David Daley

David Daley, "Antidemocratic" RJ Julia opened 35 years ago as an independent bookstore whose mission was, and is, to be a place where words matter, where writer meets reader, where the ambiance and selection and merchandising of b...

Connecticut! It's the first Monday in October -- let's talk John Roberts, voting rights and ANTIDEMOCRATIC, 6:30 tonight at RJ Julia in Madison. A bucket-list event in a store I've spent days upon days....

rjjulia.com/event/2025-1...

@rjjulia.bsky.social

I don't know when or how it will come, but there will be a moment when Trump's presidency is behind us and we're picking up the pieces of our democracy.

That can't be the first time we think about how we rebuild; that planning has to start now. Deep, structural court reform must be a part of it.

TONIGHT! Very excited to talk ANTIDEMOCRATIC at the amazing Kramer Books in Washington DC with the sharpest SCOTUS analyst going, Slate's @mjsdc.bsky.social. See you all at 7.

Washington, D.C.! Join me at Kramer's on Dupont Circle on Wednesday night to celebrate the paperback release of ANTIDEMOCRATIC. Very excited to be in conversation with the brilliant @mjsdc.bsky.social of Slate. We will get started at 7. Would love to see you there!

Bet I can guess who wrote the decisions that Kennedy has concerns about the tone

And bet the decisions themselves don’t concern him at all

🔽

Whizzer

Giant Sandra Day O'Connor

It is bad enough that the court is clearly planning to let Trump construct the most submissive executive branch in history by purging his opponents from federal agencies. What’s worse, though, is that the supermajority has ushered in this new era of autocratic presidency over the shadow docket, offering almost no public explanation for its radical moves. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent, the court’s Republican appointees have elected “to reshape the nation’s separation of powers” in Trump’s favor. And they’re doing so without respecting the process that differentiates legal judgments from bare flexes of partisan muscle.

Six Republican justices are speed-running our collapse into a dictatorship and they don’t even have the integrity to explain why.

(But we all know why.) slate.com/news-and-pol...

Every Supreme Court Precedent Bows to the Principle of “Donald Trump Gets What He Wants” The conservative supermajority is willing to throw process out the window if their favorite president asks nicely.

I have no idea how law students are supposed take seriously anything they learn in constitutional law when the Supreme Court's entire approach to precedent and stare decisis is just "does Mister Trump want us to overturn it right now" ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/trump...

They picked a Court that would do the job for them

GOP-Friendly Local ‘News’ Broadcasters Plan More Harmful Mergers After Trump Destroys What’s Left Of Media Consolidation Limits During Trump 1.0, his FCC took at absolute hatchet to media ownership limits. Those limits, built on the back of decades of bipartisan collaboration, prohibited local broadcasters and media from gr…

ABC affiliate owner Nexstar also owns the feckless gossip rag the The Hill, and has been lobbying the FCC for approval of of a $6.2 billion merger with Nexstar, if that helps connect some of the dots for the Jimmy Kimmel cancellation for you

Based on novel by John Jay Osborn who wrote The Paper Chase

Win! Gerrymandered Congressional Map Struck Down in Utah, Anti-Gerrymandering Initiative Reinstated

BREAKING: The Utah Supreme Court leaves in place our lower court victory striking down the state's gerrymandered congressional map. New, fair districts will be in place for the 2026 election.

Campaign Legal Center will continue to fight for fair maps.

Everything you need to know about the Court/non-court in one easy graph courtesy of The NY Times:

Since we’re talking about political violence, know this:

“The murder rate for Black politicians in Reconstruction was 2,317 per 100,000. This rate is 20 times greater than *any* *other* demographic in the United States as of 2020, where the highest homicide rate was less than 105 per 100,000.”

Gov. Greg Abbott pardons Daniel Perry, veteran who killed police brutality protester in 2020 A Travis County jury sentenced Perry to 25 years in prison last year, prompting Abbott to ask the state parole board to review his case.

I am just going to keep posting that the TX governor recently pardoned a political murderer.

The dude texted "I'm going to shoot protestors", then went and shot a Black Lives Matter protester. He was convicted in a jury trial.

Hard to find a more blatant example of celebrating political violence.

Chief Justice Roberts should step down and President Trump should elevate Justice Kavanaugh to the Chief Justice position. Being Chief Justice is not a permanent sinecure. Judges have life tenure, not a life sentence. Justice Kavanaugh might be the only person who can steer the Court through this current moment. Roberts cannot. I think Kavanaugh can push the Court to grant cert before judgment more often, hold oral argument, and issue reasoned emergency docket opinions. No more one-paragraph John Roberts blue plate specials. Roberts is so concerned about saying too much, that he invariably says too little. And Justice Kavanaugh has the media savvy to speak intelligently to the American public, and not hide behind pretentious press releases and cryptic comments at conferences.

the tweet "its always 2 dumb itchces telling each other 'exactlyyyy'"

Josh Blackman writing a blog post calling on John Roberts to step down as chief justice, and Trump to elevate Brett Kavanaugh as his replacement reason.com/volokh/2025/...

Bigger story here is lower courts are doing heroic work in assembling fact sets exposing the deep rot of bad faith at the core of Trump's pretexts for many of his illegal acts.

The Pulte scam is a case in point.

citing @sifill.bsky.social & @leahlitman.bsky.social

newrepublic.com/article/2002...

Conservative Justices Declare Racial Profiling Just Fine If Mister Trump Asks For It Once again, the Court issues an unexplained shadow docket order that will inflict real-world harm on people whom Supreme Court justices never encounter or think about.

The simplest way to predict the outcome of any Supreme Court case is, “What is the result that would be most beneficial to Donald Trump?”
ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/noem-...

The Supreme Court Just Let ICE Detain Americans Based on Race Indiscriminate immigration raids will expand across the country with the implicit blessing of the conservative supermajority.

Sotomayor: “We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.”

But we do. Because the Supreme Court traded the Fourth Amendment for the MAGA Constitution.
slate.com/news-and-pol...

If I were a Democrat in Congress I'd be introducing legislation to suspend the Supreme Court's upcoming term (it's happened before, in 1802). The suspension would be to give us time to figure out what to do with this dangerous, anti-democratic institution.

Those horrified that SCOTUS would give these powers to Trump, who think John Roberts surely can't empower this, have it backward.

This is what this Court wants to do. It is what they were put there to do. Long before Trump. Trump is irrelevant. These are the outcomes/policies they desire.

The Supreme Court is a completely illegitimate institution that does not represent the people or uphold the constitution.

We are under no obligation to accept or abide by its decisions. It’s literally just a bunch of guys with opinions.

In 1993 and 2015, crazy

The Conservative Media Ecosystem Is Coddling Amy Coney Barrett Nothing says “I am not a partisan hack” like kicking off your book tour in conversation with Bari Weiss.

If you are a Supreme Court justice, giving an exclusive first excerpt of your book to Bari Weiss's anti-woke blog is a bad way of proving that you are not an ideologue

John Roberts is the most successful Republican politician of any of our lifetimes. He has delivered his party long desired victories — on guns, voting, the regulatory state, campaign finance, *waves hands* — that could never, ever be won at the ballot box.

John Roberts is the political advisor.

this is what the right is doing in media, meanwhile dems are looking for a political flex seal guy to do a few tiktoks

The most important direction for the future of the Democratic Party is breaking up the two party doom loop.

There is not a singular ideological agenda or direction that will make a pro-democracy majority. We need a new, proportional representation system that will allow more parties in Congress.