Let me again request that you look and consider whether you are comfortable liking my most recent LinkedIn postings entitled,
- Our Rule of Law and Trial Advocates which is a reposting of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) description of a recent resolution. This is generally available.
- Our Rule of Law and the President, his Staff and his Administration, which describes a NYCBa statement and accompanying extensive report entitled, The Abuse of Presidential Power and Breach of Public Trust. The posting is available generally and at the YLS Democracy Network. The NYCBA executive summary which links to the report is available at https://lnkd.in/e4ftdE7W
- How to Defend Our Rule of Law, which discusses what each of us can do to safeguard our rule of law that in turn protects our constitutional rights, liberties and freedom. The posting is available generally and at the YLS Democracy Network. Thus, this may encourage others to act, and be comfortable that their actions are valiuable
You may wish to look at the following audios/videos:
- December 16, 2025 [Harvard] Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies program, entitled, Europe in a Time of War: A Conversation With Fiona Hill. The Forum: Europe in a Time of War” is a new event series co-sponsored by the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and the Ukrainian Research Institute.
- The inaugural speaker for the series is Dr. Fiona Hill (REECA ’91), senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe. Dr. Hill was a deputy assistant to the U.S. president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. She is the author of the bestselling memoir There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century (2021) and coauthor of the acclaimed biography Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (2015).
- Dr. Hill will be in conversation with Dr. Steven Solnick, the Davis Center’s executive director. She will address the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, including implications for European security and American foreign policy, and a range of other topics.
A transcript and replay are available at https://www.youtube.com/live/GkCEj2hH6ck
- December 18, 2025 Harvard Kennedy School The 2025 James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Lecture in Economic Inequality was delivered by legal scholar Lina Khan, who served as the chair of the Federal Trade Commission from 2021 to 2025. A replay and transcript is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXymygyG4iM The full lecture and conversation are available at: https://ken.sc/48IwNmU One of the key questions for the resistance will be whether to adopt the kind of anti-trust policies Ms. Khan is adopting.
- December 19, 2025 Amanpour and Company segment entitled, The New Christian Right, Antisemitism & U.S. Democracy. Reporter Tom Gjelten is shining a light on the alarming rise of antisemitism within the Christian nationalism movement and the Republican Party. It’s the focus of his cover story for Moment magazine. Gjelten joins Michel Martin to discuss his concern about the dangerous intimacy between religion and politics in America. A replay and transcript is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcCSzvDl5Dg
- December 19, 2025 The New Untouchables segment entitled, Epstein Files, Trump lies, the end of the civilized world as we know it. The group, including June Carbone YLS ‘78, discussed the implications of recent events, particularly focusing on the Department of Justice and the handling of the Epstein case. Louis Clark emphasized the importance of truth and understanding the situation within institutions that are being damaged. Paul expressed concern about the behavior of a leader with a personality disorder, wondering what would make the wheels fall off for someone like that. The conversation touched on the current political climate, the president’s attention to polls, and the potential for change in the near future. A transcript and replay is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKtUdxlE9l4
- December 21, 2025 MS Now segment entitled, Deflection & Name-Calling: Trump’s Attacks on Women Journalists. When questions get uncomfortable, President Trump doesn’t just change the subject with a deflection — he lashes out at the women journalists asking the questions. From insults ranging from “aggressive” to “piggy”, the President’s niece Mary Trump weighs in on why his attacks may be escalating, “he’s feeling more and more comfortable being his worst self” and “he is terrified.” MS Now Contributor, April Ryan, who has personally experienced Trump’s ire says, “It’s not just the words, it’s what they do.” A transcript and replay is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bANRI5q9PhY
- December 22, 2025 The Breakdown segment entitled, CBS Sixty Minutes CECOT segment that was not shown in the USA. You can decide whether it should have been shown.
You may wish to look at the following recent litigation documents:
- December 19, 2025 Order of the U.S. Supreme Court in Margolin v, Nat. Assn. of Immigration vacating an administrative stay and denying a stay pending appeal of an order of the Fourth Circuit rejecting the Administration position that a challenge of its policy limiting speaking engagements by immigration judges had through the administrative process before going to court so that the district court may determine the extent of the independence of the process. See more generally December 19, 2025 ScotusBlog post by Amy Howell entitled, Supreme Court rejects Trump administration’s request in dispute over immigration judges.
- December 22, 2025 Letter from counsel to John O. Brennan to Chief Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, asserting that the DOJ in violation of prosecutorial ethics, appeared to be planning to “manipulate grand jury and case assignment procedures” to put the investigation into Mr. Trump’s perceived foes under Judge Aileen M. Cannon.
You may also wish to consider the following items:
- December 5, 2025 Democracautopy.org report, How Democrats Lost the White House. This is a project of Action for a Progressive Future, a 501c4 organization. Permission to republish any section of “Autopsy: How Democrats Lost the White House” is granted on condition that DemocraticAutopsy.org be acknowledged as the source along with a prominent hotlink to this site. The five major explanations are
- Voter Disenchantment: Losing a whopping 6.8 million voters who supported Biden in 2020 proved pivotal in this extremely close election. Harris’s inability to mobilize these pro-Biden voters may have been the campaign’s biggest failure.
- Biden’s Betrayal: Former President Joe Biden’s disastrous decision to run for reelection, and his stubborn refusal to step aside until very late in the process, robbed voters of a Democratic primary process, created confusion and chaos, and severely hindered Democrats’ chances.
- Abandoning the Working-Class Base: With millions of Americans already disenchanted and desperate due to inflation, the Harris campaign lost this essential Democratic base by focusing on courting Republicans, kowtowing to corporate donors’ interests, and failing to confront the role of corporate greed in escalating inflation.
- The Gaza Effect: There is ample evidence that Harris lost many voters, especially young voters, Arab-Americans, and critical support in Michigan and elsewhere, due to the campaign’s failure to shift or even signal a potential shift in policy on Israel and Palestine.
- Losing Young Voters: Extensive evidence shows a huge drop-off in both turnout and Democratic support among young voters aged 18-29.
- December 19, 2025 Dorf on Law Segment by Neil H. Buchanan entitled The Left’s Conventional Wisdom about Last Year’s Election Results Is Still Wrong, No Matter How Much They Repeat It . Prof. Buchanan ascribes bigotry against black women as the decisive factor.
- December 19, 2025 AP Report by Joshua Goodman entitled, Military lawyer swiftly fired from immigration bench after defying Trump deportation push Two key paragraphs raise questions about the due process being made available in immigration courts, which is similar to the question raised by the treatment by the Fourth Circuit of the immigration judges that the administrative process will not provide due process about the claim of the violation of their free speech rights:
- Of the 11 cases he concluded in November, he granted asylum or some other type of relief allowing the migrant to remain in the United States a total of six times, according to federal data analyzed by Mobile Pathways, a San Francisco-based non profit.
- Such favorable outcomes for migrants have become increasingly rare as the Trump administration seeks to slash a massive backlog of 3.8 million asylum cases by radically overhauling the nation’s 75 immigration courts.
- December 19, 2025 Law Fare column by Molly Roberts entitled, Why the Government Keeps Failing to Re-Indict Letitia James. Two critical paragraphs are
- But the government’s trouble is deeper than just this. Prosecutors not only need to show the willful violation of rules for secondary residences—they also need to show that those violations influenced the decision of a bank. And the shift in focus away from allegedly renting the property to allegedly failing to occupy it renders that task even trickier. The old indictment sought to meet the bar by avowing, based on the Schedule E tax forms, that James had received “thousand(s) of dollars in rents” and was therefore treating her home as an investment property. Lying about whether the home was an investment property might have influenced the bank—because a mortgage for an investment property would have carried a higher interest rate.
- The new indictment doesn’t do that. Indeed, it dispenses with the “thousand(s) in rent” language entirely, perhaps because the Schedule E forms include only $1,350 in rents received and reveal a matching $1,350 in utilities paid. Read carefully, the Schedule E forms indicate that after taking into account mortgage interest, taxes and depreciation, James lost money on the property in 2020.
- December 19, 2025 Guardian column by Ryan Doerfler and Samuel Moyn entitled, It’s time to accept that the US supreme court is illegitimate and must be replaced. A precursor is a June 16, 2025 podcast by YLS Prof Moyn at RevDeM entitled, Can Courts Save Democracy. Three key paragraphs are
- In Donald Trump’s second term, the supreme court’s conservative supermajority has seized the opportunity to empower the nation’s chief executive. In response, public approval of the court has collapsed. The question is what it means for liberals to catch up to this new reality of a court that willingly tanks its own legitimacy. Eager to realize cherished goals of assigning power to the president and arrogating as much for itself, the conservative justices seemingly no longer care what the public or the legal community think of the court’s actions. Too often, though, liberals are responding with nostalgia for a court that cares about its high standing. There is a much better option: to grasp the opportunity to set right the supreme court’s role in US democracy.
- Some liberals worry that concluding the supreme court is beyond redemption is too close to “nihilism” about the constitution, or even about law itself. In the aftermath of Trump’s re-election, Professor Kate Shaw remarked: “I don’t think abandoning the constitution in the course of abandoning institutions is the right way forward or is something that we can survive.” Vladeck cautioned similarly against “doomerism”, warning the “rule of law” in the United States might “struggle to survive” the “emergence of any kind of popular consensus that law increasingly doesn’t matter”.
- Such qualms suggest some can’t imagine an alternative to a legitimate supreme court even once the institution itself has abandoned that role. Much like in the early 20th century, Americans today are responding to a series of institutional failures with an extended period of constitutional rethinking. Tracing many of those failures to the undemocratic features of our written constitution – the electoral college and the Senate, most notably – reformers are proposing creative solutions or workarounds that might move us in the direction of an actual democracy.
My disagreement with this analysis is three-fold. First, the Supreme Court approval rate has not collapsed, the 50% level shown is higher than any politician or almost any institution. Second, the suggested workarounds, which are quite sensible, require political power, which is a resistance goal but not yet realized. Third, until those reforms are achieved it seems prudent to devote considerable, but not all, energy to trying to persuade the court to curtail the Presidential assertions of power that violate the Constitution