Jonathan Feingold

Opinion | Northwestern capitulates to Trump, abandons its independence and betrays its commitment to academic freedom Opinion Contributor Stephen Rohde (CAS '66) criticizes President Henry Bienen's decision to make a deal with the federal government.

I missed this last week -- an appropriately scathing critique of NWern's deal with the dev- I mean with the Trump administration, from an alum. dailynorthwestern.com/2025/12/05/o...

Judiciary watchdog group Fix the Court has filed a judicial misconduct complaint against Judge Emil Bove over his attendance at the Trump event last night.
fixthecourt.com/wp-content/u...

Democrat flips northeast Georgia state House seat, pulling off special election upset • Georgia Recorder A Watkinsville Democrat defeated a Republican in a two-way race Tuesday, flipping a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives.

Another flip by a Dem who ran as a strong supporter of public education. One common theme emerging in these upsets: winning candidates sound nothing like centrists & pundits when it comes to talking about schools. georgiarecorder.com/2025/12/09/d...

1. This is good
2. People have to enforce it
3. Those people are police
4. It will definitely be challenged by the administration

Despite Judge’s Order, ICE Deports Shackled Babson College Freshman, Harasses Her Family in Texas Nineteen-year-old Any Lucía López Belloza was detained and deported, despite a lack of removal order, when attempting to head home from Babson College in Boston to surprise her family in Texas for Tha...

Despite Judge’s Order, ICE Deports Shackled Babson College Freshman, Harasses Her Family in Texas

Tuesday - ICE agents used pepper spray to push through a crowd that blocked their vehicles as they checked IDs in a Somali neighborhood of Minneapolis.

The Trump administration is targeting this community and they know it.

IOW the winning Dem ticket is Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban.

Young Palestinian dies in Israeli custody, dozens taken in West Bank raids Death of 21-year-old raises alarm as rights groups document systematic torture in detention facilities.

Death of 21-year-old raises alarm as rights groups document systematic torture in detention facilities.

Leaders of a Catholic church in Massachusetts kept a Nativity display with an anti-ICE message in place on Monday, defying an order from the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston to remove it. The display shows Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus missing, replaced by a sign reading “ICE WAS HERE.” trib.al/adPW46y

Texas Faculty Speak Out on Campus Free Speech CONTACT:  Brian L. Evans, PhD, President of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), affiliated with the Texas American Federation of Teachers (AFT), aaup.texa...

Yesterday, faculty from across the State testified at a “people’s hearing” of the Texas House Democratic Caucus Interim Special Committee on Free Speech. Several AAUP leaders and members from across the state testified about the impact of censorship in higher ed. 👏👏

aaup-texas.org/blog/f/texas...

Justice Dept. kills long-time tool used to prove racial discrimination The decades-old provision of civil rights law allows statistical disparities to be used as proof of racial discrimination.

This administration is race obsessed.

And btw I’m still waiting for lawsuits that foreground the racism. When you eliminate disparate impact bc you want to harm black communities the complaint writes itself.

www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Important: Maryland senate leader refuses to redistrict to counter Trump/GOP, but Rep Jamie Raskin says if Indiana GOPers move, MD must act:

"There’s nothing ethical or moral about unilaterally disarming before authoritarians in a game they’ve created."

On the pod:

newrepublic.com/article/2042...

Justice Dept. kills long-time tool used to prove racial discrimination The decades-old provision of civil rights law allows statistical disparities to be used as proof of racial discrimination.

It is all about race.
Justice Dept. kills long-time tool used to prove racial discrimination www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

U.S. plans to ask visitors to disclose 5 years of social media history The proposal would affect travelers from countries on the visa waiver program, including Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Japan and South Korea.

Welcome to America, land of xenophobia and chilled speech.
U.S. plans to ask visitors to disclose 5 years of social media history www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...

The impact will be most severe in large Republican-leaning states that have not expanded Medicaid, including Florida and Texas, because they rely on the Obamacare marketplace to cover many of their low-income residents. Those states will see their uncompensated care costs rise by as much as 25%.

For grifters like Trump, racism has always been a tool to oppress and exploit his own very white base. This nugget from @juddlegum.bsky.social.

open.substack.com/pub/populari...

Abstract President Trump's anti-Black racism and authoritarian impulses are transparent. But in ways that remain underappreciated, elements of the anti-Black logic that animates Trump’s assault on civil rights also travels through liberal scholarship, liberal organizations, and many individuals who identify with the political Left. This includes decades of acquiescence to conservative frames that portray remedial race-conscious interventions as “racial preferences” that harm innocent “victims.” Even today, some of Trump’s harshest critics discursively equate traditional affirmative action with the President’s nepotistic and race- and gender-inflected favoritism for billionaires, lackeys, and South Africa’s white “refugees.” The remainder of this essay explores the logic that binds liberal affirmative action discourse with the Trump Administration’s anti-democratic agenda. To surface these links, I annotate an April 2025 executive order that demeans disparate impact theories of liability and directs federal agencies to eliminate its use. I then close by turning to a May 2025 memorandum announcing a new Department of Justice initiative to “combat antisemitism.”

Also: my dive into Trump's assault on disparate impact that tracks all this from @victorerikray.bsky.social.

The point, like everything else in Trumpland, is to make racial equality illegal and immoral.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Abstract President Trump's anti-Black racism and authoritarian impulses are transparent. But in ways that remain underappreciated, elements of the anti-Black logic that animates Trump’s assault on civil rights also travels through liberal scholarship, liberal organizations, and many individuals who identify with the political Left. This includes decades of acquiescence to conservative frames that portray remedial race-conscious interventions as “racial preferences” that harm innocent “victims.” Even today, some of Trump’s harshest critics discursively equate traditional affirmative action with the President’s nepotistic and race- and gender-inflected favoritism for billionaires, lackeys, and South Africa’s white “refugees.” The remainder of this essay explores the logic that binds liberal affirmative action discourse with the Trump Administration’s anti-democratic agenda. To surface these links, I annotate an April 2025 executive order that demeans disparate impact theories of liability and directs federal agencies to eliminate its use. I then close by turning to a May 2025 memorandum announcing a new Department of Justice initiative to “combat antisemitism.”

Today, the Justice Department issued a final rule updating its regulations under Title VI of the Civil Rights of 1964. This rule ensures that our nation’s federal civil rights laws are firmly grounded in the principle of equal treatment under the law by eliminating disparate-impact liability from its Title VI regulations. “For decades, the Justice Department has used disparate-impact liability to undermine the constitutional principle that all Americans must be treated equally under the law,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “No longer. This Department of Justice is eliminating its regulations that for far too long required recipients of federal funding to make decisions based on race.”

for anyone looking for background on DOJ's "final rule" (take that with grain of salt) eliminating disparate impact, here's my essay annotating the racism that drips from Trump's assault on disparate impact.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

This makes facially neutral policies--like poll taxes and literacy tests--that we know were adopted for discriminatory purposes legal. Organizations can now simply claim there was no discriminatory intent regardless of outcome. It's unconstrained institutionalized racism.

March in Joy for Justice, Democracy, and the Rule of Law Click to download.

and after that drink we'll have a march for justice, democracy and the rule of law.

#CriticalLegalCollective

criticallegalcollective.org/2025/12/08/m...

Northwestern University law profs argue that NU's "deal" with the Trump admin violates the First Amendment and federal antidiscrimination law.

Moreover, the grant freeze Trump imposed on NU was unlawful and should have been challenged in court.

www.theuniversityunderthreat.org/updates?fbcl...

We asked activists from authoritarian regimes what they wish they’d known sooner. Here’s what they said Activists from Hungary, El Salvador and Turkey offer advice to the US about what they’ve learned about authoritarians

We asked activists from authoritarian regimes what they wish they’d known sooner. Here’s what they said www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

One theme here is the speed of American institutional collapse.
“It took Erdoğan 15 years to do what Trump did in 100 days. If [Americans] do not accept the fact that this is a long game, and it will be brutal, I think you won’t have the patience and stamina to bear it.”

Torture Techniques from CIA Black Sites Were Used at Alligator Alcatraz Amnesty International, interviewing migrant detainees, identifies use of the confinement box. There can be no denying it is a torture prison

They're using the confinement box, one of the most horrific methods of CIA torture in the post-9/11 black sites, against migrants now. This is the direct result of the lack of consequences for the architects of the torture program. Either there will be criminal penalties for this or it will expand.

Not only is ICE snatching hard working people who are trying to earn a living, they’re taking their money too?

A witness recorded ICE agents taking a cash box from a taco stand in La Puente during an operation where four people were arrested.

Indivisibles of MD hard at work on redistricting 👇

Sauer saying something is unconstitutional because it "would be unconstitutional under Justice Scalia's dissent" is a remarkably cogent statement of the Roberts Court's approach to precedent.

ALPE Membership Membership dues for the Association of Law and Political Economy. At this point, we do not yet have a process for accepting student membership, but we're working on it. Stay tuned for details soon on...

Here's a link to join as a member! (We accidentally had the conference registration link there in the post!)

forms.gle/9tmSAHsgoN86...

Ep. 48 | Dr. CBS on Black Scare/Red Scare in the Age of Trump Professor Charisse Burden-Stelly, aka Dr. CBS, joins #RaceClass for a wide ranging conversation about the election of Zohran Mamdani, the legacy of Black Studies, resistance in the age of Trump, and h

"If we believe our own analysis that fascism is either here or around the corner, then this routing is the precondition for no more elections."

@drcbs.bsky.social joined #RaceClass to talk du bois, black studies & Black Scare/Red Scare in the age of Trump.

soundcloud.com/user-8088721...

Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Description of Mortgage Fraud, Records Reveal The Trump administration has argued that Fed board member Lisa Cook may have committed mortgage fraud by declaring more than one primary residence on her loans. We found Trump once did the very thing ...

Trump committed mortgage fraud, according to Trump.

Somehow I doubt his DOJ will go after him the way he instructed his DOJ to go after his political enemies over this.

Every Republican accusation is a confession.

Video Juneteenth and MLK Day removed as free-fee days at national parks The National Park Service will offer free admission on President Donald Trump's birthday but is eliminating it for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.

So this is what I did over the weekend, an interview on the Trump regime’s idiotic plan to make the national parks free on his birthday but cancel it for MLK Day with ABC News. The Pastor was far more eloquent than me but I could not help myself with the Nobel dig. abcnews.go.com/US/video/jun...