#libraryofcongress — Public Fediverse posts

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTWH1Fdkjow

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbXw4EFioRI

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM0TUtqddpg

What To Watch On YouTube Right Now – Part 138

Welcome back my readers, YouTube viewers and all others who followed this series of articles focused on YouTube videos worth watching.

Have you been searching for something fun or interesting to watch on YouTube? Do you feel bored right now and you crave for something to see on the world’s most popular online video destination?

I recommend you check out the following videos I found.

#1 How To Get The Strongest And Most Optimized Spaceship Crew In Starfield – This year, Bethesda launched several important updates to make their 2023 science fiction role-playing game Starfield better and they also offered new DLC for those who crave for new content. One of the more defining aspects of the game is space travel and this includes setting up your own crew for your spaceship and there is impact on its functions and capabilities. If you want to learn how to get the stronger and most optimized crew for your ship, I encourage you watch the video below.

https://youtu.be/vy8iOx7eqVU?si=gn7W1mZxTOQ4SSrd

#2 Mari Iijima And The Defining Song of Macross: Do You Remember Love? – I really love watching the 1984 anime feature film Macross: Do You Remember Love? Apart from the great animation, the spectacle, the memorable characters and the solid storytelling, the movie also has a great soundtrack made to delight the long-time Macross fans. Still, the movie has its very own song performed by none other than Mari Iijima (Minmay) and it is a classic among Macross fans. In the videos below, you will see Mari Iijima perform the song live in a 1980s TV broadcast and the song playing with selected footage of Macross: Do You Remember Love? Enjoy these!

https://youtu.be/OfuW_Wbt73c?si=Q1DE8eJxo4Zk90pc

https://youtu.be/uJBMYV9e1Nc?si=veDGYU4r7s0flQ_H

#3 The Tuna City In Japan Is Changing With Tourism In Mind – If you plan to visit Japan at all, you might want to discover Miura City located in Kanagawa Prefecture. Miura City is famous for its fresh tuna and in recent times there has been a series of changes as several room-only hotels and new trends have sprouted as the locality is finding new ways to turn visitors into overnight guests. This is a place I would like to visit someday if ever I get the opportunity to return to Japan. Watch and learn from the Nippon TV video below.

https://youtu.be/fUPP30fYH78?si=MrC6Dml3IRVe7fcV

#4 Women’s Rights Activist Marries Islamist And Things Went Wrong – Did you notice that there is a gradual rising number of feminists and women’s rights activists who not embrace Islam (wicked and ugly) but also marry Islamists believing that things will be alright and they can just continue their activism. Of course, many of them activists and feminists do not fully understand Islam nor the full content of the Quran. As such, when things go very wrong, they are get into deep trouble. Watch and learn from the video below.

https://youtu.be/bx3YvoyP6cw?si=omxqhyR8CQfpfhYK

#5 Islamists Violate Hindu Women In India And Get Arrested – Let’s be very clear here. Islamists are oriented to conquer others even though they may not be numerous within a locality. Believe it or not, a group of such people who wielded power inside a business violated the Hindu women (plus at least one male employee) with regards to cultural norms and doing things that go against their faith. Even forced religious conversion happened. Watch and learn from the video below.

https://youtu.be/9xjFS-3Vuws?si=xuDIivIonrp9tQux

#6 Meatballs Reaction And Retrospective – When it comes to cinematic comedy, Bill Murray is iconic and his early work in 1979’s Meatballs already involved the late Harold Ramis and the late director Ivan Reitman. That said, there is something about Meatballs – produced for less than $2 million – that helped it achieve tremendous commercial success with ticket sales of $70 million. Remember, three of the creative minds behind the classic Ghostbusters are involved in this old movie and you will see how You, Me and The Movies react to it in the video below. Be aware that as of this writing, there are not too many movie reaction videos about Meatballs on YouTube. Also posted below is an in-depth retrospective about Meatballs by GoodBadFlicks.

https://youtu.be/nhR9xUCvpAI?si=Zh6gjAX0SdIrtSfT

https://youtu.be/D0BS-K3K_vE?si=HtyR_VThLUKv0Wj6

#7 Ashleigh Burton Reacts To The Thin Man – Have you ever heard of The Thin Man? It’s not a UFO reference. It’s the 1934 American pre-Code comedy-mystery movie that was eventually named to the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress having been deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 1997. Apart from its reputation in American film history, The Thin Man also resulted in five sequels. If you want to discover the 1934 movie but you don’t have the time nor resources to watch the movie, watch Ashleigh Burton’s reaction video and see how it impacts her.

https://youtu.be/IJRQXuw–20?si=mSYY7_Eb4EK6reBY

+++++

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Historic Photos Show the Once Ubiquitous American Diner https://petapixel.com/2026/05/01/historic-photos-show-the-once-ubiquitous-american-diner/ #libraryofcongress #historicalfriday #Editorial #americana #Features #diner #food

Resources for African American History Month: Selected Digital Collections – Teaching with the Library

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Resources for African American History Month: Selected Digital Collections

February 10, 2026, Posted by: Colleen Smith

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This is the second post in a series that looks at different resources from the Library that support teaching and learning about the achievements and contributions of African Americans throughout U.S. history.  The first post highlighted several primary source sets from Teaching with the Library; today’s post brings attention to the Library’s digital collections.

More than twenty-five of the Library’s digital collections relate to the rich histories, cultures, traditions, and contemporary experiences of African Americans. A few are highlighted below, along with ideas for using collection items in the classroom.

Selected Collections

African American Photographs Assembled for the 1900 Paris Exposition 

W. E. B. Du Bois compiled a series of photographs for the “American Negro” exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition. His goal was to show the diversity and successes of African Americans as a counter to common stereotypes. The Library of Congress holds approximately 220 mounted photographs reportedly displayed in the exhibition.

• Teachers might use items in this collection to introduce, investigate, or reinforce aspects of DuBois’s approach to combating racism and segregation.
• Images from the collection are powerful visuals of African Americans holding professions in diverse fields. This may help broaden students’ understanding of African American life at the time and bring attention to the experiences, successes, challenges, and contributions of African American individuals and communities.

By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s 

To honor the remarkable life and legacy of Jackie Robinson, Library staff put together this collection featuring sources from across many different divisions of the Library.

• The colorful prints and photographs make this an inviting collection to explore with younger learners. Teachers could bring some of these visuals to support existing materials they use to celebrate Robinson and his contributions.
• For older learners, consider sending them to this set of brief essays. Topics include Robinson’s career and the greater subject of segregation in the sport of baseball.

Zora Neal Hurston

This collection features digitized plays by Hurston (1891-1960), an author, anthropologist, and folklorist.

• A timeline offers a glimpse into Hurston’s life and career and could help students find an angle or selected topic for further research.
• Teachers interested in finding more on Huston’s work might also consult this resource guide from the American Folklife Center, where Hurston’s audio recordings are held. The guide highlights unique unpublished and published materials.

Frederick Douglass Newspapers, 1847 to 1874

Douglass, a leader in the black press, used the medium to communicate and persuade the public on the abolition of slavery and women’s rights. With this collection, students can explore newspapers edited by Frederick Douglass.

• These articles and essays are helpful for finding your way through the collection and identifying aspects to explore further. For example, this post gives further context to Douglass’s famous speech, “What to the American Slave is Your Fourth of July?“
• Ask students to consider how Douglass used the media of his time to capture public attention. In what ways do public figures use media today to communicate a message? What differences and similarities do students notice?

We hope this overview is helpful for considering how you might bring some of the Library’s digital collections to your classroom. If you are interested in more ways for students to engage with materials from the Library, you might check out the latest transcription campaign from By the People: the papers of Christian Fleetwood an African American Union soldier during the Civil War.

Do you enjoy these posts? Subscribe! You’ll receive free teaching ideas and primary sources from the Library of Congress.

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Continue/Read Original Article Here: Resources for African American History Month: Selected Digital Collections | Teaching with the Library

Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library

After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.

Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.

Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.

What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.

The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.

The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.

This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.

The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.

The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.

When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.

Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.

© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Sources used

• “About this Reading Room,” Library of Congress, 2025.
• “About Us,” British Library, 2025.
• “About us,” House of Commons Library, 2025.
• “About us,” Royal Asiatic Society, 2025.
• “About us,” Wellcome Collection, 2025.
• “Archives,” London Library, 2025.
• Barker, Sam. “The British Museum’s Secretive Round Reading Room Has Reopened To The Public,” Secret London, 4 Jul. 2024.
• “Bickley,” Wikishire, 13 Jul. 2025.
• “D. Leonard Corgan Library,” Kings College, 2025.
• “Dana Research Centre and Library,” Science Museum, 2025.
• “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone,” British Museum, 2025.
• Fox, Caroline. “Every Enola Holmes Filming Location (And What Every Place Looks Like Now),” ScreenRant, 26 Oct. 2020.
• Funk, Alex. “The British Museum’s mysterious domed Reading Room has officially reopened to the public,” TimeOut, 3 Jul. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Librarians and libraries in anime,” Pop Culture Library Review, 2025 (orig. 25 Jul. 2020).
• Hermann, Burkely. “More than a coming-of-age drama: The value of libraries and librarians in “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”,” Pop Culture Library Review, 8 Jan. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Recently added titles (March 2025),” Pop Culture Library Review, 2 Apr. 2025.
• Hermann, Burkely. “The fictional library and the value of studying redux,” Pop Culture Library Review, 30 Jul. 2024.
• Hickley, Catherine. “British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years,” The Art Newspaper, 3 Jul. 2024.
• “History of The London Library,” London Library, 2025.
• “Library,” Linnean Society of London, 2025.
• “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
• Mathur, Rhea. “The British Museum’s Reading Room: Past and Present,” gowithyamo, 2 Sept. 2024.
• Moran, Sarah. “The British Museum’s Stunning Domed Reading Room Reopens to Public,” Home Journal, 27 Sept. 2024.
• “National Art Library,” Victor and Albert Museum, 2025.
• “Philatelic Collections: Introduction,” British Library, 29 Mar. 2010.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
• “Spaces at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bodleian Library, 2025.
• “Spotlight: the Reading Room,” British Museum, 2025.
• Steves, Rick and Openshaw, Gene. London (24th Edition, US: Avalon Travel, Sept. 2022): 212, 214-215, 236, 238, 240, 244-247, 249.
• “Strand Campus: Self-guided tour,” King’s College, 5 Oct. 2014, p. 8.
•  “The British Library Philatelic Collection,” The Royal Philatelic Society London, Nov. 2005.
• “The Present Buildings,” Inner Temple Library, 2025.
• “Treasures of the British Library,” British Library, 2025.
• “Update on progress with the Masterplan,” British Museum, 19 Dec. 2024.

#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons

A justice’s most lasting legacy – SCOTUSblog

Home Newsletters, EMPIRICAL SCOTUS

A justice’s most lasting legacy

By Adam Feldman, on Nov 14, 2025

Empirical SCOTUS is a recurring series by Adam Feldman that looks at Supreme Court data, primarily in the form of opinions and oral arguments, to provide insights into the justices’ decision making and what we can expect from the court in the future.

Among a president’s most enduring legacies are the federal judges they appoint – particularly Supreme Court justices. This permanence stems from life tenure, a constitutional provision that ensures judicial independence but also transforms each appointment into a generational bet on the nation’s legal future.

Yet history is littered with presidential miscalculations. President Dwight D. Eisenhower supposedly called his appointment of Earl Warren as chief justice one of his “biggest mistakes,” as Warren became a liberal stalwart for over a decade. Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter, both nominated by Republican presidents, evolved into some of the court’s most liberal members. Had Republican presidents consistently installed reliably conservative justices since the mid-20th century, the court would have been far more conservative than it actually was (and perhaps even is today).

But presidential legacy is only part of the story. The judges themselves have developed their own succession strategies. In recent years, a striking pattern has emerged: Supreme Court justices now appear ready to retire only with tacit – or perhaps explicit – assurances that they will be replaced by someone they helped shape, typically a former clerk. This, combined with the fact that so many such clerks now serve as judges on the lower courts, has had profound effects – and will continue to do so – on the federal judiciary. 

Judicial successors 

Supreme Court clerkships represent a relatively modern phenomenon, emerging primarily as the court evolved through the 20th century. The number of clerks allocated to each justice has steadily increased, from two until 1969, to three in the 1970s, and to four in 1980. This has also expanded the pool of potential judicial heirs. Justice Byron White was the first justice to have clerked for a former justice – Chief Justice Fred Vinson in his case. Chief Justice William Rehnquist clerked for Robert Jackson, and Stevens for Wiley Rutledge. Stevens was confirmed in 1975. Of the next several justices – Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Souter, Clarence Thomas, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg – none held a Supreme Court clerkship. 

Then came Justice Stephen Breyer, confirmed in 1994, who had clerked for Justice Arthur Goldberg. The majority of justices appointed after 1994 held Supreme Court clerkships at one point in their careers – Chief Justice John Roberts for Rehnquist, Elena Kagan for Thurgood Marshall, Neil Gorsuch for Kennedy (although he was originally hired by White before his retirement), Brett Kavanaugh for Kennedy, Amy Coney Barrett for Scalia, and Ketanji Brown Jackson for Breyer. Neither Samuel Alito nor Sonia Sotomayor clerked at the Supreme Court level, leaving them a minority in this regard.

Indeed, since Kennedy retired in 2018, the phenomenon of justices being replaced by their clerks has become the norm rather than the exception. As noted, not one but two of Kennedy’s former clerks were appointed by President Donald Trump in succession: Gorsuch filled Scalia’s seat, which had remained vacant longer than any in court history, and Kennedy’s own seat went to Kavanaugh. According to Politico, Kennedy’s backroom conversations with Trump prior to his departure may have been used to facilitate a transition. For Trump, this was advantageous: he could install more consistently conservative justices than Kennedy, who had occasionally sided with liberals on consequential civil liberties cases like the same-sex marriage decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.

This trend of former clerks joining the court continued with Barrett, a Scalia clerk, replacing Ginsburg after her death, and Jackson, a Breyer clerk, succeeding her former mentor. 

The downstream effects of Supreme Court clerkships can reshape American law across generations. Consider the lineage from Jackson to Rehnquist, who clerked for Jackson, to Roberts, who clerked for Rehnquist. And this chain of influence now spans more than half a century, with each generation of jurists passing their interpretive methods to the next.

Breaking down the numbers

But that is not the full picture. The data also reveals how widespread former Supreme Court clerks are in the federal judiciary as a whole.

Thomas leads by a substantial margin, with 12 former clerks hired as federal judges – a testament both to his long tenure and his deliberate cultivation of conservative judicial talent. Kennedy follows with 10 clerk-judges, including the two Supreme Court justices mentioned earlier. Rehnquist placed eight former clerks, continuing his influence even after his 2005 death.

Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ginsburg each count six former clerks in the federal judiciary, and Stevens also placed six. Alito has four clerk-judges, while Breyer and Souter each have three. (Perhaps most surprisingly, given his position as chief justice, Roberts has not yet seen a former clerk become a federal judge.)

Implications: the self-replicating judiciary

These patterns of clerk placement, both on the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court itself, point toward a fundamental transformation in how the federal judiciary perpetuates itself. What began as perhaps an informal preference for continuity has evolved into something approaching a self-replicating system, where judicial philosophies pass from one generation to the next through carefully cultivated mentor-clerk relationships. And the implications extend far beyond individual careers or even the ideological balance of particular courts.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: A justice’s most lasting legacy – SCOTUSblog

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A justice’s most lasting legacy – SCOTUSblog

Home Newsletters, EMPIRICAL SCOTUS

A justice’s most lasting legacy

By Adam Feldman, on Nov 14, 2025

Empirical SCOTUS is a recurring series by Adam Feldman that looks at Supreme Court data, primarily in the form of opinions and oral arguments, to provide insights into the justices’ decision making and what we can expect from the court in the future.

Among a president’s most enduring legacies are the federal judges they appoint – particularly Supreme Court justices. This permanence stems from life tenure, a constitutional provision that ensures judicial independence but also transforms each appointment into a generational bet on the nation’s legal future.

Yet history is littered with presidential miscalculations. President Dwight D. Eisenhower supposedly called his appointment of Earl Warren as chief justice one of his “biggest mistakes,” as Warren became a liberal stalwart for over a decade. Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter, both nominated by Republican presidents, evolved into some of the court’s most liberal members. Had Republican presidents consistently installed reliably conservative justices since the mid-20th century, the court would have been far more conservative than it actually was (and perhaps even is today).

But presidential legacy is only part of the story. The judges themselves have developed their own succession strategies. In recent years, a striking pattern has emerged: Supreme Court justices now appear ready to retire only with tacit – or perhaps explicit – assurances that they will be replaced by someone they helped shape, typically a former clerk. This, combined with the fact that so many such clerks now serve as judges on the lower courts, has had profound effects – and will continue to do so – on the federal judiciary. 

Judicial successors 

Supreme Court clerkships represent a relatively modern phenomenon, emerging primarily as the court evolved through the 20th century. The number of clerks allocated to each justice has steadily increased, from two until 1969, to three in the 1970s, and to four in 1980. This has also expanded the pool of potential judicial heirs. Justice Byron White was the first justice to have clerked for a former justice – Chief Justice Fred Vinson in his case. Chief Justice William Rehnquist clerked for Robert Jackson, and Stevens for Wiley Rutledge. Stevens was confirmed in 1975. Of the next several justices – Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Souter, Clarence Thomas, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg – none held a Supreme Court clerkship. 

Then came Justice Stephen Breyer, confirmed in 1994, who had clerked for Justice Arthur Goldberg. The majority of justices appointed after 1994 held Supreme Court clerkships at one point in their careers – Chief Justice John Roberts for Rehnquist, Elena Kagan for Thurgood Marshall, Neil Gorsuch for Kennedy (although he was originally hired by White before his retirement), Brett Kavanaugh for Kennedy, Amy Coney Barrett for Scalia, and Ketanji Brown Jackson for Breyer. Neither Samuel Alito nor Sonia Sotomayor clerked at the Supreme Court level, leaving them a minority in this regard.

Indeed, since Kennedy retired in 2018, the phenomenon of justices being replaced by their clerks has become the norm rather than the exception. As noted, not one but two of Kennedy’s former clerks were appointed by President Donald Trump in succession: Gorsuch filled Scalia’s seat, which had remained vacant longer than any in court history, and Kennedy’s own seat went to Kavanaugh. According to Politico, Kennedy’s backroom conversations with Trump prior to his departure may have been used to facilitate a transition. For Trump, this was advantageous: he could install more consistently conservative justices than Kennedy, who had occasionally sided with liberals on consequential civil liberties cases like the same-sex marriage decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.

This trend of former clerks joining the court continued with Barrett, a Scalia clerk, replacing Ginsburg after her death, and Jackson, a Breyer clerk, succeeding her former mentor. 

The downstream effects of Supreme Court clerkships can reshape American law across generations. Consider the lineage from Jackson to Rehnquist, who clerked for Jackson, to Roberts, who clerked for Rehnquist. And this chain of influence now spans more than half a century, with each generation of jurists passing their interpretive methods to the next.

Breaking down the numbers

But that is not the full picture. The data also reveals how widespread former Supreme Court clerks are in the federal judiciary as a whole.

Thomas leads by a substantial margin, with 12 former clerks hired as federal judges – a testament both to his long tenure and his deliberate cultivation of conservative judicial talent. Kennedy follows with 10 clerk-judges, including the two Supreme Court justices mentioned earlier. Rehnquist placed eight former clerks, continuing his influence even after his 2005 death.

Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ginsburg each count six former clerks in the federal judiciary, and Stevens also placed six. Alito has four clerk-judges, while Breyer and Souter each have three. (Perhaps most surprisingly, given his position as chief justice, Roberts has not yet seen a former clerk become a federal judge.)

Implications: the self-replicating judiciary

These patterns of clerk placement, both on the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court itself, point toward a fundamental transformation in how the federal judiciary perpetuates itself. What began as perhaps an informal preference for continuity has evolved into something approaching a self-replicating system, where judicial philosophies pass from one generation to the next through carefully cultivated mentor-clerk relationships. And the implications extend far beyond individual careers or even the ideological balance of particular courts.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: A justice’s most lasting legacy – SCOTUSblog

#2025 #america #clerks #donaldTrump #education #federalJudiciary #health #history #influences #justice #justices #libraries #library #libraryOfCongress #opinion #politics #resistance #science #scotus #scotusblog #supremeCourtOfTheUnitedStates #trump #trumpAdministration #unitedStates

‘He Knew’: What Epstein Said About Trump in New Emails – The New York Times

Nov. 13, 2025, 6:00 a.m. ET

Hosted by Rachel Abrams, Featuring David Enrich and Michael Gold, Produced by Rob SzypkoAlex Stern and Rachelle Bonja, Edited by Paige Cowett and Lexie Diao, Original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano, Engineered by Alyssa Moxley.

Thousands of pages of newly released emails between Jeffrey Epstein and his associates have put the convicted sex offender’s relationship with President Trump back in the spotlight.

David Enrich and Michael Gold, who have been covering the story, explain what the new documents tell us and discuss whether they could prompt the release of the rest of the Epstein files.

On Today’s Episode

David Enrich, a deputy investigations editor for The New York Times.

Michael Gold, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.

Background Reading

• Mr. Trump said the Democrats were bringing up the Epstein “hoax” to deflect from the government shutdown.
• House Republicans asserted that the emails revealed little information.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: ‘He Knew’: What Epstein Said About Trump in New Emails – The New York Times

#20000Pages #2025 #america #convictedSexOffender #davidEnrich #democrats #donaldTrump #education #epstein #epsteinFiles #health #history #jeffreyEpstein #libraries #library #libraryOfCongress #michaelGold #opinion #politics #republicans #resistance #science #theNewYorkTimes #trump #trumpAdministration #uSHouse #unitedStates

Jon Stewart on the Perilous State of Late Night and Why America Fell for Donald Trump – The New Yorker Radio Hour – WNYC Studios

Jon Stewart on the Perilous State of Late Night and Why America Fell for Donald Trump

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October 31, 2025

By David Remnick

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Jon Stewart has been a leading figure in political comedy since before the turn of the millennium. But compared to his early years on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”—when Stewart was merciless in his attacks on George W. Bush’s Administration—these are much more challenging times for late-night comedians.

Jimmy Kimmel nearly lost his job over a remark about MAGA supporters of Charlie Kirk, after the head of the F.C.C. threatened ABC. CBS recently announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s program. And Stewart now finds himself very near the hot seat: Comedy Central is controlled by David Ellison, the Trump-friendly C.E.O. of the recently merged Paramount Skydance.

Stewart’s contract comes up in December. “You’re going to sign another one?” David Remnick asked him, in a live interview at The New Yorker Festival. “We’re working on staying,” Stewart said. “You don’t compromise on what you do. You do it till they tell you to leave. That’s all you can do.”  Stewart, moreover, doesn’t blame solely Donald Trump for recent attacks on the independence of the media, universities, and other institutions.

“This is the hardest truth for us to get at, is that [these] institutions . . . have problems. They do. And, if we don’t address those problems in a forthright way, then those institutions become vulnerable to this kind of assault. Credibility is not something that was just taken. It was also lost.”

In fact, Stewart also directs his ire at “the Democratic Party, [which] thinks it’s O.K. for their Senate to be an assisted-living facility.” “In the general-populace mind, government no longer serves the interests of the people it purports to represent. That’s a broad-based, deep feeling. And that helps when someone comes along and goes, ‘The system is rigged,’ and people go, ‘Yeah, it is rigged.’ Now, he’s a good diagnostician. I don’t particularly care for his remedy.”

This episode was recorded live at The New Yorker Festival, on October 26, 2025. 

Produced by The New Yorker and WNYC Studios

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Jon Stewart on the Perilous State of Late Night and Why America Fell for Donald Trump | The New Yorker Radio Hour | WNYC Studios

#2025 #America #Americans #ComedyCentral #Democrats #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #JonStewart #LateNightTV #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Podcast #Politics #Republicans #Resistance #Science #Studios #Television #TheNewYorker #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #WNYC

Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis” – Daily Kos

by TheCriticalMind

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday, October 11, 2025 at 4:45:27p PDT

The current Supreme Court is making unprecedented use of the ‘shadow docket’. Reaction has been mixed. Liberals say the Court is a rubber stamp enabling Trump’s imperial presidency. MAGAs argue that SCOTUS’s conservative bloc is doing God’s work by thwarting anti-democratic rulings by unelected, activist, lower court judges.

However, politics aside, Supreme Court rulings impact how the Judiciary does business. To understand the practical effect of the Court’s use of the shadow docket, the New York Times polled US District and Appeals Court judges.

It reported its findings in an article titled: Federal Judges, Warning of ‘Judicial Crisis,’ Fault Supreme Court’s Emergency Orders.”

The subhead summarized the substance of the piece. To wit:

Dozens of sitting judges shared with The Times their concerns about risks to the courts’ legitimacy as the Supreme Court releases opaque orders about Trump administration policies.

The Times wrote to “hundreds of federal judges across the country” — and 65 replied. The respondents are not named. But the paper said presidents of both parties had appointed them. And that, while there was a difference in degree, Judges across the political spectrum worried about SCOTUS’s high-handedness. In the NYT’s words:  

Of the judges who responded, 28 were nominated by Republican presidents, including 10 by Mr. Trump; 37 were nominated by Democrats.

Adding: While those nominated by Democrats were more critical of the Supreme Court, judges nominated by presidents of both parties expressed concerns.

The paper asked the judges if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: The Supreme Court has made appropriate use of the emergency docket since President Trump returned to office. Overall 72% said SCOTUS’s use was inappropriate, 9% hedged, and 18% (all Republican) said it was appropriate.

Tellingly, while almost all Democrats said SCOTUS was on the wrong side of the line, nearly half the Republicans concurred. The conclusion is inescapable. When half your team thinks your side stinks, it stinks.  

 Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis”

#2025 #America #DailyKos #DonaldTrump #Education #EmergencyOrders #FederalJudiciary #Health #History #JudicialCrisis #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #RuleOfLaw #SCOTUS #SupremeCourtOfTheUnitedStates #TheNewYorkTimes #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis” – Daily Kos

by TheCriticalMind

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday, October 11, 2025 at 4:45:27p PDT

The current Supreme Court is making unprecedented use of the ‘shadow docket’. Reaction has been mixed. Liberals say the Court is a rubber stamp enabling Trump’s imperial presidency. MAGAs argue that SCOTUS’s conservative bloc is doing God’s work by thwarting anti-democratic rulings by unelected, activist, lower court judges.

However, politics aside, Supreme Court rulings impact how the Judiciary does business. To understand the practical effect of the Court’s use of the shadow docket, the New York Times polled US District and Appeals Court judges.

It reported its findings in an article titled: Federal Judges, Warning of ‘Judicial Crisis,’ Fault Supreme Court’s Emergency Orders.”

The subhead summarized the substance of the piece. To wit:

Dozens of sitting judges shared with The Times their concerns about risks to the courts’ legitimacy as the Supreme Court releases opaque orders about Trump administration policies.

The Times wrote to “hundreds of federal judges across the country” — and 65 replied. The respondents are not named. But the paper said presidents of both parties had appointed them. And that, while there was a difference in degree, Judges across the political spectrum worried about SCOTUS’s high-handedness. In the NYT’s words:  

Of the judges who responded, 28 were nominated by Republican presidents, including 10 by Mr. Trump; 37 were nominated by Democrats.

Adding: While those nominated by Democrats were more critical of the Supreme Court, judges nominated by presidents of both parties expressed concerns.

The paper asked the judges if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: The Supreme Court has made appropriate use of the emergency docket since President Trump returned to office. Overall 72% said SCOTUS’s use was inappropriate, 9% hedged, and 18% (all Republican) said it was appropriate.

Tellingly, while almost all Democrats said SCOTUS was on the wrong side of the line, nearly half the Republicans concurred. The conclusion is inescapable. When half your team thinks your side stinks, it stinks.  

 Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis”

#2025 #America #DailyKos #DonaldTrump #Education #EmergencyOrders #FederalJudiciary #Health #History #JudicialCrisis #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #RuleOfLaw #SCOTUS #SupremeCourtOfTheUnitedStates #TheNewYorkTimes #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis” – Daily Kos

by TheCriticalMind

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday, October 11, 2025 at 4:45:27p PDT

The current Supreme Court is making unprecedented use of the ‘shadow docket’. Reaction has been mixed. Liberals say the Court is a rubber stamp enabling Trump’s imperial presidency. MAGAs argue that SCOTUS’s conservative bloc is doing God’s work by thwarting anti-democratic rulings by unelected, activist, lower court judges.

However, politics aside, Supreme Court rulings impact how the Judiciary does business. To understand the practical effect of the Court’s use of the shadow docket, the New York Times polled US District and Appeals Court judges.

It reported its findings in an article titled: Federal Judges, Warning of ‘Judicial Crisis,’ Fault Supreme Court’s Emergency Orders.”

The subhead summarized the substance of the piece. To wit:

Dozens of sitting judges shared with The Times their concerns about risks to the courts’ legitimacy as the Supreme Court releases opaque orders about Trump administration policies.

The Times wrote to “hundreds of federal judges across the country” — and 65 replied. The respondents are not named. But the paper said presidents of both parties had appointed them. And that, while there was a difference in degree, Judges across the political spectrum worried about SCOTUS’s high-handedness. In the NYT’s words:  

Of the judges who responded, 28 were nominated by Republican presidents, including 10 by Mr. Trump; 37 were nominated by Democrats.

Adding: While those nominated by Democrats were more critical of the Supreme Court, judges nominated by presidents of both parties expressed concerns.

The paper asked the judges if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: The Supreme Court has made appropriate use of the emergency docket since President Trump returned to office. Overall 72% said SCOTUS’s use was inappropriate, 9% hedged, and 18% (all Republican) said it was appropriate.

Tellingly, while almost all Democrats said SCOTUS was on the wrong side of the line, nearly half the Republicans concurred. The conclusion is inescapable. When half your team thinks your side stinks, it stinks.  

 Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis”

#2025 #America #DailyKos #DonaldTrump #Education #EmergencyOrders #FederalJudiciary #Health #History #JudicialCrisis #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #RuleOfLaw #SCOTUS #SupremeCourtOfTheUnitedStates #TheNewYorkTimes #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis” – Daily Kos

by TheCriticalMind

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday, October 11, 2025 at 4:45:27p PDT

The current Supreme Court is making unprecedented use of the ‘shadow docket’. Reaction has been mixed. Liberals say the Court is a rubber stamp enabling Trump’s imperial presidency. MAGAs argue that SCOTUS’s conservative bloc is doing God’s work by thwarting anti-democratic rulings by unelected, activist, lower court judges.

However, politics aside, Supreme Court rulings impact how the Judiciary does business. To understand the practical effect of the Court’s use of the shadow docket, the New York Times polled US District and Appeals Court judges.

It reported its findings in an article titled: Federal Judges, Warning of ‘Judicial Crisis,’ Fault Supreme Court’s Emergency Orders.”

The subhead summarized the substance of the piece. To wit:

Dozens of sitting judges shared with The Times their concerns about risks to the courts’ legitimacy as the Supreme Court releases opaque orders about Trump administration policies.

The Times wrote to “hundreds of federal judges across the country” — and 65 replied. The respondents are not named. But the paper said presidents of both parties had appointed them. And that, while there was a difference in degree, Judges across the political spectrum worried about SCOTUS’s high-handedness. In the NYT’s words:  

Of the judges who responded, 28 were nominated by Republican presidents, including 10 by Mr. Trump; 37 were nominated by Democrats.

Adding: While those nominated by Democrats were more critical of the Supreme Court, judges nominated by presidents of both parties expressed concerns.

The paper asked the judges if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: The Supreme Court has made appropriate use of the emergency docket since President Trump returned to office. Overall 72% said SCOTUS’s use was inappropriate, 9% hedged, and 18% (all Republican) said it was appropriate.

Tellingly, while almost all Democrats said SCOTUS was on the wrong side of the line, nearly half the Republicans concurred. The conclusion is inescapable. When half your team thinks your side stinks, it stinks.  

 Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis”

#2025 #America #DailyKos #DonaldTrump #Education #EmergencyOrders #FederalJudiciary #Health #History #JudicialCrisis #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #RuleOfLaw #SCOTUS #SupremeCourtOfTheUnitedStates #TheNewYorkTimes #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis” – Daily Kos

by TheCriticalMind

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday, October 11, 2025 at 4:45:27p PDT

The current Supreme Court is making unprecedented use of the ‘shadow docket’. Reaction has been mixed. Liberals say the Court is a rubber stamp enabling Trump’s imperial presidency. MAGAs argue that SCOTUS’s conservative bloc is doing God’s work by thwarting anti-democratic rulings by unelected, activist, lower court judges.

However, politics aside, Supreme Court rulings impact how the Judiciary does business. To understand the practical effect of the Court’s use of the shadow docket, the New York Times polled US District and Appeals Court judges.

It reported its findings in an article titled: Federal Judges, Warning of ‘Judicial Crisis,’ Fault Supreme Court’s Emergency Orders.”

The subhead summarized the substance of the piece. To wit:

Dozens of sitting judges shared with The Times their concerns about risks to the courts’ legitimacy as the Supreme Court releases opaque orders about Trump administration policies.

The Times wrote to “hundreds of federal judges across the country” — and 65 replied. The respondents are not named. But the paper said presidents of both parties had appointed them. And that, while there was a difference in degree, Judges across the political spectrum worried about SCOTUS’s high-handedness. In the NYT’s words:  

Of the judges who responded, 28 were nominated by Republican presidents, including 10 by Mr. Trump; 37 were nominated by Democrats.

Adding: While those nominated by Democrats were more critical of the Supreme Court, judges nominated by presidents of both parties expressed concerns.

The paper asked the judges if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: The Supreme Court has made appropriate use of the emergency docket since President Trump returned to office. Overall 72% said SCOTUS’s use was inappropriate, 9% hedged, and 18% (all Republican) said it was appropriate.

Tellingly, while almost all Democrats said SCOTUS was on the wrong side of the line, nearly half the Republicans concurred. The conclusion is inescapable. When half your team thinks your side stinks, it stinks.  

 Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Federal judges call SCOTUS’s shadow docket “inappropriate,” “opaque,” and a “judicial crisis”

#2025 #America #DailyKos #DonaldTrump #Education #EmergencyOrders #FederalJudiciary #Health #History #JudicialCrisis #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #RuleOfLaw #SCOTUS #SupremeCourtOfTheUnitedStates #TheNewYorkTimes #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Professor sues West Point, says the academy is restricting free speech | AP News

U.S. News

West Point is violating the First Amendment with a crackdown on professors, lawsuit says

By  LARRY NEUMEISTER, Updated 9:08 AM PDT, September 22, 2025

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. Military Academy at West Point is banning opinions by professors in the classroom and some books and courses in a crackdown that violates the First Amendment, a law professor at the military school said in a lawsuit Monday seeking class action status.

Tim Bakken filed the lawsuit in Manhattan federal court and named the school and its leaders as defendants. He said he wants to protect free speech and the right to academic freedom at an institution where he has flourished despite his public criticisms of the academy and the U.S. military.

Bakken also noted in the lawsuit that he has a contract with a publisher for a book that is critical of some aspects of West Point and doesn’t want to seek approval from the school’s leadership prior to its publication because “it is very likely such approval will be withheld.”

The lawsuit seeks class action status for West Point’s civilian faculty members, believed to be more than 100 individuals, and a court order to stop restrictions on free speech, along with unspecified damages and legal fees.

Bakken’s lawsuit said the school began to scrutinize faculty speech after a January executive order from President Donald Trump to “carefully review the leadership, curriculum and instructors of the United States Service Academies and other defense academic institutions.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Professor sues West Point, says the academy is restricting free speech | AP News

#2025 #America #AP #APNews #AssociatedPress #Censorship #DonaldTrump #Education #FirstAmendment #FreedomOfSpeech #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #MilitaryAcademy #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #WestPoint

3 Pillars of Trump’s Power—Including Tariffs—Head to Supreme Court | TIME

Sep 10, 2025, 4:00 AM PT

3 Pillars of Trump’s Power Are Tested, as Pivotal Cases Head to Supreme Court

• Politics
• Trump Administration

By Brian Bennett, Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME.

The Brief September 10, 2025

The Brief September 10, 2025

Editor’s Note: Audio on the linked article/site. Not available to embed.

In early September, President Donald Trump’s White House sent out a press release laying out ways Trump has been “delivering historic results.” It outed $158 billion in tariff revenues coming into the U.S. since Trump took office. It said that Trump’s border crackdown has led to a 97% drop in northward migration from Central America and that his use of the military for law enforcement in Washington DC is a “model” for other cities.

It was just the latest example of the Administration highlighting how Trump is following through on his campaign promises to aggressively deploy tariffs, ramp up deportations, and send the National Guard into U.S. cities. But a recent drumbeat of court rulings have called those three central actions of Trump’s presidency into question. Lower courts are repeatedly finding that Trump has exceeded his powers as President under the Constitution. In just the last two weeks, federal courts ruled that most of his tariffs are illegal, that he violated a law prohibiting the use of soldiers for law enforcement inside the U.S., and that many of his most high-profile deportations were based on a faulty reading of law.

The White House is challenging all of those decisions, setting the stage for the Supreme Court to ultimately determine if if Trump may have to rein in his efforts in those areas The high court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority thanks to the three justices Trump hand-picked during his first term, has so far taken an expansive view of Trump’s ability to act.

Here are three major actions Trump has taken that are in jeopardy and appear destined for the Supreme Court:

Issuing Tariffs

A federal court ruled in late August that most of Trump’s tariffs are illegal because they were imposed without Congressional approval. But that lower court held off on enacting its order to give the Trump Administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the high court announced it was expediting the tariff case, demanding briefs from all sides from the government and the plaintiffs by Sept. 19 in order to hear in-person arguments in early November.

The case was brought by a group of small businesses that said the tariffs Trump imposed so far “amount to an average tax increase of $1,200-$2,800 per American household.” The business owners argued that issuing those tariffs were beyond the President’s powers under the Constitution. Article I of the Constitution empowered Congress to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and demands that bills for raising revenue “shall originate in the House of Representatives.” (CONTINUED)

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: 3 Pillars of Trump’s Power—Including Tariffs—Head to Supreme Court | TIME

#2025 #America #DemocraticStates #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #NationalGuard #Opinion #Pillars #Politics #Resistance #Science #SpeedingDeportations #Tariffs #Three #Time #TimeMagazine #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpSPower #USCities #UnitedStates

Closer Look: Library Collections Pages | Teaching with the Library

Teaching with the Library Primary Sources & Ideas for Educators, ISSN 2691-6916

Closer Look: Library Collections Pages

June 24, 2025, Posted by: Cheryl Lederle

Many of the online collections from the Library of Congress include tools to help researchers, including student researchers, find what they need in the collection. Exploring those expert resources early in their research process can give students valuable context, a better understanding of what might be in the collection, and can help them decide whether or not to examine the collection further, reducing frustration and improving search results.

Though the available information varies by collection, collections typically include a tab “About this Collection” as well as the “Collection Items” tab. Some collections also have a tab of “Articles and Essays” for additional context. The left navigation of the “About…” page links to related resources, when available, and includes information about “Rights and Access.”

Featured Content, a carousel highlighting select items, is a prominent feature of the “About this Collection” pages. Students might browse the carousel to get a sense of the kinds of items in the collection, or they might select an item and examine it to glean information and to generate questions to inspire and focus additional research.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Closer Look: Library Collections Pages | Teaching with the Library

#2025 #Blogs #Books #CloserLook #Education #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryCollections #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Reading #Science #TeachingWithTheLibrary #Technology

Influential Sister Photographers Were Hidden in Geronimo’s Eye for a Century https://petapixel.com/2025/09/05/influential-sister-photographers-were-hidden-in-geronimos-eye-for-a-century/ #womeninphotography #libraryofcongress #historicalfriday #gerhardsisters #20thcentury #geronimo #portrait #Culture #history #News

Alina Habba ‘unlawfully’ working as US attorney in New Jersey, judge rules – POLITICO

• Europe
• Pro
• E&E News

Alina Habba ‘unlawfully’ working as US attorney in New Jersey, judge rules

As a result, Habba cannot participate in prosecutions by the office.

Alina Habba, former lawyer for President Donald Trump, is at the center of battle to lead New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney’s Office. | Mary Altaffer/AP

By Ry Rivard and Matt Friedman08/21/2025 03:37 PM EDTUpdated: 08/21/2025 05:36 PM EDT

A federal judge rejected President Donald Trump’s use of a loophole to keep Alina Habba in place as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor.

In a 77-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann said Thursday that Habba “is not lawfully holding the office of United States Attorney” and has been in the position without legal authority since July 1.

Editor’s Note: The PDF ruling document is embedded at the end of this article.

As a result, Habba, who had previously worked as Trump’s personal attorney, cannot run the office the president attempted to keep her in charge of after her 120-day interim appointment expired. The Trump administration employed a series of maneuvers to try to retain Habba’s control of the office after district judges ousted her in July.

“Faced with the question of whether Ms. Habba is lawfully performing the functions and duties of the office of the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, I conclude that she is not,” Brann wrote.

Brann put his ruling on hold, pending the Trump administration’s possible appeal, but the fallout could be a staggering mess across the executive branch. Brann said Habba’s actions in New Jersey for the past seven weeks “may be declared void” and Habba must be disqualified from participating in any of the office’s cases as its leader. The office handles thousands of criminal and civil cases at any given time.

The ruling by Brann — a Republican and Obama appointee who sits in Pennsylvania’s Middle District — could also have wider implications for other U.S. attorney’s offices in Los Angeles, Nevada, New Mexico and upstate New York, where the administration has effectively sidestepped or overridden both the Senate confirmation and judicial appointment processes for selecting U.S. attorneys.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Justice Department would “immediately appeal.”

She said on social media Habba “is doing incredible work in New Jersey — and we will protect her position from activist judicial attacks.”

A spokesperson for Habba did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brann’s ruling came in response to legal challenges to Habba’s authority by defense attorneys trying to get charges against their clients thrown out by arguing the Trump administration illegally kept her on and without being confirmed by the Senate.

Those challenges came amid days of confusion over who is leading the office because of complex and contested rules over filling vacancies when there isn’t a Senate-confirmed leader.

The judge declined to throw out the charges against the defendants, Julien Giraud and Cesar Pina, but said anyone who prosecutes them “under the supervision or authority of Ms. Habba” would be subject to disqualification.

Brann’s formal order only applies to the defendants in the case before him, but his opinion is written to broadly apply to everything Habba does.

“I think it would be deeply irresponsible for the department to move forward with Alina Habba as the highest Justice Department official signing indictments or other pleadings,” said James Pearce, an attorney who represents the Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey in the case.

Brann said that allowing stacked interim appointments would effectively void the need for confirmation. “Taken to the extreme, the President could use this method to staff the United States Attorney’s office with individuals of his personal choice for an entire term without seeking the Senate’s advice and consent,” he wrote.
His ruling also has findings that could embolden those who want to check Trump’s moves to strengthen the White House’s grip on government.
“Congress is expected to speak clearly when it rebalances the separation of powers, and courts should be chary of Executive branch interpretations of structural enactments that result in greater arrogation of power to the President,” Brann wrote.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/21/alina-habba-new-jersey-us-attorney-ruling-00518559

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department, has started putting his name on some of the New Jersey office’s work in recent days, an unusual move that appears designed to head off challenges to the authority of those prosecutions if they were signed by Habba alone.

Brann’s ruling also has implications for other agencies, said Anne Joseph O’Connell, a Stanford Law School professor who studies the appointments process. She said modern agencies run on the delegation of authority in the face of a broken Senate confirmation process and that some of the particulars in Brann’s ruling would affect other administration officials, like the current head of FEMA.

“If upheld on appeal, this ruling would upend common practice of acting officials under Democratic and Republican Administrations,” Joseph O’Connell said. Editor’s Note: Below is the judge’s opinion in full, courtesy of Politico.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Alina Habba ‘unlawfully’ working as US attorney in New Jersey, judge rules – POLITICO

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On Politics: Why Trump wants to meet Putin

August 13, 2025

Trump’s Washington

How President Trump is changing government, the country and its politics.

Good evening. Tonight, our veteran national security correspondent, David Sanger, guides us through the stakes of President Trump’s upcoming summit with Vladimir Putin. We’re also looking at how the administration’s science funding cuts will affect research into health care disparities, and how Trump is exerting his influence over culture. We’ll start with the headlines.

• A federal appeals court ruled that the Trump administration can withhold billions in funding intended for foreign aid groups.
• Europe’s leaders say they’ve agreed with Trump on a strategy for his talks with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, on Friday.
• The Trump administration urged a federal court to uphold its sweeping global tariffs or risk an economic depression. Experts dispute the severity of that claim.
• Trump’s deployment of federal troops in Washington has begun. Here’s what it looks like.

The meeting on Friday will be the first for an American president since the Western world isolated Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. New York Times photographs by Doug Mills and Nanna Heitmann

At stake in Alaska: two egos, and a continent’s future

by Jess Bidgood and David E. Sanger

There is nobody with more confidence in President Trump’s deal-making abilities than Trump himself.

Yet, as his Friday meeting in Alaska with President Vladimir Putin of Russia draws near, he and his top aides are lowering expectations, suggesting it’s not Trump’s job to make peace between Moscow and Ukraine and calling the summit little more than a “listening exercise.”

Statements like that belie the enormous stakes of the first meeting between Trump and Putin since the Russian invasion, particularly for the parties who aren’t expected to be present, which includes the leadership of Ukraine and of the European nations that have been living with the war on their doorstep. For Trump, though, the motivation is personal — it’s a chance to reset a relationship he has long boasted about but has lately become rocky, while bringing his personal brand of deal-making to the world’s biggest stage.

There’s a lot going on here. So I called David Sanger, who has covered the White House and national security for decades and who has written books about superpower conflict, before he boarded a series of flights to Anchorage earlier today.

He walked me through the calculus of risk and reward around this meeting — and why Putin can claim a modest win before it even starts.

As you’ve written, it used to be normal for an American president to meet with the Russian leader. George W. Bush met with Putin roughly two dozen times. Joe Biden met him only once, in 2021. But Trump’s meeting will be the first for an American president since the Western world isolated Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. What does he stand to gain from it?

Trump sees himself as a peacemaker, and this is tied up very much in his oft-expressed desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize, which he usually combines with some kind of comment to suggest that the Nobel Committee would never give it to him.

He has taken credit for a cease-fire between India and Pakistan, although the Indians have a different version of that story. He took a direct role in a peace pledge signed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, at the White House, and there have been other regional conflicts in which he’s played an important role. The big ones, though, have evaded him.

Those, of course, are the Israel-Hamas war and the Russian war with Ukraine, which he famously declared that he would solve in 24 hours, on the basis of his long and, in his view, respectful relationship with Putin. He has now come to question whether that relationship is what he thought it was, or at least what he portrayed it as, because Putin has held a series of perfectly friendly, constructive phone calls with him and then continued on the same battle plan that he was on before, with considerable recent success.

If the president comes out of Alaska without an immediate or imminent cease-fire plan, I think it’s going to be difficult for him to portray this as a win. But a cease-fire alone won’t be enough.

Who has the most at stake here?

The country with the most at stake, of course, is Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who wasn’t invited. The second-most at stake is President Trump and the countries that make up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. Let me explain.

For Ukraine, the risk is that Trump will push for something he’s been referring to as a “land swap.” He doesn’t say that Russia would simply get the land that it has already taken militarily, which would be problematic enough, because it would reward Moscow and Putin for invading a sovereign state.

Trump’s use of the phrase “swaps” leaves you with the impression that he might be willing to award the Russians territory that they have not gained militarily, in return for something else.

Tell us about the risks for Trump.

The big risk for Trump is that whatever comes out of Alaska is just a delaying action. Putin may calculate that what he needs most is a relaxation of sanctions, a reopening of trade and time to rebuild his force so that a few years from now, he can attempt a re-invasion of the rest of Ukraine and use the territory he’s gained as a launchpad to drive toward Kyiv. That’s a huge risk, and the Ukrainians are rightly worried about it.

To forestall that, the Europeans and Zelensky are insisting on security guarantees and continued arms shipments to Ukraine, as well as making sure that Trump doesn’t make any concessions about where NATO forces can be deployed in Eastern Europe. All of those issues are as important — and over the long term, perhaps more important — than where you draw the boundaries between Russia and Ukraine.

And there’s one more risk for NATO. Will Putin use this meeting to drive a wedge between Trump and the NATO allies? That is Putin’s greatest dream.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: On Politics: Why Trump wants to meet Putin

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Seeing Things – Texas Democrats’ Moral Clarity – by Liza Donnelly

What’s happening in Texas and the redistricting fight is meaningful; I believe this is a moment. It is a fight for the House of Representives coming up in the next midterm election. The Republicans are not playing by the rules; Democrats intend to meet them head-to-head in this battle.

Yesterday, Texas Democratic legislators left Texas in order to stop the state Republicans from passing legislation that would redraw the voter registration map of Texas to add five GOP seats to the Texas house. Without a quorum, the legislation could not vote on this. Texas state representative James Talarico said in a video posted to social media,

“My Democratic colleagues and I have just left our beloved state to break quorum and stop Trump’s redistricting power grab. Trump told our Republican colleagues to redraw the political maps here in Texas in the middle of the decade to get him five more seats and protect his majority in Congress. They’re turning our districts into crazy shapes to guarantee the outcome they want in the 2026 elections. If this power grab succeeds, they will hang on to power without any accountability from the voters. But Texas Democrats are fighting back. We’re leaving the state, breaking quorum and preventing Republicans from silencing our voices and rigging the next election. We are not fighting for the Democratic Party. We are fighting for the democratic process, and the stakes could not be higher. We have to take a stand.”

Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Gene Wu said, “If Donald Trump is allowed to do this, if he is allowed to once again cheat and get away with it, there’s no stopping this. This will spread across the country, and…will occur everywhere. Because if one person’s going to cheat and no one’s going to stop it, why doesn’t everyone just do it then? And that is not a society, that is not an America that works. Everyone is already tired of the hyperpartisan bickering and all the fighting because we never get anything done. And they are creating a system that will reinforce that and make it even worse. And we’re telling people, please come out, stand up against it, rise up and say no more. Enough.”

Wu said the Texas Democratic representatives “did not make the decision to come here today…lightly, but we come here today with absolute moral clarity.”

The Democratic legislators bravely left their home state on principle, and traveled to Illionois, New York and California where they were welcomed with open arms by the govenors of each state. Illinoir govenor Pritzker said,

“To be in public office right now is to constantly ask yourself, how do I make sure that we’re standing on the right side of history? There’s a simple answer. The wrong side of history will always tell you to be afraid. The right side of history will always expect you to be courageous. Expect courage from people around you, and it will show up. Expect fear, and fear will rule the day. Let the courage of these leaders be an example to the rest of the country. I’m proud to stand side by side with our friends from Texas today.”

Governor Kathy Hochul of New York hosted some of the Democratic lawymakers at a luncheon in Albany, and called them “profiles in courage.”

Texas Govenor Abbott immideately shot back when the Democrats left, saying he has the power to replace them, that they forfeited their seats.

What happens next is unclear. Blue states are working to ammend their state’s constitutions so that they can redraw their electoral maps just as Texas is trying to. What Abbott will do, where the Democratic legislators will go, will Abbott try to arrest them: this is all still unknown.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Texas Democrats’ Moral Clarity – by Liza Donnelly

Original article: View source

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How I wrote the newest Sherlock Holmes novel – The Spectator World

By Gareth Rubin

How I wrote the newest Sherlock Holmes novel

It wasn’t so elementary, Watson, Wednesday, July 23, 2025

I don’t think anyone has ever come up with a word to describe an authorized author. It’s not quite a tautology. The writer, who has been invited to write a novel continuing the body of work of another, might, possibly, be an example of literary parthenogenesis. Or, more pejoratively, karaoke.

Who knows? But either way, it’s a growth industry. You will have seen the new authorized James Bond novels, the recently crafted Miss Marple and George Smiley outings that have appeared on the bookstore shelves over the past few years to some fanfare – despite the fact that those characters’ creators are very much pushing up the daisies. No, the mortality status of said celebrated novelists is no barrier – perhaps it’s even an incentive – to fans of the series rushing out and handing over their cash for the work featuring their favorite sleuth or spy.

In those cases, the literary estate of Ian Fleming, for instance, will have authorized the new book in return for a cut of the proceeds. But sometimes – perhaps more strangely – the originators are alive and kicking but don’t fancy another ten months in front of their laptop, and so they subcontract the work. Hence, Lee Child can still introduce his latest smash-hit Jack Reacher thriller to a hungry readership, without hiding the fact that the actual words were written by his brother Andrew. Either way, the arrangement leaves everyone content and fulfilled.

I know whereof I speak. When it was announced that the Conan Doyle literary estate had authorized me to write a new Sherlock Holmes novel, the first question I was publicly asked was whether I thought I was up to the job. After all, Holmes is a uniquely popular character, listed in the Guinness World Records as the most-portrayed human literary creation, with hundreds of films and television shows about him. But I do, as it happens, think I’m up to it. I wouldn’t have written it otherwise, would I?

Holmes and Moriarty was published in the US this past May, with near-simultaneous publication in a wide range of European countries. My literary agent, Jon, came up with the idea. He had previously published the last two authorized Holmes novels, written by Anthony Horowitz, and was therefore in touch with the Conan Doyle estate, made up of Sir Arthur’s descendants. They were interested in finding a new author to continue their ancestor’s legacy, and my previous Gothic-tinged Victorian-set mystery, The Turnglass, had been a Sunday Times bestseller, so they wanted to know what I would do with Holmes.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: How I wrote the newest Sherlock Holmes novel – The Spectator World

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