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Michael Perino

@professorperino.bsky.social
619 followers 916 following 357 posts

Law professor at St. John’s Law and writer (The Hellhound of Wall St.) who still believes in the rule of law and the American experiment

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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
A Texas University Becomes a Petri Dish for a Conservative Overhaul www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/u... The thought police are hard at work at Texas Tech and the doublespeak about academic freedom and censorship is breathtaking to behold.
The strictest prohibition at Texas Tech is on classes in the core curriculum, which are a menu of lower-level courses that students must select from in order to graduate. Mr. Creighton has banned any course in the core that includes material related to sexual orientation and gender identity.

Sonja Stojanovic, a French studies professor, worried about her core course, called Holocaust in Literature. Because it mentions that gay and bisexual men were also targets of the Nazis, university leadership suggested that the course become an upper-level course.
“Now the Holocaust becomes an elective,” she said.Survey respondents also said they worried about irreparable reputational damage. One said Mr. Creighton’s directives amounted to “using a chain saw to remove a splinter.”

Mr. Creighton shrugged off the concerns. He said many professors are supportive of the changes, though they are less vocal, and noted other university systems are implementing their own course-content reviews.
“Ours is absolutely the most deliberative and respectful of academic freedom,” he said, adding, “It has never been more exciting to have an opportunity to be a faculty member at the Texas Tech University System.”“Texas is the model for the nation in returning our universities again to places of open debate, free inquiry, getting rid of ideological indoctrination and creating degrees of value for students,” Ms. Sylvester said, adding, “Faculty members need to remember that they are state employees.”
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Greetings from Washington DC
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
youtube.com/watch?v=IZjq... For all you Civil Procedure and Federal Courts nerds out there, the Federal Circuit channels Schoolhouse Rock.
youtube.com
What is the Federal Circuit? An Animated Civics Lesson
YouTube video by U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Will no one rid me of this meddlesome Fed Chair? Trump Threatens to Fire Powell if He Does Not Resign From Fed www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/b...
nytimes.com
Trump Threatens to Fire Powell if He Does Not Resign From Fed
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David Corn @davidcorn.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
Good news for plutocrats.
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
Even Dictionary.com is taking shots at our idiotic president and his administrative buffoons. I give you today's Word of the Day: perpend. www.dictionary.com/word-of-the-...
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
The world is watching he says, and boy is it embarrassing.
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
The federal government's war on fraud enforcement continues unabated. SEC enforcement personnel down 18%. Bigger declines in Investment Management, Trading & Markets, and, in a nice homage to 2008, Credit Ratings. GAO: these changes "could pose risks to the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission."
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Will media ever abandon this terminology? “ICE-involved shooting” like “police-involved shooting” does nothing but obscure who is doing the shooting. ICE agents or police weren’t shot. They were the shooters. Just say it directly!
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James Hell Brooks @kleinman.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Hiring the dregs of Liberty Law School for the DOJ is the legal equivalent of drafting 13-year-olds into the infantry
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 07/12/2025
How a Cryptocurrency Helps Criminals Launder Money and Evade Sanctions www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/t... Wow, really? Who would have guessed that a financial instrument designed to disguise illegal activity would be used to disguise illegal activity.
nytimes.com
How a Cryptocurrency Helps Criminals Launder Money and Evade Sanctions
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
media.tenor.com
two men are standing next to a car in a garage and talking to each other .
ALT: two men are standing next to a car in a garage and talking to each other .
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
Prosecutor Used Flawed A.I. to Keep a Man in Jail, His Lawyers Say www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/u... I guess I shouldn’t be surprised but you’d think that after all the stories of hallucinations in legal briefs lawyers would begin to take a bit more care when using #ChatGPT.
nytimes.com
Prosecutor Used Flawed A.I. to Keep a Man in Jail, His Lawyers Say
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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
This is…brilliant.
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
The Comey Case Is a Comedy of Errors www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/o... This is what happens when the only qualification is blind loyalty.
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Comey Case Is a Comedy of Errors
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Mark Lemley @marklemley.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
My paper with @vanloo.bsky.social and @lanemiles.bsky.social showing that more than 15% of US companies have potentially illegal interlocking board members is now published in the Columbia Law Review columbialawreview.org/content/anti...
columbialawreview.org
ANTICOMPETITIVE DIRECTORS - Columbia Law Review
“The practice of interlocking directorates is the root of many evils. It offends laws human and divine.” — Justice Louis Brandeis. Introduction Antitrust law prohibits competing corporations from shar...
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/u... Wait for it … and because there is an ongoing criminal investigation it would be inappropriate to publicly release any investigatory information.
nytimes.com
Trump Demands Inquiry Into Epstein’s Ties to Prominent Democrats
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Ryan J. Reilly “paints a vivid and urgent portrait of… disarray” @ryanjreilly.com · 13/11/2025
"On the first question, several jury members struggled to stifle laughter as Lairmore expanded on the hoagie’s alleged explosive properties. 'It was like, Oh, you poor baby,' the juror told me." www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
theatlantic.com
Inside the Sandwich Guy’s Jury Deliberations
Can a flung sandwich cause bodily harm?
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George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/tuesday-november-11th-we-cave
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
The World According to John Irving www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/s... “I could not, would not, in good conscience go to my birth country when there is such an authoritarian bully in the White House, and when the craven Republicans in the House and the U.S. Senate are complicit in their silence.”
nytimes.com
The World According to John Irving
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Democrats were winning in the courts and in the court of public opinion. They threw away all the political momentum and leverage for what? To avoid photos of stranded Thanksgiving travelers?
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
Vigilante Lawyers Expose the Rising Tide of A.I. Slop in Court Filings www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/b... Robert Freund “is part of a growing network of lawyers who track down A.I. abuses committed by their peers, collecting the most egregious examples and posting them online.”
nytimes.com
Vigilante Lawyers Expose the Rising Tide of A.I. Slop in Court Filings
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
To Preserve Records, Homeland Security Now Relies on Officials to Take Screenshots www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/u... Solution to avoiding record-keeping requirements by auto-deleting on Signal was not to automatically save messages, it was to ask officials to take screenshots? Not suspicious at all.
The Department of Homeland Security has stopped using software that automatically captured text messages and saved trails of communication between officials, according to sworn court statements filed this week.

Instead, the agency began in April to require officials to manually take screenshots of their messages to comply with federal records laws, citing cybersecurity concerns with the autosave software.

Public records experts say the new record-keeping policy opens ample room for both willful and unwitting noncompliance with federal open records laws in an administration that has already shown a lack of interest in, or willingness to skirt, records laws. That development could be particularly troubling as the department executes President Trump’s aggressive agenda of mass deportations, a campaign that has included numerous accusations of misconduct by law enforcement officials, the experts said.
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
Yes!
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
Anyone notice the state seal of Virginia adorning the stage at #Spanberger HQ?
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
How Bad Is Finance’s Cockroach Problem? We May Be About to Find Out. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/o... Stayed tuned to the private credit market. “Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, warned, ‘When you see one cockroach, there are probably more.’”
nytimes.com
Opinion | How Bad Is Finance’s Cockroach Problem? We May Be About to Find Out.
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
Keeping the House Absent, Johnson Marginalizes Congress and Himself www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/u... Any psychologists want to comment on why you would expend all that time and effort to become Speaker only to cede all your power and make yourself servile and irrelevant?
nytimes.com
Keeping the House Absent, Johnson Marginalizes Congress and Himself
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
The Rise of the Inflatable Chicken Resistance www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/o... “Frivolity and absurdity are kryptonite to authoritarians who project the stern-father archetype to their followers. Once the pants are lowered and the undies of the despot are glimpsed, there is no point of return.”
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Rise of the Inflatable Chicken Resistance
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
Coal Miners With Black Lung Say They Are ‘Cast Aside to Die’ Under Trump www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/c... “President Trump has been a cheerleader for coal miners. But these miners say his administration is failing to enforce limits on a lethal workplace hazard.” This should surprise no one.
nytimes.com
Coal Miners With Black Lung Say They Are ‘Cast Aside to Die’ Under Trump
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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
Love this story so much. Student journalists ftw 💪
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
Well Trump and Santos both believe in the same things—lying habitually, fabricating a mythic past, and grifting at every opportunity.
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Paul Rosenzweig @rosenzweigp.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
Jack Smith speaks -- and he outlines a few of the horrors of Trumpism's assault on the Rule of Law, as a reminder of what has happened in the last 8 months (during two recent speeches): /1
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/u... So much for welcoming the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
nytimes.com
Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
ICE Is Cracking Down on Chicago. Some Chicagoans Are Fighting Back. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/u...
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
Should They Just Go Ahead and Put Up a Gold Trump Sign on the Supreme Court? www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/o... “Give a president total firing power and combine it with his pre-existing pardon power over federal crimes, and you’d allow the federal government to be run as a criminal enterprise.”
nytimes.com
Opinion | Should They Just Go Ahead and Put Up a Gold Trump Sign on the Supreme Court?
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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
The situation in America is not great. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...
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Popehat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
It’s important to flood social media and news channels with news about how ICE lies, so that potential jurors see it.
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Jameel Jaffer @jameeljaffer.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
It's a pretty big deal that the NYC Bar Association--one of the most prominent and respected bar associations in the country--is accusing the President of ordering the "unlawful summary execution," i.e. murder--of civilians in violation of US and international law. www.nycbar.org/press-releas...
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
Judge Again Blocks Guard Deployment as Trump Expands His Targets www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/u... For Trump the rule of law is not something to be followed. It is something to be ignored, evaded, or overwhelmed.
nytimes.com
Judge Again Blocks Guard Deployment as Trump Expands His Targets
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
“Untethered to the facts” strikes me as a great description of, not just this determination, but of Trump’s entire life and worldview.
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John Q. Barrett @johnqbarrett.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
I never met Judge Bazelon or Justice Powell. But Joel Klein is take-it-to-the-bank honest. The lessons here are that happily life can work out anyway (he found Powell, & vice versa), and that there’s no defense for judges who are abusive to staff, litigants, media, commentators, anyone.
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
U.S. Military Attacked Boat Off Venezuela, Killing Four Men, Hegseth Says www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/u... Legally disputed? How about this for a headline: Trump and Hegseth ordered the murder of four more Venezuelan nationals today.
nytimes.com
U.S. Military Attacked Boat Off Venezuela, Killing Four Men, Hegseth Says
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
"Trump's 'compact with universities is just extortion... the future of higher education in America requires that every university reject it." Very good from UC Berkley law dean Erwin Chemerinsky. Higher ed leaders should all do so, and donors, unions, anyone with influence should pressure them to.
nytimes.com
Opinion | Trump’s ‘Compact’ With Universities Is Just Extortion
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Joyce White Vance @joycewhitevance.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
Halligan may have obtained the indictment the president wanted, but it...one thing to get a grand jury to indict. Getting a conviction is an entirely different matter. New from me for @brennancenter.org A discussion of the flawed Comey indictment. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana...
brennancenter.org
Comey Indictment Shows Danger of Subservient Prosecutors
The political prosecution of a presidential enemy has left the government with a seemingly unwinnable case — and a justice system tainted by politics.
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Seth Stern @sethstern.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
The three liberal justices are diverging more when it comes to the emergency docket, reflecting differing views on when—and how aggressively—to critique their conservative colleagues’ approach, @justinfwise.bsky.social reports news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/...
news.bloomberglaw.com
Liberal Justices Show Competing Styles in Shadow Docket Dissents
The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices, who last term tended to vote in near lockstep on closely divided cases that were argued, are diverging more when it comes to the emergency docket, reflectin...
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 27/09/2025
Give In or Fight Back? Colleges Are Torn on How to Respond to Trump. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/u... This is both 100% correct but will never happen (and has in fact already not happened).
“The idea that each university has to fight this battle by themselves, that’s truly crazy to me,” said Arne Duncan, one of President Barack Obama’s education secretaries. “And I know it’s hard. I know it’s scary. But any time a university is attacked, there should be 500 university presidents standing up together, or 1,000 boards of trustees standing up together and saying, ‘We’re in solidarity.’ And that would send such a different message.”
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
Animal Farm (1946). Orwell knew what was coming. #trump #JamesComey
Napoleon decreed that there should be a full investigation into Snowball’s activities.
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
Trump Administration Live Updates: President Predicts More Indictments and Claims It’s Not Revenge www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09... “Napoleon decreed that there should be a full investigation into Snowball’s activities.” George Orwell, Animal Farm
nytimes.com
Trump Administration Live Updates: President Predicts More Indictments and Claims It’s Not Revenge
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Michael Perino @professorperino.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
Thomas has an amazing double standard. In 2018, when he believed a majority decision was undermining one he wrote (one in which he made up a standard no court had ever before applied), Thomas complained bitterly about how the majority flouted what he “dreamt up.” www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18p...
supremecourt.gov
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Kai Ryssdal @kairyssdal.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Marco Rubio is the acting Archivist of the United States, as it happens
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