Taylor Kordsiemon
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tkords.bsky.social
Taylor Kordsiemon
@tkords.bsky.social
340 followers 1.1K following 280 posts
Dad. Lawyering in Utah. Occasional pretend scholar. Movies. Books. Utah Jazz. Lawyer work: https://www.mc2b.com/taylor-kordsiemon Pretend scholar work: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=3465182
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Reposted by Taylor Kordsiemon
NEW: “To read it is to spend 48 pages understanding the depth of corruption in the Justice Department in the second Trump administration.”

@benjaminwittes.lawfaremedia.org and I break down DOJ’s response to James Comey’s vindictive prosecution motion. ⬇️

www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...
You might be able to pull it off with “Inside.” There’s really only three controls: joystick, jump, grab. You could probably figure a way to control the joystick with a thumb while hitting the other two buttons with fingers on the same hand. But I’ve obviously never tried it.
The liberal justices are not only outnumbered – they’re divided on strategy/tone. Here’s my reporting on their thorny dilemma, the tensions that have arisen, and the Kagan/Jackson divide. Thank you so much for reading, and as always, curious to hear reactions. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/u...
The Debate Dividing the Supreme Court’s Liberal Justices
www.nytimes.com
I’m a horror fanatic. My wife is … not. But she’ll watch one horror flick with me each year on Halloween.

This year it was Ready or Not. I’ve seen it a dozen times and it still rocks. Perfect horror comedy. 10/10.
Reposted by Taylor Kordsiemon
If ICE agents believe they have blanket immunity or that citizens have no right to record them, it’s up to the rest of us to disabuse them of that error.

A free society depends on public oversight of government force, and on courts that uphold that freedom. @walterolson.bsky.social
There's a Right To Record ICE Raids--and There's No Blanket Immunity for Raiders
Notwithstanding pronouncements from leading officials of the Trump administration, the consensus of federal courts is that the Constitution protects the right to record immigration raids, and federal ...
www.cato.org
Reposted by Taylor Kordsiemon
New paper from me offering a holistic assessment of #SCOTUS's behavior on Trump-related emergency applications thus far:

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

TL;DR: The ultimate theme of the decisions is a majority bent on preserving *their* supremacy, as such—which is likely to only be self-defeating.
Reposted by Taylor Kordsiemon
Am I reading this correctly: the firms that opposed Trump's intimidation tactics have suffered no consequences, whereas the firms that struck deals gave away $900 million while jeopardizing any work with clients who have interests at odds with the government?

There's a lesson in there somewhere.
Incredible that when Tapper hears that Trump is illegally withholding funds to starve children, his response is, “Well YOU’RE choosing to let him starve children by not caving to his illegal gambit and letting him strip healthcare from millions of Americans.”
Wow.

Democratic Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury absolutely destroys Jake Tapper — who tries to advance a debunked Republican talking point about Trump cutting off SNAP.
Just once, I want Utah to make national news for good reasons.

This is shameful. Especially for a state that touts its purported adherence to Christian virtues and principles of free agency.
Under Trump, the draconian future of homelessness policy is coming into focus: mass internment. Utah is building a 16-acre site to detain up to 1,300 homeless people inside locked "accountability centers." This is profoundly alarming.

Vital reporting from @ellenbarry.bsky.social and Jason DeParle:
In Utah, Trump’s Vision for Homelessness Begins to Take Shape
www.nytimes.com
Rewatched Evil Dead (2013) this morning, and I’ve come to the conclusion that Evil Dead might just be the best horror franchise. Every single movie (and the TV show) is a banger.
I never understood the outrage over that case. He admitted to negligence, and three years for two counts of negligent homicide seems pretty lax by American standards.
Reposted by Taylor Kordsiemon
Justice Kavanaugh: "and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States."
"According to his running club, the man, who is a U.S. citizen, was returning from a team run when agents pulled him out of his vehicle, tackled him to the ground and kneeled on top of him, allegedly breaking six ribs and causing internal bleeding"
US citizen, 67, ‘has six ribs broken’ by Border Patrol agents, his running club says
The incident unfolded Saturday in Chicago’s Old Irving Park neighborhood, where residents say federal agents disrupted a children’s Halloween parade
www.independent.co.uk
This purported justification for Halligan’s messages seems inconsistent with her later attempts to keep the conversation private and “off the record.” If the conversation was off record and couldn’t be used in reporting, then how could be used to address “unfair prejudice” from “recent publicity”?
DOJ filed its response to Letitia James's motion today.

It argues that Lindsey Halligan's text exchange with me was appropriate because her comments were made "to protect [her] client from the substantial undue prejudicial effect of recent publicity..."

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Wish Republicans could extend that kind of grace to actual children accused of crimes.
My hot take is that minors should never be charged as adults, no matter how heinous the crime, without exception.
Reposted by Taylor Kordsiemon
J. D. VANCE: We need to end DEI.

MONKEY’S PAW: (raises one finger)
BREAKING: Pope Leo XIV is set to effectively disband Opus Dei in the coming weeks.

This would be the most sweeping internal reform of his pontificate — and a dramatic continuation of Pope Francis’s legacy.
NEW: Pope Leo Set To Break Up Opus Dei
If Pope Leo does indeed approves a plan that effectively dissolves Opus Dei’s structure, it would be the most significant internal action of his short pontificate to date.
open.substack.com
Reposted by Taylor Kordsiemon
It's going up to $40 billion.

USAID's budget last year was $28 billion.
Nope
Ready or Not
It Follows
Barbarian

(There’s a lot more—I’m an easy grader.)
Alien
The Innocents
The Thing
Hereditary
Quote this with the first four Horror movies that come to your mind that are 10/10s for you. No cheating. Just the first four that pop into your head.

Get Out
The Honeymoon
Scream
It Follows
Reposted by Taylor Kordsiemon
The empty formalism used to constitutionally forbid diversity-enhancing or remedial action—that to “stop discriminating on the basis of race we must stop discriminating on the basis of race”—is possibly the most invidious trope the Roberts Court has cultivated in our modern legal culture.
As a Utahn, quite literally nothing gets me more fired up than this. Utah Republicans even tried to lie to voters through a deceptive ballot proposition in an effort to undue the ban on partisan gerrymandering that voters enacted. utahnewsdispatch.com/2024/10/24/a...
Amendment D ballot language was misleading to voters, Utah Supreme Court affirms • Utah News Dispatch
The Utah Supreme Court affirmed that Amendment D was mischaracterized on the Nov. 5 ballot in a unanimous, 53-page opinion.
utahnewsdispatch.com