Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

No one could have predicted…

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

White supremacy is terrorism.

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Activist Judges!

Open Thread: Letitia James Is Indicted by Trump, Remains Uncowed

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CNN: We have just learned that Letitia James has just been indicted by the DOJ

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— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) October 9, 2025 at 4:29 PM

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This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.
I am not fearful — I am fearless.
We will fight these baseless charges aggressively, and my office will continue to fiercely protect New Yorkers and their rights..

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— New York Attorney General Letitia James (@newyorkstateag.bsky.social) October 9, 2025 at 5:36 PM

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Because lèse-majesté is (inexplicably to TrumpWorld) not included in the federal criminal codes…

BREAKING: Letitia James has been indicted on one count of bank fraud in Virginia, charge brought directly by Lindsey Halligan, just like the Comey indictment.

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney.bsky.social) October 9, 2025 at 4:46 PM

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Kind of an odd thing that Trump doesn't realize that bullshit cases that die in court against his political foes just raise those foes visibility by significant amounts

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— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 9, 2025 at 4:59 PM

Per the Washington Post, “Letitia James becomes the second Trump foe charged in a case that career prosecutors had turned down” [gift link]:

The Justice Department obtained an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James on Thursday, accusing her of committing mortgage fraud when she purchased a property in Virginia.

The indictment on one count of bank fraud and one of making a false statement makes James the second of President Donald Trump’s political foes to be charged in the Eastern District of Virginia since Trump pushed out the top prosecutor there and appointed a close ally, Lindsey Halligan, to replace him. Halligan, who had no previous experience as a prosecutor, obtained an indictment two weeks ago against former FBI director James B. Comey on charges of making a false statement to Congress. He has pleaded not guilty.

Halligan presented the case against James to a grand jury in Alexandria. It is unusual for a politically appointed top U.S. attorney to present a case herself, suggesting that the office struggled to find a career attorney willing to take on the assignment.

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Open Thread: The Supreme Court Follows *Their* Money

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BREAKING: In a two-sentence, unsigned order on Wednesday, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked Trump's attempt to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, saying she can stay in her job at least until the high court hears oral arguments in the case in January.

— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule.bsky.social) October 1, 2025 at 12:59 PM

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SCOTUS set up arguments on whether Trump can remove Lisa Cook from the Fed for January, and she stay in her post at least until then. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/u…

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— Taniel (@taniel.bsky.social) October 1, 2025 at 2:05 PM

Much could happen, in that time. I might die, or the king might die — or the horse might talk!

Good for the Supreme Court, but let’s not pretend the Sinister Six considered anything beyond the strong possibility that their personal profits — and their donors’ profits — would take a hit if Trump were allowed to interfere with the Federal Reserve. [Gift link]:

… Top former Fed and Treasury officials and Ms. Cook’s legal team had warned the Supreme Court that permitting Mr. Trump to fire her while litigation over her status was underway would spur economic turmoil and undermine public confidence in the Fed.

While the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has repeatedly cleared the way for the president to fire leaders of other independent agencies, the justices have recently signaled that the central bank is uniquely independent…

The legal battle over Ms. Cook’s firing has major implications for the central bank and its ability to set interest rates free from political interference. Every living former Fed chair — Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Janet L. Yellen — joined former Treasury secretaries nominated by presidents of both parties to tell the justices in a court filing that Ms. Cook should be allowed to stay on the job while her case was being reviewed to ensure “stability of the system that governs monetary policy in this country.”

In the months since he returned to the White House, Mr. Trump has put public pressure on the Fed far exceeding that of his predecessors, with repeated demands that it lower borrowing costs. The president has also taken steps to add a political loyalist to the central bank’s Board of Governors…

The court’s decision to allow Ms. Cook to stay on as a governor was welcomed by former officials, economists and investors, who have been very concerned about the president’s efforts to erode the central bank’s longstanding independence from political interference.

That separation is seen as crucial to ensure that the Fed is setting interest rates based on what is best for the economy rather than whoever is in the White House. Past instances in countries where central banks have acted at the behest of a president have typically ended in soaring inflation, lower growth and financial volatility…

Mr. Trump is the first president to try to remove a governor in the Fed’s 111-year history…

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Sunday Morning Open Thread: How Do We Reform the Supreme Court?

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Barrett spurns Supreme Court bias claims after string of Trump shadow docket wins
“I want people to understand, agree or disagree with the decisions that the court reaches, that we are engaged in a legal enterprise."
@courthousenews.bsky.social
www.courthousenews.com/barrett-spur…

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— Kelsey Reichmann (@kelseyreichmann.bsky.social) September 25, 2025 at 5:54 PM

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Thomas also gave public remarks on Thursday, suggesting that the precedent purge isn’t ending anytime soon www.courthousenews.com/thomas-signa…

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— Kelsey Reichmann (@kelseyreichmann.bsky.social) September 25, 2025 at 10:05 PM

Josh Marshall has some proposals:

For 26 but especially 2028 it's time for Democrats to make clear that the current Supreme Court will have to be reformed (expanded in number, reformed in structure) to allow popular govt to continue in the United States. Not so much a litmus test as precondition for any other promise to be credible.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 11:38 AM

2/ My own preference is for the number of Justices to be expanded by at least six for terms of ten years (re-appointable) and the Court restructured to operate more like one of the federal appellate circuits. But that’s just one idea, not necessarily the best. This can all be done by simple…

3/ majority votes. There remains a lot of resistance to these necessary reforms. But the last eight months have helpfully clarified the extreme corruption of the current court. No new legislation can have real impact as long as the Court willfully misinterprets the plain meaning of statutes or …

4/ makes de facto rulings without opinions that provide explanation or precedent. The responsibility for this dangerous set of circumstances rests entirely with the corruption of the current members.

5/ It’s a very secondary matter. But this is also something all law professors and people in legal academia generally need to reckon with. Over the last three or four years there’s been a growing number of law profs who’ve been forced to reckon with the current majority’s extreme corruption …

6/ and realize, admit that reform is necessary. But quite a few still persist making excuses for the current corruption as though it were a matter of differing judicial philosophies etc. In a way it’s professional self-preservation because if the work of the legal judicial/academic system isn’t …

7/ an intellectual pursuit, a matter of scholarship and thought but rather a system of mystification and pure power than what are you doing exactly? Then it’s just PR work for people who got great grades as undergrads and nailed the LSATs. I’m not saying that’s the entirety of it.

8/ But that’s the reality for those who haven’t been able to reckon with the Court’s corruption.

Another ‘engaged in a legal enterprise’ proponent heard from:

Justice Anthony Kennedy tells @npr.org's @ninatotenberg.bsky.social "very worried" about our country, and that "Democracy is not guaranteed to survive."
Kennedy wrote Citizens United and was the fifth vote in the rest of the Roberts Court's anti-democratic decisions.
www.npr.org/2025/09/27/n…

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— Mike Sacks (@mikesacks.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 7:34 PM

Sunday Morning Open Thread: How Do We Reform the Supreme Court?Post + Comments (214)

Repub Venality Open Thread: The SC(R)OTUS Traitors

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Kavanaugh says no one has too much power in US system. Critics see Supreme Court bowing to Trump
flip.it/BVkaPv
LOL

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— Greed Apocalypse (@juanmunoz.bsky.social) September 12, 2025 at 1:26 PM

There’s a club, and we’re not in it…

WACO, Texas (AP) — Justice Brett Kavanaugh says the genius of the American system of government is that no one should have too much power, even as he and other conservatives on the Supreme Court are facing criticism for deferring repeatedly to President Donald Trump.

Invoking the list of grievances against King George III that the nation’s founders included in the Declaration of Independence, Kavanaugh said Thursday the framers of the Constitution were set on avoiding the concentration of power.

“And the framers recognized in a way that I think is brilliant, that preserving liberty requires separating the power. No one person or group of people should have too much power in our system,” Kavanaugh said at an event honoring his onetime boss, Kenneth Starr, a former federal judge and solicitor general celebrated by conservatives who died in 2022.

Trump’s aggressive effort to remake the federal government did not come up inside a gymnasium on the campus of McLennan Community College in Waco…

Kavanaugh’s appearance in Waco highlighted Kavanaugh’s long history with Starr, most notably his stint as a prosecutor in Starr’s independent counsel investigation of President Bill Clinton.

Starr became a household name in the late 1990s because of his investigation of Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Kavanaugh pushed Starr to ask Clinton in graphic detail about phone sex and specific sexual acts, according to a 1998 memo…

Starr followed Kavanaugh’s advice and his report, filled with the salacious details, was released in full by House Republicans, who ultimately impeached Clinton for lying under oath. The Senate acquitted him…

In 2018, Starr was among those who publicly defended Kavanaugh, then a Supreme Court nominee, as he faced sexual misconduct allegations, including from Christine Blasey Ford, who said he groped her at a party when they were teenagers and tried to remove her clothes…

Ken Starr did varied work after the Whitewater investigation. He represented Jeffrey Epstein when the financier was first accused of having sex with underage girls. Epstein pleaded guilty to minor charges and accepted a light sentence in Florida in 2008, in a deal that avoided a more serious federal prosecution.

Starr served as dean of the Pepperdine University law school in the Los Angeles area and then as president of Baylor University, also in Waco. But he was forced out of the Baylor job in 2016 in the midst of a sexual assault scandal involving players on the school’s football team. A school-commissioned report found that under Starr’s leadership, Baylor did little to respond to the allegations.

Then in 2020, Starr joined Trump’s defense team that won Senate acquittal of the president after his first impeachment.

John Roberts:

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— Nied ?? (@nied.bsky.social) September 9, 2025 at 4:45 PM

Andrew Perez and Ryan Bort, at Rolling Stone — The Supreme Court Is Trump’s Partner in Crimes Against America:

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GOP Venality Open Thread: Amy Comey Barrett, Gleefully Shilling for the Kakistocracy

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I think the fact that SCOTUS doesn’t think we’re in a constitutional crisis is a big part of the constitutional crisis.

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— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) September 5, 2025 at 6:52 AM

As an elderly white woman, am I allowed to use the phrase This heffa?

Because when I see clips of Amy Cunning-Bunny smirking her way through her new book tour, that’s my first thought: This heffa.

I have not been a fan since Comey Barrett emerged from her Federalist Society cocoon and smirked her way through her rigged confirmation hearing, holding up a blank sheet of paper to indicate just how she’d handle her new job: By deciding ‘the law’ was whatever her kakistocratic masters wanted. And she’s held firm to that standard, giving the rich business elites an occasional sop as she gleefully cuts apart the networks that hold our embattled nation together.

Her new book / book tour are an open reward for her fealty; I wish I could be sure it had been rushed out now because the market might not last through the midterms next year.

Here’s the NYTimes‘ characteristically mealy-mouthed review — “Amy Coney Barrett’s Memoir Is as Careful and Disciplined as Its Author” [gift link]:

… Barrett, who was co-author of a 2016 paper calling the 14th Amendment “possibly illegitimate,” maintained that the lower courts’ efforts to uphold a constitutional right were exercises in judicial overreach. She even directed a pointed swipe at her fellow justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose blistering dissent warned that the majority was creating a “zone of lawlessness” for the president to “take or leave the law” as he wishes.

“We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument,” Barrett wrote, with icy disdain, “which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself.”

I kept thinking about this spectacularly scornful line while reading Barrett’s new book, “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.” Barrett highlights the “collegiality” of the Supreme Court, whose traditions include weekly lunches and welcome dinners for new justices. When Jackson was confirmed in 2022, it was Barrett’s turn to host; she served Jackson’s favorite dishes and asked a Broadway performer to sing selections from “Hamilton.”

It all makes for a pleasant (if surreal) scene. But if you really listen to what Barrett says in “Listening to the Law,” you’ll quickly realize that she isn’t on the Supreme Court because she wants to make friends. Barrett, a former law professor and circuit court judge, clearly knows that readers crave relatability, especially from women, so she deigns to offer a few breadcrumbs. But her book is inevitably a controlled performance, as careful and disciplined as its author. She’s not about to let her guard down, even for a reported $2 million advance…

This is from Justice Barrett’s new book. I’ll just observe that it‘s a very strange metaphor to use to describe the decision to move to Washington D.C. to become a Supreme Court Justice. www.cbsnews.com/news/book-ex…

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— Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof (@evanbernick.bsky.social) September 7, 2025 at 2:18 PM

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Turning down a life of comfort in South Bend for a life of more comfort and massive power in DC. Powerful decision.

— Courtney Milan (@courtneymilan.com) September 7, 2025 at 2:36 PM

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

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A judge has ruled that the Trump administration cannot deny funding to Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and 30 other cities and counties because of policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration efforts.

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) August 22, 2025 at 9:46 PM

More media outlets have to start pointing out that ‘Trump says’ has the same real-world impact as a toddler announcing he’ll have ice cream and cheezy puffs for dinner: It only happens if the adults let him get away with it. And that goes double for what his little minions announce:

A judge ruled late Friday the Trump administration cannot deny funding to Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and 30 other cities and counties because of policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration efforts.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco extended a preliminary injunction blocking the administration from cutting off or conditioning the use of federal funds for so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions. His earlier order protected more than a dozen other cities and counties, including San Francisco, Portland and Seattle…

Orrick also blocked the administration from imposing immigration-related conditions on two particular grant programs.

The Trump administration has ratcheted up pressure on sanctuary communities as it seeks to make good on President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to remove millions of people in the country illegally…

Orrick, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, said the executive orders and the “executive actions that have parroted them” were an unconstitutional “coercive threat.”

In May, the Department of Homeland Security published a list of more than 500 “sanctuary jurisdictions,” saying each one would receive formal notification that the government had deemed them noncompliant. It also said it would inform them if they were believed to be in violation of any federal criminal statutes.

The list was later removed from the department’s website after critics noted it included localities that have actively supported the administration’s tough immigration policies…

(Also, note that the entire Trump administration is highly incompetent.)

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Trump is Stockton Rush, the rich dilettante who built the deadly submarine for rich guys. Except the sub is the entire American economy.
And the popping noises you're hearing? Not good…
www.thebulwark.com/p/oceangate-…

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— Adam Keiper (@adamkeiper.com) August 22, 2025 at 9:46 PM

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(More) GOP Venality Open Thread: Justice Roberts, Traitor

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really important to emphasize that roberts' view of the executive branch as comprising a single individual is literally contradicted by the text of the constitution itself

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— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) July 21, 2025 at 9:26 AM

likewise for roberts’ vision of strict separation of powers, where the authority of one branch cannot touch another. this, as well, is contradicted by both the text and explicit logic of the constitution

now all of this is easily explained if you just assume that john roberts and his merry band of dipshits are working backwards from the conclusion that a republican president cannot be encumbered by any other actor or institution…

…but assuming he has a real vision in mind, it is not one with any roots in the history or tradition of the american political order.

Peter Shane, in the Atlantic, “This Is the Presidency John Roberts Has Built” [gift link]:

No one on the Supreme Court has gone further to enable Donald Trump’s extreme exercise of presidential power than the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts. Associate justices have also written some important opinions shaping executive power, and the Court has issued ever more important unsigned orders, but the most transformative opinions—the opinions that directly legitimize Trump’s unprecedented uses of power—are Roberts’s handiwork. This is not happenstance. Under Supreme Court practice, the most senior justice in the majority—which is always the chief justice when he so votes—determines who will write the main opinion. Roberts reserved these milestones for himself.

And what milestones they have been. Roberts upheld the first Trump administration’s “Muslim ban” on the grounds that the president’s national-security role precludes courts from taking account of the bigotry undergirding an immigration order. He remanded a lower court’s enforcement of a congressional subpoena for Trump’s financial information, writing that “without limits on its subpoena powers,” Congress could exert “imperious” control over the executive branch and “aggrandize itself at the President’s expense.” He has come close to giving the president an untrammeled right to fire any officer in the executive branch at will. And he took the lead in inventing a presidential immunity from criminal prosecution that could exempt the president from accountability for even the most corrupt exercises of his official functions…

What America is witnessing is a remaking of the American presidency into something closer to a dictatorship. Trump is enacting this change and taking advantage of its possibilities, but he is not the inventor of its claim to constitutional legitimacy. That project is the work of John Roberts.

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