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Sam Bagenstos

@sbagen.bsky.social

31614 Followers

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Personal account. Personal views. Frank G. Millard Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School & Arlene Susan Kohn Professor of Social Policy, University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy. Former General Counsel, HHS and OMB.

  1. It is rare to see a country takes one of its best comparative advantages, pour kerosene on it, & light it up on fire like this.

    This is Pol Pot-like level of purposeful destruction without the gory side.

    54 fellowships. Gone. The public & parents about to send their kids to UW (or any other university…we are not unique) will have no idea that most fellowship funding for foreign language study is now gone forever, if no one above my pay grade or Lesley’s speaks up about it.

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  2. Our report has already been covered by news outlets including The Guardian and Forbes. Now you can make sure your member of Congress sees it, too!

    You can help us defend public health by clicking here to write to them and tell them to reject MAHA and adopt IHAT.

    actionnetwork.org/letters/shar...

    With the public release of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “MAHA Strategy” delayed and because his May 2025 “Make America Healthy Again” report fundamentally mischaracteriz...

    Share the IHAT Report with your Members of Congress

    With the public release of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “MAHA Strategy” delayed and because his May 2025 “Make America Healthy Again” report fundamentally mischaracteriz...

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  3. Please do not skip by. Every day there are new horrors and we must confront ALL OF THEM. We are sick country.

    Despite being American citizens, three children — a 4-year-old boy with Stage 4 kidney cancer, his 7-year-old sister and a 2-year-old girl — were detained with their families by immigration authorities in Louisiana and quickly sent to Honduras, according to a lawsuit.

    An immigration group filed a lawsuit on behalf of two families, saying they were not given access to legal counsel before two mothers and their children were sent to Central America.

    ICE sent 3 U.S. citizen children, including boy with cancer, to Honduras with their deported moms

    An immigration group filed a lawsuit on behalf of two families, saying they were not given access to legal counsel before two mothers and their children were sent to Central America.

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  4. Really important.

    Pleased to announce that my new article, “Voting Rights and Private Rights of Action: An Empirical Study of Litigation Under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 1982-2024” is forthcoming in the Florida State University Law Review and available on SSRN here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

    <div>
 The Voting Rights Act is perhaps the most effective civil rights law ever enacted, bringing millions of Americans who have historically been discriminate

    Voting Rights and Private Rights of Action: An Empirical Study of Litigation Under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 1982-2024

    <div> The Voting Rights Act is perhaps the most effective civil rights law ever enacted, bringing millions of Americans who have historically been discriminate

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  5. Giving the President the power to extract such tax-like concessions as he chooses, with the thread of denying a license, raises the kinds of constitutional liberty concerns Justice Kennedy raised in his Clinton v. NY concurrence -- all the more so absent a law authorizing the extraction.

    It follows that if a citizen who is taxed has the measure of the tax or the decision to spend determined by the Executive alone, without adequate control by the citizen's Representatives in Congress, liberty is threatened. Money is the instrument of policy and policy affects the lives of citizens. The individual loses liberty in a real sense if that instrument is not subject to traditional constitutional constraints.

The principal object of the statute, it is true, was not to enhance the President's power to reward one group and punish another, to help one set of taxpayers and hurt another, to favor one State and ignore another. Yet these are its undeniable effects. The law establishes a new mechanism which gives the President the sole ability to hurt a group that is a visible target, in order to disfavor the group or to extract further concessions from Congress. The law is the functional equivalent of a line item veto and enhances the President's powers beyond what the Framers would have endorsed.
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