Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

You’ve seen "You Can See Everything." Now you can see everything Elizabeth Holmes said under oath. I rounded up the full transcripts from her criminal trial, plus video of her 2017 SEC deposition. See it on Slip Opinion, and subscribe (it's free) for more: annabower.substack.com/p/you-can-se...

A bit of a heads up here: I’ll be out of touch and offline for the next 10 days or so on personal business. Apologies that I won’t be chiming in on any last minute immigration issues before the election, but hopefully some of the other excellent people on this site will cover any gaps!

This is distressing to me, personally. Because I live in a neighborhood that was really struggling circa 2022, largely because of the struggling restaurant industry, which was struggling partly because of crime. And it’s really struggling right now. Arguably worse. Largely bc of Trump.

I recently had to block this guy because I found him to be one of the most bad faith legal commentators on X, who claimed to be an expert in immigration law despite little relevant experience, and because his follower base would flood my mentions with insults and ignorance. That made him really mad.

I expect 9th Circuit to dismiss DOJ's motion in California ballot case tonight or tomorrow, and for DOJ to file next at the Supreme Court, where they are likely to lose (if for no other reason that the district court will likely rule on the TRO before SCOTUS considers case)

Thread 🧵: the fraudulent transgender mailers have a connection back to Dallas, Texas, where a local Republican megadonor used a similar playbook years ago when he funded a fake BLM group to send letters to wealthy white parents that were designed to discredit the BLM movement.

Three times in the past two days, Elon Musk tweeted out "Live by the sword, die by the sword." He was responding to suggestions that he and his business interests will soon be facing a lot more scrutiny. Two of his three tweets were in response to us at The Bulwark.

Elon is losing his mind. 🍿

Impatient Federal Government Asks Ninth Circuit to Rule in California Ballot Case by Saturday; Ninth Circuit Orders Responses to Be Filed by that Time [Corrected headline] electionlawblog.org/2026/impatie...

Once upon a time, Americans took pride that people would leave other countries and come to the USA because it was so much better

The Fifth Circuit upheld the administration’s policy of mandatory detention for noncitizens who have entered the country without inspection, saying that the Constitution's Fifth Amendment due process protections do not require that these individuals receive bond hearings.⁠ nipnlg.org/news/press-r...

FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Trump says he ordered the Justice Department lawsuit over Alaska's US Senate race: 'I'm the one that said do it.'

Read @immcouncil.org's statement about this awful decision. www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/press-releas...

Yglesias says re: Minneapolis, as a defense against the idea that oppostion was wrong, that "I mean, what it took in Minnesota to turn that around, they killed multiple U.S. citizens." That's true! But it also took Bloody Sunday and similar incidents to galvanize national support for civil rights.

Follow @gillianbrockell.com for the latest on this while I’m conferencing. TRO motion: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Oil hits $115 a barrel for the first time since May, adding to the economic strain just 11 days before critical midterm elections that may turn in part on affordability. @iankmsmith.ft.com @urbandirt.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/8948...

we gotta figure out a better way to write headlines about this thing that cannot and will not happen

Carter has since issued a scheduling order that... basically ignores the DOJ shenanigans and moves forward with his hearing set for next week.

Brent crude oil prices surge above $117/barrel for the first time since March 19th amid fears that the US will renew strikes on Iran.

NEW: DOJ charges two former FBI officials who came under criticism from Trump allies with lying to Congress.

We have, somehow, reached a heretofore unprecedented level of bad-faith argument from DOJ.

“Nobody is safe” under mass deportation, said Rep. @fernandez.house.gov. More than 500 U.S. citizens have been targeted and detained under Trump’s deportation agenda. Some have even been deported. Yet the administration continues to deny these abuses. ✍️: @tusk81.bsky.social + @yunao08.bsky.social

By every measure, Opus 4.8 beats human experts as peer reviewers in a study of 124 Harvard social science papers covering a range from statistical analyses to formal models to qualitative work. As academics, we need to figure out how to adapt the practice of science to AI, and we need to do it fast

I’m not sure the Panopticon is still a relevant metaphor. The point there was that a concealed machinery of surveillance could make everyone behave AS IF surveilled, even though the watchers could only observe a few people at once. We seem to have effectively superceded that technical limitation.

Hey transparency folks, heads up that ICE says it's going to be implementing a new FOIA request form: www.federalregister.gov/public-inspe...

I'm back doing some video content! This one on noncitizen voting. Check it out!

How may cases of noncitizen voting occurred in past elections? Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick breaks down the myths that surround noncitizen voting, revealing that cases are extraordinarily rare and never impacted the outcome of a single election.

The mention of Mahoning County got my attention. ICE has detained people at the Mahoning County Jail since April 2025.

The Panopticon was a thought experiment but the technology is now genuinely there to make it a reality and we have to grapple with what that means for us as a society. /yes, I am aware that others countries had this debate and went with total surveillance decades ago.

The Executive Branch has no authority to regulate states’ election decisions as to candidate qualifications, and the choice to file a lawsuit like this just days before an election speaks volumes about the political corruption festering at the top levels of the DOJ.

With citizenship approvals slowing, would-be voters are left in limbo: backlogs in naturalization applications rose from about 500,000 cases at the start of the second Trump administration to more than 800,000 as of August www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...

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.

Note, however, the Ninth Circuit has "not, as yet, adopted a 'chutzpah doctrine' as the D.C. Circuit has; nor joined the Federal Circuit in giving 'chutzpah awards', nor conducted a 'chutzpah championship,' as does the Court of Federal Claimss." U.S. v. Sar-Avi, 255 F.3d 1163, 1169 (9th Cir. 2001).

Chutzpah Department: After Federal District Court Failed to Act within Hours on DOJ “Request” to Expedite TRO Hearing in California Ballot Case, DOJ Already Appealing to the Ninth Circuit electionlawblog.org/2026/chutzpa...

The is a motion on the El Paso City Council meeting for 27, October to discuss calling on the City Manager and City Attorney to draft a resolution to call for the closure of Camp East Montana. The motion was presented by City Council Reps. Josh Acevedo and Lily Limón.

He is remarkably consistent in supporting alleged perpetrators and enablers of sexual violence and attacking their victims

"In June of last year, the Mexican government began to receive a steady stream of deported Cubans over 60, most of whom had been in the States for decades." From @dawnpaley.bsky.social www.theborderchronicle.com/banishing-th...

NEWS: The website and social media accounts for pollster SoCal Strategies have been taken offline after FiftyPlusOne reached out to the firm Tuesday to verify data quality and potential ties to Wedgewood Polls, which admitted to fabricating data this week. blog.fiftyplusone.news/p/more-polls...

“Departures from these practices should never be countenanced because they risk allowing prosecutors to impact national elections.” -Todd Blanche on DOJ’s 60-day rule, September 2024

Because this has some traction, here's our reporting from February on the warehouse putsch.

Blanche had a very different view of that rule when he represented Trump.

For anyone wondering about how the Louise Lucas indictment relates to DOJ's so-called "60 day rule" about pre-election actions, Jack Goldsmith wrote about the purported rule for @lawfaremedia.org in October 2024: www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what...

1. The Wall Street Journal and CBS News confirmed that Elon Musk was involved in the decision to stall out Starshield, the military version of Starlink, when Ukraine needed it most. www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-mu...