Profile avatar
akalhan.bsky.social
Law professor, Drexel Univ • Fellow, UC Nat'l Ctr for Free Speech & Civic Engagement • Affiliated fellow, Yale ISP • NYC Bar Ass'n Rule of Law Task Force • AAUP Cmte A on Academic Freedom ⚾ Cleveland native/partisan 🏀 runner • https://linktr.ee/akalhan
1,538 posts 17,802 followers 4,468 following
Prolific Poster

Gestapo is short for Geheime Staatspolizei. Literally translated to Secret State Police.

NEW -- SecDef Hegseth is asked in Congress what authority, precisely, Trump is using to put troops on the ground in Los Angeles. Hegseth says he doesn't know but is certain Trump has it. www.huffpost.com/entry/hegset...

Trump at -11 net approval on immigration and -16 on deportations in new Quinnipiac poll. Possible this isn’t the dominant issue for Trump that some people have assumed! www.gelliottmorris.com/p/kilmar-abr...

Updated presidential issue approval ratings chart (YMMV) reveals a dip in Trump's immigration approval over the last week. Due mainly to a couple of big negative polls. This is the trend to watch over the next week www.gelliottmorris.com/p/data

I guess I'd missed this. The new head of the Office of Legal Counsel at DOJ is a former Ken Paxton soldier from his wildly corrupt AG's office down in Texas. Old news. from Jan. But I hadn't heard. Arsonist now running the fire dept. www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/release...

KENNEDY: Harvard is in many respects violating federal law SCARBOROUGH: What federal law is Harvard violating? KENNEDY: Harvard practices ideological capture

Reporter: "This administration has talked a lot about defending law enforcement...but you've been criticized for having a double standard with the president pardoning all these people who attacked police officers on Jan. 6." Bondi: "Well, this is very different."

Cops on horses hitting dudes in plaid shirts with sticks because the dudes are not walking quite fast enough? Anyway totally insurrectiony, very invasion.

Republican senators freaked out when asked about Trump's military parade costing $45 million. Some hid in elevators. Some stared off into space. Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) snapped: “I answered the question I wanted to answer!” www.huffpost.com/entry/gop-se...

ICE Releases Gavin Newsom Beheading Video

Pathetically incompetent journalism

Dear @washingtonpost.com : Why will any academic talk to you now? That parenthetical is an insult to his academic integrity: “Is he saying this bc of his years of hard work and research, or just bc he is a partisan hack? 🤷🏻‍♂️” If he’s wrong, show he’s wrong. Don’t attack via snide insinuation.

the insinuation here that Levitsky’s politics might influence his scholarship has the causation exactly backwards

the word "constitution" does not appear in this article nor does any indication that the Trump regime's actions might be illegal it does however note "White House officials maintain that the president is ... standing up for 'law and order' as Democrats go soft on violent agitators."

Pope Leo’s first US episcopal appointment, San Diego’s Bishop-designate Pham, a Vietnamese refugee, invites priests and faith leaders to “stand in solidarity”with migrants at courthouse on June 20, as they make court appearances.

Journalistic malpractice/incompetence to not point out clearly and up front that this directly violates a federal statute

This is a real thing being posted and circulated by the Department of Homeland Security, referring to undocumented immigrants as “foreign invaders” and urging good Americans to turn them in. (I’ll leave it to BlueSky historians to find comparisons to WWII era materials.)

Trump Claims He Can Overrule Constitution With Executive Order Because Of Little-Known ‘No One Will Stop Me’ Loophole theonion.com/trump-c...

This was always clearly the objective and many in the media also insisted on treating anyone who said so clearly like they were some kind of lunatic bsky.app/profile/carn...

FFS @politico.com

Somehow showing more leadership on immigration than elected Democrats

Trump underwater in literally every single issue. 38% approval overall. 27% approval on his spending bill. 40% approval on deportations. Musk also at 30% approval. 38% approval for RFK Jr. 35% approval for JD Vance. Nobody fucking wants any of this. poll.qu.edu/poll-release...

He was also a committed slaveowner who brutalized the human beings he owned. He didn’t fight for honor.

From my undergraduate lecture notes on the Weimar Republic's collapse

Billionaire Walmart heiress Christy Walton is paying for a full page ad in the New York Times entitled ‘No Kings’ and MAGA are now calling to boycott Walmart. This is funny AF. 🤣

good piece from @jeffhauser.bsky.social. it is maddening that so much discourse ignores that Kamala Harris ran precisely the campaign the "popularist" crowd wanted prospect.org/politics/202...

FFS @politico.com

Stephen Miller’s unhinged rage goes straight back to the utter impossibility of his goal: making America white. It can’t be done. So he lashes out with sadistic attacks on Los Angeles and, of course, innocent immigrants. www.salon.com/2025/06/11/s...

Somehow showing more leadership on immigration than elected Democrats

There are huge opportunities right now for ambitious Democratic governors and legislators to make names for themselves. Don't let Newsom hog all the glory.

Steve Bannon literally wants to destroy democracy and replace it with an authoritarian state, and anyone who is involved with him is complicit in that project.

Oh great, a Hatch Act violation and ignorance about California term limiting governors, all in one!

"In the video, agents who hid their faces with masks and sunglasses and traveled in marked border patrol vehicles, are informed they were on private property. “Excuse me, ma’am, listen to me, you are interfering with my arrest,” the agent said. “I am doing my job. You don’t have nothing to say.”"

NIH Staff have written The Bethesda Declaration urging the NIH director to end the politicization of science and medicine and a return to academic freedom and scientific excellence. Sign in support. Please share broadly. www.standupforscience.net/bethesda-dec...

There is no way to move forward unless rich liberals find a real media operation

ABC News said it won't renew senior national correspondent Terry Moran's contract. Moran was recently suspended after calling President Trump and top aide Stephen Miller "world-class" haters.

Democrats should share videos of the January 6th insurrection and Trump pardoning all of them throughout this week.

Journalistic malpractice/incompetence to not point out clearly and up front that this directly violates a federal statute

Hmm, a foreign flag, un-American activity, and violence, you say?

I will be damned if I allow a bunch of Confederate-waving January 6th apologists give the American people a lecture on flag waving. There is ZERO reason to enter an argument about patriotism with people who still worship traitors to America 150+ years later. They. Are. Breaking. The. Law.

@pelosi.house.gov: "On January 6th...we begged the president of the United States to send in the National Guard. He would not do it...And yet, in a contra-constitutional way, he has sent the National Guard into California. Something is very wrong with this picture."

what people seem to believe is that there is a large number of criminal, layabout immigrants who can be easily found and deported. they support doing so snd are dismayed by the deportation of otherwise law abiding people. the problem is that the criminal group is imaginary!

given how online the white house is, at what point do they suggest locking up the kardashians

I spent so many years covering propaganda anticipating this exact moment and so many of my peers bought the paid-for contrarian line that even covering disinformation was somehow, itself, censorship. Now we're at the event horizon. Celebration is protest is riot is justification for a police state.

It’s just a first step, but it’s a big one. Remember to celebrate our wins!

This is 100% the fault of ICE and the Trump admin, which has deliberately incentivized this behavior with their tactics. Their goal is to encourage white nationalist groups to dress up as ICE to attack minorities, and the increase in lookalike crimes is to them an acceptable byproduct.

Neosegregationist crackpot and abusive TV show host joins ICE raids to film propaganda reels