Daniel Sharfstein

What the Columbia Settlement Really Means

The Columbia settlement is an “astonishing transfer of autonomy and authority to . . . an administration whose disdain for the values of the academy is demonstrated anew every day.” New @knightcolumbia.org analysis of the Columbia settlement, just published. knightcolumbia.org/blog/what-th...

Suddenly, Jamaica | Henry Louis Gates Jr. Jamaica Kincaid’s commanding, irreverent work immerses her readers in a black world without explaining or defining its blackness. This seems to be a major departure in the history of African American ...

A fantastic HLG essay. See below this illustration. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Having shaken down Columbia, Trump reportedly now wants to "settle" w Northwestern & other schools. I beg anyone w power at these schools (& I've reached out to a handful of ppl at NWern directly) to read this critical analysis by Columbia law prof. David Pozen:
balkin.blogspot.com/2025/07/regu...

A pretty basic FBI rule of thumb is to always go into an interview knowing more than they think you know. No way Blanche digested the whole Epstein/Maxwell case. Original prosecutor fired. No FBI agents. Victims left out. How did he know how to test her credibility? What follow up questions to ask?

Trump Isn’t Done Cutting Your Health Care Now it’s low-income kids that Republicans are targeting.

@citizencohn.bsky.social does an amazing job explaining how harmful a policy choice it was that the Trump Administration ended continuous coverage for babies and toddlers.

A truly terrible decision for America's families.

Trump Isn’t Done Cutting Your Health Care www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-isnt...

DOGE Put Free Tax Filing Tool on Chopping Block After One Meeting With Lobbyists A key operative from DOGE initiated plans to potentially kill Direct File, the free tax filing tool developed by the IRS, after offering assurances it would be spared from cuts.

SCOOP: DOGE moved to kill Direct File, the IRS's popular free tax filing tool, days after meeting with private tax filing software lobbyists.
www.wired.com/story/doge-d...

Trump's Budget Chief Is About To Go Rogue On Massive Spending Cuts Russ Vought said to expect more massive spending cuts because Trump is "not cowing to a legislative branch’s understanding of its own authorities and powers."

i think it is bad that the president's budget director thinks congress is an advisory body and that the constitution is a set of recommendations www.huffpost.com/entry/russ-v...

Proud to be a signatory on this letter.

And, as if to prove the point, here’s the DOJ official responsible for ousting Jim Ryan and leading the “negotiations” with our Board of Visitors. It has nothing to do with protecting Jews; 100% with advancing a far-right partisan agenda.

My co-author and friend Richard Fallon died on Sunday. On the blog, I remember some of what made him such an extraordinary scholar, teacher, and human being.

Opinion | Democrats Can Finally Stop Pandering to Farmers

The Big Beautiful Bill can be a wake-up call for Democrats on food and ag policy. I wrote in @nytimes.com that now is the moment for them to stop supporting ludicrous and destructive welfare programs for rich Republican farmers who hate them. Time for a new approach! www.nytimes.com/2025/07/12/o...

Miami Herald is doing important work on DeSantis' concentration camp.

It’s a weird thing thinking of colleges for a kid to apply to and having to figure which are on the presidents kill list. #lifeunderTrump

Imagine the utter cruelty of making this decision; the people who decided, yeah, let's make it so that those toddlers here without legal status can't learn.

It's not sending people to foreign torture prison but the president of the United States dictating whether PepsiCo can have a chief diversity officer or Pete Rose is eligible for the Hall of Fame really puts the "total" in "totalitarian" defector.com/totally-petty

Harvard sociologist/polisci Theda Skocpol explains how the vast expansion of ICE in BBB may be Trump's secret weapon to overcome the barriers of federalism and complete his autocratic takeover of the American state. (History from Germany & Hungary in 20s/30s.) talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/criti...

How Trump Killed the GOP’s Love of States’ Rights From immigration to education to Medicaid, the new strategy is to impose a MAGA vision on America—whether or not states like it.

Among the many hidden features of the GOP health care cuts:

On work requirements, marketplace operations, the bill would limit state flexibility

Unless states wanted to make it *harder* for people to get insurance, in which case they'd get the green light www.thebulwark.com/p/how-trump-...

July 3: the anniversary of the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg. It’s the history Trump likes: White men doing bold deeds, with the bonus that nearly half were doing them for slavery.

Let’s take George Armstrong Custer, a most Trumpian figure, to show why Trump’s idea of history is a joke.
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It's hard to avoid recalling this passage from the English historian Tony Judt:

These women should all still be alive. Their deaths were not only preventable, they were foretold by the stories of other women from a century ago. One of those stories involved my own great-grandmother, Julia Cowan, who met the same fate in 1929. Living in Boston, Julia, a White woman, became pregnant with what would have been her fourth child. Desiring to end the pregnancy but having no access to the medical care necessary for an abortion, she took matters into her own hands and ultimately bled to death in a Boston hospital. Like so many others, she died because society did not recognize her as someone with the “dignity and authority to make these choices.”

An absolutely remarkable concurrence by Chief Justice Karofsky in the WI Supreme Court case that held the state's total abortion ban is not in effect.

CJ Karofsky recounts the stories of women, including her great-grandmother, who died bc of abortion restrictions. www.wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/D...

Part of what’s disorienting right now about being a liberal lawyer opposed to the Trump Administration’s assault on our constitutional democracy is that one faces two right-wing forces—the Administration and the Supreme Court—whose overt postures toward law are highly divergent.

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It’s Not Just a Constitutional Crisis in the Trump Era. It’s Constitutional Failure | Washington Monthly While Trump defies constitutional norms, Congress remains conspicuously silent and the Supreme Court has abdicated its responsibility.

One of our most serious constitutional historians plausibly argues "the phrase constitutional crisis no longer describes our situation. The Constitution has failed, and we no longer know which institution will rescue it." Read this piece. washingtonmonthly.com/2025/06/27/i...

Senior DOJ official shares thoughts on a #SCOTUS justice

Actually, this is the Publisher's Weekly gratifying advance review (starred). www.publishersweekly.com/9781324092452

This is a super important point. Strongly recommend at least scanning Nick’s thread from here.

The CASA op is a shanda. But in thinking through next moves, it’s crucial to be clear eyed about the paths to broad relief that remain, esp class actions, associational standing, and APA vacatur.

A blow to judicial power and a win for Trump The Supreme Court curtails judges’ ability to block the president’s agenda

SCOTUS's conservative majority is risking a chaotic patchwork citizenship policy with today's ruling in Trump v CASA. As I write in @economist.com, even if that does not come to pass, Trump will now see smoother sailing for other parts of his agenda www.economist.com/united-state...

This is an important point. The Court's rapidly expanding free exercise jurisprudence virtually never employs historical reasoning bc the history is bad for them.

Unless something dramatic happens in the interim, a birth certificate will no longer be sufficient to prove the citizenship of any child born in much of the United States after July 27.

Consistent with what @dorfonlaw.bsky.social suggests here, the underlying problem with CASA for me is it shows that SCOTUS either thinks we are in regular order, with a presumptively law-abiding executive, or thinks we aren't in regular order but thinks that's none of its business.

If the Supreme Court thinks universal injunctions are unconstitutional, to wait until *now* to say that, in this of all cases, with this of all presidents, is a devastating indictment of both its impartiality and its prudence.

Justice Jackson in dissent: "The Court's decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law."