@debpearlstein.bsky.social
Director, Program on Law & Public Policy, Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs. Charles & Marie Robertson Visiting Professor of Law & Public Affairs. Still teaching Con law, still aiming to get out of the new social media market.
Incredible scenes from today's pro-Magyar, anti-Orban rally in Budapest. Only 4 weeks left until the most consequential election in the EU this year
🇪🇺🇭🇺
“legally evacuated to the U.S. after the fall of Kabul”
Judge Boasberg quashed subpoenas issued by the US Attorney’s Office in DC against the Federal Reserve, with the judge finding the govt presented “no evidence whatsoever” of a crime that could be properly investigated and that, as such, “asserted justifications for these subpoenas are mere pretexts.”
Looks greener and slightly more English than I remember.
Major Alex Klinner has been named by his family as the 2nd of 6 US service members killed in Thursday’s refueling operation to support the US war against Iran. He leaves behind a wife and three children. (Photos from GoFundMe set up to support the family www.gofundme.com/f/major-alex...)
Department of Homeland Security leaders removed top privacy officers who objected to mislabeling government records to block their public release, WIRED has learned.
Happy Pi Day to all who celebrate. 🥧
this is just open and abject corruption, but the way U.S. journalism frames it you'd not really understand that there's anything untoward
Judge Boasberg's opinion quashing subpoenas to Fed Reserve chair Jerome Powell: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
“For presidents, broadly speaking, lying is not against the law. For lawyers pursuing a president’s agenda, however, it’s a very different story,” Deborah Pearlstein writes about the latest front in Trump’s war on the independence of the legal profession.
"The move against state bars is of a piece with the administration’s broader strategy against universities, the media, law firms — any set of organizations capable of challenging the president’s power. And few things threaten it more than holding it to the truth."
Upcoming Voter Registration Deadlines for 2026 Primaries
• Tue, 3/17: ILLINOIS - in-person
• Mon, 4/6: INDIANA and OHIO - in-person, mail and online
• (Tue, 4/14: VIRGINIA - mail and online for redistricting referendum)
• Wed, 4/15: LOUISIANA - in-person, mail and online
More at npr.org/vote
DOD aims to do to Anthropic what Trump did to the law firms, universities, etc. However you feel about AI, huge news that Microsoft filed a court brief Tuesday supporting Anthropic’s lawsuit against the Pentagon. "[A] momentous decision for one of the largest government contractors around." Bravo.
A proposed rule from the Trump admin aiming to block independent ethics investigations of DOJ lawyers “would severely limit the courts’ ability to offer any kind of independent check on the executive branch,” argues Deborah Pearlstein in today’s NYT.
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/o...
Too much to keep track of, but don't sleep on AG Bondi's new proposed rule that would let DOJ lawyers avoid key ethics checks that prohibit lying to court. Ratcheting up the assault on courts & the reality-based world at the same time. Mine in today's NYT. (Gift Link)
As Executive Director of the Society for the Rule of Law, and a former Republican Chief Nominations Counsel, I was immensely proud to join these briefs.
These cases dramatically illustrate the importance of the separation of powers in protecting our liberty.
Extraordinary. And a long, long, long time coming.
Unsealed shareholder lawsuit against Intel for selling a 10% stake to the federal govt seeks to void sale, alleging Intel board "advised by legal counsel [Skadden, Arps] that itself was conflicted due to its pro bono promises to the president, caved to the govt's extortion."
Unsealed shareholder lawsuit against Intel for selling a 10% stake to the federal govt seeks to void sale, alleging Intel board "advised by legal counsel [Skadden, Arps] that itself was conflicted due to its pro bono promises to the president, caved to the govt's extortion."
So you’re already registered to vote?
You sure about that?
Eligible voters can be removed from lists if they have moved, changed their name or haven't voted in a while.
You can find the links for checking your status at npr.org/vote
Someone just posted about how they don't care if their students use AI as long as the text conveys the ideas the students meant to convey. The thing is, you don't know exactly what you think until you write it. And if some prefab thing pops up, you're liable to decide that was what you thought.
"Once universities and their allies recovered from their shock and challenged Trump, they were able to block many, if not most, of the White House’s moves in court. Trump has certainly left his mark on America’s universities. But he has not broken them."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Recall that the Trump family crypto business has profited enormously from Binance support.
Pretty sure this is what they used to call war profiteering.
Important ruling on immigration operations in Minnesota
Judge Tostrud (Trump appointee):
"Plaintiffs have made a clear showing that Defendants have adopted a POLICY authorizing federal immigration officers to conduct investigatory stops based on ethnicity or race without reasonable suspicion."
1/
Crucially important read:
The DHS is abusing its power to brand American protesters as terrorists.
WSJ: 181 of the 279 “people accused by officials on X of attacking federal officers in the past year” are U.S. citizens.
About 1/2 never charged.
0 convicted.
www.wsj.com/us-news/immi...
A water desalination plant is presumptively a civilian object & it is an object indispensable to survival.
Targeting a civilian object is a war crime.
Targeting an object indispensable to survival can implicate the starvation war crime.
NB: carnegieendowment.org/emissary/202...
OpenAI head of robotics just resigned over company deal with the Pentagon saying…
“Surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got”
An imperfect solution to something that should never have been a problem. But there's something fitting about the fact that this went up at the hands of AOC employees who simply showed up to do their jobs today, just as the folks it honors did on Jan. 6. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...