Following the Saturday Night Massacre during the Nixon administration, the independence of the Department of Justice from political influence and partisanship became a foundational position of its existence. The DoJ existed to serve the American people, not the president. It was theoretically there to do justice, without fear or favor. And that understanding remained intact until Trump 2.0, when it openly and notoriously became a tool of the administration.

In an act of extreme irony, Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose effusive admiration of her patron was expressed at every opportunity whether relevant or not, named Ed Martin, the Trump nominee for United States Attorney for the District of Columbia whose lack of competence and integrity was so extreme that not even the Republican majority in the Senate would confirm him, the head of the Weaponization Task Force to investigate people who “weaponized” the government against Trump. Continue reading →

Ed. Note: On July 21, 2025, Roy Black passed away at the age of 80. Roy was a legend in the criminal defense world, and subscriber and occasional commenter at SJ. Roy Black’s work had a particularly significant on Mario Machado, who remembers him here.

For me, there’s one quote that always stuck out:

I’m going to do whatever I can to see justice is done in the courtroom. If the town burns down because of it, so be it.

That’s from when Roy Black defended Miami Police Officer Luis Alvarez, the 1982 case that had the city in perpetual fear because of the Miami Riot Syndrome. Having done my damn best to study Roy’s approach to everything, that line sticks out because it’s the complete opposite to what I see and read about today’s defense lawyers: the majority casually going along to get along, terrified of superseding indictments and pleading out cases in perpetuity, lest they upset anything about the status quo. Continue reading →

Sitting down with the friendliest of interviewers, Sean Hannity, after the “successful” summit with Vladimir Putin, President Trump was asked a simple question.

Hannity: “You said before the interview that in two minutes you would know…What vibe did you get in two minutes?”

Trump: “You know, I always had a great relationship with President Putin. And we would have done great things together in terms of, you know. Their land is incredible. The rare earth, the oil gas — it’s incredible. It is the largest piece of land in the world as a nation by far. I think they have 11 timezones if you can believe it, that’s big stuff. But we would have done a lot of great things we had the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax which stopped us from doing that. We would have done so great. But we have the greatest — one of the great hoaxes. I mean, there were others like the election itself and as you know, as you covered better than anyone. But it was a rigged election and a horrible thing that took place in 2020. But we would have had a great relationship but we did amazingly well considering — you know, he would look and see what happened, he would think we’re crazy with the made up Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. So we had something very important and we had a very good meeting today, but we’ll see. I mean it’s, you have to get a deal.”

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Outside California Governor Gavin Newsom’s presser in Little Tokyo announcing that California will hold a special election to determine whether to engage in midterm redistricting in reaction to Texas’ gerrymandering to give Trump the five additional House seats he demanded, dozens of heavily armed and masked federal agents appeared. Why then? Why there?

They did arrest one person who was selling strawberries, but there was no reason why they would be outside Newsom’s presser except to make a statement. We have the guns and can go and do whatever we want. And there is nothing you can do about it.

As the governor was preparing to speak inside the Japanese American National Museum in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles, the agents assembled outside, many of them masked and armed, and some wearing tactical helmets and carrying rifles.

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When Emma Camp, now of Reason but then a senior at the University of Virginia, wrote a New York Times op-ed, about her reluctance to express views that failed to align with progressive orthodoxy, she was excoriated for saying aloud what everybody knew. There is now a study that reaches the same uncontroversial conclusion.

Northwestern University researchers Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman report in an op-ed on the results of a series of interviews they conducted with undergraduates.

Between 2023 and 2025, we conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. We were not studying politics — we were studying development. Our question was clinical, not political: “What happens to identity formation when belief is replaced by adherence to orthodoxy?” Continue reading →

There has been a flurry of activity from the White House, from the bizarre to the banal, and the scope and breadth of matters into which President Trump has poked his very small fingers is, many people say, overwhelming. There is only one thing that he hasn’t done

Unsealing the transcripts would be an exception to the secrecy of grand juries, wrote the judge supervising Ms. Maxwell’s case, Paul A. Engelmayer. Permitting such an exception “casually or promiscuously” would erode confidence in people called to testify before future panels, the judge wrote in a 31-page opinion.

This was, of course, about as easy a decision as could be, there being no exception under law to permit the unsealing of the grand jury transcripts, and there being no purpose for doing so in any event. Continue reading →

Such niceties as geopolitical diplomatic messaging elude him, being from a world where nothing matters other than getting the thing built and stiffing the contractors. So when Trump invited a man who was shunned by the rest of the free world, the democratic world as an invading pariah to come to the United States, which he occasionally misunderstood to still be Russia, it likely didn’t register that he gave away a key sanction for nothing.

Vladimir Putin, invading war criminal, was coming to the United States at the invitation of the President. Putin was being welcomed back into international society, embraced by that society’s matron. The red carpet will be rolled out for him. Hands will be shaken, not stirred. There will camaraderie with the comrade. Comrades. Continue reading →

Students go by many names. Someone named Andrew might prefer to be called Andy, or perhaps even Drew. So what? What if Andy was chosen because the student was transgender and the person who was once known as Andrew was now Andrea?

As Prawf Jon Adler explains, the Sixth Circuit held in Meriwether v. Hartop that forcing college professors to use preferred pronouns violated their First Amendment rights of free expression and free exercise. But that was pronouns. In Kluge v. Brownsburg Community School Corp, the issue was whether a teacher could be required to use the student’s chosen name as reflected in the high school’s database under Title VII. Continue reading →

Andrew Sullivan chronicles some of our president’s abuses of power for his own personal gain. If you’re unfamiliar with what this is about, or refuse to believe that Trump isn’t your savior doing everything for you rather than him, feel free to read the sordid details in Sullivan’s post. My hope is that it’s not necessary as you’re already well aware of it. All of it. All of it increasing monthly, weekly, daily, as it pops into Trump’s head that there is someone out there he wants to crush and will happily abuse the power of his office to impose suffering on his enemies or to gain his advantage.

But then, it’s only for another three and half years, right? After all, his bluff notwithstanding, his two terms as president is all he gets, and it’s not as if he can or would try to violate the Constitution. Right? Right?!? Continue reading →

Do they look Hispanic? Do they speak Spanish or English with an accent? Do they have Hispanic names? Do they work in construction or lawn care? Do they pick up day jobs at Home Depot? Does that give rise to reasonable and articulable suspicion that they’re in the United States unlawfully? Central District of California Judge Maame E. Frimpong said no, it was racial profiling and prohibited roving ICE patrols from rounding up all the Hispanic-looking people as if they were “illegal aliens.” The Ninth Circuit affirmed the temporary restraining order.

ICE didn’t care.

The Department of Homeland Security said that the operation, named Trojan Horse, was a “targeted raid” that led to arrests of 16 undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua. Continue reading →