on pronouns- the broader point i would make is that what you might call binary transition has 100+ years of medical data behind it. the treatments are pretty well established. we know what gender dysphoria is. etc.
OTOH there's no medical concept whatsoever of a "nonbinary".
A person who suffers gender dysphoria, either in childhood or adolescence, and goes to a doctor and seeks to transition, changes their name and pronouns, etc., is treating a medical condition.
A person who says "i reject the gender binary" is taking and ideological position.
Jun 6 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
OK, now my second tweet-- I think a lot of people on both the Left and the Right owe me an apology. I was lectured, called "my sweet summer child", etc., for saying that the courts have a lot of power to get the President to obey court rulings.
Specifically, one of many powers I identified was that courts would rule against the Administration in future court proceedings so long as courts were being disobeyed.
And another was that courts could subject the Administration to intrusive discovery.
BOTH happened here.
Jun 4 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Not singling this person out, but this is a common, wrong view on the Right.
Temporary injunctions are about MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO UNTIL A RULING. They are legal under law that is literally older than the US government.
Once they decided to get cute with Abrego Garcia and then tried to rush deportations before a judge could rule, well, that guaranteed almost every deportee could get a temporary injunction preventing removal. Because once removal occurs the White House may say its irreversible.
Jun 1 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
i'm not going to link to any of the stories about the trans athlete at the California state meet- she's 16 years old, leave her alone.
I will say, however, as a track fan, that a SOPHOMORE doubling with wins in the triple and high jump at the state meet has never happened before
high jump/triple jump is an incredibly unusual double at ANY track meet, let alone a state meet in a major state where athletes approach elite level and there has been specialization. and while sophomores win an event every now and then, this kind of performance is unprecedented.
May 30 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
A mildly annoying bit of jurisprudence. Justice Thomas takes positions, over and over again, that nobody on the Court agrees with and nobody ever will agree with, citing his own dissents again and again. One of those positions is that schoolchildren have no free speech rights. 1/
For instance, here's Thomas in Morse v. Frederick, the "Bong Hits for Jesus" case, concurring the speech was unprotected but objecting to SCOTUS applying the "Tinker standard" (the school free speech standard) because students have no free speech rights.
a simple way of describing the Harvard anti-semitism report is that there's a long tradition of anti-semitism among segments of the Left (as there is on the Right) but there used to be social opprobrium against people who expressed it. the social opprobrium has now weakened.
the way this has happened is through the power of the Palestine issue among Lefty coalitions. Palestinian advocates on the Left tend to be maximalists who see Jewish presence in historic Palestine as colonialism and violence against Jews a justified response of the occupied.
Apr 27 • 37 tweets • 7 min read
I have some not very organized thoughts about Alex Thompson's point about the press missing the Biden story. Maybe I should just list them.
1. Reporters rely on confidential White House sources to report on what's going on in the government.
And this means-- inevitably-- that reporters' relationships are going to be somewhat compromised. The way you get access is by being a mouthpiece. If you report on stuff the insiders don't want you to report on, you'll find yourself no longer getting your calls returned.
Apr 24 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
I'm seeing a lot of conservative discourse that treats the Montgomery County "parents rights" Supreme Court case as if it is perfectly obvious and how dare the state of Maryland have this clearly unconstitutional rule.
That discourse is wrong. This is a VERY tough case. 1/
To be clear, I think there are very strong policy arguments for allowing parents wide latitude to pull their kids out of classes that contain content they object to. I don't have a high opinion of parents who do this, but I nonetheless get the point. 2/
Apr 11 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Back when all the smug types were telling me how the Trump Administration would just disobey every court order they didn't like, I pointed out that one weapon the courts had was issuing more onerous orders than they otherwise would.
This has now happened twice at SCOTUS.
First, when the Court held that Alien Enemies Act challenges had to be filed in habeas, it also said each noncitizen must get notice in advance and an opportunity to file a petition.
It is very uncommon in a denial of jurisdiction for the Court to make a ruling on the merits.
Apr 10 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
Justice Sotomayor's concurrence correctly cites the US Senate-ratified UN Convention Against Torture and the US statutes and regulations that implement it.
Let's do a thread that harkens back to my early career doing human rights cases, and the doctrine of "refouler". 1/
You will often hear people say that once the US government transfers a prisoner out of US custody, it has no further jurisdiction over it. As you can see from today's ruling, the Supreme Court is 9-0 on that not being true. The courts can require POTUS to try and get him back. 2/
Apr 8 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Regarding the "Abundance" debate, I want you to consider a hypothetical I adapted from a Substack comment.
Imagine if Ukraine military aid had to follow the rules Democrats attach to domestic projects. 1/
So, first of all, no aid can be sent, or the aid can be blocked in court, unless 25% of the arms are purchased from women or minority owned arms suppliers. 2/
Mar 30 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Just a meta comment on the Vietnam War and my tweets:
The War was folly for the US and France. But many people misinterpret that to mean the Communists were on the right side. In fact South Vietnam, despite its corruption and autocracy had a far more free society than the North.
You wouldn't have minded living in Saigon during the war, except for the effects of the Communist insurgency. Hanoi, in contrast, was an unproductive poor authoritarian hellhole that people desperately wanted to escape.
Mar 20 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
I'm going to do a quick political theory thread about this because it is interesting.
Ever notice how Democrats got creamed in several elections (1972, 1980, 1984, 1988), then stopped getting creamed? It's actually partly the effects of this. And it's fascinating.
Go back to 1972. Why did McGovern lose SOOOO badly, only winning one state? Well, because he lost the white working class-- voters who used to support New Deal Dems and now pulled away and voted for Nixon.
Part of that was Vietnam and the protests. But there was something else.
Mar 16 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
i just listened to a law professor on the usually good Advisory Opinions podcast say that the real answer to the problem of an independent Federal Reserve clashing with unitary executive theories is to ask whether central banking is an appropriate federal power in the first place
I will say-- this isn't representative of most law professors or even most right leaning ones. The majority realize central banking is a necessity and that the country will go to hell if the President can unilaterally control it.
But this belief is out there.
Mar 10 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
I'll do a longer thread on this once briefing happens, but this is actually an impossibly difficult case from a First Amendment perspective.
Here are a couple of tweets sketching out why it is so difficult.
First, what does Colorado's law do? Well, it bans "conversion therapy", and then gives it a quite broad definition, including trying to talk a patient out of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Mar 6 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
I think this piece by Adam Serwer is indicative of how a lot of writers are going to go about opposing Trump's DEI policies, but I think he's ultimately politically clueless about how toxic this issue has become.
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Here's the thing. Ever since there has been affirmative action programs, of any sort, defenders of those programs ALWAYS accuse opponents of trying to reinstitute Jim Crow. If you don't favor these programs, you must want all white institutions.
Mar 5 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I'd make a different point to conservatives. Justice Barrett was confirmable to a seat that had been occupied by Ruth Ginsburg, and conservatives had little margin for error on the pick given the 2020 election was upcoming.
Way too much discourse ignores the Senate in discussions of SCOTUS picks. But if you have little time to work with, you need someone who presents no problems that could even potentially slow her confirmation. You have to keep the Senate majority happy.
Feb 12 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Even though the theories of how it might happen are kind of esoteric and unthinkable to many people, the exercise of thinking "how would the Supreme Court require the President to follow the law?" in many ways answers the question "why is the US such a strong democracy?".
I've discovered in the last couple of days that a lot of people, left and right, have convinced themselves that our democratic institutions are weak. But in fact, even despite what Musk is doing right now, it's actually very difficult to seize absolute power.
Feb 11 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I am going to put myself on a big limb here, but there is no chance of the White House successfully refusing to comply with a final order of a court enjoining a DOGE action.
People truly haven't considered all the various weapons judges AND the state have to force compliance.
I have pointed out already that Elon Musk has massive economic interests in cases currently before the federal courts. That is reason enough he would have to obey an order or resign if Trump demanded he not do so. A federal court could default him on those suits.
Feb 9 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
at the request of the excellent @lxeagle17 , here's all the reasons why we will have free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028 and you shouldn't listen to shortsighted smug doomscrollers who say otherwise.
First, January 6, 2021 proves this. Yep that's right. I am literally starting with what seems like the strongest point on the other side.
But while 1/6 was a terrible, shocking event that should never be repeated, it also... didn't come anywhere close to reversing the election.
Feb 3 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
Around 1900, Argentina was something like the third richest country in the world. Anyone who visits Buenos Aires can see this-- there are majestic, still standing buildings from Argentina's golden era. Buildings that used to host some of the world's great corporations.
Nowadays Argentina is 71st richest in the world, with per capita national income of around $12,000 a year.
What happened? Juan Peron happened. Or, to be more specific, Peronism happened. Argentina became obsessed with making everything itself and not trading.
