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ICE Admits It Investigated a Critic Based on Constitutionally Protected Speech

2026-08-18T16:47:50Z

Last June, two investigators employed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) showed up at David Streever's house in Rochester, New York. Streever was not home, so they left him a note.

That note, presented as an official warning from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is at the center of a First Amendment lawsuit that Streever filed last month, alleging that ICE agents investigated and threatened him based on his constitutionally protected criticism of their boss. This month, the government responded to Streever's lawsuit, confirming his allegations while attempting to rebut them.

On January 26, two days after DHS agents fatally shot Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti, Streever sent an angry email to Todd Lyons, then the acting ICE director. Streever called Lyons "a monstrous human being," likened him to the genocidal Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich, and predicted that he would be haunted by "shame at your own pathetic weakness" in defending the Pretti shooting "until your last day on Earth."

Streever's evaluation of Lyons was harsh, to say the least. But he did not say anything that could reasonably be construed as a threat of violence.

Brent Goodwin, assistant director for investigations at ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), nevertheless claims Streever's email "had potential threatening undertones" and "potentially present[ed] a safety concern." Because "ICE OPR did not have any information about Mr. Streever when the email came in," Goodwin says in an August 5 declaration, it "determined that it needed to conduct an ICE investigation."

What happened next makes little sense if ICE's investigators, who did not even try to contact Streever until five months after his email, were attempting to resolve a legitimate "safety concern." But their actions are completely understandable if they were trying to intimidate an ICE critic.

"YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW," said the "WARNING NOTICE" that two agents left with Streever's wife in Rochester on June 23. It cited two statutes, one dealing with threats of violence against federal officials, the other making it a crime to reveal "restricted personal information" about them with the intent to intimidate or incite violence against them.

Streever had not violated either of those laws. But the notice said ICE had "reason to believe" his email to Lyons "may constitute a violation of Title 18 of the United States Code," which includes more than 1,500 offenses.

The document asked Streever to "promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior." It added that "receipt of this Notice will be taken into consideration, should you continue to be involved in any criminal activities described above."

In addition to delivering the notice, DHS agents unsuccessfully tried to intercept Streever at John F. Kennedy International Airport when he returned from a trip to Finland with his 7-year-old daughter on June 25. They also repeatedly tried to contact him in person and by telephone at the New York hotel where he stayed that night.

After that, Goodwin says, ICE gave up, closing the case on June 30 because "all investigative leads" had been "exhausted." ICE did that even though its agents had never managed to interview Streever so they could determine "whether or not [he] presented a threat," which Goodwin describes as the object of the investigation.

Seeking dismissal of Streever's lawsuit, the government's lawyers concede his email to Lyons "put words to his disagreements with a current administration official." In other words, they admit he was investigated because of speech protected by the First Amendment.

Other ICE critics have received similar treatment. The Wall Street Journal reports that the agency "has deployed a round-the-clock digital dragnet" that tracks online speech to identify more targets.

ICE's retaliatory campaign, Streever's lawyers at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression warn, threatens the freedom to criticize police conduct without fear of arrest. Four decades ago, the Supreme Court described that ability as "one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state."

The post ICE Admits It Investigated a Critic Based on Constitutionally Protected Speech appeared first on Reason.com.

Minnesota's "Nudification" Ban Repeats Unconstitutional Errors of Early Revenge Porn Bills

2026-08-19T03:40:44Z

More than a decade ago, states began enacting laws to prohibit so-called "revenge porn." Some partners would voluntarily exchange sexual photographs, but after the relationship ended, one of the partners would share the intimate images as a form of revenge. Later, the term "non-consensual pornography" became more common, as the pictures were not always shared by former partners.

Many of the early bills imposed what was effectively a strict liability standard without any scienter requirement. Over time, these bills were modified to include a scienter requirement, and these guardrails were essential to survive strict scrutiny.

While I doubted the constitutionality of early revenge porn bills, I came to the conclusion that the scienter requirement, as well as other guard rails, saved the laws. For example, the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the state's revenge porn law in light of this narrow tailoring. That court observed in State v. Casillas (2020):

Second, a defendant must "intentionally" disseminate the image. Minn. Stat. § 617.261, subd. 1. This mens rea requirement means that a defendant must knowingly and voluntarily disseminate a private sexual image; negligent, accidental, or even reckless distributions are not proscribed. This specific intent requirement further narrows the statute and keeps it from "target[ing] broad categories of speech." Muccio, 890 N.W.2d at 928.

This background helps explain why a new Minnesota law is unconstitutional. This statute is commonly called an AI "Nudification" Ban, but it sweeps far more broadly. It provides in part:

Subd. 2. Nudification prohibited.

(a) A person who owns or controls a website, application, software, program, or other service must not:

(1) allow a user to access, download, or use the website, application, software, program, or other service to nudify an image or video; or

(2) nudify an image or video on behalf of a user.

The statute defines "nudify," in part, as "an image or video is altered or generated to depict an intimate part not depicted in an original unaltered image or video of an identifiable individual." The only exemption is when the web site "requires the technical skill of a user to nudify an image or video." The statute lacks any scienter requirement. The statute also lacks any exemption for images that have artistic, political, medical, or other educational value.

xAI, the maker of Grok, challenged the constitutionality of the ban. The district court denied the TRO and set the case for a preliminary injunction proceeding. That briefing has now completed.

xAI argues (correctly in my view) that the statute's lack of a scienter requirement renders the law unconstitutional:

The Act then compounds the problem by omitting every limit that might have confined it to addressing the harm the Legislature described. It has no scienter requirement, so liability turns on what a user managed to do rather than on anything the provider knew or could have prevented. It never mentions consent, so a woman who edits a photograph of herself is treated exactly like a stranger who edits her picture.

Minnesota doesn't really engage that argument, but instead contends that under intermediate scrutiny, there is no scienter requirement. I don't think this argument works. This statute is content-based, as it triggers liability directly based on the content of the generated image. (This is an argument I have advanced for some time in the 3D-printed gun litigation.) An image generated with people fully-clothed would not be subject to liability. But a picture of a shirtless man wearing speedos could generate liability. The absence of a scienter requirement, in this case, means the statute lacks the requisite narrow tailing. xAI's brief cites the Minnesota Supreme Court case mentioned above.

xAI recognizes how this tool can be abused, and the brief demonstrates numerous safeguards that Grock has put in place. The PI brief begins:

A state that seeks to guard its citizens against real harms nevertheless must also respect those same citizens' fundamental rights in the effort. In enacting HF 1606, the trouble is not that Minnesota sought to advance a legitimate interest in prohibiting the dissemination of artificially generated nude images of real people without their consent. xAI does not contest that interest, and it strictly prohibits its users from generating nude or sexualized images of people without their consent. Indeed, xAI has filed suit against users who evade its extensive technological blockers to generate such images in violation of this strict prohibition. The problem is that HF 1606 stretches far beyond the Legislature's claimed target to hit other, equally important rights protected by the Constitution.

The problem of overbreadth is something Minnesota should be familiar with. More than three decades ago, in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, the Supreme Court declared another well-intentioned law from the Land of 10,000 Lakes as a violation of the First Amendment. Justice Scalia observed:

Let there be no mistake about our belief that burning a cross in someone's front yard is reprehensible. But St. Paul has sufficient means at its disposal to prevent such behavior without adding the First Amendment to the fire.

Much the same can be said about the nudification law. The intentional use of AI for generating nude images of people is reprehensible. but Minnesota has the means to craft a carefully tailored statute to achieve this goal. In the First Amendment context, the court reviews the statute as drafted, and not the statute the lawyers present.

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Voter Ignorance and the Problem of Confusion Caused by Candidates With Similar Names [Updated]

2026-08-19T03:57:49Z

Sen. Dan S. Sullivan (R-Alaska). (US Senate)

As Cornell law Professor Michael Dorf explains in an interesting recent blog post, the currently ongoing Senate election in Alaska includes two candidates with almost identical names, one of whom may well be in the race to siphon off votes from the other:

In today's Senate primary election, Alaska voters will have many choices, including two named Dan Sullivan. One is the incumbent Republican. The other is a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg, Alaska with the same name. Republicans claim that the man I'll call Teacher Dan is running for the sole (or at least main) purpose of siphoning votes off from the incumbent and thus potentially handing victory to the Democratic challenger in a tight race. That's a plausible allegation given the jungle primary format. The top four finishers in today's primary advance to the general election. If two of those candidates are named Dan Sullivan, that could be enough to tip the outcome in favor of Democratic challenger and current House member Mary Peltola.

Is Teacher Dan in it only (or mostly) to siphon votes from Incumbent Dan? A NY Times story today reaches an uncertain verdict. Teacher Dan vociferously denies that he's running as a spoiler/siphoner, professing a desire to turn the Republican Party away from MAGAism and back towards its traditional norms and positions. However, the same story also indicates that Teacher Dan's views, as expressed through activism and donations, are pretty mainstream liberal Democratic….

The names are not quite completely identical. The incumbent senator is Dan S. Sullivan, and "Teacher Dan" (as Dorf calls him) is Dan J. Sullivan. But the similarity is great.

As Dorf notes, if "Teacher Dan's" campaign succeeds in exploiting voter confusion about the two men's names, there is an obvious sense in which it is undermining effective voter choice. I agree, even though - like Dorf - I would ultimately prefer that Democrat Mary Peltola win this race, as her positions are much less bad than those of most Republicans in the current Trump-dominated version of the GOP.

As Dorf notes, this is far from the first time that voters may get confused by candidates with similar names. In addition to cases he indicates, there is the example of the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, where little-known candidate George Schwartzman finished ninth out of 135 candidates, beating several better-known ones, likely because voters were confused by the fact that his name is similar to that of famous actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger still won easily. But in a close election, the nearly 11,000 votes that Schwartzman got might have proved decisive.

Dorf points out that if "Teacher Dan" really is in the race primarily to siphon off votes through confusion, it is not clear whether his actions are illegal. While such exploitation of confusion is morally reprehensible, I am not sure it is a good idea to prosecute candidates who do this. They are indeed trying to deceive voters. But the same is true of many other candidates who routinely lie about and distort issues of all kinds.

Donald Trump is a particularly egregious example, going all the way back to his first campaign in 2016, and more recently with his lies about the 2020 election and other issues. But more conventional politicians also often resort to lies and deception, even if not to the same degree. President Obama, for example, famously lied when he claimed that, under the Affordable Care Act, "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it." That deception won the 2013 Politifact Lie of the Year award. But it still helped Obama get reelected in 2012. I am not sure exploiting voter confusion about names is any worse than exploiting their ignorance about policy issues like crime, immigration, and health care.

Trying to prevent such exploitation through criminal and civil liability is likely to violate the First Amendment. In addition, it would likely end up giving incumbent political leaders broad power to curb speech and control electoral campaigns that they cannot be trusted with.

Ultimately, both exploitation of voter confusion about names and other deceptions used in campaigns seek to exploit widespread voter ignorance. Because of the combination of "rational ignorance" (lack of incentive to seek out political information) and "rational irrationality" (lack of incentive to engage in unbiased evaluation), most voters know little about government and public policy, and often do a poor job of evaluating the information they do know. This makes them vulnerable to deception and manipulation, and incentivizes politicians to lie and otherwise distort the truth.

Voter confusion about candidates with similar names is just another example of this broader problem. Voters who follow politics closely and pay careful attention to their ballots should have little trouble distinguishing between the two Dan Sullivans. Indeed, they would likely know about this issue ahead of time thanks to all the media coverage it has gotten, and would thereby watch out for it when at the polls. The same goes for the difference between Schwarzenegger and Schwartzman, and other such situations. But, due to the incentive structure of voting, most people do not pay such close attention and are not especially careful in filling out ballots. Thus, many might be confused by candidates with similar names.

There is no easy solution to the problem of voter ignorance. But I assess a range of possible options in my 2023 article on "Top-Down and Bottom-Up Solutions to the Problem of Political Ignorance, and in my earlier book Democracy and Political Ignorance. I believe the best approach is to make fewer decisions at the ballot box and more by "voting with your feet," where incentives to seek out information and evaluate it wisely are much better. But I recognize that any effective approach will take time, and there may be no one fix that is sufficient by itself. We may need to pursue multiple strategies. In the meantime, voters are likely to continue to be ignorant and confused about a variety of issues, and politicians and interest groups are likely to keep on exploiting that.

UPDATE: I have made minor additions to this post.

UPDATE #2: At the Election Law Blog, prominent election law scholar Rick Hasen notes that the Justice Department is investigating Dan J. Sullivan, and argues that an prosecution here would raise serious First Amendment concerns, and likely be unconstitutional:

If J. ultimately is charged with violating the Ku Klux Klan Act (18 U.S.C. s 241), which punishes a conspiracy to "injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State. . . in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States," I think J. would have a very strong First Amendment defense (and likely for the wire fraud claims too, but I don't know enough about what the basis for those charges might be)….

[T]his is not a case about tricking someone about the mechanics of the election not to vote. Nor is it a case of impersonation: J. is really named "Daniel Sullivan." It is not even a case about J. telling a campaign lie….

This is a case about someone running for office with impure motives who is lucky enough to have a name that could confuse some voters….

I don't see how the government could criminalize his running for office for having impure motives. And if it could do so, then it could be a crime every time that the Republican Party backs a Green Party candidate, or Democrats support a MAGA candidate in a primary in the hopes that the candidate would be weaker against a Democrat in the general election. This stuff happens all the time.

It would be quite dangerous for the state to start criminally prosecuting people for their political beliefs and secret motives. Are we going to put people on trial and probe their political allegiances?

I largely agree with Hasen's analysis on this point. "Teacher Dan's" behavior may be reprehensible, as is that of many politicians who use lies and deception exploit voter ignorance. But it probably cannot be prosecuted.

The post Voter Ignorance and the Problem of Confusion Caused by Candidates With Similar Names [Updated] appeared first on Reason.com.

The Greater the Illegal Migrant Population, the Stronger the Case Against Mass Deportation

2026-08-18T23:55:23Z

People hold up "mass deportation now" signs at the 2024 Republican National Convention. (Carol Guzy/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom)

Standard estimates of the illegal/undocumented immigrant population in the United States range from about 11 million to 15 million. But right-wing immigration restrictionists often assert the true figure is much higher, as with Donald Trump's claim that it is 25 million. The implicit assumption is that the higher the number, the stronger the case for mass deportation. But, as my Cato Institute colleague David Bier - a leading immigration policy expert - explains in a recent article (fuller, but paywalled version here) the exact opposite is true:

The math is simple. The more illegal immigrants, the more Americans would have to pay to deport them. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that a single deportation costs on average $18,245. This means that when Trump invents the presence of 10 million more immigrants, he's adding a theoretical $182.4 billion to the price tag.

And that's just the cost of deportation. The cost to federal revenue is even starker. Illegal immigrants pay sales tax — and, often, Social Security tax, income tax and property tax. The more illegal immigrants we deport, the more the cost of funding government would shift to American citizens and legal residents. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that recent illegal immigrant arrivals would have cut deficits by nearly $1 trillion over 10 years, and  found that Trump's crackdown in 2025 had already erased $500 billion of those savings.

Illegal immigrants receive very few taxpayer benefits because they are ineligible for all the largest federal public benefit programs, and most states also restrict eligibility for smaller state programs. Since the benefits being paid are a known quantity, a larger illegal immigrant population suggests that the cost per immigrant is actually far lower than we think.

But the taxpayer expenses are dwarfed by the broader economic impact: less stuff produced for the American people. The Peterson Institute for International Economics has estimated that just 8.3 million deportations would leave U.S. gross domestic product 7.4% lower than otherwise by 2028, the equivalent of about $2.5 trillion. Lower output means fewer goods and services — everything from food to childcare — for Americans.

Higher figures also imply that the illegal migrants have an even lower crime rate than under conventional estimates of their numbers (which already show them to commit crimes at a much lower rate than native-born Americans):

If the Trump administration's hyperinflated figures were true, it would also suggest that illegal immigrants commit crimes at much lower rates than we thought. Using a far lower estimate of the number of illegal immigrants in the country, scholars had already calculated that, compared to native-born Americans, illegal immigrants  were far less likely to be incarcerated. But again, since we know who is in prison, if the free immigrant population were to grow, the immigrant incarceration rate would fall in turn.

In other words, the Trump administration apparently believes that illegal immigrants are far less represented in the crime data than anyone else. Of course, the rate of crime — not the absolute number of crimes — is what matters, because the rate is how we estimate the likelihood that someone will become a victim of a crime. More immigrants would mean a much lower victimization rate — that the presence of illegal immigrants reduces the likelihood that Americans will be victimized.

I would add that deporting larger numbers of illegal migrants (or even trying to do so) increases the already severe impact of deportation efforts on the civil liberties of US citizens, including through racial profiling, illegal detention, killing and injuring of protestors, and more.

Furthermore, deporting larger numbers of people increases the number sent back to what for many is a lifetime of poverty and oppression, and sometimes an early death. It is unjust to use force to consign people to such a fate merely because they were born to the wrong parents in the wrong place.

As David Bier notes, some illegal migrants nonetheless do commit crimes, even if at a lower rate than US citizens. The answer to that problem is simple: just punish them the same as anyone else! As I have explained in other writings (e.g. here and here), we can significantly reduce crime rates, overall simply by abolishing ICE and transferring its resources to ordinary police, tasked with fighting violent and property crime.

Ending, or at least curbing, deportation operations would further lower crime by making Hispanic crime victims more willing to report crimes to the police. When local and state police assist in federal deportation efforts, reporting drops, thereby increasing crime significantly. Given widespread racial profiling by immigration enforcement agencies, even legally present Hispanics may often fear interactions with law enforcement, if the latter are involved in deportation efforts. And, obviously, many citizens and legal migrants have relatives who are undocumented, or who have been rendered so by the Trump Administration's massive effort to strip legal status from many immigrants who had it before, including Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who fled communism, Iranian Christians who fled radical Islamism, Haitians who fled one of the Western Hemisphere's poorest and most violent societies, and more.

In sum, the greater the number of illegal migrants, the stronger the case against mass deportation.

The post The Greater the Illegal Migrant Population, the Stronger the Case Against Mass Deportation appeared first on Reason.com.

Ibram X. Kendi Is Wrong About Jason Arday

2026-08-18T21:25:19Z

Are the media responsible for the demise of a famous black professor at the University of Cambridge? Jason Arday was found dead last week after resigning from the university following widespread serious plagiarism allegations. But his defenders say Arday was unfairly targeted by racist reactionaries. Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, assailed the media for engaging in a campaign of "pernicious public shaming," and the activist group Stand Up to Racism said he'd been subjected to a racist witch hunt.

Most notably, the anti-racist activist Ibram X. Kendi stated unequivocally that "the media lynched Jason Arday."

The death of Jason Arday hit so close to home that I had no words yesterday. But I woke up with words.

To be a prominent antiracist Black scholar is to know you are a target, almost totally surrounded by resentments. You know that at any point, the attacks can come like a lynch… pic.twitter.com/XetSepzJrx

— Ibram X. Kendi (@ibramxk) August 15, 2026

He writes:

To be a prominent antiracist Black scholar is to know you are a target, almost totally surrounded by resentments. You know that at any point, the attacks can come like a lynch mob.

And if you die from all the attacks, the media still calls the attacks on you "accusations" to wash their hands of the blood. Your lynchers announce your death as if they had no role in your lynching.

That is completely and utterly absurd. It's grossly offensive. And it elides the real harms that Arday perpetrated: serial plagiarism, fabulism, and lying. Now, Arday's death is clearly a tragedy, and no one should be making light of it. There's nothing good or pleasant about this sad affair. But when Kendi and others accuse the media of complicity in his death, what they are essentially saying is that it's your fault for noticing and calling out his serious transgressions—that he should have been left alone to continue lying about who he was and his qualifications.

And to be clear, the fact that Arday was a fabulist is not in dispute at all. He made outrageous and self-discrediting claims about his background: alleged crippling autism, being nonverbal until age 11, running 600 miles, raising huge sums of money for charity. Those were widely noted details of his personal life, and he simply lied about them. And that's without even getting into his professional failings: his sloppy work, his continuous plagiarism.

It's not as if he was some harmless or vaguely relevant academic. He was a huge deal at Cambridge, and even advised the British government on the school's curriculum. And when a reporter for Times Higher Education had questions about Arday's work and background, Arday had him investigated by the police. That's right, rather than face well-justified criticism, Arday called the British police on Jack Grove, a journalist. The police told Grove not to contact Arday again because it was negatively impacting his mental health.

And indeed, it probably was. But there's no way around this: Arday brought this on himself by lying.

Moreover, his inclination to sic the cops on a critic was very, very bad behavior and entirely contrary to basic principles of free inquiry—principles that supposedly undergird higher education. Unfortunately, some people are taking the opposite lesson and calling for more restrictions on freedom of speech and press freedoms in order to prevent them from causing emotional harm. The author and journalist Matt Haig called on U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham to take action to punish journalists for engaging in speech. He writes: "The ability right now for UK journalists to face zero consequences for politically motivated campaigns against vulnerable individuals, often in minority groups, is a massive blight on the UK's moral standing."

That right there is an endorsement of censorship, and it's wrong. It's wrong to weaponize the concept of mental health and use it as some kind of veto over legitimate criticism. Arday's death is tragic, and everyone should wish he'd gotten whatever help he needed. But that doesn't mean we should blame the people who called out his sensational lies—and we certainly shouldn't have prevented them from speaking out.

If we start policing people for asking totally legitimate questions of public figures, like a notable academic, then we are quickly going to render important institutions—like academia—immune to criticism. That would be a terrible mistake, quite obviously. Already, higher education is facing a crisis of legitimacy due to the perception—and in some cases, the reality—that out-of-touch liberal elites have used race and ideology as stand-ins for merit, allowing charlatans to peddle dubious research that they can't defend when challenged. Worse, higher education administrators have weaponized the concept of diversity and used it as a cudgel to promote groupthink on cultural issues. In America at least, this has engendered a significant backlash, and the Trump administration has undertaken various efforts to roll back DEI initiatives.

If you want an elite culture that is even more closed-minded, and thus even more prone to capture by bad actors, then you'd do exactly as Arday's defenders are advising: You would make it a crime to call him out.

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No Pseudonymity for U Michigan Student Challenging Discipline for Using "Assertedly 'Fake' … Medical Note" "to Obtain an Accommodation"

2026-08-18T21:27:06Z

From yesterday's decision by Judge Laurie J. Michelson (E.D. Mich.) in Doe v. Regents of Univ. of Mich.:

Plaintiff, a student at the University of Michigan, was disciplined for providing an "assertedly 'fake' telehealth medical note" to obtain an accommodation for her coursework. The University treated this as academic dishonesty, resulting in Plaintiff's suspension for the Winter 2026 semester and the inclusion of a disciplinary notation on her transcript. Plaintiff maintains that the note is genuine and filed this lawsuit against numerous University of Michigan officials and Academic Affairs employees alleging due process violations.

At the same time, Plaintiff filed a motion to proceed under the "Jane Doe" pseudonym. According to Plaintiff, "[t]his case challenges discipline imposed by a public university that is based on, and would necessarily litigate, Plaintiff's private medical information and education records." Moreover, continues Plaintiff, "[p]ublic disclosure of [her] identity would cause concrete and irreparable harm, including stigma associated with an 'academic dishonesty' finding and enduring damage to Plaintiff's educational and professional prospects due to disclosure of protected health information, including her pending graduate and professional school applications."

But cases raising "stigma-plus" due process claims, like this one, involve the disclosure of sensitive or stigmatizing information. Plaintiffs' discomfort with that fact is not sufficient to permit her to proceed anonymously, even absent any opposition from the defense….

"Lawsuits are public events." Generally, "a complaint must state the names of the parties." But the Court "may excuse [parties] from identifying themselves in certain circumstances." "In exercising its discretion, a court must balance the public's common law right of access to court proceedings against the interests of litigants in nondisclosure." … "The burden rests with Plaintiff to establish that it is appropriate to permit [her] to proceed under a pseudonym." Plaintiff fails to carry that burden here….

Plaintiff simply asserts, in conclusory fashion, that "the case necessarily involves information of the utmost intimacy, including Plaintiff's private medical circumstances, treatment, and documentation, as well as education records protected by law and custom." But not all medical or educational information is "of the utmost intimacy." Plaintiff does not provide any authority to support that insomnia and a finding of academic dishonesty are of the utmost intimacy. In fact, there is substantial case law to support that they are not…. [M]ost "college students challenging disciplinary procedures are required to proceed in their own name" ….

Nor is it obvious that Plaintiff's case will, as she suggests, "necessarily litigate, Plaintiff's private medical information." The heart of this case is whether Plaintiff submitted a forged medical accommodation letter—not whether Plaintiff does or does not have legitimate medical needs.

Similarly, Plaintiff's argument that an "academic dishonesty finding" threatens her professional future is not a legally cognizable consideration …. See Doe v. Univ. of Akron (N.D. Ohio 2016) (collecting cases where courts denied requests by plaintiffs faced with academic dishonesty allegations who claim "damage to [their] reputation" and concerns about "career opportunities")….

This conclusion is not altered by Plaintiff's contention that Defendants will not be prejudiced if the Court allowed her to proceed under a pseudonym. "[T]hat consideration alone is insufficient to outweigh compliance with the civil rules of procedure and preference for open judicial proceedings."

The Court appreciates Plaintiff's situation. But many federal court plaintiffs, especially those asserting stigma-plus due process claims, must face disclosure of sensitive or personal information that they would likely prefer to keep private. Plaintiff fails to carry her burden to show that her case is otherwise exceptional….

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Upcoming Speaking Engagements

2026-08-19T02:53:58Z

Below is my list of speaking engagements for the Fall 2026 semester. Unless otherwise noted, all events are free and open to the public—and in person. The listed times are those in the time zone where the event is being held.

I will likely add additional events and information to this post, as they are scheduled, and update details on existing ones. In the meantime if your university, think tank, research institute or other similar organization would like to invite me to speak (either virtually or in person) on any topic within my expertise, I am open for business!

I will note that there are only very limited potential additional speaking slots during the fall semester, because I am a visiting professor at the University of Virginia, which creates some logistical constraints, given the need to split time between Charlottesville and my family's home in the Washington, DC area. But that arrangement will end in early December, and I can be more flexible after then, and in the spring semester.

September 17, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC, 5:30-7:30 PM: "Tariffs, Nondelegation, and Executive Power" (tentative title), panel on "Democratic Governance and the Rule of Law." Other participants include include Carol Anderson (Emory), Bruce Swartz (Yale), Steve Vladeck (Georgetown), and Mary McCord (Georgetown) as moderator.

September 29, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, time TBA: "Previewing the 2026-27 Supreme Court Term," (tentative title). Annual Supreme Court Preview Panel.

October 5, Washington and Lee University School of Law, Lexington, VA, 11 AM-1 PM: "Tariffs and the Separation of Powers." Sponsored by the Washington and Lee Federalist Society.

October 12, Emory Law School, Atlanta, GA, 12:15 PM-1:45 PM: "The Constitutional Case Against Exclusionary Zoning." Sponsored by the Emory Law School Federalist Society.

October 16, London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom, 2-3:30 PM: "Foot Voting, Federalism, and Political Representation" (tentative title), panel on "Rethinking the Rules of Political Representation," conference on "Taming Polarization: Reforming the American Federal Republic." Other panel participants will be Jenna Bednar (University of Michigan), Jonathan Rodden (Stanford University), and Nicola Lacey (LSE), as chair. Sponsored by the LSE Phelan US Centre. More information about this event available here.

October 21, Georgetown University Law Center, 5:45 PM-7:30 PM: "Is the Major Questions Doctrine Consistent with Textualism?" Debate with Prof. Chad Squitieri, Daniel Webster Debate Series. Sponsored by the Georgetown Federalist Society. I will be taking the affirmative side.

October 23, Boston University School of Law, Boston, MA, time TBA: "Tariffs and Executive Power," Panel on "Legal Interventions and Executive Overreach," symposium on "Presidentialism and the Escalation of Executive Power." Other panel participants will include Aaron Nielson (Univ. of Texas), Matt Segal (ACLU), and Corinne Blalock (Harvard).

November 3, Berry College, Mount Berry, GA, 11 AM-12:15 PM: "Tariffs and the Separation of Powers" (tentative title).

November 3, Berry College, Mount Berry, GA, 7-8:15 PM: "Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom."

The post Upcoming Speaking Engagements appeared first on Reason.com.

Suicides and Public Humiliation: Recalling Some Past Incidents

2026-08-18T21:26:37Z

The tragic apparent suicide of Cambridge Prof. Jason Arday, following what appeared to be at least credible public allegations that he had engaged in false biographical claims, plagiarism, and (potentially) data falsification, has led people to argue that some in the media misbehaved in the matter. To quote Michelle Goldberg in the N.Y. Times yesterday ("After a Scholar's Awful Death, Mistaken Calls for Censorship"),

In the wake of Arday's death, many on the left are blaming the media. "The media lynched Jason Arday," declared Ibram X. Kendi. The head of a Cambridge college called for an official inquiry into the "media onslaught."

Important British progressives, including Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party, and several Labour M.P.s, signed an open letter demanding some sort of official oversight of journalistic decision making. "Self-regulation of the press has comprehensively failed," it said. The writer Will Self called, in an open letter to Prime Minister Andy Burnham, for the police to begin "impounding computers," presumably belonging to people involved in covering the scandal.

I think it's often helpful in such situations to broaden the frame a bit, beyond the particular cause célèbre before us. It's human nature to be influenced in such situations by one's feelings towards the particular person involved, whether sympathy or antipathy. Looking at a wider range of examples can help us get beyond this bias.

I therefore thought I'd pass along some other examples of people committing suicide following episodes in which they were accused of misconduct, often publicly, and faced actual or possible loss of jobs or other business opportunities:

In 2020, Dartmouth professor and department chair David Bucci was accused of "looking the other way" as to sexual harassment in the department, and "intimidate[ed] those who had spoken out." "Some colleagues shunned him. A woman at his food co-op called him a 'disgusting human being,' said his wife, Katie Bucci." Less than a year later, he committed suicide.
In 2008, two University of Iowa professors (Mark O. Weiger and Arthur H. Miller) accused of sexually harassing their students, killed themselves.
In 2011, University of Idaho professor Ernesto A. Bustamante was accused of threatening his ex-girlfriend (a graduate student), and "was either fired or forced to resign as a result." After that, he murdered the ex-girlfriend and killed himself.
In 2019, German historian Marie Sophie Hingst committed suicide after having been found to have falsified much of her life story, including claims that many of her relatives had been murdered in the Holocaust. According to Wikipedia, "She was castigated in the German media, leading to the destruction of her reputation."
In 2014, Japanese researcher Yoshiki Sasai committed suicide after his papers were retracted by the journal Nature based on "duplicated and mixed-up images, mislabeling, faulty descriptions, and 'inexplicable discrepancies ….'"
In 2017, Japanese researcher Yoshihiro Sato apparently committed suicide after another researcher had uncovered what was described as "fabricat[ing] data."
In 2021, Portsmouth (England) student Alistair Hall committed suicide after having been found to have plagiarized his final dissertation.
In 2020, University of North Carolina Wilmington professor Mike Adams committed suicide after a wave of condemnation for various tweets that were said to be racist, sexist, and the like. His "rhetoric had been labeled 'vile' and 'hateful' by his own university," and the controversy had gotten a great deal of public attention and news coverage. In the wake of the controversy, he had apparently agreed to retire.
In 2017, porn actress August Ames killed herself "after sparking an online backlash over allegedly homophobic comments." "Ames' death occurred after she was criticized on Twitter for refusing to work with a male performers who had previously appeared in gay adult films."

Now naturally each of these incidents is different. Some followed considerable news coverage of the accusations. Some followed a great deal of social media attention. Some were apparently more connected to humiliation in front of colleagues, even if not the public at large. Some involved worse behavior than others (the Bustamante incident being the worst, of course).

In some, the person involved apparently had other psychological difficulties. In some, the true causes of the suicide might be complex, with the criticism or firing being just one element (though it was apparently a triggering event in each incident, from the press accounts I've seen).

And of course the overwhelming majority of all accusations, even of much more serious offenses (such as serious crimes), don't lead to suicide. But these incidents also remind us that a wide range of accusations—whether they involve alleged plagiarism, fabrication, sexual harassment, sexism, racism, and so on—that can cause humiliation, firing, or the potential end of a career can also lead some people to commit suicide.

Of course, that still leaves the question of what to do about all this. Should there be social norms against criticism—or coverage of criticism—that might lead someone to suicide? Should there be legal constraints? I'm skeptical about both. (Lies that lead to suicide should of course be condemned, and could already lead to liability: They would be lies, which is bad enough, and of course their effects would show that they would be especially harmful lies. But that, I think, is not the issue as to Jason Arday: The accusations against him were either true or at least sincere and even plausible conjecture.)

Should there be institutional mechanisms that diminish the scope of such scandals, by protecting the ability to criticize others (especially prominent people, such as academics)? For instance, if a university is widely known to honestly and seriously deal with accusations against its faculty, accusers might turn to the university rather than going public. In my experience, in many situations the accusers don't want to take the time, energy, and risk to fully investigate the allegations themselves, if they think some more established institution can handle the matter.

Then, if the university concludes the accused was culpable, the accused could be offered a relatively quiet and graceful exit: The firing or discipline of the accused would presumably be still be announced (recall the "honestly and seriously deal with accusations" assumption), but the announcement would likely yield just one round of stories, with little likely follow-up. (Query whether that's on balance good, since it may in some measure protect individual faculty but at the expense of less attention to what might be serious systemic problems in the university.)

But this appears not to have happened here. The press accounts that I've seen suggest that Cambridge and other universities associated with Arday didn't seriously investigate the allegations, and even Times Higher Education decided not to run its story about the matter in 2025 because of litigation threats.

This is, of course, human nature: It's natural (not to say good, but natural) for institutions to protect themselves and their leadership. Accusations against faculty reflect badly on the institutional leadership as well, especially when the leadership has celebrated the faculty members' work and identity, so there's ample incentive to ignore or minimize such accusations.

But the consequence of this natural reaction was that the accusers felt they had to go public (that too is human nature), and the story started coming out a little at a time. That meant newspaper article after article dealing with each new development in the story: each accusation of plagiarism, of fabrication, of litigation threats. I expect that led to much more massive media coverage.

In any event, though, when we're thinking about such matters, we should appreciate that any such norms or legal rules would apply to a wide range of public criticism, from the left, right, or elsewhere, of a wide range of people.

The post Suicides and Public Humiliation: Recalling Some Past Incidents appeared first on Reason.com.

San Francisco's 'Historic Laundromat' Project Finally Begins Construction

2026-08-18T19:39:08Z

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week, we take a look at the final chapter in the long-running development battle over San Francisco's "historic laundromat."

'Historic Laundromat' Project Finally Begins Construction

When I first interviewed Robert Tillman about his effort to convert his laundromat in San Francisco's Mission District into a 75-unit apartment building in 2018, he quipped that "it's taken me longer to get to this point than it took for the United States to win World War II."

At that point, he'd already spent four years in the entitlement process and close to $1 million on predevelopment costs.

Eight years on from that interview, and 12 years since Tillman initially proposed apartments on the site, the 75-unit project is finally beginning construction.

Observed on my afternoon run: construction is underway at the site of the Mission District's "Tillman laundromat."

The owner was a crank who said he'd sue the city rather than accede to "the groups," back at the dawn of the YIMBY era.

1/5 pic.twitter.com/T0oivu3YuB

— Chris Elmendorf (@CSElmendorf) August 13, 2026

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that developer Cresleigh Homes, which acquired the property from Tillman in 2019, has started site preparation and foundation work and will begin vertical construction next year.

Tillman's laundromat became a major flash point in San Francisco's development wars. It proved an illustrative case study of the city's complicated discretionary approval process and all the power that process gave local officials and antidevelopment activists to delay a project.

In Tillman's case, neighborhood activists were able to block his project for years by demanding he perform studies on the historic significance of his laundromat (turns out there wasn't any) and ensure the shadows cast by his project wouldn't stunt the growth of children at a nearby school (they'll be fine).

While activists put on compelling performances during public hearings, the environmental concerns they raised were not genuine. Demanding another shadow study was simply a way of keeping Tillman's project in costly development limbo until he eventually agreed to sell his land at a cut rate to a nonprofit developer.

This was something he refused to do. As Tillman explained to me at the time, he was trying to build a one-off project on land that he owned and which sported a money-making business.

That meant he could afford to resist city officials' and activists' demands, whereas a professional developer with carrying costs on the land and lots of projects pending city approval might have been forced to settle.

Eventually, he prevailed. After the city delayed his project again in an effort to get Tillman to conduct a third shadow study, he sued. He won his lawsuit, and in 2019, the city approved his project.

As the Chronicle reports, Tillman quickly sold to Cresleigh Homes. It was good timing.

The following years put a lot of headwinds on residential development in San Francisco. The pandemic and associated decline in public order suppressed demand for living in the city. High interest rates and rising construction costs further reduced the financial return to projects.

More recently, the city's AI boom is seeing rents spike again, making the development environment more favorable. Recent reforms at the state and local levels have also eliminated some of the tools activists used to delay projects like Tillman's.

It's good that the "historic laundromat" site is finally being developed. The decade-plus of delays makes it feel like a Pyrrhic victory.

When Tillman first proposed his 75-unit project, it was also a favorable development environment. Had the city's approval process been a little more rational, those 75 apartments could have been online years ago, housing people and putting downward pressure on everyone's rents.

Instead, it took a 20 percent spike in rents to get a dormant project first proposed 12 years ago off the ground.

(For some bonus content, check out Reason's 2019 documentary about the case.)

Quick Links

A new study from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank measures the impact of zoning by comparing suburban neighborhoods that were developed before the imposition of comprehensive zoning to those that were developed after zoning. The authors find that prezoning development patterns feature more multifamily housing and more businesses. Postzoning development is also exclusively single-family housing.
Savannah, Georgia, Mayor Van Johnson proposes missing middle reforms.
A small Delaware town walks back hotly contested accessory dwelling unit reforms.
California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton proposes a 10-year suspension of CEQA and other antidevelopment regulations.
The company behind a controversial data center project next to the Nashville zoo is suing over what it claims are the local government's "illegal" delays in approving the project. Read Reason's past coverage here.
The Seattle City Council passed a law banning pet rent as part of a general crackdown on so-called junk fees.

The post San Francisco's 'Historic Laundromat' Project Finally Begins Construction appeared first on Reason.com.

The Trump Administration Promised a Pivot From the Middle East to East Asia. It's Doing the Opposite.

2026-08-18T18:14:35Z

The U.S. military is more naked in East Asia than it has been for a while. The USS George Washington, the last U.S. aircraft carrier in the region, is heading out to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East. President Donald Trump also announced on Sunday that he would "substantially reduce" planned military exercises in South Korea.

"While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, 'No thanks!'" he wrote in his announcement.

In other words, the U.S. presence in Asia is taking a back seat to the U.S. presence in the Middle East. (Three months ago, a Navy official also admitted to Congress that the U.S. was pausing weapons sales to Taiwan because of how much ammunition it used up in Iran.) That is a complete reversal of the strategy that the Trump administration promised when it came to office.

Trump's top military planner, Elbridge Colby, has long preached that the cold war with China is the single greatest challenge to U.S. power, and that Middle Eastern wars are sapping resources away from it. Vice President J.D. Vance expressed similar views, calling potential war with Iran a "huge distraction of resources." The National Security Strategy published by the administration in 2025 declared that "the days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over."

The Middle East is now, in fact, dominating both the long-term planning and day-to-day execution of the Trump administration's foreign policy. It was largely by choice. Trump came to office with a ceasefire in Gaza, calm in Yemen, and an Iranian leadership that was willing to negotiate. He chose to reopen the former two wars in spring 2025 and then launched an all-out surprise attack on Iran alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in February 2026.

Trump and his allies have publicly said that they expected the war with Iran to last only days or weeks. Some hawks, such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, even sold the war as an opportunity to wash America's hands of the Middle East once and for all. The apparent success of the U.S. regime change operation in Venezuela and the massive uprising in Iran, both of which happened in the first week of January 2026, probably contributed to their confidence.

But the problem is deeper than the hubris of one president. U.S. strategic planners have actually been promising a "pivot to [East] Asia" since the days of President Barack Obama. The term pivot came from a 2011 essay by then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arguing that ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would allow for more serious "economic and strategic commitments" in the "Asia-Pacific region." Yet Obama and Clinton themselves oversaw new U.S. wars in Libya and Syria.

The two sides of the political ledger were simply unbalanced. The pivot was not really any politician's top priority; it was driven by an abstract recognition that the U.S. had interests in East Asia, and vague public dissatisfaction with wars in the Middle East. The wars in the Middle East, on the other hand, had powerful and single-minded political constituencies backing them.

Obama's view that other countries would have to "share the neighborhood" with Iran mobilized a hawkish coalition of oil-rich Arab monarchies, Israel, and American war-on-terror dead-enders. They lobbied hard against Obama's nuclear diplomacy with Iran, his first real move toward implementing the pivot. Although this campaign failed to stop a U.S.-Iran deal, it did impose a political price. Obama was cowed into supporting a Saudi war in Yemen and stepping up U.S. military cooperation with Israel, described by The Jerusalem Post as a "compensation package" for the deal with Iran.

President Joe Biden went through a similar process in his own presidency. After finally pulling the plug on the U.S. war in Afghanistan—and facing serious political pushback—he spent the rest of his presidency trying to reassure Arab states that the U.S. wasn't going to abandon them. "The United States is not going anywhere," Biden said in a 2022 speech in Saudi Arabia. Those states took the opportunity to push for permanent U.S. security guarantees.

Meanwhile, lawmakers and bureaucrats worked to quietly embed the U.S. military in Middle Eastern countries. Congress passed a law in 2022 requiring the U.S. military to help integrate Arab and Israeli air defenses, and another law in 2023 requiring the U.S. military to help integrate regional navies.

Although politicians were willing to rant against "endless wars" in the abstract, they were rarely willing to fight specific political battles, especially on arcane defense issues. After all, the tradeoff between Middle Eastern wars and an East Asian buildup didn't seem urgent. Congress could pour money into both at the same time.

Some major advocates for the pivot bent over backward to avoid offending Middle Eastern partners, especially Israel. Colby wrote in July 2023 that pivoting to East Asia would actually allow the U.S. to "defer more to Israel's judgment." Vance argued in May 2024 that the "enduring defeat of Hamas" would allow Israel and the Arab states to "police their region of the world" without as much U.S. involvement.

In practice, these states were happy to take American help in building their own capacities and push for more direct U.S. involvement in their wars. And the quiet U.S.-Arab-Israeli integration of the past few years turned out to be a trip wire for U.S. intervention. After the Hamas attacks of October 2023 provoked a regional war, Israel attacked Iranian forces twice and allowed U.S. troops to absorb the retaliation.

By the time the tradeoffs between the Middle East and East Asia became a live political issue, it was too late to change course. The war with Iran ate up a massive amount of American ammunition, both for air defense and long-range strike weapons. U.S. aircraft carriers were deployed for record amounts of time—remember, the war was only supposed to last days or months—causing maintenance and morale issues. These are problems of physical bottlenecks rather than budgets.

The Pentagon is drawing up plans to reduce its forces in the Persian Gulf after the war, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, which seems a bit like closing the barn door after the horses have all escaped. The ammunition shortage will take years to resolve, while China has been able to build uninterrupted. (North Korea has also been going through a military buildup.) Rather than loosening its grip on one region to prioritize another, the U.S. may end up being forced to give up on both.

In 2017, the historian Alfred McCoy predicted five possible future world orders, from a peaceful U.S.-Chinese accommodation to an apocalypse driven by World War III or climate change. One of his more pessimistic scenarios was Washington launching a "psychologically compensatory" war in the Middle East, only to destroy its own global standing.

"As black clouds billow skyward from the Gulf's oil ports and diplomats rise at the [United Nations] to bitterly denounce American actions, commentators worldwide reach back to the 1956 debacle that marked the end of the British Empire," McCoy wrote, referring to the Suez Crisis. Nearly a decade later, Politico put the exact phrase that McCoy predicted in a headline: "America's Suez."

The post The Trump Administration Promised a Pivot From the Middle East to East Asia. It's Doing the Opposite. appeared first on Reason.com.

Appeals Court Upholds Right To Film Police—but Grants Immunity to Cops Who Arrested a Connecticut Videographer

2026-08-18T18:10:25Z

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit issued a landmark ruling Monday that a Connecticut man had a First Amendment right to film a police station from a public sidewalk, but it also ruled that the officers who arrested the man are immune from his lawsuit.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit held that Keith Massimino, a self-described "First Amendment auditing hobbyist," had a constitutional right to film the exterior of a police department in Waterbury, Connecticut, on an October evening in 2018.

"When the government wants to preserve its privacy, it may build a fence or close a door—but not ban speech," U.S. Circuit Judge Myrna Pérez wrote for the majority.

The panel's opinion creates binding precedent in Connecticut, New York, and Vermont, and, according to the opinion, it makes the 2nd Circuit the ninth federal circuit to agree on the issue. Although the Supreme Court has not ruled on the matter, every circuit court that has considered the issue has found an unambiguous First Amendment right to record and monitor the police, so long as one isn't physically interfering with or obstructing an officer.

"We begin by joining a growing chorus of our sister circuits that have recognized a First Amendment right to record law enforcement activity in public," Pérez wrote. "That right encompasses Massimino's recording of the exterior of a police station from a public sidewalk."

Waterbury police officers approached Massimino in 2018 while he was filming their police station and told him it was illegal to do so, which was false. Massimino is part of a growing trend of First Amendment auditors who film police and government employees to test their compliance with the Constitution. After Massimino gave vague answers about why he was filming and refused to produce his ID when ordered, the officers arrested him for obstruction. The misdemeanor charge was dismissed by prosecutors two and a half years later.

Massimino filed suit in 2021 for violations of his First and Fourth Amendment rights, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut (ACLU-CT). A federal district court dismissed his claims. Although the 2nd Circuit upheld Massimino's First Amendment right on appeal, it ruled that the right wasn't established at the time, making the Waterbury officers immune from his lawsuit. The appellate court also ruled that Massimino's behavior and refusal to hand over his ID gave the officers reasonable suspicion to stop him and probable cause to arrest him, voiding his Fourth Amendment claims.

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, says the ruling is "a case of the bitter with the sweet."

It "helps secure an important First Amendment right for millions of people, and Keith Massimino deserves our gratitude and applause," Olson says. "Yet the court denied him simple justice in his own individual case."

Olson says that's a predictable result of qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that grants government employees immunity from civil suits when the right they violated wasn't "clearly established" at the time.

Civil liberties groups across the political spectrum say qualified immunity lets police officers and government employees bog down civil suits for years and escape accountability for gross violations of rights. The Cato Institute recently filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to review and reverse a 6th Circuit decision granting qualified immunity to a Cleveland police officer who shot his partner while firing blindly into a boarding house bathroom.

"For now, I'm going to look on the brighter side," Olson says. "By the court's count, eight federal circuit courts had already recognized the First Amendment right to record police, while none took the contrary view. Now one of the most influential federal circuits, whose reach includes media center New York, has joined them."

Despite this broad consensus in the judiciary, local police officers have continued to arrest and retaliate against videographers, and the Department of Homeland Security has declared "surveillance" of law enforcement to be unlawful, extremist activity.

Nevertheless, the 2nd Circuit ruling puts police officers in three states on notice that they won't be able to escape civil suits in the future for identical arrests.

"This is big," Dan Barrett, legal director of the ACLU-CT, said in a press release. "It puts it in writing that the First Amendment protects our right to record the police in public. This decision is the difference between Connecticut residents being able to hold law enforcement accountable and the police deciding who gets to watch them work. It's a win for democratic oversight."

The post Appeals Court Upholds Right To Film Police—but Grants Immunity to Cops Who Arrested a Connecticut Videographer appeared first on Reason.com.

ABC's First Amendment Lawsuit Against FCC

2026-08-18T18:07:42Z

From today's Complaint in ABC, Inc. v. FCC (D.D.C.):

Government censorship is deeply un-American. That fundamental principle predates the Republic, with our Founders recognizing that "the freedom of the press is one of the great[est] bulwarks of liberty." And it is no less true today, as the Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed only two years ago: the government may not "use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression." NRA v. Vullo (2024).

This case concerns the Administration's sustained effort to do just that. Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts.

That campaign began in this Administration's earliest days and has only intensified since. Again and again, the Administration has attacked ABC's speech—the stories its journalists report and the viewpoints its network programs air. Over time, those attacks have escalated into express demands that ABC be stripped of its broadcast licenses because of its speech.

In prosecuting the Administration's campaign against free speech on network television, the Commission fights on several fronts using its expansive regulatory powers. What has unfolded, in the words of sitting FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, is "a sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control, carried out through the weaponization of the FCC's authority as a federal regulator and aimed at pressuring a free and independent press and all media into submission."

The Administration has not been shy about openly coercing ABC into changing its programming. For example, in response to on-air comments by ABC's late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, the FCC's Chairman issued an ultimatum to Plaintiffs: "We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways … to take action … on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."

For months, the Administration has steadily increased the pressure on ABC, culminating in the present threat to the broadcasting licenses of the eight ABC Owned Stations ("the Stations"). The day after the President objected to additional on-air comments by Mr. Kimmel, the Commission issued an unprecedented order requiring the Stations to file early applications to renew their licenses—years before any of their licenses would have come up for renewal in the ordinary course and allowing only thirty days to file applications which ordinarily take months to prepare. Until the day before that order issued, the Commission had not called for a renewal application ahead of schedule in more than half a century. Nor had it ever demanded simultaneous early renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a single broadcast network—much less stations with the record of public service and award-winning journalism like these Stations. In a contemporaneous interview, the Chairman did not mince words when explaining the Commission's decision to ramp up its pressure on ABC: "If you didn't take us seriously, now you should."

The Commission has demanded a review of the Stations' licenses extraordinarily early. For all but two of the Stations, this early review comes before their current license terms have even reached the halfway point, and years before the Commission is statutorily authorized to grant renewal. That timing underscores the Commission's true purpose: coercing and retaliating against a network that refuses to bow to the Administration's demands…. With the threat of non-renewal or revocation of its Stations' broadcast licenses on the line, ABC cannot ignore the consequences of any decision that might anger the Administration or the FCC Chairman. On July 16, 2026, the President made a primetime address. ABC made the editorial judgment not to broadcast the address live. ABC was aware that the President wanted the address to be broadcast live, and considered the risk of resulting Administration retaliation. ABC ultimately decided to livestream the speech on ABC News LIVE, which it ordinarily would not have done.

In direct response to ABC's decision not to broadcast his address—and during the address itself—the President called for the revocation of the ABC Owned Stations' broadcast licenses, as well as those of NBC, which had similarly chosen not to broadcast the address: "NBC and ABC fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech …. [T]his should mean a revocation of their licenses."6

The Administration's threats to ABC's licenses were not new. But this threat landed with unusual force, because the Commission had just called those very licenses up for early review. And the Commission promptly confirmed the connection: following the President's demand, the Chairman stated that the Commission would consider ABC's decision not to broadcast the July 16 address as part of its review of the Stations' renewal applications.

The Commission is poised to make good on its threat any day now: the public comment period on the renewal applications has closed, and the Commission may, at any moment, issue an unprecedented Hearing Designation Order for all eight Stations, which would kick off a formal agency adjudication to determine the fate of ABC's licenses. On July 15, 2026, Bloomberg reported that the FCC was "expected to take action against [ABC] … as soon as next month." According to individuals "who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private," the FCC was planning to take action "likely timed before the Labor Day holiday."

Any FCC adjudication would be a charade. The Commission cannot lawfully grant renewal this early in the license terms—the only outcomes on the table are adverse to Plaintiffs. At one extreme, the Commission may intentionally prolong the adjudicative process, miring ABC in years of costly litigation, with the threat of adverse action ever present and with every editorial judgment shadowed by the prospect of provoking the Administration into further retaliation. After all, "the value of a sword of Damocles is that it hangs—not that it drops."

At another extreme, the Commission may use the hearing to deny license renewal or immediately revoke the Stations' licenses, forcing Plaintiffs off the air entirely, as the President has repeatedly demanded. In either scenario, the Administration accomplishes its goal of eliminating a perceived media critic: either it gets Plaintiffs to fall in line, or it silences them if they refuse.

The Commission's retaliatory campaign against ABC has drawn condemnation from across the political spectrum. Senator Ted Cruz has warned that the Commission's attempted censorship of ABC is "dangerous as hell." Likewise, Senator John Kennedy recently commented that "the FCC scares me right now" as it is "getting into the foothills of violating the First Amendment." He explained further that he "do[esn't] like some of the stuff that is said on television, but what business is it of the FCC?" Less than two months ago, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch cited the Commission's threats in response to Mr. Kimmel's late-night comments as a cautionary tale of what might be done by a too-powerful executive agency to "[a] business out of favor with the party in control of the White House." Trump v. Slaughter (Gorsuch, J., concurring). And in a public comment in the Stations' renewal proceeding, a bipartisan group of former FCC Commissioners and senior officials condemned the Commission's early review of ABC's broadcast licenses as "an assault on free speech disguised as regulatory process."

The consequences of the Administration's campaign against free speech reach well beyond ABC. If the Administration gets its way, the message to every media company in the country will be unmistakable: tell only the stories the Administration deems favorable, or face the coercive machinery of the federal government. In such a world, the press could in no way be described as free.

The FCC Chairman has left little doubt that this is his goal. He has publicly touted the Administration's success in extracting speech-related concessions from other media companies, boasting that it has "t[aken] on the fake news media" and is "winning," cataloguing with evident pride the perceived critical voices that have been taken off the air.

Facing this existential threat, Plaintiffs have no choice but to seek redress from the judicial branch for the Administration's blatant retaliation for their First Amendment speech. Plaintiffs come to this Court reluctantly with no alternative means to eliminate these ongoing and immediate threats other than total capitulation to the Administration's demands. This Court should immediately enjoin Defendants from taking or threatening to take any action against Plaintiffs in relation to the early license renewal applications, including issuing a Hearing Designation Order in connection with Plaintiffs' renewal applications.

I'm not an administrative law expert, so I can't speak to whether there are procedural barriers to this sort of request for an injunction against the FCC. But the substantive First Amendment objections that ABC raises strike me as very serious.

For more on the special First Amendment rules dealing with broadcast regulation, see Stuart Benjamin's Making Broadcast Content Regulation Aggressive Again.

The post ABC's First Amendment Lawsuit Against FCC appeared first on Reason.com.

No Preliminary Injunction Against Alleged Defamation of Counselor by Estranged Wife/Ex-Client

2026-08-18T17:37:50Z

From Patterson v. Patterson, decided by Chief Judge Brian Morris (D. Mont.) today:

James Patterson ("Plaintiff") filed this action on July 10, 2026 . Plaintiff filed a motion for a preliminary injunction and a Temporary Restraining Order ("TRO") on July 16, 2026. Plaintiff requests the following relief (1) to enjoin Defendant Cindy Patterson ("Defendant") from publishing defamatory statements about Plaintiff to any third party; and (2) to require Defendant to remove alleged defamatory comments posted on the internet….

Plaintiff has served as a longtime clinician, chaplain, ordained minister, military officer, VA Chaplain, and owner of a Counseling Service Business in Montana…. Plaintiff and Defendant (collectively the "Parties") met in Montana in 2014 when Plaintiff became Defendant's professional counselor. Defendant attended counseling sessions with Plaintiff over the course of 5 years. Plaintiff and Defendant communicated off and on every couple of months following the end of their professional relationship. Plaintiff contends that the Parties typically limited these communications to short discussions regarding Defendant's well-being. Plaintiff alleges, however, that Defendant began to "aggressively pursue" him for a romantic relationship around August 2020.

Plaintiff knew Montana had enacted ethical rules prohibiting therapists from entering romantic relationships with their former clients. Upon investigation into the Montana Administrative rules, Plaintiff found it reasonable to believe he could pursue a romantic relationship with Defendant. Plaintiff alleges to have consulted with an approved supervisor with the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy in October of 2020. Plaintiff further alleges the supervisor informed him that a romantic relationship with a former client, such as Defendant, would not violate applicable ethical standards.

The Parties began a romantic relationship and ultimately married on February 12, 2021. The marriage began to deteriorate shortly thereafter in March of 2021. The Parties remain legally married while currently going through divorce proceedings. Plaintiff asserts that Defendant started to make statements concerning Plaintiff on social media and to third parties outside the divorce proceedings.

Plaintiff alleges Defendant has published defamatory statements to churches, pastors, prayer networks, Christian media outlets, counseling clients and professionals, licensing boards, Plaintiff's ordination sponsor and religious endorser, military leadership, Montana public bodies, and social media. Plaintiff alleges Defendant demonstrates her intent to continue posting defamatory statements regarding Plaintiff, as evidenced by her X posts on July 2, 2026….

Defendant's statements regarding the Parties' relationship and her thoughts on how Plaintiff treated her may or may not be true. The alleged future statements have not been proven as defamatory. Additionally, if the Court were to enjoin Defendant from publishing her statements regarding their relationship, it would impose an impermissible prior restraint of her speech. For these reasons, the Court declines to enjoin Defendant from publishing statements to third parties regarding their relationship and her thoughts on Plaintiff's personality. Further, a TRO or preliminary injunction prohibiting Defendant from "publishing further defamatory statements" would be both ineffective and overly burdensome. The Court would be placed in a role of having to determine continually what Defendant should be allowed to say.

Plaintiff may prove some of Defendant's statements to be defamatory in future proceedings. Plaintiff has not yet met this burden. As a result, a TRO or preliminary injunction ordering Defendant to be enjoined from speaking "defamatory statements" would be ineffective, overly burdensome on the Court, and a prior restraint on Defendant's speech….

Plaintiff asks the Court to order Defendant to remove three comments she posted on X on May 20, 2026, and July 2, 2026. On May 20, 2026, Defendant posted: "Professionals told me [the Plaintiff] groomed me in therapy" and "believe I'm not [the Plaintiff's] only victim." Defendant described Plaintiff in another X post as a "communal narcissist," and claimed that "[the Plaintiff] groomed and abused her."

Plaintiff has not yet proven false Defendant's comment concerning Plaintiff's alleged grooming of her. Defendant labeling Plaintiff as a "communal narcissist" represents her opinion which merely accuses Plaintiff of being a bad person. Plaintiff has not yet proven the statements to be defamatory.

Plaintiff included in the Complaint an exhibit of text messages between the Parties. The text messages included Defendant assuring Plaintiff he did not "exploit" their professional relationship. Additionally, the Montana Board of Behavioral Health ("MBBH") allegedly dismissed Defendant's complaint against Plaintiff.

The text messages and the MBBH's findings do not prove conclusory of whether Plaintiff exploited the Parties' professional relationship. Defendant's allegations differ materially. Now, Defendant alleges she had been "groomed" by Plaintiff. Plaintiff has not provided evidence to disprove the claim. Plaintiff has not yet shown a likelihood of success on the merits of this claim when Plaintiff has not demonstrated the statements to be false.

Defendant also posted on X, "Wyoming revoked [Plaintiff's] license," and mentioned the Parties' marriage. The Parties agree they got married in February of 2021. Whether the state of Wyoming revoked Plaintiff's license remains currently unknown. Plaintiff claims he "voluntarily surrendered" his Wyoming license. Defendant alleges the Wyoming Mental Health Professions Licensing Board (the "Board") recommended revocation of Plaintiff's license because of the Parties' relationship. Defendant asserts that the Board offered an alternative of the voluntarily surrender of Plaintiff' license in lieu of the Board formally revoking Plaintiff's license.

The Court recognizes Defendant's statements may harm Plaintiff in his occupation. Plaintiff has not yet introduced ample evidence showing the statements to be false. Plaintiff has not shown a likelihood of success on merits of the claims of his libel and slander for Defendant's posts on X….

Michael Doggett (Doggett Law Offices, PLLC) represents defendant.

The post No Preliminary Injunction Against Alleged Defamation of Counselor by Estranged Wife/Ex-Client appeared first on Reason.com.

Disney Sues FCC for 'Retaliatory' Investigation of ABC

2026-08-18T17:32:23Z

The broadcast network ABC, parent company Disney, and eight ABC affiliates filed a lawsuit today against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

ABC alleges the government is targeting the network for its speech, and it makes a convincing argument.

"Government censorship is deeply un-American," the lawsuit begins. "That fundamental principle predates the Republic, with our Founders recognizing that 'the freedom of the press is one of the great[est] bulwarks of liberty.'"

The filing cites NRA v. Vullo, a 2024 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected the state of New York's efforts to prevent banks and insurance companies from doing business with the National Rifle Association.

The government, wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, cannot "use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression." According to ABC's lawsuit, "This case concerns the Administration's sustained effort to do just that. Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts."

Plaintiffs typically face a difficult task proving selective or vindictive treatment by the government. But this is not a typical situation: The lawsuit catalogues dozens of times that President Donald Trump suggested broadcast networks, including ABC, should be taken off the air for displeasing him.

"ABC & NBC FAKE NEWS, two of the worst and most biased networks in history, give me 97% BAD STORIES," he wrote last year in a characteristic Truth Social post. "IF THAT IS THE CASE, THEY ARE SIMPLY AN ARM OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND SHOULD, ACCORDING TO MANY, HAVE THEIR LICENSES REVOKED BY THE FCC."

"If Network NEWSCASTS, and their Late Night Shows, are almost 100% Negative to President Donald J. Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party," he complained in another, "shouldn't their very valuable Broadcast Licenses be terminated? I say, YES!"

Trump has said this for years, even though it's not how it works: Networks create content, but the local affiliates that air it have broadcast licenses. Disney only owns eight of ABC's hundreds of affiliates, meaning the vast majority are owned by third parties.

Just last month, Trump threatened to revoke ABC's and NBC's broadcast licenses for not airing one of his speeches.

But Trump is not the only example cited in the lawsuit. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has also repeatedly threatened Disney and ABC with reprisal over what largely amounts to hurting the president's feelings.

In September 2025, when Jimmy Kimmel suggested in his late-night show's monologue that slain conservative activist was killed by a member of "the MAGA gang," FCC Chair Brendan Carr called on ABC's affiliates to "step up" and reject the network's programming; otherwise, "we can do this the easy way or the hard way," he warned. "These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."

Numerous affiliates preempted Kimmel's show, and ABC suspended production until the following week.

This year, Carr threatened ABC's daytime chat show The View for not following the federal "equal time" rule that says when a candidate for public office appears on a broadcast network, their opponents must be offered equal time. The FCC had exempted shows like The View from the rule for decades before Carr reversed course.

Carr also opened an investigation into Disney's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies; while Disney had already rolled back its DEI programs, "significant concerns remain," Carr claimed.

ABC's lawsuit calls the investigation "pretextual." Indeed, it formed the basis of an action earlier this year, when the FCC called in the broadcast licenses of all eight Disney-owned ABC affiliates for "early renewal," years before any of them were set to expire. Notably, though, it came just days after Kimmel made another intemperate comment at Trump's expense.

"Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC," Trump wrote on Truth Social the day before the FCC announced it was calling in the licenses.

ABC's lawsuit seeks relief from the review, which it characterizes as completely unprecedented. The FCC "had not called for a renewal application ahead of schedule in more than half a century," the filing claims. "Nor had it ever demanded simultaneous early renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned by a single broadcast network."

Carr apparently agrees: "It's probably been 50, 60 years or longer since the FCC has used this tool," he told the Financial Times. "If you didn't take us seriously, now you should."

And last month, Carr suggested that ABC's decision not to air Trump's speech would factor into the FCC's review.

ABC's lawsuit says the network faces "irreparable harm" from the government, but it also suggests dire potential consequences for the entire broadcast industry. "If the Administration gets its way, the message to every media company will be unmistakable: tell only the stories the Administration deems favorable, or face the coercive machinery of the federal government," it warns. "In such a world, the press could in no way be described as free."

"The current FCC has repeatedly used its power over broadcast speech to jawbone, punish, and threaten censorship of its political opponents," David Inserra, a fellow for free speech and technology at the Cato Institute, said in an emailed statement. "Today's lawsuit by ABC Disney against the FCC directly challenges the broad and abusive powers that Congress and prior court decisions gave the FCC. No government agency should ever be empowered to restrict free expression based on what it thinks is fair, equal, or in the best interest of the public. In a world where the American people and press can speak through print, broadcast, cable, satellite, internet, and other forms of media, there is no justification for the FCC to continue to wield such significant power over broadcast speech."

"Disney is entirely justified in asking a court to stop the FCC's attempt to coerce its broadcast stations' programming through an unlawful campaign of regulatory scrutiny," added Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. "The lawsuit makes clear that this campaign has already chilled ABC's speech. The First Amendment prohibits the government from using regulatory threats to chill speech that the government doesn't like, which is exactly what the FCC is doing here."

The post Disney Sues FCC for 'Retaliatory' Investigation of ABC appeared first on Reason.com.

"As If These Blunders Were Not Enough," U.S. Attorney Office Management …

2026-08-18T16:49:57Z

From Judge Beryl Howell's long opinion last week in U.S. v. Thompson; read the full opinion for details (and see here for more on the Speedy Trial Act, which provides more specific time limits and procedures than does the Sixth Amendment's Speedy Trial Clause):

The government's pending motion to dismiss without prejudice the indictment against defendant Adrian Thompson amounts to nothing more than a strategic attempt to circumvent the Speedy Trial Act in circumstances where noncompliance with this statute was inevitable and due entirely to the government's own mismanagement of this case.

After defendant was first arrested in 2024 and brought to the District of Columbia Superior Court, the charge against him was "no-papered," or declined for prosecution, but then he was arrested a second time in 2025 and charged in this Court and scheduled to face a jury trial on July 20, 2026, on a one-count indictment alleging felon-in-possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).

Following a series of missteps by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia ("USAO-DC")—including double booking its line attorney for two trials scheduled to begin on the same day; knowing for over nine months about problems with an essential government witness but failing to make timely alternative plans; and ignoring defendant's repeated requests for discovery and Brady materials—the government realized in the lead up to the trial date, which had been proposed by the parties and adopted by the court four months earlier, that it is not ready. After first attempting to seek a continuance of "at least 90 days," which was denied on Speedy Trial Act grounds, the government is now requesting dismissal without prejudice pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 48(a).

The missteps leading to the current posture of this case may be laid squarely at the feet of management at the USAO-DC. How else to explain double-booking the same Assistant U.S. Attorney ("AUSA-1") for two jury trials on the same day in this Court, without substituting in another line attorney for one of the trials? How else to explain that the assigned AUSA-1 needed supervisory permission to call the essential law enforcement witness necessary for the introduction of DNA evidence tying defendant to the gun at issue in the charge, yet was not alerted of that requirement by his supervisors until less than a month before trial?

How else to explain that when supervisors were consulted by another AUSA ("AUSA-2") about the witness problem in mid-June 2026, efforts to re-do the DNA testing by collecting new buccal swabs from defendant did not occur until almost four weeks later at the pretrial conference held ten days before the scheduled trial date? How else to explain the recurring problems involving the same essential government witness in USAO-DC cases, including a prior case in this Court where the same issue also surfaced just before trial?

The present predicament boils down to this: The government cannot proceed to trial due to its own dilatory behavior and so grasps at Rule 48(a) to end-run the Court's denial of its continuance motion. The government has informed the Court that, after dismissal, it will be ready to re-prosecute "in approximately 90 days" at which time "this case can proceed to adjudication." Unsurprisingly, defendant, who has met nearly every court-imposed deadline, been under stringent pretrial supervision for over a year, and diligently prepared for months in reliance on the parties' jointly proposed July 2026 trial date, vigorously opposes the government's motion and requests instead dismissal with prejudice.

For the reasons set forth below, the government's motion for without-prejudice dismissal is granted in part insofar as the motion seeks dismissal of the indictment, and denied in part as to its request that the dismissal be without prejudice. Accordingly, the indictment against defendant is dismissed with prejudice….

The post "As If These Blunders Were Not Enough," U.S. Attorney Office Management … appeared first on Reason.com.

Congress Is Trying To Give Trump More Tariff Powers. He Wants Even More.

2026-08-18T15:57:18Z

President Donald Trump has made a habit of recklessly using—and often overstepping—the many tariff powers granted to the presidency.

Now, Congress is preparing to give him even more unilateral authority to tax imports.

Those new powers are tucked inside a bipartisan bill that cleared the Senate earlier this month. Ostensibly, the bill is meant to tighten sanctions against Russia and Iran, but it would also allow the president to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on goods from the five countries that import the most Russian crude oil or natural gas.

In July, the largest importers of Russian crude oil were China, India, and Turkey. Several major European countries, including France, Spain, and Belgium, are among the top recipients of Russian natural gas.

The bill cleared the Senate with an 86–11 vote, despite warnings from some senators about the tariff provisions.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) called it "extremely dangerous to give Trump massive new tariff powers, particularly after we've seen the disastrous impacts of his corrupt, chaotic, and inflationary tariff spree," in a joint statement with Rep. Richard Neal (D–Mass.), the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) offered an amendment in the Senate to remove the tariff provisions from the bill. It was rejected.

With the bill now in front of the House, Trump is reportedly asking lawmakers to add even more tariff powers to the legislation so that he could also target countries that import goods from Iran.

This makes little sense. Tariffs are tax increases paid by Americans. The goal is to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin for his war of aggression in Ukraine, but this tariff policy would allow the president to tax Americans who buy goods made in India or Belgium. Yes, the intention is to steer those countries away from using Russian fossil fuels, but surely there are ways to do that without hiking taxes on Americans in the process.

If the tariff powers must be included in the bill, they should be more narrowly tailored, argued Clark Packard, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, in an op-ed for The Washington Post. The Senate-passed version gives the president (and the U.S. trade representative) unchecked authority to determine which countries should face tariffs, how high those tariffs will be, and how long those tariffs will be in force. That's the same sort of ambiguity that Trump and his allies have tried to exploit in other tariff efforts.

"Congress could add an expiration date to the tariff authority or require a vote before any duties take effect," Packard wrote. "Lawmakers could cap the tariff rate far below 100 percent or specify how the largest importers of Russian energy are determined."

Whatever other merits the bill might have, the tariff provisions should be a red flag for every member of Congress. The past few years have shown that Congress made a terrible mistake in unloading so much of its constitutional authority over trade and tariffs to the executive branch. Rather than reversing that trend, the Russian sanctions bill would give Trump (and his successors) even more unchecked power to raise taxes on Americans.

The post Congress Is Trying To Give Trump More Tariff Powers. He Wants Even More. appeared first on Reason.com.

Ninth Circuit Rejects Trump Administration Acting U.S. Attorney Appointment

2026-08-18T15:42:52Z

Yesterday, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concluded that the Attorney General did not properly appoint Sigal Chattah as the Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada. The AG had named Chattah to the post in an effort to get around the need to either nominate a U.S. Attorney the Senate would confirm or accept a judicial appointment.

Judge Eric Miller wrote for the panel in United States v. Jackson. His opinion begins:

These cases present the question whether the Attorney General can make someone an Acting United States Attorney—bypassing the usual requirement that a U.S. Attorney be confirmed by the Senate—by designating that person as the first assistant to an already-vacant office of U.S. Attorney. We hold that the Attorney General cannot do so. Although the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 (FVRA) provides that a first assistant automatically succeeds to a vacant office, that rule of automatic succession applies only to a first assistant who held that position at the time the vacancy arose; it does not apply to a first assistant who never served under a validly appointed official. 5 U.S.C. § 3345(a)(1). Nor can the Attorney General create a de facto Acting U.S. Attorney by delegating all of the functions and duties of the U.S. Attorney to someone else. The FVRA is "the exclusive means for temporarily authorizing an acting official to perform the functions and duties of any office," so it prohibits a complete delegation of all of the U.S. Attorney's powers to a single person. Id. § 3347.

Applying those principles, we affirm the district court's order disqualifying Sigal Chattah, the putative Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada, from supervising the prosecutions of the defendants in these cases. We dismiss defendants' cross-appeals because we lack appellate jurisdiction to review the district court's denial of defendants' motions to dismiss their indictments.

From later in the opinion:

The government argues that when the Attorney General designated Chattah as the first assistant to the vacant office of U.S. Attorney, section 3345(a)(1) automatically elevated her to Acting U.S. Attorney. But section 3345(a)(1) does not apply to an official who, like Chattah, was not serving as the first assistant at the time the vacancy arose. In the alternative, the government argues that Chattah may exercise all of the powers of the U.S. Attorney by delegation from the Attorney General. But the FVRA is "the exclusive means for temporarily authorizing an acting official to perform the functions and duties of any office of an Executive agency." 5 U.S.C. § 3347(a). The Attorney General therefore cannot rely on general delegation statutes to make Chattah the de facto U.S. Attorney.

Of potential interest, in the decision, Judge Miller also explains why a the panel gave a 2001 Office of Legal Counsel opinion upon which the AG relied in making the appointment is entitled to "no weight."

The next question is whether the administration will appeal.

The post Ninth Circuit Rejects Trump Administration Acting U.S. Attorney Appointment appeared first on Reason.com.

Remy: Choosin' Texas (Ella Langley Parody)

2026-08-18T15:10:03Z

Remy has friends in low (tax) places.

Parody of Ella Langley's Choosin' Texas, written and performed by Remy. Mastering and backing vocals by Ben Karlstrom.

LYRICS:

Just when I thought he loved our singleMile of high-speed railOur water supply for fires that isBasically a pail

Doesn't he love our various high taxes?On income, property, car, and gases?

He's choosin' Texas, I can tell by the wayHe's two-stepping 'round the roomAnd judging by the tax assessment on his placeHe's probably leaving soon

It doesn't take a crystal ball to seeThere's needles on the sidewalk of this streetSmoking crack all by myselfHe's choosin' Texas, I can tell

Netanyahu should be arrestedThat's what I declare!What meeting's this guy leading?He's in charge of pothole repair

He always loved not getting robbed in the morningWe should've taken that as a warning

He's choosin' Texas, I can tell by the wayHe's high-fiving every dudeAnd judging by this meeting of the PTAThe U-Haul's coming soon

It doesn't take ten Flock cameras to seeWe let folks use the bathroom on the street

Taking craps all by myselfHe's choosin' Texas, I can tell

Oh no!

There's a new meals tax as well?He's choosin' Texas, I can tell

The post Remy: Choosin' Texas (Ella Langley Parody) appeared first on Reason.com.

Vanishing of Stories Mentioning Congressional Candidate Michael Carbonara, Due to "Bogus Copyright Complaints"

2026-08-18T15:03:35Z

WLRN (Daniel Rivero) reports:

A string of bogus copyright infringement claims have been filed to Google over the course of several weeks, demanding that the search engine giant de-list articles about Carbonara's data center connections from search results. The complaints, filed by different entities with little information online, fraudulently claim that the articles are using copyrighted material.

WLRN has found that the effort largely paid off, making it nearly impossible for the public to find information about Carbonara's data center connections or other critical coverage of the candidate through a basic Google search….

The takedown efforts are allowed through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed by Congress in 1998. Social media companies, search engines and web hosts simply comply with all complaints as soon as they are filed, out of fear of being held liable for legitimate copyright violations….

Two days after WLRN published an article last month entitled "Candidate running for Project Tango district is embroiled in Michigan data center controversy," a company allegedly called Reynolds Media Group, based in the United Kingdom, sent a complaint to Google falsely claiming that the article was stolen from the Times of India. No information about the UK-based Reynolds Media Group can be found online, but it alleged that it represented the Indian newspaper in the complaint sent to Google. The company that owns the Times of India is The Times Group.

"We demand the immediate removal of this infringing material from Google search results to safeguard our intellectual property," reads the complaint.

The article was immediately removed from Google search results, WLRN found….

The WLRN article has many more examples and other details. See also South Florida Sun Sentinel (Susannah Bryan) and Miami Herald (Claire Heddles), which discuss the story; the latter notes that "Carbonara insisted his campaign had no role filing those complaints."

For more on various schemes for vanishing material from search engine results, see Shenanigans (Internet Takedown Edition); I briefly discuss the DMCA takedown schemes at pp. 300-01.

The post Vanishing of Stories Mentioning Congressional Candidate Michael Carbonara, Due to "Bogus Copyright Complaints" appeared first on Reason.com.

Meme After Meme Shows Jayden Daniels Made One of the Dumbest P.R. Fumbles in Sports History

2026-08-18T14:21:29Z

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! This week, it's time to get a life (or don't?).

We've got a full newsletter this week, starting with the funniest thing to happen in sports this week—not Jayden Daniels' letter to LSU, but the reaction to it. Then I'll play jury and deliver a verdict on a couple of other major sports scandals involving Kawhi Leonard and Shohei Ohtani (both, coincidentally, Los Angeles sports stars). All rise!

Locker Room Links

A federal investigation into Mark Walter (with ownership stakes of some kind in the Dodgers, Chelsea soccer, motorsports teams, the Professional Women's Hockey League, and until several days ago, the Lakers) is causing major ripple effects across the sporting world, with Walter reportedly looking to sell off assets. Allegedly, Walter hid debt-related transactions between his own companies through third entities.
All that has caused even more Lakers-related chaos, with lots of confusion. Did the Buss family vote to sell their remaining 17.8 percent stake in the team, or is Jeanie Buss right in saying the trust vote is "void"?
Ever wondered all the requirements for hosting ESPN's College GameDay at your school? FOIAball got the list.
Very interesting data for each sport on your odds of making an NCAA roster if you're on a high school team (though some caveats apply).
The WNBA's Atlanta Dream skipped the national anthem ahead of their highly anticipated game against the Indiana Fever.
San Antonio will spend almost $500 million on a new Spurs arena, but won't let citizens vote on it because, as one councilman said, a ballot proposal would be too expensive.
Maybe they'd ignore the vote results anyway, which Kansas City, Missouri, appears to be doing en route to spending $600 million (plus huge tax breaks!) on a new Royals stadium.
Thankfully, sanity prevailed in Orlando, Florida, where officials decided against promising $1 billion to an MLB team that doesn't exist yet.
Elsewhere in Reason: "She Spent 7 Months in Legal Hell After Cops Used Flock Surveillance To Identify the Wrong Car"

Jayden Daniels and His Humorless P.R. Fumble

Has any famous athlete ever had such an unnecessary public relations fumble as Jayden Daniels' demand that LSU stop using his name, image, and likeness (NIL)?

The Commanders quarterback is getting relentlessly mocked online by almost everyone—not just random people online, but even professional teams in other leagues. Examples if you click below:

I mean pic.twitter.com/9HCeuBWkiI

— Dan Steinberg (@dcsportsbog) August 15, 2026

Daniels was apparently so bitter at LSU assigning his no. 5 jersey to sophomore cornerback D.J. Pickett that Daniels sent a cease-and-desist letter (on August 5, naturally, but reported on by ESPN a week later) telling the school to stop using his NIL. But, in a textbook example of the Streisand effect, now everyone is talking about him and how silly this demand is.

Even if Daniels' NIL contract expired long ago, his demand that no. 5 be retired reeks of entitlement. Especially on the collegiate level, football numbers don't get retired often because there are a gazillion people on the roster. While he did win the Heisman in his senior year, the team was just 9–3 in both of his LSU regular seasons (a season ending in the ReliaQuest Bowl is not exactly the stuff of history).

The funny thing is, this is basically Daniels complaining about someone doing marketing for him for free. LSU used his likeness to promote themselves, yes, but also to promote their famous alumni. "If you like us," the marketing might imply, "why not go buy this very successful former player's NFL jersey?" In theory he could have asked for payment or a cut of proceeds in exchange for NIL rights, but now that ship seems to have sailed with the feud going as public as it has.

There are malevolent P.R. fumbles (drunk driving, domestic abuse, etc.) and ones the victim can eventually laugh along with (butt fumble), but Daniels found the sweet spot as a totally unnecessary loser in this fight. He has, of course, expressed no humor about the situation, issuing a statement that says, "I have been locked in on training camp and that's been my number one focus." (He could have at least used ChatGPT to come up with a lame no. 5 joke!)

I, for one, will cut my drinking tonight from five beers to four—out of respect for Jayden Daniels.

Sorry Kawhi Leonard Defenders: He's Guilty

I'm very flummoxed by anyone who's looked into the Kawhi Leonard salary cap–circumvention scandal and still thinks Leonard and Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer are innocent.

The latest news comes from ESPN, which reports that "the NBA has found no evidence showing LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer funneled money through team sponsors to pay Kawhi Leonard in order to circumvent the salary cap, according to three people with knowledge of discussions between the two sides in recent days."

The NBA and I apparently have different interpretations of what "evidence" is.

The smoking gun in this case is an endorsement deal Leonard signed with Aspiration, an eco-conscious banking company that paid Leonard a combined $48 million. Seven months before that deal, Ballmer invested $50 million in Aspiration (on top of millions he had already invested). And, to my absolute bewilderment, Leonard's endorsement deal didn't actually require him to do anything to promote Aspiration. Leonard also had a no-show endorsement deal with Daktronics, a Clippers sponsor who made the massive scoreboard at the team's arena.

What is the point of a marketing deal that doesn't involve any marketing?

The NBA's likely argument (though they say ESPN's report has "numerous and significant inaccuracies" and their investigation into the situation is ongoing) seems to be that Leonard and Ballmer did nothing wrong, but that the team's employees may have broken salary cap rules by introducing Leonard to team sponsors (who, the NBA seems to think, made useless no-show endorsement deals because they like losing money?).

If the NBA found that Leonard indeed had these no-show endorsement deals but that Ballmer and Leonard (and his agent, his uncle Dennis Robertson) did nothing wrong, then it needs to tighten up its salary cap rules. They would be far too easy to game, especially now that team owners, players, and sponsors see what they're allowed to do without reporting anything to the league.

As I wrote back when the scandal first began, "I'd bring down the hammer if I were the NBA." Instead, the NBA is apparently negotiating with Ballmer for how to resolve the investigation. Weird!

I am confused by some of Leonard and Ballmer's defenders. Some of the defenders seem to be conservatives who would prefer that journalist Pablo Torre have gotten all of this wrong. I don't share Torre's politics—at least as far as I can tell from him having socialist Zohran Mamdani and the worst antitrust enforcer this century, Lina Khan, on his podcast. But if you want to judge this situation based on politics, let it not be forgotten that Ballmer donates millions to Democrats and liberal causes, and that Aspiration was founded by Democrats, one of whom is heading to prison (Leonard, for what it's worth, seems to keep his politics quiet).

If anything, Torre deserves credit for being willing to go after these progressives.

Sorry Shohei Ohtani Haters: He's Innocent

Many a jealous baseball fan would love to see Shohei Ohtani's honorable and clean reputation turned to dust by smoking-gun proof that he bet on baseball while his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, took the fall. But thanks to a thorough investigation by ESPN's Tisha Thompson, plus federal prosecutors, I'm convinced Ohtani was rightfully cleared of all wrongdoing.

If you read this newsletter after the MLB trade deadline, you probably figured out I'm one of those baseball fans who's jealous of the Dodgers' success and wouldn't mind to see Ohtani fall from grace. But after listening to all of the 30 for 30 podcast The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani, I'm more confident than ever before that Ohtani did nothing wrong (other than the huge mistake of entrusting far too much of his affairs to Mizuhara).

I got pulled in by a viral post on X, with over 8 million views, that seemed to give many people what they wanted to see: a direct connection between Ohtani and an illegal bookie, proven by documented bank transfers. But as the podcast goes into later episodes, listeners find out what really happened: All that money came out of a private bank account set up by Mizuhara, an account he'd always managed to convince everyone that Ohtani didn't want touched. He even called the bank pretending to be Ohtani to get his $500,000 wire transfers to the bookie approved.

The main argument of the Ohtani haters (that Mizuhara is taking the fall) is never 100 percent disproved. But since Mizuhara confessed and pleaded guilty, it seems proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it, with no alternative explanation. Mizuhara bet on sports constantly (something like 25 bets a day averaged for more than two years) and lost millions. He bet when Ohtani was on the field and clearly wasn't betting himself. When the bets lost, it came out of Ohtani's accounts—when he won, the winnings went to Mizuhara. Similar examples abound, as we hear throughout the closing episode about several times Mizuhara took advantage of Ohtani besides gambling debts. Even after his plea and before his sentencing hearing, Mizuhara was still lying.

Everytime you think "How could this scandal have gotten to this point, and then that point, and then an even worse point?" it comes back to one thing: Ohtani always trusted Mizuhara with everything—translation, bank accounts, important documents, and more. He never doubted Mizuhara until the very end. As Thompson explains it, since Mizuhara was Ohtani's only translator, Ohtani didn't even find out about the betting scandal and stolen money until after the clubhouse meeting where Mizuhara told everyone on the Dodgers about the story—and then translated it for Ohtani afterward.

It's a very well-made podcast, and I highly recommend listening. We get most of a recording of Thompson's initial interview with Mizuhara just before the scandal came out; we get an after-the-fact interview with the bookie at the center of the case, Mathew Bowyer; and hear from the feds who investigated it all and went through thousands of texts between Ohtani and Mizuhara.

You know what's never mentioned in those texts? Sports betting.

Replay of the Week

Scottie Scheffler is so good that even when this happens to him, he can still win a tournament by eight strokes.

I've NEVER seen this before.

Legitimately one of the worst breaks I've ever seen on a golf course.pic.twitter.com/5v7uPrUN0C

— Jamie Kennedy (@jamierkennedy) August 16, 2026

That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the week: It's not yet time for college football, but you can watch North Dakota against Eastern Michigan in women's soccer on Saturday.

The post Meme After Meme Shows Jayden Daniels Made One of the Dumbest P.R. Fumbles in Sports History appeared first on Reason.com.

New in SCOTUSBlog: "The chief justice should share much of his power"

2026-08-18T15:51:02Z

Today's a busy day! SCOTUSBlog has published my new installment on Supreme Court reform. This piece focuses on (who else?) the Chief Justice. I write that the Chief should delegate some of his powers to the associate justices.

Here is the introduction:

Under longstanding tradition, the chief justice presides over oral argument and the justices' private conferences. I propose a change. The chief justice should delegate these presiding duties to his colleagues. Doing so would promote trust among the justices and allow for the experimentation of different leadership styles.

There are two primary duties to be delegates: presiding over oral argument and presiding over the conference.

The division of labor here could be done in different ways. For the simplest approach, each year, the justices could draw a number from a hat to select the presiding justice for a given term. Once a justice serves as chief, his or her name will be taken out of the hat until all other active members have served. That approach would provide more stability and continuity in the chief's seat. It would also give the presiding justice time to develop an approach to the important role. A justice could opt out of having his or her name drawn at random. This system would be entirely voluntary – but I suspect most of the junior justices would jump at the chance to preside, barring some other extenuating circumstances.

The justices could also rotate during a given term. The court is in session for approximately nine months out of the year from October through June. There is usually one sitting per month. Each of the nine justices could serve during one sitting as presiding officer for oral argument and for the conference. In fairness, the court usually does not hold oral arguments in May and June (although they should.) But I have little doubt that this could be worked out.

Perhaps most critically, my approach would allow different members of the court to assign majority opinions. Here, more justices would be able to direct the trajectory of majority opinions. And since the selection would be random, justices could not game which opinions they can assign. Moreover, the ordering would not be announced to the public in advance. This information might allow litigators to time cert petitions and emergency applications to shop for particular presiding officers. (On the lower courts, savvy litigators know when certain judges are sitting on emergency motion panels and can time their cases accordingly.)

Again, this is yet another reform that would change the power structures on the Court without affecting its composition or jurisdiction. All of these proposals for term limits and expansion only purport to treat the symptoms and not the root cause.

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Fifth Circuit Rejects Energy Department Direct-to-Final Rule on Home Appliances

2026-08-18T14:43:45Z

Last week, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted a petition for review of a Biden Administration Department of Energy direct-to-final rule limiting the energy use of stoves and ovens.

Judge Oldham wrote for the panel in Mississippi v. Department of Energy, joined by Judge Ho. Judge Haynes concurred in the judgment. The intro of Judge Oldham's opinion, makes clear he does not like the rules at issue.

The Biden Administration proposed numerous regulations to make home appliances more expensive and less useful. See, e.g., Louisiana v. DOE, 90 F.4th 461 (5th Cir. 2024). As part of that effort, one official even proposed banning gas stoves. See Ari Natter, US Safety Agency to Consider Ban on Gas Stoves Amid Health Fears, Bloomberg (Jan. 9, 2023), https://perma.cc/7E2V-DFN5 (quoting statement of Consumer Product Safety Commission official Richard Trumpka, Jr.). These efforts generated significant controversy and public backlash.

Rather than confront that controversy, the previous Administration attempted to dodge it. In this case, the Department of Energy created new regulations on home cooking appliances, including gas stoves, through a "Direct Final Rule." What does that mean? It means the Biden Administration promulgated a rule without giving the public advance notice or the opportunity to comment on it. Petitioners are several States that are aggrieved by the Direct Final Rule. Their objections are well taken, so we grant the petition for review.

Although the Energy Policy Conservation Act provides for the promulgation of direct-to-final rules, so as to facilitate the quick adoption of consensus-based or otherwise non-controversial standards, the panel concluded the Department overstepped here, and had sought to use the DFR process to evade engaging with substantive objections to the new rules. Judge Oldham writes:

The previous administration's gas-stove measures were among its most controversial energy proposals. The idea that all that controversy could be elided using the DFR—a mechanism designed for consensus rulemaking—is untenable. And it's all the more untenable in the face of the EPCA's comment and review provisions, which the Department would have us rewrite.

Interestingly enough, the Trump Administration has also sought to evade the notice-and-comment process in some of its rulemakings, embracing an unconventional (and quite aggressive) interpretation of the "good cause" exception within the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). I discuss two examples in my forthcoming article, "Unsustainable Presidential Administration," one of which also involves the Department of Energy (repeal of the showerhead definition), as well as the OIRA memo encouraging agencies to use the "good cause" exception more aggressively. The Fifth Circuit's rationale could cause problems for such efforts, particularly if adopted by other circuits.

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A Biological Need To Steal?

2026-08-18T14:30:24Z

A biological need to steal: Look, I took A.P. biology, and while I wouldn't say I was the greatest student, I am pretty sure there was not a section on the biological urge to steal. Yet that is what New York Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher claimed recently in a rant outside the Manhattan Criminal Court.

"Most of what we saw were crimes of poverty—people who are stealing things like toothpaste, people who were stealing things like, you know, soap. And that means if you're stealing those things, you need them," said Gallagher, according to The Daily Wire.

"We are choosing to protect billion-dollar companies, like CVS and Walgreens, over the people who are struggling to get by," Gallagher reportedly said. "So I would say that the true crime is that there is such incredible wealth disparity in this city that there are people who can be thrown in jail simply for having a biological need."

I will give the leftists this: There are legitimate arguments and discussions to be had about overpolicing, about excessive and draconian sentencing, and about prison and jail conditions and how society should treat offenders. Those are arguments that some on the right prefer to ignore. Criminal justice policy is genuinely complicated.

But the question of stealing isn't. Theft is wrong. Even small thefts. Even small thefts from big corporations.

Anyone who has been to an urban drug store in the last several years and found empty shelves and locked cabinets knows there are wider societal consequences, that the people who don't steal end up paying the price for widespread, flagrant property crimes. It isn't kindness or benevolence to bless this sort of anti-social behavior, or to defend it as something like a natural right.

The way to address the genuinely difficult and complex questions of criminal justice is to address the complex and difficult questions of policy, not grandstand about how stealing is a biological need.

Even if it's just a small, fringe faction, it's disturbing that progressive provocateurs are coming out as objectively pro-theft. But it makes sense, in a way, given the recent trajectory of America's political left.

A worldview that sometimes cashes out into affirmative justifications of theft (or, for that matter, looting) is a worldview that makes it easier to support massive expropriation of wealth and absurd, practically Soviet levels of taxation and government control of the economy. Which, according to at least one recent estimate, is essentially what the Democratic Socialists of America are calling for.

Speaking of socialists…

Sunshine State socialism: Florida is holding primary elections today. It's a Republican stronghold, with nearly every major statewide office held by the GOP.

But a trio of what The New York Times calls "underdog democratic socialist candidates" are trying to make inroads in Democratic primaries. (Notably, DSA luminaries like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) are staying out of the state.)

Like so many of this summer's leftist insurgents, Florida's socialist upstarts support rent control and Medicare for All. Do they have a plausible plan to pay for it? How do other countries manage government-funded healthcare, and if they can, why can't the United States?

Those questions, and more, were the subject of much of yesterday's Reason Roundtable podcast. Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reem Ibrahim, Matt Welch, and I had a wide-ranging discussion about the enormous cost of Medicare for All and the expensive, unserious agenda now being pushed by the DSA.

We also touched on a few other topics, including a listener question about government policies we actually like.

Watch and listen below:

Oh man, Oman: On the one hand, it is pretty clear that Donald Trump wants out of the Iran war. It has caused him nothing but irritation, depleting the country's supply of munitions, closing the Strait of Hormuz, making inflation and international relations worse. And, after all, he was the Republican who campaigned against prolonged, pointless wars in the Middle East. He's stuck, with no obvious way out.

On the other hand, usually the way to end a war is to stop bombing, and he keeps threatening to bomb the Middle East. His latest threat was directed not at Iran but at Oman, which has reportedly been conducting negotiations with Iran about managing traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump sees this as a threat to ending the war he started. So he's threatening more war. "If Oman gets in the way, we'll bomb the shit out of them," he told Fox News' Trey Yingst.

Can Trump bomb his way out of a foolish war? Unfortunately, we might find out.

Scenes from the Greater Boston area: You know what city isn't cracking down on booze? Boston. The city allowed limited outdoor drinking this summer during the World Cup. And now city lawmakers are debating extending bar hours to 3 a.m. Nearby Cambridge also rejected a proposal to limit bars to serving no more than one drink every 30 minutes to any individual customer.

QUICK HITS

Britain has some real problems: Slow growth, bureaucratic inertia, police crackdowns on speech. But as two different Brits have pointed out to me recently, they have one thing the United States doesn't: a widespread expectation that it's legal and socially acceptable to drink outside—on city sidewalks and even in public areas like parks. This presumably includes standing around in spaces just outside of pubs, especially during the summer, when the weather is nice. However, according to The Wall Street Journal, some U.K. lawmakers are trying to crack down on such boozy festivities: "Some venues would be subject to strict table-to-chair ratios and only be able to serve drinks as a table service. Venues could also be barred from serving alcohol to anyone not sitting down with a substantial meal."
In 2024, I wrote about how everyone, including and especially Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), hates prices. This was back when Warren was warning about the potential for dynamic pricing at fast food chains like Wendy's. Well, now Warren is worried about dynamic pricing for ice cream.

We should all be worried about "dynamic pricing."

That's when companies change their prices in real time.

If it's hot out, the cost of ice cream could go up.
If it's cold, tea bags could go up.

It's a way for giant companies to squeeze you even more.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) August 16, 2026

Prices are good, actually!

Sarah Ditum on the damage done by Jason Arday, the Cambridge scholar who became the subject of scrutiny after revelations of professional plagiarism and biographical fabulism: "Arday's self-mythologising was not harmless. He hurt the academics whose work he plagiarised. He hurt the discipline he belonged to. He hurt the early career lecturers who were competing with him for jobs, but couldn't match his fantastical legend. He hurt the families of non-verbal children who believed the story of his unprecedented late acquisition of language, and either blamed themselves for lacking the patience and love of Arday's mother, or blamed their children for their failure to blossom."
Predictably, some people are blaming journalists for Arday's death and demanding that laws be changed to further restrict the rights of the press:

This is a great piece from Sarah. The backlash against the reporting about Arday is a reminder that the attachment to free speech (even reporting quite clearly in the public interest) is worryingly thin in the UK, including among people who think of themselves as liberals. https://t.co/zyqR2n2cyO

— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) August 17, 2026
Meta, the company behind Facebook, is headed to federal court today in what looks to be a major child safety case, with 29 states charging that the company promoted its product despite knowing that it resulted in anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and other mental health problems, reports Politico. This sort of consumer safety case increasingly looks to be the line of legal attack that states and other Big Tech critics see as giving them leverage to take down large tech companies. Read Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown for some informed skepticism of this legal maneuver.
This summer's overperforming Spider-Man movie aside, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been flagging recently. But MCU chief Kevin Feige has a plan to keep it going: The X-Men, which are slowly being integrated into the movie's sprawling narrative. He recently said there could be "100 more" movies featuring X-Men characters. Who's excited for an entire spinoff franchise devoted to Alpha Flight?

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The East Wing and Justice Breyer's Concurrence in Van Orden v. Perry

2026-08-18T13:20:23Z

When I studied the First Amendment circa 2007, we struggled to reconcile two Establishment Clause cases decided on the same day. In McCreary County, the Court held that a display of the Ten Commandments posted on the wall of a courthouse was unconstitutional. And in Van Orden v. Perry, the Court held that a large stone monument of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas Capitol could remain. Justices O'Connor and Breyer cast the deciding votes in each case. In the latter decision, Justice Breyer worried what would happen if the people saw a large edifice on state property being demolished.

At the same time, to reach a contrary conclusion here, based primarily upon on the religious nature of the tablets' text would, I fear, lead the law to exhibit a hostility toward religion that has no place in our Establishment Clause traditions. Such a holding might well encourage disputes concerning the removal of longstanding depictions of the Ten Commandments from public buildings across the Nation. And it could thereby create the very kind of religiously based divisiveness that the Establishment Clause seeks to avoid. Zelman, 536 U. S., at 717–729 (Breyer, J., dissenting).

The rule, as we learned it, is the Constitution permits taking down a piece of paper but does not permit demolishing a heavy stone monument.

This history makes me think of the pending East Wing case. According to the government, nearly 60% of the structure is already built. Let's say the Supreme Court denies the stay. What happens? Would Judge Leon force the government to leave the partially-exposed construction zone on the White House grounds indefinitely? Would he order the government to close it up in some ad hoc fashion that he decides, but which fails to provide the intended defenses to the underground facility? Would he force the government to tear down all of the above-ground structures? What would that image convey to the American people who are already concerned that the judiciary is usurping our democracy? How would our foreign adversaries, who are planning attacks on the White House, see that act?

Enjoining an executive order is an abstract act that most people cannot understand. But ordering bulldozers onto the White House property to tear down a structure is something everyone can see. Indeed, I can see a world where those bulldozers are not allowed through the gate. Judicial supremacy has its limits. A court-ordered demolition of a White House national security facility, broadcast to the entire world, would be a Rubicon that should not be crossed.

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New in Civitas: Curtail the Cult of Judicial Celebrity

2026-08-18T13:04:13Z

This summer I have spent some time proposing different reform of the Supreme Court that have nothing to do with its composition or jurisdiction. As I often say, the clearest way to affect how the Justices do their job is to make the Justices do more of their own work. My latest proposal, published in Civitas, seeks the curtail the cult of judicial celebrity on the left and the right. In short, Congress should make the Supreme Court boring again.

The task is actually straightforward: make the Supreme Court Justices feel like lower court judges. I would ask and answer two questions. First, what should they do when they are not working? The same sorts of mundane activities that lower court judges engage in. There should be no special perks for being a Justice. Second, what about outside income? Justices should not profit from their jobs. Any book royalties should be donated to the Holmes Devise. Congress could increase the Justices' salaries, but they would have the same cost of living as other judges in Washington, who have far fewer perks. As we say in Texas, these steps will make sure the Justices do not get too big for their britches.

From the conclusion:

These proposals would change nothing about the Court's docket, decisions, or deliberations. But they would hopefully curtail the cult of judicial celebrity. Indeed, these proposals, more than Court packing, term limits, or jurisdiction stripping, would change how Justices understand their role in the operations of the federal government and would slowly change citizens' perceptions of their stature in the government. affect

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Make Congress Legislate Again

2026-08-18T12:48:55Z

Congress has not engaged in regular lawmaking for some time. Does this require structural reform, such as abolishing the filibuster? Some seem to think so. I am skeptical. If Congress is reluctant to legislate, there will be difficulty cobbling together the requisite number of votes whether 51 or 60 votes are required. If there is insufficient reason to craft a legislative vehicle that can pass, it will not get passed.

Legislative quiescence is a serious problem, but it is not as if Congress never acts. Must-pass legislation gets enacted, albeit often after much consternation (and the occasional government shutdown). What I believe this illustrates is that creating stronger incentives for Congress to act, and to revisit existing laws, is fruitful path for encouraging more regular lawmaking, including the reauthorization of programmatic statutes.

Chris Walker and I explored this issue some in our paper, "Delegation and Time." I discuss it further in "Making Congress Legislate Again," my contribution to today's Civitas Outlook symposium on structural reform. From my essay:

Including expiration dates or sunsets in new legislation is one way to encourage Congress to reengage with specific policy areas more frequently. Congress can still punt when an authorization expires, such as by extending deadlines piecemeal, as is sometimes done with continuing resolutions. But there is still value in forcing legislators to acknowledge their responsibility and cast their votes.

Many existing programs already contain time-limited authorizations, even if Congress has not observed them. This is the case with most major environmental statutes, which, as noted above, have not been reauthorized (let alone significantly revised) this century.

Adding sunset provisions or expiring authorizations to new laws would be a positive change, but we need not wait for it. It is also not a cure-all, as expired authorizations matter only if they are allowed to take effect. The Congressional Budget Office regularly reports which programs have expired authorizations, ostensibly to prevent appropriations for them.

As it happens, current congressional rules may already require Congress to revisit existing programs. Current House and Senate rules already prohibit appropriating funds for unauthorized or expired federal agencies and programs. Blocking such appropriations should require no more than raising a point of order. While such objections can be overruled (and congressional leadership has ways of making procedural objections difficult), raising them would be a start.

Many think the answer to Congress's inability or unwillingness to legislate requires rewriting the rules or broader structural reforms. A better start might simply be enforcing the rules we already have.

The full symposium, with contributions from Steven Hayward, Josh Blackman, John Yoo, and William Voegeli is here.

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"Comma Mischief from the Florida District Court of Appeal"

2026-08-18T14:21:26Z

Thanks to Wikipedia for the koala photo.

Blog readers know that I'm interested in legal language, and that includes punctuation (see, e.g., "Punctuation Matters. At the Heart of This Case Is the Placement of a Comma" and "A, B or C" vs. "A, B, or C"—the serial comma and the law). There was an interesting Florida case on punctuation and the law a few weeks ago, and I thought I'd pass along an item about it from Ken Adams, author of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting (5th ed. 2023), published by the American Bar Association:

Comma Mischief from the Florida District Court of Appeal

A pervasive problem of our judicial system is poor textual interpretation. A recent example is the decision of the Florida District Court of Appeal in Treasure Coast Classical Academy, Inc. v. Optima Foundation, Inc., No. 4D2025-1577, 2026 WL 2104076 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. July 22, 2026).

The Opinion

Optima provided services to Treasure Coast Classical Academy, Inc. The academy sued Optima in the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit Court, Martin County, Florida. Optima moved to dismiss the complaint for improper venue, arguing that all causes of action had to be brought exclusively in Collier County, Florida.

Here's the sentence at issue:

State Governing Law/Venue/Waiver of Jury Trial. The rights of all parties hereto shall be subject to the jurisdiction of and be construed according to the laws of the State of Florida, with venue in Collier County, Florida.

The academy argued that the venue provision was permissive rather than mandatory, and that the action should remain in Martin County.

The trial court granted Optima's motion and dismissed the complaint without prejudice, finding "that the Parties' written agreement is clear, unambiguous, and contains an exclusive venue provision that requires all disputes be filed in Collier County, Florida."

The academy appealed. The appellate court held that "a comma is the decisive factor in construing the clear and unambiguous language of the parties' agreement." It reversed and remanded for further proceedings.

In so deciding, the appellate court cited another Florida District Court of Appeal decision, Regal Kitchens, Inc. v. O'Connor & Taylor Condominium Construction, Inc., 894 So. 2d 288 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2005). Here's the provision at issue in that case: "Any litigation concerning this contract shall be governed by the law of the State of Florida, with proper venue in Palm Beach County." The court in Regal Kitchens held that provision to be permissive, as it "lacks mandatory language or words of exclusivity to show that venue is proper only in Palm Beach County."

The Treasure Coast court also cited another Florida District Court of Appeal decision, Global Commercial Roofing, LLC v. iCrete, LLC, 410 So. 3d 735 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2025), which concerns a provision similar to the one in Regal Kitchens, except that it lacks a comma before the venue language: "The Subcontractor acknowledges and agrees that any controversy or claim arising out of or relating to this Contract, or the breach thereof, shall be settled under the laws of the State of Florida with venue in Lee County, FL."

The court in Global Commercial Roofing noted that the provision in Regal Kitchens applied only to the choice of Florida law because the choice of venue was "set off by a comma and cannot be modified grammatically by the language 'shall be governed by.'" Given the lack of a comma in the provision at issue in Global Commercial Roofing, the court held that it was mandatory, making Lee County the exclusive venue for any litigation arising from that contract.

Because the provision at issue in Treasure Coast includes a comma before the venue provision, the appellate court said that "the importance of the comma in the clause here cannot be understated." It held that "'shall' applies only to the choice of Florida law rather than to venue selection."

Deficient Drafting

To understand the implications of the sentence at issue in Treasure Coast, one must consider it in its entirety. So let's start with the first part, up to the comma: "The rights of all parties hereto shall be subject to the jurisdiction of and be construed according to the laws of the State of Florida … ."

The first part combines two provisions—one to the effect that Florida courts have personal jurisdiction, the other specifying that Florida law is the governing law of the contract. Both are awkwardly drafted. For one thing, the jurisdiction provision contains an ambiguity, albeit one with modest implications. (See this blog post.)

For our purposes, all that matters is that whatever the drafting shortcomings, neither the jurisdiction provision nor the governing law provision has anything to do with venue. Venue is a distinct concept, in that it's a function of which court, among courts that have jurisdiction, is the appropriate place for a proceeding to be heard.

Deficient Textual Interpretation

So the only part of the sentence at issue in Treasure Court that relates to which court is the appropriate place for a proceeding to be heard is the second part: "with venue in Collier County, Florida."

In grammatical terms, the second part is a kind of "absolute construction." See Bryan A. Garner, Garner's Modern English Usage 10 (5th ed. 2022) (GMEU). Broadly speaking, an absolute construction is a modifier that combines a noun (or pronoun) and a participle (a verb ending in -ing or -ed). It modifies the rest of the sentence, not just part of it. Absolute constructions add incidental matter to the sentence. In the sentence I started hiking up the mountain, the sleet stinging my face, the absolute construction is the sleet stinging my face.

More specifically, the second part of the provision at issue is what the linguistics literature calls a "with-augmented absolute." Many writers insert the preposition with at the beginning of an absolute construction. See GMEU, at 10. Also, the participle being is elided in the second part.

The appellate court said the comma at the end of the first part was "the decisive factor" in establishing that venue was permissive rather than mandatory, because the comma meant the mandatory effect of shall didn't apply to the venue selection.

But there's no basis in grammar for attributing that function to a comma. Instead, it's standard to use a comma to separate an absolute construction from the rest of the sentence. See GMEU, at 898. It would be unreasonable to expect all contract drafters to always be consistent in using a comma in this context. Because presence of a comma has nothing to do with whether venue is mandatory, there's no basis for suggesting that absence of a comma has anything to do with it either. But the judge in Global Commercial Roofing, LLC saw fit to say it does, citing no evidence. And the judge in Treasure Coast saw fit to rely on Global Commercial Roofing, LLC.

The court in Treasure Coast seems to have come to the right decision, but the justification it offers is nonsense. Florida courts have held that if a venue provision lacks mandatory or exclusive language, it should be considered permissive. See Regal Kitchens, Inc., 894 So. 2d at 291. So the court in Treasure Coast could have simply held that because there's nothing in the second part of the provision—the only part dealing with venue—to suggest that venue is mandatory, it's permissive.

The Upshot

What explains the failed textual interpretation on display in Treasure Coast? Evidently, the court was uninformed. In particular, it might have succumbed to a legalistic urge to make mischief with commas. That urge is at large in the legal profession. For example, I've done battle with the notion that if in a sentence a series of nouns, noun phrases, or clauses is followed by a modifier and the modifier is preceded by a comma, the modifier applies to the entire series, not just the final element in the series. That's nonsense too. See my 2015 article.

Why was the court uninformed? It's the result of our expecting judges to be equipped to interpret legal text, just by virtue of being judges. The prevailing view is that no expert testimony is admissible for purposes of determining whether contract language is ambiguous. See this 2009 blog post.

But in my years of dipping into caselaw, what I've found suggests that many judges aren't up to the task. See this 2020 blog post. It's unrealistic to expect they would be.

What's the fix for defective textual analysis? For one thing, courts could admit expert witness testimony on ambiguity. But the same effect could be achieved if law firms were to retain to advise them, behind the scenes, experts who have demonstrated semantic acuity and familiarity with relevant principles of linguistics.

A broader fix would be to offer in-person and online training to judges and their clerks, perhaps from a center based at a law school. That center could also submit amicus briefs in cases where the public interest is at stake.

Nothing gets better unless we work to make it better.

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Trump Courts Another Legal Defeat on Birthright Citizenship

2026-08-17T20:36:52Z

Less than two months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled his executive order on birthright citizenship to be unconstitutional, President Donald Trump has issued not one but two new executive orders on birthright citizenship that largely retread the same illegal grounds that the Supreme Court already rejected in Trump v. Barbara.

Is this just a futile outburst from a consummate sore loser? Or does Trump actually stand a chance of faring any better in court this time around?

Trump's original 2025 executive order purported to deny the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship to all U.S.-born children whose parents were either unlawful immigrants or lawful temporary visitors. His pair of new executive orders basically attempts a sort of do-over on the latter group, now purporting to deny birthright citizenship to several categories of U.S-born children whose parents are lawfully but temporarily present on American soil, such as "when the parent(s) of the person engage in a commercial transaction to ensure that the person's mother is present in the United States, or a territory of the United States, to give birth."

The trouble for Trump is that the Supreme Court already reviewed and repudiated the same sort of arguments against so-called "birth tourists."

During the April 1st oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, for example, Solicitor General John Sauer asserted that "birth tourism" was the cause of all sorts of modern problems that "the 19th century Framers of this amendment" could "not possibly" have wanted to permit when they drafted the 14th Amendment and its guarantee of birthright citizenship. But Chief Justice John Roberts responded by pointing out that the Trump administration's emphasis on modern policy concerns does not alter the original meaning of the Constitution. "You do agree," Roberts told Sauer, "that that has no impact on the legal analysis before us?"

Sauer struggled for a little bit to regain his footing after getting hit with that one from the chief justice, before finally arguing back to Roberts that "we're in a new world now," one "where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a—a child who's a U.S. citizen."

"Well, it's a new world," Roberts promptly retorted. "It's the same Constitution."

The Supreme Court reiterated that point about an unchanging Constitution in Trump v. Barbara. "Children born of parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States," the Court held, "satisfy both elements of the Citizenship Clause [of the 14th Amendment]: they are 'born…in the United States' and 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof.' Under the Constitution, they are citizens at birth."

That language from the Court's holding fully covers the U.S.-born children of "birth tourists," who are "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S. while present on U.S. soil and therefore "citizens at birth." Nothing in Trump's new flurry of executive action does anything to change those legal facts.

The first lawsuit against this new pair of executive orders was filed last week against the Trump administration. And as Amy Howe noted at SCOTUSblog, "lawyers for the plaintiffs who successfully challenged Trump's earlier order restricting birthright citizenship" were the ones who filed it: "Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups urged U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante to clarify that the new order goes beyond the limited exception – for foreign diplomats – to birthright citizenship that the Supreme Court reaffirmed in its June 30 decision in Trump v. Barbara."

If this case, or one like it, does eventually reach the Supreme Court, I see little reason to think that Trump will fare any better than he did back in June. If anything, Trump's rather obvious disregard for the Court's recent decision may only doom his latest case even more.

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Today in Supreme Court History: August 18, 1920

2026-01-26T16:12:16Z

8/18/1920: The Nineteenth Amendment is ratified.

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Brickbat: The Big Easy

2026-08-17T18:12:23Z

New Orleans police officer Brandon Coleman faces 350 criminal charges for allegedly claiming more than $111,000 in overtime pay that he did not actually earn. Investigators say Coleman repeatedly reported working long shifts, while surveillance footage showed him at home during some of that time. The investigation grew out of earlier concerns about unusually high overtime payments to New Orleans police officers. In response, the New Orleans Police Department has introduced stricter overtime controls, like requiring officers to clock in at their actual work locations and improving supervisory checks. Those changes have reportedly reduced police overtime spending by 45 percent, saving the city millions of dollars. Coleman has denied the allegations.

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Open Thread

2026-08-18T07:00:00Z

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Did The ACLU Make A Mistake By Seeking Certiorari in the Texas Ten Commandments Case?

2026-08-18T14:05:14Z

In April, the en banc Fifth Circuit upheld the constitutionality of Texas's law requiring the posting of Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. For much of the past four months, I wondered whether the ACLU would take the risk of filing a cert petition. On the one hand, separationists must publicly state they will fight to the last stage to ensure there is no religion in the classroom. On the other hand, the Supreme Court could set a broader precedent that would set back separationism far more than Kennedy v. Bremerton did. Why not just let Louisiana and Texas go to avoid setting a nationwide precedent. A conservative Fifth Circuit litigator told me he was certain the ACLU wouldn't seek cert here. The move was just too risky.

Today, the ACLU filed a cert petition in the case.

Now the tougher question: does the Supreme Court have to grant cert? In the usual course, the Justices would always take a case of this significance that (arguably) deemed that Stone v. Graham was abandoned. Then again, the Court's liberals may see a risk in taking this case, and vote to defensively deny cert. If so, would the Chief and Justice Barrett be eager to take the case? The conservatives may also grant to extend the Fifth Circuit's precedent nationwide. But that grant may backfire if there is are five votes to preserve Graham.

The calculus here is not clear.

The post Did The ACLU Make A Mistake By Seeking Certiorari in the Texas Ten Commandments Case? appeared first on Reason.com.

Second Circuit Joins Courts That Recognize First Amendment "Right to Record Law Enforcement Activity in Public"

2026-08-17T22:41:29Z

From today's decision in Massimino v. Benoit, written by Judge Myrna Pérez and joined by Sarah Merriam:

We begin by joining a growing chorus of [eight of] our sister circuits that have recognized a First Amendment right to record law enforcement activity in public. {See Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78, 82 (1st Cir. 2011); Fields v. City of Philadelphia, 862 F.3d 353, 360 (3d Cir. 2017); Sharpe v. Winterville Police Dep't, 59 F.4th 674, 680–81 (4th Cir. 2023); Turner v. Lieutenant Driver, 848 F.3d 678, 690 (5th Cir. 2017); American C.L. Union of Ill. v. Alvarez, 679 F.3d 583, 594–95 (7th Cir. 2012); Fordyce v. City of Seattle, 55 F.3d 436, 439 (9th Cir. 1995); Irizarry v. Yehia, 38 F.4th 1282, 1289 (10th Cir. 2022); Smith v. City of Cumming, 212 F.3d 1332, 1333 (11th Cir. 2000).} That right encompasses Massimino's recording of the exterior of a police station from a public sidewalk. {Exterior, as it is used throughout this opinion, means the areas visible from a publicly accessible area outside the police station.} …

The right to record law enforcement activity in public emerges from three foundational First Amendment principles. First, the First Amendment protects the creation of speech, not just the immediate act of expression. Second, speech on matters of public concern—and particularly discussion of governmental affairs—lies at the heartland of the First Amendment's protections. Finally, the First Amendment protects the public's right to gather and access information about the government. We take each principle in turn.

The First Amendment protects the acts of "creating, distributing, or consuming speech" in equal measure. In other words, the First Amendment encompasses the entire "speech process," and therefore extends far beyond the precise moment of expression. Necessarily so. Otherwise, "[i]t would make permissible the prohibition of printing or selling books—though not the writing of them."

This principle confirms that video recording falls within the protection of the First Amendment, at least as a general matter. Viewing, possessing, and distributing videos are acts protected by the First Amendment. A necessary antecedent to those acts is recording a video in the first place; to distribute a recording, one must first create a recording. Thus, creating a recording is part of the speech process.

When the government prevents a person from recording a video, it prohibits that person from possessing, viewing, and disseminating that video. And when the government does so based on the content of the recording—for instance, because the recording depicts law enforcement activity—the government implicates the "most basic" First Amendment principle: "As a general matter, … government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content." Thus, the First Amendment protects the creation of a video depicting law enforcement activity in public.

That right rests on a second independent foundation as well. It is anchored in the bedrock principle "that speech on public issues occupies the 'highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values,' and is entitled to special protection."

There has long been "practically universal agreement that a major purpose of th[e] [First] Amendment was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs." In the daily lives of many Americans, "governmental affairs" is not an abstract concept; it is a badge and a uniform. When a citizen records public police activity, she creates speech concerning the state's most immediate instrument for enforcing its laws. Speech of this kind "is more than self-expression; it is the essence of self-government."

Lastly, the right to record law enforcement activity in public vindicates "the paramount public interest in a free flow of information to the people concerning public officials, their servants." As the Supreme Court has explained, "the First Amendment … prohibit[s] government from limiting the stock of information from which members of the public may draw."

Indeed, the First Amendment "has a structural role to play in securing and fostering our republican system of self-government." "Implicit in this structural role is … the antecedent assumption that valuable public debate—as well as other civic behavior—must be informed." As we have explained, "it is essential that the people themselves have the ability to learn of, monitor, and respond to the actions of their representatives and their representative institutions."

The right to record law enforcement activity in public fits squarely within these three principles. As the First Circuit has reasoned, "[a]n important corollary to th[e] interest in protecting the stock of public information is that '[t]here is an undoubted right to gather news from any source by means within the law.'" Recording law enforcement activity in public exercises that right.

We do not doubt that being recorded and exposed to public view while on the job may place added strain on the challenging job of law enforcement. But "[t]he risk of this exposure is an essential incident of life in a society which places a primary value on freedom of speech and of press." That is doubly true for law enforcement officers who serve, and wield tremendous power over, the very public seeking to record them as they perform their duties….

And the court concluded that this includes the right to record the exterior of a police station, even if in the process he recorded some activity within the station that was "publicly visible":

Massimino may have recorded some areas of the building that were not open to the public to enter. But Massimino has not claimed a right to physical access. Instead, he claims a right to record and disseminate what was in plain view from the public sidewalk—what any passerby standing in the same location could have observed. Those areas were exposed to ordinary observation by Massimino and any other passerby on the unrestricted public sidewalk.

{Nothing in the record suggests that Massimino used technology to capture information that could not otherwise be observed from his lawful vantage point on the public sidewalk. We do not address a recording made through technology that reveals information not otherwise perceptible by ordinary observation from that location.}

The court noted, however, that it did not "decide whether the government may impose a properly tailored restriction directed at recording particular persons entering or leaving a station, nonpublic security features, or other information implicating concrete privacy or safety interests."

Judge Reena Raggi declined to reach the First Amendment right-to-record question, because she thought it was enough to conclude (as did the majority) that the right hadn't been clearly established at the time of these events, so the police officers got qualified immunity:

As the majority notes, this court has thus far declined to decide "whether the First Amendment protects a right to record law enforcement activity in public." We should not attempt to do so in this case, which involves very little "activity" of any kind, much less "law enforcement activity." …

The overwhelming majority of the video recorded by Massimino depicts no police officers at all—that is, until Massimino is approached by the defendant officers. Rather, the focus of Massimino's video is on the exterior of the police station, which Massimino records as he travels round the building while occasionally lingering or zooming in on its main entrance; the side entrance to its "Youth Division" (not generally open to the public-at-large); a station rooftop security camera; and its semi-open garage, through which some police vehicles were visible. To be sure, at one point, a person in civilian clothing is briefly recorded standing outside the Waterbury station's main entrance. His identity and the reason for his presence are unclear. He does not appear then to be either engaged in, or the subject of, any law enforcement activity. At other points, three police vehicles are briefly recorded, one entering and one leaving the station garage, and one in street traffic. While there may well be circumstances in which the movement of police cars reflects law enforcement activity, that is not obviously the case here. Indeed, Massimino focuses on these vehicles only briefly before panning away to continue recording the exterior of the building, where no activity of any kind is occurring….

In sum, in this case, where a plaintiff's recording focus was on a building, and not on "activity," there appears to be no reason for the court to pronounce a broad First Amendment right to record "law enforcement activity" occurring in public….

Dan Barrett, Elana Bildner, and Jaclyn Blickley (ACLU Foundation of Connecticut) represent plaintiff.

The post Second Circuit Joins Courts That Recognize First Amendment "Right to Record Law Enforcement Activity in Public" appeared first on Reason.com.

Who Pays for Medicare for All?

2026-08-17T22:28:33Z

This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Matt Welch are joined by reporter Reem Ibrahim to discuss whether America can afford Medicare for All and the broader Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) agenda. They examine the enormous cost of expanding government-run health care, why taxing billionaires wouldn't come close to covering the bill, and what the experiences of the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and other countries reveal about the tradeoffs of universal health care. They also consider whether either major political party is prepared to confront America's growing deficits and looming fiscal crisis.

The editors then turn to the DSA's growing influence within the Democratic Party and the pushback from Democrats wary of socialism. They discuss President Donald Trump's efforts to reduce America's military presence abroad, including his decision to pull back from exercises with South Korea, and whether his approach represents a genuine foreign policy retrenchment or simply more erratic decision making. The panel also makes the case for giving children more independence and questions laws that punish parents for letting their kids play outside unsupervised. Finally, a listener asks when, during each panelist's lifetime, the government has been most effective and worked best for the American people.

0:00—Medicare for All and American health care

19:12—The DSA's influence in the Democratic Party

28:58—Trump cancels joint military exercises in South Korea

36:21—Listener question on government effectiveness

46:34—The case for free-range parenting

54:39—Weekly cultural recommendations

Upcoming Reason Events

The Reason Roundtable's 10th Anniversary—Live in NYC! October 7

Mentioned in the podcast:

"The DSA's Agenda Could Cost More Than $200 Trillion—and You'll Be Picking Up the Tab," by Reem Ibrahim

"Socialists Claim Public Libraries Are Examples of Their Policies. Don't Believe Them," by J.D. Tuccille

"Hong's Swan Song," by Liz Wolfe

"It Can Happen Here," by Arnold Kling, David R. Henderson, and Maurice McTigue

"Trump's Assault on Judicial Review Undermines a Crucial Safeguard Against Tyranny," by Jacob Sullum

"The War on Free-Range Kids Makes The New York Times," by Lenore Skenazy

"In Widow's Bay, the Real Monster Is Utilitarianism," by Christian Britschgi

The post Who Pays for Medicare for All? appeared first on Reason.com.

West Virginia Wants To Use Data Centers To Eliminate Its Income Tax

2026-08-17T21:25:38Z

West Virginia Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey is trying to head off public opposition to hyperscale data centers in his state by proposing a 20-year development framework that he hopes will revitalize West Virginia's economy while addressing residents' concerns.

Earlier this month, Morrisey unveiled the West Virginia Responsible Data Center Development Plan. The plan, built around seven core principles, sensibly holds data center developers and utilities responsible for covering "electrical infrastructure upgrades and energy capacity needs." It also requires them to "build, bring, or procure sufficient power resources" needed for their projects. To mitigate concerns over water use, West Virginia will "actively recruit projects committed to water-efficient designs" and require them to adhere to the state's environmental laws governing water resources. (Contrary to popular belief, data center water use is not a pressing issue.)

Under West Virginia's Power Generation and Consumption Act, passed in 2025, local governments have little regulatory authority to block large technological infrastructure projects such as hyperscale data centers. But the development plan put forth by Morrisey and state lawmakers ensures they'll still benefit when a project is approved.

Fifty percent of all revenue generated by hyperscale projects will go toward reducing or eliminating the state's income tax. The plan will give counties 30 percent of the revenue of any project within their jurisdiction, with an additional 10 percent shared by all counties in the state. The remaining 10 percent will be used for "improved electrical, water, and wastewater projects for the citizens and communities" of West Virginia.

These provisions were likely written with Tucker County residents in mind, many of whom have opposed Fundamental Data LLC's proposal to develop the state's first hyperscale data center there, according to West Virginia Watch. Opponents have said the project offers no tangible benefits for residents while saddling them with all the costs. Despite the opposition, state regulators allowed the project to move forward on Monday, West Virginia Watch reports.

Morrisey claims West Virginia's plan avoids "repeating the mistakes of other states." On one hand, he's not wrong: West Virginia has avoided issuing tax breaks and incentives to attract data center developers, a popular tactic nationwide before growing public backlash prompted a retreat. Lawmakers in the Mountain State have also eschewed the example set by states like New York and Texas, which recently adopted sweeping statewide bans on new data center development.

However, Morrisey's plan still includes some of the worst provisions often seen in anti-data center legislation, namely new administrative bodies that serve as bottlenecks for any new development projects. To wit, the state's plan creates a Data Center Advisory Council responsible for developing "statewide standards for property setbacks, noise mitigation, aesthetic integration, site security, and proximity to sensitive locations." The advisory council will consist of "experts from academia, local government, conservation groups, industry, and utility providers"—an amalgamation with differing objectives that can hardly be expected to come to any working consensus in a reasonable time period.

A small consolation prize: The plan requires project sites to be acquired "through voluntary market transactions," which would prevent the state from using eminent domain to seize property for approved projects.

With this framework, Morrisey is hoping to curtail the main talking points often used to stymie data center development. Using the booming industry to reduce the state's tax burden is prudent, but adding more bureaucracy could backfire.

The post West Virginia Wants To Use Data Centers To Eliminate Its Income Tax appeared first on Reason.com.

Trump Administration Announces New "Hacking Back" Program

2026-08-17T21:04:22Z

The Trump Administration announced a new program on hacking back last week, allowing United States companies to hack back in some circumstances in cooperation with United States officials. The program is premised on some interesting theories about the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and I think it raises a lot of complicated issues under that statute.

In this post, I wanted to take a look at some of them.

First, here's the language from the Trump Administration's announcement:

. . . . The National Coordination Center (NCC), established pursuant to section 6(d) of Executive Order 14159 of January 20, 2025 (Protecting the American People Against Invasion), shall create, manage, and maintain a Program to authorize Participating Companies, as defined in section 4(f) of this memorandum, to conduct Cyber Surveillance Operations and Cyber Effects Operations against foreign Cyber-Enabled Transnational Criminal Organizations (CE-TCOs), under the control and oversight of the Federal Government. As part of lawful investigatory, protective, or intelligence operations carried out by Federal law enforcement, this Program shall:

(i) be overseen by co-Executive Directors, one from the Department of Justice, designated by the Attorney General, and one from the Department of Homeland Security, designated by the Secretary of Homeland Security (Program Executive Directors). The Program Executive Directors shall be delegated authority to approve, after coordination with each other, cyber operations conducted within the Program by personnel of their respective departments, except that they may not approve operations resulting in Critical Outcomes, as defined in section 4(b) of this memorandum. Cyber operations shall only be approved after coordination between the Program Executive Directors, and any resulting operational action will be exclusively conducted on behalf of and under the supervision of the Federal Government pursuant to the Federal Government's lawful authorities;

(ii) require Participating Companies to enter into contractual agreements with the Department of Justice or the Department of Homeland Security, which shall ensure that Participating Companies undergo rigorous vetting and that their performance adheres to the strict operational procedures outlined in the implementation guidance directed in section 3 of this memorandum; and

(iii) permit Participating Companies to enter into commercial agreements with:

(A) private sector entities, from which the Participating Companies may receive for the purpose of proposing responsive cyber operations to the NCC any threat information collected in the course of those entities' normal business activities; and

(B) Federal, State, local, tribal, and territorial agencies, which will identify CE-TCO threats to the Participating Companies in a manner that enables them to propose cyber operations to the NCC that address those threats.

(b) The NCC shall conduct all Program activities in accordance with the Constitution and all other applicable laws and international obligations of the United States, including section 1030 of title 18, United States Code, thereby ensuring that Participating Companies are acting under the control and oversight of the United States Government.

Sec. 3.  Implementing Guidance. (a) Within 60 days of the date of this memorandum, the Program Executive Directors shall, in coordination with the Homeland Security Council, establish consensus operating procedures for the Program that ensure the Federal Government's complete oversight and control of Participating Companies' performance. No operation may be approved unless it complies with these operating procedures. The procedures shall:

(i)     establish minimum standards that Participating Companies must meet in order to take part in the Program, which shall include appropriate levels of technical proficiency, proven performance of cyber operations, facility security, personnel vetting, competence, reliability, and other factors that the Program Executive Directors, in coordination with the Homeland Security Council, determine are relevant or necessary for guaranteeing high confidence in a Participating Company's ability to perform successfully in the Program;

(ii)    ensure that the Program's eligibility criteria enable participation by both large companies, which provide critical capacity, and smaller, more agile companies, which may be better suited for specialized or discrete tasks;

(iii) mandate that Participating Companies disclose to the NCC all contractual relationships entered into pursuant to section 2(a)(iii) of this memorandum;

(iv)   authorize the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to mandate as a condition of their contractual agreements with Participating Companies under section 2(a)(ii) of this memorandum that such companies maintain a bond or escrow in an amount not less than $1 million, to be forfeited should the Participating Company enter non‑compliance with its contractual agreement described in section 2(a)(ii) of this memorandum;

(v)     in conformance with the classified annex to this memorandum, set forth the operational workflow of the Program, which shall include operational deconfliction across Federal law enforcement, the Department of State, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of War, the Department of Justice, and the United States Intelligence Community;

(vi)    in conformance with the classified annex to this memorandum, provide an adjudicatory framework to ensure operational activity targets only CE-TCOs and accounts for other United States Government equities;

(vii)   set forth standardized rubrics and templates for target identification and the creation and processing of Cyber Surveillance and Cyber Effects Operations packages;

(viii) include reporting requirements for Participating Companies that will advance a greater understanding of the activities and impact of foreign CE-TCOs, especially as they relate to the American people and economy, and that will ensure the NCC is fully apprised of the Participating Companies' operational activities;

(ix)    include procedures, including a review by the Department of Justice, that ensure any Program activity that is directed at a United States person or otherwise implicates the United States Government's obligations under the Constitution, Federal law, or international law receives any necessary authorization, judicial or otherwise, prior to approval of the operation;

. . . .

Sec. 4. Definitions. For purposes of this memorandum:

(a) "Cyber Effects Operation" means activity conducted in or through the interdependent network of information technology infrastructure that includes the Internet, telecommunications networks, computers, information systems, industrial control systems, networks, and embedded processors and controllers that results in the manipulation, disruption, denial, degradation, or destruction of information systems, networks, physical or virtual infrastructure controlled by information systems, or information resident thereon.

There's a lot going on here—many policy issues, and many legal issues. In this post, I wanted to focus on a legal question: Does hacking back pursuant to this program violate federal law, and specifically 18 U.S.C. § 1030, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)?

The concern, I take it, is more civil liability than criminal prosecution. Can a company hacking under this provision be subject to a civil suit, either by the entity targeted for hacking or someone whose data was affected by the hacking even if they were not the target?

The issue is partly the result of the global reach of the CFAA. Over the years, the CFAA has expanded in scope so that it now covers computers all around the world. Basically, if the foreign commerce clause allows Congress to protect it, the CFAA protects it—and given that the foreign commerce clause is thought to be almost plenary, that means computers all around the world are covered.

There are three interrelated legal provisions, it seems to me. First, governments are exempt from liability under § 1030(f) for their "lawfully authorized" activity:

This section does not prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative, protective, or intelligence activity of a law enforcement agency of the United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State, or of an intelligence agency of the United States.

Second, the CFAA prohibits unauthorized access (in § 1030(a)(2), for example) and damage without authorization (in § 1030(a)(5)(A)). What makes the access or damage authorized versus unauthorized is of course one of the great longstanding issues in interpreting the CFAA.

Finally, there's a requied mens rea for liability. To trigger liability, an unauthorized access or damage without authorization must be intentional.

So how does this play out? I think there are three questions.

The first question is whether the executive branch's blessing is enough to trigger § 1030(f). If a company has entered an agreement with the government, and the government pre-approves the hacking back, is that the exempt "activity of a law enforcement agency . . . or of an intelligence agency of the United States"?

I doubt it. This is a voluntary program, in which companies go to the U.S. government and get permission to hack back. Even if the U.S. government is approving the hacking, it's still the company deciding to participate and instigating the hacking. I would think this is the company's activity, not the government's.

The second question is whether executive branch blessing makes the access or damage authorized, or, if so, whether judicial blessing does so.

On one hand, it seems clear to me that executive-branch permission alone can't "authorize" the hacking as a statutory matter. Think of a physical analogy. If I want to break into people's homes and steal things, getting the permission of the local police chief doesn't mean that I'm actually allowed to do it as a matter of law. Maybe I have an estoppel argument against prosecution (and maybe some kind of necessity defense allowing the breaking in could at least be considered), but it doesn't negate liability under the elements of the criminal statutes of trespass or burglary. In the CFAA setting, the existence of § 1030(f) tends to confirm this, I think. The provision wouldn't be needed if police could just legally authorize hacking themselves.

On the other hand, I think a judicial warrant could authorize hacking under the CFAA. I have suggested this in the past. The way to have legal hacking back, I think, is to have the government go to a judge and get a warrant authorizing the search of the computer to be hacked and the seizure of data there. If that seems odd, I'd suggest it's not all that far to the original use of warrants in the physical world back in the common law era. If the farmer next door stole your sheep, you'd get a judicial warrant giving you permission to enter the neighbor's farm and take your sheep back. The warrant was your judicial authorization to enter and seize that made the acts legal.

Applying that concept to the digital realm also raises several other interesting legal questions, though. Among them, does Rule 41 authorize a warrant to hack back? Lower courts have held that the warrant requirement doesn't apply outside the United States, so there's not much in Rule 41 that focuses on that sort of thing. But the 2018 amendments to Rule 41(b)(6)(B) might plausibly fit to authorize the warrant to be issued.

Finally, there's the mens rea question: If the government says you can hack, and you hack incorrectly thinking that the executive branch blessing might render the hacking legal, is it intentional unauthorized access? (Again, an estopped principle might apply to prevent prosecution, but that wouldn't apply civilly.) That raises some very interesting issues about the intent requirement, see my article Norms of Computer Trespass in the last section.

There's certainly lots to think about for the companies that are considering whether to get involved in this program.

One last thought, not really substantive, but I gotta say it: It's too bad our colleague Stewart Baker isn't around to see this. As our years-ago debate on hacking back made clear, Stewart would have loved this.

Note: I have fiddled a bit with this after posting to improve a few sentences and correct typos.

The post Trump Administration Announces New "Hacking Back" Program appeared first on Reason.com.

How To Teach Trump v. Barbara?

2026-08-18T02:23:39Z

Trump v. Barbara is one of the Supreme Court's most consequential decisions in recent memory. Most landmark decisions evolved as part of a long-line of cases. Slaughter followed from Seila Law which followed from Justice Scalia's Morrison dissent. Dobbs followed from Casey which followed from Roe. Students for Fair Admission followed from Grutter which followed from Bakke. On rare occasion, the Supreme Court decides an issue in an open field. Heller was one such case where the Supreme Court had to establish an entire new area of jurisprudence. Barbara is another. Both cases were based on text, history, and tradition, and both cases split 5-4 on the constitutional question.

The challenge of teaching Barbara is significant. There are many difficult pedagogical choices. First, where should it even go in the curriculum? It doesn't really fit in with discussions of the Fourteenth Amendment for the Due Process or Equal Protection Clauses. Second, how much of the case should be included? The entire decision stretched nearly 200 pages, and the dissents were more than triple the length of the majority opinion. Third, which issues should be covered? The history sweeps throughout different eras: the English common law, antebellum America, the Reconstruction period, and the late nineteenth century. Fourth, is it still necessary to cover Wong Kim Ark? According to the Chief Justice, the majority opinion flowed naturally from that precedent; the dissent countered that Wong Kim Ark doe not control. Fifth, should the assignment forward-looking, as efforts to restrict birthright citizenship continue?

Randy Barnett and I struggled through these questions for some time. Ultimately, we reached an arrangement to divide the case into six excerpts that stretch about sixty pages to be taught over two classes. But if a professor so chooses, three excerpts, spanning thirty pages, can be taught in a single class. The decision of which excerpts to assign will turn on what the professor seeks to cover. And we placed the case at the end of our chapter on the Fourteenth Amendment, immediately after Plessy. That was the most logical spot to include the decision.

You can download the excerpt from our supplement here. We explain the breakdown as follows:

The decision in Barbara stretched nearly two-hundred pages. All of the opinions offer a deep historical analysis of citizenship stretching back to seventeenth century England. To make the case more digestible, we have split up Barbara into six discrete parts. The first presents the differing conceptions of the majority and dissenting Justices; the next three present different categories of evidence bearing on the meaning of "subject to the jurisdiction"; the fifth posits a statutory rather than constitutional outcome of the case.

The first excerpt presents the majority's and dissenters' rival conceptions of "subject to the jurisdiction." In particular, the majority opinion held that the Fourteenth Amendment adopted a modified version of the English common law rule of birthright citizenship. The dissenters argued that America charted a different course.

The second, third, and fourth excerpts consider different types of evidence of the original meaning of the Citizenship Clause: (a) analysis of the text; (b) the context provided by the citizenship clause in the Civil Rights Act of 1866; (c) the congressional debate over the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendmentment; and (d) post- ratification practice by the executive branch.

The fifth excerpt provides a summary of the judiciary's interpretation of the Citizenship Clause — in particular the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), a decision from three decades after ratification. Before this excerpt, we reproduce a portion of Wong Kim Ark, so that you can judge what the case decided before reading the Justices' competing characterizations of it.

In the sixth and final excerpt, Justice Kavanaugh takes an entirely different tack. On the one hand, he joins the other dissenters in rejecting the majority's interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Kavanaugh maintains that the President's executive orders violate the original meaning of the Constitution. But on the other hand, all agree that the Naturalization Clause empowers Congress to expand citizenship beyond the original meaning of the Citizenship Clause. Justice Kavanaugh contends that Congress did exactly this when it enacted the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. On his analysis, then Congress may cut back on its own expansion of citizenship by enacting a statute returning to the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. No other Justice accepted Justice Kavanaugh's reading of the 1952 statute. We include Justice Thomas's brief rebuttal.

I welcome feedback and suggestions of how to teach the case.

The post How To Teach Trump v. Barbara? appeared first on Reason.com.

As France Pauses Social Media Ban, American Lawmakers Race To Restrict the Internet

2026-08-17T17:07:09Z

In a positive development for online freedom—which can feel rare these days—France's top court has rejected a proposed social media ban, citing concerns over free expression and privacy.

On Friday, France's Constitutional Council ruled that a proposed social media ban for children under the age of 15 would "disproportionately infringe upon the freedom of expression and communication." The court also found that the law failed to provide "the legal safeguards necessary to ensure the right to respect for private life," Reuters reports.

The bill, which would have also barred high school students from using phones in school, passed both chambers of France's Parliament in July. The social media ban has been a longtime goal of French President Emmanuel Macron, who urged the European Union to pass similar legislation after a teenager stabbed a teacher's assistant last June. He blamed teenagers' exposure to social media for the violence.

Even after last week's legal setback, Macron appears determined to implement the ban. CNN reports that Macron has asked Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to revise the bill "as quickly as possible."

In many ways, Europe and the U.K. still lead the U.S. in pushing for draconian online safety laws. But lawmakers in states such as Texas and Utah have passed similar legislation.

A judge in Travis County, Texas, was able to freeze the domain of a foreign pornography website in June because of the state's age-verification laws for adult sites. As the internet freedom group Reclaim The Net points out, the site has been taken down "until it posts a $9.14 million bond and builds an age verification digital ID system to the state's own specification." While the ruling would force the company to comply with Texas law, it effectively took the site down "for everyone on earth," the group notes.

Nico Perrino, executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), had called the situation "insane."

"The free internet is dead if a state court can pull a website offline worldwide simply because the registry for its domain is based in the United States," he wrote on X.

"That puts the world's access to information at the mercy of state lawmakers and judges—in this case, in Texas," he added.

And it's not just states that are cracking down on internet freedom—federal lawmakers are too. Earlier in August, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee passed four bills related to online safety and AI, including the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which requires covered platforms to "implement tools and safeguards to protect users and visitors under the age of 17." The Senate's version of KOSA includes a "duty of care" provision regarding platforms' design choices. Although the bill's co-sponsor claims that the language would prevent sites from censoring or blocking content, FIRE has warned that design choices could be "broadly defined to include any feature of the platform that would cause minors to spend time on it."

France's court ruling is a win for internet freedom. But the push to censor and age-gate the internet does not appear to be stopping.

The post As France Pauses Social Media Ban, American Lawmakers Race To Restrict the Internet appeared first on Reason.com.

Women Taking GLP-1s See Spike in Marriage and Cohabitation

2026-08-17T15:41:28Z

GLP-1 meds—perhaps better known by brand names like Ozempic and Wegovy—have become widespread as weight loss tools. But there's evidence that links their use to to a range of positive health outcomes, and now researchers say they may "alter social and economic outcomes" too.

Specifically, relationship outcomes. In a new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, the Harvard economist Rebecca Diamond found GLP-1 use linked to higher likelihood of marriage or cohabitation.

Using data from the University of Southern California's Understanding America Study, Diamond compared the relationship status of women starting out on GLP-1 medications for weight loss purposes with those who wanted to take them but were not.

"Among women who are single when they start, the probability of being married or living with a partner rises 18 percentage points overall and 29 percentage points after six or more quarters," Diamond found. She attributes this weight loss "dramatically affect[ing] first impressions of potential partners, leading to a large increase in marriage and cohabitation."

In an era of fretting over a supposed "sex recession" and declining marriage rates, maybe GLP-1s are just what we need.

Of course—you knew this was coming—correlation doesn't equal causation. We can't just assume that the use of GLP-1s generally or that losing weight because of them is directly responsible for more women on GLP-1s finding romantic bliss.

After all, the choice to start on GLP-1s is not made in a vacuum. Maybe women who made the leap—as opposed to those in the control group who were merely thinking about it—were bolder in other ways too, and this explains their higher rates of relationship formation. Maybe the decision to take GLP-1s is prompted by the possibility of a romantic relationship starting or escalating. Or maybe the decision to take GLP-1s is often part of a broader reassessment of circumstances or reorientation of goals; this larger shift could explain both the decision to start the medication and the decision to put oneself out there in other ways, including ones that make relationship formation more likely.

But it also seems plausible that the weight loss itself could be responsible for an increase in relationship formation and escalation. "GLP-1 weight loss changes outcomes on precisely the margins where visible body weight should affect first impressions," writes Diamond.

In other words, visibly losing weight may up people's chances of attracting a partner in the first place. I would wager that changes in self-esteem associated with losing weight could also play a role here.

Notably, starting GLP-1s was not linked to relationship status changes for women already partnered when the study started.

And while starting GLP-1s was linked to getting a job among women who were unemployed at the study's start, it was not linked to upward job mobility among women already employed.

Diamond suggests that the lack of change among women who were already employed and/or in a relationship at the start of the study helps rule out changes in "general productivity or well-being" as the cause of any differences between the GLP-1 group and the control group. She also notes that single women on GLP-1s experienced "no statistically significant change in depression, loneliness, or life satisfaction," and argues that this is evidence that weight loss—as opposed to other factors, such as changes in "mood and motivation to date"—helped cause these differences.

In the News

No penalty for police who failed to test rape kit for 16 years. A woman going in court by Jane Doe was sexually assaulted at 14-year-old girl and let authorities conduct a medical exam to collect forensic evidence for what's (unfortunately) known as a "rape kit." The Anoka County, Minnesota, sheriff's office told her mother the kit was tested but yielded no DNA evidence. In reality, it had not been tested, and would not be tested for more than 16 years.

When the kit was finally tested, in 2020, it yielded DNA evidence that implicated a particular assailant. Doe responded with a lawsuit.

But, per a recent ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, Doe does not have standing to sue because police had no obligation to investigate her claim of rape.

"Eighth Circuit precedent bars 14th Amendment claims against the government for failing to investigate a crime," notes Law360.

"Doe sued Anoka County and Sheriff Stuart alleging they violated her equal protection rights based on their failure to investigate her claim that she was sexually assaulted and their failure to train its employees in proper investigative practices," wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Bobby Shepherd in the court's opinion. But "a victim does not have a constitutional right to the investigation of a crime," and thus "Doe lacks standing to maintain her constitutional claims against Anoka County and Sheriff Stuart."

Read This Thread

This is absolutely insane. The free internet is dead if a state court can pull a website offline worldwide simply because the registry for its domain is based in the United States.

That puts the world's access to information at the mercy of state lawmakers and judges—in this… https://t.co/dTajjSunEo

— Nico Perrino (@NicoPerrino) August 12, 2026

More Sex & Tech

• In Australia, men who refuse to pay sex workers for contracted services are being convicted of criminal charges. "This is not merely dishonest—it is a serious sexual offense," said Emily Smith of the legal group Southside Justice.

• Recent "legal attacks on Meta merely let politicians pretend to protect children while the trial lawyers reap giant paydays," suggests the Wall Street Journal editorial board in a piece about the social media "addiction" trial that got underway last week.

• Pornhub has agreed to a settlement with plaintiffs in two lawsuits accusing the website of profiting from sex trafficking and underage content.

• Not comforting:

Researchers have found that a single company — Yoti — is responsible for 60% of age checks worldwide. observer.com/2026/08/age-…

— Mike Stabile (@mikestabile.bsky.social) 2026-08-13T19:00:33.627Z

The post Can Ozempic Solve the Sex Recession and Raise Marriage Rates? appeared first on Reason.com.

The Rise of Florida's 'Microschools'

2026-08-17T16:59:50Z

There's a quiet revolution happening in K-12 education, driven by parents and teachers who say they've had enough.

Jessica Zivkovic knows the feeling. "Ultimately I got to a point where I knew that we needed a whole overhaul," she says, "and I could not bring about the change within the system."

A handful of states are pushing school choice to the max. "There are a lot of eyes on Florida right now," says Tiffany Thenor. "We are kind of the pioneers of this universal voucher."

In the Sunshine State, about 14 percent of students attend a charter school and roughly 15 percent use state vouchers or education savings accounts, and traditional public schools are gradually losing students. It's like a slowly deflating balloon. And the teachers union says it's reckless.

"What we're seeing in Florida—it feels like an abandonment of public schools," says Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association.

But it's not slowing down.

Is this the future of American education?

The students at WonderHere in Lakeland, Florida, start their days with farm chores, gardening, and outdoor play. "I like my school. It's fun. I like that we have animals and we get to play outside," says Eva, one of the students. William, another student, adds that farm life "teaches you how to be more responsible"—that if you touch something you're not supposed to, "it could end up costing the lives of some of the animals."

WonderHere was started 10 years ago by public school teachers Tiffany Thenor and Jessica Zivkovic. Zivkovic describes the moment she knew the system was broken: "I was teaching second grade at a different school, and our administration said that they did not want any use of crayons, scissors, coloring pages, any sort of crafting in the classroom—like everything should be paper and pencil. And this is 7-year-olds."

She compares it to a scene in the film Matilda: "It felt like Ms. Trunchbull is coming down the hall and you have to hide all of your colorful things and all of the fun crafts and all the color. Because that's not allowed. Those are the moments that just really taught me that the system was so broken."

They started WonderHere as a private school. Today, it operates out of two converted homes on a 10-acre property. The curriculum incorporates teaching practices from Montessori, the child-centered educational philosophy known as Reggio Emilia, and academic standards from Finland. There are just 120 students on the Lakeland campus.

"We have a 12-to-1 student-teacher ratio," says Thenor, "and that allows for our teachers to be able to personalize each student's learning, to meet with them one-on-one each day, to make sure that they are taking notes and being observant of their learning behaviors and their interests."

WonderHere began accepting state vouchers in 2023 after Florida made them available to all students seeking an alternative to their zoned schools. Thenor says 95 percent of their Florida students now use a voucher.

"It's been a huge blessing for us to be able to accept students with the Florida Empowerment Voucher," says Zivkovic. "When we started WonderHere, we never wanted it to be a place that was only for families who could afford it."

Florida's vouchers, worth about $8,000, almost completely cover WonderHere's $9,000 annual five-day tuition.

Colossal Academy in Fort Lauderdale is also part of the "microschool" movement, replicating the feel of the one-room schoolhouse, with kids of different ages together in one setting. State vouchers enable more families to send their kids here.

"It's been a godsend, literally," says parent Sadiqa Glusman. "We wouldn't be able to afford going here."

The vouchers cover about half the cost of Colossal's full-time tuition. The average secular private day school tuition nationwide is $49,000 a year. By contrast, three-quarters of microschools nationwide charge less than $10,000, according to a National Microschooling Center survey.

"Today's emerging schooling models are nothing like typical private schools," says Kerry McDonald, the author of Joyful Learning: How to Find Freedom, Happiness, and Success Beyond Conventional Schooling.

"School choice mechanisms certainly make alternative education options more financially accessible to more families, and that leads more families to look around and see what's available to them, which then leads more potential founders to go ahead and respond to that demand for something new and different by opening a new school or space," McDonald says.

Families can also spend money from their education savings accounts at homeschool "co-ops," which became popular when public schools shut down during COVID. McDonald notes that "many of these new schools and hybrid learning communities and homeschool collaboratives…were sprouting all across the country, primarily created in many cases by former public school teachers who left the classroom either during COVID or shortly thereafter, and began creating their own learning communities focused around individualized, flexible, student-centered education."

The national homeschooling rate has been increasing at about 5 percent a year, more than double the pre-pandemic rate. Microschooling is also growing, serving an estimated 750,000 U.S. students, though the line between microschooling and homeschooling can be blurry. Microschools serve a disproportionate share of "students with learning differences whose needs aren't being met in traditional schooling environments," according to a 2025 report by the RAND Corporation.

The founder of Colossal Academy is Shiren Rattigan, a former Chicago public school teacher. It started as a homeschool pod during the pandemic.

"It's March 2020 and people just didn't know what to do," she recalls. "We started with four students, and I thought, 'OK, well, if you pay me less than what you're paying the Montessori school, it'll still make my salary, and I only have to be responsible for four children.' And so I did, and the students were like, 'Can we go to the beach?' And I'm like, 'yeah, hop in the car. ' They're like, 'can we start gardening?' I'm like, 'whatever you need.' That just completely opened my eyes into the possibilities of what we should be calling school—everything in the world could actually be their classroom."

The actual academic instruction is a blend of in-person and self-directed virtual learning.

Rattigan says the model is especially well-suited to kids who don't thrive in traditional settings, "whether it be like super hyperactive boys that don't want to sit still—and they shouldn't have to, right? The learning environment needs to allow and forgive and give grace for our students that need to move."

Seventy percent of Florida students attended district-run public schools last year. That's down from 86 percent 25 years ago. That means the traditional public schools have a lot less money.

Spar says public schools have absorbed the financial hit. "There was about $260 or $280 million that got withheld from public schools. And those withholdings were because the voucher program needed more money."

Florida state Sen. Don Gaetz (R–Pensacola) supports school choice but also became a leading critic of how Florida has administered its voucher and education savings account program after a state auditor report cited a "myriad of accountability challenges." At a Senate committee hearing, Gaetz noted: "They cannot locate 30,000 students that they're paying for. That's $270 million that we're paying for students, which on any given day of the week, we can't find."

Gaetz introduced a bill that would separate the funding of vouchers and education savings accounts from district school funding to better track the money. "I introduced the bill because as a strong supporter of school choice, I wanted to make sure that school choice wasn't besmirched by the way that the Family Empowerment Scholarship legislation had rolled out," says Gaetz, a former school superintendent.

In some cases, public schools are getting state money to educate students who are also receiving vouchers. Gaetz says "$1 to 2 million" may also have gone to fund education savings accounts for students who don't exist. One private school is accused of taking voucher money for students who never attended. According to the state auditor, the state failed to recoup between roughly $10 million and $59 million in overpayments.

"By mixing all the money we began a chain of accounting problems and financial management problems," says Gaetz.

Some school choice advocates oppose Gaetz's bill on the grounds that separating out voucher funding will make it easier to cut. Gaetz isn't worried: "We have a Republican governor who favors school choice, a Republican House that favors school choice, and a Republican Senate that favors school choice. Who are we afraid of?"

Spar says public schools aren't competing on a level playing field. "We have right now in the State of Florida 1,408 pages of public school law that every public school must follow. But when you look at charter schools, it's less than 100 pages. When you look at vouchers in Florida, it's less than 20 pages of laws that those schools have to follow. So it doesn't sound like we have a very fair system in the state."

Gaetz introduced a bill to cut down on public school regulation, but Spar also wants more regulation of private schools.

"Why shouldn't they be required to tell parents the types of teachers they have there?" Spar asks. "Do they have college degrees? Because in a lot of cases they do not. Are they certified as a teacher in the state of Florida?"

That kind of restrictive licensing and regulation is exactly what the founders of WonderHere and Colossal say they were escaping.

Rattigan says she's held accountable by her customers. "If I'm not doing what my families want, they go, right? And so then I'm either forced to change, whereas we have failing [public school] systems that continue to be funded. When a school is failing, they don't shut it down in a traditional public environment. They keep it open and, in fact, they throw more money at it."

When we visited Colossal, part of the students' day was spent harvesting in the garden and cooking stir-fry. They also study art, music, photography, and how to fly a drone. More regulation and licensing would make such programs more difficult and expensive to operate.

"Adults who are experts really want access to young people, and we just can't do that in the traditional [setting]," says Rattigan. "There are too many barriers to entry to be able to work with young people. We are so happy to take all that expertise." She adds that subject experts "may not know how to work with young people," so "we're teaching them how to teach."

Rattigan says she can try new things and abandon them quickly if they aren't working. "If a student wanted drones, they would tell me on Tuesday. By Thursday, I have drones. By the next Tuesday, we have a teacher in, we're doing drones. It's actionable and fast." That flexibility disappears in a more regulated environment. "If I was in a traditional public [school], I would have to go and ask my principal, and then they'd have to check the district, and then everybody in eighth grade, the following year or two, would be doing drones. Not the four kids that asked me for it."

When asked about accountability, Rattigan pushes back: "It's a new market. You can't use old standards to measure a new market. That's with anything, right? When you build anything new, you have to create new matrices by which you decide something is successful or not. In our particular school, we believe in rigor. And our students are taking a standardized test. But we're in a moment now of innovation—can we use the same old archaic measurement tools to study something that's brand new?"

Voucher and education savings account recipients do have to take some standardized tests for tracking purposes, but the results don't affect a private school's "rating" or funding in the way they would a traditional public school.

"We do not consider those tests to be high stakes," says Thenor. "We just consider them to be one additional piece of data."

The founders at WonderHere say the government's intense focus on standardized test scores has created the one-dimensional, stifling environment they want to disrupt.

"The Department of Education really wants there to be accountability and cohesion because that's easy to create data from, it's easy to monitor progress, it is easy to determine whether a school is passing or failing," says Zivkovic. "But there is a cost to that accountability. We're not opposed to monitoring students' progress, but it cannot come at the cost of such a rigid structure. Our children—we're humans, right? We're not like a product in a factory that can be easily discarded if it doesn't meet quality standards."

Florida has made the wager that if public and private schools alike must compete for students, standardized tests alone will no longer determine whether a school is failing or not: Families will.

Gaetz puts it bluntly: "It used to be that you move into a community, you know where your local school is, your zone for that school, that's where your child goes. Now, none of that is true anymore. Now it's an unstable and unpredictable marketplace. And school districts are going to have to choose: Do they want to be a collection of buildings that begin to be emptied out and an employment agency for unions? Or do they want to supply services and goods to parents and teachers and students?"

And that seems to be exactly what's happening. Many district-run public schools have adapted to the competition by rebranding as "magnet" schools and touting their arts, science, or other specialized programs. Even Spar's daughter bypasses her zoned high school to attend one with an extensive dance program. When asked whether he supports that kind of choice, Spar says "that absolutely is something I support wholeheartedly." He adds: "We're not advocating for ending vouchers or charter schools. We're not in that position at all. The question is, are we going to give public schools the ability to experiment too?"

Gaetz, for his part, wants to do exactly that. "I think it's a fair assessment that public schools are regulated more. That's why I support as much deregulation in public schools as we possibly can do. In fact, we have a major dereg bill moving through the legislature this year."

And at least one Florida public school has plans to incorporate lessons from the private sector. WonderHere will run two K-1 classrooms at a struggling public school next school year. "The parents will opt in. They will lean into the learning environment the way our private school parents do. We will not do letter grades. We will not do report cards. We will do far less paper [and] pencil. They will play outside. We might even get chickens if I can pull it off," says Thenor.

"When we started WonderHere, our goal was always to try and influence public education," adds Zivkovic. "We never wanted to leave and turn our backs and just say, 'Well, good luck, guys.' We wanted to do something that proved that a different type of learning could exist."

So what about waste and fraud? Gaetz's bill failed in the Florida House, but the State Department of Education has begun checking directly with school districts instead of relying on parent surveys to avoid paying for double enrollment. The nonprofit, Step Up For Students, that distributes the funds has enhanced its monitoring efforts and reports that accounts flagged for possible double-billing fell from 28,000 to 6,000.

School choice in Florida remains broadly popular. Education savings accounts are the most popular form of school choice, according to recent polls. The future of education looks more decentralized, nimble, and, for some, micro.

"I think microschooling is here to stay," says Rattigan. Thenor agrees: "All of these beautiful vouchers that are coming out, giving parents the opportunity to take their funding and choose what's best for them and their family—I think that is powerful and it's a power parents should always have." McDonald puts it in broader terms: "More and more families are demanding more options for their children's education, more education models that are reflective of the realities of the 21st century. I have so much personalization in the other goods and services that I access. I want that same level of personalization in my children's education."

The post The Rise of Florida's 'Microschools' appeared first on Reason.com.

Open-Weight

2026-08-17T16:41:54Z

The AI arms race heats up: "The U.S. is preparing to ‌tell dozens of countries they must pick sides in the artificial intelligence race with China, warning they will be excluded from a U.S.-led AI coalition if they also sign up for Beijing's competing framework," reports Reuters. "Washington last year launched the Pax Silica initiative aimed at securing supply chains for AI models, semiconductors and critical minerals, amid a fierce technology rivalry with Beijing….By pressing countries to choose sides the U.S. hopes to starve China of resources in a race to make the most sophisticated AI, which could be used for military or economic dominance."

At the same time, the Trump administration appears to be set to financially benefit from the growth and sophistication of Chinese AI models. World Liberty Financial, a Trump family–backed crypto firm, offers tokens that are then used by WorldClaw, which Reuters calls "a Hong Kong–based venture offering artificial-intelligence models developed by Chinese companies." According to Reuters, "43 of the 90 models available through WorldClaw's website, or nearly half, were developed by Alibaba, Baidu, Z.ai and other Chinese technology companies the Trump administration says pose risks to national security and intellectual property."

Chinese AI products are rapidly gaining popularity in the U.S.: Mozilla's chief technology officer "switched to Chinese AI startup Moonshot's Kimi K3 for many of his day-to-day activities within days of the new, powerful model's launch more than a week ago," reports the Associated Press. "Earlier, he had been using another high-performing Chinese model, Z.ai's GLM-5.2, for routine tasks such as managing his calendar, documents and email….U.S. companies like cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said they're switching to Chinese AI models to help trim costs." Some of the value-add from Chinese models is that they're often open-weight or open-source, not closed.

"AI systems exist along a spectrum," explains John Villasenor at Brookings. "On one end are closed models, such as the various tiers of Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT. Users can submit queries to these models and get responses, but the detailed inner workings of the models and how they were trained are proprietary. At the other end of the spectrum are open-source models, in which information about the training data, the code used to generate weights from the training data, and the resulting weights are publicly disclosed. In between these two endpoints are 'open-weight' models in which the weights that 'determine how the model interprets input data and generates outputs' are public, but the methods that were used to generate those weights are not." Globally, China is establishing dominance as a provider of both open-weight and open-source models, which some companies prefer as they're a lot cheaper to run, with more customization, control, and data privacy available.

"If American AI is dominated by a small handful of closed model providers, the result will be an overconcentration of power," warns Villasenor. "That raises many concerns, including the risk of regulatory capture and a set of resulting policies that impede new market entrants."

Starving China of resources is one path, I guess, but beating China at their own game would be another possibly worth choosing.

Dose of sanity: Finally, someone says what much of the left needs to hear surrounding jobs, pay, and inequality! "If men disproportionately hold dirty or dangerous jobs, paying them more may widen the earnings gap between men and women even when no woman is formally excluded (of course, one could also frame this as widening the longevity gap in women's favor)," writes the eminently reasonable Kelsey Piper for The Argument. "Differences in opportunity, choice, and achievement can accumulate into durable disparities between groups defined by immutable characteristics like sex. But—while such a disparity might be a warning sign to investigate further for injustice—we have to keep in mind that our objective is to identify and redress injustice, not difference itself. Sometimes unequal outcomes are evidence of sexism and will vanish in a better world. Sometimes they are the mechanism by which society persuades people to haul away our garbage."

Scenes from Texas: I was back in Texas with my family last week and shocked by the amount of Talarico Fever (in an admittedly blue city).

Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, who is running for Senate against the state's attorney general, Ken Paxton, believes "it's time to start flipping tables"—referencing Jesus flipping the tables of merchants outside the temple—and reclaim talk of Jesus and the gospel from the right.

Democratic strategists, per a long Washington Post piece on the matter, seem to believe the Talarico playbook will win over ultra-religious Bible Belt voters. I am less sure. Talarico drew plenty of scorn back in March for an appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast in which he claimed that the story of the Annunciation—when the angel Gabriel came to Mary and told her she would bear a child, to be called Jesus—lays the foundation for Christians to accept abortion as morally permissible. "To me, that is an affirmation in one of our most central stories that creation has to be done with consent. You cannot force someone to create," Talarico told Rogan. He further elaborated that Christian opposition to abortion is not rooted in Scripture. "All I'm asking is that for Christians who are pro-choice and who respect the bodily autonomy of women, that we be given the space to make our theological argument, because I think there is a lot of biblical evidence to support that opinion," he added.

I don't think this is theologically sound in the slightest, but more to the point: I don't think most Christian voters—like evangelicals and Catholics, both groups strongly represented all over Texas—will find his logic persuasive. (Talarico also said that "God is nonbinary" during a debate over trans youth inclusion in single-gender sports. My point being: I'm not sure most Texas evangelicals will appreciate his theology. "It is blasphemous," one Republican told the Post.)

QUICK HITS

Are people tiring of the pursuit of artificial perfection, in the form of botox, fillers, and veneers? asks Amanda Mull at Bloomberg. Some people "have moved on to some kind of artfully messy style or are asking their cosmetic injectors to let a few wrinkles remain. Ultimately, though, it's probably too optimistic to regard this potential shift as the coming triumph of more realistic beauty standards or domestic ideals. If big white veneers are too popular, those with means can move on to even more expensive cosmetic dentists, armed with the latest techniques and materials to ensure their perfect new teeth look like the kind that might actually have grown out of their jaw. To avoid a too-puffy face full of filler, they can opt for a new injectable like Sculptra, which subtly stimulates your body's own collagen production over time. Perfection, after all, isn't some set point in the distance. It moves when you do."
Semi-related: Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) has new ink, and I kind of love it, though it's admittedly a little comical. She's going for the Liz Wolfe look!
"Democrats have a habit of enacting abortion laws that are extreme by any reasonable definition, and then feigning shock if you care to point this out," writes Emma Camp for The Wall Street Journal. "This week Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed an expansive new law that effectively eliminates the state's restrictions on postviability abortion. Under current law, abortion is unlawful after 24 weeks unless the mother's life or health is at risk or the unborn child has been diagnosed with a fatal birth defect. The new law, which takes effect in November, allows abortion at any time, for any reason, subject only to the 'professional judgment' of a physician that it is necessary….Democrats want it both ways—to pass laws with the explicit intent of allowing elective abortion at any point in pregnancy, and to deny that these laws could possibly have that effect."

The post Open-Weight appeared first on Reason.com.

Bloodright Citizenship (Citizenship by Descent): Who Decides?

2026-08-16T23:11:34Z

An excerpt from Friday's concurrence in Guerra Quezada v. U.S., by Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho:

The Constitution vests Congress—not the judiciary—with the power to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization." And that basic principle dictates the correct result in this case. Federal courts may not confer U.S. citizenship on any individual who fails to comply with all of the conditions and requirements set forth in our naturalization laws—and that includes the requirement of physical presence in the United States.

Yet that's precisely what Plaintiffs [who were born outside the U.S. -EV] urge us to do here: They ask us to grant them citizenship, despite the fact that they plainly fail to comply with the physical presence requirement.

Plaintiffs theorize that they're exempt from the physical presence requirement, because the ancestor from whom they claim citizenship was "wrongly turned away at the border" due to "systemic barriers." They invoke a doctrine of constructive presence, based on a series of atextual rulings from the Board of Immigration Appeals.

But the constructive presence doctrine plainly conflicts with the governing statutory text. A number of our sister circuits have so held. And I'm grateful that our court today has agreed to so hold as well….

Under the Constitution, Congress may choose "not to grant a United States citizen the right to transmit citizenship by descent." Rogers v. Bellei (1971). It may also "prescribe a period of residence in the United States as a condition precedent."

And federal courts may not alter the conditions set by Congress. "Neither by application of the doctrine of estoppel, nor by invocation of equitable powers, nor by any other means does a court have the power to confer citizenship in violation of these limitations."

These principles doom Plaintiffs' claim of citizenship. Because Congress has made amply clear which individuals are exempt from the physical presence requirements enumerated in 8 U.S.C. § 1401. And it is telling—and binding on federal courts—that Congress has declined to do so under the circumstances presented here.

Federal law, for example, has long provided that "any periods of honorable service in the Armed Forces of the United States by such citizen parent may be included in computing the physical presence requirements." And Congress has enacted additional exceptions over time. See 8 U.S.C. § 1401(g) (providing exceptions for those working with the United States Government abroad, those working for certain international organizations, and for spouses and dependent children of those who qualify for these exceptions)…. As our sister circuits have observed, the existence of other exceptions to the physical presence requirement "undermines the argument that this [c]ourt should add [another] 'circumstances beyond control' exception." …

Plaintiffs nevertheless ask us to override U.S. law and grant them citizenship because Executive Branch officials "wrongly turned away [their ancestor] at the border" due to "systemic barriers."

But that misunderstands the limited role of the judiciary. Respect for the political branches commands us to accept their judgments about who shall be offered the profound privilege of United States citizenship.

Throughout our history, the American people have welcomed countless foreigners who seek to come to our shores to pursue the privileges of U.S. citizenship. I am one of them. I was not born a United States citizen, but I thank God every day that I will someday die a United States citizen.

But the generosity of the American people is a matter of political discretion—not duty. "I cannot imagine how enormously different (and considerably worse, I am sure) my life would have been had I not been granted resident alien status in America." And that's the point: It's a grant, not a guarantee. I will never forget that it was "my exquisitely good fortune"—not some right I could force upon the American people over their wishes—"that I was admitted into this country as an alien—and later naturalized as a citizen." …

"United States citizenship is one of the greatest privileges this world has ever known." And "as with anything of great value, the privilege of citizenship must be vigorously protected." That is precisely what we do today….

And hare the specific facts of the case, plus a bit of the legal analysis, from the considerably longer majority opinion by Judge Leslie Southwick, joined by Judge Don Willett and Judge Ho:

Guerra-Vasquez and Guerra-Quezada appeal and contend that their respective citizenship flows from the same source, Cruz Rodriguez de Guerra, who is the grandmother of the former and the great-grandmother of the latter….

Cruz Rodriguez de Guerra was born in Kansas in 1924, making her an American citizen. See An affidavit attached to the complaint makes no representations concerning how long she lived in the United States, but it does assert she attempted to re-enter the United States in 1940 after being in Mexico. She was denied entry because the officers at the border told her she could not enter because she had "abandoned her residence." In 1981, the Immigration and Naturalization Service issued her a completed Form I-197, better known as a "U.S. Citizen Identification Card," stating she "claimed under oath to be a citizen of the U.S. through birth in U.S."

Cruz Rodriguez de Guerra's husband and the father of her children, Benigno Guerra, was born in Mexico. In 1944, she gave birth to a son, Antonio Guerra-Rodriguez, in Mexico. That son was the father of Appellant Guerra-Vasquez, who was born in Mexico in 1962, and the grandfather of Appellant Jorge Antonio Guerra-Quezada, who was born in Mexico in 1993. Both of Guerra-Quezada's parents were born in Mexico. Appellant Guerra-Quezada is Appellant Guerra-Vasquez's nephew.

In December 2021, United States Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a certificate of citizenship to Guerra-Quezada — according to the Government, erroneously—after he filed an N-600 application for such a certificate. The Government has commenced proceedings to cancel Guerra-Quezada's certificate, and those proceedings, to our knowledge, remain pending.

Both Guerra-Vasquez and Guerra-Quezada have been ordered to leave the country in the past. Guerra-Vasquez was a lawful permanent resident at one point but was issued a voluntary departure order in 2007; he re-entered the country illegally the next year, where he was detained and pled guilty to improper entry by an alien under 8 U.S.C. § 1325. He re-entered again but had remained undetected in Arlington, Texas. Guerra-Quezada was a long-time lawful permanent resident before he pled guilty to felony online solicitation of a minor. The Government subsequently removed him pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(E)(i). He later re-entered the country after being inspected….

"The applicable law for transmitting citizenship to a child born abroad when one parent is a citizen is the statute in effect at the time of the child's birth." Guerra-Vasquez was born in 1962. The statute that applied at that time required that—for a person with one United States citizen parent and one non-citizen parent—the citizen parent have resided in this country for a total of ten years prior to the child's birth, with at least five of those years coming after the parent was 14 years old. Guerra-Quezada was born in 1993. The statute to be applied to him stated that the United States citizen parent passes his or her citizenship to a child born outside this country only if that parent had been physically present in this country for a time totaling not less than five years prior to the child's birth, with at least two of those years coming after the parent became 14 years old.

The Board of Immigration Appeals adopted what is now labeled the "constructive-presence doctrine" as a means of satisfying a similar physical presence requirement when determining whether a person has retained their citizenship. The requirement could be satisfied if "physical presence [was] prevented by circumstances beyond the individual's control, or by reliance upon erroneous information received from a United States official." No circuit court of appeals has adopted the doctrine. Several have rejected its application in the citizenship-transmission context, which is the relevant context for us.

The Appellants agree that their claims to citizenship fail unless we revise the statutory requirements detailed above with a version of constructive presence that results in the father of the older Appellant, Guerra-Vasquez, being a United States citizen. The younger Appellant, Guerra-Quezada, would then have us forge ahead even further, extending the doctrine one generation more and through a different family line.

We reject the constructive-presence doctrine. The concurring opinion helpfully explains what exceptions to actual physical presence Congress has enacted. None of the statutory exceptions apply here, and we will not create judicial ones. That means neither Guerra-Vasquez nor Guerra-Quezada is a United States citizen….

"Bloodright citizenship," as a counterpoint to "birthright citizenship," is a fairly rare phrase, but I thought it was striking and interesting. It is connected, I expect, to the Latin phrase jus sanguinis, which refers to citizenship being granted based on the citizenship of one's parents, as opposed to jus solis, which refers to citizenship being granted based on place of birth. The Fourteenth Amendment provides for jus solis, as the Court just recently reaffirmed in Trump v. Barbara; but American law also provides for jus sanguinis as well, under the restrictions imposed by the specific statutes.

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U Pittsburgh Denied Due Process to Professor as to Sexual Harassment Allegations

2026-08-16T22:36:23Z

Some excerpts from Friday's longish decision by Judge Nora Barry Fischer (W.D. Pa.) in Bhattacharya v. Univ. of Pittsburgh:

Plaintiff, Chitrabhanu Bhattacharya, a tenured professor employed in the School of Business of Defendant, the University of Pittsburgh, was suspended without pay for a year, and terminated from the H.J. Zoffer endowed Chair, for "pervasive but not severe" violations of Defendant's sexual misconduct policy….

Plaintiff sued, claiming the University denied him due process, and the court agreed. The court concluded that a one-year suspension from a tenured position, and termination from a $50,000/year chair, were deprivations of "property" that required due process, and that such due process wasn't provided:

Plaintiff contends that Defendant failed to give him adequate notice of the charges against him, or an adequate explanation of Defendant's evidence. He avers, to the contrary, that Defendant provided a July 10, 2023 notice of charges whose "sole allegation was that between June 2022 and May 2023 he engaged in 'unwelcomed verbal advances of a sexual nature.'" The July 10 letter did not disclose any charges of unwanted touching; and (with a single exception) Plaintiff was provided no notice of such charges prior to or at the commencement of a July 27, 2023 interview with Defendant's investigator Laurel Gift, Esq. (in which Plaintiff first learned the specifics of multiple charges against him in the course of being questioned about them by Ms. Gift).

Although Defendant alleges that Plaintiff was "verbally informed of the allegations against him, including allegations of physical touching, during his paid suspension meeting on June 6, 2023," the paragraph of Defendant's [Statement of Material Facts] cited in support of this allegation does not mention physical touching. Ultimately, Ms. Gift concluded that Plaintiff had engaged in pervasive sexual harassment based upon some 16 "behaviors/comments" comprising nine alleged incidents of unwelcome physical conduct and 10 or 11 alleged incidents of verbal behavior, as summarized in a table in her Investigative Report. Crucially, Plaintiff alleges, and Defendant effectively does not deny, that he "had no notice" of nine specified "behaviors and comments listed in the table that he was not asked about during his July 27, 2023 interview or at any other time during the investigation." …

The Court concludes that Defendant did not provide sufficient notice of charges and evidence to allow Plaintiff a meaningful pre-deprivation opportunity to defend against those charges. Plaintiff was entitled to be informed, no later than the beginning of his interview with Ms. Gift, as to each distinct charge that was considered by Ms. Gift and ultimately passed along to Dean Anderson for determination of sanctions. He was not so informed….

The court also concluded that the university's appeal procedure didn't provided adequate due process, either:

Plaintiff appears well justified in labeling Defendant's … appeal procedure "secret" and "superficial." Plaintiff was not privy to the Investigation Report that formed the basis for his suspension, and his appeal was limited to three grounds (new information, procedural nonconformity, and severity of sanctions). His appeal was denied by an anonymous board that did not conduct a hearing or determine facts or guilt, on the conclusory ground that Plaintiff's "basis for appeal does not fall within any of the three limited grounds for appeal." The board's denial was approved by Defendant's Provost, who did not review the underlying record. Such a procedure appears poorly calculated to find or correct any errors in investigating and sanctioning faculty conduct.

Although the Court is not prepared to say that a full-blown hearing was required as a matter of law, it is clear that the post-deprivation procedure afforded to Plaintiff was constitutionally inadequate, especially in light of the limited grounds for appeal, which continued to deny Plaintiff an opportunity to address the substance of the charges against him. The Court concludes that, taken together or separately, the pre- and post-deprivation procedures available to Plaintiff were plainly insufficient to provide him with the notice and opportunity to be heard which are the irreducible requisites of constitutional due process.

James B. Lieber and Thomas M. Huber (Lieber Hammer Huber & Paul, P.C.) represent plaintiff.

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Judge's Allegedly "Relying Wholly" on AI in Order Is Covered by Judicial Immunity, Court Rules

2026-08-16T17:46:42Z

From Wednesday's decision in Phillips v. Parlade, by Judge Gloria Navarro (D. Nev.), where a litigant sued a state court judge in his case:

Plaintiff … argu[es] that judicial immunity does not apply in this matter because Defendant unlawfully delegated her official decision-making duties when she relied wholly on artificial intelligence to issue a judicial ruling, without any discretionary human thought, such that her actions cannot be considered a "judicial act." Plaintiff further argues that because Defendant delegated 100% of her decision-making duties, the rulings were in clear absence of all jurisdiction.

Judges enjoy absolute immunity from civil liability, even if their action was in error, done maliciously, or in excess of their authority. Judicial immunity applies unless the challenged conduct is accompanied by a clear absence of all jurisdiction or where the challenged conduct is not judicial in nature. Courts determine whether an act is judicial in nature by considering whether: (1) the act is a normal judicial function; (2) the events occurred in the judge's chambers; (3) the controversy centered around the case pending before the judge; and (4) the events at issue arose out of confrontation with the judge in his or her official capacity.

Here, Plaintiff alleges that Defendant issued a judicial decision in his state court case by relying wholly on artificial intelligence. Issuing a judicial ruling is clearly a normal judicial function and the controversy at issue centered around Plaintiff's state court case pending before Defendant. Moreover, there are no allegations that the events occurred outside Defendant's chambers. The challenged conduct is therefore judicial in nature. Furthermore, Plaintiff provides no case law or authority to support a finding that the challenged conduct was accompanied by a clear absence of all jurisdiction. Thus, Defendant is entitled to judicial immunity and this case must be dismissed.

Naturally, I can't speak to whether the allegations against the state judge are correct. But the federal decision in this case is that, as a matter of law, even if the allegations are correct and she had indeed relied entirely on AI in making her decision, she can't be sued for that in federal court.

Such objections to a state judge's actions can of course be raised on appeal to a state appellate court (or through various appeal-like remedies, such as petitions for a writ of mandamus or the like). And they can be raised in state court disciplinary proceedings. But, according to this case, they can't be raised in a federal district court lawsuit against the state court judge.

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Today in Supreme Court History: August 17, 1988

2026-01-26T16:11:37Z

8/17/1988: Republican party nominates George H.W. Bush for President. He would appoint David Souter and Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.

President George H.W. Bush's appointees to the Supreme Court

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Lawsuit Argues That School Choice Is a First Amendment Issue

2026-08-17T00:14:14Z

School choice advocates have argued for years that education options encourage competition among schools, cater to differing preferences for learning environments, and allow flexibility for families and children. Now, though, the plaintiffs behind a new lawsuit credibly argue that school choice protects the right of parents to have a say in the speech directed at children in the classroom.

Education Is First Amendment-Protected Speech

"Education happens through speech: Every lesson taught, book selected, idea discussed, and value emphasized conveys a message to the child," Zhonette Brown, general counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), noted last week when announcing a lawsuit against the state of Nebraska. "And parents, not the government, have the legal duty and the primary right to provide or select the educational speech their children receive."

"The government cannot condition a valuable public benefit on families surrendering a constitutional right," Brown added. "Nebraska may require children to receive an education, but it cannot use that requirement, and the enormous financial pressure attached to it, to steer parents toward government's preferred speakers and viewpoints."

Put simply, having required Nebraskans to educate their children, the state cannot also control the ideas children are taught.

In its complaint in the case of Jacobsen v. Spellerberg, the NCLA cites court precedents establishing that "the paramount authority and obligation to educate children, and the right to provide educational speech, rests with parents."

"State and federal Constitutions therefore preclude government abridgment of parents' educational speech," the complaint adds. "But education in public/government schools consists primarily of government supplied, selected, and reinforced educational viewpoints."

The complaint acknowledges that parents have the option to choose alternatives such as private schools and homeschooling. But Nebraska spends more than $19,000 per student every year on K–12 education in government schools and "defendants provide various and significant educational benefits only if Plaintiffs enroll their children in government schools, where the government's viewpoint reigns."

That means Nebraska taxpayers—including plaintiffs Justin Jacobsen and Timothy and Joanna Menter, who have school-age children—are forced to subsidize educational orthodoxy even if they choose schooling options that teach different viewpoints. Defendants include State Treasurer Joey Spellerberg, Nebraska Attorney General Michael Hilgers, Commissioner of Education Brian L. Maher, and other education officials who enforce the education mandate, disburse funds, and manage public schools.

Families That Want Choice Suffer Unconstitutional Conditions on Education Benefits

The plaintiffs seek declarations that the current arrangement of mandatory education and coerced funding of public schools teaching government viewpoints violates the federal and state constitutions. They want "an injunction barring Defendants from imposing the afore-declared unconstitutional condition on educational benefits" and court-ordered payment of damages by the City of Lincoln and/or Lancaster County "equal to the per pupil value of funding or other benefits those Defendants collect or provide for the benefit of the Lincoln Public Schools, multiplied by the number of Plaintiffs' school-aged children, with such damages continuing until the unconstitutional scheme no longer exists, such children graduate from high school, obtain a GED, or turn 19 years of age, whichever comes first."

Presumably, the injunction would also force Nebraska officials to adopt a new educational system that respects parents' right to guide their children's education, but the details are left to be determined later.

School Choice Offers Escape From Government-Preferred Viewpoints

That government-preferred viewpoints are pushed in public schools is beyond debate. The New York Times captured the situation in a January 2020 article by Dana Goldstein about the ideological customization of otherwise identical textbooks for California and Texas, where texts are selected at the state level. "The books have the same publisher," Goldstein wrote. "They credit the same authors. But they are customized for students in different states, and their contents sometimes diverge in ways that reflect the nation's deepest partisan divides."

She added, "Texas policymakers feel strongly about giving students a positive view of the American economy; since 1995, state law has required that high school economics courses offer an 'emphasis on the free enterprise system and its benefits.'…California's curriculum materials, by contrast, sometimes read like a brief from a Bernie Sanders rally."

Remarkably, that was before the curriculum wars really took off, when COVID-19 lockdowns sent kids home for online lessons that gave parents glimpses of preexisting biases and were further politicized by the ideological ferment of pandemic policy, racial tensions, and growing partisan polarization. The Cato Institute maintains an online Public Schooling Battle Map tracking disagreements among parents and between families and officials over the teaching of gender issues, morality, sexuality, and (the largest category) curriculum in general.

In 2021, the National Education Association (NEA), an important teachers' union, added fuel to the fire by adopting a resolution defending the teaching of controversial critical race theory in the classroom.

When many families pulled their children out of public school so they could ensure their kids were taught values with which they agree, prominent figures like Harvard Law School's Elizabeth Bartholet complained these parents were "indoctrinating" their children "in views and values that are in serious conflict" with those held by education officials. Bartholet argued that "policymakers should impose greater restrictions on private schools for many of the same reasons that they should restrict homeschooling" so that there would be no escape from official viewpoints.

Penalties for Exercising Choice Are No Better Than a Ban on Dissent

But even in the age of growing homeschooling and increasing portability of school funding in some states through tools like education savings accounts, many places, like Nebraska, still force parents to pay for government schools and official viewpoints no matter what they choose for their own children. Nebraska, notably, offers little in the way of school choice beyond recognizing families' rights to educate their children elsewhere so long as they leave behind the taxes they paid.

"The unconstitutional conditions doctrine exists to stop the government from doing indirectly what it cannot do directly," warns NCLA litigation counsel Christian Clase. "Nebraska cannot ban parents from teaching their own children their own values—so instead it penalizes them for exercising that recognized right. But the Constitution does not tolerate that abridgement of parents' free-speech rights."

If the First Amendment means anything, it should mean that governments are not permitted to penalize parents for making their own decisions about what children can and should be taught.

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Euclidean Zoning: How Our 'Arbitrary and Oppressive' City Planning Scheme Got Its Name

2026-07-29T22:17:14Z

The practice of separating homes, businesses, and factories into their own dedicated districts is called "Euclidean zoning." Given that Euclidean zoning involves the slicing and dicing of city maps into color-coded districts, you might assume it is named after Euclid, the ancient Greek "father of geometry" who laid down the rules for drawing lines and shapes on flat planes. But if you ask an urban planner, he will tell you that Euclidean zoning is actually named after a town in Ohio.

In 1922, Euclid, Ohio, passed a comprehensive zoning code to protect its small-town character from expanding, industrial Cleveland next door. The code drew the ire of the Ambler Realty Company, which objected to the town's imposition of a residential-only zone on a piece of land it had hoped to use for industrial development.

The company promptly sued, which ultimately led to the Supreme Court's 1926 decision in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. While zoning might have been "arbitrary and oppressive" 50 years ago, Justice George Sutherland wrote for the majority, the complexities of modern urban life required local governments to carefully plan which land uses were allowed where. "A nuisance may be merely a right thing in the wrong place—like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard," he said.

In upholding Euclid's restrictions, the Court gave municipalities across the country wide latitude to zone as they pleased. Following that ruling, almost every other community in the country followed the Ohio village's example by adopting a "Euclidean" zoning code.

The urban planners of the 1920s might have thought they could carefully regulate the modern industrial city to everyone's benefit. Instead, zoning codes have grown more "arbitrary and oppressive."

Urban planners who still support Euclidean zoning are not just wrong about policy. They are also wrong when they say Euclidean zoning is not named after the famous mathematician. Euclid, Ohio, was founded in 1796 by teams of surveyors who decided to name the town in honor of the Greek sage, to whom they owed a tremendous intellectual debt.

In short, Euclid, the man, lent his name to Euclid, the town, which lent its name to the Supreme Court decision that blessed what became known as Euclidean zoning. Those extra steps notwithstanding, Euclidean zoning is named for the author of Elements, Optics, Data, and Phaenomena.

That's certainly a crazy accident. The Supreme Court case that established the government's power to divide up maps into tiny shapes is named after a town that was itself named after the guy who invented the practice of dividing up maps into tiny shapes. With coincidences like that, what fool thinks he can plan anything, let alone a city?

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Brickbat: Running With a Rough Crowd

2026-08-12T03:54:25Z

In England, former Merseyside police officer Daniel Hughes was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years, after being convicted of eight counts of unauthorized access to computer material and three counts of knowingly disclosing personal data without consent. Between 2016 and 2019, Hughes repeatedly used police computer systems to look up information about his friends who were involved in organized crime. Then, between 2019 and 2021, he shared sensitive details about ongoing police investigations with them, all while never disclosing to the department his long-term friendships with suspected criminals.

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