Noah Rosenblum

The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:

$678M raised through those spam tactics

$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.

$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)

The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

Love Richard!!

Lashing Out Over Russia and Jobs Data, Trump Displays His Volatile Side President Trump had been on a winning streak. But when faced with facts and foes that wouldn't bend to his will, he responded with disproportionate intensity.

What on earth is going on at the @nytimes.com?

But a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a famously liberal jurisdiction, ruled in Mr. Trump's favor, writing that "the government has shown that the president would have taken the same action even in the absence" of the union lawsuits. Even if some of the White House's statements "reflect a degree of retaliatory animus," they wrote, those statements, taken as a whole, also demonstrate "the president's focus on national security."

But who were the judges on the panel @nytimes.com? Were they famously liberal judges????

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/u...

The totally groundless firing of Dr. Erika McEntarfer, my successor as Commissioner of Labor Statistics at BLS, sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau. For a full statement opposing this move, read:

Trump’s first BLS Commissioner, Bill Beach, calls today’s firing groundless and dangerous.
www.friendsofbls.org/updates/2025...

Basically all my posts recently could be part of the same thread:

The problem of our time is governments—particularly the Trump administration, also the Netanyahu administration, etc—making policy based on factual premises that are not true, which they've gotten "many people" to believe are true.

This is great, but you better be citing my example of the BLS in just this way on pp 224-225 of the Fourth Branch book. 😉

And as @rickhills.bsky.social notes, the BLS chief here really is the quintessential example of a civil servant engaged in administration. Seems like mere happenstance that she serves at pleasure. This really illustrates how much more extreme Trump’s vision of the presidency is than even UET.

In our article on Arthrex (forthcoming in @dukelaw.bsky.social’s Duke Law Journal), @rickhills.bsky.social and I use the BLS as a quintessential example of administration, which can properly be insulated from presidential meddling even under unitary executive theory.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

My unprecedented use of federal power to prove I had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein is raising a lot of questions already answered by my truly unprecedented and otherwise inexplicable use of federal power to show I never have ever had anything to do with my very good friend Jeffrey Epstein

The latest Docket! Special focus on methods and new books that are making big waves in the legal history world!

Have a new legal history article or book? Want to write a book review? Offer thoughts on how your work addresses the present? We're taking pitches for the 12/25 issue-DM me!

Of course this is all illegal. But so is what’s happening at Brown, Columbia, the law firms and more.

This is a kind of power that classical liberals have always worried about. But the institutions to guard against it have become ineffectual. I am not sure we have the will to rebuild them. (3/3)

The precedent this establishes simply legitimizes government extortion. And the government could extort so many things — not just universities, but foundations, media entities, energy companies, churches.

Want a lease on federal land? A renewal of your broadcast license? Worker-visa approval? (2/3)

I assume that Trump-world thinks universities are already captured by the left, so what harm is there in using government power in agressive new ways to push them to the right. When Dems come back to power, if they undo the deals, it’s just return to status quo ante anyway.

But this is wrong. (1/3)

Years ago I used to joke that McConnell would let the republic collapse if he thought it would help the GOP in the midterms.

There was a time it was funny.

Multiple credible claims that Bove urged DOJ employees to break the law and ignore the judiciary. And the GOP Senate decided this is not disqualifying because nothing is disqualifying.

a few miscellaneous thoughts/pandering to new yorkers: the prospect park zoo and the brooklyn botanical gardens are delightful (my kids had a great time exploring both). speaking of the kids, people have been totally lovely with them everywhere we’ve been so far this week.

Bravo!!!

I am very honored that my dissertation has been selected by the American Political Science Association to receive the 2025 Leonard D. White Award for the best dissertation in the field of public administration. What a time to be thinking about why we should have a separation of powers!

The 2025 Cundill History Prize Longlist | Cundill Prize The jurors have chosen 15 exceptional titles to be longlisted for the 2025 Cundill History Prize.

Honored that my book is on the longlist for this year’s Cundill History Prize.

www.cundillprize.com/news/the-202...

Photo of Tom Lehrer

My last living musical hero is still my hero but unfortunately no longer living. RIP to the great, great Mr. Tom Lehrer.

Everyone should know about the GAO. An excellent explanatory thread.

Ah yes, glad everyone is focused on the most important and significant ethical violation of the day

In the same week we have a storied news bureau agreeing to the installation of a government commissar and an Ivy league university taking dictation from the White House. A decade ago I'd have laughed out loud at the suggestion our core institutions could be this weak & unprincipled.

Dangers of nostalgic institutionalism is such a good line

Maybe some republic-sustaining norms are still solid though. If we could understand what the institutions and conditions are that undergird those, we could direct our efforts to strengthening them, and get out ahead, as it were. Classically, it’s not law that keeps the republic, but mores. (6/6)

I understand the urge to insist on old norms. I share it. Norms are contested, and by insisting on the ones that are being discarded, we can assert their continuing validity and try to make them efficacious.

But I worry we’re building with rotten wood. After all, those norms gave way easily. (5/6)

In any case those conditions are gone now. It’s not that there are no red lines for Trump; remember how quickly he responded to the markets tanking. Our politics still has some real constraints. They’re just not the ones we learned about in school — or those that will maintain democracy. (4/6)

What were the conditions that prevented prior presidents from accusing their predecessors of treason? I’m not sure — maybe some mix of class solidarity, confidence in tit-for-tat, an ethos of public-mindedness, and a Cold War-era conviction that undermining the US would help the commies? (3/6)

Norms are never self-enforcing. They are undergirded by political, social, and economic conditions and specific institutions. Clearly those eroded over the last decades, although our leadership class seems to have mostly missed it. (2/6)