slouching towards atopia

Long C19, abolition lit, print culture, and the Age of Revolutions. Bartlebies of the world, unite!

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is so insanely corrupt, I can’t even believe it.

More than half the donors to Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom just won over $50 billion in new federal contracts in six months.

And here’s the part that should make your blood boil.

Sixteen of these 27 donors were facing federal enforcement actions, antitrust reviews, labor cases, securities charges. Many of those cases have been quietly dropped or scaled back since Trump took office. You write a check, your legal problems disappear. That’s not a coincidence.

The White House won’t even release the full donor list. They’re hiding it on purpose, because daylight is the one thing pay-to-play can’t survive. A federal judge already ruled ballroom construction has to stop until Congress authorizes it.

Government is supposed to serve the people, not auction itself off to the highest bidder. When access goes to whoever pays the most, working families always end up paying the price.

We either end the corruption, or the corruption will end us.

https://t.co/4MGFzSseFl

[Chris “Law Dork” Geidner @chrisgeidner]

This is truly one of the worst things the court has done — both in terms of legitimacy and in terms of the law — since I have been covering the court.

[slouching towards atopia @IanLitwin]

@jmetr22b The attorneys who participated in the sordid conduct and then tried to cover it up should be disbarred.

[Brad Lander @bradlander]

We’re both proud Jewish New Yorkers. But there are sharp & clear differences between us on Israel/Palestine.

For example, Dan Goldman marched alongside war criminal Bezalel Smotrich yesterday, who called it “just & moral” to starve Gaza. I did not.

[slouching towards atopia @IanLitwin]

@TheJusticeDept Hopefully, Blanche and whoever else is responsible for creating the fund will be disbarred.

[slouching towards atopia @IanLitwin]

@LASHYBILLS It's a start. They should also prosecute him.

[Jesus Freakin Congress @TheJFreakinC]

🚨This is one of the most disturbing ICE brutality videos I’ve seen in a long time…

Another angle of this incident shows ICE agents suddenly rushing protesters outside the Newark ICE Facility, then continuously shoving U.S. citizens toward the wheels of a MOVING TRUCK…

until an activist’s LEG is run over.

And the most disturbing part?

The protesters are not charging the agents… The agents are the ones creating the escalation.

And not only that, they are forcing civilians backward toward a MOVING VEHICLE, escalating a situation that was not violent until THEY made it violent.

That is reckless, dangerous force.

So, let’s go over the obvious constitutional violations happening in this video…

1. First Amendment violations, because Americans have the constitutional right to peacefully protest the government.

2. Fourth Amendment violations, because federal agents cannot use excessive or objectively unreasonable force against nonviolent civilians.

3. Fifth Amendment due process concerns, because the government cannot arbitrarily target, intimidate, or assault citizens exercising protected rights.

4. Federal officers can also face liability under 18 U.S. Code § 242 for depriving people of constitutional rights “under color of law.”

When armed federal agents create chaos themselves, then use that chaos to justify violence against civilians, that is an abuse of power.

Call your representatives.
Demand accountability.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Samuel Alito’s son has worked as a lawyer inside Trump’s Treasury Department since early last year. The administration hid it.

No public resume, no LinkedIn, no mention on the Treasury website, outdated bar listings. Four former officials confirmed it.

The public was never told.

Here is why that matters.

Philip Alito served as an attorney-adviser in Treasury’s general counsel office, briefed on department matters across the board, while the Supreme Court took up a case in which the Treasury Department was a named defendant.

The department never disclosed the connection in court.

Justice Alito did not recuse.

The federal recusal law is plain. A justice must step aside in any case where his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

That is the test.

Not whether anyone can prove influence but whether a reasonable person looking at this would doubt it. A justice ruling on cases involving the very agency that employs his son fails that test on its face.

And Treasury sits at the center of many upcoming issues, including the fight over Trump’s $1.776 billion dollar fund to reward the January 6th rioters he pardoned. That fight could be headed to the Court too.

This is exactly why the honor system has failed.

The Supreme Court is the only court in America with no enforceable code of conduct. I support withholding funding from the Court until the justices adopt a binding code with real recusal review.

Congress holds the power of the purse.

We should use it.

https://t.co/t2aZrXpaoU

[Peggy Flanagan @peggyflanagan]

Today, we learned that Congresswoman Craig would not be joining us at the DFL endorsing convention in Rochester.

If you can’t face your own party, you’re not ready to face a Republican.

I’ll still be working hard to earn your endorsement. I hope to see you there!

[slouching towards atopia @IanLitwin]

@Legal_Fil Except there was no self dealing. The underlying suit wasn't complete bullshit. It wasn't taxpayer funds. And he wasn't planning to reward criminals for crimes committed on his behalf. But sure, totally analogous you feckless weasel.

[Taniel @Taniel]

The NYT appears to have taken a great feature story written by my colleague at Bolts about a West Tennessee county & the VRA, & essentially rewritten it. (Same frame, similar hed, overlapping sources.)

Without any mention or credit, let alone a hyperlink buried somewhere.

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

This is a hard article to read, but I hope you'll do so. I've spent some time reporting on widespread rape and other sexual violence of Palestinian male and female prisoners by Israeli authorities, and the article is now published. The assault victims were warned not to give speak of what they endured -- they were sometimes told they would be killed or raped if they gave interviews -- but they found the courage to do so. One man described being raped three times in a single day in Israeli prison, the third time after he tried to protest. A young woman said the guards would come in at the beginning of each shift and strip her naked and abuse her. Another reported that she was shown photos of herself being raped and warned they would be released unless she cooperated with Israeli intelligence. Even three children who had been detained told me they had been sexually abused. Look, whatever our position on the Middle East, we should be able to agree on being anti-rape. Sexual assaults were horrific when Israeli women were targeted on Oct. 7, and they're equally horrific when Israeli authorities use them against Palestinians day after day after day. We should be able to find common ground in opposing rape. Here's a gift link to the article: https://t.co/aMMHId49OO

[slouching towards atopia @IanLitwin]

@daniel_dsj2110 This is conceptually incoherent. If capitalism is defined as market dependence, then capitalists do not loathe capitalism. They love it because it maximizes profit from their quasi-monopolies. They do hate free market competition, but that, per his definition, is not capitalism.

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

Rep. @AOC: Have you ever participated in a meeting with Bayer to discuss the legal issues the company was facing about glyphosate?

Lee Zeldin: That topic did not come up

AOC: You're certain they didn't bring up anything?

Zeldin: 100%, absolutely

AOC: Okay. I would like to submit to the record some internal emails to the EPA. We have documentation here

[Alex Colston @enoughformethx]

This is the post that kicked off the Cedric Robinson stuff, right?

It would be crazy if Robinson criticized the very thing he’s accused of doing here.

Let’s take a look at what he wrote.

Oh

[slouching towards atopia @IanLitwin]

@nikhil_palsingh I actually like Robinson's use of the word "tradition," even though Gilroy has a point. "Tradition" shows that Robinson is not ahistorical, nor is he a race reductionist or a race essentialist as some of his poorly informed detractors suppose.

[slouching towards atopia @IanLitwin]

@C_W_England @TiltingatM3 This is a you problem. There are a bunch of scholars in different fields, from history, religious studies, philosophy, literary studies, etc that tackle the issues you've raised. You apparently haven't grappled with any of them and are unwilling to consider their arguments.

[slouching towards atopia @IanLitwin]

@C_W_England @TiltingatM3 You seem to think that Robinson's thesis about European medieval racialism is, in the first instance, about anti-Blackness. It's not. But thank you for making clear the closest you came to reading the book is Johnson's review. Haven't read Heng either, huh?

[slouching towards atopia @IanLitwin]

@C_W_England @TiltingatM3 And, again, your misconstrual of his thesis makes it clear you haven't read him. The idea that racial difference is innate or insurmountable is completely antithetical to his book.

If you want to argue that he's wrong, step one is getting his thesis right.

[slouching towards atopia @IanLitwin]

@C_W_England @TiltingatM3 I also linked you to a center filled with contemporary medievalists and early modernists working on racial distinction during the period Robinson argues racialism was prominent in Europe.

You slunk from "roundly rejected" to "there's no scholarly consensus". Keep backpedaling.