Thomas Frampton

A subset of the South has spent ~150 years resenting the perceived unjustified deployment of federal troops in their communities during Reconstruction. Entire politics and worldviews have been shaped by it. Honestly curious how this is landing there culturally: Amnesia? Vengeance? Schadenfreude?

Damnit you made me do a triple-take.

I don’t know enough about the TX and AZ context, but UVA actually can’t sue (because our General Counsel reports to the State AG, not the university, and the State AG is very much a MAGA type). It’s unclear that our current Board of Visitors and President would sue, but that’s another matter.

I thought I'd put the administration's proposed "compact" with universities in context, so I wrote the blog post below.

It's especially for journalists covering this story!

Many details about how the compact itself works and why the administration has retreated to this strategy.

I’ve only heard second-hand; but that’s deeply embarrassing if that’s actually where the university’s leadership is at.

Even the Jefferson Council appears to recognize that UVA shouldn’t sign the “Compact.”

NY Times header about how people are signing up for the Army because they were struggling to pay for food and shelter.

🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅

This is critical. Reasonable people can disagree on "institutional neutrality" (i.e., internal policies about the issuance of statements on current events). UVA adopted one in August 2024.

But the U.S. government gagging universities if they want federal funding should offend us all.

Excellent resolution from UVA. Well done, @uvahumanities.bsky.social

Now, friends at Dartmouth, MIT, Vanderbilt, Texas, etc need to step up.

News coverage of the Trump administration's proposed "compact" with universities has been, so far, shockingly bad.

I hate to pick on NPR reporter Elissa Nadworny, who's usually a solid reporter, but almost every important thing I heard her say this morning about the proposed "compact" was false.

Note the wording: "designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization." Not "Foreign Terrorist Organization."

As of 2 weeks ago, "Antifa" has been so designated.

So will universities that join the "Compact" be committing to adopt policies prohibiting "support" for antifascism?

They folded the big First Amendment violations in with a bunch of other stuff, including things that are totally unobjectionable and that universities are already doing, in order to make the overall document read as reasonable to someone who doesn't know the ins and outs of it. Don't be that person.

The admin’s efforts to get universities to agree to a list of demands in exchange for preferential access to federal funding isn’t just “troubling” as Ted Mitchell, prez of the @aceducation.bsky.social says in this article; it looks blatantly unconstitutional.🧵
www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

Big day for SSRN though…

Much appreciated! Just a dislocation (and MAYBE a small fracture); sore but fine now!

Def seems seasonally appropriate, huh?

X-ray of hand with obviously dislocated finger.

Selfie of me in pain and wife maniacally grinning.

I had a bogus Friday night.

Many thanks to the wonderful professionals at Washington Hospital Center, and to the other ER patrons, for their prompt diagnosis of "oh god, that finger's jacked up." And to @yoyokellyo.bsky.social for her ability to find joy in unpleasant circumstances.

Every Supreme Court Justice should have to have a phone like this.

Got it. Great catch! I'm curious if/when/whether a DoD lawyer will actually try to enter an appearance or purport to submit a pleading on behalf of the "Department of War." I suspect they'd be risking sanction, but I don't know.

No, I read the story (which is great, thank you!). I meant link to the pleadings? I went through the court dockets for the lawsuits and couldn't find it, but I didn't read everything!

Wait, seriously? Can you link? (I hadn't seen that yet and it's fascinating.)

One day, everyone will have always been against this.

If a government tells you that you can’t call it authoritarian, it’s authoritarian.

TIRED: Grand jury nullification.

WIRED: Grand jury indicting the U.S. Attorney for civil rights deprivations.

Is there anything preventing a grand jury for returning a "true bill" indictment against the U.S. Attorney (e.g., 28 USC 241 or 242) if they wanted to? Like, nothing in the Federal Rules prevents that, right?

A lot of lawyers on EDVA/DC grand juries...

I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital. (🎥: Elias Eliahu)

WOW. The lead plaintiff is a Latino man who's been here legally for 24 years. He was grabbed off the street by plainclothes federal agents who didn't even ASK about his status.

He was detained overnight and only released once a supervisor realized he had been illegally arrested.

The ICE Shooter’s Motive Joshua Jahn's friends speak

An important read about the background and possible motivation of the ICE shooter. His friends describe him as an extremely online edge lord, with no strong political leanings.
www.kenklippenstein.com/p/the-ice-sh...

Genuinely wild how much more professional the Metro cops were though (as in transit police, not MPD) as compared to HSI and FBI.

And some of them clearly had no experience whatsoever. I’m pretty sure three of the FBI vest people were just lab techs who clearly just wanted to go do science things.

Just witnessed THE libertarian nightmare at Mt Pleasant and Lamont: a team of every type of federal law enforcement including IRS COPS snatching someone.

(Don’t worry, though. It wasn’t tax related. It was just immigration enforcement.)