Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Anthony Michael Kreis @anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 2d

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..."

12 98 420

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ @aaronrosspowell.com · 2d

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.

3 390 1.5K

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Women in Legislative Studies @winls.bsky.social · 2d

This Friday, October 10 at 2pm ET is the next WILS Professional Development Seminar. The topic for this week is "Getting Organized."

Register: forms.gle/ynvw3P56sBa3...

Read Shiri Noy's recent Inside Higher Ed article on organizing your research: www.insidehighered.com/opinion/care...

Registration Professional Development Seminar, Oct 10 2025, "Getting Organized"

This is the registration form for the upcoming Women in Legislative Studies Professional Development Seminar, which will begin at 2pm ET. We'll send you a zoom link shortly before the event.

forms.gle

1 3

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 2d

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.

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 2d

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.

33 230 1.8K

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Women in Legislative Studies @winls.bsky.social · Sep 2

Jacob M. Lollis and Mackenzie R. Dobson find that LGBTQ lawmakers elected in high-discrimination environments are more effective than those elected from less discriminatory environments.

www.cambridge.org/co...

Polisky

I’m Coming Out! How Voter Discrimination Produces Effective LGBTQ Lawmakers | PS: Political Science & Politics | Cambridge Core

I’m Coming Out! How Voter Discrimination Produces Effective LGBTQ Lawmakers - Volume 58 Issue 3

www.cambridge.org

2 1

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Women in Legislative Studies @winls.bsky.social · Sep 5

Janet Malzahn and Andrew B. Hall find that election-denying Republicans underperformed in the 2022 midterms in state-level races but not U.S. House races.

More here: www.cambridge.org/co...

Polisky

Election-Denying Republican Candidates Underperformed in the 2022 Midterms | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core

Election-Denying Republican Candidates Underperformed in the 2022 Midterms - Volume 119 Issue 3

www.cambridge.org

2 2

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Women in Legislative Studies @winls.bsky.social · 2d

Maya Kornberg's book "Stuck: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress" will be published this coming Winter by Johns Hopkins University Press and is available for pre-order here : www.amazon.com/Stuck-Violen...

Stuck: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress

Stuck: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress [Kornberg, Maya L.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Stuck: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress

www.amazon.com

1 1

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Women in Legislative Studies @winls.bsky.social · 2d

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

2 3

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Micah @rincewind.run · 6d

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

John Gramlich @johngramlich.bsky.social · 6d

% of US men under 30 who say legal sports betting is a *bad thing* for society

22% in 2022
47% in 2025

No other demographic group has seen a bigger increase.

Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society and sports

Today, 43% of U.S. adults say the fact that sports betting is now legal in much of the country is a bad thing for society, up from 34% in 2022.

www.pewresearch.org

50 220 1.2K

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 6d

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?"

Zoë “Baddie Proctor” Quinn @unburntwitch.com · 7d

Microsoft says its Agent Mode in Excel has an accuracy rate of 57.2 percent in SpreadsheetBench, a benchmark for evaluating an Al model's ability to edit real world spreadsheets. This result

5 7 29

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

AAUP chapter @UT Austin @utaustinaaup.bsky.social · 7d

And now the UT System is auditing all courses for “gender ideology.” We haven’t been told what that even means.

AAUP chapter @UT Austin @utaustinaaup.bsky.social · 8d

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.

Jamal Greene @jamalgreene.bsky.social · 11d

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...

6 27 56

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Dr. Damien P. Williams Wants A Better Sociotechnical Paradigm @wolvendamien.bsky.social · 7d

…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?!

The Verge @theverge.com · 9d

Microsoft launches ‘vibe working’ in Excel and Word

Vibe working is all about Office’s new Agent Mode.

buff.ly

13 43 150

Sara Chatfield @poliscisara.bsky.social · 7d

"Microsoft says its Agent Mode in Excel has an accuracy rate of 57.2 percent..."

Uhhhhhhhhhh

4

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 7d

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...

580 7.3K 25K

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 7d

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

Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 7d

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.”

8 38 210

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

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? 🙏

270 170

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Jen Taub @jentaub.bsky.social · 7d

“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

360 8K 27K

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

John Hawkinson @johnhawkinson.bsky.social · 8d

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"

23 460 1.5K

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 8d

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]

49 880 2.7K

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

JVG 骨 @jasonv.bsky.social · 8d

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

4 4.3K 14K

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 9d

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?

Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 9d

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.

120 1.2K 4K

Sara Chatfield @poliscisara.bsky.social · 9d

It has similar vibes to another favorite book of mine, Everyone in this Room will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin, which I also highly recommend.

bookshop.org/p/books/ever...

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead: A Novel

A Novel

bookshop.org

1

Sara Chatfield @poliscisara.bsky.social · 9d

A little late for #FridayReads but posting this anyway: Discontent by Beatriz Serrano may be my favorite book of the year so far. It follows a disaffected office worker on her increasingly ridiculous exploits and is just incredibly funny (and dark).

bookshop.org/p/books/disc...

#BookSky

Discontent: A Novel

A Novel

bookshop.org

3 2 4

Sara Chatfield @poliscisara.bsky.social · 9d

#KidLit recommendation of the day: Don't Trust Fish by Neil Sharpson. Super funny, cute illustrations, and overall just highly entertaining.

bookshop.org/p/books/don-...

Don't Trust Fish

Check out Don't Trust Fish - <b>NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An absurdly laugh-out-loud funny picture book about the villainy of fish, illustrated by National Book Award-winning creator Dan Santat<br><b...

bookshop.org

1

Reposted by Sara Chatfield

Joanna Schwartz @jcschwartzprof.bsky.social · 10d

Justice Kavanaugh: “If the person is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully
in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter.”

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 10d

79. American citizen.

440 4.4K 10K