Rick Hills

Immigration: The Federal Solution The conflict over immigration has become something close to a civil war, with the federal government blocking state action against federal agents arguably guilty of murder.

Here’s a proposal, worth considering IMHO, to defuse passions over immigration with federalism: Let each state adopt their own visa policies. (Lest you think that idea mad, read Cristina Rodriguez, “The Significance of the Local in Immigration Regulation” (2008)). open.substack.com/pub/daviddfr...

FBI Warns of Criminals Posing as ICE, Urges Agents to ID Themselves In a bulletin to law enforcement agencies, the FBI said criminal impersonators are exploiting ICE’s image and urged nationwide coordination to distinguish real operations from fakes.

To bad there’s not a simple way for DHS to avoid this sort of criminal fraud by masked imposters. 🤔 www.wired.com/story/fbi-wa...

NYC voters approve ballot questions aimed at boosting housing, limiting Council control As New York City tackles a pervasive affordability crisis, New York City voters were poised to pass three reforms to fast-track affordable housing development, despite pushback from the City Counci…

Congrats to NYC’s voters: Housing won big today. www.nydailynews.com/2025/11/04/n...

A fine thread from @richardprimus.bsky.social on Judge Immergut’s opinion barring use of the National Guard in Portland. As SCOTUS observed in Dep’t of Commerce v NY, “Our review is deferential, but we are ‘not required to exhibit a naiveté from which ordinary citizens are free.’”

Just to give you you an idea of what sorts of cards states have to play, consider this chart — and realize that a giant % of federal spending is tied up in defense, interest on debt, and non-discretionary entitlements. taxpolicycenter.org/sites/defaul...

It’s time for soft secession How blue states can use their economic clout to stand up to Trump’s agenda—starting with California.

Maybe the first time ever I’ve agreed 100% with Mother Jones. It’s time to unhook the Federalism fire escape. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Special Feature: Must Administrative Officers Serve at the President’s Pleasure? A broad range of views on democracy to help break the stalemate caused by partisan conflict.

I strongly recommend this fine essay by Caleb Nelson evaluating the originalist basis of the theory that all executive officers must serve at the President’s pleasure. Nelson, committed to originalism, sees nothing in Art II requiring such a presidential power. democracyproject.org/posts/must-a...

Good morning, Brooklyn!

Isn’t the most logical explanation for the ICAO decision to include a sex field in Doc 9303 that they needed the form to be standard across nations to be machine-readable? Some nations had a sex field for passports, some didn’t, so the ICAO included the field for ease of adoption across both?

Sure, but I don’t get a lot of land-use and local gov’t news, data, or analysis here. Elmendorf posts his 🧵s on X so far as I can tell. The zoning news items from smaller jurisdictions or latest NBER papers mostly don’t show up here as they did in the twitter days. Maybe I need to curate better…

Against Bluesky (and Blueskyism) Politics, echo chambers, and the difference between persuasion, propaganda, and performance on social media

Another essay explaining what’s wrong with Blue Sky. (TL;DR: Too many keyboard warriors competing for Fiercest Invective against The Bad Guys Award). Posting it in hopes that my tiny little corner of this place might get better. open.substack.com/pub/conspicu...

True, Greer’s writing from the Right. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t hear a lot of vitriol from Tanner against “the Left” in this piece—certainly not the sort of invective that writers from the Right typically use to blame Kirk’s murder on progressives or liberals.

Bullets and Ballots: The Legacy of Charlie Kirk What did Charlie Kirk mean to the Young Right?

Tanner Greer’s analysis of Kirk’s significance to young people on the Right. The viewpoint here is alien to BlueSky. If you react with as little vitriol as this essay contains, then — congrats! — you’ll have shown a level of empathy atypical of social media. scholarstage.substack.com/p/bullets-an...

YouTube video by SMU Jones Film HUD Secretary Carla Hills Tours A Solar Home North Of Dallas - October 1976

A clip of my mom in 1976 touting (1) federal subsidies for housing and (2) this new fangled thing called “solar energy.” She’s a Republican, folks. youtube.com/watch?v=Tptf...

The Bluesky-ization of the American left Progressives discovered a seemingly invincible weapon. One day it stopped working.

“‘They’re dragging your ass on Bluesky’ is a statement that strikes fear into the heart of practically no one.” open.substack.com/pub/noahpini...

A question for immigration law profs like @adambcox.bsky.social : Has there been litigation on the meaning of DHS rule (287.8(c)(2)(iii)) requiring officers to identify themselves as soon as it is practical and safe to do so? Masking seems to be in tension w/ the rule. www.ecfr.gov/current/titl...

What is Blueskyism? And why is it so toxic for political persuasion?

“Humorless, scoldy neuroticism, often rationalized by the view that one must be on ‘war footing‘ because the world is self-evidently in crisis.” open.substack.com/pub/natesilv...

Sam Kriss (@samkriss) gpt-5 was released the other day. it was probably the most expensive ai ever built and has five trillion parameters, and by all accounts it’s a very minor improvement on the last model. obviously you ...

Sam Kriss on ChatGPT 5.0: “still essentially just a weighted average of all the fanfiction ever posted online.” substack.com/@samkriss/no...

Palmer amaranth, the king of weeds, cripples new herbicides Scientists in the US sound the alarm about a crop-smothering weed that is growing resistant to multiple herbicides

Palmer’s Pigweed didn’t just defeat me: It has evolved a genetic resistance to glyphosate (aka Round-Up), costing millions in lost cotton and soybean crops that it swamps. So, yes, it is noxious (albeit edible!) But still it deserves some respect for sheer toughness. cen.acs.org/business/spe...

Having spent dozens of hours digging up a rogues’ gallery of weeds (Russian Thistle, tumble weeds the size of beach balls, globemallow, punture weed loaded with goats’ heads, etc), I am sparing this 6’ Palmer’s Pigweed growing out of a cement block out of sheer respect for its tenacity.

As @zhangtaisu.bsky.social @bridgetfahey.bsky.social and Lin note, there are many areas in which states can provide a check on federal manipulation of data. Jobs and inflation, however, are two areas where this safeguard fails, because states lack the state capacity to generate reliable numbers.

Because the BLS provides information that political appointees can review and reject, Noah and I argue that Congress can always insulate BLS staff from serving at the Prez’s pleasure. But, as Abbe Gluck notes, loose language in Braidwood puts that position at risk. www.scotusblog.com/2025/07/expe...

bsky.app/profile/rick...

Trump fires labor statistics boss hours after weak jobs report The president implied that the BLS commissioner, longtime federal employee Erika McEntarfer, manipulated the data "for political purposes."

McEntarfer is the epitome of the apolitical civil servant. She started at the Census Bureau 20 years ago as a labor economist and has worked at calculating jobs numbers ever since. She was confirmed by the Senate 86-8 in 2024, at the height of partisan polarization. www.nbcnews.com/business/eco...

The "Freethinkers" Who Aren't How the “heterodox” became what they hated

“…you shouldn’t treat the fact that you don’t believe the same dogma as everyone else as meaning you’re immune from dogma.” benthams.substack.com/p/the-freeth...

compression culture is making you stupid and uninteresting why the death of nuance should scare you -your fav gen z philosopher xx

Insightful essay on why the culture of impatience captured by “TL;DR” is destroying your capacity to think, grow, and feel. It really isn’t TL: Give it an R. open.substack.com/pub/maalvika...?

Evaluation of Minneapolis’ reducing zoning constraints in suggests that deregulation reduced housing costs by 15-23%—even without adding a lot of new units, because density alone may reduce construction costs. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I am old enough to remember when a parade of litigators marched into Andrew Hanen’s courtroom for non-party remedies.

Yes, ofc, if the only variable to be maximized were “Trump loses *now*” then, sure, non-party injunctions are a handy weapon. But maybe there are other values? Like not gumming up the Buttigieg (or whoever’s) administrative w/ non-party injunctions? Biden, Obama were afflicted w/ these plagues.

“Our politics revolve around the idea that scarce resources mean keeping people out. We are utterly unprepared for a world in which perhaps the scarcest resource will be people.” www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/o...