#James Ho

[myxomycota]

Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa by James Ho

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

There’s Ted Cruz standing next to neo-Nazi billionaire oligarch Harlan Crow who has an autographed copy of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler in that library.

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Ted Cruz wants to subpoena Epstein’s flight logs. He doesn’t want you to know that he and Clarence Thomas both get round trip flights on Neo-Nazi oligarch Harlan Crow’s private jet. Like the time he summoned them to swear in this judge in Crow’s private library. The library where an autographed copy of Hitler’s book Mein Kampf is kept. The library near the infamous “dictator sculpture garden.”

[wtffundiefamilies]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Peter Montgomery at RWW:

The American Family Association’s Center for Judicial Renewal has been urging Republican presidential candidates and senators to adopt its explicit religious test for future Supreme Court justices;  the group is attempting to blackball conservative judges who fail to meet its “biblical worldview” standard. In a fundraising email sent Tuesday, AFA Action CEO Walker Wildmon revealed that the group is also seeking to apply its religious worldview test to judges for the lower courts, which he calls “a crucial, much-needed expansion of CJR’s scope.”

[...] Wildmon’s email also brags about the group’s involvement in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led project to engineer a far-right takeover of the executive branch if Donald Trump or another Republican is elected president this fall.

In spite of promoting an explicit religious test for federal judges—a clear betrayal of the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution—and supporting Project 2025’s authoritarian plan to undermine checks and balances, Wildmon’s email portrays AFA as a defender of the Constitution against “radical progressives” who he claims are “bent on destroying the rule of law altogether.”

Project 2025 partner and far-right hate group American Family Association’s sister organization Center For Judicial Renewal expands their religious litmus test (conservative evangelical Christians preferred) to lower court nominees.

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

Judge James Ho, a Donald Trump appointee who sits on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, is quickly building a name for himself as the biggest crybaby troll on the federal bench. In and out of court, the man is so whiny and obsessed with unjustified grievances, that one expects any day now for him to be outed as "ElliotRodgerFan48" on some low-rent message board. Ho is the judge who argued that, because they didn't take away guns from convicted wife-beaters in the 19th century, the government has no right to do it now. He's the judge who swore he would never hire a Yale graduate because Yale students, using their right to free speech, protested a leader of a hate group. He sneeringly argued that pregnancy cannot ever be a serious medical condition, questioning, "When we celebrated Mother's Day, were we celebrating illness?" He was sworn in by Justice Clarence Thomas at the home of billionaire Harlan Crow, but Ho routinely paints himself as the victim of "elites" like, uh, college students and everyday women who need abortion access. As James LaRock at Balls and Strikes writes, "Ho often confuses being a federal judge with being a speechwriter for a right-wing shock jock's presidential campaign." But even by the sub-Steven Crowder standards of Ho's cringeworthy career, he bests himself his opinion in a recent case on whether the courts can unilaterally throw out FDA approval of mifepristone, which is part of a two-pill regimen to terminate early term pregnancies Ostensibly, the fight is over whether the drug is "dangerous," but even those arguing that point can barely be bothered to pretend to believe it. Abortion pills have been legal since 2000 and have been used over 5 million times. As the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists writes, "serious side effects occur in less than 1% of patients, and major adverse events—significant infection, blood loss, or hospitalization—occur in less than 0.3% of patients. The risk of death is almost non-existent." So instead, Ho decided to argue that women need to be forced into unwanted pregnancies so there are more adorable sonogram pictures to gaze upon. No, I'm not exaggerating. "Unborn babies are a source of profound joy for those who view them," he wrote in his Wednesday opinion. "Expectant parents eagerly share ultrasound photos with loved ones. Friends and family cheer at the sight of an unborn child. Doctors delight in working with their unborn patients—and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted."

[planetofsnarfs]

When the former president Donald Trump appointed the Texas attorney James Ho to the fifth circuit court of appeals in 2017, lawyers at the prominent law firm Gibson Dunn – where Ho worked before his appointment – had a problem: how to replace the politically connected Ho. Turns out, they didn’t even need to change the home address for his replacement. Ho’s wife, Allyson, moved into her husband’s position and his old office.

Few people outside of legal circles have heard of the Hos, yet the couple is tied to the case before the US supreme court that will determine women’s access to mifepristone, a drug commonly used in medication abortions. The court hears arguments in the case on Tuesday.

Ho served on the three-judge panel last summer that ruled to restrict access to mifepristone. The legal group behind the mifepristone case, Alliance Defending Freedom, made at least six payments from 2018 through 2022 to his wife, Allyson, a powerhouse federal appellate lawyer who has argued in front of the supreme court and has deep connections to the conservative legal movement that has led the attack on the right to abortion in the US.

The payments don’t violate the court’s code of conduct, according to Stephen Gillers, a New York University emeritus professor of law and author of Regulation of Lawyers: Problems of Law and Ethics. But some court watchers argue that Ho’s failure to recuse himself from the case illustrates why public trust in the judiciary is eroding.

[kp777]

The next Clarence Thomas? Abortion pill case spotlights rightwing judge and his wife’s shadowy connections

[cerise-grenadine]

so, when @dearestdo3 posted her lovely Pokémon drawing, it made me want to sketch my old team too! well, i should say teamS because i couldn’t choose in the end 😩

so here’s the roundup: (it’s more of what team would represent him rather than who he’d pick of course 🤭) (and it's my AU!Snape so no Lily or does involved)

Young angry Death Eater Sev.

Corvisquire — his patronus is a raven, and although at this age he wouldn’t be able to cast one, i still had to include one bc it represents him quite well. (not too fond of other raven Pokémon, i hesitated with Corviknight but find him too sturdy/metal-looking)

Seviper — he obviously needs a snake Pokémon. not my fave snake design but i usually pick this one for two reasons: can’t ignore that he’s called SEViper, and i like that he is canonically Zangoose’s rival who reminds me of McGonagall/Gryffindor :D

Alolan Marowak — this Sev has traumatic mommy issues so Cubone is a nice pick, and the sinister witchy Ghost evolution is 👌🏻 (tried to draw him in an agressive action pose and failed miserably alas, so he’s just waiting ominously)

Duskull — i had to pick at least one Death Eater Pokémon, so the death mark one it is.

Absol — he’s just there for the gloomy emo vibe 🤌🏻

Crobat — well. he’s a BAT. a COOL BAT.

thought about drawing a Voldie-Serperior in the background and then got lazy so please imagine he's there 😌

Chiller adult Sev. pissed off by his work and moldy voldy coming back, but overall has been working on his issues and is much more in control of himself. healthier habits and hobbies.

Seviper & Corvisquire are still there bc they’re very representative of him

Gloom — i wanted a poison Pokémon for potion reasons. Gloom and her oozing seemed an interesting pick — especially since i accidently gave his gf a Bellossom

Hatterene — she’s so witchy and so gender ✨i felt she was not unlike his adult self, solitary, a bit sinister, magical and graceful.

Umbreon — he’s here for the emo vibes but chiller than Absol

Sinistea — magical tea for the magic British school. again chill vibes but also a little bit dark — fits Sev.

Muireann. what can i say, she’s all fluff and love and music

Blissey — she’s nurturing, she’s caring, she’s wholesome.

Vulpix — she’s also young and fiery

Gourgeist — Gourgeist is a redhead jack-o-lantern, and in French she’s named after banshees, so she made sense in the team of an Irish witch.

Wooloo — a wee happy lamb! also they have the same hairdo.

Bellossom & Meloetta are both here for musical reasons: Muireann is a dancer and singer and music is one of the most important things in her life — she’d have musical Pokémon.

[myxomycota]

Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa by James Ho

[dy3rs3v3]

...And Christmas For All!

With 4 suspiciously Metallica shaped Santas to celebrate ! 🎄

Pics by Ross Halfin

[notwiselybuttoowell]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lisa Needham at Public Notice:

It was likely only a matter of time before right-wing federal judges decided to weigh in on student protests over the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians. And, these judges being the reactionaries they are, their contribution to the discourse is not designed to provide solutions or even to advance a coherent worldview. Instead, it’s just some good old-fashioned hippie-punching. On Monday, 13 federal judges, led by Trump appointees James Ho of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and Lisa Branch of the Eleventh Circuit, sent a letter to the president of Columbia University, Minouche Shafik. They stated they would no longer hire as law clerks anyone who attends Columbia University — the undergraduate and the law school — starting with the entering class of 2024. 

This isn’t the first time Ho and Branch have pulled this stunt. In the fall of 2022, they both declared they would no longer hire law clerks from Yale Law School after students disrupted speeches by right-wing speakers. In March 2023, they extended their boycott to Stanford after students heckled fellow Trump appointee Judge Kyle Duncan. This time around, they’re joined in the letter to Columbia by 11 other Trump-appointed judges (Alan Albright, David Counts, James W. Hendrix, Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, Jeremy D. Kernodle, Tilman E. Self III, Matthew H. Solomson, Brantley Starr, Drew B. Tipton, Daniel M. Traynor, and Stephen Alexander Vaden). The esteemed jurists have three demands for Columbia — but they don’t provide any facts, context, or legal reasoning to underpin them. At only two pages, this is a thin little screed, particularly given that fully one-third of a page is just the list of the judges’ names. 

[...]

Quixotically, the people who will be most hurt by this are conservative students. The progressive students out protesting right now don’t want to clerk for judges like this. Right-wing students who might have contemplated attending Columbia will presumably go elsewhere, meaning the viewpoint diversity the judges demand won’t happen either. When Judge Ho announced his Yale clerk boycott, a Yale student asked him exactly this: “How will we fix the culture of students … if all of the conservatives suddenly boycott Yale with the judges?” Ho didn’t have an answer, instead saying that “if someone has a better idea, I am all ears” and that “the objective is very simple, it’s to restore free speech.” These judges are only part of the current right-wing project to redefine free speech and tolerance as the absence of diversity. They’re joined by people like New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, who has pushed the “great replacement theory” that Democrats are importing millions of undocumented immigrants to replace white voters. This is a theory endorsed by the marchers at Charlottesville and grounded in the antisemitic belief that Jews are behind the plan. These days, Stefanik is a self-styled protector of Jewish students, holding hearings to harangue university administrators over their ostensibly antisemitic behavior and celebrating when she gets them fired.

There’s also Christopher Rufo, who has helped with everything from destroying Florida’s public university system to ousting former Harvard president Claudine Gay. There’s former Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller, whose “America First Legal” law firm exists largely to file lawsuits to block any government initiative that attempts to redress historical wrongs against people of color. And there are any number of feckless state legislators who are eradicating all diversity initiatives in their states. At root, this is a profoundly cynical enterprise. None of this is borne out of concern for Jewish students. Rather, they serve as a convenient prop for the latest iteration of MAGA bombast. None of these people will ever confront the antisemitism at the core of their party and that Trump, their presumptive presidential nominee, has a decades-long history of stoking. These judges will continue to use their lifetime appointments to roll back rights for everyone they don’t like and they will continue to demand that schools show them fealty. Meanwhile, the students they loathe will continue to risk their safety and their future by standing in solidarity with people thousands of miles away. The kids, as they say, are alright.   

13 right-wing judicial activists serving on various federal courts sent a letter to Columbia University’s scandal-tarred President Minouche Shafik that they will not hire any Columbia attender for law clerk positions in the future as part of the overblown right-wing moral panic about antisemitism on college campuses.

[padfootastic]

i just want to put it out there that sirius black is scary as fuck from a purely physical point of view.

he’s tall as shit, has been since fifth year when he got his growth spurt, and he has tendency to loom over most people.

there’s also the matter of his poker face—it’s impeccable, untouchable. can make anyone feel like him stuck to the bottom of his shoe. he learnt it from the best in house black and it’s his default. there’s a reason people are afraid of approaching him, and are slightly awed by james’ ability to unconditionally do so at all times.

his magic is ridiculously sentient. it swirls around him at all times, often feeling suffocating to those near him. he doesn’t even notice how it swells with his emotions, rising in his defence without him having to call it. at times, it can feel like a brick wall, that’s how powerful it is. and it’s cold. people have been known to shiver and turn into metaphorical icicles around him.

and he’s also just intimidating in a—social capital way ykno? so much money, training, and status. it shows. he could be dressed in a potato sack and he’d still reek of royalty. which is essentially what the blacks are.

and this is it u don’t take padfoot into account. this fuckoff huge Grim who’s literally an omen of death, easily twice the size of any human around him, just bounding around with sharp canines on display and malice in his eyes. it’s the easiest thing to piss ur pants when u come into contact w him.