Fearless Leader, @hamlinclaw. Handcrafted appellate briefs since the 1900s. “Ted Frank is good at Twitter.” — Reuters. On my second 🫀.
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Joined October 2008
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I spoke to Reuters about our Seventh Circuit appeal on behalf of drivers trapped in gridlock by pro-Hamas protestors who blockaded the entrance to O’Hare Airport for hours. Argument scheduled for April 9.
📰HLLI in the News
@JgreeneJenna of @Reuters covered our lawsuit on behalf of drivers who were trapped in their vehicles for hours after anti-Israel activists blocked access to O’Hare International Airport.
tedfrank retweeted
Nobody on this board wants a segregated neighbourhood. Each person only asks that at least 3 in 10 of their neighbours look like them. If not, they jump to an empty spot where that is true.
Then the colours pull apart into big blocks, and the average person ends up with about 3 in 4 neighbours like them, far more than anyone asked for.
Thomas Schelling showed this in 1971 with pennies and dimes on graph paper, and he shared the 2005 economics Nobel for work on how individual choices add up to patterns nobody chose. The lesson is that a pattern in the whole does not prove a wish in the parts.
In the second run each person asks for 5 in 10, and the blocks are even sharper.
tedfrank retweeted
Schumer filled 21 District Court and 1 Circuit Court spots in 2024 after the election.
It can be done.
tedfrank retweeted
It is heartbreaking to see antisemitism in my hometown. I was born in Wyncote, near Philadelphia, and it makes me angry and ashamed to see hatred tolerated there.
The numbers show this is not an abstract concern. The Anti-Defamation League recorded 465 antisemitic incidents across Pennsylvania in 2024, an 18% increase over 2023. It tracked 189 incidents in Philadelphia and 51 in Montgomery County. These reports include harassment, vandalism, and assault; they are not all classified as crimes. (adl.org, philadelphia.adl.org)
Hateful expression harms more than its immediate target. In a 2025 survey of Jewish Americans, 79% said they were concerned about antisemitism, and 52% said they had worried about their personal safety because of their identity. Nearly half reported taking steps to increase their security. A research review also found that exposure to hate is associated with worse psychological well-being, more negative stereotypes, and less trust between groups. (philadelphia.adl.org, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
It takes me back to the racism I experienced in the 1960s: signs throughout the South declaring that Black people could be refused service, along with separate “white” and “colored” signs on bathrooms and drinking fountains,”no niggers”. I remember what that hatred looked and felt like. We cannot accept it in any form, directed at any people.
I wish I could be there to stand with those protesting HATE. I am asking elected officials and other leaders in Philadelphia: Where are the clear statements condemning antisemitism? When hateful language is excused or repeated, it can make hostility seem acceptable and deepen fear and division. Leaders should speak plainly and consistently: antisemitism and hate have no place in our communities.
What the hell? We have to speak up.
Reggie Jackson
The Mr. October Guy
tedfrank retweeted
Rs are so busy assigning blame for their midterm blowout that they’ve forgotten Dems now have to govern an affordability crisis their own policies created. And the Rs who can stop them have already opened the door.
The first-term Reaganites are gone. The New Right runs the econ agenda now, and it doesn’t object to subsidies or taxing the rich. It just wants to decide who gets the cash and who gets the bill.
Jeffries wants ACA subsidies extended, and Vance has entertained it. A permanent extension adds at least $350B to deficits over a decade, and premiums will keep climbing anyway.
Dems want higher taxes on the wealthy, and Trump has floated that too.
Biden poured another $1.9T into demand while Washington’s own supply constraints stayed in place. It made it easier to buy without making it easier to produce.
Consumer prices are now nearly 30% higher than in 2021. Inflation slowed, but those accumulated increases never disappeared.
Meanwhile, socialist NYC froze rents with just 1.4% of apartments empty. Nobody with a frozen lease moves out, and nobody facing frozen rents and rising costs builds. Supply gets hit with a 1-2 punch.
Dems promise to fight grocery “price gouging” in an industry with 2.1% margins—over 10% of retailers lost cash last year. Restrict what stores can charge without lowering what they pay, and you get fewer stores, not cheaper groceries.
The feds are already running nearly $2T deficits and spending over $1T annually on interest. That borrowing competes with private investment, raising the cost of building the very supply needed to bring prices down.
The clearest price relief Dems are offering is reversing Trump’s tariffs, and that runs through his desk.
On Iran, they want to withdraw without explaining how they’ll secure Hormuz. Leave the IRGC with that leverage, and diesel climbs even higher.
Rs can keep fighting over why they lost. But Dems now have to explain how more subsidies, taxes and regulations will make anything cheaper to produce.
And with the New Right open to some of the same remedies, Rs may not even demand an answer.
I’ll go one further: whoever wins the 2028 election is going to regret it, because they’re inheriting the social security time bomb that’s going to blow up the economy (either through giant spending cuts, giant tax increases, or a debt disaster economic shock) right before the 2032 election.
Unless Dems use a 2028 victory to keep the mused promise to destroy the republic. But maybe there will be enough red state Dem senators and Dem institutionalists with the courage to stand up to that when push comes to shove. I don’t trust the media to sound the alarm, though.
This is a critical point, which for now I’ll narrow to the economic domain. I believe the middle class is so structurally strapped by costs they can’t cut (mortgage/rent, healthcare premiums, childcare/1 income, education costs) that there is essentially NO short-term shock that they can tolerate. That makes us a fragile and brittle country. Even if you don’t believe the Iran war was necessary, this effect isn’t limited to that particular engagement. And it’s fragility which will whiplash on each party in power until it’s alleviated.
tedfrank retweeted
This is a critical point, which for now I’ll narrow to the economic domain. I believe the middle class is so structurally strapped by costs they can’t cut (mortgage/rent, healthcare premiums, childcare/1 income, education costs) that there is essentially NO short-term shock that they can tolerate. That makes us a fragile and brittle country. Even if you don’t believe the Iran war was necessary, this effect isn’t limited to that particular engagement. And it’s fragility which will whiplash on each party in power until it’s alleviated.
I was skeptical of the war from the start, but PEG’s point includes a broader black pill.
I don’t think there is margin in contemporary American politics for any decision that is strategically necessary but politically costly. This is clearly relevant to deficit/debt matters, where neither party has an incentive to pursue the harsh reforms needed to avert continued fiscal/monetary degradation.
There may be paths out if we can achieve high AI-enabled growth, but these remain speculative, and themselves subject to political risks given the unpopularity of Silicon Valley/AI/data centers.
tedfrank retweeted
we have a winner for the most absurd AI startup ever
this Peter Thiel backed company uses AI robots to stab fish in the brain so they taste better and last up to 3x longer
it's called Shinkei and it modernizes a centuries-old Japanese technique
dozens of Michelin-star restaurants are already lining up to buy the fish
here's how it works:
> the problem is when a fish gets caught, it usually just suffocates on the boat
> that stress floods the meat with hormones and lactic acid, which hurts the flavor and texture
> the old Japanese fix for this was spiking the fish through the brain right after the catch, which stops all that
> but doing it by hand is impractical for most American fishing crews
> so Shinkei built a fridge-sized robot that sits right on the boat's deck
> the crew feeds in a fish and AI identifies the exact species, so it knows exactly where the brain and gills are
> the robot then drives the spike through the brain and cuts near the gills in about 7 seconds
> the fish goes into an ice slurry so the blood drains out
> so the fish doesn't sit there stressing out, and that tasty flavor and texture is preserved
example number 5,392,417 of how AI can be applied to literally anything
ALT A gloved fisherman on a boat feeds a live salmon head-first into the steel intake of a white Shinkei Systems robot, with the ocean behind.
tedfrank retweeted
This is a completely underunderstood consequence of last night.
Republicans didn’t just lose seats Tuesday. They lost their bench.
Democrats flipped at least 12 legislative chambers and hundreds of state seats nationwide, their best statehouse night since Watergate. In Pennsylvania they took the Senate for the first time in 48 years.
Nearly half of Congress started in a statehouse. So did Josh Shapiro. Policy is part of this, but so is the pipeline, and the next generation of leaders just changed parties.
washingtonexaminer.com/opini…
tedfrank retweeted
Religious Jews are already asking AI the questions they once brought to a rabbi: Shabbat, kashrut, mourning, how to treat people.
Nobody has measured which way these models lean.
Introducing HashkafaBench: is your AI stringent or lenient?
tedfrank retweeted
BREAKING:
Scientists confirm that an ADHD partner will unconsciously pick a random, stressful argument 20 minutes before leaving for a vacation, a date night, or a road trip—just to manufacture enough adrenaline to survive the transition.
Researchers baffled.
ADHD couples packing the car in icy silence: "Every single trip."
Here is why the "Pre-Vacation Fight" happens, and how to stop it before it ruins your weekend:
tedfrank retweeted
People know court packing is a bright line in the sand between us and permanent leftist tyranny. But a sleeper issue of near magnitude is the destruction of the electoral college by the longstanding Democratic effort to get states to sign onto a compact that pledges their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. If this compact moves from deep blue state legislatures states into some of the swing and even red states Dems won this time around, it’s game over for Republicans in situations like 2016, where the popular vote splits from the Electoral College totals. Worse, it’ll encourage blue states to “run up the score” by throwing the doors open completely to eg illegals, homeless to legally vote. Every vote will run up the total in a meaningful way that will transform national elections, as opposed to just making California more blue. It’ll turbocharge voting fraud beyond anything we’ve seen so far.
Republicans MUST hold the line against this.
It is structural party suicide and a short trip to one-party rule.
dailysignal.com/2026/11/05/d…
tedfrank retweeted
Harmeet Dhillon defended Christians more than Mike Johnson (supposedly a Christian) ever did, she took on anti-white hate, and then people who claim to be "pro-white" and "pro-Christian" attack her. Absolutely disgusting people.
tedfrank retweeted
Sarah Isgur @whignewtons has written a remarkably substantive, informed, insightful, accessible, and entertaining book about the Supreme Court (and much more) which every law student should read before taking constitutional law. And so should those who follow me here.
The war against Iran was good and necessary and it was a political disaster for the administration to fail to even make the case (and for the vice president to repeatedly undermine it).
tedfrank retweeted
Americans are in favor of vouchers 3-to-1 by the way
edchoice.org/wp-content/uplo…
tedfrank retweeted
Every single federal judicial vacancy needs to be filled in the lame duck session. The Senate should pull all-nighters for as long as it takes. Democrats wont confirm a single Trump judge once they take over.
