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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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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 10h

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

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 11h

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 · 18h

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 · 3d

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 · 18h

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 · 18h

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 · 20h

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 · 22h

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 · 21h

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

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 1d

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 · 1d

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 · 1d

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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Jason❌ @gizmosspace.bsky.social · 2d

This is awesome.

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Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 1d

Texas is preparing emergency resources for wildfires and floods. The Texas National Guard should be THERE — not in Illinois.

We stand ready to support their return home so they are best positioned for helping Texans respond to any natural disasters.

Abbott activates emergency resources ahead of growing wildfire threat, flood risk in Texas

With expected growing wildfire danger across Texas and the potential for a flood risk this weekend, Gov. Greg Abbott is activating more state emergency response resources Friday.

trib.al

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 1d

This is excellent.

I’d only add that at this moment, the work of transforming the Constitution, and extending it to protect everyone, is being led not just by Americans but by immigrants and their communities—from pro-Palestinian advocates to undocumented workers and their families.

The 14th Amendment Center @the14thcenter.bsky.social · 1d

A critical premise of the work of the 14th Amendment Center is that we are all founders & framers of the future of democracy in this country.

Prof. Kate Andrias channels that spirit in this excellent op-ed.
GIFT LINK
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/o...

Opinion | The Constitution Doesn’t Belong to Trump or the Supreme Court

www.nytimes.com

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 1d

This is in the collective bargaining space, but it’d be nice if the Ninth Circuit hurried up with its en banc proceedings in a big First Amendment/labor law case still pending there related to retaliation against federal worker unions.

Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 1d

This is a whole sermon here:

“We have been more defeated by narrative than we have been defeated in the courts.”

Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 1d

A note and a caution about “planting season.”

@visionandjustice