Deborah Pearlstein

Not that long ago, three major lower-court rulings against the executive branch on three unrelated topics would’ve been a busy *month,* and outlets would’ve rushed to write up such a run of adverse rulings. Now, it doesn’t feel unusual when we get three on the same *day.* It’s all … exhausting.

Now completely reassessing my long-held position never to run for mayor of New York.

A 2025 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Omar Yaghi is the son of Palestinian refugees who grew up in Jordan. He just left the US to move to China after raising concerns about rising anti-immigrant sentiment, like the kind shown here. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/china-than...

Grateful @marcelias.bsky.social took the time to speak with us at @plawpu.bsky.social this busy time of year (and great to have @kevinmkruse.bsky.social there too!). You can now catch the video of his talk under past events at the link. plaw.law.princeton.edu

Here's the excerpt I think @kyledcheney.bsky.social meant to append:

What it looks like when you believe, in the words of our current Attorney General, that prosecutorial independence is "a myth."

Election Officials Warn That Ballots Tied To Stray Cat Unlikely To Arrive In Time https://theonion.com/election-officials-warn-that-ballots-tied-to-stray-cat-unlikely-to-arrive-in-time/

No doubt headed to SCt. The case pits the idea of prosecutorial independence from politics (and a non-partisan civil service) against the SCt's embrace of unitary executive theory on steroids. Hugely consequential.

Exclusive: The U.S. Military Academy at West Point continues to require top officials to review its civilian professors’ requests to speak at external events, despite a federal judge’s ruling that such a mandate is unconstitutional.

Huge DCt ruling: AG is bound by laws barring firing fed prosecutors w/o cause. (This case brought by fmr prosecutor Maureen Comey, almost certainly fired in retaliation against her dad.) Headed to the SCt, this case is abt preserving prosecutorial independence & a non-spoils-system civil service.

"AI model Claude bypassed a paywall ​and accessed publicly available US ‌state of Georgia aggregate voter counts without human authorization, Anthropic said in a ​statement on Sunday."

Breaking News: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated Flávio Bolsonaro to stay president of Brazil, halting the right’s march in Latin America. Follow live updates. nyti.ms/47GKOQJ

Yes, and here too. Nonetheless, definitely taking a moment to appreciate a remarkably good night for the cause of constitutional democracy.

Lula has been reelected president, Brazilian media has now called. An extraordinary comeback for the left-wing politician who trailed by 2 points in round 1 but managed to hold off Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president's son.

⚠️ Social media = polarization machine ‼️ 👉 Extreme ideologues post more 👉 People are more likely to post extreme positions "...robust evidence that online discourse severely over-represents extreme perspectives" = "prediction of false polarization." Important preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Huge event. Failed Jared Kushner/Trump luxury hotel project planned for Belgrade played a role in starting expanded protests against Vucic.

look, nothing is simple and i have no parsimonious explanation for anything here, but a student protest movement, focused on corruption & authoritarianism, just won a major european election. a big deal.

Political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security wanted CISA, an agency that protects election systems, to acquire and hack a voting machine, which shocked staffers. “This goes against everything CISA represents,” a former official said.

+2 early in person in Princeton, NJ, with a steady, fast-moving line all day 🎉 Feels good.

Wanna understand the difference between the lawyers calling the shots in Trump 1.0 vs. Trump 2.0? Boy do I have the book for you - mine, now available for pre-order! a.co/d/0330OVtL. And yeah, I'll have more to say about this soon....

Hey law faculty friends - have a sabbatical year coming up and interested in spending it with us? Applications now open! 👇

This is a broken market, and an essential read from @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social and @adambonica.bsky.social newrepublic.com/article/2163...

Hey law faculty friends - have a sabbatical year coming up and interested in spending it with us? Applications now open! 👇

TODAY (Saturday, Oct. 24) is the deadline for registering to vote for the midterms in: - MASSACHUSETTS - NEW YORK And coming up next: Sat, 10/31 — North Carolina (in-person) More at npr.org/vote

New: White House attorneys are evaluating whether to issue mass pardons to junior staffers. https://www.washingtonsun.com/whitehouse/white-house-weighing-mass-pardons-for-junior-staff

#earlyvote morning update 10/24: at least 25 million people have voted in the 2026 general election 🥳 election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2...

Trump has made more stock trades in his second term than all 535 members of Congress combined.

From my @slate.com piece on Alaska: slate.com/news-and-pol...

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) raised more than $1.5 million in campaign funds on the day and day after the federal government searched her home in D.C. this month, according to a Post analysis.

As usual, Chris' characterization of the merits is pretty on the nose. The suit will not succeed. But as with much of Trump driven litigation, it's not about winning - it's about making news, draining resources, and casting doubt.

Already. Such an ominous sign of the volume of litigation awaits in the post-election period...

NEW, from Bloomberg News: “Elon Musk has now given more than $445 million in the current election cycle.”

Once mass spam texts were made legal, younger donors vanished, leaving a grassroots fundraising machine that subsists on squeezing vulnerable seniors, some of whom give hundreds of times a day. It’s a horrific model. Consultants get generationally wealthy, and the party hollows out its future.

Voting starts long before you walk into the polls. Make sure you're prepared by checking your state’s ID requirements today. Find out how with our guide here: https://protdem.org/4sherlb

Democratic US Senator Richard Blumenthal on Thursday said he had opened an inquiry into Ukraine's loss of critical access to the Pentagon's Starshield satellite communications service and the resulting degrading of Kyiv's ability to defend itself against Russian attacks.

Not a surprise from this administration, but both unlawful and incredibly destructive of effective governance. www.washingtonsun.com/administrati...

Scoop from @brettlogiurato.bsky.social: CBS has sold its local election night coverage to DraftKings, stirring more controversy inside the David Ellison-owned company. Details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/cbs-draftk...

A Florida appeals court on Wednesday referred a lawyer to the Florida bar for possible professional discipline after finding her filings in a case bore hallmarks ​of generative AI output that the panel of judges called “AI slop.” @mikescarcella.bsky.social reut.rs/4z4CmXF

Dear registered voters, When was the last time you checked your registration status and verified your current name and address? You can find the links you need to do that at npr.org/vote

At a time when we have literally never needed them more.

Gift link - FOIA ftw U.S. Begins Disclosing C.I.A. Interview Reports From Scrutiny of Post-9/11 Torture The rolling release of long-secret files could add detail to the history of a legally disputed Bush-era counterterrorism program. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/20/u...

My brain cannot process this level of corruption. She was being paid $50 million to engineer a pardon from Trump *while working at the Justice Department* as a "Special Government Employee." And it worked. He got the pardon, and she got the money. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/20/u...

NEW: Lindsay Graham and Jim Clyburn were under FBI investigation for bribery. Then Trump dismantled the DOJ & FBI public corruption units. The investigation died. We unearthed it: www.propublica.org/article/nava...

Because four of the Justices have book contracts with a party's corporate parent, the Supreme Court LACKS A QUORUM to hear BMG v. Vetter, and one of the worst copyright decisions in recent memory is affirmed by default. It's just one bad look after another. www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docke...

From 1982-2018 the RNC that Rodgers invokes was under a federal consent decree that restricted its ability to engage in "ballot security measures" to intimidate voters. This is why. There is a reason Rodgers talks about Detroit and no other part of the state. Same reason as always.

Is this a joke?

"In the recent attorney general lawsuits against OpenAI, each of the 8 states-Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska & W. VA-brought separate cases in their respective state cts...[Some cases] deal w/ChatGPT users who were allegedly coaxed by the chatbot into killing themselves."

apply.interfolio.com/195460 new post-doc at Princeton: AI as a "cultural technology" — its role across arts & humanities & knowledge infrastructures, AI's societal effects on creative & cultural industries (literature, music, film, visual arts). Looking humanistic approaches to AI systems!

Christiane Amanpour’s note announcing her coming departure from CNN contains her trademark admonition to journalists: Remember: always be truthful, not neutral. www.cnn.com/2026/10/19/m...