“Without a statutory path for victims to sue individual agents who violate their rights, any new restrictions are purely advisory. They are toothless concessions offered to an administration that has already displayed a penchant for flouting constitutional constraints.” @foxmike90.bsky.social #law
New from me at Cato: "We’re Not Out of the Woods on the Law Firm Revenge Orders". Reflects the ongoing twists and turns of the story at least through noon today! /1
Assembly-line criminal justice: "Justice Jackson’s Harvard Thesis Predicted Cases Like Hunter v. United States" [colleagues Kayla Susalla and Matthew Cavedon, Jurist]
“The death penalty is increasingly used not as a punishment for the ‘worst of the worst,’ but as a pretrial pressure mechanism to keep defendants jailed for years and force them into submission.” @foxmike90.bsky.social @cato.org #law
From colleague @foxmike90.bsky.social: Together, USPS v. Konan and Vullo offer a prospect of "a double lock on the doors of justice. If you sue the government agency, you are blocked by sovereign immunity; if you sue the specific official who harmed you, you are blocked by qualified immunity."
Severe public defender shortages suggest that Oregon and other states "should consider revisiting [drug] decriminalization. When resources are scarce, overcriminalization may undermine both justice and public safety." [Matthew Cavedon and Kayla Susalla, Cato]
Violence in Mexico doesn’t increase violence in the USA.
I & three Cato colleagues have new pieces out on government data access threats involving constitutional rights, medical privacy, financial privacy, and age-verification laws:
www.cato.org/free-society...
From my colleague @foxmike90.bsky.social: "Can the pardon power be saved from its own abusers?"
My Cato colleague @foxmike90.bsky.social on the grand jury in its finest hour
These are all good but there's NO ENFORCEMENT MECHANISM PROVIDED. We need:
-universal, nationwide injunction authority
-right of states and localities to investigate/prosecute
-codify Bivens, right to sue ICE/no qualified immunity
The U.S. Dept. of Justice has been all over Minnesota: it "has shielded federal agents from accountability, launched needless criminal investigations into Minnesota officials and residents, and pumped out propaganda to aid the far-right press in justifying ICE’s tactics." [@qjurecic.bsky.social]
Op-ed with my colleague and physician Jeff Singer: "The ongoing immigration enforcement crackdown in Minnesota is already producing a familiar yet increasingly harmful side effect: Patients are avoiding doctors’ offices, clinics and hospitals out of fear." www.minnpost.com/community-vo...
This is fantastic, appreciate the shoutout!
Y'all don't appreciate the @cato.org for doing yeoman's work in fighting Government Overreach in the #Trump era. Maybe the only think tank with ideological consistency anymore.
Why we can't bring ICE and Border Patrol to justice: my @cato.org colleague @foxmike90.bsky.social explains how we got the artificial legal hurdles that make our constitutional rights almost unenforceable when federal agents like those occupying Minneapolis trample them underfoot.
Juries must not act as a rubber stamp for the state, and their independence is essential. "An impartial jury is not one that does exactly what it is told; it is one that understands it has the power to simply say ‘no'," writes my Cato colleague @foxmike90.bsky.social: www.cato.org/news-release...
"This is wrong. And every American whose capacity for moral judgment has not been addled by partisan derangement should recognize it....Probable cause, rights of accused, the need for search warrants, due process of any kind—ICE is proceeding as if such restrictions on gov't power no longer exist."
“Since July, #immigration agents have shot at least six people behind the wheel of a vehicle… In each instance, the playbook is the same: the agent claims self-defense, asserting they ‘feared for their life’ as a vehicle was ‘weaponized’ against them.”
@foxmike90.bsky.social @cato.org @ms.now
This specific phrasing is very very common in these cases: officers say the escalation in violence is self-defense, that they “feared for their life” when a car was “weaponized" against them. From Cato's @foxmike90.bsky.social today: www.ms.now/opinion/ice-...
Lawsuit says Alabama kept inmates past date of legally required release. District court tossed it on the basis of so-called Heck doctrine barring civil rights challenges to intact sentences, but Cato amicus brief urges Eleventh Circuit to reverse, since the suit didn't challenge their sentences.
Top 5 immigration stories of 2025:
1. Unprecedented broad bans on legal immigration
2. Stripping millions of lawful status
3. Deprioritization of criminals
4. Papers-please racial profiling
5. Serious attacks on the Constitution www.cato.org/blog/most-im...
My colleague @davidjbier.bsky.social picks as the most important immigration stories of 2025: broad bans on henceforth-legal immigrants; cancellation of lawful statuses; de-prioritization of criminals; "papers-please" profiling; and a broad assault on constitutional rights of speech, privacy, etc.
www.cato.org/events/comba...
DC peeps: By all accounts, John, Tanner, and I never should have crossed paths. Then again, by all accounts, John and Tanner shouldn't have found themselves ensnared in our criminal justice system. Now I'm hosting them next month. Join us.
Restoring Bivens rights: one bill "would allow citizens to sue for damages resulting from constitutional violations committed by federal officers," while the other "would create a cause of action against federal law enforcement agencies and police depts for constitutional violations."
Modern surveillance tools like automated license plate readers “let the gov’t monitor millions of people with ease. Law enforcement can track movements, detect faces, record conversations— & store such information indefinitely.” Cato brief urges Eleventh Circuit to recognize Fourth Amendment claim.
If the international students had run a newspaper this way, Trump would’ve closed Harvard and banned all foreign students. As it is, he’s basically demanding that Harvard subsidize these “conservatives” on its campus in the name of ideological diversity
A retired Tennessee policeman who spent more than a month in jail over an anti-Trump Facebook post is suing the authorities responsible for his arrest.
“In America, we do not jail people for political speech,” the lawsuit states.
From my colleague Jeffrey Singer back in 2019. Labeling fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction is one of those terrible ideas that keeps coming back because it serves the ambitions of those in power.
On Dec. 4, DOJ labeled people who impede or "dox" ICE agents "domestic terrorists." I document how DHS believes following, recording, and protesting agents is "impeding," and has a policy of threatening & arresting ICE observers. That's unconstitutional. www.cato.org/blog/dhs-pol...
