbed the part of his LinkedIn page where he describes himself as an "attorney and strategist who fights for conservative values"
"Scratch-paper musings” is SUCH a good burn of the shadow docket, nobody is doing it like KBJ www.politico.com/news/2026/04...
"I want to tell my fellow trans people that the Constitution’s promises protect them as much as anyone else. But when the Court won’t afford them the decency of acknowledging that bigotry against trans people is real, I can only tell them to give the Court the amount of respect it deserves."
Thursday, May 14, 2026 9:30 A.M. USCA Courtroom 31 Judges Srinivasan, Pillard, Rao 26-5009 Mark Zaid v. Executive Office of the President 25-5241 Perkins Coie LLP v. DOJ
NOTE: We have the merits panel for the May 14 arguments in the law firm (and Zaid security clearance revocation) cases at the DC Circuit: Judges Srinivasan (Obama), Pillard (Obama), and Rao (Trump).
BREAKING: We're suing federal immigration agents on behalf of Juan Sebastián Carvajal-Muñoz, a legal U.S. resident who was racially profiled and violently abducted in Maine in January.
Agents violated his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights and must be held accountable.
IMPORTANT: Under federal law, it's very hard, at times near-impossible, to sue federal law enforcement officers for civil rights violations. But legal theorists have said for decades that there is a possible way to sue under state law instead.
This is a VERY big test case.
DC panel has (again) BLOCKED Judge Boasberg from investigating possible criminal contempt by DOJ and DHS officials, including Judge Bove, in connection with sending Venezuelans to CECOT against his order. (I can't access full ruling yet.) Panel: Judges Rao (Trump) Walker (Trump) & Childs (Obama)
There's an emerging ideological divide over whether unexplained #SCOTUS rulings must be given precedential effect. Today's "One First" argues that there's nothing "conservative" about saying "yes"; it's just cover for bad behavior that has nothing to do with ideology—and everything to do with power:
For a more developed analysis of this point in my @newrepublic.com piece on Justice Jackson's dissent in Chiles v. Salazar, see my Substack: harrylitman.substack.com/p/free-speec...
Do you think he will at least be willing to state that Biden won the 2020 election at his hearing? (He would be the first Trump nominee to do so.) How can we expect any of these folks to stand up to Trump and protect the rule of law if they can't even state the truth in their hearings.
Trump just announced that he’s nominating former Alito clerk Matthew Schwartz to the 2nd Circuit.
“A Partner at Sullivan and Cromwell, Matt has fought fiercely against Lawfare and Government Overreach, representing clients at all levels of Federal and State Judiciaries,” he said on Truth Social.
NEW: Trump has nominated Matthew Schwartz, who worked on the president’s legal team appealing his criminal conviction in the New York hush money case, to fill a key appellate judicial vacancy on the Second Circuit.
@lbaum94.bsky.social explains that mass shootings by transgender individuals are exceedingly rare as compared to other attacks – but they garner disproportionate attention. And social media commentary often ignores other extremist motivations.
www.justsecurity.org/136047/no-tr...
By what is effectively a 9-6 vote, the en banc Fourth Circuit has vacated an injunction blocking DOGE from accessing Social Securit data (that #SCOTUS had previously stayed).
Much of the drama is over the precedential effects of #SCOTUS's June 2025 intervention:
georgetown.box.com/v/AFSCME-CA4...
The administration is once again reviving the FACE Act religious-worship argument career prosecutors avoided for decades because they knew it didn't pass constitutional muster.
A screenshot of an article from The Dispatch. The headline reads "Trans Issues Are No Conspiracy," with the subheadline, "The public pays attention to trans issues because trans activists wanted them to." It is categorized under "Society & Culture."
Jesse Singal is back on his transphobic bullshit by arguing that the trans rights backlash is self-inflicted and that anyone pointing to coordinated right-wing funding is peddling a "conspiracy theory." It's a masterclass in false dichotomy and victim blaming.
archive.ph/ZD74X
1/5. Orbán pioneered a model whereby oligarchs trade the fascist memes and electoral tricks they use to stay in power. He made Budapest a node between Moscow and Washington of the international far right.
harrylitman.substack.com/p/free-speec...
NYTimes Headline: The Women Who Believe That Women Should Lose the Right to Vote Subhead: Adherents to biblical patriarchy support household voting: One household, one vote--the husband's. They say the idea is catching on.
The New York Times rolling up its sleeves to do the hard work of normalizing the idea that women should not have the right to vote.
"Among young American men, the strongest predictor of support for the tradwife lifestyle was not gallantry but hostility towards women"
Apparently this is not what researchers "expected". Which makes one wonder: had these researchers thought about it for 30 seconds?
www.thetimes.com/life-style/s...
Opinion) Constitutionality of the Presidential Records Act The Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional because it exceeds Congress's enumerated and implied powers and aggrandizes the Legislative Branch at the expense of the constitutional independence and autonomy of the Executive. April 1, 2026 MEMORANDUM OPINION FOR THE COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT You have asked whether the Presidential Records Act of 1978 ("PRA" or "Act") is constitutional. We conclude that it is not. The PRA is unconstitutional for two independent but interlocking reasons: It exceeds Congress's enumerated and implied powers, and it aggrandizes the Legislative Branch at the expense of the constitutional independence and autonomy of the Executive. "Every law enacted by Congress must be based on one or more of its powers enumerated in the Constitution," United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 607 2000), or "such implied powers as are necessary and proper to carry into effect the enumerated powers," Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238, 291 (1936). And congressional attempts to regulate the Presidency directly raise heightened separation of powers concerns. See The Constitutional Separation of Powers Between the President and Congress, 20 Op. O.L.C. 124, 126-29 (1996) ("Separation of Powers"). The PRA exceeds the oversight power because it serves no identifiable and valid legislative purpose. It exceeds any preservation power because Congress cannot preserve presidential records merely for the sake of posterity. It exceeds Congress's regulatory power over statutory agencies because it purports to regulate a constitutional office-the Presidency— that Congress did not create and that Congress cannot abolish. It exceeds the spending power, because that power allows Congress to incentivize outcomes with federal funding, not to directly regulate coordinate branches of government. And it exceeds Congress's power to assist in the execution of the powers vested in coordinate branches because it restri…
You gotta be kidding me