Kimberly Atkins Stohr

Washington

Contributor at MSNBC

Senior Opinion Writer at The Boston Globe

Columnist at The Emancipator

Host at #SistersInLaw

No hyphen. ✍🏾: @GlobeOpinion. 📺: @MSNBC. 🗣: #SistersInLaw. Dumped my X for 🧵

Articles

Humphrey dies again — giving Trump more power - The Boston Globe

1 week ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

This past week, the court dropped some big news in several cases — without making a final decision on them. Perhaps the most impactful was the court’s shadow docket order allowing President Trump to fire board members of two federal agencies despite federal laws that prohibit the president from removing them without cause.
Why Trump’s attack on big law matters - The Boston Globe

1 week ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

When I started law school I didn’t know much, but I was clear about one thing: I didn’t want to work for a big law firm. Yes, the top-dollar pay was tempting, especially with my growing student debt. But billing corporate clients in six-minute intervals — and at the current average rate for low-level associates, every six minutes of work can cost a client as much as $100 — for hours upon hours of work reviewing documents or taking on other mundane tasks was just not my jam.
What to watch for in the court’s home stretch - The Boston Globe

2 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

What a long, strange trip this Supreme Court term has been. But the justices are truckin’ on to the end of the term, which should wrap by the Fourth of July holiday weekend. (Except for emergency actions in challenges to Trump administration policies, but more on that in a moment.)As usual, decisions in the term’s most high-profile cases will come in its final weeks. I have no crystal ball, but here are some of my predictions of what is to come in the final stretch of the Supreme Court’s term.
Don’t blink. The arrest of a lawmaker is a constitutional crisis in motion. - The Boston Globe

2 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

“Constitutional crisis” is a term that has been nearly stripped of meaning from its overuse and misuse. That, unfortunately, is part of the reason autocracies can creep into place under the watchful eyes of citizens. Don’t blink. It‘s important to think of the ongoing attack on US democracy not as an abstract idea, not as a looming possibility, but rather as something that is playing out each and every day.
John Roberts misses the moment - The Boston Globe

3 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

The rule of law is under attack in America, as are members of the judiciary. Some of them are pushing back. In a letter sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi last week, 150 retired state and federal judges wrote: “We unequivocally reject your and the Trump Administration’s assault on the judiciary, the Rule of Law and those who administer it.”“This does not make us ‘deranged,’” the letter stated.
Supreme Court could swiftly end Trump’s bid to strip birthright citizenship - The Boston Globe

3 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

The birthright citizenship case the Supreme Court will hear Thursday — as I and others have noted — isn’t really about birthright citizenship. But it could and should be. The issue being argued is largely procedural: Did a trio of federal judges overstep their authority by issuing nationwide injunctions halting President Trump’s executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship for children born to immigrants without legal status?
David Souter: What a simple man from N.H. taught me, and all of us - The Boston Globe

4 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

Justice David Souter was not a man drawn to the trappings of Washington. He was a simple guy who preferred the comfort of his modest Weare, N.H., farmhouse that didn‘t even have a phone line — that is, until his massive collection of books proved too much for the house’s frame to support and he was forced to move.
Shocking but not surprising: Supreme Court OKs Trump’s trans military ban for now - The Boston Globe

4 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

“No more dudes in dresses. We are done with that sh*t.”I hope one day this can go without saying, but for now a word: Transgender women are not “dudes in dresses.”But factually inaccurate slur aside, Hegseth was feeling bullish about the policy, even as it faces legal challenges by those who argue — in my view correctly — that it violates transgender servicemembers’ and recruits’ constitutional equal protection rights.
Trump’s prime-time defiance of the Supreme Court - The Boston Globe

1 month ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

In a prime-time television interview on Tuesday, President Trump admitted that he could facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was illegally deported to a Salvadoran prison described as a “gulag” due to what the administration called an “administrative error,” but he is choosing not to. “You could get him back,” Moran told Trump, gesturing toward the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. “There’s a phone on this desk.”“I could,” Trump said.
Trump is coming for the press - The Boston Globe

1 month ago | bostonglobe.com | Kimberly Atkins Stohr

There are two things as certain as death and taxes. The first is that an independent and free press is essential for a functioning democracy. That the press is the only profession that enjoys express protection in the Bill of Rights is a testament to that fact. The other certainty is that the work of a free press will face blowback, pushback, and in some cases out-and-out obstruction by the governments that reporters are tasked to hold accountable — even in a democracy.