Discretion and Dissent in Immigration Law

OA1184 - The saying pretty explicitly tells us to don't, and yet here they are not don'ting. This week on Rapid Response Friday: why is a Texas lawmaker filing a habeas petition asking a federal court to release her from the state capitol building? What’s the deal with redistricting, and is Texas’s plan to tip the balance in the U.S. House of Representatives actually legal? Jenessa brings her voting rights expertise to explain why this plan is so bad that state Democratic leaders had to go on the lam on threat of arrest to try to stop it. We then briefly discuss the import of Attorney General Pam Bondi pulling back from her attempt to take over DC’s entire police force before Matt takes on a couple of little-noticed immigration policy memos in which the Trump administration has given itself dangerously broad new powers to determine things like an immigrant’s “good moral character” and “anti-American” activities and associations.

Finally in today’s footnote: it’s Columbia-on-Columbia violence as the West Coast sportswear company goes to war with the East Coast Ivy League university over some IP nonsense which gives Matt yet another excuse to be correct about fonts.

• Texas state representative Nicole Collier’s habeas petition (filed 8/19/25)

• “Restoring a Rigorous, Holistic, and Comprehensive Good Moral Character Evaluation Standard for Aliens Applying for Naturalization,” USCIS (8/15/25)

• “Clarifying Discretionary Factors in Certain Immigration Benefit Requests,” USCIS (8/19/25)

•  Columbia Sportswear v. Columbia University (complaint filed 7/23/25)

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