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Cristian Farias

@cristianfarias.com

18K followers 600 following 2.8K posts

Legal journalist and beachgoer. I write about courts, the law, and the politics shaping them for @vanityfair.com, @newyorker.com, and @nymag.com. Host of The Bully's Pulpit. Signal: cristianfarias.33

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · Mar 26

For @newyorker.com: I wrote a crash course on how John Roberts empowered the current destruction and lawlessness in Washington.

There’s a perception this began with the immunity ruling, but he has long been pushing the idea of an unrestrained, unchecked presidency. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

How John Roberts Has Empowered a Lawless Presidency

The Chief Justice’s rebuke of Donald Trump over his calls to impeach judges obscures Roberts’s own role in fostering the destruction in Washington.

www.newyorker.com

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 12h

TIME has come a long way since:

An August 2016 TIME cover showing an illustration of Donald Trump’s face melting down, like wax.

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Reposted by Cristian Farias

Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 1d

Police officers who publicly declare that they’ll quit if a mayoral candidate they dislike wins the election are (1) usually bluffing—sure buddy, toss away that paycheck and pension—and (2) exactly the sort of cops cities would be better off without, ones who don’t see themselves as public servants.

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Stephen West @stephenwest.bsky.social · 20h

How W. E. B. Du Bois responded to government policing of "anti-American" sentiment during the 1910s:

"I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, 'We are seeking to have the Constitution of the United States thoroughly and completely enforced.' ”

Federal agents invaded even the offices of The Crisis and the National Association for the advancement of colored people and asked searching questions: " just what, after all, were our objects and activities?” I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, “We are seeking to have the constitution of the United states thoroughly and completely enforced.” It took some ingenuity, even for Southerners, to make treason out of that.

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 22h

Thank you for catching up to Justice Elena Kagan's masterful, originalist dissent in Seila Law v. CFPB, distinguished originalist scholars.

Julian Davis Mortenson @jdmortenson.bsky.social · 22h

“Originalist ‘Bombshell’ Complicates Case on Trump’s Power to Fire Officials” excellent @adamliptak.bsky.social piece on new developments in the executive power debates www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/u...

Originalist ‘Bombshell’ Complicates Case on Trump’s Power to Fire Officials

www.nytimes.com

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 22h

Honest to God:

I thought this serious question was settled long ago in McCormack v. Powell. Which makes me wonder why Democrats aren't compelling a judge to order Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva's being seated as a member of Congress.

God @thegodpodcast.com · 6d

Serious question:
What can be done to stop the Speaker from just not swearing in a Congress person? God is no legal expert but it sounds unconstitutional!

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 23h

both!

Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 1d

Without a doubt.

An image of Mario and Luigi of Nintendo fame.

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Reposted by Cristian Farias

Jamal Greene @jamalgreene.bsky.social · 1d

Also, despite the headline, only one law school is mentioned in the piece. This is a classic misinformation tactic.

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d

This framing is a bit of a choice:
What happened: Ilya Shapiro and the Federal Society wanted an event on anti-semitism at NYU. Campus officials proposed another day, worried about the anniversary on Oct 7. After pushback, they relented. Is this a cancelation?
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/o...

Opinion | I Resigned as Manhattan’s U.S. Attorney. Law Schools Are Missing the Point of My Story.

www.nytimes.com

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 1d

Good fodder for a small item in the student paper, not your first essay out of the gate in the paper of record.

Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 1d

There’s no problem. And a person who has far more interesting things to write about allowed her name and goodwill to be hijacked at a time where there are far graver First Amendment crackdowns coming from the administration she once worked for.

Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 1d

As I’ve said many times before: Don’t love prosecutors. They’ll break your heart.

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 1d

People have been eager to read what this former prosecutor at one of the nation’s preeminent U.S. Attorney’s Offices has to say since she resigned in protest and out of principle—she stood up to Emil Bove!—and … this is what she decided to write about?

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d

Opinion | I Resigned as Manhattan’s U.S. Attorney. Law Schools Are Missing the Point of My Story.

www.nytimes.com

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 1d

Lastly, what matters is the substance of the survey, which is the Supreme Court’s subservient and opaque behavior during the first year of the second Trump administration.

Here, @stevevladeck.bsky.social rightly calls on everyone to focus on that instead: www.stevevladeck.com/p/183-the-mi...

183. The Missing Defenses of the Court's Behavior

Rather than knocking down straw men or attacking their critics, the justices (and their defenders) would do well to explain why the sharpest criticisms of the Court's recent behavior are *wrong.*

www.stevevladeck.com

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 1d

This was their perfect chance to make their voices heard and self-immolate in defense of Donald Trump and Samuel Alito. Respond to The New York Times survey and skew the results. Light yourself on fire!

If they didn’t, that’s on them.

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 1d

Secondly, Trump and Republican judges were included in the survey.

If they wanted to weigh in and defend their betters at the Supreme Court, nothing stopped them. If anything, rightwing judges are better than most at organizing, boycotting, and engaging in other performative extrajudicial behavior.

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 1d

The rightwing meltdown over federal district judges anonymously responding to a journalistic survey and then speaking to reporters is so funny to me.

For one, there’s nothing untoward in approaching a universe of unapproachable subjects, and then reporting on whatever results. That’s journalism.

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Preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 1d

My latest is the story of how my community has rallied to protect and defend our neighbors in recent days, as ICE has targeted the Rogers Park neighborhood in Chicago. "This is not a story about a moment of victory, but a moment of being reminded of our power."

They Came for Our Neighbors. We Showed Up.

Before long, there were dozens, and then hundreds of people in the streets, watching and responding.

organizingmythoughts.org

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

federal agents stealing children and sending them south. where have i heard about that before?

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 1d

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility
By Marcela Rodrigues Globe Staff,Updated October 12, 2025, 44 minutes ago

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A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Everett after an interaction with members of the Everett Police Department and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, according to his mother and immigration lawyer Andrew Lattarulo.

The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested. After waiting for about an hour and a half, she was told her son was taken by ICE, Berto told the Globe in a phone interview.

“My world collapsed,” Berto said in Portuguese.

From the police department, the boy was taken to ICE’s holding facility in Burlington on Thursday evening, where he spent a night before being transferred by car to the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., on Friday morning, his mother said. The juvenile facility is more than 500 miles away from Everett.

The boy is a 7th-grader at Albert N. Parlin School in Everett, his mother said. The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, Lattarulo said.

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 2d

Anyway, I wrote about this and touched on the need for an objective standard everyone can agree on, rather than Truth Social posts, competing narratives, and astroturfing from MAGA influencers.

Judges are ill-equipped to deal with all of that, so they need a clear rule.

bsky.app/profile/cris...

Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 5d

At its core, the militarization of U.S. cities is an affront to Democratic, and democratic, governance—a gambit to set up a national police force, with the president as its chief, where neither the Constitution nor federal law allow it.

For @nymag.com, I probe how to put a stop to this perversion.

Trump Is Not Entitled to a National Police Force

How the hostile takeover of Democratic cities should end.

nymag.com

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 2d

Her most important contribution may be this paragraph here, setting out, by my lights, an objective standard for federalizing the National Guard.

To wit: It’s a last resort. If the civil power hasn’t failed and the courts remain open, the president may not call forth the guard.

Screenshot from ruling, which reads in part:

“Here, there has been no showing that the civil power has failed. The agitators who have violated the law by attacking federal authorities have been arrested. The courts are open, and the marshals are ready to see that any sentences of imprisonment are carried out. Resort to the military to execute the laws is not called for.”

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 2d

Because she issued the temporary restraining order one day earlier, I missed U.S. District Judge April Perry’s decision against the deployment of the National Guard in Illinois.

Here it is: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The Supreme Court will hate it because she does originalism.

storage.courtlistener.com

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 2d

Sending out a survey to everyone and only reporting on the responses while noting limitations is perfectly fine, journalistically.

Also: Many Trump judges make wild extrajudicial statements and light themselves on fire in other ways. Nothing stopped them from “balance” or skewing the results here.

Beau Baumann 🍏 @beaubaumann.bsky.social · 2d

I guess I think its limitations are obvious on its face and laid out by the writers. Does the Times have thickly articulated norms against this? (I imagine outrage if it was the basis for a law review article, but is this bad journalism?) Is it even misleading anyone?

t.co/R1sYHTDCjp

https://ift.tt/K7O8Rcx

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 2d

Who else is complaining? I’d love to read them. 💀

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 2d

Not the biggest or most important point, but a Black woman going out of her way to buy a very modest home for a family member long facing housing insecurity, far from home, is something that I imagine will resonate with many people.

Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 2d

NYT reports that Letitia James’s great niece lives in the home that is the subject of the indictment.

The niece reportedly testified before a *different* grand jury, telling them that she had lived there for many years without paying rent. James visits regularly.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

Letitia James
Indictment
Read the Indictment
Timeline of Conflict
Indic
But in June, IMs. Thompson testified to a grand
jury in Norfolk that she had lived in the house for years and that she did not pay rent, a person familiar with her testimony said. She was not asked to testify again, and the grand jury that voted to indict Ms. James was not seated in Norfolk, but in Alexandria.
The specter of Mr. Trump's revenge campaign has so far overshadowed the facts of the case, given how he has pushed for Ms. James's punishment. For years, he has railed against her on social media, calling her a "crook" and
"corrunt" Last month. he also appointed Ms.

for a peaceful life after years of turbulence in several cities.
The family, Nakia Thompson and her children, have lived at the address ever since, according to two people familiar with the home, and until this week, the plan for a more lacid existence had largely gone as expected. Several times a year, the people said, a great-aunt who had purchased the house in 2020 with Ms.
Thompson in mind would come for an extended stay.
This week, with the filing of court papers some 200 miles north, the plan came to an abrupt end.
The great-aunt - Letitia James, the New York attorney general - was indicted by President Trump's Justice Department. The yellow house,

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Emily Galvin-Almanza @galvinalmanza.bsky.social · 2d

Seriously, Judges *do no do things like this*

They don't give their opinion to the media

They don't criticize how SCOTUS works

This is them breaking the emergency glass, folks
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

Federal Judges, Warning of ‘Judicial Crisis,’ Fault Supreme Court’s Emergency Orders

www.nytimes.com

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