Gautam Hans

You’re such a Supernintendo Chalmers

Rowan helped push the President of U Penn out. Now he wants to use the power of the government, including tax dollars, to persuade universities to surrender their academic freedom. Because, he believes, he and other rich men know how to run a university better than the faculty.

The Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine and the Compact for Excellence Members of the Trump administration love to say that federal funding is a privilege not a right and therefore something that can be granted or withheld based on changing administrative priorities.

The Trump Administration’s “Compact of Excellence” for Universities is... far from excellent! Indeed, it’s unconstitutional. In this post, let me count the ways.

blog.dividedargument.com/p/the-uncons...

Legal experts condemn Apple bowing to White House's request to remove ICE tracking app It's the latest example of tech giants bowing to pressure from the Trump administration. Legal experts say the developer of the app has free speech rights that may have been violated.

Apple bowing to Trump admin’s pressure on ICEBlock invites even more jawboning, says @gshans.bsky.social.

"Compliance will only incentivize further government demands."

www.npr.org/2025/10/03/n...

Supreme Court allows Trump to revoke protected immigration status for thousands of Venezuelans The Trump administration is trying to revoke a Biden-era policy has extended protections to thousands of Venezuelans.

NEWS: Supreme Court again allows Trump to move forward with plans to remove protected status from thousands of Venezuelans:
www.nbcnews.com/politics/sup...

Brett Kavanaugh’s Racial Profiling Opinion Is Looking Sillier By the Day Kavanaugh said that immigration agents “promptly” release people after determining that they are legal U.S. residents. They don’t.

Kavanaugh recently suggested immigration stops are no big deal if you're a legal resident bc ICE just promptly releases you

That is not, in fact, what ICE does

He invents a fiction bc the reality of the policies he supports is too disturbing for him to imagine

ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/brett...

Opinion | Trump’s ‘Compact’ With Universities Is Just Extortion

“This is extortion, plain and simple.

It is not hyperbole to say that the future of higher education.. requires that every university reject it…The only solution is solidarity and collective action against this effort at federal control over higher education.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...

I was at Columbia and on our campus newspaper when Bari Weiss first rose to notoriety for “Columbia Unbecoming.” There is something deeply cynical and depressing about this coronation of bad faith, which is of a piece of our time — and her initial crusade on campus over twenty years ago.

so to state the obvious - leaving aside everything else, this is why the shadow docket is bad, this is why grabbing cases from the trial level is bad. fact finding matters! it's important to establish a record before you reach a decision. there's a reason that order exists, and SCt is upending it

lol, no

Federal Funding and the First Amendment

A series of short posts from leading scholars about the constraints the First Amendment imposes on the government's authority to impose conditions on federal funding. Seems relevant! This is a @knightcolumbia.org series from earlier this year. knightcolumbia.org/research/fed...

Why Is This Democratic Senator Voting to Confirm a Trump Judicial Nominee? If you really think Trump poses an existential threat to democracy, the bar for affirmatively supporting one of his nominees has to be higher than “I don’t know, he seems fine.”

Six Democratic senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee (Durbin, Schiff, Whitehouse, Klobuchar, Coons, and Welch) voted yes on two Trump district court nominees this morning, and my question remains, why do senior members of this party keep voluntarily ceding political capital to Donald Trump

The Story of This Supreme Court Term Is Already On YouTube How conservative activists are building a shared cultural understanding about who deserves the law’s protections, and who does not.

My Supreme Court term preview is about the YouTube channels of right-wing activists, who are making soft-lit campaign videos to build a shared cultural understanding about who deserves the law's protections (conservative Christians), and who doesn't (anyone else)

Some schools will be starved of resources. Other schools will be offered bribes. The end goal is the same. To make the universities an extension of the Trump administration. Shame on any of these institutions willing to take the bribes.

RIP Jane Goodall, by all accounts a wonderful woman who loved this Far Side cartoon

We are now in the domain of not just illegal impoundments, but targeted illegal impoundments to punish liberal spaces. Not different from what Trump is doing to to universities.

The Fed Exception, coming to theaters June 2026.

(ORDER LIST: 606 U.S.) WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2025 ORDER IN PENDING CASE 25A312 TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF U.S., ET AL. V. COOK, LISA D. The application for stay presented to The Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is deferred pending oral argument in January 2026. The Clerk is directed to establish a briefing schedule for amici curiae and any supplemental briefs responding to amici.

NEW: The Supreme Court *refuses* to let Trump fire the Fed's Lisa Cook—for now. Instead, the court agrees to hear the case in January. Cook may continue to serve in the meantime.

Every time the subject of Jimmy Fallon’s spinelessness comes up, I think of this passage from Tina Fey’s Bossypants

Opinion | Trump Has No Mandate to Destroy America

Terrific column by @jamellebouie.net about Trump’s lack of mandate. Good reminder that Trump got 49.8% of the vote in 2024 to Harris’s 48.3%. Compare with 2020, when Biden got 51.3% of the popular vote to Trump’s 46.8%.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

This might be why journalists in pop culture are too often seducing sources — it’s the most obvious way to make reporting cinematic.

1. Rachel McAdams in “Spotlight”. She balanced drive with a humane understanding of the story she pursued.
2. Pop culture relies upon drama. As a lawyer and a professor I know the messy, hostile side of my job needs to be overemphasized to capture attention. That’s probably true for journalists too.

Cert grant when

Anjali what would our 2005 selves have to say about this

Ben, it’s time for stinky bed

Judge Rules Trump Unlawfully Targeted Noncitizens Over Pro-Palestinian Speech

Very proud of my colleagues right now--especially @ramyakrishnan.bsky.social and @alexabdo.bsky.social. But we could not have got this far without the superb trial lawyers at Sher Tremonte. Grateful to them for all of the time and energy they put into this case. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/u...

Excited to introduce Vibes from Meta. Eat your slop, piggies!

"the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United
States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of
us. The Court answers this Constitutional question
unequivocally “yes, they do.”" storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Ahead of the case caption, a handwritten note: "Trump has pardons and tanks . . . . what do you have?" Judge Young's reply: "Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States –- you and me -- have our magnificent Constitution. Here’s how that works out in a specific case –- "

AAUP v. Rubio is out, and look at how it starts. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

this is, no exaggeration, some of the most loser shit i have ever seen in my life