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Justice Jackson warns the Supreme Court is manipulating the rules to benefit Trump

Justice Jackson warns the Supreme Court is manipulating the rules to benefit Trump

Ian Millhiser writes: The Social Security Administration v. AFSCME case arises on the Court’s “shadow docket,” a mix of emergency motions and other matters that the Court decides on an unusually tight schedule, without full briefing or oral argument. Prior to the first Trump administration, the Court rarely granted requests for shadow docket relief — indeed, lawyers were so discouraged from seeking shadow docket decisions that both the Bush and Obama administrations only requested it about once every other year….

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Sudanese people who depend on Starlink don’t have the luxury of hating Elon Musk

Sudanese people who depend on Starlink don’t have the luxury of hating Elon Musk

Yassmin Abdel-Magied writes: Once upon a time, my dream was to work for Elon Musk. I was a young mechanical engineering graduate with hopes of inventing the machines of the future. Unlike other tech billionaires whose inventions existed in boring binary and flat 2D, Musk seemed like a man from a different era, a man after my own heart. He wanted to revolutionize the automobile, travel to space, shift earth and change the world, and he wanted to do it…

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Perceived social breakdown fuels desire for authoritarian leaders, new study shows

Perceived social breakdown fuels desire for authoritarian leaders, new study shows

PsyPost reports: When people perceive society as falling apart, they may become more receptive to authoritarian leaders—those who promise order, control, and certainty. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which provides the first causal evidence linking the perception of societal breakdown, or “anomie,” to support for authoritarianism. According to the researchers, this link is explained by a sequential process: anomie leads people to feel politically powerless, which then creates political…

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America is on the brink of becoming a failed democracy

America is on the brink of becoming a failed democracy

Jonathan Sumption, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Britain, writes: As an observer of democracies and a constitutional lawyer in Britain, I have watched with rising alarm as many Western nations threaten to become failed democracies. They may not yet be like Venezuela, Peru, Hungary, Turkey or Russia. But these countries show what can happen when a democracy dies with a whimper, not with a bang. There may not be tanks on the lawns or mobs in the…

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Trump is making himself the enemy of workers across America

Trump is making himself the enemy of workers across America

CBS News reports: A top California union official was charged with interfering with law enforcement operations after he was arrested during anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, according to court documents filed Monday. David Huerta, the president of the California division of the Service Employees International Union, is set to appear in court for an initial appearance on one felony charge of conspiracy to impede an officer after he was arrested Friday during protests over ICE raids. The protests lasted through…

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We are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police state

We are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police state

Robert Reich writes: History shows that once an authoritarian ruler establishes the infrastructure of a police state, that same infrastructure can be turned on anyone. Trump and his regime are rapidly creating such an infrastructure, in five steps: (1) declaring an emergency on the basis of a so-called “rebellion”, “insurrection”, or “invasion”; (2) using that “emergency” to justify bringing in federal agents with a monopoly on the use of force (Ice, the FBI, DEA, and the national guard) against civilians…

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A regime that rejects the legitimacy of protest will always accuse protesters of being violent

A regime that rejects the legitimacy of protest will always accuse protesters of being violent

Rebecca Solnit writes: I think maybe it’s begun, the bigger fiercer backlash against the Trump Administration which is itself a violent backlash against every good thing that’s happened over the past several decades – the advance of rights for nature, women, children, indigenous peoples, BIPOC and immigrants/refugees, queer people, trans people, people with disabilities, workers, the right of us all to be free from being poisoned by food, water, air. It’s begun in Los Angeles, the city of angels, a…

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Trump risks turning U.S. military into deadly political force, veterans warn

Trump risks turning U.S. military into deadly political force, veterans warn

The Guardian reports: The Trump administration’s deployment of national guard troops to Los Angeles to intervene in civilian protests in the face of opposition from the Californian governor is a major escalation that risks the politicisation of the US military, armed service veterans are warning. Former top military figures have told the Guardian that the decision to put up to 2,000 troops under federal control and send them into the streets of LA is a violation of the military’s commitment…

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Gov. Newsom unfazed by threats of arrest made by Trump’s deportation goon

Gov. Newsom unfazed by threats of arrest made by Trump’s deportation goon

NBC News reports: California Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against threats of arrest by Trump administration officials, remaining defiant as he oversees clashes between law enforcement agents and protesters in response to immigration raids across Los Angeles while also managing an ongoing power struggle with the federal government. Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, warned Saturday that immigration operations and the presence of federal personnel would continue in the city despite criticism from Democratic leaders who’ve warned it could further escalate…

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Overview and updates on the Abrego Garcia criminal case

Overview and updates on the Abrego Garcia criminal case

  A phony indictment? A corrupt “extradition” order to El Salvador? A prosecutor who won’t abide by corruption and resigns? All of this and so much more when Michael Popok updates you on Armando Abrego Garcia’s arraignment and developments in the Tennessee Federal criminal case, and explains why none of this gets the Trump Administration out of hot water with Judge Xinis in Maryland.

Time for non-violent civil disobedience

Time for non-violent civil disobedience

Robert Reich writes: Trump wants to escalate tensions. He wants a replay of the violence that occurred in the wake of the George Floyd murder — riots, mayhem, and destruction that allow him to escalate his police state further — imposing curfews, closing down parts of Los Angeles, perhaps seeking to subdue the entire state. And beyond. Please do not give him this. Don’t fall into his trap. We cannot be silent in the face of Trump’s dictatorial move. Silence…

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For Trump, deploying the National Guard in LA is a dress rehearsal

For Trump, deploying the National Guard in LA is a dress rehearsal

David Frum writes: If Trump can incite disturbances in blue states before the midterm elections, he can assert emergency powers to impose federal control over the voting process, which is to say his control. Or he might suspend voting until, in his opinion, order has been restored. Either way, blue-state seats could be rendered vacant for some time. Precedents do exist for such action. In autumn 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant imposed martial law on counties in South Carolina to…

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ICE arrested David Huerta, a beloved California union leader. Does Trump understand what that means?

ICE arrested David Huerta, a beloved California union leader. Does Trump understand what that means?

Anita Chabria writes: To say he is a beloved and respected leader in both the union and California in general is an understatement. You can still find his bio on the White House website, since he was honored as a “Champion of Change,” by President Obama. Within hours of his arrest, political leaders across the state were voicing support. “David Huerta is a respected leader, a patriot, and an advocate for working people. No one should ever be harmed for…

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ICE: Crossing state lines to incite riots

ICE: Crossing state lines to incite riots

Harold Meyerson writes: Let’s be clear about who, exactly, the agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been arresting in and around Los Angeles. On Friday, they raided downtown L.A.’s fashion district, where seamstresses and retail clerks, some of them undocumented immigrants, are clustered. On Saturday, they made arrests outside a Home Depot in Paramount, a working-class L.A. suburb where day laborers, some of them undocumented immigrants, assemble daily to get work on small-scale construction projects. The microscopically thin…

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