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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/business/trump-harvard-letter-mistake.html?unlocked_article_code=1.A08.gxfZ.fOAXlOzX7tdK "The April 11 letter from the White House’s task force on antisemitism, this official told Harvard, should not have been sent and was “unauthorized,” two people familiar with the matter said."

Supreme Court blocks, for now, new deportations under 18th century wartime law "Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented." via the washington post, The American Civil Liberties Union said several migrants at an immigration detention center in North Texas had received written notices of removal over the past several days, and a second group of unknown number was told to get ready for travel Friday. Copies of those notices, filed in court, were written only in English and said the recipient had been “determined to be an Alien Enemy” and would be deported. Aside from stating that the recipient can “make a phone call,” the notices do not inform those who receive them when they will be deported, that they are entitled to contest their removal or outline the means for doing so, the ACLU said. “There’s no box to check to say I want to contest,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said during a hastily convened Friday evening hearing in federal court in Washington. “There’s nothing that says there is a right to contest, much less the time frame.” ... A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security declined to respond to a request for comment on the ACLU’s claims in its filings. “We are not going to reveal the details of counter terrorism operations, but we are complying with the Supreme Court’s ruling,” Tricia McLaughlin said in an email statement. (emphasis added by Gromnir) am also outraged (but unsurprised) by trump's harvard shenanigans, but we got limited vitriol to go around particular as am getting ready to receive easter guests. given trump's monumental economy blunders, the administration's renewed targeting o' immigration and the intellectual elites is, we s'pose, fresh meat to keep the base sated. the lack o' noteworthy new trump sponsored dei and and/or trans outrages this past week is perhaps the only genuine wrinkle in what we expected. HA! Good Fun!

quick addition on the "jurisdiction" angle for the birthright citizenship issue https://www.ussc.gov/research/quick-facts/federally-sentenced-non-us-citizens point is the fed has tried, convicted and imprisoned undocumented immigrants for many years. is current tens of thousands o' undocumented immigrants in US prisons. if the US has no jurisdiction over such people, akin to arjen rudd, then all o' those folks shoulda' been deported as 'posed to incarcerated. maybe you thinks all the undocumented in US prisons should be deported, but the point is that US courts has for years been acting as if they got jurisdiction and is not as if those imprisoned never thought to challenge jurisdiction. the question has been asked and answered more than once and as such there isn't any real jurisdiction question... unless scotus decides there is a question. scotus is not bound by precedent or tradition. roe were overturned and we got dobbs. plessey were overturned and we got brown. be careful when expressing outrage over the Court overturning precedent. the thing is, unlike plessey or korematsu, we ain't had decades o' legal, academic and public outrage fueling a push to overturn precedent. at least with dobbs there were a widespread recognition even by supporters of a fundamental right to abortion that the original roe plurality were based on a kinda fuzzy legal basis. with birthright citizenship, the plain meaning o' the text o' the fourteenth amendment is supported by strong case law and fed practice as well as, until recent, a widespread public assumption that birthright citizenship were valid. but again, am gonna admit the Presidential immunity case kinda shook us. that a bunch of self-described textualists could conjure up Presidential immunity w/o even recognizing or responding to the potential dangers o' a chief executive free o' the threat o' criminal prosecution for any and all official acts, made it clear to us that the Court conservatives had abandoned core legal principles. is only tangential related (for now,) but am gonna concede we didn't foresee cecot. even if the Court went complete spineless and accepted the trump administration arguments for deporting tren de aragua members sans any due process finding that those deported is in fact members o' tren de aragua, then am not sure how we get indefinite incarceration in an el salvadoran hell hole as = deportation. trump argument seems to be that the President has the authority to remove undocumented immigrants, seditionists, insurrectionists and terrorists beyond US borders... and once those persons is in fact beyond US international waters/borders, then the Courts no longer have any jurisdiction in the matter, so cecot is okie dokie. keep in mind that w/o due process, trump could decide that literal everybody fits in one o' the aforementioned categories. the legal basis for sending people to cecot has nothing to do with a person's actual status as a gang member but is rather a recognition that once beyond the jurisdiction o' the Court's habeas power, the President has the sole authority under the Constitution to decide fates. the legal argument is that as long as Trump acts faster than the Courts, any person he successful removes beyond US borders/air space could be sent to cecot... and when we say "successful removes," am making a physical/geographical observation as 'posed to a legal one. is one o' the aforementioned right v. legal situations. HA! Good Fun!

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/rfk-jr-autism-studies-environmental-toxins-rising-rates-rcna201582 Helpful approach to study to have a conclusion and work backwards, I suppose

the Court already has answered the jurisdiction question when it found that the executive not only failed to afford due process to those it "deported" to el salvador but that it must facilitate the return o' mr. garcia so that he might be provided a legal sufficient hearing to assess his deportation viability. Court were 9-0 on the aforementioned question(s.) w/o jurisdiction, the Court coulda/woulda declared the issues moot. w/o jurisdiction, you got a detective murtagh conundrum. regardless, if even undocumented immigrants now languishing in cecot were subject to the jurisdiction o' the fed, it would take a preposterous exercise in mental gymnastics to then find that children o' such aliens born in the US are not subject to jurisdiction. on its face, there really is no issue in play. 1) plain language interpretation hurts trump efforts. "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." other than during the ugly nativist late 19th and early 20th century period, the above language has consistent been read by academics, lawyers and regular people to include birthright citizenship. even during the nativist years, there were Court cases which clarified the matter, which brings us to... 2) US v wong kim ark https://www.facebook.com/AmericanExperiencePBS/videos/wong-kim-ark-the-chinese-exclusion-act-american-experience-pbs/28276366908645263/ is a few other such cases and they is all consistent. 3) THIS Court has already functional answered the question again, the 9-0 holding in the garcia matter complete undermines the notion there is a jurisdiction question. as a bonus, reading the Trump government argument serious means Gromnir loses citizenship. doj cites case law dealing with native americans to support their applicability o' nul jurisdiction for illegal immigrants. as such, many native americans o' treaty recognized tribes would effective be stripped o' US citizenship if the Court embraces the trump doj position. there is no case here... but there were no real case for Presidential immunity neither. no case law supporting. no Constitutional text. no historical understanding. HA! Good Fun! ps in the spirit o' full disclosure, there is one possible grey area which nevertheless doesn't apply to the vast majority o' children o' undocumented immigrants-- the children o' an invading occupation force would not be given US birthright citizenship. so, even if the Court were to accept the trump position that tren de aragua is an invading force not subject to the jurisdiction o' the US, and that the children o' tren de aragua don't get birthright citizenship (a position already seeming undermined by the recent 9-0 scotus decision,) the vast majority o' the individuals born to undocumented immigrants in the US would not be subject to the occupation force exception to citizenship.

So, apparently, Paapa Essiedu is going to play Severus Snape in HBO's upcoming Harry Potter series. Sometimes studios do the darndest things. I mean... I don't really care about Snape being black just because he was described as Whitey McCracker with long, greasy hair in the books, but out of all the Harry Potter teachers they could have turned into a token black guy they pick the one person who gets hung from a tree by the Marauders? That's going to be one unfortunate scene, unless it gets dropped quietly - although it is a huge part o the reason for Snape's animosity towards Potter, so they can't really drop it. I mean sure they could, but not without changing the entire character dynamic between Snape and Potter, which is one of the best character bits in the books. Has anyone on the creative team read the books before making the casting choices? Why not cast a Morgan Freeman-esque actor as Dumbledore? That would have been something.

A slowly spinning universe could solve the Hubble tension If true, it presents a nice, tidy package for our understanding of the big bang.

Juvenile colossal squid observed at natural depth:

Found this gem (might be in a wrong order, but each screenshot should be self-contained; it is a single-player game):

https://www.reuters.com/science/scientists-find-strongest-evidence-yet-life-an-alien-planet-2025-04-16/