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fpbland.bsky.social
Public interest lawyer, music fan, dad/granddad/husband
403 posts 5,281 followers 4,741 following
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Don't look away from North Carolina. In a cloud of words and claims of probity, the Rs are trying to eliminate thousands of votes with retroactive changes to the rules If Rs can exclude people unlikely to vote for them, they can rule this country with far less than a majority

submitted 6 hours ago • 0 comments

They retroactively decided that he had been legally sent to El Salvador? This is really chilling, if they get away with just using fiat to overturn law that they acted illegally. Is this really ok with SCOTUS, that the law can be reduced to Calvinball, where the regime has no limits?

submitted 19 hours ago • 2 comments

I don't know anything about his politics, but many years ago I read a couple of Mario Vargas Llosa's novels. They were a mashup of different ideas and even genres, sometimes funny and sometimes touching, and he obviously was very talented. This news makes me want to go back and reread them

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Again and again DOGE attacks parts of the government that were investigating Musk's companies, generally on very well founded based. The conflict of interest is extreme and obvious. Every single story on DOGE should highlight this

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

One of the problems with the government flooding the zone is crucial things get lost And while I care enormously about the assault on democracy and civil rights, the rigging of the economy for billionaires, don't sleep on the devastating harm done in the fight against the climate emergency

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

submitted 4 days ago • 61 comments

I got to work just a little with Steve Susman, and he was one of the best lawyers I ever met, and over the years I have been co-counsel with some remarkable lawyers there. While I don't always agree with the cases this firm takes on, I hate to see them targeted for being enemies of the regime

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

This is a terrific explainer, I always feel better informed after reading Ian's excellent work

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

This is such a crucial point, strongly agree

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

They want to make it harder to fight pollution by making it impossible to measure pollution. But the first step is always knowing you have a problem

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

So if you run a business and you are trying to make plans that extend six months out about what to buy, how to organize something, do you assume there will or won't be tariffs with some countries? How do you know what to do?

submitted 5 days ago • 19 comments

Leavitt says they are playing the long game. I see a guy impulsively panicking under pressure, who didn't know yesterday that he was going to do this today. How are businesses supposed to plan in a climate of such uncertainty?

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

To most Rs, they don't care about states rights per se. It's a tool, like a hammer or a wrench, and they use it when it helps something they like (like banning abortion or immunizing a corporation that made a defective product) and don't use it when it's inconvenient.

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

"We construe these TROs as appealable injunctions." Is this like trying a juvenile as an adult? #Calvinball

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

I'm sure that the people who starve to death or die of curable diseases will mostly leave the Earth very happy in the knowledge that Trump's own golf course gave him another award, though

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Again, worth at the last considering the possibility that he’s a malevolent idiot who has no idea what he’s doing.

submitted 8 days ago • 2211 comments

In a country run on a patrimonial system, it doesn't really matter if a.bunch if people lose their jobs, civil liberties or savings, so long as the Dear Leader is having fun. For a bunch of people, we are all just extras in the exciting story of Donald

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Bannon's goal of "flooding the zone" is on display. So many folks are focused in this moment on Trump's tariffs crashing markets that they have all forgotten top security officials sharing operational plans unsecurely, and few noticed him firing the head of the NSA on the say so of a conspiracy nut

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

They're going to be blaming Joe for everything they do for years

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

I know that high prices made the economy problematic for a lot of people in 2024. But if people thought it couldn't get MUCH worse, they weren't following what was happening in some other countries and they didn't know enough history McKinley, Trump's historic boo, caused a huge depression

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

He is repeatedly doing things that blatantly violate the law in the country, often laws that have been in place for decades. So his ask to SCOTUS is to dramatically rework America's legal system to let him do what he wants

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

The corruption is just right there. The guy donated a lot to Rs and magically the guy leading the criminal investigation of him is fired. Unbelievable

submitted 15 days ago • 13 comments

I had a friend say "oh, they can't mess up Social Security, it's all handled by computers." Sounds like this may have been an excess of optimism.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments