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Mary Kelly Persyn

@marykellypersyn.bsky.social
415 followers 510 following 468 posts

Lawyer, children's rights advocate, democracy defender, reader, poetry and books📚 lover, mom, runner.

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Reposted by Mary Kelly Persyn
Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I’m at the point where I’m confusing all the rapists in the news so that’s how its going.
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Ann Telnaes @anntelnaes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Free link: Homeland Security Money Financed Pro-Trump Television Ads www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
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Ann Telnaes @anntelnaes.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
House Speaker Johnson calls an early recess to avoid a Sec. Hegseth impeachment vote, AI regulation, the Epstein files, Trump’s criminal behavior, and pretty much everything else. anntelnaes.substack.com/p/squeaker-m...
anntelnaes.substack.com
Squeaker Mike Johnson
makes a run for it
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Mary Kelly Persyn @marykellypersyn.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
So much respect and appreciation for Christian Bale. This is beautiful work. (And who's cutting onions in here? 🥲🥹)
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Mary Kelly Persyn @marykellypersyn.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
This comment is just stupid on its face.
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Janai Nelson @janainelson.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
We thank Secretary Bunch for his extraordinary service to the Smithsonian and his leadership during these deeply troubling times. His remarkable legacy reminds us that preserving and sharing the full breadth of our history requires both brilliance and courage. www.naacpldf.org/news/ldf-sta...
naacpldf.org
LDF Statement on the Retirement of Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III
Read the PDF of our statement here. On Tuesday, Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III announced his retirement from the Smithsonian Institution, marking the end of his historic tenure as its 14th Secretary of...
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Liz Sepper @lsepper.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Today (9/10) at 10am ET, the Indiana Supreme Court will hear arguments in a religious liberty challenge to the state abortion ban. The mostly Jewish plaintiffs have so far prevailed in the state courts under a state Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Watch here:
mycourts.in.gov
Indiana Appellate Clerk's Portal
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Mary Kelly Persyn @marykellypersyn.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
It's an honor to once more represent First Focus on Children as they defend children's rights in the Supreme Court. Our latest amicus brief argues that excluding LGBTQ families and 4-year-old children from preschool harms them significantly, without protecting the health and safety of any child.
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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
When, in January 2025, I wrote that the Trump administration was segregationist folks said I was exaggerating. I would have *loved* to be wrong about this but the unfortunate evidence remains on my side. This is just racism, pure and simple.
nytimes.com
Trump Moves to Strip Tax Exemption From Schools That Aid Minority Students (Gift Article)
The Treasury Department released rules that would prevent schools with race-based programs from qualifying for tax-exempt status, a threat to both higher education and other private schools.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 03/09/2026
the literal position of the trump administration is that any school that has any more than a smattering of black students is engaged in illegal racial discrimination against whites www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/b...
nytimes.com
Trump Moves to Strip Tax Exemption From Schools That Aid Minority Students (Gift Article)
The Treasury Department released rules that would prevent schools with race-based programs from qualifying for tax-exempt status, a threat to both higher education and other private schools.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Weirdos. Lying, psychotic, manipulative, but most of all, weird.
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Mary Kelly Persyn @marykellypersyn.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Hi Friends! The Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights is running its 6th annual Elizabeth Frenkel Waymakers Mileage Challenge, which raises awareness and funds for the great work the Center does for kids in migration. I started a new team, The Power Of We, and I've committed to 200 miles.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
This is large scale disenfranchisement and now SCOTUS has even less excuse not to reject Trump's EO on mail voting. Allowing him to move forward would have clear negative harms to voters that could not be reversed, even as his claim for authority over voting processes is legally dubious.
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Mary Kelly Persyn @marykellypersyn.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
We have truly entered the Twilight Zone
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James Talarico @jamestalarico.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
BREAKING: Liam Tadeo was just deported by ICE.
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W.E.D.em Boyz @leftistwonk.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
ICE has fallen out of the headlines but July marked the largest number of migrant detentions ever on record. Five migrants have died in ICE custody in the last two months. It's also currently impossible to legally migrate to this country, as 100% of visa applications have been paused.
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Greg Lipper @theglipper.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
“This is a noxious litigation strategy that should be a red flag for courts.” www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf…
Footnote 5 from Justice Jackson’s dissent from SCOTUS’s mail-in ballot order: "Under this approach, the Executive can intentionally act in harmful ways that violate the law, decline to defend the legal merits of its unlawful actions, and nevertheless put challengers on the defensive (by thwarting injunctions on the basis of alleged flaws with the form of plaintiffs’ legal claims), thereby extending its unlawful activity for as long as possible. See, e.g., CASA, 606 U. S., at 839 (considering only threshold procedural questions while the underlying merits issues festered). This is a noxious litigation strategy that should be a red flag for courts. It forestalls resolution of the merits, prolongs unjustified harms, and wounds public confidence in the judiciary’s ability to award actual relief for meritorious challenges. Furthermore, if sowing chaos is the Government’s ultimate goal, as it is here (see Part IV, infra), the effectiveness of judicial review is substantially undercut when the Court shunts all consideration of the lawfulness of the Government’s conduct at the stay stage and greenlights significant harms in the interim."
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American Constitution Society @acslaw.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
New on the ACS Expert Forum: @marykellypersyn.bsky.social and @brucelesley.bsky.social examine how the Supreme Court’s OT 2025 decisions showed a striking “judicial blindness” to children’s rights and well-being. Read the full analysis: www.acslaw.org/expertforum/...
acslaw.org
The Supreme Court’s Judicial Blindness to Children in OT 2025 | ACS
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Jack Mirkinson @jackmirkinson.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Today in @thenation.com: a harrowing piece written from inside the Dilley ICE detention center by Maryam Tahmasebi, a green card holder who's been locked up along with her husband and son for months despite none of them committing any crime. www.thenation.com/article/soci...
thenation.com
One Woman’s Message From the Hell of ICE Detention
My husband, son, and I have been locked up for months—despite being permanent residents with no criminal record. It is an unendurable, unending nightmare.
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noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
i've been chewing on why i think this is so great, and i think at bottom it's that it's such *ordinary* speech. clearly she's thought about this, clearly she has values she's comfortable expressing, but she's not speaking as though she's Making A Political Statement. just plain, earnest language
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Marc Elias @marcelias.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Notice DOJ doesn't talk about its efforts to obtain state voter files anymore. They are 0-20 in those cases and today is the beginning of the quiet period -- states can no longer do systematic removals of names from the voter rolls. TLDR: We won!🥳
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Wajahat Ali @wajali.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
If we weren't so broken, divided and led by corrupt rapists, this would be the biggest story of the week. But barely a blip. apnews.com/article/trum...
apnews.com
Trump accounts were closed in 2021 due to concerns over possible money laundering, Capital One says
Capital One closed President Donald Trump’s accounts in mid-2021 after flagging financial activity that resembled money laundering.
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paulpro @mariopro.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Trump’s Golden Parachute @anntelnaes.bsky.social on SUBSTACK substack.com/pub/anntelnaes
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Guardian US @us.theguardian.com · 30/07/2026
"A concentration camp, in its most basic definition, is a place where a targeted civilian population, not necessarily accused of a crime, is detained and at least some of their basic rights are suspended," writes @jwashing.bsky.social. "That’s precisely what’s happening in the United States today."
theguardian.com
Don’t call them ICE detention centers. Call them camps | John Washington
I’ve spent a decade reporting on immigration enforcement. The word ‘camp’ best captures the political function of these facilities
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Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG) @lawyers4goodgov.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
The Senate rejected the SAVE America Act twice. Now, its supporters are attaching its provisions to must-pass bills in an attempt to force them through. A different package does not make the same voter-suppression policies acceptable. Take action: L4GG.org/OpposeSAVEAct
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paulpro @mariopro.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
This description, to anyone who did not watch the speech, defines the act of Sane-washing Trump’s behavior @anntelnaes.bsky.social
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Jennifer N. Victor @jenvictor.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Today, in violations of the rule of law that would be sufficient for impeachment in any other American presidency but aren't in this one because pathological partisan loyalty has rotted the constitutional order:
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Mary Kelly Persyn @marykellypersyn.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
It's so difficult to put into words the multidimensional perversity of the current Court's fabrication of a "colorblind" Constitution. Eric Segall's version is well worth reading.
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Dag. @3fecta.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
We are a signatory to the Geneva Conventions.
I. Treaties
Additional Protocol I
Article 54(2) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I provides:
It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.
Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), Geneva, 8 June 1977, Article 54(2). Article 54 was adopted by consensus. CDDH, Official Records, Vol. VI, CDDH/SR.42, 27 May 1977, p. 208.
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 22/07/2026
When power is rooted in disinformation, data become a threat. apnews.com/article/eeoc...
apnews.com
US civil rights agency moves to end demographic data collection after 60 years
The Trump administration is seeking to toss aside a 60-year-old requirement for tens of thousands of private sector employers to submit workforce demographic reports each year to the Equal Employment ...
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paulpro @mariopro.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Comply or die @anntelnaes.bsky.social
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Mary Kelly Persyn @marykellypersyn.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Children haven't been caught in the crackdown. Children are its target. Children are under siege, and the danger isn't coming from books or "ideologies." It's coming from our government.
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Freedom to Read Project @freedomreadproject.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
"Don't join the book burners." These words from President Dwight D. Eisenhower are just as relevant today. We don't preserve democracy by hiding difficult history or silencing ideas, we strengthen it by confronting them. The freedom to read protects our freedom to learn. #FreedomToRead
Dwight D. Eisenhower: Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Something I talked about repeatedly in 2024: 20 million people, to say nothing of 30, would be the largest forced population transfer in human history, larger any of the three post-WW2 transfers (partition of India, expulsion of Germans, partition of Palestine) or the post-WW1 Balkan cases.
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Mary Kelly Persyn @marykellypersyn.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Every. Single. Day. How did we arrive at a place where this teen's own government bullied her so brutally simply because of who she was that she would choose to stop living? How in the world do we permit this?
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Mike Fortun @chromatinfuel.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
"...the Court has done significant damage to the formal, practical, and moral authority of federal district courts to hold the federal government to account—all while arrogating much of that same authority to itself..."
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Ohwoisme @kmohwoisme.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
BREAKING: After Donald Trump spent hours calling Fox News executives and screaming at them for ignoring his fraud claims, one reportedly yelled back, “You told the entire country, on live television, that every president—even Sleepy Joe—has run fair elections EXCEPT you!"
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Is this translated from the original German? www.whitehouse.gov/releases/202...
Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller made clear there must be no retreat: “One of the hallmarks of left-wing violence and terrorism is its completely pre-textual and disingenuous appeal to civil liberties in an effort to shield its own violence… When the leftist — who does not believe in freedom, who does not believe in civil rights, who does not believe in any ordinary notion of justice — protests that we are violating his rights, understand the he is lying to try to persuade people who are not closely following the political scene that some injustice has perpetrated against him. We must stay the course and be completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization.”
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 16/07/2026
Sen. Alsobrooks tells Vought "I have been waiting for the opportunity to come face to face with you" and repeatedly calls his actions "depraved" and "evil"
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Marc Elias @marcelias.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
🚨BREAKING: Donald Trump and his two eldest sons’ $10-billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service was brought for “an improper purpose,” a Florida-based federal judge ruled. The judge also recommended attorney sanctions for the Trumps’ lawyers. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
democracydocket.com
Judge slams Trump’s IRS lawsuit as ‘improper,’ refers acting AG Blanche to bar
The judge characterized Trump's suit as an unparalleled expression of self-dealing.
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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
BREAKING: Federal judge finds that Trump's IRS suit was improper because Trump controlled both sides of the litigation. Judge Kathleen Williams also sanctions Trump's lawyers, issues monetary sanctions, and harshly criticizes DOJ's "untenable" conduct. More to come at Law Dork: www.lawdork.com
The Parties used the existence of federal litigation as a means of conferring legitimacy upon a course of action that they were unwilling to subject to judicial review.
The context of the "settlement," the relationships of the people involved in negotiating and approving it, the ethical implications of their conduct, and the Parties' swift efforts to
dismiss this case after the Court raised fundamental jurisdictional questions all support this conclusion. Accordingly, the Court expressly finds that Plaintiffs acted in bad faith.
See Sofaly v. Portfolio Recovery Assocs., LLC, 155 F.4th 289, 295 (3d Cir. 2025) (monetary sanctions were proper under the court's inherent power where the lawyers acted in bad faith and committed fraud on the court by using "their clients to bring
contrived lawsuits"). That finding is enough to invoke the Court's inherent authority. See JTR Enter., LLC V. Columbian Emeralds, 697 F. App'x 976, 986 (11th Cir. 2017) ("The key to invoking a court's inherent power to sanction is a finding of bad faith.") (citation
omitted).
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Frank Pasquale @frankpasquale.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
While “80 million people were reached by emergency-health services in 2024, that number in 2025 dropped by more than 50 million people. That included 14 million people who were victims of severe, acute malnutrition. 2.5 million were children.” www.newyorker.com/news/the-new...
newyorker.com
The Human Cost of DOGE’s War on U.S.A.I.D.
Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and the “public man-made death” that they’ve caused.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 12/07/2026
A few words on the passing of South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, who spent the last ten years of his life eagerly helping Donald Trump in his quest to destroy American democracy. youtu.be/z4HMequIiiY
youtu.be
What is there to say about Lindsay Graham?
YouTube video by Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie
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Norm Eisen @normeisen.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Three witnesses were in the van with Lorenzo Salgado Araujo Per their attorney: no ramming, no danger to agents & no reasonable basis to open fire Unreasonable force opens these agents to liability This is becoming another national outrage & it should be👇 -TN
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Mary Kelly Persyn @marykellypersyn.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Big victory for academic freedom: 🧵
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Mary Kelly Persyn @marykellypersyn.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
So is the plan to give a pregnancy test to every woman coming into the country? After you examine them to ensure they are "biological women"? Totally demented
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Steven Nelson @snelsonus.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
I appreciate the @theguardian.com’s willingness to call this group what it is. Neo-fascist group Patriot Front parades Confederate flag in Washington DC on Fourth of July www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Neo-fascist group Patriot Front parades Confederate flag in Washington DC on Fourth of July
Hundreds of masked members of the white supremacist organization marched and chanted in the US capital
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 03/07/2026
new video up with more thoughts on trump v barbara youtu.be/kjvAnWSBz4E
youtu.be
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Told the True Story of Birthright Citizenship
YouTube video by Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie
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Ben Railton @americanstudier.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
On our 250th anniversary, I refuse to cede the idea of patriotism to the white supremacist fascists. That mythic patriotism has always been part of our identity--but we can tell a very different story through the legacies of American critical patriotism. My new @pghreviewofbooks.bsky.social essay! 🗃️
pghrev.com
A Syllabus of Critical Patriotism - Pittsburgh Review of Books
For most Americans, the term “patriotism” can be succinctly defined by the kinds of things that happen each 4th of July (and will even more symbolically still
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ElieNYC @elienyc.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
I wrote about the Supreme Court's latest disgusting anti-trans ruling. I wrote about it because I refuse to act like taking away constitutional rights and allowing legal discrimination is okay just because it's happening to people who don't poll well in a diner in Ohio. In @thenation.com
thenation.com
The Supreme Court’s Anti-Trans Ruling Goes Well Beyond Sports
The ruling is about whether trans people have the same rights as everybody else—and the Court said they don’t.
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