Brian Highsmith

Oh, thank you! Very kind. Robert and I actually have been meaning to email you — we've learned much from your work, and it would be great to connect again sometime! @robertmanduca.bsky.social

I'm trying to get better about using my blog as a place to collect things that are a) related to what I do and b) interesting/important (and stealing this idea from @simonwillison.net).

Thank you for digging into the appendix for this — it is exactly how we are hoping the work will be used!!

We are really excited about this article — thank you for sharing! — and will be doing a thread soon collecting the main findings and implications (with a link to an interactive nationwide map that is not in the academic publication). Watch this space!

Would love to chat if ever helpful! Thanks for the great reporting.

i reup this paper by @bhighsmith.bsky.social

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

The New York Historical’s Bonnie and Richard Reiss Graduate Institute for Constitutional History is accepting applications for its fall 2025 seminar for advanced graduate students and junior faculty. seminar | fall 2025 Native Peoples, American Colonialism, and the US Constitution Fridays, November 7 and 21, December 5 and 12, 2025 | 11 am–2 pm ET Instructors: Maggie Blackhawk, Ned Blackhawk As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, this seminar invites a critical examination of a central paradox in American constitutional history: how can a nation celebrate a founding document and constitutional tradition built, in part, on the dispossession of Indigenous homelands? Indian affairs and westward expansion were foundational to the creation and evolution of the US Constitution, yet Native history remains marginalized within the fields of constitutional history and mainstream constitutional scholarship. This seminar explores emerging historical and legal literature that re-centers Native peoples and American colonialism in the narrative of US constitutional development. Presented in person at The New York Historical and via Zoom Apply by October 10, 2025

What a great opportunity! Seminar Native Peoples, American Colonialism and the Constitution with @maggieblackhawk.bsky.social & Ned Blackhawk for grad students & "junior" faculty. In person & virtual. Apply by 10/10.
www.nyhistory.org/education/in...

Zohran's big innovation is to attack economic *and* authoritarian power. Those are allied with each other to particularly noxious effect right now, as corporate elites capitulating to Trump's authoritarian takeover are demonstrating. Zohran attacks them as linked to one another, as I show here:

These two things might seem unrelated, but together they help distill the workings of competitive authoritarianism. When the opposition loses, it gets blamed on their having terrible leaders, but part of why they have terrible leaders is bc any rising leader is hounded by the ruling party.

A professor who was actually canceled - fired - and crickets from the hysterical “anti-cancel culture” crowd.

These efforts to impose some state's restrictions (when it's abortion) or lack of restrictions (when it's guns) on other states are absurd

It also feels, imo, weirdly reminiscent of slave states' efforts to impose their laws on free states by demanding that they return people who freed themselves

If you're doing work in this area, do consider applying! I got such helpful feedback last year on my (then-early-stage) research about Gilded Age efforts to use state constitutions to challenge oligarchy, and also had a great time hanging out with other democracy scholars in Lansing. 10/10!

Dear President Milliken, Regents, and Governor Newsom, As faculty members of University of California law schools, we endorse Governor Newsom's commitment to resist the Trump Administration's unlawful actions taken against the University of California, Los Angeles. The Governor is on firm legal ground. The Trump Administration's termination and suspension of federal funds has violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in numerous ways. Governor Newsom and the University of California Regents will protect the vital interests not only of Californians but of all Americans if they defend the University of California's rights. The U.S. Department of Justice notified UCLA on July 29, 2025, that it had found that UCLA had "violated its obligations under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964." Chancellor Frenk subsequently announced that "the federal government claims antisemitism and bias as the reasons" for federal grant terminations. UCLA faces losses of at least $584 million, funding that has supported vital research on matters ranging from treatments for pancreatic cancer to advances in online security. The Trump Administration has made no pretense of following the law. Title VI permits a federal agency to terminate funding only if it has found that the particular program receiving that funding has violated the law's non-discrimination provisions. Funding cannot disappear just because the agency's policy or political preferences differ from the institution's. Moreover, the agency can act only after following specific procedural steps. Importantly, Title VI requires a formal administrative hearing—a proceeding much like a trial-before the agency can terminate funding. At the hearing, the agency would have the burden of proving the university's alleged violations of Title VI before an impartial decision-maker. If the agency prevails at the hearing, the university or other interested persons could appea…

factually supported and consistent with civil rights laws. Without the steps Title VI requires, there is no protection against an administration alleging discrimination as a pretext to force compliance with its policy or partisan preferences. Title VI's procedures guarantee the constitutional due process requirement that no person can be deprived of liberty or property without fair notice and opportunity to be heard. They protect the university and its members' academic freedom, an endowment essential to scientific research, intellectual discovery, and open debate. We are deeply committed to the core principle of non-discrimination codified in Title VI and in the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. The principle that no person may suffer discrimination because of race, color, or national origin protects equality and ensures fairness in political as well as social life. Allegations of discrimination deserve serious and careful consideration and, where established, effective redress. But this enforcement effort must follow the law. We urge Governor Newsom and the UC Regents to continue to stand up for the fundamental principles of the rule of law, due process, and equal protection. A defense of the University of California's rights in court will model respect for these bedrock principles of equality and fairness, and it will ensure that the government honors them. The Trump Administration's failure to abide by the law subverts these principles by denying the University of California a fair opportunity to contest the government's charges of unlawful discrimination before an impartial decisionmaker. It is precisely because we cherish the principles of the Civil Rights Act and the Constitution that we encourage Governor Newsom, the UC Regents, and the University of California to fight back. Through its grantmaking powers, the federal government wields vast influence over social and economic life. If not held to account by the procedural protections enacted by Congres…

🚨 150 University of California law professors (and counting) have now signed this open letter to the UC Regents and other officials, explaining the flagrant illegality of the Trump Administration’s UCLA funding cut offs, and urging the UC to fight back. sites.google.com/view/uclawfa...

Found in the archives: In protest of populists' inclusion of "statutory" detail (like labor rights) in the 1910 Arizona constitution, conservatives introduced a petition to constitutionally limit the size of women's "merry widow hats".. honestly, great gag, have to hand it to them.

We either need to enlarge the House so much that this type of hyper-gerrymandering is no longer possible, or we need to eliminate single member districts. Or both. But there is no serious definition of democracy or republic compatible with this level of districting shenanigans.

This is why so many of us should have been listening to Black voices and learning far more about the history of racism in America.

All of that led us here. Fascism was already here for many others. And now it’s coming for the rest. If we had fought for others harder, we’d have prevented it.

On Data and Democracy (Mid-Year Roundup): Charting the Assault on American Democracy and A Path Forward A narrative of a democracy in the balance, told through 29 data visualizations.

There’s so much interesting data in this latest by @adambonica.bsky.social on data and democracy. Highlights (or lowlights) to me include Supreme Court acting virtually opposite the lower courts, the U.S. being the biggest gerontocracy & low Dem turnout in 2024.
open.substack.com/pub/data4dem...

Note also that the lawsuit alleges that because race and class are correlated, providing free tuition to lower income students is also racial preference.

They just want a pure aristocracy of inherited wealth

I want to be clear: this is what American prisons are like.

I spent years posting about the humanitarian crisis in U.S. prisons. The criminal legal system consigns Americans who are incarcerated to live like this FOR YEARS. DECADES.

WOW. A lawyer told @miamiherald.com that a Florida Highway Patrol agent told her that they are calling Border Patrol to investigate anyone who "appears Hispanic" that they pull over.

That is direct evidence of racial profiling — said over the phone to a lawyer! They aren't even hiding it!

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES No. 24A1203 LINDA MCMAHON, SECRETARY OF EDUCATION, ET AL. v. NEW YORK, ET AL. ON APPLICATION FOR STAY (July 14, 2025] The application for stay presented to JUSTICE JACKSON and by her referred to the Court is granted. The May 22, 2025 preliminary injunction entered by the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, case No. 1:25-cv-10601, is stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such a writ is timely sought. Should certiorari be denied, this stay shall terminate automatically. In the event certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court. JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting. This case arises out of the President's unilateral efforts to eliminate a Cabinet-level agency established by Congress nearly half a century ago: the Department of Education. As Congress mandated, the Department plays a vital role in this Nation's education system, safeguarding equal access to learning and channeling billions of dollars to schools and students across the country each year. Only Congress has the power to abolish the Department. The Executive's task, by contrast, is to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." U. S. Const., Art. II, §3. Yet, by executive fiat, the President ordered the Secretary of Education to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure

It’s really not acceptable that this Court is allowing Trump to dismantle the federal government without even a hint of legal reason or explanation. Just raw power. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

The fact that impeachment, the obviously-intended remedy for our situation, is seemingly off the table means that the Constitution is at /best/ suspended rn. It may have value as a symbol, but understanding that we are operating outside its frame makes our predicament & our options clearer.

What the current administration understands -- and what Democratic establishment and many of my liberal fellow-travelers have ignored for far too long -- is that there are no *fundamental* rules in the game of politics.

The rules are created by humans, and they are enforced by humans. Or not.

2/

The Supreme Court's disdain for Congress, the statutory design of agencies, and the public services they provide to millions truly astounds.

Destroying a 50-year-old Cabinet-level department may be the biggest violation of the Take Care Clause in U.S. history—and six justices simply ... don't care.

I have no words. Everyone prepared for the constitutional crisis of the President defying the SCOTUS. The crisis is the SCOTUS being fully aligned with Trump’s vision of presidential power. So here we are.

The veneration of the Supreme Court by American lawyers was also a big, big mistake.

The Department of Education exists by statute. Its funding comes from Congress. The EO expresses a plan to dismantle without Congress’s consent. And now the Judicial Branch has co-signed that radical plan rather than defending the separation of powers.

All without explanation.

The majority may think: "We're not ruling on the legality of Trump's actions; it's just a stay." Bullshit. With the injunction stayed, Trump and McMahon will be able to effectuate their evisceration of the Department of Education and it will be impossible to put Humpty Dumpty back together.