Here
9mo ago
He's also a Peruvian citizen who spent most of his career in Peru and gave a portion of his speech in Spanish.
Here
10mo ago
A third year Skadden associate sent out a firm-wide - including overseas offices in Europe and Asia - email with her "conditional" resignation, where she laid out her terms not to quit. The terms were basically to fight Trump better. She also posted the email on her LinkedIn.
A few hours later, she could no longer access her firm email - it appears Skadden accepted her resignation. She is now making news appearances talking about #resisting in the face of authoritarianism. It's unclear how many firms want a corporate associate that desires to "fight" so badly - in the few firms interested in disrupting client work for challenging the administration, social justice is reserved for the litigators.
Ultimately, all BigLaw is soulless, putting profits over justice. It's about dealwork and defense, not upholding the law itself - that's more plaintiff-side work that very few BigLaw firms can swing litigating. Not many clients wants to hire a law firm that paints a target on their back, not when NGOs and civil rights firms exist - there are more appropriate "mechanisms" in the legal world to fight these fights, and those mechanisms are in play. It is not the duty, nor the skill set, of BigLaw.
I admire her confidence that the world-wide firm would care about a junior leveraged finance associate's opinion regarding the rule of law in the United States. Posting an internal email on her LinkedIn also feels concerning from a disclosure perspective - associates have been fired for filming tiktoks in their offices before because of the risk of showing client materials.
She has previously circulated an anonymous statement "signed" by BigLaw associates listing their firm name and class year, because she believed it would pressure BigLaw firms into Doing Something.
It seems that statement culture is no longer a tool of the culture war - firms don't really seem to care. Being willing to resign is a step in the right direction, I think, although I wonder if she really thought she would be considered so valuable to the firm that they would meet her conditions. She seems to truly believe that she Accomplished Something, and I wonder if that's a residual impact of the COVID corporate social justice era, in which empowering employees to Defend The Current Thing took off.
I'm waiting to see if she's going to try to file a workplace retaliation claim or anything crazy for Skadden accepting her resignation, because that kind of feels like the vibe of things. Realistically, I know that this is going to be like when random tech workers quit over how their employers "handled" Palestine - it will be swept under the rug and forgotten about.
Here
11mo ago
After you sign a contract and pay your bill
I think that's the issue though, no? The Europeans haven't paid their bill. The transactional approach is falling apart because there is no transaction - just one-sided behavior.
Here
11mo ago
Penn is rescinding some PhD offers as part of cuts to graduate programs in light of DOGE funding changes. Vandy, USC, and Pitt are pausing PhD admissions for now, which feels slightly more reasonable than rescinding.
It's interesting that the cuts are occurring to the "next generation" of incoming talent, although it somewhat makes sense - Penn PhDs are funded, with very nice stipends. Rescinding is still a big move, though, when Penn could cut administrative bloat or decrease the full funding such that potential candidates decide not to join the program in the first place. The whole point of the Ivy, I mean, Ivory Tower is to strengthen their own prestige and little robots, so rescinding feels weird. There's also the ability to dip into the endowment, but I know that gets complicated fast.
I am also wondering how they're deciding who to rescind from. Are any international future students getting the boot? Are there DEI level decisions being made after the fact, as a way of getting around affirmative action? Are they going to change their minds if funding frees up if lawsuits throw down or the DOGE pause ends?
I'm a law student, and firms talk a lot about lessons learned from the financial crisis. An entire "generation" of talent was lost from cutting start classes during the crisis, and firms really feel it now - it had longer term impacts down the road to not just take the financial hit of having a few new associates bumbling around. I wonder if academia is about to undergo the same learning experience?
Or will academia, particularly STEM, turn to embrace private funding more thoroughly? Private influence in STEM academic research could increase innovation and development, and solve the "funding crisis" presented from the withdrawal of government funds. The influence of private interests in nonprofits/educational institutions is an old culture war argument, but one that might start playing out among graduate programs.
It's also interesting that undergraduate programs, for now, aren't getting hit. Maybe they're more lucrative/cash cows, although many are moving to full need-based funding. Maybe it's the demographic cliff.
Here
11mo ago
The most recent executive order is little c conservative regarding the law, in that it takes Loper Bright a step further in curtailing unelected legislating by bureaucrats.
It does not put the executive over the legislative or judicial branch, despite fear mongering. Instead, it puts the White House/AG over "independent" agencies. All regulations must be reviewed by the White House/AG's office, and agencies must defer to their interpretation of vague laws.
The judicial branch still has the ability to overturn those interpretations (they actually have more power to overturn those interpretations after the death of Chevron).
The legislative branch can avoid the issue by making more specific laws. This will never happen, because Congress has been fine with passing the buck to the executive branch to avoid reelection fights for a long time now. The legislative branch can also move certain agencies (or agency functions) into the legislative branch. Congress can make ALJs specialty Article III courts, to increase their independence from the President. Congress can move regulation-making functions underneath relevant subcommittees in the legislature, but that would increase their workload in reviewing what agencies are up to. Congress has delegated a lot of power to the executive, and the most recent EO is an example of how that can go sideways. If they didn't want the executive to have the power to interpret vague laws, they should've made less vague laws. The three branches were always supposed to be at war with each other, not casually handing over powers such as the tariff power.
It doesn't really impact what a Democratic president would or would not do - it's logical to think that Democrats, who are a fan of letting "experts" use their expertise, will return decision-making to independent agencies instead of wading through regulations at the Presidential level.
But the hyperbole around all of this is... Weird. If things are so bad, why do people/legacy media feel the need to exaggerate the impact? Idk. The language part of the culture war has always gotten to me.
What was the betrayal on guns?
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