B.J. Priester

Hilariously, this is also a paradigmatic exemplar of a situation in which the original public meaning of the text and the current-day meaning of the text are completely different. Bravo!

Been saying this for a year now. After SFFA, the @nytimes ran a story about universities working overtime to recruit men--many of whom had less glittering credentials than women applicants. Wesleyan literally created a football team to recruit more men. We ladies are ready for the meritocracy.

I'm struggling to articulate this in my teaching: there is a point in preserving the ideals of avoiding fear or favor and exercising reasoned judgment in law, even if they have to be kept in exile

It's good—very good, and very important—that district courts keep issuing these 100-page rulings upholding the law. It must be incredibly dispiriting to see them overturned in a two-page, lawless, unsigned order, but please, keep them coming. They expose SCOTUS' corruption like nothing else.

It's not just liberal judges they're doing this to. They're doing this to plenty of conservative judges too; judges who actually spent weeks and weeks poring over the details and with their arms deep in the guts of thousands of pages of documents and days of testimony.

Those judges are pissed.

This entire argument by Louisiana and the conservatives questions are premised on an erasure of Congress’ enforcement power under the 14th & 15th Amendments.

Literally swinging for the fences to wipe out the premise for the legitimacy of Congress’ power to enact civil rights statutes.

Louisiana: "The plaintiffs came in and said 'we want a second majority-minority district."
KBJ: "NO THEY DID NOT. They said our votes are being dilluted."
Louisiana: "That's the same thing."
KBJ: "No it's not. ... trust me on this."
:)

Yes. Very casually turning the SSFA into a determination that any statute addressing race discrimination must be time-bound. Just absolutely untrue. An utter usurpation of Congress’ enforcement power under the 14th & 15th Amendments.

ICE agents raid South Shore apartments; Trump says Chicago could become military training ground ICE agents raided a South Shore apartment building overnight as the city braces for a possible military deployment.

Chicago, Illinois, 2025:

"They had the Black people in one van, and the immigrants in another van."

"They was bringing the kids down, had them zip-tied to each other."

"I kept asking, 'What is the morality?' One of them laughed. He said, 'Fuck them kids.'"

abc7chicago.com/post/ice-chi...

What Trump has wrought: a reversal of attitudes on immigration. Now we're an immigrant nation again, we need more immigrants to maintain our economy, and Trump's persecution of immigrants is just wrong.

I think we should also ridicule Miller here, not fear him. His fascist cosplay is absurd. He thinks tweeting in a clipped, military-sounding tone will frighten us. Oooo, he said "utilized"! Scary! Meanwhile their efforts to prosecute foes are imploding in buffoonery and Trump is polling in the 30s.

John Roberts Wrote Trump a Permission Slip to Indict Comey Political targets of the Justice Department can thank the chief justice.

"The list of culprits for destroying the Justice Department and the politically driven prosecutions of the second Trump administration must include John Roberts, their chief enabler." Great piece by @cristianfarias.com

nymag.com/intelligence...

How weak were the Comey charges? One was rejected and the others got 14/23 votes, barely clearing the ham sandwich threshold www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/u...

Since none of that is happening, all of that is illegal

The Constitution is colorblind except immigration enforcement.

The injunction is silent as to the use of force. And it is not necessary for the injunction to address that use-of-force question because the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness standard continues to govern the officers’ use of force and to prohibit excessive force. To the extent that excessive force has been used, the Fourth Amendment prohibits such action, and remedies should be available in federal court. I agree with the dissent on that point. But to reiterate, this injunction against brief stops for questioning does not address the useof-force issue.

It's not the most important part of the issue but Kavanaugh saying "well they should just sue if they're the victims of excessive force from ICE" when he himself has previously voted to bar lawsuits against federal officers for violations of the 4th Amendment in immigration cases takes chutzpah.

so Justice Kavanaugh seems to have cited a DOJ number unsupported by any source without saying where he got it to reach a constitutional conclusion based in part on that number being accurate.

SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in a college applicant's file is blatantly unconstitutional

ALSO SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in targeting whom to detain and deport is cool cool cool

#SCOTUS all-but overruled a unanimous, 90-year-old precedent through an unexplained "administrative" stay this morning, and that's only the second-most-problematic thing it did before lunchtime.

Exactly this 💯

This is very much worth reading. Explains the insane national guard loophole about troops still under the command of their state, and why Trump's scheme amounts to Texas invading Illinois.

D.C. grand jurors reject latest wave of Justice Dept. indictment requests One former federal prosecutor said of the indictment denials by D.C. grand juries that he's "never heard of this happening."

NEW: DC grand jurors reject more Justice Dept cases

Former DOJ attorney: “Not only have I never heard of this happening, I've never heard of a prosecutor who's heard of this happening”

www.cbsnews.com/news/d-c-gra...

Cleta Mitchell Thinks Trump Will Use Emergency Powers to Take Control of Elections Read more here.

🚨BREAKING: Cleta Mitchell thinks President Donald Trump may declare a national emergency to allow him to take control of national elections. Her comments will add to growing concern that Trump is plotting a way to use his power over the military and federal law enforcement to rig next year’s vote.

176. Illinois v. Texas A quick look at President Trump's (apparent) plan to send uninvited and un-federalized Texas National Guard troops into Illinois—and how it could (and maybe should) quickly end up in the Supreme Court

Via "One First," my quick stab at the legal authority President Trump will likely claim allows him to deploy un-federalized Texas National Guard troops to Illinois; why such a deployment without Illinois's consent *ought* to be unlawful; and the options Illinois will have for litigating that issue:

Case: 25-1812 Document: 159 Page: 5 Filed: 08/29/2025 V.O.S. SELECTIONS, INC. V. TRUMP The Government appeals a decision of the Court of International Trade setting aside five Executive Orders that imposed tariffs of unlimited duration on nearly all goods from nearly every country in the world, holding that the tariffs were not authorized by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), 50 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq. Because we agree that IEEPA's grant of presidential authority to "regulate" imports does not authorize the tariffs imposed by the Executive Orders, we affirm.

BREAKING: Federal Circuit, 7-4, rejects Trump’s tariffs under the IEEPA, affirming the lower court’s decision against Trump. www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-ord...

39th & 40th Congress: we are writing these constitutional amendments to give the federal government the power to address racial inequities and enforce a set of national civil rights

Roberts Court: but what if you didn't

There was a LOOOOONG delay in issuing the supplemental briefing order, burying it on a Friday in August rather than at the end of the Supreme Court term when everyone was paying attention.

The Supreme Court knocked down one of the two pillars of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 in the Shelby County case. It has now gone out of its way to consider whether it should knock down the other, by rescheduling arguments in a case it could have resolved in June under existing precedent.

CORDER LIST: 606 U.S.) FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 2025 24-109 24-110 ORDER IN PENDING CASES LOUISIANA V. CALLAIS, PHILLIP, ET AL. ROBINSON, PRESS, ET AL. V. CALLAIS, PHILLIP, ET AL. The parties are directed to file supplemental briefs addressing the following question raised on pages 36-38 of the Brief for Appellees: Whether the State's intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution. Supplemental briefs for appellants are due on or before Wednesday, August 27, 2025. Supplemental brief for appellees is due on or before Wednesday, September 17, 2025. Reply briefs are due on or before 2 p.m., Friday, October 3, 2025. The time to file amicus curiae briefs is as provided for by this Court's Rule 37.3. Word limits and cover colors for the briefs should correspond to the provisions of this Court's Rule 33.1(g) pertaining to briefs on the merits rather than to the provision pertaining to supplemental

😬The Supreme Court will consider whether the intentional creation of a majority-minority congressional district violates the 14th or 15th Amendments.

If the answer is yes, SCOTUS will effectively declare that what remains of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. This is very, very ominous.

SCOTUS Could Be Set to End Key Protection for Minority Voters Read more here.

🚨BREAKING: The U.S. Supreme Court escalated the high-stakes redistricting battle in Louisiana by ordering new legal briefings on whether intentionally creating a second majority-Black congressional district — to comply with the Voting Rights Act — might violate the U.S. Constitution.