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Michigan Law

@umichlaw.bsky.social

New from Professors Ellen Katz and @sbagen.bsky.social in @ssrn.bsky.social:

The Dismantling of Civil Rights Protections and Thoughts on Rebuilding

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Abstract
Over a few months in 2025, the second Trump Administration dismantled the infrastructure for federal civil rights enforcement in the United States. In this paper, we describe key elements of this assault assess its impact, and sketch the beginnings of a set of longer-term goals for remaking civil rights enforcement.

We begin with the premise that there is no returning to precisely the same doctrinal and institutional structures set up in the second part of the twentieth century. Restoring the regime to provide the protections that existed on January 20, 2025, when the present assault began, would resurrect what was already a hollowed-out system whose operation fell far short of the aspirations that first propelled it. Nor do we advise restoring the regime to the contours it occupied in, say, 1970, before the many cutbacks that prevented it from operating as intended. Such a restoration simply would not be feasible, even allowing for the dramatic change in political will necessary to secure the far more modest legal changes we recommend here. Nor would such a restoration address head on the evolution in both the manifestation of discriminatory practices and the resistance to remedies for them.

We must instead rethink both the substantive doctrines through which we seek to achieve democratic equality and the institutional structures through which those doctrines will be elaborated and enforced. Examining the events of the last year, we believe that a lasting infrastructure for civil rights enforcement requires direct engagement with the specific tactics the current Administration has used to dismantle the pre-existing system. The paper focuses on three of these tactics, which we label erasure, demolition, and weaponization. More specifically, it argues that rebuilding will require structures designed to withstand more effectively future efforts that seek to (1) erase existing data pertaining to race, ethnicity, and gender in a host of realms and terminate…

January 30, 2026 at 6:51 PM

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Adam Serwer

@adamserwer.bsky.social

One thing I found deeply moving about resistance in the Twin Cities was the universalism of loving your neighbor, the philosophy driving the opposition to the ICE/BP invasion. I couldn't help but notice the contrast with the blood and soil-ism of Miller and Vance. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Trump-administration officials and MAGA influencers have repeatedly called these activists “violent” and said they are involved in “riots.” But the resistance in Minnesota is largely characterized by a conscious, strategic absence of physical confrontation. Activists have made the decision to emphasize protection, aid, and observation. When matters escalate, it is usually the choice of the federal agents. Of the three homicides in Minneapolis this year, two were committed by federal agents.

“There’s been an incredible, incredible response from the community. I’ve seen our neighbors go straight from allies to family—more than family—checking in on each other, offering food and rides for kids and all kinds of support, alerting each other if there’s ICE or any kind of danger,” Malika Dahir, a local activist of Somali descent, told me.

If the Minnesota resistance has an overarching ideology, you could call it “neighborism”—a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from. The contrast with the philosophy guiding the Trump administration couldn’t be more extreme. Vice President Vance has said that “it is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers.’” Minnesotans are insisting that their neighbors are their neighbors whether they were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. That is, arguably, a deeply Christian philosophy, one apparently loathed by some of the most powerful Christians in America.

January 27, 2026 at 2:38 PM

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Greg Olear

@gregolear.bsky.social

One of the best things I’ve read in a while:

January 25, 2026 at 10:39 PM

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G Elliott Morris

@gelliottmorris.com

Reminder: All it would take to end the murder of American citizens by an untrained government goon squad is 16 Republicans in Congress voting with Dems to defund ICE (or 23 to impeach and remove Trump — 3 in House & 20 in Senate). That’s it. 23 Americans can vote for the public and end all of this.

January 24, 2026 at 6:26 PM

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austin_walker

@austinwalker.bsky.social

Anyone who is part of the federal government who is not doing everything in their power to stop this administration, regardless of the assumed cost to normalcy or career, is a coward and a collaborator.

January 24, 2026 at 5:07 PM

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Chris Packham

@chrisgpackham.bsky.social

Watch @oliviablakemp.bsky.social’s brutal takedown of driven grouse shooting in just 90 seconds from last weeks debate in Parliament.

@wildjustice.bsky.social