Particularly in the context of DC statehood, it cannot be emphasized enough that the historical reason we have "two Dakotas" is—quite literally—bc admitting the territory as separate states helped the (19th century) Republican Party engineer control of the Senate & Supreme Court.

https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1616068819516284930

These excerpts are from Barry R. Weingast & Charles Stewart III, "Stacking the Senate, Changing the Nation: Republican Rotten Boroughs, Statehood Politics, and American Political Development" (2008):
doi.org/10.1017/S08985…

More are recognizing Bush v Gore as a distinct turning point in the GOP's outright+open rejection of majoritarian democracy. I submit that Gore's concession—"Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it"—marks a similar inflection point.

https://twitter.com/bd_highsmith/status/1495466026896609286

There's a real—not insignificant—chance that in a few years' time this Court will seek to affirm an effort by democracy-proof GOP majorities in gerrymandered purple states to overturn the will of their voters and install Donald Trump as President, ending our democratic experiment

This @brentinmock report is such a compelling example of how—under our fiscal federalism design—contested municipal boundaries can function as tax shelters for white residents of segregated neighborhoods. Appreciate the cite to my municipal hoarding essay! bloomberg.com/news/features/… That piece lays out a framework—about how "Against the backdrop of residential segregation, [our] local funding structures deprive excluded communities of the services needed to meet basic human needs"—that I'm hoping to expand in my dissertation research: prospect.org/civil-rights/t…

The tremendous—practically unreviewable—power exercised by our judiciary is unique among rich democracies. Kathy Thelen (@thelenkathleen1) and I suggest that comparatively distinctive features of US courts are best understood as structurally conservative: lpeproject.org/blog/the-role-… "While the process for enacting legislation requires multiple successive moments of consensus from different actors, there are v few practical constraints limiting what 5 determined justices can do on a court of 9 that acts w the powers of review that ours has assumed for itself"

This is a great essay; loved this line, in particular: “In the US as currently constituted, the state is the form best suited to maintain, at the local level, the dominance of the suburban+rural over the urban, and, at the national level, the dominance of geography over people.”

https://twitter.com/pareene/status/1490083497519849477

“It is not just that conservatives in power are guiding us toward some form of government the political scientists call ‘managed democracy’ or ‘competitive authoritarianism’; it is that they have basically already implemented it at the state level in various places.”

Student debt replaces progressive taxation—a consequence of our choice to commodify higher ed, rather than providing it as collective good. An example of how “user-funded structures privatize social risks while shielding wealth from productive public use.” nytimes.com/2021/06/23/opi…

https://twitter.com/sparkyabraham/status/1475925976953413634

I use the word "replace" intentionally: as Andreas Wiedemann recently summarized, “A growing body of work associates higher debt levels with limited welfare states, suggesting that the former can substitute for the latter.” Student debt is but one example. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…

As noted, personal wealth is *never* comprehensively reported to our government—apart from programs supporting people experiencing poverty or disability. The resulting invisibility of high-end wealth has wide consequences for our public discourse and policy design (quick thread).

https://twitter.com/bd_highsmith/status/1446899818027159554

The invisibility of wealth means: when we attempt to "target" public programs by economic circumstance (as through means-testing)—or generally, when we measure/discuss economic inequality—we look only at the FLOW of current-year income rather than the STOCK of accumulated wealth.

can't stop thinking about the concept, developed under int'l law and also adopted by social movements around the world, of “odious debt”—ie, that certain obligations should not bind the current population, as result of the undemocratic nature of the initial borrowing arrangement. specifically, the parallels btw 1) ongoing obligations on a public that accompany various forms of public debt and 2) our obligations to the many antidemocratic features of our institutions, all designed at a time when most of the polity was formally excluded from participation.

"Quite simply, law is haunted by race, even when it doesn’t realize it. Allow me to go a step further. Much of our comfort with inequality generally—in terms of gender, class, wellbeing—is buttressed by our history of comfort with racial inequality.” papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… "And in this moment when the country is undergoing a racial reckoning, when law schools have pledged to look inward and become anti-racist and truly inclusive, it makes sense to begin with acknowledging how law schools continue to function as white spaces."

This case is not over until it's over—and journalists should stop proclaiming certainty about future events that are not certain. In NFIB, Roberts (infamously) changed his vote months after oral arguments in response to public pressure. The comments are notable—but it's not over.

https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1326191422576484353

For more on Roberts' flip see pages 957-60 in my article: ssrn.com/abstract=31929…

I'm not just being cynical. I've written fairly extensively about the politics of the ACA cases—urging folks to take this challenge seriously from the beginning.

This is not over until it is over.

I respectfully disagree. We’re in a situation where the only thing that can stop Republicans from pulling off this attempted authoritarian takeover is certain other *Republicans* (including on the courts) saying no. That outcome hasn’t been an open question before, but it is now.

https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1325976989258440704

The key point is that they don’t have to win these lawsuits in order to use these lawsuits to “win”—to hold onto power after Jan. The GOP legislatures in PA+MI could cite these cases to appoint their own electors. They’ve previously indicated that they would not, but they *could*