I'm not entirely sure why, but this is the one that broke me.

Despite how rarified the academic originalism debate has become, I just... I just can't stop

Two ideas—(2) the administration is engaged in patently political prosecutions and (2) its cases are often weak—are intertwined. That said (and as @kovarsky.bsky.social recently noted), it really feels like grand juries are starting to respond to the *politicization*, not just the incompetence.

Ryan Coogler explains why he declined the invitation to join the Academy www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/m...

Much of the free speech crisis results from powerful private interests intertwining their economic and regulatory interests with the administration's agenda. The First Amendment can slow direct government censorship, but it's not equipped for this kind of alignment between capital and the state.

“The Radical Center in Contemporary Legal Thought” - my latest balkin.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-...

Empirically, the claim that “[i]f a government official had probable cause to take an action (say a search), it’s much less likely that First Amendment retaliation was its but-for cause” seems totally divorced from reality.

This is a great conversation at the heart of my current preoccupations. Is 1A doctrine capable of protecting basic democratic processes? Are there plausible ways to improve it or alternative traditions to be reconstructed? And is it desirable to entrust courts with democratic oversight in any event?

For my current work in progress, I'm trying to track (a representative sample of) litigation against the Trump administration that features First Amendment claims or otherwise implicates free speech. To that end, this tracker from @lawfaremedia.org has been incredibly helpful:

NEW📰: Democracy requires both an informed citizenry and a free press. But how do these ideals show up in public policy?

Today, we have a paper out that looks at how media has become highly concentrated, commercialized, and drained of its public interest potential.