Forgetting, for the moment, that nobody is talking about the Epstein Files at the moment, Trump announced that he’s now “in charge” of Venezuela, under his new flavor of the Monroe Doctrine, which he’s decided to call the Donroe Doctrine because there are few things he loves more than his name attached to things.

For background, the Monroe Doctrine was that the western hemisphere, the Americas, should no longer be subject to European rule, but should be independent of their colonial overlords. There was the Roosevelt Corollary, in which President Theodore Roosevelt decided to build the Panama Canal, legal niceties notwithstanding,* and the banana republics which were literally for the sake of bananas. Continue reading →

The easy response from the unduly passionate Magats is that anyone who isn’t praising Trump’s exercise of presidential fiat by invading Venezuela and seizing its illegitimate dictator must love Maduro. These are not deep thinkers. Outside of the few nations with whom Trump holds dear feelings, nobody doesn’t think Maduro was a monster whose removal from power isn’t a good thing. That, however, doesn’t mean engaging in an unlawful invasion of a sovereign nation without authority is magically a good thing.

Ilya Somin sums it up well.

Maduro is getting what he deserves, even if for the wrong reasons. But the US attack is illegal, and it is far from clear whether it will really lead to a beneficial regime change in Venezuela. Continue reading →

Greetings, friends! Wait, we ARE friends, right? I’d like to think so with the amount of time some of you spend here…but I’m already getting off track. WELCOME TO 2026!

Do you have your matter replicators or flying cars yet? No? Me neither. So to ease the pain of all those science fiction promises that have yet to materialize, let’s all gather round the dust bin of history and wish one final “fuck you” and “farewell” to 2025 with this, the Simple Justice Year in Review from yours truly!

As longtime readers know, I usually try to summarize the year in a word. This time the word that fits best in my humble opinion is “turbulent.” Between geopolitical strife, rank stupidity from our elected officials in America, and general stupidity from the public, it seemed like everything was shaking all around us for the duration of the calendar year. And yet here we are, mostly safe and untouched except for the bother of having to keep our proverbial seatbelts fastened for the entirely of the flight. Continue reading →

Leo Garcia Venegas had a problem. He is a citizen of the United States of America. He is also a Latino working in construction. The Constitution says he has a right to be left alone. He also has no obligation to prove his citizenship, as Americans are under no duty to carry proof that they are Americans. ICE isn’t particularly concerned about such matters.

An Alabama construction worker is challenging the Trump administration’s warrantless construction site raids after he says he was arrested and detained by federal immigration agents—twice—despite being a U.S. citizen with a valid ID in his pocket.

In a federal civil rights lawsuit filed today in the Southern District of Alabama, Leo Garcia Venegas is seeking to stop “dragnet raids” that target Latinos like himself, without any probable cause besides their ethnicity.

Continue reading →

In the abandoned City Hall subway station, Zorhan Mamdani, his hand on two Qurans held by his wife, Rama Duwaji, was administered the oath of office by New York State Attorney General Letitia James. He then signed the leatherbound book kept by the Clerk of the City of New York of the signatures of mayors. Love him or hate him, he is now the Mayor of the City of New York.

What will happen next will be an experiment. It’s hard not to find him charming and charismatic. He is a damn likeable fellow, which can’t be said for a great many people who hold office. But he has promoted a litany of changes that are unlikely to work as they depend on a fantasy understanding of economics and human nature. Continue reading →

It’s been a long decade since New Year’s Eve 2025, but we’ve made it this far. Don’t give up now.

Thank you all for reading and thank all of you who have contributed to the upkeep of SJ and donated to FRAXA. I sincerely appreciate it. And a very special thank you to my editor, Beth, without whom I would be lost. Happy New Year to everyone.

According to Dahlia Lithwick and Marc Joseph Stern, people have started calling immigration stops of random Hispanics by the derogatory term “Kavanaugh stops,” referring to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Noem v. Perdomo.

Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English. Cf. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S., at 884–885 (listing “[a]ny number of factors” that contribute to reasonable suspicion of illegal presence). To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a “relevant factor” when considered along with other salient factors.

The uproar over what can kindly be characterized as Kavanaugh’s slopping writing, that while ethnicity alone might not prove sufficient for reasonable suspicion, ethnicity plus some other benign factor, such as presence at Home Deport or working as a landscaper or in construction would suffice. Kav then doubled down by crafting a fantasy scenario of how such stops happened. Continue reading →

It was only a day after the board vote, headed by Richard Grenell, a dedicated Trump sycophant, that workers were busy adding the letters for “Donald J. Trump” above those on the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Trump claimed he was surprised by the gesture, which conflicted with the law naming the center after JFK and beyond the power of the board to change. Trump didn’t care. And the magical appearance of the letters the next day strongly suggests it was neither a surprise nor a product of the board’s vote. Letters don’t appear by magic, yet there they were.

Then came the reactions. First, Chuck Redd canceled his jazz Christmas concert. Continue reading →

The argument against imposing cash bail for pre-trial release of people accused of crimes was straightforward: The crime and personal characteristics of the accused didn’t matter. If you had the cash, you went home. If you didn’t, you sat in jail. It was, to a great degree, unfair and ineffective. Even worse, it was extremely expensive, holding individuals charged with petty offenses in jail at great public expense for pretty much no reason.

After all, what was the grave fear that someone would drink in public again if cut loose? The key justification for bail was to compel defendants to return to court as required. The one thing the experiment proved was that for the most part, they did. Indeed, the biggest factor was the reminder text of the next court appearance. Few people wanted to be saddled with a bench warrant and most were willing to confront their accusation and take the punch, whether deserved or not. Continue reading →

The State of Illinois had a big win, and Trump a big loss, on the shadow docket in Trump v. Illinois, where a 6-3 Supreme Court refused to allow the federalized National Guard to be deployed. Woo hoo? Much as the outcome may have brought smiles and tears to their respective teams, the rationale behind the ruling hasn’t gotten much scrutiny outside of the legal academy. And it is, well, surprising, peculiar and, quite frankly, not the most useful reasoning. Ilya Somin explains.

The official rationale for Trump’s use of the National Guard here is the supposed need to counter anti-ICE protests in the Chicago area, some of which had allegedly included elements of violence. In order to deploy the Guard, Trump invoked 10 U.S.C. Section 12406, which can only be used to federalize state National Guard forces and employ them for law enforcement in one of the following situations:

1) the United States, or any of the Commonwealths or possessions, is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation; Continue reading →