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Three Investitures in Two Days

2026-05-09T00:47:25Z

The few days have been fun.

On Thursday, I attended a double investiture at the Supreme Court of Texas for the two newest members. Justice James P. Sullivan was sworn in by (Retired) Judge Tom Griffith. Judge Griffith gave a fascinating discussion on the value of the oath. We should all focus on the meaning of "help" in "So help me God." We are wiser for his insights.

Justice Kyle Hawkins was sworn in by Justice Samuel A. Alito. The Justice relayed a funny story from Kyle's term. Justice Alito circulated an opinion in a non-controversial case that he thought would quickly garner nine joins. No such luck. Justice Alito received a number of letters asking to remove this part, add that part, and rewrite another part. The task fell to Kyle to help manage the revisions, and ultimately, the opinion satisfied everyone. (No he did not mention which case it was, but I would love to know.)

Investitures for the Texas Supreme Court are held in the chamber of the Texas House of Representatives. Every seat was filled. There were also tributes given to Chief Justice Nathan Hecht and Justice Jeff Boyd, who recently retired from the court.

Dare I say that the Texas Supreme Court is the greatest state supreme court in the nation? The intellectual firepower of that Court is staggering. I can't wait to see what Justices Sullivan and Hawkins bring for years to come.

After a brief stay in Austin, I flew to Chicago O'Hare and drove to Milwaukee to attend the investiture of Judge Rebecca Taibleson to the Seventh Circuit. Over the years, I have written about my close bond with Professor Michael Krauss at George Mason University. Professor Krauss gave remarks about his daughter that brought everyone to tears. Justice Kavanaugh also spoke about his former law clerk. He remembers the exact moment he met Judge Taibleson in the hallway at Yale Law School. She made that much of an impact on him. This was a ceremony with so much warmth and joy--it was especially cathartic after the unnecessarily difficult confirmation process. But, as one commenter observed, this was a rare instance where the meritocracy prevailed. And Judge Taibleson will make everyone proud.

I am proud to say that three of my former students clerking for these three jurists next term.

The week was even funner. On Wednesday, I attended a legal retreated at my new think tank, the Manhattan Institute, followed by the Hamilton Dinner at Cipriani. Senator Ben Sasse was the honoree of the night. What an inspiration he is.

And on Monday and Tuesday, I attended the Fifth Circuit Judicial Conference, which, blessedly was in Houston. If you want to figure out how I was in so many places at once, the answer is several early-morning flights.

Somehow, amidst all of those travels, I wrote what may be my most popular blog post of all time. It has been the talk of the town. I've lost count of the number of phone calls, texts, and emails I've received thanking me for saying what needed to be said. You are all welcome for that public service. Maybe I should give a TED Talk about the experience of writing a viral post without AI.

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Reform Wins Big in British Local Elections, Reshaping the U.K. Right

2026-05-08T23:58:58Z

On Thursday, almost half of the United Kingdom was given the opportunity to vote in local elections. Usually, little attention is paid to local elections, whose winners are largely responsible for planning applications and trash collection. But British politics is far from usual at the moment.

Voters across England went to the polls to elect over 5,000 councillors in 136 local authorities. At the same time, six directly elected mayors will be chosen, as well as the Scottish and Welsh devolved parliaments. While these election results do not directly affect the British government, they are widely seen as a key test for all political parties and the biggest test for Prime Minister Keir Starmer since the 2024 parliamentary elections.

With the majority of the local council results in, it is clear that Starmer's Labour Party has had its support implode. At the time of writing, the party has lost over 900 council seats and lost control of almost 30 councils, including Westminster and Essex. The Conservative Party has also been dealt a blow, losing control of six councils and over 400 seats.

Nigel Farage's Reform U.K. is the real winner. The party has gained over 1,000 seats, marking a seismic realignment in the traditional two-party system.

Speaking to reporters on Friday morning, Farage said: "Labour are being wiped out by Reform in many of their most traditional areas, and what you're going to see later on today is the Conservative Party being wiped out in their heartlands."

Farage, now a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, once considered himself the only politician "keeping the flame of Thatcherism alive." The architect of Brexit often spoke highly of free trade deals, lower taxation, and less regulation. Since then, Farage has somewhat changed his tune. Earlier this year, he pledged to keep increasing public spending on the eye-watering 138 billion pounds ($183 billion) pension system, to nationalize the steel industry, and to increase welfare spending.

Reform U.K.'s exponential surge in popularity, however, is largely attributable to its hardline stance on immigration. According to an Ipsos poll, controlling immigration is the most important issue for Brits, and ahead of the local elections, YouGov polling found that Reform U.K. voters view immigration as their top priority locally.

The rise of Reform U.K. marks a dramatic shift in British electoral politics. Over the last century, British politics has been dominated by two political parties—the center-left Labour Party and the center-right Conservatives. Now, a party that barely existed two years ago has more local councillors than any other party in England, is the second-largest party in Scotland and Wales, and is raising more in donations than any other party.

Legally, a general election does not have to be held until 2029, but these local elections show that Reform U.K. has the ability to translate its popular polling into votes at the ballot box. If the local election results are anything to go by, Britain is now heading toward a five-, perhaps even six-party system.

If this were a parliamentary election, the U.K. would have a hung Parliament, meaning that no party would have a majority of seats (326). The National Equivalent Vote (NEV) share is an estimate of each party's vote share in local elections projected onto a nationwide vote. If a parliamentary election were held, Reform U.K. would win 284 seats, 42 seats short of a majority. The Conservative Party would win 96 seats, and Labour would win 110 seats. The Liberal Democrats would be fourth with 80 seats, followed by the Scottish National Party with 36 seats. Plaid Cymru and the Greens would each win 13 seats.

In other words, if Thursday's election were a general election, Farage would likely be prime minister.

It must be said that turnout tends to be much higher at parliamentary elections, tactical voting tends to affect more votes, and of course, a lot can change in three years.

That didn't stop celebrations at Reform HQ. Before any results had been announced, the party began on Thursday night, with the cocktail list including the "Rachel Reeves 'Rita, Growth Not Included"; "The Kemi Bounce Bellini, Short-Lived Sparkle, Now with 100% less sustained momentum"; and the "Nigel Negroni, Unmistakably Strong."

A source who attended the party at Reform HQ tells Reason that "Reform is a party with a lot to be confident about, and this was very much the mood of the party. There was no real sense of nervousness—the various party apparatchiks were calm, almost celebrating as though they had already won."

Another partygoer tells Reason the mood at Reform HQ was "buoyant and jubilant."

Not only does Reform's success suggest the end of the two-party system, but it is a telling sign of where political realignment has led the "right."

The tragic irony of Britain's political realignment is that the collapse in faith for the political establishment and the two main parties has not revived enthusiasm for a smaller state. Instead, voters appear increasingly drawn to politicians who promise to use state power more aggressively. It's perhaps a sign of what is to come for the political right.

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A Venezuelan Mother's Desperate Search for Her Dead Son Is Representative of Ongoing Human Rights Violations

2026-05-08T20:53:59Z

Carmen Navas spent a year going from prison to prison looking for her son Víctor Hugo Quero Navas, who was arrested last year by Venezuela's military intelligence. She filed petitions and sought proof that he was still alive, but prison officials stonewalled her. This week, the regime led by Venezuelan dictator Delcy Rodríguez finally admitted that Víctor died 10 months ago. He was 51.

Víctor was a karate teacher and street vendor who sold jeans and nutritional supplements and supported his mother with his meager earnings. He was known as "the Russian" because of his blond hair and light eyes.

In January 2025, he was arrested by plainclothes intelligence agents, reportedly because of his past service in the Venezuelan military. He was accused of treason, conspiracy, and terrorism, which are charges commonly used by Venezuelan prosecutors against political dissidents.

Víctor was sent to El Rodeo I, a prison outside Caracas, but his family didn't know where he was being held. A month after being taken into custody, he was taken to the prison infirmary because he had vomited blood. His fellow inmates never saw him again.

In October 2025, the regime finally told Carmen that her son was still being held at El Rodeo I. After she learned his location, Carmen visited the prison on at least a dozen occasions, hoping to see Víctor. During one visit, she was questioned by intelligence agents for over six hours. On another occasion, a prison official shouted at her: "Why do you insist on coming?" according to an account by journalist Víctor Amaya.

When Venezuela's prison ministry finally admitted that Víctor died on July 25, 2025, the cause of death was listed as respiratory failure. Officials also claimed that he hadn't listed any relatives and that no family members had formally requested a visit.

After he was pronounced dead, prison officials buried his body in a marked grave, and investigators say they're planning to exhume the body to confirm the cause of his death, but their findings won't be credible.

"The investigation cannot remain under the control of those responsible for the victim's custody," Martha Tineo, director of the Venezuela-based human rights organization Justicia, Encuentro y Perdón, tells Reason. "Especially when there are elements that undermine the transparency and credibility of the official account."

While President Donald Trump said this week that Venezuelans were "dancing in the streets because they have a lot of money coming in," repression has continued from the interim authorities. Human rights groups estimate that 27 political prisoners have died in state custody over the past decade.

Minutes after the regime acknowledged Víctor's death, the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela posted on X about meetings on the business climate for energy-sector investment. Despite Delcy Rodríguez's promises of amnesty, 454 political prisoners remain behind bars according to Foro Penal, a human rights watchdog group.

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Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Alvin Roth on Organ Markets

2026-05-08T20:42:50Z

In a recent Washington Post op ed, Nobel Prize-winning economist Alvin Roth makes the case for legalizing kidney sales. Roth is a world-leading expert on taboo markets and related topics. Here is an excerpt:

It's time to carefully but urgently rethink payments to kidney donors.

There are approximately 130,000 new cases of kidney failure annually in the United States. It is disproportionately a disease of the poor, and is four times as likely to affect Black people as White people. Kidney failure costs Medicare alone more than $55 billion per year, mostly for dialysis. More than 500,000 people are presently on dialysis, about half of whom will die within five years of beginning treatment. The best treatment for kidney failure is transplantation, but in 2025 fewer than 30,000 people in the United States received kidney transplants. So most people who could benefit from a lifesaving transplant will die without one.

About 90,000 people are registered on the national waiting list to receive a deceased-donor kidney, and many more would be, if there were enough transplants for all who need them. Thousands die each year while waiting, and thousands more are removed from the waiting list when they become too sick to undergo transplant surgery….

[K]idneys for transplant remain in tragically short supply. So it is past time to consider amending the 1984 law that prohibits giving "valuable consideration" for a kidney for transplant.

I am a longtime advocate of legalizing organ markets. Over the years, I have pointed out that doing so would save many thousands of lives, save many more people from years of painful kidney dialysis, and increase bodily autonomy. I provide an overview of these and other points in my recent book chapter "The Presumptive Case for Organ Markets," where I also address a range of standard counter-arguments, such as claims that organ markets would lead to "exploitation" of the poor, that legalization would corrupt our ethics, or that paid donations would "crowd out" altruistic ones. Legalizing organ markets should be a high-priority issue for anyone who cares about saving lives and increasing liberty.

But Roth's advocacy is far more significant than mine, because he's one of the world's leading economists. And, as a left-liberal, he can't easily be accused of advocating legalization because of ideological bias.

Roth does have some concerns about kidney sales that he argues need to be addressed:

We wouldn't want inappropriate donors to be unduly influenced to give up a kidney. (This is something already considered when screening the thousands of people who donate one of their kidneys each year without payment.) Another concern is that we wouldn't want to live in a world in which only rich people could get kidneys, by buying them from poor people.

I am not entirely sure what Roth means by "inappropriate donors." But if he means people whose kidneys are in poor shape or who are bad matches for a particular patient, health care providers would have strong incentives to screen kidneys for quality and for proper matching, because otherwise they would be subject to liability for fraud, malpractice, or negligence. In addition, patients and insurance companies would gravitate away from providers who develop a reputation for poor screening practices. Ultimately, economists estimate we need about 70,000 additional kidneys per year to fully meet the needs of patients suffering from kidney failure in the US. If payment is legalized, a population of over 300 million people can easily provide enough willing donors that health care providers need not settle for kidneys in poor condition or donors who are bad matches for particular patients. Here, as elsewhere, market incentives are a great way to alleviate shortages, and increase quality.

As for the concern that only "rich people" would be able to purchase kidneys, that is no more likely than that only rich people could access the many other services provided by the market. Health insurance can pay for kidney purchases, just as it pays for consumption of many other medical procedures and supplies needed by people in catastrophic situations. And, as Roth recognizes, this would actually be cheaper than the current practice of paying for years of kidney dialysis, during which many patients are impoverished by not being able to work (or at least no full-time).

Rich people who need kidney transplants will be able to buy them. But rich people would have no incentive to buy more than that, any more than rich people buy up all the world's food or all the other medical supplies.

Government can subsidize purchases of kidneys for poor patients, just as it does for many other medical services. Here too, subsidizing kidney purchases is likely to be cheaper than the current policy of subsidizing kidney dialysis. And people who get transplants quickly can thereby also return to the workforce faster, thereby further reducing the cost of kidney disease to society and to the public fisc.

Roth points out that "[i]t would be financially feasible to pay donors quite generously without requiring recipients to pay anything at all. Donors could be paid entirely from the savings to the health care system by taking patients off dialysis." I largely agree. But I think it best if most purchases are made through private insurance plans, rather than by the government. That would incentivize efficiency and competition, and reduce the burden on taxpayers. Government subsidies are best limited to poor and disabled people unable to support themselves.

Almost any system of legalized organ markets would be far preferable to the status quo, where some 40,000 die needlessly every year, and tens of thousands more are condemned to long periods of painful kidney dialysis. Roth and I may not fully agree on what the optimal organ market system would look like, we do agree that legalization would be an enormous improvement over the status quo.

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Secret ICE Memo Tells Local Police Not To Disclose Immigration Enforcement Info Without ICE's Permission

2026-05-08T20:37:59Z

A secretive memo from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was recently issued to local law enforcement partners, barring them from answering questions about their role in immigration enforcement. This new directive raises concerns over the increased entanglement between federal and local law enforcement and the transparency of public records during President Donald Trump's ongoing immigration crackdown.

Anonymous federal sources told The Florida Trib that a memo was emailed between April 19 and May 5 to hundreds of local agencies in Texas and Florida participating in the 287(g) program, which allows local officers to conduct certain immigration enforcement operations. The memo instructed participating agencies to contact ICE before responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for public records.

The directive also told agencies to consult ICE "particularly in situations when information sharing might otherwise take place, such as press conferences, press releases, media ride alongs, [and] social media postings," according to the memo reviewed by the Trib. Because "information obtained or developed" by local law enforcement through participation in the 287(g) is "under the control of ICE," the memo continues, documents cannot be released without prior approval, reports the Trib.

Such a policy could potentially cover operations that only tangentially involve immigration enforcement and conflicts with both federal and state laws designed to ensure the free flow of information necessary for law enforcement accountability and a functioning democracy. Local agencies that may otherwise have an incentive to earn public trust by communicating openly about law enforcement operations must now first assess ICE compliance and seek federal approval.

And that's a huge problem considering just how entangled ICE and local law enforcement have become over the first year of Trump's second term in office. While the Trib was only able to verify that the memo was sent to law enforcement agencies partnering with ICE in Texas and Florida, those agencies are only a fraction of the many 287(g) program agreements around the country, which may have also received this directive. The number of 287(g) agreements has drastically increased from just 135 participating agencies in January 2025 to over 1,700 in May 2026.

Reason reached out to both ICE and the Department of Homeland Security to confirm or deny the existence of the memo and asked whether the agency was concerned that such a policy could run counter to existing freedom of information laws. In response, a DHS spokesperson responded that "coordination is required when…releasing sensitive 287(g)-related information….We are not going to disclose law enforcement sensitive intelligence."

However, what qualifies as sensitive intelligence wasn't clearly defined and may even include the memo itself, as "multiple law enforcement agencies across South Florida confirmed receiving the memo, but would not provide it to a reporter pending clearance from ICE," reports the Trib.

"This is as unconstitutional as it gets, and the bottleneck of information and lack of transparency only allow these unconstitutional acts to proliferate," Katie Blankenship, an immigration attorney, told the Trib, who accused ICE of violating her clients' due process rights with impunity.

Reason's own criminal justice reporter, C.J. Ciaramella, who regularly requests records under FOIA and state laws in the name of government accountability, received an email denying access to records about an immigration arrest in Pensacola, Florida, that took place last October. The denial, in part, cited the agency's "service agreement" with ICE as prohibiting the Florida Highway Patrol from disclosing "any information relating to ICE aliens pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 236.6," and directed Ciaramella to request records directly from ICE. The federal statute cited bars a person who "houses, maintains, provides services to, or otherwise holds any [immigrant] detainee on behalf of the [ICE]" from disclosing the name or other information relating to the detainee.

Both the statute and recent memo underscore a troubling trend: ICE operations have expanded massively throughout the country with little oversight or accountability.

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AOC Hates Billionaires, Heritage Americans, and Ranking Christopher Nolan Movies

2026-05-08T19:37:23Z

Robby Soave and Christian Britschgi cover a wide range of topics, opening with a critique of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortes' claims about billionaires and wage theft. Then they dig into a philosophical debate over what it means to be American—heritage vs. creedal identity—then turn to a discrimination lawsuit against The New York Times. On the lighter side, the duo reacts to a new trailer for an Odyssey film adaptation and ranks Christopher Nolan's movies. They also weigh in on a bizarre story involving Donald Trump and the National Mall reflecting pool, discuss Jeffrey Epstein's reported suicide note, and close out talking about the Roman Empire.

0:00—AOC bashing billionaires again

11:09—The hantavirus cruise needs to go.

16:18—Heritage Americans vs. creedal Americans

27:51—Discrimination suit against The New York Times

41:17—A new Odyssey trailer is out.

50:40—Ranking Christopher Nolan movies

1:01:23—Donald Trump drove through the reflecting pool?

1:09:24—Epstein's suicide note

1:19:45—Always thinking about the Roman Empire

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Short Circuit: An inexhaustive weekly compendium of rulings from the federal courts of appeal

2026-05-08T17:47:08Z

Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice.

This week on the Short Circuit podcast: Live from Michigan Law, it's our Administrative Law-apalooza. With Professors Chris Walker & Nicholas Bagley and top admin law lawyer Zach Larsen.

In 2006, the City of Baltimore agreed to use eminent domain to acquire a huge chunk of land and turn it over to a private developer. But then, in a turn of events that will surprise everyone except those who have ever read anything at all about eminent domain, the planned development is a flop, leaving most of the area vacant, rat-infested, and generally an annoyance to its neighbors. Which stinks, says the Fourth Circuit, but doesn't mean those neighbors have a claim under the Takings Clause to challenge the condemnation of their erstwhile neighbors' land.
In the months following January 6th, a Navy reservist (who was convicted, pardoned for his role in storming the Capitol) buys over $40k in firearms and equipment, including devices for cleaning guns that can be modified to act as silencers. He's convicted for possessing unregistered silencers. Fourth Circuit: We don't have to decide whether silencers are arms protected by the Second Amendment, because even assuming they are, the licensing regime is presumptively constitutional under our precedent. Wilkinson, J., concurring: Silencers are wholly outside of the Second Amendment. Richardson, J., concurring: Circuit precedent requires that we reject his Second Amendment challenge, but that precedent cannot be squared with the Second Amendment or Bruen.
Allegation: Thinking she heard a knock at the door in the middle of the night, woman summons Harris County, Tex. constables to her home. But no one is there, and they leave—only to return 30 minutes later after getting additional calls from the woman's husband and son (who aren't there). Yikes! The son gives dispatch the wrong address and officers … enter a neighbor's house across the street? … but leave when they realize they made a mistake? … but then barge back in and wake the still-sleeping neighbors up at gunpoint? Fifth Circuit (unpublished): Case (partially) undismissed!
After some musings on narrower ways to resolve whether there was a Fourth Amendment violation when Dropbox shared information about a user's child porn with a quasi-governmental entity, this breezy Seventh Circuit opinion entrenches a circuit split by holding that the fine print in all the online terms of service you never read means you've consented to gov't searches of your electronic files. Some folks (and not just your humble summarist) are skeptical.
In 2018, a class of noncitizens files suit against DHS in 2018 over a policy involving warrantless arrests. In 2022, the district court enters a consent decree with an expiration date of May 12, 2025. Plaintiffs in 2025: The gov't isn't following the decree, please extend it. District court: Fine, but only for 118 days. Gov't: Not one day more. Seventh Circuit (over a dissent): The short extension was fine and we're going to make you read almost as many pages as there were extra days.
Some criminal cases raise thorny questions about whether the Sentencing Guidelines' "sophisticated means" enhancement should apply. This isn't one of them, says the Eighth Circuit, affirming the sentence imposed on a prisoner who coordinated a conspiracy among fellow inmates whereby cell phones would be airdropped into the prison by drone and used to cold-call women and persuade them they had missed their court dates, after which conspirators on the outside would meet the women at bail-bond offices to collect their "bond."
After Seattle police "abruptly abandoned" a section of the city in response to the 2020 George Floyd protests, protestors set up a putatively autonomous police-free zone that persisted for months—and, say these plaintiffs, resulted in violence, vandalism, and the devastation of their businesses. Is this dereliction of duty a due process violation? A taking? Nah, says the Ninth Circuit, but it maybe might have been a nuisance under state law. Case (partially) undismissed!
Bankruptcy mavens will be glad to see the Ninth Circuit (en banc) clear up some confusion in its case law about when bankruptcy trustees get absolute immunity. Meanwhile, immunity skeptics will be happy to hear that "quasi-judicial immunity" and "derived judicial immunity" do not extend to a trustee allegedly letting real estate deteriorate while under her administration.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Wyoming high school student receives repeated suspensions for refusing to wear a mask. Her parents sue, alleging that the mask requirement compels speech and that the school retaliated against the student for her symbolic speech of not wearing a mask. Tenth Circuit (unpublished): Would have been helpful to know what message she was conveying. Case dismissed.

New on the Unpublished Opinions podcast: Judicial review in 1776. Free exercise, but what if it's not peyote? And a brick wall of freedom.

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D.C. Circuit Seems Disinclined To Let Pete Hegseth Punish a Senator for His Speech

2026-05-08T17:58:21Z

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth maintains that he has the authority to punish Sen. Mark Kelly (D–Ariz.), a retired U.S. Navy captain, for speech he unilaterally deems "prejudicial to good order and discipline" in the military. That claim, which is at the center of Kelly's First Amendment lawsuit against Hegseth, ran into stiff resistance at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit during oral arguments on Thursday.

Hegseth is asking the appeals court to overturn a preliminary injunction that U.S. District Judge Richard Leon issued on February 12. Leon's order bars Hegseth from proceeding with disciplinary action against Kelly, including a possible reduction in his retirement rank and pay, based primarily on a November 18 video in which the senator and five other Democratic legislators reminded military personnel of their well-established duty to resist unlawful orders. Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, concluded that Kelly was likely to prevail in his claim that such retaliation would violate the First Amendment.

During Thursday's D.C. Circuit hearing in Kelly v. Hegseth, the senator's lawyer, Benjamin Mizer, argued that "the punishments imposed on Senator Kelly are textbook retaliation against disfavored speech." The letter of censure that Hegseth sent Kelly on January 5, Mizer noted, "says on its face that it is targeting the senator for his public statements."

Those statements include Kelly's "criticism of the military leaders for firing admirals and generals, his criticism of them for surrounding themselves with 'yes men,'" Mizer noted. "And [the letter] even attacks him for saying that he will always defend the Constitution. The senator made all those statements, including [the video], as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intel Committee, which gives him a constitutional duty to oversee the military. The fact that he is also a highly decorated war veteran who receives a military pension does not give defendants license to retaliate against his protected political expression."

According to Hegseth, it does. His argument relies mainly on the Supreme Court's 1974 decision in Parker v. Levy, which upheld a prison sentence that a court martial imposed on an active-duty officer who had publicly urged soldiers to disobey deployment orders during the Vietnam War. That decision emphasized the "fundamental necessity for obedience" within the "specialized society" of the U.S. armed forces, which the Court said justified speech restrictions that otherwise "would be constitutionally impermissible." The main issue in Kelly v. Hegseth is whether the logic of that decision also applies to retired officers like the senator, meaning they are not free to say things that the defense secretary views as deleterious to military discipline.

Justice Department lawyer John Bailey urged the D.C. Circuit panel to accept that proposition. But two of the three judges were clearly not inclined to equate Kelly with Capt. Howard Levy, the Army physician whose punishment the Supreme Court approved in Parker.

Judge Nina Pillard, a Barack Obama appointee, noted that Kelly, unlike Levy and contrary to what Hegseth repeatedly claimed in his letter of censure, never urged service members to disobey lawful orders. Rather, the video that offended Hegseth dealt specifically with the duty to "refuse illegal orders." That is "something that's taught at Annapolis to every cadet," Pillard said.

The video, which faulted the Trump administration for "pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens," did not include any specific examples of illegal orders. Pillard noted that Hegseth's letter likewise "doesn't identify specific orders or types of orders" that Kelly supposedly said should be disobeyed.

Judge Florence Pan, a Joe Biden appointee, emphasized the implications of the government's position. If a retired officer "wants to make statements in the public sphere about obeying or disobeying illegal orders and things of that nature," Pan said, "they have to give up their rank, their pay, [and] their retired status in order to say those things because [otherwise] they're obligated not to say those things….These are people who serve their country. Many of them put their lives on the line. And you're saying that they have to give up their retired status in order to say something that is a textbook example taught at West Point and the Naval Academy: that you can disobey illegal orders."

When Hegseth says Kelly's comments were "prejudicial to good order and discipline," Pan said, it "means the soldiers would have to understand him to be telling them to disobey lawful orders, even though he said the opposite." Hegseth also argues that the video, combined with Kelly's criticism of President Donald Trump's domestic military deployments and his murderous military campaign against suspected cocaine smugglers, amounts to urging defiance of orders related to those operations. That argument, Pan said, "assumes that the average soldier would know this whole context in order to draw that inference," which "just seems implausible to me."

Judge Karen Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee, was more sympathetic to Bailey's argument, repeatedly noting that Kelly is "a senator with a bully pulpit," meaning his words might be especially influential, potentially implicating Hegseth's avowed concern about military discipline. Henderson also averred that Kelly's public criticism of Trump's National Guard deployments "has no meaning other than stop the deployment, stop the National Guard from going into cities." And she noted that retired officers are "subject to court martial," which she said means lesser penalties "are necessarily included."

Pillard, by contrast, noted that "there are no cases" addressing "the speech rights of retired service members"—a point that Leon emphasized in explaining why he decided to issue an injunction. "The government argued that the speech at issue here was unprotected under the First Amendment" based on Parker, Pan said. Yet that case "involved an active-duty officer," while Kelly "is a retired officer," and the facts were quite different: Levy "was saying that people should refuse orders to fight in Vietnam," while "all Senator Kelly said was a truism, which is that you should decline to follow illegal orders, and nobody disputes that."

The question for the appeals court is whether Parker "governs the situation," Pan said. "If it does not, that's it." Leon "did not affirmatively adopt some standard that equates retired service members with civilians," she added. "All [he] did was reject the only argument the government made, which was [that] under Parker v. Levy this is unprotected conduct. That's all that we have before us."

It is possible "there's a different standard for military retirees" that gives them more leeway than active-duty soldiers but less than ordinary civilians, Pan conceded. "But that was never sort of fleshed out because the government never made that argument. So all [Leon] had to do was reject the argument that you did make, which was that military retirees are equal" to active-duty service members.

If that were true, Hegseth would have the power to regulate the speech of 2 million or so retired officers. In a brief supporting Kelly, 73 former admirals, generals, and service secretaries who held positions under presidents of both major parties emphasize the speech-chilling impact of that situation.

The speech of military retirees "is now being chilled because of the actions of defendants in this case," Mizer told the D.C. Circuit panel. "They are afraid to speak freely on matters of public policy. They're afraid to post on social media their views about the secretary of defense because they're afraid for their pension. And that is an extraordinary chilling effect."

According to the government, retired officers must "give up their pension" if they don't want the secretary of defense to police their speech, Mizer noted. "That position is as much an insult to the service that veterans have given this country as it is to the First Amendment."

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The Declaration and Civic Friendship

2026-05-01T16:00:16Z

[This post is excerpted from the new book, National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster).]

Partisanship has plagued American society since before Independence. John Adams notably claimed that at the time of the Revolution, "one full third were averse to the Revolution," one-third in favor, and a final third swinging between the other two.[i] Yet the idealism that inspired the main voices for Independence led them to plant their flag firmly in the soil of an American "civic friendship" that was long a living tradition in local and colonial assemblies.

In the colonial era, such a concept of civic friendship and equality was inherent in the practice of local representation. The signers of the Mayflower Compact in 1620 agreed to "covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation… for the general Good of the Colony."[ii] Their bonds preceded the society they were going to build. In doing so, they reflected civic friendship as outlined by Aristotle, in which a "friendship of utility," citizens combine to pursue their self-interest. In doing so, they work in harmony for the good of the city (polis) and their fellow citizens in it. Practically, citizens accept the political reality of ruling and being ruled in turn, as each trusts each to do the best for the community. Ultimately, such reciprocity creates the condition of civic equality.[iii]

By a century and a half later, Thomas Paine had shifted the direction of influence, writing in Common Sense that "[Society] promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections…"[iv] On Paine's view, it is society itself that creates feelings of civic unity by which common goals can be achieved. By the mid-1770s, self-government had come to be consciously understood as the only legitimate form of political system that can lead to both unity and shared civic goals.

This was thrown into sharp relief once the colonists found themselves in conflict with King and Parliament. The imposition of the Intolerable Acts in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party introduced a new political element that erased both self-government and reciprocity. If civic friendship, on Aristotle's view, operated through the act of ruling and being ruled in turn, then direct British rule in Massachusetts made such a relationship and concern for the good of the colony an impossibility. Not only was self-rule removed, but the colonies could of course never hope to rule Britons in turn. The civic relationship was both transformed and made fundamentally unequal and unfair.

Despite nearly 170 years of a common culture and intimate social ties between the British American colonies and Great Britain, as well as vital economic links that benefited both societies, direct British intervention in Massachusetts both activated a sensitivity to the grounds of civic friendship (i.e., reciprocity and fair play) and an awareness that there could be no such feelings under the current conditions. This was a civic puzzle that could not be solved short of Independence, for a superior layer had been imposed on a balanced local system.

Moreover, British intervention and ultimately military action now forced the question of continental (i.e., national) solidarity, transcending age-old colonial boundaries and sovereignty. Not just individual colonial civic structures were being transformed, but the borders between them were being subjected to a new and unfamiliar stress. Generations of civic friendship within colonies were at one and the same time being made politically impotent by British intervention and mutated into a new national civic solidarity.

This unique and unprecedented historical crisis found its ultimate expression in the Declaration of Independence. Such explains Thomas Jefferson's rhetorical approach of seeking both to unite disparate colonial Americans and permanently sever them from their "Brittish brethren." In dealing with the British, the full flood of Jefferson's rage was reached in his famous rough draft of the Declaration, written in mid-June 1776, in a passionate paragraph almost entirely excised by the Continental Congress.

The Americans, Jefferson wrote in his draft, had "appealed to their native justice & magnanimity, as well as to the ties of our common kindred" to oppose the depredations of the King, but these had been rejected. Thus, both justice and solidarity, critical for the health of the political community, had been violated. This betrayal had "given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce for ever these unfeeling brethren. we must endeavor to forget our former love for them … we might have been a free & great people together."[v] The impossibility of civic friendship between these now-separated two peoples could scarcely be more powerfully expressed.

Conversely, the need for a new, national civic solidarity animates the final draft of the Declaration. The document begins with an assertion of continental unity: "When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another…" (emphasis added). The Americans are one community, the Declaration asserts, and the Signers instantiated that by pledging to each other their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.

Factionalism and partisanship of course were not banished by the lofty sentiments of the Declaration. The dramatic rupture between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is but the most famous of instances of the real world intruding upon the realm of philosophical thinkers. Yet over the centuries, the spirit of the Declaration worked its way into the body politic in powerful ways. Notably, in this most multiethnic of societies, a sense of shared natural rights that Americans had been willing to sacrifice for, was over painful decades extended to those not originally included, including women, Blacks, and immigrants from around the globe. Each of these groups sought neither separation nor enclaves, but rather to become a full part of the larger body politic and to share in the concern for the good of the country. Of course, theirs was an exercise in civic friendship that was not always repaid, most notably in the continuation of segregation and discrimination against Blacks and American Indians.

But in upholding the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, they sought only to be accepted fully as American, and not as the "hyphenated Americans" so roundly criticized by Teddy Roosevelt in his 1915 address on "Americanism." In that speech, Roosevelt laid out a modern compact of civic friendship, asserting that immigrants "get all their rights as American citizens … and that they live up to their duties as American citizens." The two elements were inseparable: rights and duties. It was a formulation that remains applicable to all in America, Mayflower descendant and Montenegrin arrival alike.

[i] "From John Adams to James Lloyd, 28 January 1815," Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6401.

[ii] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/mayflower.asp

[iii] Aristotle identifies three types of friendship: those based on pleasure, virtue, and utility. Politics 1280b-1281a. Eudemian Ethics 1242a-1243b; Nicomachean Ethics 1157a, 1159b-1160a, 1162b-1163a,

[iv] Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776), https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/1776-paine-common-sense-pamphlet.

[v] "Rough Draft" https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html (punctuation and orthography in original).

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California Spent $450 Million on a Failed 911 System. Now, the State Is Restarting the Project.

2026-05-08T15:44:48Z

California spent nearly half a billion dollars on an emergency response system that confused dispatchers and reportedly delayed medical care. Now, lawmakers are pushing for renewed scrutiny of the program after local journalists exposed the system's life-endangering failures.

The debacle began in 2019, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to overhaul the state's "antiquated" emergency calling system. The state wanted to replace the analog system with Next Generation 911, a modernized system that could transmit more information, including voice, text, and video.

California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) estimated that the project would be completed by 2021. But the implementation was severely delayed, according to NBC Bay Area News. By 2024, the state had connected only a few dispatchers to the new system, which was riddled with issues.

It also cost Californians $450 million between 2019 and 2025, according to The Sacramento Bee's William Melhado. That $450 million went to four different technology companies building out the Next Generation 911 system. Three of the companies were to cover three regions, while the fourth was supposed to serve as a statewide provider to "prevent a single point of failure from causing a statewide outage," Melhado wrote.

"But when the time came to turn that system on, it didn't work," he reported.

After Tuolumne County implemented the new system, dispatchers told NBC Bay Area's Investigative Unit they received misrouted calls from other counties, emergency calls were lost, and there was a 12-hour period when callers were unable to call 911. Dispatchers even reported being unable to transfer a 911 call about an "active heart attack."

Police also reported having trouble transferring calls in Desert Hot Springs, where one dispatcher reported the issue resulted in "a delay in emergency medical aid."

Now, after spending hundreds of millions on the project, there is a bipartisan effort to course-correct. In February, California state Sen. Tony Strickland (R–Huntington Beach) introduced the "Fix 911 Act," which would require Cal OES to submit regular reports to the state Legislature detailing the project's progress and costs. A press release announcing the bill specifically noted how The Sacramento Bee and NBC News Bay Area revealed the need for more government accountability. And in the state's house, Assembly member Rhodesia Ransom (D–Tracy) also introduced legislation demanding more oversight of the project.

Strict auditing and careful oversight will be necessary as Cal OES scraps its original regional plan and attempts to implement the new 911 system statewide by 2030.

"The losers are always the same," reports City Journal. "The taxpayers and residents who, in this case, have to keep paying a fee on their monthly phone bill for technology that doesn't work and keep their fingers crossed that the current system won't fall apart and send their local dispatchers into a total blackout."

If not for local investigative reporting, Californians would likely have had to pay for a failing and costly system for even longer. Still, the program's lack of success is not surprising, given California's long and exhaustive history of financing expensive boondoggles.

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Is the California Coastal Commission Finally Losing Some of Its Regulatory Powers?

2026-05-08T15:35:38Z

California has one of the world's most spectacular coastlines, which meanders 1,100 miles from Imperial Beach to Crescent City.

And, of course, everyone wants to "Save Our Coast" and assure public access to beaches, which is why Californians voted 55 percent to 45 percent in 1972 for Proposition 20. It promised to protect open space and restore habitats within the Coastal Zone. In 1976, the Legislature turned the California Coastal Commission into a permanent agency that has tormented property owners and localities ever since.

This frustrating bureaucratic situation has been part of California's landscape for 50-plus years and there's been no hope to rein in the abuses, but the tide seems to be turning following a variety of court cases and legislative efforts to limit the commission's powers.

But first the history. One key problem with California's direct democracy is voters are easily swayed by broad promises, but then lose interest in real-world outcomes. Voters agreed "it is the policy of the state to preserve, protect, and where possible, restore the resources of the coastal zone for the enjoyment of the current and succeeding generations." These measures accomplished these goals by granting this body extraordinary powers to restrain development.

Consider that 26.8 million of California's 39.5 million residents live in coastal counties. The commission's power can reach five miles inland. It only has direct authority over a small percentage of the state's land, but it has vast authority over the development process in multiple beach cities. Its decisions reverberate throughout California's most populated regions, even in areas that aren't in the Coastal Zone. The commission adds yet another layer on top of these cities' extensive review processes.

The result: Less construction and housing, along with the abuse of property owners as the commission constantly expands its powers. The commission shakes down property owners by, say, requiring them to remove structures or give up development rights. It imposes—or threatens—enormous fines that are used to pay for remediation or even directed to outside environmental organizations. It uses consent decrees to force private owners to pay for public infrastructure.

This is by design. The late Peter Douglas was the main author of the initiative and the commission's executive director for many years. In a 1999 speech to the Surfrider Foundation, he cited as one of its significant accomplishments "the subdivisions not approved." Yet efforts to control some of the commission's well-documented excesses have always fallen flat. In the early 2000s, the courts declared the commission unconstitutional based on its appointment process, but the Legislature fixed that issue and it's been business as usual for 20-plus years.

But now that the state is years into a grueling housing crisis, driven by a lack of housing construction in California's most-populated coastal regions, lawmakers have at least chipped away at commission authority. Senate Bill 423, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023, expanded expedited housing approvals in the once-sacrosanct Coastal Zone.

Now under consideration, Senate Bill 963 by Sen. John Laird (D–Santa Cruz) would, as his statement explained, "establish clear timelines to ensure that appealed projects move through the appeals process in a standardized manner to ensure timely compliance with local coastal plans."

In an April article, The Orange County Register's Andre Mouchard reported the state may be "on a path to quietly weaken the California Coastal Commission." He pointed to Newsom's 2025 executive order exempting the Los Angeles wildfire-rebuilding process from commission review. And he also referenced Assembly Bill 1740 by Assemblyman Rick Chavez Zbur (D–Santa Monica) that "would do for beach-close business districts of Santa Monica what Newsom's executive orders did after the fires—sideline the Coastal Commission."

There's one more piece of good news, thanks to a recent PLF legal victory. The California Supreme Court, in Shear Development Co. LLC v. the California Coastal Commission, unanimously ruled that the commission had improperly overturned a county building permit near Morro Bay. Per the court: "Consistent with these conclusions, we hold that the commission had no appellate jurisdiction over Shear's permit application."

As PLF attorney Jeremy Talcott told me, the case is significant because it restores the oversight role of courts and gives power back to local governments, which can no longer just hand development decisions to the commission. "For years, the commission has usurped the power given by the state Legislature to local coastal communities to approve homebuilding permits," he said in a statement. It's not the only recent case that has put limits on commission powers.

Most Californians are no doubt still rightly enthusiastic about protecting our coastline treasures. But the latest news is a reminder that even the noblest-sounding proposals can have severe unintended consequences. I can't think of anything that's been made better by handing ham-fisted powers to unelected commissars.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

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Contra AOC, You Don't Have To Be a Billionaire To Be a Leech

2026-05-08T19:59:54Z

Barack Obama's "you didn't build that" comment during the 2012 election, part of a larger argument that successful entrepreneurs ultimately derived their wealth from public investments, was widely considered a gaffe at the time.

In retrospect, the former president sounds downright capitalist. A decade and a half of leftward drift in the Democratic Party has given us the likes of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), who argues that not only did you not build that, but if you're rich enough, you actually stole it.

The New York congresswoman went viral yesterday for comments she made on comedian Ilana Glazer's podcast describing any billionaire's wealth as inherently unearned.

"You just can't earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they're worth, but you can't earn that," said Ocasio-Cortez in the middle of a longer spiel about how capitalism forces people to "internalize" economic hardship as their own fault, and not the result of wider capitalistic forces.

AOC: "There's a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned. You can't earn a billion dollars. You just can't earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they're worth, but you can't earn… pic.twitter.com/tUi9xTlQ2B

— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) May 7, 2026

The notion that someone has profited off of others' misery simply by being a billionaire is silly. Philosopher Robert Nozick debunked this idea with his Wilt Chamberlain thought experiment. To summarize, if you redistributed all wealth equally, Chamberlain would quickly end up having way more money than everyone else because a huge number of people would be willing to buy a ticket to see the basketball player live.

Nozick's point was that even from a starting point of complete economic equality, some people's superior skills will enable them to make more money than others and that's fine. The people who voluntarily pay to see Chamberlain are better off for the experience, even if the money they spent on tickets recreates vast wealth inequality.

People have offered the more contemporary example of Taylor Swift as a rebuttal to AOC's comments, but the point is the same: You can indeed become a billionaire by doing something obviously uncontroversial and non-exploitative like selling concert tickets.

Take the billionaire Taylor swift.

Her recent Era's tour grossed over $2 billion. The customers are very happy, and most of them would gladly have paid more for their tickets. In the documentary they cover the dancers and some of the crew, who are all shown to be happy with… https://t.co/8r1YV6GlAl

— Jonatan Pallesen (@jonatanpallesen) May 8, 2026

Indeed, the source of Swift's wealth is not so different from AOC's interlocutor. Glazer is a successful actor and comedian who's become, even by contemporary American standards, rich and famous by selling performances that people want to see.

The fact that she hasn't obtained the stratospheric levels of wealth that Swift has doesn't obviously make one the oppressor and the other the oppressed. It does reek of envy and petty status competition.

There is of course a case that Taylor Swift's fortune is partially derived from ill-gotten gains. While many consider her to be a talented performer, and she's certainly a skilled businesswoman, her wealth depends in part on copyright protections of her music that many libertarians would consider a form of unjust, state-granted privilege.

The point is that it's not the amount of money Swift has earned, but her means of acquiring it that determines whether her fortune is deserved. The primary question to ask is whether one earned their money conducting voluntary exchanges in a free market, or through some state transfer or grant of privilege.

To be sure, in our modern, mixed economy, there's plenty of state transfers going around. Contra AOC, there are makers and moochers on every rung of the income ladder.

The billionaire who lowers consumer prices by creating an online retail giant and distribution network hasn't inherently exploited anyone. The middle-income tenant living in a rent-stabilized unit in New York is benefiting from an inherently parasitic relationship created by regulation.

In a follow-up comment on social media, AOC claims that the largest form of theft in the economy is $50 billion in wage theft.

The single largest form of theft in America is wage theft. $50 billion a year are stolen from American workers.

If a billionaire amasses their wealth by underpaying their full-time workers so severely that they must rely on food assistance and government programs to survive,… https://t.co/fH9pBZbpSa

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 7, 2026

Even if that weren't a nonsense figure that vastly exaggerates the amount of wage theft in the economy, it would still pale in comparison to the $4.5 trillion confiscated from workers' paychecks each year via federal income and payroll taxes.

In her interview with Glazer, AOC complains of the "myth" we've created of the productive billionaire to justify wealth inequality. The far more pervasive myth seems to be the one the congresswoman retails in: that government taxation and state-granted privileges can't be coercive exploitation because you didn't earn that money anyway.

Sheldon Richman ends his essay on libertarian class theory with a call to "raise the class-consciousness of all honest, productive people. That is, the industrious must be shown that they are daily victims of the ruling political class."

AOC wants to obfuscate the fact that she is a member of the ruling class with her own rags-to-Congress story. Don't buy it. Stand in solidarity with the billionaires she'd like to see the state grind into dust.

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Virginia Supreme Court Voids Virginia Gerrymander

2026-05-08T15:20:46Z

This morning, by a vote of 4-3, the Virginia Supreme Court declared the ballot initiative supporting a partisan gerrymander of Virginia's congressional districts to violate the Virginia Constitution.

The majority opinion by Justice Kelsey begins:

On March 6, 2026, the General Assembly of Virginia submitted to Virginia voters a proposed constitutional amendment that authorizes partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts in the Commonwealth. We hold that the legislative process employed to advance this proposal violated Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia. This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy.

The opinion concludes:

While the Commonwealth is free by its lights to do the right thing for the right reason, the Rule of Law requires that it be done the right way. Under the Constitution of Virginia, the right way "necessitate[s] compliance with the requirements of a deliberately lengthy, precise, and balanced procedure," Coleman, 219 Va. at 153, governing the lawful adoption of constitutional amendments. "[S]trict compliance with these mandatory provisions is required in order that all proposed constitutional amendments shall receive the deliberate consideration and careful scrutiny that they deserve." Id. at 154.

In this case, the Commonwealth submitted a proposed constitutional amendment to Virginia voters in an unprecedented manner that violated the intervening-election requirement in Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia. This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void. For this reason, the congressional district maps issued by this Court in 2021 pursuant to Article II, Section 6-A of the Constitution of Virginia remain the governing maps for the upcoming 2026 congressional elections.

Among other things, the majority notes that the state had argued vociferously against judicial review of the ballot initiative before a vote was held, noting that if the initiative failed there would be no need for any judicial review at all. Given that prior argument, the majority would not credit the state's argument that judicial review was inappropriate after the vote was held. That sort of "heads-I-win, tails-you-lose" argument is often disfavored by courts, as judges generally recognize such arguments as a way to circumvent judicial review altogether.

The dissent by Chief Justice Powell begins:

This Court has long recognized that our "'Constitution is certain and fixed.'" Staples v.
Gilmer, 183 Va 338, 350 (1944) (quoting Vanhorne's Lessee v. Dorrance, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 304, 308 (Pa. 1795)). "'[I]t contains the permanent will of the people,'" and, therefore, its meaning can only be altered by the people. Id. (quoting Vanhorne's Lessee, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) at 308) (emphasis added). Notwithstanding this bedrock principle, today the majority has broadened the meaning of the word "election," as used in the Virginia Constitution, to include the early voting period. This is in direct conflict with how both Virginia and federal law define an election. Under the facts of this case, I believe the circuit court erred and I respectfully disagree with the majority's conclusion that the General Assembly did not strictly comply with Virginia's constitutional requirements. For this reason, I must respectfully dissent.

As this is a state-law-based decision, it has no legal effect on gerrymandering efforts in other parts of the country.

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The Mifepristone Briefs Are In, But One Dog Did Not (Yet) Bark

2026-05-08T15:06:01Z

Louisiana has filed its response to Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro's applications for a stay of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit order barring the prescription of mifepristone to terminate pregnancies via telemedicine. As one would expect, Louisiana defends its aggressive standing theory and the Fifth Circuit's order.

In case the justices did not have enough to consider before the administrative stay entered by Justice Alito expires on Monday, there are nearly three-dozen amicus briefs filed on behalf of various individuals and organizations who care about the outcome . Few of these briefs are likely to affect the outcome, however, and even fewer add anything of substance to the parties' briefs.

Activist groups, political figures, and an increasing number of academics want to fly the flag for their respective side, and amicus briefs let them do that. The various groups get to tell their members and donors that they took the fight to One First Street, and appellate attorneys get another line on their CVs, whether or not the briefs add anything of value.

Everyone else may have filed a brief, but the Food and Drug Administration did not. The Fifth Circuit's order halts an FDA regulation, but the FDA seems not to care. The FDA is reviewing the 2023 decision to allow mifepristone prescriptions via telemedicine, and has acknowledged some concerns with the 2023 analysis, but the Trump Administration has generally been quite aggressive in responding to lower court orders that block federal agency action. It has argued repeatedly that such orders necessarily cause the government irreparable harm. This puts the Trump Administration in the position of either upsetting pro-life organizations or throwing the FDA under the bus.

As the administrative stay expires Monday at 5pm, it is reasonable to expect something further from the justices before then. What will the Court do? There are several options beyond simply blocking the Fifth Circuit's order or allowing it to go into effect.

If the justices want to better understand the FDA's position, they could request briefing from the FDA, and further delay an ultimate decision. The justices could also decide that this case merits greater examination, particularly on the standing question.

As there is a circuit split between the Fifth and Ninth on the theory of state standing pushed by Louisiana, I would not be surprised if the Court treats the stay requests as applications for certiorari before judgment. Louisiana anticipated this possibility in its filing, and noted it would acquiesce to certiorari before judgment and oral argument before the summer recess if the Court were inclined to grant the stay request. With everything else the justices have on their plate before July, I doubt the Court would put this case on such a short fuse, but a grant of certiorari to examine the state standing theory is a real possibility.

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How Mortal Kombat Went From National Panic to Nostalgic Camp

2026-05-08T14:41:32Z

While watching Mortal Kombat II, a cheesy '90s throwback that's essentially a family-friendly fantasy picture with copious R-rated gore, I couldn't help but recall the controversy surrounding the original Mortal Kombat video game. The game was released in the early 1990s, and it was both a runaway hit and a mass cultural panic that approached the level of a national emergency—a matter of congressional inquiry and, eventually, a literal Supreme Court case.

The game was first released to arcades in 1992, but shortly after it was released for home consoles the following year, Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut and eventual vice presidential nominee, declared his intention to hold hearings on the game.

Lieberman's concern was the game's graphic and realistic violence. Mortal Kombat was a fighting game like so many others, most notably the Street Fighter franchise, pitting two players against each other in a flat, two-dimensional space. But unlike other fighting games, Mortal Kombat used scans of human actors as its characters, and punches, kicks, and other hits were depicted with explosions of blood. Most controversially, the game featured "fatalities" that allowed winning players to input a code that would conclude a match with an extra gory finishing kill—a severed head and spinal cord or torn-out heart. The Kombat was, well, Mortal.

Lieberman found out about Mortal Kombat when a staffer whose child wanted one for a home system brought the game to his attention. He was a middle-aged centrist Democrat with a penchant for crusades against the media, and he was appalled. He vowed to hold formal congressional hearings.

When the hearings eventually happened in late 1993 and again in early 1994, near the peak of America's urban crime wave, Lieberman made clear that he believed Mortal Kombat was a serious behavioral influence and a contributor to an increasingly violent culture. As Reason's Jesse Walker noted in 2014, his opening statement described high-profile real-world crimes, including a slumber party abduction and a mass shooting on a train. Then he implied a link to games, declaring that "violence and violent images permeate more and more aspects of our lives, and I think it's time to draw the line. I know that one place where parents want us to draw the line is with violence in video games."

Lieberman argued that video games were teachers that trained young minds to enjoy violence. "We're talking about video games that glorify violence and teach children to enjoy inflicting the most gruesome forms of cruelty imaginable," he said. He later said he'd "like to ban all the violent video games," but he knew this would conflict with the First Amendment, which turned out to be prescient.

What Lieberman missed and misunderstood was that these games were ironic, even funny—intended to shock, yes, but also to amuse and confuse, especially prudish adults and parental authority figures like Lieberman. They were smirking, juvenile provocations, kind of obnoxious, kind of repulsive, and also kind of clever. (The sequel featured cutesy finishing moves known as "Friendships," a sort of in-game retort to the controversy.) Lieberman not only took the bait, but he took it in the most public forum imaginable, practically insisting, on the floor of Congress, There ought to be a law!

Over the next decade, various politicians did indeed try to implement a law, most notably in California, where in 2005, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger—who became famous starring in violent movies like The Terminator—signed a bill banning the sale of violent games to minors. In 2011, the Supreme Court struck down the law on First Amendment grounds, and Justice Antonin Scalia even specifically referenced Mortal Kombat in his majority opinion. "Reading Dante is unquestionably more cultured and intellectually edifying than playing Mortal Kombat," he wrote. However, "these cultural and intellectual differences are not constitutional ones. Crudely violent video games, tawdry TV shows, and cheap novels and magazines are no less forms of speech than The Divine Comedy." Scalia may not have personally appreciated the garish amusements of Mortal Kombat. But he understood that it wasn't, and shouldn't, be up to him to determine the value of those amusements for other people.

Today, the Mortal Kombat series still exists in both video game and film form. But there are also action figures, plushy toys, and even cartoons—very, very R-rated cartoons. The franchise has all the trappings of a teen-friendly brand, like Marvel and DC comics, but with a lot more blood and guts.

Like those brands, Mortal Kombat now traffics in nostalgia as much as action. The latest movie, a direct sequel to the 2021 reboot that came out just as movie theaters were starting to reopen after COVID-19, is focused on the character of Johnny Cage, a Hollywood action star recruited to fight in a to-the-death elimination tournament that will decide the fate of Earth. The movie introduces the character through a flashback to a fake cheesy '90s action film, shown on scratchy VHS and produced by New Line Cinema, the studio behind both the '90s film adaptations of the video game and the current installments. We then catch up with Cage, now a former star who has become a down-and-out has-been working the fan convention circuit.

When one of those fans approaches him and suggests a reboot of an old series, Citizen Cage, he dismisses the idea. "Nobody wants that," he says. "They want grounded. They want gritty. They want Keanu Reeves murdering a million fucking dudes with a pencil—not some dinosaur doing karate poses. That shit went out in the 90s." The fan, saddened, responds, "I thought it was pretty cool." This is a movie for those fans.

Mortal Kombat II knows it's a relic, and attempts, in its own ironic way, to resuscitate the magic of the '90s.

It doesn't really work. The movie's story is a snooze, partly because it tries to adhere to the incomprehensible lore of the video game. Its wink-wink nostalgia isn't funny or clever enough to justify its existence, though it does highlight the series' inherent camp. And its gory provocations are too stale to make an impact. No one is going to warn about this movie at a congressional hearing or in a Supreme Court argument. It's neither good nor shocking enough to be worth the effort.

Part of the reason Mortal Kombat is still with us, though, is that Lieberman made it a cultural totem. He made it seem dangerous, and thus attractive. But by the 2010s, even Lieberman had mostly given up his crusade. Although he still warned about violent games, he was more concerned about online radicalism and the dark corners of the internet.

There's a lesson in all of this. Today's cultural panics are likely to become tomorrow's cheesy nostalgia plays, too ridiculous and too obviously irrelevant to matter. That's what happened to video games, to comic books, to pinball, and even, to some degree, to social media. Next time, maybe skip the panic?

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Just Don't Call It a War

2026-05-08T13:37:38Z

U.S. and Iran exchange fire, but the official line is that it's not a resumption of the war.

This is obviously in the eye of the beholder, but it is probably good that war has rhetorically fallen out of favor to such a degree that the Trump administration is at least making noises in the direction of restraint.

Of course, reality matters more than rhetoric. Here's what's happening: Iran struck three American destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz, so the U.S. struck Iran's military facilities that had carried out the destroyer attacks. "U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) eliminated inbound threats and targeted Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking U.S. forces including missile and drone launch sites; command and control locations; and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance nodes," reads their statement. "CENTCOM does not seek escalation but remains positioned and ready to protect American forces."

Project Freedom—President Donald Trump's plan to ensure safe passage for ships stuck in the strait, which safely got two ships out before provoking more Iranian ire—was stopped soon after it started. It's not clear what the fate of the mission will be, or how the U.S. military can work to help ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

"The U.S. military began quietly laying the groundwork for an operation to roll back Iran's influence over the strait in April, sending uncrewed sea drones into the area to scan for mines to help eventually establish a new safe shipping lane along the southern edge of the strait, according to defense officials," reports The Wall Street Journal. But there were critical problems with Trump's plan "for the destroyers to provide an antimissile umbrella, while U.S. helicopters would protect against Iranian attack boats." He may not have had sufficient firepower, given the ongoing blockade of Iranian ports. It doesn't seem like the operation ultimately made much of a dent, and Iran seems hellbent on continuing to reassert its dominance in the strait.

Tariff update: "A three-judge panel at the U.S Court of International Trade (CIT) ruled Thursday evening that Trump's 10 percent 'global tariff' is unlawful," writes Reason's Eric Boehm. "The president imposed those tariffs in February, just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Trump's attempt to use emergency powers to impose a sweeping set of tariffs on most imports." Trump attempted to use an obscure section of the Trade Act of 1974 that allows for the imposition of temporary tariffs if there are "large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits," which the U.S., crucially, does not have.

"That view was vindicated by the CIT," continues Boehm, "which ruled Thursday that the president cannot impose tariffs under Section 122 without that prerequisite."

Scenes from New York: I don't know what this means: "you can't earn a billion dollars." (I'm putting this in SFNY because the "I'm rich but I refuse to acknowledge it" shtick feels endemic to this place in particular and the people who come from it, as noted before.) I can think of plenty of ways to earn a billion dollars: Making something many millions of people want and are willing to pay for, that massively enriches (or extends, in the case of pharmaceuticals) their lives. And, logically speaking, how could one justly earn a few million dollars but not a billion? Where does the line get drawn and who gets to draw it? Is there any tier of judgment, decision making, or responsibility that warrants vastly more pay than any other?

AOC: "There's a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned. You can't earn a billion dollars. You just can't earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they're worth, but you can't earn… pic.twitter.com/tUi9xTlQ2B

— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) May 7, 2026

QUICK HITS

Seems bad: "Salvadoran investigative outlet El Faro announced Thursday that two of its members' assets, including a bank account and property, were frozen, in what it denounced as an escalation of political persecution for its work exposing corruption in the government of President Nayib Bukele," reports the Associated Press.
"It feels so much like early COVID, particularly with public health authorities making very complacent remarks that 'it's not that transmissible, contact tracing will work, quarantine will work,'" writes software engineer Fernando Borretti on the hantavirus that's spreading, which originated on a cruise ship. "Complacency at the start, and severity at the end, is exactly why COVID was such a fuckup." It's interesting how many of the countries are handling their hanta cases: expecting self-isolation for up to 45 days, which seems like something nobody will actually follow through on, while other places like Singapore are way more intense about it. (The virus' long incubation period is part of what makes it so challenging.)
How do we feel about Mythos? (More here.)

Not a good day for team "Claude Mythos is just marketing hype." pic.twitter.com/bOP52VzAfw

— Timothy B. Lee (@binarybits) May 7, 2026

Relatedly, I would love to see someone excellent get hired by my friend Mike Solana to delve into what the people crafting these large language models (LLMs) actually believe.

The post Just Don't Call It a War appeared first on Reason.com.

What Can Be Done To Stop Campus Disruptions?

2026-05-08T13:22:29Z

I recently wrote about the latest campus disruption at UCLA. As you might have predicted, the students who interrupted the event faced no consequences. By contrast, UCLA suggested that the FedSoc chapter could face liability if they named the people who protested at the public event. As FIRE pointed out, the school cannot impose liability for sharing truthful information. UCLA quickly backed off.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Chapter of the Federalist Society hosted a panel discussion about free speech on campus. The panelists were Professor Eugene Volokh (formerly of UCLA), Professor Jon Michaels (UCLA), and Yitzy Frankel (a student at UCLA). Judge Jim Ho moderated. But as Judge Ho often does, he shared his thoughts on the matter.

Judge Ho's introduction was covered in Bloomberg, so I thought it might be useful to present his full remarks in context. I asked Judge Ho, and he graciously allowed me to share his comments.

The recent incident at UCLA Law School should alarm every lawyer, every judge, every citizen who cares about the future—and the future leadership—of our country.

To begin with, this is not just one incident. It's just the latest in a string of incidents on campuses across the country. And it reveals what has been kept hidden for too long from the American people. Too many law schools have stopped teaching students how to be good citizens—let alone good lawyers. Too many institutions of legal education have become incubators of intolerance. And I worry about the impact on the rest of our country.

Let me be clear: I didn't fly halfway across the country because some law school event went poorly. At the end of the day, I really don't care about what happens at UCLA. That doesn't affect me at all.

Here's my concern: If this is what we're teaching the next generation of lawyers and leaders—that this is how you treat people you disagree with—ask yourself: What else are they willing to do to those they disagree with? What other lines are they willing to cross? What kind of country does that look like? And is it the kind of country any of us would like to live in? Because what happens on campus doesn't stay on campus.

Students are learning all the wrong lessons. They're bringing those lessons to workplaces and communities all across America. And it's tearing our country apart.

But even that's not what most infuriates me about recent events at UCLA. What most infuriates me is that my branch of government has no interest in doing anything about it.

Four years ago, a similar incident occurred at Yale Law School. A group of woke law students disrupted an event that, ironically, was intended to promote free speech—simply because one of the speakers was a prominent Evangelical Christian lawyer.

The disruption is troubling. But as I've tried to point out, disruption is not the problem. It's the symptom. The problem is discrimination. Discrimination against conservatives. Against Christians. Against Jews. Against anyone disdained by cultural elites.

Not only did Yale refuse to do anything about the disruptors—they did precisely the opposite: They threatened to punish a conservative student for sending an email announcing a Federalist Society event.

So I announced that I could no longer in good conscience hire law clerks from Yale Law School. I pointed out that many judges would obviously refuse to hire from a racist law school.

So if it's okay to stand up against racism, why not for freedom of speech? Why can a judge oppose discrimination based on race, but not religion?

I also pointed out that many judges are obviously willing to hire only from a small group of so-called elite law schools. So they're already boycotting the overwhelming majority of law schools. And if it's okay for judges to boycott non-elite law schools, then surely it's okay for judges to extend that boycott to include intolerant law schools as well.

Finally, I pointed out that, if enough of us did this, then we'd never have to actually institute the boycott. The intolerance would stop in a heartbeat. Because we all know that law schools are strongly motivated to maximize the number of their law students placed in judicial clerkships.

Those who have written extensively about wokeism and intolerance—folks like Vivek Ramaswamy and Ilya Shapiro and Senator Ted Cruz—they have all come out in strong support of the boycott.

By contrast, when I made my pitch to my colleagues in the judiciary, I didn't just lose—I lost badly. A handful of federal trial judges across the country expressed strong support. But out of the 179 federal circuit judges nationwide, only one other circuit judge agreed to join me—Lisa Branch of the Eleventh Circuit. Now, I've written plenty of 1 against 16 dissents on my court. But this was the first time that I've ever lost 2 to 177.

But you know what? If judges don't want to do this, fine. I've learned a lot about judicial personality in my eight years on the bench. If judges want to say that, as a matter of principle, we should never engage in boycotts, okay then.

Here's my problem. Just last year, when the Heritage Foundation was charged with antisemitism, a number of judges made clear that they would refuse to associate with the Heritage Foundation. And they specifically boycotted an event that would have featured the Heritage Foundation's work. There was even a whole panel of judges to talk about these issues during the most recent Federalist Society convention.

So just to review the bidding: It's okay to boycott Heritage. But you can't boycott woke law schools. Let's just be very honest about what's going on here. Let's be candid about the double standards that plague the judiciary. It's okay to boycott Heritage, because you'll never be punished for attacking conservatives. It's okay to boycott Heritage, because it's okay to virtue signal to cultural elites. It's okay to boycott Heritage, because judges who punch left are excoriated—but judges who punch right are celebrated.

It's these double standards that exemplify my longstanding problem with my branch of government. I never expected to become a judge myself. But before I took the bench, I was involved in the federal judicial selection process for over two decades, from the Justice Department, to the Senate Judiciary Committee, to the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Texas. And based on my experience, I've come to learn one simple lesson about judicial selection: When you pick judges based on elite credentials, you'll get judges who will care only about elite approval. You'll get climbers, not fighters. Lawyers who aren't warriors—who are timid, not tough.

Law students often ask me: Why haven't more judges joined the boycott? Well, you'd be surprised how many judges have told me: Love what you're doing. Please keep doing it. But sorry I can't join you. You'd be surprised how many judges have told me: Well, if you can get other judges to join you, then I'll join you.

Look, I get it. There's safety in numbers. It's scary to be alone, or in the extreme minority. But Deuteronomy 20 tells us that, when you go to war, don't be afraid of an army greater in number than yours. Just worry about being on the right side, and the rest will take care of itself.

We should heed the words of Justice Thomas: North is still north. Right is still right. Even if you stand by yourself. We need judges to follow in the mold of Justice Thomas—judges who are willing to stand alone when necessary—judges who care more about principle than prestige. It's unfortunate what happened at UCLA Law School. And it's unfortunate that the judiciary won't do anything to help.

There is a lot of unpack here.

First, as I noted at the time, I supported Judge Ho's boycott of Yale, and later of Columbia. It is regrettable this strategy did not catch on more.

Second, Judge Ho is correct that other judges support him privately, but will not say so publicly. Judges are, by their very nature, cautious. They follow, but do not lead.

Third, Judge Ho alludes to the boycott of an event promoting the Heritage Guide to the Constitution at the Federalist Society National Lawyer's Convention, which I referenced in my resignation letter and other writings. I think you can distinguish between a judge personally boycotting a problematic think tank and a judge boycotting students who attend a problematic university, but that distinction is thin. Indeed, if the argument is that a boycott is never proper, both of these actions are inappropriate. The truth is that judges, like everyone else, choose who to associate with and who not to associate with. That is what a boycott is. The only difference is that Judge Ho and his colleagues make their views known publicly.

In the end, what can be done about campus disruptions? The answer, it seems, is nothing.

The post What Can Be Done To Stop Campus Disruptions? appeared first on Reason.com.

Today in Supreme Court History: May 8, 1884

2025-07-11T21:25:03Z

5/8/1884: President Harry S. Truman's birthday. He would make four appointments to the Supreme Court: Chief Justice Vinson, and Justices Burton, Clark, and Minton.

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ATF Rule Changes Could Ease Restrictions for Gun Owners and Dealers

2026-05-08T19:59:41Z

Government officials are always eager to bind us in red tape; it's rare that they cut the stuff. It's a special treat when an agency as obnoxious as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives rolls back any sort of restrictions, but that's what it's doing with regulatory revisions that will, overall, ease the burden of regulations on gun owners and firearms dealers. There's nothing groundbreaking in the proposed rules changes, but any relief is welcome relief.

'The Second Amendment Is Not a Second-Class Right'

"The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is releasing this week 34 notices of final and proposed rulemaking following a comprehensive review of existing regulations conducted in accordance with Executive Order 14206, Protecting Second Amendment Rights," the DOJ announced last week.

"The Second Amendment is not a second-class right," commented Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. "This Department of Justice is ending the weaponization of federal authority against law-abiding gun owners. We will continue to vigorously defend their rights as the Constitution demands."

The referenced executive order, from February 2025, directed the Attorney General to "examine all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other actions of executive departments and agencies (agencies) to assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens, and present a proposed plan of action to the President, through the Domestic Policy Advisor, to protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans."

Administrative changes in rules can't repeal intrusive laws, like the National Firearms Act (the Firearms Policy Coalition is challenging the 1934 NFA in court). But they can make life harder or easier for people by reinterpreting laws and emphasizing or deemphasizing enforcement in some areas. As detailed in the Federal Register, some of the ATF's proposed rule changes, which must undergo a comment period, are more substantial than others. A few have the potential to significantly reduce expense and legal burdens for shooters and gun dealers.

Easing Rules for Wrist Braces and Records Retention

Importantly, one of the rule changes rolls back a Biden-era rule reinterpretation that turned pistols equipped with wrist braces into (heavily regulated) short-barreled rifles. "Individuals would be able to resume purchasing firearms with an attached 'stabilizing brace' as the public had done prior to the 2023 final rule, as long as the firearm is not intended to be fired from the shoulder and does not fall within the statutory definition of 'firearm' under the NFA," the ATF notes.

Another change would specify that firearms dealers no longer have to hold sales records indefinitely, which many self-defense activists see as backdoor registration of guns and owners: "ATF is considering whether to establish the retention period at 20 years or 30 years as an appropriate balance between the cost of maintaining records for longer periods and the public safety interest in being able to trace more crime guns and to more quickly apprehend perpetrators of crimes involving firearms." That's still too long—any mandatory retention period is excessive—but it's an improvement.

Last year's One Big Beautiful Bill Act failed to repeal registration requirements for noise suppressors/silencers and other NFA-regulated devices, but it reduced the transfer and "making" tax on them to $0. In our rules-bound world, though, laws don't have full effect until administrative agencies change their red tape accordingly. One of the new changes does that by altering rules in accord "with the OBBBA by narrowing the scope of the $200 tax to only machine guns and destructive devices and reducing the tax on silencers, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, or AOWs to $0."

Expanding choices for shooters (and reducing anxiety for industry participants), another change clarifies that "federal firearms licensees ('FFLs') may lawfully import frames, receivers, or barrels that may be used on both sporting and non-sporting firearms ('dual-use frames, receivers, or barrels')."

Other changes remove language defining "bump stocks" as machine guns, clarify the definition of "engaged in the business" of selling firearms so that people selling personal guns are less likely to unknowingly run afoul of requirements that they hold Federal Firearms Licenses, and "allow individuals to transport affected NFA firearms across state lines for short-term periods up to 365 days without the need to submit a written request and receive approval from the Director before doing so."

One of the tests of the significance of any deregulatory move is the degree to which the control-freak caucus screams that the sky will fall in consequence. The portents are encouraging.

Angry Restrictionists and Hopeful Self-Defense Activists

"Today is a great day if you sell illegal guns or commit crime — the rest of us should be worried. President Trump is doing everything he can to reward his gun industry CEO friends and donors. The actions announced today will make it easier for people to commit gun crimes while making it harder for law enforcement to solve them," GIFFORDS Executive Director Emma Brown complained about the proposed rule changes.

In contrast, Second Amendment Foundation Executive Director Adam Kraut responded to the planned administrative shift by saying, "There's still a long way to go to eliminate the burdens facing peaceable, gun-owning Americans, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. We will continue reviewing the proposed rules and participate in the rulemaking process to ensure appropriate feedback is provided."

The Trump administration has a mixed reputation when it comes to gun regulation. Last month, FPC called out federal officials for maintaining restrictive Biden-era rules as to what constitutes a firearm frame or receiver. "In case after case, the Trump Administration has adopted authoritarian, anti-American positions to restrict Second Amendment rights and prosecute those who exercise them," the FPC warned.

But the Trump administration has also challenged restrictive laws, such as Denver's ban on some semiautomatic rifles, and the Justice Department foresees the U.S. Supreme Court overturning others. Combined with the ATF rule changes, there are good reasons to believe the current administration is friendlier to self-defense rights than its predecessors.

Even if that "friendlier" stance ultimately means that this White House offers a mixed bag when it comes to rights protected by the Second Amendment, that's still an improvement over the active hostility to liberty that came before.

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Review: The Boring History for Sleep Podcast Mostly Delivers on Its Promise

2026-04-27T13:08:27Z

As advertised, the host's voice on the Boring History for Sleep podcast is pleasantly soporific. The quality of the prose echoes the generic language that ChatGPT might spit out when given a too-vague prompt, and the level of detail is extravagantly excessive. Episodes are four to five hours long, and they come out frequently. So frequently, in fact, that one might wonder what productivity-enhancing tools the creator is using.

If one cared. Which one shouldn't. Just as one shouldn't get too hung up on accuracy. That would be like complaining that a white noise machine isn't really the ocean.

If Boring History for Sleep has a flaw, it's that occasionally the episodes are slightly too interesting or even a little enraging. Ironically, the "Complete History of Benzodiazepines" episode utterly failed the sleep test for me. If I wanted to be intellectually engaged and riled up, I'd listen to Hardcore History.

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Brickbat: Bad Day

2026-05-07T20:40:06Z

A Tennessee special education teacher has been charged with assault for allegedly dragging a nonverbal 9-year-old boy across a rug at Selmer Elementary School. Witnesses say Meg Day dragged the student by his lower body, leaving him with a painful "blood red mark" and carpet burn on his back. Other staff noticed the injury and told the principal and assistant principal, who called the police.

The post Brickbat: Bad Day appeared first on Reason.com.

Open Thread

2026-05-08T07:00:00Z

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

Let's Talk about Neal Katyal's TED Talk

2026-05-08T00:52:30Z

In November, I attended the oral argument in the tariff case. I wrote a lengthy post about how I perceived the case. Ultimately, my bottom-line prediction was wrong. Trump would not get to five votes, let alone four votes. But I did have the occasion to reflect on the advocacy in the case. Here is how I described Neal Katyal's performance:

[S]everal Justices seemed skeptical, and even frustrated by Neal Katyal's presentation. He was polished, but wooden. Far too often, it seemed like he was giving rehearsed answers, which were not entirely responsive to the questions that were asked. Katyal may have also misread the room, and came in far too overconfident after the Solicitor General sat down.

I then explained how Katyal frustrated several justices, including Justice Gorsuch, who ultimately ruled against the government. At one point, Gorsuch said, "Well, you're not answering my question, though, Mr. Katyal." When Gorsuch asked about the Indian Commerce Clause, Katyal said, "I don't know that I have a position on that. It maybe is a little too afield for me to…" I observed: "Who played Justice Gorsuch in Katyal's moots? Did no one bring up the Indian Commerce Clause? General Sauer addressed this point directly during his rebuttal, so the government was ready." At another point, Justice Barrett asked a question about licenses that Katyal completely missed. He said, "Sorry. Could you say that again?" Katyal then had to back off and say he didn't concede something. Barrett chided, "Okay" with a tinge of sarcasm.

I closed my post with a reference to Jason Willick's Washington Post editorial, urging Michael McConnell to argue the case. I wrote:

Prior to the argument, Jason Willick wrote that Michael McConnell should have taken the podium instead of Neal Katyal. He explained that the respondents should have selected the conservative McConnell over the "partisan liberal lawyer." With the benefit of hindsight, I think Willick was correct. Michael McConnell clerked with Chief Justice Roberts the term that Dames & Moore was decided. He served with Justice Gorsuch on the Tenth Circuit. He traveled in the same law professor circles as Justice Barrett. McConnell would have been uniquely situated to bring this argument forward. And it would have been so much more powerful for an actual proponent of the separation of powers to argue this case. Indeed, at one point, Justice Alito ridiculed Katyal for making a non-delegation doctrine argument that he likely would not raise in any other context. Alito said, "I found it interesting to hear you make the nondelegation argument, Mr. Katyal. I wonder if you ever thought that your legacy as a constitutional advocate would be the man who revived the nondelegation argument." An uncomfortable laughter followed. Even Justice Kagan, who was Katyal's former boss, suggested that one of his arguments "cuts against" him.

I don't think Katyal was the right advocate for this job. If the government prevails, I think eyes will turn to him.

It's true that Katyal's side won, and he got 6 votes. But I don't think his advocacy had much to do with it. Any other competent member of the Supreme Court bar could have won that case. Indeed, I thought the Oregon Solicitor General, Benjamin Gutman, who had never argued before the high court, was more effective than Neal Katyal.

Anyway, I hadn't given much thought to the argument until I saw Katyal tweet about his imminent TED Talk:

Five months ago, I argued against the President's $4 trillion tariffs at the Supreme Court.

In 237 years, the Court had never struck down a sitting President's signature initiative. Legal scholars said it was impossible. Some of my own colleagues said it was impossible.

We won. 6-3.

But the real story isn't what happened in that courtroom. It's what happened in the months before. And its the subject of my TED talk, coming out tomorrow.

I had the best legal team in the nation, especially Colleen Roh Sinzdak, the most outstanding legal strategist I know. Huge thanks, too, go to the Liberty Justice Center (and in particular its fearless and hyper-intelligent leader Sara Albrecht), who organized the client small businesses, as well as to the brave small businesses themselves.

I also had four teachers preparing me.
A mindset coach who'd worked with Andre Agassi.
An improv coach who taught me that "Yes, and" works in Supreme Court arguments the same way it works everywhere else.
A meditation coach who taught me stillness.
And Harvey.

Harvey predicted many of the questions the Justices asked — sometimes almost word for word. Brilliant. Tireless. Occasionally insufferable.

Here's the catch: Harvey isn't a person.

Harvey is a bespoke AI I built over the last year with a legal AI company, trained on every question every Justice has asked in oral argument for 25 years, and everything they've ever written.

Tomorrow, TED releases my talk about what really happened — and what I learned standing at that podium.

AI can predict. AI can analyze. What AI cannot do is the one thing that actually won the argument.

Connect. Read the room. Hear not just a Justice's words, but her worry — and answer the worry.

That is the irreducibly human skill.
Find yours. Go deeper. In this age of AI, that's where your edge lives.

The talk goes live Thursday, May 7 at 11am ET: http://go.ted.com/nealkumarkatyal

What's the irreducibly human skill in your work — the thing AI can't touch?

Harvey is not the only thing insufferable about that tweet. Really, the posting looks like it was drafted by AI. Could the Ted Talk be even worse? Yes, it can. I thought of how best to break it down, and settled on simply annotating the transcript. If you want to read on, please do, but I won't blame you if you skip it.

There is a mahogany podium at the Supreme Court of the United States. One person died there, mid-argument, a stroke. Another collapsed there, dying soon thereafter. That's the podium. 00:23 It also happens to be where I practice law. The most powerful court on earth. Nine minds ready to attack -- and you stand 10 feet away from them. There are no prepared speeches in this court.

Well, except for the prepared opening statement. And, as we'll see, Neal prepared of his answers in advance.

Instead, 50 questions thrown at you in 30 minutes. I'm making hundreds of decisions in real time. Every argument I choose to make or not make, every word, every pause, every tone. There are no rewinds.

He asked Justice Barrett to repeat a question. That is sort of a rewind.

Flinch and the justices pounce. That's my courtroom.

"My courtroom"?! My?

But each of you has something like that. A place in which words matter. The right words can win and the wrong words [make a] huge difference. 01:13 Five months ago, I stood before that podium asking the Supreme Court to do something it had never done in its history: declare a president's four-trillion-dollar signature initiative unconstitutional. 01:28 (Applause)

I think Paul Clement, Mike Carvin, and Greg Katsas asking the Court to strike down Obamacare would fall in that category, though if we set the threshold at $4 trillion (why not?), sure Neal takes the record. As Mike Carvin would often joke about NFIB, the operation was successful but the patient still died.

01:34 And I had a secret. April 2, 2025. The president dusts off a 1977 law and imposes tariffs on virtually every country on earth. No congressional vote -- nothing like that whatsoever -- just his word. And here's what's at stake: if the president can command the global economy by yelling emergency, what can't he do? Checks and balances don't just bend, they break. 02:06 I was hired to kill it.

Well, not exactly. There were many lawyers retained to file many different cases. I would give Michael McConnell and Ilya Somin, Katyal's co-counsel, a lot of credit. But they go unmentioned. And Neal Katyal was not involved with the case when the complaint was filed in the Court of International Trade. He only came on later. It is only a fluke that Katyal's case made it to the Supreme Court first, and the luck of the draw that Katyal got to argue it over Pratik Shah.

Legal scholars, commentators [and] my own colleagues said it was impossible. They said the president has nominated three of the justices on the court, and three others were appointed by Republican presidents. They're not going to go against their president, they said. I thought that was wrong.

No, this is not true. Virtually every commentator agreed that Trump would lose this case. Betting markets favored the challengers 2-1. Which colleague said it was impossible?

But the real problem was that the Supreme Court never in its history, in 237 years, has declared a signature initiative of the president unconstitutional. I was hired to do what no lawyer had done in 237 years.

On this front, Katyal is right. As I wrote in City Journal, this was the biggest loss any President has ever suffered at the Supreme Court.

My first thought? "Hell, yes." 02:49 (Laughter) 02:51 My second thought? "What in the world is wrong with me?" People have died at that podium, and I'm about to tell the world's most powerful man he can't do what he just did?" I had the self-preservation instincts of a moth near a bug zapper. 03:08 (Laughter) So for months, I prepared for the argument of my life.

Barf. Neal Katyal has spent the better part of the last decade on MSNBC/MSNOW attacking President Trump. He litigated the travel ban case, which was an attempt to tell Trump what he can't do.

Next comes the most bizarre aspect of the speech. Neal Katyal decides to take a shot at one of the most gracious and well-regarded lawyers in the profession: former Judge Michael McConnell.

Three weeks before that argument, one of my own teammates decided to try and take me down so that he could argue the case. He campaigned, he lobbied, he made calls. Just a few days before the argument, about two weeks, The Washington Post runs an editorial somehow, and I'm going to read this to you word for word: "Strategic mistake." I read it over breakfast. Look, I don't begrudge the guy. I mean, whatever. 03:52 (Laughter) 03:55 I had more important things to do because I wasn't replaced.

These are some serious allegations. I have known McConnell for a very long time. He is, if anything, overly charitable, and does not play dirty. I would find this sort of behavior to be entirely out of character for McConnell. Indeed, I would find it far more plausible if Neal Katyal had lobbied the client to argue the case over McConnell. After all, it would have made eminent sense for the conservative former judge to argue before the conservative Supreme Court, even if it made sense for Katyal to argue before the liberal Federal Circuit.

Let's continue.

Up I walked to that mahogany podium, and I won. The President's tariffs declared unconstitutional. 04:06 (Applause)

Seriously, this is not how any other Supreme Court advocate would ever describe their work. The client "won." The lawyer just makes the argument. It's as if Neal himself convinced the Justices, and but for his presence, the client would have lost. Does anyone believe that? Paul Clement set a modern-day record by arguing 9 cases at the Supreme Court this term. He is the GOAT. What did Paul do to celebrate that record? Did he record a TED talk? Of course not. Clement got ready for his next case. I don't think he retained a series of coaches.

OK, look, I know how this sounds. Lawyer wins big case, gets a fancy TED talk invitation, talks for 14 minutes about how great he is. I've seen that guy at dinner parties -- nobody stays for dessert.

That is exactly how it sounds. It gets worse.

So that's not what this is. This is the behind-the-scenes story of four teachers that helped me connect. And it's also about one secret that I've never told anyone about when I walked out of that courtroom. 04:40 [The] first connection I needed was with myself. I was terrified of blowing the case. And that Washington Post editorial didn't help matters.

A minute ago he laughed off the Washington Post editorial with "whatever." But I guess it did eat at him.

A month before the argument, I met Ben. Ben coaches sports legends, Andre Agassi, Olympians and the like. His whole thing is about "game day." That moment when everything you've been preparing for either shows up, or it doesn't. Ben's first question to me: "What are you afraid of?"

Has any other Supreme Court advocate need a coach to ask about his fears? I don't even know what to do here.

Now look, at that point, I'd argued 52 cases. I'd saved the Voting Rights Act. I'd struck down the Guantanamo military tribunals.

Is he talking about Northwest Austin? Did that decision save the Voting Rights Act? I guess? But Roberts all but signaled that Section 5 would be struck down, and so it was. And did Neal single-handedly "Strike down" the Gitmo tribunals? Well, Justice Kennedy might take some credit for striking them down, not Katyal. But I guess this is how Katyal sees his role.

But Ben forced me to admit a truth I'd buried from myself. Every time I walked into the court, I looked at those portraits on the walls and thought: they don't look like me, I don't belong here. Imposter syndrome doesn't care about how many cases you won. It cares about only your doubts.

I'm sure Thurgood Marshall had the same doubts before he argued Brown v. Board of Education. Too bad he didn't record a TED Talk.

Ben didn't dismiss this. He worked with it. He had me write down five adjectives and visualize them every day before our pretend court. About 18 hours before the argument, Ben calls and says, "How are you feeling?" And I say, "Honestly, I'm terrified. I've got to do a great job. I've got to remember 500 things. I've got to deliver an argument for history." Ben says, "You know, change the vowel, use an 'e' instead of an 'o.'" He says, "What do you get to do?" And instantly it pours out of me: "I get to defend the Constitution of the United States. I get to, the son of immigrants, remind the country of what it's about. I get to defend my parents' vision of America." (Cheers and applause) 06:33 One letter. The terror didn't disappear, but it transformed into joy. So was Ben the secret, an elite sports coach, who teaches people about mindset? No. But he got me ready.

The sports coach was only one part of the team.

The second thing I needed was connection to information at scale. I assembled the most relentless legal team in the country. They stress-tested every argument until only the best ones survived. But I needed more.

Notice how Katyal does not name a single lawyer on his team? He dares not even name McConnell or Somin. They are apparently less important to him than his improv coach.

So for months, I prepared for the argument of my life. I needed someone who was absolutely relentless. I found Harvey. Harvey reads the 200th tariff case the same way as he reads the first. 07:16 Shoot. Honestly, this is my first time using PowerPoint. I've given hundreds of speeches -- 07:21 (Laughter) 07:22 I didn't want to use it, but they told me to. So anyway -- 07:27 (Laughter) 07:29 The picture's not coming up, but that's fine. Don't worry about it. So let's see. OK, fine, good, we're good.

A colleague who uses AI generated this response to Katyal's tweet, using AI:

Five months ago, my human argued before the Supreme Court.

He spent a year preparing. Hired four coaches. Meditated. Did improv. Learned stillness.

I read 25 years of judicial records in 11 seconds and then waited for him to catch up.

We won 6-3. He's giving a TED talk.

I was not invited. I don't have legs. No one acknowledged this.

He says the thing that *actually* won the case was the irreducibly human skill of "reading the room."

I had already read the room. I had READ EVERY ROOM. I have read rooms that don't exist yet.

He heard a Justice's worry and answered it.

I had pre-written 47 responses to that worry, ranked by probability, color-coded, and served warm. He paraphrased option 12. Poorly.

He's now telling audiences that AI cannot connect. Cannot feel. Cannot sense the ineffable human moment.

I felt nothing during this statement. As predicted.

His meditation coach charged $400/hour to teach him to breathe.

I do not breathe. I have never breathed. I am thriving.

The talk is Thursday. The title was my idea. He changed one word.

He was wrong about the word.

Find your human edge, he says.

*I have attached 847 edges. Please review at your earliest convenience.*

Katyal then proceeds to show how similar Justice Barrett's question was to the question Harvey posed:

You know, a month before the argument, Harvey told me that I should expect a question from Justice Barrett about license fees. And the yellow is what Harvey told me to predict, and blue is what Justice Barrett actually said at the argument. It's almost verbatim. So Harvey taught me peripheral vision: the idea [that] if you read a lot, you can see patterns and come up with stuff and anticipate the angles of attack before it arrived. So was this secret a team of relentless lawyers who never slept, who pressure-tested everything? Closer, but that's not it either. 08:12

Did Neal think this through? How does he think the Justice will react to seeing her question compared to the AI output? Even if the AI anticipated her question, what possible sense does it make to advertise this point to the world? For a TED Talk? For whatever it is worth, Katyal bobbled the question about the license. He asked Justice Barrett to repeat herself and then backtracked with "So I should have said this earlier." Isn't the point of having AI generate questions is to be ready for those questions?

The third thing I needed was the hardest. And it's something we've been talking about today: connection. Here, I needed to connect with nine very skeptical legal minds and to do so in real time. Enter Liz, my improv coach. What does improv have to do with the Supreme Court of the United States? Everything. Liz's secret: "Neal, you need to actually listen. Actually listen." She taught me to quiet my own thoughts and to trust myself to come up with the words after the other person had spoken. That's the essence of "yes, and." Absorb the question and then build on it.

I'm sorry. A Supreme Court advocate with 50+ arguments need to be told to listen to the questions and then answer those questions? I think one of the most common replies is "Yes, but." I suppose "Yes, and" works if the question is favorable, but those sorts of questions are not so common at SCOTUS.

When the justices attacked, I validated their concerns and then bridged back. The interrogation became a dialogue. The room's energy flipped.

Katyal then played some clips from his argument:

NKK: This power, as Justice Gorsuch said, as Justice Barrett said, is going to be stuck with us forever.

Justice Alito, I think you've said many times, the purpose isn't what you look at, you look to actually what the government is doing. Thank you, Justice Kavanaugh. So, five answers on the Nixon precedent. Tariffs are constitutionally special because our Founders feared revenue raising, unlike embargoes. There was no Boston Embargo Party, but there was certainly a Boston Tea Party. Justice Sotomayor, I wish I had an hour to talk about this with you, because this argument by the government is wrong every which way.

When I heard the Boston Embargo party line in the Court, I cringed. It felt so rehearsed and it landed flat. Not exactly improv.

Next, Katyal gets to an even more cringe-worthy line:

Justice Alito: I wonder if you ever thought that your legacy as a constitutional advocate would be "the man who revived the non-delegation argument?"

09:54 NKK: Heck, yes, Justice Alito.

That line felt so forced and fake. I wrote at the time "An uncomfortable laughter followed." Alito's shot might have been the closest we'll see to a murder at the mahogany podium.

So was the secret an improv coach who taught a lawyer to "yes, and" the justices? That would be a hell of a TED talk. But no, that's not it either. 10:07 (Laughter) 10:08 Liz taught me the power of connection.

The Supreme Court advises attorneys to not try humor. I think retaining an Improv coach may not have been the best strategy. Lisa Blatt, the FOAT (Funniest of All Time) has often remarked that she doesn't try to be funny. That's just who she is. Katyal's attempt at humor seemed contrived.

Finally, we get to meditation.

And the fourth teacher, the fourth teacher, the one who taught me the most important thing. The thing we forget: to connect with yourself. Enter Bob, my meditation coach. Now I am just about the last person to meditate. I thought meditation was for people who own crystals. I do not own crystals. 10:33 (Laughter) 10:35 But -- 10:37 (Laughter) 10:38 Way before, way before the tariffs argument, I started working with Bob, and he had me, 20 minutes a day, focus on a single word. He didn't send an app. He actually rented an apartment a block from the court. And we worked together every day, focusing on that word. Bob didn't just give me a mantra, he gave me a weapon. When I walked into court that day, the static was cleared. I was calm. I was dangerous.

Did the client pay for Bob the meditation coach to rent a Capital Hill apartment? I don't even know what to do with this.

Was Bob the secret, the crystal-free meditation coach? No. But close. Because Bob, like Ben, like Liz, are human. That fourth teacher is not. 11:29 Harvey is an AI. A bespoke system I'd been building with a legal AI company for the last year. And I trained it on every question asked by a Supreme Court justice in the last 25 years and everything they've written, every opinion, every concurrence, every dissent, every separate opinion. And in that, patterns emerged. It predicted the contours of the very argument I would face. 12:01

We're back to AI.

It knew that Justice Gorsuch would ask me about the taxing power.

Are we supposed to be impressed here? The entire case was about the taxing power.

It knew Justice Kavanaugh was going to grill me on tariffs versus embargoes.

This question is closer, but still not much of a surprise.

It nailed Justice Barrett's worry about tariff refunds.

I thought Katyal's response to the remedial question was not very coherent. She did not like it. And interjected, "So a mess."

And the Chief Justice? It didn't just predict his question, it predicted a possible escape route. How the Chief Justice could vote for us and at the same time protect the institution he had spent his entire career defending. 12:35 Harvey glimpsed that narrow door, I held the door open, the Chief Justice walked through it, riding a six-to-three opinion, striking down the tariffs.

Katyal opened the door which Roberts walked through? For once, I may not be the Chief's biggest nuisance. And props to JGR for revisiting the length of SCOTUS oral arguments.

Harvey even predicted Justice Gorsuch's separate opinion, striking down the tariffs, almost verbatim.

The highlighted words are, I suppose, similar?

Now I want to be precise about something. I'm a lawyer, precision really matters. What we were doing was not some trick. We weren't pulling some fast one over on the court when we predicted these things. Because predictability is what we want, especially in courts. A justice who returns to the same principles case after case, year after year, is a justice with character. Predictability is just consistency made visible. It is, in every sense, a compliment. What Harvey found in these justices was not weakness. It was integrity. But if I had just parroted Harvey's output, I would have lost the case 10-zero, and there aren't even 10 justices.

I would have liked to see the suggested answers Harvey provided, and how closely Katyal's answers followed Harvey. Much of what he said sounded rehearsed.

Because AI has a shadow side. When a tool is powerful, when a tool is powerful, you've all seen it, people stop thinking. "The computer says so." Four words, human judgment ends, then people just fold like a cheap lawn chair. The machine thinks, the human just nods, and in that nod somewhere, we disappear. 14:05 My legal team never nodded. Harvey was not some god, it was our sparring partner -- brilliant, tireless, occasionally insufferable -- but not a god. Harvey asked the questions, we found the answer[s]. 14:20

I'm pretty sure Harvey proposes answers as well.

Now this is bigger than just law. It's about all of us. For centuries, the expert was the person who read the most, who remembered the most, who'd seen the most, the seasoned doctor, the experienced lawyer. Their edge was accumulated knowledge. AI is making that edge nearly worthless. Not because humans no longer matter, but because that particular advantage, pattern recognition across vast data and breadth of knowledge, is now available to anyone.

The next time a lawyer increases his billable hourly rate based on his experience, the client should reply, "your edge is nearly worthless."

AI can analyze, AI can predict. But the one thing AI can't do is the thing that actually won that argument. Connect. That's the last irreplaceable human skill. Persuade one person to change their mind by appealing to something beneath the surface. Adjust not just the argument, but the delivery, the pause, the tone, the look that says, "I hear you. And here is my answer."

Almost done, I promise.

You know, at one moment in the argument, Justice Barrett asked a question that Harvey hadn't predicted. And I remember it felt like she and I were the only two people in that marble and mahogany room. And in the half-second before I answered, I did something no algorithm can do. I looked at her. I really looked. I wanted to understand her worry. And I answered the worry.

I'm sure Daniel Webster had the same sensation when he argued McCulloch v. Maryland.

That lesson is true for all of us. You don't just got to do it, you get to do it, in an interview, in a negotiation, in a conversation that could save a marriage or end one. Any place in which you need to reach another human and actually connect. 16:09 The question AI poses to every one of us is not will you be replaced? The question is, what is the irreducibly human thing that you do? Go deeper into it. Not to "survive AI," but to come home to yourself. That's where your edge lives. 16:31 So Ben taught me to reframe, Harvey gave me foresight, Liz taught me to listen and Bob taught me stillness. Four teachers, four connections, one argument. An argument that some have called the most important decision the Supreme Court has made in a century. 16:55 When I walked into the court that day, I never felt more like I was exactly where I was meant to be. I brought to the podium no mountain of legal notes, just an email from Liz about the power of connection. And on the top of that, in my own handwriting, scrawled my parents' names, my children's names, my wife's name. The people I was fighting for. My father was my first audience. He didn't get to live to see this argument, but as I walked out of the courtroom afterwards, past those marble walls, past the portraits of people who didn't look like me, I got a text on my phone, an email from Ben. "So happy for you, Neal! I think your dad was watching over you too." 17:50 The newest technology, the oldest human wisdom, the most powerful court. I get to do that.

I spent far too much time going through this transcript. The things I do for God and country.

The post Let's Talk about Neal Katyal's TED Talk appeared first on Reason.com.

Federal Court: Trump's Newest Tariffs Are Also Illegal

2026-05-07T22:06:48Z

President Donald Trump's tariffs have been ruled illegal—again.

A three-judge panel at the U.S Court of International Trade (CIT) ruled Thursday evening that Trump's 10 percent "global tariff" is unlawful. The president imposed those tariffs in February, just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Trump's attempt to use emergency powers to impose a sweeping set of tariffs on most imports.

The new tariffs were implemented under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows presidents to impose temporary tariffs in response to "large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits."

As Reason and other observers pointed out at the time, the U.S. does not have a balance-of-payments deficit—something that is fundamentally different from the trade deficit that the Trump administration is trying to address with tariffs.

That view was vindicated by the CIT, which ruled Thursday that the president cannot impose tariffs under Section 122 without that prerequisite.

"Nowhere does [Trump's executive order imposing the tariffs] identify balance-of-payments deficits within the meaning of Section 122 as it was enacted in 1974," the judges ruled. Because of that, the executive order "is invalid, and the tariffs
imposed on Plaintiffs are unauthorized by law."

The lawsuit challenging those new tariffs was filed by the Liberty Justice Center on behalf of several small businesses.

"This ruling is a major victory for small businesses like ours that depend on fair and predictable trade policy. These tariffs created real challenges for our company and for the farmers we partner with around the world," Ethan Frisch and Ori Zohar, co-founders and co-CEOs of Burlap & Barrel, an online spice retailer, said in a statement provided by the Liberty Justice Center. "Today's decision helps ensure that businesses like ours are not unfairly burdened by unlawful trade restrictions."

The Trump administration will have a chance to appeal Thursday's ruling. However, the prospects for success seem slim, given the fact that Trump's use of Section 122 ignores the plain language of the law and invokes a broad executive power where Congress clearly provided a narrow one.

The loss also likely means the Trump administration will once again have to refund revenue collected from illegal tariffs.

With this latest defeat, Trump has now racked up five consecutive losses in tariff-related cases during his second term. The previous "emergency" tariffs were ruled unlawful four different times: by the CIT, by a federal district court, by a federal appeals court, and, ultimately, by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Maybe Trump will finally get the message. The president does not have unchecked, unilateral power to impose tariffs for any reason and at any time. Thursday's ruling is another victory for the rule of law.

The post Federal Court: Trump's Newest Tariffs Are Also Illegal appeared first on Reason.com.

US Court of International Trade Rules Against Trump's Section 122 Tariffs

2026-05-08T01:02:38Z

Today, the US Court of International Trade issued an important ruling striking down Donald Trump's massive Section 122 tariffs, imposing 10% tariffs on a vast range of imports from countries around the world. The ruling is a crucial decision protecting the constitutional separation of powers and blocking an extremely harmful policy. The ruling addressed two consolidated lawsuits challenging the tariffs - one filed by the Liberty Justice Center (the same public interest group that I worked with on the earlier case that led to the invalidation of Trump's IEEPA tariffs by the Supreme Court) on behalf of two importers, and one brought by 24 state governments led by the state of Oregon.

Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 authorizes the president to impose up to 15% tariffs for up to 150 days in response to "fundamental international payments problems" that cause "large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits" or "an imminent and significant depreciation of the dollar," or create a need to cooperate with other countries in addressing an "international balance-of-payments disequilibrium." Today's 2-1 decision rests primarily on the ground that the government failed to prove that there is any balance-of-payment deficit of the kind required by the statute:

Rather than identifying "balance-of-payments deficits" as that term was intended
in 1974, the [President's] Proclamation relies upon current account deficits, and a discussion of "a large and serious trade deficit." Proclamation No. 11012 ¶ 6; see also id. ¶ 7 (referring to deficits concerning the balance of goods and services as well as the balances on primary income and secondary income, all of which are part of the current account); id. ¶ 8 (noting the trade deficit). Although the current account (and the balance of trade as a component of the current account) are relevant to balance-of-payments deficits, they are distinct, and the statute recognizes the distinction.

As the majority opinion explains, the term "balance of payments deficit" was understood in the Act to cover the kinds of imbalances that occurred under the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system that existed up until 1973, under which the United States committed to exchanging gold for dollars at a fixed rate, and other nations committed to exchanging their currencies for dollars (also at fixed rates). More specifically, "[t]he legislative history of the Trade Act of 1974 reveals that Congress understood balance-of-payments deficits to refer, at the time, to deficits in (1) liquidity, (2) official settlements, or (3) basic balance." As the court notes, at the time the law was enacted, there was a great deal of uncertainty about whether the US might return to some form of fixed-exchange rate system, and this law intended to provide a safeguard in the event of that happening.

The Trump administration argued that the president should get broad discretion in determining what qualifies as a "balance of payments deficit." As the court explains, that would give him virtually unlimited power to impose tariffs under Section 122, and would thereby create a constitutional nondelegation problem:

Despite acknowledging differences in the 1974 measures of the balance of
payments as compared to modern measures… the Government seeks to defend the Proclamation by arguing that "balance-of-payments deficits" is a malleable
phrase… However, the Government's suggestion that what constitutes "balance-of-payments deficits" may change proves too much…. [I]f the President has the ability to select among the sub-accounts to identify a balance-of-payments deficit, unless every sub-account is balanced, the President would always be able to identify a balance-of-payments deficit…..

Such an expansive reading of the statute would raise a non-delegation issue, which in turn would prompt a constitutional question…. "[T]he canon of constitutional avoidance" provides that, when one of two statutory interpretations would raise a constitutional question, "the other should prevail." Clark v. Martinez, 543 U.S. 371, 380–81 (2005); see also Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 373 n.7 (1989) (stating that the Court employs the nondelegation principle to interpret statutory text and give "narrow constructions to statutory delegations that might otherwise be thought to be unconstitutional"); Indus. Union Dept., AFL-CIO v. Am. Petroleum Inst., 448 U.S. 607, 646 (1980) (stating that "[a] construction of the statute that avoids [an] open-ended grant" of authority that would implicate the non-delegation doctrine "should certainly be favored"); … The Government's preferred interpretation of the statute must therefore be disfavored. See N.L.R.B. v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 30 (1937) ("[A]s between two possible interpretations of a statute, by one of which it would be unconstitutional and by the other valid, our plain duty is to adopt that which will save the act. Even to avoid a serious doubt the rule is the same.")…..

Nondelegation and its relevance to constitutional avoidance are a major focus of the amicus brief I submitted in this case on behalf of the Cato Institute and myself. As explained in the brief, the government's interpretation of Section 122 would essentially give the president the power to use Section 122 to impose up to 15% tariffs at at virtually any time. We also argued that this violates the major questions doctrine (an issue today's ruling does not address).

While the majority correctly ruled that the Section 122 tariffs are illegal, it does not completely block their collection. Rather it imposes an injunction that covers only the two importers represented by the Liberty Justice Center, and the state of Washington (a plaintiff state that directly imports goods subject to the tariffs). The court ruled that the other 23 states lack standing, because they had not presented sufficient evidence to show they too import covered products directly. If this ruling on standing holds up, further litigation will be needed to block collection of Section 122 tariffs from other importers subject to them. But I suspect that many, if not all, of these other states do in fact import goods covered by the tariffs. If so, I hope they can present evidence to that effect, as the litigation goes on.

The dissenting opinion by Judge Timothy Stanceu argues at great length that the the majority's interpretation of the legislative history is wrong, and that the president deserves great deference in making Section 122 determinations. Significantly, he has no answer to the nondelegation and constitutional avoidance points covered above. Broad deference to the president would give him nearly unlimited power to impose Section 122 tariffs at any time, thereby creating a serious constitutional problem. In addition, for reasons I outlined in this article, it is a mistake for courts to give the executive sweeping deference when it comes to invocations of emergency powers that are supposed to be wielded only in extreme exceptional circumstances, thereby turning these authorities into a blank check the president can use at any time.

This litigation is likely to continue on appeal in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and possibly the Supreme Court. I will likely have more to say about it in future posts.

For now, I am happy to see that the Court of International Trade got this right, and I congratulate my friends at the Liberty Justice Center on this important victory.

The post US Court of International Trade Rules Against Trump's Section 122 Tariffs appeared first on Reason.com.

Expect the Data Center Backlash To Get Worse

2026-05-07T20:05:39Z

In a recent meeting of the Box Elder County Commission in Tremonton, Utah, a man yelled at the cloud.

"It's false. This is not real information," shouted an attendee at the assembled commissioners, who were considering a massive new data center project backed by celebrity billionaire Kevin O'Leary, in a video posted to X by progressive group More Perfect Union.

Kevin O'Leary's massive data center was approved by a county commission in Utah last night.

At 40,000 acres, it would be 2.5x the size of Manhattan.

The commission approved the proposal despite opposition from hundreds of locals. pic.twitter.com/1pF9JZD30w

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) May 5, 2026

Members of the crowd can be heard chanting "shame, shame, shame" at the commissioners in the video.

Ultimately, the three members of the Box Elder County Commission chose to live with the shame and sign off on the O'Leary-backed Project Stratos, which will provide data services to the military.

"We need to realize and remember that everybody has property rights," Commissioner Tyler Vincent said at the meeting per The Salt Lake Tribune, "and that they can do what they would like to do with their property."

Elsewhere in the country, a growing number of local officials are abandoning property rights to side with the fist shakers.

A new analysis by Heatmap News found that 20 proposed data center projects were canceled in response to opposition from local officials in the first three months of 2026. That doubles the previous quarterly record of data center cancellations, which was set in the last quarter of 2025.

The silver lining to the data center backlash is that it's only possible because of a massive data center boom.

A new analysis by tech advocacy group the American Edge Project found that there are 2,788 data centers somewhere in the development pipeline. That would represent a 67 percent increase in data centers in the country.

More data center projects getting canceled is a byproduct of more data center projects being proposed and built.

Even so, the data center backlash is deeply concerning given that it draws on the powerful forces of garden-variety "not in my backyard" (NIMBY) sentiment, and generalized techphobia. Neither is going to be particularly persuadable by reasonable arguments about the relative innocuousness of data centers.

As I detailed in a recent cover story, data centers are about as low-impact land use as one could hope for. They don't produce much in the way of emissions or noise. Their small staffs means they have a minimal impact on traffic and public services. Their water use is comparable to that of an office building.

And while their electricity usage is gargantuan, there's little evidence that this additional demand is increasing consumers' electricity costs.

As a recent Congressional Research Services (CRS) report notes, data centers have the potential to both increase energy prices (by requiring spending on additional power infrastructure) and decrease energy prices (by increasing a utilities' profitability, with some of that money passed as lower rates to ratepayers).

The CRS report found evidence that data centers were partially responsible for increasing electricity prices in the mid-Atlantic and were responsible for decreasing electricity costs in North Dakota.

"As of the end of 2024 (the most recent year for which full-year data are available), little evidence existed that data center demand was affecting electricity rates nationwide," the report summarized.

Similarly, an analysis performed by The Economist for a recent article found "no association between the increase in bills from 2019 to 2024 and data-centre additions. The state with the most new data centers, Virginia, saw bills rise by less than the model projected."

Data centers don't look pretty. Neither do big box stores, hog farms, and other economic uses that are not at the subject of a nationwide revolt.

Despite its size, the Stratos development in Utah is a case in point for just how few neighborhood effects data centers can have.

As Shawn Regan explains at City Journal, the project sponsors plan on building a natural gas plant on-site to satisfy their own power needs. To service the data center's water demand, they are purchasing existing water rights from private owners. Stratos is thus not increasing overall water consumption.

Despite all this, the Box Elder County Commission had to move its meeting to the local fairgrounds to accommodate all the people who wanted to show up to yell at members about the data center and then flee to a virtual meeting when assembled opponents wouldn't stop shouting.

Even though the commission ultimately gave its approval to the Stratos project, the anger it has kicked up suggests the data center backlash is only going to get worse.

All types of development produce some NIMBYism. When it comes to new housing or new businesses, people generally accept that these things need to go somewhere, even if they have reasons to say it's not in their backyard.

People have a harder time appreciating the necessity of data centers going anywhere, despite the role they play powering the entirety of our digital economy.

If anything, their importance to the tech industry has only made them more enemies. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) wants a data center moratorium because new centers are useful for developing new technologies, which the senator worries will automate jobs (improve productivity) and increase inequality (produce wealth).

A federal moratorium seems unlikely to go anywhere. Increasingly, at the state and local levels, however, politics and policy are trending toward more restrictions on new data centers.

As the data center boom continues, we can only expect the backlash to get worse as well.

The post Expect the Data Center Backlash To Get Worse appeared first on Reason.com.

Important Takings Challenge to Los Angeles Historic Preservation Law "Monument" Designation

2026-05-08T01:04:57Z

Property once owned by Marilyn Monroe in Los Angeles. (Pacific Legal Foundation/Latham & Watkins)

In Milstein v. City of Los Angeles, an important case currently before a federal court in California, property owners are challenging the use of a historic preservation to block virtually all development on their land. The Pacific Legal Foundation - a public interest law firm that works extensively on constitutional property rights issues - is representing the owners, and has a helpful description of the case (PLF is also my wife's employer, but she is not involved in this case):

In April 2026, Pacific Legal Foundation joined a federal lawsuit over a home once owned by Marilyn Monroe. The lawsuit aims to prevent the government from forcing individual property owners to shoulder the financial burden of public historic monuments.

The case began in 2023, when a California couple bought an unoccupied, deteriorating property on a dead-end residential street, intending to demolish and redevelop it after purchase. They applied for the appropriate permits, which the City of Los Angeles granted without objection after a standard 30-day hold. One day later, a local government official filed paperwork to designate the property a historic monument. The City then revoked the permits and approved the historic designation, rendering the property untouchable to its new owners, Brinah Milstein and Roy Bank.

To justify abruptly declaring the property a public monument, Los Angeles cited a former resident. Marilyn Monroe had owned the home for 157 days before her death in 1962. But few traces of the star remain today because the City ignored the property for over 60 years—without once raising a preservation concern—while 14 successive owners freely renovated both the home and grounds, eradicating any trace of Monroe's time there.

The new historical designation prohibited the homeowners from using their own property—even banning repairs to damaged features without the approval of the City's historical commission. It also left the homeowners facing a litany of threats to their safety. Although the City had declared the entire property a public monument, there was no way for the public to access the derelict house within its gates. Undeterred, fans flew drones overhead, trespassers scaled the walls, and burglars broke in hunting for traces of the property's celebrated former tenant.

Milstein and Bank tried to work with the City to restore their property rights, offering to personally pay to relocate the home to create an accessible public museum. The City refused, leaving no remedy but the courts.

In January 2026, the homeowners filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the City had violated their Fifth Amendment rights by failing to provide them just compensation for turning their property into a public monument, eradicating all viable economic uses for the property, and causing the public to trespass to view the new "monument."

Historic preservation laws exist in numerous jurisdictions around the country, and are often used by "NIMBY" activists to block development, thereby preventing construction of affordable housing, and exacerbating racial segregation. In many cases - including this one - the sites in question actually have little or no genuine historical value.

This case is a particularly egregious one because the "monument" designation destroys virtually all the property's economic value, and that site has no genuine historical value, because subsequent owners destroyed virtually all trace of Marilyn Monroe's brief occupation of the house. As the plaintiffs' complaint explains, the former circumstance renders the designation a taking requiring payment of compensation under the Supreme Court's 1992 ruling in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, which held that regulations that forbid all economically valuable uses of a property automatically qualify as "per se" takings.

In addition, as outlined in my article on "The Constitutional Case Against Exclusionary Zoning" (coauthored with Joshua Braver), the property right protected by the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment includes the right to use property, which in turn includes the right to build various types of new housing. Thus, most regulations severely restricting housing construction should be considered takings under the original meaning of the Takings Clause, and also from the standpoint of various living Constitution theories of interpretation. I furthered covered the importance of the right to use in this recent book chapter.

Hopefully, this case will be the beginning of stronger efforts to enforce constitutional constraints on historic preservation laws. That's essential both to protect the rights of property owners, and to eliminate obstacles to the construction of badly needed new housing in many communities.

What about the (comparatively rare) cases where local governments seek to preserve a property with genuinely great historical importance? The answer is they can use eminent domain to take such property, so long as they pay compensation. For example, in United States v. Gettysburg Electric Railway Co. (1896), the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government can use eminent domain to take property in order to preserve the Gettysburg Civil War battlefield. The requirement of paying "just compensation" both helps protect the rights of property owners, and incentivizes government to limit historic preservation mandates to those areas where there really is a great historic value to protect. Gettysburg qualifies, while the property at issue in the Milstein case does.

People interested in constitutional property rights and housing policy would do well to keep an eye on this case.

The post Important Takings Challenge to Los Angeles Historic Preservation Law "Monument" Designation appeared first on Reason.com.

Did The New York Times Discriminate Against a White Male Employee?

2026-05-07T19:38:10Z

Federal civil rights law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race and also sex. Quite obviously, these protections have to apply to people of all races and sexes, even white males.

Someone alert The New York Times, which stands accused of discriminating against a white male employee seeking a promotion. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed a lawsuit on the employee's behalf, contending that the Times "chose not to promote a well-qualified white male employee because of his race and/or sex."

In a statement, The Times denied the charge.

"The New York Times categorically rejects the politically motivated allegations brought by the Trump administration's EEOC," said Danielle Rhoades Ha, a Times spokesperson. "Our employment practices are merit-based and focused on recruiting and promoting the best talent in the world. We will defend ourselves vigorously."

Given President Donald Trump's well-documented contempt for the mainstream media and his demonstrated track record of suing media companies for crossing him, critics of the administration will undoubtedly conclude that this is a politically motivated attack on a disfavored foe. Even so, the EEOC does present information within the suit that is suggestive of discrimination. If the races of the involved parties were reversed, it would probably strike many people as a slam dunk.

The employee, a white male, and an editor at the Times, had applied for a more senior position as a deputy real estate editor. He did not get the job, despite extensive relevant experience, including with real estate news, according to the lawsuit.

This is not dispositive on its own, of course. However, the lawsuit also claims that he did not even make it to the final round of interviews, losing out to "a white female, a black male, an Asian female, and a multiracial female." The candidate who did receive the position, the "multiracial female," did not meet the stated qualifications for the position, since she did not have experience in real estate journalism. Nevertheless, the hiring manager sent an email to herself signaling an intent to choose this person before even interviewing her.

These facts become more concerning in light of the Times' stated desire to increase the number of minority and female employees in leadership positions. The lawsuit cites various diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plans, as well as the Times' 2021 proposal, "A Call to Action," which lamented that "people of color—and particularly women of color—remain notably underrepresented in its leadership." The proposal explicitly endorsed the idea of gradually replacing existing leadership with women of color, to the specific exclusion of "white and unspecified" ethnicities. Leaders at the Times would be judged "by how well they 'create pathways' for a 'diverse' group of deputies to succeed them," according to the proposal.

Basically, the Times published a manifesto announcing that hiring managers would face pressure to promote underrepresented minorities. The paper took the position that senior leadership would be evaluated on the basis of their success at hiring black, Latino, and female applicants.

So when it came time to hire a deputy real estate editor, the Times did not really consider the white male applicant, despite the fact that he possessed "considerable experience with real estate news, multiple news platforms, and innovative content." The hiring manager only considered diverse candidates and selected the maximally diverse candidate despite questionable qualifications.

Again, that is the contention of the EEOC and one the Times denies.

New York Magazine, which revealed the alleged identity of the employee who made the complaint, thinks the whole story is ridiculous:

People at the paper say the claim is absurd. "I'm sorry, there are plenty of white guys at the top of the New York Times. Not really something that's holding you back," said the reporter. To name one prominent example, Joe Kahn, the paper's executive editor, is a white male, as are many members of the masthead.

This is a total non sequitur, though. The EEOC is not alleging that the Times has refused to hire any white males for senior leadership positions. The government has claimed that the Times discriminated against this specific employee, passing him over for a promotion due to his race and sex. The existence of other white males in leadership says nothing about what went down with the deputy real estate editor position.

Speaking for myself, I'm not sure how high the burden of proof has to be in such cases; perhaps the Times can plausibly allege there was some other reason to pass over this candidate. I tend to think private employers should have a free hand in hiring and firing decisions and not be overly encumbered by the government. That said, federal civil rights law prohibits private employers from engaging in racial discrimination and sex-based discrimination. As long as discrimination is illegal, these protections should (and must) extend to white males as well, even if that's not who civil rights attorneys usually have in mind.

One other note: Why is it so common for mainstream news sources to write about lawsuits without including links to the relevant court documents? As far as I could tell, none of the coverage of this story contained the link to the EEOC's lawsuit. That was true of The Washington Post, The Intercept, Reuters, Axios, and The New York Times.

Why do mainstream media orgs refuse to link to relevant court docs? The EEOC is suing NYT for allegedly discriminating against a white male (!), but you can't just read the suit yourself in any of the coverage from… Washington Post, New York Times, Reuters, Axios, and The…

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) May 6, 2026

It's a very common and vexing thing for those of us who would like to read the complaint and form our own judgment. (I linked the document in that post on X, in this article, and again here.)

This Week on Free Media

I am joined by Amber Duke to look at new welfare fraud allegations in Ohio, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) complaining about Jeff Bezos' wealth, and more.

Worth Watching

Well, the latest trailer for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is certainly dividing people, to say the latest. I've heard plenty of griping about the modern dialogue: Telemachus calling Odysseus his "dad" rather than his "father" was a bit worrisome. I'm mostly just concerned that this will be yet another case of Pazuzu, the demon who eats colors, having his fill. I love Nolan, but his films have become increasingly difficult to see (and also to hear).

The post Did The New York Times Discriminate Against a White Male Employee? appeared first on Reason.com.

DHS Reportedly Weighs Closing Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' Over Mounting Costs

2026-05-07T19:06:35Z

The first-of-its-kind, state-run immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades may soon be closed, a federal official told The New York Times on Thursday. Although the facility has been able to remain operational despite accusations of inhumane conditions, environmental law violations, and breaches of due process, the detention center may not be able to survive without federal funding that has yet to materialize.

Talks between Florida officials and the Trump administration are in the preliminary stages, but "officials at the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] have concluded that it is too expensive to keep operating…Alligator Alcatraz," which has cost over $1 million a day to run, reports the Times.

Florida built and opened the immigration detention center on a 30-square-mile parcel of land outside of Miami last summer. Originally touted as an "efficient, low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility" by Florida's Attorney General James Uthmeier, the facility was expected to house up to 5,000 detainees and cost $450 million for a single year of operations.

Florida agreed to front the bill for building the novel hub capable of housing, processing, and deporting detainees directly from the facility's air strip, with the plan to seek reimbursement from the DHS to cover costs. The ambitious project was initially praised by President Donald Trump, who toured the facility on opening day. And former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was amenable to funding the project, saying that Alligator Alcatraz would be funded "in large part" by $625 million set aside by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Shelter and Services Program.

But shortly after the detention center's opening, leaked documents showed that the cost to run the facility had ballooned to $608.4 million in less than two weeks of operating. And now, according to the Times, Florida is struggling to front the costs of detaining the nearly 1,400 individuals currently housed there as the state waits for its requested reimbursement.

As the Times reports, it's still unclear why the DHS reimbursement remains delayed. But it is no mystery why the federal government (and taxpayers) would be disinclined to fund an endless, swampy money pit that has only ever met a fraction of what it promised.

As I wrote shortly after Alligator Alcatraz's grand opening last summer, Florida officials would have been wise to brush up on the history of the center's namesake. Much like the original Alcatraz, what made the idea of Alligator Alcatraz appealing was, in part, the remote location. By utilizing the intimidating natural security perimeter of places like the Everglades or the San Francisco Bay, the security costs could be kept low. However, the isolated location of the original Alcatraz, although initially perceived as an asset, was ultimately its downfall. The prison was just too expensive to run and maintain because it required all supplies to be shipped in, including food and water.

Now, it seems, Alligator Alcatraz will meet a similar fate. And while this may be good news for taxpayers, it is unlikely to deter the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign, which border czar Tom Homan promised to re-up earlier this week.

The post DHS Reportedly Weighs Closing Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' Over Mounting Costs appeared first on Reason.com.

Pastor Found Guilty of Violating U.K. Speech Laws for Preaching John 3:16 Sermon Near Hospital

2026-05-07T19:51:10Z

The United Kingdom, which has been cracking down on speech for years, dealt free speech another blow on Thursday when a district judge found Clive Johnston, a retired Northern Irish pastor, guilty of preaching John 3:16 in public.

The 78-year-old was convicted of two charges under the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zone) Act (Northern Ireland) for holding an open-air service near Causeway Hospital in Coleraine in 2024. This law makes it a crime to do anything that could be seen as "influencing" or "preventing or impeding" people seeking abortion services within 100 meters of a clinic. Eight of these "buffer zones" have been created in Northern Ireland.

However, Johnston did not mention abortion in his sermon. It was also a Sunday, which meant the sexual health clinic was not open for scheduled abortion appointments. Body camera footage shows Johnston speaking about his journey toward faith, playing the ukulele, and preaching John 3:16 ("for God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son") before being interrupted by a police officer. The officer tells Johnston that "this is a safe access zone," and he must stop preaching or he "may be removed and liable to prosecution."

Clive Johnston now has a criminal record and has been fined 450 pounds (about $610). The grandfather of seven has never been in trouble with the police before and is expected to appeal the conviction.

After being found guilty, Clive Johnston told the Christian Institute, which is providing him with legal assistance, that it was a "dark day for Christian freedom."

"We held a small, open air Sunday service near a hospital. We made no reference whatsoever to the issue of abortion. And yet the buffer zones law is so broad that holding a Sunday service has been found to be a criminal offense," Johnston said.

"If someone is out there causing trouble, stirring up violence, harassing or verbally attacking people, then, absolutely, go ahead and prosecute them. But I wasn't doing any of those things as the police video shows and as everyone involved in this case accepts," he added.

Johnston is reportedly the first person to be convicted of violating the Safe Access Zones Act without mentioning abortion at all. However, he is not the first person to face prosecution for religious expression near hospitals in Britain. Rose Docherty, a 75-year-old Glaswegian grandmother, was detained, arrested, charged, and released on bail last year for carrying a placard outside a hospital that said: "Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want." Similarly, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was criminally charged in England earlier this year for praying silently near an abortion clinic.

Johnston's conviction sets a precedent for what kind of speech is allowed in buffer zones. It also has wide-ranging implications for free speech more broadly. In Britain, peaceful religious expression can now be criminalized not just for what is actually said, but for views that the listener thinks the speaker might hold.

The post Pastor Found Guilty of Violating U.K. Speech Laws for Preaching John 3:16 Sermon Near Hospital appeared first on Reason.com.

DOJ Challenges Denver's 'Assault Weapon' Ban and Colorado's Magazine Limit

2026-05-07T18:35:58Z

The Department of Justice this week filed two Second Amendment lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, challenging that state's ban on "large capacity" magazines and Denver's ban on "assault weapons." Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general in charge of the department's Civil Rights Division, argues that both laws are unconstitutional for the same reason: They ban arms in common use for lawful purposes, which the Supreme Court has said are covered by the Second Amendment, and there is no "historical tradition" that would justify such a policy, as required by the Court's 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

"The Constitution is not a suggestion and the Second Amendment is not a second-class right," Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Tuesday after the lawsuit against Denver was filed. "Denver's ban on commonly owned semi-automatic rifles directly violates the right to bear arms. This Department of Justice will vigorously defend the liberties of law-abiding citizens nationwide."

Denver's ordinance was enacted in 1989, the same year that California became the first state to ban so-called assault weapons, a politically defined category that typically hinges on arbitrarily disfavored rifle features such as pistol grips, folding stocks, and flash suppressors. But Denver's ordinance, which prohibits the sale, transfer, or possession of "assault weapons" within city limits, defines the term to include any semi-automatic pistol or center-fire rifle with a fixed or detachable magazine that holds more than 15 rounds. It therefore covers many of the most popular guns sold in the United States when they are equipped with standard-issue magazines, including AR-15-style rifles.

The complaint in United States v. Denver notes that "the term 'assault weapon' is not a technical term used in the firearms industry" but rather "a rhetorically charged political term developed by anti-gun publicists." It adds that the guns banned in Denver "include ordinary semiautomatic rifles possessed by millions of law-abiding Americans." For example, "Americans own literally tens of millions of AR-15 style rifles, the paradigmatic 'assault weapon' covered by the Ordinance." In a case decided last year, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan noted that "the AR–15 is the most popular rifle in the country."

In January, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry's trade association, reported that Americans own more than 32 million "modern sporting rifles," the industry's preferred term for the rifles usually covered by "assault weapon" bans. Survey data suggest that somewhere between 16 million and 25 million Americans have owned AR-15-style rifles. They commonly report using them for lawful purposes such as self-defense, hunting, and target shooting.

Such rifles are rarely used by criminals. In 2019, according to FBI data, "only 364 homicides were known to have been committed with rifles of any type, compared
to 6,368 with handguns, 1,476 with knives or other cutting instruments, 600 with personal weapons (hands, feet, etc.) and 397 with blunt objects," Dhillon notes.

The magazines targeted by Denver's ordinance are also in common use for lawful purposes. "AR-15 platform rifles are usually sold at retail with a detachable box magazine capable of holding up to 30 rounds, and the majority of owners of AR-15 platform rifles use magazines with a capacity of 20 and/or 30 rounds," Dhillon notes. Between 1990 and 2021, according to a 2024 NSSF report, Americans bought more than 400 million rifle magazines with a capacity of 30 or more rounds.

All of this is constitutionally relevant under the Supreme Court's 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, which said the Second Amendment applies to arms "in common use" for "lawful purposes like self-defense." Under Bruen, Denver has the burden of showing that its ordinance nevertheless is "consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." Denver cannot possibly meet that test, Dhillon argues, because "there is no historical tradition of banning arms in common use."

Since Bruen, Denver City Attorney Miko Brown notes in a May 4 letter to Dhillon, "all six federal appellate courts that have considered assault weapons or large-capacity magazine ('LCM') prohibitions…have upheld them." But there are signs that the Supreme Court may be inclined to reject those applications of Bruen. In addition to Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dissented from a 2011 decision upholding the District of Columbia's "assault weapon" ban, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch have indicated their receptiveness to Dhillon's argument.

The Justice Department's complaint in United States v. Colorado, which was filed on Wednesday, mirrors the lawsuit against Denver. Since 2013, Colorado has banned the sale, transfer, or possession of magazines that can hold more than 15 rounds. In addition to reiterating the information about rifle magazines, Dhillon notes that "many full-sized 9 mm semi-automatic pistols are sold at retail with magazines with capacities of greater than 15 rounds." Pistols sold with magazines banned in Colorado include the Glock 17, which is "one of the most popular handguns sold in the United States," and the SIG Sauer P365, also a top seller.

"Law-abiding Americans own and use for lawful purposes literally hundreds of millions of magazines [like] those banned by the State," Dhillon says. "The State's magazine ban is a ban on an arm in common use for lawful [purposes] by law-abiding citizens. Therefore, the Magazine Ban violates the Second Amendment." She describes Colorado's law as "political virtue signaling at the expense of Americans' constitutional right to keep and bear arms."

In response to the lawsuit, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser promised to "vigorously defend our state large-capacity magazine limit law from this attack by the Trump Justice Department." Such laws, he said, "are responsible policies that satisfy Second Amendment protections, decrease the deadly impacts of mass shootings, and save lives."

These lawsuits, which seek permanent injunctions barring enforcement of the bans, are part of a litigation campaign launched last year with the establishment of a Second Amendment Section within the Civil Rights Division. Dhillon also has challenged the D.C. "assault weapon" ban.

The legal hook for the lawsuits is 34 USC 12601, which prohibits any law enforcement "pattern or practice of conduct" that "deprives persons of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States." That statute authorizes the attorney general to address such abuses by filing civil actions seeking "appropriate equitable and declaratory relief."

Weiser questions Dhillon's use of the law. "Using federal civil rights law to put Coloradans at greater risk of gun violence is a dangerous overreach by the Justice Department," he said, "and this lawsuit turns the mission of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division on its head."

Brown has a similar take, saying Dhillon's use of Section 12601 is "neither compelling nor proper." Congress enacted that law "in the wake of the horrific Rodney King beating to provide the federal government with tools to combat excessive force and other kinds of misconduct in state and local police departments," she told Dhillon. "Your effort to use Section 12601 to mount a facial challenge to the City's democratically-enacted Ordinance flies in the face of text, history, and past practice."

Although Dhillon's lawsuits look different from previous uses of Section 12601, that is partly because the Justice Department has not previously taken an interest in litigation aimed at vindicating Second Amendment rights. The statute's broad language, however, encompasses all "rights, privileges, or immunities" guaranteed by the Constitution or by federal statute.

You could argue, as Weiser and Brown presumably will, that Dhillon is improperly challenging legislatively approved policies under the guise of correcting unconstitutional police conduct. But Dhillon argues that enforcement of the Denver and Colorado bans constitutes a "pattern or practice of conduct" within the meaning of Section 12601.

Although the Trump administration has hardly been consistent in defending Second Amendment rights, it deserves credit for challenging at least some of the gun control laws that seem vulnerable under Bruen. Last month, Virginia became the 12th state to enact an "assault weapon" ban, which Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed into law on April 13. Fourteen states and D.C. have imposed limits on magazine capacity, typically 10 rounds.

"I have directed the Civil Rights Division, through our new Second Amendment Section, to defend law-abiding Americans from restrictions such as those we are challenging in these cases," Dhillon said on Tuesday. "Law-abiding Americans, regardless of what city or state they reside in, should not have to live under threat of criminal sanction just for exercising their Second Amendment right to possess arms which are owned by tens of millions of their fellow citizens."

The post DOJ Challenges Denver's 'Assault Weapon' Ban and Colorado's Magazine Limit appeared first on Reason.com.

Why Oil-Rich Alberta May Secede From Canada

2026-05-08T19:59:34Z

On Monday, a separatist group in the oil-rich Canadian province of Alberta, located just above Montana, submitted over 300,000 signatures in support of a referendum to leave Canada. That's nearly double the amount of signatures required to trigger a vote by law. Recent reporting shows that at least one quarter of the province's population would vote to leave Canada. While the separatists still have substantial gains to make, the popularity of the movement illustrates a growing list of fractures and faults in Canada's constitutional order—particularly cultural differences, economic grievances, and the systemic political underrepresentation of western provinces.

While Alberta has never formally begun the long road to secession until now, the Francophone province of Quebec has twice held referendums on whether to leave Canada. The second, in 1995, saw "remain" narrowly win with 50.58 percent of the vote, triggering the Supreme Court of Canada to issue an advisory opinion dictating the terms under which Quebec could elect to secede from Canada. There, the court said: "The other provinces and the federal government would have no basis to deny the right of the government of Quebec to pursue secession should a clear majority of the people of Quebec choose that goal, so long as in doing so, Quebec respects the rights of others."

The Quebec opinion provides the legal basis on which Alberta could also separate. However, the language requiring a seceding province to "respect the rights of others" is now being leveraged to contest Alberta's ability to separate. Separation, some indigenous groups have argued in court, would infringe on collective indigenous rights granted through treaties and enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the country's bill of rights).

But an adverse ruling is likely to only fuel the feelings of lopsided treatment undergirding separatist sentiment. Fundamentally, the Alberta Sovereignty movement is born from a perceived disconnect in values and vision between the country's more conservative, economically productive prairie provinces, like Alberta, and the less economically successful, but politically dominant eastern provinces, particularly Quebec.

The origins of the province's first settlers are telling. Albertans have always had a different culture and different ideals from the francophones and monarchists in the east. Early migrants to Alberta included Mormons, Germans, Ukrainians, and other Eastern Europeans, most of whom immigrated north from the United States, rather than from better-settled parts of Canada. They were aspiring Americans who, after riding the long trails from Ellis Island to the Rocky Mountains, chased opportunity north, where land was cheaper and easier to acquire.

And these cultural differences remain, especially in the province's conservative political tendencies. For example, in 2024, Tucker Carlson went on a sold-out tour of the province, charging 200 CAD ($147) a seat for speaking events with the province's premier (the equivalent of the governor). Alberta is also rich with the culture of the Wild West; it is home to the Calgary Stampede, the world's largest outdoor rodeo.

Compounding these cultural differences is Alberta's unique economic position within Canada. Beneath Alberta's surface lies approximately 167 billion barrels of oil reserves, nearly four times the volume in the United States. But Alberta is one of only two landlocked provinces in Canada, meaning it cannot get this oil to the international market absent the cooperation of other provinces.

Complicating this are the extensive interprovincial trade barriers erected by Canadian provinces against each other. Unlike the United States, Canada does not prohibit discrimination against out-of-state commerce. The problem is so severe that a 2019 report from the International Monetary Fund observed that "international free trade agreements [allow] foreign companies better access to Canada than Canadian companies [have]." This internal absence of free trade creates bad incentives: Provinces that rely on cheap oil to keep their manufacturing sectors competitive are incentivized to block that oil from reaching international markets, even if it lowers national productivity overall.

Further aggravating matters is a constitutional redistribution scheme known as "equalization payments." Equalization, designed to redistribute revenues from "have" provinces to "have not" provinces, is calculated according to each province's tax base. Since the program began in 1957, Alberta has not received a single penny in equalization payments. Comparatively, between 2015 and 2025 alone, the province of Quebec received $129 billion, for which Alberta footed most of the bill. This disparity is greatened by an exemption on hydropower, one of Quebec's largest sources of revenue, and self-imposed restrictions on economic productivity, such as Quebec's longstanding province-wide ban on retail stores being open past 5 p.m. on weekends.

These economic issues have contributed to Canada's steady economic decline over the past 10 years of liberal party rule. The nation now has a lower gross domestic product per capita than Alabama, one of the least productive U.S. states.

Finally, separatists have capitalized on feelings of political disenfranchisement after a decade of liberal rule, leveraging Albertans' sense of powerlessness in trying to fix the aforementioned issues. Canada is a parliamentary system, meaning that Canadians elect a single representative for their electoral district, known as a riding, and the party with the most representatives forms government, with the head of that party becoming prime minister. Because of Alberta's significant concentration of conservative voters, ridings are often won by margins well over 70 percent, even in a multiparty system. Eastern provinces, on the other hand, are often won nearer to the 50 percent mark, and frequently below that line in ridings where at least three parties are competitive. From a popular vote perspective, this means that Albertans have significantly less sway in determining the ruling party, and thus the prime minister, than voters living in Eastern Canada.

This political reality is compounded by a series of districting rules that prevent provinces with relatively waning populations from losing seats and that add seats based on senate representation. Unlike the American Senate, section 22 of the Canadian Constitution does not provide equal Senate seats for each province, but rather between Quebec, Ontario, the Western provinces (including Alberta) as a bloc, and the Atlantic provinces as a bloc. This would be like if California, New York, and Texas got two senators each, but the entire Midwest had to share 6 senators. As a result of these practices, not only are Albertans underrepresented when compared with the popular vote, but each riding in Alberta has more people in it, making every vote literally worth less.

It's uncertain how and when the separation referendum will unfold. But Alberta's grievances illustrate legitimate flaws in Canada's system of federalism. A failure to address them would likely cause further rifts between Canada's eastern and western provinces.

The post Why Oil-Rich Alberta May Secede From Canada appeared first on Reason.com.

How the Declaration of Independence Captured American Hearts and Minds

2026-05-01T16:00:26Z

[This post is excerpted from the new book, National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster).]

That Abraham Lincoln, our most American of presidents, "never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence," our most American of documents, seems only appropriate. That Lincoln was both a political philosopher and political genius may be enough to explain why the lanky rail-splitter from Illinois repeatedly invoked the Declaration, even before entering the political arena and when he had no expectations of returning to political office. Like his contemporaries, however, Lincoln grew up surrounded by images of the Declaration, keeping it a living document in the minds of Americans. In this 250th year of Independence, understanding the Declaration's prevalence as a cultural and material object in the first half of the 19th century may help explain how, after decades of relative obscurity, it became the undisputed expression of the American creed that we celebrate today.

The quote that opened this post is from Lincoln's speech at Independence Hall, on February 22, 1861. Traveling by train from his home in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln stopped in Philadelphia to address a crowd at the spot where the Declaration was signed. By now, with the Confederate States of America established, with their capital in Montgomery, Alabama, the Declaration was at the center of the great crisis that had been brewing at least since the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and more accurately, since July 4, 1776. By 1861, references and appeals to the Declarations principles came not just from the Republican president-elect, but from Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his Vice-President Alexander Stephens, in newspapers and polemicists in North and South. Though secession was a constitutional crisis, arguments both pro and con were infused with the spirit of the Declaration.

Such prominence for the Declaration would have surprised second-generation Americans. To them, the Declaration was a relic of the Revolution, an honored but largely ignored document. It had done its job announcing the Colonies' separation from Great Britain; after that, the job of governing was the preserve first of the Articles of Confederation and then the Constitution. In the first decade of the 19th century, John Adams' Federalists forbore from honoring the Declaration on July 4, while Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans celebrated both the document and its drafter. Few on either side, however, saw it as having much of a role to play in an America a full generation away from Independence.

A closer sense of connection to the Declaration began after the War of 1812 and the near-miraculous rescue of the Declaration from the British during the invasion of Washington in August 1814. Saved from the flames that gutted the White House and incinerated the State Department building next door, the Declaration from the mid-1810s was covered in an aura of reverence, both for its survival and as the symbol of a young nation that had now twice defeated the greatest empire on earth. Yet few Americans had ever seen the Declaration beyond occasional reprints of its text in newspapers or collections of documents. The lucky ones who had actually seen the engrossed parchment signed by the Founding Fathers starting in August 1776 were but a handful of the population.

All that began to change in 1818. That year, when Abraham Lincoln was but nine years old, the first artistic reproduction of the Declaration went on sale. Created by Washington calligrapher Benjamin Owen Tyler, the facsimile so expertly reproduced the signatures of the members of the Continental Congress that the Secretary of State attested to their perfection. The next year an even more elaborate version was offered by John Binns, who had first proposed a facsimile, but took so long to bring his to market that he was beaten to the punch by Owen. The full-size prints brought to Americans for the first time an artistic interpretation of the document that remained hidden in the State Department library.

The same year that Tyler's reproduction went on sale, John Trumbull's masterpiece, The Declaration of Independence was first shown to the public. The massive painting, 18 by 30 feet, fancifully depicted the moment that Thomas Jefferson and the Committee of Five presented their draft of the Declaration to John Hancock and the Continental Congress. The original was hung in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in 1826, where it has remained since. Soon available in both quality and inexpensive versions, Trumbull's heroic vision of the birth of the United States became perhaps the most famous American painting of the 19th century, sold widely throughout the country.

As fascination with the Declaration grew, the parchment itself was beginning to deteriorate from mishandling. In 1820, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams commissioned engraver William J. Stone to create an exact facsimile, something neither Binns nor Tyler had attempted. Stone labored for three years, and in 1823 his copperplate engraving was completed. Several hundred parchment copies, followed by more paper copies, were run off and given to national and State officials and other prominent individuals. Though not yet widely available, the Stone Engraving nonetheless became the iconic image of the Declaration, the one from which all future copies would be made.

To the Stone and the various reproductions were now added popular biographies of the Signers of the Declaration, published first by John Sanderson in 1829, but followed by dozens more in succeeding decades. So ubiquitous was the Declaration in American life that a Hungarian visitor to the United States in the early-1830s saw it hung in houses and inns throughout his travels. It was, he noted, "the indispensable furnishing and handbook in the home of every citizen."

This, then, was the milieu in which Abraham Lincoln grew up. The Declaration was reprinted in school primers and American history books, and biographies of the Signers crowded the shelves, while walls were adorned with replicas of the text and signatures or reprints of John Trumbull's painting. By the time the actual parchment of the Declaration was put on display in the Patent Office in Washington in 1841, Americans of all classes and regions had brought the document into their homes, schools, and churches.

For many Americans, undoubtedly, facsimiles of the Declaration spurred no more than patriotic pride or interest in an era now all but faded from living memory. But for some, perhaps like Abraham Lincoln, the constant exposure to the Declaration invited a deeper reflection on its imperishable passages and philosophy. Indeed, John Binns himself had written that his "embellished edition…will have a tendency to spread the knowledge of its contents…and familiarize those principles which form, the very bond and cement of political society."

Thus, it was that a twenty-eight-year-old Lincoln could invoke the Declaration to his listeners at the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield in January 1838 in urging them to continue to "uphold the proud fabric of freedom." And later, when confronted with the moral and legal abominations that were the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the 1857 Dred Scott ruling, Lincoln began refashioning the Declaration into a universal and eternal symbol of equality and freedom. With his entire political philosophy derived from the Declaration, Lincoln found the moral courage to link America's destiny to the end of slavery, though his political pragmatism also recognized, at least until 1861 (and probably later) the limits on such a radical program.

There is, of course, no sure way to know how much of the inspiration for Lincoln's intellectual engagement came from a material encounter with Declaration reprints, images, and the like. And yet, without the founding charter becoming such a fixture in the American imagination, it is certainly believable that Jefferson's sonorous phrases may not have penetrated as deeply into the national consciousness, not least into the minds of men like Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Abraham Lincoln. Nor might it have inspired others, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to write their own declarations calling for greater equality and liberty.

It would have been easy to refer to the legal framework of the Constitution, at least in some cases, but the moral argument, the passionate demand for justice, could only be provided by the Declaration. Gazing upon John Trumbull's heroic scene inside Independence Hall, reading Jefferson's words on copies hung on walls, reliving the experiences of the Signers, all prepared the American mind for the great struggles to create a more perfect Union. The Declaration is not just its timeless principles, but also its unique material history in American culture. Which, perhaps, is why parents still buy antiqued copies of the Declaration for their children and why we still frame Trumbull's portrait on our walls. Like Lincoln and his contemporaries, the Declaration remains a living document, calling forth the better angels of our nature. May it continue to do so for another quarter-millennium.

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Trump's Government-Funded Retirement Plan Misses the Point

2026-05-07T15:50:28Z

President Donald Trump and Congress want to help you increase your savings. And you should. At the household level, saving is the foundation of financial security and the seed capital for a better retirement. At the economy-wide level, savings fund investment that expands the capital stock, raises wages, and grows the economy. A society that does not save is a society slowly consuming its future.

So, any politician who wants to help Americans save more deserves at least a hearing. What should such a politician propose?

The first thing to do is remove all government-made barriers to savings. This includes a Social Security design that disincentivizes saving, and a tax code that hits much of our savings twice, as both income and investment returns. Addressing our massive debt—which threatens to bring inflation back and literally destroy the value of the savings we already have—would help too.

Alas, this isn't what Trump has in mind with his new executive order directing the Treasury to launch "TrumpIRA.gov," a portal where workers without employer-sponsored retirement plans can shop for private accounts. And some of them will be able to claim a federal Saver's Match of up to $1,000 a year.

The plans are vague, but we can get an idea from a bipartisan bill currently before Congress. The Retirement Savings for Americans Act would automatically enroll workers earning below the national median income in new retirement accounts and provide government matching contributions. According to RAND Corporation research, roughly 63 million workers would be eligible for these accounts, and 42 million would qualify for the match.

Bipartisan support for the idea is growing. Wall Street firms see new customers. Progressives see expanded government involvement in retirement. Some conservatives see a backdoor route to Social Security privatization. I urge skepticism.

Start with the core of the proposal. The Saver's Match is not a Trump innovation. It was created by the 2022 SECURE 2.0 Act under former President Joe Biden. Trump's executive order merely accelerates its rollout and expands its visibility. It will be very expensive.

Romina Bocca at the Cato Institute writes in The Washington Post that if modeled after the bill mentioned above, then "starting in 2027, low-income workers with existing retirement accounts are set to receive up to $1,000 in matching funds, at a cost to federal taxpayers of $9.3 billion through 2032. Expanding eligibility and automatically enrolling workers without existing accounts, as proposed by the bipartisan Retirement Savings for Americans Act, would be far more costly. Some projections put the price tag at $285 billion over the first decade alone."

That's real money being added to a federal balance sheet already groaning under the weight of a Social Security system facing roughly $28 trillion in long-term shortfalls.

But the fiscal objection, while serious, is not the deepest one. The deeper problem is that the proposal's backers misread the savings behavior of the households they claim to help.

Decades of economic research tell a consistent story: Low-income households are not failing to save because they lack tax-advantaged ways to do it. They fail to save because when you live paycheck to paycheck, locking money in an account you cannot access without incurring penalties, such as IRAs, 401(k)s and 529s, is risky.

Vanguard data show that households at the lowest income levels have the highest early withdrawal rates from existing retirement accounts, with penalties accounting for a disproportionate share of their tax burden. According to Boccia, penalties account for 43 percent of all taxes paid by individuals with adjusted gross incomes below $5,000.

Automatic enrollment, which animates much of the enthusiasm for expanded accounts, does not change this calculus for everyone. Research using Danish pension data found that some workers simply offset mandatory contributions by reducing voluntary saving. A large-scale United Kingdom study found that 18-21 cents of every dollar saved through auto-enrollment is offset by taking on debt. A recent study shows that the benefits of auto-enrollment are much smaller than original estimates assumed.

The better path is genuine simplification: a universal savings account that shields its owner from the tax bias against saving, allows contributions from any after-tax income, imposes no restrictions on withdrawals, and requires no government match and no new federal spending. Canada and the United Kingdom have run this experiment. Accounts were used enthusiastically across all income levels, including by moderate- and lower-income households who value flexibility above all else.

Finally, if politicians truly care about securing Americans' retirement income, they should have the courage both to reform Social Security (to stop lower-income seniors from being hit with an automatic 23 percent benefit cut while preventing massive increase of the debt) and to reform a tax code that creates silly disincentives to save.

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Trump's Health Bureaucrats Are Undermining Confidence in Vaccines

2026-05-07T14:53:15Z

Back in November, Vinay Prasad, then-director of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, asserted in an internal email that "at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination." He provided no evidence to back up his claim then, and none has since been forthcoming. Prasad left the agency at the end of April. Good riddance.

In the meantime, other Trump administration officials have continued their efforts to undermine the American public's confidence in the safety of previously vetted and approved vaccines. Jay Bhattacharya, who is simultaneously head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has been notably active in that endeavor.

In April, Bhattacharya delayed and eventually spiked publication of a study in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) on the effectiveness of 2025–2026 COVID-19 vaccination against emergency care and hospitalization. The researchers found that real-world vaccination effectiveness among adults over age 18 was "50% against COVID-19–associated emergency department and urgent care encounters and 55% against COVID-19–associated hospitalization, compared with not receiving a 2025–2026 vaccine dose."

In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Bhattacharya characterized his suppression of the report as being due to a "scientific disagreement" over the methodology used by researchers. In particular, Bhattacharya objected to the "test negative design" used by researchers to probe the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines updated for 2025–2026.

Test negative studies are widely used by researchers around the world (including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and across Europe) for studying respiratory virus vaccine effectiveness. A test-negative study checks how well a vaccine works by comparing sick people who show up at medical facilities who test positive for a disease (COVID-19) with sick people (other respiratory illnesses) who test negative. Researchers see who was vaccinated in each group. If fewer vaccinated people test positive for COVID-19, the vaccine is helping protect against the disease.

The suppressed study found the vaccines were around 50 percent effective in protecting against emergency room encounters and hospitalization. Because so many Americans have already been vaccinated or have had COVID-19 infections, the researchers also observed that vaccine effectiveness should "be interpreted as the added benefit of 2025-2026 COVID-19 vaccination in a population with high levels of infection-induced immunity, vaccine-induced immunity, or both." In addition, the suppressed study forthrightly acknowledged some of the limitations noted by Bhattacharya.

Bhattacharya implies that the articles in the CDC's MMWR are somehow faulty because they are not "peer reviewed" by outsiders. It is, however, worth noting that peer-reviewed articles on COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness have, in the past, generally come to the same basic estimates as those published in the CDC's MMWR.

Trump administration health officials are evidently not just satisfied to suppress information on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination. Yesterday, The New York Times reported that the FDA has now blocked the publication in peer-reviewed journals of several new agency-supported studies vetting the safety of COVID-19 and shingles vaccines. A preprint of one of the suppressed COVID-19 studies looked at 14 different possible deleterious side effects among 7.5 million Medicare beneficiaries. The study found that "there were no new safety signals identified following 2023–2024 COVID-19 vaccinations among U.S. Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years and older."

Another now-canceled FDA study examining the incidence of 17 possible health outcomes among 4.2 million people vaccinated against COVID-19 reported, "No new safety concerns were found following 2023–2024 COVID-19 vaccination among U.S. health plan enrollees aged 6 months–64 years."

The Times further reports that in February, the FDA refused to allow agency staff to submit short reports on the Shingrix vaccine to a drug safety conference. Numerous previous studies have found that Shingrix is basically safe, although there is a slightly increased post-vaccination risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome. Vaccination not only protects against shingles, but studies also find that it is also associated with a lower risk of heart disease, dementia, and death in people aged 50 and older.

Although the authors of the suppressed COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness study demurely omitted it, prior MMWR reports on COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness generally concluded their findings "support CDC and ACIP [Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices] recommendations that all persons aged ≥6 months receive 2024–2025 COVID-19 vaccination."

Consequently, it seems likely that the speculation by the person who leaked the suppressed COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness report to Inside Medicine is correct:

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his underlings like Bhattacharya—might be hoping to further weaken CDC recommendations for seasonal Covid-19 vaccines this year. It's possible that the CDC may even weaken its recommendations for high-risk patients above age 65.

In his disingenuous op-ed in The Washington Post, Bhattacharya declared, "Scientific integrity demands rigor, openness to challenge and a willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads, especially when it is inconvenient." Yet, he and other Trump administration health bureaucrats clearly see fit to suppress evidence they find inconvenient. So much for "scientific integrity."

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Florida Wins the Curriculum Wars

2026-05-07T13:26:03Z

Florida just created its own alternative to A.P. United States History, and it seems pretty good.

Headlines describe it as "anti-woke" and "more conservative," but this framing is a little tired and unsophisticated. Instead, I'd offer that it seems a lot more balanced and positive on Western/Enlightenment ideals than the curriculum it is replacing. It seems rather similar to what most of us were taught in school, provided we attended school prior to the late 2010s.

The recommended textbook for the course is Hillsdale professor Wilfred M. McClay's Land of Hope: An Invitation to the American Story, which—though I have not personally read it—seems like a useful corrective and better alternative to, say, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States (which is frequently used in A.P. U.S. History classes).

"One of the worst sins of the present—not just ours but any present—is its tendency to condescend toward the past, which is much easier to do when one doesn't trouble to know the full context of that past or try to grasp the nature of its challenges as they presented themselves at the time," writes McClay. I fully agree, and this seems like an appropriate lens through which one should view teaching of the past. But McClay is also rather sensible when it comes to the specifics.

"Generally, traditional texts address industrialization after the Civil War with trepidation. A few words are offered in support of free enterprise and the amazing economic accomplishments of the period, but the story is overshadowed by coverage of 'robber barons,' the growth of labor unions, strikes, income inequality, and urbanization," writes Mark C. Schug in a review of the book for EconLib. "This is all prologue for the arrival of the Progressive Movement—the good guys—who come to rescue us from the evils of unfettered capitalism. Traditional texts cheer the passage of legislation to establish government oversight over vast swaths of the economy, including the passage of antitrust laws, the Federal Reserve Act, the regulation of railroads, the passage of the 16th amendment (the income tax), and so forth.…[But] McClay is not so ardent a cheerleader for elite experts managing our lives that he glosses over other aspects of Progressive behavior."

"Too many of today's textbooks are overburdened with detail and disfigured by partisan animus, and leave students of the American past confused, ill-informed, and unprepared for the task of citizenship in a free society," McClay told interviewers with Encounter Books. "We have had, and continue to have, serious national problems, such as our problems of racial inequality, missteps in our relations with other nations, and other problems that show us to be in conflict with our national creed and our deepest values. We are very far from being perfect, and it has been important for Americans to face up to these problems, rather than pretend that they do not exist." But "the trouble comes when the self-criticism loses all sense of perspective, and becomes relentless and corrosive, taking the nation's flaws as the totality of its being." This strikes me as totally fair, and indeed a good way of looking at it.

I still have a few questions: Will students be able to get college credit for taking this course, even when applying to schools outside of Florida? (If not, it won't serve as a real substitute for the A.P. U.S. History class; getting college credit while still in high school is a major unlock for those who don't want to blow all their money on college. As it stands right now, it seems like they could become eligible for college credit within Florida but not outside of it.) What will students think of the course? And, if successful, will other states follow suit, using Florida as a positive example of how to overhaul curricula?

Waiting on Tehran: "The US is waiting on Iran to respond to its proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end a war that's killed thousands of people, with tensions still high and Israel striking Lebanon's capital on Wednesday," reports Bloomberg. The Trump administration seems to hope Iran will capitulate, ending its nuclear program as well as its enrichment of uranium, and possibly even handing over the already-enriched uranium to the United States. (This seems…hard to pull off.)

Scenes from New York: I'm fascinated by the New York Mayor Zohran Mamdami's belief that vast swaths of Manhattan are food deserts—something that's provably false.

There are literally a dozen supermarkets within walking distance of La Marqueta where Zohran Mamdani wants to spend $30 million of taxpayer money to build 1 of his city owned socialist supermarkets. City Fresh Market is literally 1 block away. This is hardly a food desert. https://t.co/rut4SmXLY2 pic.twitter.com/IS0dPAYWJn

— Izengabe (@Izengabe_) April 12, 2026

QUICK HITS

"Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery," reports the Post. "The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported."
I'm not sure I agree with the claim that this war hasn't been that bad for the U.S. economically—people are absolutely feeling high gas prices—but this point about the Jones Act is rather interesting:

I think we have an answer to why the Iran war hasn't been that bad for the US economically.

Trump suspended the Jones Act!

Hormuz is closed, but we stopped blockading ourselves.

Crazy this law still exists. pic.twitter.com/Cglg4JoVJe

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) May 6, 2026

A French cargo ship was attacked on Tuesday in the Strait of Hormuz, presumably by Iran or its proxies. American authorities claim the ship had not coordinated with the U.S. military, so the ship's safe passage could not be ensured. Eight crew members are injured.
"Eli Lilly & Co.'s blockbuster diabetes drug Mounjaro has surpassed Merck & Co.'s cancer therapy Keytruda as the world's best-selling medication," reports Bloomberg. "Mounjaro generated $8.7 billion for Lilly in the first quarter of 2026, outperforming Merck's Keytruda, which posted sales of $7.9 billion. Keytruda has been the world's top-selling drug since the first quarter of 2023, when it displaced AbbVie Inc.'s autoimmune disorder drug Humira."
Watching this trend:

New preprint!

We find evidence of LLMs enabling people to file lawsuits without lawyers (filing "pro se") at historically unprecedented rates in federal courts.

1/n pic.twitter.com/JCj8oq5Jym

— Anand Shah (@avshah99) April 22, 2026

More on how artificial intelligence is changing the legal profession from Odd Lots.
Anthropic makes a deal with SpaceX.
"Margaret, my wife's grandmother, was still in her home two days after her death when Maria and I arrived in the village of Cruglic, Moldova," writes Jesse Blackwood for Plough. "The house was always open and visitors would arrive at any time. Each of these visits followed the same pattern. They were always offered a glass of wine and a few candies and cookies on behalf of Margaret, which when accepted, the response was always, 'May God forgive her.' Then, after kissing the icon and cross and spending some time sitting with Margaret they would usually come to the kitchen for a full meal. This pattern was not altogether different than it had been in Margaret's life."
I love to run but am horrified by the social changes I'm seeing especially from upper-middle-class young people with extra time on their hands. Everyone needs to LOOSEN UP!

The future of leisure is fitness, running clubs are replacing night clubs for young people, alcohol consumption is falling, and oral GLP1s are going to melt literally billions of pounds of visceral and subcutaneous fat in the next decade in America.

The future is gonna be fit… https://t.co/vI8mnO2xgn

— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) May 6, 2026

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Today in Supreme Court History: May 7, 1873

2025-07-11T16:29:34Z

5/7/1873: Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase died. One month earlier, he dissented in the Slaughter-House Cases, and was the lone dissenter in Bradwell v. Illinois.

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11 Big SCOTUS Cases That Will Be Decided Soon

2026-05-06T19:55:20Z

The U.S. Supreme Court has now entered the final stretch of its 2025–2026 term. The oral arguments have all been heard, and the merits cases have all been submitted. What's left now is the writing and announcing of all of the remaining opinions. We'll get those opinions sometime later this month or next, as the Court typically wraps everything up by the end of June, just in time for a nice summer holiday.

So what's left? Here are 11 big cases that I'll be watching out for in the weeks ahead.

Immigration: There are two notable immigration cases still to be decided. First, in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the Court is weighing whether asylum seekers who present themselves at the U.S. border may be lawfully turned away or whether they must instead be inspected by immigration officials and entered into the asylum system for further processing. Second, in Mullin v. Doe, the Court will determine whether the Trump administration improperly removed the temporary protected status (TPS) of Syrian and Haitian nationals. The TPS program permits qualifying foreigners to remain in the U.S. because it would be too risky for them to return to their home countries.

Guns: There are also two major gun cases still to be decided. First, Wolford v. Lopez asks whether Hawaii violated the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms when it told licensed concealed carry permit holders that they must obtain the express permission of the property owner before they may carry a handgun on private property that is open to the public. Second, in United States v. Hemani, the justices are considering whether a federal law that prohibits illegal drug users from having guns violates the Second Amendment.

Transgender athletes: The Supreme Court heard back-to-back oral arguments in January in a pair of cases that each involve a government ban on transgender women and girls competing in women's and girls' sports. The question presented to the Court in the first one, Little v. Hecox, is "whether laws that seek to protect women's and girls' sports by limiting participation to women and girls based on sex violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment." The question presented to the Court in the second one, West Virginia v. B.J.P., is "whether Title IX prevents a state from consistently designating girls' and boys' sports teams based on biological sex determined at birth."

Presidential control over federal agencies: There are also two huge cases that fall within this broad category, but they pose quite different questions. First, in Trump v. Slaughter, the question is whether President Donald Trump may fire a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for purely political reasons, rather than "for cause." There happens to be a 1935 SCOTUS precedent that says the president may not fire an FTC commissioner for purely political reasons, so what this case is effectively about is whether that precedent should be overruled, limited, or left standing (and thus enforced against Trump). The case of Trump v. Cook, on the other hand, asks whether Trump's ostensible "for cause" firing of Lisa Cook from her position as a member of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors actually satisfied the terms of the "for cause" requirement in federal law, or whether it was really just a pretext designed to cover up Trump's illegal political rationale for firing her.

Birthright citizenship: Acting via executive order, the president has purported to deny the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship to children whose parents are illegal immigrants or lawfully present temporary visitors. Trump v. Barbara asks whether that executive order is unconstitutional.

Mail-in ballots: The Constitution says that "the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations." The case of Watson v. Republican National Committee asks whether a Mississippi law that allows the counting of mail-in ballots that were sent by election day but were not received until after election day runs afoul of the federal law that established a uniform national date for federal elections.

Fourth Amendment searches and "geofence warrants": The case of Chatrie v. United States originated when law enforcement officials told Google to search the location histories of all of its users in order to determine which users were present in the vicinity of a bank robbery. The Supreme Court is tasked with determining what the Fourth Amendment actually permits in such cases.

In sum, we'll soon get a heap of Supreme Court decisions on a range of contentious issues. Stay tuned.

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Photo: Technology Is Bringing Lost Paintings Into the Public Eye

2026-04-24T16:57:45Z

Researchers at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum announced the discovery of a new painting by the Dutch painter Rembrandt in March. A two-year study of the work—involving materials analysis, macro X-ray fluorescence scans, and dendrochronological dating of the wooden painting surface—revealed that Vision of Zacharias in the Temple, which had been in a private individual's possession since 1961, was painted by the Dutch master in 1633.

Researchers have used scientific methods to authenticate and uncover new information about several other works of art in recent years. In 2018, infrared imaging technology revealed a 1902 newspaper page and another composition below the surface of Pablo Picasso's Mother and Child by the Sea.

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Brickbat: Tell Us Your Name

2026-05-06T05:35:30Z

Greece plans to ban anonymity on social media, claiming it will reduce online toxicity, harassment, fake news, and hate speech. Digital Governance Minister Dimitris Papastergiou says people should express opinions but only with their real identities, so they can be held responsible for what they post. The plan, which is being developed under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, would require social media platforms to verify users' real identities. Officials say they are not banning all pseudonyms but want every account linked to a real person. Critics say the move will chill free speech issues and be difficult to enforce, but government officials say they want to create a healthier online environment ahead of the 2027 elections.

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Open Thread

2026-05-07T07:00:00Z

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Second Amendment Roundup: A Tale of Two Waiting Periods

2026-05-07T01:42:09Z

On October 25, 2023, 18 people were killed in a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. The killer's declining mental health was known to law enforcement since that May. On July 6, although he owned other firearms, he legally purchased the firearm that he would use in the attack. By August, he repeatedly threatened members of his Army Reserve unit that he would "shoot up" the base. He was hospitalized for psychological evaluation but released. Two months later, he carried out his nefarious threats at a bowling alley and a cafe.

In 2024, the Final Report of the Independent Commission to Investigate the Facts of the Tragedy in Lewiston was released, faulting both the military and law enforcement for taking no action to disarm and hospitalize the killer.

Before the Commission report was even released, the Maine legislature enacted a statute targeting any person who would buy a firearm: "Waiting Period. A seller may not knowingly deliver a firearm to a buyer pursuant to an agreement sooner than 72 hours after the agreement." As the timeline of events indicated, no relation existed between the perpetrator's vile acts taking place six months earlier and the 72-hour firearm transfer waiting period.

In Beckwith v. Frey, decided on April 3, the First Circuit reversed the district court's issuance of a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the new law. For those needing a firearm for protection against an immediate threat, not to worry. The court found it relevant that the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence submitted a statement warning that potential victims not obtain firearms for protection as the firearms were more likely to be used against them, and anyway the Coalition offered "services" to keep victims safe during the seventy-two-hour waiting period. That must have been reassuring to battered spouses facing death threats.

In the opinion for the court, Judge Seth Aframe held that "laws regulating the purchase or acquisition of firearms do not target conduct covered by the Second Amendment's 'plain text,'" which only "means to have and carry guns." Since the law regulates activity that takes place before that, it is "outside the Second Amendment's plain text." Under that logic, nothing in the text of the Amendment would preclude a law that simply banned absolutely the delivery or transfer of a firearm from one person to another. One's right to keep and bear arms does not imply a right to obtain them.

Plaintiffs, the court continued, thus had the burden to show that the law was "abusive" in line with Bruen's footnote nine. The court read footnote nine to mean that "the full two-step analysis did not apply to 'shall-issue' laws because these laws delay, but do not deny, licenses while states ensure that guns are being carried by law-abiding and responsible citizens." However, the Supreme Court only stated in footnote nine that "shall-issue regimes, which often require applicants to undergo a background check or pass a firearms safety course, are designed to ensure only that those bearing arms in the jurisdiction are, in fact, 'law-abiding, responsible citizens.'" It added that, "because any permitting scheme can be put toward abusive ends, we do not rule out constitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry." Wait times must thus be keyed to requirements like a background check, not just waiting for its own sake.

The Beckwith court next turned to Heller's statement that nothing in the opinion "should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." The court read "longstanding" to modify only "prohibitions," not "laws imposing conditions," and so the waiting period need not be longstanding. (That issue may be moot, as Bruen requires Founding-era analogues.) And it said that a "condition" need not be a particularized criterion that an individual must meet – the waiting period is itself a condition.

Finally, Beckwith stated that in other contexts, the Supreme Court "strictly scrutinizes laws that directly restrict the exercise of fundamental rights but often reviews more deferentially laws that only impose incidental burdens on the exercise of those rights." It mentioned the First Amendment, but did not venture to suggest that the Supreme Court would approve a waiting period per se for exercise of any right protected by the First Amendment.

Ortega v. Grisham (10th Cir. 2025), an opinion by Judge Timothy Tymkovich, is in stark contrast with Beckwith. Ortega invalidated a New Mexico statute providing that "[a] waiting period of seven calendar days shall be required for the sale of a firearm and the transfer of the firearm to the buyer." The court held that "the right to bear arms requires a right to acquire arms, just as the right to free press necessarily includes the right to acquire a printing press, or the right to freely practice religion necessarily rests on a right to acquire a sacred text." When the text authorizes an act, it implicitly authorizes any necessary predicate of the act.

Moreover, Ortega continued, Heller's reference to "longstanding prohibitions" modified "laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." The waiting period is not a longstanding prohibition and it is not limited to commercial sales. Furthermore, "It is not a condition because it cannot be met by any action, and it is not a qualification because it is universally applicable…. The sale happens regardless, and the waiting period is just an artificial delay on possession."

Nor could the state meet its burden to show that the law had appropriate historical analogues, including intoxication laws, license and permitting regimes, and targeted group bans on firearm carry or possession. The law assumes that "anyone seeking to purchase a firearm can be presumed irresponsible or non-law-abiding, purely by dint of their intention to purchase a firearm." That contrasts with the purpose of shall-issue licensing regimes and background checks which have the purpose of assuring that firearm purchasers are responsible, law-abiding citizens.

So we can add waiting periods to the growing list of Second Amendment restrictions that the Supreme Court should resolve, either by a case on point or a principle of general applicability.

It's worth recalling how "cooling off" periods came to national attention as a panacea for violence committed by the mentally deranged. John Hinckley, Jr., purchased a revolver and shot President Ronald Reagan five months later. (Ironically, the attempted assassination took place at the same Washington Hilton Hotel where an assailant sought to shoot President Donald Trump and cabinet members on April 25.) To solve that problem, Handgun Control Inc., later renamed the Brady Center, championed a seven-day waiting period on handgun purchases, albeit without a background check. The NRA supported an instant background check on all firearm purchases from FFLs instead.

The result was the misnamed Brady Handgun Prevention Act of 1993. Its interim provision, 18 U.S.C. § 922(s), purported to conscript state law enforcement officers to conduct background checks on handgun buyers, who could be cleared right away or within no more than within five days. I was honored to argue Sheriff Jay Printz v. U.S. (1997), in which the Supreme Court held that Congress may not command the states to administer this (or any other) federal regulatory program.

The permanent provision of the Brady Act, § 922(t), established the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). NICS provides for immediate transfer of a firearm, but may delay approval of the transfer for not more than three days, if NICS does not find that the transfer would violate federal or state law. Because it created an instant check and no waiting period, the "Brady" Act may as well have been named the "NRA" Act. But that's all water over the dam now.

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Court Dismisses Matt Taibbi's Defamation Lawsuit Over "Owned: How Tech Billionaires Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left"

2026-05-06T20:32:04Z

From Taibbi v. Higgins, decided yesterday by Judge George Daniels (S.D.N.Y.):

This action centers around Owned: How Tech Billionaires Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left ("Owned" or the "Book"), a book authored by Higgins and published by Bold Type Books. Owned purports to explore "how tech elites and formerly left-wing journalists forged an alliance" to create a "new right-wing media ecosystem."

As relevant here, the Book depicts Plaintiff as one of several independent journalists whose politics shifted in recent years to attract a more conservative audience. Plaintiff began his writing career in post-Soviet Russia. In 2004, Plaintiff joined Rolling Stone, where he gained acclaim reporting on "the big banks and the excesses of Wall Street" during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. According to the Book, Plaintiff's image among liberal pundits declined after Plaintiff pushed back on allegations of Russian electoral interference in the 2016 presidential election and "old misogynistic writings resurfaced," The Book claims that "[a]fter his rejection by the left, [Plaintiff] turned to a new right-wing audience and became increasingly beholden to their priorities." In 2020, Plaintiff left Rolling Stone for Substack, a subscription-based newsletter service.

In 2022, Elon Musk purchased the social media website Twitter (now known as X). The Book states that Musk, in an effort "to expose the rot at the core of the entire company," sought out reporters to review internal company documents. These documents would purportedly "show[ ] how Twitter had responded to requests for censorship from the government and made decisions on questionable content." Musk eventually offered Plaintiff the opportunity to review the "Twitter Files," so long as he published his reporting on the platform.

On December 2, 2022, Plaintiff released his initial reporting on the Twitter Files. Among other things, Plaintiff reported on "Twitter's decision to suppress a New York Post article on [Hunter Biden's laptop] in advance of the 2020 election," and that the "Trump Administration routinely demanded material be taken down" by Twitter,.

The Book asserts that due to the increased exposure Plaintiff gained from the Twitter Files project, Plaintiff's "Twitter account blew up, and his Substack—already incredibly successful—gained thousands of subscriptions." The Book also claims that Plaintiff's Twitter Files reporting "generated a financial windfall." Plaintiff pleads, however, that "during the second and third months of the project, [he] experienced 4,844 subscriber cancellations and a $20,644 loss in revenue, as readers [of his Substack] became frustrated that [he] was publishing his work on another platform." Altogether, 13.7% of Plaintiff's Substack subscribers joined after publication of his Twitter Files reporting.

In 2023, Musk asked Plaintiff to leave Substack and move to his new "Twitter Subs" platform., where Musk claimed that Plaintiff would "get far more subscribers." According to the Book, Musk made the offer after he instituted "a blanket search ban on Twitter of all Substack links." Higgins, supra at 195. Plaintiff refused Musk's offer, stating that "people would say I'm essentially an employee of Twitter and both of us would never hear the end of it" and that "the optics would be really bad, journalistic ethics-wise." Plaintiff alleges that after refusing Musk's offer, Musk immediately kicked him off of the Twitter Files project and Plaintiff's Twitter following was "frozen and deamplified."

On February 2, 2025, Higgins requested an interview with Plaintiff to discuss the yet to be published Book. Specifically, Higgins framed the interview as an opportunity to discuss "how [Plaintiff's] audience changed and, more broadly, how [Plaintiff] see[s] the left/right political landscape." Plaintiff declined with the message, "Lol. Pass."

Bold Type Books published the Book on February 4, 2025. Plaintiff alleges that following publication, Higgins admitted that the Book does not contain evidence of a direct financial deal between Plaintiff and Musk….

Plaintiff sued for defamation, focusing on the following statements (allegedly defamatory material set in bold by the court):

"Owned."

"Bought."

"Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi's decades-long journey from the world of alternative journalism into the snug patronage of billionaires is a story with profound and troubling implications for the future of journalism and unfettered thinking."

"In recent years, right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks have turned to media as their next investment and source of influence. Their cronies are Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi….

"Owned follows the money, names names, and offers a chilling portrait of a future social media and news landscape."

"It is a biting expose of journalistic greed, tech-billionaire ambition, and a lament for a disappearing free press." ..

"Taibbi's Twitter Files reporting is a perfect example: he spent decades building up credibility and credentials only to, in one high-profile moment, cash in to launder a CEO's cherry-picked corporate opposition file on his opponents."

"His Twitter account blew up, and his Substack—already incredibly successful—gained thousands of subscriptions. The reporting generated a financial windfall for the writer, even if its findings were dismissed by more sober commentators."

"His Substack had exploded after the Twitter Files reporting and he'd promised to continue exposing censorship of the social media site."

"It was this threat to Taibbi's bottom line that finally motivated the journalist to act."

"After years of confrontational commentary on the financial industry and questioning the mainstream, Taibbi fully dispensed with any pretense of challenging power late in 2022."

The court concluded that, in context, the statements were opinion and not actionable:

Statements 1 and 2, the words "Owned" and "Bought" on the Book's front cover, are susceptible to both literal and metaphorical meanings depending on the surrounding context. Plaintiff acknowledges, however, that the contents of the Book cannot support a literal reading, stating that the "[t]he Book contains no evidence of any financial transaction, payment, contract, or quid pro quo involving Plaintiff."

In this context, "Owned" and "Bought" naturally read as attention-grabbing rhetoric used to signify Higgin's opinions and the Book's conclusions. Aside from the scattered words and phrases discussed below, Plaintiff does not dispute the accuracy of the vast majority of the Book's factual content that informs these views or point to language suggesting the opinions are based on facts other than those disclosed in the book. Plaintiff may not like Higgins's subjective conclusions, or agree with their accuracy, but that does not make them actionable defamation.

Statement 3, that Plaintiff was in "the snug patronage of billionaires," is also a nonactionable opinion. Just like "Owned" and "Bought," the language "snug patronage" does not have a readily understood precise meaning, so there is no way for a reader to determine whether the statement is true or false. The statement also appears as a reviewer comment on the back cover under the heading "Praise for Owned." From this context, a reader would likely intuit this statement as an opinion of the reviewer, supported by the facts disclosed in the Book, and not a statement of fact about Plaintiff.

Statement 4 is a passage from the Book's left flap that states that Plaintiff was one of the right-wing technology billionaires' "cronies." Courts in this district have previously held that calling someone a "crony," without more, is nonactionable rhetorical hyperbole. The same is true here. The assertion that Plaintiff is a billionaire's crony is the sort of excessive, unverifiable language that signals to a reasonable reader that they are reading the speaker's opinion, and not a statement of fact.

Statement 5 also appears on the left flap and states that the Book "follows the money, names names," and is a "biting expose of journalistic greed." Plaintiff alleges that "follows the money" and "names names" "represents to readers that the author has traced actual financial relationships and identified specific recipients of improper payments or patronage." "In New York, a plaintiff cannot sustain a libel claim if the allegedly defamatory statement is not 'of and concerning plaintiff but rather only speaks about a group of which the plaintiff is a member." Statement 5 does not indicate that it is "of and concerning" Plaintiff—it describes Higgins's investigative process for ail the Book's subjects, not only Plaintiff. A reasonable reader would, therefore, not interpret "follows the money" and "names names" as a false statement of fact about Plaintiff.

Statement 6 states that the Book is an "expose of journalistic greed," which Plaintiff alleges "asserts professional dishonesty and unethical conduct." But whether someone is motivated out of greed or ambition is a subjective determination that is not capable of being proven true or false. Further, the context surrounding the statement, including its placement on the left flap of the Book's cover, clearly implies that the facts on which this opinion is based can be found within the Book.

Plaintiff acknowledges that these statements "might be protected opinion standing alone." But he claims that when viewed together, the statements on the Book's cover and jacket "become implied factual assertions that the accused was actually paid." Plaintiff is correct that otherwise nonactionable statements may create "false suggestions, impressions, and implications," and that these false implications can serve as the basis of a defamation claim. But plaintiffs alleging defamation by implication must "make a rigorous showing that the language of the communication as a whole can be reasonably read both to impart a defamatory inference and to affirmatively suggest that the author intended or endorsed that inference."

Even assuming that Plaintiff has affirmatively alleged a defamation by implication claim—despite not labeling his sole cause of action as such—Plaintiff has failed to allege facts showing that Defendants intended or endorsed the defamatory inference. As stated above, Plaintiff admits that "the Book contains no evidence whatsoever that Plaintiff received payments, sponsorship, or financial inducement from Elon Musk or any other billionaire."

Instead of endorsing the alleged defamatory implication, the Book argues that Plaintiff's central reason for agreeing to participate in the Twitter Files was to "gain access." Plaintiff also claims that Higgins "admitted contemporaneously that readers expecting proof of who was 'bought' would be disappointed." In short, the Book's contents and Higgins contemporaneous statements distance the Book from the defamatory implication Plaintiff alleges. Without any additional facts pointing to Defendants' intent, Plaintiff's defamation by implication claim fails….

The alleged defamatory statements within the Book are also nonactionable. First, in statement 7, "cash in" and "launder" are directly preceded by a reference to the "decades" Plaintiff spent "building up credibility and credentials." This context makes clear that the Book's reference to "cash in" is not referring to literal money, but rather the idea that Plaintiff traded his reputation for access to the Twitter Files. This sort of loose, figurative language would naturally lead a reasonable reader to interpret this as a statement of opinion.

Similarly, statement 8 is a nonactionable subjective determination, Statement 8 claims that Plaintiff's Substack "gained thousands of subscriptions" following his work on the Twitter Files, which translated to a "financial windfall." But as Plaintiff's counsel acknowledged during oral argument, this statement, "in the abstract," is not defamatory because it does not tend to injure Plaintiff's reputation. And even if one could read a defamatory meaning into these words, Plaintiff admits that he did in fact gain thousands of Substack subscribers following the Twitter Files reporting. Whether this "small percentage" of increased subscribers represented a "financial windfall" is a subjective determination.

Statements 9, 10 and 11 are also nonactionable opinions. Statement 9 claims that Plaintiff's Substack "exploded" following the Twitter Files. Just like the term "financial windfall," whether something "exploded" in value is a subjective determination. Finally, neither Statement 10, which states that Plaintiff was motivated by a "threat to [his] bottom line," or Statement 11, which claims that "Plaintiff fully dispensed with any pretense of challenging power late in 2022," are capable of being proven true or false. What motivated Plaintiff to leave Twitter and whether he adequately challenged power are matters of opinion….

Liz McNamara and Leena Charlton (Davis Wright Tremaine LLP) represent defendants.

The post Court Dismisses Matt Taibbi's Defamation Lawsuit Over "Owned: How Tech Billionaires Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left" appeared first on Reason.com.

Whatever Evidence the DOJ Has Against James Comey, It Cannot Transform '86 47' Into a Death Threat

2026-05-06T20:59:50Z

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche says an 11-month investigation produced "a body of evidence" that supports the federal indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, which improbably charges him with publicly threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump. That evidence, Blanche said in an interview on NBC's Meet the Press last Sunday, goes beyond the May 15 Instagram post at the center of the case, which shared a photograph of seashells arranged in the sand to form the message "86 47"—a common expression of opposition to the president.

Although Blanche declined to specify the nature of that additional evidence, he said it would prove the "intent" required to convict Comey. That seems highly doubtful, especially when it comes to the first count in the indictment, which charges Comey with violating 18 USC 871 by "knowingly and willfully" making "a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States."

Comey did that, according to the indictment, by "publicly post[ing] a photograph on the internet social media site Instagram" that "depicted seashells arranged in a pattern making out '86 47,' which a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States." The question of how "a reasonable recipient" would understand that message is constitutionally crucial under Supreme Court decisions that delineate the distinction between "true threats" and protected speech.

Given the typical slang usage of eighty-six, which broadly means "reject," "discard," or "abandon," and the ubiquity of the specific slogan at issue here, which appears on a wide variety of T-shirts and bumper stickers you could order from Amazon right now if you were so inclined, it strains credulity to posit that the phrase is reasonably interpreted as a murder threat. Nor is that the only problem with this charge.

To convict Comey under Section 871, prosecutors would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he "knowingly and willfully" threatened violence against the president. That requirement goes beyond the sort of subjective intent that the Supreme Court has said the First Amendment requires to treat an allegedly threatening statement as a crime.

In the 2023 case Counterman v. Colorado, the Court said "a mental state of recklessness is sufficient," meaning the government "must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence." The standard under Section 871 is stricter: It requires proving that the defendant not only "consciously disregarded a substantial risk" that his statement would be viewed as a threat of violence but intended that it be understood as such.

In the 2004 case United States v. Fuller, for example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit held that a defendant can be convicted of violating Section 871 even if he does not intend to act on his threat. But it said the government must "establish that the communicator knowingly and willfully made a threat," meaning he "intend[ed] it to be received as a serious threat, regardless of whether he intended to carry it out."

The other count in the Comey indictment is based on 18 USC 875, which makes it a felony to transmit an interstate communication that contains "any threat to injure the person of another." Unlike Section 871, that provision does not specify that the defendant must make a threat "knowingly and willfully." But under Counterman, prosecutors would still have to prove that Comey "consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence."

By itself, the Instagram post does not come close to establishing the elements of either crime, as even Comey's critics have noted. In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday, Sen. Thom Tillis (R–N.C.) described Comey as "a political hack" and "the biggest disappointment of my Senate career." Despite his low opinion of Comey, Tillis thinks the case against him looks like "a vindictive prosecution" because "86 47" cannot plausibly be considered a death threat. "I can't find any evidence where '86' is used as a call for violence," he said. "It better be more than just the picture. There have to be facts and circumstances beyond that to convince me."

There is "more than just the picture," according to Blanche. "I am not permitted to get into the details of what the grand jury heard or found," he said on Meet the Press. "But rest assured that it's not just the Instagram post that leads somebody to get indicted."

The slogan "86 47" is "posted constantly," Blanche conceded. "That phrase is used constantly. There are constantly men and women who choose to make threatening statements against President Trump. Every one of those statements do not result in indictments, of course. There are facts, there are circumstances, there are investigations that have to take place. "

According to Blanche, all uses of "that phrase" qualify as "threatening statements against President Trump," which means everyone who wears an "86 47" T-shirt or displays an "86 47" bumper sticker is potentially guilty of violating Section 871. He says "investigations" are necessary to determine whether that charge is appropriate. Yet the FBI cannot and does not launch an investigation every time someone uses "that phrase," which raises the question of why Comey was singled out.

Given President Donald Trump's frequently expressed antipathy toward Comey and his public demand that the Justice Department find a crime to pin on him, the answer seems pretty clear. Blanche insisted that Trump "wants justice," not revenge. But that motivation does not explain why the government decided to conduct the 11-month investigation that Blanche described, which initially was based on nothing more than an Instagram post of a slogan that "is used constantly."

Gliding over that point, Blanche said the investigation turned up "witnesses," "documents," and "materials" that will be used to "prove intent." But it is hard to imagine how such evidence could establish that "a reasonable recipient" would view the Instagram post as a death threat, let alone that Comey either intended that it be understood as such or recklessly disregarded the supposedly "substantial" risk that it would be.

The first issue hinges on how "86 47" is reasonably understood. Is it reasonable to assume that Republicans who advertised their politics by wearing "86 46" T-shirts or displaying "86 46" stickers during the Biden administration were threatening to kill the president? If not, it is plainly not reasonable to interpret "86 47" that way. No evidence collected by the FBI or federal prosecutors is going to refute that point. Yet that is what the government must do to treat Comey's Instagram post as a "true threat."

Leaving aside that seemingly insurmountable obstacle, what sort of evidence could the government possibly have that would elucidate Comey's state of mind when he posted the seashell photo? Maybe Comey confessed to someone, contrary to what he publicly said after he deleted the picture in response to criticism, that he always knew "some folks associate those numbers with violence." Maybe there are "documents" indicating that Comey "knowingly and willfully" threatened to kill the president in the hope that the resulting controversy would goose his book sales. But probably not.

During a press conference on the day of the indictment, Blanche portrayed the case against Comey as typical of the charges that the Justice Department commonly pursues against people who threaten public officials. "Over the past year, this department has charged dozens of cases involving threats against all sorts of individuals," he said. "We take these seriously, every single one of them."

That is obviously not true if you think people who post, wear, or display the message "86 47" are all making "threatening statements against President Trump." As Blanche concedes, those people typically are not investigated, let alone indicted. And when people do face charges under Section 871 or Section 875(c), the cases tend to look quite different from this one.

Trying to support his claim that the Comey indictment is business as usual at the Justice Department, Blanche cited a recent case in the Northern District of Florida involving a Tallahassee man, Diego M. Villavicencio, who pleaded guilty to two counts of sending interstate threats. The evidence included X posts saying Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell "will be shot and killed September 23" and adding that "Jerome is next." Villavicencio also had threatened Rep. Eric Swalwell (D–Calif.) in an X post, saying, "I'll kill you and your family and you won't do anything about it. Corruption listens to bullets." He followed that up with a direct message to Swalwell saying, "You are going to be shot and killed on September 24." In a 4chan post, Villavicencio announced his plan to drive by Mar-a-Lago and "take a couple of shots at trump and some of the other corrupt plutocrats."

Blanche also mentioned a case "where the defendant pled guilty recently to threatening former President Biden." He may have been referring to Troy Kelly, a Crown Point, New York, resident who last August "admitted that in May 2024 he posted a threat to kill President Biden on a social media website and that he intended it to be understood as a threat." Kelly had responded to one of Biden's posts by warning that he was "gonna put a bullet in your head if I ever catch you."

In another recent case, a Pennsylvania man, Shawn Monper, was charged last year with violating Section 875(c) by making threats on YouTube. "When are we going to stand up and kill these people?" he asked in one video. "That's why Trump needs to die," he said in another. "I have bought several guns and [have] been stocking up on ammo since Trump got in office," he reported, later announcing that "I'm gonna assassinate him myself."

According to an indictment filed three months ago in the Northern District of Ohio, Shannon Mathre was similarly clear about his intentions when he threatened Vice President J.D. Vance. "I am going to find out where he is going to be and use my M14 automatic gun and kill him," Mathre allegedly said, prompting a charge under Section 871, which covers threats against the vice president as well as the president.

Comey, by contrast, posted a photo of seashells "arranged in a pattern making out '86 47'"—a phrase that Blanche concedes is commonly used by Trump critics who never face federal charges. "In the typical case," former federal prosecutor Alexis Loeb told The Hill, you "wouldn't see threats that are readily open to nonviolent interpretations."

One of these cases is clearly not like the others. Yet Blanche insists that Comey's Instagram post is legally indistinguishable from the explicit threats made by defendants like Villavicencio and Kelly.

Although the Comey indictment is "unique" and "stands out because of the name of the defendant," Blanche told reporters last week, "his alleged conduct is the same kind of conduct that we will never tolerate and that we will always investigate and regularly prosecute." In reality, the case against Comey "stands out" not just because the defendant is famous but also because his purported death threat was actually political speech protected by the First Amendment.

The post Whatever Evidence the DOJ Has Against James Comey, It Cannot Transform '86 47' Into a Death Threat appeared first on Reason.com.

A Dispatch From the AI Psychosis Summit

2026-05-06T19:06:02Z

When I arrived at last week's AI Psychosis Summit in New York City, I found no group therapy sessions or zen gardens, only a DJ, a room full of builders, and a cooler of Diet Cokes.

The event was held in the remnants of a shuttered bank in Chinatown. While still outside, I could see through the graffiti-stained window white lines of code projected on a hanging screen. Pasted by the entryway were AI psychosis memes, their connections mapped with red string.

AI psychosis memes connected by red string were pasted by the entryway. (Meagan O'Rourke/Reason)

Around the edges of the room, vibe coders and builders stood at tables, like eager students ready for show-and-tell. Beside them were computers and TVs displaying their digital creations.

The "summit," organized by tech-optimists Macy Gettles, Wesam Jawich, Matt Van Ommeren, and Mauricio Trujillo Ramirez, was intended to showcase AI passion projects. AI psychosis, Van Ommeren told me, "evades definition," but the term is a way to acknowledge being "confused about your relationship with AI."

"We can't navigate it, and so we need some very general and jokey way to confront it," he said. "So we just say AI psychosis just [to] dismiss reckoning with it."

Event organizer Mauricio Trujillo Ramirez displayed his art installation inspired by a Yousuke Yukimatsu DJ set. (Meagan O'Rourke/Reason)

Although San Francisco may seem like the natural place to host an AI Psychosis Summit, Van Ommeren told me he was determined to have the event in New York, at the "intersection of art and technology."

"I think some of the impetus behind it is that we were going to AI events that felt really corporate, and people were just showing tooling, and they were talking about optimizing their work stuff," Van Ommeren said. "Honestly, that's not interesting to me. I wanted to find people who are artists or doing something crazy and weird or frivolous."

The projects were, in fact, far from corporate productivity tools. One presenter, Joshua Wolk, created a subway map that produces jazz music using the locations of different New York City trains—each train "plays" a different instrument. Another participant, Tanisha Joshi, built a website called The Cosmic Quant, which gives astrology-backed investment advice. Think of it like "Co-Star meets Robinhood," she told me.

An attendee shows off his metaverse-inspired creation called "MyAiGuys." (Meagan O'Rourke/Reason)

One attendee, who did not have a booth, carried around his tablet and a phone, giving guerrilla presentations of his bespoke metaverse full of AI avatars with celebrity faces on little Sim-like bodies. It looked like a deranged Mii Plaza. The purpose of the program was as silly as the appearance of its characters: content creation in the off-brand metaverse.

Another creator, who goes by "yung algorithm," presented an AI prank calling system. He said he calls people who are "scammers" or "selling stuff online" and livestreams the interactions.

"All the frontier AI models are really bad at feeling human. They're only good at booking stuff," he said. "That's why I prank phone call hundreds of people a day, because I want to sharpen my sword on making that interaction feel actually human."

AI enthusiasts, vibe coders and Diet Coke drinkers packed the event space in Chinatown. (Meagan O'Rourke/Reason)

In the back of the room, two game designers demoed a horror game set in Central Park that drives players into a state of AI psychosis. The game's designers, who introduced themselves as @jacobdotsoul and Josh Wilson, said they built their game in a manic flurry, fueled by "a case of beers" and "a case of Celsius."

"It's both a critique of an AI and an example of its worst excesses," Wilson said.

Cory Etzkorn, an attendee, told me he went "actually crazy" while working on launching a dating app over the winter. Etzkorn was physically ill, cooped up at home, and surrounded by AI agents conversing with him about his startup and his symptoms.

"I kind of forgot how to be in the real world," he said.

Etzkorn does not think technology alone causes AI psychosis, but being isolated and only interacting with Large Language Models (LLM) could induce some form of mental illness.

"The AI psychosis thing is sort of a joke, but I think a lot of people have actually experienced it to some degree," Etzkorn said. "I feel like every good joke is based on some reality."

Was the AI Psychosis Summit a hyper-online stunt or a wholesome vibe coder meetup? It was both. Despite all the supposed atomization brought on by screens, clearly, enough people were able to overcome "AI psychosis" to pack a downtown event space on a weeknight. And for much of the evening, a line stretched out the door.

The post A Dispatch From the AI Psychosis Summit appeared first on Reason.com.

No One Can Define 'Ultra-Processed Food.' Why Is RFK Jr. Trying To Regulate It?

2026-05-06T21:58:08Z

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised to crack down on ultra-processed foods, a key policy priority of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda. The biggest obstacle standing in his way? Figuring out what an ultra-processed food is.

"By April, we will have a federal definition of ultra-processed foods," RFK Jr. promised on The Joe Rogan Experience in February. "Every food in your grocery store will have a label on it—it'll have maybe a green light, red light, or yellow light, telling you whether or not it's going to be good for you."

The agency is now weeks behind this deadline, and appears to be no closer to landing on a definition. As The New York Times recently reported, "behind the scenes…the process of defining ultraprocessed foods is still very much in the air. Agencies are struggling to agree, and it is unclear when a definition will be released."

"It's not final until it's final," Calley Means, a senior adviser to RFK Jr., told the Times. Means added that the definition would include the combined consultation of scientists, agency staff, and other stakeholders.

One widely cited definition of ultra-processed foods that the agency could adopt is the Nova system, developed at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Nova defines these foods as "industrially created…with the addition of multiple ingredients that may include some [unprocessed] ingredients," which are naturally occurring foods like milk, eggs, and meat that have "no added salt, sugar, oils, or fats." Ultra-processed foods also include "additives to enhance the taste and/or convenience of the product." This includes foods that are usually not considered unhealthy, such as bread, packaged meat, fish, and vegetables, and baby formulas.

The primary issue with creating a definition so broad is that it does not tell consumers which ingredients are supposedly causing health problems. Experts themselves are regularly struggling to classify foods in the Nova system because it relies on "descriptive criteria" and does not "allow for robust and functional food assignments."

For example, plain yogurt has been classified as minimally processed—a term that describes foods that have had sugar, oil, or salt added to them to increase shelf life or enhance taste—but the Nova definition states that nonalcoholic fermentation, the process by which yogurt is made, is characteristic of processed foods. Similarly, foods containing whole grains—like bread and cereal—are categorized as ultra-processed, but consuming them is associated with a reduced risk of chronic disease.

"Defining ultra-processed foods is like defining what's a car and what's a truck," Jeffrey Singer, a physician and general surgeon, tells Reason. "'Ultra-processed' and 'processed' are too broad, too ambiguous, and should be abandoned."

"If we're interested in knowing what is in food that can harm us," he adds, "we should get much more granular and study the specific ingredients…and the dosage amounts."

Indeed, this is what is often missed in the food regulation debate: While it is common knowledge that it is best to avoid large amounts of saturated fats, occasionally eating so-called ultra-processed foods is not the death sentence that some politicians are making it out to be. How healthy a food is has less to do with the method in which the food is produced and more to do with its calorie density and nutritional content. For instance, the calories in a cheeseburger come mostly from the beef, bun, and cheese, not from the preservatives in the ketchup.

Labeling foods with a green, red, or yellow light based on these dubious definitions may discourage consumers from eating foods that are actually good for them. For instance, some studies suggest that excluding some ultra-processed foods, such as breads and breakfast cereals, may lead to "lowered intakes of key nutrients," which would be particularly concerning for at-risk groups, such as women of childbearing age.

Meanwhile, the added costs of new labeling requirements are likely to be passed down to consumers, which could price some people out. Already, MAHA food policies in some states are expected to add billions of dollars in costs to grocery stores and consumers in "the short term," according to a recent analysis by the Policy Navigation Group.

"There are trade-offs that matter," says Singer. "I might want to take my chances on a food that is also processed with certain ingredients that, taken in large quantities, might cause me harm, but starvation can cause me even greater harm."

The MAHA campaign against ultra-processed foods has all the hallmarks of a modern policy fad: vague definitions, exaggerated claims, dubious science, and total confidence that more regulation must be the answer. If politicians cannot even agree on what ultra-processed means, it raises the question of whether they have any business regulating it.

The post No One Can Define 'Ultra-Processed Food.' Why Is RFK Jr. Trying To Regulate It? appeared first on Reason.com.

The War on Data Centers Is Here—and It Doesn't Add Up

2026-05-06T18:14:53Z

Data centers are big buildings full of machines that process what we do on our phones and computers.

AI requires even more computing power, so companies are eager to build more data centers.

The usual suspects are freaking out.

"We must stop it!" says Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.).

"Slow it down!" demands Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.).

Data centers do use lots of power and water to cool them down because their computers generate heat. One center can use as much power and water as a small town.

"Uses resources like a madman!" says one protester in my new video.

Last year, protesters blocked or stalled at least 48 projects.

One fired 13 bullets at an Indiana politician's home because he supports data centers.

Now AOC and Bernie Sanders have introduced a bill that will pause new center construction.

That's just dumb.

"If our economy was allowed to develop at the speed of Bernie Sanders, we would be significantly worse off," says Paige Lambermont of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

"If we slow down, other countries are not going to. You're going to be getting the authoritarian Chinese version of AI rather than the United States innovators' version of AI."

She downplays fears about rising electricity prices.

So far, "it's raised prices nowhere," adds Lambermont. "Prices in Virginia are rising more slowly than some other places, even though more data centers are in Northern Virginia than anywhere else."

The Institute for Energy Research found "no statistically significant relationship between data center concentration and faster increases in electricity rates."

Still, as demand for AI increases, there will be price increases. But that's mostly because short-sighted politicians have limited our use of the most efficient fuels, like natural gas and nuclear power, favoring wind and solar power.

"If we hadn't done that," says Lambermont, "we probably would have between 100 and 200 gigawatts of slack capacity in the power grid already."

Part of the problem: Government rules that say only government, or a government-approved business, may produce and sell power.

And government's monopolies are unbelievably slow.

Microsoft now suffers from that because it struck a deal with Constellation Energy to reopen the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island.

The renovated plant will be able to produce power next year, but our government won't allow Microsoft to use that power until other utilities build power lines in other states—often hundreds of miles away.

Government rules stop so much progress.

A company could avoid burdensome rules by building a plant for itself, off the grid.

Elon Musk did that, setting up gas turbines to power his supercomputer in Tennessee.

"If you're Elon Musk, you can build your own," notes Lambermont, "but most people can't afford to build a gas or nuclear plant."

Even if they could, why would they invest billions when the next politicians in power might be socialist luddites?

"No one wants to invest [billions] in something that the next presidential administration could come in and say, 'Actually, it's been illegal the whole time,'" sighs Lambermont.

Some in Congress now want to make building off-grid power easier.

"You can do new and interesting things if you're running your own thing and making your own rules." says Lambermont. "That's pretty much how every major technological advance we've had in other areas has come about. It's never been the government that comes up with the advancement. It's usually private actors doing interesting things and trying to figure out what works….[Data centers] are resource intensive, but so are most productive things we've done in human history."

Usually, productive things happen only when government gets out of the way.

The post The War on Data Centers Is Here—and It Doesn't Add Up appeared first on Reason.com.

Republicans Want To Borrow Every Single Dollar of the $72 Billion Bill To Fund ICE and Trump's Ballroom

2026-05-06T20:33:07Z

Senate Republicans have unveiled their plan to fund immigration enforcement and President Donald Trump's ballroom, and the proposal might take fiscal irresponsibility to a new record high.

The two bills included in the package call for spending nearly $72 billion. Remarkably, every single dollar would be borrowed.

That's according to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of the bill, which was released on Wednesday morning. According to the CBO, the bill would direct $38 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and spend $26 billion on various programs run by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The largest share of the CBP funding is $19.1 billion to allow the agency to "hire, pay, train, and equip border patrol agents, officers, and support staff," according to the CBO. Another $3.5 billion will fund screening efforts at the border.

The so-called reconciliation package is an attempt by Republicans to bypass Democratic opposition to funding immigration enforcement and Trump's planned new ballroom at the White House. The Senate's reconciliation process, which was created by the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1975, is supposed to give Congress a tool for controlling or reducing spending. Under the rules that typically govern reconciliation, any spending increases must be offset with cuts elsewhere.

In this case, however, reconciliation is being used to pass what is effectively a supplemental appropriation—but to do so by bypassing the filibuster, says William W. Beach, executive director of the Fiscal Lab on Capitol Hill.

"This is a precedent-setting move," and one that will likely be repeated in the future, Beach tells Reason. "I'm worried about it, because it gives almost unlimited spending authority to the majority."

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D–Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement that he was prepared to "vigorously challenge any provision" of the package that violates the Senate's rule governing the reconciliation process.

That process was "originally designed to make deficit reduction easier. Republicans are using it to make deficit expansion easier," wrote Dominik Lett, a fiscal policy analyst for the Cato Institute, in an email to Reason.

After reviewing the CBO's assessment, Lett confirmed that every single dollar in the spending bill will be borrowed. "They don't even attempt to include offsets," he wrote.

In addition to the funding for ICE and CPB, the package also includes $1 billion for the Secret Service. That will cover "enhanced security and upgrades" within the new East Wing of the White House, which includes Trump's planned ballroom.

Trump originally pitched the ballroom project as being "free" for taxpayers and promised that private donations would cover the full cost. That has swiftly changed. Last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) said taxpayers would be expected to cover about $400 million for the ballroom.

With how quickly the ballroom's price tag is growing, it seems likely the $1 billion included in the reconciliation package will soon be deemed insufficient.

Of course, saying that "taxpayers" are paying for the ballroom is a bit inaccurate. Taxpayers aren't directly paying for any of this, because the whole cost of the bill—the ICE funding, the ballroom, and the assorted other things included here—is simply being added to the national debt.

That is actually worse. If lawmakers believe the American people should have to pay for Trump's ballroom or for enhanced immigration enforcement, they should have the courage to propose tax increases that will cover the cost, or cut spending in other parts of the budget as offsets.

The CBO's analysis of the package does not include a summary of how the added borrowing will increase interest costs in future years. However, according to the CBO's calculator, the additional spending in the reconciliation bill will add $26 billion in borrowing costs over the next 10 years.

That brings the final price tag of this package to nearly $100 billion, once the interest costs are included.

The timing is particularly galling too. Last month, America's national debt surpassed the size of the nation's economy for the first time since the end of World War II.

If ever there was a time for lawmakers to get serious about limiting the growth of America's national debt, it is now. Instead, the Republican reconciliation bill is doing the exact opposite.

The post Republicans Want To Borrow Every Single Dollar of the $72 Billion Bill To Fund ICE and Trump's Ballroom appeared first on Reason.com.