Sara Chatfield
@poliscisara.bsky.social
9K followers 3.7K following 1.6K posts
Polisci prof at U of Denver. She/her. American politics and law, American political development, gender & politics, state politics. Opinions represent myself only. Check out my work: https://du.digication.com/sara-chatfield/home
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Reposted by Sara Chatfield
leannecpowner.bsky.social
Just a reminder: I'm happy to offer my Dumpster Fire Fighting for Academics seminar for ANY department that wants it. 60-90 min of practical tips for understanding & coping with doing academic work during chaotic times. Pay what you want. [email protected] to coordinate.
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
gtconway.bsky.social
Apart from helping Comey's selective prosecution defense, this also means the president of the United States uses direct messages on Truth Social to communicate with cabinet officials.

I didn't know that, but we can be sure intelligence agencies all over the planet already did.
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
pbump.com
I guess I should also add that a key difference between the Trump investigation and the Comey indictment is that *Trump did something obviously and significantly wrong*. Like, if you can't grok that distinction as important, I don't know what to say.
poliscisara.bsky.social
I created edited versions of Trump v. CASA (19 pages) and Loper Bright (12 pages) to use with undergraduate students for a class session on judicial power. If you'd find either of these helpful, they can be downloaded here: drive.google.com/drive/folder...

(No promises that these are error-free!)
Edited Cases - Google Drive
drive.google.com
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
anthonymkreis.bsky.social
Illinois asserts an equal sovereignty argument in the state's lawsuit over the deployment of federalized National Guard: "Defendants have trampled these principles by selecting certain politically disfavored jurisdictions – including Chicago and Illinois – for an involuntary [Guard] deployment..."
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
aaronrosspowell.com
As the people who insist otherwise try to burn the country, it's important to affirm that immigrants, from everywhere, are awesome, and America is better the more immigrants we have. You have to be just empty and vapid and unimaginably small to reject that.
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
michaelhobbes.bsky.social
Something fundamental has broken in the brains of elites. No matter how many op-eds they read, write and publish denouncing identity politics, they still think it's a heterodox viewpoint you can't find anywhere.
tressiemcphd.bsky.social
I had a liberal centrist — a professional — once tell me that they engage with more diversity at a Bari Weiss dinner party than they do in any mainstream media event.

I mention this because, just as it is true in politics at the moment, some of the calls are coming from inside the house.
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
winls.bsky.social
The Rooney Democracy Institute at Notre Dame is seeking a postdoc or visiting PhD student in legislative institutions and/or representation, under the direction of Jim Curry, Jeff Harden, and Rachel Porter (@rachelporter.bsky.social)

Applications due November 15th: apply.interfolio.com/175219
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
apply.interfolio.com
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
rincewind.run
like a lot of rapid changes in opinion, this is personal

if you are a sports fan in this demographic, or even sports-adjacent, you almost certainly know someone who has ruined their life with sports betting
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
kwcollins.bsky.social
I need more managers to ask themselves not "how cheap is this?" but "what would you do if an employee made calculation errors in 40% or more of their work?"
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
utaustinaaup.bsky.social
And now the UT System is auditing all courses for “gender ideology.” We haven’t been told what that even means.
utaustinaaup.bsky.social
A thread on the illegality of the Texas Tech president’s letter banning reference to more than two genders. We saw a similar confusion of EO’s with law and a similar overriding of free speech and academic freedom in the Texas A@M case.
jamalgreene.bsky.social
The university president's letter is bananas, and anyone who sends such a letter should not be running an academic institution. A thread. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/u...
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
wolvendamien.bsky.social
…y'know what? fine: Touch the bright red shiny stovetop again. I'm sure this time'll be different & not at *all* massively catastrophic due to the kinds of errors necessarily introduced by LLM-based "AI" systems being especially dangerous for anywhere you'd use *Fucking EXCEL* what is WRONG w/ you?!
poliscisara.bsky.social
"Microsoft says its Agent Mode in Excel has an accuracy rate of 57.2 percent..."

Uhhhhhhhhhh
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
kyledcheney.bsky.social
JUST IN: A U.S. citizen from Alabama who has been detained twice by ICE while working at a construction site, has filed a class action suit claiming ICE's broad warrantless arrest powers violate the constitution. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
tomscocca.bsky.social
Obviously there are plenty of powerful contenders for all-time worst Supreme Court opinion, lots of them from the Roberts Court, many of them this year, but in terms of how much of the opinion was proven how wrong how fast, Kavanaugh and his Kavanaugh Stops are really in rarefied territory
tomscocca.bsky.social
Sup Brett Kavanaugh
Screenshot of text: 

But like in Lyons, plaintiffs have no good basis to believe
that law enforcement will unlawfully stop them in the
future based on the prohibited factors—and certainly no
good basis for believing that any stop of the plaintiffs is
imminent. Therefore, they lack Article III standing:
“Absent a sufficient likelihood” that the plaintiffs “will
again be wronged in a similar way,” they are “no more
entitled to an injunction than any other citizen of Los
Angeles; and a federal court may not entertain a claim by
any or all citizens who no more than assert that certain
practices of law enforcement officers are unconstitutional.”
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
anthonyclark.bsky.social
If you've done in-person research at any of the following presidential libraries in the last 8 months, can you please follow me/contact me—soon—for a story I'm working on (can be off the record)?

Hoover
FDR
Truman
Eisenhower
JFK
LBJ
Ford
Carter

And either way, can you please share this request? 🙏
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
jentaub.bsky.social
“To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police.”

- Judge William Young, September 30, 2025
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
johnhawkinson.bsky.social
OMG this William G. Young opinion that just dropped (12:30pm) in AAUP v. Rubio.
It begins with a postcard sent to Chambers and Young's reply

card: "Trump has pardons and tanks, what do you have?"

WGY: "We the People of the United States — you and me — have our magnificent Constitution"
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
annabower.bsky.social
Young’s opinion, which rules that the Trump admin illegally targeted pro-Palestinian students for deportation, is absolutely scathing.

“In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police…ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and everyone who works in it.”
And there's the issue of masks. This Court has listened
carefully to the reasons given by Öztürk's captors for masking-
up and has heard the same reasons advanced by the defendant Todd
Lyons, Acting Director of ICE. It rejects this testimony as
disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable. ICE goes masked for a
single reason -- to terrorize Americans into quiescence. Small
wonder ICE often seems to need our respected military to guard
them
as they go about implementing our immigration laws. It
should be noted that our troops do not ordinarily wear masks.
Can you imagine a masked marine? It is a matter of honor -- and
honor still matters.
To us, masks are associated with cowardly
desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we
have never tolerated an armed masked secret police.
Carrying on
in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this
administration and everyone who works in it
"We can not escape
history," Lincoln righty said. "[It] will light us down in
honor or dishonor, to the latest generation." Abraham Lincoln,
Second Annual Message to Congress (Dec. 1, 1862) .
Perhaps we're now afraid to stick our necks out. If the
distinguished Homeland Security intelligence agency can be
weaponized to squelch the free speech rights of a small, hapless
group of non-citizens in our midst, so too can the Federal Home
Loan Mortgage Corporation, and the audit divisions of the I.R.s.
and the Social Security Administration be unconstitutionally
[98]
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
jasonv.bsky.social
Absolute all-timer sentence in today's @nytimes.com
"some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily execute civilians" says today's New York Times, continuing their long tradition of whitewashing fascism
Reposted by Sara Chatfield
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
Am I reading this correctly?

A grad student ... in Computer Science ... enrolled in an undergraduate seminar ... in the American Indian and Indigenous Studies program ... where he ignored the readings and hijacked discussions to talk about Israel and defend its actions in Gaza?

What the hell?
nkalamb.bsky.social
Cornell is cancelling a distinguished professor's classes on Gaza and suspending him because of the complaints of a student who previously served in Israel's military surveillance agency and was literally recording the comments of other students in class and deliberately derailing discussion.
Early last semester, Droubi said, students began approaching Cheyfitz with complaints that a graduate student in the “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance” class appeared to be recording them, possibly to “gather their names and comments” and intimidate them. “We believe that a student came to the course for the sole reason of surveilling and potentially harming students in the class,” Droubi said. “That ended up proving itself to be true because multiple students came forward and shared their concerns with Professor Cheyfitz.” Cheyfitz said one Palestinian student quit the class after telling him she felt upset and frightened.

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According to Cheyfitz, the graduate student often steered conversations away from the assigned readings—which at that point mostly focused on definitions of genocide and international law on Indigenous rights—to defend Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza and argue with others in the class. “He clearly had not done the readings,” Cheyfitz said. “It was disruptive.”

Cheyfitz said he met with the graduate student in late January and spoke to him about concerns from his classmates. During the conversation, he asked the graduate student to drop the course, and by the next class, he did, Cheyfitz said. The graduate student, Oren Renard, a PhD candidate in computer science whose identity was confirmed by other students in the class, previously served in Israel’s elite military surveillance agency, Unit 8200, according to his LinkedIn profile.