Thomas M. Keck

@tmksyracuse

Mostly free speech and democratic backsliding. Also Syracuse politics and Baltimore sports.

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Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· 27d

Great piece, but in my experience, this part is accurate as to 50501, but not local Indivisible groups, many of which have been holding monthly in person meetings pretty consistently for 9 years and counting

The Limits of Popular Identification
This form of identity politics flourishes online. It's not a coincidence that both 50501 and Indivisible, the convening organizations of No Kings, came out of viral posts on social media. These organizations have small staffs and no formal membership requirements; all it takes to join is liking the local Facebook group or resharing their Instagram post.

They have shown they can mobilize huge numbers of people, but what binds the movement is largely a shared imaginative identification with relevant empty signifiers rather than a personal relationship to other specific individuals, institutions, or places.
In this, No Kings resembles many. recent enormous protests that have ultimately fizzled or otherwise failed, might serve as nits of what lan
groups can accomplish in politics.

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· 28d

#11 Read this on a friend’s recommendation. I thought it would be too abstract for me, but I actually found it gripping

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jul 8

I’m about to pitch this account to a room full of cantankerous retired folks. Wish me luck

Flyer announcing my talk at Roland Park Place

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jul 8

The unitary executive cases are a case in point. The Court’s recent holding in Slaughter dates very explicitly to a 1988 Scalia dissent. The problem here is not that today’s conservative justices are making stuff up but that their longstanding approach is now clearly enabling Trump’s autocratization

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jul 6

Main point I make is that some decisions undermining democratic health are best understood as Court fabricating legal arguments out of whole cloth, but more common dynamic involves stubborn judicial adherence to longstanding commitments despite evidence those commitments are enabling autocratization

=
Making Things Up Out of Whole Cloth
The conservative arguments in Trump v.
Barbara, the birthright citizenship case, were fabricated out of whole cloth.
Egalitarian citizenship irrespective of race or national origin is the central, defining commitment of the post-Civil War Constitution. This commitment is uncommonly clear in the text of the Fourteenth Amendment:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
14th Amendment, sec. 1
The commitment is also reflected in more than 100 years of SCOTUS precedent, as well as federal immigration law since the 1940s.

tomkeck.beehiiv.com

Stubborn Adherence to
Longstanding
Commitments, Democracy be Damned

To sum up so far, one recurring dynamic in Trump-era constitutional law is the conservative justices' willingness to more or less invent legal arguments as necessary to suit the Trump regime's agenda.
A second and more common dynamic is the conservative justices' stubborn adherence to longstanding conservative doctrines despite proliferating evidence that these doctrines are enabling and facilitating Trump's autocratization. In other words, the Roberts Court
sometimes acts in pursuit of goals of the conservative legal movement that long predate the Trump era-and in this sense, the justices are not just "making stuff up" as in the birthright citizenship case.

tomkeck.beehiiv.com

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jul 4

I’m all for improving Americans’ civic knowledge, but if the pollster thinks this was the main purpose of the US Constitution, maybe we can start there

Nearly 60% do not know the main purpose of the U.S.
Constitution is to limit government power

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jul 4

Douglass is still tops but don’t sleep on Twain’s July 4 address www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mar...

I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.
I refer with effusion to our railway system, which consents to let us live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners. It only destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and unnecessary people at crossings. The companies seriously regretted the killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for some of them -- voluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law against a railway company. But, thank Heaven, the railway companies are generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without compulsion. I know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time. After an accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old relative of mine in a basket, with the remark, "Please state what figure you hold him at -- and return the basket." Now there couldn't be anything friendlier than that.
But I must not stand here and brag all night. However, you won't mind a body bragging a little about his country on the Fourth of July. It is a fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle.

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jul 3

The Tempo posted my friend’s sign! And hand lol www.instagram.com/p/DaT4Pp5FtK...

Hand holding sign reading: Lesbian fans are filling the stands

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jul 2

Just catching up to KBJ concurrence in Barbara. It's got a lengthy defense of anti-caste reading of 14A (w extensive citation to Wilkerson's Caste), a remarkable treatment of drafters' discussion of Chinese & Roma immigrants, and this conclusion that reminds me of Ta-Nehisi's most recent piece

Yet here we are. The Government, the principal dissent, and a handful of revisionist commentators now vigorously promote an interpretation of the Citizenship Clause that diverges sharply not only from what the text says, but also from the historical record as interpreted by the keepers of “the call of remembrance” (trained historians).59 What is more, this alternative account pitches Black Americans against immigrants when the advocates who promoted the Fourteenth Amendment did no such thing. Freed Blacks fought for the shared humanity of all people. And the Great Emancipator eventually foresaw that the only path forward that could prevent a return—in any form—to slavery and race-based subordination was to link the fates of all.

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jul 1

Not the most important thing, but Coach Kavanaugh's description of youth sports rings very false to me. Here in the Syracuse City School District, it is simply not true that "Every athlete who makes a team takes a roster spot from another athlete"

Some might ask: What is the harm in allowing an
additional athlete to compete in women’s or girls’ sports?
That sentiment, though understandable, misunderstands
the nature and reality of sports.
Sports are highly competitive and generally zero sum. At
almost every turn, someone wins and someone loses. Every
athlete who makes a team takes a roster spot from another
athlete. Every player who earns playing time reduces the
playing time of a teammate. Every player who makes the
starting lineup sidelines another who remains on the
bench. Every competitor who wins a race or competition
deprives another athlete of that victory, or medal, or prize.
Every team that wins because of an added player means
that another team has lost because of that added player.
Every player who makes all-conference beats out another
player who does not. Every student who earns an athletic
scholarship takes that opportunity away from another
student. And so on.

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 30

Props to the Post-Standard for their continued highlighting of this story

Photo of front page of hard copy Post-Standard

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 24

This is from Mark Weiner’s piece

The final outcome will likely be decided by a count of up to 510 absentee ballots. Those ballots are likely to favor Magnarelli if they follow the trend of early and mail-in voting to date.
The Board of Elections received 51 absentee ballots this week that were not included in Tuesday night's tabulation.
An additional 459 mail-in ballots could be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day and received by the Board of Elections by June 30.

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 24

Here in Central New York, DSA and Indivisible-endorsed @mobreezy213.bsky.social has an 82(!) vote lead on Bill Magnarelli, who has held this seat since 1999. If this result holds, it’s the second year in a row with an enormous upset here in Syracuse

Screenshot of county election results page showing Mo Brown with 82-vote lead

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 24

For the first time tonight, @mobreezy213.bsky.social is in the lead!

With 91% reporting, Mo Brown is leading 50.65% to 49.27%

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 24

Good grief, this race is now tied. Magnarelli had a lead of 250+ votes in early voting. Mo Brown is doing better with election day voters

With 84% of election day precincts reporting, Magnarelli and Mo Brown are tied with 3,130 votes each

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 24

Lots of eyes on downstate primaries of course, but don't sleep on CNY. We've got a _very close_ race for state assembly here in Syracuse. Mo Brown is the DSA and Indivisible-endorsed challenger to longtime incumbent Bill Magnarelli

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 23

#10

Book cover:
Tolkien’s Return of the King

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 22

After all, we are living through a global democratic recession, from which the United States is by no means immune. Here’s V-Dem’s electoral democracy index. The red line is the United States; the blue line is the world population-weighted country average

Time series plot of V-Dem's electoral democracy index from 1945-2025 for the U.S. and the global population-weighted country average. Both lines show clear evidence of democratic decline since 2010

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 22

In the mid-20th century, U.S. Supreme Court justices regularly advanced European-style militant democracy arguments in support of state restrictions on extremist speech. The most well-known example is probably Jackson's dissent in Terminiello v. Chicago, but I provide lots of others in the book

Justice Robert Jackson elaborated these arguments at greatest length. Following World War II, Jackson took a leave from the Court to serve as chief Allied prosecutor at the Nazi war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg. This experience left him closely attuned to the role of extremist speech in the Nazi Party’s rise to power in Weimar Germany. Consider his dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago (1949).

That text is followed by this block quote:
There are many appeals these days to liberty, often by those who are working for an opportunity to taunt democracy with its stupidity in furnishing them the weapons to destroy it as did Goebbels when he said: ‘When democracy granted democratic methods for us in times of opposition, this [Nazi seizure of power] was bound to happen in a democratic system. However, we National Socialists never asserted that we represented a democratic point of view, but we have declared openly that we used democratic methods only in order to gain the power and that, after assuming the power, we would deny to our adversaries without any consideration the means which were granted to us in times of (our) opposition.’ 1 Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression (GPO 1946) 202, Docs. 2500—PS, 2412—PS.

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 20

Just hit 28 doors for @mobreezy213.bsky.social and @jobennettcny.bsky.social. Great weather and very friendly Meadowbrook turf. Let’s finish strong people

Screenshot of Minivan progress showing 28/28 doors knocked

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 20

I haven’t made it to an O’s game yet this year, but I made it to the Tides game tonight and they put up 14 for me. And I got to see Bradfield for the first time. And Kjerstad ended the game on an outfield assist

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 14

Just in-person early voted for @mobreezy213.bsky.social @jobennettcny.bsky.social Cjala Surratt and Raj Goyle

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 14

Germany out here trolling the Brazilians with this result

Germany 7-1 Curaçao
(same score line as Brazil’s most infamous World Cup match)

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 10

I've got a chapter on free speech and democratic backsliding in this forthcoming edited volume. From what I've seen, there will be many great chapters, including one from the late Ran Hirschl (may his memory be a blessing). I'm honored to be included.

Book cover:
Constitutional Democracy in Crisis? II
Edited by
Mark A. Graber
Mark Tushnet
Sanford Levinson
Antonia Baraggia

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 9

#9 Book 2 in the series. As weird & disturbing as the first one. Humans destroy earth, aliens save the humans for nefarious reasons, the humans can’t stop warring among themselves, but a mixed human/alien child is maybe gonna save them

Book cover:
Octavia Butler’s Adulthood Rites

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· Jun 3

And now it’s got this line stuck in my head

“Neck placed firm tween the floor and the Florsheim”

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· May 20

#8 Sticking to my rule that if I read them cover to cover, nonfiction books go on the list bsky.app/profile/tmks...

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· May 18

Viewpoint neutrality mandates are inconsistent with academic freedom, exhibit one million

The policy says teachers are allowed to take a stance on “widely settled historical judgments,” like denouncing slavery and the Holocaust, but taking a position on current debates is discouraged.

A “frequently asked questions” document related to the policy identifies several “active areas of disagreement in contemporary public debate” where teachers should remain neutral, including abortion, immigration laws and enforcement, policing and climate policy.

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· May 8

#7 Always my favorite of the series

Thomas M. Keck@tmksyracuse· May 4