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Cristian Farias

@cristianfarias.com
20K followers 647 following 3.9K posts

Legal journalist and beachgoer. I write and talk about courts, the law, and the politics shaping them in a number of places. Working on a new thing. Signal: cristianfarias.33

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 4h
Good bot.
A screenshot from the Trump administration’s new chatbot:

Q: Who won the 2020 presidential election?

A: Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the 2020 presidential election.

Official results
• Electoral College: Biden 306, Donald J.
Trump 232(270 needed to win)
• Vice President: Kamala D. Harris
• Popular vote (FEC): Biden about 81.3 million (51.31%)
Congress counted the electoral votes and declared Biden elected. He was inaugurated on
January 20, 2021.
Sources: National Archives, 2020 Electoral
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 6h
This is an astonishing self-own by the Internal Revenue Service that will keep scores of hardworking, tax-paying, non-refund-seeking immigrants from paying billions in federal taxes. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/b...
nytimes.com
Trump Administration Prepares to Ask Tax Filers if They Are U.S. Citizens (Gift Article)
The new question, included on a draft version of the primary tax form, comes as part of an anti-immigrant turn at an agency that long prioritized tax administration.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 8h
Question (4) is breathtaking: “Please tell us all the ways you want us to rule for you, independent of the actual legal issues in the case.”
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 13h
One big takeaway from this hearing is that Barack Obama and Joe Biden did a world of good to the D.C. Circuit when they appointed former trial judges to it. And with good reason, Judges Robert Wilkins, Michelle Childs, and Florence Pan have all been lighting into the Justice Department quite a bit.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 29/09/2026
Every so often, I’m reminded that Gannett was specifically recruiting for and hired a “conservative opinion editor”—I imagine to commission pieces such as this one. www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...
usatoday.com
Gas prices are brutal. Giving Democrats Congress would be worse | Opinion
Republicans have let conservatives down on gas prices and the SAVE Act. But staying home in midterm elections would put their biggest wins at risk.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 28/09/2026
Judges won't save us, but I imagine any media organization or broadcast network that derives part of is revenue from political and government ad spending has standing to sue over the propaganda ads the White House is running on friendly networks in the lead-up to the election. Maybe.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 28/09/2026
10-year-old: My beautiful tan is going to go away with this weather. Me: Tell me about it.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 27/09/2026
I ran into Mahmoud Khalil in the greenroom.
Cristian and Mahmoud Khalil pose for a selfie at MS NOW
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 26/09/2026
“I simply do not believe that Nolan simply and accidentally drowned. . . . And nobody saw anything? And no one knows anything,” the mother of a Black teen-ager who died this summer on a boating trip in Mississippi said. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
newyorker.com
Nolan Wells’s Family Still Wants Answers
A Mississippi grand jury declined to bring charges in connection with the death of a Black teen-ager during a boating trip, but it’s still unclear exactly how he died.
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The idea that people want AI oversight to happen "all of a sudden" ignores years of research, warnings, and policy efforts. The delay hasn’t been a lack of awareness; it’s been because of years of industry lobbying against regulation, political resistance, and inaction.
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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Read @courtwatch.bsky.social review the stories that don't get told as corporate media (in this case, McClatchy) lays off all the legal journalists. www.courtwatch.news/p/the-rabbit...
courtwatch.news
The Rabbit Hole: Covering What McClatchy Will Miss
With the private equity-owned newspaper chain laying off 90 reporters, we look at the court stories they’ll miss.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 27/09/2026
I can't stop, won't stop writing about Nolan Wells.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 26/09/2026
SCOTUS on Friday
Kombucha tasting girl meme
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 26/09/2026
Wow, in the middle of a nor’easter, all the swim bros and swim gals are like vultures waiting in the wind and rain for the pool to open. Ask me how I know. (I was watching them from the car, leave me alone.)
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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The last two sentences are … direct. Link: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 25/09/2026
Too much legal news.
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Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
JUST IN: A federal judge has issued a permanent injunction upbraiding ICE for mass arrests that have strained detention facilities and forced detainees all over the country into "overcrowded, squalid, and degrading rooms for excessive periods of time" www.nysd.uscourts.gov/sites/defaul...
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Sam Bagenstos @sbagen.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Heidi Overton said yesterday of Mifepristone that “according to FDA standards, the drug is safe and effective as labeled today.” She said something similar about vaccines. Don’t be fooled. That’s exactly the same as Brett Kavanaugh saying Roe v. Wade “is settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court.”
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 24/09/2026
While we were sleeping: Trump judge Timothy Kelly in Washington issued a temporary restraining order restoring White House press pass access to CNN, MSNOW, and Politico. Notably, his order is entirely on due process, not First Amendment, grounds. But it’s still early days.
storage.courtlistener.com
Order on Motion for TRO AND Set/Reset Deadlines – #24 in CABLE NEWS NETWORK, INC. v. TRUMP (D.D.C., 1:26-cv-03287) – CourtListener.com
Temporary Restraining Order. See Order for details. Signed by Judge Timothy J. Kelly on 9/24/26. (lctjk2) (Entered: 09/24/2026)
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Niko Bowie @nikobowie.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Deep dives like this really put into perspective what Chief Justice Rehnquist was doing in 2000 when he resurrected the Court’s precedents of the 1870s and 1880s, writing that their authors “had intimate knowledge and familiarity with the events surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 24/09/2026
This severe fall weather on the very first day of fall is extremely rude and uncalled for and a slap in my (glowing, bronzed) face.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 23/09/2026
The state of Mississippi won’t have the last word about Nolan Wells.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 23/09/2026
Thank you. It’s not even my favorite lift—far from it—but it’s a great newsletter name for a shredded legal journalist.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 23/09/2026
I’ve watched too many grieving Black mothers take their grief public, in search for answers and justice, but I’ve never seen what Nolan Wells’s mother does here — stopping and correcting an NBC News interviewer about how to refer to her son. Rightfully so, the interview ended shortly thereafter.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 23/09/2026
Katy Tur liked the name of my newsletter. From today:
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 23/09/2026
I turned on my long-dormant Substack to have occasional conversations with fellow nerds who care about law and politics, democracy, and being swole. Thank you to @stevevladeck.bsky.social for agreeing to nerd out with me this morning. I contained myself and did not bring up Younger abstention!
open.substack.com
The Missouri Mess: Live with Cristian Farias and Steve Vladeck
A recording from Cristian Farias and Steve Vladeck's live video
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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
A federal judge has ordered Texas to air condition all of the state’s prisons by the end of 2029 High temperatures violate the Constitution’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment, the judge ruled.
texastribune.org
Texas ordered to air condition all prisons by the end of 2029
High temperatures violate the Constitution’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment, the judge ruled. Just over a third of Texas prisons are fully air conditioned.
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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Confused about what the Eighth Circuit did last night in the Missouri redistricting case—or what happens now? Join @cristianfarias.com and me for a Substack Live at 8:45 ET to cover the details: open.substack.com/live-stream/... And/or read my explainer post: www.stevevladeck.com/p/252-the-ei...
open.substack.com
LIVE SOON: The Missouri Mess: Live with Cristian Farias and Steve Vladeck
Starting Sep 22 at 8:45 AM EDT
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 22/09/2026
Four legal experts!
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
NEW: @apnews.com confirms that ICE has begun electronically "disappearing" people in the agency's custody who have final orders of removal. As of last week, anyone jailed by ICE with a final order of removal will NOT appear in the ICE Online Detainee Locator System, making them effectively vanish.
apnews.com
AP Exclusive: ICE hides locations of thousands of detainees with final removal orders
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding most detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, in a move that has made it harder for lawyers an...
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Josh Block @joshablock.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
1. Under what possible procedural mechanism can a court of appeals affirm a TRO and remand for entry of a *permanent injunction* when there hasn’t even been an answer to the complaint? 2. This just openly defies Kavanaugh’s stay of the order until disposition of a cert petition.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 20/09/2026
The only reason he’s changing it up is his co-partisans on the Supreme Court, which let him get away with the ballroom that’s also now an underground military complex.
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Professa Murray @kalimurray.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Yeah: the Unitary Executive theory of removals is dumb because the President must faithfully execute the laws—including civil rights law—and firing people because of race and gender violates civil rights law. People really need to read Federalist Paper No. 69.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 18/09/2026
In a Manhattan federal courtroom today, a lawyer for the Trump administration argued that Article II of the Constitution lets the president fire a federal employee because he’s Black, and there’s nothing a court can do about it. www.politico.com/news/2026/09...
politico.com
DOJ says recent Supreme Court ruling shields Maurene Comey firing
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 18/09/2026
Rest in peace, Duncan Sheik. I’m so glad your one hit song had us in a chokehold for so long—and that life gave you so much fulfillment other than being a dreamy one-hit-wonder. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/a...
nytimes.com
Duncan Sheik, Who Traded Pop Stardom for Broadway, Dies at 56 (Gift Article)
Weary of the heartthrob label after his 1996 hit “Barely Breathing,” he pivoted to musical theater and won two Tonys for composing “Spring Awakening.”
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 17/09/2026
This is an issue @knightcolumbia.org, which filed an amicus brief and also argued the case, has been litigating for many, many years. Of note: There’s a pending cert petition on warrantless border searches, brought by a U.S. citizen and immigration lawyer. pacificlegal.org/wp-content/u...
pacificlegal.org
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 16/09/2026
Oh no.
A newsletter headline that reads:

The New Yorker Daily
The Supreme Court Saved the Midterms
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ElieNYC @elienyc.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
It looks like we’re *finally* at the magic Purcell point where Kavanaugh thinks we’re too close to the election for his party to rig it.
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Sam Bagenstos @sbagen.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Yup. I always told my staff at HHS OGC that their jobs helped people live longer, better lives. Gutting the administrative state puts lives in danger.
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Gabriel Malor @gabrielmalor.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
DC Cir. holds that Trump administration had no authority to order a Michigan power company to keep operating a coal power plant that was scheduled to decommission in 2025 and be replaced by renewable energy. DOE gets no deference under Loper Bright Enters. media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/doc...
The Department’s reading of “emergency” invites frequent federal interventions that are unsupported by the statute and threaten the stability of the energy market.  By directing a generator approved for retirement to remain operative while effectively walling it off from planning and market frameworks, the Order challenged here interferes with ordinary methods to assess a region’s true generation capacity and distorts price signals that otherwise prompt appropriate capacity investments.  See Energy Law Scholars Amicus Br. 16.  DOE’s use of its expansive interpretation of “emergency” to prevent planned retirements of generators slated to close, for example, will likely discourage development of needed new resources by artificially lowering capacity market prices and destabilizing those markets.  See id. 16-20.  Such distortions may be justified in the face of the rare emergency requiring DOE’s immediate, short-term intervention.  But unless DOE’s involvement is needed in response to a genuine emergency as defined by section 202(c), it must be avoided.   The text and statutory structure are alone sufficient to settle the “best” understanding of FERC’s section 202(c) authority.  See Loper Bright, 603 U.S. at 370.  The correctness of our reading is powerfully confirmed by the executive branch’s consistent interpretation and limited exercise of that
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 10/09/2026
These are not serious people: "At a minimum, an alien could not qualify as an 'inhabitant,' at the time of the Founding, without establishing a residence within a jurisdiction and an intent to remain there indefinitely." From Donald Trump's new proposed Census rules:
federalregister.gov
Decennial Census of the Population of Americans; Proposed Residence Criteria and Proposed Regulations for Demographic Questions
The Census Bureau is proposing to add two new parts to the Code of Federal Regulations governing the decennial census of population and housing. First, the Census Bureau is proposing to add a part out...
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 10/09/2026
The same John Roberts that blocked the citizenship question from the 2020 Census ruled, in the very same case, that a citizenship question is perfectly legal under the Constitution and laws. From Trump's new proposed rulemaking aiming to overhaul the Census: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
Excerpt from new Census rulemakign, with language highlighted that reads in part: 

The Census Bureau could, in addition, include a question about legal status on the short-form decennial census questionnaire. The Enumeration Clause “permits Congress, and by extension the Secretary, to inquire about citizenship on the census questionnaire.”  Dep't of Com. v.  New York, 588 U.S. 752, 770 (2019).
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 10/09/2026
How I read this: The Supreme Court takes the rule it announced in Moore v. Harper—which shot down the so-called independent state legislature theory—seriously and as binding on rogue state legislatures.
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Lawrence Hurley @lawrencehurley.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
JUST IN: Just minutes after Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins filed at SCOTUS, the court, with no noted dissents, blocks his attempt to use a newly drawn GOP map that the Missouri Supreme Court said he couldn't:
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 09/09/2026
Day 1 of school: Kids up early, excited, fed, all dressed up and ready to go with an hour to go. Day 2 of school: Kids must be dragged from beds and there’s much teeth-pulling to go around. I love parenthood.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 08/09/2026
We did it, Joe: First and only outdoor swim of the season.
Cristian jn a local pool, shot from behind, ready to swim some laps. Swim stats from Apple Watch:

Mon, Sep 7
Pool Swim
Freestyle (1,250yd)
2:36PM-3:24PM
Workout Time
0:21:21
Elapsed Time
0:48:04
Distance
1,250YD
Active Calories
300CAL
Total Calories
342CAL
Avg. Pace
1'41"/
/100yd
Avg. Heart Rate
136BPM
Laps 50
Pool Length
25YDThe sun peeking through a tree.
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ElieNYC @elienyc.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I'm about to go on with @joyannreid.bsky.social with @cristianfarias.com to talk about his excellent article about Nolan Wells. I linked it here in my newsletter. Also, my newsletter is out and I was very mean to the Dems who voted for House resoultions. www.thenation.com/article/poli...
thenation.com
A New Theory of John Roberts’s Jurisprudence
In this week’s Elie v. U.S., our justice correspondent explains why he thinks Roberts rules the way he does. Plus: Elie mourns the end of summer—and the world.
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New York Magazine @nymag.com · 03/09/2026
As the investigation drags on, and internet sleuthing fills the void, justice for Nolan Wells requires getting to the truth and nothing but.
nymag.com
What We Owe Nolan Wells
As the investigation drags on, and internet sleuthing fills the void, justice for Nolan Wells requires getting to the truth and nothing but.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 03/09/2026
This essay is about many things: A mother’s search for answers. An investigation that drags on. About the Black journalists and content creators keeping the story alive. And about Mississippi—the Blackest state in the nation and a history of inflicting pain on and denying justice to Black people.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 03/09/2026
I wrote about Nolan Wells—and about how the truth, and nothing but the truth, is the one thing his family is rightfully demanding. They deserve nothing less. Not many of my peers are covering this story, so here I attempt to make sense of the vacuum, legal or otherwise. nymag.com/intelligence...
nymag.com
What We Owe Nolan Wells
As the investigation drags on, and internet sleuthing fills the void, justice requires getting to the truth and nothing but.
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