AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH

also, the justices' papers ought to belong to the united states, to be made public at some date (let's say a decade) after retirement.

shouldn't be allowed to choose their own clerks, shouldn't be allowed to accept fees for speaking or prize money or awards. shouldn't be able to get book deals, etc. etc. if what you want is to be famous, well, no one is forcing you to be a supreme court justice.

this reminds me, i don't think SCOTUS should be allowed to choose their own clerks. standardize the hiring schedule, put the applications in a pool, blind reads (perhaps by a panel of former clerks) and random assignments.

The fact that Mamdani just seems like a cheerful normal guy who's policies are things like "we're going to tax second homes to fund pothole repairs" or whatever and yet this generates panicked responses like "This is basically Stalin's great purge turned up to eleven" is... telling. It tells things.

an underrated, unforgivable belief that remains prevalent among pols and normies is that a rising tide lifts all boats when it’s been clear forever that a rising tide simply drowns the people on low lying land

ALIEN ENEMIES ACT: ALIEN ENEMY VALIDATION GUIDE In the case of: ________________________________ A-File No:__________________ 1. The person named above is fourteen years or older: 2. The person named above is not a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States: 3. The person named above is a citizen of Venezuela: If any of these three requirements are not satisfied, the person named above shall not be ordered removed under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA). In such a case, you should consult your supervisor and the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and, where applicable, initiate removal proceedings under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). 4. The person named above is validated as a member of Tren de Aragua (TDA), as determined by reference to the following evaluation form: Instructions: Complete the following validation evaluation form for each suspected alien targeted for removal under the AEA, or, following apprehension, for each alien potentially subject to an AEA removal. After accounting for the two comments below, aliens scoring 8 points and higher are validated as members of TDA; you should proceed with issuing Form AEA-21B, titled, “Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal under the Alien Enemies Act.” Aliens scoring 6 or 7 points may be validated as members of TDA; you should consult with a supervisor and OPLA, reviewing the totality of the facts, before making that determination; if you determine an alien should not be validated at this time as a member of TDA, when available, you should initiate removal proceedings under the INA. Alien scoring 5 points or less should not be validated at this time as member of TDA; when available, you should initiate removal proceedings under the INA.

The following alt-text is excerpted of a larger checklist, as the whole page doesn't fit within alt-text character limits. Comment 2: For purposes of validating an alien as a member of TDA, at least one scoring category must involve conduct occurring, or information received, within the past five years. Valuation Explanation Category Definition Explanation Points Judicial Outcomes and Official Documents a. Subject has been convicted of violating Title 18, United States Code, Section 521 or any other federal or state law criminalizing or imposing civil penalties for activity related to TDA 10 b. Court records (e.g., indictments, criminal complaints, sentencing memorandums) identifying the subject as a member of TDA, describing specific activity of TDA 5 Self-Admission a. Subject self-identifies as a member or associate of TDA verbally or in writing to law enforcement officer, even if that self identification to a law enforcement officer is unwitting, e.g., through lawful interception of communications. 10 Criminal Conduct and Information a. Subject participates in criminal activity (e.g., narcotics trafficking, human smuggling, etc.) with other members of TDA, including preparatory meetings and significant incidents directly attributed to TDA 6 b. Law enforcement or intelligence reporting identifying subject as a member of TDA, to include Bureau of Prisons validations and reliable foreign partner information. 4 c. Credible testimonies/statements from victims, community members, or informants that affirm the subject’s membership in or allegiance to TDA. 3 d. Detailed open-source media (e.g., newspapers, investigative journalism reports) that describe arrest, prosecution, or operations of a subject as a member of TDA 2 e. Subject conducts and/or facilitates business with TDA (e.g., money laundering, mule, service provider) 2 Documents and Communications

Final page: Association a. Surveillance documentation that a subject is frequently observed closely associating with known leaders and members of TDA 2 b. Subject part of group photos with two or more known members of TDA 2 c. Subject presently resides with known members of TDA 2 Total Points VALIDATION DETERMINATION Note: If any of the four requirements are not satisfied, do not complete this validation determination. Based on the validation guide and instructions above, including Comments 1 and 2, I find that the person named above, _______________________________________________: 1. Is fourteen years or older; 2. Is not a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States; 3. Is a citizen of Venezuela; and 4. Is a member of Tren de Aragua. Accordingly, the above-named person is validated as an Alien Enemy. _____________________ _________________________ __________________ Name of Agent/officer Signature of agent/officer Date completing the form completing the form ______________________ _________________________ ____________________ Name of Supervisor Signature of Supervisor Date

NEW: @aclu.org obtained ICE's "Alien Enemies Act Validation Guide," confirming all it takes to be sent to rot in prison in El Salvador is being Venezuelan and 1) having a tattoo an ICE officer says is a "gang tattoo" and 2) displaying "logos," "symbols" or clothes an ICE officer says are gang signs.

Tisza at 137 seats, 4 clear of a supermajority, with 2/3 of the constituency votes counted.

Opposition leader Péter Magyar at a rally.

Orbán's electoral crushing is a far greater achievement than most people outside Hungary realise.

He systemically consolidated power for 16 years, fixed the electoral map, abused govt power for political purposes & censored media.

The hurdles that Hungarians overcame for this moment were immense.

Yet one thing more

An mRNA treatment for PANCREATIC CANCER was in trials, among many other uses. Choosing to end this research is choosing to sentence millions to an early, painful death

As the father of a middle schooler I have seen the rebellion against AI forming there — even using “that’s AI, bro,” not indicating something is literally AI, but that something is metaphorically so — it’s sus, it’s bullshit, it’s bad weird

A WHOLE CIVILIZATION WILL DIE TONIGHT My son needs lunch, and I have to put his backpack together, but a whole civilization will die tonight, so I'm wondering if they've closed their schools. Like, a snow day, maybe, except instead of snow it's "keep your children home so if you die, you die together" — instead of "well open back up once the plows have cleared" it's "we don't know if we'll be here tomorrow, hold your babies tight." It's just "talk" I'm told, which I've been told before. "It's how the president makes his deals." But I've never heard anyone talk about other human beings this way, and I'm not certain I can look my son in the eyes if we all agree to stomach it one more time. A civilization will die tonight, but as I zip up his backpack and kiss him off to school I think: if this is what we call leadership then I'm not entirely sure ours isn't already dead. @michaelfdubois Mukad A QuBoy @michacifdubois

Brutal.

we'll see how it shakes out over the course of years, but as of right now, mamdani is definitely showing how the future of good progressive governance means "use government to do good things and then post about it"

both parts are important!

Segregationists did memory hole slavery for about 100 years and then integration meant that white students would learn about it honestly in school and they've been trying to memory hole it again ever since.

Not so long ago, when Russia was targeting hospitals in Syria, that it was widely denounced as a war crime.

I'm a bit of a broken record on this, but usurping the power of the purse isn't just one constitutional violation among all the many others. It is, uniquely and singularly, the death of constitutional government altogether. Game over, end of story, you now live in an autocracy.

Nothing a city provides is free. The only question is whether it’s paid for by taxes or fees.

Means-testing also makes programs cost more than they would under a universal model, because so much money gets wasted on verification, surveillance, and compliance.

Two of the officers targeted by Mr. Hegseth are Black and two are women on a promotion list that consisted of 29 other officers, most of whom are white men. Mr. Hegseth’s highly unusual decision to remove the officers prompted some senior military officials to question whether they were being singled out because of their race or gender, officials said. Mr. Hegseth had been pressing Mr. Driscoll and General George for months to remove the officers from the promotion list. But Mr. Driscoll and General George refused, citing the officers’ long records of exemplary service.

Hegseth firing Generals who wouldn't go along with his purge of Black and female officers
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/u...

Justice Barrett, Slavery, and Birthright Citizenship I have previously written about how all of the Trump Administration's rationales for denying birthright citizenship to children of…

In today's SCOTUS oral argument, Justice Barrett asked about how Trump's rationales for denying birthright citizenship to children of illegal migrants would also deny it to many ex-slaves. SG Sauer's answer on crucial issue was factually wrong. See my explanation here: reason.com/volokh/2026/...

decisions relied to a considerable extent upon the decision in Lynch v. Clarke, in which the person concerned, who was declared to be a native citizen ot the United States, was born in this country of alien parents who were mere sojourners. What is more important, all of these decisions were based upon the theory that the law of citizenship of the United States was taken from the common law of England, and the latter makes no distinction between persons born in the country of alien sojourners and those born of domiciled aliens.23

Too easy. He literally goes on to say that WKA follows the common law and the common law has no domicile requirement.

It is true that the decisions in Re Look Tin Sing and United States v. Wong Kim Ark did not directly decide the precise point that persons born in the United States of aliens who are mere sojourners or transients are citizens of this country, since in each of these cases the parents were domiciled in the United States, so that it was not at issue. However,

Here’s the part that Sauer highlighted, to make it look like contemporaries understood Wong Kim Ark to contain a domicile requirement. Note the “however“ at the beginning of the next sentence…

DUAL NATIONALITY AND ELECTION RICHARD W. FLOURNOY, JR. (1921)

Just so everyone knows, the Solicitor General straight up lied about the 1921 law review article he kept talking about. quick thread:

I think some day, when the story of the Trump administration’s lurch towards autocracy is written from a historical perspective, Abrego García’s case will be a touchstone. Perhaps the clearest example of its sheer vindictiveness

At a time when America is learning, yet again, how vulnerable fossil-fuel dependence makes us, an all Democrat elected body should not be hobbling us for generations just to placate idiots living in a neighborhood that had to be forcibly integrated and where the median home price is $1.2 million.

Awful. A teenager, dead by suicide in an ICE detention center. There is now a crisis of suicide inside the detention system; I have never seen anything like it. Suicide has happened before, but they were very rare. This is the third or fourth this year.

That’s a great point. Finishing a brief is fine, getting paid is nice, winning a hard case is wonderful, but the thing most of us are really chasing (I suppose) is the feeling of the big idea or the right expression of an idea finally jolting into your brain.

Thanks in both instances!