Josh Chafetz

Very important piece by Cerin Lindgrensavage and @davidasuper.bsky.social. This behavior by the administration is not only illegal, it is anti-constitutional. thehill.com/opinion/cong...

Congress rejected some of Trump’s proposed budget cuts. OMB is making them anyway.

President Trump and the Office of Management and Budget are accused of violating the separation of powers by attempting to unilaterally withhold funds that Congress specifically appropriated.

Reply to @joshchafetz.bsky.social

No legislative veto. Hampered oversight. No agencies outside of presidential control. No attempt to meaningfully enforce the power of the purse statutes. This is the Court’s doing.

What kind of fascist hellscape is happing on Pennsylvania Ave at the Eastern Market Metro stop? These guys—seemingly all white, all men—have their faces covered, are carrying shields, wearing brown …

NYC currently has a shark problem
DC currently has a jets problem

there's only one solution

Diane Patterson @dianepatterson.bsky.social

NOT NOW, SHARKS

Anthropic is accusing other companies of--get this--unfairly copying their work. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/t...

American A.I. Companies Say Chinese Copycats Are Quickly Catching Up

1/ I know we've all moved on to Barbara etc., but one observation about Slaughter.

In his conclusion, Roberts writes: "Th[e] President is not all powerful—not by any means." He then cites three cases: Milligan, Youngstown, and the Nixon Tapes Case.

The discourse around the Supreme Court term would be much improved, I think, if people focused on the center of the Court as being very much part of the GOP coalition, rather than focusing entirely on whether it is or is not doing Trump’s bidding specifically.

well, he endangered my life, but at least it was in the cause of decreasing my air quality

The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman flew a vintage jet fighter at the Fourth of July air show over Washington, D.C., despite objections by federal air-safety regulators. The FAA initially denied his request, calling the aircraft too dangerous for densely populated areas. on.wsj.com/4eM6fEr

Exclusive | NASA Leader Flew His Vintage Jet at DC Air Show Over FAA Objections

The regulator initially denied Jared Isaacman’s request to fly in the Freedom 250 celebration, calling the aircraft too dangerous for densely populated areas.

Reply to @joshchafetz.bsky.social

Ah, *this* kind of fascist hellscape bsky.app/profile/john...

Johnathan Swag @johnswag.bsky.social

Patriot Front spotted in Washington DC near the capitol

Reply to @joshchafetz.bsky.social

3/ What is the implication? Just that--consistent with the literature on judicial self-aggrandizement--Roberts understands whatever (minimal) constraints on the presidency there are to be those imposed by the Court alone.

This is in fact correct, which is why you’ll notice that no Senate Dems have been up in arms about McConnell’s absence.

Reply to @joshchafetz.bsky.social

4/4 Congress is figured as a branch that needs to *be constrained*, but it is not a branch that can legitimately constrain the presidency.

This is not new--as I've repeatedly argued, it is very characteristic of how this Court sees Congress--but it is worth noting.

TBH, I think Steve is giving the Court too much credit here. It's not at all clear to me that they've shown up with a fire extinguisher as opposed to, say, a bag of marshmallows and some hot dogs.

Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social

Iconic line from @stevevladeck.bsky.social here in response to Will Baude’s SCOTUS boosterism www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/o...

Once again, McConnell being absent from the Senate without resigning is *better for Democrats* than the alternatives.

Again, one way you know this is that Senate Democrats are not up in arms about what's going on here.

Yes, and also I hate the headline the piece has on here (which is different than the headline if you click through).

It’s a bad sign for all knowledge production. This fetishization of “science” is ultimately itself destructive of the academy and broader society.

Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD @prasad.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/u... an ominous trend: graduate admissions are down 15 percent from last year, on top of an 11 percent decrease from the previous year we are destroying our seed corn

Research Universities Are Admitting Fewer Ph.D.s, a Bad Sign for Science

1/2 I've posted a revised version of my paper on unitary executive theory and democratic accountability, now with a discussion of Slaughter and Cook at pp. 5-6. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Reply to @joshchafetz.bsky.social

2/ Each of those involve the *Court* imposing limits on the president in the name of the Constitution. None of them involve Congress constraining the presidency.

Indeed, Roberts approvingly cites Chadha in several places.

He's gonna hire a crony arborist; they're gonna do a shitty job; half the trees are gonna die; and he's gonna spend weeks posting about how Democrats salted the earth to kill his precious tree babies.

Dan Diamond @ddiamond.bsky.social

Trump has a new side project: counting the number of trees in a public park across the street from the White House. He wants Lafayette Square to feature 47 trees — to match his 47th presidency, per people familiar. with @jakespring.bsky.social

Trump’s vision for White House park: 47 trees to mark his presidency

The president has called Lafayette Square the entrance to the White House. Contractors have been renovating the park for months and are likely to miss Trump’s original goal of reopening before July 4.

Man, the author of the majority opinion in Slaughter is gonna be SO MAD when he reads what the author of the majority opinion in Cook had to say about agency independence from presidential control.

Reply to @joshchafetz.bsky.social

2/ Under Alito's "updating," the more racist a party is, and therefore the more it drives away minority voters, the *less* likely a plaintiff is to be able to satisfy the Gingles preconditions, because it will be increasingly impossible to "control for partisan preferences" as distinct from race.

Really missing the artisanal feel of pre-AI email scams

If you’ve never recalled a book from yourself, are you even an academic?

If you want a policy "solution" to this non-existent "problem," maybe try making it so that no one's access to higher education depends on how fast they can run or how many three-pointers they can shoot?

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com

Gluesenkamp Perez: "At town halls, what I saw was the people who were the most upset had spent the last 12 years driving their girls to sports practice & they view their best shot of their student going to college as an athletic scholarship. So when we rush to moralize we miss some of the nuance."

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Reply to @joshchafetz.bsky.social

The idea that the U.S. is launching “retaliatory strikes” for the American soldiers killed in Kuwait, when those soldiers were only killed because the U.S. launched a war of aggression in Iran is some kind of thing.