Joseph Burns

Tonight.

Judge William Young's ruling against Rubio and Noem is a lesson for all in the Trump era Young lays bare the unconstitutionality of the Trump administration's student deportation efforts — and issues a challenge to America. Also: More court pushback.

NEW: Judge William Young's ruling against Rubio and Noem is a lesson for all in the Trump era.

Young lays bare the unconstitutionality of the Trump administration's student deportation efforts — and issues a challenge to America.

Today, at Law Dork:

The moment where Hegseth ends his speech and not a single officer claps is the most hopeful thing I have seen in a long time.

Voters Elected Her to Congress. Mike Johnson Is Making Her Wait. “At this point, I can’t hire staff. We don’t have an office. I can’t get around without being escorted,” Arizona’s incoming House Democrat, Adelita Grijalva, said Tuesday.

Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva hasn't been sworn in, so she has to roam Congress with an escort

I saw her this morning going through security along visitors — something lawmakers don't need to do when walking into the Capitol

More on her limbo status here:
www.notus.org/congress/ade...

Glad the work is getting done.

You can never get out of a ditch that you can’t admit that you’re in.

Mike Johnson continues to refuse to swear in a Democrat who won in a landslide.

To what end would he use courage, I wonder?

Most of the power authoritarians have is freely given. We should not comply with them in advance.

Trump is far weaker than he looks. So is the GOP. We should draw them out, drain them at every opportunity, and fight for people’s wellbeing at every turn.

We have been sent here to fight for people.

Getting the phylogeny right is hardly a political consideration.

I appreciate the liberalism, but the fulcrum is missing. The liberal order isn’t governing.

But if you can be effective with this, more power to you.

He’s a wannabe, but he’s gotten far enough and the institutions are supine enough that it’s a four alarm fire.

Terms-schmerms, it’s man the barricades time.

Granting Republican outrage as good faith was an obvious error at the time.

White House withdraws controversial pick to lead Bureau of Labor Statistics The statistical agency has lacked a leader since Trump fired its commissioner over a weak jobs report in August.

We sunk the Bismark!

www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

About Overthinking the Shutdown talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/about...

If you’re going to take on an impossible cause, Constitutional governance is a better hill to die on.

Every single one of these clips was taken today in downtown Portland. Portland doesn’t want or need a federal takeover. If Trump insists on sending federal “resources” he can start with funding health care, bridges, affordable housing, and wildfire protection to name a few.

One better: the discernible political need to reignite Portland’s historic left-right tension.

# of paragraphs for news orgs to mention there's no discernable need to deploy troops to Portland, Oregon

The Guardian: 1st paragraph
BBC: 4th paragraph
AP: 5th paragraph
Time: 6th paragraph
Politico: 8th paragraph
NPR: 9th paragraph
CNN: 10th paragraph
NBC: 12th paragraph
Fox News: never mentions

He abuses the truth in furtherance of other abuses.

CARTOON OF THE DAY

Dallas Morning News shareholders vote to deny the hedge fund Alden Global Capital Is a newspaper a financial asset or a community trust? This particular standoff ended with an increasingly uncommon answer.

"Dallas Morning News shareholders vote to deny the hedge fund Alden Global Capital."

The hedge fund offered more money.

Did you hear what I said?

"Alden Global Capital is well known as the worst possible newspaper owner for anyone who cares about journalism." www.niemanlab.org/2025/09/dall...

Why not both?

I would argue that many who run for public office are constitutionally ill-suited to defend the system they expected to manage. (like the system itself)

Though the last decade might’ve clued them in.

Probably a major qualification for his current job.

Mafia loves it when they’ve got a handle on you.

He literally owes them everything. A guaranteed factotum.

The ambition keeps growing. After redefining it (successfully as far as the media is concerned ) they’ve decided to use it against any vestige of public integrity or human decency.

Eventually it’ll mean refusing to pay your bribes.

If the models stop chasing “genius” and start admitting what they don’t know and reducing error rates, maybe the cohort of burned early-adopters will be low enough to avoid the bust.

Investments don’t seem to be going that way.

rewatching NETWORK for a project 👀 and it is absolutely shocking how prescient this film is. it’s like paddy chayefsky was granted a vision of america in 2025 and he furiously tried to turn what he saw into something intelligible to viewers in the 1970s

Just think of all the buddies who had advance notice of his tariff flip-flops.

More grift.

Starring: Emil Bove, then at the DOJ and now a lifelong federal judge, who the article says pushed DOJ to be skeptical of the investigation

Defense Secretary Hegseth requires new 'pledge' for reporters at the Pentagon The Pentagon is implementing new guidelines that will require journalists to sign a pledge and agree to report only approved and officially released information.

"journalists must sign a pledge not to gather any information, including unclassified reports, that hasn't been authorized for release" or lose their press credentials - openly authoritarian www.npr.org/2025/09/20/g...

The H1-B visa thing is, like everything else in the Trump administration, set up to carve up exceptions for friends and punish enemies. It’s the authoritarian thru-line that stitches everything together.