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Today in Supreme Court History: July 20, 1990

2026-07-20T09:29:27.696-04:00

By Josh Blackman - July 20, 2026 at 07:00AM

7/20/1990: Justice William Brennan resigns.

Justice William Brennan

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Brickbat: Friends Helping Friends

2026-07-20T07:29:32.740-04:00

By Charles Oliver - July 20, 2026 at 04:00AM

A federal judge in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, sentenced police officer Jaron Taylor to three years of probation and $38,670 in restitution for his part in an auto insurance fraud scheme. Prosecutors said Taylor worked with other officers to file false insurance claims for stolen or damaged vehicles. They helped each other by writing fake police reports, staging vehicle thefts, and using their positions as police officers to make the fraudulent claims appear legitimate so they could collect insurance payouts and avoid paying loans on vehicles worth less than they owed.

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Open Thread

2026-07-20T05:29:41.869-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - July 20, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Today in Supreme Court History: July 19, 1949

2026-07-19T09:29:28.661-04:00

By Josh Blackman - July 19, 2026 at 07:00AM

7/19/1949: Justice Frank Murphy dies.

Justice Frank Murphy

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Open Thread

2026-07-19T06:29:24.106-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - July 19, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Is The Hawaii Supreme Court's "Aloha Spirit" Consistent With A Republican Form Of Government?

2026-07-19T03:29:32.951-04:00

By Josh Blackman - July 19, 2026 at 12:13AM

Hawaii was admitted as the 50th state in 1959. The experience of the Hawaiian people was very, very different from the experience of the people in the other 49 states. The United States of America was established by overthrowing a monarch in 1776. Hawaii remained under the control of a monarch until 1893. During the Nineteenth Century, as the American states and territories lived with a right to keep and bear arms, Hawaii had no such protection. Justice Jackson recounts this history in her Wolford dissent:

Since its time as a sovereign kingdom, Hawaii has never permitted the widespread carrying of firearms in its territory. In 1833, King Kamehameha III of the Kingdom of Hawaii prohibited the possession of "dangerous weapon[s]." Translation of the Constitution and Laws of the Hawaiian Islands, Established in the Reign of Kamehameha III 163 (1842) (reprint 1934) (targeting possession of any "knife, sword-cane, or any other dangerous weapon"). Hawaii maintained this tradition of strictly regulating weapons both before and after it was annexed as a U. S. territory in 1898.

There was an extended discussion of whether Justice Jackson should have relied on racist Jim Crow laws, but the citation to Hawaiian monarchical laws is even more problematic. Why is it relevant that a King imposed a prohibition on carrying arms. King George III, and General Thomas Gage, imposed prohibitions on arms in the Massachusetts Bay colony. That violation of rights triggered the Revolutionary War, and inspired the Second Amendment. There is no reason to cite King Kamehameha's laws as a means to interpret the Second Amendment.

The Hawaii Supreme Court has stated that it interprets the federal Constitution based on the unique legal history of the state. Justice Eddins of the Hawaii Supreme Court wrote in State v. Wilson that the "Aloha Spirit" should inspire how his court reads the federal Constitution:

In Hawai'i, the Aloha Spirit inspires constitutional interpretation. See Sunoco, 153 Hawai'i at 363, 537 P.3d at 1210 (Eddins, J., concurring). When this court exercises "power on behalf of the people and in fulfillment of [our] responsibilities, obligations, and service to the people" we "may contemplate and reside with the life force and give consideration to the 'Aloha Spirit.'" The spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons during day-to-day activities. The history of the Hawaiian Islands does not include a society where armed people move about the community to possibly combat the deadly aims of others. See Haw. Const. art. IX, § 10 ("The law of the splintered paddle … shall be a unique and living symbol of the State's concern for public safety.").

The Supreme Court rightly rejected Justice Eddins's reading of the Constitution:

As the plurality explained in McDonald, the Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States. 561 U.S. at 784–785, 130 S.Ct. 3020. It cannot give way to "the spirit of Aloha" in Hawaii, any more than it can yield to the spirit of the Big Apple (Bruen) or the Windy City (McDonald). It applies in the same way to our 50th State (where about 8% of adults possess guns) and our 49th State (where the figure is roughly 59%).Merely local attitudes can neither shrink nor inflate the meaning of fundamental Bill of Rights guarantees that apply to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.

The "Aloha Spirit," whatever that is, developed from a very different legal, political, and social set of circumstances than the states on the mainland. Can a state supreme court justice, who takes an oath to the federal Constitution, base his decisions on a "spirit" that is inconsistent with the American history and tradition? Stated more bluntly, is the Hawaii Supreme Court's "Aloha Spirit" consistent with a Republican form of government? Could a justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court cite General Gage's seizure of firearms to support the Commonwealth's strict gun control laws? Is there a "Red Sox Spirit"?

Still, I think the problem goes even deeper. Justice Eddins seems to be saying that the Hawaiian legal system is alien from the legal system that developed on the mainland. I don't think Justice Eddins (or his chatbot) has fully thought through the implications of that position. Indeed, there is a relevant Supreme Court case from 1901 about another territory:

If those possessions are inhabited by alien races, differing from us in religion, customs, laws, methods of taxation, and modes of thought, the administration of government and justice according to Anglo-Saxon principles may for a time be impossible, and the question at once arises whether large concessions ought not to be made for a time, that ultimately our own theories may be carried out and the blessings of a free government under the Constitution extended to them. We decline to hold that there is anything in the Constitution to forbid such action.

Of course, this passage comes from Downes v. Bidwell, one of the Insular Cases.

The Hawaii Supreme Court argued the 50th state's history was inconsistent with the Second Amendment. Perhaps the Constitution is inconsistent with the "Aloha Spirit."

As states and their courts continue to go off the deep end, we need to give more thought to the Guarantee Clause. One question that has been on my mind: would a state that adopts an expressly socialist system of government be consistent with a Republican form of government?

The Supreme Court ducked the "invasion" issue in Barbara, but the justiciability of these sorts of questions are not going anywhere.

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Labor Unions Hate Robots—and It's Stopping Democrats From Delivering on Affordability

2026-07-18T09:29:38.528-04:00

By Peter Suderman - July 18, 2026 at 06:00AM

Democrats have a union problem. They have tied their political fortunes to unions, public and private, in ways that exacerbate intraparty conflict while stymieing both progressive and moderate goals. That's not just a problem for the party. Democratic deference to unions creates economic hurdles for much of the country—almost everyone who isn't in a union, and even some people who are—because today's unions function as roadblocks to the future.

To understand the party's problem, consider that the two most powerful words in Democratic politics in 2026 are abundance and affordability. Both represent rival party factions.

The abundance faction is a predominantly young, educated, and urban cohort of policy wonks, journalists, and activists who generally believe that the Democratic Party has overemphasized identity politics while moving too far to the left on economics, particularly when it comes to urban governance and housing policy. They tend to favor technological progress and measurable gains in efficiency. One of the movement's core insights is that Democrats, who essentially have uniparty control of America's biggest, most important cities, need to deliver better governance and a better standard of living for their constituents—and that to do this they must embrace deregulation, private business, market mechanisms, and high-quality policy analysis.

That starts with housing, which has been overregulated to the point of strangulation, resulting in shortages that have dramatically increased home prices in and around the country's most desirable cities. The core issue is one of supply and demand, and Democratic politicians have often chosen to restrict supply and subsidize demand. In the abundance view, what those cities need (and what Democrats need to deliver) is more housing, primarily via market mechanisms that allow developers to build. More supply will ease demand and lower prices.

From this insight—that markets are an efficient and necessary way to deliver more goods at lower prices—an entire theory of policy flowered. What if market mechanisms are a good way to deliver all sorts of goods beyond housing? What if markets depend on developers, entrepreneurs, and businesspeople who are often quite wealthy? What if building new things, and even new labor-saving technologies, was the path to widely shared prosperity? What if there was an entire policy agenda devoted to delivering these goods via these processes? Perhaps you could call it an abundance agenda.

The abundance advocates are not libertarians. They tend to favor some form of social welfare spending. They sometimes say they want government to be good at doing and building things, like high-speed rail. But even this is a welcome acknowledgment that, in general, government is not great at doing things. Much of the movement amounts to the reinvention of Adam Smith from observational data, the primary observation being that Democratic Party governance has been a disaster. Better late than never.

On the opposite side of the party are the affordability mongers. Yes, abundance types will sometimes use the word too, but affordability has been more associated with politicians like Zohran Mamdani, the young member of the Democratic Socialists of America who is also now the mayor of New York City. Mamdani's social media–savvy mayoral campaign helped boost affordability into political buzzword status.

Affordability is partly a response by the party's left flank to the abundance movement's market-friendly critique, and sometimes it comes with a grudging acknowledgement that the construction of new homes might require actually letting developers build some homes. But mostly it's a rhetorical dodge, a marketing gimmick that allows the socialist-curious and their fellow travelers—the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren axis—to disavow responsibility for the party's many policy mistakes while pushing further interventions into the economy.

Abundance is how you get a one-bedroom apartment that costs less than an aircraft carrier within walking distance of a cute matcha shop. Affordability is how you get subsidized daycare and city-run grocery stores.

While these two factions are at odds, they share a key premise, which is that modern life is too expensive for ordinary people, especially in American cities. One reason life is so expensive is an obstacle that neither side is well-equipped to deal with: labor unions. Democrats say they want abundance and affordability for America, but deferring to union demands will mean they can't deliver either.

Driverless Cars, Deadhead Ubers, and Expensive Groceries

Public sector labor unions are key drivers of bloated spending, low performance, and all-around inefficiency in state and local governments. Private sector labor unions have repeatedly attempted to block labor-saving technologies, create legal requirements that slow new construction, and push tax policies that would undermine innovation and entrepreneurship, specifically in the tech sector.

For the affordability faction, which favors big-government solutions and top-down control, unions are an affirmative good, a source of both high-paying working-class jobs and partisan political muscle. For the abundance faction, labor is a longstanding part of the Democratic coalition, an interest group to be criticized occasionally but ideally kept inside the tent. Some abundance-aligned writers have taken a more aggressive line against union-driven economic sclerosis, but few high-profile Democratic politicians have been willing to cross organized labor in significant ways, especially in deep-blue urban districts and states.

The party's capture by labor interests is particularly visible in debates about the role of robots and automation in the economy. Take Massachusetts, where in 2023 there were more than 134,000 car crashes, an average of more than 367 a day. Many of these are minor accidents, but some are serious, and some—too many—result in fatalities.

In 2022, more than 430 people died from traffic accidents in Massachusetts. Bay State traffic fatalities have dropped somewhat since, but vehicle accidents still kill hundreds of people in the state every year. Many fatal accidents probably would not have happened were it not for a driver under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Most years, roughly a quarter to a third of the state's auto fatalities involve an alcohol-impaired driver.

Driving has obvious public benefits for both personal transportation and shipping. It is also a risky activity. The danger comes primarily from poor human judgment: impairment, distraction, or inability to think and act quickly in an emergency situation.

Until recently, there was no way to eliminate human judgment from the act of driving. Only human beings, imperfect as we are, could operate a vehicle.

That is no longer true. Waymo, an autonomous vehicle company owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet, operates self-driving cars that are increasingly capable of navigating streets on their own. The company began limited operations in the San Francisco area in 2021; it now runs fleets of taxis in at least 10 cities, with further expansions planned. Other companies, such as Tesla, are also building self-driving cars, with varying degrees of success.

The technology isn't perfect, but it's rapidly advancing. The clearest sign of its success is in the safety data—Waymos are far, far safer on every major safety metric than human-driven vehicles. The more that people substitute robot cars for human-operated cars, the safer our roads will be.

But after Waymo began mapping Boston's streets in preparation for a service launch in the city, the local Teamsters union helped form a coalition to stop it. Saying they had concerns about autonomous vehicle safety, the Teamsters supported a city ordinance that would subject self-driving cars to expansive bureaucratic oversight. Waymo says the ordinance would effectively prohibit the company from operating in the city, calling it an "unprecedented ban on a technology." Given that the group the Teamsters joined was named Labor United Against Waymo, it's reasonable to assume that a de facto ban was, in fact, the goal.

"Driverless cars and trucks pose a serious threat to public safety, our communities, and the livelihoods of the countless dedicated men and women across the Commonwealth who work as professional drivers," Tom Mari, President of Teamsters Local 25, said in October 2025. Given Waymo's extensive and well-documented safety track record, it is hard to take the group's safety concerns seriously. They were worried about preserving jobs. And to preserve those jobs, they were willing to oppose a new technology that is demonstrably safer than human drivers.

They're not the only ones. In California's gubernatorial primary, both former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, widely viewed as a more moderate (for California) party stalwart, and Tom Steyer, a left-wing billionaire backed by the party's progressive wing, supported union positions opposing automated trucking.

"AI shouldn't put California truckers out of work to pad Big Tech's profits," Steyer posted on X. "As governor, I'll reverse the DMV's autonomous trucking rules and keep human drivers on the road." Similarly, Becerra posted that "when it comes to automation, jobs and safety come first. Trucks still need drivers."

In March, a top official for the California Federation of Labor Unions, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, posted gleefully about her expectation that Becerra would support "our position on Autonomous Vehicles" and that she appreciated "the near unanimity of Dem candidates in this issue." Here was a union leader publicly celebrating that Democrats were practically united in supporting labor's crusade against new technology. This, she wrote, was "progress." Considering the promise and potential of autonomous trucking, one might reasonably argue it was the opposite.

Waymo does not yet operate an autonomous long-haul trucking fleet. But already there are demonstrations and pilot programs, like one in Texas, that show promise in making semitrucks fully self-driving. Large trucks are involved in a disproportionate share of auto fatalities, and autonomous versions of those trucks would almost certainly be safer than the human drivers Steyer wants to keep on the road. Yes, autonomous vehicles can make mistakes. But they cannot fall asleep, drive drowsy, become distracted, or operate a vehicle under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Autonomous trucks wouldn't just be safer. They would be cheaper and more efficient, and they would help lower the cost of consumer goods, especially groceries.

Even—especially—the safest human drivers need to sleep. But an autonomous truck could operate for 24 hours a day without needing to stop for food or rest, cutting transit times dramatically. Autonomous trucks are also expected to be more fuel efficient, reducing not only the cost but the environmental impact of shipping. They could also help solve staffing problems. The American Trucking Associations claims the industry is short 60,000–80,000 drivers. There are reasons to be wary about taking that number at face value. But it's clearly true that fewer drivers (human or bot) mean more expensive transportation costs, which can be passed on to consumers. By 2035, self-driving trucks could generate $9 billion in consumer savings annually, under an optimistic scenario, according to a 2026 report conducted by the consultancy Steer and commissioned by the autonomous trucking company Aurora.

Self-driving trucks would also threaten the employment of many unionized truck drivers; a self-driving truck running a 24-hour shift might replace as many as three union jobs. That's why the Teamsters Union, which represents truckers, wants mandates that require a human driver even in trucks that are nominally driving themselves. Steyer's opposition to self-driving trucks amounts to a one-way transfer from ordinary consumers to organized labor in the form of higher prices—and a net loss for everyone in an automobile, in terms of road safety.

This pattern appears everywhere: Unions oppose robots that would otherwise deliver broad-based cost and efficiency gains to the general public.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents grocery checkers, opposes automated self-checkout systems. Those systems help prevent retail theft, and they lower grocery costs; the union's demand is effectively to make grocery prices higher.

A fall 2024 strike by dockworkers in the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) was nominally about wage disputes but was really about automation. The strike increased costs for retailers and threatened the larger economy, with J.P. Morgan estimating a likely impact of $3.8 billion to $4.5 billion per day. But despite the economic impact, then-President Joe Biden supported the union, reportedly producing research supporting the Longshoremen in negotiations and inviting shipping industry representatives to a meeting so that the White House could make the case for the union's side.

More than anything else, the union wanted a total ban on automation. "The ILA is steadfastly against any form of automation—full or semi—that replaces jobs or historical work functions," the union wrote in an unsigned October 2024 statement. They had been offered a 50 percent pay increase, but that wasn't enough. "We will not accept the loss of work and livelihood for our members due to automation. Our position is clear: the preservation of jobs and historical work functions is non-negotiable."

Even for a union communication, this was unusually blunt. But the preservation of jobs and historical work functions—which is to say, prohibitions on cost- and labor-saving technology—is a primary goal for many unions. If it had been up to a horse-and-buggy union, Americans would still be traveling by horse and buggy.

Instead of horses and buggies, today's unions merely insist on expensive Ubers that are burdened by artificial, legally enforced scarcity.

In Seattle, the city's ride-share union, which represents drivers of Uber and Lyft, pushed for a mandatory minimum wage for ride-share drivers. After the law went into effect, Seattle became the most expensive city in the country to hail an Uber, with the price of some trips increasing by 50 percent or more. As demand for ride-sharing suddenly dropped, unionized drivers ended up spending more time driving without a passenger, which is known as deadheading. In response, the union called for "a pause in onboarding new drivers until a reduction in unnecessary deadheading miles is achieved," along with "rules to maintain a balanced market where increases to driver supply don't continue outpacing trip growth."

The union's initial minimum wage advocacy hurt its own members. Rather than admit that the wage law backfired, the union chose to back restrictions on new drivers—pulling up the ladder for new workers while making ride-sharing both less affordable and less abundant for everyone.

Closed Shop

Unions often make it hard to operate nearly any kind of business, small or large. Achilles Heel, a well-regarded bar in Brooklyn, closed three days after its employees announced they had formed a union, citing financial problems, according to The New York Times. Similarly, Barboncino, a pizza shop in the borough, closed after its workers voted to unionize, citing "rising costs and diminished sales."

Unions make it more expensive and more difficult to run small businesses with low margins. They also make it difficult to own and operate large businesses.

In California, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) proposed a one-time wealth tax on billionaires in the state. Union-friendly groups estimate that it would generate about $100 billion in revenue over five years, though some policy experts say this likely dramatically overstates the effect. The tax "has the potential to completely destroy California's economy," warned the University of California, Berkeley, economist Enrico Moretti.

Residents will have the opportunity to vote on the tax later this year. If it passes, it will go into effect retroactively for the year 2025. Some billionaires have already exited the state, though not all explicitly cite the tax as the reason. Critics have warned that because the tax would hit paper wealth, such as ownership of a company that has not yet experienced a liquidity event, it could effectively force some founders to sell their companies, all but taking their businesses away from them.

California construction unions, meanwhile, have long used environmental laws—particularly 1970's California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)—to slow or stop construction, a practice known as "greenmailing." The goal of these campaigns isn't to protect the environment. It's to force costly delays and legal fees on developers in hopes of pressuring them into hiring union labor. Environmental concerns get deployed as a legally actionable, potentially expensive pretext for more nakedly self-interested union demands.

This ruse was taken nearly to the point of self-parody in May, when a union representing state attorneys and administrative law judges threatened a CEQA suit in response to a return-to-office demand. Perhaps the union actually cared about the environmental impact of their commutes; more likely, they just didn't want to go back to working at the office.

Fighting unions in drawn-out court proceedings is costly. But so is acceding to their demands. Unionized projects are more expensive to build; a 2021 RAND study found that project labor agreements, which specify (typically pro-union) hiring rules, add about 15 percent to the cost of affordable housing projects. The added expense is by design: Unions demand higher wages for the same work, which means union demands make affordable housing less affordable.

Blue State Blues

California, New York, and Massachusetts are longtime bastions of Democratic Party governance, especially in their major metro areas. They are also among the most expensive places to live in the United States, with significantly higher housing, transportation, and energy costs than red states in the Sun Belt. These are the states that need abundance, or even just something like real affordability, the most.

Yet prominent Democratic politicians in those states have been borderline obsequious to unions. In New York City, Mamdani is arguably the most pro-union New York mayor in decades, the sort of person who specifically talks about fighting inequality with "union density," which, as New Labor Forum notes, is a term more typically associated with union organizers. In 2024, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey gave a speech at the Massachusetts Building Trades Unions' annual convention, where she called herself "the proud daughter of union members" and announced the creation of a Labor Advisory Council, essentially giving unions a direct voice in state governance. A press release from her office noted that it's the state's first labor council in more than 50 years. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1228, which increased the minimum wage to $20 an hour for fast-food chains with more than 60 locations. The bill was heavily backed by unions, and Newsom held the signing ceremony at the Los Angeles offices of SEIU Local 721.

Some prominent abundance advocates have argued that Democrats need to break with unions on some issues. The writer Matt Yglesias has argued that unions would in some cases actually benefit from abundance, and thus union enthusiasts should support an abundance agenda. The Argument, a publication that often takes abundance-aligned positions, has chided blue-state politicians and activists for rejecting or slow-walking robot taxis; it also recently published an extensive piece by Nicholas Bagley and Robert Gordon on how public sector unions prioritize jobs above all else, rejecting merit and performance reviews and dragging down public services in the process. The core problem, they wrote, "is that public sector unions generally fight to minimize differences among employees, including both standouts at the top and weak links at the bottom." Their recommendation is in the title: Democrats should fire bad teachers and bad cops.

The same dynamic often plays out with private sector unions. While it's encouraging to have writers and intellectuals making the case for better policy, in practice, prominent Democratic politicians rarely stand up to union demands.

The party's most recent president, Biden, declared himself "the most pro-union president" in history. At one point he proposed what amounted to a $400 billion SEIU slush fund as part of an infrastructure bill. The proposal, which did not pass, would have funded home health workers; in order for states to get the money, they would have had to allow the federal government to dictate wages and let home health workers unionize.

Some moderate Democrats, such as Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, have broken with unions on key issues, such as collective bargaining laws. But most rising Democratic stars, especially those hailing from deep blue territories, appear deferential.

Newsom looks to be gearing up for a presidential run. Mamdani is the great young hope for the Democratic Party's progressives and socialists. Both have pushed policies intended to streamline the construction of new housing. These are concessions to the abundance crowd. At the margins, they might even have a positive impact on the housing market.

Yet it's hard to imagine a Democratic Party that is willing to push back meaningfully against union demands—demands that almost always value union jobs over technologies that save time, money, and lives. Unions aren't interested in affordability, and the only abundance they want is in the form of union jobs for a select few. Until Democrats learn this, they won't achieve either goal.

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Open Thread

2026-07-18T05:29:03.469-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - July 18, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Review: Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Is Celebrating America's Semiquincentennial

2026-07-17T10:29:20.896-04:00

By Ronald Bailey - July 17, 2026 at 06:00AM

At Monticello, the central Virginia home of Thomas Jefferson, the phrase Our Guy Wrote It is emblazoned on banners and T-shirts hailing the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson's estate is also the home to "1776: Road to the Declaration," a compact new exhibition tracing the Declaration's origins.

The exhibit greets visitors with a 1795 quotation from Jefferson: "This ball of liberty, I believe most piously, is now so well in motion that it will roll around the globe." A highlight of the exhibition is the commemorative copy of the Declaration owned by Jefferson's friend, the fourth president of the United States, James Madison. There is also a handy timeline intertwining significant events in Jefferson's life with the history of America.

Since 1776, the Declaration's bold claim that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "unalienable Rights" to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" has inspired countless subsequent struggles for freedom. That ball launched two and a half centuries ago by Jefferson's Declaration keeps battering tyrannies across the globe today.

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Brickbat: Unlicensed Search

2026-07-17T08:29:29.351-04:00

By Charles Oliver - July 17, 2026 at 04:00AM

In Albany, Georgia, five police officers were fired after an internal audit found they had used the department's Flock license plate reader system for personal reasons. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation also arrested all five former officers on charges of misuse of license plate data and violation of oath of office. The Albany Police Department said it will strengthen oversight and training to prevent similar incidents in the future.

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Open Thread

2026-07-17T04:29:05.389-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - July 17, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Why Foreign Tourism to the U.S. Is Declining Under Trump

2026-07-16T09:29:14.681-04:00

By Eric Boehm - July 16, 2026 at 06:00AM

America is celebrating its 250th birthday and hosting the world's biggest sporting event this year. But these days, we are welcoming fewer guests to the party.

Foreign tourism to the United States has slumped since President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025. The administration's eagerness to raise barriers to people entering the country—even when they just want to come here temporarily to spend some money and then go home—is one likely reason why. That, in turn, is contributing to growing anti-American sentiment among travelers who might have otherwise vacationed in the United States.

That latter issue seems to be particularly salient for would-be travelers from America's northern neighbor. Canadian government data show a 25 percent decline in trips across the border into America in 2024 and 2025. The actual decrease might be even bigger. In May, the University of Toronto School of Cities published a report, based on cellphone data, that found Canadians made 42 percent fewer trips to the U.S. last year than they did in 2024.

Declining travel is a material indicator of a dynamic that pollsters have identified: Canadians are pretty miffed right now. A February Politico poll found that most Canadians believe America is not a "reliable ally" at the moment. Nearly 80 percent of Canadians said Trump's presidency had weakened the relationship between the two countries.

It is hard to blame them, considering that Trump rolled into office last year and immediately began making threats to annex Canada as America's "51st state." If your neighbor was talking loudly about stealing your land, you probably wouldn't go to poker night at his place.

It's not just the Canadians who are staying away. International travel to the U.S. declined by 5.5 percent last year, according to TravelPulse, an industry newsletter. It was down another 4.3 percent in the first four months of 2026. In late 2025, Tourism Economics, a travel data forecasting company, said the United States is experiencing severe "sentiment drag."

New federal policies are unlikely to reverse that trend. Last year, the State Department imposed a new requirement that visitors from about 50 countries post a bond of up to $15,000 before being allowed to enter the United States.

The Trump administration framed that demand as an attempt at limiting the number of visitors who overstay their visas—a common source of illegal immigration. But like many policies intended to stop illegal immigration, the bond requirement imposed a conspicuous penalty on peaceful, law-abiding visitors from the affected countries. In May, the Trump administration implicitly recognized that point, saying it would lift the bond requirement for World Cup ticket holders.

In December, the administration announced plans for a new rule requiring many foreign visitors to disclose their social media accounts and histories before being allowed to enter the country. The proposed rule would apply to tourists from the 42 nations (including the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and many European countries) with access to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, which allows visa-free entry for up to 90 days.

The proposed rule drew strong rebukes from civil libertarian groups, who said it threatened the free speech and association rights of visitors (as well as American citizens who may have interacted with them). In a World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) survey, 34 percent of respondents said the proposed rule made them less likely to travel to the United States in the coming years.

You may not care if a bunch of loony Canucks or effete Europeans don't like America. But those foreign tourists support millions of American jobs in the hospitality industry, generating trillions of dollars in economic output each year. When foreigners stop showing up, it means less work, smaller earnings, and fewer tips.

"International visitation has been an issue, not only for Las Vegas, but a lot of destinations," Bill Hornbuckle, president and CEO of MGM Resorts, told investors during an August 2025 earnings call. Data from the rest of the year backed up his concerns. Spending by international visitors in the U.S. fell by 4.6 percent in 2025 relative to the year before, according to the WTTC.

That happened even though 2025 was a record year for travel worldwide. The WTTC says 80 million more people traveled across national borders last year compared to 2024, despite a 5.5 percent decline in travel to America.

The implications are clear. On a planet that is getting wealthier by the day, travelers are increasingly choosing to spend their leisure time and money elsewhere.

The United States has a lot to offer foreign visitors—Disney World, the Grand Canyon, Broadway. But perception is reality, and the perception of America is not good right now. When overstaying your visa can earn you a one-way, no-due-process-granted trip to a Central American prison, it's not hard to figure out why many travelers are choosing to stay away.

Successful, prosperous societies are the ones that attract more people—both as immigrants and as tourists. Regardless of why it is happening, the decline in foreign visitors is another worrying sign that the Trump administration is cutting the ties that connect America to the rest of the world.

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Open Thread

2026-07-16T06:29:33.078-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - July 16, 2026 at 03:00AM

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A Texas Immigrant Detention Center Is a 'Human Rights Disaster,' Civil Rights Groups Say in Report

2026-07-16T03:29:20.179-04:00

By C.J. Ciaramella - July 16, 2026 at 01:00AM

Dozens of detainees at the country's largest immigration detention center told investigators with civil rights groups that they're subjected to beatings, medical neglect, malnutrition, and inhumane conditions.

In a joint report released today, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) say that the abuses described in interviews with 71 people being held at Camp East Montana, a privately operated immigration detention center inside the Fort Bliss Army Base near El Paso, Texas, violate national and international human rights law.

"People during our interviews described unbearable cruelty and international human rights violations," Angélica César Rosales, a fellow at Human Rights Watch and the report's author, says. "They came forward and reported life-threatening medical neglect. They told us they were forced to live in filth, that they were beaten by masked guards, and that they had, at different points in their detention, access to communication with the outside world completely cut off. In some cases, that may amount to enforce disappearance under international law."

The report is the latest in a string of human rights reports, news investigations, and internal government audits that have found rampant abuses inside Camp East Montana, which has a current capacity to hold 5,000 detainees.

Most notoriously, Camp East Montana is the site of the January 3 death of Geraldo Lunas Campos. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initially claimed that Lunas Campos had attempted to commit suicide and died during a struggle in which "guards were trying to save him." However, the El Paso Medical Examiner's Office ruled his death a homicide by asphyxiation. Several Camp East Montana detainees came forward, including in the report, alleging that guards strangled Lunas Campos to death.

Camp East Montana consists of large, soft-sided canvas tents with no windows, inside of which are cages. In the report, detainees describe squalid showers and toilets, lack of hygiene supplies, and sometimes going weeks without being let outside.

"Between August and September, I went a month without seeing the sun," one detained man said. "The guards were just not taking us outside. The people in my unit were all becoming anxious and desperate with nothing to do. I felt trapped, it was torture."

Of the 71 detained people interviewed by Human Rights Watch, 64 of them, housed across at least five different tent units, "either personally experienced beatings or witnessed the beatings of their peers by 'anti-disturbance' guards," the report said. The beatings were often in response to protests over conditions inside the camp.

"The guards run into our pod in groups of 15, sometimes it looks like 20," one interviewee said. "They are dressed in all black, wear masks that cover everything but their eyes, and don't wear name tags. When they come, they just run in, grab whoever they can and start to beat them….They are in control and can do whatever they want with us."

Several detained men described the death of Lunas Campos, who they say was strangled to death by guards. One man recalled:

Geraldo was handcuffed outside of his cell and asking for his medicine. Nurses were distributing medicine, so he said, "I need my medicine." The guards told him to shut up and to get in his cell. Geraldo refused and said he would enter once they gave him his medicine. Guards grabbed Geraldo and shoved him into the cell. They locked the door. The walls in SHU [the solitary housing unit] are very thin; I could hear everything. It sounded like guards were hitting Geraldo, like his body was being punched and slammed. Geraldo screamed for help. He said, "I can't breathe!" many times. They continued to beat him. He said, "You are suffocating me." Everything went silent.

César Rosales says that one of the interviews that stuck with her was with a 66-year-old Cuban man who had been living in Florida for more than 40 years prior to being detained. The man was also a cancer survivor, and he'd gone on hunger strike to protest staff's refusal to give him daily medication that he needed.

"When we met him, he'd been on a hunger strike for a couple of days," Cesar says. "And instead of responding by providing his medication and getting him the treatment that he needed, they placed him in solitary confinement and later transferred him to a different detention facility. That is one of many instances of abuse and medical neglect that we documented, but it is truly indicative of the abuse that people are facing. We also interviewed his wife, and his wife told us that she was afraid that he would not survive immigration detention."

An internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) inspection of Camp East Montana earlier this year uncovered dozens of violations of national detention standards, including failures to document use of force and medical care, and failure to respond to grievances about lack of medical care. A detainee with tuberculosis wasn't isolated; another detainee escaped.

A Government Accountability Office audit in June found that ICE wasted millions of dollars expediting the awarding of the contract and the opening of Camp East Montana. ICE terminated its contract and switched to a new private contractor in April.

In response to the internal reports and media inquiries, the DHS has said that its new contract will improve oversight of Camp East Montana. "Far from closing, Camp East Montana is upgrading," a DHS spokesperson told Reason in June.

However, César Rosales says there's been no noticeable change in what she's heard from people inside Camp East Montana.

"Conditions have consistently been abusive," César Rosales says. "People are still reporting that they are living in filth. They're experiencing life-threatening medical neglect. In some cases, they're not being given recreation in accordance with ICE and international standards. They're still having problems reaching out to attorneys, and there's really no functional law library at the facility, so there's trouble defending their own immigration cases as well. All of which to say, abuses of the facility are persisting despite the change superficial change in contractors."

The report calls for the shutdown of Camp East Montana and an end to the Trump administration's mass deportation program. Short of that, it calls for reinstating the three DHS oversight offices that were largely gutted by the Trump administration, and for revitalizing Congress' and state lawmakers' statutory authority to inspect detention centers.

Allegations of medical neglect, brutality, and lack of due process have poured out of federal immigration detention centers since the Trump administration launched its mass deportation program. Another medical examiner's report recently obtained by Reason found that an ICE detainee died of complications from a severe tooth infection.

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Lindsey Graham's Death Marks the End of an Era of Interventionist Foreign Policy

2026-07-15T09:29:39.804-04:00

By J.D. Tuccille - July 15, 2026 at 07:00AM

With the passing of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.), U.S. foreign policy may be poised for a big shift from the hawkish stance the longtime D.C. insider preferred to a more restrained one better aligned with President Donald Trump's nationalist MAGA base. Once a Trump critic, Graham became a friend and confidant to the president during both his administrations and nudged him in an internationalist direction that (mostly) avoided the hard break that many world leaders feared. But his position was out of step with an American public increasingly skeptical of military adventures.

Graham 'Believed Strongly in the NATO Alliance'

In the hours before Graham died of an aortic tear, as he began to feel unwell, the senator reportedly joked, "I can't die now. I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out and do Israeli-Saudi normalization."

Graham had just returned from meeting with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as part of his support for that country's fight against invading Russian forces, about which he briefed Trump. He'd been a strong supporter of sanctions against Russia, aid to Ukraine, support for Israel, and engagement with allies including the members of NATO.

"Deeply saddened by the news of the passing of United States Senator Lindsey Graham. Lindsey was a true defender of freedom and the values that make our world safer," commented Zelenskyy as news spread of the senator's death.

Deeply saddened by the news of the passing of United States Senator Lindsey Graham. Lindsey was a true defender of freedom and the values that make our world safer.

He visited Ukraine ten times during the years of Russia's full-scale invasion and was here with our people when it… pic.twitter.com/7oE2F5ZDAy

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 12, 2026

"So sad to learn of the sudden passing of my friend @LindseyGrahamSC," mourned NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. "He was a powerful advocate for America who believed strongly in the NATO Alliance and was actively working to bring an end to Russia's war against Ukraine."

"Lindsey understood that the security of Israel and America are inseparable," agreed Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "He devoted his life to defending America, strengthening our alliance and standing up for the free world."

As those eulogies suggest, Graham served as an advocate for an active and often war-like foreign policy on behalf of U.S. interests and those of the country's allies. Importantly, he also had the ear of Trump, a chief executive who frequently voiced skepticism of foreign involvement but noted Graham's passing by calling him "a dear friend of mine, and a truly great man, who achieved so much for our Country."

From Trump Critic to Trusted Confidant

The connection between Graham and Trump would have been inconceivable a decade ago. In 2016, with Trump closing in on the GOP nomination, Graham accused the front-runner of waging "a campaign on xenophobia, race-baiting, religious bigotry" and warned that if Trump was nominated, "the Republican Party will get killed, we'll get creamed, we'll lose, we'll deserve it."

Aside from his personal criticism of the eventual nominee and two-term president, Graham championed an aggressive and often violent foreign policy of the sort that Trump had criticized for decades. Of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq—a war that Trump opposed—Graham said at the time that it was "the only reasonable option available." Graham favored America's participation in NATO while Trump, as long ago as 1987, paid for newspaper ads arguing that U.S. allies don't cover their fair share of the cost of defense.

It would have been reasonable to expect the lawmaker from South Carolina to be on the outs with an administration that leaned toward a more go-it-alone position. Instead, a president who once predicted that then-President Barack Obama "will attack Iran in order to get re-elected" ended up waging a war against Iran of the sort favored by Graham and resuming military support for Ukraine despite very public spats with that country's leadership. Trump has also, however grudgingly, continued working with traditional U.S. allies, despite repeated flirtations with the idea of pulling the U.S. out of NATO.

The president's ongoing backing of Israel is less surprising given his long-established support for the world's only majority-Jewish country.

Graham may have modified his opinion of Donald Trump, but it was the president who bent when it came to engagement with other countries. Graham never budged from his hawkish advocacy under Trump and through the interregnum Biden administration when he worked to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Last September, in a bid to overcome congressional opposition, Politico credited Graham for a strategy of attaching Trump-supported sanctions against Russia to a spending bill intended to keep the government open.

Out of Step With the American Public

But, as the Associated Press noted after Graham's death, the senator was a believer in "the traditional Washington consensus prioritizing alliances with Europe and Israel, one falling out of favor with many in both political parties." His passing leaves that school of thought with a dwindling pool of champions at a time when the public is having second thoughts about international entanglements fueled by long, expensive, and bloody experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The latest YouGov/Economist poll, released this week, finds "a majority (57%) of Americans say going to war in Iran was the wrong decision, while only 27% say it was the right decision." That's a shift from 51 percent opposition and 30 percent support in April.

Internal NATO polling reported by Politico shows that "just 43 percent of U.S. adults responded positively when asked whether NATO would follow through with its pledge to assist their home country if attacked" – a sharp drop from previous numbers.

Likewise, support for military aid to both Israel and Ukraine has declined as those wars drag on.

Waiting in the wings as the heir apparent to the nationalist MAGA movement is Vice President J.D. Vance who may be the anti-Graham. Vance wants to end military support for Ukraine, says "NATO has failed to carry its fair share of the burden for literally decades," and has become extremely critical of Israel. Vance may or may not be a true "isolationist"—foreign policy experts quibble over his beliefs, and in that poll, MAGA Republicans are the only strong supporters of the Iran war—but he's closer to the go-it-alone positions that Trump has voiced than Graham ever was, and he's now more likely to get traction for his views.

Sen. Lindsey Graham's death may mark the end not just of his life, but of a foreign policy era in which the U.S. was eager to engage with the world and, all too often, wade into global conflicts.

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Open Thread

2026-07-15T06:29:07.690-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - July 15, 2026 at 03:00AM

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By Blessing Corruption, Todd Blanche Has Disqualified Himself From the Job He Wants

2026-07-15T02:29:38.477-04:00

By Jacob Sullum - July 15, 2026 at 12:01AM

"I'm guessing I'll be in line," former FBI Director James Comey quipped after Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced a "settlement agreement" between President Donald Trump and the IRS that included $1.8 billion in taxpayer money for targets of "lawfare and weaponization." Comey's joke encompasses two reasons why the Senate should not confirm Blanche as attorney general: a flagrantly unconstitutional prosecution and a brazenly corrupt arrangement that delivered huge favors to Trump, his family, and his followers at taxpayers' expense.

Blanche's participation in both of those scams demonstrated his eagerness to please his boss, which explains why Trump nominated him to replace Pam Bondi. But that same tendency should alarm anyone who thinks the attorney general should pursue justice rather than the president's personal agenda.

In a scathing ruling on Monday, a federal judge described Trump's lawsuit against the IRS as a pretext for "a 'settlement' that had no viable basis in law or fact." Kathleen Williams, who oversaw the case in the Southern District of Florida, concluded that it never involved a genuine controversy between adverse parties, since both sides were controlled by the president.

Trump's lawsuit, which was joined by two of his sons and the Trump Organization, preposterously alleged that an IRS contractor's illegal disclosure of their tax returns had caused "at least" $10 billion in damages. In addition to offering an improbable estimate of the injury he had suffered, Trump filed the lawsuit more than two years after learning about the leak, exceeding the time limit set by the statute he invoked.

That law covers unauthorized disclosures by "any officer or employee of the United States." So even if Trump had filed his lawsuit on time, he would have faced the challenge of arguing that a contractor employed by a consulting business fit into that category—a point that the Justice Department has disputed in other cases involving similar claims.

Despite those legal weaknesses, the Justice Department never bothered to contest Trump's claims, in sharp contrast with the way it usually treats such lawsuits. That failure highlighted the blatant conflicts of interest created by a case that pitted Trump against agencies he oversees, represented by lawyers who also answer to him.

Further compromising the Justice Department's ability to defend the IRS, a February 2025 executive order bars the government's lawyers from taking legal positions at odds with the president's. As Williams saw it, that order, the Justice Department's lassitude, and Trump's "direct, unassailable control over Defendants" proved the case was phony from the beginning.

Blanche nevertheless approved the resulting "settlement with myself," which provoked a fierce bipartisan backlash that persuaded him to abandon the "Anti-Weaponization Fund" two weeks after he announced it. That decision left in place another provision of this cozy deal: Blanche's order shielding Trump and his relatives from liability for tax violations and any other federal offenses they may have committed, which could save the president more than $100 million in back taxes, interest, and penalties.

Even as Blanche promised compensation for victims of politically motivated government abuse, he was compounding that problem by pursuing a laughable criminal case against Comey. According to Blanche, Comey committed two federal felonies by posting a photograph of seashells arranged to form the slogan "86 47," which Blanche conceded is a ubiquitous expression of opposition to the president.

That message, which did not even come close to meeting the constitutional test for a "true threat," was indisputably political speech protected by the First Amendment. Yet there was Blanche, claiming with a straight face that Comey's seashell picture justifiably provoked an 11-month investigation culminating in an indictment that threatens him with up to 10 years in prison.

That case shows Blanche is willing to subvert justice in service of the president's grudges, and his participation in the IRS "settlement" shows he is happy to bless a grossly unethical product of self-dealing. Either would be enough to disqualify him from the job he is seeking.

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Today in Supreme Court History: July 14, 1913

2026-07-14T11:29:25.569-04:00

By Josh Blackman - July 14, 2026 at 07:00AM

7/14/1913: President Gerald R. Ford's birthday. He would appoint Justice John Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court.

President Gerald Ford

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'Government Totally Annihilated': How Americans Governed Themselves as British Rule Crumbled

2026-07-14T07:29:27.971-04:00

By Jesse Walker - July 14, 2026 at 06:00AM

In a special America 250 issue, Reason takes a look back at our country's founding people and ideas. Read more here.

Joanna Andreasson

"For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American War, and to a longer period in several of the American States, there were no established forms of government," Tom Paine declared in The Rights of Man. "The old governments had been abolished, and the country was too much occupied in defence to employ its attention in establishing new governments; yet during this interval order and harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe."

Well, sort of. It wasn't a period of no governing structures so much as a time when different structures competed for Americans' loyalty. From 1774 through 1776, the old colonial regimes shriveled away. What replaced them was not, to yank a phrase from its original context, what the conservative historian Forrest McDonald sardonically called "the taxless, shiftless Utopia which most Americans cherished as a secret dream, and for which 'republicanism' and 'unalienable rights' were merely euphemisms." Nor were new states formed instantly. Instead, vigorously active associations emerged from below.

Pieces of the previous governments held on, surviving by shifting their loyalty to the new order. (In Georgia in 1775, rebels surrounded a fort and compelled the king's rangers to surrender—but soon asked them to assume their posts again, working now for the revolutionary Council of Safety.) The rest of the old authorities found themselves facing a population that was increasingly unwilling to obey them, taking their cues instead from institutions jerry-rigged by improvising insurgents.

Georgia's royal governor summed up the results in a letter sent in September 1775. "Government totally Annihilated," he reported. In its place, "Congresses, Councils and Committees" were assuming the old Leviathan's functions.

Those grassroots groups stood somewhere on the spectrum between a state and something less rigid and more voluntary. First they coexisted with the prior regimes, and then they displaced them. Gene Sharp, one of the great theorists of civic resistance, described such situations as moments of "dual sovereignty and parallel government." While these alternative institutions might sometimes act violently, he argued in The Politics of Nonviolent Action, their success "depends almost entirely on the voluntary withdrawal of authority, support and obedience from the old regime and their award to the new body."

Consider the Continental Association, a charter adopted at the First Continental Congress to enact a boycott of British goods. (It also featured several other measures meant to foster unity during the crisis, including an effort to discourage plays, cockfights, "the giving of scarves at funerals," and any other "species of extravagance and dissipation.") The Continental Congress would eventually evolve into a government, but when it first met in 1774 it saw itself as a group of English subjects protesting policies they disliked. Its purpose was to overturn laws imposed from London, not to create a legal apparatus of its own. It certainly didn't have the standard tools of a government at its disposal.

"The Continental Association lacked the machinery of a state and therefore the capacity to enforce laws as a state does, by jail, fines, and the like," the sociologist Ronald McCarthy reported in Before Lexington, a book he edited with Sharp and two other scholars. But even without that machinery, the Association's advocates could pressure people into compliance. They could boycott, denounce, ostracize, and, if the locals were rowdy and the circumstances seemed right, assemble an intimidating crowd, perhaps with a tar pot and some feathers.

They organized this activity from the ground up. The First Continental Congress asked Americans to form groups to enact its agenda, but it did not establish or direct those groups itself. It didn't even offer a blueprint for how to constitute them, suggesting merely that "those who are qualified to vote for representatives in the legislature" select the bodies. Hundreds of councils promptly appeared, taking different shapes in different places, and they quickly started burrowing into Britain's edifice of authority.

The Loyalists recoiled. "A Committee has been chosen in every County," fretted Virginia's final royal governor—John Murray, Fourth Earl of Dunmore—in a letter to London. Each committee, he complained, "assumes an authority to inspect the books, invoices, and all other secrets of the trade and correspondence of Merchants; to watch the conduct of every inhabitant, without distinction, and to send for all such as come under their suspicion into their presence; to interrogate them respecting all matters which, at their pleasure, they think fit objects of their inquiry; and to stigmatize, as they term it, such as they find transgressing what they are now hardy enough to call the Laws of the Congress."

In each county, Dunmore added, the rebels were "now arming a Company of men, whom they call an Independent Company, for the avowed purpose of protecting their Committees, and to be employed against Government, if occasion require. The Committee of one County has proceeded so far as to swear the men of their Independent Company, to execute all orders which shall be given them from the Committee of their County." These rebellious companies and committees "have set themselves up superiour to all other authority, under the auspices of their Congress, the Laws of which they talk of in a style of respect, and treat with marks of reverence, which they never bestowed on their legal Government."

Over the course of 1775, those dissident Virginia formations attracted enough support that Dunmore fled the capital and tried running his rump regime from a British warship. By July 1776, a full-fledged revolutionary government was in place, with Patrick Henry as governor, and Dunmore was on his way back to England's imperial bosom.

The process was even more pronounced in New England, where Americans were already accustomed to governing themselves in town meetings. Indeed, one of the blows that prompted the Revolution was the Massachusetts Government Act of 1774, which basically stripped away the colonists' right to self-government. The law gave the royal governor vast new powers, including the right to prevent towns from meeting and the right to appoint judges and other officials who had previously been elected.

Or that's what the law was supposed to do. Out in the countryside, the freeholders of Massachusetts simply refused to recognize the revamped government. "Starting in August 1774," the historian Ray Raphael wrote in The First American Revolution, "each time a court was slated to meet under British authority in some Massachusetts town, great numbers of angry citizens made sure it did not." By October, "all Crown-appointed officials had been forced to disavow British authority or flee to Boston, which was still under military protection."

The leaders of the colony's rural militias resigned their official posts with the colonial government, but they and the militias kept training. Towns kept holding meetings, assembling to govern themselves without permission from the governor. A new Massachusetts Provincial Congress persuaded many towns to send it the taxes that were supposed to be directed to the Brits. "The provincial congress, of course, had no power to enforce this command," McCarthy noted, "and its validity depended completely upon the recognition by the towns of its legitimacy." (Some towns opted just to keep their taxes for themselves.)

Parallel events played out across the colonies. "In the fall and winter of 1774–75," McCarthy wrote, "these bodies quickly adopted more and more of the functions previously performed by the legislatures, executive officials, magistrates, and courts of the crown regime." They settled disputes, enforced rules, and became forums for debate.

Institutions emerged in the social spaces between the colonies as well as within them. The revolutionaries built underground alternatives to the authorities' postal service, for example, allowing insurrectionists to correspond without officials intercepting their letters. The United States Post Office itself was not a government agency when the Continental Congress established it in 1775; it was an independent alternative for surveillance-conscious subversives. When Congress became the ruling body of a new national government, the post office became a socialized delivery service. But in the beginning, it was something else.

These new bodies sprouting across the colonies were more open to popular participation than their predecessors. "Thousands of Americans who had never before held office—indeed, who never even imagined that it was their right to do so—flooded into positions of leadership," wrote the historian T.H. Breen in American Insurgents, American Patriots. Some committees were more open than others, and plenty of old social hierarchies survived. But the aristocracy was cracking, and a more fluid political order was appearing in its place.

By their nature, these grassroots projects relied heavily on voluntary cooperation. But not always. As the rebellion rolled on and the councils turned from enacting the decisions of the Continental Association to running the war effort, they became engines of a crackdown on those deemed British sympathizers, a group that included not just actual Tories but neutralists, pacifists, and the occasional unpopular neighbor. Revolutionaries opened mail, issued fines, confiscated property, burned Loyalist literature, demanded loyalty oaths, and alternated between banishing alleged Tories and restricting their movement. The new state governments backed and often commanded these activities, but the extralegal councils and committees did the bulk of the work. They became more violent, more intrusive, more censorial, more willing to use the jailhouses of the old regime.

Even the most enthusiastic fans of the revolutionary councils usually shake their heads at this repression. The libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard was effusive about the other activities of the Continental Association's enforcers, hailing how they had depended mostly on social pressure and voluntary action. "Never before in history," he argued in Conceived in Liberty, "had so much reliance been placed on such nonviolent methods of mass struggle as the boycott, and on such libertarian and nonviolent means of enforcing the boycott as secondary boycotts, social ostracism, blacklists, and public obloquy." But when it came to persecuting Tories, he wrote regretfully, the committees' zeal took them "beyond the bounds of libertarian principle."

Yet even here, adopting practices that were far too repressive by the standards of any sensible civil libertarian, the committees were much milder than the roughly comparable councils found elsewhere. In North Carolina, for example, the revolutionary congress explicitly instructed the local committees not to inflict physical punishments, a reaction against the stocks and whipping posts of the old government. Thousands of Tories fled the colonies, but barely a handful were killed. "Instead of executing enemies wholesale," Breen writes, "the committees tried to shame them into giving public confessions. These proceedings took on a ritual quality in which terror and humiliation were aimed at converting dissenters. The bark was generally worse than the bite."

Across the ocean, not that many years later, thousands of Frenchmen would literally lose their heads for ideological transgressions. In America, they were more likely just to be canceled. By revolutionary standards, that might almost qualify as tolerant and voluntarist.

After two years, as Paine said, new governments had taken control in most of the colonies, and the Second Continental Congress was evolving into a national authority. Congress was raising an army and issuing paper money to pay for it; the states were experimenting with price controls, conscription, and other intrusive powers. But as long as the war was underway, the committees and councils stuck around, with greater or lesser degrees of autonomy depending on where they were.

So there was truth to Paine's portrait, but he painted it with broad strokes. America in the mid-1770s was a jumble of spontaneous formations amid the ruins of an empire, a mix of anarchistic autonomous local groups, fledgling shoots of a new regime, and old British structures that would soon either crumble or persist with a paint job. From this patchwork emerged the United States we know today. But that took a while, and things could be lively in the meantime.

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Open Thread

2026-07-14T06:29:13.652-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - July 14, 2026 at 03:00AM

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First Amendment Protects Universities From Florida's Stop WOKE Act

2026-07-13T09:29:43.602-04:00

By J.D. Tuccille - July 13, 2026 at 07:00AM

The cure for a regime of establishment-approved ideology does not come from government censorship of conversations. That should be clear to anybody who believes in freedom, and it's a point strongly made by a federal appeals court in overruling Florida's Stop WOKE Act. Saying the First Amendment is incompatible with "an official government line—in a college classroom of all places," the court overruled the state's effort to battle ideological orthodoxy by imposing its own orthodoxy.

Florida Tries to Cure 'The Woke Mind Virus'

"A federal court on Tuesday [July 7] struck down part of a law signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022 that aimed to restrict colleges, schools and workplaces from promoting certain viewpoints on racism, sexism and history," the Florida Courier's Kerry Sheridan Wusf reported last week.

The 2022 law was a high-profile response to peak social justice activism. After the passage of what is widely called the Stop WOKE Act, DeSantis told the National Conservatism conference that "in Florida, parents should be able to send their kid to elementary school without having woke gender ideology shoved down their throat." He went on to refer to the prevailing ideology in many academic institutions and corporate H.R. departments as "the woke mind virus."

Many parents, unhappy with politicized lessons, agreed. But the law didn't further empower parents to move their kids out of classrooms and schools to alternatives that better suited their values (the state already has strong school choice policies). Instead, it tried to dictate what could be discussed in schools, colleges, and even private workplaces. The preface to the legislation specifies that it seeks to prohibit "subjecting any individual, as a condition of employment, membership, certification, licensing, credentialing, or passing an examination, to training, instruction, or any other required activity that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such individual to believe specified concepts" regarding race, relative privilege, collective guilt, and other ideas consistent with social justice ideology. Determination of whether discussions violate the ban on such advocacy is left to the state.

A Censorship Law That is 'Positively Dystopian'

Understandably, government intervention in classroom and workplace discussions drew immediate First Amendment challenges. The law hasn't fared well.

"The State of Florida seeks to bar employers from holding mandatory meetings for their employees if those meetings endorse viewpoints the state finds offensive. But meetings on those same topics are allowed if speakers endorse viewpoints the state agrees with, or at least does not object to," a three-judge panel for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in a 2024 order blocking the law's application to private businesses. "Florida may be exactly right about the nature of the ideas it targets. Or it may not. Either way, the merits of these views will be decided in the clanging marketplace of ideas rather than a codebook or a courtroom."

That decision came after a federal district court issued a temporary injunction in a case brought in part by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) in 2022 against the law's application to colleges and universities. The judge in that case noted that "the law officially bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints….This is positively dystopian." (Full opinion here.)

The July 7 decision by the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upholds the 2022 ruling.

"Viewpoint-based restrictions designed to compel or ban a set of beliefs are dangerous in any setting, and they are especially pernicious in the classroom context," wrote Judge Britt C. Grant for the majority. "Though the government has plenty of ways to promote its own viewpoint, puppeteering every university professor in the state is not one of them. Forcing an official government line—in a college classroom of all places—is exactly the 'pall of orthodoxy' that the First Amendment will not tolerate."

"Universities and professors do not always get it right. Neither does the government," Grant concluded. "Our Constitution is unique in its commitment to letting the people, rather than the government, find the right equilibrium."

Fundamentally, the courts aren't taking a position on whether the woke ideas targeted by the Florida law are good or bad—they allow that state lawmakers may be entirely correct about the toxic nature of the targeted ideology. But government in the United States isn't permitted to intervene in ideological battles by banning the promotion of some ideas and encouraging others.

"Today's important decision means that college remains a place where professors and students are allowed to debate controversial topics — even if politicians disagree with them," FIRE senior attorney Greg H. Greubel commented in response to the appeals court decision. "Today's ruling makes clear something we've known for a long time: Governments cannot censor their way to freedom."

The Real Cure Is Open Debate

Interestingly, open discourse is addressing concerns about woke social justice ideology and its hold on institutions without the need for government interference. Writing in January for The Washington Post, progressive political scientist Shadi Hamid conceded that "from 2014 to about 2023, and peaking in 2020, Democrats fell under the sway of 'woke' ideas that prioritized divisive cultural issues such as transgender rights and reducing funding for police." He added that "a growing number of Democrats and liberals have acknowledged that things may have gone too far, alienating too many Americans."

A Democratic Party postmortem on its large-scale losses in the 2024 elections blamed the debacle, in part, on extreme cultural ideology. It urged candidates to "focus less on abstract issues and identity politics" if they want to draw votes.

In other words, Americans didn't have to be protected from toxic ideas by government action; they encountered those ideas, debated them, and many then rejected woke ideology by themselves.

Florida residents always had opportunities to push back against ideas they don't like, given the state's school choice options, the ability to pick and choose employers, and opportunities to apply to and enroll in a multitude of colleges and universities. Anybody feeling pressured to embrace a specific ideology and uncomfortable with debating the point can vote with their feet, their labor, and their money.

What Floridians can't do, just like all Americans, is deputize government to suppress the promotion of disfavored ideas. They can argue against bad ideology, but censorship is off the table.

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Photo: A New Map of the Universe

2026-07-13T07:29:26.606-04:00

By Fiona Harrigan - July 13, 2026 at 06:00AM

In April, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) in Arizona completed its five-year mission to produce the largest-ever high-resolution 3D map of the universe. DESI "observed more than 47 million galaxies and quasars and 20 million stars" during its quest to "study dark energy, one of the biggest mysteries in physics," according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which operates the instrument. DESI is a collaboration of more than 900 researchers from more than 70 institutions. It will continue to document the sky through 2028 as scientists seek to better understand the history of the universe.

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Open Thread

2026-07-13T06:29:31.714-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - July 13, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Is Title IX Holding Back U.S. Men's International Soccer?

2026-07-12T15:29:12.560-04:00

By Paul Cassell - July 12, 2026 at 12:11PM

In the wake of the World Cup soccer defeat of the U.S. Men's National Team (USMNT), analysts have been wondering what the U.S. can do better to improve its talent in international competitions. In the 4-1 defeat to Belgium, it seemed apparent that other countries (often European countries) have done a better job of developing a talent pipeline for men's soccer than the U.S. Why hasn't the U.S. developed better men's talent?

As an avid fan of the U.S. men's (and women's) national soccer teams, I have been following the debate closely. Commonly identified culprits include: America's "pay to play" system of youth soccer, diversion of some of America's best athletes to other sports, and the alleged lack of a true American soccer "culture."

But on Friday, Scott Yenor of the Heritage Foundation tried to add a new suspect to the list. He offered his view that America's Title IX regime was "a factor behind the underperformance of U.S. men's soccer on the international stage." I'm not sure whether his article was intended to manly to provoke. But the article is so disassociated from the current realities surrounding soccer talent development that a brief response may be warranted.

As Yenor tells the tale, Title IX's prohibition of sex-based discrimination in college sports programs has created "perverse incentives." According to Yenor, Title IX forces universities with (American) football teams to balance things out by padding the rosters of their women's teams in other sports—and, in some cases, cutting men's soccer teams. Yenor displays statistics showing that soccer participation by sex in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I programs has changed over time, so that women now outnumber men.

According to Yenor, these statistics show that, while "America's women's soccer has a world-class pipeline … Title IX prevents men's soccer from building one." Yenor provocatively concludes that "[o]nly when America drops its sports sex-quota system will the American men stop being humiliated by Belgium."

In my view, Yenor's argument betrays a lack of any real understanding of how talent pipelines of men in international soccer work. Because he does not seriously engage with the real debate over how to improve the USMNT, his policy recommendation misses the mark.

Starting with his graph, his timeline shows little connection to the World Cup performances by America's men's (and women's) national teams. Title IX became effective in the mid-1970s. The men's team did not qualify to participate in any World Cups for many years both before and after. Focusing on the modern era, the U.S. men did not qualify to play between 1954 and 1986. The U.S. men did qualify in 1990—more than a decade after Title IX went into effect—and reached the Round of 16 at the next opportunity, in 1994. In 2002, the USMNT reached the quarterfinals. In its last four appearances—in 2010, 2014, 2022, and 2026—the men played consistently, reached the Round of 16 each time … but progressed no further.

To be sure, Title IX's enactment no doubt helped propel the U.S. women to success. They won the first women's World Cup in 1991. They were also champions in 1999, 2015, and 2019. But in its most recent appearance, in 2023, the U.S. Women's National Team (USWNT) disappointingly only reached the Round of 16. This trendline—consistent, long-standing success followed by a sharp drop in the most recent tournament—bears little relation to the escalating college participation over decades by women that Yenor depicts.

The core problem with Yenor's argument is its focus on the very backend of the talent pipeline—players entering college soccer programs. But as has been widely discussed—both before and after the USMNT's defeat against Belgium—developing international-level talent requires starting much earlier than college. The Athletic has a good summary of the discussion. It quotes Marije Elferink-Gemser (a Dutch professor who studies sports and talent development). She explains that, in soccer, "the ball-handling skills are so difficult that you really need to do it from a young age on." It appears that "golden age" for developing skill acquisition is the first six years of a child's life, although some might argue that the age extends all the way to age twelve.

After a child learns basic ball handling skills, the next step in the process is intensive training in soccer skills—again, well before a boy (or girl) enters college. As is commonly discussed in the soccer talent debate, many European (and other) countries have soccer "academies," where budding stars begin training as youn as age nine. As an example, consider perhaps the best player in the world: France's Kylian Mbappé. Mbappé began training with his local club at age six. Then he moved to the French national football academy—Clairefontaine—where his impressive performances led to many professional European teams trying to sign him. At age 14, Mbappé joined the youth academy of the French soccer power, Monaco. By age 16, he became a first-team player for Monaco. At age 18, he completed a move to France's best professional club team (Paris Saint-Germain) for a price of €180 million. Ever since he has been an internationally recognized star.

To develop top-tier, international-level talent, the U.S. is going to need to replicate this kind of intensive professional training at a young age for some of its elite, budding soccer players. From a talent-pipeline perspective, it makes no sense to debate whether changes in Title IX might slightly upgrade the men's soccer programs at the University of Texas or University of Florida (examples cited by Yenor, where only university club teams exist). There are already more than 6,000 men's soccer players playing in NCAA Division I. A few more players at the end of the bench in college soccer isn't going to change America's international standing.

And, of course, Yenor is assuming that changing Title IX to add additional scholarships at U.S. universities will result in more American players; but many scholarship athletes come from other countries. As one example, consider the 2024 NCAA Division I men's final between Vermont and Marshall. According to one tabulation, 73% of the starters were international players from countries such as Germany, Japan, and Brazil; Marshall's squad of 28 players contained only three who were American.

The declining importance of college participation to the USMNT is easy to see by looking at U.S. World Cup rosters. To be sure, college soccer was once the central pipeline for the U.S. men's national team: every player on the 1990 World Cup roster appears to have played U.S. college soccer, and roughly three-quarters of the 1994 and 2002 rosters did. But by the modern era, that share had fallen sharply. In the last two World Cups, it appears that only about 8 of the 26 players had done so—and only a few of them were starters. Of the USMNT starters on the field against Belgium this month, only goalkeeper Matt Freese (Harvard) and 38-year-old defender Tim Ream (Saint Louis) appear to have been former NCAA soccer players.

The trend towards fewer ex-college players is attributable to several factors that have nothing to do with Title IX regulations on NCAA scholarships. One of the most important factors is the rise of Major League Soccer (MLS) academies in the U.S., designed to compete with the well-developed European soccer academies. More than two dozen U.S.-based MLS teams exist. All teams have strong academies designed to develop local talent, either to supplement their rosters or to generate income by selling these players in the international transfer market.

The next generation of U.S. talent may well come from these academies. The Athletic already has an interesting projection of which new players are most likely to make the 2030 World Cup roster of the USMNT. Assuming that 14 current players return, it is then possible to project an additional 16 new arrivals, broken into the categories of "just missed" (#15-20) and "next generation" (#21-30), with ages and current club affiliation listed:

Just Missed in 2026

15. Noahkai Banks (19) — FC Augsburg
16. Johnny Cardoso (24) — Atlético de Madrid
17. Tanner Tessmann (24) — Olympique Lyon
18. Aidan Morris (24) — Middlesbrough FC
19. Patrick Agyemang (25) — Derby County
20. Diego Luna (22) — Real Salt Lake

Next Generation in 2030

21. Zavier Gozo (19) — Real Salt Lake
22. Cavan Sullivan (16) — Philadelphia Union
23. Adri Mehmeti (17) — New York Red Bulls
24. Julian Hall (18) — New York Red Bulls
25. Peyton Miller (18) — New England Revolution
26. Mathis Albert (17) — Borussia Dortmund
27. Rokas Pukstas (21) — HNK Hajduk Split
28. Julian Eyestone (20) — Brentford
29. Diego Kochen (20) — Lyngby Boldklub, on loan from FC Barcelona
30. Josh Wynder (21) — SL Benfica (B team)

Of this list of sixteen potential players, only three appear to have previously played college soccer (or seem likely to do so in the future): Aidan Morris, Patrick Agyemang, Julian Eyestone. Notably, two of these three also went to an MLS academy (Morris, who spent three pre-college years at the Columbus Crew academy; and Eyestone, who joined the FC Dallas academy at around age 10). And only one of the three — Agyemang, the oldest player on the list — played four years of college soccer. Morris played one fall season at Indiana, before leaving to sign with the Columbus Crew; Eyestone played one fall season at Duke, before signing with Brentford in England. By my count, eleven of the sixteen went to MLS academies and several of the others went to foreign academies (Banks at FC Augsburg, Cardoso at Brazilian academies, and Kochen at Barcelona's famous La Masia academy) and Josh Wynder went to a Louisville City/USL academy (the second-tier league below MLS).

Part of the reason that U.S. men's players (such as Morris and Eyestone) want to leave NCAA soccer programs quickly is that the NCAA requires that athletes be students first, and soccer players second. Generally speaking, the NCAA rules cap the amount of "countable athletically related activities." During the playing season, the standard Division I limit is 4 hours per day and 20 hours per week, with required days off. And the season lasts only a few months of the year.

There are occasional NCAA exceptions allowing more training for Olympic-level athletes. But the last thing that American soccer would want to encourage is its top athletes going into NCAA-regulated college soccer programs. For an elite soccer talent, the NCAA rules are major constraints. A professional environment can offer, well, professionalism: such things as daily training throughout the year, individualized technical work, strength and conditioning, recovery, nutrition, film study, reserve-team matches, and first-team integration. The NCAA season is compressed in a fall window of about three months, with some stretches of three games in eight days—a bad program for training. There are other problems as well. But the general point is that as fewer elite American men go into college soccer programs, that likely improves our talent pool by putting them in more competitive and professional environments.

An excellent scholarly analysis of the rise in non-college pathways to the USMNT comes from Samford University's Center for Sports Analytics. In a report published this May, the Center presciently predicted something like the USMNT's round-of-16 exit in July. The report's title is "The 2026 USMNT Is the Best American Soccer Team in History. It Still Isn't Good Enough." The report carefully explains, comparing the 1994 and 2026 USMNTs, far fewer of today's players are arriving from college soccer. Instead, four additional pathways, apart from the historical college path, exist to arrive at the USMNT: (1) the Youth Export, (2) the MLS-Academy-to-Foreign-League; (3) the MLS "Lifer"; and (4) the Foreign-Raised Dual-National.

And, interestingly, the report notes that the "further up the pitch [i.e., field] you go on the 2026 USMNT, the more European the system that produced the player becomes." The report explains that, currently, even the MLS does not produce America's match-deciding players. European clubs do … and American teenagers are now competing for academy spots at those clubs alongside the world's best young players. The report also impressively presents detailed analytics, showing that the key metric for predicting how a national soccer team will perform at the World Cup is total playing time for a country's nationals in the five elite European soccer leagues over the just-completed season. By that metric, the U.S. currently sits just outside the top eight teams (in tenth position)—exactly where the team finished in this year's World Cup.

So on the men's side, the college pipeline has little relevance to World Cup performance. But what about the women's side? Yenor also argues that, compared to the U.S. men, the U.S. women have built a "world-class pipeline" through college soccer. To be sure, Title IX's enactment in the 1970s helped to propel the U.S. women's team to the top. The timing gave American women's soccer a jump start ahead of other countries.

But here again, Yenor's chart (reproduced above) bears little connection to that jump start. The chart shows increasing women's participation in NCAA Division I over the last several decades. But the development of players for the USWNT has always been heavily concentrated in a handful of elite college programs. The fact that (for example) such schools as Mercyhurst University, Lindenwood University, and others have recently added Division I women's soccer programs is disconnected from the national team program.

NCAA development of international-level women's soccer players has always been heavily concentrated in the most competitive schools. The prime example is UNC, where the amazing Tarheels women's program won 16 of the first 19 national titles. More recently, schools like Stanford, Santa Clara, Penn State, Notre Dame, and a few others have been involved. But increasingly USWNT players are turning pro and never playing college soccer.

The trend of avoiding NCAA soccer is due to a recent change in the legal environment that now allows strong American girls to turn professional at a young age. Olivia Moultrie was the trailblazer here. Moultrie started playing soccer when she was four years old. By fifth grade, she was homeschooled so that she could focus on soccer and became the first girl on a boys' club team to play in the U.S. Soccer Development Academy system. At 11, she accepted a full scholarship offer to play soccer for the UNC Tar Heels when she reached college age, becoming the youngest female soccer player to publicly accept a college offer at the time. Shortly thereafter, she traveled to Europe to train. When she was 13, she began training with the Portland Thorns (of the National Women's Soccer League or "NWSL").

In 2021, when she was 15, Moultrie filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NWSL in district court in Oregon. She alleged that the NWSL, as the "only acquirer of talent in the [professional] market," violated the Sherman Antitrust Act with its age-requirement that players be 18 years old. Her lawsuit asked for a temporary restraining order against the age rule so that she could play during the 2021 pro season. U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut granted a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, ordering the league to lift its age limit and allow Moultrie to compete for a roster spot on the Thorns. Moultrie became the youngest player in NWSL history to score a goal and appear in a NWSL championship game.

Unsurprisingly, Moultrie has also featured for the USWNT, where she has made a total of 18 appearances, including 7 during 2026. And Moultrie is hardly alone in taking this professional path. Recently, many of America's brightest young USWNT stars have skipped college. Consider what a projected "starting eleven" lineup for the U.S. women's team might look like next year in the 2027 Women's World Cup in Brazil, arranged from oldest to youngest player, with any college experience noted:

Emily Fox (28 years old) — North Carolina, 2017-2020.
Mallory Swanson/Pugh (28) — Enrolled at UCLA but left before playing an official NCAA season; no NCAA soccer.
Phallon Tullis-Joyce (27) — Univ. of Miami, 2014-18.
Tierna Davidson (27) — Stanford, 2016-2018.
Naomi Girma (26)— Stanford, 2018-2021.
Sophia Wilson/Smith (25) —Stanford, 2018-2019; only two NCAA seasons.
Trinity Rodman (24) — Turned pro directly; no NCAA soccer.
Jaedyn Shaw (21) — Turned pro at 17 rather than playing college soccer; no NCAA soccer.
Gisele Thompson (20) — Signed directly with Angel City rather than playing at Stanford; no NCAA soccer.
Olivia Moultrie (20) — Turned pro with Portland; NWSL debut at 15; no NCAA soccer.
Lily Yohannes (19) — Ajax/Lyon pro pathway; no NCAA soccer.

Of the eleven players on this list, only five played NCAA soccer, and only four played for the full four years. And the difference between the older players and younger players is stark: Of the five youngest players on the possible projected starter list (such as Moultrie), none played NCAA soccer.

As with the men's team, recent scholarly research about the women's team highlights the importance of these non-college pathways to the USWNT. And given the rising strength of women's soccer teams in other countries—apparently fueled by professional training opportunities at professional clubs—the need for these non-college pathways is increasing. The U.S. women exited the last World Cup in 2023 earlier than ever before—in the Round of 16. A new generation of professionally trained players is needed to return America to the top.

As the recent pathways for top players joining both the U.S. men's and women's national teams demonstrate, NCAA college soccer is fading into obscurity as part of the international talent pipeline. There may be arguments for modifying some of Title IX's rules to expand athletic opportunities for men in soccer or other sports. (I take no position on that issue here.) But the claim that changing Title IX's rules could have any meaningful benefit for the American men's international soccer team is but a provocative diversion from the real issues. To beat the best professionals, the top U.S. men—and women—need to follow the most professional paths.

***

Note: In the interests of brevity, in this post I have referred to the "World Cup" and "Women's World Cup," because those are the official names of the competitions as given by FIFA. I acknowledge that using the sex modifier for the women's game but not the men's might be viewed as relegating the women's game to second-class status. But, at this time, this linguistic approach appears to be conventional.

Update: I've corrected an embarrassing mistake on my list of projected 2027 USWNT starters, swapping in goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce. Thanks to David Nieporent for catching my embarrassing roster projection error. That correction means that five of the projected starters for the USWNT in 2027 played NCAA Division I soccer.

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Andy Serkis on Animal Farm, Authoritarianism, and Humanizing Monsters

2026-07-12T10:29:45.548-04:00

By Nick Gillespie - July 12, 2026 at 06:00AM

https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/d2h6a3ly6ooodw.cloudfront.net/reasontv_audio_8378684.mp3

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Andy Serkis: What Orwell Understood About Tyranny

Andy Serkis has played some of contemporary film's most memorable characters: Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, Kong in King Kong, Caesar in the Planet of the Apes reboot, proto-punk icon Ian Dury in the biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, and arms dealer Ulysses Klaue in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Serkis has also moved behind the camera: He directed an animated adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm, which was released in theaters on May 1. Later that month, Serkis spoke with Reason's Nick Gillespie about his new film, authoritarianism, and what unites his signature roles.

Q: Let's talk about Animal Farm. What drew you to the material?

A: I read the book when I was about 10 or 11 years old on the bus to school. You get to that age and you start reading things that you know have underlying themes, but you don't really fully understand what are being driven at. It had an innocence about it, and yet I could feel that there was a world that was underneath it. It was one of those books that just never left me. I read it again in years to come at various different points of my life.

Q: This is an adaptation and an update of the original. The system that you're critiquing is not socialism or international communism. Where do you go with that?

A: No. When we started working on it, we talked to the Orwell estate a lot about it. If Orwell were writing that story now, what would his targets be? He was someone who reviled authoritarianism on a grander level. At that particular time, he was aiming at a particular regime. But if he was writing Animal Farm right now, what would be his targets?

A lot of the themes are exactly the same. It's just the different management systems around the world that use authoritarianism and dictatorship to survive obviously are thriving. This is not a stab at any one leader in terms of the allegory. We're not saying "this is this political leader," but it's having a go at all of the framework of what controls us and what is authoritarian around the world, like the misuse of information, fake news, all of those things which are themes in the book, the corruption of power. It was looking at that in a modern context for a young audience, which is crucial. It was written as an allegory for young children to read, as I read it when I was that age.

Q: Orwell was writing Animal Farm 80 years ago, at a moment when authoritarianism seemed to be on the rise in various places. Compared to then, are we in a better place?

A: I don't necessarily think we are in a better place. Part of this story is about history repeating itself and why it is that we always make the same mistakes. Even though we do, we mustn't stop trying to rectify those mistakes. That's really at the core of our version: There is no answer, and we will probably keep repeating things, but you still have to keep trying to understand.

It really is about learning to listen. One of the things about making this version—it was for young people to sit in a room with their parents and grandparents, who have probably got all different viewpoints about the world, and actually really start to investigate through a debate. It was to cause a debate, but it's a family film, so that will hopefully inspire debate across generations.

Q: You've been part of some of the most successful franchises in contemporary film. Is there a common thread in the roles you've played? Is Gollum the personification of someone who gets corrupted by the possibility of more power? Is that the shadow self that you're chasing in many of these roles?

A: The job of the actor or the storyteller is to try and broaden the audience's perspective. If you're an actor inside the head of a character, you have to believe that there's a morality that that character believes in. Every character I've played, I've wanted to examine that, and therefore it takes you as a person to be empathetic to perhaps places you don't necessarily want to go. That is the challenge of acting—and you can't deny that, because you have to believe that that character sees the world from his perspective as the right view. We humanize monsters to a certain extent in order to be able to understand them and hopefully learn from them.

This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.

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