Lisa Schultz

Library of Congress staff just showed what resistance looks like. After Trump abruptly fired Dr. Carla Hayden, the respected Librarian of Congress, he tried to install Todd Blanche, his former personal lawyer and current Deputy Attorney General, as acting librarian. Staff weren’t having it.

contact local, state and federal officials.

All because I sent an email.

Stay tuned.

I joined Eaton Fire Residents United, an advocacy group that’s on the ground, talking to people and contacting local and state politicians to raise these issues.

Long story short(ish), just this week, we’ve found the right people to help us navigate this and they’re now helping us… (4/?)

ineffective remediations, only to then refuse to pay for testing that would confirm whether the home is still full of lead, asbestos, arsenic, and a variety of other dangerous toxins (spoiler alert: almost certainly).

After my own request for an independent industrial hygienist was declined… 3/?

In the last month, I’ve learned more about the toxins left behind after a wild-urban interface fire (WUI) than I ever thought possible.

Hell, I didn’t even know what a WUI was.

I’ve learned how utterly cruel insurance companies are…forcing policyholders to go through expensive and utterly 2/?

I haven’t been on here much, bc I haven’t had much to say. Now I do.

My house is 2 blocks outside of the #EatonFire burn zone.

When I learned that our house survived, I didn’t understand why it was spared when so many others were not. I knew I was meant to DO something, there was a reason… 1/?

I worked hundreds of hours for the Harris campaign. I was in the #WisDems Boiler Room on Election Day as a volunteer attorney. And I feel nothing.

I didn’t lose my house, but my neighborhood is gone. And I feel nothing.

At some point, all of this is going to hurt *really* bad.

I know I haven’t started processing the #EatonFire yet, and I knew I was disconnected. Everything feels like I’m watching a really vivid documentary about another time and place. My only reaction today has been, “huh, well, that’s gonna suck.” For whoever it’s actually happening to, I guess.

1/2

Finnegan is also struggling. Obviously. #EvacuationCat #EatonFire

Evacuation Day Whatever: this is Teddy, the “feral” cat who lives in our yard. There are 5 other cats plus us in one bedroom. He’s been exactly this chill the entire time. #HeKnows #EatonFire

Scientologists have been making off with truckloads of donations across LA all week. There’s a group of them recruiting “volunteers” in a parking lot by Fair Oaks & Mountain in Pasadena if anyone wants to stop by and…say hello…

Generational Black Homes in LA Reduced to Ash Amid Growing Wildfires As multimillion-dollar mansions in celebrity enclaves dominate headlines, Black communities in Altadena face an uphill battle to rebuild their lives.

Throughout Los Angeles, ash, smoke, wind & flames are rewriting the landscape & although less publicized, Black history.

My latest gets into what is being lost, & how disaster-capitalism + the collapse of the insurance system will make it so much worse. capitalbnews.org/california-w...

This #EatonFire “update” is a fucking joke.

If you don’t want us to come back, give us some FUCKING INFORMATION. Do I still have a house?

Not much could make me laugh right now, but this did it.

Court Cases Learn about the lawsuits that Democracy Docket is keeping an eye on.

Democracy Docket posts court documents and opinions for nearly 1000 voting and election cases for FREE on its website. Check it out. www.democracydocket.com/cases/

If 2025 was a picture…

This is great.

Screenshot of Lexi’s+AI response

Screenshot of Restatement section cited as supporting document by Lexis+ AI.

Then I asked, “what must be established for a cause of action for sexual harassment to succeed under federal law?”

The prompt purposefully could be better. However.

It directed me to…not the statute or case law, which was oddly not hyperlinked…

The RESTATEMENT. 🥴

(See attached screenshots)

I asked Lexis+ AI a series of questions related to CA sexual harassment law (FEHA) and then asked if the plaintiff could sue under federal law.

Yes, it said…and pointed to Title VII, then said there were both similarities and differences between the state and fed laws.

Good, right? Well…

Doing a side-by-side comparison of Lexis+ AI and Westlaw AI-Assisted Research as I do class prep today.

Welcome to 2025. Might as well embrace the dumpster fire on Day One. Wish me luck.

Save the date - January 20 & 27 for an educational antiracism series, “Unpacking White Supremacy in the Classroom: A Call to Action for Reachers and Allies.” Registration link coming soon.

Hey law librarians…this antiracism in the classroom series is geared for teachers and librarians. I asked the facilitator if it is appropriate for graduate school-level educators and she said, “yes, absolutely!”

Registration link coming soon.

That’s interesting. I’m in California and would *love* that. We have no good way to directly access most of that information. Can’t imagine that wouldn’t be financially viable. There are a few lawyers here. 🤣

Especially since AI is not a fact-finding machine. Since it’s looking for language patterns and not yes/no answers to queries, you’re absolutely correct about the best answer it could give…even if the data was 100% complete. Which it never will be.

If only.

Heck, I’d settle for a tool that tells me exactly where to find (or not) different pieces of leg history materials, so I’d know where to start looking.

Like one massive and continuously updated LibGuide.

Not surprised. Lexis does a terrible job of connecting the statute to relevant leg history documents on the non-AI platform. Also, AI is notoriously bad with numbers, so asking it to make connections based on PL numbers, etc. would be disastrous.

Right. So theoretically, WL and Lexis won’t eat their own tails, but ChatGPT, etc. certainly could…and arguably already are.

WL & Lexis’ AI is limited by the underlying data, and I’m skeptical about their commitment to maintaining secondary sources, in particular. Which is another problem.

At what point does GenAI just become the snake eating its own tail - ingesting content that it created, thus creating content that’s even less vetted/accurate?

Or are we already there?

Is it just me, or has Lexis’ regular search functionality (t&c especially) gotten substantially worse in the last few months?

Trying to force us to use the AI or just diverting all of their resources to it and letting the main product wither?

This message deserves repeating!

Let alone actually getting INVOLVED, how are our elected officials supposed to know what our opinions are?

Do we expect them to divine it from the brick wall we screamed at?

Or are we just waiting for a rich, white vigilante murderer to fix it for us?