Joey Fishkin

Reconstructing American constitutional democracy will require an anti-oligarchy constitution.
@fishkin.bsky.social
anti-oligarchy.com

My sense is most people aren't tracking how many of these suits the regime is just giving up on.

Anyway, huge congratulations to @veenadubal.bsky.social and the entire @aaup.org team. This is one for the history books.

Now there is a further wrinkle, and I hope all UC researchers with federal grants read this: This injunction may need to be enforced.

UC FACULTY: If you see something where the federal government violating this injunction.... say something.

Tell your faculty association, who can tell the lawyers.

I have never seen an injunction like this, which basically says stop using flimsy, bogus "civil rights" to attack your perceived political opponents!

Excellent job @veenadubal.bsky.social and @aaup.org

Don’t let up

1 That language is as follows: “At stage one, a Task Force Agency announces investigations or plannedenforcement actions related to alleged civil rights violations at a school. At stage two, Funding Agenciescancel the school’s federal grants en masse without following Title VI and IX procedural requirementsor limiting the scope of the terminations to non-compliant programs. At stage three, DOJ demands thepayment of millions or billions of dollars—a penalty that Title VI and IX do not authorize—and requiresa wide range of policy changes as a condition for restoring funding and avoiding further fundingdisruptions.”

What's even better about this victory is that it means the federal government no longer contests that Judge Lin was right about their strategy of weaponizing Title VI.

They had a playbook, Judge Lin identified it, it's ugly, and the government no longer appeals an injunction ordering them to stop.

That strategy is dangerous. But UCLA no longer has to worry about it, w/regard to any grant cancellations ostensibly based on a Title VI violation, or any of the wave cancellations from last July.

UCLA can respond to any grant cancellations/refusals by suing the govt for violating the injunction.

The administration has busily been building the case for stopping universities from pursuing their claims about the (blatant, extreme) procedural violations involved since the start of the DOGE grant cancellations by rerouting these claims to the Court of Claims.

...they go through all the considerable procedural and substantive steps laid out in the relevant statutes.

Now you might say, wtf, this injunction just says "we promise to obey the law next time" so what good is that?

Actually it's great.

1. Defendants are ENJOINED and/or STAYED from refusing to grant, non-renewing,withholding, freezing, suspending, terminating, conditioning, or otherwise restricting use of federalfunds, or threatening to do so, to the University of California (“UC”), defined to include any of itscampuses, laboratories, and affiliated medical centers, based on alleged discrimination on the basis ofrace, color, national origin, or sex, until after full compliance with all of the required steps, consistentwith all procedural and substantive requirements governing the termination of federal financialassistance under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §2000d et seq., and Title IX of theEducation Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. §1681 et seq., and all procedural and substantiverequirements governing the termination of federal financial assistance under the applicable Title VI andTitle IX implementing regulations, and all procedural and substantive requirements under theAdministrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. §§551-559, 701-706 (“APA”), including but not limited to thefollowing:

And this injunction has an unusual character. It is forward-looking as well as backward-looking. It says the Trump administration agrees, first, not to suspend or block or "refuse to grant" any type of grants to the UCs based on allegations of supposed violations of Title VI, unless...

Trump administration drops appeal of court order blocking $1.2-billion UCLA settlement The Trump administration dropped its appeal of a major higher education case in which a federal judge blocked its $1.2-billion settlement proposal to UCLA over alleged civil rights violations. It will...

This is a genuinely huge, sweeping victory today for the University of California—or rather, for us, its faculty, acting through our faculty associations, while the UC itself maintained a strict policy of deer-in-headlights silence.

The Trump admin has given up its appeal of a powerful injunction:

Thanks for doing this Ilya.

The idea of a bill rendering people deportable for following religious law should make every Jew ill

I'm sorry the guy changing the rules on the fly is named what

‘Do You Speak Billionaire?’ and Other Stories From the Fall of the Washington Post I think I can say with little fear of contradiction that I...

This is an especially great post from @joshtpm.bsky.social.

Newspapers need a better business model than "find a billionaire to subsidize me"—for many reasons, not least (as Josh argues) because they tend to give up.

"Find a billionaire buyer" turns out to be the darkness in which democracies die.

Law is shaped by politics which is shaped by law which is shaped by politics. No accident that the now-famous picture is literally attached to the order.

This graph has been making the rounds and it should. It’s a horror movie in graph form.

Will Americans see it, and if so, can we read it? Serious question.

::taps mic::

beyond being an absolutely miserable illness, measles can cause immune amnesia. It wipes out your immune systems memory of how to fight every infection, every vaccine you've ever had.

It’s part of democracy’s immune system to continually check whether you’ve become the tyranny you rebelled against.

This judicial order quoting so much Declaration of Independence—well beyond the famous first line—is part of that.

Even before the biblical photo caption at the end, quite an order!

Judge Biery signed the order with a photo of Liam and two bible verses: The first is "But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." The second is simply "Jesus wept."

Astonishing thing for a judge to do.

Yes yes yes this whole thread.

tl;dr means testing sucks and wastes tons of money and makes people's lives more miserable and government should stop being in the business of judging if someone is worthy and just help them because they're a human being.

Senior ADL antisemitism researcher leaves to lead competing effort at watchdog Nexus - Jewish Telegraphic Agency Aryeh Tuchman will direct a new Nexus research center focused on improving data, definitions and public understanding of antisemitism.

NEW: Today, we’re excited to announce the creation of the Nexus Center for Antisemitism Research (NCAR), which will work to improve the quality of research, data, and analysis available to advance the broader mission of confronting hate and promoting Jewish safety.

"I'm coming to Boston and I'm bringing hell with me."
--Homan in February

"Do I expect violence to escalate? Absolutely."
-- Tom Homan in March

"I actually thought about getting up and throwing that man a beating right there in the middle of the room"
-- Homan in July, referring to a D congressman

One problem is that Democrats look at already passed funding as untouchable, while Republicans look at it as something to chip away at forever.
Case in point: the 2022 IRS surge funding in the Inflation Reduction Act.
TIL the House cut another $11 billion from that last week! And Dems voted for it!

To say aloud that the vice president is friends with Nazis and to point out that his Holocaust tweet is crafted so as not to offend them is to sound crazy to everyone who doesn’t know both are stone cold facts. Frustrating thing.

JD Vance @JDVance X.com Today we remember the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust, the millions of stories of individual bravery and heroism, and one of the enduring lessons of one of the darkest chapters in human history: that while humans create beautiful things and are full of compassion, we're also capable of unspeakable brutality. And we promise never again to go down the darkest path.

Legitimately a feat of carefully calculated writing to issue a Holocaust Remembrance Day statement of this length without mentioning either (1) the people who perpetrated the Holocaust or (2) the people against whom they perpetrated it

Ms. King also criticized employees who were divulging details of the newsroom’s inner workings to the press, and speculated on how long it might take for her own remarks to leak. Ms. Weiss, wryly, chimed in: “I’m sure someone’s livestreaming it right now, Gayle,” she said, HIGHLGHT: ***according to a recording of the event obtained by The New York Times.*** Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media, politics and culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since 2016. Benjamin Mullin reports for The Times on the major companies behind news and entertainment. Contact him securely on Signal at +1 530-961-3223 or at benjamin.mullin@nytimes.com.

Bari Weiss obviously has been given lots of room by her equally novice boss to do what she wants at CBS—for now.

What she can't do is get all her professional journalists to keep her various moves a secret.

Amazing final line of the NYT's report from her first all-hands meeting:

Yikes. That is a lot of expertise to lose in a short time.

ICE watchers in Maine say they were threatened by federal agents Community members have been monitoring the activity of immigration agents in Greater Portland.

ICE is changing tactics in Maine: "Now, the volunteers in Maine say federal agents have started showing up at their homes and intimidating them or threatening arrest. Some of them, masked and wearing tactical gear, have issued stark warnings not to follow them." www.pressherald.com/2026/01/23/i...