Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Sarah Burris @sarahburris.bsky.social · 5h

I haven't laughed this hard in a while.

The metal reads "Battle of the inflatable frog guy" and has an adorable little frog with a blue handkerchief around his neck. It is a screen capture of a tweet from @MeachamDR

Reposted by Sarah Burris

Sara Spector @miriam2626.bsky.social · 5h

You know why it's Project 2025's goal to subjugate the women?
It's because they know women have the backbone to stand up to authoritarians.
Look at Olivia Troy, Liz Cheney and Cassidy Hutchinson.
Women will save this country if the Republicans don't succeed in disempowering us.

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Julie DiCaro @juliedicaro.bsky.social · 5h

Imagine fancying yourself a captial-J journalist and having Dan Rather say this about you.

I'd quit the field.

Julie DiCaro @juliedicaro.bsky.social · 1d

Dan Rather isn't a fan of Bari Weiss, either.

MAGA Tested, Trump Approved News

A conservative opinion writer is now leading CBS News

substack.com

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Tormented🕷Abroad @jjgass.bsky.social · 5h

When only one district out of 14 is competitive, representative democracy doesn’t work

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 6h

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina announced plans on Monday to redraw the state’s already gerrymandered congressional maps to further favor their party. The most likely target is the First Congressional District, which has the state’s only competitive House seat.

North Carolina Republicans Plan to Redraw Congressional Map to Add a Seat

The Trump administration has pushed Republican leaders to redraw House district maps before the midterm elections next year. His party already holds 10 of North Carolina’s 14 congressional seats.

nyti.ms

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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 5h

Taft wrote some bad history in a mostly forgotten 1926 case about firing a local postmaster, Scalia turbocharged that in a cranky dissent in 1988 that no other justice joined, and now it's a Roberts Court article of faith even though it has zero textual basis and is built on pseudohistory.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 13h

I read Caleb Nelson's piece on the removal power and I was taken with a reference he makes in the conclusion.

When the First Congress confronted the same ambiguities, more than one member warned against interpreting the Constitution in the expectation that all Presidents would have the sterling character of George Washington. The current Supreme Court may likewise see itself as interpreting the Constitution for the ages, and perhaps some of the Justices take comfort in the idea that future Presidents will not all have the character of Donald Trump. But the future is not guaranteed; a President bent on vengeful, destructive, and lawless behavior can do lasting damage to our norms and institutions. As one member of Congress argued in 1789, we should not gravitate toward interpretations of the Constitution that “legaliz[e] the full exertion of a tyrannical disposition.”

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Sarah Burris @sarahburris.bsky.social · 5h

I ended up in a debate about this story because it liberally uses the word "fine" interchangeably with citation. Wouldn't a "fine" be the penalty not the accusation. Could he still go to court with his paperwork and ask that the judge dismiss the fine? Or the charging agent not even show?

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Felipe De La Hoz @felipedlh.bsky.social · 11h

I haven’t seen this reported anywhere yet and I honestly haven’t had time to fully report it out myself but Patel was brought in about three months ago to run the NYC ICE field office with a mandate to increase arrests

emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 13h

"She wants to grab him," Ricky Patel said before he had had any exchange w/Ras Baraka. Even after Baraka left the facility, Patel said, "I’m going to place the Mayor in handcuffs. We are arresting the Mayor, per the Deputy Attorney General of the United States."

www.emptywheel.net/2025/09/29/s...

"She Wants to Grab Him:" The Premeditated Detention of Ras Baraka - emptywheel

Even before anyone had spoken with Ras Baraka on May 9 at Delaney Hall, someone had decided "she" wanted to "grab" Newark's Mayor.

www.emptywheel.net

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Sarah Burris @sarahburris.bsky.social · 5h

I hope this kid's lawyer sees that

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Reposted by Sarah Burris

Ashley DeAzevedo @afuashley.bsky.social · 9h

ANOTHER FAMILY SEPARATED BY OUR IMMIGRATION SYSTEM

Immigration Laws Drive North Carolina Father Out of Country, Separating Him from U.S. Citizen Wife and Two Daughters

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Sarah Burris @sarahburris.bsky.social · 9h

sigh....

bleary @bleary.off-the-records.com · 13h

If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.

Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing?
2? Questions
I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up.
Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?

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Sarah Burris @sarahburris.bsky.social · 13h

Damnit guys.... come on

Republicans celebrate the Navy's birthday — with photos of Russian ships www.rawstory.com/navy-birthday/

Republicans celebrate the Navy's birthday — with photos of Russian ships

Monday marks the 250th birthday of the U.S. Navy and, to commemorate the occasion, some Republican lawmakers and others took to social media to share photos of ships. Unfortunately, they chose ones fr...

www.rawstory.com

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Sarah Burris @sarahburris.bsky.social · 15h

hey at least we can see his damn face

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Reposted by Sarah Burris

Jonah @anotherjonah.bsky.social · 17h

This morning I was filming ICE abducting sometime in Petworth. One of the agents told me "the last US citizen that did this he put in cuffs all the way to the courtroom".

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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 15h

Auspicious start for the new CBS News, laundering unattributed cop shit-talking through the incoming editor-in-chief’s blog and failing to correct a misspelling of the story subject’s name in the web headline for three days.

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Ben K. @benjaminkabak.com · 15h

This is a cross-posted Free Press story which is now 3 days old and uncorrected.

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Sarah Burris @sarahburris.bsky.social · 16h

Trump's cankles are looking rough today

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Reposted by Sarah Burris

Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 17h

People have been eager to read what this former prosecutor at one of the nation’s preeminent U.S. Attorney’s Offices has to say since she resigned in protest and out of principle—she stood up to Emil Bove!—and … this is what she decided to write about?

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 17h

This framing is a bit of a choice:
What happened: Ilya Shapiro and the Federal Society wanted an event on anti-semitism at NYU. Campus officials proposed another day, worried about the anniversary on Oct 7. After pushback, they relented. Is this a cancelation?
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/o...

Opinion | I Resigned as Manhattan’s U.S. Attorney. Law Schools Are Missing the Point of My Story.

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Sarah Burris

Jamal Greene @jamalgreene.bsky.social · 17h

Also, despite the headline, only one law school is mentioned in the piece. This is a classic misinformation tactic.

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 17h

This framing is a bit of a choice:
What happened: Ilya Shapiro and the Federal Society wanted an event on anti-semitism at NYU. Campus officials proposed another day, worried about the anniversary on Oct 7. After pushback, they relented. Is this a cancelation?
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/o...

Opinion | I Resigned as Manhattan’s U.S. Attorney. Law Schools Are Missing the Point of My Story.

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Sarah Burris

Julie DiCaro @juliedicaro.bsky.social · 1d

Per the governments argument, Fitzgerald is refusing to enter into a discovery agreement until the DOJ gives up the names of two anonymous witnesses in Comey’s indictment.

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Reposted by Sarah Burris

Justin Elliott @justinelliott.bsky.social · 1d

Here is our full story that Vance is dismissing, with primary source documents showing Trump cabinet members with multiple primary-residence mortgages

www.propublica.org/article/trum...

www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

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John Collins @logicallyjc.bsky.social · 2d

I don’t think Biden was president on J6.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 1d

The One Big Beautiful Bill cut a trillion dollars from healthcare, Schoolmarm Johnson

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Mike Johnson: "Republicans are the party that are fixing healthcare. We just demonstrated that in the one big beautiful bill."

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Amee Vanderpool @girlsreallyrule.bsky.social · 1d

NO SLOWING on the gun violence this week: there were seven separate mass shooting incidents in the United States where 15 people were killed and 48 were injured.

My Sunday recap covers this and all the critical legal and political details of last week: shero.substack.com/p/shero-on-s...

SHERO on Sunday

A lightning-fast rundown of the week's most significant political and legal events for October 6th - 12th, 2025

shero.substack.com

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Sarah Burris @sarahburris.bsky.social · 1d

One of these days congress really just needs to ban the shadow docket, force cameras in scotus, pass ethics mandates, pass high penalties for a breach of those ethics and maybe it should include an unpaid suspension

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Sarah Burris @sarahburris.bsky.social · 1d

If the cases aren’t resolved there’s no reason to establish it as law then and even less of a reason for any other court to follow the ruling.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Amy Coney Barrett defends heavy use of the shadow docket: "If we wrote a long opinion, it might give the impression that we have finally resolved the issue, and in none of these cases have we finally resolved the issue."

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