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1 day ago | 
dorfonlaw.org | Michael C. Dorf
President Donald Trump recently took to social media to call Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell a "major loser" for failing to lower interest rates "NOW." Read against the backdrop of Trump's statement that Powell's "termination cannot come fast enough" and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett's confirmation that the administration is studying whether Trump can fire Hassett, the broadsides against Powell wreaked further havoc on Wall Street. Understandably so.
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3 days ago | 
chroni.cl | Timothy D. Brennan |James Smoliga |Rafael Walker |Michael C. Dorf
The best movie I’ve seen this year is Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, a political drama about the state repression of the thousands of Iranians who took to the streets of Tehran and elsewhere in protest of the death of Mahsa Amini, murdered by religious police for not wearing a hijab.
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4 days ago | 
dorfonlaw.org | Michael C. Dorf
Just before 1 AM on the morning of Saturday, April 19, the Supreme Court issued an order directing the U.S. government not to remove (i.e., send to El Salvador) any member of a group of Venezuelans currently detained in Texas pending the Court's further order. The Court acted early Saturday morning because it appeared that the Trump administration was about to violate the limits on removals set forth in its April 7 per curiam opinion.
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6 days ago | 
dorfonlaw.org | Michael C. Dorf
As John Oliver says at the top of each episode of Last Week Tonight, it has been a busy week. So busy, in fact, that for today's essay, I'm going to do a lightning round of observations on three of the major developments in just the last couple of days. 1. ContemptLet's start with Judge Boasberg's opinion in J.G.G. v.
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1 week ago | 
dorfonlaw.org | Michael C. Dorf
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump threatened to revoke Harvard's tax exempt status, posting on Truth Social:Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’Put aside the absurd suggestion that Harvard is pushing "sickness" (in scare quotes even in Trump's original for no apparent reason) that is inspired by or in support of terrorism.
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1 week ago | 
chronicle.com | Michael C. Dorf
Harvard University’s rejection of the Trump administration’s April 11 demand letter (styled as a proposed agreement in principle) almost immediately led the White House to announce a freeze on $2.2 billion in federal funds to the institution. Undoubtedly, Harvard’s leadership contemplated such an announcement as a possible consequence of its resistance. Thus, its decision deserves either praise for courage or condemnation for foolhardiness.
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1 week ago | 
dorfonlaw.org | Michael C. Dorf
[N.B. My latest Verdict column, Fighting the Last (Trade) War: Trump Ignores the Coming AI Revolution, was published yesterday. It explains that even in the unlikely event that President Trump's tariffs--or even more rational tariffs--boost U.S. domestic manufacturing, they will not lead to very substantial increases in domestic manufacturing employment, due to automation.
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1 week ago | 
dorfonlaw.org | Michael C. Dorf
The Trump regime has chosen defiance over compliance with the federal court order to facilitate the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the inhumane El Salvadoran prison to which he was mistakenly sent. Yesterday, during an Oval Office meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele, both stated that Abrego Garcia would not be coming back. There was no indication whatsoever that Trump had asked Bukele for Abrego Garcia's return and that Bukele had then said no.
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1 week ago | 
verdict.justia.com | Michael C. Dorf |Laurence H. Tribe |Michael Morrison |Jesse Choper
It has been difficult to find much to laugh about in the economic news of the last couple of weeks, as President Donald Trump single-handedly caused a generally downward roller-coaster ride for world financial markets, but Elon Musk’s dunking on Trump tariff guru Peter Navarro did provide one bright spot. Musk called Navarro “truly a moron,” “dumber than a sack of bricks,” and used a slur to further insult Navarro’s intelligence.
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1 week ago | 
dorfonlaw.org | Michael C. Dorf
On Thursday night last week, after the Supreme Court issued its order in Noem v. Abrego Garcia but before Judge Xinis responded by clarifying what exactly she expected of the Trump administration, I published a thread on BlueSky that, in retrospect, may have been too optimistic. Unrolled (that is to say, as a single text rather than multiple entries), here's what I wrote:I'm seeing a lot of criticism of the SCOTUS order in the Abrego Garcia case.
