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Avatara Smith-Carrington

@avatarasc.bsky.social
141 followers 383 following 18 posts

Litigating from the margins because that is the center of my world.

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Reposted by Avatara Smith-Carrington
Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 29/06/2026
And nobody cares except us. I’m on like six unemployed black woman listservs, where everyone’s freaking out, and nobody’s like “I’m running on trying to get y’all jobs.” It’s like we’re being erased from American society.
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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 30/06/2026
For non-lawyers wondering what they're missing and how to reconcile the Court's rulings letting Trump fire anybody anywhere *except* at the Federal Reserve: It's money The explanation is money ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/trump...
ballsandstrikes.org
Supreme Court Rules Trump Can Fire Any Agency Head Who Doesn’t Make John Roberts Wealthier
It is very important for presidents to be able to fire agency heads at will, unless that agency is very important to John Roberts.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 21/05/2026
i was asked recently if i thought clarence thomas saw himself as a villain. i said yes and this is a good example. he is totally bloodthirsty and loves the idea of the government executing people.
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
If the Supreme Court is concerned about its declining public legitimacy and thinks too many Americans are calling the Supreme Court illegitimate, the majority could try not issuing bad faith rulings that illegitimately distort law in pursuit of undemocratic partisan power. That’s always an option.
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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
I'll just note that critical race theory predicts quite a lot about the current racial retrenchment and for being *correct* it was pilloried in the press and by some academics.
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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
I can’t get over how Cultural Revolution the DOGE story is, these young people doing crimes they didn’t understand on behalf of a political leader
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
it’s unreal how these grown-ass men had no problem destroying untold lives with chatGPT but go crying to a judge when people make fun of them online
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Alice Miranda Ollstein @alicemiranda.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Can you imagine having to participate in a 3hr virtual court hearing while in active labor? It happened in "Florida, a state that has pushed to expand medical freedom for those who wish to avoid vaccines or fluoridated water, while constricting the rights of people in various stages of pregnancy."
propublica.org
They Didn’t Want to Have C-Sections. A Judge Would Decide How They Gave Birth.
Two Florida women had to attend virtual court hearings while in labor to argue for their right to choose their own medical care. As their state pushes to expand some types of medical freedom, it has a...
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
I don’t think this shit will work but i never want to hear about free speech from any trumpers or anti anti trumpers ever again, fuck off forever bsky.app/profile/cram...
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Avatara Smith-Carrington @avatarasc.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
I don’t get on here often but what I will share is that the decision being made in Kansas to strip transgender people of their valid state identification is not only a dangerously discriminatory act of facism/state violence but also a blatant attempt to rig elections.
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Jeanne Theoharis @jeannetheoharis.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Friends, Claudette Colvin—the 15-year-old who refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus in March 1955 & joined the federal case against bus segregation that went to the Supreme Court — died today at age 86. But there are lots of myths and mis-impressions about her. A short corrective thread:
A photo of teenage Claudette Colvin in glasses and a sweater.
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Charlie Thomas @cthomasjamh.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
This is the sort of statement that was expected from every university president and law firm partner over the last year. That those statements weren’t made played a huge part in where we are now and people will remember.
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Bolts @boltsmag.org · 01/01/2026
A judge has tossed the racketeering charges filed by the Georgia attorney general against activists who protested against Atlanta's Cop City facility.
ajc.com
Fulton judge dismisses RICO charges against training center protesters
In his order issued Tuesday, the judge said Attorney General Chris Carr did not have the authority to bring RICO charges.
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
Brett Kavanaugh (September 2025): The facts and how they relate to the law don’t matter. Assume ICE and other federal forces always act with integrity, always respect rights, and consistently impose minimal burden. Brett Kavanaugh (December 2025): Should I not have done that? Was that wrong?
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Hyperallergic @hyperallergic.com · 23/12/2025
Even in the down year of 1950, Langston Hughes’s Christmas Cards show his writing wit still bristling. For those who may have had a hard year leading up to these winter holidays, there’s some defiant joy to glean from his wry greetings.
hyperallergic.com
Christmas Cheer from a Lean Year: The 1950 Holiday Cards of Langston Hughes
The Beinecke Library at Yale University is exhibiting Hughes's typewritten 1950 Christmas postcards, along with holiday cards he received from friends.
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Adam Keiper @adamkeiper.com · 22/12/2025
It used to be that the United States would use Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to transmit truth across the borders of repressive regimes. Now the work of American reporters, having been censored, is being smuggled across the border to reach Americans.
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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
A graduate teaching assistant who gave a University of Oklahoma student a failing grade on a psychology essay will no longer be teaching at the university
koco.com
Graduate instructor who gave failing grade to Samantha Fulnecky no longer teaching at OU
A graduate teaching assistant who gave a University of Oklahoma student a failing grade on a psychology essay will no longer be teaching at the university.
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I Scare You Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 23/12/2025
Bringing back Limewire to illegally rip copies of reporting suppressed by the government is definitely some cyberpunk shit
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404 Media @404media.co · 23/12/2025
Archivists have saved and uploaded copies of the 60 Minutes episode new CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss ordered be shelved as a torrent and multiple file sharing sites. @evystadium.bsky.social has more. Full story by @josephcox.bsky.social: www.404media.co/archivists-p...
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Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:
News Team,
Thank you for the notes and texts. I apologize for not reaching out earlier.
I learned on Saturday that Bari Weiss spiked our story, INSIDE CECOT, which was supposed to air tonight. We (Ori and I) asked for a call to discuss her decision. She did not afford us that courtesy/opportunity.
Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now-after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.
We requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department. Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed
to kill the story.
If the administration's refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, wehave effectively handed them a "kill switch" for any reporting they find inconvenient.
If the standard for airing a story becomes
"the government must agree to be
interviewed," then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast.
We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.
These men risked their lives to speak with us.
We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their
stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless.
CBS spiked the Jeffrey Wigand interview due to legal concerns, nearly destroying the credibility of this broadcast. It took years to recover from that "low point." By pulling this story to shield an administration, we are repeating that history, but for political optics rather than legal ones.We have been promoting this story on social media for days. Our viewers are expecting it.
When it fails to air without a credible
explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of "Gold Standard" reputation for a single week of political quiet.
I care too much about this broadcast to watch
it be dismantled without a fight.
Sharyn
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
I wrote about the conservative quest to restore the "true" Constitution, the Antebellum Constitution, shorn of the egalitarian nonsense in the Reconstruction Amendments, a document that replaces equality with a society of dominators and the dominated. www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
The Constitution of the Roberts Court is not color-blind. It is a Constitution that permits discrimination on the basis of race, but forbids alleviating discrimination on the basis of race. And over the next year, the Court will face more cases that could further erode both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, pushing America back toward what some on the right believe is the true, Antebellum Constitution.
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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
In the summer of 1950 most US newspapers ran an AP story about how race had become the main issue in the upcoming Georgia governor's race. Segregationist Herman Tallmadge, governor from '47 to '55 and then a Senator until 1981 made a name for himself by refusing to "apologize for being a white man."
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Out Magazine @out.com · 20/12/2025
Opinion: President Trump forces himself on top of someone who didn't consent — again.
out.com
Straight Nonsense: The Trump-Kennedy Center would make sense—if I were a nitwit
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Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
The Trump administration’s release of the Epstein grand jury documents are entirely redacted. It’s 119 pages of just black rectangles.
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Avatara Smith-Carrington @avatarasc.bsky.social · 20/12/2025
Trump having his name affixed to every building possible despite the fact that legislation passed by Congress provides for another name is exactly what I would expect a sexual predator.
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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
UNTIL IT’S DONE, Ep. 4: Sylvia Rivera In the 1970s, queer New Yorkers had been pushed to the margins of NYC. Our trans neighbors faced immense cruelty. But in Sylvia Rivera, they found a champion. As we combat Trump’s politics of darkness, her legacy can light the path forward.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
UPDATE: Judge Perry issued an opinion explaining why she blocked the Texas National Guard deployment in Chicago. She begins with Alexander Hamilton’s rejection of a “preposterous” idea that the Constitution lets a President deploy a State’s militia to a different State for political retribution. 🧵
OPINION AND ORDER
Since this country was founded, Americans have disagreed about the appropriate division
of power between the federal government and the fifty states that make up our Union. This
tension is a natural result of the system of federalism adopted by our Founders. And yet, not even
the Founding Father most ardently in favor of a strong federal government believed that one
state's militia could be sent to another state for the purposes of political retribution, calling such
a suggestion "inflammatory," and stating "it is impossible to believe that [a President] would employ such preposterous means to accomplish their designs." But Plaintiffs contend that such
an event has come to pass, and argue that National Guard troops from both Illinois and Texas
have been deployed to Illinois because the President of the United States wants to punish state elected officials whose policies are different from his own.
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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
The Virginia Senate just told UVA it’s not getting state funding if it accepts the compact since UVA exists to serve Virginia, its residents, & their interests—not be a tool of the federal govt. Scoop from our student newspaper, who’ve been doing vital reporting www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025...
cavalierdaily.com
Virginia Senate leaders express “unequivocal opposition” to Compact
The letter calls upon the University to immediately cease consideration of the Compact, and if not, the state will work to negatively impact the University’s funding.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
My first thought was “wow I hope this guy didn’t give out his name because he could absolutely be charged” and yup, he is correct to stay anonymous. This man’s account is shocking. His neighbors’ situation is shocking. The entire Chicago raid is shocking.
On the other side was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for his help.
"I wasn't planning on letting her stay, but I didn't know what the hell was going on," the man said of his Venezuelan migrant neighbors. But he quickly relented. The little girl was inconsolable and hid under his bed.
"I didn't want them to take her," said the man, who didn't want to be named because he fears he'll be targeted by federal authorities for his actions.
"I gave her my bedroom, and I just told her,
'Just stay there. Don't open, don't, shh, just stay quiet," he recalled telling the mom and daughter as he choked back tears.
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Frank Vehafric @fvehafric.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
One of the things I took away from the 60s and Richard Nixon, first mentioned by Hunter Thompson, but I believe to be true, is the fact that we believed, at time, that all our protesting, marching and sign waving was futile and pointless when in fact, it drove Richard Nixon to alcohol fueled madness
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Paul T. Levin @paultlevin.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
““They dragged little Greta [Thunberg] by her hair before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag. They did everything imaginable to her, as a warning to others,” the Turkish activist ErsinÇelik, a participant in the Sumud flotilla, told Anadolu news agency.”+
theguardian.com
Israel accused of detaining Greta Thunberg in infested cell and making her hold flags
Activist tells Swedish officials she has been subjected to harsh treatment, including insufficient food and water
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David J. Bier @davidjbier.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
ICE says I cause assaults on ICE by reciting facts about ICE’s recent shooting but refuses to link to the thread. Only posting a picture. ICE lies and ICE hides. You can read the facts for yourselves
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ACLU @aclu.org · 05/10/2025
BREAKING: A federal judge blocked the Trump administration's deployment of 200 Oregon National Guard members to Portland over the governor's objections. This decision reinforces one of our country's core principles: The military has no place policing our communities.
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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
Request: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... Order: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
Abughazaleh: I think Kristi Noem should be tried at The Hague. And if the response from ICE to people exercising their first amendment right is to drive vehicles through them, they should not be an agency in the US.
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Al Jazeera English @aljazeera.com · 04/10/2025
BREAKING: US President Trump says Israel "temporarily stopped bombing" Gaza as 17 Palestinians killed in new Israeli attack in Gaza City. 🔴 LIVE updates: aje.io/a1y8rg
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Genevieve Lakier @genevievelakier.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
The Trump Administration’s “Compact of Excellence” for Universities is... far from excellent! Indeed, it’s unconstitutional. In this post, let me count the ways. blog.dividedargument.com/p/the-uncons...
blog.dividedargument.com
The Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine and the Compact for Excellence
Members of the Trump administration love to say that federal funding is a privilege not a right and therefore something that can be granted or withheld based on changing administrative priorities.
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Susan Rinkunas @susanrinkunas.com · 02/10/2025
We contacted more than 40 Planned Parenthood affiliates for this story on the state of care now that the GOP budget law is fully in effect. Service journalism with @garnethenderson.com:
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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
NEW: Judge William Young's ruling against Rubio and Noem is a lesson for all in the Trump era. Young lays bare the unconstitutionality of the Trump administration's student deportation efforts — and issues a challenge to America. Today, at Law Dork:
lawdork.com
Judge William Young's ruling against Rubio and Noem is a lesson for all in the Trump era
Young lays bare the unconstitutionality of the Trump administration's student deportation efforts — and issues a challenge to America. Also: More court pushback.
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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
I think we underestimate the extent to which the right wing has eroded civil society simply by pulling stunts like this that make any public participation extremely unpleasant.
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Anthony Michael Kreis @anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
Look at what the United States Government is citing in the birthright citizenship case. Non-expert legal scholarship and work done hastily in service of their political goals.
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David Noll @david.noll.org · 28/09/2025
Ladies and gentlemen, the meritocracy
Ms. Halligan, who took over on Monday after her predecessor quit rather than prosecute James B. Comey with what he believed was insufficient evidence, had a little trouble with the first two tasks. At one point, she entered the wrong courtroom. When she found the right one, she stood on the wrong side of the judge, then appeared confused about the paperwork she just had signed.
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Jo Yurcaba @joyurcaba.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Texas to become the 20th state with a law restricting what bathrooms transgender people can use For @nbcnews.com: www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-...
nbcnews.com
Texas to become the 20th state with a transgender bathroom law
The bill, which Texas first attempted to pass in 2015, will require transgender people to use restrooms in public schools and government buildings in accordance with their birth sex.
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Movement Advancement Project @mapresearch.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Including a new law in Texas, 1 in 3 transgender people now live in the 20 states with a bathroom ban, though they vary in scope. 🔗 Learn more via our map: bit.ly/3LOIUSw Note: TX's law does not go into effect until December 4, 2025, and it will likely be challenged. www.them.us/story/texas-...
them.us
Texas Gov. Abbott Signs Trans Bathroom Bill Into Law With $125,000 Fines
The legislation covers government-owned buildings, public schools, prisons, and domestic violence shelters.
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ACLU @aclu.org · 23/09/2025
At a time when the Trump administration is trying to force people to conform to their ideology, last week's ruling is an important reminder that the government can't restrict speech based on its political agenda.
playbill.com
Court Rules That NEA 'Gender Ideology' Rule Violates the 1st Amendment
A new policy that required applicants to make supposed anti-"woke" declarations has been struck down.
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Cayden Mak @catachresis.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
As easy as it is to dunk on the acetaminophen announcement today, I just can't stop thinking about how all this claim of a "cure" for autism plays into a fundamentally eugenicist way of looking at the world. Those who diverge are to be cured or purged.
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Nicole Carr @nicolefcarr.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
I want you to read one of my 2022 investigations again + understand that the response you’re seeing from your children’s school boards-the harassment + firing of teachers, administrators & staff-is tied to a network of folks who have been in this game for years: www.propublica.org/article/geor...
propublica.org
White Parents Rallied to Chase a Black Educator Out of Town. Then, They Followed Her to the Next One.
Cecelia Lewis was asked to apply for a Georgia school district’s first-ever administrator job devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion. A group of parents — coached by local and national anti-CRT gr...
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Adam Weinstein @adamweinstein.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Today, the president of the United States of America said that the country's current pediatric vaccine schedule was "too much liquid... going into that baby" and then issued a decree announcing that anti-fascism is terrorism
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Foreign Bacall @absolutelyahha.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
‘Most complaints filed in federal courtrooms do not spend dozens of pages recounting the plaintiff’s “singular brilliance” and “history-making media appearances” in programs like Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson.’ 🤣
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Daphne Keller @daphnek.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
Receipts. Receipts galore.
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