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Brandon Weiss

@bweisslaw.bsky.social
891 followers 262 following 32 posts

Law Prof @ American University Washington College of Law. Writing & teaching about property, housing, community dev, ethics, legal ed. Dad to 🦉 & 🦕 expert. www.american.edu/wcl/faculty/weiss.…

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Brandon Weiss @bweisslaw.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Not sure who else will appreciate this, so for the property law nerds out there… I somewhat randomly stumbled upon Leicester Sq. last night. Happy to report it appears to remain uncovered with any buildings and available as a pleasure ground #tulk
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Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
A 3,750 year-old contract for the sale of a house recorded on a clay tablet, still in its original clay envelope! Museo di Antichità, Turin 📷 by me #Archaeology
My photo shows a Paleo-Babylonian clay tablet inscribed with cuneiform text, still partially enclosed in its original clay envelope. The clay is pale orangey-brown in colour displayed against a grey display case background. The outer envelope has been broken open, revealing the inner tablet beneath. Both surfaces are covered with densely packed wedge-shaped characters, which record a contract for the sale of a house purchased by Mannum-balu-Samas at the price of 1/3 shekel and 15 grains of silver. This is followed by the names of the numerous witnesses including the mayor Sin-magir and the courier Apil-ilisu. The same text is repeated on the envelope in the event of a dispute, which was broken to inspect the internal document. It is dated 32nd year of Hammurabl's reign, 10th month, c. 1750 BC. The clay envelope measures 87 mm (height) × 55 mm (width), while the inner tablet measures 64 mm (height) × 43 mm (width). On display at the Museum of Antiquity in Turin. Collection number MAT 740.
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Pearl Jam @pearljam.com · 30/01/2026
The Ten Club is closed Friday, January 30 as we stand with the people of Minnesota to protest the actions of ICE and murders of Alex Pretti, Renee Good, Sliverio Villegas González, and Keith Porter Jr. For more information on how to participate in the National Shutdown, visit: nationalshutdown.org
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Brandon Weiss @bweisslaw.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Thanks for the shrewd analysis @tsilverstein.bsky.social. Not entirely clear to me that their agenda is better served by doing this given ICP rather than just issuing a new rule that functionally kills disparate impact. They’d prefer the random court’s interpretation of ICP than their own rule?
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Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Thanks, New Yorker
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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 22/09/2025
The Trump administration is limiting enforcement of fair housing laws, dismissing them as ideologically driven and DEI in disguise, according to interviews and internal documents reviewed by The New York Times.
nyti.ms
Trump Appointees Roll Back Enforcement of Fair Housing Laws
Interviews and internal documents show that signature civil rights protections in housing are being dismissed as ideologically driven and D.E.I. in disguise.
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Tara Raghuveer @taraghuveer.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
In the last six weeks, the Tenant Union Federation launched seven (7) majority tenant unions, across five (5) states, representing 1000 units of housing owned by Capital Realty Group, a New York-based corporate landlord. The first portfolio organizing of its kind... www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
bloomberg.com
Tenants Seek to Unionize One Private Equity Firm's Entire Housing Portfolio
By organizing renters across Capital Realty Group’s affordable housing complexes, the Tenant Union Federation hopes to bring sectoral bargaining to negotiations with large landlords.
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The Briefing with Jen Psaki @briefingwithpsaki.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
Pritzker: "Everybody should be saying that ABC should reverse their decision."
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Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
It’s happening. The takedown of Jimmy Kimmel is likely the start of a campaign to use the murder of Charlie Kirk as a pretext to use the power of the White House to wipe out Trump’s critics and his political opponents. But we aren’t powerless. We can mobilize and organize. Now.
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
See how this works?
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Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
Just just did this. The kids will miss Bluey but it had to be done.
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Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 25/08/2025
I am sounding the alarm on the real crisis we face today. Donald Trump’s overreach is what our founders warned against – it is unprecedented, unwarranted, and un-American. There’s no emergency here that calls for military intervention.
Governor JB Pritzker joined elected officials, business, faith, and education leaders, community advocates, and law enforcement leaders to condemn the Trump administration’s plan to deploy the National Guard or active duty military in Chicago despite objections from state and local leadership.
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
Reminder that Trump unleashing federal troops across D.C. isn't meant to address any actual concerns about crime. It's a show of force. It’s important to see this and L.A. as trial runs for a possible military occupation elsewhere in the United States.
theguardian.com
DC residents question troops’ focus on low-crime areas amid Trump takeover
Many federal agents have been seen standing around in tourist areas, with few spotted addressing violent crime
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Niko Bowie @nikobowie.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
“We have committed our professional lives to learning and free inquiry, working together with students to advance truth for the collective benefit of society. Unlike our distant governing boards, we will not give up so easily — no matter what kind of deals are signed in our name.”
bostonglobe.com
Harvard faculty won’t cave to Trump demands - The Boston Globe
Unlike our distant governing boards, we will not give up easily — no matter what kind of deals are signed in our name.
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Kathleen Rubenstein @kbrnyc.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
I have resigned as Executive Director of the Skadden Foundation. This moment in history calls on us to provide more and better support for public interest lawyers. I look forward to finding other ways to contribute to their vital work.
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ACLU @aclu.org · 10/05/2025
Today, our client Rümeysa Öztürk was released on bail from ICE detention in Louisiana, and she will return to New England to continue her studies. 📸 Giancarlo D’Agostaro
Two woman walking and embracing each other in front of an ICE detention center. The woman on the left is wearing a black dress and heels. The woman on the right is smiling and wearing a white hijab, glasses, and a pink garment. Members of the press are in the background.Two women standing, smiling, and embracing each other with grass, water, and the sky in the background. The woman on the left is wearing a white hijab, glasses, and a pink garment. The woman on the right is wearing a black dress.Two woman stand next to each other and hold onto one another. The woman on the left is wearing a black dress. The woman on the right is smiling and wearing a white hijab, glasses, and a pink garment. In the background is the fence of an ICE detention center.
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Bec Hamilton @bechamilton.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Lifetime honor to receive American University’s highest award, Scholar/Teacher of the Year, at the National Press Club this evening. So very grateful @auwcl.bsky.social
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Andrew Guthrie Ferguson @profferguson.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
It was the original tool to prevent tyranny. No EO or politicized federal prosecution can get a conviction unless 12 ordinary citizens agree. Maybe more people will read Why Jury Duty Matters as a reminder.
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Jessica A. Shoemaker @jessicashoemaker.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
As markets churn and world orders reset, @jamesftierney.bsky.social and I have a new piece forthcoming in Yale Law Journal that couldn't be more timely. "Trading Acres" traces the risks of farmland financialization and analyzes the role of law in this ongoing rural land grab. 🧵
Abstract - Trading Acres - forthcoming Yale Law Journal - Jessica A Shoemaker and James Fallows Tierney - Farms are places where people live their lives, sustain their families, and produce food and fiber for the wider community. And now, farms are assets swept up into global financial channels—converting before our eyes from repositories of the best of our agrarian ideals into paper playthings for the very rich. This asset-class-ification of farmland echoes patterns of financialization occurring across other elements of our daily lives, including housing, and compounds wider crises of concentration and industrialization in agriculture. But as an active land grab unfolds across rural America, farmland’s recent capture by absentee investors is particularly concerning. Farmland’s conversion to asset class threatens rural livelihoods, agriculture and food system resilience, and economic and spatial justice. In this article, we argue that Wall Street’s arrival at rural America’s gate is not merely a market trend but rather the product of deep social choices governing the accumulation of investor wealth: property, corporate, and securities law. We explore the ways in which these deep structures of our legal system—from the primacy of market logics to a range of biases that skew our spatial, temporal, and social relations—constitute the conditions for this profound transformation in the way farmland, as a basic and essential rural resource, is being integrated into the modern capital economy. Together, business and property law create the conditions for land concentration, rural depopulation, environmental degradation, and labor exploitation. Today’s rural land grab is meeting little resistance. But historically, investor-owned farmland was seen as a deep and politically-motivating threat to rural life. We situate past reform attempts to rein in financialized farmland and conclude that many attempts failed because modest doctrinal interventions result in playing shell gam…
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Prof Dynarski @dynarski.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Harvard sued the Trump admin today 💪🏽🥳💯 www.harvard.edu/research-fun...
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Laurence H. Tribe @tribelaw.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
Was the major questions doctrine meant to be a one-way ratchet, good for striking down Democratic presidential action but dormant during Republican presidencies? Let’s hope Roberts avoids that further black mark on the legitimacy of an already embattled court. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Will This Conservative Legal Doctrine Undo Trump’s First Months in Office?
What goes around, comes around. And it is not likely to be good for the White House.
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Brandon Weiss @bweisslaw.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
Feels like momentum is building toward coming together and speaking up… here’s a letter members of our faculty put out this week
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Ben Ross @benross.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
Steve Kerr wore a Harvard basketball shirt after the Warriors’ win tonight: “Yes, this is me supporting Harvard. Way to go. Way to stand up to the bully.”
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Brian Galle @bdgesq.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
I guess I'm gonna have to do a big explainer on the Bob Jones case (which will control how the Harvard tax exemption revocation will go in the lower courts) at some point on here, but for now you can't go wrong with this nice introduction to the issues by Joe.
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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
If the U.S. government is going to take the position that, once removed from the United States, folks can’t be brought back, then it sure seems to me that federal courts should be reflexively and categorically barring *all* removals until they’re 100 percent certain that the removals are lawful.
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Barack Obama @barackobama.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions - rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking steps to make sure students can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect. Let’s hope others follow suit.
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Neil Lewis, Jr. @neillewisjr.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
I hope other university alliances start pooling resources and engaging in the kinds of collective action Rutgers is proposing here for the Big Ten. senate.rutgers.edu/report/resol...
Whereas, the Big Ten Academic Alliance represents not only athletic competition but also a longstanding tradition of academic collaboration, research excellence, and commitment to democratic values and shared governance; Whereas, the Big Ten Academic Alliance includes 18 universities with thousands of instructors serving over 600,000 students; Whereas, the preservation of one institution’s integrity is the concern of all, and an infringement against one member university of the Big Ten shall be considered an infringement against all; Be it resolved that, the Rutgers University Senate urges the President of Rutgers University to formally propose and help establish a Mutual Academic Defense Compact (MADC) among all members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance; Be it further resolved that, under this compact, all participating institutions shall commit meaningful funding to a shared or distributed defense fund. This fund shall be used to provide immediate and strategic support to any member institution under direct political or legal infringement; Be it further resolved that, participating institutions shall make available, at the request of the institution under direct political infringement, the services of their legal counsel, governance experts, and public affairs offices to coordinate a unified and vigorous response, including but not limited to: Legal representation and countersuit actions; strategic public communication; amicus briefs and expert testimony; legislative advocacy and coalition-building; related topical research as needed.
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Blake Emerson @blakeprof.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
Wishing everyone here a happy Transgender Day of Visibility! Trans rights remain at the frontier of American civil rights law and we can’t give up the fight for freedom, equality, and inclusion.
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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century." snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-les...
snyder.substack.com
Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow
Key selections from On Tyranny, for viewing and sharing
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Marin K. Levy @marinklevy.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
“Lawyers and big firms: For God’s sake, stand up for the legal profession, and for the Constitution. Defend the oath you took when you became officers of the court. If we stand together and fight, we will win.” - John W. Keker, Robert A. Van Nest and Elliot R. Peters
nytimes.com
Opinion | For God’s Sake, Fellow Lawyers, Stand Up to Trump (Gift Article)
If law firms won’t defend the rule of law, who will?
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Dan Farbman @danfarbman.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
But the formula for resisting these bullies is not mysterious or complex. Collective solidarity in defense of each other (even at the risk of loss/harm) will work. I see this letter as weak advocacy in this direction. That doesn’t make it good, but it’s better than it could have been. 4
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Dan Farbman @danfarbman.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
This is a great reminder that all of us who are embedded in institutions have power to act within those institutions—to open space, resist, build power. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
A Commons in the Master's House
Almost everyone who reads these words is an institutional insider in some form. Those of us who aspire toward transformation, liberation, and resistance from ou
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Brandon Weiss @bweisslaw.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
“The federal government is stating ‘we are not making integration a priority,’” said Brandon Weiss, a law professor at American University…
cnn.com
Trump administration backs off mandate addressing housing segregation and discrimination | CNN Business
In 2021, Boston began requiring real estate developers to consider how their projects could hurt residents historically discriminated against in housing and take steps to reduce those impacts.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar @repilhan.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
I signed a letter asking for Mahmoud Khalil’s immediate release. We will not let this administration trample our constitutional rights and silence voices they don’t like. Free Mahmoud Khalil.
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Brandon Weiss @bweisslaw.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
“Going forward, the agency will accept a locality’s self-certification that it is affirmatively furthering fair housing in accordance with the 1968 Fair Housing Act.”
subscriber.politicopro.com
POLITICO Pro: Trump scraps Biden-era fair housing rule
Trump had weaponized an earlier version of the rule during the 2020 campaign, declaring that Democrats wanted to “abolish the suburbs.”
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Rep. Jamie Raskin @raskin.house.gov · 26/02/2025
Even the people working at DOGE say it is a lawless nightmare for America. In fact, they know it better than anyone. Thanks to these true public servants who won’t stand for such a dangerous betrayal of the American people.
npr.org
21 DOGE staffers resign, saying they won't help 'dismantle' public services
Twenty-one members of the United States DOGE Service have resigned, they said in an anonymous letter, citing DOGE's ongoing work dramatically reshaping the federal government.
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Danielle Citron @daniellecitron.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
1/ Musk and crew have no legal authorization to access (a disclosure to them) Treasury Department tax return systems. Period. No routine use; no written request from law enforcement head for a specific record; no nothing. This is the kind of indiscriminate, unauthorized access that Sen. Goldwater
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Brandon Weiss @bweisslaw.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
Excellent reporting by the Washington Post today in a top story on the potential scale of alleged rent-setting collusion by some of the nation’s largest landlords wapo.st/4fWtN6U
wapo.st
Landlords are accused of colluding to raise rents. See where.
Millions of rents across the country may now be set using one company’s algorithmic software, according to a federal lawsuit and a Washington Post analysis.
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Brandon Weiss @bweisslaw.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
I had the pleasure of being invited to HUD headquarters in Oct. as one of 25 housing scholars from around the U.S. to talk about the "Next Generation of Housing Policy." The two-day convening was a wonderful opportunity to engage w/ scholars and the incredibly dedicated public servants at HUD. (1/2)
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Dan Immergluck @danimmergluck.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Hah! He picks guy who helped run Opportunity Zone program, a basically scam tax break widely regarded as worst & least-accountable economic development program in US history. Program subsidizes already-likely gentrification. No evidence of benefits to communities. www.politico.com/news/2024/11...
politico.com
Trump selects motivational speaker Scott Turner to lead housing agency
The one-time Texas lawmaker works at a Trump-allied think tank.
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Brandon Weiss @bweisslaw.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
My pre-election piece on post-Chevron housing regulation (with Michael Karam). Given the election, it’ll be interesting to see if conservative-leaning judges suddenly become much less keen on the MQD…
lpeproject.org
Are Major Housing Regulations Possible in a Post-Chevron World?
Faced with increasingly dire housing challenges, tenants and organizers have called on federal administrative agencies to impose rent regulations, curb discriminatory screening practices…
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Brandon Weiss @bweisslaw.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
Show me a picture on your phone that has your energy but isn’t a selfie.
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Thomas Silverstein @tsilverstein.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
Some good news (or perhaps, the absence of bad news) out of SCOTUS today: the Court denied cert in two Takings challenges to New York's rent stabilization laws. Gorsuch indicated that he would have granted cert but did not write a dissent. The threat is far from gone, but I'll take this for now.
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Jorge A. Caballero, MD @datadrivenmd.social · 07/11/2024
Welcome to everyone new to Bluesky! Here are 4 (illustrated) steps you can take to make your experience here more pleasant than what you left behind on X and/or Threads. A 🧵
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Brandon Weiss @bweisslaw.bsky.social · 03/04/2024
Happy to be quoted in this Washington Post article today: “Stories about the growing number of squatters is a sort of narrative, or rhetorical tool, being used to push back against tenants . . . . " www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/...
washingtonpost.com
Squatters have become a right-wing talking point. What to know about the rare practice.
Republican legislators are introducing and passing state laws to curb squatting, but experts say there’s no data to support fears of a surge.
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Brandon Weiss @bweisslaw.bsky.social · 16/01/2024
Busy week @ SCOTUS for those who care about affordable housing / property / HUD. Last Tuesday was Sheetz (relevant to AH impact fees), tomorrow is Devillier (whether the Takings Clause is self executing), and Wednesday is Loper (challenge to Chevron deference — could affect FHA rules)
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Brandon Weiss @bweisslaw.bsky.social · 29/12/2023
I just donated to Luz Herrera for Judge 2024 and you can too: www.efundraisingconnections.com/c/LuzHerrera... Many of you know and love Luz — she is an incredibly dedicated public interest lawyer and law professor, who started a nonprofit firm in Compton, CA ~20 yrs ago. Bio here: luzherrera.com
luzherrera.com
Luz Herrera for Judge 2024 – Los Angeles County Superior Court Office 137
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Brandon Weiss @bweisslaw.bsky.social · 20/12/2023
“As rents surge and homelessness reaches a record high, housing assistance has fallen to the lowest level in nearly 25 years — a stark contrast to growth in other safety net programs.” www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/u...
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