Jay Willis
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jaywillis.net
Jay Willis
@jaywillis.net
150K followers 300 following 5.8K posts
I write about courts, democracy, media, and the raccoon family living in a tree behind my house. Bluesky’s ONLY fantasy football guru. EIC @ballsandstrikes.org, more writing at jaywillis.net.
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jaywillis.net
hello @sickoscommittee.org the phone’s for you
6 straight punts baby
November 9, 2025 at 3:26 AM
jaywillis.net
Wow looks like my favorite team is in an entertaining, competitive college football game. If only the YouTube TV package I pay $90/month for allowed me to watch it!
• Cal 23 CAL 5-4 20 11:08 - 4th ESPN2 50 Watch 23 20 15 LOU 7-1
November 9, 2025 at 2:52 AM
jaywillis.net
Just go ahead and get the hall of fame class of ‘42 bust in production already
Cal Bear Fernando
November 8, 2025 at 8:43 PM
jaywillis.net
For me, Trump attending a Commanders game during a 40-day government shutdown and *participating in an on-field ceremony* is an even crazier story than him wanting the stadium named after him. He’s going to get booed mercilessly! Does no one in his orbit realize this?? www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/...
"That would be a beautiful name, as it was President Trump who made the rebuilding of the new stadium possible," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told ESPN on Friday night via email. Leavitt declined to answer additional questions, but the senior White House source told ESPN: "It's what the president wants, and it will probably happen." A Commanders spokesperson declined comment Saturday. However, a team source said the organization has spent days preparing for Trump's attendance at the Commanders' home game against the Detroit Lions on Sunday afternoon. Trump will attend the game as Harris' guest and is expected to participate in halftime
November 8, 2025 at 4:35 PM
jaywillis.net
Today we celebrate the two-year anniversary of me at last persuading my insurance company to approve surgery for a back injury that had made me a miserable, hobbling, heavily medicated mess for the previous 12 months. Here’s me right after, high out of my mind, for some reason hitting a Half Trump.
Me right after surgery in a bed, eyes seeing NOTHING, giving the thumbs up, god bless my wife for having the presence of mind to commemorate this moment
November 7, 2025 at 11:51 PM
jaywillis.net
A couple years ago a friend stayed at my house, and described his thank-you gift strategy as “buying the funniest piece of sports memorabilia I could find on eBay for under $40.” Anyway, here’s a Rudy Giuliani signed Yankees mini-helmet I now own.
Regrettably, exactly what the post describes
November 7, 2025 at 6:36 PM
jaywillis.net
Look, I know ragebait when I see it, okay www.politico.com/news/2025/11...
Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh to conservative law students: Don’t give up The Trump appointees’ remarks came at a Federalist Society event in Washington.
November 7, 2025 at 4:44 PM
jaywillis.net
This is so embarrassing, man. The six most influential Republicans in the country with the unreviewable power to make the law whatever they want, patting each other on the back for their courage. Butter-soft.
Asked for advice for conservative women in law schools who feel marginalized because of their views, Barrett said they should not be afraid to be “countercultural.” Referencing her seven children, Barrett said she’s done “lots of countercultural things in the course of my life.” “In truth, being a conservative woman, in a law school particularly, takes a lot of courage and independence and in many ways shows more feminism than just falling into some predetermined vision of what a woman should be,” she said.
November 7, 2025 at 4:35 PM
jaywillis.net
What is Kavanaugh talking about? Genuinely, what "cost" has Sam Alito incurred for his values or opinions or whatever? People who already didn't like him before now like him even less? These people are such babies, man. www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...
When the questions turned to the criticisms and even death threats the justices themselves have faced, Kavanaugh said he tries to follow the examples of role models like the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who showed “what it meant to withstand withering criticism, what it meant to be fearless.” Justice Samuel Alito, who was in the audience, has likewise displayed courage “and the willingness to stand up for principle even when it comes at a cost, a big cost,” Kavanaugh said. More: Justice Alito still doesn't like court's gay marriage decision but said it's precedent “If you don’t want to get criticized,” Kavanaugh said of being a Supreme Court justice, “this is not a good gig.”
November 7, 2025 at 4:33 PM
jaywillis.net
The Supreme Court’s ruling on Trump’s passport sex markers policy conveys as much casual transphobia as a two-page judicial opinion ever could without actually including slurs. Absolutely vile stuff. ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/the-suprem...
When the conservative justices issue a shadow docket opinion like this one, they often stress that they are not ruling on the merits. But the only snippet of legal argument the majority dares to include—the assertion that the Passport Policy conveys “a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment”—reveals a lot about how the justices really feel about the transgender plaintiffs before them. By allowing the administration to require people to use the marker associated with the “historical fact” of their sex assigned at birth, the conservatives are tacitly endorsing Trump’s position that any other gender identity is, in some sense, “false”—not real, not serious, and not entitled to their respect. The logic is every bit as transphobic as Trump’s executive order; the Court simply uses more legalese to embrace it.
November 7, 2025 at 3:07 PM
jaywillis.net
It is a stain on the legal profession that Sarah Isgur, the Trump DOJ flack best known for publicly defending his family sepration policy, has been allowed to rebrand as a savvy legal pundit who feels comfortable cranking out shit like this www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/776620...
A myth-busting glimpse into the inner workings of the Supreme Court, revealing what we get wrong about the “Roberts era,” what the justices’ clerks gossip about, and how to fix a court in crisis—from the popular ABC news pundit and top legal podcaster Most people get the Supreme Court all wrong. That includes Washington “insiders.” A smattering of high-profile decisions have popularized a simplistic idea of the Court and its nine justices. Yes, six of them were appointed by Republicans, and only three were appointed by a Democratic president. So, how does that 6-3 conservative majority explain why liberal Elena Kagan and conservative Brett Kavanaugh agreed with each other over 75 percent of the time in a recent term? Or why the court threw shade at Florida’s attempt to ban drag shows? To truly appreciate the nine justices of the Supreme Court, argues Sarah Isgur, you have to look beyond political affiliation. That’s only part of the story—the “X-Axis.” The wisest court watchers know that they there is a whole other measuring stick—the “Y-Axis.” On this spectrum, the justices span from order-loving institutionalists to true chaos agents. The Y-Axis affects which cases the court takes, when they take them, how they get decided. And, when you appreciate its nuances, you’ll see the court looks a lot more like 3-3-3 than 6-3.
November 7, 2025 at 5:07 AM
jaywillis.net
The conservative justices don't want to acknowledge this. This is their whole opinion—all jargon and boilerplate. By including the substance they omit, Jackson is making clear to people the gross things the Court is doing that the Court would really prefer no one know about.
REME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES _________________ No. 25A319 _________________ DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL. v. ASHTON ORR, ET AL. ON APPLICATION FOR STAY [November 6, 2025] This case concerns an Executive Branch policy requiring all new passports to display an individual’s biological sex at birth. The United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts preliminarily enjoined the Government from enforcing the policy, and the First Circuit declined to stay the injunction pending appeal. The Government then filed this stay application. Applying our familiar stay fac- tors at this preliminary stage, we grant the application. Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth—in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment. And on this record, respondents have failed to establish that the Government’s choice to display biological sex “lack[s] any purpose other than a bare . . . desire to harm a politically unpopular group.” Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U. S. 667, 705 (2018) (internal quotation marks omitted). Nor are respondents likely to prevail in arguing that the State Department acted arbitrarily and capriciously by de- clining to depart from Presidential rules that Congress ex- pressly required it to follow. See 22 U. S. C. §211a. For these reasons, the Government is likely to succeed on the merits. And the District Court’s grant of class-wide re- lief enjoins enforcement of an Executive Branch policy with foreign affairs implications concerning a Government docu- ment. In light of the foregoing, the Government will 2 TRUMP v. ORR JACKSON, J., dissenting “suffer[] a form of irreparable injury” absent a stay. Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U. S. 831, 861 (2025) (internal quotation marks omitted). The application for stay presented to JUSTICE JACKSON and by her referred to the Court is granted. The June 17, 2025 order of the United States District Court for the Dis- trict of Massachusetts, case No. 1:25–cv–10313, is stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such a writ is timely sought. Should certiorari be denied, this stay shall termi- nate automatically. In the event certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judg- ment of this Court. JUSTICE JACKSON, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR and JUSTICE KAGAN join, dissenting from the grant of applica- tion for stay. As is becoming routine, the Government seeks an emer- gency stay of a District Court’s preliminary injunction pending appeal. As is also becoming routine, this Court misunderstands the assignment.
November 6, 2025 at 10:21 PM
jaywillis.net
The Supreme Court's decision to let the Trump White House implement its anti-trans passport policy is vile, and I appreciate Jackson going out of her way to include in her dissent, for the record, the administration's language justifying the policy. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
TRUMP v. ORR JACKSON, J., dissenting identity. From 1992 to 2010, passport applicants who wished to obtain passports with sex markers that were dif- ferent from the sex assigned to them at birth had to submit evidence of surgical reassignment. In 2010, the State De- partment began allowing passport applicants to submit a doctor’s certification avowing that they had undergone clin- ical treatment for gender transition. Beginning in 2021, the State Department allowed applicants to self-select the sex marker that matched their gender identity. Through it all, the indisputable point of a passport re- mained: to “attes[t] to the identity and nationality of the bearer.” 22 CFR §51.1 (2024). The State Department’s sex- marker policies have thus long demonstrated that what is important for identification purposes is the bearer’s gender identity today. No matter. On January 22, 2025, the agency overhauled the rules for sex markers on passports, reverting to its pre- 1992 practices. Its Passport Policy now requires that all new passports reflect the holders’ sex assigned at birth. Why? Because two days earlier, on January 20, President Trump issued Executive Order No. 14168, characterizing transgender identity as “false” and “corrosive” to American society. 90 Fed. Reg. 8615 (2025). The order asserted that “the policy of the United States” is “to recognize two sexes, male and female,” which it defined based on the sex as- signed “at conception.” Ibid. And the order directed the Secretary of State to require that any new government-is- sued identification documents reflect the holder’s “biologi- cal” sex. Id., at 8615–8616. The State Department re- sponded by rescinding its prior sex-identification policies moving forward; transgender Americans who had previ- ously obtained passports with sex markers reflecting their gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth could continue to use those documents until they expire. Several transgender Americans w Cite as: 607 U. S. ____ (2025) 9 JACKSON, J., dissenting President from carrying out these supposedly legitimate ob- jectives. Thus, the Government’s asserted harm from being sub- jected to the injunction—its only asserted harm—is that the President cannot, at least for now, enact his preferred poli- cies regarding sex markers on U. S. passports. Even as- suming, arguendo, that this purported injury counts as ir- reparable harm, it does not suffice to justify the extraordinary equitable remedy of a stay pending appeal.5 What the Government needs (and what it does not have) is an explanation for why it faces harm unless the Presi- dent’s chosen policy is implemented now. It suggests that there is an urgent foreign policy interest in dictating sex markers on passports, but does not elaborate as to what that interest might possibly be. All the Government is able to muster is the statement that “the injunction forces the government to misrepresent the sex of passport holders to foreign nations” and to “contradict . . . biological reality.” Application for Stay of Injunction 34. But how urgent can this interest be when the Passport Policy itself allows transgender Americans who already have passports with sex markers reflecting their current gender identity to con- tinue using those passports until they expire? The Government also insists that gender identity is not a meaningful basis for identification—strangely begging the question why sex markers are required on passports at all.
November 6, 2025 at 10:14 PM
jaywillis.net
My kid sporting my “I voted” sticker in my mail ballot
November 4, 2025 at 2:48 AM
jaywillis.net
I do not think YouTube TV subscribers who just lost their access to ABC, ESPN, FX, Disney, the college football networks, etc. are reacting the way YouTube TV hoped they would react
Google trends chart showing search interest in “cancel YouTube TV” spiking
November 1, 2025 at 3:19 PM
jaywillis.net
Are you people fucking kidding me with this shit @washingtonpost.com www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
At the same time, there are legitimate debates about the best ways to feed the needy, how many should qualify and how much they should get. In the 1970s, 1 in 50 Americans received food stamps. Now, 1 in 8 do. On average, these households get $322 a month. Are 42 million Americans really in such danger of suffering malnutrition that the federal government should spend about $100 billion every year Certainly, many need the help. The American Enterprise Institute's Kevin Corinth estimates that 2.9 million individuals willbe pushed into poverty if SNAP benefits are not paid in November, including 1.1 million children, 1.3 million working-age adults and about 500,000 seniors. But no one should aspire for large segments of the population to depend on government handouts. The program could certainly be designed better to not discourage work. Ultimately, the best way to help over the long run is to grow the economy, which leads to job creation and rising wages.
October 31, 2025 at 3:04 AM
jaywillis.net
I found the relative apparent head sizes in this Getty Images photo to be really distressing, so I'm sharing it here
a picture of trump and vance at the army navy game last year, except also with elon musk, who is standing behind them, but somehow his head is like twice the size of both of theirs, man i hate it so much
October 30, 2025 at 9:56 PM
jaywillis.net
Man shut the FUCK up
free press headline of akhil amar's stupid fuckin blog post
October 28, 2025 at 7:26 PM
jaywillis.net
Guys, guys, GUYS, it’s finally happening
Resee Witherspoon • 10m @reseewitherspoon.bsky.social Hello! How are you doing? Not followed by anyone you're following Accept Reject
October 28, 2025 at 5:53 PM
jaywillis.net
Literal Klan members shouldn't be Supreme Court justices
the brave man meme
October 24, 2025 at 11:51 PM
jaywillis.net
Wow, groundbreaking stuff from the Washington Post editorial board here, I am so relieved SOMEONE is brave enough to stand up for free markets and personal liberties again
Opinion The Editorial Board Prosecuting insider sports betting will deter the rigging of games FBI Director Kash Patel likens Operation Nothing But Bet to insider trading enforcement. Today at 3:00 p.m. PT It's essential to prosecute under-the-table deals like these to the fullest extent of the law to deter other athletes. Players and team employees need to fear that getting involved in gambling won't just end their careers but lead to time in prison. They also need to believe the chance of getting caught is reasonably high. As Joseph Nocella Jr., U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said at a news conference: "Violating the law is a losing proposition, and you can bet on that."
October 24, 2025 at 3:08 AM
jaywillis.net
Honestly this Netflix series is going to be so good
Atthe Rigged Games, the members of the Cheating Teams—including the defendants and their co-conspirators—used card shuffling machines that were purportedly randomly shuffling the playing cards to ensure fairness (the “Rigged Shuffling Machines”). However, the Rigged Shuffling Machines were secretly altered to use concealed technology to read the cards in the deck, predict which player at the table had the best poker hand, and relay that information via interstate wires to an off-site operator (the “Operator”). The Operator then communicated that information by cellular telephone to a member of the Cheating Team seated at the Rigged Game poker tables, referred to as the “Quarterback” or “Driver,” who used secret signaling to share the information with the other members of the Cheating Teams playing in the Rigged Games. The Cheating Teams used the information from the Quarterback to defraud the Victims, who believed they were playing “straight” illegal poker games. At times, the defendants also utilized other cheating technologies such as electronic poker chip trays that could secretly read cards placed on the poker table; card analyzers that utilized technology loaded onto decoy cellular telephones that could surreptitiously detect which cards were on the table; and playing cards that had markers visible only to individuals wearing specially designed contact lenses or sunglasses.
October 23, 2025 at 9:14 PM
jaywillis.net
Here's a fun little nugget from Trump's demand that DOJ pay him, personally, $250 million: In his memo, he argues that prosecutors "should have foreseen" that he has "immunity from prosecution for officials acts." Thank you John Roberts, great rule of law-ing, sir! static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics...
Moreover, as former U.S. Court of Appeals Judge and now-Attorney General Merrick Garland should have foreseen, President Trump had immunity from prosecution for official acts.23 As such, given the Supreme Court's immunity decision and Judge Cannon's dismissal of the prosecution on grounds that the Special Counsel's appointment violated the appointments clause and his office was funded through an 19 Superseding Indictment at 1-4, United States v. Trump et al., No. 23-80101-CR, 2024 WL 3404555 (S.D Fla. July 15, 2024) (the original indictment was dated June 8, 2023). 20 United States v. Trump, No. 23-80101-CR, 2024 WL 3404555, at * 1 (S.D. Fla. July 15, 2024) (hereinafter " Dismissal Order”). 21 Order Denying Motion for Franks Hearing and Reserving Ruling on Balance of Motion Pending Necessary Factual Development at 9, U.S. v. Trump et al., No. 23-80101- CR (S.D. FL June 27, 2024) (Document 655) (“But the Court determines that some of the terms in that document ( e.g., 'national defense information' and ‘Presidential Records'), do not carry ‘generally understood meaning[ s]' such that a law enforcement agent, without further clarification, would have known to identify such material as 'seizable” property'[.]"); accord. id. at 10 ("the present record does not indicate , for example, whether the clarifying information in the affidavit was attached to the warrant or expressly incorporated into it [See ECF No. 567 p. 13] ”) . 22 Constitutional Questions After the Raid on Mar-a-Lago, National Constitution Center 2 ( August 18, 2022), https://constitutioncenter.org/media/files/Mar-a-lago_Raid_Transcript.pdf . 23 Trump v. United States, 144 S. Ct. 2312, 2327 (2024) .
October 22, 2025 at 11:50 PM
jaywillis.net
Go Mariners, in my view
Me stressed out Celebrating wildly Rapturous Jumping up and down and yelping as my wife laughs hysterically at me
October 21, 2025 at 3:28 AM
jaywillis.net
Honestly pretty zen about it, because I really enjoyed enjoying baseball again this season, for the first time in a long time. I wish they hadn’t lost, but I had a great time on the ride. And I’m gonna remember being there for Game 5 forever. Sports are fun.
October 21, 2025 at 3:23 AM