Jeff Tulis

PS Commentators’ Best Reads in 2025 PS editors ask Project Syndicate contributors to select the books that most influenced their thinking over the past year.

Best Reads of 2025.

I flagged Laura K. Field's Furious Minds.

Prominent Scholars Highlight Congressional Authority on Tariffs in Supreme Court Brief - Democracy Forward

Friend of the Court brief challenging the President's claim to unilateral authority regarding tariffs.

democracyforward.org/updates/prom...

The Case for the Forever Shutdown Senate Democrats actually allowing the GOP to stop funding the government is only the first step. Now they have to make the case that Trump’s government is illegitimate.

Urgent and Compelling

newrepublic.com/article/2014...

isps.yale.edu/news/blog/20...

Five Ways to Fight Trump's Fascism Robert Reich

People are constantly asking me — what can I do? Here are five, practical next steps you can take to make a difference. https://youtu.be/8W-lVRQQGtI?feature=shared

This @washingtonpost.com editorial doesn’t make it past the second paragraph without a glaring (and telling) factual error.

President Washington didn’t create the War Department in 1789; *Congress* did:

www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...

Ungoverning America The logic behind Trump’s assault on the administrative state.

Exceptionally well done and important. Trump is not thinking big, he is thinking bad. He is not changing governing policy, he is destroying governing capacity.

www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

Armed troops in US streets? For many, Trump makes that seem normal. Armed troops patrol streets in the nation’s capital, and many residents shrug their shoulders. President Trump’s ability to normalize such dramatic actions is at play – but isn’t the end of the story.

“Trump is different from other authoritarian leaders. Most don’t want to appear authoritarian. This is a government that is advertising its authoritarianism,” says Steven Levitsky.

www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics...

“He said, ‘We’ll notify next of kin if she dies.’ And at that moment, I knew that I was no longer dealing with humans.”

“I knew I was dealing with someone that is sick in the head, and this was the person who made the decision to incarcerate her, Rosa said.”

Am the official loon counter, for Audubon, for my Maine lake -- and the yearly count was yesterday!

You posted the answer. But I knew this and was feeling proud to say so!

Wow!!! This is so great and so deserved.

Passage from Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in TRUMP v CASA.” p. 56 of decision.

This is the key point in Sotomayor’s dissent in the majority decision in Trump v CASA:
“No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates.”

Headline at left, from 'Independent' in UK.

Headline at right, from "most prestigious" news org in US.

-Hard to believe they're about same event.
-All too easy to believe that NYT again went with sane-washing.

There Is No Piecing Back Our Badly Shattered Constitutional Order We are past the point of crisis and have entered an era when our political disputes will be settled by the raw exercise of power, not the law

"America has been flung into a constitutional crisis in the most massive and fundamental way imaginable, ruled by a regime which is not merely doing unconstitutional things but is anti-constitutional at its very core."

www.theunpopulist.net/p/there-is-n...

Opinion | We Study Fascism. And We’re Leaving the U.S.

This deserves your attention and wide circulation to break through normalization.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/o...

Boulder kept my dad alive. So did the government My father never quite understood how I could live in New York City. He always preferred Montana, open rather than dense, prairie rather than concrete. Great Falls was his birthplace,

Great and beautiful essay

Normalizing Trump YouTube video by Dartmouth

Recently gave this talk at Dartmouth.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F2i...

Compelling, important and vital.

Compelling, important and vital. Thanks Steve Vladeck.

Hey NBC and Seth Meyers, y’all need to book the largest possible venue in D.C. on April 26th and do a competing fundraiser and comedy show that actually celebrates the First Amendment. Televise it. Make Amber Ruffin the central act. Send a message that free speech is non-negotiable.

The asshole who talked about putting USAID "into the woodchipper," and childishly grinned when prancing around with his chainsaw, is now having hurt feelings because Tim Walz made fun of him.

Even Trump is going to recognize pretty soon that this is a "brand-image minus" for him.

The Cost of the Government’s Attack on Columbia American universities have given the country prosperity and security. The Trump administration’s attack on academic freedom endangers all of that.

Fear is paralyzing university presidents. Proud to see Chris Eisgruber step up. We all need to step up.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Making some good trouble in Vermont

More than one thousand political scientists, whose personal views span the partisan political spectrum, have signed this petition describing what is perilous and anti-constitutional about the current political moment in the United States.

drive.google.com/file/d/1lGk2...

Defending the Gulf of Mexico From Trump's Totalitarianism | Common Dreams How serious is Trump’s Orwellian effort? Can it really succeed in reshaping public discourse? We can hope not. But can we be sure?

Sometimes small things can reveal big and important transformations. Insightful, as usual, from Jeffrey Isaac.

www.commondreams.org/opinion/gulf...

Vance Says ‘Judges Aren’t Allowed to Control’ Trump’s ‘Legitimate Power’ The declaration by the vice president came as court orders have temporarily blocked parts of the Trump administration’s agenda.

We all need to start using the word "coup." They're well past the point where Hitler starts dictates his Enabling Act. I talk to Very Serious People who actually believe courts telling Trump that they he is breaking the law will stop this. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/u...

Trump did a Friday Night Massacre, firing 15 inspectors general, completely ignoring the law that prevents him from doing this, essentially asserting monarchical authority over the government. Total contempt for democracy. Here is how the Times is covering it

Excellent analysis of Trump's dangerous rhetorical instinct.