Laura Evans
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lauraevans.bsky.social
Laura Evans
@lauraevans.bsky.social
440 followers 400 following 170 posts
Poli Sci prof at University of California, Riverside. I write and teach about the politics of Native Nations, Indigenous peoples, federalism, and race. I am both a dog person and a cat person.
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lauraevans.bsky.social
Our melon-collie baby wishes you a very Happy Halloween!
A smooth collie wearing a bandana decorated with watermelons is lying on the floor. Don’t worry; she’s not actually melancholy—just tired.
October 31, 2025 at 5:51 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social
Finally Mears (2024) notes that if the US military today wanted to follow a path of compromise, it could maintain the small number of medals awarded for acts that preserved Native lives.

In other words, Hegseth chose to be an extremist when a middle path was clearly available to him.
“Gresham’s award recommendation noted that he ‘worked carefully, patiently and coolly, up the ravine, searching among the dead and wounded, brought out Nineteen (sic) women and children, [and] disarmed some wounded men.’”
September 28, 2025 at 10:08 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social
In fact, regs at the time set *stricter* standards for protecting Native non/combatants.
“Native Americans were ‘entitled, as repentant wards, to the protection of the government.’ If this assimilation to an enemy state did not occur, then the Judge Advocate General opined that ‘acts of violence committed against [Native Americans] as if they were enemies, are not acts of legitimate warfare but crimes.’”
September 28, 2025 at 9:58 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social
Finally noticed the guy in the UCLA shirt in one of the top #yeson50 ads. Subtle.
Lots of people in very boring clothes, but one guy up front in a UCLA t-shirt
September 23, 2025 at 3:17 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social
Robert Redford in the last scene of The Candidate, saying, “What do we do now?”
September 16, 2025 at 8:24 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social
Thinking of the leadership requirements in the oldest constitution on the continent, The Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy:

“The thickness of their skin shall be seven spans”

sctribe.com/sites/defaul...
Text of the Great Law of Peace
June 7, 2025 at 12:02 AM
lauraevans.bsky.social
Soap was a parody, but it also took on big issues.
Wikipedia overview of Soap: Jodie Dallas is a young gay man living in his mother's home. He makes his living directing television commercials. He is in a romantic relationship with Dennis Phillips (Bob Seagren), a professional football player. Jodie enters the hospital to have sex reassignment surgery so that he and Dennis can legally marry. However, Dennis breaks up with him out of fear of exposure. Jodie attempts suicide by overdose but survives, although he remains depressed.
May 15, 2025 at 3:21 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social
Love hearing about felines catching bird flu from wild birds that migrate the entire West Coast.
the cougars may have eaten infected birds along the Pacific Flyway, a major north-south migration route that runs along the West Coast from Alaska to Mexico.
May 4, 2025 at 8:40 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social
Let’s be real about what could happen with this kind of information.

The mass sterilization of Native women is within living memory.

In the 70’s, the Indian Health Service sterilized one quarter of Native women without consent and despite legal prohibitions.

Screenshot of govt acknowledgement:
1976: Government admits unauthorized sterilization of Indian Women A study by the U.S. General Accounting Office finds that 4 of the 12 Indian Health Service regions sterilized 3,406 American Indian women without their permission between 1973 and 1976. The GAO finds that 36 women under age 21 were sterilized during this period despite a court-ordered moratorium on sterilizations of women younger than 21. Two years earlier, an independent study by Dr. Connie Pinkerman-Uri, Choctaw/Cherokee, found that one in four American Indian women had been sterilized without her consent. Pinkerman-Uri’s research indicated that the Indian Health Service had “singled out full-blooded Indian women for sterilization procedures.”
April 22, 2025 at 12:00 AM
lauraevans.bsky.social
Honestly, it feels like Hochul is having her Ford to City: Drop Dead moment.

Chief executives who’d rather leave New Yorkers to the wolves than try to be part of the solution.
When Gerald Ford refused to help NYC in a fiscal crisis, the New York Daily News, in its characteristic understated style, titled the story “Ford to City: Drop Dead” and added a quite unflattering photo of Ford.
February 14, 2025 at 6:03 AM
lauraevans.bsky.social
Why was the Medicaid mandate in ACA not okay? (pt. 2) “States have developed intricate statutory and administrative regimes over the course of many decades to implement their objectives under existing Medicaid.” “The Medicaid expansion, however, accomplishes a shift in kind, not merely degree.” “As we have explained, [t]hough Congress’ power to legislate under the spending power is broad, it does not include surprising participating States with postacceptance or ‘retroactive’ conditions.” Pennhurst, supra, at 25.”
February 4, 2025 at 11:10 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social
Why was the Medicaid mandate in ACA not okay? (pt. 1) “In this case, the financial ‘inducement’ Congress has chosen is much more than ‘relatively mild encouragement’—it is a gun to the head.” “A State that opts out of the Affordable Care Act’s expansion in health care coverage thus stands to lose not merely ‘a relatively small percentage’ of its existing Medicaid funding, but all of it. Dole, supra, at 211.” “Medicaid spending accounts for over 20 percent of the average State’s total budget, with federal funds covering 50 to 83 percent of those costs. See Nat. Assn. of State Budget Officers, Fiscal Year 2010 State Expenditure Report, p. 11, Table 5 (2011); 42 U. S. C. §1396d(b).”
February 4, 2025 at 11:09 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social
Why was it okay to withhold 5% of federal highway funds if a state didn’t raise its drinking age to 21? “[D]irectly related to one of the main purposes for which highway funds are expended—safe interstate travel.” 483 U. S., at 208. “Not a restriction on how the highway funds—set aside for specific highway improvement and maintenance efforts—were to be used.” “We found that the inducement was not impermissibly coercive, because Congress was offering only ‘relatively mild encouragement to the States.’ Dole, 483 U. S., at 211.”
February 4, 2025 at 11:08 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social
Federalism isn’t just about individual liberty—it’s about accountability, too “Permitting the Federal Government to force the States to implement a federal program would threaten the political accountability key to our federal system. ‘[W]here the Federal Government directs the States to regulate, it may be state officials who will bear the brunt of public disapproval, while the federal officials who devised the regulatory program may remain insulated from the electoral ramifications of their decision.’ Id., at 169. Spending Clause programs do not pose this danger when a State has a legitimate choice whether to accept the federal conditions in exchange for federal funds. In such a situation, state officials can fairly be held politically accountable for choosing to accept or refuse the federal offer. But when the State has no choice, the Federal Government can achieve its objectives without accountability, just as in New York and Printz.”
February 4, 2025 at 11:08 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social
Commandeering and “undue influence” aren’t okay “That insight has led this Court to strike down federal legislation that commandeers a State’s legislative or administrative apparatus for federal purposes. See, e.g., Printz, 521 U. S., at 933 (striking down federal legislation compelling state law enforcement officers to perform federally mandated background checks on handgun purchasers); New York, supra, at 174–175 (invalidating provisions of an Act that would compel a State to either take title to nuclear waste or enact particular state waste regulations). It has also led us to scrutinize Spending Clause legislation to ensure that Congress is not using financial inducements to exert a ‘power akin to undue influence.’”
February 4, 2025 at 11:07 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social
Grants are like contracts “At the same time, our cases have recognized limits on Congress’s power under the Spending Clause to secure state compliance with federal objectives. “We have repeatedly characterized . . . Spending Clause legislation as ‘much in the nature of a contract.’ ” Barnes v. Gorman, 536 U. S. 181, 186 (2002) (quoting Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U. S. 1, 17 (1981) ). The legitimacy of Congress’s exercise of the spending power “thus rests on whether the State voluntarily and knowingly accepts the terms of the ‘contract.’ ” Pennhurst, supra, at 17.”
February 4, 2025 at 11:05 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social


Here’s an extremely blurry copy of the original printed in Denton’s newspaper.

Fin.
This is very blurry; all the text is transcribed in posts in the thread
November 19, 2024 at 6:16 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social
The obit mentions dad’s chili recipe, canonically served on Super Bowl Sunday. He wrote it down for me years ago, infused with his natural wit.

Cc: @unlawfulentries.bsky.social and other poli sci foodies
November 13, 2024 at 4:48 PM
lauraevans.bsky.social
First, while the obit pic is from recent years, here’s one of my favorite blasts from the past.
November 13, 2024 at 4:44 PM