# Balls & Strikes The official newsletter of Balls & Strikes, each week from Jay Willis Page: Feed: --- ## [The Justice Who Wrote Plessy v. Ferguson Had Some Awful Ideas About Women Voting, Too](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/the-justice-who-wrote-plessy-v-ferguson) _2026-08-14 · Jay Willis_ After Henry Billings Brown stepped down from the Court in 1906, he launched an exciting second career as something of a freelance bigot. ## [Todd Blanche Will Promise Anything Republican Senators Ask](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/todd-blanche-will-promise-anything) _2026-08-07 · Jay Willis_ Trump’s attorney general nominee can’t afford to lose any more votes. Republican senators know it. ## [The Good Stories Are Always Worth It](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/the-good-stories-are-always-worth) _2026-07-31 · Jay Willis_ We’re looking for new contributors to Balls & Strikes. Here’s how to pitch us. ## [I Am Begging Senate Democrats to Do Anything Other Than Help Confirm Trump Judges](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/good-stories-are-always-worth-the) _2026-07-24 · Jay Willis_ Four months before the 2026 midterms, three Democratic lawmakers have decided to give a historically unpopular president a little boost. ## [Anti-Trans Activists Know What the Supreme Court Will Let Them Do Next](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/anti-trans-activists-know-what-the) _2026-07-17 · Jay Willis_ Brett Kavanaugh says that sports are just “different.” The anti-trans activists he’s emboldening do not see things that way. ## [A Brief History of This Bizarre Pro-Management PSA, Starring the Dallas Cowboys and Young Clarence Thomas](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/a-brief-history-of-this-bizarre-pro) _2026-07-10 · Jay Willis_ Among the perks of being chairman of Reagan’s EEOC: getting to film public service announcements with your favorite football team. ## [The Supreme Court Keeps Inviting Trump to Get More Ambitious](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/the-supreme-court-keeps-inviting) _2026-07-02 · Jay Willis_ The justices don’t give Trump everything he wants. But they are very comfortable giving him a lot. ## [Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas Think Police Abuse of Black People Is Kind of Overblown](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/samuel-alito-and-clarence-thomas) _2026-06-27 · Jay Willis_ The conservative justices’ vision of a “color-blind Constitution” is an effort to declare the law powerless to address real-world consequences of illegal discrimination. ## [Clarence Thomas’s War On Affirmative Action Was Never Just About the Law](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/clarence-thomass-war-on-affirmative) _2026-06-18 · Jay Willis_ As law students, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor both had memorably awful experiences—and took very different lessons from them. ## [The Senate Must Not Confirm Any More Trump Judges Who Are This Bad at Parking](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/the-senate-must-not-confirm-any-more) _2026-06-12 · Jay Willis_ A closer look at Judge Ryan Nelson’s deeply embarrassing bid to fight a stranger in a mostly empty parking lot. ## [Pirate.io on Google Play (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/YOdt0nqNmkuf) _2026-06-12 · **Sponsored**_ Open the Pirate.io listing on Google Play to view the app’s details. ## [“Thank You Very Much, I Love You Sir” Is Somehow a Real Todd Blanche Quote About Donald Trump](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/thank-you-very-much-i-love-you-sir) _2026-06-05 · Jay Willis_ Things at the Justice Department are going to get way, way worse before they get better. ## [There Are No Serious People In the Trump Justice Department](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/there-are-no-serious-people-in-the) _2026-05-29 · Jay Willis_ The nation’s top law enforcement agency is now a law firm that serves only the president’s personal interests, and bills its time to you and me. ## [Senate Democrats Are Not Taking Their Jobs Seriously](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/senate-democrats-are-not-taking-their) _2026-05-22 · Jay Willis_ If Trump is picking judicial nominees who will serve as “MAGA loyalists,” why are you voting to confirm any of them? ## [Trump DOJ Lawyer Correctly Describes Congress’s History of Circumcising Presidential Power](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/trump-doj-lawyer-correctly-describes) _2026-05-15 · Jay Willis_ During oral argument in the cases about Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms, a Justice Department lawyer brought up a very different form of severability. ## [The Justice Department Offers America’s Least Employable Lawyers $25,000 to Humiliate Themselves In Public](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/the-justice-department-offers-americas) _2026-05-09 · Jay Willis_ In response to an ongoing staff shortage, the Trump administration launches a real-world experiment to see how much an attorney’s reputation is worth. ## [The Republican Justices Want to Help Republican Politicians Win Elections](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/the-republican-justices-want-to-help) _2026-05-01 · Jay Willis_ The Supreme Court just issued a decision making it easier for lawmakers to racially gerrymander their states. Republicans are already racing to take advantage. ## [Originalist Judges Are Spitting On the Constitution and Think You Won’t Notice](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/originalist-judges-are-spitting-on) _2026-04-23 · Jay Willis_ A law in Texas requires every public school to display the Ten Commandments in every single classroom. No problem, says the Fifth Circuit. ## [The Most Offensive Thing a Supreme Court Justice Can Do Is Be Honest About the Supreme Court](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/the-most-offensive-thing-a-supreme) _2026-04-17 · Jay Willis_ The legal profession has no problem with Clarence Thomas publicly railing against the evils of progressivism, as long as he doesn’t mention any colleagues by name. ## [Brett Kavanaugh’s Colleagues Are Getting Awfully Tired of Brett Kavanaugh](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/brett-kavanaughs-colleagues-are-getting) _2026-04-09 · Jay Willis_ Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s comments about the Supreme Court’s recent racial profiling case are just more evidence that Kavanaugh’s colleagues kind of hate his guts. ## [One Cloud, Every AI Layer (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/10ZzbzN4LNXl) _2026-04-09 · **Sponsored**_ Run agents, inference, and infrastructure on one stack — economics improve as you scale. ## [Pam Bondi Was Bad. Trump’s Next Attorney General Will Be Worse](https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/pam-bondi-was-bad-trumps-next-attorney) _2026-04-02_ Trump gets rid of Cabinet members for one reason: He’s decided that his interests would be better served by an even more obedient loyalist.