Shahrzad Shams

Presidential Crimes - Boston Review Torture must be addressed through legal instruments, not simply through the electoral repudiation of bad policy.

“The incalculable damage left by Bush and Cheney’s day-in-and-day-out contempt for national and international law includes the power to sweep forward in time and trivialize into a matter of personal preference any future president’s adherence to the law.“

Elaine Scarry in 2008:

Still thinking about Zohran’s full-throated defense of immigration and how long i’ve waited for it. No bullshit about border security or “legal” immigrants but just unabashed support for immigrants. How many people feel so much more seen today? I know I do. 1/

Can Democrats Accept the Obvious?

The most obvious thing in politics is often the hardest to admit: If you lose an election, the best thing that you can do to make sure you win the next one is to find a message that puts you closer to the median voter than you were the last time around.

It is time to admit that Republicans won the 2024 election by running to the center.
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/o...

It probably doesn’t matter but I would be flooding the zone with images of the White House destruction right now.

Only perfect candidates off the harvard law conveyor belt pls, highly disciplined, all boxes checked, well liked and humble, absolutely no spiritual connection to having a physical body except for severe IBS, volunteered at a soup kitchen in high school, signs email "cheers," etc.

“Let him among you who is without a Nazi tattoo cast the first stone.” -The Bible

The AWS outage reveals the web’s massive centralization problem What happens when key infrastructure providers are too good at their jobs? Everyone relies on them—with catastrophic consequences when they fail.

🧵 Yesterday’s AWS failure wasn’t just a massive service disruption. It exposed how dependent our economy and public institutions have become on privatized, centralized systems. 1/4
www.fastcompany.com/91425078/aws...

Maybe it's time for the pathetic and cowardly Democratic Leadership to FINALLY ENDORSE ZOHRAN MAMDANI?

One of the Biggest Cases of the Supreme Court’s Term Is John Roberts’ Decadeslong Pet Project If there’s one thing the Roberts court has been consistent on, it’s this.

Everything about John Roberts's approach to the Voting Rights Act makes sense when you remember that John Roberts has has always been hostile to the Voting Rights Act, never believed it was appropriate, and has spent most of his 45-year legal career working to hollow it out.

Very bad: OSU unilaterally cancelled the registration of grad students attending the joint conference of the National Society of Black Physicists and the National Society of Hispanic Physicists. And OSU won't fund recruiting at the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.

It was inevitable that, without needed change and reform, the War on Terror would swing back to America

It’s the march of capitalism and its reliance on hidden and then overt authoritarianism. We can see where this is going by looking at what we did to others, and so we must band together with them

Unsurprisingly all over online right-wing media channels too.

Amid the flood of ads for grifty “wellness” products and the occasional pitch to invest in gold, these recruitment ads have joined the steady rotation of horseshit on Rumble

ICE is not only chasing down every random brown person in Chicago, they have a cameraman following them to film this for social media. Cruelty and inhumanity as content.

Economic Policy Is Disability Policy: Launching the Disability Economic Policy & Research Consortium - Roosevelt Institute When we apply a disability lens to economic policy and research, we zoom in on people who deeply understand the flaws in our systems and are more likely to interact with public programs and services. ...

Last month @rooseveltinstitute.org and NASI launched the Disability Economic Policy & Research Consortium. Read my colleague Lena Bilik's latest below on how a focus on this oft ignore population is crucial to building an inclusive economy.

rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/disabil...

Deputy Director of Democratic Institutions lays out the cases to watch in this SCOTUS term.

With the influence this court has had on landmark decisions and precedent, the outcomes will have long-lasting impacts.

now is not the time to ban phones why Jonathan Haidt sucks

"Haidt’s thesis is broader than just 'new thing bad.' In The Anxious Generation and his public commentary you find a dismissal of young people as a thinking, feeling group: they are anxious because of phones, they empathize with Gaza because of phones."

Important piece by @lookheron.bsky.social tracing how the steady neoliberalization of higher education has sowed fertile ground for its takeover by authoritarians

Stephen Miller said last year this was the plan. They said it out loud. Some of us highlighted his remarks at the time and warned how dangerous they were. Most of the media missed them and/or moved on from them. It’s happening:

And if we zoom out a bit, we can see that depending on how SCOTUS rules, the case could effectively grant candidates greater power in our political system at the expense of voters—you know, the people those candidates are *supposed* to be working for.

Mail Ballot Security Election officials and the U.S. Postal Service have a range of systems to secure mail voting and ensure election mail is delivered on time.

Mail-in voting leads to higher voter turnout, greater voter confidence, and more informed voting, as people have more time to deliberate when casting ballots from home. And as @brennancenter.org shows ⤵️ the US has robust systems to ensure mail voting is secure.

www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...

If SCOTUS rules for the petitioners, millions of Americans who rely on mail-in voting could face new barriers to their right to vote, and election officials would face additional strain, as certification would need to happen earlier—despite clear evidence that vote-by-mail strengthens democracy.

Their argument is that this practice unconstitutionally dilutes votes and imposes “campaign burdens.” And while the case turns on a procedural question—whether federal candidates have standing to challenge Illinois' process for counting ballots—its potential implications are very much substantive.

3) Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections. This case could undermine mail-in voting—and possibly other state election rules—across the US.

Federal candidates are challenging an Illinois law that says mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day can be counted if received up to 14 days after.

How the Supreme Court Warped Civil Rights Laws to Undermine Civil Rights The justices’ decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services is the culmination of a decades-long conservative push to hollow out federal civil rights laws.

Depending on how the Court rules in this case, the decision could have massive consequences not just for the Voting Rights Act, but civil rights law more broadly—a longtime project of reactionaries on the Court ⤵️

ballsandstrikes.org/legal-cultur...

Now, this term, the Court will decide whether Louisiana's creation of that second district violates the 14th or 15th Amendments to the Constitution.

The question is whether the act of remediating a racist measure is actually *itself* a racist measure.

Finding for the Black voters, a federal court ordered Louisiana to redrew its map to include a second majority-Black district, which it did.

But then, a group of "non-Black voters" sued, claiming that the new map unconstitutionally used race as the sole determining factor in drawing the new map.

2) Louisiana v. Callais. This case may gut what's left of the Voting Rights Act. After the 2020 census found that 1/3 of Louisiana's population is Black, the state redrew its districting maps. But it was drawn with only *one* majority Black district.

The math failing to math, Black voters sued.

Citizens United and the Decline of US Democracy: Assessing the Decision’s Impact 15 Years Later - Roosevelt Institute In a new analysis, Rachel Funk Fordham examines the 15-year legacy of Citizens United, assessing its impact on democracy through new evidence and political science research and offering recommendation...

The decision to hear this case comes 15 years after the Citizens United v. FEC ruling.

As @rfunkfordham.bsky.social shows ⤵️ Citizens United's impact on our democracy has been disastrous. Now, with NRSC v. FEC, SCOTUS may well build on this shameful legacy.

rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...

But it also places caps on these expenditures, which are being challenged in this case as a violation of the 1st Amendment.

If the Court strikes these limits down, big money will come to play an even larger role in our political system, while party control becomes even more consolidated.

1) NRSC v. FEC. This case has the potential to further shift power away from American voters and into the hands of donors.

Federal law currently allows political parties to make certain expenditures—known as "coordinated party expenditures"—to support federal candidates' general election campaigns.

At the outset, it's worth noting that we likely don't yet know of some of the most consequential cases the Court will take up this term, due in part to the justices' increasing reliance on the deeply antidemocratic shadow docket.

That said, here are a few cases I've got my eye on: