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Dan Walters

@profdanwalters.bsky.social
7.6K followers 1.3K following 983 posts

Law professor at Texas A&M University School of Law, specializing in administrative law. Views are mine alone. Dog pictured is Oliver Wendell Holmes Walters Jr. (RIP 2025) law.tamu.edu/faculty-staff/find-peo…

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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
There's about to be an epic intraparty fight over this new permitting reform and energy infrastructure bill. But the last line strikes me as right: you either strike a deal here or all these data center developers build their own BTM generation that will probably not be climate friendly.
canarymedia.com
Senate permitting bill could greatly expand power lines and clean…
The U.S. transmission grid isn’t growing fast enough to meet surging electricity demand. Fast-tracking transmission upgrades could change that.
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James Goodwin @jamesgoodwin.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Check out my latest @slate.com with @profdanwalters.bsky.social on Suncor v. Boulder. This could be the biggest case of the Supreme Court's next term. slate.com/news-and-pol...
slate.com
The Supreme Court’s Term-Opening Blockbuster Will Test the Conservative Justices Like No Other Case
The results could shape responses to climate change for decades to come.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Look at those numbers for neither or both equally. Together, they equal if not exceed either party's numbers--there is absolutely a window of opportunity here for a third party even with the winner take all incentive.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
For what it's worth, I don't think he's light years better at this than any number of folks who have been around for a while (AOC, Warren, etc.). What seems different is the cool factor, for lack of better words, and media/comms tech savvy to deliver undiluted coolness.
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Jameel Jaffer @jameeljaffer.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Glad to see this. Trump’s actions are a flagrant violation of the First Amendment—an outrageous attack on press freedom as well as the public’s right to independent information about government. I assume the news organizations will ask for emergency relief. www.politico.com/news/2026/09...
politico.com
News outlets Trump banned from White House announce lawsuit
POLITICO, CNN and MS NOW to seek restraining order to restore reporters’ access.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
So sorry for your loss.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I stand by that. But I'd also hasten to add that the fact that the relatively Republican judiciary is so far letting the Trump administration win sometimes is not evidence that they will do so in a future Democratic administration. We'll likely see some pullback, but how much is the question.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
“There’s a distinct possibility that, functionally, Loper Bright will be quite similar to Chevron,” said Daniel Walters, an administrative law professor at Texas A&M University. “What will largely determine that is how willingly courts find a delegation of discretion.”
news.bloomberglaw.com
Court Deference to Agencies Endures Via Loper Bright Off-Ramp
Courts are testing the boundaries of a landmark Supreme Court ruling on federal regulatory authority, which left open a path for judges to defer to executive branch agencies in certain circumstances.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Man, I wish I could go to this.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
One of the great joys in American life--the road trip--has indeed become a sad reminder not only of how much damage climate change is doing, but also of how unequal and unkept the country is becoming. We're like frogs boiling in a pot, but it hits you in the face when you venture out there.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Anyway, this is certainly a working draft, and we are thinking about things to add, so please let us know if you have any feedback!
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Interestingly, we find that this tendency is most pronounced among textualist respondents, and that the pattern sharply reverses when we them statutes that clearly rule out a delegation of discretion. Our textualist Court might need to update priors about textualism's valence.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Our design allows for comparison with several baselines (e.g., the Court's own evaluations). We find that lay readers are surprisingly willing to label statutes that push beyond these baselines as delegating--that is, they have an expansive understanding of the concept.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Now available on @ssrn.bsky.social: "When Is the Best Reading of a Statute That It Delegates Discretion?" Co-authored with @kevintobia.bsky.social and Marko Petrovic. We use experimental surveys to explore how "ordinary readers" understand Loper Bright delegations. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
When Is the Best Reading of A Statute That It Delegates Discretion?
<p><span>The Supreme Court’s decision in <i>Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo</i> to end <i>Chevron </i>deference has at least temporarily unsettled the fiel
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Nick Bednar @nicholasbednar.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
There are some mornings when I wake up Post-Slaughter and think... "Wait.... Is THAT now unconstitutional?" And, frankly, I don't like it.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
A real eye opener for me was reading about how intelligence is an evolved trait rewarding manipulation of other people (in pro-social ways, generally, but still...).
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Remember when we learned that CJ Roberts made his decision about the Clean Power Plan in about two seconds because of the unthinkable consequences of leaving utilities thinking they might have to eventually comply with a regulation? Yup, same guy.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Thanks, Shalev. Would really welcome your feedback on the draft if you get a chance!
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Very much a working draft, so I welcome questions and comments!
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
New paper 🚨: SCOTUS has made democratic theory a central part of its consolidation of presidential power over agencies, but its democratic vision is chock full of empirical and normative holes, which I unpack in a forthcoming essay in the Duke Law Journal. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Bringing back the old "it's a republic not a democracy" pedantry, I see.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
There's hope yet--we just need to wrest control back from a fringe group of the "wrong kind of Americans" who think running a government is like running a cable news political talk show.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Among many remarkable things about this moving essay, it stands out that so many people in both the first and second Trump administration (including Mike Pence) understood the value of administrative competence and service and were not going to throw that away to score points with the base.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I have a different read on his presidency. I see someone who was progressive in his ideals but practical to a fault. I don't see blind allegiance to neoliberalism, but rather a naivete in the face of the forces that were developing around him. Maybe charitable. But he wasn't far off.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
My only beef with this would be that I don't think Obama et al saw themselves as disciples of the old gods. And I worry that anything that is not edgy enough gets lumped into this category and rejected, however genuine it might have been. We will need his brand of pro-social politics.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
I don't know. It's hard for me to look back on those times and think things are better now. Maybe we're more honest about our politics (and differences) now, but we're quite clearly more dysfunctional and ineffectual, and nobody has the ability to make the disruption into something constructive.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
While this is not very surprising (students, after all, can think), I think it's a mistake to treat this as an important question that needs to be established. Had the opposite been found, it wouldn't change anything because the point of education is not to be fed "balance," it's to be challenged.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
This is all true, but when the SG stands up in Court, there have to be colorable arguments. SCOTUS made that a lot easier by pulling an exception out of nowhere.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Huh, I'm rarely accused of taking legal reasoning too seriously, but you may be right. Some of this is probably attributable to the administration's contempt for law rather than the Court's own disorder. But I'll maintain the Court isn't exactly making it hard to evade compliance.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Practical originalism? I'm so ashamed this guy is a fellow Phillies fan.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Like, you're gonna create an unprincipled carveout? Okay, we'll see what you do when we treat that as seriously as it deserves.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Oh, just observing that the administration (which is expert in BS) could easily identify the legal ambiguity inherent in the Fed carveout and exploit that.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
SCOTUS should not have expected any other response from the administration--BSers gonna spot BS, like the Federal Reserve carveout.
nytimes.com
Trump Restarts Battle to Fire Sitting Fed Governor Lisa Cook
The Trump administration, rebuffed by the Supreme Court in its first attempt to fire Lisa D. Cook, sent the Federal Reserve governor a letter saying it was “considering” removing her from the job.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
I refuse to live in a world where the only way we retain our humanity is to deliberately make things worse.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Fair.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Perhaps they're dropping the pool indictment on a Friday so that they can sneak this by? www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/u...
nytimes.com
Trump to Appeal Judge’s Ruling Denouncing I.R.S. Lawsuit as Exercise in Self-Dealing
It was the latest sign that the president was doubling down on his fight for aspects of a deal that brings him vast benefits, even though they have jeopardized the confirmation of his pick for attorne...
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Raffi Melkonian @rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Also, the person who said it was vandals was the President. So enough with blaming a different agency. You wanted unitary, you got unitary.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
I don't follow this stuff closely, so my apologies if I'm missing something, but what does the lab leak theory have to do with Fauci and the public health guidance about how to deal with Covid-19? The debate about origins, such as it is, seems irrelevant to that.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
I think that is an extreme minority view, but probably explains some resentment toward Fauci and other public health officials. I was mostly commenting about the people who were never listening no matter what.
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Shalev Gad Roisman @shalevroisman.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
New draft paper on SSRN: "Fact Avoidance," forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review Supreme Court Issue. This Essay identifies a recurring feature where the Court decides presidential power cases entirely on legal grounds without engaging at all with the facts /1 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
Fact Avoidance
<p><i><span>The legality of the President’s exercise of statutory power depends on questions of both law and fact. Yet courts often focus exclusively on the for
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
What actually triggered people was that over half the population followed the recommendations because they were trying to be good people contributing to the welfare of the nation. People don't like feeling like they're selfish, and you can't help but feel that in that situation.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Notice how both of your responses shift away from a defense grounded in democracy--in 1) the outputs of democracy can't be trusted, and in 2) we put certain judgments about equality outside democratic control. That's much more honest. But it's not a democratic defense of Gorsuch's agenda.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
You mean the acronym agencies that Congress democratically created to protect the collective interests of the people in safety, health, and welfare? And the racial equality that the people, mobilized by a civil war and the fight against slavery, passed a constitutional amendment to ensure?
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Democracy: the system in which a minority of the population (and sometimes just a minority of five people!) entrenches itself in complete power.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
You do you, bro, but I'm just saying I simply couldn't live with myself if I was this full of contradiction.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
This is not (or should not be) surprising to anyone who has been paying attention, but it is nevertheless stunning to have it in court records. It represents, without any exaggeration, a betrayal of the nation (not to mention the millions of Trump voters in many of these ostensibly "blue" states).
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Yes, and 99 percent of coal plants failed when there was no more coal on hand... I am truly at a loss for words to describe how obtuse and/or manipulative this message from the Department of Energy is.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
It is such a shame that this kind of wealth and power couldn't have found itself in the hands of someone with an ounce of character and foresight.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
The problem with writing an op-ed about this kind of thing is that two days later you've got so many great new examples--this, the White House intervening on behalf of Taylor Farms, selling access to advance information from POTUS. It's a dark time indeed. thehill.com/opinion/whit...
thehill.com
Handing agency oversight to Trump is a fatal blow to public trust
Public trust in government has been declining for decades, and Trump v. Slaughter will surely exacerbate the trend.
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Dan Walters @profdanwalters.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Slaughter was not just about removal--it was a "conceptual revolution." Taken seriously, it implies one of two futures: an ineffective government hobbled by courts limiting the president's power, or courts holding back and enabling a power grab. What a choice. www.theregreview.org/2026/07/22/b...
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