iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Jay Willis

Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 2h

There is no one I would trust more to handle the nuance of the SCOTUSblog story in a way that is neither mean nor sands off the rough edges than @jaywillis.net — another SCOTUS writer who I am friends with and greatly respect. His story at Slate is a must read and, ultimately, really sad.

slate.com

It Was the Essential Home of Supreme Court News. Now It’s a Joke. What Happened?

How high-stakes poker brought down a pillar of Supreme Court coverage.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 4h

A pretty grim sign for legal journalism when the best-known source for Supreme Court news and information turns itself into a free platform for Fortune 500 companies to talk about what a good job the Supreme Court is doing

ballsandstrikes.org

The Conservative Takeover of SCOTUSblog Is Just What the Supreme Court Needed

SCOTUSblog used to cover the Supreme Court. Now, it cheers for it.

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Reposted by Jay Willis

Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 4h

In case Americans getting ready to vote forgot about Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration killing people, and all of the other governmental lawlessness, Todd Blanche wants you to remember.

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 8h

Today in “neither our media nor our political system is designed to deal with a far right authoritarian party”

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 29/09/2026

If you’d asked me to parody how silly and broken legal journalism is, I genuinely don’t think I could have come up with “so the best-known ‘nonpartisan’ Supreme Court outlet is now run by an ex-Trump DOJ flack who had her longtime personal friend Brett Kavanaugh officiate her wedding”

ballsandstrikes.org

The Conservative Takeover of SCOTUSblog Is Just What the Supreme Court Needed

SCOTUSblog used to cover the Supreme Court. Now, it cheers for it.

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Elon Green @elongreen.bsky.social · 21h

This is a hell of a piece.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 29/09/2026

Wrote about the decline and fall of SCOTUSblog, which used to be the single best resource for Supreme Court stuff, and (thanks to some intervening crimes committed by its co-founder) is now a weird platform for conservative pundits to talk about what a good job the conservative justices are doing

slate.com

It Was the Essential Home of Supreme Court News. Now It’s a Joke. What Happened?

How high-stakes poker brought down a pillar of Supreme Court coverage.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 29/09/2026

GOOD NEWS: A phone call has confirmed that my wallet is NOT at the brewery where I last paid for something on Sunday BAD NEWS: My wallet is therefore somewhere in my house, and I have checked everywhere and do not have a blessed idea where it could be

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is important, not because many regular people read SCOTUSblog, but because media outlets still treat it as a good resource

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 29/09/2026

Jack Smith adopting the sort of bewildered deadpan affect of Coach Beard in 'Ted Lasso' throughout this clip might be the comic performance of the year

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Rick Hasen @rickhasen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

#ELB: Jay Willis Pens Must-Read Piece on the Sad Demise of SCOTUSBlog (Gift link) electionlawblog.org/2026/jay-willis…

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Micah @rincewind.run · 29/09/2026

it is just monumentally depressing that at the time we need honest supreme court coverage the most, the place that used to be the best resource for it has been turned - like most other media outlets - into a sycophantic shitshow dedicated to glazing the worst people in america

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 29/09/2026

slate.com

It Was the Essential Home of Supreme Court News. Now It’s a Joke. What Happened?

How high-stakes poker brought down a pillar of Supreme Court coverage.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 28/09/2026

The fact that a guy who once called Joe Biden a "great national nightmare" is now a slam-dunk judicial nominee is a pretty tidy illustration of how openly partisan judicial nominations are for the Trump White House. They want Republicans who will do what Mister Trump wants, and they sure found one.

ballsandstrikes.substack.com

Trump Nominee: For Ethical Reasons, I Cannot Discuss the Time I Called Biden a “Great National Nightmare”

Lots of judges are Republicans. Not all of them are this loud about it.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 28/09/2026

Easily the funniest part of meeting parents at my kid's school is when they ask what I do, and I explain I'm a journalist and write about the law and the Supreme Court, and I see a flicker of horror on their faces that is very clearly, "Wait, does this guy think women shouldn't be allowed to vote"

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 28/09/2026

Once you see Sean McVay’s Kash Patel eyes, you really cannot unsee them

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 27/09/2026

I kept JSN in fantasy from last season, but offered him to half the league in trades in August because I was very nervous about The Regression this year. Lol, lmao.

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Reposted by Jay Willis

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 25/09/2026

really fascinating to see isgur conduct this interview as if conservative election mistrust has materialized out of nowhere or as if liberal claims of voter suppression are totally baseless. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | How Worried Should We Be About the Midterm Elections?

And how we learn to trust elections again.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 27/09/2026

I told the 3-year-old I love him very much and he immediately hit me with “thank you”

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 27/09/2026

Well, it’s pretty simple: USC and everyone ever associated with it are bad and should be seized by the state and razed to the ground

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 26/09/2026

It’s always silly when judges insist that they are magically nonpartisan and have no political beliefs, but it’s especially funny when you have a long track record of saying things like “ANY REPUBLICAN IS BETTER THAN ANY DEMOCRAT” (all caps in original)

ballsandstrikes.substack.com

Trump Nominee: For Ethical Reasons, I Cannot Discuss the Time I Called Biden a “Great National Nightmare”

Lots of judges are Republicans. Not all of them are this loud about it.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 26/09/2026

I’m catching up on DVR, but the booth just referred to a player in the Cal-Clemson game as a “seventh-year senior” and my mind is spinning

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 25/09/2026

I called for an HVAC tuneup and my call was answered by Dane, an AI agent that identified itself as AI but also had background chatter and keyboard sounds to make it sound like it was a call center. I told Dane that that creeped the shit out of me and he apologized and said he was just here to help.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 25/09/2026

Really enjoyed reading Greg Cook, a Trump nominee to a district court in Alabama, spend roughly 50 pages explaining that the time he said that "ANY REPUBLICAN IS BETTER THAN ANY DEMOCRAT" does not in any way suggest that he might be biased in favor of Republicans

ballsandstrikes.substack.com

Trump Judicial Nominee: For Ethical Reasons, I Cannot Discuss the Time I Called Biden a “Great National Nightmare”

Lots of judges are Republicans. Not all of them are this loud about it.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 24/09/2026

Checking in on keen insights from this year’s SCOTUSblog summit, which included the general counsels of Boeing and Exxon complimenting the justices for "their well-developed, well-thought-through approaches to deciding cases,” and for "calling it as best they can" www.scotusblog.com/2026/09/at-a...

Lat next asked whether the lawyers considered the Roberts court “pro-“ or “anti-business.” Gerry countered that it was neither. Instead, he said, the court was made up of “nine justices who have well-developed, well-thought-through approaches to deciding cases” that lead to “a result in a case,” regardless of who’s on what side of the case.

Callanan pointed to the tariffs case as evidence of the difficulty of making such a determination. Whether it was a pro-business case, he suggested, depends on your vantage point: two different businesses – a lumber company, which benefited from the tariffs, or a toy store, which often imported its products from overseas – would have two entirely different views on the question.

Taylor acknowledged that “if you’re looking to make that argument” that the court is pro-business, “you can find it,” but he contended that it’s also easy to make the argument that the court is anti-business. “And that,” he concluded, “tells me that they’re calling it as best they can.”

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 24/09/2026

I am skeptical this will survive in court, but if it does, basically the only thing that will be a crime under the Endangered Species Act is wearing a T-shirt that says MY SPECIFIC INTENT IS TO KILL BABY SEALS and then walking up to baby seals on the beach and clubbing them to death

abcnews.com

Trump administration allows inadvertent killing of endangered species

Inadvertently killing endangered animals while logging a forest or building a dam would no longer be considered illegal under a new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 24/09/2026

I agree with this, just give it to whichever team won the division last year and let’s be done with it.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 23/09/2026

Sometimes you only need to read the caption to know that a Supreme Court case is going to be an absolute bloodbath

CERT. GRANTED
Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota
DOCKET NO.
25-1017
OP. BELOW
9th Cir.
ARGUMENT
Dec 8, 2026
TERM
October Term 2026

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 23/09/2026

There have been lots of malevolent Supreme Court justices, but there's not really a precedent for a Supreme Court justice who is as *dumb* as Brett Kavanaugh. A complete rube. Shows his ass every time he tries to write down more than two sentences of original thought.

ballsandstrikes.org

Brett Kavanaugh’s Imaginary Immigration Stops Opinion Gets More Embarrassing Every Day

The fact that ICE officers do not allow wrongfully detained people to “promptly go free” is a surprise to only one man in America.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 23/09/2026

Appreciate the direct link Chris’s post makes between the Supreme Court repeatedly making shit up to suit its agenda, and hack Trump appointees on the lower courts who decide that they are perfectly within their rights to do the same thing

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Reposted by Jay Willis

Rodger Sherman @rodger.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Tough competition of course, but the Trump admin deciding that white South Africans are the only group of people on earth currently worthy of refugee status has to be the most overtly racist thing any administration has done in decades

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 22/09/2026

There is an explanation for this, and it’s simple: The song is Pretty Good

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 22/09/2026

For all the work the conservative legal movement put into capturing the Supreme Court, they've never been able to get around the basic fact that normal people hate its policy agenda. The polling numbers on Citizens United are ABYSMAL. Blowout-level stuff. ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

A major contributing cause of this explosive increase was Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision striking down a federal law that prohibited corporations from using their general treasury funds to support or oppose candidates for office. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the five-justice majority that the prohibition was tantamount to “censorship,” and that the intrusion on corporations’ First Amendment rights could not be justified by the government’s interest in preventing corruption.

According to a 2025 YouGov poll, 79 percent of Americans disagree with the majority’s conclusion that independent corporate expenditures “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” On the contrary, 75 percent believe that unlimited spending in elections makes democracy weaker by allowing the wealthy to exert too much influence over the decisionmaking of ostensibly public servants. Basically, Citizens United opened the floodgates to a wave of big money in politics, and people are tired of drowning.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 20/09/2026

The least essential thinker the legal academy has to offer. I’m in awe.

And last, and very much not least, he will be remembered for trying to stand up to Donald Trump and preserve the rule of law to some degree in the course of the Trump administration, when the threats against the rule of law and the courts have really been substantial.
Will that lead him to go down in history as a great Chief Justice?
I rather doubt it, but it will lead him to go down in history as an important Chief Justice who influenced significantly the outcome of cases in front of the Court.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 20/09/2026

I know judges love to talk about how they just Do Law, Not Politics, but an opinion like this one is as close as judges get to being like “your policy proposal is too stupid to be legal, please get out of my face with this”

ballsandstrikes.org

Federal Judge Baffled, Annoyed By Trump’s Lazy Crackdown On International Students

When a judge is describing your legal argument as “exceptionally weak” and “largely disconnected from academic or practical realities,” things are not going as you’d hoped.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 20/09/2026

Insane to me that the *entire reason* Trump is obsessed the arch is because some guy at the Claremont Institute blog wrote a post that was like “an arch would be SO cool and Mister Trump, if you’re reading, you should build it right by this bridge, here’s a diagram” americanmind.org/salvo/washin...

Washington Needs an
Arch
Catesby Leigh
A proposal worthy of the nation's 250th birthday.
T
he triumphal arch holds a very important place in the annals of
Western architecture and urbanism. In Roman times it played a lofty honorific role, even though most Roman arches commemorated civic achievements and personages rather than military victories. The freestanding

Where to put the arch? The most important monumental axis in the United States extends westward from the Capitol to the National Mall, Washington Monument, and Lincoln Memorial before deflecting to the southwest across Arlington Memorial Bridge and down Memorial Avenue to Arlington National Cemetery's granite Hemicycle. Roadways leading into the cemetery branch off to right and left in front of the Hemicycle.
There is a conspicuous dead space that marks a transition in this grand axis. Between the bridge and Memorial Avenue lies a patch of turf about a hundred yards in diameter, enclosed by a traffic circle. This turfed expanse is surrounded by four eagle-crowned pylons 43 feet tall, two at the southwestern end of the bridge and the other two at the entrance to Memorial Avenue.
As has long been recognized, this circular

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 20/09/2026

Had a really delightful visit, even if the success rate of my “a few days away from the kids, I’m gonna go back to the hotel a little early and take the chance to catch up on some sleep” strategy remains zero percent

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 18/09/2026

NICHE ADVICE NEEDED: Do you know of a good podcast studio for rent in NYC, ideally downtownish. The one I booked for tomorrow canceled on me. Please help; I do not trust Google Ads.

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Reposted by Jay Willis

Timothy Burke @bubbaprog.xyz · 17/09/2026

i'd post the audio because i think it's that important but i have...a lot going on today, listen to @hollyanderson.bsky.social on this week's @shutdownfullcast.bsky.social, she articulates something incredibly well in it that you should hear

podcasts.apple.com

Week 3: All James Madison Want… - Shutdown Fullcast - Apple Podcasts

Podcast Episode · Shutdown Fullcast · September 16 · 1h 30m

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 17/09/2026

Me, back in NYC for the first time since before the pandemic

The Michael Scott-Sbarro “like right here is my favorite New York pizza joint and I’m going to get me a New York slice” gag

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 17/09/2026

I’m gonna be honest, just based on what they did to him, those two twirly-knife ladies killed Reacher about a half-dozen times apiece

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 17/09/2026

It is pretty gratifying when a non-Trump federal judge considers the White House’s legal arguments for a plainly xenophobic policy change and then writes an opinion that says, in substance, “This is the dumbest, laziest shit I’ve ever heard, what is wrong with you people”

ballsandstrikes.org

Federal Judge Baffled, Annoyed By Trump’s Lazy Crackdown On International Students

When a judge is describing your legal argument as “exceptionally weak” and “largely disconnected from academic or practical realities,” things are not going as you’d hoped.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 16/09/2026

Here are the nine most important words in the entire post

Over the last decade, Democrats have criticized McConnell’s approach to shoring up conservative judicial nominees. But Durbin, who is retiring at the end of the year, said that his party shouldn’t engage in retaliation if Democrats win the majority in the midterm election.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 16/09/2026

A perfect landing spot for Matt Calkins: no editorial standards, no fact-checking, no obligation to write anything meaningful or insightful. He'll do great there. What a coup.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 16/09/2026

'The Backfire Effect' is a pretty astonishing story that lays bare so many of the worst parts of the criminal legal system, and so there's basically no one better than @jduffyrice.bsky.social to tell it. Highly recommend you listen to this podcast.

lnk.to

Examined: The Backfire Effect

About Examined: Overlooked cases that never got the real investigation they deserved. Each season features deeply reported stories about crime, punishment, and the people inside the criminal legal sys...

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 16/09/2026

Look, I don't do PR for Brett Kavanaugh, obviously that's Sarah Isgur's job. But, uh, if I were him, I would steer clear of opportunities to be photographed in college dorm rooms!

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