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Mark Joseph Stern

@mjsdc.bsky.social
174K followers 811 following 2.9K posts

Senior writer at Slate covering courts and the law. Co-host of the Amicus podcast. Dad.

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Reposted by Mark Joseph Stern
Rick Hasen @rickhasen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"Whether he is watching too much Fox News or acting for other reasons, Justice Alito seems to be emotionally unable to rationally examine the actual evidence in the cases before him to see if they support his voter fraud arguments." democracyproject.org/posts/exorci...
democracyproject.org
Exorcising Justice Alito’s Voter Fraud Boogeyman
A broad range of views on democracy to help break the stalemate caused by partisan conflict.
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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 17/09/2026
A programming note: I’m going to be working more frequently with my buds at Slate over the next few months while @mjsdc.bsky.social is out on parental leave and, God willing, not consuming Supreme Court-related content. Please remember to be an ally and click on BOTH versions of these posts, tysm.
slate.com
Trump’s New Effort to Mess With Student Visas Was Shot Down in Humiliating Fashion
The change was set to take effect on Tuesday.
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Rick Hasen @rickhasen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
My new one @slate.com Let’s Celebrate the Supreme Court Not Outright Rigging the 2026 Election slate.com/news-and-pol...
slate.com
Let’s Celebrate the Supreme Court Not Outright Rigging the 2026 Election (Gift Article)
For the time being, let’s celebrate that the center of the court did hold, even as dangers remain ahead in both 2026 and 2028.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Noticing a trend
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Others have said this but it’s truly insane that Brett Kavanaugh, lover of the major questions doctrine, thinks there’s a good chance USPS can use a vague grant of authority over mail processing to radically alter absentee voting procedures in all 50 states without congressional approval. Come on.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
It’s notable that the majority says BOTH that Trump’s USPS rule is likely illegal AND the equities counsel against implementing it. Seven justices are sending a pretty clear message to Trump that this kind of sloppy election subversion is a bridge too far. That’s moderately encouraging?
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
My read is that there aren’t five votes to let Trump literally rig elections. Roberts and Barrett won’t greenlight overt election subversion or chaotic, illegal interference with voting. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch aren’t reliable but don’t love the chaos either. Thomas and Alito want to end democracy.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I LOVED @skyeperryman.bsky.social’s new book. It’s energizing and hopeful, and my favorite chapter is a vital antidote to SCOTUS doom-and-gloom. Skye is one of the key players in the legal battle against Trump 2.0 and she has a lot to teach us about how to fight and win when all feels lost.
Lucy the hound with Skye’s book
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
🫤
Box of free stuff including Kamala Harris stuff
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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
NEWS: After Yaakov Roth defended many of the worst actions of the Trump administration over the past year and a half at DOJ, Jones Day took Roth back as a partner when he wanted to cash in on the friends he made when working to undermine the rule of law in America.
Yaakov Roth, former Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General of DOJ Civil Division, rejoins Jones Day
August 31, 2026 Firm News
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Leah Litman @leahlitman.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
KBJ has them cold:
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Programming note: I’m out on parental leave for a while! I may still post occasionally, but please don’t expect breaking SCOTUS news from me. Actually, if you see me reporting SCOTUS news, please shame me off of Bluesky and back to my parenting duties.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Likely en banc decisions from the 5th Circuit soon: 1. Trump can use the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport Venezuelans 2. A $1.7 trillion bill enacted in 2022 is invalid in its entirety because of proxy voting 3. The whole federal statute barring criminals from owning guns is unconstitutional
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Quinn Yeargain @yeargain.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
This is just an absurdly stupid, deeply unserious thing to put in a judicial opinion. But it is absolutely real, image and all, courtesy of Judge Brantley Starr of the Northern District of Texas: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Footnote 51 reading: As young people say today, “money printer go brrrrrrrr.”
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Why did they make him look so cool though
Don’t play with guns coloring bookA cool cat with sunglasses pointing a gun
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
At the park with my toddler and ATF is demonstrating its robot dog while Beyoncé plays as part of a violence intervention event
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
For Slate's summer series By the People, I wrote about how D.C. v. Heller is both a paragon of popular constitutionalism and its own dark mirror. Progressives can learn real lessons from how it was won—if they ignore its bogus originalism and look at what really went down. slate.com/news-and-pol...
slate.com
Conservatives Perfected the Ideal Legal Tactic. It’s Time for Liberals to Use It.
While Heller was built on phony history, it reflected a genuine, hard-fought shift in public understanding.
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Jeremy Stahl @jeremystahl.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
The Trump administration sued Yale for its admissions policies (alleging too much diversity). Yale is negotiating with DOJ, whereas Harvard fought Trump. The former dean of Yale Law School thinks he knows the real reason why. slate.com/news-and-pol...
slate.com
Harvard Fought Trump’s Abuses. Yale May Fold. I Think I Know Why.
Seeking to set a new course for the conservative movement, J.D. Vance in 2021 declared war on institutions of American higher education.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Great news; yet another court finds that ICE and the DOJ were wrong to declare that Congress secretly mandated detention of millions of noncitizens in 1996 (specifically, anyone who entered unlawfully at some point in the past, no matter how long ago), and that no one had noticed until now.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
The Supreme Court invited exactly this when it held that the president's attempt to conduct "sham" "investigations" was a core executive power immune from all regulation, including criminal prosecution, in Trump v. United States.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
It's a point worth making but at SOME point we're going to have to accept that he's a pathological liar who makes shit up for attention and refuse to play the game, I think.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Obviously Ho is campaigning for a Supreme Court seat (that he'll never get), but I also think he has more broadly become totally addicted to attention. I find these rants increasingly dull and tedious and wonder if they're best just ignored.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
This NYT article is just awful. We should judge Fauci based on his work, not his innermost musings to a diary he never intended to become public. Who cares that he enjoyed the admiration of celebrities? There's zero evidence here that it interfered with his job! www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/u...
nytimes.com
The Doctor and His Diary: What Fauci’s Innermost Musings Reveal
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci seemed to be the life of the party, even in the midst of a deadly pandemic.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Agree with @jamellebouie.net that it's pretty clear Elon Musk wanted to eviscerate USAID *for the purpose of killing as many African people as possible.* Mass death wasn't an accidental byproduct of his "deep state" paranoia; it was a key mission of DOGE. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/o...
One might even see his destruction of the United States Agency for International Development — responsible, so far, for an estimated 700,000 deaths worldwide — as consistent with his concern with falling white birthrates relative to those in places such as sub-Saharan Africa, where U.S.A.I.D. was active. After all, one way to secure a future for Western children, in this zero-sum view of the world, would be to starve African ones.
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Rick Hasen @rickhasen.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
"His for-profit company is seeking to wrap itself in the mantle of voting rights to make the case for a gambling activity that states have ample reasons to choose to discourage, while no one’s constitutional rights are being infringed. Freeman is not John Lewis."
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Rick Hasen @rickhasen.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
SCOTUSBlog as profit center is not pretty
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Supporting a nuclear strike on DC home rule … to battle a 20 cent fee that will raise money to help feed poor families in low-income communities. Please. Just do it. Cancel your DoorDash.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
DoorDash, in damage control mode, now claims it supports D.C. home rule and denies lobbying against it. Here’s the letter their lobbyist wrote to Rep. Comer supporting his bill to ban D.C. from ever imposing or increasing a tax or fee without congressional approval. hillheat.com/files/492/DD...
Re: DoorDash Support for H.R. 9720, the "D.C. Taxing Authority Review Act"
Dear Chairman Comer and members of the committee:
On behalf of DoorDash, I write to express our support for H.R. 9720, the "D.C. Taxing Authority Review Act," which would require congressional approval before the District of Columbia can impose or increase a tax or fee. We believe this is a reasonable check against the hastily enacted local taxes and fees that fall hardest on small businesses and the residents who depend on them.
DoorDash's marketplace in the District is built overwhelmingly on small, independent merchants: Roughly 80% of DC merchants that were active on our platform as of December 2025 had 3 or fewer storefronts on the platform. These are the businesses least able to absorb new taxes and fees or the administrative burden of complying with them, from costly point-of-sale upgrades to added compliance overhead.
The District's recently passed delivery tax illustrates the risk: a tax on virtually every delivery, with proceeds designated for a myriad of projects and the District's general fund, passed without a single public hearing and, consequently, without input from the residents and small businesses it will most heavily impact. Based on our internal data, a tax like this would mean millions of dollars a year in added costs for D.C. residents and lost revenue for local merchants, and that burden grows quickly as the rate is increased, as authorized by the Budget Support Act. Research on comparable taxes bears this out: an economic analysis of Colorado's retail delivery fee found it raised takeout prices by nearly 1%; cut delivery orders by more than 400,000 a year; cost the restaurant sector over $12 million in revenue; and resulted in a loss of roughly 234 jobs across restaurant and delivery workers.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
The typo-prone part of my brain was so incredulous that DoorDash would go to war over a 20 cent fee that it swapped in a bigger sum I guess
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
FYI a typo on my part—not a 20 percent tax, a 20 CENT tax!
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 22/07/2026
In a footnote in a labor case, a senior Republican-appointed judge on the D.C. Circuit blasts the Supreme Court about an embarrassing error in its landmark ruling overturning the Chevron case, which unsettled four decades of administrative law precedent. media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/doc...
Text of footnote: 

There is an error in the Supreme Court's analysis in Loper Bright. Much of the Court's reasoning (and a part of Justice Gorsuch's concurrence) is devoted to criticizing the Chevron opinion for ignoring section 706 of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 706. See, e.g., 603 U.S. at 397-400, 411-12; id. at 428 (Gorsuch, J., concurring). The Court's critique is unfounded. It is unfounded because section 706 of the APA did not apply to judicial review of the EPA rule at issue in Chevron. Section 706 did not apply because Chevron was not an APA review case. The Clean Air Act superseded the APA: "The provisions of section 553 through 557 and section 706 of Title 5 [the APA] shall not, except as expressly provided in this subsection, apply to actions to which this subsection applies." 42 U.S.C. § 7607(d)(1). The problem the Court identified in Loper Bright was not with Chevron itself, but with courts, including the Supreme Court, indiscriminately adopting the Chevron formula in later cases in which section 706 of the APA did apply.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Background bsky.app/profile/maus...
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Just canceled my DashPass and sent this email to DoorDash. I encourage you to do the same if you support D.C. home rule. press@doordash.com and ir@doordash.com
Hello,

I’m writing to let you know that I just canceled my DashPass because of DoorDash’s disgraceful campaign against D.C. home rule.

DoorDash is urging Congress to nullify a new D.C. law imposing a 20 percent tax on food-delivery services—not merely by overturning that law, but by prohibiting the District from enacting any new tax without prior congressional approval. That is an extraordinarily sweeping assault on D.C.’s right to govern itself and an odious insult to the District’s residents.

I am especially disgusted by DoorDash’s public claim that it is somehow defending D.C. residents while actively seeking to strip us of our right to govern ourselves through our own democratically elected lawmakers. Please do not pretend that disenfranchising District residents is an act undertaken on our behalf.

I intend to publicize DoorDash’s attack on home rule as widely as possible and urge everyone I know to boycott the company.

Shame on you.
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Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Here's a new one: ICE *prevented* a man from self-deporting by a June 11 deadline — he asked ICE to let him leave and had a one-way plane ticket for June 10. Then ICE re-detained him because he missed the deadline. Due process violation, judge rules. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
As Judge Higginson notes in dissent, this en banc rehearing takes up a recent call from Justice Clarence Thomas to dismantle federal gun laws and, with them, much of the U.S. Code by shrinking congressional power down to almost nothing. www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub...
Just a few weeks ago, Justice Thomas, writing alone, asked lower
courts to reexamine the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) under the
Commerce Clause. See United States v. Hemani, 146 S. Ct. 1677, 1694 (2026)
(Thomas, J., concurring). Already, our court answers the call. Today, we
grant a petition for rehearing in what was a Second Amendment as-applied
challenge to § 922(g)(1), now reframed as a facial1 Commerce Clause
challenge. So, rather than clarifying our § 922(g)(1) as-applied precedent to
provide fair notice to people in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas about
whether they can lawfully own guns, see, e.g., United States v. Cockerham, 162
F.4th 500, 518 (5th Cir. 2025) (Higginson, J., dissenting), we imperil much
of the United States Code.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
The 5th Circuit, sitting en banc, will decide whether §922(g)—the entire federal statute that prohibits violent offenders from possessing firearms—violates the Constitution's commerce clause. A vehicle to increase gun deaths while gutting congressional power. www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub...
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Jeremy Stahl @jeremystahl.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
We (the people) need this wakeup call.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
NEW SERIES! By the People: How to reclaim the Constitution from an imperious Supreme Court and an imperial presidency. A primer on popular constitutionalism and a toolkit if you're as fed up as we are. The opening batch of essays, and the first podcast episode, are here: slate.com/news-and-pol...
slate.com
By the People
As a thought experiment, we bring you popular constitutionalism—local, organic farm-to-table making of legal meaning.
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Josh Chafetz @joshchafetz.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Very important piece by Cerin Lindgrensavage and @davidasuper.bsky.social. This behavior by the administration is not only illegal, it is anti-constitutional. thehill.com/opinion/cong...
thehill.com
Congress rejected some of Trump’s proposed budget cuts. OMB is making them anyway.
President Trump and the Office of Management and Budget are accused of violating the separation of powers by attempting to unilaterally withhold funds that Congress specifically appropriated.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Alaska prosecutors have been trying to seize this guy's plane for 13 years now. State courts have held that seizing a $95,000 plane over a forbidden six-pack of beer does not violate the 8th Amendment's prohibition against excessive fines. Now SCOTUS will take a crack at it. Kind of a crazy case.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
The Supreme Court just took up a case (Jouppi v. Alaska) that asks whether prosecutors violated the 8th Amendment's bar against excessive fines when they confiscated a pilot's private plane (worth $95,000) after he unknowingly flew a passenger's beer into a dry town. ij.org/case/alaska-...
ij.org
Jouppi v. Alaska - Institute for Justice
Ken Jouppi, a longtime Alaska bush pilot, is fighting the forfeiture of his plane over a six-pack of beer.
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Dahlia Lithwick @dahlialithwick.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
New Series "By the People". For the better part of two centuries of U.S. history, the American people understood that they—and not the Supreme Court—were the final arbiters of the Constitution.
shows.acast.com
By the People | Who Owns the Constitution? | Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
The Supreme Court would have us believe it alone decides what the Constitution means. That’s not true. It never was.
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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 17/07/2026
fuck em up Todd
Screenshot from Mark's article about a recent ruling by Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins, reading as follows:

The Roberts court, Eddins declared, “sees only white. It refuses to acknowledge who the Equal Protection Clause was written to protect. The freed people, their descendants, and all others denied equal citizenship. It turns its back on what is in plain sight. The Fourteenth Amendment is not colorblind. It never was.” He continued:

The court calls the Constitution colorblind while engineering the dilution of Black votes, the unraveling of hard-fought civil rights remedies, and the erasure of Black history. That is not blindness. That is white sight, by design. A Constitution interpreted this way is not colorblind. It is whatever the court needs it to be. A way to advance its partisan project.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
There is no ending Citizens United, and probably no ending gerrymanders, without SCOTUS reform…
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Gift link with no paywall because everybody needs to read this one after the June we just had slate.com/news-and-pol...
slate.com
A Sitting Judge Just Delivered the Most Scathing Critique of This Supreme Court Term
The Supreme Court has veered so far off track that even the harshest language can feel inadequate to capture the damage wrought by its most recent term.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Watching the massive right-wing freak-out over this excellent opinion on X has been a highlight of my summer so far. Read it yourself to see why it makes these greasy FedSoc losers flip their shit. slate.com/news-and-pol...
slate.com
A Sitting Judge Just Delivered the Most Scathing Critique of This Supreme Court Term
The Supreme Court has veered so far off track that even the harshest language can feel inadequate to capture the damage wrought by its most recent term.
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
The 3rd Circuit also struck down New Jersey's ban on large-capacity magazines, which are not at issue in the upcoming SCOTUS case. While the outcome is no surprise, the lopsided vote is: 10–5, with a Biden appointee, Judge Freeman, writing for the majority. www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/242...
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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
As expected, the 3rd Circuit has struck down New Jersey's assault weapons ban, becoming the first federal appeals court to find that the Second Amendment protects AR-15s. But SCOTUS will settle this issue next term, making the decision anticlimactic. www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/242...
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