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joshchafetz.bsky.social
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Law and Politics, Georgetown Law: https://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/josh-chafetz/ Author, most recently, of _Congress's Constitution_: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300248334/
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"According to our back-of-the-envelope math, that puts total attendance somewhere in the 4-6 million people range. That means roughly 1.2-1.8% of the U.S. population attended a No Kings Day event somewhere in the country yesterday."

🎶 Can’t find John Fetterman 🎶

What a contrast: On the one hand, one grandiose spectacle in the nation's capital, a panorama of propaganda put on by an aspiring autocrat. On the other hand, thousands of assemblies of free citizens across the nation, authentic celebrations of the proposition that here the people rule.

The mushroom lady at the Eastern Market farmer’s market is my new best friend. This is the most flavorful maitake I’ve ever had. It’s gonna make such good risotto!

🎶 Can’t find John Fetterman 🎶

“If not gestapo, why gestapo shaped?”

"It's a republic, not a democracy," say the conservatives as they get very excited for a big display of military force moving across the river into the capital.

Good point here from Stanley: lack of GOP representation occurs in fields beyond humanities and social science. It's not about universities abandoning the GOP, but the GOP divorcing itself from science.

I do enjoy the country-specific name changes for No Kings protests this weekend

Uchi Posts Liquor Liquor License Placard Downtown - Details: www.popville.com/2025/06/uchi...

Heckuva line in the riveting account of Pentagon disarray published by NY Mag today (and presumably written days or weeks ago) ... nymag.com/intelligence...

As I just flagged, this has been replaced with something which is arguably worse; requiring that basically every plaintiff seeking a preliminary injunction against the federal government pay millions or billions of dollars in "security" to pay for "costs" to the federal government if they later win.

Basil Headline Fawlty

My team and I at the Crowd Counting Consortium (@[email protected], Soha Hammam, & Chris Shay) have a new piece out: wagingnonviolence.org/2025/06/amer.... In it, we show that through May 2025, the size and scale of anti-Trump protests have dwarfed those in 2017. 🧵

NEW: Senate Republicans quietly stripped the provision from the House GOP's "big, beautiful bill" that would have allowed Trump to circumvent the courts and essentially serve as a king. www.huffpost.com/entry/senate...

Basil Headline Fawlty

talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump...

👀 Remember these ~distributions~ on Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”? Then, boy, do I have news for you. Taking the bill and tariffs together, the bottom **80%** of households are worse off, @budgetlab.bsky.social found.

New piece and Chart of the Week: All the polls on immigration and the LA protests this week: - Where Americans stand on the protesters - How people feel about Trump’s use of federal troops - And Trump's immigration approval just fell to -1.3 www.gelliottmorris.com/p/all-the-po...

New figures from CBO about how Americans at different income levels are affected by the GOP's Big Beautiful Bill. Topline finding: Richest decile gets about 2% richer. Poorest decile gets about 4% poorer. www.cbo.gov/publication/...

Possible to start to tell a unified story: "Trump is personally too old, crazy, and confused to run things, so at any given time the question is which co-president is in charge. At first it was Musk, & we got the crazy chaotic DOGE era. Then Navarro: a trade war that crashed markets. Now Miller..."

Today in masculinity politics

Folks, @resnikoff.bsky.social is right

Yikes. (SCOTUS, anticipatory)

Since Jan, Trump administration members have 1) endorsed the Confederacy, 2) endorsed white Afrikaner attacks on the post-Apartheid South African government, 3) given a Nazi salute at the inauguration, 4) endorsed the neo-Nazi party in German elections. There's a pattern here, but it's subtle.

CNN homepage right now Some of those stories: www.cnn.com/2025/06/11/p... www.cnn.com/us/live-news... www.cnn.com/2025/06/11/p... www.cnn.com/2025/06/11/p... www.cnn.com/2025/06/11/b...

FWIW, there's some tension between two claims I'm seeing on here a lot: (1) The media are misleading the public about the LA protests; and (2) The media are out of touch because their portrayal of the LA protests does not match up with public opinion.

Wow. New Quinnipiac poll finds Trump's approval at 38-54. And note this: Trump approval on immigration: 43-54 Approval on his deportations: 40-56 Can we say Trump isn't winning on this issue yet?

It's hard but important to hold two opposing thoughts simultaneously: 1. The authoritarian threat is dire & we should be yelling about constantly & doing whatever we can to fight it 2. The authoritarianism & the Mad King are wildly unpopular & the normal laws of 🇺🇸 political gravity still operate

I always note to my students that, until just a few years ago, there was a Lee Barracks at West Point, which is in some sense the equivalent of Sandhurst having a Göring Barracks. Of course, in some sense, Lee Barracks is even worse, since Göring never swore allegiance to the UK.

Pope Leo XIV, a Chicago native, stuns in a White Sox cap.

New episode of the Academic Freedom Podcast w/ tax policy and nonprofit law expert @bdgesq.bsky.social discussing the proposed university endowment tax. www.podbean.com/ew/pb-z9mv6-...

Reed: "You signed a contract with a company to reconfigure the [Qatari jet]. What is the price of that contract?” Hegseth: “That cannot be revealed.” Reed: “This is the Appropriations Committee of the United States Senate. We appropriate the money that you will spend.”

Oof. Between the purges, the departures, and the volume - DOJ is just obvi beyond capacity for dealing w/the legal consequences of everything Trump/Miller have going. Literally no one's interests are served - not theirs, not ours.