Rachel Rothschild

Federal Prosecutor Used Fabricated Quotes in Court Filing An assistant US attorney in North Carolina filed a response with the court that included “fabricated quotations and misstatements of case holdings” and then made “false or misleading statements” of ho...

Now pro se plaintiffs are catching Pam Bondi's AUSAs fabricating quotes and citations.

news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/...

If you feel the need to write articles using AI, please find another job. Your students and colleagues deserve a lot better.

New poll: Democrats' real problem isn't being too liberal — it's being seen as too weak Americans, including swing voters, see the Republican Party as 20 points more extreme than Democrats — and the Democrats as weak and ineffective. So why would the *Democrats* moderate?

Today's @gelliottmorris.com post is really eye-opening with respect to Dems' optimal midterm strategy ... www.gelliottmorris.com/p/new-poll-d...

“One of these days when the mischief is fully done . . . men
will begin to realize what they have lost, and will hold conventions, and pass resolutions, and enact laws, and spend great sums of money for the undoing of the mischief and the
restoration of our atmosphere to its original state.” ~ 1899

John Gofman, nuclear dissident 1971 on the ideology of technological inevitability.

The Fight Over US Climate Rules Is Just Beginning As the EPA moves to roll back the endangerment finding, which allows it to regulate greenhouse gases, experts predict uncertainty for business and a protracted legal fight.

“I don't see any plan, any strategy, any end game,” says Pat Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at the University of Vermont. “I don't see anything from this administration, just fuck everything up as much as you can. You can print that.”

Sounds accurate to me.

Historians!?
Lol ok lets have AI organize the government's National Archives and Records Administration catalog, digitize all government records held only in hard copy, and then we can talk.
Tell me you've never read a history book without telling me you've never read a history book.

This may be correct, but what I'm thinking about is a lifetime of seeing health care, poverty and environmental programs mocked as impractical and always subject to negotiation while the job-killing misery machines get rushed through the door.

There needs to be a public reckoning about this episode. But the people who have something to answer for are those who pulled the climate science chapter from the Judicial Manual and the WSJ authors of this abysmal editorial. Not the lawyers who discussed the state of climate science.

Climate science is not unsettled. It is not an ideology. Denying it *is* akin to denying that asbestos and cigarettes cause cancer. I am so, so tired of unfounded accusations that environmental scientists and researchers are biased when it is these folks who are truly compromised.

I am happy to debate those who think there are better ways to approach greenhouse gas emissions reductions than through litigation against fossil fuel companies. But to smear the lawyers who wrote a chapter trying to explain climate science to judges is reprehensible.

For some older WSJ acid rain editorials that misrepresented acid rain research, see:
"Clouds over Acid Rain" (3/24/86)
"The $94 Billion Report (9/23/87)
"No PAP from NAPAP" (1/26/90)
(I'd link the articles but they are archived and paywalled - you can find them on Proquest Historical Newspapers)

Opinion | A Failed Climate Coup in the Courts The Federal Judicial Center tried to pass off one-sided propaganda as ‘settled science.’

For the WSJ editorial and the shameful attacks on Columbia's Sabin Center for Climate: www.wsj.com/opinion/refe...

Maybe it's too much to expect a major paper of record to stop discrediting well established environmental science. But I guess not. It is exhausting and I have lost patience with it. If thousands of studies and decades of research is still not enough for these people, nothing will ever be enough.

The WSJ denialism of acid rain's harms continued right up through the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, in which President George H.W. Bush spearheaded a cap and trade scheme to reduce acid rain. Today, that legislation is responsible for extensive environmental and public health benefits.

Today, the WSJ Editorial Board published an essay claiming that climate science is still unsettled and attacking several environmental lawyers. So I got curious: what were they saying about acid rain back in the day? Spolier: the WSJ downplayed the evidence of acid rain's harms without fail

Over at the Yale Journal on Regulation's blog, @j-p-a.bsky.social and I have put together a 🔥 symposium for you on the intersection of AI and administrative law.

This symposium is for AI skeptics, AI believers, and everyone in between. Come join us!

www.yalejreg.com/topic/sympos...

Opinion | Local Prosecution Is the Answer to Federal Lawlessness

In today's @nytimes.com, @barryfriedman1.bsky.social and I argue that, with no *other* means of pursuing accountability for lawlessness by ICE, local/state prosecutions become not just legally viable, but necessary—both to punish past abuses and to deter future ones:

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/o...

Kudos to the NYT editor who took “Appears to” out of the lead headline (finally)

Complaint – #1 in Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension v. Noem (D. Minnesota, 0:26-cv-00628) – CourtListener.com COMPLAINT against All Defendants (filing fee $ 405, receipt number AMNDC-12575332) filed by Hennepin County Attorney's Office, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Filer requests summons issued....

I have never seen a case where state law enforcement had to file a lawsuit to obtain evidence of a police shooting within its jurisdiction. Until now.
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

DHS is telling us not to believe our own eyes. They are counting on the fact that some new outlets will air this disinformation without pointing out the contradictory evidence, and plenty of viewers will never learn the truth. We deserve better from our government.

NEW VIDEO: this appears to be the footage from the woman in the pink coat.

I am a climate scientist and this is correct.

As the planet warms, storms like the one today are getting stronger… and as the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the mid latitudes, it increases the risk of the “freezer door” swinging open.

Technical explanation here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

It's not "sniping" when one political party wants to stop the other political parry from letting industry increase dangerous air pollution by hundreds of thousands of TONS & evade pollution controls, by gutting safeguards & rolling back five decades of law. insideepa.com/remaking-epa...

Do better.

This must be weird news to see if you’re one of the literally hundreds or even thousands of university administrators who preemptively censored faculty, scrubbed websites, changed the names of centers, etc.

Glitter & Gold | Official Trailer | Netflix YouTube video by Netflix

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVEe...

Lead Children | Official Trailer | Netflix YouTube video by Netflix

I don't know who is on the Netflix production team, but between this series on lead pollution and the ice dance documentary I'm a little concerned they've tapped my phone or hacked into my computer.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=phN7...

normie midwesterners who have been pushed too far

Your Lungs Could Pay the Price for EPA’s Latest Move The Clean Air Act has saved millions of lives, but the EPA will stop calculating those benefits for at least some proposed regulations

www.scientificamerican.com/article/erod...

E.P.A. to Stop Considering Lives Saved When Setting Rules on Air Pollution

This is contrary to a large body of environmental case law as well as best practices for performing economic analyses of regulatory costs and benefits. It is, however, consistent with this administration's Orwellian approach to governance.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/c...