Dorf on Law

There have recently been increasing reports about the migration of intellectuals out of the United States, along with a parallel decrease in foreign scholars moving to the US.  In the former category are three Yale professors -- Marci Shore, Timothy Snyder, and Jason Stanley -- who published a joint video on the op-ed page of  The New York Times  last month titled: " We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the U.S. "  They are all moving permanently to the University of Toronto, where I have been a visiting professor for the past two years. Indeed, my reasons for leaving the University of Florida (UF) in 2023 included the Yale trio's stated concerns about the scary trends in the US, which I had observed during the Florida Republican government's anti-intellectual dress rehearsal in the 2022-23 period (and which have only become worse since my decampment).  I explained my full set of reasons in some detail  here and here , shortly after I left not just the Univ...

Here's a recent social media post from President Trump: As the foregoing rant makes clear, the occasion for Trump's turn against Leonard Leo, some of the judges Trump appointed in his first term, and the Federalist Society was the fact that some of those people believe that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not grant the president the authority to impose the sweeping tariffs Trump imposed. Given the Federal Circuit's stay of the ruling by the Court of International Trade, it is possible that Trump will eventually win this particular battle, although his social media post contains numerous falsehoods. Trump's tariffs were never going to bring in trillions of dollars, much less was any money from tariffs going to come "from other countries." And, of course, Trump's view of presidential powers reflects no familiarity with the Constitution. Even if one thinks that the IEEPA does grant Trump the tariff power he thinks it does, that wo...