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Nuclear Power Now Has Bipartisan Support

2026-10-21T17:35:08Z

Nuclear power has historically been a divisive issue: During the Cold War, an entire generation feared annihilation at the hands of the same basic technology that some want to use to power their homes.

That's unfortunate, because nuclear energy has considerable benefits—a reliable source of power with very few greenhouse gas emissions—with increasingly lower risks.

Thankfully, it seems that message is catching on with people from both major political parties.

"About six-in-ten U.S. adults now say they favor more nuclear power plants to generate electricity," Pew Research reported in October 2025. "That's up from 43% in 2020, driven by increasing support among both Republicans and Democrats." The authors noted that "Republicans are more likely than Democrats" to favor the policy, with "roughly seven-in-ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents" expressing support, but it still included 52 percent of Democrats and independents who lean in that direction.

Gallup found similar results earlier this year. The pollster "asked whether the U.S. should put more emphasis, less emphasis or about the same emphasis as it does now on producing domestic energy from each of six sources," wrote Megan Brenan. The six sources were solar, wind, nuclear, natural gas, oil, and coal.

"Nuclear energy is the only one of the six sources to see support grow since 2021, rising seven points to 46%," Brenan added. "This shift is notable given that preferences for nuclear energy had historically been more evenly divided among responses of more, less and the same." Instead, those favoring more emphasis on nuclear power outranked both those who want less and those who wish for it to stay the same, by about 20 points each.

It seems the consensus has been building: In 2024, a poll of first-time voters in The Wall Street Journal found overwhelming support for nuclear energy as a means of fighting climate change.

The trend is welcome, and it marks a major reversal of anti-nuclear sentiment that goes back decades.

The China Syndrome, a film about a possible meltdown at a fictional California nuclear plant, premiered in the U.S. in March 1979. One character in the film warns that a meltdown could "render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable, not to mention the cancer that would show up later."

Less than two weeks later, in a disastrous bit of timing, a malfunction caused a partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Thankfully, Three Mile Island was not a disaster. "Some radioactive gas was released a couple of days after the accident, but not enough to cause any dose above background levels to local residents," according to the World Nuclear Association. "There were no injuries or adverse health effects."

But those details were lost on the public. Several recording artists formed Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE), an activist group that opposed nuclear power. Just six months after Three Mile Island, MUSE held a series of "No Nukes" concerts at Madison Square Garden, plus a rally in Central Park that drew nearly 200,000 attendees.

That populist support spilled over into politics, particularly among Democrats. Running for president in 1980, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D–Mass.) called for a two-year moratorium on new nuclear plants. In its national platform, the Democratic Party pledged to "retire nuclear power plants in an orderly manner."

After the Three Mile Island incident, 39 planned nuclear plants were canceled.

That's a shame, for many reasons. As Reason's Ronald Bailey wrote in 2018, in a theoretical world where the development of U.S. nuclear power continued at its previous pace, "by 2015 it would have replaced all coal-burning and three-quarters of gas-fired electric power generation….Cumulative global carbon dioxide emissions would be about 18 percent lower, and annual global carbon dioxide emissions would be one-third less."

Yet even decades later, plenty of people—again, particularly Democrats—still opposed nuclear energy.

"Of all the Democratic divides on climate," Politico wrote in 2019, "the role of nuclear power may be the biggest. Progressives and some environmental groups have long lumped it into a category with fossil fuels, and some have spent decades opposing it."

At the time, a number of people were running to be the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, and many of them had strong opinions on nuclear energy. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) said that she would not license any new nuclear reactors; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) pledged to go one step further and not renew the licenses of any existing reactors.

But things have changed in just a few short years, and nuclear energy is now an issue with potential bipartisan support. When did this pivot take place, and why?

"It was really around 2021, 2022, I would say that things really began to shift," James Walker, CEO of Nano Nuclear Energy, tells Reason. "A lot of the popular support looks like it's coming from younger people….It is a zero-carbon-emission power, and they have been raised to [be] more climate goal-focused" than older generations.

It's not just Gen Z either: Lawmakers are more keen on nuclear power now too. Earlier this month, the MORE American Fuel Act, sponsored by Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R–Wyo.) and Mark Kelly (D–Ariz.), passed the Senate unanimously. The bill "modernizes outdated Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing requirements for uranium enrichment facilities and aligns them with the process already used for other nuclear facilities and reactors," according to a press release from Lummis. It also "lets enrichment companies begin construction at their own risk instead of waiting years for a construction license before breaking ground, while preserving public participation and the NRC's rigorous safety standards."

"What we've seen up in Washington is that there is a nervousness around keeping pace with AI development," Walker adds. "There is a concern that rivals that are also investing very heavily into AI, such as China, are building nuclear reactors like crazy, and one of the reasons they're doing that is just so they have baseload power that allows them to scale up their systems. They are building two gigawatt-scale nuclear power plants every year at the moment, and a lot of it is to try and catch up with the U.S. tech industry."

The post Nuclear Power Now Has Bipartisan Support appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Why I Can't Go Back to Virginia Until It's Named Americaginia

2026-10-21T16:25:12Z

When I wake up each morning, the most important thing is that I avoid setting foot anywhere that is not American in Name Only (AINO). This, as a native Virginian, presents a problem. The state was named after England's Queen Elizabeth I, known as the "virgin queen" for her lack of a husband. How am I supposed to go back to Virginia until it is named Americaginia? I have principles.

Thankfully, President Donald Trump is on this, having made the AINO cause a top priority. He refashioned the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America via executive order; not long after, he decreed Lake Ontario would be Lake America with another wet signature. Naturally, New Mexico is the next target. The state "should immediately change its name to New America," Trump posted this week on Truth Social. "We are not Mexico, we are the United States of America!"

So true. New Mexico lawmakers would have to initiate the transition, and the public would have to approve it—the president cannot do so with an executive order here. But it is vitally important that, when he can, he continue changing the names of geographic landmarks to maximize the use of those four beautiful syllables. And when he cannot, he must raise awareness of the AINO spirit.

I should know. I'm surrounded. Though I am no longer living in ***ginia, I reside in the District of Columbia, a name that strikes fear and loathing into the hearts of any AINO patriot. Columbia is derived from Christopher Columbus, who in 1492 sailed that ocean blue—presently called the Atlantic, we'll return to that momentarily—to what is now America. But are we really going to let our nation's capital conjure up visions of a country in South America, give or take an o? Perhaps a better question: Do we want it dedicated to an Italian? Rechristening it the District of America would be a win for AINO, a win for Trump, and a win for the progressives who hate Columbus Day. Boom.

To the north we have Maryland—named after Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of England's King Charles I—which will need to be Americaland if I am to cross that line again. (I also ask that Americaland's drivers stop learning their technique from Grand Theft Auto.) Looking southward, I'm trapped as well: The Carolinas bear the title of Charles himself. If there is any justice, North Carolina will be North America, and South Carolina will be South America. Yes, those technically already exist, but these are the real North and South America. The others are the fake ones. (West Virginia is easy: West Americaginia.)

The president could plausibly change the names of the seas that surround this great country. At least, he could change their names in the Geographic Names Information System. Columbus sailed the American Ocean. The Pacific, meanwhile, is properly the West American Ocean—or, given that its waves break against California, the Woke American Ocean. There's something in the water.

Many may find Trump's obsession with AINO bewildering. In reality, it is to be expected. A national-populist presidency must have the requisite packaging—whether the branding primarily promotes policy or is the main event itself is a fair question. Trump is a showman, so there must be a show.

We are approaching the intermission of the second Trump administration. The plot twists—though sometimes predictable—have consisted of higher prices for everyday goods (tariffs), higher gas prices (the war in Iran), and Apple Maps now showing Rochester's shores opening their arms to Lake America. The country may be more expensive, inflation not yet vanquished, government spending altitudinous, the swamp waterlogged, that promised golden age still elusive. But at least America is more American in Name Only.

The post Why I Can't Go Back to Virginia Until It's Named Americaginia appeared first on Reason Magazine.

X Bans Former Libertarian Party Affiliate—After the State Requests It

2026-10-21T16:09:36Z

The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire's (LPNH) X account—which has become infamous for its bigoted and controversy-ridden posts—is finally gone. But the state's spurious role in its banning raises free speech concerns.

Last week, New Hampshire Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte sent a letter to X's safety team, asking the company to suspend the account. Ayotte's letter made mention of several clear violations of X's content policies: "This account has openly called for the assassination of elected officials from the New Hampshire Democratic Party, has said it condones murdering elected officials for their policy positions, and most recently threatened a member of House leadership.…I'm calling on X to remove [the posts] and suspend the account immediately."

The letter referenced one particularly bold post from September (which the account later deleted). The post read: "We openly support the assassination of basically every elected democrat in New Hampshire. But if you don't have the balls to do it, then you should probably vote GOP."

X suspended the account the day after Ayotte sent the letter.

The removal of the LPNH account has likely elicited a sigh of relief from the Libertarian Party's (L.P.) leadership, which has repeatedly tussled with LPNH over its extreme rhetoric, undermining of L.P. candidates, and constant creation of P.R. crises for the party. In 2024, the LPNH endorsed Donald Trump for president instead of Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver, pushing the Libertarian National Committee to disaffiliate LPNH from the L.P.'s structure this past May. The Granite State Libertarian Party was designated the state's new L.P. affiliate in September.

Even though the LPNH has clearly violated X's terms and does not adhere to the most basic requirements for L.P. membership (such as pledging to uphold the nonaggression principle), the government should not tell private firms when to enforce their own policies. This sentiment was shared by Granite State L.P., which recently said in a social media post, "While a private company has a right to remove someone screaming about setting people on fire…the government should play zero part in that decision."

Jeremy Kauffman, the chair of the LPNH, is outraged but unsurprised, posting on Sunday that he and the LPNH are "exploring a lawsuit against the New Hampshire government." He tells Reason, "Ayotte's letter was a classic example of jawboning. When a governor sends a demanding letter like this to a private company, there is a clear implicit threat attached."

Speaking to Reason, Trace Mitchell, a technology and free speech expert at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, defines jawboning as, "when the government, through veiled threats or direct coercion, pressures a private entity to take an action that the government could not lawfully take or mandate itself."

In Bantam Books v. Sullivan (1963), the Supreme Court ruled that the government cannot make recommendations to private companies if those recommendations come with legal repercussions—even implied or veiled repercussions. Doing so would qualify as jawboning, which violates the First Amendment. Though Ayotte's letter could be construed as extralegal pressure, it does not imply a punishment for noncompliance and likely falls short of legally recognized jawboning.

Addressing Kauffman's proposed lawsuit, Mitchell says, "In this case he would likely have to show there is something beyond this letter…[like] outside communications, emails or text with X."

Safety officers at X provided no comment to Reason to justify the suspension. It is not clear whether there was any external communication involved beyond the letter. Without a more definite connection between Ayotte's request and X's decision, Kauffman may struggle to win in court. Still, that doesn't make the governor's request any less concerning.

While Ayotte's letter was a surprise, it was not unprecedented. As social media has become the public forum, all levels of government have tried to regulate what is said there. During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal officials under the Biden administration were revealed to be in near-constant communication with major social media firms, encouraging and recommending that misinformation be removed from the platforms. Many of these recommendations were paired with implied threats to review the firms' legal immunity for content posted on their platforms, which spawned a lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court in 2024.

Although the Court dismissed the case for lack of standing, some lawmakers have taken action to address concerns over jawboning, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) introducing the JAWBONE Act in June. The bill would make it easier for members of the public to sue government officials who pressure media networks, as well as require increased transparency for all federal communications to media networks.

Even if Kauffman cannot find legal remit, Ayotte's letter was a troubling move for the future of internet speech. Many of the offending posts referenced were months old or had been deleted before the letter was sent. The LPNH has likely been violating X's content policy for years, but X only took action after the government instructed it to.

You don't need a judge to see how that might be concerning.

The post X Bans Former Libertarian Party Affiliate—After the State Requests It appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Body Armor Ban Struck Down by N.Y. Federal Court

2026-10-21T16:50:13Z

From today's decision by Judge John Sinatra (W.D.N.Y.) in Heeter v. James:

New York enacted a first-of-its-kind law prohibiting law-abiding residents-who are not engaged or employed in an eligible profession-from purchasing body armor for self-defense. New York enacted this legislation "to further strengthen gun laws." New York's body armor legislation, however, violates the Second Amendment….

In D.C. v. Heller (2008), the Court made it clear what the term "Arms" meant when the Second Amendment was ratified. In explaining that "[t]he 18th-century meaning" of the term "Arms" is "no different from the meaning today[,]" the Court quoted multiple dictionaries from the Seventeenth Century. Specifically, "[t]he 1773 edition of Samuel Johnson's dictionary defined 'arms' as '[w]eapons of offence, or armour of defence.' 1 Dictionary of the English Language 106 (4th ed.) (reprinted 1978) (hereinafter Johnson). Timothy Cunningham's important 1771 legal dictionary defined 'arms' as 'any thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another.' 1 A New and Complete Law Dictionary; see also N. Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) (reprinted 1989).'' As a result, this Court is bound by Heller's textual analysis, which demonstrates that the word "arms" included armor at the Nation's founding (as it does today)….

The State submits that, during the Founding Era, armor "had become rare or even entirely obsolete in everyday American English" and "the protective leather gear of th[e] pre-Kevlar era was notoriously ineffective against bullets, meaning civilians did not typically wear such body protection either." This argument runs headlong into the definitions adopted by Heller, nevertheless indicating that the term "arms"—as it was defined in the Founding Era—included defensive body armor that (according to the State) was supposedly rarely utilized in 1791.

Body armor may be used more today than Defendants' understanding of its use in 1791. But it strains credulity to say that an arm that was rarely used during the Founding Era—yet still protected by the Second Amendment per Heller—is no longer protected despite being much more common among Americans today.

Moreover, this conclusion is consistent with Heller's clear statement that the Second Amendment "extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding." While body armor may not have been in common use at the founding—although the commonly understood definition of "arms" included body armor—neither were other arms commonly used for self-defense, such as resolvers, semiautomatic pistols, and stun guns. See Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016) (Alita, J., concurring). The defensive body armor available today is "no more exempt from the Second Amendment's protections, simply because [it was] unknown to the First Congress, than electronic communications are exempt from the First Amendment, or electronic imaging devices are exempt from the Fourth Amendment." …

Even if the definitions put forth by the Supreme Court in Heller are dicta, this Court has an "obligation to accord great deference to Supreme Court dicta," absent a change in the legal landscape. Defendants have not suggested—nor can they—that a change in the legal landscape exists that would require this Court to ignore how Heller defined the term "arms." …

Because Plaintiffs have demonstrated that body armor is an "arm" protected by the Second Amendment, the burden shifts to the State to justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of arms regulation. The State fails to do so….

The State argues that there exists a "centuries-long historical tradition" demonstrating that, "when body armor has been in use, it has been subject to government regulation." Yet, the State is unable to identify a single regulation on body armor post-ratification…. The State contends that its body armor ban is consistent with "English monarchs and parliaments" who "regularly issued laws forbidding or restricting the wearing of armor …." Not only is this analogy irrelevant to the regulation of arms in the United States, but it also ignores the historical reason the right to keep and bear arms is "understood to be an individual right protecting against public and private violence." Accordingly, the Court interprets the English history put forth by the State in light of these principles and articulates that it is not "sufficiently probative" to defend New York's body armor ban….

The State points to the Statute of Northampton for support for its position that there is a long-standing tradition of restricting who can purchase body armor. The law prohibited anyone to "go, nor ride armed by night, nor by day, in fairs markets, nor in the presence of the justices or other ministers, nor in no part elsewhere, upon pain to forfeit their armor to the King and their bodies to prison, at the king's pleasure." Notwithstanding the ink that continues to be spilled over this law, the Supreme Court has stated that "the Statute of Northampton—at least as it was understood during the Middle Ages—has little bearing on the Second Amendment adopted in 1791." N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n, Inc. v. Bruen (2022)….

The State's analogy to the Statute of Northampton is an attempt to justify its body armor ban by speculating that individuals only wear body armor to terrify the public. Yet, this ignores the reality put forth by Plaintiffs, that the public is more likely to reach for body armor to protect themselves from terrifying circumstances. In Rahimi, the Supreme Court concluded that "[a]n individual found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment." Here, however, the State is suggesting that a merely broad-based suspicion over the population at large is sufficient to justify a universal ban on the sale and purchase of a specific type of arm. And to the extent that the State analogizes this to prohibiting criminals from purchasing body armor, other statutes already criminalize the use of body armor while committing violent crimes. The State's categorical prohibition of a specific type of arm to law-abiding citizens at large, is untethered from any historical tradition-including the Statute of Northampton….

Nicolas J. Rotsko (Fluet) represents plaintiffs.

The post Body Armor Ban Struck Down by N.Y. Federal Court appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Homeland Security Lied About Child Porn To Search Activist's Phone

2026-10-21T16:02:31Z

One of the unfortunate quirks of the American system is that you can't lie to the government, but the government can lie to you. Samuel Tunick found himself on the receiving end of this setup last year at Atlanta International Airport. When agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked for his phone password, he allegedly gave them a self-destruct code that wiped his data. Tunick now faces five years in prison for destroying evidence.

It turns out that the feds were lying to Tunick the entire time. A new court filing, first reported by 404 Media, shows that the DHS had sent out an order to seize Tunick's phone over his involvement in environmentalist protests in Atlanta. When he landed at the airport, however, agents told Tunick that they were looking for "kiddie porn" and he would be allowed to leave with his phone if he cooperated. They also repeatedly denied him access to his lawyer when he asked.

"There can be no real debate that if law enforcement had acted similarly elsewhere in Atlanta, their actions would be unconstitutional. But the government says it was entitled to act this way because Mr. Tunick was returning from an international vacation" in the Dominican Republic, his lawyers wrote in the filing, which includes internal DHS communications and excerpts from his interrogation video.

U.S. law recognizes a "border exception" to Fourth Amendment privacy rights, allowing federal agents to search incoming travelers for contraband. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) claims that this exemption also allows them to hold travelers for questioning and search their electronic data. Tunick's case reveals just how widely the agency stretches this loophole.

A few hours before Tunick landed, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent Travis Mcghie emailed the CBP station in Atlanta with his photo and information, stating that he is under investigation for "suspected terrorist activities." (Tunick is involved in Save the Atlanta Forest, also known as Stop Cop City, a protest movement against a local police training center.) The email asked CBP to "conduct a 100% baggage exam, retain all electronics and collect passcodes," stating that the HSI will be at the airport to conduct an interrogation.

Pulled into the secondary screening room, Tunick "almost immediately" told CBP officers that "I don't really want to speak without a lawyer any more," according to the filing, which cites the interrogation tape. He would ask for a lawyer multiple times.

The agents asked Tunick if he had "kiddie porn" on his phone and stated that "because you're refusing to talk, we have the authority to go through your phone to see what we're looking for." One of them, Latoya Castro, told Tunick that "either you can give us your password so that we can go through it no problem, or you can refuse to do that, unfortunately, we will have to seize your phone."

Both of those statements were a lie, of course. The HSI's email had asked CBP to take Tunick's phone, whether or not he cooperated.

The lie about child porn may not only have been meant to intimidate Tunick. While there are contradictory lower court rulings about the border search exemption, some courts have ruled that the CBP can only search electronics for "digital contraband," or files that are themselves illegal. A search for child sex abuse material would be on stronger legal ground than a search for mere evidence of other crimes.

Tunick was using GrapheneOS, a secure phone system that allows users to set both a real password and a "duress password" that wipes out all data when entered. The interrogation tape shows his phone appearing to reset after he gave the officers a passcode. HSI agent Nathan Burnham and FBI agent Andrea Coble then entered the room.

"You are not under arrest. Once these gentlemen are done with you, pursuant to your entry into the country, you're free to leave," Burnham said, referring to the CBP officers.

Tunick's lawyers argue that the judge should throw out the phone password Tunick provided and everything that resulted from entering it as an "involuntary" response made under "unlawful interrogation," because the CBP agents did not read Tunick his Fifth Amendment rights and ignored his multiple requests to consult with his lawyer before answering their questions.

The CBP claims that secondary screening at the border doesn't count as a criminal investigation, so detainees don't have the same rights as criminal suspects. "Since the international arrivals inspection is an administrative function, CBP policy and federal regs do not permit the presence of lawyers during secondary examinations," a spokesman told Reason earlier this year.

But Tunick's lawyers insist that his experience was "far outside" a normal border crossing: He was accused of a serious crime to his face, faced an investigation for a different serious crime he didn't know about, and clearly could not leave the situation until he gave information to government agents.

"I hope people understand that the charges against me are meant to intimidate people against protecting their data and their privacy, and the government hopes to set a precedent that no one has the right to privacy," Tunick told 404 Media.

Defend the Atlanta Forest, the movement that Tunick is involved with, has been a major nuisance for authorities in Georgia. Protesters attacked and burned construction equipment throughout 2022, and police shot a protester in 2023 under unclear circumstances, claiming that they were fired at during a raid.

The Trump administration has brought down the federal government against the movement. In June 2026, the Department of Justice brought federal charges against two alleged arsonists, citing National Security Presidential Memo 7, which directs the feds to go after left-wing domestic terrorism.

But beyond the email line about "suspected terrorist activities," there is no indication of what specific crimes the feds suspected Tunick of, or why they suspected him. And the whole setup of the interrogation was designed to hide those answers. In fact, instead of charging Tunick under typical obstruction or evidence-destruction laws, federal prosecutors chose a rarely-used statute that doesn't require them to disclose what the underlying investigation was about.

"Many times the government wants to highlight what it was trying to investigate because that ups the stakes on what the defendant was doing," former prosecutor Daniel Richman told The New York Times. "This is a case where I think they're trying to avoid exactly that by focusing only on the destruction, and not what the investigation was about."

The post Homeland Security Lied About Child Porn To Search Activist's Phone appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Rezoning Request for Catholic Shrine May Have Been Denied Because of Shrine's "Pro-Life Message"

2026-10-21T15:35:46Z

From Judge Stephanos Bibas, joined by Judge Tamika Montgomery-Reeves, in Monday's Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church v. Township of Collier:

Holy Trinity is a Ukrainian Catholic parish outside Pittsburgh. It practices the Catholic faith, but with rituals and architecture that are distinctively Ukrainian. The parish owns two plots of land. On one of them, in Carnegie, sits a church, where it holds regular liturgies. The other plot, in nearby Collier Township, has been owned by the parish for more than seven decades. That 41-acre plot houses the parish's cemetery and mausoleum but is otherwise mostly wooded.

About three years ago, Holy Trinity's pastor felt called to turn the second plot into a shrine, a pilgrimage destination for faithful to gather from "near and far." The shrine would "honor Mary, the Mother of God, and would pay homage to the sanctity of life." With the help of lawyers, architects, and traffic consultants, Holy Trinity designed the shrine. It envisioned a 13,000-square-foot chapel with gold domes, a bell tower, a museum, a gift shop, and a retreat center.

But the plot is constrained by Collier Township's zoning code. The code divides the township into districts, each of which allows certain types of buildings. The northern, wooded half of the plot lies in a planned-economic-development district, allowing larger projects like business offices, amusement parks, or country clubs. The southern half is in a rural-residential district, allowing farms and single-family homes. Neither district contemplates shrines.

The zoning code is enforced by Collier's five-member Board of Commissioners. The Board has power not only to rezone land or amend the code, but also to approve or deny some building projects, because the code makes some land uses conditional. For instance, the code conditionally allows new churches in rural-residential districts, but only if the Board approves them. In any event, anything as big as Holy Trinity's shrine needs the Board's approval.

To fit the shrine project into the zoning code, Holy Trinity applied to do two things. First, it asked the Board to amend the zoning code to allow planned cultural centers, including the shrine, in economic-development districts. Second, it sought to rezone some of its rural-residential land into economic-development land, to make a larger plot for the shrine. As part of its application, Holy Trinity included sketches of its shrine plus a traffic study showing minimal impact on the surrounding community. After a live hearing with concerned residents, the Board denied Holy Trinity's application, expressing concern about traffic and Holy Trinity's fundraising projections. Some residents, and at least one Board member, were also troubled once they learned that the shrine's message would be pro-life.

So Holy Trinity tried again with a smaller project. It applied to build a modest chapel entirely on its rural-residential land. Though the Board approved the new application, it came with strings attached, limiting bell ringing, the height of the chapel, and who could be remembered at memorial services….

The majority held that Holy Trinity wasn't entitled to a preliminary injunction, because the harm could be repaired by damages (one of the elements of the preliminary injunction inquiry); on this matter, the majority and Judge Paul Matey's dissent had an interesting and complicated debate. But here's a passage as to the facts that struck me as worth noting, even apart from that controversy:

Finally, and most troubling, both community and Board members objected to the shrine's pro-life message. One resident worried that "Father Jason has been very involved in pro life. This is to be a pro life museum … [W]hen you think very political rights, either side, it brings a lot of danger, a lot of protests, as well as costs that could be incurred by the community." Another complained that "the intent of the shrine was a celebration for Roe vs. Wade being overturned … [and] reparation for sin of abortion and counseling, spiritual direction …. this will bring a bunch [of people] potentially for a rally and this could also bring the opposite as well for protest."

Privately, at least one of the Board's members agreed. The day after the hearing, that commissioner forwarded an email about the shrine's pro-life stance to the rest of the Board: "Looks like we might have dodged a bullet last night. The true inten[t] of the shrine" was pro-life and "This could have been a disaster." Another township officer, copied on the email, seemed to affirm those sentiments. Nothing in the record suggests that any other Board member responded and disagreed. And in her deposition, the Board member who wrote the email confirmed that "one of the reasons" that the Board had denied the application was Holy Trinity's pro-life purpose. She also defended denying land-use approval "based on the nature of the religious service to be held in the building."

These objections hint at unconstitutional religious hostility and content-based discrimination, concerns that would be better addressed on a more developed factual record. But at the very least, they strongly suggest that the Board resists ever approving the shrine project. If so, the rezoning denial is effectively absolute, and the "degree" of burden on Holy Trinity is substantial. Plus, the township does not show that denying approval altogether is the least-restrictive means to serve a compelling interest. That is enough to show that Holy Trinity is very likely to prevail on its RLUIPA [Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act] substantial-burden claim….

The post Rezoning Request for Catholic Shrine May Have Been Denied Because of Shrine's "Pro-Life Message" appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Are Prediction Markets Just Gambling? Kalshi CEO Responds

2026-10-21T15:00:40Z

Today's guest is Tarek Mansour, the 30-year-old billionaire co-founder and CEO of Kalshi, the prediction market platform where users can trade on the outcomes of everything from elections and economic forecasts to sporting events and the weather. As prediction markets surge in popularity, Kalshi is facing legal challenges from states that argue it's operating an illegal gambling business. But Mansour insists that prediction markets are fundamentally different from casinos and sportsbooks and that efforts to restrict them threaten a powerful new source of information about the future.

Nick Gillespie talks with Mansour about Kalshi's battles with state regulators, why he believes the gambling industry is trying to stifle competition, and how prediction markets can help businesses manage risk. Mansour explains why ordinary people can sometimes forecast economic trends more accurately than Wall Street professionals. They also discuss Mansour's journey from growing up in Lebanon to building a multibillion-dollar American company and his concerns about rising inequality and the declining enthusiasm for entrepreneurship. Mansour argues that capitalism needs to give more Americans a stake in its success without sacrificing the innovation that makes it possible.

0:00—How prediction markets differ from casinos

4:55—Do prediction markets serve a public good?

8:18—Markets, price discovery, and the economy

11:36—Why does Kalshi ban insider trading?

14:06—CFTC and federal regulation

17:26—How Kalshi differs from Polymarket

22:30—Do prediction markets have a corrosive effect?

25:03—Kalshi's ban on athlete harassment

26:49—Arizona and New York lawsuits

31:30—State versus federal regulation

33:45—Why is Kalshi exploding in popularity?

35:57—Mansour's background and the American Dream

39:55—Wealth gap narratives and an inclusive economy

42:39—Will a Democratic Congress hurt Kalshi?

45:17—Mansour's prediction for Kalshi

47:48—Will state lawsuits require a Supreme Court decision?

Producer: Paul Alexander

Director of Photography: Kevin Alexander

Camera Operator: Meagan O'Rourke

Audio Engineer: Ian Keyser

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: This is The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie. I'm talking today with Tarek Mansour. He's the co-founder of Kalshi, the prediction market platform that allows people to win or lose money, or invest or not money, on everything from election results to weather outcomes to who will win Dancing With the Stars and, of course, all sorts of sports. Thank you so much, Tarek.

Tarek Mansour: I'm excited.

You're 30 years old, you're a billionaire, and you are a big believer in prediction markets as truth machines. I want to talk about that in a minute. But first, Kalshi gives money to a lot of nonprofits, including Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this podcast. There are no conditions on this interview.

Tell me first, what is a prediction market, in the simplest terms possible, and why is it different than a sportsbook?

I think a prediction market, in the simplest terms possible, it really is like the stock market. We're matching buyers and sellers in an open marketplace that is competitive. The thing that they're trading is not a small, specific subset that Johnny Wall Street cares about, whether it's a stock or a bond or a credit default swap or all these kinds of sophisticated things. It's simple questions about the future.

Right. So everything is yes or no?

And some things are actually more like, is it going to go up or down? And there are more structures now. But I think a prediction market is just a generalization of the stock market. One way to think about the stock market is actually a prediction market on the prices of stocks on companies.

And you make money not on whether or not you bet right or wrong. You're not the house. You run the platform, so it's like you own the casino. And you're not staking anything…

No, it's exactly the opposite. We're exactly like owning the stock market. We're like the New York Stock Exchange, right? The New York Stock Exchange is not in the business of pricing a stock or setting the prices. They're in the business of matching buyers and sellers.

And so you may have an opinion that something's going to happen, and somebody else may think that something is not going to happen. And we match the two of you to settle that disagreement of opinion via trade.

Historically, that's about stocks. Someone thinks Apple stock is going to be worth more than the current price, more than $100 per share, and someone thinks it's not actually going to be, that it's overpriced. They make a trade as a way to settle that difference of opinion.

The difference in a prediction market is you're doing it on whether Brexit is going to happen or not. And you may think that it's very likely that Brexit happens, and someone else, your counterparty, may think that it's not very likely it's going to happen.

And let's say the market right now is trading at a 40 percent chance, 40 cents on the dollar. You may want to buy, and the other person wants to sell, and we match the two of you. And I take 0.7 percent. So if you put in $100, the other person puts in $100, I take 70 cents.

And now, very quickly, explain why that's different from a sportsbook, like why you're not Fanduel….

Here's how I'll explain it, and I'll get back to exactly the sportsbook analogy.

So when the first version of financial markets came around, and very few people know this, people think that the first financial market was the stock market, but actually it wasn't. It was the commodities market.

The first real example of a financial market was the rice futures exchange in Japan. And then in the U.S., it's really become very popular at the end of the 19th century. It was farmers, they were trading on the price of grain using grain futures, and then over time, it evolved to oil futures, etc.

And at the time, it was really interesting because when I tell you about grain futures right now, you don't think gambling. You think boring, mainstream financial markets.

But at the time, the states were suing the Chicago Board of Trade, saying this is gambling. And what was the claim? It was saying, "Well, farmers are betting on the price of grain. They're speculating, and so it looks and feels like gambling. What's the difference?"

And at the time, they didn't have sportsbooks or casinos. They had the bucket shops, which were different from the Chicago Board of Trade.

So what were the bucket shops? A bucket shop was a place where the shop, which was functioning like a casino, set the prices. They would say, here's the price of grain, and here's what I'll let you buy, and here's what I'll let you sell.

And then the purpose was basically, it was a casino. Farmers would come in, bet against the bucket shop, and then they would lose money. And if you made a little bit, if you were a smart, sophisticated trader, they would ban you. You know, the card counters get banned from the casinos.

It continues to happen on sports betting.

In sportsbetting or casinos, right? Like, if you're a smart, sharp trader, you get limited. And if you maybe have some addiction issues or you lose consistently, you get promos, and you keep coming back. That is the gambling business model. That is the end.

And when people were claiming that the exchange was gambling, at the time, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Chicago Board of Trade.

And the basis was very simple. It's like, yes, some people are speculating, which looks and feels like betting, sure. But the mechanism is different, and there's a public good that comes out of it.

The mechanism is a free, neutral platform that lets people trade against each other. And what it needs and incentivizes, it incentivizes the card counters, the smart traders, because the public good that it brings is the informational knowledge that it gives to people.

Talk a bit about this, because this is key to your argument, and we'll get into the regulatory structures and the cases against you, but that prediction markets serve a public good because they give more information about what is likely to happen or how actors are going about their business. How does that happen?

In particular, at a place like Kalshi, you can bet on whether it's going to rain tomorrow or how much. How does that in any way create information that is useful?

Yep. So our weather forecast, so when people are trading on whether it's going to rain tomorrow or not, what happens is you get price discovery.

Some people think the odds of rain are a little bit higher than the market, so they buy it, which moves it a little up. And then some people think it's lower, and it moves it a little down. And that continuous thing is how a stock moves. That's why we call it price discovery.

Price discovery is essentially, there's a quote from a Supreme Court decision in 1905. It's really neat. It's like this idea that speculation is the self-adjustment of society to the probable.

Which is like it's the self-adjustment of the market, the wisdom of the crowds, to what we think is going to happen.

There were papers actually a week or two ago that compared our weather forecast, like the forecast from the prediction markets on the weather, to the most accurate national blended average of weather station forecasts, and we were 10 percent more accurate.

I mean, just very quickly, how does that happen? Because Joe Schmo betting on the weather, he doesn't have satellite information.

So let me give you a little bit of history.

Prediction markets, I think the founder of prediction markets is Friedrich Hayek, the economist. He used to call them information markets, not prediction markets.

And what was the sort of central thesis? At the time, he was saying we have a knowledge problem. The knowledge problem is that our decisions in society, whether it's D.C., whether it's executives, are centralized.

It's you and I sitting in a room and making a very critical decision about the future of the country. But the information that's relevant to that decision is actually very decentralized. It's sitting with a bunch of different people, hundreds of thousands, millions of people distributed across the board.

So we need a magnet. We need the mechanism to bring that information from everyone so we can make better decisions over time.

That's what markets do.

That's exactly what markets do. Market prices are a very good aggregator of information.

Ok, so then the idea is that somehow the people who are betting on the weather have some kind of meaningful knowledge that otherwise would not be—

And by the way, people are not even usually, for example, for the Senate race right now, they don't buy Democrat or Republican and then hold it till maturity. They buy if they think the price is underpriced, and they sell if it's overpriced. They're constantly trading these things.

But the key thing here, when I started the company in 2018, a few years before that, Philip Tetlock did…

At the University of Pennsylvania.

He's actually at MIT.

Oh, I'm sorry. Ok.

And it's about superforecasters. And the whole thing, he was trying to figure out the science of forecasting. What are these people who are good at forecasting?

And he pitted a bunch of elites on geopolitics, the big pundits, and he pit them against a bunch of random dudes, basically, and had them predict geopolitical events. And guess which group did better? The random dudes.

And it was amazing because it tells you a little bit that actually there is a lot of wisdom in this idea of the wisdom of the crowds. The average people, if you add them all up, and all their bits and pieces of information, you end up getting a way better solution and result than the small group of elites.

And this gets reflected, I mean, the way Hayek talks about it in "The Use of Knowledge in Society" and throughout all Austrian school of economics, is markets and prices are discovery systems that transmit information.

That's exactly what it is.

And prediction markets are like transmitting information about a much broader… We used to care about— farmers used to care about what the price of grain is going to be. Why?

And I go back to the farmer. Imagine we had banned grain futures as gambling at the time. There's a very clear net impact on society today, which would be what? Why would it be important?

That price discovery that was happening was giving the farmer predictability on what the price is going to be of grain in September. So now I'm in March, I know how much I can invest, how much I can plant.

If you take that away from them, what would they do? They would plant less. They would just, because with less predictability, you can invest less. And so actually, our food supply would go down. That's how critical grain futures are.

So that makes total sense. And then just to press on this a little bit, as a libertarian, I like markets and everything. I like prediction markets, etc. But what is the positive social externality, other than people being able to express themselves or entertain themselves, with like betting on Dancing With the Stars?

Well, I think to me, some people may disagree on the lines, but a lot of people care about that. And I'll give you a lot of examples.

At a high level, it seems like we agree with the premise that getting smarter, even if it's a little smarter, about what's going to happen will enable us to make better decisions and allocate resources more effectively and manage risk more effectively, right?

Now, what's interesting is actually I always think of this as like, you want more markets on more things because like—

It's more information.

It's more information. It's just that simple.

And I'll give you an example. This was the same argument that was made. So there were two types of commodity derivatives that were banned. Onion futures, which I can tell you the story, there was a wild story.

The second one is box office futures. Box office futures, in 2010, there was an exchange that was trying to bring them to light, which is an idea to do price discovery on how successful a movie is going to be beforehand.

Guess who killed it?

I'm assuming the movie companies.

The big ones. Why? Because they wanted less information. And the argument was at the time, well, it's frivolous. What is the purpose of knowing if a movie is going to be successful? It's a frivolous thing…

And this is called a Keynesian beauty contest or something, where you're betting on what you think other people will say is going to happen or something.

Yeah, I mean, but in this specific one, it's more like they were saying, "Look, knowing if this movie is going to be successful or not, that seems frivolous. It's not like grain futures. We should ban it."

But they actually had an ulterior motive, and there's a reason they did not want price discovery, for two reasons.

Because one, if the market can predict ahead of time how successful a movie is going to be, it'll be harder for them to juice the three or four weeks of box office they get in a bad movie before the word gets out. And there was a second reason. If you have a market that will tell you upfront, actually, "This team is doing a good job, even though it's a small team with a smaller brand," you may attract more investment to the smaller studios, which was going to bring more competition to the space. You will get more efficient….

I mean, markets are democratizing, ultimately, or they push against centralization.

More information is always better, and oftentimes monopolies and incumbents want less information because, you know, the markets usually reduce…

Well now let me… I want to get to the regulatory structure you're currently under, plus what various states are trying to fit you into, a different kind of regulatory structure. But just on this moment, let's stop for a second.

If more information is always better, why do you ban insider trading? Because there is an argument that insider trading is absolutely the best information, and it changes prices very quickly and makes markets clear more—

And libertarians, that's the argument, and the free market side of me always tells you that you want more. You want as much as possible.

And you want, like, when Practical Magic 2 is coming out, you want people in the studio who have seen it, who know it sucks, to change, you know, to…

I would argue yes, in theory. I'll say where in practice.

But maybe right before, I want to just make, because you asked me about the gambling distinction, which we'll get to with insider trading.

The gambling business model is one where the thing they incentivize for their customers is fun and entertainment and to keep losing. That's why they give you the suites and the drinks, and they keep you losing.

Prediction markets, what they incentivize is going out there, like markets, seek knowledge, seek truth, and then come to get rewarded for it in the open market. That is why there is a fundamental difference.

And it doesn't matter what the topic is. It could be grain futures. It could be weather. It could be economics. It could be sports. It doesn't really matter. The structure, the former structure, is what really matters.

Now, on the other argument, I agree with you. It's like, well, the insiders, should they be allowed to trade? And the way I always answer the question is, why is insider trading banned in the stock market? Because in theory, we would get more accurate prices in the stock market.

And there's a very practical reason, and this is how markets should be regulated. And I strongly believe that. That's why we took a pro-regulatory-first approach to this.

Because markets can only exist if there are fair rules of the road and the competition is fair and equitable across all the participants. So I think actually…

And people need to believe that the market are not…

Otherwise, they stop trading.

Free markets, in my view, if you take the opposite of free markets, it's this idea that there's a privileged, closed circle that has access to specialized information. Right? And the key thing in the line I was drawing is, if the information is something you can access by doing research and work and putting in the effort, no matter who you are, then it's fair game.

But if it's information that you only will have privileged access to because, I don't know, you work in government or you're an executive at a team, then it's unfair. Then it creates an unfair dynamic that over time dries up liquidity and makes actually the market less efficient because nobody will trade. People won't trade.

So this helps explain, you noted you co-founded Kalshi in 2018. You went to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to get licensed and regulated at the federal level. So when people say, "Oh, you guys are completely unregulated," that isn't accurate. But you're…

It's completely inaccurate.

Yeah. How does the CFTC regulate what you do? And then we'll get into how and why states might be trying to change that.

Yeah, I mean, I think they're two entirely different… There's a reason why the states are trying to change that, and we'll talk about that. It's fundamental protectionism.

So the beauty of the Commodity Exchange Act, why did it come? It actually got created after this whole fight that the Chicago Board of Trade was having with the states. And Congress, in '74, enacted the Commodity Exchange Act to actually preempt two types of laws: state insurance laws and state gaming laws.

And there's a reason why. Because on an open exchange, in grain futures or on Kalshi, there are two types of activity: speculation, which looks and feels like gambling, or hedging, which looks and feels like insurance.

The difference between those two is they're being done on an open market.

And why do you need the federal statute? Why didn't they let the Chicago Board of Trade be done state by state? It's because it didn't work. And here's the easiest way to explain it. Imagine we siloed the New York Stock Exchange, the stock market, state by state, where in New York, you can only buy Apple stock from New Yorkers.

Imagine we had 50 different New York stock exchanges, different prices, different rules, fragmented liquidity.

What would happen? Worse prices, a bunch of deadweight loss, lower liquidity. You probably won't be able to, if you're in Kansas, you won't be able to buy as much stock as you want.

It is a completely anti-market kind of structure.

What you want is a federal, uniform set of rules that apply across all 50 states that promote and foster this sort of multilateral, peer-to-peer idea. Someone in California is trading with someone in Texas, and you want as much information as possible. You don't want to silo information. That's the anti-market view.

And what does regulation mean, and why is it important for us, first, for us to really get regulated as commodities? It's because the rules that apply to trading on oil futures or interest rate swaps or politics on Kalshi are largely the same.

So what do you want to prevent against? You want to prevent against insider trading, prevent against market manipulation, so doing things that move the market price unnaturally for profit. You want to add sensible guardrails around knowing who your customers are and money laundering and that sort of thing.

And I believe in this, and I think this is where the regulation is very important. It's like all these products, whether it's grain futures or sports betting or prediction markets or trading options on Robinhood, most of the use is fine.

And it's not about people winning or losing. I think the competition, some people are going to win, some people lose.

But there's some degree of irresponsible use. I do believe in that. And I believe in individual freedom. People should be able to choose, but I think there should be some regulations on irresponsible use so that companies are not targeting those types of behavior.

The sportsbooks constantly target those types of…

Yeah, so let's just, real quickly, how do you guard against insider trading? I mean, you ban it, but how do you know whether insider trading is happening? How do you know whether or not somebody who has a problem is continuing to use Kalshi? How do you find out?

Yeah, so insider trading, I mean, it's the ever question for a stock market. How do you know? And it's largely a very similar mechanism.

So one, you have to verify all customers. It's like onboarding onto Schwab, opening a brokerage account. You have to…

Are you covered by know-your-customer rules?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. As a regulator.

And that is distinct from something like Polymarket, which is based offshore, and they're struggling with the idea that there may have been a member of the U.S. military who bet on Maduro being removed because he was part of the operation, which is kind of a classic case of insider trading.

It certainly is insider trading, for sure.

Because insider trading is like, are you trading on material nonpublic information? So do you have a piece of information that you're not supposed to disclose legally? And trading is a form of disclosure. You can't go say it, so you…

Ok, so you follow KYC, but then, yeah, and then how? So how do you…?

And then you have the same systems as the New York Stock Exchange, which basically flag suspicious patterns.

I mean, insider trading or market manipulation, the patterns are always weird. You always have an account that is trading hundreds of dollars, and now they're trading thousands of dollars all of a sudden on an asymmetric shot. What's happening, right?

And the last piece is you enforce. So when you find someone, we have, as a self-regulatory organization, we can impose fines all the way to referrals for criminal prosecution.

And the last piece that's so interesting about the prediction market, so I think it's even unique compared to some of the financial markets, all of our trades are public. It's all fully transparent.

So our customers, because why is insider trading bad? There's someone who gets harmed when someone commits insider trading. It's the person on the other side. That person is extremely incentivized to whistleblow, usually.

And so, George Santos basically tried to commit insider trading on Kalshi a few months ago. We had 100 whistleblower complaints within a few minutes because traders immediately tell us, "Oh, this is weird," and they can all see it publicly.

And that's actually kind of a curse because the press talks about insider trading cases on prediction markets all day because they're so easy to flag.

That's actually a blessing, if you really think about it, because it's so obvious. It's so clear.

So let's talk about…

You're committing a crime in broad daylight, right?

Yeah. So the state of Arizona, I mean, there's about 20 jurisdictions, I guess states, also some Indian tribes and things like that, that are bringing suits against Kalshi.

Arizona, earlier this year, launched a criminal indictment that you're running an illegal gambling operation. New York state, we're talking in New York, and you guys are headquartered in New York, right? It's saying that you are basically, I guess it's not a criminal indictment, but they think you owe them billions of dollars because you're essentially a gambling operation.

What do they get wrong? And what do they get wrong about your structure?

I mean, let me read to you something that I've sort of been looking at recently that I've been sort of really into.

I'll read you one of the court opinions, and here's how it sort of goes:

"We are clearly of opinion that dealing in these markets is void by the common law, for, among other reasons, that it is contrary to public policy. It is not only contrary to public policy, but it is a crime. A crime against the state, a crime against the general welfare and happiness of the people, a crime of religion and morality, and a crime against all legitimate trade and business. This species of gambling has become emphatically and pre-eminently the national sin. In its proportion and extent, it is immeasurable."

And they go on and on about how horrible this activity is.

This is the Illinois Supreme Court. It is from actually 1888. And it's about grain futures, not prediction markets.

And I think the same thing is playing out.

And is this simply, I mean…

It really is as simple because we have the same structure.

And the topic never mattered under the federal law. But states misunderstood it, and they just looked at grain futures at the time as like… Because people don't understand markets. Markets have always been something that people…

They're counterintuitive.

And I always think, imagine we had banned grain futures back in the day. We would have ruinous consequences. It's today one of the bedrocks of the U.S. economy. We would not be able to function without grain futures.

And everybody benefits. I mean, there are individual winners and losers, but you get a more stable supply of food, better planting, better forecasting.

I think about 100 years from now, when there's going to be the next generation of entrepreneurs coming around and expanding the universe, they're going to be looking at this and thinking, "Imagine we didn't have a good gauge on where elections are going to land, on where geopolitics are going, the weather, the climate, the hurricanes."

And you're starting to see today, our fastest-growing segment is actually businesses hedging on Kalshi.

How do they do that?

You can take a position because you want to make money, speculate, but a lot of people take positions because they want to reduce their risk toward an event.

So the same way that grain farmers would short the price of grain so that if the price of grain goes down in six months, they would offset their revenue loss, we see a lot of businesses do the same.

So one example, we have now hundreds of businesses that do the same, it's like sports bars hedge against their home team losing every game.

Why? Because if the team wins tonight, I will make $2,000 in revenue. If it loses, I'll make $800 in sales. And my cost is the same because I have to stock up on inventory. So it's $1,200, $1,200 no matter what.

So when the Knicks win tonight, I make $800. The Knicks lose tonight, I lose $400.

Unpredictability like that is very bad for small businesses. So they buy no on the Knicks. So they short the Knicks winning in a way that essentially compensates their P&L so they're up $300 no matter what.

And why is that important? Because predictability, it's a bit like how the airlines hedge their price fluctuations, predictability helps with investment, helps them make their decisions.

Quick question before we get to why the states are bringing these suits the way they are. Does the financialization, or does the prediction marketizing of everything, does that have a corrosive effect, say, on sports?

In leagues, and this goes back to the 1919 World Series in Chicago, the Chicago White Sox famously had some players who threw it. But when everything is being bet on, everything is being speculated, does that end up undermining something fundamental?

So one, it shouldn't be everything. Two, I just want to be clear, we are not adding anything to sports. Sportsbooks have existed, like DraftKings and FanDuel, and if you see all the cases of players doing bad things, they're actually on the sportsbooks.

Can I ask what percentage of your revenue, or…?

I mean, it's like 65, 70 percent now, but it's going down. So it was 96 percent nine months ago. So it's going down very quickly because sports is a great way to educate people about probability. They get it. It's Moneyball. Our customer is the Moneyball type.

And then over time, they do politics and economics, and everything else is growing.

But I want to make a key point about this, which is very important. The notion that prediction markets all of a sudden now allow people to bet or trade on sports, it exists already. The question is, do you prefer it in an open and fair marketplace where everything is transparent, or do you prefer it in a closed marketplace where everything is opaque? That is the question.

And then I'm a pro-regulation guy, so I think there's war, terrorism, assassination, violence, wildfires, things that create moral hazards, that should not be traded on. We should not have markets on those things because the incentive is, it's too easy to go and create a fire.

But we also, as a market, we don't go… Most of the issues that you see is things…So we have standards that are more strict than the states' gambling rules around things not being very easily manipulated in the Commodity Exchange Act.

So we don't, for example, do markets on whether the next play is going to be a ball or a strike. The sportsbooks do these, and that's actually the vast majority of cheating cases, etc.

And that's also why we believe that regulation is very important, because when you set the right guardrails on what markets should be in, what markets should not be in, and how do you police those types of activities, and when you find someone that does it, how do you punish them very heavily? The last thing I'll say is we actually ban athletes from trading on anything that relates to their leagues.

I'm sorry, anything at all, or just on…?

Anything in their leagues. Yeah, the same way we ban politicians or members of Congress from trading on things that relate to Congress.

Yeah.

All of that goes into our…

That's like the only place where Congressmen can't bet on what they're about to legislate.

They can do it on the stock market, but not on Kalshi.

Kalshi was a sponsor of the U.S. Open, which is kind of interesting, and there's a growing acceptability.

And the NHL and MLB, and you're going to see a lot of other leagues.

But you've also recently you said that you are going to limit people who are abusive toward sports figures.

Yes.

Explain that, because now are you saying, as a condition of entering contracts on Kalshi, you're going to limit the speech of people? Or how does that work?

That's a great question. I mean, look, I think there are certain bad cases where, and by the way, it's not just about sports. It exists in really anything.

But I think the idea that someone… We always want to be careful about regulating the bad behaviors out of the system. And I believe that. I'm a very free markets guy, but I do believe in sensible guardrails. I do. And we may disagree on that point.

My view is the highway should be wide enough for people to compete and thrive and do all the great things you're going to do. You have to have a fence at the end of the highway to make sure people are not driving themselves off the cliff.

And I think it needs to be very delicate and needs to be very careful. You don't want to make the highway one car at a time because that's terrible. And so in this specific case, you have issues sometimes where people get over their skis and they go and harass…

Yeah, I mean, if you lose $2,000 or $10,000 or $200 because somebody dumps the fifth set at the U.S. Open, you're probably going to yell at the person who lost.

Yeah, yelling is one thing. Harassing and following them online and doing all the weird stuff that sometimes… And by the way, we haven't seen any evidence of that happening on Kalshi. That has historically happened on the online sportsbooks and some of the other mechanisms. I just want to be ahead of it. I don't like that idea.

Ok, so then here, is there any… When the state of Arizona says, "Ok, you're like a gambling operation, you're like the Mafia coming in and you're running this billions of dollars," New York is doing something similar.

In New York state, I think on a typical sportsbook, they take 51 percent of gross revenue. They make a lot of money by taxing and regulating this, and obviously they want money from you. Is there any other reason that they're doing this?

The casino lobby. I mean, the casino lobby is… The foundational thing is a few things.

So when an incumbent gets threatened competitively from a challenger, what does the incumbent usually do?

Go to the government.

It's litigate, then legislate, and then finally, when you realize that this is here to stay, you innovate, right? That's the basic 101. It's always been par for the course.

And why? Because incumbents, inevitably, when you get big enough, you want less competition. That's what you really want. And that's what's been playing out here.

And by the way, it's not just about sports. We launched perpetual futures recently, and CME, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Board of Trade, sued us over it.

And usually the policy argument is never, "I'm losing some revenue due to competition." It's like you come up with a bunch of reasons, like, "Oh, it's too risky. It's too whatever," so they can get policymakers riled up.

And they usually have very orchestrated lobbies and comms functions that do these sorts of things.

But if we look at it foundationally, first, it's interesting. We have zero evidence of cannibalization between what we are doing and the gaming companies, but also the sportsbooks. Why? Because my core customer is a trader. It's the guy who has 17 monitors and like is doing math and stats, and that's 70, 80 percent of my volume. That person is banned in the sports world.

Ok, yeah.

Right? Because they're making money.

I mean, so do you think people are using Kalshi to make money, or is it a form of entertainment? Because casinos and sports betting is really entertainment…

Do you think some people use options in the stock market as a form of entertainment, like on Robinhood?

Yeah, I suspect that.

I mean, on Robinhood, for sure.

But there's a great, actually from Illinois, that was more recent actually, like a week or two ago, which is saying that just because something— financial, these prediction markets are swaps, they're financial instruments, they just happen to be fun.

And that's not… Fun is not a problem because when you look at the grain futures market, I always go back because the parallels are so clear, 95 percent of the transactions are speculative.

Sometimes I get farmers having fun. They're gambling, speculating on something.

But the key thing here is that you can win on Kalshi. The bulk is people who are doing sophisticated things, and it's a more sophisticated market.

What is the percentage overall of winners versus losers?

It's a zero-sum game. It's like the stock market or active trading in the stock market.

I'll ask you this question this way: How many hedge funds outperform the S&P every year?

Yeah, I mean, in a given year, I don't know how many.

What do you think is a number, roughly?

Uh, 50 percent?

50? It's like 20.

Ok.

It's amazing. Like 20 percent of hedge funds win. Yeah, like 20 to 30 percent—

And then over time, none of them do.

No, there are, I mean, there are big winners like Citadel and Renaissance. That are like really big winners.

Why? Because competition. Competitions are hard, right? Imagine that number was 50. What should that tell us? If it was 50-50, 50 percent win, 50 percent lose, it would just be a game of chance. There's no skill in this thing.

Anything that has skill, like how many people win the NBA Finals in their careers? It's a very small subset because competitive environments require skill, and when that happens, you're going to have…

So how are you…?

So the answer is actually, if 80 percent of hedge funds lose on the stock market, our numbers are closer to 60, 65 percent of people losing, which is actually more of an equalizer.

Because the one thing we see on Kalshi is actually a much larger diversity of people end up being winners. If you look at our top performers, 79 percent of them went to public school. Our top traders, they're 2x more likely to have worked in retail than worked on Wall Street.

It's kind of amazing if you think about it.

Our best inflation forecaster is a random guy in Kansas who's never traded in the financial markets, just likes…

How does he do it, then? Do you know?

He's read about the economy for 20 years, loves reading about it, very, very calibrated. He's been thinking about it a lot.

And this goes back to Hayek and Tetlock. It's the idea that information and knowledge sits anywhere. They're not sitting with the elites.

And by the way, the Federal Reserve put out a paper in February. It's called "Kalshi and the Rise of Macro Markets."

They compared the Wall Street forecasts, the Bloomberg, on inflation, economy, GDP growth, unemployment, against the Kalshi forecasts for those things, which is Main Street—- Wall Street vs. Main Street.

And the result was actually Main Street was more accurate than Wall Street, and it's also real time. We move in real time.

So is your strategy, obviously you're fighting lawsuits, but is it ultimately like you're going to come up with a number that you say to New York state and Arizona, and you say, "We're not going to give you 51 percent of gross revenue," but do you keep working until you get to a point where they're like, "Ok, we'll live with it"?

I mean, I like to take the optimistic view of things, which is I think there are some people who just don't understand it. So part of it is we're just sitting down and explaining what I just explained.

Right, right.

Because the superficial view on prediction markets, like any markets, it's always the same. Society has always had an affect reaction to prediction markets. It comes around, and they're like, "That feels like gambling. It feels wrong.

It's either random or it's rigged," right?

Exactly. It's either random or it's rigged, and it's financialization of stuff.

Not because they're bad or good, just because they are hard to understand. And when you explain it more and it gets a little bit more normalized, people, "Oh, that's actually pretty cool."

And you always see it. When I start with a meeting and I end with a meeting, the opinions on this go, "Oh, actually, it can make us think about the future a little bit better. It could depolarize us because now people are thinking more instead of saying stupid things on Twitter."

Clearly, you're not describing any meetings that you've had with the New York State Department.

Well, I mean, look, I can't speak about specific meetings, but my point is, over time, it requires education. There are parts that don't understand, parts that, yeah, there are lobby groups and casinos that are pushing really hard to protect their turf. Or I don't even think they're protecting it. They're not getting cannibalized. I think their view is like, "Oh, it's a big industry. We should have it, too." It's a little bit that sort of thing.

The thing that they're misunderstanding is that this cannot exist state by state.

Why not?

Because, you know…

Ok, because gambling does. And I know you make a big distinction.

With gambling, you go against the house, and you bet against the house. It's localized. That's fine.

But I'm a peer-to-peer market. You don't want the Californians to trade only against Californians, and Texas…

Again, why is New York… Do you prefer a national New York Stock Exchange or 50 different…?

I'm a citizen of the world. So, yeah.

But the point is, exchanges are peer-to-peer, and they require liquidity. They require a large diversity.

It's like Marketplace, Airbnb. Imagine eBay. You can only buy the bag that you want from people in the same state. That doesn't make any sense. You want diversity. The more diverse the participation, the more information, the more it works.

Why do you think prediction markets, and obviously there have been prediction markets probably for as long as humans have had language…

You know what the first one was, right?

I don't.

Pope elections.

Oh, ok.

In the 1400s.

Ok. Yeah, and well, Intrade, which was a predecessor, which was another business, or got run out of business in 2013, was very good at predicting who was going to be pope.

But why does it seem to be exploding now in popularity? Is it that the tech got better? Is it that people have more money?

I think it's two things. One, we approached it from a regulatory-first approach. I always wanted to create a financial market and broaden it into more things.

Prediction markets are just the financial markets. They're just on a different topic. That's it. People are complexifying this.

But the second thing is, when I started in 2018, I think the demand is because, I think it's the polarization that's happening in the country.

And we feel like there's more information than ever, but less truth than ever. Because the filters, the things that are filtering our information, are biased. They're partisan, they're extreme, they're polarized.

The social media algorithms, and you see, you look at two different Twitter feeds and they look entirely different. People have different conceptions of the truth, of what's happening on the ground.

Because if you write seven paragraphs of thoughtful analysis on Twitter, you get two likes. If you write something crazy, like something racist or something ludicrous, just straight-up stupid, you get 10,000 likes.

Because it's clickbaity. It's like the 10-second Reel on Instagram.

I was like, there will need to be, there was going to be a lot of demand for a source of information where the filtering mechanism is very transparent and it's very aligned with truth.

And that's markets.

We used to always joke, when I did my master's at MIT, and I was doing a Ph.D. or working on Wall Street are mostly the same thing, except that you have to be right on Wall Street. You have to do analysis in both.

But my point here is about the incentive structure of the prediction market. It's very, very simple. The seven-paragraph thoughtful analysis probably makes money, and the stupid, extreme takes probably lose money. And all you have to trust is that people like making money and they dislike losing money. That's it.

It's interesting to me that, Kalshi, you were born in California, but you grew up in Lebanon. Your co-founder was born and raised in Brazil.

Can we read anything into that, that these are the two founders, people from countries that are peripheral to, in a way, certainly to America, but kind of to the global economy?

I just think it's naive. It's like the American dream.

I mean, my mom, when we… So I was born in California, moved back to Lebanon. My mom, I grew up with a single mom, and she's kind of a tiger mom. Not kind of. She was very much a tiger.

It would be a lion, right, in Lebanon?

In Lebanon, it would be a lion.

But the whole thing was, like, "You have to go back to the U.S. because that's a country that will, if you have good ideas and you're smart and you work hard," and she knew I was always, like, a math nerd…"You're going to make it, it will reward you for doing that."

And she was right.

She was a ballerina, but also a lot of similar sort of thinking in our household.

And we showed up here, and we're so excited. There are so many different things you can build, and you can challenge the status quo. It's a country that lets you challenge the status quo in a way that no other country lets you.

And that's amazing. That's something we should really cherish, and like keep….

Do you worry about that? I mean, again, we're in New York, which elected a democratic socialist as mayor. You have Donald Trump Jr. as a special adviser. Who you hired, or you announced, a week before the inauguration of Donald Trump Sr. in a second term…

That's not right. That's actually what happened.

Ok. Well, I mean, the press release went out, I think

I don't know, but we actually had done it before the elections. It was not a political decision.

Well, what I'm getting at, though, is that MAGA, Donald Trump has nationalized the economy or socialized it in ways that were unthinkable since FDR.

So on both sides of the aisle, we seem to be pulling away from free market ideology or belief in free markets or belief that America is a place where you can define yourself.

But the people on the left say, "No, you're defined by who your parents were, what race you belong to, what gender or sexual minority." People on the right want to kick out people like you, right? I mean, they don't want Middle Easterners coming to America, even if you're an American citizen.

So, I mean, look, I…

So are you worried about the America that you've moved back to?

Yes, I am worried. I don't think it's necessarily a political thing. I just think it is a structural thing that's happening in the economy that we have to kind of contend with.

I'm 30, so I was going through school like 10 years ago, and when I was going through school, there was still this energy. People were excited. They were pumped. They wanted to build, they wanted to do things, they wanted to start companies.

And my cousin now is going to Columbia, and you don't feel that energy anymore. That, to me, is the most concerning part.

Where did it go?

I think part of it is there is structural changes happening that society is battling, where there's AI, there is wealth disparity that's being created that is extreme.

And then that is also not… When I think about free markets, I always say the foundation of free markets is everybody needs to have a shot in the competition, right? Everybody needs the same rules, the same rights, and the same obligations.

And if people stop believing that, the competition is tilted. The competition is not a level playing field. I think that's kind of an opposite view to fair markets.

And I'm not here to say, look, the solution is simple. But I think we would argue that capitalism is a good thing, but what we need to contend with and be aware of is that a lot of people are not part of it. They don't feel like they're part of it.

And that's a reality. That's a truth on the ground that we cannot just…

Is it that they're not part of it, or is it that they don't feel they're part of it?

It's equivalent, though.

Yeah. I mean, because one of the arguments about social media, which clearly has a lot to do with this type of stuff, is that the median household income, the median individual income in America, is at all-time highs. It keeps going up, despite the financial crisis, despite COVID, despite geopolitical Sturm und Drang.

But people feel like, "I'm not getting as much as Donald Trump Jr. has, so I feel ripped off," even if they're doing better. I mean, is it important to know what the narrative is and what the facts on the ground are?

And frankly, I do think, because I don't want this to sound partisan, I do think it's bipartisan. I think people on both sides…

Yeah, no, I agree with you completely.

And we engage. Kalshi has engaged. People have talked about Don. We have advisers on the other side of the aisle, Democrats, across the board. And I frankly talk equally to Republicans and Democrats. And there is a lot of thought on both sides about how do we deal with this?

And my view is we may be being a little bit too ideological about capitalism versus socialism.

And to me, it's more like, I think most people would agree that we want a free, competitive economy. We want people to have a shot. We want people to feel part of the system.

And my view is a little bit more practical. It's like, "Look, if the wealth inequality is too out of whack, we need a little bit of a dampening mechanism. Just bring it back."

Is that mechanism, is it heavy taxation? Is it regulation that prevents the formation of new businesses? Is it…?

I don't think we should ever prevent or slow down innovation or prevent the formation of new businesses. My view is more that we need to think about ways to bring the people who feel they're out of the system into the system.

There are simple, kind of naive ways to think of it. I always think, could you have the most successful companies in America, or the rising top 200 tech companies, take a small 1 or 2 percent of their stock, voluntarily?

And I do believe, actually, you sit down with a big enough group of founders and give it to, let's call it whatever, you can define a set of households in America and put it in their children's accounts.

And the thing I love about that idea is all of a sudden people feel, they understand, actually, ok, AI, space, tech, fintech, all these different things that feel completely distant and far removed from you right now, they're tangible.

And it's actually, oh, it moves up over time. And as we're creating value as a society, we're doing the thing that America does: innovate, push the boundaries, take risks. There's tangible value that basically accrues over time.

And to me, it's like we don't need to… Capitalism, it's too much ideology versus, how about the middle ground? Let's make sure we bring people along. And it's not going to hurt the very top that much to do a little bit on the margin.

So you're facing a huge amount of regulatory uncertainty. There's also a huge amount of political uncertainty that's kind of bigger than that.

My view is all companies, tech companies, are facing a lot of that. AI as well…

Well, and technological uncertainty, all of this kind of stuff. But for the midterms, is there an outcome that is better for Kalshi or worse?

I'm frankly, not sure. The idiom is like, "Well, what are you going to do when the Democrats take over?"

And I don't know. Frankly, the internal view is, to me, we've built relationships on both sides. I found actually there's a big group of people on both sides that actually are largely are where we are, which raises my second point.

Who are some of the Democrats? I mean, I think I know some of the Republicans, but many of them are anti-prediction market. But who are some of the…?

I know, it's many. I mean, I think there are some on both sides of the aisle, but I think there's a big group on both sides that is actually pro.

But without naming names, to me, the thing that we're really focused on is what we've been focused on from day one.

We're a company that spent the first four years of our company getting regulated upfront, which is very unusual for Silicon Valley. It's very, very unusual.

And I always say I'm pro-sensible regulation. Banning something is not a form of regulation. It's actually the ultimate deregulation because you're moving it offshore, and you're just closing your eyes and letting it go crazy. And that's what happened with crypto. We banned a bunch of stuff onshore, it went offshore, and people lost their money.

To me, it's always be sound on policy, truly. Try to actually, let's put the ideology aside. Let's actually get it right and communicate that over and over and educate what is right.

And I always say there are certain types of markets that shouldn't exist because those are moral hazards that could create issues. Like the military strike market should not have existed. And we never did it because we're regulated in the U.S., but no one should be able to do it.

Number two is ban insider trading. We have to, because if there's a privileged set that has access that the rest of America does not have, that ruins the markets over time. It destroys trust in the system. We don't want that.

And three, sensible guardrails. There's going to be irresponsible use for any of these products, whether you're trading options on Robinhood or crypto on Coinbase.

Or you're going to the neighborhood bar. You want somebody to send you home when you've had too much.

That's right. Most people who drink alcohol, it's fine. It's great, actually. It is a social lubricant. I mean, there's a small percentage, sub-1 percent, that end up destroying their lives. You want to regulate that out of the system. I believe in that.

And it's like any technology. You have upsides, the steam engine, and then you have your carbon dioxide emissions. Regulation reduces the emissions and optimizes the upside.

And it's always delicate. It has to be delicate and balanced. But it's usually not the best thing for getting a bunch of clicks on social media, right? That's the…Policymaking is boring.

So about 15 years ago, or I think it was 2013, Intrade, an Irish-based prediction market, was regulated out of existence in the U.S.

They were unregulated.

Ok. Well, they were, but they had a CFTC license.

No, they didn't.

Oh, ok.

So we're the first to have gotten the CFTC…That's the difference.

That's the difference. Thank you.

But what would you put the odds on of you, in five years, Kalshi being bigger than ever and in a clear regulatory market, or…?

I think they're very high. They're very, very high. I mean, we have 30 million customers in the market, right? I mean, it's very big.

And again, the choice is, if you were to ask me whether prediction markets exist in five years, that's 100 percent.

Yeah, of course.

Because it's not a question of whether they're going to exist or not. It's just whether we're going to regulate them the right way.

You think they will be legal and public and transparent.

Certainly, yes. I mean, I think it's because they're here. I think the question is now, do we regulate it? Do we add the sensible guardrails? Do we just drive it offshore and close our eyes?

But I think usually, again, time is with us because even if you compare it today versus six months ago, way more people understand it. There's much less energy than before.

And the one thing I'll say, the media, you know this, the media just loves the scandals. When the insider trade happened on Maduro, that was like a three-month cycle. It was never-ending, right?

That's what all people would hear about it. And they wouldn't say Polymarket, they'd say prediction markets. They would lump us in.

But it's going to take some time for people to understand that actually, that was a one-off. There are like 30 million customers who are using these things. And yes, there's some bad in any system, and we're going to have to regulate it, but the positives are exciting.

Because to me, you're seeing now, we have thousands of businesses that rely on this.

I mean, people in the Keys around hurricane season start calling in and buying yes on hurricanes in their town because insurance companies don't insure their homes anymore. We have so many insurance use cases that are proliferating right now on sports, on weather, on esoteric things.

Like, there's this bill. I don't know if you saw the story about the goat herder in California. There's a bill in the legislature that was being passed that was going to move. He has 3,000 goats, move goat-herding wages from $70,000 to $40,000, which is going to drive him out of business.

He started calling insurance companies to underwrite this risk. They're like, "We're not going to. I mean, this is crazy."

And so he came to us, and we set up a market. Within two or three hours, the market said there's a 10 percent chance of it happening. Then he bought a $50,000 hedge that would pay out $500,000 if the bad thing happens, and it happened.

So now he has the war chest to go and diversify his business and stay afloat and all that. More of that is basically going to happen.

I guess a final question is, are the lawsuits against you at the state level or at the nonfederal level, is that going to require a Supreme Court decision, do you think?

You know, I just think, for us…

Because the Supreme Court has, I mean, some of these suits are proceeding, so you have a legal argument, which strikes me as pretty solid, but I'm not a lawyer. But is it going to take a Supreme Court decision? I don't know what this is all…

I think maybe. I mean, I think that we'll see. I think there are a lot of things that are in flux because some of the courts where we lost, it was based on a rule that has been changed now.

There are a number of new rules that are regulated that the federal agency, the CFTC, has put forth now. So that's kind of changed. It invalidates a lot of these opinions for good reason.

So it's a bit of a reset that's going to happen.

How important is the actual head of the CFTC to your future?

It's very important, but these things, it's like a push and pull, and some people may disagree with this regulator, right?

My point is that Congress explicitly gave the authority to the CFTC to regulate market structure this way, no matter what the topic is. That's really the law.

And they even say if something is gaming, which you can say the sports game is a game, the CFTC can decide what to do with it. That's the law, and they can decide to allow it and regulate it in a certain way.

You may disagree with the regulations. Some people tell me, well, maybe they're not stiff enough on this or not stiff enough on that.

But that's why you have the separation of powers. Congress delegated their authority to the agency. If you're unhappy with the agency, there may be a shift in two years. There'll be another agency that might be more strict or more loose.

And that's the natural, it's par for the course, natural course of history.

But to me, it's like, as we learn and as data surfaces, as we understand these things better, the better for us. Because the truth and the data is on our side. The best way to tell a good story is to have a good one, and I think we have a good one.

All right. We're going to leave it there. Tarek Mansour of Kalshi, thanks so much.

The post Are Prediction Markets Just Gambling? Kalshi CEO Responds appeared first on Reason Magazine.

New Lows

2026-10-21T13:32:40Z

We're two weeks out from midterms, and President Donald Trump's approval rating just hit a new low. Per a New York Times/Siena University poll, "36 percent of likely voters said that they approved of Mr. Trump's performance, while 59 percent said that they disapproved," which makes that the president's "lowest approval rating recorded in any Times/Siena poll." Yikes.

The likely voters say that cost-of-living, the war in Iran, and gas prices are the primary reasons why they're frustrated with the Trump administration.

Ohio's race gets nasty: The governor's race, between Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and Democrat Amy Acton, somehow got even dirtier when a video started circulating, gaining traction earlier this week, showing Acton's estranged mother calling her daughter a "liar."

The ad does not show who made or financed it, and the Ramaswamy campaign was slow to take responsibility for it. But late yesterday, that campaign confirmed that it was responsible for the ad and would spend millions to air it all over the state.

"Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar," said her mother in the video. "She's lied her entire life. My daughter needs help."

"Don't vote for people who lie," continued her mother. "Don't let her become your governor. If you think she'll make your life better, you're fooling yourself. It will only get worse."

The gubernatorial candidate's family history appears to be rather tragic: "Acton's campaign provided extensive documentation, from court records and contemporary reports in local media, that corroborated her account that she and her brother were removed from their mother's home after her second husband, Cledith Arthur, was arrested and indicted in 1978 and charged with rape of 'Amy Stearns being less than thirteen (13) years of age,'" per The Washington Post. It appears that Acton's mother took the side of her husband, not her daughter; Acton's biological father was the one who reported the sexual abuse by the stepfather to law enforcement. Her brother said in a statement that "our birth mother stayed married to Amy's rapist until he died." Amy Acton appears to have no relationship with her mother.

It's not clear why Ramaswamy and other Republicans who've visited the state, campaigning on Ramaswamy's behalf, feel the need to stoop so low. Vice President J.D. Vance, for example, recently implied that Acton is a drunk. The race is extremely tight, but that's still no reason to drag Acton's rape-victim past and family drama into the mix. I wonder whether this ad could have the opposite effect to what was intended: Acton seems impressively resilient in the face of trying circumstances, and Ramaswamy's team just looks rather desperate, trotting out a person who seems to be a terrible mother and an unreliable source to attempt to sink the Acton campaign.

I like Vivek and think a lot of the smears against him are unfair. He is very intelligent and highlights real policy problems. But his latest ad exploiting the abusive mother of Amy Acton disgusts me. This woman was so horrible she lost custody of her at age 12.

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) October 20, 2026

Another possible take: The Ohio voters struggling with high cost-of-living might be put off by all of this; really gross mudslinging at the expense of talking about real kitchen-table issues.

Scenes from New York: "Federal, state and city investigators searched about a dozen adult day care centers in New York City on Tuesday, focused in part on operators who they believe fraudulently billed Medicaid for clients who received no services or were dead, three people with knowledge of the matter said," reports The New York Times. "The searches came as the Trump administration is focusing on investigating accusations of fraud at adult and child day care centers, often underscoring what it says is wrongdoing in Democratic-controlled states. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was with investigators at one or more of the search locations on Tuesday, according to two of the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss a law enforcement matter." I am fully in support of stamping out Medicare and Medicaid fraud and deploying lots of federal government resources to do so.

QUICK HITS

"The public is hotly debating whether AI is a normal technology—something that will transform our world like the internet did—or more like the arrival of postindustrial modernity to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the 1950s: something that vaporized a culture overnight," writes Kelsey Piper for The Argument. "The third option is that AI is more like the rise of humanity as seen from the perspective of livestock animals. (In this scenario, AIs are the humans, and we are the animals whose fate will make no sense to us.) Anthropic believes that the second possibility is already baked in, and it's hoping to prevent the third—but its plan for preventing that looks more like hope and guesswork than something we should trust it with." I agree with pretty much every worry Piper expresses in the piece.
"President Donald Trump said he has committed more than $400 million to help Republicans in the midterms, including $300 million already spent on advertising, contacting voters, holding rallies and other efforts," reports The Washington Post. Republicans seem to believe you can just outspend and that you don't necessarily need to draft compelling candidates. Interesting theory.
The Wall Street Journal has a good piece on Anthropic's draft prospectus ahead of its possible IPO next month.
The expats who fled America regret it.
The welfare state as it currently stands should be dismantled:

In DC, a family with a housing voucher can rent a 3-bedroom apartment for up to $5,301, which is significantly higher than the market rent in even the most expensive DC neighborhoods. pic.twitter.com/CwnYwjItA4

— Kevin Corinth (@kevincorinth) October 20, 2026

The post New Lows appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Grassroots Revolt Targets Unpopular Property Taxes

2026-10-21T11:00:52Z

If you have to pay a regular fee to maintain control and use of a home or other parcel of property, do you really own it? Or are you just renting it from whoever collects the money? That's the question behind a growing movement against property taxes, which is winning support across the country and may see its next big test in the form of a proposed constitutional amendment on the Florida ballot that would significantly trim taxes on owner-occupied homes.

'Property Is the Foundation of Liberty'—and a Big Source of Tax Revenue

Advocates of reform understandably champion the inviolability of private property, which is threatened by continuously rising levies. Opponents predictably include people who fear reduced government revenues, but also those who worry that cutting property taxes will shift power to state governments at the cost of local autonomy.

"Property is the foundation of liberty," argues economist Vance Ginn. "It represents the right to the product of voluntary exchange, investment, and saving—not a privilege granted by government. To tax property again every year after it has been bought with after-tax income is to deny genuine ownership. Property taxes operate like an annual wealth tax or unrealized capital-gains tax, applied regardless of income or ability to pay."

Opposing Ginn's argument in the debate is the Tax Foundation's Jared Walczak, who is not so much a fan of property taxes as a believer that they suck less than the alternatives.

"Spending restraint can reduce property tax burdens," argues Walczak. "But with property taxes accounting for 70 percent of local tax collections nationwide and upwards of 90 percent in some states, any discussion of property tax elimination must grapple with revenue alternatives."

"It is axiomatic that whatever you tax, you get less of," he adds. "Taxing income means less income-producing labor and investment, for instance. But because land is an immobile asset, taxing property does less to distort market decisions than taxing income or even sales."

Walczak also points out that while property taxes are usually imposed by local governments, most alternatives to property taxes come at the state level. That would move power further up the political food chain, away from the property owners worrying about their tax bills.

To this, Ginn responds that governments at all levels cost more than they should and that "the moral and fiscal failure of property taxes lies not only in how the money is raised, but also in how much government spends."

That means the debate over property taxes isn't just a struggle between those who want to trim the state's take and those who prefer larger government, but also between anti-tax activists and their frequent allies among advocates of local power. In a piece this week on the groundswell against property taxes, Politico's Liam Dillon notes that "the uprising's most pitched battles are being fought in Red States where the issue has emerged as yet another dividing line on the right."

Localities Are Dependent on Taxing Property

The debate over property taxes is fierce partially because governments have come to rely so heavily on them. "In fiscal year 2023, property taxes comprised 28.9 percent of total state and local tax collections in the United States, more than any other source of tax revenue, despite being levied almost exclusively at the local (not state) level," Janelle Fritts wrote for the Tax Foundation.

Property taxes in the U.S. range from roughly half a percent to just under 2 percent of assessed home value. States that rely most heavily on them, like New Hampshire (1.5 percent in 2024) and Texas (1.4 percent in 2024), also tend to leave a lot of government responsibility in local hands that might be exercised at the state level elsewhere. It's worth noting that Cato's Freedom in the 50 States ranks New Hampshire as having the second least burdensome tax regime among states, with Texas in fourth place.

The lowest taxed states in property terms are Alabama (0.37 percent in 2024), Arizona (0.48 percent), Hawaii (0.29 percent), and Utah (0.48 percent). Some states, such as Illinois (1.88 percent in 2024) and New Jersey (also 1.88 percent), tax the hell out of many things to support large and intrusive governments. Hawaii, despite low property taxes, is ranked as the most tax-burdened state by Cato.

As mentioned above, economists tend to like property taxes because they are efficient, minimally distort economic decisions, and empower localities relative to state and federal authorities. But as Politico's Dillon emphasizes, "everyone who is not an economist seems to hate property taxes."

Homeowners Don't Like the Insecurity That Comes With Property Tax Bills

Property taxes rise with assessed property valuations that homeowners have no control over, as the market shifts with supply and demand. They require what feels an awful lot like an annual rent payment to keep a roof over people's heads many already paid for. That reduces the sense of security that owners feel in their homes, since their habitation remains conditional on meeting local authorities' demands. The bite of sales taxes can be reduced by buying less, and income taxes are dependent on earning paychecks, but property taxes (with some local exceptions) come due no matter what.

Soaring property valuations in recent years drove property tax bills higher for Americans who did nothing but remain at their established addresses, though localities can and sometimes do adjust tax rates to offset rising values. USA Today reported that "between 2019 and 2023, the median value of annual property taxes increased nearly 25%." That has energized the movement to cut or abolish the taxes.

Efforts to reform property taxes have been effective in more than a dozen states, according to Governing. Most of these efforts involved reducing taxes, though eyes are currently on Florida where Amendment 3, a proposed change to the state constitution, would incrementally raise the homestead exemption to $250,000. It also would require "the Legislature to prescribe a uniform procedure for counties and municipalities, for their respective levies, to increase the homestead exemption up to full assessed value," effectively abolishing property taxes on owner-occupied dwellings.

As a constitutional amendment, the measure requires 60 percent of votes to pass. Polling shows more support than opposition, but not necessarily at the supermajority level necessary for victory.

According to the Tax Foundation, in Florida, "the statewide average sales tax rate would have to rise from 7.02 to 15.34 percent to replace the property tax" with equivalent revenue. Rates could widely vary if localities implemented sales taxes instead of leaving them to the state.

Of course, that assumes state and local governments continue spending and providing services at the same level. But as economist Ginn points out, the problem lies not only in how property taxes raise money "but also in how much government spends." If the property tax revolt represents revulsion not just at the tax, but at the expense of large government, that may require less revenue to fund a smaller Leviathan.

The post Grassroots Revolt Targets Unpopular Property Taxes appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Today in Supreme Court History: October 21, 1919

2026-10-21T11:00:22Z

10/21/1919: Abrams v. United States argued.

The White Court (1916-1921)

The post Today in Supreme Court History: October 21, 1919 appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Atlanta's Former Mayor Is Running for Georgia Governor. The 2020 Protests Could Cost Her the Race.

2026-10-21T10:30:34Z

When Americans vote in the midterm elections next month, it seems likely that Democrats will see decisive victories across the country.

This trend seems likely to affect Georgia's two most high-profile races differently. Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, is running for reelection against Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican who represents the state's 10th congressional district, while in the race to replace Gov. Brian Kemp, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms faces Republican billionaire Rick Jackson.

Ossoff and Bottoms may both be Democrats, but their prospects look very different: A recent poll put Ossoff nearly seven points ahead of Collins, but Bottoms was a point and a half behind Jackson, trailing the senator from her own party by more than five points.

Democrats hope that if Ossoff does well enough, it will boost their other candidates. But it's worth asking why Bottoms, who was feted as a possible vice presidential candidate, is struggling to break even against someone with no prior name recognition, in a year expected to be a boon for her party.

It's possible that the crime and protests of 2020 could be weighing down Bottoms' candidacy in an otherwise auspicious year for Democrats.

Mayor Bottoms and the 'COVID Crime Wave'

Bottoms' single term as mayor of Georgia's capital city would be defined by summer 2020. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, violent crime rose across the country, but it was worse in Atlanta—homicides were up 59 percent, while most other cities averaged 33 percent. Bottoms herself later called it the "COVID crime wave."

Then on May 25 in Minneapolis, a police officer killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill. Footage went viral, and protesters across the country took to the streets.

In some places, including Atlanta, protests turned destructive, and the police responded in kind.

Bottoms called for peace. "If you care about this city, then go home," she exhorted rioters in a news conference. "When you burn down this city, you're burning down our community."

She won bipartisan praise. "Your passion, your composure, your balance, has been really incredible," then-presidential candidate Joe Biden told her.

But just days later, Atlanta police officers shot and killed a black man, Rayshard Brooks, in a Wendy's parking lot. Protesters gathered the next day and burned the restaurant to the ground.

Meanwhile, after the district attorney announced charges against the cops involved in Brooks' shooting, more than 170 officers called out sick in protest. Bottoms admitted that officer morale "is down tenfold."

Then on July 4, less than half a mile away from the site of Brooks' death, protesters shot into a car, killing 8-year-old Secoriea Turner.

The crime spike persisted into 2021, and in May of that year, Bottoms announced that she would not run for a second term.

Officially, she said, it was "time to pass the baton on to someone else," though her announcement "came as the city faces a homicide rate topping that of this time last year—a historically deadly one in Atlanta," Henri Hollis wrote at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Indeed, it seems the "COVID crime wave" had caught up with her: A September 2021 poll found that while 57 percent of city residents approved of the job she was doing, 53 percent also felt the city was on the wrong track, including 48 percent of Democrats. The top issue was crime, which 70 percent of respondents felt was headed in the wrong direction.

She later told New York that by stepping down, she was "putting my emotional and mental health first"—a worthy reason, though a bit odd since she now seeks an even higher office.

Then again, she also had higher aspirations. Bottoms was one of the first officeholders to endorse Biden for president in 2020, and she later made his shortlist of potential running mates. After the end of her term, she joined Biden's White House as director of the Office of Public Engagement, after which she moved over to the President's Export Council for the remainder of his term.

Bottoms announced her run for governor just four months after leaving Washington. And while she locked up the Democratic nomination easily, winning 56 percent of the vote among seven candidates, she didn't exactly fire up the base, and it seems like she just expected to coast to victory.

"It feels a lot like she gained the nomination…largely from name identification," progressive journalist Zaid Jilani tells Reason. "She really wasn't raising that much money or spending that much on television….It should be a high-profile race in many ways, but the ideas she's putting forward are fairly rehashed," and "she doesn't have that much creative advertising."

Rick Jackson's Deep Pockets and Shallow Record

Rick Jackson, meanwhile, seemed to come out of nowhere.

President Donald Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in August 2025, and Jones led the Republican primary field at the end of that year.

While Kemp famously resisted Trump's efforts to subvert Georgia's presidential election results in 2020, Jones was a willing participant in the scheme.

"I've been the Trump guy since 2015, not '16," Jones bragged. "I've taken all the battle scars and everything else. I know who ran and hid during 2020 and everything else."

Then in February 2026, just three months before the primary, Jackson entered the race. He was a septuagenarian with no name recognition, but he was also quite wealthy, so he blanketed the state with ads to introduce himself to voters.

In six weeks, he spent over $30 million—"more than any candidate has ever spent in a primary race for Georgia governor, with more than two months before the May 19 election," wrote Jeff Amy of the Associated Press.

It worked: Jackson beat Jones in a primary runoff with 53 percent of the vote. By then, he had spent $108 million on his campaign while raising less than $400,000 from donors.

Jackson has made much of his background, as a child of poverty who entered the foster system at age 13 to escape a dysfunctional household. As an adult, he started in sales and worked his way up to entrepreneurship, starting Jackson Healthcare in 2000 and growing it to more than $1 billion in annual revenues. He is also a generous donor to charitable causes, particularly those relating to foster care.

But with no political record, Jackson can be hard to pin down on certain issues.

For example, one Jackson ad criticizes Bottoms for the rise of data centers in Atlanta, even though he has also spoken positively of their economic potential.

Georgia Democrats have tarred Jackson as a Trumpian election denier, singling out a comment he made at a campaign event: When asked if the 2020 election was stolen, Jackson replied, "That was totally ridiculous what happened in 2020 and our people really let us down." ("Just as Governor Kemp did, Rick acknowledges both Biden's win and that there were issues in the 2020 election that needed to be resolved in order to ensure Georgians have faith in our electoral system," a campaign spokesperson told CNN.)

During the primaries, he even took heat from both sides on abortion: Jones accused Jackson's company of working with Planned Parenthood, while Jackson himself seemed to suggest he wanted to change the state's abortion ban to remove exceptions for rape or incest. ("Rick believes we have a strong pro-life law in place and he wants to keep it as it is," his campaign said in a statement.)

And while he made Trump-like pledges, like to "make Georgia No. 1 in the nation for criminal deportations" and keep "the religion of woke ideology" out of schools, his platform calls for an "intelligent Medicaid expansion" in the state.

Jackson has also pivoted just over the course of the campaign.

He bragged in his campaign announcement video that he "donated a million bucks to Trump," and he's said that if elected, he would be "just like" Trump but "with a southern tone."

He said Trump had "no bigger supporter" than himself, and he could not name a single Trump policy he disagreed with. When Trump endorsed Jackson at a campaign rally in July, the candidate pointed to the president and said, "I'm going to be this man's favorite governor."

But like many other Republicans, Jackson has distanced himself from the president, whose approval rating is at an all-time low. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that in campaign appearances, Jackson has stopped mentioning Trump directly, preferring to compare himself to Kemp, the sitting governor who remains popular.

He apparently also scrubbed all mentions of the president from his campaign website.

But one thing that has remained consistent in Jackson's campaign strategy is criticizing Bottoms' record as mayor.

Will the 'COVID Crime Wave' Sink Bottoms?

Some of Jackson's campaign ads feature grateful children who grew up in foster care and benefited from his philanthropy, but for the most part, they have targeted Bottoms over her record.

One ad, titled "Disaster," paints Bottoms' tenure as exactly that, with the city becoming practically unlivable during summer 2020.

"Keisha ended cash bail, gutted the corrections budget, let Atlanta burn, and unleashed a crime wave," Jackson wrote on X to accompany another ad. "Then she walked away."

"If Keisha wants to run from her record," according to a campaign email, "we're going to make sure Georgia remembers exactly what that record was."

Many Jackson ads, flyers, and mailers have featured images of Secoriea Turner, the 8-year-old girl killed by gunfire. (Turner's parents have asked Jackson's campaign to stop.)

But is it fair to blame everything on Bottoms? While Atlanta was worse than most, many major cities saw large homicide spikes: Chicago's murder rate climbed more than 50 percent that year, while New York City's went up nearly 40 percent. Murders in Columbus, Ohio, rose a staggering 67 percent.

Regardless, Bottoms was in charge at the time. And the attacks do seem to have an effect, as she's locked in a dead heat against Jackson.

Granted, Bottoms was never a particularly strong candidate. When she ran for mayor in 2017, she won the runoff election by fewer than 800 votes, even with the endorsement of the outgoing mayor.

Georgia also has not elected a Democratic governor in nearly three decades, though it has elected Democrats to the U.S. Senate three times since 2020 and seems poised to reelect one this year.

There's also the fact of Jackson's money, saturating the state with eight-figure ad buys while Democrats were spending only a fraction of that.

Of course, money alone can't buy a victory: Kemp defeated Stacey Abrams in each of the last two races for governor, despite being comfortably outraised and outspent each time.

But Bottoms currently trails Ossoff by five points in an election cycle expected to be quite beneficial to their party.

It seems the race will serve as an indicator of how fresh the summer of COVID-19 still feels for Georgians.

"To the kind of voter that Jackson is courting, it probably is true that had Democrats [instead] nominated the mayor of Macon [a smaller Georgia city], they would be in a stronger position than nominating the mayor of Atlanta, especially one who was in power during those years," Jilani tells Reason. "If he wins, it demonstrates that that is still a fairly potent line of attack."

The post Atlanta's Former Mayor Is Running for Georgia Governor. The 2020 Protests Could Cost Her the Race. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Brickbat: Teaching While Intoxicated

2026-10-21T08:00:32Z

Katharine Viviano, a first-grade teacher at Pleasant Valley Elementary School in Peters Township, Pennsylvania, faces a charge of public drunkenness after officials said she became intoxicated at school and left her students unattended. According to police, Viviano left during the school day to buy alcohol, and when she returned, she hit another vehicle in the school parking lot. She later went into the bathroom attached to her classroom and refused to come out; another teacher found her in the bathroom semi-conscious. School staff initially believed Viviano was having a medical emergency, and they moved her students to another classroom and then to a playground while they dealt with the situation. Viviano reportedly smelled of alcohol, with slurred speech and bloodshot eyes. Authorities say she admitted drinking vodka earlier in the day.

The post Brickbat: Teaching While Intoxicated appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Open Thread

2026-10-21T07:00:00Z

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason Magazine.

2 Recent Cases Illustrate the Limits of a Doctrine That Often Blocks Civil Rights Claims

2026-10-21T04:01:04Z

Since 1871, a federal statute has authorized Americans to sue state and local officials for violating their constitutional rights. But since 1982, thanks to the court-invented doctrine of qualified immunity, such claims have been allowed only when they allege violations of "clearly established" law.

Because courts often require plaintiffs to meet that standard by citing precedents involving closely similar facts, qualified immunity can prove insurmountable even for victims of outrageous abuses. But as two recent cases illustrate, there are limits to this license for misconduct, meaning officials may still be held accountable when they flout longstanding constitutional principles, even when they do so in novel ways.

In 2022, Mario Rosales and Gracie Lasyone sued two Alexandria, Louisiana, police officers, Samuel Terrell and Jim Lewis, alleging that they had pulled Rosales over without legal justification. The cops ordered Rosales and Lasyone, his girlfriend, out of the car and detained them for 21 minutes, during which they grilled the couple about illegal drugs, frisked Rosales, and instructed him to empty his pockets.

Terrell and Lewis sought refuge in qualified immunity. But last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that Rosales and Lasyone had plausibly alleged several Fourth Amendment violations, including a stop based on a "fabricated traffic violation," an improperly prolonged detention, and unjustified searches.

In reaching that conclusion, the 5th Circuit relied mainly on a 1968 decision in which the Supreme Court said police may detain someone only if they reasonably suspect he is involved in criminal activity and may frisk him only if they reasonably suspect he is "armed and dangerous." Assuming the facts alleged in the lawsuit are true, the three-judge panel unanimously held, Terrell and Lewis had failed both of those tests.

When the officers stopped Rosales, the principles that the 5th Circuit applied had been the law of the land for more than half a century. Terrell and Lewis nevertheless argued that "any constitutional violation arising from the traffic stop was not clearly established," which gives you a sense of the chutzpah that qualified immunity invites.

Police commonly pull drivers over, ostensibly for traffic violations, in the hope of implicating them in drug crimes. A case that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit considered this month involved a much more unusual scenario: a judge who locked two children in jail cells because he was frustrated by their resistance to a parental custody decision.

During a 2019 hearing in Taney County, Missouri, a divorced couple agreed that the mother would have primary custody of their two children, then 12 and 14. But contrary to that agreement, the children did not want to go home with their mother, which led to an argument in the courthouse lobby.

Judge Eric Eighmy intervened, telling the children they had to leave with their mother and repeatedly warning them that they could end up in foster care if they refused to do so. When that did not work, Eighmy jailed them until they became more cooperative.

"The time spent in the holding-cell area was between twenty and forty minutes," the 8th Circuit noted. And since Eighmy did not have probable cause to believe the children had committed any offense, "much less one that justified placing them in a holding cell," the court said, their confinement clearly violated the Fourth Amendment.

If so, Eighmy argued, he had no way of knowing that. The 8th Circuit panel unanimously disagreed: "As we put it over a decade and a half ago, long before the events in this case, 'it is clearly established that a warrantless arrest, unsupported by probable cause, violates the Fourth Amendment.'"

Notably, the 8th Circuit did not think the bizarre details of the case counted in Eighmy's favor. "We are not concerned about the lack of a prior case" with "fundamentally similar" facts, it said. "Indeed, given how clear the law is, it would have been surprising to find one."

The post 2 Recent Cases Illustrate the Limits of a Doctrine That Often Blocks Civil Rights Claims appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Update on Canada's Two Secession Movements

2026-10-21T04:25:28Z

Illustration: Lex Villena

Back in June, I wrote a post about Canada's two active secession movements: one in Alberta and one in Quebec. Since then, there have been some important developments. Alberta secessionists suffered a major defeat. Quebec secessionists are in better shape, but the odds are still against them succeeding anytime soon. That said, both movements may well persist for a long time to come.

Yesterday, Alberta secessionists lost a referendum on secession by a massive 75-25 margin. Pollsters expected a blowout, but this margin is close to the outer edge of expectations. Moreover, the result may actually understate the true extent of opposition to secession in the province. As noted in my earlier post, the question put to the voters was not directly about secession, but rather on whether "the Government of Alberta [should] commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada." Essentially, it was a referendum on whether to hold another referendum. Some "yes" voters might have been confused about what it meant or wanted to hold a second referendum, while planning to vote "no."

United Conservative Party Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (who played a key role in arranging yesterday's vote, despite opposing secession herself) has pledged not to hold any further referenda on secession. She may well be happy to sideline an issue that divides her party (Alberta secessionists are overwhelmingly right-of-center UCP voters).

All of this is bleak news for Alberta secessionists. But it's too early to say their movement is dead. As noted in my previous post, secession movements often persist for many years, even in the face of defeats in referenda and other political setbacks. Scotland, Quebec, and Catalonia are all examples of this phenomenon. And some 25% of Alberta voters did express support for secession, despite opposition from the leaders of all major political parties. That's a minority, but far from an insignificant one.

Meanwhile, in Quebec, on October 5, the secessionist Parti Quebecois (PQ) won the provincial election. But they got only 28% of the vote (the lowest percentage for any winning party in the history of Canadian provincial elections). That translated to a "minority" government that has 59 seats in Quebec's National Assembly (the provincial legislature), 5 short of a majority. And, as discussed in my previous post, secession remains unpopular, with polls showing opposition by a margin of 2-1 or more. For much more detailed discussions of the Quebec election and its ramifications, see analyses by Canadian election/polling experts Eric Grenier and Philippe Fournier.

As Fournier emphasizes, PQ leader Paul St. Pierre Plamondon (known as "PSPP") remains committed to holding a secession referendum. But the minority nature of his governments makes it unclear whether the PQ can find the votes to enact legislation to hold one. The left-wing Quebec Solidaire party (which holds 9 seats) is also pro-independence. But they may not be willing to work with the PQ. In addition, PSPP has promised not to hold a referendum so long as Donald Trump remains president of the United States, claiming it would be too dangerous to do so while Trump continues his trade war with Canada and otherwise threatens the country. Unless Trump dies or gets impeached and removed (both relatively unlikely), he will remain in office until January 2029. Canadian minority governments generally don't last more than two years. So PSPP may not be in power long enough to outlast Trump.

While Quebec secessionists seem unlikely to prevail in the near future, the fact that they managed to return to power is still a sign of the movement's persistence. And they have survived referendum defeats in 1980 and 1995. Thus, the movement is likely to continue to be a thorn in the side of Canadian federal governments, perhaps for many years to come. It has demonstrated its staying power over many years, much more so than Alberta secessionists.

Many Canadians believe Trump's threats against their country have weakened secessionists in both Alberta and Quebec. PSPP's stance is just part of the evidence for this conclusion. Trump's trade war and threats to make Canada the "51st state" have bolstered national unity and made the Liberal Party government of Prime Minister Mark Carney much more popular than might otherwise be the case. Trump is making Canadian national unity - and the Canadian Liberal Party - great again! But for him, the Liberals would likely have lost last year's Canadian federal election to the Conservatives.

Perhaps, all along, Trump has been trying to help the Liberals and stymie secessionists. If that's the true objective of his Canada policy, then maybe it's not quite as evil and stupid as otherwise seems to be the case. On a more serious note, Trump's policies have illegally usurped congressional authority over trade, damaged our economy, and alienated a crucial ally - all for no good reason.

In my June post, I outlined reasons why I am more sympathetic to Alberta's secession movement (motivated by conservative economic ideology and grievances about federal fiscal transfers and energy policies), than Quebec's (motivated by Francophone ethno-nationalism). Although I think the Alberta movement has greater merit than Quebec's, for reasons also summarized in the earlier post, I remain skeptical that Alberta secession would accomplish more good than harm. I also explained why these movements may be of interest to many non-Canadians and why I (an American) comment on them them:

[T]hese events are… of interest to students of federalism and secession, and to anyone who cares about the future of America's northern neighbor and one of our most important allies. And history shows that secession movements often persist even after defeat in a referendum….

From a US perspective, I worry that a successful secession movement would make Canada a weaker and less effective ally. Unlike our current president, I think a strong Western alliance is essential….

Some might find it inappropriate for an American to comment on Canadian politics. I disagree. Canadians and other non-Americans often express views on US politics. And they have every right to do so. Political analysis should be judged on its substance, not on the background of the author. In addition,… Canadian secessionism potentially impacts the US in various ways, and raises broader issues about the morality of secession movements that Americans and others have reason to take an interest in…. I am a longtime academic expert on federalism and secession-related issues, and I know French, as well as English. Thus, I think have the necessary qualifications to write about these issues. Whether the commentary is any good or not, is for others to judge.

The post Update on Canada's Two Secession Movements appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Mississippi A.G. Says Killing of 1-Year-Old Boy Over Stolen Diapers Was 'Justified'

2026-10-21T17:10:17Z

On Monday, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch ruled that the police shooting of 1-year-old boy Kohen Wiley was a "justified" use of force. Kohen was fatally shot in June, outside of a Walmart, as cops investigated his mother and her friend for stealing diapers. Fitch didn't explain the reasoning behind the decision or what evidence was considered in a case that has sparked national backlash.

According to a June 14 statement from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation (MBI), officers from the Senatobia Police Department (SPD) and Tate County Sheriff's Office were responding to a shoplifting call when "officers encountered two subjects and a juvenile child fleeing from the store into a vehicle." They "attempted to stop the vehicle, but the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one," and the officer then "discharged their weapon and the vehicle fled the scene." The family went to a local hospital, where 1-year-old Kohen Wiley was pronounced dead.

Kohen's mother, Vellesiya Wiley, has a different version of events, which she outlined in a video on X following the tragedy. She said that after police tried to stop her friend (the driver) outside the Walmart, Wiley continued to go to her car, saying the interaction had "nothing to do" with her. Once she got into the car, her friend arrived and began to back out of the parking spot. Then officers came over to the car, drawing their guns. She says that after she raised Kohen to show him to the officers and try to defuse the situation, they opened fire. "[The police] tried to say that [my friend] forcefully was trying to drive and hit them, but they was all on the right side, and she was driving towards the left….They personally just shot at the car," she said. In the months since the incident, the family held several rallies, demanding justice for Kohen's death.

The tragedy of the shooting has been compounded by a lack of transparency from the SPD, as well as alleged expert analysis that counteracts the MBI's statement. According to reporting from Mississippi Today, Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney who is representing the Wiley family, claims that an independent autopsy conducted by forensic pathologist Robert Mitchell indicates that the bullets entered through the front passenger door, rather than the windshield, suggesting that the officer wasn't in the vehicle's path when he discharged his gun.

In response to Fitch's announcement on Monday, Crump released a statement asking, "How can anyone accept that conclusion when Kohen's family and the public still have not been allowed to see the body-camera footage?"

"If the footage supports the state's decision, release it. We will not stop fighting until this family gets the truth," he added. To this point, the SPD has declined to release the footage, saying it's standard procedure during an ongoing investigation.

Crump was also keen to point out complaints of racism in the SPD: "This is a department whose chief was fired after reports of racial slurs in his text messages, and whose officer faced a complaint alleging a racially offensive remark two days before he shot Kohen."

The SPD's chief at the time, Harold Vanderford, was unceremoniously fired after journalists from Mississippi Today, The New York Times, and Verite News revealed a slew of racist text messages he sent. According to reporting from Verite News, in one of the messages he said he "almost beat a nigger and white woman's ass a few minutes ago." Senatobia's Board of Aldermen rejected his attempted resignation and voted to fire him instead on September 1.

Crump also cited a complaint filed by Officer Dexter Smith, who claimed that Sergeant Hunter Foster, the officer who shot Kohen referred to him as "a black motherfucker" on June 12, just two days before the incident. According to reporting from Mississippi Today, Smith's complaint states that he was filling out paperwork in the booking room when he heard Foster say, "Who is this Black motherfucker back there?" to his colleagues. Smith claims to have had almost no relationship with Foster prior to the encounter.

It's hard not to feel outraged considering that this little boy lost his life over something as trivial as shoplifting—a misdemeanor in Mississippi that does not justify use of lethal force, as Reason's Joe Lancaster wrote in June—and for diapers no less. With the bodycam footage yet to be released, all the public is left with is the state's word that the investigation found no wrongdoing. Given the multiple instances of racism within the department, it shouldn't come as a surprise if the public isn't content to take them at their word.

The post Mississippi A.G. Says Killing of 1-Year-Old Boy Over Stolen Diapers Was 'Justified' appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Trump's 50% Tariffs on Canadian Goods Illegally Rely on a Superseded Statute, a Lawsuit Argues

2026-10-20T21:10:51Z

Last July, President Donald Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on various Canadian goods, a list he subsequently expanded to include additional imports, some of which he banned outright. His legal justification was Section 338 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which Congress approved in 1930. Section 338 authorized tariffs in response to discriminatory trade practices. But in the 96 years since it was enacted, no president had ever used it to impose tariffs.

Why is that? According to a lawsuit that the Liberty Justice Center (LJC) filed on Tuesday in the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT), the answer is clear: Section 338 was superseded by subsequent legislation that likewise targeted discriminatory trade barriers, beginning with the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934 and culminating in Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Section 301, the current remedy, includes requirements that Trump apparently sought to dodge by invoking Section 338 instead.

That maneuver is illegal, the LJC argues. "Congress already gave the executive branch a tool for responding to unfair foreign trade practices: Section 301, which requires an investigation, public comment and other safeguards," says Jeffrey M. Schwab, the LJC's director of litigation. "The administration cannot skip those protections by reaching for a 1930 statute that no president had ever used to impose a tariff."

Why not? "Where provisions in two acts are in irreconcilable conflict, the later act, to the extent of the conflict, constitutes an implied repeal of the earlier one," the lawsuit says. "Where a later act covers the whole subject of an earlier one and is clearly intended as a substitute, it operates similarly as a repeal. And a specific policy embodied in a later federal statute controls the construction of an earlier one even absent express amendment."

Even if Section 338 somehow survived congressional approval of contrary laws, the LJC adds, Trump's tariffs exceed the authority it grants. And if Trump's interpretation of Section 338 were correct, the lawsuit says, the provision would violate the nondelegation doctrine, which bars Congress from delegating its tariff power to the president without providing "an intelligible principle" to guide and constrain his exercise of it.

Trump's Section 338 tariffs, in short, are "the Administration's latest attempt to exercise, through a statute never designed for the purpose, the tariff power that the Constitution assigns to Congress." That pattern should be familiar by now.

Shortly after taking office in 2025, Trump claimed to have discovered a previously unnoticed delegation of extensive tariff authority in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that does not mention import taxes and had never been used to impose them. That claim was rejected by every court that considered it, and last February the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs at all.

Trump responded to that decision by immediately announcing similarly broad tariffs under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, which addresses "fundamental international payments problems" caused by "serious United States balance-of-payments deficits." In May, the CIT ruled that the new tariffs were illegal because Trump had failed to "identify balance-of-payments deficits within the meaning of Section 122."

Trump then switched to Plan C, invoking Section 301 of the Trade Act, which authorizes tariffs in response to a foreign "act, policy, or practice" that is "unreasonable or discriminatory" and "burdens or restricts" U.S. commerce. He claimed that provision justified tariffs on 86 trading partners, accounting for nearly all U.S. imports, because they had failed to "impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor." The CIT is currently weighing challenges to those tariffs, including an LJC lawsuit.

Trump's Section 338 tariffs have now added to the CIT's caseload. The LJC represents Gellert Global Group, an importer that was hit hard by those taxes after Trump added cheese to the list of disfavored Canadian goods. The lawsuit asks the CIT to certify a class of importers, numbering in "the hundreds, if not the thousands," that likewise have been clobbered by Trump's 50 percent tariffs.

Since Trump obviously is aware of Section 301, why did he resort to a never-used, seemingly obsolete provision to justify the tariffs on imports from Canada? As the LJC notes, Section 301 requires an investigation by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, "consultation with the foreign country concerned, notice, public comment, a hearing, and determinations within statutory deadlines." It also requires "that action be equivalent in value to the burden imposed, that duties be preferred over other import restrictions, and that actions terminate after four years absent a request for continuation and review."

Can Trump avoid those constraints by invoking Section 338 instead? The LJC thinks not: "Congress did not intend to leave in place a parallel authority that would allow the President to impose the same remedies, for the same conduct, free of every one of those safeguards."

Section 338 has been "impliedly repealed," the LJC argues. "At a minimum, Section 301 controls where, as here, the President seeks to respond to foreign practices within Section 301's scope, and the President may not impose duties in response to such practices while disregarding the procedures and limits Section 301 imposes. Because the President did not proceed under Section 301, the Section 338 Tariffs are unlawful whether or not Section 338 survives."

Even if you ignore subsequent legislation, the LJC argues, the Canadian policies that Trump cited when he announced the tariffs do not qualify as "discrimination" under Section 338. "Canada's motor vehicle surtax and its provinces' alcohol purchasing decisions are responses to tariffs that the United States imposed on Canada, not discrimination by Canada against the United States," it says. Trump also complained that Canada treats European cheese imports more favorably than U.S. cheese imports. But "when Congress enacted Section 338, a preference granted under a reciprocal agreement was not 'discrimination.'"

Section 338 "addresses discrimination: measures that single out United States commerce for worse treatment than the commerce of the world at large," the lawsuit says. "It is not a general authorization to impose tariffs whenever the President disagrees with a trading partner's policies, or whenever a trading partner responds to tariffs the United States has imposed on it."

Trump also was unfazed by Section 338's requirement that the president set duties to "offset" the costs imposed by discriminatory practices, which implies proportionality. Rather than attempt that, the LJC notes, Trump imposed "the statutory maximum rate of 50 percent without tying it to any measured burden."

As interpreted by Trump, the lawsuit warns, Section 338 authorizes the president to "impose tariffs of up to 50 percent on any products of any country that extends better treatment to any other country in any respect—including through any of the hundreds of preferential trade agreements to which the United States is not a party—or that responds to tariffs the United States has imposed on it." Yet Section 338 "contains no clear statement authorizing that power," contrary to the "major questions" doctrine, which applies to assertions of executive authority with "vast economic and political significance."

If Section 338 conferred the sort of unfettered authority that Trump is claiming, the LJC says, it "would supply no intelligible principle constraining the exercise of Congress's power to lay duties." His reading "would convert a narrow, fact-dependent provision into an effectively unrestricted delegation of Congress's tariff power," which would be "an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power."

This case "is not about the president," says LJC CEO Sara Albrecht. "It is about the presidency. No president should have the power to pull a dormant statute off the shelf and use it to impose sweeping tariffs or import bans without the limits Congress required."

The post Trump's 50% Tariffs on Canadian Goods Illegally Rely on a Superseded Statute, a Lawsuit Argues appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Trump's $8 Billion Diesel Bailout Pays Farmers for a Problem He Created

2026-10-21T00:39:45Z

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it would "make $8 billion available for one-time payments to American farmers this harvest season to provide relief during temporary market disruptions and increased input costs."

Using a formula derived from the USDA's production, yield, and price estimates, the Harvest Fuel Relief program will "provide simple, proportional support to producers." It will only cover a "portion of modeled losses during the 2026 crop year." The Farm Service Agency—an office within the USDA that administers credit and loan programs—will administer the $8 billion in one-time payments using funds from the Commodity Credit Corporation, a federal entity authorized to draw up to $30 billion from the U.S. Treasury to fund agricultural initiatives. Payment rates won't be released until November, and the USDA's notice leaves open the possibility of additional payments for "non-Title I commodities, including specialty crop growers and fishermen."

A fiscally questionable decision, the program comes at a time when farmers are feeling a significant price pinch. The dyed diesel American farmers and ranchers use is exempt from state and federal highway taxes, but that has done little to offset skyrocketing fuel prices. In September, the American Farm Bureau Federation projected that fuel expenses would reach $22 billion this year, up 29 percent from 2025. The Farm Bureau estimates that total production expenses will reach nearly $500 billion in 2026. According to its own predictions, the USDA doesn't expect the situation to improve anytime soon.

In its latest Commodity Costs and Returns report, released in June, the USDA projects farmers and ranchers will face record production costs in 2027—higher than during the COVID-19 supply chain disruptions—driven by higher prices for necessary inputs such as fuel, fertilizer, seeds, machinery, and labor.

While the USDA has blamed "temporary market disruptions" for these cost hikes, the blame more accurately falls to President Donald Trump, thanks to his illegal war in Iran. As of Tuesday, Trump's war—and the subsequent shocks it has caused to the global diesel supply—have pushed the national average price in the U.S. up $2.70 per gallon from a year ago, a 74.6 percent increase, according to AAA data.

Unfortunately, the war in Iran is just one of several Trump administration policies making life more expensive for everyone, including the nation's farmers and ranchers. Tariffs on imported fertilizer, which began in 2020 during the first Trump administration, have made it difficult for American farmers to afford what they need. By the Farm Bureau's estimates, fertilizer costs for 2026 are projected to reach a record $40 billion, up 15 percent from the previous year.

The $8 billion program is part of a windfall of taxpayer money the Trump administration has sent to farmers as relief for harms caused by the president's actions. Last December, the USDA sent $11 billion in one-time bridge payments to more than half a million farmers nationwide. Earlier this month, the USDA announced it would provide a record $13.8 billion in gross payments to agricultural producers to cover revenue losses.

In a speech in Kansas touting the program, Trump claimed that the state's residents would see a "plunge" in prices once the war ends. That's likely an exaggeration, given the host of questionable economic policies he seems hell-bent on implementing.

Still, that shouldn't discredit the president's suggestion. Ending the war would benefit farmers, ranchers, and consumers, without doling out billions in another government bailout for a favored industry.

The post Trump's $8 Billion Diesel Bailout Pays Farmers for a Problem He Created appeared first on Reason Magazine.

California's 'Wealth Tax' Could Cost the State $39 Billion

2026-10-20T19:50:55Z

A proposed "wealth tax" on California's billionaires could backfire and cost the state tens of billions of dollars in the long run.

If the proposed tax drives wealthier residents out of the state, California could end up losing between $1 billion and $3.5 billion annually in income taxes, according to a working paper published this week. A pair of researchers at Stanford University warn that the state could end up losing an estimated $39 billion because of the consequences of the wealth tax.

"These findings suggest that the Billionaire Tax Act will not fulfill the primary functions for which it was designed," write researchers Benjamin Jaros and Joshua Rauh.

Voters in California will decide next month whether to impose the one-time, 5 percent tax when they vote on Proposition 40. The ballot measure is dividing Democrats—Gov. Gavin Newsom opposes it, while progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) claims it is the "most important ballot initiative in America and a fight for the soul of our party."

And it's already spurring some billionaires to flee the state—including venture capitalist Peter Thiel and Google co-founder Larry Page. Including those two, the seven billionaires who have publicly said they are leaving the state represent more than $539 billion of the nearly $1.9 trillion aggregate net worth of California's billionaires, the researchers note.

With other departures likely happening more quietly, the new study estimates that the tax will generate about $30 billion, a far cry from the $100 billion that the tax's supporters expect. The "behavioral response" from billionaires in California "has eroded most of the projected tax base," write Jaros and Rauh.

That's still a pretty big pot of revenue. In the long run, however, the state is likely to lose out.

After running 100,000 simulations using different assumptions, the two researchers report that "85 percent of plausible outcomes produce a negative" result in state revenue.

Other recent experiments with special taxes on wealth have backfired in similar ways. In response to a new wealth tax in Washington State, Jeff Bezos relocated to Florida, and iconic Seattle brand Starbucks shifted more of its corporate headquarters to Tennessee. Studies have shown that a "millionaires tax" in Massachusetts contributed to wealth moving out of that state.

Capital is always mobile, despite the best efforts of politicians. And if you were a billionaire living in California, why would you stick around?

Polls show voters are narrowly divided over Proposition 40. A Politico poll published earlier this month showed 46 percent of voters plan to vote for the measure, while 43 percent oppose it. Voters were similarly divided when asked if they expected it to pass or not.

The post California's 'Wealth Tax' Could Cost the State $39 Billion appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Liberty Justice Center Files First Lawsuit Challenging Trump's Section 338 Tariffs Against Canadian Imports

2026-10-20T19:09:21Z

Illustration: Midjourney

Today, the Liberty Justice Center (LJC) filed Gellert Global Group Corp. v. Trump, the first lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump's massive Section 338 tariffs against a variety of Canadian imports. The case was filed in the US Court of International Trade (which has jurisdiction over tariff-related cases); Gellert Global Group is an importer of Canadian cheese subject to the tariffs. LJC is the same public interest group that I worked with on the case challenging Trump's earlier IEEPA tariffs, which ultimate resulted in their invalidation by the Supreme Court. I am not directly involved in the present case. But I support it and believe it deserves to prevail.

LJC has also filed cases challenging Trump's massive Section 122 and Section 301 tariffs. They have become America's premier public interest law group standing up for free trade and enforcing constitutional constraints on executive power over trade restrictions.

Section 338 was part of the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930, which gravely exacerbated the Great Depression. It has never been used before, likely because it was superseded by later laws.

I have previously written about why Trump's Section 338 tariffs are harmful and illegal. See my recent Montreal Economic Institute paper on this topic, and earlier pieces here, here, and here. To briefly summarize, the tariffs on Canada are illegal because 1) Section 338 has been superseded by later legislation, 2) even if Section 338 is still operative, Trump's tariffs do not meet its requirements because the Canadian actions they supposedly respond to do not "discriminate" against US goods, as the law requires, 3) Trump's tariffs do not "offset" the Canadian actions (as Section 338 also requires), but go far beyond that, 4) the administration's interpretation of Section 338 runs afoul of the "major questions" doctrine, and 5) if Section 338 is operative and does authorize the Trump actions, it would violate the constitutional nondelegation doctrine (which restricts delegation of legislative power to the executive).

The LJC complaint advances all five of these arguments. To prevail, they need win on only one. They also add a few more technical points that I will not try to cover here. LJC further seeks a class action certification for a class of all those importers subject to the Section 338 tariffs. If this succeeds, it would block all enforcement of Section 338 tariffs, not just those paid by Gellert.

This lawsuit does not directly challenge Trump's extension of the Section 338 action to categorically ban some Canadian imports, in addition to imposing tariffs. As far as I can tell, Gellert does not import goods subject to the ban (as opposed to the tariffs). However, as I explained here and here, the legality of the bans is dependent on that of the initial tariffs. In a recent Lawfare article, I outline the reasons why executive-imposed import bans are subject to most of the same legal constraints as executive-imposed tariffs.

Like the IEEPA, Section 122, and Section 301 tariffs, Trump's use of Section 338 is an attempt to convert a limited delegation of authority into a blank check enabling the president to impose tariffs whenever he wants. Courts should reject all of these power grabs.

I commend LJC for bringing this important case. And I hope and expect it may not be the last lawsuit challenging the Section 338 measures. Future cases might well challenge the import bans directly, as well as the tariffs.

The post Liberty Justice Center Files First Lawsuit Challenging Trump's Section 338 Tariffs Against Canadian Imports appeared first on Reason Magazine.

ADU Nihilism

2026-10-20T18:50:41Z

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week, we're going to jump right into it with a philosophical question: What is an accessory dwelling unit anyway?

It's a question that officials in Somerville, Massachusetts, are realizing they didn't know the answer to after learning that a state law allowing ADUs in single-family neighborhoods could also require them to approve three-story backyard mini-apartments.

As the Boston Globe reported on Sunday, Somerville's "deep ethos in favor of new housing" is being tested by the extent of the state law. Elected officials are describing the potential for three-story ADUs as a "joke," and the area's state lawmakers, including one who voted for the state law, are demanding reforms to stop them.

The law in question was a statewide accessory dwelling unit (ADU) legalization tucked inside a major housing package of mostly new spending programs that passed in 2024.

The bill required municipalities to allow ADUs of either 900 square feet or half the size of the primary dwelling (whichever is smaller) anywhere single-family homes are allowed. A subsequent rule issued by state regulators also forbade localities from imposing height and bulk limits on ADUs that are stricter than the limits imposed on primary dwellings.

That latter rule is what's causing Somerville's freakout.

Because the town allows triple-decker apartments (a three-story triplex common in New England) in all its single-family zones, the state rule means that it must also allow ADUs to be three stories tall.

The Globe story notes that the mini-triple-deckers could still only be 900 square feet, meaning each floor of a mini-triple-decker would have to be pretty small. Thus far, no one has proposed building an ADU tower in Somerville.

Even so, the town is worried that someone will eventually propose one of these "out-of-scale" units that it'll have to approve. Its officials are now agitating for changes to the state law to prevent this.

On the one hand, one can perhaps understand why Somerville officials feel blindsided.

The text of the 2024 ADU law allows localities to set "reasonable" height and bulk limits on accessory units. It was state regulators who decided after the law's passage that requiring ADUs to be shorter than the primary unit was "unreasonable."

On the other hand, allowing a second home on a lot to be as tall as the first house sounds "reasonable" enough. Can one complain about out-of-scale development when the new unit is the same height as an existing home and a little bit smaller?

Somerville is not the first city where people's own colloquial definition of an accessory unit as "a tiny home that doesn't bother anyone" has clashed with official regulatory definitions that allow ADUs to be a fair bit bigger.

San Diego's ADU Bonus program once allowed a technically unlimited number of ADUs to be built on single-family parcels near transit stops. (Height and bulk regulations imposed practical limits on how many units could fit on a site.)

That enabled developers to build what were, in effect, ADU apartment complexes on large single-family lots throughout the city. This year, the city imposed new restrictions to stop these "monster" ADU developments, including a per-lot accessory unit cap.

The latest dust-up in Somerville, like the San Diego controversy before it, provides several lessons about the realities of housing reform.

The first is that the definition of "accessory dwelling unit" is completely arbitrary.

In Massachusetts, an ADU is a 900-square-foot home that can be one story or three stories, depending on the town and zoning district it's being built in.

In Montana, it's a 1,000-square-foot unit. In California, state law can require localities to allow ADUs as large as 1,200 square feet. Under certain conditions, these ADUs can even be sold separately from the main house.

At a certain point, an accessory dwelling unit is just a dwelling unit. A house is a house.

The second lesson is that any ADU reform that is actually intended to produce new housing units is going to cause controversy.

State and local laws allowing ADUs have been one of the more common forms of housing reforms to pass.

Supply-boosters see them as a way to get a modest number of new units. Supply skeptics don't see much to object to about allowing someone to install a kitchenette and bathroom in their garage.

If the ADU regulations don't allow much more than the garage conversion, supply-boosters will be disappointed and push for expansions of the law. California passed dozens of ADU laws before they started enabling actual units to be built.

If an ADU law actually allows more homes, the ADUs will look like homes, and the supply skeptics will be mad.

No amount of branding or planning will resolve the inherent conflict of some people wanting more development while others oppose it in their neighborhoods.

Thus far, Massachusetts' ADU law has been modestly productive. The state's ADU survey reports that 2,048 ADU permits have been issued since the state law went into effect in January 2025. About half of those units are attached ADUs (think the garage with the kitchenette).

That's a little under 10 percent of Massachusetts total housing production during that time, per the Census Bureau's building permit survey.

At 50 units permitted, Somerville has actually approved the second most ADUs of any jurisdiction in the state. (Boston has only approved 49.)

But now that it's facing the prospect of allowing ADUs that look like actual homes, it's starting to get cold feet about the new law.

Quick Links

Speaking of Massachusetts, the town of Marblehead (of "are we kind of being pricks?" fame) has at last had its rezoning plan, which allows apartments in more districts, accepted by state officials.
While Spain is tightening its tenant protections and rent controls in the face of housing protests, Portugal is trying to remove regulations on its rental housing industry. Either way, housing protesters are clashing with police.
Single-family homebuilder confidence continues to drop.
The Urban Institute has a new white paper on whether data center development is coming at the expense of housing development.
A new report on home construction in Chicago finds that the practice of aldermanic privilege (where individual aldermen can veto projects in their district) is strangling development.

The post ADU Nihilism appeared first on Reason Magazine.

You Can Trade Contracts on Elections, but Not on Onions. These College Students Want To Fix That.

2026-10-20T18:22:40Z

On Monday, a group of students from the University of Chicago stood outside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange—one of the world's largest and most diverse derivatives marketplaces—and called for the repeal of an obscure 1958 law that bans onions as futures products traded on U.S. exchanges.

Attracting an audience with a humorous jingle and amusing signs that included "Onions Deserve a Future," "Honk If You Want Free Onions," "Hot Girls Hedge Onions," and "Free Markets Feed Families," the student group, named For Our Futures, has a simple platform: a repeal of the 1958 Onion Futures Act, which prohibits anyone from trading in onion futures on commodity exchanges. (The law was amended in 2010 to ban motion picture box office receipts from being traded on commodity exchanges.) The viral campaign drew enough attention that Mike Selig—chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and a proponent of expanding the list of commodities traded on futures markets—was asked about the law in a media appearance.

American farmers produce about 6.75 billion pounds of onions a year, according to the National Onion Association, an industry trade group. While peers who grow cotton, wheat, corn, and soybeans can hedge against price swings by trading futures contracts, onion farmers have no such recourse under federal law. But, as the Agriculture Department's daily National Potato and Onion Report shows, onion prices are highly volatile and subject to wild swings, making them an ideal market for futures trading.

In its latest report, released Monday, the agency shows that onion prices have roughly doubled since this time last year. If onion futures contracts were legal, farmers could rely on market expectations instead of planting crops based on last year's prices. It would also let buyers potentially cut costs by locking in lower prices to protect against spikes. Trading onion futures contracts would give the industry a useful price-discovery tool, one that the student group aptly notes is "crucial for price stability and for hedging risks associated with weather and market fluctuations."

It's not For Our Futures' first time trying this gambit. The student group staged similar protests at college campuses in April and May, armed with bags of raw onions to entice passersby into signing their petition to legalize onion futures. The students' crusade might be comical, but after a recent Gallup poll found that 57 percent of Americans age 18–34 have a positive image of socialism, it's encouraging to see college-age students stand up for free markets.

A protest over onions sounds absurd, but it's a viral reminder to others in that age cohort of how far governments can go when given the slightest leeway to regulate an industry.

Instead of relying on outdated price points when planning future harvests, American onion producers could use resources like futures contracts that offer real-time market signals. All that would require—as the college kids state—is for federal lawmakers to "let the free market reign supreme."

The post You Can Trade Contracts on Elections, but Not on Onions. These College Students Want To Fix That. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Supreme Court Takes Up Accusations of Race-Based Middle School Admissions

2026-10-20T17:58:07Z

Three years after ending affirmative action in higher education, the Supreme Court will hear another case on race-based admissions, this time in middle schools.

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Board of Education. The case, which was originally brought forth in 2020 by the Association for Education Fairness (AFEF), a coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland, parents, alleges that Montgomery County's selection process for magnet programs (gifted programs for STEM and humanities studies in middle schools) violates the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause by discriminating against Asian American students. The county insists that the selection process is race-neutral.

Montgomery County changed its selection process in the 2021–22 school year. According to reporting from The New York Times, the county was facing pressure from community groups, including the NAACP and Citizens Assisting and Sheltering the Abused (CASA Inc.), over the underrepresentation of black and Latino students in its magnet programs. Previously, students were selected based on test scores and grades. The new process implemented a lottery system in which high-achieving students are placed in a selection pool and selected at random.

The AFEF's central complaint is that the new system factors school poverty levels into the criteria for pool eligibility. This means students' eligibility depends on their scores relative to students in similarly affluent or disadvantaged schools, rather than the general population. They argue that since Asian Americans are concentrated in high-performing, lower-poverty schools, they have to clear a higher bar to become eligible. The group alleges the new system has caused fewer Asian American students to be admitted into magnet schools, a claim that is backed up by admissions data (which also show that the share of Asian American applications has fallen). The AFEF also cites Montgomery County's 2015 hiring of Metis, a national consulting firm, to recommend ways to make the system more "equitable" as an indication of the county's effort to "racially balance" its magnet programs.

The complaint was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in 2022, who ruled that the parents hadn't shown the policy disproportionately harmed Asian American students, citing the fact that they made up a larger share of admitted students than of the applicant pool. Xinis drew a distinction between accounting for economic disparities, which she called "wholly permissible," and racial discrimination. "Alleged disparity in treatment based on socioeconomic status alone does not make plausible discrimination on account of race," she wrote in the ruling. The tension raised by Xinis sits at the center of many debates regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion, as factors like poverty levels can often become a proxy for race; therefore, policies that are neutral on their face can still disparately impact a certain race.

In February, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal, ruling that precedent from the Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board (2023) requires parents to show the policy disproportionately harmed Asian American applicants, which they hadn't. However, there is a real legal question as to whether racial groups should have to prove they were harmed as a group, as opposed to the individual, and lower courts have given mixed answers.

The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a public-interest law firm representing the AFEF, litigated a similar case in New York City, where the city implemented an economic need index in its admissions process for competitive high schools, aimed at increasing the number of black and Hispanic students. Again, parents alleged that the requirement discriminated against Asian American students. In 2024, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals found that if the city intended to discriminate, the parents don't have to prove Asian Americans were harmed as a group and that harm to an individual was enough for the case to move forward. The case was sent back to the district court to determine whether the city intended to discriminate, where it remains pending.

The Supreme Court will now settle the issue and determine "whether a plaintiff challenging a facially neutral admissions policy as racially discriminatory must establish that the targeted racial group suffered an aggregate disparate impact relative to its share of the applicant pool," according to SCOTUSBlog.

In a statement on Monday, PLF Senior Attorney Chris Kieser said, "The Constitution protects students as individuals, not as members of a racial group. A school district should not be able to defeat a discrimination claim by showing that its policy did not harm enough Asian American children. Every family deserves admissions rules that judge their child on their own merit."

The post Supreme Court Takes Up Accusations of Race-Based Middle School Admissions appeared first on Reason Magazine.

New in SCOTUSBlog: "The separation and expansion of powers between Congress and the president"

2026-10-20T16:28:06Z

SCOTUSBlog has published the final installment in our series on recent changes in constitutional law. This essay focuses on the separation of powers. It begins:

The late 1990s and early 2000s ushered in the Rehnquist federalism revolution, which appeared to place limits on Congress' powers and expand those of the states. Then came Sept. 11, 2001, and the global war on terror, which seemed poised to expand the president's powers. Yet, by 2008, Congress' powers seemed without meaningful limits and the president's efforts to expand his own powers had failed. And the separation of powers remained, well, separate. Nevertheless, the next two decades would vastly enlarge the president's powers as Congress' authority over the executive branch would be greatly diminished.

Here is a chart that shows the shift in cases:

Here is our conclusion:

Up to the fourth edition of our casebook in 2022, constitutional law followed a somewhat predictable arc. To be sure, there were shifts to the left and to the right, but the doctrine could be explained by a coherent narrative: the New Deal settlement on federal power was untouchable; the court would offer only modest protections for federalism; the administrative state was beyond reproach; attempts to single out unpopular groups would be halted; "benign" racial classifications were permitted; and church and state were strictly separated. Now, each aspect of this narrative has been reconceived. The five years since that edition appeared have brought the most changes to constitutional law since the Warren court.

We began this series by observing that lawyers tend to internalize the constitutional law that existed when they attended law school. The same is true of law professors. Virtually all law professors today came of age in a time of stasis. They could safely assume that the trajectory of the Warren court would continue indefinitely. But the jurisprudence of the Burger and Rehnquist courts was primed for a reversal, just as the Warren court reversed so many precedents from before. Ultimately, the Roberts court continues to chip away at precedents from the 1970s and 1980s, even if the precedents from the 1960s and before remain.

Many of these professors have struggled to cope with sudden changes in the doctrine. Some have voiced their despair of teaching constitutional law at all. Unsurprisingly, their students also struggle to cope with these developments. This trend is regrettable. Our role as casebook editors, and constitutional law professors, is to guide students through the entire corpus of constitutional law, from the framing to the present day, without any nostalgia for, or bias against, times gone by.

This is my last planned post with SCOTUSBlog. I'm sure there will be more to come.

The post New in SCOTUSBlog: "The separation and expansion of powers between Congress and the president" appeared first on Reason Magazine.

The European Union Wants To Punish People for Their Speech—Without Even a Trial

2026-10-20T16:02:17Z

The European Union claims that "the fundamental right to freedom of expression" only applies to journalists "acting in good faith," and that authorities do not have to give due process before freezing people's bank accounts, as these sanctions are "temporary and are not criminal in nature," according to a legal letter shared by a sanctioned journalist.

Last year, the European Union blacklisted 21 people for allegedly spreading Russian propaganda, banning them from doing business in Europe. One of them, Hüseyin Doğru, was falsely listed as a Turkish citizen living in Istanbul. In fact, Doğru is a German journalist in Berlin, making him the first European citizen on European soil to be sanctioned this way.

It was like being sentenced to "civil death," Doğru told American journalist Chris Hedges. He was banned from holding a job in Europe or having a European bank account, and authorities have restricted Doğru to a €506 ($567) per month allowance from his own money. "The sanctions are designed for people outside of Europe, so they don't really know how that should function with me, because I'm a European citizen and I'm living in Europe," Doğru told Hedges.

Last month, the civil libertarian Wau Holland Foundation hired lawyers to contest the sanctions against Doğru. And earlier this month, the Council of the European Union sent a response letter, which Doğru shared on social media, promising to escalate the case to the E.U. General Court. Although the council conceded to Doğru that he is not a Turkish citizen living in Turkey, it still insisted on the authority to punish him for his speech.

The council quoted a 2022 court case between the Russian news outlet RT and several European countries: "The protection of the right of the media and, more particularly, of journalists to impart information on issues of general interest is subject to the proviso that they are acting in good faith and on an accurate factual basis and provide 'reliable and precise' information in accordance with the ethics of journalism."

Doğru's lawyers insisted that he should be treated as innocent until proven guilty. But the council responded that sanctions fall short of a criminal punishment, so any complaint about a "violation of the presumption of innocence is therefore unfounded." In other words, because he is not accused of a crime, Doğru has fewer rights than a criminal suspect.

"People need to understand sanctions are an extrajudicial measure. They're extrajudicial. There's no court. There is no hearing, no evidence, there is no sentence by the court, nothing," Doğru told Hedges. "When you're sanctioned, you are not informed….The day when I was sanctioned, me and my wife, my wife was pregnant back then, we went to the pharmacy to buy medicine for her, and her cards did not work."

The original blacklisting decision accuses Doğru of supporting "actions by the Government of the Russian Federation which undermine or threaten stability and security in the Union" by spreading "false information on politically controversial subjects with the intent of creating ethnic, political and religious discord amongst its predominantly German target audience."

Doğru and his wife, British journalist Lizzie Phelan, previously worked at the Russian-funded publication Redfish. A few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he split off to create a new website called red.media, insisting to The Left Berlin that "we are not Russian. We are not Kremlin. red.media is not funded by Russia or any other state." In the same interview, Doğru called Russia an "imperialist" regime.

But in September 2024, a Biden administration "fact sheet" on Russian propaganda offhandedly mentioned red.media, citing a hit piece on Doğru by the German newspaper Tagesspiegel. Doğru told Hedges that the U.S. fact sheet created a circular logic in German media: "They said red.media is Russian because [U.S. Secretary of State Antony] Blinken said so. But what they never said is that Blinken is referring to your articles where you never say it like that. You say there is a suspicion, it might be so."

Doğru shut down red.media in May 2025 due to the bad press. The European Union sanctioned him a few weeks later. Doğru's lawyer, Alexander Górski, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine earlier this year that the European Union didn't "even attempt to make an evidentiary case" about any ongoing connection to Russia.

The blacklisting decision also claimed that, during a pro-Palestinian student protest at Humboldt University in Berlin, red.media "coordinated with the occupiers to disseminate images of their vandalism—which included the use of Hamas symbols." Doğru told Hedges that these accusations are an attack on journalists' freedom to do their jobs.

The European Union does not have the same protections for the freedom of the press as the U.S. Constitution. Earlier this year, the Curia of the European Union ruled that simply reposting clips from Russian media could be a violation of European sanctions, even if no money changes hands, something that is explicitly exempted from U.S. sanctions under the Berman Amendment.

Still, U.S. authorities have tried to push the limits of international sanctions to censor speech. The Biden administration told an American nonprofit that "the provision of a platform for [the sanctioned individuals] to speak" was illegal, backing down after the nonprofit sued.

And the Trump administration sanctioned Italian academic Francesca Albanese for her "lawfare" calling for the prosecution of Israeli leaders and a boycott of Israeli industries. In addition to freezing her bank accounts, the sanctions forced Columbia University researchers to cut off their relationship with Albanese, and Georgetown University to close her email account.

In the same statement accusing red.stream of being a Russian front, the Biden administration announced sanctions on two Russian news agencies. "We encourage dissent, open debate, and free discourse. But we will not stand for attempts by state actors to carry out covert activities with the goal of hijacking that discourse," the statement insisted. "The ultimate goal of sanctions is not to punish, but to bring about a positive change in behavior."

The post The European Union Wants To Punish People for Their Speech—Without Even a Trial appeared first on Reason Magazine.

New Yorkers Don't Compost. Will They Be Fined Into Compliance?

2026-10-20T15:15:35Z

Most New Yorkers are lawbreakers and don't even know it.

New York City requires residents to separate certain sorts of food scraps from the rest of their trash. Composting diverts waste from landfills, creates nutrient-rich soil, and helps the environment by reducing greenhouse gases. When food scraps are buried in a landfill, they decompose without access to oxygen, causing the release of methane. Composting lets rotten food breathe and reduces methane emissions. In New York City, composting is also supposed to save money by reducing the amount of trash that the city hauls to landfills and incinerators, many of which are out of state.

The city's older, voluntary residential curbside composting initiative started as a pilot program 13 years ago under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In his 2013 State of the City address, he declared that he would "tackle New York City's final recycling frontier, and that is food waste." Mayor Bill de Blasio wanted to expand the program, but in 2018 that was put on hold due to exploding costs and low participation rates.

Around this time, according to the Citizens Budget Commission (CBC), the city was spending an estimated $1,700 per ton to collect organics compared to $291 per ton of regular trash, as special composting trucks were carrying relatively little waste. The CBC also reported that in participating neighborhoods, almost 90 percent of organic material was still going in the regular trash in 2017. During the pandemic, budget constraints forced the sanitation department to pause compost pickups altogether.

The city made composting mandatory in late 2024, under Mayor Eric Adams. Since then, residents have had to separate eggshells, orange peels, and other food scraps from regular trash and dispose of these organic materials in composting bins. In April 2025, the city began issuing fines of up to $300 to property owners who failed to comply. The city paused fines for most violators a few weeks later, on the grounds that New Yorkers needed more time to learn what to do. Now, under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the composting enforcement fines are back.

With all this confusion, it's hardly surprising that New Yorkers are not great composters. According to the New York City Independent Budget Office (IBO), "Organic waste—food scraps, yard waste, and other compostable materials—make up roughly 36% of the City's residential waste stream, yet organics collections were 2.4% of residential waste collected in [fiscal year] 2025." In other words, New Yorkers separated only about 7 percent of their organic waste from the regular trash during the first nine months of the citywide composting program. A recent report from the city government says that the amount of all organics separated from the rest of the trash increased by 25 percent in fiscal year 2026. Given the already low levels of compliance, the figures are still not encouraging.

It's unclear exactly how much the city is spending on this largely ignored program. A spokesperson for the Sanitation Department told Reason, "It is difficult to put a number on it, since composting is integrated with so much of [the department's] other work, but for personnel and processing, the city budget includes baselined funding for 299 uniform positions at a recurring cost of $33.4M a year for curbside organics collection."

Still, some have tried to estimate how much the city would need to compost to make the program cost-effective. Samantha MacBride, a former director of research and operations at the sanitation department, has estimated that the city would need to sort out about 30 percent of its organic waste.

The Mamdani administration attempted to increase compliance by reinstating fines at the beginning of this year. Buildings face tickets of up to $300 for failing to compost or composting improperly, but the fines haven't had much impact. According to data from the city's sanitation department, there was a brief jump in the amount of organic waste collected after Adams instituted fines in April 2025. But oddly, the monthly tonnage collected in May, June, and July of 2025 (when fines were not being enforced) was higher than in May, June, and July of 2026 (when fines were in effect).

City of New York

Suppose all residents complied with the composting mandate. Would the city even be able to process all that waste? Absolutely not.

As of 2025, the city can handle only about 400,000 tons of organic waste per year. That organic waste goes either to traditional composting facilities or to anaerobic digesters, which turn waste into energy. Based on the IBO's estimate that 36 percent of residential waste is compostable, New York residents produce around 1.1 million tons of compostable organic waste per year.

The city's composting and digesting facilities would hit capacity if New Yorkers put barely more than a third of their organic waste into brown bins. Not that the city is close to that level of compliance. Right now, it's still trying to tell New Yorkers the mandate even exists.

In one amusing effort to alert citizens about composting, the city launched a Sex and the City marketing campaign funded by a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. The ad features the composting mascot "Scrappy" on the side of NYC buses and urges residents to call 3-1-1 if their buildings aren't complying with the rules.

Reason asked several New Yorkers whether they understood this ad. Overwhelmingly, they did not.

One might think this PSA would at least inspire Carrie Bradshaw wannabes in Manhattan to compost, but no. Manhattanites actually tend to be the worst composters. This may be due to living in cramped apartments and large apartment buildings. The borough with the highest composting rate is actually Staten Island, the city's Republican stronghold, where many residents live in single-family homes.

Steven Cohen, who used to run Columbia University's Earth Institute, is skeptical that the program will ever achieve 100 percent compliance. He believes composting is a worthwhile endeavor, but as he told Reason, "It takes a lot to change people's habits." That's why he has proposed an alternative to relying on individuals to sort their trash: AI.

Ideally, he says, a mixed stream of garbage could go to "essentially a waste mining facility where artificial intelligence and robotics will do the separation for us and try to extract the value out of the waste stream." Instead of paying to send garbage to landfills, he says, we could extract, process, and sell the valuable mineral resources in the waste stream. Some places, such as Portsmouth, Virginia, have begun experimenting with AI trash sorting, but the technology is still in its early stages.

And for now, New York City seems determined to keep its mandatory composting program going with fines and confusing reminders from Scrappy.

Photo Credits: MEGA / Dennis Rees / MEGA / Newscom/DRSTA/Newscom; John Marshall Mantel/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; RICHARD B. LEVINE/Newscom: Rafael Ben-Ari/Chameleons Eye/Newscom

Music Credits: "Sneaky Tactics" by Ilona Harpaz via Artlist; "Gentle Persuasion" by Matt Evans via Artlist; "Second Smile" by LMOP via Artlist; "Catch Me" by Ty Simon via Artlist; "The Microwave Dance" by Semo via Artlist

The post New Yorkers Don't Compost. Will They Be Fined Into Compliance? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Fans Don't Want a 24-Team College Football Playoff. The NCAA Thinks You'll Watch Anyway.

2026-10-20T15:06:20Z

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Be careful when you're behind the wheel this week.

College football is great! Surely you want even more of it, right? We'll get into the problems with a 24-team College Football Playoff (CFP), then talk about the NBA's new betting restrictions, and close with thoughts about President Donald Trump's new government golf course plans. And just in case you don't make it to the end, here's a shortcut to our survey on who you're rooting for in the World Series.

But first, many congratulations to "Gary's 1st Entry" on outlasting everyone else in our NFL Survivor group. There's no prize other than this shoutout, so be sure to print out today's newsletter, highlight this paragraph, and frame it in gold. Perhaps Gary can keep going and challenge Primetime Paulie Rothrock's 13-game winning streak from last season.

Locker Room Links

Both teams in the WNBA Finals left the court for the National Anthem—unclear if this was a protest or just part of the pregame routine. WNBA policy doesn't require teams to be on the court for the anthem, but does require a "dignified posture" if they are.
"Inside ESPN's tangled ties to the Protect College Sports Act"
Bars around Dodger Stadium used a big bet against the Dodgers on Kalshi to hedge the revenue lost because of the Dodgers' playoff exit.
American cities that want to host matches for the 2031 Women's World Cup have learned from this summer's hosting experience and are negotiating with FIFA to limit taxpayer obligations.
In the thick of a playoff race, three Zambian women's soccer players are separated from their National Women's Soccer League teams because they played in Uganda, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a three-week restriction on reentry due to Ebola. (There are zero active Ebola cases in Uganda and Zambia.)
Elsewhere in Reason: "Be Prepared for Elizabeth Warren's Reign of Economic Error"
This is the kind of excessively nerdy fantasy football content I live for. (Yahoo remains the best fantasy sports system. ESPN's is trash, relying on name recognition to get by.)

I figured out how ESPN calculates fantasy football win percentage, it's bad!

ESPN made a stats 101 error when calculating their win percentage which leads to horribly miscalibrated numbers. ( thread) pic.twitter.com/bDypgjelKj

— Will (@will_j_5) October 18, 2026

Watering Down College Football Is a Mistake

Saturday was one of the best days of college football ever—or perhaps it could have been, if we thought any of the five top-10 teams who took a loss were now certainly out of playoff contention. Instead, Georgia, Notre Dame, Indiana, Alabama, and Texas are all still very much alive in the championship hunt.

Today was one of the craziest days in college football history:

- First time ever five teams ranked in the top 7 lose in a single week
- First time the No. 1-ranked team loses to an unranked team in consecutive weeks since 1990
- First time Texas, Alabama, and Georgia all lose… pic.twitter.com/psVRoM5s5b

— Bobby Football (@Rob__Paul) October 18, 2026

With two losses, Alabama and Texas are at least on the edge of the playoff bubble with perhaps no more room for error. But that's only true under this year's CFP format. Next year, the playoff is almost officially set to balloon to 24 teams, making the chaos of a day like Saturday matter even less.

Fans will always celebrate a huge upset or major rivalry win, of course—Tennessee fans don't need playoff stakes as an excuse to get drunk when they beat Alabama. But the joy of a rivalry win in the past was always bigger because of the off-field stakes, too—the first loss for your rival meant they probably wouldn't be national champions, the second meant they'd be out of the Rose Bowl, a third meant you could be proud your team sent them packing for the Alamo Bowl. Winning is great; ruining your rival's season is even better.

With 24 teams in the playoff, the joy is a bit diminished because it will take four or possibly five losses to knock a powerhouse program out of the CFP (Iowa, at 8–4, was ranked 23rd by the committee before last year's playoffs). It'll be a bit like a rivalry win in college basketball—we win, you suck, congrats on getting a slightly worse NCAA Tournament seed.

In the business of sports, more inventory for TV is king, and the powers that be think more teams playing more playoff games will make more money. At Free Agent, we don't begrudge institutions for trying to make more money—we all do the same every day. But it's not clear abandoning conference championship games will be the answer, especially when the Big Ten and SEC championships apparently outdraw many playoff games.

ESPN and the power conferences know fans aren't happy about it—just look at all the chatter online, and how the crowd at BYU reacted when College GameDay discussed expansion on Saturday (especially when BYU would probably benefit from expansion!). They're betting enough people will watch to make the expansion profitable anyway. The last hope is that fans get loud enough to bully them into abandoning expansion—which only occasionally works, sometimes on things small (putting the trophy logo on the court for the NBA Finals) and large (soccer's European Super League). If any powerhouse considers going independent, that might shock leaders into a rethink too.

Almost every sport I know is adding more: more teams, bigger playoffs, more for TV. As fans, we still eat it up, of course—much to the excitement of the TV executives who are selling commercial time to the people trying to reach us, the viewing public. (The only counterexample is the MLB proposal to cut eight games from the regular season—I'd love to see each sport I follow cut its season by about 25 percent to make regular season games matter more, so I'm interested to see how this goes.)

Perhaps I'm biased because my favorite team, Michigan State, is a dumpster fire—they could expand the playoff to 64 teams and the Spartans still wouldn't deserve a bid. I personally don't have a whole lot at stake in the playoff format now or anytime soon. But as a neutral, the chaos of Saturday might have been viewed with my full attention in the past—instead, this year I just had it on in the background while I played video games.

Sports Are Regulating Bets Without Politicians, Part 3

After last year's major betting scandal, the NBA asked sportsbooks late last week to stop offering certain types of potentially problematic bets. The sportsbooks, which the NBA says handle roughly 99 percent of the U.S. betting market, agreed. No politician or regulation was necessary to solve the problem.

No longer can bettors bet on unders for a bit player who likely won't get more than 12 minutes of playtime. Bettors also can't wager on the opening tip or on players to miss specific shots. Parlays that string together under bets on the same player's statistics are also out (this one seems a bit harsh—if you just want to bet on a certain major player to have an off night, you can bet on stats separately, but not in a big multiplier parlay). Bets on players who have two-way contracts between the NBA and G League were already banned.

This all comes on the heels of similar developments last year in the NFL and MLB. While some people want to ban prop bets altogether, the NFL asked sportsbooks to eliminate bets in four different categories. Sportsbooks largely agreed or weren't offering those bets anyway. MLB, in light of some pitching-related scandals, asked for a $200 limit on pitch-specific bets and to keep them out of parlays—sportsbooks agreed to that too.

As I wrote last year, "Ideally, this is how the regulation of the sports betting industry should go….These approaches are catching the nuances of what works for both the leagues and for sportsbooks without the heavy-handed approaches of politicians who would use an axe to ban all prop bets instead of a scalpel to limit problematic bets."

It's important to note leagues are able to do this because they have commercial partnerships with the sportsbooks. Otherwise, the leagues would have no direct leverage over a sportsbook offering a bet the league doesn't like. Keep that in mind the next time you see people bemoaning a league partnership with a sportsbook or a prediction market.

Trump's Golf Course Plans Have People Teed Off

President Donald Trump has new plans for the National Park Service golf course at East Potomac—again. Last time new plans were announced, the site plan still had its historic miniature golf course, a par-3 course, and the existing road still ringing the property for bicycling, running, etc. Much of the public didn't like that plan anyway—now, none of that remains in the latest plans, just 18 holes of golf and a driving range.

Trump announces plans for the redeveloped East Potomac Park golf course. pic.twitter.com/ZiGYgc99Uo

— Andrew Leyden (@PenguinSix) October 18, 2026

What's really going on here seems quite clear to me: Like so many other things going on in the second Trump administration, this is a scheme to enrich the Trump family. The plan?

Step 1: Cancel a lease that was signed during the first Trump administration with a nonprofit group operating the golf course and working, in the long term, on major capital improvements and renovations.

Step 2: Use taxpayer dollars to pay for renovation of the course into, allegedly, a championship-level course capable of hosting major golf tournaments (no matter that the area has next to zero parking, is a mile from the nearest Metro station, and only accessible by narrow roads not meant to handle tens of thousands of spectators).

Step 3: Have the federal government sign a sweetheart deal with, who else, the golf division of the Trump Organization to operate the course on extremely favorable and profitable terms.

If you're wondering why the Trump administration is doing something, corruption is usually a good guess.

The arguments for the course don't make much sense. There are plenty of adequate, competitively priced golf courses in the broader Washington, D.C., area. Several of them are already capable of hosting professional golf tournaments. Between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour, there were three tournaments at three different courses in the last couple years. The 2030 PGA Championship and 2037 Ryder Cup will happen just over the D.C. line in Bethesda, Maryland.

East Potomac is not the nicest course around, no thanks to the legal limbo it's been in for the past year. But if the National Park Service is going to, for some reason, be in the business of running a golf course, it should be a course that emphasizes and teaches its history instead of the pipe dream of a corrupt madman.

Who Ya Got? 2026 World Series Edition

For the first time in 46 years, we've got a World Series contested by two teams that have never won it before. Brewers against Rays is also a rare instance of the top seeds from each league outlasting the randomness of the MLB playoffs to make the World Series. And before you trot out the tired line that "TV executives must be seething about the small market teams" remember that they care much more about getting a playoff series that goes seven games with close results in each game (What did I say above? Inventory rules all!).

In any case, I want to know who you're rooting for. At first glance, neither team seems super objectionable to me. Come back next week for my thoughts. But make sure you sound off and take 10 seconds to respond to our World Series poll here.

Replay of the Week

Kick-six alert! (Honorable mention to the blocked extra point returned for two the other way.)

"A kick-six type opportunity."

Chris Lewis was all over this one on the CBS Sports Network call of Nevada-North Dakota State. pic.twitter.com/eRt42xcYIt

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) October 18, 2026

That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the weekend: MSU men's hockey (No. 2 in the nation!) against New Hampshire.

The post Fans Don't Want a 24-Team College Football Playoff. The NCAA Thinks You'll Watch Anyway. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Will Ohio Voters Buy Republicans' Pitch?

2026-10-20T13:30:15Z

Can Republicans just spend their way to success in Ohio? "Republicans have bombarded Ohioans with ads with $19 million spent on competitive races through Oct. 12, intended to sell voters on the tax law that had been called the One Big Beautiful Bill," reports The Washington Post. "But the message is struggling to connect with voters amid anxiety over tariffs and the war with Iran, which have pushed up prices for everyday products. The ad blitz, the most spent on the topic in any state with competitive races, is aimed at bolstering vulnerable GOP candidates in a state that was considered safely Republican for the better part of the last decade."

Republicans in states across the Midwest (and the country) have experimented with distancing themselves from the Trump administration and its agenda; it's hard to know if this strategy will prove successful, or if it's just too little, too late. In Ohio, though, Republican candidates are mostly staying close to Dear Leader.

Sen. Jon Husted, a Republican, is running for U.S. Senate against Democrat Sherrod Brown in what looks to be an extremely tight race; ads claim Husted has "supported ending taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security, plus a $200 million investment in rural hospitals," trying to tie him closely to President Donald Trump's agenda. But it's really not clear whether this type of pitch will be enough to make voters forget about tariffs and inflation, the war in the Middle East and gas prices. A New York Times/Siena poll found that 79 percent of likely Ohio voters disapproved of Trump's handling of gas prices. It's hard to sell people on a tax cut when they're paying a different tax, in the form of tariffs, every time they go to the store; Ohio voters might not be so easily swindled.

Gun laws in Oregon: In the aftermath of the tragic shooting at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon, where a 16-year-old killed three little kids and one teacher, some parents of elementary schoolers there are asking what laws can be changed.

But "Oregon earns high marks from gun safety advocates for its firearms laws," notes The New York Times. "Everytown for Gun Safety, one of the nation's largest gun violence prevention organizations, ranks Oregon 12th in the country for the strength of its laws, citing recent legislation tightening storage requirements, banning untraceable 'ghost guns' and prohibiting devices that can convert semiautomatic firearms into machine guns." Gifting laws are pretty lax, though, and that might be what happened here: The 16-year-old's mother seems to have been the one who purchased the Maverick 88 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, so it's possible she either gifted the gun to her son or that he stole it from her. "Decades ago, Oregon lawmakers made an exception to gun laws that allow parents to give rifles and shotguns to minors. In many areas of the state, as in other parts of the American West and South, it's a rite of passage for a young person to receive a weapon for hunting or target practice."

There's no law that can really prevent theft of weapons, especially when the thief is a teenager living inside the home where the gun is stored, and there's no law that can prevent parents from foolishly gifting guns to teenagers or young adults whom they've misjudged as capable of handling the responsibility. These are terribly unsatisfying realities.

Prosecutors could, of course, attempt to try the parent for the crimes of their teenager. They "could consider charges ranging from reckless endangerment to manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison," continues the Times. "But that would require evidence of more than just a parent's awareness that a child was troubled. Prosecutors would have to establish that the mother disregarded—or, in the case of criminal negligence, failed to recognize—a substantial and unjustifiable risk."

Scenes from New York: "Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Monday that New York City will expand free child care for 2-year-olds to Staten Island and across the Bronx as the city moves to add 10,000 seats next school year," reports The New York Times. Here's why that won't work:

QUICK HITS

Something juicy for you, readers, since I too frequently subject you to my Catholicism. Let's switch it up: "I'd been thinking about turning down the speed on my vibrator for a long time, but I'd considered my affliction personal, not society-wide. Now it was dawning on me that the problem wasn't simply mine. Women are being sold egg-shaped suction devices in the pages of New York magazine, and BookTok influencers pair with sex-toy companies for promotional collabs. Yes, there is a bookmark that doubles as a vibrator," writes Sarah Hepola for The Atlantic. "Does this consumer game of one-upmanship amid the mainstreaming of vibrators even matter? There are too many varieties of women's razors, too, and I don't care. But what worries me is how this points in the direction in which so much of modern life has been barreling: self-pleasure, self-love, self-care, self, self, self.…Like so much of our day-to-day lives, getting off is becoming more efficient, easier, faster. But has it gotten better?"
"Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America," wrote Elon Musk on X yesterday. "This will be the first of many."
"Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate arrested last year by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents amid campus protests, appealed to the Supreme Court on Monday in an attempt to prevent his deportation," reports The New York Times. "Khalil, a legal permanent U.S. resident who is married to an American, became an early and high-profile example of President Trump's crackdown on pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses."
Is California's new billionaire tax a net revenue loser?
Play the discretionary review computer game! See how far you get as a developer in San Francisco!

The post Will Ohio Voters Buy Republicans' Pitch? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

The DEA Wants To Turn 7-OH Consumers Into Criminals

2026-10-20T13:00:27Z

The federal drug police want to turn consumers of certain concentrated kratom-derived products into criminals while leaving traditional kratom leaf products outside the ban. Before exposing adults to arrest and prosecution, the feds owe them a scientific explanation for that distinction.

On October 14, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced its intent to temporarily place 7-hydroxymitragynine (commonly called 7-OH) and mitragynine pseudoindoxyl—above specified thresholds—in Schedule I. Schedule I is the category for drugs that the agency thinks have "no currently accepted medical use" and "a high potential for abuse." A scheduling order could be issued on or after November 13.

The DEA already classifies mitragynine pseudoindoxyl as a Schedule I substance regardless of concentration. The proposal would ease that restriction by introducing thresholds—while imposing new Schedule I restrictions on 7-OH under the same criteria.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have supported the DEA's move, and HHS supplied the proposed thresholds. Under the temporary scheduling provision of the Controlled Substances Act, the DEA must consider HHS's comments but need not follow its recommendations. Congress gave a law-enforcement agency the authority to decide which drugs individuals may consume.

The ordinary scheduling process gives health officials more authority: HHS's scientific and medical findings bind the DEA, and its recommendation against control prevents the agency from proceeding. But temporary scheduling lets the DEA bypass those requirements when it determines a substance poses an imminent hazard to public safety.

Congress should never have given federal drug police that power. Having done so, it should at least demand compelling evidence before they exercise it.

Kratom comes from a Southeast Asian plant whose principal alkaloid is mitragynine. Its leaves contain trace amounts of 7-OH. Manufacturers also sell concentrated 7-OH products and products containing the related compound, mitragynine pseudoindoxyl.

Millions of Americans use kratom or kratom-derived products. A 2022 review cited an estimate of 2.1 million U.S. users in 2020. In a survey of 2,798 users, 91 percent reported using it for pain and 41 percent said they use it to reduce or stop opioid use. In a letter to HHS, nine military veterans described using 7-OH to manage pain and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and to move away from other opioids and from alcohol. They warned that banning it could drive them back to more dangerous drugs.

These reports describe benefits that warrant further study and needs that will persist after a ban.

Concentrated 7-OH products deliver a potent alkaloid without requiring consumers to ingest large amounts of kratom leaf. 7-OH is significantly more potent than mitragynine in activating the opioid receptors involved in pain relief. Researchers still need to determine how its benefits and risks compare across different human doses.

The DEA's proposed criminal controls hinge on concentration and composition. The concentration threshold is 1 milligram per gram of solid material or 1 milligram per milliliter of liquid, calculated for the two covered substances combined. Products would also trigger controls if the mitragynine-to-covered-substances ratio fell below 100 to 1.

Consider a tablet containing 15 milligrams of 7-OH, a strength advertised by some sellers. If the tablet weighs one gram, its concentration exceeds the limit fifteenfold. Diluting the same 15 milligrams into a product weighing 15 grams brings it to the concentration limit. Consuming the entire product still delivers the same dose. It would also need at least 1,500 milligrams of mitragynine to avoid the separate ratio restriction.

Adding bulk changes the concentration but does not change the amount of 7-OH consumed. These calculations tell us nothing about whether that dose is effective or safe.

The DEA acknowledges that controlled trials have not established safe consumption limits or standardized dosing for concentrated 7-OH products. Neither DEA nor HHS has determined that below-threshold products are safe.

In a public comment submitted to HHS in July, I urged officials to obtain the human evidence needed to justify a threshold before setting one. Animal studies can reveal hazards, including dependence and respiratory depression, but they cannot, by themselves, identify a scientifically defensible cutoff for human consumption.

Officials may intend these thresholds to distinguish traditional kratom from concentrated products. What evidence shows that crossing that boundary justifies criminal penalties?

The DEA also owes consumers an accounting of what prohibition could do to them. People seeking relief from pain or withdrawal will still need it after a ban. Some may abandon these products, while others may turn to illicit sellers or switch to other opioids. Criminalizing those choices could make them more dangerous.

Misleading labels, contamination, dependence, and drug interactions warrant attention. Accurate labeling, independent testing, age restrictions, and enforcement against fraud can address several of these concerns. Before resorting to criminal penalties, the DEA should explain why those measures would be inadequate.

We already know how difficult it is to verify a drug's identity, strength, and purity in an illicit market. Creating another prohibited product will give that market another opportunity.

Autonomous adults should be free to decide which substances they consume and which risks they accept. The DEA proposes taking that choice away even as it acknowledges major gaps in the medical evidence. Before the drug police turn more consumers into criminals, they should at least demonstrate how doing so will make those consumers safer.

The post The DEA Wants To Turn 7-OH Consumers Into Criminals appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Did Oregon Man Who Shot the School Shooter Violate Oregon Law in Carrying Gun onto School Property?

2026-10-20T14:22:05Z

I've seen some say yes as to that—as an objection to gun control laws, not as an objection to the man's actions—but I don't think it's quite right.

It's true that Oregon law generally criminalizes gun possession on school property, including by people with concealed carry licenses, if the school board adopts such a no-guns-allowed policy. And apparently the Bend school in which the shooting took place indeed has such a policy.

But Oregon law recognizes a so-called "choice of evils" defense, often called a "necessity" defense, that allows people to violate a wide range of laws if it's genuinely necessary in an emergency:

(1) Unless inconsistent with other provisions of chapter 743, Oregon Laws 1971, defining justifiable use of physical force, or with some other provision of law, conduct which would otherwise constitute an offense is justifiable and not criminal when:

(a) That conduct is necessary as an emergency measure to avoid an imminent public or private injury; and

(b) The threatened injury is of such gravity that, according to ordinary standards of intelligence and morality, the desirability and urgency of avoiding the injury clearly outweigh the desirability of avoiding the injury sought to be prevented by the statute defining the offense in issue.

(2) The necessity and justifiability of conduct under subsection (1) of this section shall not rest upon considerations pertaining only to the morality and advisability of the statute, either in its general application or with respect to its application to a particular class of cases arising thereunder.

That means that, even when gun possession is otherwise criminal, it is "not criminal" when it's necessary to avoid imminent serious harm. Indeed, even felons, who are generally barred from possessing guns, may pick up a gun that's physically available to them when it's necessary for imminent self-defense:

We think that the trial judge's conclusion that ORS 161.200 [the choice of evils statute] is inapplicable to the offense of being an ex convict in possession of a firearm is incorrect. The statute contains no such express exception, and we see no justification for implying one. To the contrary, one who has been previously convicted of a felony is just as entitled to defend himself from an imminent threat of injury as is any other private citizen. We hold that the defense is available to those who have been previously convicted of a felony and, in appropriate circumstances, may justify their resort to a weapon which it would otherwise be unlawful for them to possess.

Likewise, a law-abiding gun owner may go into a school where gun possession is otherwise criminal when it's necessary to try to stop a school shooting. (Even in jurisdictions that don't formally recognize a choice-of-evils / necessity defense, the separate doctrines of self-defense or defense of others may provide a defense as to bringing a gun onto school property in such a situation, just as they provide a defense as to using the gun to kill the shooter.) And while in some situations the balancing test in the necessity defense can be vaguer than the somewhat more precise terms of the self-defense defense, carrying a gun into a no-guns zone in order to stop an apparent in-progress school shooting makes for an extraordinarily clear case for the defense.

Nor is this just a matter of prosecutorial discretion. If a prosecutor does file charges in such a situation, the gun owner can raise the defense. And if the evidence is sufficient to potentially trigger the defense (e.g., if the defendant or a witness testifies to facts that a reasonable jury may interpret as sufficing for the defense), then "the state must negate [the defense] beyond a reasonable doubt."

In this respect, the choice-of-evils defense is much like the defense-of-others defense. Killing someone is generally a crime; but the law recognizes that sometimes it's justifiable (in particular, to defend yourself or others against death or other very serious harms), and thus provides a defense-of-others affirmative defense.

Likewise, carrying a gun onto school property in Oregon is a crime when the school district forbids it. But the law recognizes that sometimes it's justifiable (in particular, to defend people against a school shooting), and thus provides a choice-of-evils affirmative defense.

Naturally, the operation of the defense depends on the good sense of prosecutors, judges, and juries—just as the operation of the self-defense and defense-of-others defense do. But it's the way our legal system deals, even if at times imperfectly, with situations where an emergency need warrants what would otherwise be illegal action (whether that otherwise illegal action would be murder, as to the shooting itself, or a weapons offense, as to the carrying of a gun onto school property).

Of course, the choice-of-evils defense doesn't work for people who want to carry guns in forbidden places simply to be prepared in case the gun is needed (the usual reason most people who carry guns do so). One can certainly debate whether schools should allow at least some people, such as teachers or other school staff who are trained and licensed, to keep guns on their persons in school.

But even if you think the Oregon law (coupled with Bend's policy) is foolish in generally criminalizing gun licensees' carrying a gun onto school property, it's not so foolish as to criminalizing their carrying a gun onto school property when necessary to stop an in-progress school shooting.

The post Did Oregon Man Who Shot the School Shooter Violate Oregon Law in Carrying Gun onto School Property? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Children May Proceed Pseudonymously; May Their Parents?

2026-10-20T23:08:03Z

From L.R. v. Bd. of Ed. of Jennings School Dist., decided Wednesday by Judge Joshua Divine (E.D. Mo.):

L.R. and her mother, R.S., alleged that after an incident involving L.R.'s father at end-of-school pickup, employees of Jennings School District placed L.R. in an out-of-school virtual learning program that was inferior to regular schooling. According to their complaint, the district employees did not provide L.R. with an explanation of how her conduct justified the suspension, a timeline or consistent standards for returning to in-person classes, or an opportunity to be heard or appeal. Those shortcomings, they argued, violated L.R.'s rights to constitutional and statutory due process as well as a free public education.

Since then, the parties have reached a settlement…. As to the settlement, the Court intends to approve it provided that the plaintiffs file an amended complaint that discloses R.S.'s identity.

[R.S.] argues that disclosing her identity "will effectively disclose L.R.'s identity" too. True, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure presumptively require anonymizing minors by their initials, but there is no similar requirement for parents. Compare Fed. R. Civ. P. 5.2(a)(3) (stating that filings must replace "the name of an individual known to be a minor" with "the minor's initials"), with id. 10(a) ("The title of the complaint must name all the parties."). Instead, Rule 10 creates a "strong presumption against allowing parties to use a pseudonym." A party may overcome that presumption "only in those limited circumstances where [the] need for anonymity outweighs countervailing interests in full disclosure."

This case is not one of them. R.S. and L.R. do not share a last name, and R.S. has not established that third parties necessarily will infer L.R.'s identity from her mother's.

Even if third parties would discern L.R.'s identity, the fact that she was suspended from in-person classes after a vaguely described "incident" involving her father is not particularly sensitive…. [O]ne factor to consider [in pseudonymity cases is] whether identifying a party "threaten[s] to reveal information of a sensitive and highly personal nature" …. "[S]ome cases allow parents who are suing on behalf of their minor children to proceed pseudonymously, at least when the case involves highly personal information about the children" …. This case does not involve, for example, sexual assault or coercion of a minor to use drugs.

If anything, there are weighty interests in full disclosure because knowing the identities of the people involved in this case could help third parties assess the reasonableness or unreasonableness of a school policy that has become a topic of public debate across the nation. The school district in this case has been featured in national media on the topic of discipline at issue. See, e.g., Carly Graf, The newest form of school discipline: Kicking kids out of class and into virtual learning, Washington State Standard (Aug. 7, 2023) (explaining how "[s]chool districts across the country, including in Missouri, have begun punishing students by forcing them into online classes"); id. (quoting the "superintendent of Jennings School District in Missouri"). R.S.'s own complaint invokes the surrounding policy debate about virtual learning, including what critics say is a negative effect on students of certain races. Therefore, the Court will deny her motion for leave to proceed anonymously.

The settlement, by the way, was that "[a]lthough the defendants are not required to admit liability, they must remove any mention of the suspension from L.R.'s records, promote her to 8th grade, pay her $40,000 dollars plus $20,000 to her attorneys, and make available a policy that "clearly enshrines due process protections for all students prior to any transfer to virtual learning."

The post Children May Proceed Pseudonymously; May Their Parents? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

After the International 'Liberal Order'

2026-10-20T12:00:01Z

Bringing Order to Anarchy: Governing the World to Come, by Charles Kupchan, Yale University Press, 328 pages, $32.50

In popular rendering, international politics since 1945 has been shaped by the so-called "liberal order." Led by the United States, a bundle of international institutions, rules, and norms intended to limit interstate competition and facilitate cooperation were widely embraced, contributing (per this narrative) to a peaceful and prosperous world. Today, that system seems to be breaking down, leaving policymakers, pundits, and scholars grappling with what a future order should entail and how this system should be orchestrated.

Rivers of ink have already flowed in service of this foundational question. To the mix we can now add Charles Kupchan's Bringing Order to Anarchy. Kupchan, a professor of government at Georgetown University and a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, is interested in both how the present crisis of order arrived and what should be done about it—as he puts it, "How did we get here?" and "What do we do now?" In his telling, we arrived at this moment because of the diffusion of power abroad, combined with shifts in domestic priorities among key members of the post-1945 order (especially the United States). The post-1945 order, he concludes, is thus irredeemably broken.

Going forward in what he sees as an increasingly multipolar world, Kupchan advocates a "global system of concerts" modeled on the Concert of Europe—the international order established after the Napoleonic wars. His proposed system would prioritize relations among the great powers, creating "informal and flexible steering groups" that would emphasize "building consensus, establishing lateral lines of authority across power centers, and providing top down governance." In practice, influence and authority would devolve to different regions, within which local great powers would play leading roles in shaping regional affairs. Meanwhile, the great powers would meet as part of a global concert, sitting atop regional orders as a kind of deconfliction and organizing body.

The most welcome contribution here is Kupchan's call to accept the end of the post-1945 order and to work within the constraints of a new distribution of power. For all that policymakers and analysts recognize that change is needed, the debate over the future of international order tends to focus on preserving whatever elements of the existing order we can. It also tends to attribute the need for change to shifts in U.S. domestic politics. Kupchan, on the other hand, helpfully reminds us that order depends first and foremost on the distribution of power. States, after all, are the building blocks of any international system, just as relative power affects both what they want and their options for pursuing their interests. The creation and maintenance of an order therefore hinges on whether it broadly reflects the distribution of power, allowing states to get some of what they want, through means most can accept.

It follows that pronounced shifts in the distribution of power require adjustments in the larger system. The greater the shift, the greater the change. And since the power shift underway today is foundational—with China emerging as a peer competitor to the United States, American power in relative decline, and power diffusing away from the West (broadly conceived)—it would be extremely foolhardy to try to preserve an order created at a very different historical moment. With a new distribution of power, Kupchan recognizes, a new system is required. Hard stop.

Still, Kupchan's call for creating a concert to replace the extant order is not entirely convincing. Two problems stand out.

First, the very same power shifts that require change to the current system leave the efficacy of the concert approach open to question. If great powers are to play the leading role in a concert system, it matters both which states constitute the great powers and how their relative power compares to one another. But amid a power shift, these are the very issues that are likely to be intensely contested, if not fundamentally uncertain. It's inauspicious for the envisioned concert, for instance, that scholars of international politics cannot agree whether the world today is unipolar, multipolar, bipolar, or something else altogether. Absent some baseline understanding of the distribution of power, it is difficult to see how a concert would form, gain buy-in, and operate successfully.

Kupchan's invocation of the Concert of Europe itself alludes to the problem. It is no accident that the Concert formed only after 25 years of warfare clarified the European distribution of power, and waned as power shifted (due heavily to the emergence of Germany). Nevertheless, Kupchan doesn't seriously engage with this core requirement for a concert model when he makes the case for a concert today. The result is a tension between the book's underlying logic and its top-line policy prescription.

Second, and relatedly, it is not completely clear what the concert's remit would actually entail. On one hand, Kupchan argues that the "Global Concert would be a consultative body, not a decision-making one"; it would "tee up decisions that could be taken and implemented" by other ordering bodies. Yet Kupchan also notes that a key virtue of concerts writ large is their ability to "lower the bar to reaching and abiding by agreements"; similarly, he calls for concert diplomacy that would set up "bespoke steering groups to tackle specific challenges," particularly in security affairs. This suggests something grander than a consultative body. "Reaching and abiding by agreements" and setting up ad hoc fora to tackle specific challenges are decisions. Indeed, even "teeing up" ideas and decisions that could be tackled by subordinate international institutions and structures is a kind of decision.

One gets the sense that Kupchan is not totally comfortable with the implications of his own reasoning. If new great powers are emerging and are poised to dominate international politics, and if these states are to coordinate with one another in small group settings, it seems likely that the concert would be a decision-making body. Alternatively, if the concert is to truly function as a consultative body, it is unclear why new great powers eager to assert influence over the international agenda would sign up and give credence to this exercise.

Beyond the logic of the concert system itself, no review of Bringing Order to Anarchy would be complete without some reflection on the volume's discussion of U.S. politics. The book contains a lengthy list of proposed domestic changes, including calls to encourage civility, forge bipartisan consensus, put the U.S. fiscal house in order, and avoid ideological excesses at home. No doubt many readers would agree with these recommendations. Still, it is not really clear what these proposals do to advance Kupchan's core arguments. Rather than directly affecting the creation or operation of a concert order, the domestic challenges he wants to remedy act as constraints on U.S. power: They impede the translation of U.S. material capabilities into international influence. Accordingly, a concert system could operate even with a domestically dazed and confused United States—the U.S. would simply be a less effective participant. Changing the domestic status quo may be a good thing, but it is not central to the mission of explaining what a future international order entails. The book's domestic discussion ends up being an odd discursion.

Still, this is an important book. In calling for casting the former order aside, Kupchan brings needed clarity to a meandering discussion. By the same token, it is very useful to bring insights from the Concert of Europe into the policy conversation. Whatever gaps there might be in its ideas about the logic and operation of a concert system—or the relationship of domestic politics to a concert—the book raises a new set of options, and that in itself is a valuable contribution to the discussion.

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Trump Administration Urges SCOTUS To Uphold Federal Ban on Distilling Liquor at Home

2026-10-20T11:00:58Z

The U.S. Supreme Court's 2026–2027 term just got a whole lot boozier. On Monday, the justices agreed to hear arguments later this year or next in the case of Department of Justice v. McNutt. At issue is whether the 1868 federal ban on distilling liquor at home is unconstitutional because it exceeds the lawful regulatory power of the federal government. If any modern Supreme Court case ever deserved its own drinking game, this one is it.

In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit found the federal ban on home distilling to be unconstitutional because Congress lacked the proper authority to issue such a ban in the first place. It was not a legitimate exercise of the congressional authority "To Lay and collect Taxes," the appellate court reasoned, because "the purpose of a tax is to raise revenue for the government;" yet this law "amount[s] to an anti-revenue provision" that only "prevents distilled spirits from coming into existence." And if it does not exist, of course, the government cannot tax it.

The 5th Circuit also denied that the federal ban on home distilling could be saved by the government's appeal to the Necessary and Proper Clause, which says that Congress has the authority "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."

But the federal ban on home distilling cannot be "necessary" to the execution of the enumerated taxing power, the 5th Circuit argued, because the provisions of federal law at issue "tax nothing, and are distinct from the regulation of distilling alcoholic products that is permitted by federal tax law."

Nor did the 5th Circuit find the ban to be "proper." "By purporting to ban activity without a plain connection to the exercise of Congress's taxation power," it held, "Congress has essentially—and 'improperly'—invaded the reserved police and regulatory power of the states."

The Trump administration lost this case at the 5th Circuit and has now successfully urged the justices to hear its appeal. In its petition seeking review, the Trump administration faulted the 5th Circuit for its overeagerness to "second-guess" the "legislative judgment" of Congress. Instead, the Trump administration argued, the federal judiciary owes a great deal more deference to the federal government's regulatory priorities in a case like this. "A law is necessary and proper if it is 'convenient' or 'useful' for carrying an enumerated power into effect, and 'plainly adapted' to that legitimate end," the Justice Department's brief argued. "That is the case here."

This case may lead to an interesting divide among the Supreme Court's more conservative members. In United States v. Comstock (2010), a 7–2 Supreme Court embraced the Necessary and Proper Clause as sufficient constitutional grounding for the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which had empowered federal officials to order the indefinite civil commitment of "sexually dangerous" individuals who had already finished serving their prison sentences. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the majority opinion in that case, while Justice Samuel Alito voted in concurrence. In other words, they both endorsed a broad view of congressional power under the Necessary and Proper Clause. By contrast, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, voted in dissent. The Comstock ruling, Thomas protested, "comes perilously close to transforming the Necessary and Proper Clause into a basis for the federal police power that 'we always have rejected.'"

Are we about to see a similar Alito-Thomas split over the proper reach of federal power in this case? And what about Justices Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh? Will one or more of them play the Scalia part and similarly reject the Trump administration's broad reading of the Necessary and Proper Clause?

Stay tuned.

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Today in Supreme Court History: October 20, 1973

2026-10-20T11:00:29Z

10/20/1973: The Saturday Night Massacre occurs.

President Richard Nixon

The post Today in Supreme Court History: October 20, 1973 appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Brickbat: Sticky Fingers

2026-10-20T08:00:23Z

Fairfax County, Virginia, police officer Scott Abram was charged with two counts of misdemeanor shoplifting for stealing merchandise from two Target stores. Police say that while using the self-checkout at a Target in Burke, Abram scanned a cheaper item's barcode to pay less for another item, then left the store with both products despite only paying for one. Abram was in uniform and on duty at the time. Police say he had committed a similar theft at a Target in Springfield the day before, while off duty. A 23-year veteran of the Fairfax County Police Department, Abram chose to retire rather than face termination. Each charge is a misdemeanor that can carry up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine if convicted.

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Open Thread

2026-10-20T07:00:00Z

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Second Amendment Roundup: Saving Lives at Silver Rail Elementary

2026-10-20T02:19:50Z

On October 15, I published a post arguing that true "sensitive places" where guns are banned must have armed protection. The same day, a murderer broke into a "gun-free-zone" school in Oregan and began shooting children and teachers. A dad of two girls at the school just happened to be driving by and grabbed his pistol, rushed into the school, and "neutralized" the killer with several shots. He was a concealed pistol licensee.

Silver Rail Elementary School is a public school in the Bend-La Pine Schools District with roughly 400 students, kindergarten through fifth grade, and approximately 40 staff members. It is located in Bend, Oregon. On October 15, a 16-year-old former special-needs student threw a shotgun over a fence outside the school and then scaled the fence. A passerby verbally confronted the teenager, who fired three shots at his truck. The driver called 911 at 12:59 p.m.

Kaylub Giamanco, a concealed pistol licensee, was also passing by when he saw the intruder shoot at the truck and then shoot the glass panes on two double doors to get inside the school. He reached for his .40-caliber pistol and rushed in through the same door. But the killer had already shot and killed three boys and a teacher and wounded another boy and a teacher. Another teacher threw a phone at the suspect, tackled him, and attempted to disarm him. As they struggled, Giamanco entered the room and shot the teen several times, killing him.

The killer fired as many as 15 rounds from a Maverick 88 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, which his mother had legally purchased. He had 44 more shotshells on his person and in his backpack. His devastation would have been far worse had not Giamanco intervened.

Besides a round in the chamber, the Maverick 88 shotgun holds either five or seven rounds in the magazine, depending on the model. Manufactured by Mossberg, the shotgun is typically used for protection and for hunting. It would not be an "assault weapon" under any of the laws that ban them, which exempt pump-action firearms.

Police arrived on the scene at 1:02 p.m. after being advised that the suspect had already been shot by a community member who had pursued the gunman. An armed citizen had ended the tragedy minutes before police could arrive. For the above, see ABC news account here.

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek reacted to the event as follows: "To the community member who heroically intervened to stop further loss of life: Your actions carry a heavy emotional burden, and I just want you to know that my thoughts are with you as well."

Just last year, Governor Kotek signed S.B. 243, the Community Safety Firearms Act, which her press release said "will help prevent mass shooting events in Oregon." "This matters to every parent dropping their kid off at school," in her words.

As revised by S.B. 243, Oregon law makes it a felony to possess a firearm in a public building, but if the building is a school, it is an affirmative defense that the person has a concealed handgun license, in which case it is a misdemeanor. ORS 166.370(1), (3)(g). However, a district school board "may adopt a policy providing that the affirmative defense … concerning persons licensed to carry a concealed handgun … does not apply to the possession of firearms on the grounds of the schools controlled by the board." ORS 166.377(1). A board that adopts the policy must "Post a clearly visible sign, at all normal points of entry to the school grounds subject to the policy…." Id.

The only effect of this policy is to criminalize a concealed handgun licensee from possession of a handgun at a school. It was already an offense for a member of the general public to possess a firearm at a school. Given that murder was already illegal, one would not expect a person intent on homicide to be dissuaded by a sign.

Only 25 of the 197 school districts in Oregon have adopted this policy, one of them being the Bend-La Pine School District. That policy prohibits school staff members, such as the teacher who threw her phone at the attacker, from being armed even if they are concealed pistol licensees.

It also means that the brave community member who entered the school and ended the carnage would have violated the law, but for a "choice-of-evils" justification defense. It was an emergency measure to avoid an imminent injury of such gravity that the desirability and urgency of avoiding the injury outweighed the desirability of avoiding the injury sought to be prevented by the statute defining the offense (ORS 161.200). Likewise, his use of deadly force was justified as the defense of third persons from what he reasonably believed to be the use of unlawful physical force (ORS 161.209). Those two provisions were held to warrant an adequate jury instruction in State v. Taylor (Ore. App. 1993), which was a self-defense case.

The lessons to be learned here are timeless. Thomas Jefferson and other of our Founders recognized the wisdom of Cesare Beccaria, who wrote in On Crimes and Punishments (1764):

The laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity … will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

The post Second Amendment Roundup: Saving Lives at Silver Rail Elementary appeared first on Reason Magazine.

France's Welfare State Is Finally Imploding

2026-10-20T04:28:08Z

This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch discuss the riots engulfing France and whether the country's increasingly unsustainable welfare state has made it ungovernable. They examine competing claims that immigration and austerity are fueling the unrest, the political gains being made by the French right, and why even modest pension reforms provoke fierce resistance.

The conversation turns to the United States, where President Donald Trump's tariffs are losing support among blue-collar voters and Republicans are struggling in traditionally conservative areas like Ohio. The panelists then discuss the abrupt departure of White House press secretary Katie Zacharia after just five days on the job. Later, they examine Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D–Mass.) opposition to a proposed $45 billion merger involving McCormick and Unilever. Finally, a listener asks why libertarians don't follow the Democratic Socialists of America's example by trying to reshape the Republican Party from within.

0:00—France's riots and the imploding welfare state
21:29—Trump's tariffs lose support among blue-collar voters.
29:41—Zacharia's tenure as White House press secretary
35:45—Listener question on libertarian influence strategy
45:52—Warren's corporate merger opposition
57:07—Weekly cultural recommendations

Upcoming Reason Events

Reason Versus - Authoritarianism Is a Right-Wing Problem, November 10

Mentioned in the Podcast:

"France Burns," by Liz Wolfe
"Protesters in France and Spain Are Angry at Government Failure—and Demanding More Government," by Reem Ibrahim
"French Tantrum," by Liz Wolfe
"Yes, Heavy Regulation Hurts the Economy. Just Look at France." by Veronique de Rugy
"Even Blue-Collar Workers Have Turned Against Trump's Unpopular Tariffs," by Eric Boehm
"Ohio's Democrat Momentum," by Liz Wolfe
"Trump Fired Kimberly Guilfoyle for Influence Peddling That Pales Next to His Presidential Profiteering," by Jacob Sullum
"Why populism leads to decline," by Nick Gillespie
"How Third Parties Die," by Jesse Walker
"How GOP Fiscal Sanity Died, in 7 Easy Steps," by Matt Welch
"Be Prepared for Elizabeth Warren's Reign of Economic Error," by Nick Gillespie
"Elizabeth Warren Wants the Government To Investigate America's 'Sandwich Shop Monopoly,'" by Christian Britschgi
"The Elizabeth Holmes Documentary You Can See Everything Is an Act of Radical Empathy," by Peter Suderman
"Thank Dutch Merchants, Not a Strong State, for Capitalism," by Edward Stringham

Today's sponsor:

Cato Innovation Project: Design your own full-time, paid role at Cato. If we fund your idea, you spend two years executing it. Apply here: cato.org/reason

The post France's Welfare State Is Finally Imploding appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Justice Department Will Investigate Conditions at D.C. Jail After Years of Reports of Filth and Neglect

2026-10-19T21:18:51Z

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Monday that it will investigate living conditions inside the Washington, D.C. Jail following years of reports of filth, medical neglect, and brutality.

The D.C. Jail, which holds all pretrial detainees and misdemeanor offenders in the District of Columbia, was the subject of an unflattering 2016 Reason cover story, "How Not to Build a Jail," describing how wretched conditions had persisted there for more than a century. Lawsuits, audits, and media investigations have all documented persistent civil rights problems. The jail gained additional infamy for holding pretrial detainees and convicted defendants who were prosecuted for their role in the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol Building.

The Justice Department received numerous allegations of excessive force, inadequate medical care, unsanitary living conditions, and malnutrition inside the jail, according to a department press release. The investigation will determine if D.C.'s Department of Corrections has a pattern or practice of violating prisoners' constitutional rights.

"The Constitution protects the rights of every incarcerated American, including those held in custody in our nation's capital," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a DOJ press release. "We are committed to upholding our federal civil rights laws so that no inmate is confined in unconstitutional conditions or subject to unconstitutional mistreatment at the District of Columbia Department of Corrections."

Last week, six current and former D.C. Jail inmates filed a class-action lawsuit alleging they found dead mice and cockroaches in their food.

Five different D.C. Jail inmates filed another lawsuit in September alleging guards failed to stop or adequately respond to a man in the jail's mental health unit from starting an electrical fire.

In 2021, the U.S. Marshals Service transferred roughly 400 inmates out of the D.C. Jail after a surprise inspection reported unacceptable living conditions, including guards withholding water and food from inmates as punishment.

A week before that inspection, a federal judge held the D.C. Department of Corrections in contempt for repeatedly failing to turn over the medical records of a January 6 defendant who had been waiting for months for a scheduled wrist surgery.

The antiquated jail, opened in the 1970s, has numerous structural problems, but plans to replace it have stalled. In the meantime, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division will write a report to add to the top of the pile.

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"The Court Requires Me to Warn You That I Pose a Risk of Stalking and Harassment to Intimate Partners"

2026-10-19T21:09:26Z

From Judge Ted Stewart (D. Utah) in U.S. v. Wang, dated Sept. 9 but just docketed today:

Defendant objected to the condition that she notify any intimate partners "about the potential risk she poses" as vague. To avoid any vagueness, the Court imposed the following: "The court requires you to notify any intimate partners that you have been convicted of cyberstalking and pose a risk of stalking and harassment to intimate partners." The Court finds this condition is necessary to protect the public considering Defendant's history of cyberstalking and her relationships with her past victims.

I believe similar conditions are sometimes imposed as to sex offenders, but this is the first time I've seen something like this as to stalkers. (Note that, once a criminal defendant is convicted, the standard for evaluating probation conditions restricting or compelling speech becomes more much government-friendly than would be the case in the absence of such a conviction.) Here's the Justice Department's statement summarizing the case:

A Utah County woman was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment [and thee years of probation] today for cyberstalking two male victims she met on online dating platforms and became obsessed with them….

According to court documents and statements made at Wang's change of plea and sentencing hearings, Wang connected with the victims separately on online dating sites in 2017 and 2018 and became obsessed with each victim. Using multiple accounts, fake names, social media accounts, and phone numbers, she harassed and disparaged them publicly and privately, tagging their friends, family, and employers.

On three separate occasions, Wang reported the victims to the federal Internet Crimes Complaint Center (IC3) claiming she was being harassed and impersonated online by them. Wang reported that they did these things together, even though there is no evidence that the victims had any relation to each other. Wang admitted that she filed the IC3 complaints to get law enforcement to investigate the victims in order to harass and intimidate them.

Wang's crimes against victim 1 and victim 2 are not isolated incidents. Wang engaged in a pattern of stalking behavior in 2013 and was convicted in the state of New York.

The post "The Court Requires Me to Warn You That I Pose a Risk of Stalking and Harassment to Intimate Partners" appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Britain Wants To Punish Microsoft for Being Too Successful

2026-10-19T20:55:25Z

Successful tech companies are being punished—for being successful.

Last week, Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) proposed designating Microsoft as having strategic market status, which would give the government regulator enormous powers to regulate Microsoft and impose specific conduct requirements on product design. A consultation process has begun, with a decision on whether Microsoft will be given strategic market status expected in February 2027.

If the CMA decides to designate Microsoft as having strategic market status, it could intervene in product bundling (how Microsoft packages Teams, Word, Excel, and Copilot together), interoperability (whether Microsoft should make it easier for competing software and AI developers to integrate with its products), cloud licensing (whether Microsoft's licensing arrangements disadvantage rival cloud providers), and customer switching (whether businesses face unreasonable barriers to leaving Microsoft's ecosystem) in the United Kingdom.

Bizarrely, the CMA's fundamental gripe with Microsoft is that it has made its software so interconnected, convenient, and commercially attractive to buy together that competitors struggle to persuade businesses to use anything else. For example, the CMA says that Microsoft offers customers "technology that is useful, secure, easy to deploy and manage, and available at an attractive overall price." According to its own customer research, Microsoft is seen as "relatively good value for money," and its bundles are "seen as more cost-effective than buying and managing separate licences." Because commercial bundling "makes customers less likely to adopt products from alternative providers," the CMA thinks it must intervene.

Microsoft is not the first tech giant to feel the CMA's wrath for creating products people like. In 2025, the CMA decided Google had strategic market status in general search and search advertising, giving the regulator the power to impose legally binding requirements on how the company operates. Since then, the CMA has ordered Google to use government-mandated standards for ranking organic search results, provide competitors with tools to access users' search data, and give publishers greater control over how their content is used in AI-powered search. (These requirements were imposed without finding that Google had violated competition law.)

"Products working well together at an attractive price used to be called a selling point," but is now "attracting intervention pushed by an overzealous regulator," Matthew Lesh, public policy fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, a London-based free market think tank, tells Reason. Lesh is the co-author of Digital Overload, a 2023 report that warns against giving the CMA "extensive, discretionary powers" amounting to the regulator "telling some of the most successful and popular platforms on the planet how to run their businesses."

Lesh argues that including Copilot, Microsoft's AI chatbot, in the designation is "particularly outrageous." Last year, when Google was designated as having strategic market status, the CMA excluded Gemini because the "AI assistant sector is relatively small, nascent, and highly dynamic." Lesh argues that, with Google, the CMA acknowledged "uncertainty about the market's development," but now "proposes sweeping Microsoft's workplace AI into a designation requiring an assessment looking at least five years ahead."

"Five years ago, ChatGPT didn't exist. Anyone confident about who will lead workplace AI in 2031 should be running a hedge fund, not a regulator," he tells Reason.

While European countries have taken a far more interventionist approach to technology, the United States has, at least comparatively, celebrated competition and innovation. But American lawmakers are increasingly flirting with importing similar restrictions on Big Tech.

In June, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R–Iowa) and Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) reintroduced the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which would allow federal and state antitrust enforcers to challenge certain practices by dominant online platforms, including favoring their own products and disadvantaging competitors. Jack Nicastro described the bill in Reason as an "atrocious importation of European-style competition policy," arguing that it would undermine innovation and choice. The following month, Sen. Mark Warner (D–Va.) introduced the AI AGENT Act, which would impose new requirements on major online platforms to accommodate competing AI agents.

These proposals are intended to address similar concerns to those of the CMA in Britain. The idea is that established companies outperforming their competitors is somehow evidence of "market failure," undermining the very innovations that made them successful.

Technological progress has always been driven by entrepreneurs and the companies they've built competing to win over consumers. Britain seems to have forgotten this. If the United States wants to remain a world leader in tech, it should avoid the British approach like the plague.

The post Britain Wants To Punish Microsoft for Being Too Successful appeared first on Reason Magazine.

A Texas Lawsuit Dubiously Accuses Students for Life of Violating the State's Abortion Pill Restrictions

2026-10-19T20:49:41Z

Last March on Instagram, Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins posted a photo showing her and two other members of the Virginia-based group standing outside Space Center Houston. According to the captions, Hawkins and her fellow activists, one of whom was holding a mobile phone, were "ordering abortion pills undercover."

A lawsuit filed last week in Harris County, which includes Houston, describes that Instagram post as "nothing more than a publicity stunt." The lawsuit, which aims to deploy a Texas abortion law championed by Students for Life against the organization, is also a publicity stunt. But while it may be effective by that measure, it faces legal challenges that will be hard to overcome.

The lawsuit, which a Texas woman who opposes her state's abortion ban filed under the pseudonym Maria Puerto with help from the reproductive rights group Amplify Legal, is supposed to highlight the vagueness and broad scope of House Bill 7, a 2025 law that authorizes private civil action to enforce state restrictions on "abortion-inducing" drugs. But Puerto's attempted act of legal jiu-jitsu seems too clever by half, relying on a dubious reading of the statute to seek "monetary compensation" it does not authorize and thereby punish anti-abortion activists for constitutionally protected advocacy.

H.B. 7, also known as the Woman and Child Protection Act, says "a person may not manufacture or distribute an abortion-inducing drug in this state" or "mail, transport, deliver, prescribe, or provide an abortion-inducing drug in any manner to or from any person or location in this state." Those prohibitions, it says, "may be enforced only through a qui tam action" against a "person" who "violates" or "intends to violate" them.

Any "person" other than a state or local official can qualify as a "relator" authorized to bring such an action. The relator can seek injunctive relief and "an amount of not less than $100,000 for each violation," plus "costs and reasonable attorney's fees." A successful relator generally receives $10,000 of that "amount," with the rest going to a "charitable organization" of his choice.

As a "person" who is not a government official, Puerto meets H.B. 7's minimal test for standing. And although H.B. 7 precludes lawsuits against pregnant women who obtain "an abortion-inducing drug," Puerto says Hawkins and the other activists "are not pregnant and were not pregnant" at the time of the Instagram post. So far, so good. But although the lawsuit asserts that Hawkins et al. "openly and flagrantly violated" the law's prohibitions, it does not explain how.

A photo accompanying a recent Mother Jones profile of Hawkins shows her and her social media coordinator, Lydia Taylor Davis, outside Space Center Houston during their "abortion-pill 'sting' stunt." Another Mother Jones photo shows Hawkins holding a mobile phone displaying what Puerto's lawsuit describes as "an order confirmation."

Judging from the Mother Jones account, it is not clear whether that description is accurate. "The scheme rapidly went off the rails," Amy Littlefield writes. "The plan was to purchase pills from a couple of services, with Hawkins posing as a male abuser while Davis pretended to be a 16-year-old—all to try to portray mail-order suppliers as reckless and dangerous. For reasons even she couldn't explain, Hawkins chose the fake name 'Wanda' as her male-abuser alter ego. But when Davis input her information, she hit a snag."

Davis was trying to order pills from the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project. But according to Littlefield, that organization "had blocked Davis in its system after Students for Life teased the sting operation on social media." Hawkins "attempted to save the stunt by placing her own order, but 'Wanda' accidentally gave her age as 15," which was below the supplier's minimum age, Littlefield says. "Now a security guard was wandering over to tell them they couldn't film. Having set out to show that telemedicine services don't screen their clients, they inadvertently proved the opposite."

Puerto "will need proof that the Students for Life leaders actually obtained or intended to obtain the pills," abortion law scholar Mary Ziegler notes in Slate. "The activists may argue that the post was not in earnest, and that no one involved ever seriously intended to bring pills into Texas."

Even assuming that Hawkins et al. successfully ordered abortion pills, that conduct by itself does not fit the language of H.B. 7, which applies to people who "distribute" such drugs or who "mail, transport, deliver, prescribe, or provide" them "to or from any person or location in this state." That language encompasses out-of-state suppliers, which raises obvious concerns about extraterritorial application of Texas law. But on its face, the prohibition does not cover someone who simply orders abortion pills.

Puerto's lawyer, Amplify Legal attorney Molly Duane, argues that Hawkins et al. could be covered by the statute's reference to transportation. "What the statute says is that transporting abortion drugs from one location to another within the state is a violation of H.B. 7," Duane told The Texas Tribune. "By the plain language of the statute, this would seem to be a violation. This is the problem with writing such a confusing and vague law."

Under that theory, however, Hawkins, Davis, and the two other activists named in the lawsuit violated H.B. 7 only if they 1) successfully ordered abortion pills, 2) took delivery of them, and 3) subsequently moved them to another location within Texas. The lawsuit alleges only that they "ordered abortion pills, apparently multiple times." According to The Texas Tribune, Duane and Puerto "are hoping that the lawsuit will eventually surface more about what the defendants did with the abortion pills once they ordered them."

The lawsuit faces another obstacle. H.B. 7 does not apply to "speech or conduct protected by the First Amendment." Hawkins et al.'s efforts to show how easily state abortion bans can be circumvented certainly seem to fall into that category. "Students for Life may stress that the case targets their political speech about abortion," which is "protected under the First Amendment," Ziegler notes.

Those are not the only puzzling aspects of the lawsuit. Puerto, a 26-year-old single mother of two young children, emphasizes that she "had no choice but to continue" those pregnancies because she did not "have access to transportation or the economic resources to pay for travel out of state." The lawsuit devotes 11 paragraphs to describing the burdens imposed by her state's denial of "true reproductive rights," which she argues justifies some sort of compensation.

All of this seems legally irrelevant under H.B. 7, which does not require a relator to allege damages of any sort, let alone damages stemming from the abortion ban it aims to reinforce. "With nowhere else to turn for assistance," the lawsuit says, "Ms. Puerto is seeking financial compensation" from Hawkins et al. "in the amount of $459,782—the average cost of raising two children from birth to age 18 in the state of Texas."

Although H.B. 7 sets a minimum award of $100,000, the lawsuit notes, "there is no cap on the monetary compensation owed a relator." But the law does not describe H.B. 7 awards as "monetary compensation" for injuries allegedly suffered by the relator.

The statute's only reference to "compensatory damages" deals with lawsuits filed against H.B. 7 relators under "clawback provisions" of other states that have tried to thwart such litigation. In response to a "clawback" action, the law says, an H.B. 7 relator can seek "compensatory damages, including money damages in an amount equal to the judgment damages and costs, expenses, and reasonable attorney's fees spent in defending the action." By contrast, the bounty for proving a violation of the restrictions on abortion pills is simply "an amount."

The lawsuit itself, emphasizing the lax standards for filing a claim under H.B. 7, notes that Puerto "did not suffer an injury traceable to [the defendants'] ordering of abortion pills that can be remedied by a court." But it suggests that an award to Puerto would be appropriate given the defendants' anti-abortion activism.

The lawsuit notes that Students for Life "proudly advertised" its support for H.B. 7. Puerto complains that Hawkins et al. "ignore the immense harms and multiple deaths already attributed to Texas's cruel abortion bans" and "demean the six million Texans of reproductive age who have had their ability to decide whether and when to begin or expand a family stripped away by these bans." Whatever you make of that charge, the defendants' activism is constitutionally protected and therefore cannot support a cause of action in civil court.

"Texas is a strange place filled with vigilante statutes" that "seek to turn Texans against each other," Duane told The Texas Tribune. "But if anyone should be benefiting from these legal regimes, it's people like our client." While "putting those two things together…might be unusual," she said, "this is the situation that Texas has put its citizens in."

Depending on your perspective, you may or may not sympathize with Duane's reasoning. But it seems unlikely to pass muster as a matter of law.

The post A Texas Lawsuit Dubiously Accuses Students for Life of Violating the State's Abortion Pill Restrictions appeared first on Reason Magazine.

A Months-Old Anti-Robotaxi Group Is Steering Transportation Policy From Albany to D.C.

2026-10-19T20:15:21Z

At a protest against a bill to legalize Waymo in Washington, D.C., earlier in October, the main tagline was: "Robotaxis don't vote; we vote." Little is known about the group behind it, raising questions about who's fueling the pushback against robotaxis in America's major cities.

People First Transportation Alliance (PFTA), the organization in question, describes itself as a "statewide coalition of labor unions" dedicated to putting "people over untested technology." The PFTA states it's a "coalition of community organizations, safe-streets advocates, and faith leaders." However, as The Washington Post reported on Monday, the group appears to have overstated its affiliation with four of the 13 individuals and organizations listed as its founding members.

"Several groups and individuals said statements made about them on the Transportation Alliance website were inaccurate," the Post reported, adding that PFTA "appears to be newly formed, with a minimal social media presence. Its website domain was created in late April, according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers." The group created its social media accounts in May, but it has no posts and no followers.

Apart from its recent interest in the nation's capital, the PFTA lists New York and Philadelphia as its priorities, two cities led by lawmakers who publicly oppose Waymo's presence. Yet for a relatively unknown, recently created organization, the PFTA has found success in its campaign to shut autonomous vehicles like Waymo out of America's Northeast.

In February, the New York Post reported that Gov. Kathy Hochul (D–N.Y.) withdrew her own proposal—which would have allowed commercial robotaxi services such as Waymo to operate in smaller cities in upstate New York—after a PFTA-led coalition prompted enough backlash to kill support for the measure. A Hochul spokesperson told the Post that it was "clear that the support was not there to advance this proposal."

The PFTA told the Post that the organization would urge the state to "pass legislation requiring a human driver behind the wheel in every vehicle and a comprehensive study leading to a plan to address the impact driverless cars would have on New York State."

The group's resolution comes despite customer support for autonomous vehicles: A 2025 study on Waymo, Uber, and Lyft by Obi—a company that aggregates real-time rideshare prices—found that 70 percent of riders who've used Waymo preferred it over Lyft or Uber and 42.7 percent of all respondents were willing to pay Waymo's premium price (up to $10 more) to use the service.

Despite consumer support, autonomous vehicles can't count on a fair shake from lawmakers in some of the country's largest cities. In New York City, Waymo's permit to operate a pilot program on public streets expired in March. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has so far been noncommittal on renewing the company's permit. At a press conference that same month, he said his administration would be prioritizing workers such as the city's taxi drivers who "for far too long, have been sold a dream of being able to work their way to the middle class, only to have the rug pulled out from under them."

Despite the mystery surrounding the PFTA, its D.C. protest drew enough public support to elicit a statement from a person who will likely be the city's next mayor, current D.C. Councilmember Janeese Lewis George. In a post on X, Lewis George said D.C. was "facing a jobs crisis" that would be exacerbated by "rushing the legalization of autonomous vehicles." She urged the D.C. Council—which is currently considering a punitive proposal to legalize commercial autonomous vehicles—to "get this right and not rush Waymo legislation this year."

It's unclear how much longer Lewis George wants the District's residents to wait before autonomous vehicles are available for use. D.C.'s approach to legalizing commercial robotaxis hardly seems rushed.

Waymo began testing its vehicles in the city nearly two and a half years ago, in spring 2024. The company's co-CEO Tekedra N. Mawakana said its fleet has driven "more than 300,000 miles in Washington, D.C."Meanwhile, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) has been conducting studies and organizing working groups on autonomous vehicles for nearly a decade. Still, the agency has been unable to draft a regulatory framework that would eventually enable commercial robotaxi use in the nation's capital. In March, UrbanTurf reported that DDOT would be conducting a long-awaited study on autonomous vehicles—originally due in 2022—and "expects to propose recommendations on AV deployment later this year."

Opponents of autonomous vehicles, such as Lewis George and the PFTA, often cite job loss as a reason not to legalize the tech. Still, with only 200 full-time ride-share drivers in a city of roughly 400,000 workers, as Lewis George has reportedly stated, the situation is a far cry from a crisis.

As for PFTA's public safety claims, Waymo's independently reviewed data show that, compared with an average human driver over the same distance, its vehicles caused 95 percent fewer serious-injury-or-worse crashes and 93 percent fewer pedestrian crashes with serious injuries.

PFTA claims it represents the people most directly affected by transportation policy. The little publicly available information suggests the group is more focused on protecting its members' position in the ride-share market than enhancing the experience of riders, who are increasingly opting for robotaxis when given the opportunity.

The post A Months-Old Anti-Robotaxi Group Is Steering Transportation Policy From Albany to D.C. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Supreme Court Will Hear Case on "Facially Neutral" Discrimination Against Asian Students in Admissions to Public Magnet Schools

2026-10-19T23:20:39Z

Today, the Supreme Court decided to hear Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Board of Education, a challenge to "facially neutral" discrimination against Asian applicants to selective public magnet schools in Montgomery County, Maryland. The admissions criteria are, on their face, racially neutral. But evidence indicates they were likely adopted for the purpose of reducing the percentage of Asian students in entering classes. More specifically, the case addresses the issue of "[w]hether a plaintiff challenging a facially neutral admissions policy as racially discriminatory must establish that the targeted racial group suffered an aggregate disparate impact relative to its share of the applicant pool." This issue is increasingly important since the Supreme Court banned most explicit racial discrimination in college admissions (and, by extension, school admissions) in SFFA v. Harvard (2023).

The lower court ruled that, even if there is evidence that a facially neutral admissions policy was enacted for the specific purpose of reducing the number of admitted students from a specific racial or ethnic group, it must still be upheld so long as the percentage of admitted students from that group is as high or higher than the percentage of applicants from that group.

The case is similar to (and based on) Fourth Circuit decision in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, which the Supreme Court refused to take in 2024 (though three conservative justices indicated they did want to hear it) [my wife Alison was one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in that case]. The present case is also from the Fourth Circuit. In my view (see here and here), the earlier Fourth Circuit decision is badly wrong and would - if the same approach were adopted by the Supreme Court - license all kinds of invidious, unconstitutional discrimination against Asians and other minorities:

Longstanding Supreme Court precedent holds that evidence of unconstitutional motivation for "facially neutral" policies shifts the burden of proof to the government to show that they would have enacted the same policy even in the absence of illicit motives. If they fail to prove that, then the policy must be subjected to strict scrutiny, which it would be unlikely to survive. In the TJ case, the Fourth Circuit majority opinion by Judge Robert Bruce King holds that even the most blatant discriminatory motivations do not trigger strict scrutiny so long as the group being targeted for discrimination by "facially neutral" means is still represented in proportion to its percentage of the relevant population (or more). Under the new admissions policy, Asians were still 54% of accepted applicants (as compared to 73% under the old one). Since that is still higher than the Asian percentage of the applicant pool, evidence of discriminatory intent becomes irrelevant….

I and others have previously compared today's anti-Asian discrimination in selective educational institutions to discrimination against Jewish applicants in earlier eras. Under the Fourth Circuit's reasoning, old-time policies using facially neutral means to reduce the percentage of Jewish students at elite universities would be perfectly legal, so long as Jewish applicants were admitted in the same [or higher] percentages as other groups. And that would be true no matter how extensive the evidence that the new policy was motivated by anti-Semitic prejudices, or that Jewish applicants had to have stronger academic records to be admitted than those required of gentiles.

The same point applies to all kinds of discrimination against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. So long as facially neutral means are used and the overall success rates of different groups are similar, this reasoning would allow even the most blatant discriminatorily motivated policies intended to reduce the participation of some groups for the benefit of others. There are many situations where members of some minority groups are "overrepresented" in educational institutions, government contracting, and elsewhere, relative to their percentage of the applicant pool or of the general population. Jews, Muslims, Asians, atheists, and Mormons are obvious examples of groups that fit that bill in a variety of educational and professional settings.

If a federal or state government adopted a seemingly neutral policy to try to reduce the percentage of blacks among professional football or basketball players, that too would pass muster, so long as the percentage of blacks in the the relevant pro sports leagues remained at least as high as the percentage of blacks among those seeking employment as players…. Progressives and others inclined to support today's decision should consider whether they are really willing to live with these troubling implications.

Since I wrote the above, the ideological valence of anti-Asian discrimination in education has shifted somewhat. For a long time, many left-wingers defended such discrimination (along with discrimination against white applicants) on the grounds that it is necessary to achieve "diversity" and compensate Blacks and Hispanics for the history of discrimination against those groups. Most conservatives condemned it because it violates principles of constitutional color-blindness.

During the second Trump Administration, however, right-wing nativists have increasingly defended discrimination against Asian immigrants on such ridiculous grounds as that they work too hard (thus making it too difficult for whites to compete with them), or even that they undermine the supposed value of racial "homogeneity." The political right actually has a long history of anti-Asian bigotry. But recently the problem has gotten much worse, after a period in which it was diminishing because conservatives (rightly) condemned such discrimination as a violation of color-blindness. The growing anti-Asian bigotry among right-wing nationalists is similar to and linked with their growing tendency towards anti-Semitism. Indeed, as many commentators have pointed out, the two prejudices are similar in many respects. Both Asians and Jews are condemned for supposedly working too hard, emphasizing academics too much relative to other activities, and supposedly dominating various business and intellectual fields.

The left-wing rationales for anti-Asian discrimination are little better than the right-wing ones. If you truly value diversity, it makes no sense to disfavor Asian applicants as a class. They add as much or more to diversity as any others. Indeed, as I have pointed out before, lumping all Asians in one category makes no sense, as this group includes a vast range of different ethnicities and cultures, covering more than half the world's population.

The compensatory justice rationale for anti-Asian discrimination collapses under the weight of the fact that many Asian groups have themselves faced extensive discrimination at various times in American history. Discrimination against Chinese and Japanese by federal and state governments has a long and sordid history, of which Japanese internment during World War II is just one particularly awful example.

It is important to recognize that "facially neutral" policies adopted for the specific purpose of excluding particular racial or ethnic groups differ from those that merely have an unintended disparate impact. The former are deliberate efforts to discriminate on the basis of race, whereas the latter are probably inevitable in a diverse society where groups differ from each other in various ways. For example, laws banning violent crime disproportionately affect any group which is, on average, younger than others, since young people (especially young men) have much higher crime rates than older ones.

The Constitution at least presumptively bars racial discrimination by government, whether motivated by left-wing objectives or right-wing ones. And such discrimination is forbidden even if cloaked in "facially neutral" garb. Otherwise, the government could easily discriminate against virtually any group simply by targeting some characteristic that correlates with group membership. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will recognize that and rule the right way in this case.

NOTE: The plaintiffs in this case are represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest group that was my wife's employer until recently. As noted above, she helped represent the plaintiffs in a previous case (also litigated by PLF), on which the lower court ruling in this case was based. She is not one of the attorneys in this case, and is no longer with PLF.

The post Supreme Court Will Hear Case on "Facially Neutral" Discrimination Against Asian Students in Admissions to Public Magnet Schools appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Matt Gaetz Lawsuit Shows How Twisted the Term 'Sex Trafficking' Has Become

2026-10-19T16:40:58Z

Matt Gaetz resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2024, shortly before the House Ethics Committee released a report accusing him of having sex with a 17-year-old girl in 2017, when he was 35, and "regularly pa[ying] women for engaging in sexual activity with him." The probe was widely discussed as a sex trafficking probe, but the ethics committee "did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that Representative Gaetz violated the federal sex trafficking statute," per its report.

Now two women have filed a civil lawsuit accusing Gaetz of sex trafficking.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, says that Gaetz and two other men (Joel Micah Greenberg and Christopher Dorworth) broke federal anti-trafficking laws by using "their public office, power, and wealth to prey on the economic vulnerability" of Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2.

Gaetz, who now hosts The Matt Gaetz Show on One America News Network, said many of the suit's allegations against him are false. "The lawsuit relies almost exclusively on a Congressional Committee report that didn't allow me to confront my accusers," he said. "Now I will finally have that chance."

On X, Gaetz posted an image of three women in bikinis seated next to bottles of beer and looking at the ocean and wrote "Jane Doe Strikes Again! Two adult women sued me today alleging they were sex trafficked to the Bahamas. I'm shocked nobody responded to their repeated cries for help, posted to instagram."

Jane Doe Strikes Again! Two adult women sued me today alleging they were sex trafficked to the Bahamas. I'm shocked nobody responded to their repeated cries for help, posted to instagram. https://t.co/HPvX2xypzs

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) October 15, 2026

This does not seem like especially helpful behavior from a public relations perspective, to say nothing of whether it's legally wise to for Gaetz to be posting to social media about the suit against him.

But Gaetz's point isn't entirely off base. The actions described in the suit against him are hardly what most people would consider sex trafficking.

Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 were adult women willingly advertising on Seeking Arrangement, a site aimed at connecting young women with rich men for mutually beneficial relationships. And by their own account, that is what went down. They were taken on trips and paid thousands of dollars while hanging out, partying, and having sex with Gaetz and his friends.

Needless to say, advertising on a sugar baby website does not make you fair game for forced prostitution or sexual assault. But nowhere in the lawsuit are forced prostitution or sexual assault alleged.

Instead, we get sentences like this: Gaetz and the other defendents "led [Jane Doe 1] to believe they could solve her financial problems as long as she kept performing sexual acts for them and their associates," states the suit. But "the money never came as a single payment that would have solved Jane Doe 1's financial issues."

So…it's sex trafficking because he didn't pay her enough at one time? I don't think that's how the law works.

Overall, it's a stretch to say that Gaetz's actions as described in this suit fall under the scope of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Under federal law, sex trafficking must involve an element of force, fraud, or coercion, and/or must involve commercial sex involving someone who is under age 18.

In this case, both alleged victims were in their 20s at the time of the alleged trafficking. No element of force or fraud is claimed. And the type of "coercion" alleged seems more appropriate for a college debate than a courtroom.

There was no suggestion that harm would come to the women or their families, that a job or housing would be lost, or that failure to engage in sexual activity with Gaetz and his friends would result in some sort of other (physical, reputational, legal, etc.) harm befalling them. There was nothing on Gaetz's end that would seem to arise to "coercion" under federal trafficking statute, which defines it as involving "threats of serious harm to or physical restraint against any person," a scheme to make someone believe that serious harm will befall them if they don't comply, or abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process.

The suit contains a lot about Greenberg—a former tax collector who is in prison after pleading guilty to charges that include sex trafficking—and comparatively little about Gaetz. It seemingly attempts to make up for the lack of direct allegations against him by noting findings from the Ethics Committee, even though that committee specifically said it could not find evidence of sex trafficking.

Gaetz is accused of having sex with Jane Doe 1 at a party while Jane Done 1 was on MDMA. But the suit does not accuse Gaetz of foisting drugs on her, simply saying "controlled substances circulated at the party, and Jane Doe 1 took MDMA during the evening." Nor does it say that anyone forced Jane Doe 1 to be at the party or to have sex with Gaetz.

Gaetz is also accused of paying Jane Doe thousands of dollars—never directly after sex or as a direct quid pro quo, but during the same time period during which he was having sex with her. The payments were labeled things like "Being my friend," "Being awesome," "Here," and "Just because," the suit says.

And Gaetz is accused, along with the other defendants, of paying to fly Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2—whom Greenberg met through the sugar baby website and introduced to Gaetz—"to Venice Beach, Miami, Las Vegas, the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, and New York City" and paying for their hotel rooms. The suit does not say that they were forced or coerced on these trips, merely that the trips exposed them to "men they would never otherwise have met, and every part of that access, from the flights to the hotel rooms, was paid for by men, including the Defendants, who expected sex in return."

The women's lawyer told the Associated Press that there was "an exploitative power imbalance," because on one side you had a congressman and some other powerful men and on the other "young financially vulnerable women in their early twenties."

Morally speaking, that might be relevant. And for a congressman, it may have been grounds for sanction. But the fact that these women were younger and less financially successful does not make a relationship between them and Gaetz de facto "coercive" or illegal.

Age gaps in relationships—even substantial ones—are not outlawed. And relationships in which an older man is attractive precisely because he has more money and power than the younger female involved, and offers to spend it lavishly, are not uncommon. The idea that this violates federal criminal law simply showcases how distorted our ideas of sex trafficking have become.

In the News

Children have a fundamental right to access the internet, says India's Supreme Court. The Free Press Journal reports:

"The safety of our children and their freedom are not at odds with each other. Our children are entitled to both," the court observed.

The bench explicitly recognised the right to access and use the internet as a fundamental right under Article 21, which protects life and personal liberty, read with Article 19(1)(a), which guarantees freedom of speech and expression.

Meanwhile, in the U.S.: "A federal appeals court panel has ruled that Florida's 2024 law restricting access to social media for teens is likely constitutional and can continued to be enforced while the legal challenge continues," notes the Florida Phoenix.

We were promised REPEATEDLY that age-verification law was narrow, and would ONLY apply to porn. But— as we warned —it was always a ruse.Since conservatives got their ruling in FSC v Paxton, they've pushed to age-gate anything and everything. It's not going to stop with social media or chatbots.

— Mike Stabile (@mikestabile.bsky.social) 2026-10-15T18:24:17.874Z

Florida isn't just using legislation to go after young people's internet freedom more broadly:

Florida is using litigation to implement digital ID through universal age verification - one platform at a time.

Florida's lawsuit against Discord is so far, the most aggressive, in pursuing age verification and surveillance under the guise of "protecting kids."

— Protecting Kids Online (@PKOproject) October 18, 2026

'Appropriate safeguards.' A small change in the language of the Apple App Store's app review guidelines could portend big changes. Via 9to5Mac:

Under Section 1.2, which covers user-generated content, the guidelines now read (changes in bold):

Apps that enable users to create, generate, upload, share, or otherwise contribute content present particular challenges, including intellectual property infringement, nonconsensual intimate imagery, and anonymous bullying.

Apple's new terms add that "Developers who fail to implement appropriate safeguards or fail to remediate identified violations after notice may be considered in violation of the Developer Code of Conduct."

The change is being reported as a crackdown on "nudification" apps, and that certainly seems to be part of it. But the language about going after "developers who fail to implement appropriate safeguards"—combined with the broad warning about user-generated content—could signal a broader intent to crack down on social media platforms and other types of apps that don't implement ID verification or engage in more intense content moderation.

On Substack

Don't sacrifice due process to outrage. We can't let anger over allegations of gang rape at Cornell convince us to re-implement old Title IV policies that disregard due process, writes Robert Shipley of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression:

There's a groundswell of demand to "do something" in the wake of the sexual assault claims at Cornell. But amid the outrage and concern over the incident, it's critical to remember that one attempted remedy we actually know will not work is to return to a campus justice system in which the burden of proof is on the accused and basic civil liberties are cast aside. That social experiment has already been run. It failed.

Title IX, the law against sex discrimination in federally funded education programs, was passed in 1972. Debates at the time focused on how it would affect single-sex colleges and college athletics. Explicitly aimed at sex discrimination, the text of the law itself mentions neither sexual assault nor sexual harassment. Those became matters for Title IX gradually over the next couple of decades, as courts determined that sexual assault and sexual harassment were both forms of sex discrimination, and therefore covered under Title IX.

The Jane Doe lawsuit against Cornell and the accused students (as well as a fraternity, a sorority, and a local bar) hit national news at nearly the same time that the Trump administration officially removed the Biden-era regulations from the Federal Register. While almost certainly not related, some have connected the two, citing the Cornell incident to argue that regulations surrounding Title IX need to be changed again to reduce due process protections for the accused.

More here.

Read This Thread

Not to pick on Sam here, but this is a useful point to highlight some of the impossibility of trust & safety work. Meta actually used to have a program *exactly* like this, BUT it became a central feature of Frances Haugen's Facebook Files as an example of Meta being evil.I'll explain…

— Mike Masnick (@masnick.com) 2026-10-17T20:27:37.894Z

More Sex & Tech

• A new pair of high-tech sunglasses from Meta "can read your mail, describe the person in front of you, tell you what is on a restaurant menu, and help you find your way home," writes Reason's Reem Ibrahim. "For the approximately 700,000 Americans who are blind, it is potentially life-changing."

• "The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld a decision ordering new trials for two people facing human trafficking and sexual services offences, after concluding they should have been able to cross-examine a complainant about the commercial aspect of her prior sex work," reports The Canadian Press. "The case looked at the application of section 276 of the Criminal Code, known as the rape shield law, which limits use of evidence about a complainant's sexual history in court proceedings."

• Markets in everything:

This website lets you attend the wedding of complete strangers

Couples list their weddings and users can buy a ticket to attend https://t.co/8b7EawyFod

— Dexerto (@Dexerto) October 18, 2026

• Reclaim the Net explains Germany's new digital ID.

• The People First Transportation Alliance has been campaigning against robot taxis in D.C. "But just who is behind the group remains unclear, even as it has sought to sway the outcome of a contentious issue with vast sums of money and thousands of jobs at stake across the country," reports The Washington Post.

• From Reason's Meagan O'Rourke: In a race that could flip the U.S. House of Representatives, nobody wants to be the pro-tech candidate.

• A proposed App Store Accountability Act in Idaho "is a de facto digital ID," warns Julie Barrett.

The post Matt Gaetz Lawsuit Shows How Twisted the Term 'Sex Trafficking' Has Become appeared first on Reason Magazine.

3 Reasons To Cancel This Year's 3.6% Social Security Boost

2026-10-20T20:14:32Z

Social Security is racing towards insolvency because the program pays out more in benefits to retirees than it collects in taxes from working Americans.

Handing out even more generous benefits will make that situation worse. Yet that is exactly what the trustees who run Social Security are planning to do: Retirees will get a 3.6 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) next year. That increase is 0.8 percentage points higher than last year's, and it is 0.9 percentage points higher than what Social Security was expecting to pay.

The Social Security trustees are doing what the law requires during a time of high inflation. That's why Congress ought to intervene here.

It should cancel the COLA.

No, this isn't a demand that lawmakers stick it to America's retirees. It's an appeal for some fiscal common sense. There are three good reasons to cancel this year's COLA.

First: Handing out higher benefits to wealthy retirees simply doesn't make sense when Social Security is trending towards insolvency.

As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget notes, the announced COLA would be a $900 increase in benefits for the average retired household—but some retirees could receive as much as $3,600 more.

Paying generous benefits to wealthy households is the main reason Social Security is facing insolvency in the first place. A program originally intended to keep seniors from falling into poverty has become a huge wealth-transfer scheme that overwhelmingly benefits those who don't need the handouts. The COLA doubles down on this flaw.

Second: What about the workers who are paying for those lavish benefits? Wages have risen by 3 percent, on average, over the past year. Those pay increases have already been outpaced by inflation, which is up 3.7 percent in the past 12 months.

You'll often hear retirees talk about how they are living on a "fixed income," but the math simply doesn't bear this out. Social Security beneficiaries will get a COLA that is larger than the average pay increase for the workers who are funding the COLA. Retirees are protected from the impact of inflation while younger Americans must deal with inflation and finance that protection for the elderly. That's crazy.

Third: Cutting the COLA could kick-start a conversation about how to solve Social Security's looming insolvency. The Social Security trustees estimate that an across-the-board cut of about 22 percent will be necessary in 2032. Eliminating COLAs won't meaningfully change that arithmetic, but it would change the conversation—which has for too long been dominated by politicians promising seniors that nothing needs to change. That's wrong—and the sooner that becomes apparent, the better off the political system will be.

If eliminating the COLA is too radical a change, Congress should instead change how the trustees calculate the annual increase.

Currently, the COLA is based on one particular measure of inflation: the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, otherwise known as CPI-W. This is a relatively narrow index that reflects the spending habits of only about one-third of all Americans, as Romina Boccia points out in her newletter, The Debt Dispatch.

Instead, Boccia suggests using the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, or C-CPI-U, which covers about 93 percent of all Americans and is generally regarded as a better measure of the rising cost of living. Other parts of the federal government already use C-CPI-U to update such things as tax brackets.

If Congress simply changed how Social Security's COLA was calculated, it could close 12 percent of the program's long-term shortfall. And while some retirees would see smaller COLAs as a result, the result would more closely match those increases to inflation.

Social Security's COLA reflects many of the fundamental flaws with America's old-age entitlement program. Like Social Security as a whole, it is too generous to the rich, too costly to the taxpayers, and too unfair to younger, poorer workers.

The post 3 Reasons To Cancel This Year's 3.6% Social Security Boost appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Supreme Court Will Hear Necessary and Proper Clause Case on Federal Law Banning Home Distilleries

2026-10-21T07:12:17Z

Illustration: Lex Villena; Ioannis Syrigos

Today, the Supreme Court decided to review the case of Department of Justice v. McNutt, which challenges a federal law banning home distilleries. The key question in the case is whether the law in question is justified by the combination of the tax power and the Necessary and Proper Clause (which gives Congress the power to make laws "necessary and proper" for executing other powers granted to the federal government). This is likely to be most important Supreme Court Necessary and Proper Clause decision since at least NFIB v. Sebelius (2012), which ruled that a "proper" power permissible under the Clause is one that is "ancillary" to the implementation of an enumerated power; it cannot be a "great, substantive and independent" power. This case is likely to further clarify the meaning of "proper," perhaps by explicating in more detail what counts as a "great…and independent" power.

In the lower court decision in this case, the Fifth Circuit ruled that the law is not "proper" and even that it isn't "necessary." There is also a Sixth Circuit decision that went the other way, thereby creating a circuit split.

As explained in my earlier posts on the Fifth and Sixth Circuit decisions (linked above), I think this law is not "proper," and I hope the Supreme Court strikes it down. I summarize the reasons why in my post on the Fifth Circuit ruling:

The Fifth Circuit… concludes that the law in question exceeds Congress' authority under the Necessary and Proper Clause, which grants the power to makes laws "necessary and proper" for carrying into execution other federal powers. I think the court is right that the law in question is not "proper." The Supreme Court, in NFIB v. Sebelius(2012), ruled that a "proper" power permissible under the Clause is one that is "ancillary" to the implementation of an enumerated power. It cannot be a "great, substantive and independent" power. See my analysis in this article. The power claimed here is clearly "great and independent." As Judge [Edith] Jones notes, "[u]nder the government's logic, Congress may criminalize nearly any at-home conduct only because it has the possibility of concealing taxable activity."

I elaborated further in the post criticizing the Sixth Circuit decision:

[T]he Sixth Circuit is badly wrong to conclude that the law is "proper." As explained in my earlier post, the Supreme Court, in NFIB v. Sebelius (2012), ruled that a "proper" power permissible under the Clause is one that is "ancillary" to the implementation of an enumerated power. It cannot be a "great, substantive and independent" power. The power to ban any home-based activity that might serve as a substitute for taxable activity outside the home is clearly a "great and independent power." As Judge Edith Jones explains in the Fifth Circuit ruling, "[u]nder the government's logic, Congress may criminalize nearly any at-home conduct only because it has the possibility of concealing taxable activity."

The Sixth Circuit tries to address this point by claiming alcohol is somehow special….

This distinction between alcohol and all other commodities is totally arbitrary. The same reasoning could justify banning home production of anything else that is more easily taxed if produced outside the home. And there is a long history of home production of all kinds of other commodities taxed or severely regulated by the government, ranging from cigarettes to illegal drugs, to pornographic videos.

While Judge Edith Jones (author of the Fifth Circuit decision) is one of that circuit's most conservative judges, the ruling was also joined by liberal Obama appointee Judge James Graves. On the other hand, the Sixth Circuit decision was written by prominent conservative Judge Raymond Kethledge. We shall see if the Supreme Court also divides on this issue in a way that cuts across conventional ideological and jurisprudential lines.

As noted in my post on the Fifth Circuit case, I think Judge Jones is not persuasive in arguing that the home distillery ban isn't "necessary," as well as improper. That argument is unlikely to prevail under the Supreme Court's expansive definition of "necessary, " dating back to McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), where Chief Justice John Marshall famously ruled that "necessary" includes any measures that may be "useful" or "convenient" for implementing an enumerated power.

As also noted in my posts on the two lower court rulings, I think the government has a better argument that this law is authorized by the Supreme Court's badly misguide precedent on federal power under Commerce Clause (which grants Congress power to regulate interstate commerce). But the Supreme Court is apparently not going to review that issue. The question presented submitted to the Court in McNutt is limited to the Necessary and Proper Clause.

The post Supreme Court Will Hear Necessary and Proper Clause Case on Federal Law Banning Home Distilleries appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Beasts of the Law

2026-10-19T15:44:50Z

A quiz about three animal-related figures of legal speech (all of which had been mentioned on this blog in years past). Fill in the blanks, and provide the explanation the courts offer:

"A red ___ case."
"Presumptions may be looked on as the __ of the law."
"Judges are not like __."

Note that it's not enough that judges actually aren't like, say, eels; it has to be a preexisting legal phrase.

Give your answers in the comments. No fair peeking, Googling, or Clauding.

The post Beasts of the Law appeared first on Reason Magazine.