Bridget Kelly

* North Carolina lawmakers say they’ve reached a deal to repeal the state’s controversial bathroom bill. I wonder how those negotiations went: “Hey, this law is awful and is costing our state billions. Let’s get rid of it.” “Okay.” I mean that’s probably not how it went, but it’s how it should have gone. [Reuters]

* Five University of California law schools are sharing the wealth after an improper foreclosure verdict results in a big punitive damages award. The judge directed a portion of that money to go to the law schools — $4 million each — earmarked for consumer law education and direct legal services. [Law.com]

* Hawaii successfully converted the TRO on the Trump administration’s Muslim Ban 2.0 into a preliminary injunction. [Hogan Lovells]

* Seattle is the first city to sue over the Trump administration’s threats against sanctuary cities. [LA Times]

* Bridgegate results in prison sentences. Bridget Kelly was sentenced to 18 months, and Bill Baroni got 2 years. [New York Times]

* Doublespeak — the environment edition. [Politico]

* Is Sean Spicer is lying about whether the White House really wants former acting Attorney General Sally Yates to testify to Congress? [The Hill]

* Judge Andrew Napolitano is back at Fox News, and back to conspiracy theories. [CNN]

* “Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign.” Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump plans to sue all of the “liars” who have accused him of sexual assault within the last two weeks when the election is over. As an attorney representing one of Trump’s accusers noted, a lawsuit would provide a “field day” to depose him under oath. [CNN]

* The American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has approved a tougher bar-passage rate standard that would require 75 percent of of a law school’s graduates who sit for the bar exam to pass it within two years. It’s up to the ABA House of Delegates to decide if the stricter standard will ever be implemented. We’ll have more on this later today. [ABA Journal]

* “I don’t know why he would wait around for 200 days and then pull out at the very moment that it seemed likely that he was going to get confirmed.” Will Judge Merrick Garland be confirmed to SCOTUS? With senators calling for lame-duck hearings if Hillary Clinton is elected and a bare-bones oral arguments calendar scheduled, it seems like even the justices are holding out hope for a full house in 2017. [Washington Post]

* In a deal likely to invoke government scrutiny, AT&T has agreed to purchase Time Warner for $84.5 billion. Teams from Sullivan & Cromwell (transaction work) and Arnold & Porter (regulatory work) will be representing AT&T, while Cravath will be representing Time Warner. Faiza Saeed, Cravath’s deputy presiding partner, will lead the team working on the deal from her firm. [DealBook / New York Times; Am Law Daily]

* According to testimony from Bridget Kelly, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, Christie allegedly knew about the Bridgegate lane closures a month before they occurred, not afterwards, as he’s repeatedly claimed. Kelly, who says she thought the lane closures were for a traffic study, not a politically motivated scheme, is currently being tried in federal court over her role in the 2013 scandal. [Reuters]

* TRUCE! In the wake of his settlement with Paul Cassell, Alan Dershowitz looks to make peace with David Boies after a vicious fight. [Big Law Business]

* Speaking of making peace, Chris Christie has made a deal with New Jersey Democrats to end a six-year stalemate over the state Supreme Court. He is nominating Bridget Kelly’s old lawyer, Walter Timpone. [New Jersey.com]

* More analysis of bar exam results: see what happened in Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington, Tennessee, and Kentucky. [Bar Exam Stats]

* Is it ethically acceptable — and does it work — to shame prosecutors for wrongful convictions? [Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics via Slate]

* Yes, that’s billions with a B: Goldman Sachs to pay $5 billion in settlements over charges it contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. [Gawker]

* Kevin Abikoff, partner at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, cleared Unaoil in an anti-corruption report, and is now facing questions about that representation. [Huffington Post]

A former politician taken down by the Feds thinks we can stick a fork in Chris Christie.

Some thoughts on Chris Christie from Above the Law managing editor David Lat, who used to work for Christie when he was U.S. Attorney.

Chris Christie is a prosecutor first and foremost, and that makes his latest scandal something we should have seen coming from miles away.