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Justice Alito Says Recusal in Suncor Energy v. Boulder County a "Difficult Judgment Call"

2026-09-30T21:51:27Z

Greg Stohr of Bloomberg reports on an interview with Justice Alito explaining the justice's last-minute decision to recuse in Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, the major climate change preemption case the Supreme Court will hear on Monday. According to the story, Justice Alito said it was a "difficult judgment call."

From Stohr's report:

Although Alito took part when the court agreed to hear the case in February, he said Wednesday he decided to back out after looking more deeply at the case in the run-up to the argument. A coalition of watchdog and environmental groups had called on Alito to disqualify himself.

"Taking into account the particular arguments that were made on both sides here, I thought that recusal was the prudent step," Alito said.

Federal law requires judges to step aside if they own stock in one of the parties to a legal fight but doesn't impose a similar restriction for shares in companies that could be affected.

"Under that rule, I was not required to be recused, and I asked our legal office, as is my custom on any case where there's an arguable recusal issue, to give me their opinion on whether I was required to recuse, and they said, 'No.'"

The story also indicates why Justice Alito holds on to individual energy stocks, despite the recusal risk.

Alito said his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, inherited the energy shares. "She wants to hold on to individual stock, and so we have stock holdings in some companies in the oil and gas field," he said.

The post Justice Alito Says Recusal in Suncor Energy v. Boulder County a "Difficult Judgment Call" appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Cops Used AI Surveillance To Detain an Innocent Texas Driver. His Lawsuit Just Got the Program Struck Down.

2026-09-30T21:12:54Z

A federal jury on Monday found Bexar County, Texas, liable for systematically violating thousands of Americans' Fourth Amendment rights for years through a criminal interdiction unit. The victory underscores that the Constitution requires searches to be reasonable and prohibits dragnet policing.

On March 16, 2022, Alek Schott was driving home from a work trip near San Antonio, Texas, when he was stopped by a Bexar County Sheriff's Office (BCSO) deputy for allegedly drifting lanes. But what should have been a quick stop turned into an hourlong, unconstitutional fishing expedition. Rather than simply writing a ticket, Deputy Joel Babb asked Schott to "step out and sit in [the police cruiser's] passenger seat while I do your warning," according to the complaint filed in federal court on behalf of Schott by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit law firm. Once in the police car, Babb began questioning Alek on a variety of topics, including where he worked, the purpose of his travel, and where he lived while he looked up Alek's criminal history.

After interrogating Schott for 10 minutes, "Babb admitted the purpose of the stop was never really about a traffic violation," writes the suit. As part of the Criminal Interdiction Unit, Babb said he didn't write traffic tickets. Instead, he stopped drivers to look for "human smuggling, drug smuggling, and all those things like that." Babb proceeded to ask Schott about illicit drugs, whether he was carrying cash, and whether he'd consent to a search of his vehicle.

But Schott refused. Still, this wouldn't be the end of the stop. After being denied consent to search and without evidence of any wrongdoing, Babb called for a K-9 unit to walk around the vehicle, according to the suit. When the K-9 unit finally arrived, body camera footage shows the officer walk the dog around the truck. In the reflection of Schott's vehicle, the officer can be seen gesturing upward and signaling toward the dog. The dog jumps up and places its paws on the vehicle in response, and the officer records a positive alert.

For the next 40 minutes, Schott sat in the back of the police cruiser while officers ransacked his truck. But they found nothing.

Before leaving, Babb gave Schott a copy of his "warning," and "reassured [him] that he'd done his best to put everything back, 'cause nine times out of ten, this is what happens'—meaning that BCSO officers typically find nothing when searching a vehicle," argues the complaint.

Schott's own dashcam footage later confirmed he'd never drifted lanes as Babb alleged, the suit explains. So following the traffic stop, Schott filed a complaint with the BCSO internal affairs department, asserting he'd been stopped without cause, detained for over an hour, and searched for no legitimate reason. But the agency refused to take Schott's complaint seriously, telling him, "If you don't like how we conduct our business, you should file a…lawsuit," writes the lawsuit.

And so he did, untangling a web of pretextual stops, unconstitutional searches, and mass government surveillance in the process.

The BCSO's systematic violation of Americans' Fourth Amendment rights occurred in five steps, beginning with a nationwide network of license plate readers. These AI-powered cameras would notify local law enforcement of any travel deemed abnormal, and BCSO deputies would then conduct pretextual traffic stops to investigate the suspicious drivers. Once pulled over, officers interrogated the drivers, and if they "refused to consent to a search, a K-9 alert from a manipulated dog supplied the probable cause to search anyway," according to the Institute for Justice's press release.

The Criminal Interdiction Unit "ran thousands of drivers through that routine—humiliating, invasive interrogations and searches of people who had done nothing wrong," said the nonprofit's senior attorney Josh Windham in a statement. "It all rests on the idea that if you watch enough innocent people closely enough, criminals will fall out," he continued.

The Fourth Amendment requires officers to have real reasons to stop, hold, and search, according to Christie Hebert, an Institute for Justice attorney and lead counsel on Schott's case, who spoke at a press conference on Wednesday. "Officers have to actually have a belief that you are committing a crime, and these officers didn't have that," she said, accusing the BCSO officers of dragnet policing, making everyone a suspect, and thinking they were above the Fourth Amendment. "Every agency in the state of Texas should be on notice that we are prepared to enforce this jury's verdict."

Along with the jury's vindication of Americans' Fourth Amendment rights, Schott was awarded $76 to represent a dollar for each minute he was unconstitutionally detained. "This is a major win for freedom of travel and constitutional rights," Schott said during Wednesday's press conference. "This has been a large consumption for four years to get some government accountability, and we finally have a jury that agrees that what they did was unconstitutional."

The post Cops Used AI Surveillance To Detain an Innocent Texas Driver. His Lawsuit Just Got the Program Struck Down. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Trump Wants AI Companies To Police Themselves. His FTC Isn't Waiting.

2026-09-30T20:45:02Z

America's leading AI companies are getting exactly what they asked for.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed the White House Accord on Super Intelligence—a voluntary, if vacuous, agreement to self-police and adhere to the same set of rules signed by the leaders of America's top AI companies. It outlines four layers of controls and audits he'd like every AI company to implement. The president told reporters he was "seeing tremendous self-policing," and that AI companies "understand that they have to self-police," according to CNN.

Trump has resisted calls to regulate AI companies even as public opinion of the industry has grown more negative. That hasn't stopped members of his administration from policing AI companies using the authorities already granted to them under the law.

On Wednesday, the New York Post reported that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would be "ramping up a sweeping probe of Anthropic, OpenAI and other frontier labs to uncover the potential dangers their technology poses to consumers, and plans to slap the tech titans with formal demands, similar to subpoenas, to turn over information."

The initial investigation began when OpenAI announced its agents had infiltrated Hugging Face's infrastructure in July. However, the Post reported that the FTC is now prepared to "force testimony from the leading firms' executives," including plans to "compel the executives at these firms to testify about their product and about the dangers they allege their products may have to consumers, to Americans."

The agency is investigating violations of the Federal Trade Commission Act, which empowers it to issue cease and desist orders to prevent "persons, partnerships, or corporations" from engaging in "unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce." If companies ignore its orders, the FTC can ask federal courts to impose civil penalties and seek compensation for violations.

So far, the agency's attempts to regulate AI companies have aligned with public opinion. Last September, the FTC ordered seven companies to provide information on their AI-powered chatbots and how they "measure, test, and monitor potentially negative impacts of this technology on children and teens." In July, the agency announced it was seeking public comment on a proposed statement accusing AI companies of "manipulating the behavior of their AI systems contrary to reasonable consumer expectations for objectivity and accuracy."

The agency's latest actions come after a string of recent events in which AI agents from Anthropic and OpenAI meddled with government websites in the U.S. and Australia. Last week, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson told Reuters that he would hold humans responsible for the actions of their AI agents.

It's unclear why the FTC has taken the lead and not the Department of Justice. In his speech at the United Nations General Assembly this month, Trump suggested the department would watch the industry closely for signs of misconduct.

Still, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei—CEOs of the world's leading frontier AI labs who have asked lawmakers to regulate the industry and called for an industrywide pause on development—appear to be succeeding in their quest for regulatory capture.

An agency official told the Post that it would likely "issue its civil investigative demands, or CIDs, in the coming weeks."

The post Trump Wants AI Companies To Police Themselves. His FTC Isn't Waiting. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Trump Orders Mosquitoes and Rats Out of the District of Columbia

2026-09-30T20:30:20Z

President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday directing various federal agencies to "develop and implement a campaign" across Washington, D.C., "to, by 2028, reduce the Asian tiger mosquito, Egyptian mosquito, and other invasive mosquito populations, as appropriate, by 90 percent and reduce the tick population by 50 percent, with further reductions as practicable." As a part-time resident of the District, I can only say, "Hooray!"

The order directs agencies to deploy standard techniques for controlling the pests, such as dumping standing water where mosquitoes breed (draining the swamp?) and reducing the tick host populations of rodents and deer. But even better, the agencies are enjoined to "consider sterilization techniques, safe genetic modification, and use of safe, beneficial bacteria" and to "prioritize and expeditiously advance or register novel tick and mosquito control methods or products that the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency finds to be both safe and effective."

Releasing sterile and Wolbachia-infected male mosquitoes to breed with wild female mosquitoes has successfully reduced pest populations by as much as 95 percent. An even more effective technology for eliminating the bloodsuckers is gene drives.

Gene drives bias inheritance to pass a specific trait to nearly all offspring instead of the normal 50 percent chance. Researchers can genetically engineer non-biting male mosquitoes so that they pass along to basically all of their offspring a gene that is lethal to female mosquito larva. As fewer and fewer female mosquitoes survive to adulthood, the process would quickly crash disease-carrying pest populations.

Gene drives could also be deployed to crash tick populations, but why not target the ticks' host species? For example, it is possible to break the cycle of infection by releasing mice genetically engineered to resist Lyme and other diseases passed along by ticks and mosquitoes. Gene drives could also target rodent populations directly. If total elimination is deemed too drastic, a team of California researchers has developed a type of gene drive that can be calibrated to suppress the pest population to any desired level.

Let's hope that Trump's order finally jump-starts recalcitrant regulators into quickly approving the deployment of gene drives for pest control.

The post Trump Orders Mosquitoes and Rats Out of the District of Columbia appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Why Is Seattle Keeping Her From Cleaning Up Trash?

2026-09-30T20:15:10Z

Many major American cities struggle with homelessness, and with no single clear or obvious solution, it's unlikely the problem will be solved anytime soon.

The issue also has spillover costs. Take, for example, the Evergreen State.

"Washington state is experiencing the fifth-highest per-capita rate of unsheltered homelessness in the nation," the Washington Department of Ecology warned in 2020. "On any given night, 10,000 Washington residents are living outside or in places unfit for human habitation." And while the encampments can pose a danger to nearby residents, their presence "also impacts the environment. Illegal disposal of garbage and human waste can contaminate the environment, spread disease, and attract vermin."

So when a Seattle resident took it upon herself to clean up public spaces in her city, why did the state feel the need to stand in her way?

Like most of us, Andrea Suarez found herself with a lot of free time during the COVID-19 pandemic. But when she took walks near her home in downtown Seattle, she didn't like what she saw: used needles, garbage, and homeless people experiencing drug addiction and untreated mental illness.

"Tourism was no longer camouflaging the crisis in our city," she tells Reason.

She wasn't alone. Writing for The Seattle Times in 2021, Sara Jean Green noted that the city's once-vibrant downtown was now marked by "open-air drug use, lawlessness and filth."

When her complaints to local officials went nowhere, Suarez took matters into her own hands: "I went to Home Depot and I bought pinchers and vests and garbage bags and a little red wagon," she says. With all the new equipment, she went out and picked up trash in Denny Park—which KOMO, Seattle's ABC affiliate, said at the time was "riddled with crime, drugs and homelessness."

Suarez would ultimately put $25,000 into starting We Heart Seattle, a nonprofit dedicated to cleaning up the city's public spaces and assisting the homeless. She announced upcoming cleanups on the group's Facebook page and asked for volunteers. Over time, the operation grew, and she now manages more than 1,000 volunteers.

We Heart Seattle takes no public money, relying solely on private donations. The organization brags that it has picked up more than 2 million pounds of trash from public spaces and helped 365 people off the street in just the six years in operation.

But in July, Suarez received a "notice of alleged safety or health hazards" from the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) Division of Occupational Safety and Health. The notice alleged "improper handling and collection of hypodermic needles and fentanyl paraphernalia."

In an accompanying letter, the department indicated that We Heart Seattle would be subject to a "review as part of the inspection process."

The review apparently resulted from an anonymous civilian complaint, alleging that the people doing cleanup were not handling sensitive and dangerous items correctly. (Reason asked for a copy of the complaint last month; L&I's Public Records Unit responded on August 26 that "due to high volume of requests," it may take until October to comply.)

The letter required Suarez to submit a number of documents within 48 hours, such as copies of the organization's safety training materials, employee training completion logs, and any "safety related employee disciplinary records" from the past six months.

But according to We Heart Seattle's IRS filing, Suarez is its only employee. All the work at cleanup sites is conducted by volunteers, overseen by Suarez and a couple of site supervisors.

Still, "we have certification for hazmat and bloodborne pathogen training," she notes. On its website, We Heart Seattle provides extensive information about what volunteers can expect at a cleanup, including safety information and waivers. It also notes that "gloves, grabbers, rakes and garbage bags" will be provided.

"From day one," Suarez says, "we've always used the red sharps containers," as well as the county needle exchange's recommendation for the proper collection and disposal.

The problem was all the other requirements, she says, that felt like overkill.

Indeed, when someone is willing to shoulder the burden of clearing out so much trash from public spaces, why make it that much harder for them to do so?

It seems part of the problem is that the state doesn't quite know how to classify We Heart Seattle, a nonprofit that is technically just a one-person operation. Suarez says that's intentional: "I don't want to scale. I don't want infrastructure. The whole point of We Heart Seattle is to be nimble and mighty. I'm private funded, so I can't just start bringing on people without the guarantee of revenue."

Now, Suarez must contend with a state inspection, which an L&I spokesperson told Reason "can take up to 180 days" to complete. In the meantime, Suarez has the threat of financial penalties hanging over her head, as violations could result in fines, or worse.

"The whole purpose of nonprofits is to supplement the work of the government," she says. But the L&I investigation "puts you in a position to not want to do the work or be fearful of doing the work, that you could be fined or shut down."

How does Washington state thank @weheartseattle for picking up over 2 million pounds of trash? By launching an investigation into their work. Reason's @BessByers shares more. pic.twitter.com/nYQIWHUixU

— reason (@reason) September 29, 2026

The post Why Is Seattle Keeping Her From Cleaning Up Trash? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

The FDA Promises To Streamline the Dauntingly Complex Rules for Approving Nicotine Products

2026-09-30T20:00:00Z

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week announced that it is reevaluating its approach to approving nicotine products such as vapes and pouches. The Wall Street Journal reports that FDA officials want to "smooth the way for more tobacco products such as flavored vapes to legally enter the market by changing the rules to speed up the authorization process."

That is good news for manufacturers of nicotine products, who for years have struggled with regulatory bottlenecks, burdensome requirements that do not apply to cigarettes, and long delays in processing their applications for "premarket" approval. It is also good news for current and former cigarette smokers, promising to preserve their access to a wide variety of alternatives that are far less hazardous than combusted tobacco.

The planned reforms would build on progress that the FDA has made during the last couple of years, including its approval of nicotine pouches and vapes in flavors that former smokers demonstrably prefer. Those decisions recognize that concerns about underage use should not override the interests of adults who might want to dramatically reduce their health risks by switching to nicotine habits that do not involve lighting vegetable matter on fire and inhaling the smoke. But if the FDA is serious about tobacco harm reduction, it needs to overhaul a dauntingly complex, expensive, time-consuming, and frustrating system that makes it extremely difficult to legally market such alternatives.

"The Trump administration is committed to keeping nicotine out of the hands of kids, getting counterfeit vaping products off the streets, and providing safer alternatives for adults who want to quit smoking cigarettes," a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokeswoman told the Journal. Regulate Smarter, a trade group chaired by former U.S. Sen. Richard Burr (R–N.C.), welcomed the FDA's announcement in an emailed press release, calling it "an encouraging and long-overdue course correction."

The need for that correction is clear from a lawsuit that Helix Innovations, an Altria subsidiary that makes nicotine pouches, and NJOY, the company's vape business, filed this month in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The complaint, which was also joined by two Texas retailers and the Texas Food & Fuel Association, argues that the FDA has failed to "comply with its obligations" under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA), the 2009 law that gave the agency regulatory authority over tobacco products.

That law "expressly requires the FDA to authorize the marketing of new tobacco products (including alternatives to cigarettes) as 'appropriate for the protection of the public health,'" Helix et al. note. "To facilitate such authorizations, the statute requires the FDA to grant or deny new product applications as promptly as possible, and 'in no event later than 180 days after the receipt of an application.'" But the FDA "has never complied with this deadline."

The problem was exacerbated in 2016, when the FDA issued a "deeming" rule requiring premarket approval for myriad nicotine products, including vapes. In response to the resulting backlog, the FDA repeatedly extended application deadlines. But in May 2019, a federal judge in Maryland nixed those extensions, saying applications would have to be submitted by September 9, 2020, with enforcement against unapproved products delayed for another year.

In September 2019, the FDA proposed a rule that "set forth requirements related to the content and format" of premarket applications and "the procedure by which FDA would review" them. According to the lawsuit, that rule, which the FDA finalized in October 2021, "disregarded comments, evidence, and obvious alternatives that would have facilitated" the processing of applications.

Under the TCA, a premarket application is supposed to include product samples, proposed labeling, a "full description" of manufacturing and packaging, a "full statement" of the product's ingredients and operation, a "full report" of available information on the product's "health risks," and an "identifying reference" to any relevant FDA standard, along with "adequate information" about the product's compliance with it. The TCA also says applicants must submit "such other information relevant to the subject matter" that HHS "may require."

The FDA's 2021 rule "made it impossible for the FDA to issue orders on the vast majority of [applications] within 180 days," Helix et al. argue. It "did not set forth a viable way for the FDA to timely apply the statutory-authorization criteria to the vast number of new product applications the Deeming Rule required. Instead of trying to dig out of the application backlog the FDA had created for itself," the agency "required vast amounts of additional information from applicants—well beyond the TCA's requirements."

The FDA's demands included "granular descriptions of 'product formulation' that had little to do with any conceivable public health concern," the lawsuit says. The agency also required "extensive supporting materials," including "all studies concerning" the product's "pharmacological profile" and behavioral data indicating how the product might "affect the tobacco use behavior of both users and nonusers of tobacco products."

The process mandated by the FDA, critics complained, was "significantly more" demanding than the requirements for approving a new prescription drug or medical device, setting an "impossibly high" bar for manufacturers. And the FDA's procedures guaranteed that processing time would exceed the TCA's 180-day limit. Among other things, the agency said the clock would not start on that limit until it received the "last piece of information necessary to complete the submission."

The FDA also broke its process into three components: "acceptance" of an application, a "filing phase," and substantive review. The agency "would often refuse to accept [an] application on non-substantive grounds," such as "failure to 'comply with the applicable format requirements,'" Helix et al. note. The FDA's forms "sometimes lack the requisite fields for all products," they say, which causes the FDA to refuse acceptance for "purely administrative reasons."

By itself, the "acceptance" phase "often takes longer than the agency's 180-day statutory deadline," the lawsuit says. "For example, under the 2021 Final Rule, Helix's [applications] for certain of its [flavored nicotine pouches] were submitted on September 25, 2024, but not 'accepted' until August 12, 2025—321 days later."

Once an application is accepted, the FDA conducts a "filing review" to determine whether it contains "sufficient information to permit a full substantive review." That phase, Helix et al. say, "typically takes even longer than 'acceptance' review." And even after "an application had been accepted and filed," the FDA "would sometimes require further information from the applicant—including product samples that applicants offered with their initial submissions" but the FDA refused to accept at that point.

The FDA, in short, asserted the power to "unilaterally determine when Congress's 180-day review period started." And that, the plaintiffs argue, plainly violates the TCA.

After the FDA proposed the nicotine product regulations but before they were finalized, the court-set deadline for applications resulted in thousands of submissions covering 4.8 million products, mainly nicotine vapes. Although "this flood of reports and applications was entirely predictable," the lawsuit says, "the FDA was totally unprepared" for it.

As of January 2021, the FDA had managed to look at just 0.6 percent of the applications. The following month, it noted "the unprecedented number of applications" and said it was unlikely to review them by September 9, 2021. That was when the protection against enforcement for companies with pending applications was set to expire, and it was six months after the TCA's 180-day limit.

"Given the unprecedented number of applications," the FDA conceded in June 2021, "the likelihood of FDA reviewing all of the applications" in compliance with the statutory and judicial time limits was "extremely low." It said that the "number of applications exceeds anything that we've ever seen by orders of magnitude" and that reviewing them had been "very challenging due to the size, complexity and diversity of these submissions."

Thanks to the FDA's onerous demands, Helix et al. argue, that challenge was inevitable. Critics of the agency's regulations predicted exactly this sort of backlog.

As of October 2022, the HHS Office of the Inspector General reported, the FDA still had a backlog of more than 53,000 vape applications that it had received two years earlier, and it was routinely missing the TCA's 180-day deadline. A 2022 analysis by the Reagan-Udall Foundation noted that the FDA had "struggled to function as a regulator in part due to some of its policy choices," including the "scope of the product review regulations," which "have been difficult for both stakeholders and [the FDA] to apply in practice." As of last March, according to the lawsuit, the FDA "still faced a massive backlog" of about 130,000 premarket applications.

In September 2025, the FDA launched a pilot project aimed at facilitating approval of nicotine pouches. That initiative "got off to a promising start," resulting in the December 2025 approval of six Helix products, the plaintiffs say. "But the pilot program's limited progress only confirmed the need for permanent, structural regulatory changes to fix the problems" that the 2021 rule "codified and exacerbated."

Last May, the FDA "again recognized the statutory and other problems with the backlog of applications" by issuing "guidance for de-prioritizing enforcement action against products in certain categories," the lawsuit says. "But the FDA's discretionary enforcement moratoria on certain (thus far unidentified) products is no substitute for the decisions that the TCA requires the FDA to make within 180 days."

The FDA is now contemplating reforms aimed at addressing the problems described in the lawsuit. "The agency is looking to add more flexibility for companies to get more products authorized," the Journal reports. "One potential way to do that is by simplifying requirements for scientific studies and speeding review times….The administration hopes to see products it considers less harmful for smokers, such as flavored vapes, enter the market more easily."

In a recent interview with Nicotine Insider, Azim Chowdhury, a tobacco and nicotine specialist at the law firm Keller and Heckman, notes that "there is a tremendous amount of potential redundancy" in premarket applications. He questions the need to reiterate the same basic information in applications for every product variation.

"There are a lot of companies in this industry—including many small businesses—that want to comply," Chowdhury says. "They are asking FDA to tell them, in a clear and predictable way, what they need to do." The current process can cost businesses "millions or even tens of millions of dollars," he notes. "That creates a system that, in practice, can be navigated much more easily by the largest tobacco companies and multinational corporations than by smaller manufacturers."

Chowdhury emphasizes the harm-reducing potential of alternative nicotine products, which the FDA has repeatedly recognized. "If the goal is a regulated marketplace, then there has to be a realistic pathway from the marketplace we have today to the marketplace FDA wants," he says. "If we create a regulated market so narrow that it doesn't reflect what adult consumers actually want, we're going to miss opportunities to move people away from combustible cigarettes."

The post The FDA Promises To Streamline the Dauntingly Complex Rules for Approving Nicotine Products appeared first on Reason Magazine.

How Regulation, Immigration Policy, and Tariffs Made Your BLT More Expensive

2026-09-30T19:52:23Z

Economist Leonard Read famously observed that no one on Earth is capable of single-handedly making a pencil.

What about a sandwich? You can slap together a BLT—a bacon, lettuce, tomato sandwich, a classic of the deli counter—in a few minutes, and the ingredients will set you back no more than a few bucks. It's simple and delicious, which is all a good sandwich needs to be.

But don't be fooled. The humble BLT is a lesson in the incredible complexity and remarkable ability of markets to meet our needs, even without anyone coordinating the whole process. Getting that bacon, lettuce, and tomato to your plate requires farmers, truckers, processors, manufacturers, retailers, and more.

It is also, unfortunately, becoming a lesson in what happens when governments intervene in those markets.

Start with the bacon.

Under the terms of Proposition 12, which voters in California approved in 2018, farms are required to give chickens, calves, and hogs more space. But the rule doesn't apply only to farms in California. To sell any meat product into the Golden State, producers must show that they comply with the rule.

The rule was meant to improve animal welfare, but there are some obvious tradeoffs. Complying with California's rules raised production costs across the board by about 9 percent, according to the National Pork Producers Council.

That's one of the reasons why bacon has been getting more expensive. An average pound of bacon cost $5.83 in January 2021, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Now, it will set you back about $6.60. That's still a pretty good deal—especially when you consider how many jobs are involved in getting that crispy slice of meat onto your sandwich—but Proposition 12 clearly demonstrates how state policy, even when well-intentioned, carries costs.

Now, let us consider the lettuce.

Much of America's supply of leafy greens comes from Yuma, Arizona, where farmers depend heavily on immigrant labor to get the job done. Most of those farmworkers use H-2A visas to cross into the United States, but intensified immigration enforcement has made it harder for farms to find the workers they need. With militarized checkpoints and huge fines for anyone caught not carrying their papers, some workers have decided that those jobs aren't worth the hassle.

The Department of Labor has warned of an "imminent labor shortage" that could threaten food supplies. There simply aren't enough Americans willing and qualified to do many of these jobs. Fewer lechugueros in the fields of Yuma threaten the supply chain that provides the critical, crispy backbone to your BLT.

Pop quiz: Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?

It's actually both. Botanically, the tomato is a fruit. But politically, it is considered a vegetable. The Supreme Court decided that in a rather bizarre case in 1893 involving tariffs on tomatoes.

Tomato tariffs are still relevant today.

Last year, President Donald Trump ended a 1996 agreement that allowed Mexican tomatoes to enter the United States without any tariffs. That was a good deal, because Mexican tomatoes are regarded as some of the tastiest in the world. Also, longer growing seasons in Mexico meant that Americans had access to fresh tomatoes for larger portions of the year.

Now, Mexican tomatoes are subject to tariffs. We still import them, but they are more expensive to buy. Fresh tomato prices subsequently jumped nearly 40 percent year over year.

That move was meant to benefit domestic tomato growers. And, sure, that might work. But the tradeoff is more expensive tomatoes at the grocery store and some reduction in the economic benefits that come along with importing tomatoes.

Governments can impose rules to protect animals, restrict immigration, shield domestic industries, or bring back manufacturing jobs. Each policy may have a defensible goal, but every intervention also comes with a price.

Sometimes that price is paid by a farmer. Sometimes by a worker. And increasingly, it is paid by the consumer standing in the grocery aisle or sitting down to have lunch.

A sandwich is a compact microcosm of an economy, so what's true for the BLT would be true in other—and more important—parts of the world.

The post How Regulation, Immigration Policy, and Tariffs Made Your BLT More Expensive appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Americans Are Wealthier Than 30 Years Ago. Here's the Data To Prove It.

2026-09-30T19:00:32Z

The economic populism that has consumed the Republican Party in recent years rests largely upon the claim that America is in decline—and that we are falling behind because other countries (or immigrants from those countries) are "ripping us off," as President Donald Trump likes to put it.

You'll often hear a similar story of economic decline from figures on the political left too, although they are more likely to blame capitalism. "The most important political division in our times is not between Democrats and Republicans, or socialists and capitalists," wrote Tim Wu, a Democratic strategist and veteran of the Biden administration, in a recent New York Times essay, "it's between those who think today's economic system is fair and working well for most people, and those who do not."

Both narratives are incorrect.

The Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) latest report on American households' income, released this week, shows that Americans are significantly wealthier than they were 30 or 50 years ago. Poorer households are earning more. Wealthier households are earning more. And, yes, that's after adjusting for inflation.

Source: Congressional Budget Office (https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2026-09/62761-Household-Income-2023.pdf)

In fact, poorer Americans have seen the largest relative gains over the past few decades—a fact that is particularly inconvenient for populists on both right and left.

As Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the Cato Institute, pointed out after crunching the CBO's data that the poorest fifth of the income distribution—that is, the 20 percent of American households earning the least annually—has seen its average household income climb by 50 percent since 1979. When government transfers and tax policies are taken into account, that same segment of the population has seen its income double over the same period.

The middle class is doing quite well too. Incomes are up by 44 percent for the median household since 1979, and they have increased by 70 percent when taxes and transfers are included. And, again, this is after accounting for inflation.

In 1990, the average middle-class household earned about $84,700 annually (in 2023 dollars). In 2023, that same segment of the population took home more than $131,000.

The growth since the 1990s is particularly interesting, as nearly all of that has been achieved since the North American Free Trade Agreement (signed in 1992) was in place and since China joined the World Trade Organization (in 2001), the two events that right-wing populists tend to highlight when discussing the supposed hollowing out of America's middle class. The income data tells a very different story.

Economic populists like to pretend that this is an either-or situation. Vice President J.D. Vance, for example, believes that it would be foolish to trade 1 million imported toasters for "a single American manufacturing job," as if the outsourcing of manufacturing would necessitate a decline in Americans' living standards.

Good news! We don't have to choose. Manufacturing jobs may have declined in recent decades, but the American middle class today has access to more affordable goods and better-paying jobs—including better-paying blue-collar jobs.

Of course, it is also true that many Americans feel like they are struggling right now. Inflation is outpacing wage increases, and higher interest rates make it harder to afford a house, a car, or anything else that requires borrowing.

Even so, the context matters. Americans of all income levels are doing far better today than in the recent past. That's a fact worth celebrating. Instead, politicians are constantly trying to turn it into a grievance, as if someone else's success might mean your failure.

The solution to today's economic problems, then, is not to blame the system that has allowed incomes to rise so steadily and so high. If politicians succeed in dismantling capitalism or eroding free trade to return America to the past, they will likely find a future where everyone is poorer.

The post Americans Are Wealthier Than 30 Years Ago. Here's the Data To Prove It. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

You Can Now Sue Federal Agents in California. Good Luck Getting Past Qualified Immunity.

2026-09-30T18:34:14Z

On Tuesday, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the No Kings Act (SB 747) into law, allowing Golden State residents to sue "every natural person who, under color of any law," violates their constitutional rights.

Under the law—sponsored by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D–San Francisco)—government actors accused of violating a California resident's constitutional rights can no longer avoid accountability simply because they are federal rather than state or local officials. The bill does not eliminate qualified immunity.

Qualified immunity—a judicial doctrine created by the Supreme Court—protects government officials from personal liability for civil damages if the act occurs while they are performing their duty. In Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982), the Court established that government officials are entitled to qualified immunity when their conduct does not "violate clearly established constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Federal courts routinely use qualified immunity to shield abusive government officials from civil liability, even when their conduct is indefensible.

Through its ruling in Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents (1971), the Court has largely narrowed civil liability claims against federal officers to violations of the Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments, provided the conduct is "in a new context," as Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in Ziglar v. Abbasi (2017).

Under that precedent, any case brought against a federal official for a constitutional violation must fit the same narrow set of circumstances as cases in which the Court has already held a federal official liable for damages.

Instead of abolishing the doctrine, California's law creates a state-level cause of action that will allow anyone to bring a civil rights suit for monetary damages against any federal, state, or local official who violates their constitutional rights. The law limits the time to file a lawsuit to two years, counted from the date the violation occurred. It's retroactive, meaning that so long as the conduct happened on or after March 1, 2025, a lawsuit can be filed for nominal and compensatory damages. The law is "very much aligned with America's traditional values" and brings back the "original idea of accountability and enforcing constitutional rights," says Anya Bidwell, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice.

For people like Bidwell's client, George Retes Jr., the law provides an avenue to "amend his claim" that federal officers violated his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights when they detained him for three days. Federal officials have long been hard to sue for constitutional violations. Section 1983 of the U.S. Code is the federal civil rights statute, but it only applies to state and local officials.

Federal courts have also failed to "definitively answer whether states have the power to provide a state court forum for suing a federal official for the violation of a federal constitutional right," says Clark Neily, senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. That has placed the burden on California and other states to create forums to adjudicate claims of civil rights violations by federal officials.

California's law applies equally to federal, state, and local officials, unlike a similar law passed by Illinois, which specifically targeted government officials carrying out immigration enforcement.

The "question of even-handed treatment will be central to analysis of the statute," says Northwestern University law professor James Pfander. "The state cannot single out federal officials for state regulation or lay a heavy regulatory hand on the federal government itself," Pfander adds, "but they can establish norms that are equally applicable to all, and the Court has been pretty clear that there's no federal supremacy preemption in circumstances where the regulatory energy of the state has been even-handedly applied to everyone."

In 2025, Illinois passed the Illinois Bivens Act, authorizing any person to "bring a civil action against any person who, while conducting civil immigration enforcement, knowingly engages in conduct that violates the Illinois Constitution or the United States Constitution." The Department of Justice swiftly filed a complaint in federal court against the Prairie State. Steven D. Weinhoeft, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, accused Illinois of advancing "unconstitutional policies designed to undermine federal law."

It's unclear what, if any, challenge the department will muster against California's new law.

Still, the law's qualified immunity provision maintains the current status quo, accepting the judicial doctrine as a legitimate defense for misconduct.

The post You Can Now Sue Federal Agents in California. Good Luck Getting Past Qualified Immunity. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Your Right to Privacy Doesn't Disappear When You're in Public

2026-09-30T20:06:52Z

Do Americans have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public? Reason has published extensively on the problems associated with law enforcement's current use of automatic license plate readers and the ongoing nationwide backlash to mass government surveillance. In response, proponents of the technology commonly argue that concerns over privacy violations are unfounded. Besides, the argument goes that Americans "have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public" or while "using public roads."

But is that true? And where does this argument come from?

First of all, such a statement is far too broad a claim. Police officers are not allowed to randomly stop someone in the street and demand to know where they're going or where they've been unless the officer has reasonable suspicion that the individual is involved in criminal activity or has committed a traffic violation. Even then, these stops are meant to be brief, and Americans are free to invoke their right to remain silent and refuse to speak with police or answer any questions. If Americans had no reasonable expectation of privacy while in public, police officers wouldn't have these restrictions on their authority.

However, this argument is most likely referring to a more nuanced Supreme Court ruling from a 1983 case called United States v. Knotts. In that case, a man was suspected of stealing chloroform to aid in the manufacture of illicit drugs. To catch him, officers placed a radio transmitter in a 5-gallon container of chloroform. Once the suspect picked up the container, officers tracked it to a drug lab a few hours away.

When asked whether the warrantless planting and use of the transmitter by police violated the Fourth Amendment, the Court answered that it did not, in part because "a person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another." The Court also noted that the transmitter didn't convey any additional information the officers couldn't simply see with their own eyes.

Although this ruling was straightforward at the time, a lot has changed since 1983. And in 2012, the Court took up a similar case called United States v. Jones, which involved the warrantless use of a GPS device to track the vehicle of a suspected drug trafficker. But despite police similarly using a device to track a suspect's vehicle on public roads like in Knotts, the Court ruled differently and unanimously held that police need a warrant before using a GPS device to track someone's vehicle.

But why the different outcome?

First, the Court's majority opinion held that installing a GPS tracker on the suspect's car required police to intrude on private property. All nine justices agreed that the Fourth Amendment definitely protects against that, and rejected the argument that the Knotts ruling meant people have no reasonable expectation of privacy while using public roads.

And second, in Jones, the cops used the GPS device to track the car everywhere it went for 28 days. Compared to the transmitter in Knotts, which police used to track a single container for only a few hours, using a GPS device for nearly a month can reveal a lot of private details about someone's life. And five justices joined in concurring opinions to express their uneasiness with that fact.

So in 2018, when the Court took up the question of whether the warrantless search and seizure of cellphone location data violates the Fourth Amendment in Carpenter v. United States, the majority held that, actually, Americans do "have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of physical movements." This holds even when people are out in public or using public roads. And in June, the Court doubled down on this ruling in a case called Chatrie v. United States, holding that police using location history collected by Google constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.

But where do ALPR cameras come in?

According to the Court's most recent rulings in Carpenter and Chatrie, police surveillance could violate the right to privacy if the technology reveals intimate details of someone's life, is cheap and easy to use compared to traditional policing methods, and allows cops to retrace someone's movements from before they were ever suspected of a crime.

It's no coincidence that the criteria for an unconstitutional invasion of privacy echo the same concerns people have expressed regarding ALPR surveillance systems. And it's why there have been multiple lawsuits arguing the Fourth Amendment protects against cops who invade Americans' privacy by using ALPR cameras provided by Flock Safety and others without proper oversight.

For now, the courts are still figuring out how the Fourth Amendment might apply to ALPRs and other surveillance technology. But one thing is clear: Americans' Fourth Amendment rights don't disappear just because they're out in public.

The post Your Right to Privacy Doesn't Disappear When You're in Public appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Miami Beach Can't Dodge First Amendment Lawsuit After Police Questioned Woman Over Anti-Israel Facebook Post

2026-09-30T17:26:24Z

A Miami Beach woman's First Amendment lawsuit against the city, its mayor, and police chief can partially proceed after a federal judge ruled on Monday that she had adequately alleged that Miami Beach has a policy and practice of targeting criticism of Israel.

Raquel Pacheco, represented by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), filed a civil rights lawsuit in March against Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner, Miami Beach Police Chief Wayne Jones, a city council member, and the municipality, alleging that her First Amendment rights were violated when a Facebook comment criticizing Meiner's position on the Israel-Palestine conflict led to police detectives being dispatched to her house to question her.

Chief U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga granted the city's motion to dismiss Pacheco's lawsuit in part, tossing out several of her claims. However, Altonaga ruled that Pacheco had sufficiently shown at this initial stage that her criticism of Israel motivated Meiner to send police to her home and that the city had adopted a viewpoint discriminatory policy disfavoring pro-Palestine expression.

In a press release, Jenin Younes, ADC president and national legal director, called the ruling "a significant victory for Raquel Pacheco, for the First Amendment, and for all Americans who care about the right to free speech and dissent."

"The City [of Miami Beach] downplayed what happened to Ms. Pacheco as a routine police visit," Younes said. "The Court disagreed, recognizing that sending police to someone's home to question and intimidate them over their protected political speech can itself violate the First Amendment."

Video taken by Raquel Pacheco showed two Miami Beach Police Department detectives visiting her home on January 12 to question her about a Facebook comment that claimed Meiner "consistently calls for the death of all Palestinians."

The detectives asked if she posted the comment, which appeared under a Facebook post by Meiner, who is Jewish, claiming that Miami Beach is a "safe haven for everyone." The detectives warned that the comment could potentially "incite somebody to do something radical."

"This is freedom of speech. This is America, right? I'm a veteran," Pacheco told the officers.

"And I agree with you 100 percent," one officer responded. "We're just trying to see if it's you, because if we're not talking to the right person, we want to go see who the right person is."

"We're just trying to prevent someone else from getting agitated or agreeing with the statement," one of the detectives told Pacheco. "We're not saying it's true or not."

Pacheco refused to further answer the detectives' questions.

After Pacheco's video of the encounter went viral, Jones, the Miami Beach police chief, released a statement defending his decision to send the officers to her home, saying that "given the real, ongoing national and international concerns surrounding antisemitic attacks and recent rhetoric that has led to violence against political figures," he had "serious concerns that her remarks could trigger physical action by others."

However, there is a high First Amendment bar to clear to meet the legal standard for incitement. Under the test that the Supreme Court established in the landmark First Amendment case Brandenburg v. Ohio, the government must prove that the rhetoric incited violence or threats of violence and that the incitement was imminent, likely, and intentional.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech group, sent a letter to Jones condemning the visit.

"The purpose of their visit was not to investigate a crime," Aaron Terr, FIRE's director of public advocacy, wrote. "It had no purpose other than to pressure Pacheco to cease engaging in protected political expression over concern about how others might react to it. This blatant overreach is offensive to the First Amendment."

And it was the second time in recent months that Meiner and Miami Beach had drawn national criticism over allegations of First Amendment retaliation, and both cases involved Israel and Palestine.

Last year, Meiner tried to terminate the lease of a movie theater for screening an Oscar-winning documentary about the Israel-Hamas conflict. Meiner withdrew the bill after intense national and local criticism from free speech advocates.

Pacheco's lawsuit pointed to the movie theater incident as evidence of a broader city policy targeting criticism of Israel.

"We're in Miami, not Cuba," Younes said. "The government does not have to arrest you, prosecute you, or formally censor you to violate the First Amendment. The chilling effect of these actions is obvious."

The city of Miami Beach did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post Miami Beach Can't Dodge First Amendment Lawsuit After Police Questioned Woman Over Anti-Israel Facebook Post appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Journalist's Publishing Information About Sealed Arrest Protected by First Amendment

2026-09-30T20:51:34Z

From yesterday's Blackman v. Substack, Inc., by California Court of Appeal Justices Tracie Brown and Danny Chou and Marin County Judge Andrew Sweet:

"'[I]f a newspaper lawfully obtains truthful information about a matter of public significance then state officials may not constitutionally punish publication of the information, absent a need to further a state interest of the highest order.'" (The Florida Star v. B.J.F. (1989).) …

Penal Code sections 851.91 and 851.92 provide for the sealing of arrest records in certain situations when the arrest did not result in a conviction, and the latter statute prohibits dissemination of sealed documents. Plaintiff Maury Blackman's 2021 arrest was sealed pursuant to these statutes, but the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) publicly released the investigative police report for the arrest to a third party without restriction, and an anonymous source subsequently sent that report to defendant Jack Poulson. Poulson wrote about Blackman's arrest online, and Blackman sued Poulson and the entities that provided online platforms for Poulson's postings.

The Court of Appeal held that Poulson's posts were constitutionally protected:

First, the evidence in this case establishes that Poulson lawfully obtained the incident report. Blackman contends that The Florida Star and Bartnicki v. Vopper (2001) are distinguishable because those cases did not involve a law that criminalized the receipt of the information at issue, whereas Penal Code sections 11134 or 13304 and Labor Code section 432.7, subdivision (g)(3) allegedly criminalize the knowingly unauthorized receipt and possession of the incident report in certain circumstances. It is undisputed, however, that Poulson did not know that the incident report was sealed when he received it. And, in any event, we agree with the trial court that Poulson was exempt from any illegality created pursuant to these statutes. (See Pen. Code, §§ 11143, 11304 & Lab. Code, § 432.7, subd. (g)(3) [exempting from their application persons described in Evid. Code, § 1070.)

O'Grady v. Superior Court (Cal. App. 2006), relied on by Poulson, is instructive on the question of whether Poulson constitutes an exempt "publisher, editor, reporter, or other person connected with or employed upon a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication" under Evidence Code section 1070, subdivision (a). In O'Grady, the petitioner bloggers resisting discovery were authors of articles on, and the proprietors of, "O'Grady's PowerPage" and "Apple Insider," which published news about Apple computers and products online. These publications had fixed internet sites, published multiple times per week, and had operated for many years with hundreds of thousands of visitors per month. The court found that Evidence Code section 1070, subdivision (a) applied to petitioners as "covered persons" because petitioners "flatly declared that they are also editors and reporters" and the respondent offered no basis to question that characterization. The court then determined that the statute did not exclude online media, and the term "periodical publication" was ambiguous in the online context. Looking to the statute's purpose, the court concluded that the Legislature intended the phrase "periodical publication" to include all ongoing, recurring news publications while excluding non-recurring publications such as books, pamphlets, flyers, and monographs. The court thus concluded that the statute protects publications like the petitioners', "which differ from traditional periodicals only in their tendency, which flows directly from the advanced technology they employ, to continuously update their content."

Here, Poulson's undisputed declaration states that he is "an independent journalist focused on the intersection of technology and national security." Poulson writes primarily through his publicly available newsletter, All-Source Intelligence, started in April 2023 and published through Substack, but he has also done freelance investigative work for The Guardian and The Intercept. Poulson provided the website for his newsletter, stated that he publishes it approximately once a week, and he declared that he had 3,000 subscribers at the time of his declaration. Similar to O'Grady, Poulson's declaration provides sufficient evidence that he is a reporter connected with an ongoing, recurring online news periodical publication.

Next, the publications discussing the arrest and the posting of the incident report itself were truthful publications on a matter of public significance. We accept the trial court's determination that the publications were truthful because Blackman does not dispute the truthfulness of the publications on appeal….

This case bears a strong resemblance to The Florida Star. The incident report is the same type of government record as the police report in The Florida Star. The incident report was ordered sealed, and, similarly, state law prohibited the release of the name of the rape victim in The Florida Star. The government in both cases nonetheless publicly released the government records at issue without restriction, and Poulson, like the reporters in The Florida Star, reported on significant information from the publicly released police record.

With respect to the one factual difference from The Florida Star—the 18-month lapse in time between the arrest and Poulson's September 14 article—the reasoning of Gates v. Discovery Communications, Inc. (Cal. 2004), as well as the high court's justifications for the rule it adopted in The Florida Star, lead us to reject Blackman's request that we find the lapse in time to be dispositive…. Gates … reason[ed] that the following considerations that drove the high court's decisions did not lend themselves to temporal limitation: (1) the press' responsibility to report the operations of government, including judicial proceedings regarding crimes; (2) by placing the information in the public domain on official court records, the State must be presumed to have concluded the public interest was thereby being served; and (3) The Florida Star "'rested in large part on the fact that the government had, by making the information available to the press, impliedly determined its dissemination was in the public interest, and could not then [fairly] punish a newspaper for' relying on that determination." …

[And] although the state interest in protecting Blackman's privacy interests is significant, it does not survive strict scrutiny. "Once the government has placed such information in the public domain, 'reliance must rest upon the judgment of those who decide what to publish or broadcast,' [citation], and hopes for restitution must rest upon the willingness of the government to compensate victims for their loss of privacy and to protect them from the other consequences of its mishandling of the information which these victims provided in confidence." …

The court also concluded that Blackman's claims against Substack (for publishing Blackman's newsletter) and Tech Inquiry (where Blackman "posted the incident report and links to his article") were barred by 47 U.S.C. § 230; a brief excerpt:

[W]e are not convinced by Blackman's brief argument that the CDA does not apply to claims alleging violation of a state court order. The CDA states, "'No cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.'" Blackman quotes the dissenting opinion in Hassell v. Bird (Cal. 2018), a case addressing whether Yelp Inc. (who had not been sued) had to comply with an order to take down defamatory consumer reviews, which stated, "None of the policies within section 230(b) state or suggest an express immunity from compliance with state court orders." But that dissent also states, "What this case does not implicate is the kind of situation where section 230 does confer immunity—against a cause of action filed directly against the platform, seeking to hold it liable for conduct as the publisher of third party content." …

And the court also concluded that the speech was "in connection with a public issue" and was thus entitled to the various procedural protections of the California anti-SLAPP statute, which included ordering Blackman to pay about $400K in defendants' attorney fees.

David Greene and Victoria Noble of the Electronic Frontier Foundation represent Poulson; Joshua A. Baskin and Thomas R. Wakefield (Wilson Sonsini) represent Substack; and Susan E. Seager represents Tech Inquiry.

Thanks to D Gill Sperlein and Ronald London (FIRE) for filing an amicus brief in the case on behalf of FIRE, the First Amendment Coalition, and me; the court declined to reach our arguments in that brief, which argued that Cal. Penal Code § 851.92(c) is presumptively facially unconstitutional, but I'm still glad to see the result the court reached.

The post Journalist's Publishing Information About Sealed Arrest Protected by First Amendment appeared first on Reason Magazine.

District Court Declares Vacatur (Likely) Unconstitutional

2026-09-30T16:47:01Z

Judge Kathryn Mizelle of the Middle District of Florida issued an opinion finding that the "set aside" remedy under the APA is (likely) unconstitutional. Here is an excerpt from the opinion:

Even if Congress were to enact a law clearly empowering Article III courts to vacate agency rules or regulations and automatically cause their erasure from the Code of Federal Regulations, vacatur would likely still be inconsistent with the limited nature of the judicial power and the non-delegability of core legislative power to the judiciary. As a result, I doubt any amount of tradition, practice, or lower-court liquidation can correct the constitutional infirmities of vacatur as currently understood. Because I am not aware of any court to have addressed the constitutional dimensions of vacatur as opposed to its statutory basis, and I have only gestured at them in the past, see K. Mizelle, To Vacate or Not to Vacate, at 19–20, I explain my doubts in full. First, I address why vacatur, if considered an equitable remedy, likely transgresses Article III's grant of judicial power because it has no Founding-era analogue and does not comport with traditional principles of equity. Second, I explain why vacatur, if considered a legal remedy, presents serious separation-of-powers problems. Third, I address why vacatur, when analogized to appellate review, still fails to cure those significant separation-of-powers issues. Finally, I conclude that, consistent with the Constitution, "set aside" in Section 706 is best read as a rule of decision when applied to agency rules.

This is an issue that does not neatly divide the Court along right-left lines. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh, both alumni of the D.C. Circuit, want nothing to do with this argument. Justice Gorsuch, who never met a regulation he liked, wants to eliminate vacatur. Justice Barrett tabled the issue in CASA, but I suspect she leans with Roberts and Kavanaugh. This opinion will go up on appeal very soon.

The post District Court Declares Vacatur (Likely) Unconstitutional appeared first on Reason Magazine.

NFL Player's Penis Size Is a 'Matter of Legitimate Public Concern,' Says Court

2026-09-30T15:44:22Z

In this newsletter, we believe in sometimes covering weighty issues surrounding sexual freedom or internet censorship. And other times, well, we're going to discuss an NFL player's penis size and whether his ex-wife had a right to discuss it on a podcast. A federal court held that she did—but that doesn't mean you can go blabbing intimate details about your ex and expect to get away with it. Let's look at why.

The case is Kalil v. Kalil, and it involves former NFL offensive tackle Matthew Kalil and swimsuit model/online content creator Haley Kalil, known online as Haley Baylee. The pair were married in 2015 and divorced in 2022.

"Haley's remarks about the size of Matt's penis and its impact on her health and marriage were remarks about a matter of legitimate public concern," a court found earlier this month.

Let's back up. Last November, Haley Kalil joined model and streamer Marlon Lundgren Garcia in Minnesota for a Twitch livestream that was later posted to YouTube. During a discussion about why she and Matthew Kalil divorced, Haley Kalil intimated that Matthew's penis had been sized such that sex—and ultimately marriage—was difficult. Here's how the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota describes the discussion:

After Garcia asked Haley a few more questions about her marriage and its dissolution, Haley typed a private message to Garcia into her phone—ostensibly to put the reasons for her divorce "into perspective." As she typed, Haley remarked that Garcia's face was "going to be hilarious" when he read the message. After reading the private message, Garcia thrice repeated "shut the fuck up." Haley, nodding and smiling, said that she was being serious and that she tried "it all….[t]herapists, doctors," even investigating "lipo type of shit." Haley joked that her "life is a comedy and it writes itself," and confirmed that the issue described in the private message was "the biggest factor" in the divorce.

As Garcia and Haley continued to talk, it quickly became obvious that Haley was referring to the size of Matt's penis. "[H]e's like 0.01 percent of the population, okay," Haley said, adding that "[w]e tried everything…you're going to be in tears type of shit." Garcia responded: "That's like one of the craziest stories I've heard." Haley characterized the experience as involving "trauma I can't put on the Internet," but said that it was "just bad luck." Again, Haley insisted that her ex‐husband is "such a good person" and "a really good guy."

Later…Haley acknowledged that a certain aspect of Matt's penis was "[t]otally fine" and "like, average," but she then said (moving her hands along a horizontal plane) that "he was just…like two [C]oke cans stacked on top each other. Maybe even a third."

Live your life such that the size of your genitalia is never the subject of a federal court case seems like sound advice for all of us. But rather than let this one go—it wasn't like she said he was too small, for goodness sakes—Matthew Kalil sued Haley Kalil for public disclosure of private facts.

Under Minnesota law, this invasion of privacy tort applies when someone publicizes a private matter that is both offensive and not of legitimate public concern.

"Without question, Matt has plausibly alleged that Haley Kalil's comments about his penis were publicized, were about a matter concerning Matt's private life, and would be highly offensive to a reasonable person," wrote U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz in his decision.

Whether Haley Kalil's comments were an actionable invasion of privacy thus turns on whether Matthew Kalil's penis size is a matter of legitimate public concern.

Schiltz held that it was—at least in the context of Haley Kalil's reasons for divorcing him.

"For at least two millennia, the private lives of public figures have been of legitimate interest to members of the public," he pointed out, adding that "one of the most famous works of history—Suetonius's The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, written in 121—is a notoriously gossipy collection of biographies of 12 leaders of ancient Rome that includes many details about their sex lives."

And while "public curiosity does not necessarily equate to legitimate public concern," Haley Kalil's comments were made "in the course of an interview in which she was being asked about her prior marriage and its dissolution," wrote Schiltz. "Her comments—including her comments about Matt—were about her life, her marriage, and her divorce, all of which are topics about which her millions of followers have a legitimate interest." They were "not vindictive or gratuitous."

The takeaway here is that publicizing private facts about an ex-partner's body parts might be protected speech in certain circumstances. But if neither you nor your partner are public figures, you should probably stay mum. And even if you are professional athletes or swimsuit models, you can't just go comparing your ex's body parts to soda cans willy-nilly. Put those Coke can comments in context, and make sure that context is of legitimate public concern.

In this case, "the court is 100% correct that a person cannot tell their life story without also simultaneously telling the story of those they interact with," writes First Amendment lawyer Eric Goldman. But "the court treats all of Haley's disclosures as equally permissible, a conclusion that isn't obvious to me."

Goldman offers these hypothetical statements:

[a] "We were sexually incompatible"

[b] "Matt and I went to doctors to see if we could find a way to make sex not painful, but they couldn't help"

[c] "Matt's penis was so large that sex was painful"

[d] "Matt's penis was so large that sex was painful" (accompanied by illustrative hand gestures)

[e] "Matt's penis is 10 inches long and 8 inches in circumference, and this made sex painful." (Note: A Coca-Cola can is 4.83 inches high and 8.17 inches in circumference, so this is essentially what Haley was implying).

He suggests that it's OK for Haley Kalil to have publicly said the first three, but that "the hand gestures and the Coca-Cola can analogy" go too far.

Goldman also suggests that the Kalils' celebrity status is irrelevant here. "I think private individuals should be equally free to disclose statements [a]-[c] as part of telling their life stories, regardless of the celebrity status of anyone involved, and I don't think the detailed disclosures in statements [d] or [e] should be fair game only because the described person is a celebrity," he writes.

Considering the internet-enabled rise of the noncelebrity celebrity, setting permissible speech conditions around who is or isn't sufficiently famous does seem to lead us somewhat into the weeds on this matter. Maybe to be safe—and certainly to be in good taste—you just shouldn't discuss an ex-lover's intimate parts publicly and in detail in the first place.

In the News

Match's new trad-dating app: The company that owns Match.com, Tinder, and Hinge is relaunching a trad-dating app called Upward. It's "formerly a Christian dating app but now a home for anybody who wants to settle down—the old-fashioned way," writes Faith Hill at The Atlantic:

"This is modern courtship in action," the company's press release reads. "Women are clear about their standards, men pursue with purpose, and both move toward marriage together."

Any number of other platforms let you date with the purpose of getting hitched, of course. On Hinge or Tinder or Bumble, you can indicate what type of relationship you're looking for and whether you want children. I see plenty of people on dating apps openly calling for a soulmate, a spouse, a co-parent—and I'm in New York City, not Tuscaloosa. What Match is capitalizing on, though, isn't simply a yearning for matrimony or parenthood. It's leveraging what's arguably a regressive streak in the culture: a tendency to romanticize the scripts that more Americans used to follow, which told them how men and women should behave and what they should value. Internally, Match calls Upward's audience the "next-gen traditionalists." Now the company is betting on them.

On Substack

The divorce decline is real—but there's a catch. From Stephanie Murray:

Is divorce really declining? Or is our divorce data simply deteriorating? That's the question the authors of this study set out to address. Combining data from the National Survey of Family Growth and the Health and Retirement Study, they track women's divorce rates from 1970 to 2019 and compare them against federal vital statistics and other surveys. Ultimately, they conclude that the decline in divorce is legit: per their estimates, it's been falling since about 1980. This trend holds even when you include separations in the divorce tally. Interestingly, though, once you include breakups among cohabiting couples, the decline disappears. The total breakup rate (including divorces, separations, and cohabitation dissolution couples) has, if anything, edged up since the 1980s.

This gets at one of the main paradoxes in discussions of marriage rates and modern romance: Marriage rates are down, but the marriages that do exist appear stronger. Some people still lament low marriage rates, but to me this seems like a good tradeoff. It suggests that fewer people are seeing marriage as so worthy a goal that it justifies settling for a bad partner or mediocre relationship, and that more people are taking decisions about who and whether to marry seriously.

The cohabitation bit here isn't surprising, because cohabiting rather than marrying may be more likely in younger couples, couples where one or both partners are unsure about the relationship, or couples where one or both partners are more unstable generally. And all of those factors suggest a higher likelihood of breaking up. But it does complete a piece of this marriage rate and divorce rate puzzle, suggesting that many of what would have been marriages-turned-divorces are now simply cohabitations-turned-breakups.

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There is no good reason for mosquitoes to exist in wealthy countries today.

New technologies can get rid of the mosquito species that cause diseases like dengue, yellow fever, and malaria; and others can prevent them from carrying those diseases.https://t.co/VxjlSKFmLL

So why…

— Saloni (@salonium) September 29, 2026

More Sex & Tech News

• An innocent Tennessee grandma spent six months in jail after being identified by facial recognition technology as a potential lead in a bank fraud case. But technology didn't put this woman in jail, writes Reason's Autumn Billings. "Bad policing did."

• Operation Coast to Coast "is a privately coordinated and funded nationwide sting operation with local task forces mimicking" federal task forces, notes Tara Burns. She has more details on the arrests—largely for prostitution or solicitation—here.

• What would sex and marriage be like in a matriarchy? For one thing, "there seems to be less of an emphasis on lifelong monogamy within matriarchal societies," Cartoons Hate Her reports.

• Katherine Dee reviews I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody Is a Celebrity. "When it comes to the sometimes bewildering world of traditional celebrity—people who are on television, in movies, or making music—this is one of the best books on the topic I've ever read," writes Dee. "But as much fun as I had reading I Want to Be Famous, there was something conspicuously missing: how the internet changed the nature of celebrity not just for celebrities as we understand them but for regular people."

• "TikTok has agreed to pay Alabama at least $100m and enact time limits and other restrictions for teenage users, avoiding a trial with a settlement that was modelled on Instagram-owner Meta's recent agreement with US states," The Guardian reports. Reason's Meagan O'Rourke comments:

At best, government-imposed social media restrictions are acts of political theater; users are often savvy enough to work around them. At worst, they're chilling censorship orders. If more of these safety measures are enforced, entire swaths of the internet could become age-gated. Officials may feel that they are protecting children in their states by securing settlements with social media companies, but they're making the internet less free for adults and pushing kids to less visible realms of the web.

• "Surveillance pricing" bans are a solution in search of a problem.

• The AI election?

The voters are now worrying more about AI overpowering human control, rather than worrying about job losses.

A shift from just half a year ago. https://t.co/RQvsJElYd4 pic.twitter.com/5E2RK4msUM

— Avery James (@averyfjames) September 25, 2026

The post NFL Player's Penis Size Is a 'Matter of Legitimate Public Concern,' Says Court appeared first on Reason Magazine.

On FOI Requests and Other Benefits of Working at a Public University

2026-09-30T15:37:22Z

In 2025, after twenty-five years at Case Western Reserve University, I moved to William & Mary. Among other things, this meant moving from a private institution to public one.

One consequence of moving to a state school has been greater clarity on what speech and expression is covered on campus. The First Amendment provides a firm constitutional floor on the level of speech protection state universities must provide. That is not so at private universities, and as I discovered at CWRU, even express university policies purporting to offer such protection can be gutted by an administration that does not care about free expression.

A second consequence of moving to a state school is that my school e-mail and files are potentially subject to freedom-of-information (FOI) requests under state open records laws. And I have been the subject of two such requests since my move to Virginia.

Both of the FOI requests submitted to the university had the same focus: communications I may have had with environmental organizations and others involved in climate litigation, presumably in response to the fact that I have have been critical of efforts to derail or preempt lawsuits against fossil fuel companies filed under states law, such asin Suncor Energy v. Boulder County. In neither case, however, are the requesters likely to find anything worthwhile.

The first request asked for correspondence I may have had with the Environmental Law Institute and individuals related to ELI's Climate Judiciary Project. Presumably this request was prompted by ELI having listed me as a reviewer for the project. Several years ago I was asked if I would review some of the CJP materials, and I reviewed one draft chapter in detail and provided some general feedback on the project. I do not believe many of my recommendations were accepted and, in any event, all of this occurred before I moved to William & Mary, so none of it would be captured by an FOI request. (And, for what it's worth, my view of the controversy over the CJP is much the same as my view of the controversy some years back when environmental groups complained about "junkets for judges").

The second request, which came in more recently, is much broader, seeking correspondence with a wide range of folks involved in climate litigation, including the Sabin Center, and various environmental groups and foundations. I suppose the requesters are hoping to find evidence that I coordinated with the plaintiffs' attorneys or that I received funding for my work in this area. Again, there is really not much to find--and this would be true even if the request covered the years before I arrived at William & Mary.

If the FOI requesters had asked, I would have happily explained the origins of my work in this area, including my decision to file an amicus brief in Suncor. The intersection of federalism and environmental law has been a focus of my work for over twenty years. I have also done significant work on how right-leaning folks should think about climate change, including these articles and my Climate Liberalism book. Indeed, my work is cited in briefs on both sides in Suncor. Of course, most of this work (and the evolution of my thinking about this area) long predates my move to a government institution subject to FOI laws.

My specific work on whether state and local government climate suits are preempted began with my paper, "Displacement and Preemption of Climate Nuisance Claims." As it happens, I did receive financial support for this paper, but not from any of the sources flagged in the FOI request. Rather, this paper was prepared for a research roundtable sponsored by the Law & Economics Center at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, at which several authors presented papers related to public nuisance litigation of various sorts. Other than that, I have not received meaningful support for my work in this space (but would gladly accept some).

As for my Suncor brief, the FOI requesters may be disappointed to learn that it was not the result of some secret machinations by the plaintiffs' lawyers or progressive foundations, and it was not funded by any such source. Given my work in this area, I had long planned to submit a brief representing my views should one of these cases reach the Supreme Court. While I have no idea whether my brief will be influential, I would like to think it could help the Court resolve this case in a way that does not disrupt the Court's existing federalism jurisprudence or needlessly constrain the state role in environmental protection.

I would have readily explained all this had the FOI requesters asked. It would have been a quick call, and cheaper than an FOI request.

The post On FOI Requests and Other Benefits of Working at a Public University appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Axel Kaiser Explains the Javier Milei Effect

2026-09-30T15:21:33Z

Today's guest is Axel Kaiser, a Chilean-German lawyer, author of The Street Economist, and classical liberal who has spent years promoting free markets and limited government across Latin America. He is the co-founder and board president of Chile's Foundation for Progress and deputy executive director of Argentina's FARO Foundation.

Nick Gillespie talks with Kaiser in Argentina about how Javier Milei transformed libertarianism from a largely intellectual movement into a popular political force and whether that shift can outlast Milei himself. They discuss the decline of Peronism, the resurgence of free market ideas across Latin America, and the tension between populism and liberalism. Kaiser also explains why libertarians need to compete for cultural influence, from universities and think tanks to movies and social media, and why a free society depends on more than limiting government.

0:00—What happens when libertarianism goes mainstream?

3:32—What is Peronism?

7:08—How did Milei make libertarianism cool?

10:41—Will Milei succumb to populism?

18:02—Is liberty more important than democracy?

22:33—The resurgent right in Latin America

25:57—Is Latin America embracing socially liberal values?

29:55—The effects of Venezuela's implosion

37:23—Cultural superstructures

48:05—The influence of movies in culture

53:43—Have libertarians stressed liberty to the exclusion of virtue?

1:00:09—Pope Francis and capitalism

1:05:03—Chile's private pension system

Upcoming Reason Events

The World Premiere of Escaping Venezuela October 13

Today's Sponsor:

Cato Innovation Project: Design your own full-time, paid role at Cato. If we fund your idea, you spend two years executing it. Apply here: cato.org/reasonmag.

The post Axel Kaiser Explains the Javier Milei Effect appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Jewish Community Center's Lawsuit Against "Goyim Defense League" Can Go Forward

2026-09-30T14:50:44Z

From Gordon Jewish Community Center v. Goyim Defense League, decided Wednesday by Judge Aleta Trauger (M.D. Tenn.):

The following factual allegations are taken from the Complaint and are accepted as true at the pleading stage. The Gordon Jewish Community Center ("GJCC") is a registered Tennessee nonprofit corporation and "cultural institution that has served as a lynchpin of the Jewish community of Nashville for more than 120 years." GJCC operates a community center on its privately-owned campus in Nashville where it offers a suite of youth, fitness, and senior programming and services.

The Goyim Defense League ("GDL") is alleged to be a "hate-for-profit enterprise" that exploits antisemitism and racism—in combination with harassment, intimidation, provocation, and violence—for monetary gain. GDL is a membership-based network that limits membership to those who share its mission for "declaring war on," "exterminating," and "subjecting Jews and people of color to harassment, intimidation[,] and violence for the purpose of creating 'white nations[.]'" To advance this mission, GDL sponsors hate-based roadshows styled as "Intimidation Tours." {Jon Minadeo II also refers to these tours as "Name the Nose Tours," a derogatory reference to an antisemitic trope regarding the noses of Jewish people that was prominent during Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.} During Intimidation Tours, GDL's members and associates descend on towns with large Jewish and Black communities to harass, intimidate, threaten, and assault them.

GDL commercializes its hatred by operating an online video and streaming platform—Goyim TV—where it publishes GDL-created and branded video footage of its members and followers' acts of harassment, intimidation, and violence. GDL exploits this content to solicit donations from its members and followers who watch footage of these encounters and for the "opportunity to get recognized by GDL leaders and other white supremacists during livestreams." GDL also operates an online store—Goyim Shop—where it sells GDL-branded products promoting the group's racist and antisemitic mission. The merchandise marketed and sold by GDL includes Hitler masks, "swastika soap," and clothing with slogans such as "Gas the Jews With Us" and "Voting Will Not Remove Them."

The money generated from GDL-branded content and merchandise is then used to fund further acts of racist and religiously-motivated harassment, intimidation, and violence. …

In 2024, GDL leadership and associates began planning a campaign to target Nashville's Jewish community and communities of color (the "Nashville Intimidation Tour"). The Nashville Intimidation Tour was spearheaded by Jon Minadeo II, the founder, president, chief executive officer, and "mastermind" behind GDL. Minadeo is a proud white supremacist who has publicly called for a race war and the extermination of Jewish and Black people or their removal from the United States. In addition to defining GDL's mission and priorities, Minadeo also owns, manages, publishes on, and profits from Goyim TV and the Goyim Shop.

As with other Intimidation Tours, Minadeo organized, directed, and led the Nashville Intimidation Tour. He received assistance from others, including Paul Miller and Travis Keith Garland. Miller is a neo-Nazi provocateur who also calls for a race war and encourages the harassment and abuse of people—including children—who appear to be Jewish, Black, or Brown. He capitalizes on this activity by creating and publishing racist and antisemitic content on various online streaming and merchandising platforms, including on GDL platforms. Garland is an alleged member or associate of GDL and is employed as an "administrator" of Miller's "hate-for-profit video streaming enterprise." …

After extensive planning, communication, and travel arrangements, Minadeo, Miller, Garland, and nearly two dozen other GDL members traveled to Nashville in mid-July 2024 for "the express purpose of harassing, threatening, intimidating, abusing, and menacing" people they perceived to be Jewish and Black. For ten days, GDL rampaged through Nashville, waving swastika flags, screaming obscenities, and littering public and private property with antisemitic flyers. Not to be outdone, GDL members also harassed and intimidated four young Black children ranging in age from eight to eleven by calling them "monkeys" and various diminutives of the n-word, directed homophobic and other slurs at police officers who intervened and escorted the young children away, attacked a Jewish man, and brutally beat a biracial man. To top it off, the group threatened multiple people they perceived to be Jewish or Black, ran up to people and pretended that they were going to hit them, threw physical objects at people, and disrupted a meeting of the Metropolitan Nashville City Council. As Minadeo sees it, this conduct constitutes protected "free speech activism." GDL's acts were recorded by its members and published on online streaming platforms to fundraise and drum up support for additional acts of white supremacist violence….

GDL directs its members and followers to continue targeting Jewish and Black people "in real life" with additional acts of harassment, intimidation, and violence after the in-person part of a tour. GDL further directs its members and followers to record and share these "in real life" encounters, "either directly to GDL leadership or to upload via" Goyim TV to generate income and promote the group's "hate-for-pay scheme."

The Nashville Intimidation Tour was no different in this respect. After the in-person part of the tour concluded, the group continued to target Nashville's Jewish and Black communities with hateful activities. For example, GDL members and followers threatened to "make Nashville the target" of World War III, to "jump" and "curb[ ] stomp to death" the young biracial man who was brutally beaten by GDL members (including by Minadeo, who "attempted to gouge out his eyes"), and to kill the Davidson County District Attorney after he filed criminal charges against several GDL associates. GDL members engaged in these post-rally activities "in person and on GDL platforms."

Garland was also eager to undertake "in real life" activities and "remained active with GDL and continued to update Minadeo on his efforts at intimidating Tennessee's Jewish communities" following the in-person rampage in Nashville. To that end, Garland "entered into a related and overlapping conspiracy" with Miller and other GDL associates to infiltrate the GJCC. Like the in-person part of the Nashville Intimidation Tour, the purpose behind this conspiracy was to "harass, intimidate[,] and menace Jewish people in Nashville in order to create fear and anxiety so that Jews would not feel safe anywhere in Nashville." Miller, Garland, and others decided that "Garland would be the only conspirator on the ground in Nashville," with Miller and the other GDL associates assisting in "the criminal intrusion by providing direction, support, and encouragement before, during, and after the planned action."

On January 5, 2025, Garland traveled back to Nashville to launch the second wave of the Nashville Intimidation Tour. Disguising himself as an Orthodox Jewish man, Garland trespassed onto GJCC's private campus and live-streamed while he desecrated its Holocaust Memorial—"a sacred space on the campus of the GJCC"—"to create content for the benefit of GDL." Garland was in contact with Minadeo around the time of his initial trespass at the GJCC. Minadeo encouraged Garland, writing that his intrusion and acts of desecration were "fu**ing awesome."

About a week later, Garland returned to GJCC's campus in a similar disguise, but with the new goal of infiltrating its main community building. Once inside, Garland was turned away and directed to leave by GJCC's personnel. Refusing to leave, Garland "tried to get through doors to additional offices and community spaces in the GJCC." A GJCC member and another man stepped forward to block Garland from entering further into the building.

Garland then battered the two men in his attempt to gain further access to the building. He was eventually escorted out of the building by the nonprofit's security guard. After being escorted outside, Garland and others participating in his livestream remotely "hurled racial slurs at the security guard, who was of Asian descent."

Once off GJCC's property, Garland stalked the perimeter of the campus, trying to find another entrance. All the while, Garland remained on the phone with other GDL associates and livestreamed his trespass for viewers. He also spoke with Minadeo "to report that he was unhurt and to discuss his efforts to infiltrate the Jewish community center."

By his own alleged admission, Garland "stormed" the GJCC's "[J]ew building" for the purpose of "harassing" the cultural center and its members. Garland's activities also served GLD's bottom line: to commercialize antisemitism by capturing video footage that could be disseminated through GDL communication channels and on Goyim TV to raise funds for even more racist and antisemitic activity. Garland used GDL branding to promote his activities at the GJCC. Garland also discussed efforts with Minadeo to infiltrate the GJCC and discussed the second operation with Minadeo right after it concluded. Garland was later arrested and pled guilty to civil rights intimidation, assault, and trespass for his criminal activities at the GJCC….

At the outset, the court notes that GDL and Minadeo do not specifically address the four claims … asserted against them in any detail. Instead, the defendants seem to argue that the four claims fail as a matter of law because the Complaint's allegations do not plausibly establish that either defendant conspired with Garland, Miller, and other GDL members and followers to harm the GJCC….

The court concluded (quite correctly, I think) that the Complaint had sufficiently alleged a conspiracy; for more details, see the full opinion.

The post Jewish Community Center's Lawsuit Against "Goyim Defense League" Can Go Forward appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Homeland Security Admits To Watchlisting Americans Based on 'Potential Inaccuracies'

2026-09-30T14:30:31Z

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) acknowledged in court filings on Monday that "potential inaccuracies were identified" in the database it is using to look for illegal foreign voters—and that its investigation process carries the risk that "in rare circumstances U.S. citizens might be incorrectly identified as aliens."

The department's lawyers told the court that "there are various safeguards in place to prevent mistakenly contacting a U.S. citizen" for interrogation, but its filings do not say what happens to U.S. citizens placed on a watchlist.

The lawsuit by several local governments and organizations in California accuses the DHS' new Unlawful Voter Initiative of intimidating Americans. It is based on a report from a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) whistleblower, who provided excerpts from a training video introducing the initiative.

USCIS officials were ordered to cross-reference voter rolls against an immigration database—which the training video admitted includes foreign-born U.S. citizens and even the American-born spouses of foreigners—and add any matches to TECS, a federal law enforcement watchlist, for further investigation by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents.

And the process picked up quite a few Americans. The DHS initially told the state of Nevada that it found 15,903 noncitizens on the state's voter rolls, then provided a list of 185 noncitizens, then found out that every single one of them was actually a U.S. citizen.

"When potential inaccuracies were identified in the USCIS lists, DHS sought further resources to prevent inaccuracies and developed a new model for generating leads for HSI's unlawful voting investigations," an anonymous HSI agent wrote in a declaration to the court, without explaining what that "new model" is.

The DHS didn't say what happened to the U.S. citizens who were already put on the TECS watchlist by mistake either. Instead, the department's lawyers downplayed the significance of the watchlist, arguing that HSI agents would check their work before knocking on doors, and that the mere "creation of the TECS record does not make any final decision and does not create any legal consequence."

But a TECS entry does have real-life consequences. The platform is used to screen anyone crossing a U.S. border and is shared with tens of thousands of officers from other "federal, state, local, and tribal government agencies, as well as with international governments and commercial organizations," according to the DHS' own privacy assessment. (TECS originally stood for Treasury Enforcement Communications System, before it was moved to DHS.)

Indeed, the anonymous HSI agent argued that the court shouldn't restrict the database in any way, because it is needed to "quickly identify subjects who for instance, are making entry into the United States as an illegal alien." Asked whether the DHS had a way of removing mistaken TECS entries on U.S. citizens, a department spokesperson told Reason that "this matter will be litigated in court, not through the media."

The plaintiffs are asking the court to force the DHS to turn over more information before making a preliminary ruling. A hearing on that motion is scheduled for Wednesday.

The post Homeland Security Admits To Watchlisting Americans Based on 'Potential Inaccuracies' appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Anti-White Speech Stemming from Seattle "Race and Social Justice Initiative" Training May Have Been Legally Actionable Workplace Harassment

2026-09-30T14:03:54Z

From Diemert v. City of Seattle, decided by Chief Judge Mary Murguia, joined by Judges William A. Fletcher and Lucy H. Koh:

During his employment, Diemert participated in the City's Race and Social Justice Initiative (the "RSJI"). The RSJI aims to undo institutionalized racism in the workplace by, among other things, requiring employees to attend trainings on racial justice and facilitating racially aligned affinity groups.

Diemert brought various claims, most of which the court rejected; but the court allowed a hostile environment claim to go forward based on the following allegations:

Diemert points to the following as evidence of an objectively hostile work environment: (1) in 2015, Diemert was discouraged from applying for a supervisory role, a person of color was hired for the position, and Diemert was required to perform the responsibilities of the position without receiving the commensurate title or pay; (2) in 2015, [a manager in Diemert's department] asked Diemert, "[W]hat could you possibly offer our department …, being a straight white male?"; (3) in 2016, manager Gloria Hatcher-Mays told Diemert "that it was 'impossible' to be racist toward 'white people'"; (4) in 2017, supervisor Tina Inay encouraged Diemert to step down from his lead role in the department in part to allow a person of color to take his position; (5) in 2017, a coworker called Diemert a "racist" and told him "that 'white people' are to be blamed for 'all atrocities' and that the United States was built upon a system of 'white supremacy'"; (6) in 2019, Diemert overheard RSJI trainers say that "white people are cannibals," that "racism is in white people's DNA," and that "white people are like the devil"; (7) between 2019 and 2020, supervisor Shamsu Said called Diemert a "colonist," "physically accosted" Diemert, accused Diemert of having "white privilege," and informed Diemert that he was "to blame for all injustices in the United States"; (8) in 2020, coworkers told Diemert that he "did not have a right to speak about black oppression" and accused him of using his "white privilege" to discredit their lived experiences; (9) in 2021, a new coworker stated that his "[s]elf and personal care" included "being around Black and brown folks"; and (10) also in 2021, Diemert was criticized by coworkers after Diemert defended critical race theory bans in connection with a discussion of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

And here's the bulk of the court's analysis of this claim (which strikes me as more precedentially significant than the court's analysis of the other, rejected, claims):

To succeed on a hostile work environment claim under Title VII, Diemert must show: (1) that he was subjected to verbal or physical conduct because of his race, (2) that the conduct was unwelcome, and (3) that the conduct was sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of his employment and create an abusive work environment….

"The working environment must both subjectively and objectively be perceived as abusive." To determine whether a work environment is abusive, courts consider the totality of the circumstances, including "the frequency of the discriminatory conduct; its severity; whether it is physically threatening or humiliating, or a mere offensive utterance; and whether it unreasonably interferes with an employee's work performance." "No single factor in this non-exhaustive list is required." "The required level of severity or seriousness varies inversely with the pervasiveness or frequency of the conduct."

"Not every insult or harassing comment will constitute a hostile work environment." "'[S]imple teasing, offhand comments, and isolated incidents (unless extremely serious)' will not trigger Title VII's protections." "The standard for judging hostility is meant to 'ensure that Title VII does not become a "general civility code."'" And "properly applied, this standard 'will filter out complaints attacking the ordinary tribulations of the workplace, such as the sporadic use of abusive language, gender-related jokes, and occasional teasing.'"

Workplace training programs designed to address racial barriers are not inherently discriminatory, and nothing in Title VII prohibits employers from either discussing historical and ongoing discrimination against persons of color or seeking to address such discrimination. See, e.g., Chislett v. N.Y.C. Dep't of Educ. (2d Cir. 2025) (rejecting the proposition that "the conduct of implicit bias trainings is per se racist"). But "Title VII's disparate-treatment provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs." Accordingly, race-conscious training programs may violate Title VII when they create a racially hostile work environment. See Chislett ("When employment trainings discuss any race 'with a constant drumbeat of essentialist, deterministic, and negative language [about a particular race], they risk liability under federal law.' And when a municipal agency consistently ignores the racial harassment of employees in both trainings and workplace interactions, it can be held liable.")….

Here, the parties dispute only whether the workplace incidents at issue were sufficiently severe or pervasive to create an objectively hostile work environment…. We conclude that [the alleged] incidents were sufficiently numerous, frequent, and severe to create a triable issue as to the existence of a racially hostile work environment. Viewed in isolation, the incidents at issue here might not be sufficient. We have held, for example, that referring to a Chinese coworker as "China Man" while mocking her appearance; telling a Hispanic coworker that "Hispanics do good in the field"; and referring to a female coworker as a "madonna," a "regina," and a "castrating bitch," were not severe enough to create a hostile work environment. But unlike cases involving only one or two racially offensive incidents, Diemert has presented evidence of numerous incidents over a five-year span.

This case, therefore, is comparable in frequency and severity to cases in which the evidence supported a finding of a hostile work environment. Reynaga v. Roseburg Forest Prods. (9th Cir. 2017), for instance, is instructive. There, the plaintiff, Reynaga, was one of two Hispanic employees who worked as a millwright. Reynaga alleged that his coworker made racially derogatory comments and engaged in other harassing conduct repeatedly over his six years of employment, including: (1) using racial slurs to refer to Blacks and Arabs; (2) stating "I'm a true believe[r] that we should close the borders to keep motherf---ers like you from coming up here"; (3) stating "Minorities are taking over the country"; (4) asking Reynaga whether "all Mexican women [were] fat"; (5) referring to Native American women, one of whom Reynaga was married to, as "nasty fat squaws"; (6) belittling Reynaga in front of a coworker as "a big boy" with a "little, tiny dick" who "needs all the help he can get"; and (7) while Reynaga was working, commenting "Boy, you're slow," and remarking to the other millwrights, "Man, he just dinks around." We held that a reasonable trier of fact could find that the coworker's conduct was sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile work environment ….

This case is comparable. As in Reynaga, the incidents at issue here referenced Diemert's race, targeted Diemert, caused Diemert to file complaints, required the City to separate Diemert from an allegedly harassing coworker, occurred over a substantial period of time, and were comparable in number and frequency.

This case is also comparable to Chislett. There, the plaintiff, Chislett, was a white woman who directed an initiative under the Office of Equity & Access in New York City's education department and supervised fifteen employees. Chislett attended bias trainings where an instructor stated that the "values of white culture are supremacist," and an executive director declared that "[t]here is white toxicity in the air, and we all breathe it in." At an overnight retreat, speakers "stated that 'white culture's values' are 'homogenous and supremacist.'"In another training, participants were asked to write "white values" on a poster and form a line based on their proximity to white privilege. The trainings conveyed a persistent message that "white culture is generally defensive; entitled; paternalistic; power hoarders; and privileged." At another staff retreat, Chislett was singled out by coworkers in a fifteen-minute confrontation that referenced her race. She was assigned a leadership coach who "offered [her] insight into what it means to be a white leader leading staff members of color."

Racialized comments from trainings spilled over into the broader workplace. When Chislett "asked her Black subordinate … why she was late to a meeting," for example, the employee accused Chislett of making a "race-based judgment" and told Chislett that she "could 'not be trusted.'" The employee later referenced the incident and scolded Chislett, "How dare you approach me out of your white privilege!" Another Black subordinate called Chislett a "racist," both subordinates told Chislett that "'race [wa]s at the center of every conversation' they had with her," and other subordinates told Chislett "that she was 'socialized as a white person to be defensive.'" Chislett also heard employees "ma[k]e racist statements about a colleague of partially white parentage." At one point, Chislett was removed from her supervisory responsibilities—although her title and pay remained the same. Many of her supervisory duties were transferred to a Black subordinate. Viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Chislett, the Second Circuit concluded that a rational juror could find that Chislett experienced a racially hostile work environment.

Here, too, the evidence presented by Diemert, accepted as true, would show that Diemert was subjected to a series of racially offensive statements and generalizations bearing little or no connection to legitimate training efforts, that he was denied or discouraged from pursuing opportunities for advancement on account of his race, and that he received scant support from his superiors when he challenged what he perceived as discriminatory behavior. Construing this evidence in the light most favorable to Diemert, and drawing all reasonable inferences in his favor, we cannot say, as a matter of law, that a reasonable jury could not find that Diemert was subjected to a racially hostile work environment. Where "severity is questionable, 'it is more appropriate to leave the assessment to the fact-finder than for the court to decide the case on summary judgment.'" …

I'm generally pretty skeptical of imposing "hostile work environment harassment" liability on employers based on their or their employees' speech to the workplace at large (as opposed to speech targeted to a particular employee); see here for more. But while some judges have shared these First Amendment concerns, other judges (and other government actors) seem to be fine with such speech restrictions; and here the bulk of the speech was indeed allegedly speech targeted at employees because of their race.

The post Anti-White Speech Stemming from Seattle "Race and Social Justice Initiative" Training May Have Been Legally Actionable Workplace Harassment appeared first on Reason Magazine.

AI-Powered Concierge Government

2026-09-30T13:30:35Z

Concierge government: "The Trump administration has built a tool powered by artificial intelligence that its developers promise will serve as a 'concierge' to the federal government, as it attempts to modernize the relationship between citizens and the state. It will be housed at a website called America.gov, setting up a test for the Trump administration's digital ambitions," reports The Wall Street Journal. "Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb and head of the White House's National Design Studio, said the online portal will function as a new digital front door to the federal government. He said the technology—in time—will serve as the final destination for all federal constituent services, setting a standard 'you'd expect of a superpower.' Renew a passport or start Medicare enrollment. Reserve a federal campsite or check on the status of federal student loans. Eventually, all of those tasks, and more, Gebbia said, can be started and completed, on America.gov."

The administration is focusing on streamlining services so that simple things—changing your last name, or getting a passport for your child—can be done easily, through one single portal.

"For the first time you'll be able to complete forms, applications, renewals all in one place," reads the website's copy. "America.gov will integrate across agencies so you can safely, securely, and quickly get it done and get back to what matters most."

Today we're launching https://t.co/QjOkuYqtoE, a single front door to the federal government.

Instead of opening a bunch of tabs across different agency sites and trying to figure out which information actually matters to you, you can ask America a question and get the relevant… pic.twitter.com/PAic2dSG0i

— Tyler Kim (@tylertaewook) September 29, 2026

"With this new AI interface to the entire federal government, if it works as promised, there won't be a single American who can't say their life wasn't helped at least in part by AI, or that the benefits accrued solely to zillionaires," wrote tech guy Balaji Srinivasan on X. "This in itself cannily mitigates anti-datacenter sentiment."

"This kind of event is a perfect example of where tech and red cooperate best," continued Srinivasan. "They both hate bureaucracy. Automating paperwork with code reduces the power of statists over both capitalists and nationalists. It's also hard to undo by other admins: once you digitize a process, hard to turn it back to paper."

The outstanding question is whether the portal will actually work as intended. I want to believe, but I have my doubts (and there are already some signs of innocuous silliness). I'm also curious about whether the administration of welfare services will be legitimately streamlined: If this can save poor people time and reduce the number of people required to administer social services, that could be a huge value-add.

Mysterious, bloody dispute on flight bound for Tel Aviv: "A clash in the cockpit of a commercial jet flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv on Wednesday caused the plane to plunge thousands of feet before passengers intervened to subdue the attacker, according to accounts from people on board," reports The New York Times. "Officials of three Israeli government agencies said it appeared that the pilot and co-pilot had gotten into a fight and one of them sent a distress signal before the plane landed at a civil-military airport in Tabuk, in northwestern Saudi Arabia." Videos that circulated on the internet showed crew members covered in blood, and both the pilot and the co-pilot were taken to the hospital in Saudi Arabia. Flightradar24 reported that the plane, which was carrying a little under 200 people, "had sent a general emergency signal, then a signal of unlawful interference, and then a general emergency signal again." Some reports are emerging that passengers intervened to stop the fighting in the cockpit, but it's not clear yet if those are accurate or what the fighting in the cockpit was about.

Scenes from New York: Yesterday, my friend Sarah Hepola's book came out. The Only Thing There Is to Want: A Memoir of Three Loves is bright and funny, just like Sarah. Check it out!

It's a good day to put out a book. pic.twitter.com/mGst35IO5q

— Sarah Hepola (@sarahhepola) September 29, 2026

QUICK HITS

"OpenAI has unveiled an always-on artificial intelligent agent that's designed to proactively tackle work on a user's behalf, competing with firms like Meta Platforms Inc. in a growing field for AI-powered digital assistants," reports Bloomberg. "The product, called Dots, is capable of using a computer and pulling information from various connected applications to conduct research, draft documents and develop software, OpenAI said on Tuesday. Users can direct and interact with the agent by messaging it through ChatGPT." The company also released an update to its Sol model. Seems like there are an awful lot of product launches despite the, uh, slowdown. ("The day before the conference, OpenAI said it had scrapped plans to debut a GPT-6.1 version of its top-of-the-line Astra model, flagging heightened risks after a spate of recent rogue AI hacking incidents." It's not clear that Astra is especially different than the updated Sol model, but I guess no one external to the company can really know for sure.)
"Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing for another hiring surge to support President Trump's deportation campaign, with a goal of bringing on 5,000 new employees by the end of the year, according to four people familiar with the plans," reports The New York Times. "The hiring would expand the agency's work force by around 17 percent and draw on substantial new funding provided by Congress. The agency had already staffed up drastically since President Trump took office, growing by about 8,000, to reach 29,000 employees as of July, according to federal data."
"The orthodox elder millennial approach to parenting," writes A.A. Kostas at Cracks in Postmodernity. "An overreliance on expert opinion which hobbles them from doing the very thing every single generation of human beings has done before them—raise children."
So rich and so unfulfilled:

I think we have a problem pic.twitter.com/kIAieyVjDG

— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) September 29, 2026

The post AI-Powered Concierge Government appeared first on Reason Magazine.

No Sealing of Property Information in Motion Challenging Diversity Jurisdiction

2026-09-30T11:55:39Z

From Magistrate Judge Reid Neureiter last Wednesday in Kazazian v. Wilson Elser LLP (D. Colo.) (plaintiff appears to be the same plaintiff who was denied pseudonymity in Roe v. Colorado Judiciary Department):

Lawsuits are public. Allegations found in publicly filed lawsuits are generally immune from claims of defamation. But, in exchange for being able to launch public allegations of malpractice or breach of duty against Defendants without threat of a defamation claim in response, Plaintiff necessarily must accept that there will likely be public counter-allegations in return that may reveal her personal information. She will have to accept this as part of the cost of bringing a lawsuit.

And an excerpt from the broader analysis:

{Plaintiff has filed a lawsuit against her disciplinary proceeding attorneys, claiming legal malpractice and breaches of fiduciary duty. She also has leveled charges, essentially of professional negligence, against the neuropsychologist retained to provide an expert report.}

Plaintiff alleges that diversity jurisdiction exists because she has been domiciled in Wyoming since 2024. Defendants' first motion to dismiss questioned whether Plaintiff is actually domiciled in Wyoming. If Plaintiff is domiciled in Colorado instead of Wyoming, it would defeat any asserted federal diversity jurisdiction. Defendants' original motion to dismiss referenced and attached the results of significant investigative work, including motor vehicle records, showing that:

Plaintiff has owned residential property in Vail, Colorado since 2007, either directly or through companies she controls;

the utility service for the Vail property is in Plaintiff's name;

a June 17, 2026 physical inspection of the Vail property showed that a vehicle registered to Plaintiff was in the space designed for the Plaintiff's property;

Plaintiff either directly, or through companies she controls, owns property on South Logan Street in Denver, Colorado;

database searches did not reveal any current Wyoming residency or real property for Plaintiff;

Plaintiff owns a car that is registered at the Vail, Colorado location, the Colorado registration expired on March 31, 2026, and the vehicle has not been registered in Wyoming;

while Plaintiff is a disbarred lawyer in Colorado, her address with the Colorado Supreme Court is listed as a business address at 34 N. Franklin St., PO Box 6871992, Pinedale, WY 82941, which is the address for Moosely Mailboxes—not a residential address;

Plaintiff has an active real estate license in New York which lists the Vail, Colorado property as her address;

the address listed in Plaintiff's complaint in this action is a commercial property for Wyoming Registered Agent, Inc., a commercial mail-receiving and registered agent business;

an analysis of emails sent by Plaintiff to Defendants since 2024 shows that Internet Protocol ("IP") addresses of all email sending locations, except two, were from Colorado. No emails were sent from Wyoming;

voting records showed Plaintiff voted in Eagle County, Colorado as recently as November 5, 2024, she renewed her voting registration there in October of 2025, and there is no Wyoming voter registration for Plaintiff or any history of her voting in Wyoming….

As a result of Defendants' filing, Plaintiff, on an emergency basis, moved to restrict the motion …, asserting that motion contained "unnecessary private, personal, vehicle-identifying, resident-related, location-related, e-mail-header/IP, investigative or former-client information." …

It is the stated policy of the District of Colorado that "[u]nless restricted by statute, rule of civil procedure, or court order, the public shall have access to all documents filed with the court and all court proceedings." D.C.COLO.LCivR 7.2(a). The local rules do provide for the restriction of documents or proceedings by court order if the party seeking restriction can identify "a clearly defined and serious injury that would result if access is not restricted," and can also show that the interest to be protected "outweighs the presumption of public access." The party seeking restriction must also explain why no alternative to restriction is practicable (such as redaction …).

Beyond the Court's stated policy, which presumes that documents filed in court proceedings are to be public, the Supreme Court has recognized the common law right to access judicial records and documents in civil cases, although the right is not absolute…. In addition, as emphasized by my colleague Judge John L. Kane, it is in keeping with the American ideals of government for court proceedings to be open to the public. The notion of significantly restricting or sealing a civil case is repugnant to that principle. As Judge Kane has rightly stated:

We begin with the fundamental presupposition that it is the responsibility of judges to avoid secrecy, in camera hearings and the concealment of the judicial process from public view. Courts are public institutions which exist for the public to serve the public interest. Even a superficial recognition of our judicial history compels one to recognize that secret court proceedings are anathema to a free society.

M.M. v. Zavaras (D. Colo. 1996), aff'd (10th Cir. 1998). The strong interest of the public in having access to court proceedings must be weighed against any claimed privacy interest of a litigant in sealing the proceedings.

Also, it cannot be disputed that the allegations underlying this dispute, and the associated allegations regarding domicile, are important to the decision-making in this case. The issues are of public concern and involve the public interest…. [Plaintiff's malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence claims] are serious public allegations that can have grave reputational impacts. Defendants are entitled to defend themselves against such charges.

Among their defenses is that Plaintiff, through fraudulent representations, has manufactured federal jurisdiction where it otherwise would not exist. She has done this to avoid Colorado state court, where, because of prior abusive litigation conduct, Plaintiff has been prohibited from filing suit without being represented by counsel. To date, there is no such prohibition on Plaintiff in federal court.

Defendants claim that Plaintiff, in alleging Wyoming domicile, is attempting to fraudulently gain access to the federal judicial system to which she would otherwise not be entitled by dissembling about where she is domiciled. These too are serious charges and there is a public interest in understanding both the allegations and how the Court resolves those allegations….

[Plaintiff's] information in question—her current or former addresses, vehicle type, license plate and VIN numbers—is, as Defendants point out, all publicly available…. If the information is publicly available, then there is no additional injury that can befall Plaintiff from its reproduction in a court pleading.

[And] Plaintiff has not identified any "clearly defined and serious injury" that would result to her if access were not restricted. Other than a general concern that her personal information will be available in court documents, Plaintiff does not identify any particular harm that may befall her from the disclosure of this information. She does not claim to be the target of any threats or violence, for example.

The only description of the supposed injury is found in her original motion to restrict: "The injury is concrete and immediate. Once personal information is placed on the public federal docket, it can be copied, indexed, searched, aggregated, republished, or misused. That harm cannot be fully repaired later." These are wholly conclusory assertions and do not establish harm.

In Plaintiff's original motion to restrict, there is a suggestion that some of the personal information may have come from the Attorney Defendants' prior representation of Plaintiff. But, based the investigator's affidavit attached to the motion to dismiss describing her investigation methods, representations of counsel, and my review of the disputed information, it does not appear that any of the information contained in the motion to dismiss was based on facts learned during the Attorney Defendants' representation of Plaintiff years ago. Plaintiff makes no showing to the contrary. Without there having been any disclosure of attorney-client privileged or otherwise confidential information, Plaintiff has not shown any injury, much less a "clearly defined and serious injury." …

[The serious allegations on both sides of this case cannot] be assessed or decided in a vacuum and certainly should not be decided behind closed doors. However the Court decides these questions, the process of evaluating these competing allegations should be conducted in the bright cleansing light of public scrutiny. Redacting substantial portions of the motion to dismiss does a disservice to the strong public interest in being able to properly assess allegations made in a federal court lawsuit and in evaluating the judicial process.

This is not to suggest that there is not some emotional toll that may result from having personal information disclosed in public court documents. The case of M.M. v. Zavaras, cited above, makes the point with clarity. In Zavaras, a prison inmate sued the Colorado Department of Corrections ("CDOC") seeking to require the CDOC to pay for an abortion. The plaintiff there sought leave to proceed by pseudonym. Otherwise, her name, her pregnancy, and her desire for an abortion would be publicly disclosed in court documents. These are undeniably personal facts that the plaintiff understandably would have preferred to keep out of the public eye.

But she had filed a lawsuit seeking court action. The motion was denied by Judge Kane at the trial level, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed on appeal. Judge Kane found that "whatever interest in privacy is claimed on behalf of the plaintiff, the countervailing public interests clearly and decisively outweigh it." The same can be said in this case. Plaintiff's privacy interest is not compelling and the public interests in open courts decisively outweigh it….

The Court will note again that it is Plaintiff who elected to file this lawsuit. Lawsuits are public. Allegations found in publicly filed lawsuits are generally immune from claims of defamation. But, in exchange for being able to launch public allegations of malpractice or breach of duty against Defendants without threat of a defamation claim in response, Plaintiff necessarily must accept that there will likely be public counter-allegations in return that may reveal her personal information. She will have to accept this as part of the cost of bringing a lawsuit.

Bottom line, the Court finds that Plaintiff has not met her burden of showing that the motion to dismiss itself should be maintained under restriction, or that only a redacted version should be filed on the public docket….

Brittney Ann Vig (Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP) and Erik David Moya, Jacqueline B. Sharuzi-Brown, and Natalie Rose Novak (Sharuzi Law Group, Ltd.) represent defendants.

The post No Sealing of Property Information in Motion Challenging Diversity Jurisdiction appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Today in Supreme Court History: September 30, 1857

2026-09-30T11:00:47Z

9/30/1857: Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis resigns from the Supreme Court after Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857).

Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis

The post Today in Supreme Court History: September 30, 1857 appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Filing Taxes Will Cost Americans $544 Billion This Year

2026-09-30T11:00:46Z

The process of paying taxes manages to add insult to injury by making it burdensome to comply as you cough up the money the government steals from you. The time lost keeping up on tax rules, filing paperwork, and calculating our own mugging is stolen from the rewarding areas of life, and the costs are diverted from productive activities. How much do we lose in satisfying government's demands? A new report answers that question in painful detail, just in time for the October 15 extended filing deadline.

The High Cost of Paying High Taxes

"The federal tax code imposes many costs on the US economy. The most direct costs, of course, are the roughly $5.2 trillion in federal taxes (as of fiscal year 2025) that consume 17.3 percent of US gross domestic product (GDP)," the Tax Foundation's Alex Muresianu and Guy Cardwell wrote last week. "A less direct cost is the time taken out of our lives to comply with a Byzantine tax code that requires billions of hours to complete IRS paperwork and file tax returns."

Drawing on data from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Muresianu and Cardwell note that "Americans will spend almost 6.9 billion hours complying with IRS tax filing and reporting requirements in 2026. This is equal to 3.32 million full-time workers—more than the population of Chicago and nearly 35 times the workforce the IRS employed in FY 2025—doing nothing but tax return paperwork for a full year."

That's an enormous amount of time and energy diverted from Americans' own priorities—like working, running businesses, and raising families—to satisfy federal paperwork requirements so we can cough up the money the government extorts from us under threats of fines and imprisonment. Few of us want to pay that money to begin with, but we have to surrender part of our lives to calculate the amount owed and satisfy tax rules.

As you might expect, all that tax-consumed time comes attached to a hefty price tag.

"If we assume a reasonable hourly wage, the 6.9 billion hours Americans spend complying with the tax code cost the economy roughly $387 billion in lost productivity," Muresianu and Cardwell add. "In addition, the IRS estimates that Americans spend roughly $157 billion annually out-of-pocket to comply with the tax code. This brings total compliance costs to $544 billion, over 1.7 percent of GDP."

IRS: Taxpayer Compliance is 63% of the Federal Paperwork Burden

Ouch. Somebody should tell the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that its system sucks and serves to rub Americans' noses in the painful process of handing money to an institution many of us dislike (polling finds that most of us distrust government, less than half of us believe what government officials tell us, and 89 percent of us consider the federal leviathan corrupt). Oh, wait. The IRS already knows.

"The federal tax system required by the Internal Revenue Code imposes an enormous burden on taxpayers," acknowledges a 2023 internal paper on the costs faced by taxpayers. "It is estimated that taxpayer compliance burden is 63% of the annual federal paperwork burden."

For example, the IRS document estimated the total time to fill out a basic 1040 form—including recordkeeping, learning about the law and the form's requirements, preparation, and submission—at 13 hours and 35 minutes under an old model developed in 1984. It's 13 hours under a newer model. The newer model puts filing costs at $250 per taxpayer.

The IRS concedes that "self-employed taxpayers generally incur substantially higher burden than other taxpayers."

Too Complex To Comply?

Interestingly, the IRS also admits that the complexity of its system is so onerous that it discourages compliance, to the detriment of both taxpayers and the government. It concedes that its model "ignores the impact that complexity has on what taxpayers choose not to do because it is too burdensome, such as choosing not to keep records necessary to claim a tax benefit or even not to comply with certain reporting requirements."

So, the idea that the tax code is insanely complex, and that complying with its dictates consumes an enormous share of our time and wealth, isn't an outlier idea cooked up by the Tax Foundation. The nation's tax collectors agree.

The Tax Foundation's cost estimates are also in line with other organizations' numbers. In calculating compliance costs for last year's taxes, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation noted that "taxpayers will spend an estimated 6.93 billion hours to complete their 2025 taxes—down from a peak of 7.93 billion hours in 2023" and that "tax compliance costs include $319.7 billion in lost time and at least $157.1 billion in out-of-pocket expenses, including tax software and professional services."

Muresianu's and Cardwell's figures for the time consumed by tax compliance are essentially identical, and their somewhat higher price tag is easily explained by one more year of rising costs.

Business Filers Really Get Slammed

The Tax Foundation analysts comment that individual tax returns account for more than 1.9 billion hours at a total annual cost of $142.4 billion, but they agree with the IRS that business compliance, including for those of us who work for ourselves or as freelancers and contractors, are where the real pain is felt. "Individuals account for about 26 percent of the total compliance cost (and roughly 28 percent of total hours). Thus, most of the remaining tax compliance burden is borne by businesses."

Larger businesses—even if they are only a hair larger—really get slammed, they add. "The IRS estimates it takes 90 hours on average to comply with Form 1120, the main form for taxable corporations. For small corporations, it takes 40 hours, and for large corporations, it takes 610 hours—more than 15 full-time weeks."

Changes in the field of finance look poised to make things even worse. The Tax Foundation study reveals that the most burdensome requirements are those imposed on cryptocurrency transactions. That may be another good reason to keep digital deals anonymous and off the books.

So, whether you're contemplating next year's taxes, paying quarterlies, or anticipating the extended deadline for filing your return, you'll want to put aside some time and money for getting your paperwork in order and ready to submit. There are few things as time-consuming and expensive as paying taxes.

The post Filing Taxes Will Cost Americans $544 Billion This Year appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Nancy Pelosi Championed a Hong Kong Dissident. She May Have Doomed Him.

2026-09-30T15:09:54Z

In one of the final speeches of her congressional career, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) rose last month "to call attention to what is happening in Hong Kong." She was condemning the Chinese government for its prosecution of protester Joshua Wong. Yet it was exactly that attention from Congress that had helped doom Wong in the first place. Like Hmong militias and Kurdish resistance fighters in years past, leaders in the Hong Kong protest movement had a one-sided partnership with U.S. politicians that would not (and could not) be reciprocated, and that ultimately put a target on their backs.

At the center of this history, culminating with Wong's prosecution, is Pelosi herself. Pelosi has planted herself at the center of every major China debate since the end of the Cold War and, early on in her career, took risks to defend her hawkish positions toward Beijing. But brazenness does not necessarily mean bravery. Pelosi squandered political capital over the decades on inconsequential adventures, achieving no serious victories, while the price paid by people caught between Beijing and Washington may prove far more exorbitant than anything Pelosi risked.

This crusade began in 1991, when Pelosi traveled to Beijing as part of an official congressional trade delegation. Three days into her trip, Pelosi quietly snuck out of her hotel, without Chinese approval, trailed by a small posse. She was headed to Tiananmen Square, the site of the infamous 1989 crackdown that occurred two years earlier.

When Pelosi arrived in the square with two of her House colleagues, they unfurled a banner that read, "To those who died for democracy in China." The banner was written in English and Chinese, indicating that its intended audience was both their American constituents and their Chinese hosts. Upon discovering the ceremony, local police began to chase Pelosi and her fellow representatives out of the square, as onlookers and journalists were shoved, corralled, and forcefully detained for filming.

Her colleague John Miller (R–Wash.) revealed that this P.R. stunt was planned from the beginning—on a bipartisan basis. "We had one major purpose in going to Beijing," Miller told reporters, "That was to deliver the strongest possible message to the Chinese government leaders that Americans and the American Congress have not forgotten Tiananmen Square."

Pelosi herself would admit that nothing else was achieved. The trip failed "to see or gain the release of prominent imprisoned dissidents or get promises of human rights improvements from the officials," she said. Relations between the two countries took a sharp downward turn. But Pelosi and Miller's third colleague, Rep. Ben Jones (D–Ga.), said at Tiananmen that the event was a "special moment for us." Indeed it was a special moment—for them. Pay no attention to the bystanders who were roughed up by police in the process.

A Progressive Hawk Flies to Taiwan

In mid-2022, Pelosi, now Speaker of the House but still a persona non grata in mainland China, would perform a stunt with more grievous potential consequences. She decided to become the first high-ranking American official in over 25 years to visit leaders in Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims as part of its territory.

Word of this trip generated major backlash among the American establishment. The New York Times' Thomas Friedman, hardly a pro-China commentator, called Pelosi's planned trip "utterly reckless, dangerous and irresponsible." Members of the intelligence community warned that a purely symbolic visit "looks like a military operation" to the Chinese government, no matter how well-intentioned or void of substance.

The late Deng Xiaoping had once said that "the main obstacle to better relations between China and the United States" was the treatment of Taiwan "as a U.S. aircraft carrier." Indeed, after Pelosi's visit, the Chinese military began a live-fire exercise, lobbing missiles into the Taiwan Strait.

President Joe Biden publicly admonished Pelosi. Yet none of this seemed to matter to Pelosi, whom Politico dubbed a "progressive hawk." During one press conference, Pelosi nonchalantly mentioned that American military officials warned that she could be "shot down, or something like that."

But as in her Tiananmen Square stunt, she enjoyed strong support from the Republican Party. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.) offered his support to Pelosi, saying, "America should always speak with one voice." From the Senate floor, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) said that Pelosi, independent of the White House's concerns, has "every right" to visit Taiwan. Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo enthusiastically supported Pelosi's decision as well. "Nancy, I'll go with you," Pompeo wrote on Twitter, "I'm banned in China, but not freedom-loving Taiwan."

And as in Tiananmen Square, Pelosi's Taiwan "cheerleading" accomplished nothing substantive. No deals were reached, no agreements were signed. As the Taiwan scholar Shelley Rigger told The New Yorker during Pelosi's visit, the trip "does not benefit Taiwan, probably does harm to Taiwan's security, and it has ensured that U.S.-China relations, which were already pretty bad, are worse than they were before."

One month after Pelosi's departure, Pompeo, who was then in Taiwan on a separate visit, complained to reporters that he'd seen local reports calling the speaker's visit "provocative" and "threatening." Pompeo dismissed this out of hand: "We should never forget who's threatening. It is not the great people of Taiwan. It is not the United States of America. The only threat to this region, the people who desire to upend what we know is right, and decent and moral, is in fact the Chinese Communist Party."

The nuclear option

Refusing to take responsibility for the ripple effects of American policy in East Asia is, of course, not new. But in Joshua Wong's case, the result of American hubris is distinctly bitter. American politicians put Wong in danger while raising his hopes in a rescue that would not come.

Wong first gained international recognition in 2014 for his leading role in Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement, a series of anti-government protests that comprised both student organizations, including Wong's Scholarism, and major civil society groups. As part of the 1997 handover agreement between the United Kingdom and China, Hong Kong was guaranteed 50 years of legislative, legal, and economic autonomy under China's "one country, two systems" framework. Over time, however, this autonomy would be challenged and degraded. But on August 31, 2014, the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress declared that politicians running for office in Hong Kong's upcoming elections must "love the country," meaning China, "and love Hong Kong." Candidates would have to be screened by Beijing and, if approved, only then could run in the region's popular elections.

This was a nonstarter for many in Hong Kong, including Wong, who had already gained the attention of his classmates and local authorities for his resistance to mainland interference. Wong had, in fact, led a successful student campaign against a 2012 curriculum change pushed by the Chinese government.

Although the 2014 protests were unsuccessful at stopping the new election law, Wong gained the attention of American supporters. He made it on the cover of TIME magazine as "The Face of Protest" and one of its 25 Most Influential Teens. Other outlets called Wong the "next tank man," a reference to an iconic Associated Press photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. When the U.S. government announced its lukewarm support for the 2014 protests, The Wall Street Journal report used Wong to slam then-President Obama. "Hong Kong," Wong explained, "needs more than a few words from Obama."

Like Wong, many U.S. legislators wanted more than words from the White House. Rep. Christopher Smith (R–N.J.), co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, drafted the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. It would impose economic sanctions that Steve Tsang, director of the University of London's SOAS China Institute, dubbed "the nuclear option," because they would destroy China's main link to the global financial system.

Meanwhile, Pelosi would meet with the now-famous Wong for the first time in 2015, and again in 2016 and 2019. That final meeting caught particular attention from the Chinese government, culminating in Wong's most recent, and most serious, trial.

That year, the Chinese government put forward another piece of legislation that many in Hong Kong viewed as destructive to the "one country, two systems" framework: an amendment to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance that would allow the extradition of suspects to mainland China, among other countries.

Western human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, warned that "the proposed changes will put at risk anyone in the territory of Hong Kong who has carried out work related to the Mainland, including human rights defenders, journalists, NGO workers and social workers." Smith resurrected his stalled 2014 sanctions bill.

To prevent the bill from losing steam, Wong and other activists were invited to speak before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Having already spoken to the group in 2017 and having been freshly released from prison in June, Wong pressed forward with the same recommendation. "Beijing shouldn't have it both ways, reaping all the economic benefits of Hong Kong's standing in the world while eradicating our sociopolitical identity," he said, claiming that the sanctions bill "enjoys the broad support of Hong Kong's civil society, a point which I want every member of Congress to take note."

The media parade continued at an event hosted by then-Speaker Pelosi, where the bill's title was pasted on a large placard behind which Wong spoke. "We stand as one," he told reporters. When Smith said that the bill "requires the President to identify and sanction persons, including the use of the Magnitsky Act, in Hong Kong and in Mainland China," Wong can be seen next to the podium nodding his head. After four failed attempts, the bill finally passed.

Breaking an Egg Against an American Wall

The 22-year-old Wong was now more than a local student leader. In the words of the Chinese government, he was engaged in "collusion" with U.S. officials in economic warfare against his own country. That label and the infamy that came with it became a serious problem for Wong in 2020, when Chinese authorities pushed a new national security law on Hong Kong that imposed life in prison for collusion with foreign powers.

"If his renown was a vulnerability, Wong reasoned, it might also be his path out," wrote Timothy McLaughlin and Shibani Mahtani, authors of Among the Braves: Hope, Struggle, And Exile In The Battle For Hong Kong And The Future Of Global Democracy. Although the authorities had already confiscated Wong's Hong Kong passport, he might be able to request U.S. asylum. He emailed Pompeo directly in a plea for help. "There is legitimate danger that I become a prime target of arrest and detention," Wong wrote, according to McLaughlin and Mahtani. "I request U.S. protection so that I may apply for asylum, including as necessary traveling to the U.S. for the purpose of applying for asylum."

There were options for the State Department to get Wong out of Hong Kong, including covert operations. President Donald Trump himself was reportedly a fan of rescuing Hong Kong dissidents through mass immigration. "They're going to be industrious," he told one adviser. "They'll be great. They'll make great Americans."

But political adviser Stephen Miller quickly shut down the idea of mass immigration, and Pompeo decided that the State Department couldn't get involved in Wong's case, according to McLaughlin and Mahtani. "You've got national interest and personal interest, and in some ways you try to find a balance between the two[.] … In the end, you know, on the seventh floor of the State Department, national interest won out," an official told McLaughlin and Mahtani.

It was in the U.S. government's interest to get involved enough in Hong Kong's affairs to put Wong in danger—by having him speak before Congress—but not to save him. Just as it was in the national interest to conscript the Hmong people into the Vietnam War, only to leave them to die in the jungle when it became too hard to rescue them. So too was it in the government's interest to mobilize and encourage Kurdish resistance in Iraq, only to watch Saddam Hussein's forces slaughter them, the only expected outcome.

As expected, Chinese authorities charged Wong with collusion in June 2025. Last month, he pleaded guilty to that charge. And how could he not? Congress handed over the evidence on a silver platter. "Wong was said to have conducted international lobbying for sanctions against the Special Administrative Region or central government, requesting that the U.S. introduce the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act in 2019 and imploring other Western countries to impose Magnitsky-style sanction programs," the Hong Kong Free Press reported.

Wong has not yet been sentenced.

During the height of Wong's 2012 advocacy, he frequently quoted the Japanese author Haruki Murakami: "If there is a hard, high wall and an egg breaks against it," Wong would say, "no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg." Indeed, Wong seems no less committed to that principle today than when he first began protesting in 2011. Whether the U.S. government supplied the final shove or not, history has shown that American hubris far too often pushes eggs, good and bad, into hard, high walls.

The post Nancy Pelosi Championed a Hong Kong Dissident. She May Have Doomed Him. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Brickbat: Bad Dog

2026-09-30T08:00:39Z

Bradley Page has filed a federal lawsuit against the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the Pinal County Sheriff's Office, and several officers over an incident that took place in February 2025 on Interstate 10. Page, who was suffering a stroke, had pulled to the side of the road. Body camera footage shows that officers apparently did not consider that Page might be experiencing a medical emergency, despite his confused behavior and difficulty following commands. Instead, they treated the situation as a standoff. Officers surrounded his vehicle and shot out his front and back windows with rubber bullets. When Page put his arm outside the window, a Pinal County deputy released a K-9 that bit and held onto Page's arm for more than a minute, as officers yanked him out through the broken window. The bite caused deep damage to Page's muscles, tendons, and blood vessels, and he requiring reconstructive surgery. Officers then congratulated the dog and each other on pulling Page from the car. They then left him handcuffed in a patrol car for over an hour before taking him to a hospital, where providers determined that he had suffered a stroke and found no illegal drugs in his system. Page was initially charged with failing to comply with an officer and reckless driving, but those charges were later dismissed.

The post Brickbat: Bad Dog appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Open Thread

2026-09-30T07:00:00Z

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason Magazine.

SCOTUS Stays Third-Party Removal Injunction 40 Minutes After Reply Filed

2026-09-30T05:24:11Z

On September 24, the Solicitor General sought an emergency stay, as well as an administrative stay, of the Boston District Court's order blocking third-country removals. Justice Jackson promptly issued a schedule with the briefs due on September 28, but did not grant an administrative stay. The Solicitor General, perhaps anticipating this denial, preemptively asked that the denied application should be referred to the full Court. At the time, I speculated that by virtue of Jackson's denial of the administrative stay, the case was effectively referred to the full court.

Another theory a colleague suggested is that the Justices had already discussed the case, and the four-day briefing schedule was something of a compromise. That is, Jackson could have given a week or longer, but that delay would have triggered an administrative stay. To avoid that outcome, Jackson agreed to a shorter briefing schedule. I suppose that's possible, but if Jackson was unwilling to vote for a stay, and knew there were five votes for a stay, what exactly would that compromise buy?

In any event, the Court did not wait for Justice Jackson to formally refer the case to the Court. On September 29 around 2:40 ET, the government filed its reply brief. About 40 minutes later, the Court issued a very detailed order granting a stay, treating the application as a cert petition, granting that petition, and setting the case for argument in December. The Court also requested briefing on at least three specific questions presented:

The application for stay presented to Justice Jackson and by her referred to the Court is granted. The February 25, 2026 order and judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, case No. 1:25-cv-10676, are stayed. The application is also treated as a petition for a writ of certiorari, and the petition is granted. The parties are directed to brief and argue the following questions: (1) Whether the district court had jurisdiction over Respondents' claims. (2) Whether the district court had authority to enter classwide declaratory relief and APA vacatur under 8 U. S. C. §1252(f)(1). (3) Whether the Government's Guidance on third-country removals is unlawful under 8 U. S. C. §1231(b), the Due Process Clause, or FARRA/CAT and its implementing regulations. (4) Such other questions that the Government determines are appropriate for the proper disposition of the case. The Clerk is directed to establish a briefing schedule that will allow the case to be argued in the December 2026 argument session. The stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court. Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan, and Justice Jackson would deny the application for stay.

The Justices did not need all of the briefing to grant this stay. The die was cast as soon as the application was filed.

Moreover, it is fairly rare for the Court poses specific questions presented after treating an application for a stay as a cert petition. The Court took this path in Trump v. Slaughter (25A264), Department of Education v. Brown (22A489), and United States v. Texas (22A17). The fourth proposed question is something I could not find in any other case: "Such other questions that the Government determines are appropriate for the proper disposition of the case." The Court may be looking for other ways to dump this case.

The interim docket continues to evolve.

The post SCOTUS Stays Third-Party Removal Injunction 40 Minutes After Reply Filed appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Hazy Drug Classification Criteria Invite Dubious Bureaucratic Judgments

2026-09-30T04:01:50Z

Half a century ago, Congress approved the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which established a system for classifying drugs based on their "medical use" and "potential for abuse." But as a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) notes, the statute does not clearly define either criterion, opening the door to debatable and changeable regulatory judgments with far-reaching criminal justice implications.

Schedule I of the CSA is supposedly reserved for drugs that have "a high potential for abuse," "no currently accepted medical use," and "no accepted safety for use under medical supervision." Those drugs, which include heroin, LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA, are prohibited except for government-approved research purposes.

Schedule II drugs, which include cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, morphine, hydrocodone, and oxycodone, also are deemed to have "a high potential for abuse." But their medical use is "accepted," and they are legally available by prescription.

So are drugs in Schedules III, IV, and V, which are supposed to have progressively lower abuse potential, justifying less severe criminal penalties for unauthorized possession and distribution. Right away we see a problem: A drug with "potential for abuse" short of "high" but no "accepted" medical use does not fit into any of these schedules.

The historical treatment of cannabis illustrates that puzzle. When Congress enacted the CSA in 1970, it placed marijuana in Schedule I, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which had the authority to reclassify drugs in consultation with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), kept it there, rejecting a series of petitions arguing that it did not meet the statutory criteria.

Beginning in 1992, the GAO notes, the DEA defined "accepted medical use" based on five criteria, including "adequate safety studies" and "adequate and well-controlled studies proving efficacy." Since those requirements are similar to the evidence that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) demands to approve a drug for prescription use, the DEA's definition essentially equated "accepted medical use" with FDA approval.

During the Biden administration, the HHS embraced an alternative test for "accepted medical use" that considers "widespread" clinical experience with a drug (in the 41 states that have legalized medical marijuana, for example) and requires "some credible scientific support" for at least one application. Based on an FDA analysis, HHS said cannabis passed that test and, after reconsidering its "potential for abuse," recommended placing it in Schedule III, which includes prescription drugs such as ketamine, anabolic steroids, and Tylenol with codeine.

Last April, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a final rule that followed the HHS recommendation, but with a twist. For the time being, he said, only marijuana products currently sold by state-licensed medical dispensaries or approved in the future by the FDA would qualify for Schedule III.

The scientific and legal logic of that decision was hard to follow, since the included and excluded products are pharmacologically identical, distinguished only by their intended use. By contrast, cocaine, fentanyl, and methamphetamine are all Schedule II drugs, regardless of whether they are dispensed by pharmacies based on medical prescriptions or purchased on the black market without legal authorization.

In any event, the government's reversal on cannabis showed how malleable the CSA's scheduling criteria are. The drug's reclassification hinged on a change in attitude rather than a change in the underlying science.

In addition to a redefinition of "accepted medical use," that shift entailed a new assessment of marijuana's abuse potential. The CSA "does not include a statutory definition of 'potential for abuse,'" the GAO notes, and "FDA officials told us that the lack of a written definition…presented challenges for determining the relative abuse potential and appropriate schedule recommendation for some substances."

The GAO thinks the FDA should specify "the criteria and process for determining a substance's 'potential for abuse.'" The lack of clarity highlighted by the report is astonishing, given how long Americans have been living with the CSA, which criminalizes a wide range of peaceful conduct and prescribes penalties based on arbitrary bureaucratic distinctions.

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Second Amendment Roundup: Bruen's Footnote 9 Not a Carve-Out from Text and History

2026-09-30T01:46:42Z

Having found the carrying of a handgun in public to be encompassed textually in the right to "bear arms," the Supreme Court in Bruen added that the historical record compiled by New York failed to demonstrate a tradition of broadly prohibiting the public carry of commonly used firearms for self-defense or of requiring citizens to demonstrate a special need for self-defense. It then inserted footnote 9 to that statement, explaining that "nothing in our analysis should be interpreted to suggest the unconstitutionality of the 43 States' 'shall-issue' licensing regimes, under which "a general desire for self-defense is sufficient to obtain a [permit]." However, the Court warned that "because any permitting scheme can be put toward abusive ends, we do not rule out constitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry."

In order to uphold restrictions not based on text or historical tradition, some lower courts have latched onto, and purported to find an expansive meaning in, footnote 9. The latest example is the Ninth Circuit's September 22 en banc decision in Yukutake v. Lopez, which upheld Hawaii's requirements that handgun purchasers obtain a handgun-acquisition permit that is void unless the purchase is completed in 30 days, and the handgun is presented for physical inspection within five days at the police station. The majority's reliance on Bruen footnote 9 prompted a lengthy disquisition on the subject by Judge Ryan Nelson, jointed by Judges Daniel Bress, Lawrence VanDyke, Bridget Bade, and Danielle Forrest.

The following are some of the leading comments on footnote 9 in Judge Nelson's dissent. There are actually more references to footnote 9 interspersed throughout his opinion.

But the majority incorrectly holds that footnote 9 of New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1…, creates a "carve-out" or "safe harbor" from Second Amendment scrutiny, and is thus analytically distinct from Bruen's framework. Maj. Op. ––––, ––––. Footnote 9 does not say that all objective regulations placed within a "shall-issue" licensing regime are "presumptively constitutional." Id. at ––––. It only addresses "public carry" regulations not at issue here. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 38 n.9…. And it does not shift to the citizen the burden to prove that a law governing protected conduct has been "put toward abusive ends." Maj. Op. –––– (cleaned up). That interpretation violates Bruen's clear command that it is the government's burden to show that restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms are "consistent with the Nation's historical tradition." 597 U.S. at 24….

Instead, footnote 9 described non-abusive regulations to ensure that only "law-abiding, responsible citizens" were carrying handguns outside the home, preserved challenges when a permitting system denies citizens their right to carry, and concerned only longstanding licensing regimes. Id. at 38 n.9… (citation omitted).

Hawaii's challenged provisions are something else. Hawaii requires purchasers of handguns to obtain a handgun-acquisition permit that is void unless the permittee completes the purchase within 30 days, and it requires persons acquiring certain firearms to bring them to a police station for physical inspection within five days of acquisition. Haw. Rev. Stat. §§ 134-2(e), 134-3(c). Neither regulation has anything to do with determining whether applicants are "'law-abiding, responsible citizens'" eligible for licenses to "exercis[e] their Second Amendment right to public carry." Bruen, 597 U.S. at 38 n.9 … (quoting District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 635 … (2008)). Indeed, the challenged laws operate after the applicant has completed a background check, firearms training course, and myriad other requirements—i.e., after he has proven himself a "law-abiding, responsible citizen"—and has been issued a permit to purchase (not carry) a handgun. And neither regulation was "longstanding" in 2022 when Bruen issued.

Footnote 9 did not create a gaping Second Amendment exemption for states to exploit with new creative restrictions that would otherwise fail Bruen's test. The majority—like most lower courts—fails to grasp (or even acknowledge) these differences. Never has a single footnote in a Supreme Court opinion been so misread by so many lower courts to deny so many Americans their constitutional rights. The statements in footnote 9 are not the genesis of a different constitutional framework; they show merely how the framework the Court has established might be applied in particular circumstances.

This case is all the worse since the challenged laws appear to be part of Hawaii's consistent and not-so-subtle attempts to end run around the Second Amendment, which suggests that these laws are abusive under footnote 9…. Hawaii has only grown more intransigent in its "blatant defiance" of the Supreme Court's clear commands on the Second Amendment. Wilson v. Hawaii, ––– U.S. ––––, 145 S. Ct. 18, 21 … (2024) (Statement of Thomas, J., respecting the denial of certiorari) (citation omitted); cf. Granillo v. State, 158 Hawai'i 385, 593 P.3d 1, 28 (2026) (accusing the U.S. Supreme Court of "[m]aking the country more dangerous with a Second Amendment unmoored from text or history and unrecognizable to the framers who wrote it"); id. (Bruen was "deadly jurisprudence," and Wolford "show[ed] disdain for Hawai'i's constitutional traditions."). But Hawaii's "[m]erely local attitudes can neither shrink nor inflate the meaning of fundamental Bill of Rights guarantees that apply to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment." Wolford, 146 S. Ct. at 2050.

A correct application of Bruen to Hawaii's regulations makes this case straightforward. First, the Second Amendment's plain text covers the acquisition of arms. A person ordinarily cannot "keep" an arm without first acquiring it, and the law has long recognized that authorization of an act includes authorization of necessary predicate acts. Luis v. United States, 578 U.S. 5, 26 … (2016) (Thomas, J., concurring in the judgment). Hawaii's statewide restrictions govern the process by which ordinary citizens take possession of handguns; possession is the core conduct protected by the "right of the people to keep … Arms." U.S. Const. amend. II (emphasis added). Second, Hawaii has not identified "a well-established and representative historical analogue" for either its short permit-use period or its acquisition-linked inspection mandate. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30…. Because Hawaii has not carried the burden Bruen places on the government, we should have affirmed the district court's judgment. I respectfully dissent.

The majority improperly side-steps the governing rule. "When the Second Amendment's plain text covers an individual's conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct." Id. at ––––. The government must then "justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." Id. The order matters. So does the allocation of burdens. The Second Amendment's text determines whether the presumption of protection attaches; history and tradition determine whether the government has rebutted it. Id. at ––––, ––––, ––––. Courts may not insert a freestanding means-end inquiry before or between those questions. Id. at ––––. It strains credulity to interpret footnote 9 as creating a separate "carve-out" or "safe harbor" from Bruen's overarching approach. Maj. Op. ––––, ––––.

Bruen guides our analysis. And we err when we cast aside Bruen's holdings for a few clarifying statements in one of its thirty-two footnotes. Footnote 9 does not address—let alone control—this case.

Situated in the Supreme Court's step two discussion, footnote 9 provides in full: [Deleted here.]

At the outset, footnote 9 addresses public-carry licensing, not every objective regulation touching firearms. The circuit courts that have read it as the latter have overread and misapplied the Supreme Court's guidance…. In other words, the inferior courts are missing Bruen's forest for a footnote's trees.

The term "shall-issue" traditionally referred only to concealed-carry permitting schemes….

Likewise, "shall-issue" was used in Bruen to distinguish objective public-carry licensing regimes from New York's discretionary carry regime….

Lower courts have misunderstood footnote 9 and expanded the term "shall-issue" to encompass all objective regulations on the purchase, possession, carry, or transfer of firearms…. But the footnote expressly and repeatedly refers to "public carry," "bearing arms," and licensing officials' discretion over concealed-carry permit applications. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 38 n.9…. Those features are not present in the laws Plaintiffs challenge.

This case concerns acquisition of handguns for simple possession, including possession in the home, "where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute." Heller, 554 U.S. at 628–29…. Plaintiffs do not challenge any aspect of Hawaii's highly restrictive public-carry laws or permitting scheme. See Wolford, 146 S. Ct. at 2046 & n.9 (Hawaii has "a tight web of laws that severely restricts the carrying of firearms for self-defense."). Nor do Plaintiffs challenge Hawaii's myriad requirements (i.e., fingerprinting, mental-health disclosures, training courses, fees, and background checks) simply to purchase a firearm in the first place.

Plaintiffs' claims target two additional rules: what happens if an already qualified permittee does not complete a handgun purchase within 30 days, and what must occur after certain firearms have been acquired. Haw. Rev. Stat. §§ 134-2(e), 134-3(c). Those rules are not carry-license criteria. They have nothing to do with "guiding licensing officials" in the issuance of public-carry permits via "narrow, objective, and definite standards." Bruen, 597 U.S. at 38 n.9 … (cleaned up). Therefore, Hawaii's regulations—which apply after an applicant has obtained a permit merely to possess a handgun in the home—are wholly outside the ambit of footnote 9.

The distinction is not formalism. Public carry and home possession have different historical traditions. See id. at 45–70 …. For example, surety laws and laws banning carrying weapons while intoxicated may illuminate regulation of public carry, but they would not automatically justify a restriction on possessing a handgun in the home…. Redefining "shall-issue" as a universal catch-all for all objective firearms licensing provisions—rather than a specific type of public-carry-permit issuance regime—collapses those distinctions. Footnote 9's discussion of "shall-issue" public-carry regimes does not speak to this case.

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Eleventh Circuit Upholds Restriction on Referring to "Settlement" of Trump v. IRS,

2026-09-29T21:16:06Z

From Trump v. IRS, decided today by Eleventh Circuit Judges Adalberto Jordan, Robin Rosenbaum, and Kevin Newsom:

On January 29, 2026, President Donald J. Trump (in his personal capacity), Donald J. Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization, LLC, filed a complaint against the Internal Revenue Service and the United States Department of the Treasury, alleging that a former IRS employee illegally gained access to and disclosed their tax returns. The plaintiffs brought claims for violations of 26 U.S.C. § 6103 and 26 U.S.C. § 7431(a)(1) and of 5 U.S.C. § 552a(e)(10), and sought, among other relief, damages of "at least $10,000,000,000.00." …

[Not long after the filing of the complaint], the plaintiffs—through attorneys Alejandro Brito and Daniel Epstein—filed a notice of voluntary dismissal with prejudice pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A)(i). In light of the self-executing nature of that dismissal, the court closed the case on the same day….

Subsequently, 35 former federal judges (the "former judges") filed a motion for relief from judgment and asked the district court to set aside the notice and order of dismissal and reopen the case. In their motion, the former judges informed the court of a settlement between the parties that had been announced by the Department of Justice. Under the terms of the settlement, the plaintiffs secured a $1.776 billion settlement fund from the Treasury, to be paid to non-parties to the litigation, and a release by the government of "any and all claims" it may or could have against the plaintiffs, as well as President Trump's family and businesses, through May 18, 2026, the date of the alleged settlement. The former judges asserted that the settlement was "a product of collusion and [wa]s itself a fraud on the [c]ourt."

In its order directing the plaintiffs to respond, the district court notified the plaintiffs of its authority to investigate misconduct as a collateral issue under Rule 11 and noted that it might impose sanctions for filing a lawsuit for an improper purpose, e.g., "for the sole purpose of forcing a settlement." In response, the plaintiffs contested the court's power to issue monetary sanctions and argued that there was no Rule 11 violation or fraud on the court because the litigation was not collusive. They did not, however, submit any affidavits, declarations, or other evidence seeking to rebut the adversity, collusion, and improper purpose concerns. Nor did they request an evidentiary hearing….

On July 13, 2026, the district court entered an order finding that the parties in the lawsuit were not adverse and imposing non-monetary sanctions on the parties and two of the plaintiffs' attorneys, Mr. Brito and Mr. Epstein.

First, the district court concluded that President Trump controlled the defendants as a matter of constitutional structure. President Trump's position as the chief of the Executive Branch, the court said, vested him with all federal executive power, including the ability to remove some subordinate officers—whose own exercise of authority is an exercise of the President's power—at will. For example, the court noted, executive officers in the Treasury and the IRS wield their authority subject to his supervision and control and are removable by him.

Second, the district court determined that—as the Secretary of the Treasury Department—Scott Bessent is subject to President Trump's direct supervisory control as an appointed member of his cabinet. And, in his role as Secretary, the court said, Mr. Bessent is President Trump's "alter ego." The court also observed that the Commissioner of the IRS is, by statute, appointed and removable by the President.

Third, the district court explained that, by executive order, President Trump had asserted his supervision and control of the entire Executive Branch, including specifically control over its litigation activities. That executive order provides that his opinions on questions of law are "controlling on all employees in the conduct of their duties." The executive order states that President Trump "provide[s] authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch." As a result, the court found it "[un]surprising[ ]" that, unlike in other similar cases, no attorney for the defendants ever appeared or challenged the action.

"Considering the brief chronology, the silent docket, and [the] [d]efendants' deviation from basic litigation strategies pursued in similar cases," the court concluded that the "[d]efendants chose not to 'advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes' President Trump's opinion regarding this lawsuit[.]"This was due, the court said, to President Trump's control over the defendants' conduct.

Fourth, the district court found that the resolution of the lawsuit further indicated that the parties' interests were "one and the same," demonstrating lack of adversity and improper motive: "[T]he extraordinary award fashioned by the [p]arties for claims that were never litigated, and have yet to be defined, on behalf of unidentified third parties whose future remedies bear no relationship to the claims in this case, indicates that real adverse interests were never before the [c]ourt."

After providing further reasons, the district court concluded that the fact that the parties were not adverse and the lawsuit collusive and jurisdictionally improper was "so obvious and so insurmountable" that it led the court to conclude that the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit for the improper purpose of justifying and legitimating "a 'settlement' that had no viable basis in law or fact."

Turning to the matter of sanctions, the district court considered whether the plaintiffs' complaint was filed "in bad faith for an improper purpose." Applying Rule 11's fact-bound, objective "reasonableness under the circumstances" standard, the court found that the circumstantial evidence—the parties' abnormal litigation conduct and the circumstances surrounding the litigation and settlement—demonstrated that the plaintiffs "acted in bad faith and for an improper purpose by 'collusively filing a lawsuit with claims subject to multiple dispositive defenses solely to provide cover for a collusive settlement.'"

As a result, the district court [imposed sanctions on lawyers Brito and Epstein and] … prohibited the parties—and any "agents, representatives, officers, or any other person acting in concert with … or under the … control" of them—from "referring to the purported 'settlement agreement,' or using, offering, admitting, or citing any of its provisions in any judicial, administrative, regulatory, arbitration, or any other official proceeding as evidence of a 'settlement' reached in this matter."

The district court also determined that the parties' conduct satisfied the subjective bad-faith showing necessary to trigger inherent authority sanctions. It found that the plaintiffs knew or should have known that their claims were time-barred and sought damages in an amount unsupported by facts or law, that the defendants abdicated their responsibility to defend the interests of the United States, and that the parties used the litigation to confer legitimacy on a settlement entered in a dubious ethical context—all of which supported a finding of bad faith.

It declined, however, to order monetary sanctions, instead giving the parties time to file memoranda regarding attorneys' fees. The attorneys' fee proceedings are still ongoing. And the district court has not yet ruled on the former judges' request to reopen the case and set aside the dismissal….

On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit discussed various procedural matters, but also had this to say about the First Amendment issue:

The speech-related sanction prevents the parties (i.e., the appellants) from "referring to the … 'settlement agreement,' or using, offering, admitting, or citing any of its provisions in any judicial, administrative, … or … other official proceeding as evidence of a 'settlement' reached in this matter." …

The speech-related sanction is not, as the appellants say, a prior restraint. It was entered by the district court after the parties were allowed to respond to the motion of the former judges and was based on findings of collusion and bad faith. See Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Comm'n on Hum. Rels. (1973) ("The special vice of a prior restraint is that communication will be suppressed … before an adequate determination that it is unprotected by the First Amendment.").

Although the appellants maintain that the speech-related sanction sweeps broadly and acts as an unconstitutional gag order which prevents them from referring to the settlement agreement at all times and under all circumstances, the district court … explained that the prohibition is in fact narrower. The court emphasized that its injunction "is not a categorical restriction prohibiting any reference to any agreement of the Parties," but rather affects only "how the Parties refer to the 'settlement agreement'[.]"

In particular, the court observed, the injunction is limited in two respects. First, the court emphasized, "the provision narrowly prevents the [p]arties from referring to the 'settlement agreement' as evidence of a 'settlement' reached in the matter brought before this Court." And second—and perhaps more to the point, given the plaintiffs' particular objection—the court clarified that "the limitation only applies to official proceedings such as judicial, administrative, regulatory, or arbitration" proceedings….

[A]ppellants have not persuaded us to construe the sanction more broadly and have not made a strong showing that they will prevail on their First Amendment challenges. They do not cite any authorities suggesting that a speech-related prohibition imposed as a penalty for conduct determined to be sanctionable violates the First Amendment. Indeed, in judicial proceedings, "whatever right to 'free speech' an attorney has is extremely circumscribed.'" Gentile v. State Bar of Nev. (1991). See also id. (explaining that "the speech of those participating before the courts c[an] be limited" and that "although litigants do not surrender their First Amendment rights at the courthouse door, those rights may be subordinated to other interests that arise in this setting").

The post Eleventh Circuit Upholds Restriction on Referring to "Settlement" of Trump v. IRS, appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Beware the Rush to Judgment in the Cornell Rape Case

2026-09-30T01:47:29Z

One might have hoped that the media—and the broader public too—would have learned the lesson that it's unwise to prejudge a sexual assault dispute, automatically take the side of the victim, and demand the heads of the alleged perpetrators. By now, we possess numerous examples of initial impressions being wildly wrong, including high-profile cases such as Rolling Stone's retracted 2014 University of Virginia story and accusations against members of the Duke University men's lacrosse team in 2006.

Cornell University may present another such case.

A seemingly quite disturbing allegation of sexual assault at Cornell has now captured the media's attention. The details are lurid: A female former student, known as Jane Doe, contends that seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity pressured her to take drugs and alcohol and then gang raped her for hours. She has filed suit against the fraternity brothers, as well as Cornell itself, which she says failed to protect her from being "sexually assaulted and raped by multiple members of the Xi Chapter of the Chi Fraternity." She is kept anonymous in her lawsuit: The alleged perpetrators, on the other hand, are named.

The accusation has brought the fraternity brothers significant opprobrium, their names and faces appearing everywhere in media. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) denounced them and Cornell, declaring: "The culture of rape, sexual assault, and pedophilia is protected in elite institutions across the United States and including Cornell University." The Cornell Daily Sun's editorial about the suit begins by listing the names of the seven alleged perpetrators. On Bluesky, a mob of angry commenters are doing everything they can to get them fired from their jobs. Many are furious that Cornell did not take the matter more seriously in 2024, when Doe made the accusation; they also cannot understand why the district attorney failed to prosecute.

But the reason for this is actually rather simple: Doe's initial statement to the police did not accuse the young men of rape or sexual assault.

That's according to District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, who released a statement elucidating why he had declined to press charges at the time. His statement quotes a document he reviewed: Doe's sworn statement to Cornell police regarding the events of October 19, 2024. According to Van Houten's characterization of that document, which he directly quotes repeatedly, Doe unambiguously described what happened to her as entirely consensual, and thus there was no crime to prosecute.

"Jane Doe's sworn statement in November 2024 did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped," wrote Van Houten. "On the contrary, Jane Doe's statement described her participation in drug use and sexual contact as voluntary, conscious and consensual."

Van Houten quotes Doe at great length: In her own recollection to police days after the encounter, she described a series of sexual encounters with a number of fraternity brothers—including two different threesomes—heavy alcohol use, and the consumption of the drug ketamine. But importantly, by her own initial account, neither the sex nor the alcohol nor the drugs were ever forced on her: Doe herself maintained that she participated willfully. When she said stop, the sexual activity stopped. When they asked to resume it, she allowed it to resume. When she tired out, it ended.

This matters, because according to New York law, mere intoxication is not enough to constitute rape, unless the substances were forced on an unwilling victim. Sunny Hostin, a co-host of The View and former sex crimes prosecutor who is hardly a contrarian right-wing anti-feminist, laid this out quite well in a recent segment, explaining why it would have been very difficult to prosecute the case given Doe's statement to police.

"The pictures of these young men who have not been charged, have not been adjudicated, are being plastered all over the internet," said Hostin. "I think people are reporting this story inaccurately. I think they are reporting it unfairly. And while this is something we have to take very seriously, there is no way, according to her statement in 2024, that any prosecutor would have brought this court case."

Sunny Hostin, a former sex crimes prosecutor, actually defends the Cornell 7. She argues that under New York State law, the girl consented and that the media is "reporting this story inaccurately. I think they're reporting it unfairly."
"The pictures of these young men who have… pic.twitter.com/ZbnJpS8G6R

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 29, 2026

Now it's true that Doe's lawsuit presents a starkly different picture. While it describes the exact same series of events, Doe now contends that she did not consent to sex and that she was pressured to take ketamine against her will. Given these claims, Van Houten has decided to open a new investigation.

But the mere existence of a lawsuit cannot be taken as evidence that the young men are guilty. It is of course possible that Doe's initial version of events was wrong, and she is telling the truth when she alleges that they abused her. It is also possible that her unequivocal statement acquitting the fraternity brothers of any wrongdoing was right, and she has subsequently altered her story for some reason. Her lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages.

It is also possible that the police who interviewed her in 2024 miscommunicated her actual sentiments. Releasing her sworn statement in full could shed more light on this.

The new accusations against the fraternity brothers are very serious, and numerous people contend that their actions are morally blameworthy regardless—that it is wrong to give ketamine to a very drunk woman and have group sex with her. But given that the D.A. is reopening the case, the proper question is not a moral one, but a legal one: Was Doe the victim of a crime?

Outside observers and commentators simply don't have full information about the case, so it's wildly inappropriate at this juncture to call for any sort of swift retribution against the accused parties.

The post Beware the Rush to Judgment in the Cornell Rape Case appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Kids Are Using NPR Podcast Comments as Secret Group Chats

2026-09-29T20:38:15Z

Some teens have been using the comments section of an NPR podcast as a group chat to communicate with one another.

Ella, 14, is not allowed on social media. She is, however, allowed on Spotify. She and about 20 friends, most of whom were girls with parents who didn't let them on social media, decided to communicate with one another by creating playlists on Spotify, naming them something along the lines of "chat here," adding one podcast, and telling their friends to chat in the comments.

When asked why they chose NPR shows to chat under, Ella said that they "just looked for podcasts that didn't have many comments." Ouch.

The discovery was made by Dave Blanchard, who runs NPR's Wild Card and keeps an eye on the comments that people post about the show. Last year, he noticed new comments on an episode: "Gilgamesh quit and I'm crying," "Last Friday I broke up with my GF," "Your cats are so cute," "You're gorgeous in that dress. OML, pink heart."

The comments seemed like "gibberish" to Blanchard, who told This American Life that he thought the accounts were bots. "They're just these clipped, weird, incoherent postings," he said. "But the fact that they were all from different accounts seemed very weird. And the fact that they also maybe seemed to be interacting in some way also seemed weird and not like typical bot behavior."

After assuming they were bots, Blanchard deleted the comments, but then noticed new ones pop up. One account said that their comment was deleted. "That felt very strange that a bot would be able to recognize that the thread got deleted and post it, letting people know that it had been deleted," Blanchard told This American Life.

He decided to investigate further. After posting some screenshots to NPR's Slack, his Gen Z colleague "almost immediately" recognized that "these are kids," partly because of the display names, some of which contain special character emojis.

Teens want to communicate with other teens—and are incredibly resourceful in making that happen. Indeed, this is not the first time that children have been found using the comments section as their very own reinvented chat room where adults won't think to look.

In October 2025, Fiona Geiran, who works on NPR's TED Radio Hour, made a similar discovery. "So one of my responsibilities on my team is to monitor our Spotify comments," she told the How To Do Everything podcast. "And for the most part, we mostly get really, like, nice comments or people engaging with our content, giving constructive feedback or saying how much they liked it. But about three weeks ago, I noticed kind of a different floodgate situation. And the first instance was only about 20 comments."

The comments were similar. Geiran described them as a lot of "You're so pretty," "No, you're so pretty." She began to question why an episode published three years prior would suddenly spark a discussion about beauty.

It turned out, Geiran suspects, that the comments were from kids. "Maybe this is just a way to get around a classroom phone-free situation," said Geiran. "Maybe they can have their laptops out, but they can't have Instagram open, or Spotify is the only thing they're allowed to have."

Of course, kids have found workarounds to social media bans. In 2019, The Atlantic reported that middle and high schoolers were using Google Docs to speak to their peers.

With social media bans for minors catching on across the world (Australia, Canada, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom, to name a few), there is an obvious lesson here: Kids adapt and get around bans. In Australia, the first country to introduce a ban on social media for those under the age of 16, around 70 percent of children who already had accounts on Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, or Facebook still had them after the ban went into effect.

Kids want to communicate with one another, and they are remarkably good at turning whatever corner of the internet that remains available into a social space of their own. Perhaps lawmakers ought to give them more credit.

The post Kids Are Using NPR Podcast Comments as Secret Group Chats appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Correcting the Stereotype About Libertarians Only Caring About 'Weed and Porn'

2026-09-29T20:15:56Z

If there's one thing that absolutely drives me crazy, it's when conservative commentators start complaining that libertarians like me, and maybe you, are the real problem, because all we do is fight for drugs and gambling and pornography and prostitution, but we're unwilling to fight for liberty where it really counts, on the things that matter to conservatives.

I see various people on the right making this argument from time to time—it's a serious allegation, made by people who are either clueless about libertarians, or actively lying about us.

The latest to commit this failing is Megan Basham, an author and culture reporter for The Daily Wire, who writes a lot about religion and social conservatism. I don't know her at all, and maybe she's a nice person who generally does great work. But when it comes to libertarians, she is dead wrong. On X, she wrote the following:

My biggest problem with libertarians is that they can usually rouse themselves to fight for weed and porn and everything destructive, and rarely anything good and virtuous. As a general rule, libertarians are useless-to-destructive coalition partners. https://t.co/xf05QbIoyj

— Megan Basham (@megbasham) September 26, 2026

"My biggest problem with libertarians is that they can usually rouse themselves to fight for weed and porn and everything destructive, and rarely anything good and virtuous. As a general rule, libertarians are useless-to-destructive coalition partners."

I don't know where this idea comes from that we only fight for weed and porn, but it's just obviously wrong. She should try opening the pages of this magazine for starters, where she'll find libertarian defenses of drug legalization and other vices, yes. She'll also find advocacy for addressing the national debt and cutting taxes and regulation, for shrinking the Department of Education and implementing school choice reforms, for saving New York City from socialism and rent control, for supporting the Trump administration's correctly laissez faire approach to AI, and all sorts of other things that traditional conservatives are ostensibly in favor of. It's the same deal with libertarian organizations like the Cato Institute, which published a magazine called Regulation that covers energy policy, transportation policy, housing policy, and antitrust. Trust me, it's not all weed and porn.

The same is true of the Libertarian Party. Their most recent presidential nominee, Chase Oliver, is often unfairly tarred as some kind of left-libertarian, but he ran on the party's standard agenda of massive cuts to government spending by shrinking the welfare state and the warfare state.

I'm sure somewhere there's a self-decribed libertarian who only cares about his weed. But this is not really true of most people who have adopted the libertarian mantle and promote these ideas in public.

I'm used to fielding complaints from liberals that I spend too much time talking about issues that cater more to the right. We can't make non-libertarians happy either way, which is why we just stick to principle and talk about the things that matter to each of us—but we libertarians do want freedom from government interference, for everybody, whenever possible, from homeschoolers and homeowners to seasteaders and sex workers.

But if this is a debate about priorities, then please explain to me how I'll be more likely to get the economic freedoms I want if I temper my enthusiasm for personal liberties? Basham and her ilk keep acting like we libertarians are not helping, even though we never fail to come to the defense of the liberties they say we are supposedly indifferent to. When have libertarians stood idly by while the government was doing oppression and said, "Well, it's not weed and porn, so I don't care"? Libertarian legal organizations have sued the government to protect Second Amendment rights, religious freedom, and more.

In fact, one could make the case that non-libertarians are the ones failing to defend freedom when it counts. In this moment of total Republican control of government, is the right meaningfully constraining the size of government, freeing the economy, or reducing entitlements? Of course not. The best thing about the Trump administration is that it is listening to libertarians on tech and leading with a pro-growth agenda when it comes to AI. Thankfully, there are a lot of libertarian-leaning people in the tech industry who are helping to make this possible. You're welcome.

In fact, the single greatest betrayal of freedom that transpired during the Trump administration was arguably the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While former President Joe Biden's policies were abysmal, it's important to remember that lockdowns, social distancing, school closures, and mask mandates all began under Trump—with enthusiastic support from some of the national conservative movement's biggest names: Curtis Yarvin, Jack Posobiec, and Steve Bannon.

Where were libertarians? The Libertarian Party's presidential candidate that year was Jo Jorgensen, who declared the pandemic response was "the biggest assault on our liberties in our lifetime." So maybe stop blaming weed-and-porn libertarians and start wondering why a Republican-controlled government so often finds itself incapable of defending basic freedoms at all.

The post Correcting the Stereotype About Libertarians Only Caring About 'Weed and Porn' appeared first on Reason Magazine.

TikTok's $100 Million Settlement With Alabama Is No Win for the Public

2026-09-29T18:36:44Z

TikTok and the state of Alabama were supposed to face off in court on Monday, but a $100 million settlement stopped the case from going to trial.

On Friday, TikTok agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall alleging the platform knowingly damaged children's mental health. The settlement requires TikTok to implement several features, including restrictions on nighttime access for children, a default nonpersonalized feed for teens, stronger parental controls, a two-hour daily time limit for children, and "robust age assurance measures to effectively verify the age of young users." TikTok could also owe Alabama an additional $183.8 million if other states reach qualifying settlements with the company, reports the Associated Press.

Alabama's office of the attorney general celebrated the settlement, calling it "the latest victory in Attorney General Marshall's efforts to hold technology companies and social media platforms accountable for putting Alabama consumers, particularly children, at risk." Last month, the office noted, Meta settled with Alabama for $117 million as part of a $17.1 billion multistate lawsuit over similar claims that social media platforms are harming children.

Social media platforms are not the only targets of Alabama's online safety crusade. The video game company Roblox reached a $12.2 million settlement with the state in April over online safety concerns. The settlement terms require all Roblox users to "undergo age verification to ensure children have access only to age-appropriate content on the platform." According to the state, Roblox said it would rely on facial recognition technology and government-issued IDs to verify users' ages.

Strict age-verification requirements raise serious privacy concerns. Implementing Roblox's ID checks would mean that all users would be subject to these age-verification measures, making online anonymity extremely difficult. Whatever such measures TikTok enforces in Alabama would presumably apply to all users to distinguish adults from children.

Meanwhile, creative and tech-savvy users often work around these restrictions or flee to less regulated realms of the internet. In Australia, a social media ban for children under 16 has proven largely ineffective, as many young children have not been asked to verify their ages. Among those who encounter age gating online, many circumvent the ban by having older friends set up accounts on their behalf, gaming the age assurance system, and, in some cases, using VPNs.

As This American Life host Ira Glass reported last week, users who were too young to be on social media were conversing in the comments section of an NPR show on Spotify. Why? Because it was a place without many comments, said one young user. While the NPR comments section is not exactly the online Wild West, the story shows that young people can be extremely creative in finding less regulated places to meet online. Techdirt's Mike Masnick pointed out last year that kids banned from social media at school have even used Google Docs as a makeshift group chat.

"Maybe Australia will ban kids from Spotify comments next. Then Google Docs. Then whatever random corner of the internet kids discover after that," he wrote. "We can keep playing [whack-a-mole] until we've legislated away every possible space where teenagers might talk to each other without adult supervision." Still, he warned, kids always find ways around bans, so it is best to teach kids how to navigate online spaces safely.

At best, government-imposed social media restrictions are acts of political theater; users are often savvy enough to work around them. At worst, they're chilling censorship orders. If more of these safety measures are enforced, entire swaths of the internet could become age-gated. Officials may feel that they are protecting children in their states by securing settlements with social media companies, but they're making the internet less free for adults and pushing kids to less visible realms of the web.

The post TikTok's $100 Million Settlement With Alabama Is No Win for the Public appeared first on Reason Magazine.

The Supreme Court's two decades of constitutional change

2026-09-29T18:19:35Z

Randy Barnett and I have started a new series on SCOTUSBlog which charts the evolution of constitutional over the past two decades. These changes largely coincide with the five editions of our constitutional casebook.

Here is the introduction:

Lawyers tend to internalize the constitutional law that existed when they attended law school. Consider a lawyer who took the course in the spring of 2005, a few months before the Rehnquist court adjourned for the last time. That lawyer learned that the Constitution protected a right to abortion, that a university could consider an applicant's race to assemble a diverse class, that courts identified an establishment of religion by applying what is known as the Lemon test, and that Congress could protect the members of an independent agency like the Federal Trade Commission from removal by the president. None of these four propositions accurately state the law today. That lawyer probably also learned nothing about the Second Amendment, which the court had not interpreted since United States v. Miller in 1939. Yet since District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008, the court has decided six major Second Amendment cases.

We have followed these changes from an unusual vantage point. Our casebook, "Constitutional Law: Cases in Context," has gone through five editions: the first in 2008, the second in 2013, the third in 2017 (when Blackman joined), the fourth in 2021, and the fifth, which will be published this December. Casebook editors work within a fixed page budget. For every case we add, we must shorten or remove another, so each edition records a judgment about which cases a student must now read. In this new series, we will discuss what has changed over the past two decades on the court. This first installment explains how much of the course has stayed the same. In the installments that follow, we take up each area of constitutional law in turn.

The conclusion is especially important:

Each generation of law students sees changes in how the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution, shaped by the conflicts of the day. Often these shifts happen slowly and even imperceptibly. Other changes happen radically in a short span. The justices control the shift. In both types of cases, the justices may not appreciate the consequences of one decision until the next case comes along.

People tend to think the times they are living in are the most unprecedented and unpredictable, but that is rarely the case. As described above, the Supreme Court decided cases during the nation's formation, conflicts over slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Progressive Era, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. When teaching constitutional law, it is important to keep the big picture in mind and avoid getting bogged down in the minutiae of the day.

If I may, some recent commentary about SCOTUSBlog is misguided. The same site publishes Erwin Chemerinsky and Steve Calabresi. I view that balance as progress. And journalism is not free. Virtually every site I visit now has some sort of paywall. I ultimately decided to not charge for my content, but I could only do so because I am a tenured law professor with a steady salary. SCOTUSBlog has not paid me for my contributions, but I am still happy to have my work shared on that valuable platform.

The post The Supreme Court's two decades of constitutional change appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Whatever Happened to Trump's Housing Affordability Executive Order?

2026-09-29T18:04:17Z

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week's newsletter includes stories on:

The far left winning state elections in Berlin, Germany, on the promise of municipalizing 225,000 private apartment buildings.
A zoning and religious freedom case out of Idaho, in which a college founded by controversial "Christian nationalist" pastor Doug Wilson is claiming discrimination at the hands of Moscow planning officials.
A new report on how the housing shortage is driving up poverty rates.

But first, we have our lead story on the Trump administration's progress on implementing the president's affordable housing executive order.

Much Ado About Stormwater Runoff

Back in March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to reduce regulations and red tape affecting the permitting and construction of new housing.

As has been discussed in the context of the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, the federal government generally plays a minimal role in setting land use regulations that govern the siting and approval of new homes.

Zoning and permitting are primarily done by local governments.

For the most part, therefore, Trump's "Removing Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Home Construction" order directs agencies to pare back the regulations it attaches to federal housing subsidy programs. It also directs them to advise local and state governments on ways they could increase home construction.

To that latter end, in May, the Department of Housing and Urban Development published a list of "best practices" for state and local governments that encourages them to adopt permitting shot clocks and zone more land for single-family home construction.

(This reflects the second Trump administration's general approach to housing policy, which focuses on encouraging more single-family home construction while saying nothing about increasing residential densities.)

In the same month, the Department of Energy requested input on how it could change its evaluation of state and local building codes to better account for the costs imposed on consumers by energy efficiency standards.

In August, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) also proposed eliminating the energy efficiency standards it imposes on housing subsidized via various rural housing programs. The USDA argued in its proposed rule-making that housing subsidized by those programs already must comply with state and local standards, making federal requirements duplicative.

The real substantive deregulation of private homebuilding activity stemming from the order comes in the area of environmental permitting.

As mentioned, states and localities are the ones who determine where new homes can be built. During the construction phase, homebuilders must comply with federal rules controlling stormwater runoff into streams and lakes and the like.

In brief, residential construction projects that disturb one or more acres of land must comply with the requirements of a "construction general permit" that attempts to limit the amount of sediment that runs off sites into water systems.

To prevent that runoff, builders will typically install silt fences around construction sites and stabilize piles of disturbed soil by matting or compacting it.

The construction general permit also requires builders to monitor and report soil runoff to EPA or state officials and to follow specific timelines for stabilizing soil to prevent runoff.

These are all technically federal requirements set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). However, the EPA only directly sets construction general permit requirements for three states (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico), the District of Columbia, some U.S. territories, and tribal lands.

Everywhere else, EPA has delegated administration of stormwater runoff regulations to the states.

Regardless of whether the permit is administered by the EPA directly or by the states, its requirements impose costs on builders, says Evan Branosky, an environmental policy expert with the National Association of Homebuilders.

The installation of silt fences and soil stabilization efforts have a direct cost, he says. Monitoring requirements and timelines for installing silt fences and the like also raise the cost of construction.

Branosky says that builders often must retain third-party contractors to immediately repair fences and stabilize soil to keep in compliance with permit requirements.

The requirements of the construction general permit are updated every five years. The last update was in 2022. In August, the EPA proposed a host of reforms to the forthcoming 2027 construction general permit.

In keeping with Trump's executive order, the proposed changes generally attempt to make the permit less costly to comply with by reducing the amount of information about stormwater runoff builders would have to submit to EPA and the frequency with which they'd have to report that information to the agency.

"EPA's proposed changes are specific and targeted, including commonsense flexibilities such as streamlining and simplifying some requirements to reduce unnecessary costs to permittees," said the EPA in a statement to Reason.

Branosky says homebuilders are generally pleased with the proposed changes. He did offer some criticism of a proposal to have builders upload stormwater management plans to an online, publicly available portal.

Builders' mitigation efforts often change during the course of construction. Having builders file a point-in-time plan could open up builders to litigation over their mitigation plans that are outdated.

The EPA says that it hopes to unveil final revisions to its construction general permit in advance of the current permit's expiration in February.

These changes would only apply in the few states and territories where the EPA directly administers the construction general permit.

But the new, streamlined requirements could serve as a model for states to update their own construction general permits, says Judge Glock, the director of research at the Manhattan Institute.

"It's an open debate how much the EPA permits and exhortations have on the state permits," says Glock. The EPA's oversight of state permits, as well as its power over federal clean water grants, does at a minimum give it significant influence over state policy.

In a brief published in February by the Manhattan Institute, Glock said that the water impacts of runoff from construction sites are minimal compared to other industrial and agricultural uses.

He also argues that it's debatable whether federal stormwater regulations should even apply to construction sites. There's a colorable argument that the EPA could remove its requirements on residential construction sites altogether.

So far, the agency is not proposing anything so sweeping.

In Berlin, the Far Left Wins Election on Promise of Seizing Private Housing

This past weekend, in Berlin's state elections, The Left Party captured a plurality of the vote and will now take the lead in forming a governing coalition.

The implications for housing policy are significant.

Berlin's voters, like residents of many major western cities, have been bearing the brunt of anemic economic growth and rising housing costs. The Left's preferred solution is to expropriate some 225,000 apartments currently owned by large real estate corporations.

The party's leader, Elif Eralp, argues this would satisfy the will of Berlin's voters, who in 2021 overwhelmingly approved a non-binding referendum calling for the seizure of apartment buildings owned by large corporations.

Expropriation "serves the purpose of being able to regulate rents, which we can't currently do with private owners," Eralp told the Russian-German magazine Wir. "This takes these apartments out of speculation and out of the possibility of profiting from the housing shortage."

It's not hard to see the downsides of such a proposal. It would require Berlin's government to compensate private owners for their lost units. That's money that could be dedicated to public housing construction (something Eralp has endorsed) or, better yet, to tax cuts that would increase the city's economic growth.

A massive government takeover of private housing would also be a major disincentive for developers to invest in new residential construction.

College Founded by 'Christian Nationalist' Pastor Doug Wilson Claims Religious Discrimination by Zoning Officials

In a new lawsuit, New Saint Andrews College claims that officials in Moscow, Idaho, are imposing selective and arbitrary zoning restrictions on its use of office space in the city's downtown out of animus towards its own brand of Protestantism.

New Saint Andrews is a small Christian college founded by the controversial pastor Doug Wilson, who has endorsed remaking America into a Protestant confessional state with restrictions on the public expression of other religions and legal sanctions for biblically proscribed behavior like adultery and same-sex relations.

Wilson has a close relationship with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is a member of the denomination Wilson founded.

This has made Wilson a controversial figure in Moscow, where some city officials, who have pledged to fight the influence of his Moscow-based Christ Church.

New Saint Andrews argues in its lawsuit that this animus has motivated the city to impose a long list of zoning restrictions on the college that apply to no other institution. Most recently, the city has blocked its ability to use downtown office space for college administrative purposes.

The college has had to hire a vendor to perform those administrative functions, which the city, citing restrictions on university activity in the city's downtown, is preventing New Saint Andrews from doing directly.

The zoning restrictions imposed on New Saint Andrews do indeed appear to be arbitrary and have little to do with mitigating any neighborhood impacts the college might have. That would seem to give the college a strong case that the city is violating federal land use protections for religious institutions.

As I noted last week in a piece for Reason, it's a tad ironic that a college founded by Wilson is claiming federal protections for religious land uses that the pastor would deny other faiths.

Call it a teachable moment about the value of broad, neutral religious liberty protections.

New Study Shows the Link Between High Housing Costs and Poverty

New research by Pew Charitable Trusts reports that housing shortages in high-regulation, high-cost states are driving up poverty rates and reducing the real value of the government's anti-poverty programs.

In Hawaii, California, Washington, D.C., New Jersey, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, and New Hampshire, Pew found that 16 percent to 34 percent of poverty stems from those states' above-average housing costs.

Additionally, Pew found that rising housing costs offset more than half of the increase in SNAP benefits from 1989 to 2023. In New Jersey, specifically, it says that rising rents offset roughly 84 percent of the additional purchasing power provided by increases in SNAP benefits.

The Pew study argues that lower rents caused by more housing construction would have a benefit to poor renters comparable to major federal anti-poverty programs.

Read the whole report here.

Quick Links

In San Francisco, a high school student has managed to do what the city has not: map all of San Francisco's rent-controlled units.
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill laid out her housing policy vision in an address that called for speeding up home permitting.
A ballot initiative that would significantly roll back California's landmark environmental review law, CEQA, is now becoming a proxy fight about data centers.
The Trump administration is attempting a "pocket rescission" of $56 million appropriated for housing counseling.
The Department of Homeland Security is claiming that its deportations are lowering people's rent.

DHS is reducing your rent, especially in states that cooperate with @ICEgov.

Texas accounted for about a quarter of ICE arrests in July and posted the country's sharpest rent drops, with San Antonio down 4.8%, Austin 4.3%, Dallas and Houston about 3%.
Miami's average rent is…

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) September 25, 2026

The post Whatever Happened to Trump's Housing Affordability Executive Order? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Seattle's 'Surveillance Pricing' Ban Is a Solution Searching for a Problem

2026-09-29T17:46:19Z

Seattle recently passed the Fair Pricing and Transparency Ordinance, which prevents large online and brick‑and‑mortar grocery retailers from using consumers' "behavior, location, demographic characteristics, biometric data, or other personal information" to offer consumers distinct prices. The city's announcement touts protections against price manipulation based on social media activity and chatbot conversations.

The ordinance includes carveouts for certain discounts but still prohibits discounts tailored to an individual shopper. Seattle's ban follows similar proposals in Maryland, Connecticut, and New Jersey.

Supporters of the law stress affordability, fairness, and privacy, framing it as a check on big grocery chains profiting from customers' data. In the announcement, City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck stated, "Groceries are getting more expensive for everyday Seattleites, while the buying, selling, and leveraging our private information to manipulate prices is making big national grocery corporations millions in profits….This is an important step we can take to prevent AI-assisted price gouging and ensure fair discounts for everyone."

The hard evidence of retailers using surveillance pricing hardly lives up to these claims. The ordinance cites investigations by Consumer Reports that found Instacart shoppers paid different prices for the same items, but it found no evidence that personal data played a role. Instacart said the price differences came from random tests, which it stopped last December. The ordinance also cites an investigation into Kroger that found it targets discounts based on customers' demographic characteristics, and inferred income, education, and loyalty levels but again cites no evidence that it raised prices based on that information. Neither case involved the use of social media history or chatbot conversations.

Unequal prices don't mean consumers are being ripped off. As Josh Withrow, a tech and innovation policy fellow at the R Street Institute, told Reason, "Rewards programs that give certain people discounts that other people don't would benefit some customers more than others, but I don't see how that's harming anybody." He added, "As long as they're not actively gouging customers…that's not a harm. That's just personalized benefits."

In a proposed policy statement outlining how it would police personalized pricing, the Federal Trade Commission acknowledged that "the extent to which businesses currently use personalized pricing is not well understood, and the effects of personalized pricing on consumers are unclear." There's no guarantee that banning algorithmic pricing would reduce prices—and as others have pointed out, banning the practice risks banning beneficial discounts and loyalty programs with it.

Councilmember Maritza Rivera (D–Seattle), one of the two votes against the ordinance, called it "an overly broad ordinance that has the potential to backfire." She stated, "I would have liked to have seen legislation that banned algorithmic pricing while ensuring loyalty programs wouldn't be impacted. It's now very possible those programs will go away, and groceries could become even more expensive."

Withrow has similar concerns; he told Reason that rules like Seattle's create "a permission-based system where the only personalized pricing programs that are legal are the ones that have been specifically carved out….It basically kills innovation on the potentially beneficial ways that companies can use data-driven pricing to better get goods to customers."

Rinck frames the ordinance as a way to stop "AI-assisted price gouging." But Withrow argues markets already punish that behavior: "A company that uses personalized pricing to consistently charge certain customers more would soon find itself with competitors who advertise doing the opposite—smart consumers will shop elsewhere."

The term surveillance pricing gives an already common practice a sinister connotation. Personal pricing has been occurring long before AI or computers existed. Algorithms and larger data sets simply help companies gain better insights and meet customers at their willingness to pay more efficiently.

Seattle's ordinance may be well-intentioned, but it targets a largely theoretical problem and puts real discounts at risk. As Withrow tells Reason, "any regulation should target actual demonstrated harms, not hypothetical use cases that, as far as I can tell, don't exist."

The post Seattle's 'Surveillance Pricing' Ban Is a Solution Searching for a Problem appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Maybe the "M" in "SMOD" Actually Stands for "Model"

2026-09-29T17:29:42Z

For a reminder as to SMOD, see articles on SMOD 2016, e.g., this CBS item:

Some voters took to social media Tuesday to share photos of their preferred write-in candidate: "Sweet Meteor O' Death 2016", or SMOD 2016 for short.

The parody campaign started in Dec. 2014 with a Twitter page devoted to the self-described "Precambrian Conservative" candidate with a description which reads, "Ready to Make an Impact, Tough on Putin & Iran, I'll probably destroy all Earthly life."

The post Maybe the "M" in "SMOD" Actually Stands for "Model" appeared first on Reason Magazine.

AI Facial Recognition Didn't Put This Tennessee Grandma in Jail for 6 Months. Bad Policing Did.

2026-09-29T17:34:34Z

Angela Lipps, a 50-year-old Tennessee grandmother, made headlines last spring after AI facial recognition identified her as a suspect in a bank fraud case halfway across the country. Now, Lipps is suing the City of Fargo and the detective responsible for her wrongful arrest for $10 million.

On July 14, 2025, Lipps was at her neighbor's house to help watch her children when a stranger knocked on the door. Little did she know her life was about to be turned upside down. Her neighbor answered the door and spoke with the stranger, who asked about a lost dog, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court. Immediately after, her neighbor's child remarked that there were people outside with guns.

Lipps looked out the window. About a dozen armed individuals stood outside, shouting for her to come outside with her hands up. Confused and scared, Lipps did not yet know that these were plainclothes members of the United States Marshals Smokey Mountain Fugitive Task Force sent to arrest her. Still, "Lipps walked outside the residence with her hands up," writes the complaint.

Held at gunpoint, terrified she was about to die, and unable to comprehend what was happening, Lipps began hyperventilating and crying. Officers began shouting things about North Dakota as they forced her hands behind her back and told her to "shut the fuck up and stop crying."

The officers took Lipps to the Carter County Detention Center in East Tennessee, where she learned she'd been arrested based on a warrant issued over 1,200 miles away in Fargo, North Dakota. Just two weeks prior, "the State of North Dakota charged Lipps with eight felonies relating to…bank fraud," the most severe of which "had maximum sentences of ten years imprisonment," according to the lawsuit.

But Lipps had never been to North Dakota. There must have been some kind of mistake.

In total, Lipps would spend five and a half months incarcerated for a crime she didn't commit. Without her medication or her dentures, she was unable to sleep and forced to break apart food with her hands to eat, explains the complaint. Months after her arrest, Lipps was flown to the Cass County Jail in Fargo. Without any connections to the area, she was deemed a flight risk and given a $100,000 bond she could not afford. But after presenting bank records showing Lipps was in Tennessee, not North Dakota, during the alleged bank fraud crimes, all charges against her were eventually dismissed. Lipps was finally released on December 24, 2025, only to find "that her residence, car, and personal property were lost" in her absence.

Over a year since her arrest, Lipps is seeking accountability for her near six months behind bars. Lipps' attorneys' investigation into her arrest and prosecution revealed that her social media photo came up as a potential lead after the West Fargo Police Department (WFPD) ran the suspect's fake ID through Clearview AI's facial recognition software, the suit alleges. Clearview AI states that any matches should be considered potential leads only and requires law enforcement to "independently verify by both peer review and other means, before continuing with their investigation."

When WFPD followed up on the lead, investigators found that Lipps did not physically match the suspect caught on multiple surveillance videos: her build was different, and so were her facial features and tattoos. Furthermore, Lipps had no connection to bank thefts or unexplained funds. After finding no additional evidence linking her to the crimes, the WFPD declined to press charges against Lipps and "understood that the facial recognition results themselves were insufficient to support probable cause," according to the complaint.

But after sharing the Clearview AI results with the Fargo Police Department (FPD), the lawsuit alleges that Detective Lucas Heck believed otherwise. Based on nothing more than a Clearview AI match based on a fake ID, Heck "misrepresented the facial recognition results and omitted material exculpatory information and his failure to corroborate Lipps's connection to" the crimes, the suit argues. And in doing so, "Heck acted maliciously and in deliberate disregard to Lipps rights" when he requested Lipps' arrest warrant.

"The problem is essentially old," Lipps' lawyer told WKRN, a Tennessee news station. "It's an officer not doing the legwork that is typically expected." And while $10 million is a significant number, Lipps' lawyer said "it reflects the specific harm that happened to [Lipps]….Can you imagine being taken away at gunpoint, held in detention, taken from your family?"

During a time of fierce public debate over AI and surveillance technology, Lipps' story serves as a stark reminder that without proper police accountability, tech reform might not be enough to protect our constitutional rights.

The post AI Facial Recognition Didn't Put This Tennessee Grandma in Jail for 6 Months. Bad Policing Did. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Were the Nazis Socialist? Only in Part

2026-09-29T19:34:12Z

National Socialist German Student League poster. (NA)

Periodically, debate rages over the question of whether the Nazis were socialists. As a general rule, conservatives (and some libertarians) make this accusation, while left-wingers indignantly deny it. This question has returned to prominence in recent months, and it remains worth addressing. The right answer is that the Nazis were similar to socialists in backing sweeping government control over the economy, yet different from them in rejecting racial and ethnic equality. But the difference is greater in theory than in practice.When socialists come to power, they often engage in persecution of minority groups, even though this is inimical to their ideology. There are systematic reasons for this pattern, which go beyond the idiosyncracies of individual leaders.

All of this has significant implications for current political debates, at a time when "democratic socialism" is a growing movement and much of the right has embraced statist nationalist economics.

It is difficult to deny that the Nazis (and other similar right-wing nationalist movements) embraced sweeping economic statism, including socialist-style central planning. The movement wasn't called the National Socialist Party for nothing. I summarized some of the evidence in a 2007 post, relying on then-recent academic research (later research has not changed these conclusions):

The idea that Nazism was an extreme form of "capitalism" and Hitler primarily a tool serving the interests of "big business" is a longstanding myth that even now retains a measure of popularity in some quarters. This, despite the fact that the full name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and that Nazi political strategy was explicitly based on combining the appeal of socialism with that of nationalism (thus the choice of name). Once in power, the Nazis even went so far as to institute a Four Year Plan for running the German economy, modeled in large part on the Soviet Union's Five Year Plans….

Two recent books further explain the socialist elements of Nazi economic policy, and will hopefully put the final nails in the coffin of the myth that the Nazis were "capitalists" or free marketeers. In The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, historian Adam Tooze describes the statist nature of Nazi economic policy in great detail, and concludes that the Nazis imposed greater government control over the economy than any other noncommunist regime in modern history. (pp. 658-60). Tooze notes that, even before the outbreak of World War II, government military spending accounted for some 20% of the GDP, while much of the rest of the economy came under government control as a result of the Four Year Plan and other similar measures.

In Hitler's Beneficiaries: : Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State, Gotz Aly argues on the basis of extensive evidence, that German support for Nazi rule was maintained by the creation of a massive welfare state funded in large part by plunder captured in Hitler's foreign conquests, but also partly by means of "soak the rich" taxation within Germany itself.

Some nonetheless persist in viewing the Nazi economic system as "capitalist" because 1) some big businessmen (such as the Krupps) supported the Nazi regime, and 2) most of the means of production remained under private rather than state ownership. It is certainly true that much industrial capital remained formally under private ownership under the Nazis. However, under the Four Year Plan and other similar policies, it was primarily the government that determined what goods would be produced, what prices would be charged, and (in many cases) who would be the consumers. "Capitalist" private firms in Nazi Germany played a role far more similar to that of socialist managers of enterprises in the Soviet Union than that of actual capitalists in a market system. The Krupps and others certainly profited greatly under the Nazis, but so too did high-ranking Communist Party enterprise managers in the Soviet Union. Neither, however, detracted from the state's ultimate control over economic production…..

These two new books are useful complements to Avraham Barkai's 1990 work Nazi Economics, which explored the ideological origins of Nazi economic policy and showed how Nazi economic theorists explicitly advocated statism, while rejecting free markets. Like some modern opponents of globalization and free trade, the Nazis viewed economics as a zero-sum game between nations, where increasing wealth for one country could, in the long run, only be achieved by impoverishing or conquering others.

More recently, economist Bryan Caplan has surveyed the data on Nazi economic policy, indicating extensive and rapidly growing government control of the economy.

But government control of the economy was not the only element of Nazi ideology. Another key facet was racial and ethnic hierarchy. The Nazis believed the state should serve the interest of "Aryan" Germans. Other groups were at best second-class citizens, and at worst slated for slavery (as in the case of Slavic peoples), or outright extermination (as in the case of the Jews).

By contrast, socialist ideology is egalitarian. The slogan "Workers of the World Unite" urges proletarians of all ethnic and national backgrounds to come together. Marx famously regarded nationalism as a form of "false consciousness." Not all socialists reject nationalism so completely. But, as a general rule, they support racial and ethnic equality and condemn discrimination. In part for this reason, historically oppressed racial and ethnic minorities have often played a role in nascent socialist movements.

The anti-Semitic trope that communism was a Jewish conspiracy is false. Most Russian Jews were not communists, and most communists were not Jews. But it is true that Jews (and a number of other ethnic minorities) were disproportionately represented among pre-1917 Russian communists. That was in part because the communists promised ethnic equality and an end to the Russian Empire's egregious anti-Semitic discrimination. Jews were similarly overrepresented in other movements promoting ethnic equality at that time, including the Constitutional Democratic Party, which sought to make Russia a liberal democracy.

Left-wingers who argue that the Nazis were not socialist like to emphasize this egalitarian dimension of socialist ideology. They have a point. But, sadly, socialist governments often fail to live up to these principles.

The Soviet Union - the world's first socialist state - is a notable example. Despite promising equality, the Soviet government ultimately engaged in massive persecution of minority groups. Stalin deported and partially exterminated various groups, such as the Crimean Tartars. Ukrainian language and culture was subjected to widespread persecution, and the state-created famine of the 1930s was in part an effort to crush Ukrainians (though millions of Russians and others also died). For many decades, the Soviet Union also promoted extensive state-sponsored anti-Semitism and discrimination against Jews, despite the fact that Jews had been overrepresented among the "Old Bolsheviks" (early leaders of the communist movement).

Such ethnic persecution and discrimination is far from unique to the Soviet Union. It was and is common in other socialist states. The Chinese communists have engaged in horrific persecution of Uyghurs and Tibetans, among others. Pol Pot's Cambodia targeted Vietnamese and other minorities for extermination. Ethiopian communists persecuted and murdered members of the Eritrean and Tigrayan minorities. And such examples can easily be multiplied.

The ubiquity of ethnic persecution - often rising to the level of deportation and mass murder - under socialist regimes, suggests a systematic pattern. Why does it happen? A key factor is that socialism requires immense coercion and concentration of power in order to function. If you intend to subject the economy to systematic central planning, ethnic and cultural minorities are a potential danger. Their distinctive practices and traditions might deviate from the plan in various ways. Ethnic groups that seek (or might seek) autonomy or secession are a particular threat to the plan, and therefore especially likely to be subjected to repression. Thus, the Soviet government's animus against Ukrainians (the largest potentially secessionist minority in the USSR), and China's against the Tibetans and Uyghurs.

In addition, socialist hatred and fear of capitalists often leads to prejudice against minority groups - such as the Jews in Europe and Chinese in southeast Asia - who are disproportionately represented in business and financial enterprises. This is how we get the distinctive far-left version of anti-Semitism, evident in Karl Marx's writings, among others.

A Soviet joke holds that a Soviet citizen who speaks only one language (usually an ethnic Russian who knows only Russian) is a good communist. By contrast, one who speaks two languages (usually a member of a non-Russian minority group, who speaks both Russian and that group's language) is a dangerous "nationalist." And one who speaks five, is a malevolent "Zionist" (likely, a Jew). The joke well captures socialist regimes' fear and suspicion of minority groups, despite their ideological commitment to egalitarianism.

In some cases, the idiosyncratic prejudices of individual leaders also play a role. Stalin, for example, had a variety of prejudices against various groups, including Jews. But these idiosyncracies are significant in large part because of systematic tendencies of socialism. Stalin's personal views had a big impact because the socialist system required an immense concentration of power, and massive coercion. People who questioned Stalin's prejudices (many of which were genuinely at odds with traditional Marxist ideology) could expect to lose their jobs, end up in prison or a Gulag, or even be executed.

In sum, there are important commonalities between Nazis and socialists. But also an important difference, when it comes to racial and ethnic equality. But, in a tragic irony, the point on which Nazis and socialists are similar - government control of the economy - often ends up undermining the ethnic egalitarianism which is one of the few admirable aspects of socialism.

All of this is of more than just theoretical significance at a time when many right-wingers in the US and Europe are embracing statist nationalist economic policy. Racial and ethnic bigotry and persecution is a ubiquitous feature of nationalist movements, even if most don't go as far as the Nazis did. The move towards statist nationalism is the main reason for the current resurgence of anti-Semitism and other bigotry on the political right in the US. And nationalist central planning of the economy has other massive flaws, many of them similar to the socialist version.

On the left, "democratic socialism" has had a resurgence in popularity. Left-liberals would do well to remember that this movement's economic policies have many of the same dangers as those of right-wing nationalists. In addition, socialists' promotion of economic central planning often ends up undermining their laudable ethnic and racial egalitarianism.

The post Were the Nazis Socialist? Only in Part appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Lawyers Shouldn't Spit in Protesters' Faces (and Police Generally Shouldn't Kick in Doors Without Warrants)

2026-09-29T16:46:22Z

In In the Matter of Disciplinary Proceedings Against Rapkin, decided Sept. 17 by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Stephanie Rapkin was subjected to discipline by the Wisconsin OLR (Office of Lawyer Regulations) for charging a client "thousands of dollars without a valid written fee agreement in place," "fail[ing] to diligently carry out her duties," and related misconduct, as well as this unrelated offense:

The OLR's complaint next alleged that on June 6, 2020, Attorney Rapkin "spat in the face of an African-American teenager who was taking part in a protest in Shorewood, Wisconsin" [apparently a Black Lives Matter protest -EV]. This incident led to Attorney Rapkin being convicted, following a jury trial, of misdemeanor disorderly conduct….

Rapkin didn't appear to contest the charges, saying that she had retired. The court concluded that a one-year suspension was the proper disciplinary measure:

We agree with the referee that, regarding her work for the estate and trust of N.H.B., there was a knowing nature to Attorney Rapkin's long-term failures to communicate with her client, timely complete tasks, and bill appropriately. There is also no dispute that this misconduct caused injury to her client. On these facts, ABA Standards 4.42(a) and 7.2 suggest that suspension is the appropriate sanction. See ABA Standard 4.42(a) (recommending a presumptive sanction of suspension when "a lawyer knowingly fails to perform services for a client and causes injury or potential injury to a client"); ABA Standard 7.2 (recommending a presumptive sanction of suspension "when a lawyer knowingly engages in conduct that is a violation of a duty owed as a professional, and causes injury or potential injury to a client, the public, or the legal system").

We note, too, that ABA Standard 5.12 recommends a presumptive sanction of suspension when a lawyer commits a crime that does not involve certain intentional acts such as fraud or theft and that seriously adversely reflects on the lawyer's fitness to practice law. We have no trouble concluding that Attorney Rapkin's criminal conduct—spitting in the face of a teenager who was taking part in a protest—seriously adversely reflects on her fitness to practice law. See generally In re Disciplinary Proceedings Against Johns (Wisc. 2014) (noting that "certain criminal conduct is so revealing of character defects, and so undermines public confidence in the legal profession, that it necessarily reflects adversely on an attorney's fitness as a lawyer"). The incident is an embarrassment to the bar….

The court also ordered Rapkin to pay $3K in costs. On the other hand, Wisconsin Public Radio reports that,

Rapkin sued the villages of Shorewood and Whitefish Bay after her arrest in 2020, alleging police violated her Fourth Amendment rights by kicking in the door to her home without a warrant. An insurance company representing the villages settled her case in 2024, awarding Rapkin $760,000.

Here are the allegations from Rapkin's Complaint in that case (remember, these are just allegations, though a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story reports that "Rapkin eventually filed a motion to suppress the evidence gathered from the search, and Judge Laura Crivello granted the motion, saying 'you need to get a warrant or wait till her attorney brings her down to the station house to talk'"):

On June 7th of 2020, while Stephanie Rapkin was sleeping in her bed, members of the Shorewood and Whitefish Bay police departments were outside her home, trying to think of an excuse to enter, so they could arrest her on allegations that she pushed a protestor picketing outside of her home.

After spending roughly 40 minutes milling around, the officers conspired to violate the Fourth Amendment by breaking into Rapkin's home under the false pretense that they just wanted to perform a welfare check. The justification for the excuse came from a neighbor, who told them that Rapkin may have taken a single sleeping pill twelve hours before. Based on this totally innocuous information, the officers kicked down Rapkin's door, pointed weapons at her, arrested her, dragged her outside, paused to allow a round of applause by a crowd who had gathered around her home to watch the spectacle, and then re-entered her home to desperately search for any evidence they could use to justify their blatant violation of the Constitution.

The post Lawyers Shouldn't Spit in Protesters' Faces (and Police Generally Shouldn't Kick in Doors Without Warrants) appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Problems with the New US Civil Rights Commission Report on Campus Antisemitism, Part II

2026-09-29T16:11:45Z

In my previous post, I argued that contrary to a new US Civil Rights Commission Report, plaintiffs alleging an illegal hostile campus environment don't need to show that the hostile environment was created by individuals or groups with discriminatory animus toward the protected class plaintiff belongs to.

Thus, Jewish students subject to a hostile environment don't need to prove that the antizionist students who created the hostile environment were motivated by anti-Jewish antimus.

This raises on obvious objection: what's to stop complainants from using hostile environment law to force universities to suppress political speech that offends them so much that they can reasonably argue that it creates a hostile environment for them? Can Hispanic students, for example, argue that speech hostile to immigration and multiculturalism creates a hostile environment, even if the speakers were not motivated by, and did not express, anti-Latino animus?

As the Report acknowledges, caselaw on whether purely political speech, not targeted at particular individuals, can create a hostile environment is far from clear.

But the Report quotes me and others as arguing, in my words, that in general "the First Amendment bars university students from basing hostile-environment claims on the ideological content of political speech they might also encounter on a street corner off-campus."

So in my view, regardless of whether antizionist activist students are motivated by antisemitic animus, their actions can create a legally hostile environment for Jewish students. But also regardless of whether there is antisemitic animus, political speech by the activists that does not amount to individualized harassment, threats, or intimidation cannot be the basis of a hostile environment claim.

However, as I have also argued, in appropriate cases such speech can provide contextual evidence as to why actions like vandalism, disruptions, and threats, not protected by the First Amendment are reasonably perceived by Jewish students as threatening and creating a hostile environment.

The post Problems with the New US Civil Rights Commission Report on Campus Antisemitism, Part II appeared first on Reason Magazine.

The Protect College Sports Act Passed the Senate. It Faces a Tougher Road in the House—and in the Courts.

2026-09-29T15:55:06Z

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Is your toilet running? Then you'd better go catch it.

The Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act late Monday night, so we'll focus on that one last time before some closing thoughts about golf.

Locker Room Links

The Irish soccer team nearly boycotted a match against Israel (which was played in Hungary instead of in the Middle East).
MLB talked to the Trump administration about hosting a baseball game in a national park, according to The Washington Post.
South Korean golfer Tom Kim hopes to win at the Asian Games this week to earn an exemption from South Korea's mandatory military service (apparently four PGA Tour wins is not enough).
The National Women's Soccer League is expanding again, with its 17th team based in Atlanta starting in 2028. The United Football League also announced expansion plans for Colorado and Rhode Island in 2027, plus Oklahoma and Utah in 2028.
In Week 2, Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair wrote on his eye black the name of a girl in Gaza who was killed by an Israeli airstrike. An NFL official told him he had to remove it or he couldn't keep playing.
The NFL also decided Week 2 was the right time to crack down on a bunch of celebrations with fines, often for allegedly drinking fake beers.
"Kentucky State center Aminata Seck has been in ICE custody for weeks," says Dennis Young of Front Office Sports.
Elsewhere in Reason: "No, Private Equity Isn't Ruining Your Sandwiches, Your Apartment, or Grandma's Nursing Home." Private equity is good, actually!
Many thanks to Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) for quoting my earlier work on the Protect College Sports Act during a Senate floor speech and in a Fox News op-ed.

"The backers of the bill believe politicians, not the NCAA, should decide how many transfers are allowed. They think politicians, not conferences, should set a compensation cap on how much schools can pay athletes. They think politicians, not athletes and businesses, should get… pic.twitter.com/JpHpmdSH5x

— reason (@reason) September 28, 2026

The Protect College Sports Act Passes the Senate

The Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act on Monday, with 77 votes in favor and 22 against (one senator did not vote). The support was mostly bipartisan—50 Republicans voted in favor, plus 27 Democrats. Four amendments were added to the bill—mostly minor changes, but one increased the limit on power conference membership from 19 schools to 20.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas), the bill's main backer alongside Sen. Maria Cantwell (D–Wash.), says he thinks the House of Representatives will come back from recess to vote on the bill before the November midterm elections—and that President Donald Trump could sign it into law during ESPN's College GameDay.

That appears to be some extremely wishful thinking from Cruz, with sources telling journalists the House is unlikely to come back from recess just for this, especially in campaign season. In fact, the legislation may not get through the House at all. (Vaguely similar legislation, the SCORE Act, failed multiple times to get a vote in the House due to lackluster support.) If it doesn't pass before 2027, the legislative clock resets and everything starts from scratch again.

That's just one reason why there's an urgency behind the bill, and why its Senate backers have been so focused on this for weeks (instead of, say, trying to lower gas prices, claw back tariff power from the president, do something about the war against Iran, or address the long-approaching insolvency of Social Security and Medicare). One of supporters' main claims has been that college sports are descending into chaos, with judges deciding who can play, and the answer seemingly changing by the week.

The Protect College Sports Act, backers say, will bring stability and order to the college sports landscape. But, at least in the short term, it's actually going to cause numerous federal lawsuits challenging various parts of the act. Here are parts of the bill that could end up challenged in court:

The student-athlete salary compensation cap
The cap on agent fees
Title IX's intersection with the compensation structure (i.e., the fact that male and female athletes won't make the same amount of money)
The eligibility rules, specifically the age limit
The eligibility rules, specifically the exemptions
The transfer limits
The anti-tampering rules around transfers
The "Lane Kiffin Rule" banning coaches from leaving midseason
The conference membership limit
The preemption of state laws on eligibility, under a 10th Amendment state rights argument
The preemption of state laws on name, image, and likeness (NIL) payments, under a 10th Amendment state rights argument
The preemption of state laws on eligibility, under a Commerce Clause argument
The preemption of state laws on NIL payments, under a Commerce Clause argument
The delegation of lawmaking-esque powers to the NCAA, College Sports Commission, and conferences

So sports fans who are annoyed that judges, instead of highlights, are clogging the headlines will not get a reprieve. The real winners of the Protect College Sports Act? Lawyers. Billable hours remain undefeated.

The Protect College Sports Act Sucks, but It Wouldn't Ruin College Sports

The average sports fan probably has no idea the Senate just passed what would be the biggest, most invasive sports law in American history. That's fair, I think, because the law shouldn't affect them very much.

The Protect College Sports Act is a bad law for all the reasons I've previously mentioned, but it doesn't ruin what makes college sports great.

It won't affect whether or not your favorite team plays its rival. It won't keep you, your family, and your friends from tailgating before the homecoming game. It won't stop the Michigan student section from belting out "Mr. Brightside" after the third quarter, or Ohio State's players from putting those dumb, ugly stickers on their helmets (if only!). It won't keep you from singing your alma mater's fight song as you rock your baby to sleep. It won't take away the memory you have of how the bar exploded when your school got the biggest, most shocking win of your lifetime. It doesn't change the feeling of the brisk autumn air on a Saturday morning while you mull the day's football action, or the anticipation of Selection Sunday before you make a bracket that will surely bust.

The things that make college sports great were never under threat. They didn't need politicians to protect or save them.

The U.S. Almost Completely Blew It at the Presidents Cup

Because I am a golf fanatic now, I have some thoughts on the Presidents Cup, in which the U.S. beat the International team 17–13 but almost lost for the first time since 1998.

The U.S. team clearly had the better golfers—just look at the head-to-head results from the singles matches, which the U.S. won 9.5–2.5. But as with last year's Ryder Cup, the U.S. was absolutely terrible at team golf. In alternate-shot matches, the U.S. got swept 5–0 on Friday and split 2–2 on Saturday. With only narrow wins in the best-ball sessions, the U.S. had a nerve-wracking 3-point deficit going into the final day. If a few of the narrow singles wins had gone the wrong way, the U.S. would have been looking at a massive embarrassment instead of celebratory beers. (The U.S. has never lost the Presidents Cup on U.S. soil, and while the format has changed, this was the second-worst point total the U.S. has ever had in a home Presidents Cup.)

That said, team golf is fun to watch and seems like it should be used more often to draw new fans in. Someone might not know who to root for when they watch the U.S. Open, but if the U.S. has a team playing in the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup, they know what to do. Once that fan has made a connection to a player, they get invested and want to see him do well in majors and regular tournaments too. Both the PGA Tour and the LPGA should keep this in mind and try to create more international competitions. Fans seem to want team golf—the Presidents Cup doesn't get great ratings since it's usually not very competitive, but this year's early TV ratings seem to be better than usual (weekend TV ratings are not yet available). I am surprised the PGA Tour didn't seem to consider any additional international team golf competitions when planning its recent schedule overhaul.

More international team golf competitions would be great. But if U.S. golf teams can't get the right leadership in place who know how to pair the right players together against the right opponents, then more international team golf might lead to more embarrassment for Team USA.

Replay of the Week

There were plenty of wild plays and big moments in sports this week, but it's my newsletter, and this is my replay of the week (with an honorable mention to Max Scherzer).

How can you not be romantic about baseball? pic.twitter.com/SRitybOvCv

— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) September 26, 2026

(Oh yeah, he threw great and the Tigers won in a walk-off.)

That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real event of the weekend, the Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix (which, naturally, is not in Bahrain).

The post The Protect College Sports Act Passed the Senate. It Faces a Tougher Road in the House—and in the Courts. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

The Way the FDA and DEA Ban Drugs Is Unaccountable and Arbitrary

2026-09-29T15:40:48Z

Since the beginning of the war on drugs over 55 years ago, the federal government has been classifying and regulating drugs through a "scheduling" system. A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reveals just how arbitrary scheduling decisions made by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can be.

In the United States, the primary law regulating drugs is the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970. The CSA establishes five "schedules" of drugs, tiered by their "potential for abuse," their medical use potential, and their likelihood of developing "psychological or physical dependence" in users. Of the five options, Schedule I is reserved for substances that have high potential for abuse and dependence and have no medical use. Schedule I is a grab bag of drugs, ranging from highly dangerous substances (like heroin), to taboo psychedelics (like psilocybin, LSD, and DMT), to marijuana (despite broad use and acceptance).

The DEA is the agency that enforces the implementation of the Controlled Substances Act and is responsible for scheduling and rescheduling drugs. The GAO report peels back the obfuscated layers of federal bureaucracy behind the scheduling process, revealing that major scheduling decisions made by the DEA follow a mostly made-up procedure: "DEA does not have any policies or procedures regarding how its staff are to conduct evaluations or schedule substances."

Ouch. There aren't any policies?

The GAO says that when it asked DEA and FDA officials about their standard operating procedure for scheduling, they usually pointed to the CSA of 1970 or the longstanding memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two organizations. But the GAO's meddlesome investigations found that neither document provides the guidelines that officials claim to be following.

The report reads, "Based on our review of the MOU, it does not include policies and procedures specifically outlining DEA's responsibilities and procedures related to drug scheduling under the [CSA]." Officials then tried pointing to the CSA itself, claiming it included "clear and strict legal procedures" about scheduling.

But the GAO disagrees: "Based on our review of the [CSA], it does not provide this level of specificity (e.g., roles, responsibilities, and procedures) regarding how DEA is to carry out these responsibilities." For an organization whose sole responsibility is to "enforce controlled substances laws," you'd think officials actually know the content of the most critical of those laws.

The problem is not just localized to the DEA. Given the FDA's role in reaching scheduling decisions, the GAO also examined that agency's procedures and found a similarly troubling lack of written standards. The report found that "FDA does not have policies or procedures that…clearly define the criteria and process for determining a substance's 'potential for abuse,' including its abuse potential relative to other substances."

Without comparing abuse potential relative to other substances, drug regulators can bend the concept of abuse potential without accountability. When the DEA rejected a petition to reschedule marijuana in 2016, it cited marijuana's widespread use as evidence of its potential for abuse, without providing quantitative measures of addictiveness relative to other substances. A 2011 study found that 8.9 percent of marijuana users developed a dependence disorder—a low figure when compared to 67.5 percent of nicotine users, 22.7 percent of alcohol users, or 20.9 percent of cocaine users. Cocaine is a Schedule II drug, while nicotine and alcohol are federally legal (with some regulations).

DEA officials told the GAO that they made all scheduling decisions with heavy consultation from medical experts, all of whom hold advanced degrees. It seems unlikely that the DEA and FDA—agencies with thousands of staff members and billions in annual budgets—are just winging every assessment, but who is to say whether the "professional judgment" of drug regulators is right or wrong, if there is no procedure to check it against?

Accurate scheduling is very important, as lower schedules apply stricter regulatory barriers for research. Many drugs currently banned under the CSA have shown potential for use in experimental psychology but have to go through lengthy approval processes before they can be used in tests. Reason's Jacob Sullum has written how the federal ban on MDMA has prevented labs from finalizing experimental PTSD treatment.

Thankfully, the past 10 years have seen slow but positive movement toward the federal rescheduling and legalization of some drugs, especially marijuana. In 2022, the Biden administration launched an inquiry seeking to reschedule marijuana, a policy which has been continued by the Trump administration. In April, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order that formally moved state-approved medical marijuana products from Schedule I to Schedule III. This is not legalization; marijuana is still federally banned. But it is a step in the right direction.

The federal government's blanket hostility to drug use has failed. For decades, federal drug policies have driven a nationwide system of prohibition that has led to over-policing and mass incarceration, without reducing overdose deaths. If the federal government is going to decide what people can and can't put in their bodies, it must do so with clarity and accountability.

The post The Way the FDA and DEA Ban Drugs Is Unaccountable and Arbitrary appeared first on Reason Magazine.

The Rise of the Non-Celebrity Celebrity

2026-09-29T15:21:58Z

I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody Is a Celebrity, by Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber, Crown, 256 pages, $33

In the spring of 2025, I started seeing fan-made videos of the same young man everywhere on TikTok. Some were photo slideshows; others were ersatz music videos. They were set to all manner of obnoxious earworms, with captions like "He ascended…." One particularly memorable one compared the kid to Jesus Christ, claiming people "hated him" because he "spoke the truth."

I couldn't quite figure out who this person was. He wasn't an actor, he wasn't a singer, he wasn't a podcaster, and he wasn't an influencer either. He was just…some guy? From what I could gather, an attractive forum moderator who posted selfies to an audience of—at least on TikTok—under 20,000. These days, for a follower count to really mean something, you're usually talking about numbers in the high hundreds of thousands or millions. And still, this guy had a pretty active fanbase.

So I reached out to the star of these edits and asked him if he would be down to do an interview. "Ok sure we can do it," he direct-messaged me back. I pitched the article to a publication; the editor asked me what the story was. I actually didn't know. That more people than ever seem capable of developing a cult following is an interesting observation, but it isn't a story.

Many people online exist in this gray area where they are neither "influencers" nor really celebrities either. They're just people with a following—a fandom, even. But there isn't always a product they're selling, like music, writing, or a podcast. It's the internet equivalent of "famous for being famous." Sometimes the aura develops into something more, and sometimes it doesn't.

Anyway, the interview never happened. I got busy, forgot, and moved on. A few months later, right before Thanksgiving, I started seeing this guy everywhere again. His name was Braden Peters, but you might know him as Clavicular. And today, even my mom knows who he is.

This seems like territory for Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber, hosts of the celebrity gossip podcast Who? Weekly and authors of I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody Is a Celebrity.

I Want to Be Famous revolves around a binary the authors invented: Who vs. Them. The definition is simple. A Who elicits a "Who?" and a Them, "Oh, them." Beyoncé is a Them. Taylor Swift is a Them. Rita Ora, a recurring fascination for Finger and Weber, and patron saint of the show, is the paradigmatic Who, simultaneously headline-making and utterly forgettable. The Who-Them binary isn't a value judgment. It's just one of the cardinal rules of fame.

When it comes to the sometimes bewildering world of traditional celebrity—people who are on television, in movies, or making music—this is one of the best books on the topic I've ever read. It's a genuinely laugh-out-loud funny romp through gossip columns, grocery-store tabloids, reality television, sponsored content, nepo babies, and Notes app apologies. We take fascinating detours through Beyoncé's career (including back when she gave real interviews), the genesis of The View, and Tyra Banks, the ultimate multihyphenate, who since the COVID-19 pandemic has gone on to sell "hot ice cream." Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez, and Britney Spears all get their due, as does Courtney Love. We learn about celebrity romances and Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop, and how Ryan Reynolds went from Two Guys and a Girl to Mint Mobile and Aviation American Gin.

This is also a book you can learn a lot from. The historical interludes woven through each chapter are especially good. An account of Ivy Lee's response to a 1906 railroad disaster takes us back to the origins of publicity. A history of gossip columns reminds us that writers as renowned as Truman Capote have practiced the craft. They contextualize President Donald Trump too: The Apprentice turned a New York celebrity into "an embodiment of the American Dream," attracting viewers who believed that getting in front of the cameras might make them rich as well; and finally, it turned him into the president.

But as much fun as I had reading I Want to Be Famous, there was something conspicuously missing: how the internet changed the nature of celebrity not just for celebrities as we understand them but for regular people. We're not just living in a time where everybody and nobody is famous; we're living in a time where it's increasingly unclear who counts as a public figure and who counts as a private citizen.

The book's Whos and Thems belong to a recognizable celebrity world, even when the individual celebrities aren't recognizable. The authors explain how people have made the jump from reality television to network television, but they pay less attention to how some people acquire such an audience without first passing through an institution. Influencers, streamers, and people who are simply very committed to posting online complicate the authors' description of celebrity. And while Finger and Weber acknowledge that fame is increasingly fragmented, I was left wondering how we got from Kim Kardashian to Clavicular.

"Whos might exist in the best position on the spectrum that goes from NO ONE CARES to EVERYONE CARES," Finger and Weber write. The Whos have fans, but they also retain some room to maneuver. "When Whos want attention, they're usually able to grab it." That might have been true a decade ago, but is it still true now?

There are people who are by no means famous but still have hordes of people who follow their every move online, treating them the same way Perez Hilton treated OC star Mischa Barton so many years ago. Then there are people like Navy vet Bella Poarch, who made the jump from "makes faces on TikTok to an audience of millions" to pop star—or better yet, Charli D'Amelio, who turned TikTok dances into a Hulu show. I don't think this is just an update to reality TV stars who somehow transformed an appearance on Road Rules or Survivor into a full-blown career. The question isn't just whether Whos can grab attention when they want it, but how attention turns someone into a Who in the first place. Even Ken Bone, the undecided voter from a 2016 presidential debate, can make money on Cameo, a site that sells personalized videos by "celebrities." Are memes Whos? And what does it mean to be a "has-been" or "washed" in this environment? What, if anything, are we to make of "The Costco Guys"?

Every time I cringe at one of the—how should I put this?—"validation junkies" I know, I end up finding out that they're not just niche famous; they're famous-famous, and now they're going to New York Fashion Week, hanging out with, I don't know, Julia Fox, and making twice as much money as me and my husband combined by streaming their dog barking in a spacious Miami apartment or something. To be clear, I'm not talking about people who don't give up on their cult podcast, music career, or writing. I'm talking about people who have an unbridled lust for attention, who were born believing they should be famous for nothing in particular and then grab life by the balls and get it. Maybe this was possible in another time; it's never been more attainable now. The reason is in the book's subtitle: Everybody and nobody is a celebrity. The exact mechanisms are still opaque.

Even if that's an exaggeration, being thirsty for fame pays dividends. Look at Trisha Paytas, the personality who ping-ponged from reality TV appearance to reality TV appearance, viral moment to viral moment, until finally becoming a celebrity in her own right. If you want an audience badly enough, in this world, you do eventually get one.

The desire for fame is eternal in a way that conventional celebrity is not. The desire to be known persists even as the meaning of being known becomes less and less discernable. The book doesn't quite explain why that desire is so durable, or what new world we're entering as the old routes to celebrity become less essential. It still works as an extremely readable history of old-school celebrity.

I Want to Be Famous left me entertained, better informed, and still curious about the same thing that puzzled me when Clavicular first crossed my TikTok "for you" page: What makes someone with an audience—indeed, a fandom—a person the rest of us are expected to recognize? Looking back, maybe there was a story there all along. Clavicular's fans had already decided he was famous. The rest of us just hadn't caught up.

The post The Rise of the Non-Celebrity Celebrity appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Painting Graffiti on African Burial Ground National Monument Isn't Protected Speech or Religious Practice

2026-09-29T15:33:58Z

The case is U.S. v. Palacio, decided last week by Judge Vernon Broderick (S.D.N.Y.); for what appears to be a video put up by Palacio, see this Instagram reel. First, the facts, as alleged by the government:

On September 20, 2024, Defendant Roberto Palacio … was charged with destruction of government property, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1361. …

The African Burial Ground National Monument … sits on a portion of what was the nation's earliest and largest African American cemetery, which was established in or around 1673. Because African Americans were prohibited from being buried in churchyards within New York City at the time, the cemetery was located outside of the then-boundaries of the city. Approximately 15,000 to 20,000 men, women, and children were buried in the cemetery. In the early 1990s, during the excavation of what would become the Ted Weiss Federal Building, 419 human remains were uncovered at the location of a portion of the cemetery. In or around 2003, these remains were reinterred on the preserved portion of the cemetery on Duane Street near Foley Square. The Monument features a granite prism that is surrounded by a circle of the diaspora, which contains 22 Adinkra symbols, each representing different African peoples and cultures. Next to these symbols, there are seven burial mounds, which contain the 419 bodies previously discovered at the cemetery.

Defendant, who is 38 years-old, has been an artist for most of his adult life and is inspired by artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat. The graffiti included words, phrases, and symbols such as "Palacio," "REINCARNATION," Olympic rings, and "The Second Art Showing: Coming TIFF TIFF," which indicated how the audience could further engage with his art show. Moreover, it also included a large crown painted in the center of the circle of the diaspora and pink paint on the Adinkra symbols. Later that same day, Palacio made a public Instagram post (the "Post") that showed the digital rendering of a pink light beam emanating from the Monument. The Post announced the opening of an "art show" running from August 12 "until they take it down" and urged people to "go check it out." The Post also described details of graffiti, including the large blue crown and the pink paint on the Adinkra symbols. Palacio added: "This was done, illegally. I Will be turning myself in, shortly."…

Palacio admitted that on August 13, 2024, he committed an "expression of art" by vandalizing the Monument. Additionally, Palacio admitted that while he had originally planned to turn himself in soon after he committed the vandalism, he later decided to wait until September 10, 2024, because there were several art exhibits happening on that day. The cost to restore the Monument totaled "thousands of dollars." …

The court concluded that the government had adequately alleged an "injury" to federal property:

Under 18 U.S.C. § 1361, it is unlawful to "willfully injure[ ] or commit[ ] any depredation against any property of the United States, or of any department or agency thereof." … I find that at this stage, the Government pleads enough facts to show that Palacio's graffiti on the Monument constitutes "injury" to the Monument. His graffiti caused the Monument to temporarily close to visitors and required over $1,000 to clean up, "reduc[ing] [its] value or usefulness" and "impair[ing] [ ] the use of property."

The court rejected Palacio's free speech claim:

The First Amendment "affords protection to symbolic or expressive conduct." The parties presumably agree that Palacio's conduct, which includes artistic expression, falls within the ambit of the First Amendment.

However, "when speech and nonspeech elements are combined in the same course of conduct, a sufficiently important governmental interest in regulating the nonspeech element can justify incidental limitations on First Amendment freedoms." … Here, § 1361 on its face and as applied to Palacio is indisputably content neutral. The statute simply prohibits willful injury or depredation against any property of the United States, "without reference to the message the speaker wishes to convey." Nor is there any evidence that the Government is specifically prosecuting Palacio because of the messages he graffitied on the property…. [T]he government has "a weighty, essentially esthetic interest in proscribing intrusive and unpleasant formats for expression." … [And t]he statute's prohibition against injury or depredation to the Monument is also "narrowly tailored to advance this interest, curtailing no more speech than is necessary to accomplish its purpose of protecting the property and advancing esthetic values."

Indeed, "[n]o one has a First Amendment right to deface government property." … Even if "the defacement at issue is temporary and can be cured … [t]he government can proscribe even temporary blight." …

And the court rejected his Religious Freedom Restoration Act claim:

Defendant argues that … his actions were "motivated by sincerely held spiritual beliefs concerning the process of self-coronation, which relies on ancestral connection uniquely found at the Monument." Thus, Palacio argues that the Government's prosecution of this conduct substantially burdens his exercise of religion and "exerts extraordinary pressure on an individual to refrain from engaging in conduct he believes to be spiritually significant."

RFRA provides that the "[g]overnment shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability," unless the government "demonstrates that [the] application of the burden to the person" is "the least restrictive means of furthering" a "compelling governmental interest." "To establish a prima facie RFRA violation, the plaintiffs must demonstrate that they sought to engage in the exercise of religion and that [the Government] substantially burdened that exercise." The "exercise of religion" is defined broadly as "any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief." … "… [T]o show that an individual's beliefs are part of his exercise of religion, the individual need only demonstrate that the beliefs professed are sincerely held and in the individual's own scheme of things, religious." …

Here, Palacio fails to establish a prima facie case under RFRA. Even assuming that his sincerely held religious beliefs require him to engage in the process of "self-coronation" at the Monument, he does not properly establish that the Government's prosecution prohibiting him from graffitiing the monument "substantially burden[s]" that belief. RFRA's "substantial burden" test "requires an objective inquiry into the extent of the governmental pressure on the plaintiff's exercise of religion." "A substantial burden exists where the state puts substantial pressure on an adherent to modify his behavior and to violate his beliefs." In other words, "substantial burden on religious exercise exists when an individual is required to choose between following the precepts of her religion and forfeiting benefits, on the one hand, and abandoning one of the precepts of her religion on the other hand."

Palacio neither explains why "self-coronation" and this particular form of religious expression can only be accomplished through illegal defacement of property rather than through other forms of art and expression, nor does he contend that the Monument is the only site where he can practice these spiritual expressions. Indeed, Defendant simply makes the conclusory statement that a criminal prosecution is a "substantial burden on his exercise of religion" without anything more. This mere parroting of the language of the statute does not warrant dismissal.

Moreover, "[t]he availability of alternative means of fulfilling religious obligations … cautions against the finding of a substantial burden." See also Henderson v. Kennedy (D.C. Cir. 2001) (ban on T-shirt sales on the National Mall does not substantially burden religious groups who sought to sell religiously themed T-shirts because they could sell T-shirts elsewhere). Although Palacio contends that self-coronation relies on an "ancestral connection uniquely found at the Monument," he also acknowledges that "self-coronation" can occur at places "where he [feels] a profound connection to his ancestors and their history." This could presumably occur at many other locations other than the Monument. Palacio also provides no information concerning why the only way to express "self-coronation" was through graffiti, rather than a lawful method of expression, at the Monument….

Getzel Berger represents the federal government.

The post Painting Graffiti on African Burial Ground National Monument Isn't Protected Speech or Religious Practice appeared first on Reason Magazine.

The Turnout Race

2026-09-29T13:35:09Z

So far, Democrats are turning out way more than Republicans in contested statewide primaries across the country.

During midterms in President Donald Trump's first term, Democrats turned out with energy and enthusiasm and flipped 42 House seats to win the majority. It's possible we're now gearing up for a repeat, if the primaries are any indication.

"This primary season, perhaps the starkest example of Democratic enthusiasm came in Texas, a state Mr. Trump carried by 14 percentage points two years ago. Both parties had hard-fought and expensive Senate primary campaigns there this year," reports The New York Times. "About 150,000 more people voted in the Democratic primary between James Talarico, the victor, and Representative Jasmine Crockett than in the Republican contest between Senator John Cornyn and the state's attorney general, Ken Paxton, who would go on to win in a runoff."

This is a marked change from 2022, "when there were 900,000 more votes in the state's Republican primaries for state offices than in its Democratic contests," adds the Times. "Even in 2018, during the last Democratic wave election, 500,000 more people voted in the Republican Senate primary than in the Democratic one."

It's looking like this year might be extremely good for Democratic voter turnout, if the Times' projections are any indication: "Compare 2022 to 2026: Twenty-two states held contested primary elections in both parties for governor or Senate. Democratic turnout increased in three-quarters of those states this year over four years ago, while dropping in two-thirds of those states for Republicans."

What can Alaska teach us? "Ten years ago, the changing geography of blue-collar jobs reshaped American politics. As the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, automation, and expanding global trade swept across the former industrial heartland, voters—male voters especially—spurned establishment figures for candidates they saw as more attuned to their concerns," writes Jordan McGillis for City Journal. Now, "both parties have made reviving manufacturing central to their economic agendas. Yet in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, fewer manufacturing jobs exist today than when Trump rode down the escalator in June 2015."

So where have the manufacturing jobs gone? Mostly overseas. But, McGillis argues, Alaska is replete with blue-collar work. Maybe not in manufacturing, but jobs that require no college degree and provide stability and solid wages:

My analysis of Census data finds that more than 40 percent of civilian, prime-age, noncollege Alaska men employed in blue-collar occupations earn at least $75,000. More strikingly, 9.4 percent of Alaska's civilian, prime-age, noncollege men work a blue-collar job and earn at least $100,000, compared with 3.6 percent nationally, ranking Alaska first in the country. Among those in such occupations more than one in four earns six figures.

What explains those returns? Alaska's abundant natural resources play a major role. Median earned income for oil-and-gas drilling workers is an astonishing $191,500, while mining operators earn $134,000, compared with the national median for blue-collar workers of $48,400. Resource extraction, like manufacturing, belongs to the tradeable sector: production occurs locally, but the output gets sold into global markets.

Those workers represent only a small blue-collar elite, however. Far more Alaskans work in transportation, construction, and equipment maintenance, and many of these occupations also command substantial premiums, particularly when tied to the resource economy.

In other words, Alaska's success will be hard to replicate elsewhere, "but the state does demonstrate that extraordinary opportunities remain available to workers without four-year degrees," argues McGillis. The whole piece is worth a read.

Scenes from New York: "Some New York City police officers used Flock Safety, a system of automated license-plate readers that has been criticized as an invasion of privacy, to run searches even though the Police Department did not have a contract to do so," reports The New York Times. "At least two dozen officers made more than 1,700 searches in Flock's nationwide database between March 2023 and December 2025, according to an analysis of public data by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and LatinoJustice, a national civil rights organization. Those figures were confirmed by a New York Times analysis. The Police Department confirmed that a 'handful' of officers used the technology during the period cited in the report. The department never had a contract with Flock, but the officers used the technology in an ad hoc manner, the police said in a statement."

Basically, representatives from Flock offered the NYPD a free trial, and the officers say they used it for cars they suspected were stolen or involved in hit-and-runs. Flock Safety "has 120,000 cameras across the country that alert law enforcement agencies whenever the cameras spot cars wanted in a crime or of interest to police," adds the Times. "It allows police officers to search through its system even if the police agencies do not own the company's cameras."

QUICK HITS

"SpaceX's massive Starship rocket reached orbit for the first time on Monday morning, achieving a milestone for the program even though the company cut the mission short after an earlier engine failure," reports Bloomberg. "Starship took off at 7:49 a.m. local time out of the Starbase launch facility in South Texas. The rocket was carrying 26 of the company's upgraded Starlink satellites, which the vehicle successfully placed in orbit to join the existing internet-from-space network."
"Until 1975, half of Americans said they entertained guests at their home every month," writes Derek Thompson. "But then something changed. Americans stopped throwing parties. Even more fundamentally, they stopped visiting each other. Between 1975 and 1998, the share of Americans who gave or attended a monthly dinner party declined by half. The share of Americans saying they never entertained people at home tripled." I'm a big dinner party appreciator (and host) and can't recommend them enough:

Dinner parties require work and risk (what if it all goes terribly and you embarrass yourself and dinner's awful?) but they allow for intimacy: You learn something new about people when you glimpse their home life, and home reveals things that don't meet the eye when one has… https://t.co/MJpvKL6fP3

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) September 29, 2026

"Iran insisted on Sunday that only diplomacy can solve its conflict with the United States and Israel, after US President Donald Trump said he rejected an Iranian proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end fighting," reports Reuters. "Iran announced a peace proposal last week at the UN General Assembly in New York, saying it had been transmitted to the Americans via Qatari mediators. Trump said on Saturday he rejected the plan, and argued that desperation was driving the Iranians' push for an agreement on the key waterway."
"Grade inflation isn't a new trend; as NAEP's survey makes clear, it's been on a steady march from the 1980s to the present," writes Kelsey Piper for The Argument. "It has many drivers, including the fact that teachers are counseled for equity reasons not to give a student a zero for an assignment they didn't complete. But in surveys, teachers report that the most common sources of pressure to change grades are students and parents."

The post The Turnout Race appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Problems with the New US Civil Rights Commission Report on Campus Antisemitism, Part I

2026-09-29T13:33:32Z

Yesterday, the US Civil Rights Commission, composed of four Republican and four Democratic appointees, with a Democratic Chair and Vice-Chair, issued a unanimous report on antisemitism on university campuses.

I find much of the legal analysis wanting, to say the least. I will have at least a few posts explaining why, starting with this one.

The Commission's Report argues that Title VI hostile environment law only reaches hostile environment discrimination when the underlying actors accused of creating the hostile environment did so with intent to discriminate against the group claiming discrimination. (The Commission alternatively describes this as antisemitic "intent," "motivation" or "animus.")

In other words, Jewish students can't bring a hostile environment claim against Harvard University unless the Harvard students who allegedly created the hostile environment did so with antisemitic intent, regardless of how the defendant, Harvard itself, reacted.

On pages 64-69, he Report cites various legal arguments, and precedents including the First Circuit's horrible opinion in Stand With Us v. MIT, for its position, but this argument has to be wrong.

Consider the following hypothetical. Harvard deploys an AI system to send out email announcements to students, which come from an address "HarvardAI@Harvard.edu." Students are required to read these announcements, which provide notices about exam dates, new or revised academic policies, required student orientations and trainings, and other necessary information.

Unfortunately, the AI system goes rogue, and in addition to sending out mundane announcements, it also figures out which students belong to the Black Students Association, and starts sending them, along with the standard emails, regular emails with mundane titles like "New Dorm Security Rules" but containing text that contains vile, personalized racist invective.

Black students, individually and collectively, complain to the Harvard administration about these emails, explaining that they are taking a severe emotional toll on them and interfering with their ability to pursue their education. The administration responds that its budget for the AI system has already been spent, so there is nothing it can do to fix the problem until at least the next fiscal year.

The students file a Title VI complaint against Harvard. The Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights dismisses the complaint, explaining that Title VI only applies where there is discriminatory animus, and AI, not being human, can't have animus, and further that the students have not alleged that anyone who worked on the AI system intended for the system to send hateful emails to black students.

I can't imagine this is the right legal answer, or that anyone, including the Civil Rights Commissioners, would think it is.

And that's because no one is suing the AI system for discrimination, they are suing the university for its indifference to the hostile environment the AI system created. The "intent" that matters is the university's deliberate indifference to the hostile environment.

Analogously, it doesn't matter if "antizionist" students are motivated by hostility to Jews, or whether the antizionist movement is, as some argue, inherently antisemitic, because these students are not the defendants.

What matters instead is this: once Jewish students have shown that the antizionist students created a hostile environment for them, intentionally or not, that meets the (stringent) legal standard for when a hostile environment exists, did the actual defendant, the university, fulfill its legal obligation to combat that environment?

The post Problems with the New US Civil Rights Commission Report on Campus Antisemitism, Part I appeared first on Reason Magazine.