Gaza - Is it a genocide? Christopher Armitage...The Existentialist Republic

 https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/on-palestine-and-genocide?r=zv1g&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web 

The Existentialist Republic

By Christopher Armitage

In September 2026, four acts gave up their spots on Ed Sheeran’s stadium tour after Sheeran dropped Macklemore for saying two words from the stage: Free Palestine. Finneas, Aaron Rowe, the Irish band Beoga, and the Danish band Lukas Graham have all walked. Macklemore had introduced his song Hind’s Hall, named for Hind Rajab, a six-year-old killed in Gaza waiting for rescue in a car with her dead relatives. Robert Kraft, who owns Gillette Stadium, had barred him from performing there, and Macklemore says Sheeran told him Kraft rallied other stadium owners into an ultimatum: keep Macklemore and lose the venues.

Ed Sheeran apparently doesn’t want to take sides on the whole “is genocide bad” conversation.

It feels obvious to me that what’s happening to the people of Gaza is a genocide. There is more suffering in the world than any one person can take on, and the ways to actually reduce it are not all within reach. Some levers are easy to pull, some are almost impossible to move even when the choice in front of you is between people dying and someone’s profit, and no one can fix it all. What I try to do, as a person and as the founder of this publication, is find the ones I can actually reach that reduce the most suffering while being achievable, and put my attention there.

I’ve posted several pieces on divestment campaigns to move government and union funds away from the companies currently committing war crimes. I’ll make sure to cover that again soon and am working behind the scenes to create a legislative push in all 50 states and with every major union to have mass divestment and contract discontinuation from the companies attacking democracy and murdering innocents en masse.****

 

Supreme Court blocks Postal Service anti-mail voting rule

 https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/09/supreme-court-denies-trump-administrations-request-to-implement-parts-of-usps-rule-on-mail-in-vo/

By Amy Howe - Scotus Blog - Co-founder and reporter

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to allow the U.S. Postal Service to carry out parts of a new rule on mail-in voting. In a brief, unsigned order, the justices left in place a ruling by a federal judge in Boston that bars the USPS from implementing aspects of the rule.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh penned a one-paragraph concurrence in which he agreed with the decision to deny the government’s request. He suggested that, in his view, the Postal Service might have the power to issue the rule. But even if it does, he continued, election officials “do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before” the November elections.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the court’s ruling, in an opinion joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. He argued that some of the challengers in the dispute do not have a legal right to sue, known as standing, “while the remainder are pursuing a claim that this Court has recently called a ‘Hail Mary pass’ that ‘rarely succeeds.’”

The court’s order comes less than two months before the midterm elections in November. At least two states – North Carolina and Alabama – have already begun to send out ballots by mail.

Removal for Cause - Manners and Menand - Yale LJ 2026

 

The Power to Remove For Cause

136 Yale Law Journal __ (2026)

61 Pages Posted: 26 Feb 2026 Last revised: 26 Aug 2026

Jane Manners

Fordham University

Lev Menand

Columbia University - Law School

Date Written: February 25, 2026

Abstract

This Article reconstructs the American law of removal “for cause.” It shows that nineteenth century state legislators used this term to strike a balance—to protect officers from losing their jobs for political reasons, while enabling the discharge of officers unable to carry out their duties effectively. Although legislators employed “for cause” provisions to create some flexibility for removing authorities, in most cases they did not expect those authorities to have the final word on whether an officer’s conduct merited removal. Instead, legislators thought of a removal “for cause” as an adjudicatory act—requiring notice, an opportunity to be heard, and judicial review of the legal sufficiency of the asserted cause.

In the decades after the Civil War, removing authorities in many states argued that “for cause” language was merely admonitory, requiring no process or judicial review. Although most courts rejected these arguments, a striking divergence emerged: Where a removed officer served for a fixed term, almost all state courts adopted “the American Rule,” treating removal as adjudicatory. But where a statute included no fixed term, some state judges (likely wary of offices that could otherwise be held for life) embraced the admonitory position.

This history reveals the significance of two largely overlooked cases from the early 1900s: Reagan v. U.S. and Shurtleff v. U.S. In these decisions, the Supreme Court resolved the question of which way federal courts would go. It adopted the American Rule for federal offices, but it declined to enforce adjudicatory removal in cases without express language conferring office for a fixed term or for life. As Congress built out the administrative state, it did so against the backdrop of the substantial body of statutory common law underlying this doctrinal settlement. Drawing on these findings, this Article offers an historically-grounded framework for evaluating removal disputes between the President and federal administrators today, in line with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Trump v. Cook. It also offers concrete legal bases that judges can use in future cases to define the outer limits of executive removal power. 

License Information

The copyright holder has granted SSRN a license. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.

Suggested Citation:

Manners, Jane and Menand, Lev, The Power to Remove For Cause (February 25, 2026). 136 Yale Law Journal __ (2026), Available at SSRN: