Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: The British government has fiercely defended its decision to ban a pro-Palestinian group under a decades-old terrorism statute, a designation reserved mainly for Islamic militants and neo-Nazis. The rationale to outlaw the group, Palestine Action, was based on “clear advice and intelligence” after an “escalating campaign involving intimidation and sustained criminal damage,” Dan Jarvis, the security minister, said on Monday. Activists from the group have vandalized weapon factories and military equipment. Mr. Jarvis said the…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: It’s never a good idea for the FBI director to wrongly suggest that a criminal suspect has been caught — but for Kash Patel, the moment was especially ill-timed. On Wednesday evening, as the investigation into the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk unfolded in Utah, Patel bungled one of his first messages to the public. He prematurely seemed to declare that the shooter had been captured. “The subject for the horrific shooting today that took the…

Read More Read More

The Guardian reports: Thousands of Brazilians have taken to the streets to rejoice at Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction for plotting a coup, as progressive politicians celebrated the historic move and rightwing figures linked to Donald Trump responded with anger and threats. Chile’s leftwing president, Gabriel Boric, led regional congratulations of the decision to jail Bolsonaro for 27 years for leading a criminal organisation that sought to seize power after the far-right populist lost the 2022 election. “My respect to Brazilian democracy…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: Frustrated federal appeals court judges publicly wrestled Thursday with how to follow vague “signals” from the Supreme Court contained in tersely worded — and often unexplained — orders handed down on the justices’ emergency docket. Some judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals even questioned whether they still had a role to play or were expected, at least in some cases, to simply reiterate the high court’s orders and leave it at that. “They’re leaving the circuit…

Read More Read More

Reuters reports: A loan estimate for an Atlanta home purchased by Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor accused of mortgage fraud by the Trump administration, shows that Cook had declared the property as a “vacation home,” according to a document reviewed by Reuters. The document, dated May 28, 2021, was issued to Cook by her credit union in the weeks before she completed the purchase and shows that she had told the lender that the Atlanta property wouldn’t be her…

Read More Read More

NPR reports: The Trump administration launched a “campaign of retribution” against senior Federal Bureau of Investigation officials who refused to demonstrate loyalty to President Trump, firing them last month for improper political reasons before they could collect early retirement benefits, according to a new lawsuit from three senior FBI agents. The lawsuit describes leaders inside the FBI and Justice Department as both partisan and inept—struggling to please the White House and willing to dismiss anyone who crossed President Trump. At…

Read More Read More

Noah Feldman writes: In a ruling likely to go down in history as a shameful expression of anti-immigrant prejudice, the Supreme Court has allowed ICE agents to re-start “roving stops” of people suspected of being undocumented immigrants because of what they look like, how they speak, and where they are gathered to work or seek employment. The 6-3 ruling in the court’s emergency docket reversed a July order by federal district court judge in Los Angeles, which found ICE had…

Read More Read More

Mother Jones reports: On an April episode of the popular Politics War Room podcast, the veteran journalist Al Hunt posed an increasingly common question from listeners to Democratic strategist James Carville. “Is Trump looking to spark enough protest to justify declaring martial law in 2026, thus suspending the election?” Hunt asked. “You’re so correct to be concerned about this,” Carville responded. “It’s getting worse by the day. It is not going to stop getting worse. And I would be—we ought…

Read More Read More

Ian Millhiser writes: Last month, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dropped an inflammatory allegation on most of her colleagues. On August 21, the Supreme Court handed down a baffling order that required researchers, who claim that the Trump administration illegally cut off their federal grants, to navigate a convoluted procedural maze in two different courts. Jackson labeled this decision “Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist.” Calvinball, an ever-changing game featured in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, “has only one rule: There…

Read More Read More