David Kaye
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davidakaye.bsky.social
David Kaye
@davidakaye.bsky.social

californian. human rights, free expression, tech, international law. uc irvine. fulbright. article 19. prior: UN special rapporteur, GNI chair.

edu coalition (dm for details)

go bears!

David Kaye is an American politician who served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression between August 2014 and July 2020, succeeded by Irene Khan. .. more

Law 28%
Political science 21%
Pinned
👀 Jim Jordan held a House Judiciary Committee hearing on . . . how Europe censors Americans. Nigel Farage came along! Let's just say I have a slightly different view than them. My written and oral testimony are here: ijclinic.law.uci.edu/2025/09/03/h...

Here are my concluding paras:
Politicized investigations against political enemies are a key feature of authoritarian systems

@reuters.com documented at least 470 targets of retribution under 🇺🇸 Trump’s leadership – from federal employees and prosecutors to universities and media outlets.

www.reuters.com/investigates...
Trump’s campaign of retribution: At least 470 targets and counting
A Reuters investigation documents at least 470 acts of retribution under Trump’s leadership.
www.reuters.com

simply grotesque. unsurprising, playing to discrimination and ignorance as this wretched admin always does.
It didn’t even take 6 hours.
It didn’t even take 6 hours.

when prosecutors are no longer lawyers for the people but for a would-be king, of course courts dismiss cases. but someday we'll have genuine accountability in this country, and history too will record how corruption & greed for power destroyed our democratic institutions and civic space.

you've been warned

there are worse earworms
Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun
YouTube video by SoundgardenVEVO
www.youtube.com

this is a pointless post but i heard black hole sun last night and still cannot get it out of my head. my hope is that putting this out in the open will do the trick.

dems in congress shouldn't stop talking about how noem must resign and face consequences for this atrocity
The first official confirmation that Noem herself made the decision not to turn the planes around. A couple hundred men were tortured as a result — and soon after, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Trump admin’s Alien Enemies Act process was a total violation of due process.
BREAKING:

“After receiving that legal advice, Secretary Noem directed that the AEA detainees who had been removed from the United States before the Court’s order could be transferred to the custody of El Salvador. “
The first official confirmation that Noem herself made the decision not to turn the planes around. A couple hundred men were tortured as a result — and soon after, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Trump admin’s Alien Enemies Act process was a total violation of due process.
BREAKING:

“After receiving that legal advice, Secretary Noem directed that the AEA detainees who had been removed from the United States before the Court’s order could be transferred to the custody of El Salvador. “

an ant with washable ink. still fun.

👆 exactly - they know nothing, and they only understand 💰

this is article 19's text

i often joke to my students that they should just tattoo themselves with article 19 of the international covenant on civil and political rights, since the freedom of expression is the cornerstone of so much of our work (& of democracy).

well they went ahead and did it! 💯😆

GenX list, i'd say ✊
haven’t seen ROS or Solo but this seems like a pretty ball-knowing list from Pritzker, particularly if he volunteered the name “Star Wars” rather than “A New Hope”

Reposted by David H. Kaye

This Just Not In: At this year’s annual Thanksgiving ceremony at the White House, the President is reported to be pardoning a turkey accused of sexually attacking several other turkeys as well as three chickens.

he's not getting one anyway but what does he know

aggression is indeed an international crime under the amended Rome Statute of the ICC, though its applicability is somewhat limited. still, remind trump - nobody's getting a nobel who uses force aggressively (twice in a year, if you count the june attack on iran, as i would).

it's common to think about the nuremberg tribunal as focused on war crimes & crimes against humanity. but especially when trump is using force on the seas & threatening it against venenzuela, it's worth remembering this: the first crime was aggressive use of force. www.un.org/en/genocidep...

but at least the media is on it
Really looks like the United States is about to launch a regime change war against Venezuela with:

-No casus belli
-No authorization from Congress
-No allies or international support
-No plan for a post-Maduro Venezuela
-No preparation for any sort of stabilization or containment of the fallout

hard to believe it's only been three years, but here's what i expected back then, almost to the day
What’s going to happen to Twitter? A few thoughts.
Here’s what I think is going to happen with Twitter. I doubt any of this is news to people but I wanted to put it down in one place. Not…
dkisaway.medium.com

i get that it remains a source of info for some regions of the world. pretty sure that won't last either.

as if serving up a nazi bar were not enough, those institutions, outlets & journalists who stayed on X should now finally realize the hollow nature of its 'engagement'. it's not a platform for info/debate, certainly not for US folks.
Although the scale of this is still to be assessed, this is the inevitable outcome of the monetization of the algorithm. Rage-bait becomes a personal revenue model. Nothing about this should be a surprise.
NEWS: I spent the past 24 hours going through major MAGA accounts on Twitter, and a bombshell development has become clear: most of the right-wing ecosphere is being fed propaganda from foreign actors.

This impacts elections. This impacts discourse. This is major. Subscribe to support my work:
haven’t seen ROS or Solo but this seems like a pretty ball-knowing list from Pritzker, particularly if he volunteered the name “Star Wars” rather than “A New Hope”
Really looks like the United States is about to launch a regime change war against Venezuela with:

-No casus belli
-No authorization from Congress
-No allies or international support
-No plan for a post-Maduro Venezuela
-No preparation for any sort of stabilization or containment of the fallout

i recently had to move mason & dixon to another shelf and almost pulled a muscle
Although the scale of this is still to be assessed, this is the inevitable outcome of the monetization of the algorithm. Rage-bait becomes a personal revenue model. Nothing about this should be a surprise.
NEWS: I spent the past 24 hours going through major MAGA accounts on Twitter, and a bombshell development has become clear: most of the right-wing ecosphere is being fed propaganda from foreign actors.

This impacts elections. This impacts discourse. This is major. Subscribe to support my work:
NEWS: Major MAGA Accounts on Twitter Exposed as Foreign Actors
A stunning development over the past 24 hours.
open.substack.com

Reposted by David H. Kaye

Despite there being an ongoing constitutional challenge against the mandatory death penalty for drugs, the Singapore government has issued three new execution notices for next week, to three people given mandatory death sentences for drug offences.

to be fair, the US position on the ICC has been bipartisan rogue-ishness from the beginning - accountability on *our* terms. but this is so over the top. bullying to protect netanyahu essentially.