Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Mary Dudziak

Rebecca Ingber @becingber.bsky.social · 17h

TLDL: still murder after all these weeks

Just Security @justsecurity.org · 19h

Murder on the High Seas Part II: What We Know about U.S. Vessel Strikes One Month In

@tessbridgeman.bsky.social and Rachel Goldbrenner are joined by @becingber.bsky.social and @bcfinucane.bsky.social to analyze the U.S. military campaign in the Caribbean.

www.justsecurity.org/122025/podca...

The Just Security Podcast: Murder on the High Seas Part II -- What We Know about U.S. Vessel Strikes One Month In

Tess Bridgeman and Rachel Goldbrenner are joined by Rebecca Ingber and Brian Finucane to analyze the U.S. military campaign in the Caribbean.

www.justsecurity.org

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 1d

Not happening somewhere else. Here. In America. Right now.

Molly Jong-Fast @mollyjongfast.bsky.social · 1d

CHICAGO (AP) — Storming an apartment complex by helicopter as families slept. Deploying chemical agents near a public school. Handcuffing a Chicago City Council member at a hospital.

apnews.com/article/chic...

Using helicopters and chemical agents, immigration agents become increasingly aggressive in Chicago

Activists, residents and elected leaders say increasingly combative tactics used by federal immigration agents are sparking violence and fueling neighborhood tensions in the nation’s third-largest cit...

apnews.com

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Mary Dudziak @marydudziak.bsky.social · 1d

Has Trump’s second term posed a greater or lesser threat to the rule of law than you expected? @nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/m...

Has Trump’s second term posed a greater or lesser threat to the rule of law than you expected?
Circular graph showing over half answered: much more than I expected, about a quarter: more than I expected, about an eighth: similar threat to what I expected, small sliver: much less threat than I expected.

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Maggie Blackhawk @maggieblackhawk.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks so much, Mary! Deadline 10/10 to apply for the free seminar for junior faculty and grad students on Native peoples and the Constitution.

Mary Dudziak @marydudziak.bsky.social · 4d

What a great opportunity! Seminar Native Peoples, American Colonialism and the Constitution with @maggieblackhawk.bsky.social & Ned Blackhawk for grad students & "junior" faculty. In person & virtual. Apply by 10/10.
www.nyhistory.org/education/in...

The New York Historical’s Bonnie and Richard Reiss Graduate Institute for Constitutional History is accepting applications for its fall 2025 seminar for advanced graduate students and junior faculty.
seminar | fall 2025

Native Peoples, American Colonialism, and the US Constitution

Fridays, November 7 and 21, December 5 and 12, 2025 | 11 am–2 pm ET
Instructors: Maggie Blackhawk, Ned Blackhawk

As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, this seminar invites a critical examination of a central paradox in American constitutional history: how can a nation celebrate a founding document and constitutional tradition built, in part, on the dispossession of Indigenous homelands? Indian affairs and westward expansion were foundational to the creation and evolution of the US Constitution, yet Native history remains marginalized within the fields of constitutional history and mainstream constitutional scholarship. This seminar explores emerging historical and legal literature that re-centers Native peoples and American colonialism in the narrative of US constitutional development.

Presented in person at The New York Historical and via Zoom

Apply by October 10, 2025

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Professa Murray @kalimurray.bsky.social · 2d

We are having an important debate about method in legal history here: that is, what is appropriate method for understanding the founder’s intent? @kexelchabot.bsky.social and @jedshug.bsky.social have both stressed we need to understand it from the first laws passed by Congress.

Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 2d

The very first statute authorizing domestic use of the military during domestic emergencies, enacted in 1792 by a Congress full of the same folks who wrote and ratified the Constitution, expressly provided for judicial review in certain circumstances *before* the President could even send troops.

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Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 3d

BREAKING: A federal judge has granted a restraining order blocking President Trump's call-up of the National Guard in Portland.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

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Asawin Suebsaeng @swin24.bsky.social · 3d

I only have a second rn but: For the uninitiated, Zeteo is a new media company, a startup from former msnbc host Mehdi Hasan. One of my rolling stone editors and I came over to help scale up the political reporting / scoops operations. It is, in my humble opinion, one of the most exciting news…

Windypundit @windypundit.com · 3d

I like your work, but what the heck is Zeteo? Would you mind taking a few minutes to sell us on it? Who’s running it? What are they trying to do? Why is it so great?

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Mary Dudziak @marydudziak.bsky.social · 3d

Rest in power Ann Fagin Ginger, who was 100. Here she is telling UC Berkeley students during the Free Speech Mvt. that they had 1st Amendment Rights. A model for our own time.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/u...

Photograph of a woman at a microphone surrounded by a very large crowd of protesters.

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John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 3d

You.
Are.
Allowed.
To.
Insult.
The.
Police.

It’s a core First Amendment principle. This is utterly lawless behavior, for which there will be no (short-term) consequences.

That he does it so casually, as they are walking away, in front of cameras.

Rightly confident in his impunity.

“[t]he freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.”

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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 3d

Resolution of the University of Virginia Faculty Senate (thus not institutional policy and entirely non-binding, but still inspirational):

Resolution Opposing the
"Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education"
WHEREAS the United States Secretary of Education has requested that the University of Virginia enter into a "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education", and WHEREAS the Compact contains provisions antithetical to the mission and traditions of the University, and
WHEREAS the Compact contains provisions which endanger the independence and integrity of the University, and
WHEREAS the compact likely violates state and federal law, and infringes upon the constitutional rights of members of the University community, and WHEREAS the University of Virginia exemplifies American academic values of the highest standard, including universal right to free speech and the cultivation of academic freedom; therefore
BE IT RESOLVED that the Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia firmly opposes this Compact as written and calls upon Interim President Mahoney and the Board of Visitors to also reject this Compact outright as well as any similar proposal compromising the mission, values, and independence of the University.
Feature Date:
Friday, October 3, 2025

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Amy Kristin Sanders @amykristinsanders.bsky.social · 3d

Know a law student interested in Communication/Media Law?

Applications are open for the Forum on Communications Law's Annual Conference and Media Advocacy Workshop scholarships to attend the February 2026 conference in Phoenix.

Application information available on the Forum's website.

Media Advocacy Workshop 2025-2026 Law Student Scholarship Program

Now in its 31st year, the American Bar Association’s Forum on Communications Law is pleased to invite law students to apply for financial support to attend its Media Advocacy Workshop and Annual Confe...

www.americanbar.org

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Jameel Jaffer @jameeljaffer.bsky.social · 4d

Don’t believe anyone who tells you that intelligence shows anything “without a doubt,” but even if the intelligence was water-tight, this strike was still murder. No law permits the deliberate, premeditated killing of civilians.

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Sam Bagenstos @sbagen.bsky.social · 4d

“'This is cruelty for cruelty’s sake,' said a senior congressional aide briefed on the plan. 'Targeting children — threatening their parents — offering them cash to give up safety — this is not immigration enforcement. It’s blackmail.'" open.substack.com/pub/migranti...

BREAKING: ICE Hunts Children in Twisted 'Freaky Friday' Operation

Operation targets unaccompanied children as young as 14 — with threats, bribes, and family arrests if they refuse to self-deport.

open.substack.com

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Mary Dudziak @marydudziak.bsky.social · 4d

What a great opportunity! Seminar Native Peoples, American Colonialism and the Constitution with @maggieblackhawk.bsky.social & Ned Blackhawk for grad students & "junior" faculty. In person & virtual. Apply by 10/10.
www.nyhistory.org/education/in...

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Charlie Savage @charliesavage.bsky.social · 7d

In case useful, I made a chart (with CourtListener links) of the newly disclosed attorney-client privilege material from the Trump J6 and docs grand jury investigations, and how they compares to the executive privilege-focused files that became public last October.

charliesavage.com/2025/09/newl...

Newly Revealed Material About Attorney-Client Privilege and Grand Jury Subpoenas in Trump’s Election and Documents Cases - Charlie Savage

Yesterday, Judge James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, made public some previously secret material about attorney-client privilege fights in th...

charliesavage.com

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Charlie Savage @charliesavage.bsky.social · 5d

Trump ‘Determined’ the U.S. Is Now in a War With Drug Cartels, Congress Is Told

A notice calls the people the U.S. military recently killed on suspicion of drug smuggling in the Caribbean Sea “unlawful combatants.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/u...

Trump ‘Determined’ the U.S. Is Now in a War With Drug Cartels, Congress Is Told

www.nytimes.com

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Brian Finucane @bcfinucane.bsky.social · 5d

Spoke with @charliesavage.bsky.social about how the administration is trying to backfill a legal rationale for US strikes in the Caribbean.

Seems by "determining" there is an armed conflict—without any basis in fact or law—POTUS is giving himself a license to kill.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/u...

Trump ‘Determined’ the U.S. Is Now in a War With Drug Cartels, Congress Is Told

www.nytimes.com

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 5d

Surreal moment for America. Needless to say, if the normal police ever pulled something like this — pulling every single person out of an apartment building and handcuffing them to run warrant checks — they would be sued into oblivion.

Yet ICE is going to get away with it entirely.

"It was scary, because I had never had a gun in my face," Fisher said. "They asked my name and my date of birth and asked me, did I have any warrants? And I told them, 'No, 'Ididn't."
Fisher said she was handcuffed before being released around 3 a.m., and she was told that if anyone had any kind of warrant out for them, even if it was unrelated to immigration, they would not be released.

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Mary Dudziak @marydudziak.bsky.social · 5d

Beautiful!!

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Mary Dudziak @marydudziak.bsky.social · 5d

Does not seem to be working right now, but here's where to find your work in the Anthropic settlement.

Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 6d

Hey authors, the official list of Anthropic works is available for searching.

secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup

Submit a Claim

secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 7d

@pastpunditry.bsky.social 's column in the NYT is terrific. This is why we need historians writing opinion pieces!

It also underscores something I keep thinking about lately. During the Second Red Scare era, 75 years ago, one key piece of background was there really were Soviet spies around!

1/

Opinion | We Have Seen the ‘Woke Right’ Before, and It Wasn’t Pretty Then, Either

www.nytimes.com

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Tony Clark @anthonyclark.bsky.social · 7d

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? 🙏

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 7d

An unprecedented violation of our civic and Constitutional traditions. Calling every military leader in the world back to the U.S. to hear a wildly inappropriate partisan campaign speech followed by a fascist call to use the military against Americans.

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Roxane Gay @roxanegay.bsky.social · 7d

If any other president in all of history said the military should use American cities as a training ground he would be removed from office that same day. The hardest thing to tolerate in all this is how relatively silent elected democrats are. It’s ridiculous.

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Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof @evanbernick.bsky.social · 7d

Just going to leave this here. I continue to believe that this whole thing is a catastrophe for legal scholarship, and I hope it doesn’t do any more damage. publications.lawschool.cornell.edu/lawreview/wp...

ESSAY
BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP AND THE DUNNING
SCHOOL OF UNORIGINAL MEANINGS
Evan D. Bernick, Paul Gowder & Anthony Michael Kreist
This Essay critically
surveys the
recent
debate surrounding birthright citizenship in the United States, particularly in light of arguments presented by legal scholars
Randy Barnett, Kurt Lash, and Ilan Wurman.
Under the guise of "originalism," Barnett, Lash, and Wurman propose an ahistorical, revisionist interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause. They suggest that the term "jurisdiction" should be understood as "allegiance," seemingly to give the veneer of legitimacy to the Trump Administration's view that the children of undocumented immigrants may not be American citizens. This Essay argues that their efforts to radically redefine the historical understanding of citizenship are methodologically flawed and undermine core principles of constitutional law. The critique exposes the inaccuracies and inconsistencies in their position and scrutinizes the scholarly merit of new theories of birthright citizenship that are wildly inconsistent with constitutional text, history, precedent, and unbroken
tradition.
This Essay concludes by examining the professional responsibility of legal scholars to engage in rigorous, fact-based historical analysis rather than politically motivated reinterpretations that threaten to destabilize
fundamental constitutional rights.

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