Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery With Daily Postings Since 2002
Via Lawfare – Benjamin Wittes has categorized the authoritarian moves by Trump so far, and they fall into similar themes as the above “autocratic legal playbook”: attack on the government’s own power to spend money; internal retributions and restructurings within government itself—most importantly, in the power agencies: DoD, FBI, and DOJ; the overt creation of …
SciElo in Perspective By Jan Velterop – “Recently, the government of the United States of America (USA) has frightened the scientific community—not just in the country but globally—by censoring terms used in scientific communications and funding proposals. as well as forbidding researchers to communicate with one another, particularly with foreign scientists. A partial list of …
Above the Law – One of the first things you need to know in a fight is who you can and can’t rely on. Thankfully, time and resources were saved by knowing that Paul Weiss is a lost cause. But the search is still on for compatriots willing to speak out against the current administration’s …
Do you have, readily available, a valid copy of your birth certificate, indicating the first and last name by which you currently identify and conduct all other business and commerce related activities? If not, be prepared as this is yet another in a litany of rapid fire orders that Trump has issued to subvert our …
Follow up to Perkins Coie Drags Trump Administration Clear To Hell In New Lawsuit and Top Law Firm Capitulated to Trump Demands – via the Washington Post [no paywall]: “The president issued a new order Tuesday sanctioning yet another law firm, Jenner & Block. The result overall has been called an extraordinary threat to the constitutional rights …
Via Kottke – this episode of This American Life from a few weeks ago, Masha Gessen read an excerpt from their book Surviving Autocracy about the particular kind of lie used by autocrats like Putin and Trump. Lies can serve a number of functions. People lie to deflect, to avoid embarrassment or evade punishment by …
NPR: “…That is the Internet Archive,” said Mark Graham, the director of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, pointing to the server stacks. Graham was leading about a dozen visitors on a weekly public tour of the headquarters on a recent Friday in March. He projected his voice to be heard over the drone of the …
The Observer: “Last week, several workers in the art and preservation unit of the General Services Administration (GSA) were placed on leave before being informed that their offices and positions would soon be eliminated. According to reporting by the Washington Post, the action affected more than half of the division’s approximately three dozen staff members …
The New Yorker [no paywall]: “Can librarians and guerrilla archivists save the country’s files from DOGE? The deletions began shortly after Donald Trump took office. C.D.C. web pages on vaccines, H.I.V. prevention, and reproductive health went missing. Findings on bird-flu transmission vanished minutes after they appeared. The Census Bureau’s public repository went offline, then returned …
The New York Review: A Constitutional Redline. “It is unprecedented for the federal government to proceed with a challenged action while in a court hearing on whether they can lawfully do so. It is a subversion of the rule of law.” March 22, 2025. David Cole, interviewed by Daniel Drake – This week the NYR Online …
The Hill: “A nearly 400-page list provided to Congress may give rare insight into the scope of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which have already roiled the global humanitarian community and shut down programs around the world. Some of the cuts on the list appear to …
It began with an Executive Action, Paul Weiss blackball order, and a Paul Weiss Fact Sheet targeting Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (Paul Weiss). “On March 14, 2025, the President of the United States issued an Executive Order titled “Addressing Risks from Paul Weiss.” Exec. Order No. __, 90 Fed. Reg. __ (Mar. …
