1/ So, some thoughts inspired by this Jesse Wegman column on teaching Con Law, which is a thing I do every year. nytimes.com/2024/02/26/opi… 2/ First, I think Wegman accurately describes how a lot of my colleagues feel right now. His reportage is accurate; this is not a critique of him.

And Biden has promised to veto.

DC needs statehood, but as long as Congress has final say over our local laws, I'm not gonna get all that upset over Dems in red states up this cycle taking a meaningless vote.

https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1658561174819020801

And I'm not exactly alone in not getting all bothered by it, although I think @EleanorNorton is wrong about #2.

https://twitter.com/EleanorNorton/status/1658561616592482306?s=20

Really, really excellent amicus brief of history and con law scholars filed today in next Term’s CFPB funding case. supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/2… (I should add that I am not one of the amici—I don’t sign amicus briefs as a matter of policy—but I do think this is a model of the scholarly amicus genre, and also happens to be entirely correct.)

Supreme Court grants cert in Carnahan v. Maloney, because it hasn’t done enough damage to congressional oversight yet. The gist: a provision of federa law allows any 7 members of the House Oversight Comm or any 5 members of the Senate Homeland Security Comm to request materials from an agency, which the agency “shall submit.” law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/…

1/ For everyone suddenly concerned about the pace of nominees coming out of the Senate Judiciary Committee: by my count, there are currently 19 judicial nominees on the Senate Executive Calendar awaiting confirmation. 2/ That's 5 circuit judges, 13 district judges, and one DC local judge. That's a lot of floor time, even if the Senate were to do nothing but work on judicial confirmations.

I get the optics &c. but does anyone really think that Thomas would vote differently in any case if he weren't hobnobbing with fellow conservatives at a fancy resort? The thing about Thomas is that he's pretty clearly an ideological true believer. I happen to dislike giant swaths of his ideology, but I really don't think he's for sale.

OKAY, here’s the thing about “members-elect”: it obscures more than it clarifies, and the House should legislate to clarify going forward. (1/x) 2/ First, why this matters. Stuff like this:

https://twitter.com/Olivia_Beavers/status/1611045699868557338?s=20&t=oPrqmmYvLlnpDxtMvuchzA

Okay: so, I haven’t wanted to say it until now, because I’m too close. But there is a candidate for speaker who’s qualified, rested, and lives mere blocks from the Capitol … also he has a freakishly long tongue, to whatever extent that’s a qualification

"Biggs?"
"Biggs!"
"Biggs." Boebert for Jim Jordan, who was not nominated.

Happy to see that, for people who lived through 2000 and 2016, the perfect remains the enemy of the good. By all means, press your side to do better! In safe districts (ahem, AZ-Sen), primary away!

But to talk about not voting for Dem candidates in a general because of one—even one highly consequential—decision … that’s vanity.

Me, when Stubbs has figured out a mischievous new trick In this case, it’s figuring out the automated elevator voice so that he can time his steps to burst through the doors exactly as they open

1/ So, now that it's more-or-less official that the GOP will have a very slim House majority, I want to take a second to revisit this piece that I published a couple weeks ago. nytimes.com/2022/11/03/opi… 2/ A major theme of that piece--and of much of my other work, as well--is that congressional houses and members have a lot of tools at their disposal in order to press for their preferred policy outcomes. But!

1/ Characteristically excellent @jbouie column, but (uncharacteristically) I'm not sure I quite agree that we will limp along in relative stasis until an external shock forces the issue. nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opi… 2/ The thing it doesn't account for, in my view, is the significant polarization by age. The electorate is likely to keep getting more Democratic every cycle, simply because younger voters are currently A LOT more Democratic than older ones.

https://twitter.com/dellavolpe/status/1590322997893951490?s=20&t=rK7tYajxeHvP3bJ-kcdqEw

I have an 8:00 AM Zoom meeting, before which Stubbs needs his morning walk, and I am nowhere near ready to stop gleescrolling.

So what I’m saying is that I am going to be ROUGH in that meeting, and I’m sorry to my colleagues. Stubbs, meanwhile, has been asleep in the other room for hours and wishes I would keep it down

Compared to what one would expect on the fundamentals, tonight is currently looking like a very good night for the Dems.

How good is still to be determined. A few races: Barnes doing surprisingly well in WI. Sharice Davids with a big lead in KS-3. Spanberger already called in VA-7. Hochul performing like a Dem should in NY …

1/ If you're calling the Mar-a-Lago search "unprecedented," you're already buying into Trump's framing. After all, law enforcement conducts warranted searches of people's residences looking for evidence of criminal activity on a regular basis. 2/ "Ah," but you reply, "this time it's unprecedented because the residence is that of a former president and current leader of a major political party!" And this is true.

And it passes. Schumer, appropriately, thanking staff.

Sounds like we're getting the MTP on the IRA at 3:00 PM. now 4:00 PM

Major questions doctrine strikes again. Could've been worse, I suppose. But the chipping away at the foundations of the administrative state has the same endpoint as the attempts to destroy it outright.

That "real real bad on the 6th" line from Meadows is gonna get a lot of play, I think. "I remember distinctly Mark not looking up from his phone" while the list of weapons was being reeled off for him.

1/ A lot of folks who teach Con Law joking/not-joking on here about having to throw out their syllabus and start over given the Supreme Court's YOLOfest. 2/ As some of you know, I teach Con Law as an APD class, starting in 1776 and proceeding chronologically. I don't get to post-WW2 until class 19 of 26, and I don't get to the 21st century until class 23 or 24 of 26. I'll hae to make a few changes, but not many.