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Mark Joseph Stern

@mjsdc.bsky.social
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  1. 1

    INCREDIBLE opinion by Wilkinson refusing to stay Judge Xinis's orders in the Abrego Garcia case, condemning DOJ's arguments as "shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear."
    storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

    17,854 5,382
    Apr 17, 2025
  2. 2

    NEW: SCOTUS shoots down a federal judge’s effort to protect eight men from being expelled—without due process—to South Sudan, where they face torture and death.

    Dissenting, Sotomayor says the court’s “indefensible” decision makes it complicit in “lawlessness.” www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

    SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting adjudicating this case. But if this Court wishes to permit the Government to flout the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Due Process Clause, it cannot avoid accountability for that lawlessness by tasking the lower courts with inventing a rationale. The Court's continued refusal to justify its extraordinary decisions in this case, even as it faults lower courts for failing properly to divine their import, is indefensible. * "In a democracy, power implies responsibility. The greater the power that defies law the less tolerant can this Court be of defiance. As the Nation's ultimate judicial tri-bunal, this Court, beyond any other organ of society, is the trustee of law and charged with the duty of securing obedience to it." Mine Workers, 330 U.S., at 312 (Frankfurter, J., concurring in judgment). This Court continues to invert those principles. Today's order clarifies only one thing: Other litigants must follow the rules, but the administration has the Supreme Court on speed dial. Respectfully, I dissent.
    11,971 4,604
    Jul 3, 2025
  3. 3

    BREAKING: By an apparent 6–3 vote, the Supreme Court halts an injunction that had prevented immigration agents from racially profiling Latinos in central California.

    Sotomayor, dissenting, says the decision is "unconscionably irreconcilable with our nation's constitutional guarantees."

    https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26085894-25a169-order/
    11,252 4,416
    Sep 8, 2025
  4. 4

    Just a reminder that at least 600 Americans were fired for failing to show sufficient respect after Charlie Kirk's murder.

    Philip Bump @pbump.com
    utterly incapable of grace
    13,404 3,977
    Dec 15, 2025
  5. 5

    Brett Kavanaugh's behavior during today's second oral arguments has been incredibly obnoxious and rude. He is so eager to kill a service member's lawsuit against a negligent government contractor that he keeps interrupting other justices, raising his voice, and getting emotional. Weird and erratic.

    15,543 3,975
    Nov 3, 2025
  6. 6

    The next Democratic president should declare that the National Emergencies Act and Article II of the Constitution allow him to:

    •admit D.C. and Puerto Rico as states
    •abolish ICE
    •grant citizenship to any immigrant
    •disband the 5th Circuit
    •expand the Supreme Court

    Seriously: Why the hell not?

    17,246 3,964
    Sep 2, 2025
  7. 7

    🚨NEW: The NC Supreme Court's GOP majority will retroactively nullify 2,000 to 7,000 ballots from military and overseas voters unless they quickly prove their identity—but only those who voted in a few Democratic counties.

    Could overturn Justice Riggs' victory.
    appellate.nccourts.org/orders.php?t...

    6,085 3,566
    Apr 11, 2025
  8. 8

    Take a moment today to read about a few of the young children whom Trump and Musk killed by shutting down USAID. The blame for these deaths falls on them.

    There will be hundreds of thousands more dead kids before their lethal crusade against foreign aid ends. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

    Another household kept alive by American aid was that of Jennifer Inyaa, a 35-year-old single mom, and her 5-year-old son, Evan Anzoo, both of them H.I.V.-positive. Last month, after the aid shutdown, Inyaa became sick and died, and a week later Evan died as well, according to David Iraa Simon, a community health worker who assisted them. Decisions by billionaires in Washington quickly cost the lives of a mother and her son. "Many more children will die in the coming weeks," said Margret Amjuma, a health worker who confirmed the deaths of Peter and Achol.
    7,092 3,510
    Mar 15, 2025
  9. 9

    Whoa—the Montana Supreme Court holds that its state constitution protects the right to "a stable climate system," and strikes down a law that barred consideration of greenhouse gas emissions when permitting new fossil fuel projects. juddocumentservice.mt.gov/getDocByCTra...

    16,099 3,425
    Dec 18, 2024
  10. 10

    After we adopted Toro we discovered that his first owner taught him to laugh like an evil villain

    undefined ▶
    40,125 2,974
    Nov 13, 2024
  11. 11

    The next Democratic president can just impound the billions of extra ICE funding on day one, right? Withhold it without any explanation? Since that’s a thing presidents can do now?

    15,613 2,963
    Jul 3, 2025
  12. 12

    The North Carolina General Assembly’s GOP supermajority just approved a hugely corrupt power grab, seizing authority from the governor and the courts to prevent any meaningful check on legislative abuses. Authoritarian stuff. A very dark day for democracy in NC. amp.newsobserver.com/news/politic...

    6,350 2,894
    Dec 2, 2024
  13. 13

    The horror stories rolling in from Minnesota are just the tip of the iceberg. This 20-year-old, who's lawfully present in the country, was arrested for being Latino, then jailed in a filthy cell where he couldn't even sit down. 18 days of illegal detention. democracyforward.org/wp-content/u...

    On January 10, 2026, while driving back to work after getting lunch with his father and cousin, a car quickly passed O., sped up, then stopped in front of him. (Id. ¶ 3.) A few men in civilian clothes stepped out of the car and asked for his identification. (Id.) The men threatened O.—if he did not get out of the car, they would force him out. (Id.) O. exited the car and was told he was under arrest. (Id.) The men handcuffed him and did not allow him to bring his phone. (Id.) O. felt like he was being kidnapped. (Id.) The men detained O., his father, and his cousin, taking them all to Whipple. (Id. ¶ 4.) At Whipple, there was “food scattered on the floor, the floor was sticky with mud, and everything stuck to your shoes.” (Id. ¶ 5.) The space was so cramped that sometimes there was no space to sit on the floor. (Id.)
    5,599 2,782
    Feb 17, 2026
  14. 14

    Trump is attempting to unilaterally freeze trillions of dollars in federal spending that’s been duly appropriated by Congress. This is completely insane and illegal. He’s seizing unlawful control over the constitutional spending power? Five alarm fire www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

    White House pauses all federal grants, sparking confusion
    The Trump administration has put a hold on all federal financial grants and loans, affecting tens of billions of dollars in payments.
    7,808 2,764
    Jan 28, 2025
  15. 15

    Justice Sotomayor's dissent in Skrmetti (which she's now reading from the bench) is deeply pained, accusing her colleagues of abandoning "transgender children and their families to political whims" and badly damaging "bedrock" principles of equal protection. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

    Tennessee’s law expressly classifies on the basis of sex and transgender status, so the Constitution and settled precedent require the Court to subject it to intermediate scrutiny. The majority contorts logic and precedent to say otherwise, inexplicably declaring it must uphold Tennessee’s categorical ban on lifesaving medical treatment so long as “‘any reasonably conceivable state of facts’” might justify it. Ante, at 21. Thus, the majority subjects a law that plainly discriminates on the basis of sex to mere rational-basis review. By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.
    8,454 2,757
    Jun 18, 2025
  16. 16

    Just so we’re all clear, the Supreme Court *expressly ruled* that the president cannot fire FTC commissioners without cause in 1935’s Humphrey’s Executor. Trump’s action here is brazenly illegal under any interpretation of the law as it stands. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

    Exclusive: Trump fires both Democratic commissioners at FTC, sources say
    President Donald Trump fired the two Democratic commissioners at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, two sources familiar with the situation said, in another major test of the independence of regulatory agencies.
    7,225 2,728
    Mar 18, 2025
  17. 17

    Reply to @mjsdc.bsky.social

    I want to reiterate that countless conservative judges issued universal injunctions against the Biden administration, and the Supreme Court never halted the practice. Now, barely five months into Trump's second term, the court puts an end to these injunctions. A brazen double standard.

    7,348 2,614
    Jun 27, 2025
  18. 18

    It is pretty galling that the Supreme Court spent four years telling Biden "you can't do that without Congress" then allowed Trump to seize a once-unthinkable amount of power from Congress within nine months and concentrate law-making authority almost entirely in the executive branch.

    9,648 2,590
    Oct 9, 2025
  19. 19

    🚨ICE agents are racially profiling and arresting Hispanic drivers in the DC area today, targeting work vehicles like trucks and vans. A friend who was targeted sent me video today. Here’s a picture that shows one of two agents before he pulled on his mask. Unmarked black Ford truck, plate: NTV9211.

    ICE agent
    4,121 2,522
    Aug 28, 2025
  20. 20

    Reply to @mjsdc.bsky.social

    An extraordinary separate dissent from Justice Jackson accuses the majority of trying to pass off its dirty work under the cover of the shadow docket and explicitly invokes Korematsu, the Japanese internment case. Wow. www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...

    I lament that the Court appears to have embarked on a new era of procedural variability, and that it has done so in such a casual, inequitable, and, in my view, inappropriate manner. See Department of Education v. California, 604 U. S. ___ , ___ (2025) (JACKSON, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 1–2). At least when the Court went off base in the past, it left a record so posterity could see how it went wrong. See, e.g., Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214 (1944). With more and more of our most significant rulings taking place in the shadows of our emergency docket, today’s Court leaves less and less of a trace. But make no mistake: We are just as wrong now as we have been in the past, with similarly devastating consequences. It just seems we are now less willing to face it.
    7,326 2,497
    Apr 7, 2025
  21. 21

    BREAKING: The Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to move forward with the abolition of the Department of Education. It gives no explanation for its order. All three liberals dissent. www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...

    From Sotomayor's dissent:

    Lifting the District Court’s injunction will unleash untold harm, delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault, and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended. The majority apparently deems it more important to free the Government from paying employees it had no right to fire than to avert these very real harms while the litigation continues. Equity does not support such an inequitable result. * * * The President must take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not set out to dismantle them. That basic rule undergirds our Constitution’s separation of powers. Yet today, the majority rewards clear defiance of that core principle with emergency relief. Because I cannot condone such abuse of our equitable authority, I respectfully dissent.
    5,606 2,447
    Jul 14, 2025
  22. 22

    Damn—the Senate parliamentarian has ruled that a LOT of the reconciliation bill requires 60 votes to pass, including a massive assault on federal regulations and several heinous attacks on civil service protections. This effectively guts a big chunk of the bill. www.budget.senate.gov/ranking-memb...

    10,495 2,442
    Jun 23, 2025
  23. 23

    A huge decision from Judge Amir Ali, meticulously reasoned and utterly scathing, finding that Trump’s foreign aid freeze is almost certainly an illegal and arbitrary abuse of power. He orders the immediate restoration of all international assistance. s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25...

    Consistent with the reasoning above, it is hereby ORDERED that Defendants Marco Rubio, Peter Marocco, Russell Vought, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Office of Management and Budget (the "Restrained Defendants") and their agents are temporarily enjoined from enforcing or giving effect to Sections 1, 5, 7, 8, and 9 of Dep't of State, Memorandum, 25 STATE 6828 (Jan. 24, 2025) and any other directives that implement Sections 3(a) and 3(c) of Executive Order Number 14169, "Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid" (Jan. 20, 2025), including by: • suspending, pausing, or otherwise preventing the obligation or disbursement appropriated foreign-assistance funds in connection with any contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, loans, or other federal foreign assistance award that was in existence as of January 19, 2025; or • issuing, implementing, enforcing, or otherwise giving effect to terminations, suspensions, or stop-work orders in connection with any contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, loans, or other federal foreign assistance award that was in existence as of January 19, 2025. It is further hereby ORDERED that nothing in this order shall prohibit the Restrained Defendants from enforcing the terms of contracts or grants. It is further hereby ORDERED that the Restrained Defendants shall take all steps necessary to effectuate this order and shall provide written notice of this order to all recipients of existing contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements for foreign assistance. It is further hereby ORDERED that the Restrained Defendants shall file a status report by February 18, 2025, apprising the Court of the status of their compliance with this order, including by providing a copy of the written notice described above. The parties shall meet and confer and file a joint status report by February 14, 2025, at 5:00 p.m. proposing an expedited preliminary injunction briefing schedule. AMIR H. ALI United States District Judge
    7,868 2,157
    Feb 14, 2025
  24. 24

    Don't forget the Supreme Court's role facilitating ICE's brutality and racism in Minneapolis. SCOTUS lifted an injunction that limited racial profiling in immigration enforcement on Sept. 8. The federal assault on Chicago began the next day. Then came the Twin Cities. SCOTUS greenlit these horrors.

    6,024 2,127
    Jan 23, 2026
  25. 25

    These emails, sent across agencies, compel all federal employees to snitch on any colleague whose work might have some vague DEIA inflection. Those who refuse to snitch will be disciplined.

    Seems designed to put all workers who aren’t white men under a cloud of suspicion. Truly vile stuff.

    Matt Shuham @mattshuham.bsky.social
    The acting director of the Office of Personnel Management (the feds' H.R. department) is telling federal employees to rat out their DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility) colleagues by emailing "[email protected]." chcoc.gov/sites/defaul...
    6,243 2,077
    Jan 22, 2025