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]]>I'm grateful to Judge Smith [who wrote the principal dissent from denial of rehearing] for flagging this case for our attention, and share his dismay that the court is denying rehearing en banc. The mediation order should have been sufficient to establish appellate jurisdiction over this interlocutory appeal from the denial of qualified immunity….
A final point: In footnote 6 of his dissent, Judge Smith notes that the [panel opinion, which he is arguing should be reheard -EV] found support in our court's "equally errant" unpublished decision in De Leon v. Munoz, 2025 WL 957500 (5th Cir.).
I joined that unpublished decision. That decision, to be clear, found appellate jurisdiction in De Leon—the same result that both Judge Smith and I urge here. That said, footnote 2 of the per curiam decision separately suggests that there was no appellate jurisdiction at an earlier stage in the case.
If footnote 2 was wrong, so be it. It's unfortunate when errors arise in our decisions—whether in express holdings in precedential decisions, or footnote asides in unpublished per curiam rulings. But errors happen. Because judges are human—and humans make mistakes. A black robe is no guarantee of gray matter. I am happy to admit error.
As judges, we should strive to be open about our mistakes, and look for opportunities to correct them. Any judge who claims that he or she has never made a mistake is a judge I wouldn't trust.
There's no shame in admitting error. There's only shame in not admitting error….
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]]>When parties seek an extraordinary remedy, they must make an extraordinary showing. After expedited briefing and a hearing yesterday, the Court finds that Plaintiff World Professional Association for Transgender Health has not made that showing in its request for a Temporary Restraining Order to block the Federal Trade Commission's enforcement action in a different forum. It therefore will deny WPATH's Motion for Temporary Restraining Order.
To obtain a TRO under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(b), a movant must show that (1) it "is likely to succeed on the merits"; (2) it "is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief"; (3) "the balance of equities tips in [the movant's] favor"; and (4) such order "is in the public interest."
Earlier this year, WPATH sued the FTC in this Court alleging that the Commission's investigative efforts violated its First Amendment rights. In that challenge, this Court in May partially granted WPATH's Motion for a Preliminary Injunction halting the "implement[ation] or enforc[ement of]" the "issued CID [Civil Investigative Demand]" that the FTC had served on WPATH seeking a broad range of internal records. The Court held that WPATH had shown that it was likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the FTC issued the CID in retaliation for WPATH's constitutionally protected speech and that Plaintiff faced irreparable harm without preliminary relief. The Court declined, however, to grant WPATH broader relief, confining its holding to the facts that gave rise to the specific CID before it.
The FTC and several states then brought a separate enforcement action against WPATH in the Northern District of Texas. They allege that WPATH violated the FTC Act's prohibitions on unfair or deceptive trade practices and false advertising. WPATH returned to this Court and sought a TRO enjoining the FTC from pursuing its Texas litigation. Plaintiff contends that the FTC's suit concerns the exact same subject matter as its previously filed pre-enforcement challenge in this Court and would frustrate the pre-existing preliminary injunction. It asserts that the FTC should proceed in this Court, not the Northern District of Texas, and it seeks an anti-suit injunction to that effect.
One of WPATH's grounds for emergency relief is its contention that halting the FTC's progress in the Northern District of Texas is necessary to protect this Court's jurisdiction over its prior injunction. The D.C. Circuit has held that anti-suit injunctions that "protect the ordering court's own jurisdiction" are more readily justified than ones whose "only purpose is to destroy" another court's jurisdiction. Where a movant can demonstrate that an anti-suit injunction is required to preserve the court's jurisdiction, then, emergency relief might well be warranted.
WPATH has not demonstrated such a threat. The Court sees no potential for "frustration of the preliminary injunction [it] has already issued" from the separate Texas litigation. However the parties characterize the ongoing action in the Northern District of Texas, it is not an attempt to enforce the CID, which the FTC has withdrawn. And, as discussed above, this Court's only decision was confined to the CID.
WPATH points out that the FTC's Texas suit attacks certain of its statements that bear a striking resemblance to the "Covered Statements" that the CID targeted, which could open it up to discovery in Texas of the very same information. But the Court's injunction did not protect WPATH from complying with all information-seeking processes—only the CID that the Court held was likely retaliatory. This Court retains its ability to consider future matters raised by any party. There is thus no threat to this Court's jurisdiction from different proceedings in a different court.
WPATH's remaining justification for emergency relief halting the Texas proceedings—that the FTC's suit is duplicative of litigation in this Court—seeks an anti-suit injunction where no jurisdictional issues are implicated. A truly compelling showing would thus be needed to warrant this Court's disrupting proceedings in a coordinate district and doing so on an emergency basis with truncated briefing and consideration.
WPATH has not made such a showing. The Court is skeptical that either Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 13(a)—which requires that parties bring related claims as compulsory counterclaims in an initial suit—or the rationale for avoiding duplicative litigation applies to actions by the Government to enforce the law. Several courts have reasoned that a plaintiff who files a pre-enforcement challenge to stop the FTC from obtaining information cannot then force the Commission to bring later enforcement actions as compulsory counterclaims in plaintiff's chosen forum.
As the Court mentioned during yesterday's hearing, linking a suit by the FTC to pre-enforcement-investigation challenges risks allowing plaintiffs "to choose the forum and pace of the litigation simply by bringing pre[-]enforcement actions." Courts have been hesitant to force government agencies to comply with a counterclaim requirement that would compress their investigative timelines and force hasty litigation decisions. This Court is thus not prepared to conclude that an action that "involve[s] assertion of rights under a Congressionally mandated enforcement scheme" is akin to a private dispute between parties that should reasonably be consolidated in one forum and time. And before one court acts to terminate another's jurisdiction, it must be on sure footing indeed.
The Court's conclusion that immediate action is unwarranted is bolstered by WPATH's inability to show that it currently faces irreparable harm. A temporary restraining order "is an emergency procedure that is appropriate only when an applicant is in need [of] immediate relief." The harm must be "great" in its impact and "certain" in its arrival to warrant preemptive action before a court can fully ascertain the merits of the parties' positions.
WPATH cites two sources of harm: violation of its First Amendment rights by the Texas litigation and monetary harm incurred by "litigating two separate cases." To find the existence of the first harm, however, this Court must hold that being subject to a suit in the Northern District of Texas is itself a violation of WPATH's First Amendment rights—else no harm would flow.
While WPATH hinges its argument on the Court's May decision, that holding extended only to the facts before it: the lack of justification for the sweeping CID the FTC issued to WPATH. The Court was not prepared in May to prejudge every permutation of the FTC's future actions as unconstitutionally retaliatory, and its role is not to do so now. Without such a holding, WPATH is subject only to an entity's standard obligation to litigate once a government agency brings a claim against it—that is, no harm at all.
Nor does the cost of maintaining two suits warrant emergency relief. The dual litigation is undoubtedly onerous to WPATH. Preliminary relief, however, requires significant monetary loss. "[T]he expense and disruption of defending oneself in protracted adjudicatory proceedings is not an irreparable harm." Nor has litigation in this Court progressed to the point where proceedings in Texas would constitute "a vexatious attempt to relitigate issues already decided." As the Court noted during yesterday's hearing, WPATH is free to cite this Court's prior Opinion in any attempt to stave off discovery in the Texas action….
John Bailey and Daniel F. Mummolo (DOJ-Civ) and Alex Potapov, Ethan D. Beck, Jonathan Abraham Cohen, and Ross Cooper Vaughan (FTC) represent defendants.
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]]>On October 8, 2025, Plaintiff Elena Sassower …, proceeding pro se, along with the Center for Judicial Accountability, Inc. … brought this Action, alleging the 34 Defendant media outlets and journalism-related entities … conspired to commit "journalistic fraud," "institutional reckless disregard for truth," and "defraud[ed] purchasers, contributors, [and] taxpayers" in violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
No, said the court; an excerpt:
[CJA] claims Defendants' "violation of First Amendment responsibilities and journalistic codes by the press, including most of the [D]efendants herein, has meant that all of [CJA]'s hard, painstaking work, spanning more than three decades, has brought no corruption-eradicating changes[ ] when even a modicum of press adherence to such responsibilities and codes … could have brought sweeping[,] corruption-eradicating changes," but this alleged injury is too remote and speculative to constitute an injury in fact….
CJA also claims that "[t]he near total press suppression of any report of [its] work, other than in minimizing, deprecating terms, deprived it of any public profile and appreciation [ ] and all the benefits flowing therefrom[,]" but "the constitutional right of free speech has never been thought to embrace a right to require a journalist or any other citizen to listen to a person's views, let alone a right to require a publisher to publish those views in his newspaper." Accordingly, because CJA has no legally cognizable right to favorable press coverage of its work, it cannot assert an injury-in-fact on this basis….
Plaintiffs [also] claim to bring this Action on behalf of the People of the State of New York who
have been kept 'clueless' by their 'free press' as to how they have been betrayed by their elected and appointed constitutional officers in their three government branches whose flagrant violations of their oaths of office, the state Constitution, laws, and rules, steal their money, … and enact and enable the enactment of policies, without legislative due process and by fraud, including as relates to elections ….
However, … Sassower's pro se status precludes her from litigating on behalf of anyone except herself. Additionally, … Plaintiffs cannot rely on harm suffered by the general public to establish standing because the injury in fact must be particularized to the individuals bringing a case.
Further, as explained above, Plaintiffs do not have a legally enforceable right—under the First Amendment or any other authority—to force Defendants to report on the topics of their choice, so they cannot claim injury to themselves or the general public on that basis.
And an excerpt as to Sassower's more personalized claim:
First, Plaintiffs lack a legally cognizable "injury in fact" as required to establish standing. In detailing her alleged injury, Sassower claims that "the corruption of New York's judiciary … and the complicity of the press, including many [of the Defendants], destroyed the lives and professional careers of her … parents," which, in turn, "destroy[ed] and derail[ed] [Sassower's] own life and career[ ] beginning when she was a child[,] and she is now 69."
However, any injury suffered by Sassower's parents does not give her standing to bring this Action because an alleged constitutional violation "is entirely personal to the direct victim of the alleged constitutional tort, and therefore 'no cause of action [based on it] may lie … for … consequent collateral injuries allegedly suffered personally by the victim's family members.'" Without providing details as to how Defendants' conduct "destroy[ed] and derail[ed]" her "life and career[,]" Sassower has not pled sufficient facts to plausibly allege she suffered a concrete and particularized injury-in-fact.
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]]>This essay … seeks to document the pivotal role of Emergency! in producing an array of legal changes that resulted in an explosion in the availability of paramedic services during the time that the TV show aired new episodes….
The legalization of paramedic services required major changes in legal principles relating to both criminal and civil liability. For example, laws in all states made it a crime for non-physicians to practice medicine without a license. These laws rendered paramedic services unfeasible due to the fact that many of the medical functions that paramedics could have performed constituted the practice of medicine. Paramedics could be criminally prosecuted under these laws even if they had undergone training and could demonstrate expertise in carrying out their paramedic tasks.
Civil liability rules also posed significant challenges for the development of paramedic services. Paramedics could be ordered to pay damages for any harms that patients incurred due to paramedic negligence. A showing of negligence was not a significant hurdle for plaintiffs to overcome since, in most jurisdictions, performing illegal medical procedures constituted negligence per se. Even apart from the negligence per se reasoning, paramedics were likely to be held to the same standard of care as physicians.
The Senate Report on the Emergency Medical Services Systems Act of 1973 summarized the legal challenges facing the development of paramedic services. The report stated that "[t]he reported bill directs the Secretary to conduct a study of the legal barriers to the effective delivery of medical care under emergency conditions …. The provision of emergency medical services is affected in some states by inflexible laws on licensure, malpractice and liability."
Adding to the need for legal changes that would have to occur if paramedic services were to develop and expand was the opposition demonstrated by many physician and nurse groups to the paramedic concept. For example, two researchers writing in 1969 surveyed over 1,300 Wisconsin physicians. The researchers asked the physicians whether they would be willing to permit paramedics to perform duties closely related to their medical specialties. The majority of physicians responded in the negative.
The physicians' professional association, the American Medical Association (AMA), recommended delay, the favorite tactic of opponents who might not want to directly challenge a reform. The AMA's position was that more experimentation was needed before legislation authorizing paramedic services was enacted. Individual doctors, however, were not so restrained. For example, one Illinois doctor thought that "[t]his whole mobile medical thing is loaded with danger …. How would you like it if someone, after only a few weeks' training, took over your husband's job?" …
Nurses often opposed the legalization of paramedic services more stridently than doctors because paramedics presented a potential "turf" issue for many nurses and nursing groups. Legalization of paramedics created a risk that duties previously regarded as part of the nursing profession would be shifted to paramedics, especially with respect to new medical technology. Thus, a number of nursing associations initially went on record as opposing the legalization of paramedic services….
As a result of these challenges and despite the glimmerings of hope for including paramedics in improved emergency services, the reality was that actual paramedic services were virtually non-existent at the end of the 1960s. As of 1971, only twelve paramedic units were in existence in the entire United States. However, in the absence of legislative authority, several of these units operated somewhat clandestinely.
As luck would have it, however, two of these twelve paramedic units were based in Los Angeles, the show-biz capital of the world. California was the first state to enact a comprehensive law authorizing paramedic services, and the two Los Angeles paramedic units operated under the authority of that law, the Wedworth-Townsend Paramedic Act of 1970.
Reflecting the uncertain toehold of paramedic services, the Wedworth-Townsend Paramedic Act was merely an experimental pilot program. The law expired automatically two years after its enactment, and it authorized paramedic services only in counties "with a population of over 6,000,000" people, meaning that the paramedic services that Wedworth-Townsend authorized were limited to Los Angeles County. Despite its rudimentary and hesitant approach, however, the Wedworth-Townsend Paramedic Act provided the impetus for Emergency! …
Popular culture's contribution to the development of paramedic services began shortly after the enactment of California's Wedworth-Townsend Paramedic Act. In the words of Los Angeles County Fire Captain Jim Page, who was involved in the early paramedic training programs in Los Angeles, "May 11, 1971 was a day of great significance to the paramedic concept." On that date veteran television producer Robert Cinader, working with Jack Webb (of Dragnet fame) met with Captain Page and other Los Angeles County Fire Department officials to discuss the development of a new television series based on the exploits of fire department rescue personnel.
Cinader's initial concept focused on physical rescue situations. Cinader asked Captain Page for help in developing rescue scenarios that could be depicted in a weekly series. Captain Page began collecting story ideas, but soon came to believe that the focus on physical rescue situations was too limiting and stated, "[t]here [are] only so many kinds of cave-ins, building collapses, and similar calamities that could be depicted without encountering potentially boring similarities." As fate would have it, Captain Page was familiar with Los Angeles County's experimental paramedic operations. Moreover, shortly after his initial meeting with Cinader, Captain Page was promoted to the office of Battalion Chief, and as a result had the County's two paramedic units under his command. Battalion Chief Page then suggested to Cinader that the focus of the show be changed from physical rescues to depicting paramedics in action.
Cinader's reaction to Page's paramedic proposal was initially cool, but he quickly became a believer. Cinader became a fixture in the fire stations that housed the paramedic units, and he accompanied the paramedics on numerous emergency calls. In September 1971, Webb and Cinader signed a contract with the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) television network to produce a two-hour world premiere movie based on the work of the paramedics. The movie, titled Emergency!, was first shown in Los Angeles in December 1971 and aired nationally in January 1972.
In the pre-cable, pre-satellite era when most American television viewers had access to programming only on three national networks and perhaps one or two local stations, Emergency! became a very popular series that ran on Saturday nights on NBC. New one-hour episodes of Emergency! continued to air through 1977, totaling 129 one-hour episodes and 6 two-hour Movies of the Week. Emergency! was often ranked among the ten most-watched shows in the country, and its national audience averaged about 30 million viewers per episode.
The popularity of Emergency! coincided with the explosive expansion of paramedic services. As mentioned above, twelve paramedic units (some of dubious legality) were operating in a few states in 1971. In 1974, President Ford signed the Emergency Medical Services Systems Act into law. That law established funds for which local communities could apply for the purposes of establishing or improving their emergency medical services systems. The Senate Report on the Act identified the requirements that communities were required to meet in order to receive funding. Barely two years after Emergency! went on the air, paramedic services had moved from a scarce and sometimes illegal resource to a requirement for receiving federal funds:
The importance of adequate training of the paraprofessional, who, in most instances, is the first person at the scene of the emergency, cannot be overemphasized …. These individuals on the emergency scene … are capable of providing lifesaving care and utilizing complex equipment essential to save the patient from death and protect him from serious disability.
With the aid of federal funding, by the end of 1975 (during the first 3 years that Emergency! was on the air), forty-six of the fifty American states had enacted laws authorizing paramedic services. By the end of the decade, about one-half of all Americans lived within ten minutes of a paramedic unit.
An analysis of Emergency!'s influence on the rapid expansion of paramedic services must begin with the acknowledgement of the familiar bromide that "correlation does not equal causation." That is, Emergency! may not have played an independent role in the development of paramedic services, but rather its popularity may have reflected the same interest in paramedic services that produced their spread throughout the country. However, ample evidence supports a conclusion that the TV show was a primary factor that fueled the legal changes that allowed paramedic services to develop and expand….
As time has passed, Emergency! continues to be recognized as a primary influence on the development of paramedic programs. For example, in the year 2000, the president of the American College of Emergency Physicians recognized "the significant role the TV series Emergency! played in raising public awareness of emergency care and promoting the early history and development of modern EMS." … Looking backwards from the year 2000, Long Beach Deputy Fire Commissioner Scott Kamins tells much the same story:
I remember watching that show [Emergency!] when I was 10 years old, and it is definitely what pushed me into fire services …. There were hardly any emergency service units in local fire departments back then in the early 1970's, and it was this show that made people want to have such teams in their community while at the same time making it an attractive career path….
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]]>A group of plaintiffs, employees in the commercial aviation business, personally reject their companies' pandemic-era policies on masks, testing, and vaccination. The district court dismissed the third amended complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction and failure to state a claim, and we affirm.
The claims in this case are remarkably weak, at least as pleaded. We are more candid than usual in this assessment because the plaintiffs' counsel Anthony F. Sabatini has not been candid with us. Sabatini filed multiple briefs replete with fake and hallucinated citations. Even after being warned. "Always a bad idea." Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., 2023 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, at 6 (2023). By outsourcing his legal work to an AI algorithm, Sabatini violated his ethical duties to both his clients and this Court….
Though the filings in this case were substandard in a variety of ways [I excerpt some of the substantive analysis below -EV], we have saved the worst for last. The plaintiffs' counsel Anthony F. Sabatini's filings are riddled with citations to nonexistent, "hallucinated" cases. His opening brief relies on at least eight such cases, including one purportedly decided by this Court.
After the defendants identified this problem, Sabatini acknowledged in his (untimely) proposed reply brief that those citations were "erroneous or unverifiable," and sought to withdraw his reliance on eight listed cases. At this point, things go from bad to worse: the eight cases Sabatini "withdrew" did not match a single one of the eight hallucinated cases in his opening brief. And not only were they not the right cases—all eight were also hallucinated.
We are far from the first court to see lawyers uncritically rely on artificial intelligence software and submit briefs citing nonexistent cases. The typical response when this kind of violation is identified is some version of an apology from the attorney, often with sanctions to follow. It is rare to see the kind of blatant and repeated misconduct that Sabatini has committed in this case.
The first rule of our profession is that a lawyer "shall provide competent representation to a client"—"competent" in the sense that it requires "legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation." It goes without saying that completely outsourcing one's legal work to artificial intelligence software is not competent. Doing so is a dramatic violation of the client's interests.
But it does not stop there, because lawyers are also officers of the Court. We expect that when lawyers submit briefs, they give us their best view of what the law is, and how that law supports their clients. We read those briefs carefully—not just because they are the product of counsel's time, effort, and skill, but because they help us as we try to reach the right answer. All that is lost if a lawyer decides that it is not worthwhile to do the work to persuade us—if he is willing to sign his name on whatever a machine churns out without so much as checking it for accuracy. We cannot do our job the same way unless lawyers do theirs.
Whatever the merits of artificial intelligence, it is no substitute for actual intelligence. Any "use of AI requires caution and humility." When lawyers rely on AI tools, there is no way to get around the obligation to verify that the software got it right, and that what it got wrong will not end up in court filings.
{AI algorithms are notorious for producing "outputs that echo users' opinions and beliefs, even when those views are incorrect." This tendency presents a particular danger in legal filings, as one of a lawyer's chief duties is to give his clients a clear-eyed view of whether the law says what the client wants it to say.}
By signing his name on briefs filled with hallucinated citations—not once but twice—Sabatini violated his professional obligations, both to his clients and to this Court. If he thinks these claims are not worth the effort, he should either tell his clients they fall short or advise them to hire another lawyer—not file obviously insufficient pleadings and briefs generated by AI tools. In a separate order, this Court, through the Chief Judge, will refer the matter to the Committee on Lawyer Qualifications and Conduct.
Orlando Sentinel (Annie Martin) reports that Sabatini is an elected County Commissioner for Lake County, Florida, and a former state representative:
The 37-year-old has made headlines for years for his controversial and often insulting social media posts and was warned by Republican leaders in Tallahassee to tone down his remarks even before he even attended his first legislative session in 2019.
In the past, he has tweeted a picture of an AR-15 targeted at George Floyd protesters, called for ending gay marriage and, when he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives four years ago, posted on X, "I'm running for Congress to imprison as many Democrats as possible."
And a few excerpts related to the substance:
Atlas Air is a commercial airline, and Flight Services International hires contractors to staff Atlas Air's flights. During the Covid-19 pandemic, both companies required employees to vaccinate against Covid-19, unless they obtained a religious or medical exemption—in which case, they had to undergo periodic testing and wear a mask on the job.
The plaintiffs say they object on religious grounds to what they perceive as "a dangerous social and medical experiment." They explain that, among other things, their "conscience prohibits them from being inoculated with any experimental foreign substance," and that their religious rights were violated as a result of "the Biden Administration's goal of achieving universal vaccination and to unlawfully acquire [their] personal, genetic information." And in their view, the companies' accommodations for religious objectors to the vaccination requirement were unreasonable: monthly testing imposed "substantial burdens," and masks were "functionally useless" "symbols" that accomplished "nothing more than political advertising." Some plaintiffs say that they "succumbed to the pressure" and took the vaccine; others begrudgingly wore masks and tested. The complaint does not allege that anyone lost their job, but does allege that some plaintiffs were assigned to less desirable, lower-paying flights.
The plaintiffs assert that their employers' Covid-19 protocols led to a hostile work environment under Title VII; a Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act violation; a federal constitutional deprivation; a tortious invasion of privacy; a negligent disclosure of private medical information; and an infliction of emotional distress. The district court dismissed all claims against Flight Services International and some claims against Atlas Air for lack of personal jurisdiction, and the remaining claims against Atlas Air for failure to state a claim….
Exercising personal jurisdiction over Flight Services International in this lawsuit would violate due process because neither general nor specific jurisdiction is available in Florida for this company….
The plaintiffs first allege that Atlas Air created a work environment hostile to their religious beliefs, in violation of Title VII. They say that Atlas Air's "repeated attempts to coerce" them into getting vaccinated constituted "unwelcomed harassment."
To prevail on this claim, "the plaintiff is required to prove that the defendant had a discriminatory intent or motive." But the plaintiffs do not allege any facts indicating that Atlas Air intended to discriminate against their religious beliefs. In fact, the allegations suggest the opposite. Under its policy, Atlas Air exempted from its vaccine requirement employees who professed a sincere religious objection to the Covid-19 vaccine. Instead, they had to wear a mask at work and test once a month.
The plaintiffs now seem to assert that these accommodations are also hostile to their religion. The problem with this argument is that there is nothing to back it up in the pleadings. The plaintiffs do not allege any religious objections to masks or tests—only political and logistical ones. Masks, they say, are "functionally useless" "political symbols" that "serve no other purpose than identifying 'dissident' employees." And the plaintiffs offer no real problem with testing, other than a generalized complaint that it entails "substantial burdens." What those burdens are, and whether they are religious in nature, the plaintiffs do not say. Nor do they allege that employees who received religious exemptions were treated any worse than those who received medical exemptions.
Whatever one makes of the plaintiffs' dislike of masks and tests, they have alleged no facts signaling animosity from Atlas Air toward their religious beliefs. The allegation that Atlas Air harbored a discriminatory motive is not only conclusory, but "wildly implausible." …
The plaintiffs also bring claims under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, alleging that Atlas Air unlawfully required its employees to take medical products authorized for emergency use. But they cannot sue to enforce such claims; only the federal government can bring enforcement actions under that statute….
The plaintiffs also allege several state tort claims. The first is that Atlas Air tortiously invaded their privacy by disclosing private medical information—namely, vaccination status—to company administrators in charge of enforcing Covid-19 protocols. "In Florida, except in cases of physical invasion, the tort of invasion of privacy must be accompanied by publication to the public in general or to a large number of persons." And publicity "requires that a matter be made public, by communicating it to the public at large, or to so many persons that the matter must be regarded as substantially certain to become one of public knowledge." The plaintiffs do not allege sufficient facts on this score….
We also reject the plaintiffs' intentional infliction of emotional distress claims. Those would require showing that Atlas Air intentionally or recklessly caused "severe emotional distress" through "extreme and outrageous conduct." The challenged conduct must "go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community."
Like many other employers at the time, Atlas Air required certain precautions designed to prevent the spread of Covid-19. But the fact that the plaintiffs disagree with the steps Atlas Air took does not put the airline's actions beyond all possible bounds of decency. The district court correctly dismissed the plaintiffs' intentional infliction of emotional distress claims.
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Over a decade ago, Sen. John Fetterman (D–Pa.) looked like the future of Bernie Sanders–style populism, championing higher minimum wages, criminal justice reform, and social welfare spending. After 13 years as mayor of deeply impoverished Braddock, Pennsylvania, and then a term as the state's lieutenant governor, he won his Senate seat in 2022.
Since coming to Washington, Fetterman has charted a unique path. He routinely criticizes his own party for "catering to the fringe and agitated parts of our base," accuses fellow Democrats of Trump Derangement Syndrome, and praises capitalism as the one system that has consistently improved living standards.
In May, Fetterman joined The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie to argue that the socialist politics of such Democrats as Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani are alienating moderates and spell long-term doom for the party. He denounced former President Joe Biden's failure to control the southern border and President Donald Trump's antipathy toward legal immigration, called the national debt a "ticking bomb," and advocated legalizing marijuana and psychedelics.
Reason: You recently wrote in The Washington Post that you're not going to be changing parties. Yet you also have critical words for your own party. You told Fox News that the Democratic Party is turning into "an orgy of socialism." And in your Post piece, you said that Democrats are "catering to the fringe and agitated parts of our base." What do you think is driving that?
Fetterman: Extremism is driving it, without a doubt. Look at the primaries all across in the Senate and in the House, and look at the kinds of people that have already been elected.
For example, the mayor in Seattle, she's an absolute socialist, if not more. And now people [say], "Hey, I'm leaving," and she's like, "Bye." And then, of course, New York, that's its own situation too. I thought [Florida Republican Gov. Ron] DeSantis had a great line saying, "Mamdani is my favorite real estate agent now." It's driving people away. People can move, and they can vote with their feet. That explains why Florida continues to flourish. But a lot of these states like New York and other blue states, we've read that $2 trillion have migrated out of these states too.
The Democratic Party is the problem, except they love the billionaires that fund those kinds of causes and those kinds of organizations that are actually driving a part, a lot, of the protesting. That's where that energy is as well. Look at some of the views now that people are espousing. It's moving more and more in socialism and communism.
In Maine, for example, [Democratic Senate candidate] Graham Platner: avowed communist. He described himself as a communist. "Antifa"—that's not a slur from me. That's his own words, how he described that.
What about your own personal evolution? In 2016, you endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) in the presidential primaries for the Democratic Party. He's an avowed democratic socialist. What is it that rubbed you the wrong way about socialists or communists since then?
In 2016, it was much more about the minimum wage and some other very basic kinds of things. Now that's just turned into much more standing with Cuba, standing with Venezuela, standing with the Iranian regime, and turn that into becoming more increasingly anti-American.
My views really haven't changed that much, things that I supported. I was very supportive about gay rights. Back in 2013, I was officializing a gay marriage when that was illegal. I was happy to get arrested on that. My views really haven't changed; what's really changed is the party. In 2024, I was campaigning for Kamala Harris as a Democrat. It was very clear we were going to lose, and a lot of the excesses that we've had in 2020 came back to revisit, and that really, I think, cost us that election in 2024. The excess of the party back then summoned the second term of the Trump administration.
.@SenFettermanPA endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in 2016. Now he's blasting fellow Democrats for embracing socialism.
What changed?
"My views really haven't changed. What's really changed is the party," Fetterman tells @nickgillespie on The Reason Interview podcast. pic.twitter.com/M2OjvyidQE
— reason (@reason) May 16, 2026
You've said that the Democratic Party has become anti-men. What forms does that take? What's driving the lurch to the far left, both in terms of economic policy and identity politics?
If you make someone feel uncomfortable or unwelcome, they will leave. They've done that. Back in 2016, I witnessed that. I lived directly across the street from a steel mill and the union hall. I was doing an event for Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton at that time. I was asking the union president, "Where's your people on that?" And he's like, "At least half, half if not more, are [for] Trump." And just coincidentally, a guy in a big truck drove by and he honked, "Ha ha ha, go Trump, go Trump." He had truck nuts on the trailer and had a Trump sticker. Clearly that's what's already well underway. I think we effectively can count that a lot of those traditional union members have already left the Democratic Party. That's where we are. It's been a serious realignment of parts of our base. And that's driving some of the more extreme things of our party now too.
You have said Trump is plainspoken. That's a charitable way of saying it. When he announced he was running for president, he launched into a diatribe against Mexicans being rapists and drug dealers.
He uses and engages in things that I would never engage on that. Just a couple of hours before this conversation, he put an image of Democrats in sewage in the reflecting pool here in Washington, D.C. I don't do those kinds of things. I don't support those things. But I also think it's ridiculous to heckle him over $13 million to rehab that. That's just kind of small ball, for me.
But let's talk about immigration. We absolutely, the Democratic Party, became an open-border party. That used to be a GOP slur. But then you realize those numbers. It really was—you had 300,000 people showing up at our border every month. That's the size of Pittsburgh, [near] where I live. I try to describe that to my party. This is a serious problem. People are angry. All of our blue cities have become overwhelmed. New York, Chicago, Denver, Boston: All those were overwhelmed with migrants. I was a Democrat being very, very pro-immigration, as I remain that. But we have to secure our border and deport all the criminals.
This draws a distinction not just between Trump and the Democrats but between you and many Democrats. Biden, in his last year, basically secured the southern border. Trump has cut legal immigration. He is exceptionally anti-immigrant. What is a better policy, once we presume that the border is secure?
Not a single Democrat could identify what's the solution. What do you do with 300,000 people showing up at the border every month? People were living at the airport in Boston. New York City spent $8 [billion], $9 billion to house and take care of those people and secure the border. The Biden administration finally made some changes. They should have already had them in place. Why not secure the border? Because I think they were afraid of the party, and that would be anti-immigration or racist for those other kinds of things. We think what's appropriate: secure the border, deport all the criminals. I was the Democratic lead for the Laken Riley bill. I grieve for Renée Good or Alex Pretti, but I also grieve for Laken Riley or Miles Young and other people that were victimized by people that should have never been here or already should have been deported after they broke the law.
It's easy to say that someone here illegally who commits a violent crime should be deported or imprisoned. But communities like western Pennsylvania need new people moving in. What would a good, viable legal immigration system look like, one that will help American communities, businesses, and the economy thrive?
We have the most generous and the largest immigration program of any country in the world already. People and immigrants are coming to Pennsylvania. In parts of Pennsylvania, like in Reading and the Lehigh Valley, across our state, the immigrant community is actually driving a lot of those economies. Agriculture is our top industry in Pennsylvania. Targeting and going after these workers is absolutely wrong. I've spoken out against that. Don't harass and target otherwise lawful people that are just working hard. I agree with that. We should protect our Dreamers too. My wife was a Dreamer. You reference what's easy. No, that's common sense; it's not easy. We betrayed those basic kinds of standards as a party. And now the Republicans, Trump has betrayed those same commonsense standards, and you have the kind of calamity in Minneapolis.
I became the only Democrat that voted for Markwayne Mullin for the next secretary [of the Department of Homeland Security]. [Kristi] Noem was a disaster. I called for her to go. I'm working with Markwayne. Markwayne promised, "I'm not going to be the guy in the headlines." There aren't any headlines.
What do you say to Republicans, including senators like Eric Schmitt from Missouri, who talk about how the real Americans are the people who can trace their heritage here back to sometime before the Civil War? Is that any way to build a viable nation?
We all have our own different views for that. For me, my family is a product of immigration, illegal immigration. My views on that haven't changed ever. That's why we have to find a way forward. Twenty-seven years ago, I had Alan Simpson as a professor at [Harvard Kennedy School]. He said you are never going to have any meaningful immigration legalization, because both sides use it and they weaponize it. That was absolutely true. So finding a way forward, it's too valuable for the extremists to blame the immigrants or to say that we could just open up our border. It's necessary to find a commonsense approach and reject the extreme things.
Do you support a path to citizenship for people who enter the country illegally but have been living here and have not been arrested for any kind of serious crime?
Yeah. I think that was part of a deal years ago, and that was derailed too. Right now, the base in our respective parties punish people that want to have a serious conversation about that. That's where we constantly are now. I absolutely knew we were going to get rolled for the bipartisan border deal back in '23 and '24, because there's no way you're going to provide that—it was too valuable on both sides. That's what happened about immigration. And here we are. That's where we are right now. Thankfully, they are coming back and they're taking more reasonable advice.
In your recent Washington Post piece you said you remain strongly pro-choice and pro-weed. Are you going to introduce legislation, or is there any federal movement to legalize marijuana or change drug laws so states can experiment more freely?
I am very, very libertarian in a lot of ways and for those circumstances. If you check my record, I've been for legal weed for forever. Politically, that was toxic or certainly not popular. And also psychedelics too. Back then too, when I was [lieutenant governor]. Pennsylvania, that's the mushroom king in the world. That is the fact. I said, "My goodness, why? Couldn't this be a really a great opportunity for agriculture and helping people feeling better about that?" Thankfully, I think we could all agree [with] everything that President Trump has done about liberalizing marijuana and psychedelics. As a libertarian, I don't judge or knock anyone for whatever they [use to] knock their edge off to just make it through in this world.
I absolutely support Zyn and those things as long as it's safe. I think that's important. That's a choice that every American of legal age deserves to have and to participate in a way that doesn't turn them into a criminal, or for those things make it as safe as possible. I think that's sacred too. Whatever that is, a glass of wine or scotch or a little weed, sitting in front of the firepit in your backyard, whatever that is. Your path for wellness, psychedelics, whatever, I think it all should be legal without judgment and without punishment or a criminal record. I've been very consistent about that and sharing those things. I do hope it continues to liberalize overall.
Tell me what you dislike about Trump. What is it about Trump that most gets you mad? What are the Republicans doing most wrong, as far as you're concerned?
He invited me to have dinner and sat down with him in January of 2025. He just came back from the most remarkable political comeback in American history, as far as I'm aware of. He was sitting, his power was peak, and he could have done a lot of big, big important things. He got a second chance in every kind of way. My God, he was shot in the head. Half an inch over, that could have turned that into a Zapruder tape. Thank God.
I don't know why he chose some of these choices when he could have done so much more. Technically, he did make [it] about revenge and those things. The strongest of these small petty kinds of cases, the strongest one I can cite is the guy that threw the sandwich at the [Customs and Border Protection agent]. I don't know why you engage in that. There's no upside for those things. Those cases never go anywhere. But I absolutely support, I was proud. I stand with Israel, and that's why I follow him now too.
Last year, federal spending was the equivalent of 23 percent of gross domestic product, while tax revenue, overall revenue was 17 percent. We had a $1.78 trillion deficit last year. The national debt is bigger than the annual economy. You are a proponent of spending lots of money or having the government be very robust and muscular and helping people. Is the national debt or federal annual deficits a problem? How do we close that gap?
Without a doubt, the national debt is a ticking bomb. Without a doubt, we are going to have to address that. We are going to have to deal with entitlements. We have to do all these kinds of honest conversations. That's going to require bipartisanship. That's going to demand that we remember we're all Americans. We have to find solutions here. Unfortunately, here in this town right now, we are doing just dumb, pointless things. Shutting down our government. I was the only Democrat that said that's dumb and terrible. Why would you shut down our entire government because we aren't able to win enough elections to make the kind of changes that we all want to?
Do you support ending the Senate filibuster? Trump wants to get rid of it, and I believe you have spoken positively about getting rid of the filibuster.
We Democrats, we were so wrong about eliminating the filibuster. I was wrong too. I'll be the first person to say we were so wrong. Thank God people prevailed. I think history vindicated someone like [former Sens. Kyrsten] Sinema [I–Ariz.] and [Joe] Manchin [I–W.Va.] to stand for that. If the Senate becomes a smaller version of the House, that would have profound changes that are going to damage our nation.
So we need the filibuster? The filibuster should stay in place?
Absolutely, 100 percent. Same Democrats—we seem to forget we all wanted to get rid of it. But now we love that shit. We love the filibuster. Thank God, the filibuster. I'm not surprised that the president is going to come for the filibuster, because that's the one thing that stands in the way before they lose the majority. Without a doubt, the House is going to change. The Senate's possible, perhaps—I don't know. But the backlash, the chaos, and without a doubt, there is going to be a lot of churn.
Social Security and Medicare are the main drivers of the national debt and annual budget deficits. Should these programs be cut back to function more as a safety net, or should taxes be raised to fund them? What is your preferred solution to entitlement reform?
When I was at grad school, they had a comprehensive, two-week node to study Social Security. It was solvent through 2037. Way, way back in 1998, that felt like we'd be living on the moon and other things. Now that's starting to approach. It just required very small, small actuarial kinds of changes for that. Insolvent does not mean broke; it just means at that point you could pay 75 percent of current benefit levels. Just agreeing as a Democrat, Republican, I'm not going to weaponize this conversation against one another, and we're not going to scare the elderly Americans. Congress has to be the adult in the room. We refuse to do that. People are running right now—"Fuck Trump, fuck Trump," that is their campaign. They are producing these kinds of videos to do that thing. It's both sides. Congress, we have to be the adult in the room and solve these serious problems. I'm here to be in that conversation as a Democrat that's been isolated in my party for some of these views, and the same guy that doesn't engage in some of the extreme AI slop in social media things from the other side too. That's where I'm at: having conversations with the left, the right, and here with you too. I'm all thrilled to just have a real conversation about where we are.
Braddock, Pennsylvania, is a town of about 1,500 or 1,700 people. You were its mayor. You told me in 2011 that you were administering palliative care, that the town probably wasn't coming back. Can you bring us up to date? What is Braddock like now? What policies would actually help people there live with dignity and give their children and grandchildren thriving lives?
When you and I met all those years ago [on Real Time With Bill Maher], I still lived there. I have three children, and they live there. They were all born in Braddock. And we [were] working—both the Biden administration and the Trump administration—to save the American steel way of life here. We were able to save a lot of the buildings in town too. We created some more affordable housing.
It's not a renaissance. When I arrived, 90 percent of all that stuff was gone already. During my time as mayor, I was very proud to address gun violence, and we were successful in achieving those things too. Giving a shit about these kinds of abandoned places, that really became my argument. It was never about money, power. No one ever showed up in a place like Braddock trying to help kids get GEDs. I never thought I would be ending up here in the United States Senate, for now, but that's where I am.
That's still my home. I could have moved. I could've moved at any point, but I live there and things are better than they were when I arrived. Significantly. But it's never going to be a gentrification. It's abandonment, and that remains a significant problem.
I think you would consider yourself a "big government liberal." Do you think government should be heavily involved in people's lives and provide money and opportunities?
No. I would never describe myself in that way. There are important problems that a government is necessary to address. Government is not the solution for all things. I'm a capitalist. I absolutely revere the market and how it's able to correct and redirect these kinds of resources. I think things continue to get better and better despite the churn and a lot of the chaos.
Is there a tension between protectionism and the creative destruction that is always happening? The industries that you were born into are not going to exist forever. How do you minimize the disruption without blocking the changes necessary to renew towns, regions, and whole countries?
That's a complicated answer. But for me, I'm a very pro-capitalist Democrat. I refuse to engage in the extreme rhetoric and support the kinds of extremism and throw around those stupid terms like end-stage capitalism. Without a doubt in human history, capitalism has been the only system that has proven to raise the quality of life across the globe. That's a fact. And now, thankfully, we were able to prevail here in our nation.
This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.
The post John Fetterman Says He's 'Very Libertarian in a Lot of Ways' appeared first on Reason.com.
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Six weeks ago, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the creation of COGE, the Commission on Government Efficiency. While the commission's name might sound like Elon Musk's now-dead federal DOGE and conjure up an image of a chainsaw-slashing, afuera-style attack on the city's $125.8 billion budget, the commission has thus far been a typical governmental task force.
Before proposing changes to the city's charter, COGE is holding a series of 11 meetings to gather input from elected officials and the public about improving government efficiency. On Wednesday evening, I went to the penultimate COGE meeting in the auditorium of the historic Riverside Church in Morningside Heights to witness COGE in action. The meeting started about 20 minutes late. When the commissioners finally took their seats, a lone audience member began clapping, and the rest of the attendees tentatively joined him.
The woman to my right said she was told she may not have time to testify during the meeting because city officials were giving presentations. The first hour of the meeting was, in fact, dedicated to lengthy presentations. Comptroller Mark Levine urged the commission to adopt clear rules for the city's rainy day fund so emergency funds may be better protected and set aside for times of economic crisis. The public advocate, the city's elected watchdog, then spoke about wanting easier access to city agency information. New York City Buildings Department Commissioner Ahmed Tigani, fresh off dealing with a building crisis in Midtown, discussed ways to accelerate safe construction projects. Tigani's colleague then shared recommendations from the SPEED task force, which seeks to "expedite equitable development" (i.e., build affordable housing faster).
After the officials and experts testified for over an hour, members of the public were called to the front of the auditorium in pairs and were given three minutes to share their grievances and suggestions. The woman sitting next to me left before testifying.
The theme of this meeting was streamlining permitting, but participants testified about a range of issues, from street safety complaints to teachers' inability to gather supplies (despite the NYC Education Department's $45 billion budget). Some participants shared testimony over Zoom, and participants were also able to submit written testimony online. One gentleman complained that the city was not ticketing cars on his street. In line with the COGE mission, nobody at the meeting demanded outright cuts to agencies, but they shared ideas for improving existing processes.
Like at any public meeting, the attendees at the Riverside Church meeting were a self-selecting group. They were not local cranks like in Parks and Rec; they were mostly leaders of various civic groups and associations, including the Times Square Alliance. Those who attended appeared to be in good spirits, clapping after each testimony (although I did catch two people snoozing). It was heartening to see that these New Yorkers cared enough about efficiency to attend a three-hour-long governmental meeting on a summer evening.
Perhaps improving government efficiency in New York City requires a long and tedious process like this. But let's remember that several of those at the helm of COGE have had long careers in city—and, in some cases, federal—government. These commissioners appear to place great faith in the government's ability to solve problems (if only it were more efficient), and they have little incentive to cut the programs they have spent their careers building. And while COGE may have good intentions, the commission's approach does not attack inefficiency at its source: the expansive size and scope of government.
The post Dispatch From COGE: A Bureaucratic Meeting About Cutting Bureaucratic Bloat appeared first on Reason.com.
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Naturalization ceremonies on the Fourth of July are singularly joyous occasions. New members are officially inducted into the American project on the day that celebrates that very thing. So what is a July 4 self-deportation?
Patricia Rojas, 25, found out this month, when she moved to Mexico. Like many immigrants, she had wanted to stay in the United States. Unlike many immigrants, however, she had lived in America legally since she was 4 months old and has never known another country as home.
Rojas is, in other words, a "Dreamer," the nickname given to those who came to the United States as kids through no fault of their own. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program shielded from deportation many immigrants who arrived here illegally as children. But there is an asterisk in Rojas' case, and in about 250,000 other cases: She is a Documented Dreamer, in that she came here lawfully. Had her parents opted to come illegally, Rojas would not have had to self-deport.
But the path to legal permanent residence is not easy. In a statement, Rojas said her father arrived in the U.S. on an E-2 visa, which allows some foreign entrepreneurs to build businesses here. Yet, while the visa is renewable, it does not allow the recipient to get in line for a green card. The H-1B visa, meanwhile, does—but country-of-origin caps can take decades, and many die waiting in line. Those like Rojas age out of the system if their parents cannot obtain permanent residency before they turn 21.
The subsequent options are few. In Rojas' case, which she also detailed in a New York Times essay published today, she did not win the H-1B lottery after three attempts—the maximum. This is not surprising: Roshan Taroll, another Documented Dreamer whose case I covered two years ago, had the same experience and had to self-deport to Taiwan.
This hole in the law has received some attention in Congress, although no legislative fix has ever gotten over the finish line. Sens. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) and Alex Padilla (D–Calif.) have introduced the America's CHILDREN Act multiple times, backed by Rep. Deborah Ross (D–N.C.) in the House. The co-sponsors are heavily bipartisan. "My bill America's Children Act fixes the documented dreamer problem by prioritizing the children of legal immigrants for permanent status," Paul told me in 2024. "So, a child whose parents came legally will not have to face deportation when they turn twenty-one."
The immigration debate has been even more charged than usual recently amid the Supreme Court's ruling upholding birthright citizenship. Paul, for his part, has made it clear he does not support it. Yet his advocacy for fixing the problems faced by Documented Dreamers is a reminder that there is widespread agreement that we should not actively punish people for coming here "the right way."
The birthright citizenship debate also looms in Rojas' mind. How could it not? "Those four months altered my life trajectory," she writes in the Times. "Had I been born after my family relocated, like both of my younger siblings, I would be an American citizen today."
The post She Came to the U.S. at 4 Months Old. She Had To Self-Deport—Because She Came Here Legally. appeared first on Reason.com.
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"We have a sclerotic gerontocracy," posted then-48-year-old Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) back in 2024. Gerontocracy means rule by the old. And we Americans certainly are dominated by a cadre of elderly politicians. The U.S. Senate has the oldest average age of members for any directly elected upper legislative chamber in the world, according to the latest data compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
The fact that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) has been hospitalized for nearly a month proves Khanna's point. The 84-year-old legislator suffered a serious health emergency and was hauled away in an ambulance from his Washington, D.C., residence on June 14. In his absence, already-feckless Congress is even more unproductive. Legislation proposed by the Senate's Republican leadership has remained stalled since McConnell's vote is necessary for its passage.
While the former Senate Majority Leader may not be dead yet, bear in mind that eight of the 16 members of Congress who died in office since 2020 were over age 75. Most notoriously, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) tottered along for years before dying at age 90 in 2023. The average age of U.S. senators is now around 65, with 10 members aged 79 and older.
Gerontocracy is demonstrably harmful for economic growth. As "a direct consequence of the obsolescence of their personal human capital," aged elites fail to "seize the opportunity offered by new technologies and to implement the best choice for the economy as a whole," according to a 2017 study in the Journal of Applied Economics.
In a 2023 Pew Research Center poll, 79 percent of Americans favored setting maximum age limits for federal elected officials. In another Pew poll, only 3 percent of Americans favored having presidents in their 70s or older. Yet here we are.
See my May 2025 Reason article, "Can America Get Out of the Gerontocracy Trap?" where I examined the problems and possible solutions to our sclerotic gerontocracy.
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]]>New on the Beyond the Brief podcast: In the 1970s, the Supreme Court upheld requirements that banks report their clients' cash transactions of $70k (adjusting for inflation) or more. Fast forward to today, and the feds are demanding disclosure of transactions of just $200. Yowza! Are there any constitutional limits on financial surveillance?
New on the Short Circuit podcast: Two Sixth Circuit First Amendment cases that go together "like cocaine and waffles." With a special appearance by Captain Justice, Guardian of the Realm and Leader of the Resistance. [link forthcoming]
New case! Leavenworth, Wash. permits all sorts of home businesses so long as they don't create parking issues or otherwise mess with the peace and quiet of residential neighborhoods. Massage therapy, beauty parlors, and barbershops are all A-okay. But, for reasons that make no sense, officials won't allow IJ client Nicole Bulow, a physical therapist whose practice will have pretty much zero impact on her neighbors, to open up shop. Click here to learn more.
The post Short Circuit: An inexhaustive weekly compendium of rulings from the federal courts of appeal appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>On June 1, 2026, Roc Nation filed a motion for sanctions against Defendants Dixon, Blackburn, and T.A. Blackburn LLC …. This Court set a briefing schedule requiring Defendants' opposition to be filed by June 30, 2026. On July 1, 2026, Blackburn filed Defendants' opposition motion. Counsel for Roc Nation filed a motion to strike the filing because it was "untimely, exceeds this Court's word limit, and contains what appear to be AI-hallucinated citations."
On July 7, 2026, Blackburn filed a response to the motion to strike in which he argued that because every case cited to is real and "each was cited for a proposition it actually holds," the allegation of AI hallucinations is inaccurate. Blackburn does not dispute that on seventeen occasions he included language in quotation marks that is not identical to language in the cited cases but states that "[w]here quoted language does not track the source verbatim, it is a paraphrase or compression that faithfully states the court's holding—the ordinary work of legal argument, not the invention of fake law that the 'AI hallucination' cases condemn." In addition to defending the choice to quote language that does not exist in the cases cited, Blackburn accuses Roc Nation of "failing the identical citation audit," and includes a list of forty citations that he alleges are not reflected in the cases verbatim.
In response to Blackburn's filing, counsel for Roc Nation filed a letter informing the Court that Roc Nation did not use AI in "identifying authority for its own motions nor in reviewing the authority cited in Plaintiff's opposition." Regarding the accusation of forty instances of misleading or inaccurate quotations, Roc Nation states "[i]t also appears that some of Plaintiff's accusations are based on hallucinations from the very 'assisted citation-verification tool' Plaintiff claims to have used." For example, Blackburn claims Roc Nation:
Misattributed [a] quotation to a Supreme Court authority. Roc Nation attaches substantive bad-faith language—that a party "filed a frivolous lawsuit, in bad faith, for the purpose of extorting a settlement from the defendants"—to Bridge v. Phoenix Bond & Indemnity Co., 553 U.S. 639 (2008). The verification tool returned "No matching quote found in Bridge v. Phoenix Bond & Indem. Co., 553 U.S. 639 (2008)." Bridge is a RICO-standing decision; it does not contain the quoted language Roc Nation attributes to it. That is precisely the species of citation error—quoted language that does not appear in the cited authority—that Roc Nation labels "AI hallucination" when it appears in Plaintiff's brief.
However, Roc Nation states:
[H]ad Plaintiff actually read Roc Nation's motion, he would have seen that Roc Nation did not attribute that quotation—or any other—to Bridge. Roc Nation cited Byrne v. Nezhat, 261 F.3d 1075 (11th Cir. 2001) and appropriately added, as a description of subsequent history, that the decision was abrogated on other grounds by Bridge.
In addition to Roc Nation's representations in their letter, the Court verified the quotations and citations in both the motion for sanctions and Motion to Dismiss.
This Court is deeply troubled by (1) Blackburn's use of language in quotation marks that does not exist in the cases he's citing the language for; (2) Blackburn's insistence that his behavior is acceptable because the cases exist even though the quoted language does not; (3) Blackburn's attempt to defend his behavior by lodging unfounded allegations against Roc Nation; and (4) a continued pattern of behavior by Blackburn of making misrepresentations to the Court in memoranda of law after being sanctioned by multiple courts, including this one, for doing so already.
Blackburn in his filing attempts to obfuscate the meaning of a quotation and how to use quotation marks. Therefore, the Court will provide definitions. Merriam-Websters's dictionary defines the verb quote as "to speak or write (a passage) from another usually with credit acknowledgement." Merriam-Webster defines quotation mark as "one of a pair of punctuation marks " " or ' ' used chiefly to indicate the beginning and the end of a quotation in which the exact phraseology of another or of a text is directly cited." The Bluebook, which provides guidance on how to use quotations from caselaw, gives specific instructions for how to substitute or omit letters or words when quoting language from a case.
Not only does the dictionary define what a quotation is and how quotation marks are used, courts expect lawyers to present accurate quotations and citations in written submissions. "When a party uses quotation marks to delineate statements of legal rules, and those rules are followed by a citation to an existing legal case, the Court treats this as a representation that the cited case contains the language which is in quotation marks." The Court does "not look kindly" on failures to accurately represent cases cited by a party.
Rather than take responsibility for the inaccurate representations in the opposition motion, Blackburn made baseless accusations against counsel for Roc Nation in attempt to deflect attention from himself. This is not the first time Blackburn has made unfounded accusations against opposing counsel in this case. Blackburn was recently sanctioned by this Court for that very behavior when he accused counsel for Cartagena of violating the Protective Order without a modicum of evidence to support the accusation.
Furthermore, this is not the first time a court has stricken filings by Blackburn from the record because he fabricated quotes from case law. On June 25, 2025, a court in the Western District of Pennsylvania stated:
When reviewing Blackburn's briefs, the Court was perplexed to see quotes attributed to the Court's own prior opinion in this case, as well as other case law, that was wholly fabricated.
Jakes v. Youngblood (W.D. Pa. 2025). Because the court viewed Blackburn's conduct as "a clear ethical violation of the highest order," the Court struck Blackburn's motion to dismiss and reply memorandum of law from the record. The court then ordered Blackburn to show cause as to why he did not violate Rule 11. In Blackburn's memorandum of law in response to the court's order to show cause he stated:
I now understand that paraphrases—particularly those closely tracking the language from cases—must never be enclosed in quotation marks unless they accurately reflect the precise language of the cited source. In this instance, I failed to meet that standard.
The court in Jakes ultimately imposed a monetary sanction against Blackburn for five thousand dollars.
In addition to being sanctioned for the same conduct Blackburn has now exhibited with this Court, he has been warned by multiple other courts against including inaccuracies and AI hallucinations in his briefs. On March 24, 2025, in this District, Judge Oetkin characterized filings by Blackburn as "replete with inaccurate statements of law, conclusory accusations, and inappropriate ad hominem attacks on opposing counsel." On December 15, 2025, in the District of New Jersey, the court sanctioned Blackburn for citing to nonexistent cases created by AI hallucinations and failing to comply with court orders to provide information about the citation to the court.
Blackburn's repeated inclusion of fabricated quotes in his filings demonstrates a pattern of complete disregard for his ethical obligations to make accurate representations to the Court. He has been sanctioned repeatedly for his reliance on AI without verifying the quotations and citations before filing his submissions. Worse still, while he represented to a court last year that he understands words "must never be enclosed in quotation marks unless they accurately reflect the precise language of the cited source," he brazenly minimizes and attempts to justify identical behavior here. When his fabricated quotes were discovered by counsel for Roc Nation in this case, he doubled down and made baseless accusations against opposing counsel. For those reasons and all of the reasons stated above, the motion to strike is GRANTED and the motion for sanctions will be considered unopposed. A separate order on the sanctions will follow.
Additionally, this Court made a referral of Blackburn to the Southern District of New York's Grievance Committee in its last Order on sanctions. Blackburn's citations to fabricated quotations and complete lack of acceptance of responsibility after previously being sanctioned for the same exact behavior is an outrageous breach of his ethical and professional obligations. Accordingly, this behavior will be incorporated in his referral to the Grievance Committee.
For Mr. Blackburn's side of the story, see his July 7 letter.
The post Lawyer Shows "Complete Disregard for His Ethical Obligations to Make Accurate Representations to the Court," Magistrate Judge Says appeared first on Reason.com.
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Two teenagers were detained by police in San Mateo, California, earlier this week after a Waymo representative alerted law enforcement that the vehicle's underage occupants were drinking alcohol and shooting what appeared to be a real weapon out of the driverless car.
A Waymo representative, "monitoring the vehicle's live interior camera feeds," called the San Mateo Police Department after seeing the teens fire a toy water-bead blaster that resembled a real gun, according to NBC Bay Area. Waymo shared the car's location with authorities and disabled the vehicle after telling its teen occupants it was "experiencing mechanical trouble," according to the cops.
In an attempt to inject a bit of humor into what could have been a more serious situation, the police department began its recap of the event on Facebook with "Parents, do you know where your teens are? @waymo does!"
While the levity was mostly well-received in the comments, some people used the post to raise questions about privacy in the age of autonomous vehicles. Irina Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics program at Santa Clara University, told NPR the post may "make Waymo passengers wonder what triggers a police intervention." At the same time, Alessandro Acquisti, an information technology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the outlet that Waymo is "most likely" not being entirely truthful to customers about its use of their data.
But framing this case as a privacy issue fuels misunderstanding of Waymo's operations and a company's responsibility to its customers.
You have to be within range of your Waymo to unlock the ride. At 14 and 15 years old, respectively, the two teens would not have been eligible to use Waymo unless they misrepresented their age or the ride was booked for them under a different account.
Both options violate Waymo's terms of service, so the company would have been within its rights to terminate the ride per its policy.
Waymo's rules also prohibit "drug or alcohol use" and "weapons of any kind" in its cars, and remind riders that they cannot "bring weapons into the car." Waymo doesn't hide the fact that its vehicles are plastered with cameras and microphones that "act as the 'eyes and ears'" of its driver. Its data policy warns that the company may use cameras to "check that in-car rules are being followed," or "review video under certain circumstances," including "live video during a trip."
It's a question of choice. By choosing Waymo as their ride-share service, the two teens agreed to abide by its policies.
It's reasonable to push back on the company for lying to the teens about the vehicle's condition to hold them for the cops. But as Jeanine Luna, a spokesperson for the police department, told the Associated Press, the teens were "not locked in" and able to "exit the vehicle" at any time. With every opportunity to leave, the pair was likely waiting for Waymo to fix the issue before continuing their joyride.
The encounter could have been very different had the pair been driving themselves. Instead, Waymo's technology effectively de-escalated the situation. Without autonomous driving—which has a stellar safety record—the story of two drunk teens driving and shooting out of a car window likely ends tragically.
Police eventually released the teens to their parents' care without filing charges, though NBC reports the cops are still reviewing whether "additional charges are appropriate."
One can hardly fault Waymo for drawing a line at a customer's willful disregard for its policies and common sense when they choose to play out a Grand Theft Auto–like fantasy in one of its cars.
The post If You Get Drunk and Brandish a Fake Gun in a Waymo, Don't Blame the Cameras appeared first on Reason.com.
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In the days before the much-ballyhooed celebrations of America's 250th anniversary, Gallup dropped what passes for a bombshell from its polling operation. "American Pride Falls to 25-Year Record Low," reads the headline on Megan Brenan's summary of recent polling, which asked a representative group of Americans the following question: "How proud are you to be an American—extremely proud, very proud, moderately proud, only a little proud, or not at all proud?"
In a column I wrote last week about the apparent decline of American patriotism, I noted that much of the press coverage focused on the low rates of pride evinced by Gen Z and millennials while ignoring that "all age groups are less likely to love America than in the past." I also focused on how volatile the patriotism of partisan Democrats and Republicans tends to be. Going back to 2001, when Gallup started asking this question, Republicans have always been much more likely to say they are extremely proud to be American. But their positive feelings routinely dip sharply when Democrats take the White House or control of Congress. The same pattern holds for Democrats, whose pride surged during President Barack Obama's first term, when the Democrats also controlled the House and Senate for a spell, before cratering from 34 percent in 2024 to an all-time low of just 14 percent this year. Does anyone think those numbers wouldn't look significantly different if Kamala Harris had won the 2024 election?
But mere partisanship can't explain a more surprising, and potentially troubling, finding: Independents, whom Gallup says now comprise "a record-high 45% of U.S. adults," have been seriously falling out of love with America for most of this century. In 2004, about two-thirds of independents said they were extremely proud to be an American, a figure that now stands at just 28 percent. That drop persisted under Democratic and Republican presidents and majorities.
So what gives? Two other questions asked by Gallup suggest strongly that pride in being an American is actually a proxy for attitudes toward the government, especially the federal government. In the recently released survey, Gallup also asked people whether they display an American flag, which seems to be a stand-in for something other than mere political or partisan identity. Interestingly, what they found was that overall, flag displays are back to where they were 40 years ago, with 43 percent of U.S. adults saying they fly a flag sometimes. Republicans are at all-time highs (69 percent) and Democrats at all-time lows (26 percent), while independents are up six points from where they were in 1986.
A Gallup report published last November suggests that independents—again, a plurality of voters—are firmly in the camp of loving their country but fearing their government (a sentiment popular enough that Walmart, Amazon, and Etsy all sell t-shirts featuring variations on the theme). When updating its series on whether Americans have confidence in the executive branch, legislative branch, and the judicial branch, and whether the federal government can be trusted to handle domestic problems and international problems, Gallup found massive long-term declines that have accelerated over the past 15 years or so. "Two decades ago, all five measures showed trust above the majority level, and as recently as 2012, majorities trusted all but the legislative branch," wrote Jeffrey M. Jones last year.
From a libertarian perspective, eroding trust in the ability of government to get things done or be on the up-and-up is not good. Counterintuitively, it leads to calls for greater state involvement in all sorts of economic and cultural activities and produces more spending and regulation as we shift from a high-trust society to a low-trust one.
It's not surprising that political partisans vacillate wildly in their opinion of the government depending on whether their team is in or out of power. But attention must be paid when there is a substantial long-term decline not only among Democrats or Republicans who happen to be on the outside looking in, but Americans generally, especially the swelling ranks of independents.
"Average trust in the five federal government branches or policy areas has declined by 35 points since the 1970s among out-party identifiers," wrote Jones last year. "At the same time, average trust among political independents is down 26 points." Rubbing salt in the wound, Gallup even found a six-decline in trust among the president's party supporters. Think about it: Even the in-group trusts the government less than it did in the 1970s, the decade of Watergate, government-mandated gas lines, and endless revelations about the government abusing its power to illegally surveil citizens.
The good news is that widely reported declines in patriotism and pride in being an American are in reality growing dissatisfaction with the federal government. When you follow debacles like the recent controversy over Graham Platner, the would-be progressive hero of Democrats hoping to win back the Senate in the midterms, or dig into President Donald Trump's hyper-scaled and unprecedented grifting, it's not a mystery why people trust the government less and no longer want to identify as a Democrat or Republican.
Per Gallup, at the start of this year, just 27 percent of Americans identified as Republicans and another 27 percent identified as Democrats, levels that are at or near historic lows for each party. Yet we are turning out for elections, especially in the presidential years of 2020 and 2024, at levels that we haven't seen in a century. It may be too much to ask, but whichever party insists on running decent, honest candidates who broadly appeal to beliefs in individual freedom and limited government will not only do well in the midterms and beyond but also help restore confidence in the government.
The post Why Are Political Independents Less Patriotic Than Ever? appeared first on Reason.com.
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More than one out of every $10 in federal food stamp payments was made in error last year—and states with high fraud rates will soon be paying a hefty price.
The latest figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) show that payments made through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps, were rife with waste once again in 2025. Though the figures vary widely from state to state, the USDA calculates that 10.62 percent of all food stamp payments were made in error—a slight decrease from the 10.93 percent error rate recorded in 2024.
Overpayments are about seven times as common as underpayments, according to the USDA data.
"The report confirms what has long been true: SNAP is structurally prone to waste, fraud, and abuse, and the states running it have too little financial incentive to fix it," write Romina Boccia and Tyler Turmin, a pair of budget policy experts at the Cato Institute.
Indeed, the fundamental flaw in the food stamp program has long been its dual nature. The federal government provides all of the funding, but state governments get to administer the benefits. That's likely part of the reason why food stamp enrollment, spending, and error rates have skyrocketed in recent years, even though federal poverty rates have remained flat. This is the fourth consecutive year that the improper payment rate has exceeded 10 percent. As recently as 2013, the national error rate was a mere 3.2 percent.
But there is a big change coming, and it could mean that some states are on the hook for huge penalties if their food stamp error rates continue to soar.
Thanks to a provision included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), the sprawling tax bill that President Donald Trump signed into law one year ago this month, some states might be required to fund a portion of SNAP benefits from their own budgets. That requirement kicks in next year, and it will apply to states that had error rates in excess of 6 percent in the previous year. The amount that states will have to cover will depend on their error rates, with a maximum obligation of 15 percent for states with error rates over 10 percent.
Only nine states—Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming—had error rates below the 6 percent threshold in 2025, according to the USDA data.
It's too soon to know how big those state-level obligations will be, because it is 2026 data that will determine what they must pay in 2027. However, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank, crunched the 2025 error rate figures and concluded that states would owe roughly $9 billion in total. Many states would owe over $100 million.
That's a lot of money, and some states are already freaking out about it.
Stephen Cha, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Human Services, for example, has called for Congress to block the provision requiring states to pick up part of the tab. "These provisions create real uncertainty for States and benefit recipients alike, and the potential for significant future costs," he said in a statement. "Penalizing states will do nothing to improve payment accuracy or meaningfully address waste, fraud, or abuse."
Evidence suggests that's simply not true.
In fact, the threat of actually being held accountable for not wasting federal taxpayers' money has caused a number of states to change how their food stamp programs operate. A survey conducted earlier this year by the Urban Institute and the American Public Human Services Association found that states are "making significant operational investments to improve payment accuracy." That includes "expanding training efforts, strengthening quality assurance functions, and adopting new technology and data tools to identify and prevent errors."
Even in New Jersey, the new rule seems to be having an effect. The Garden State's error rate declined from 14.33 percent in 2024 to 6.86 percent in 2025. Despite Cha's complaints, he told state lawmakers during a May budget hearing that his office was working with county offices to reduce error rates by "implementing additional quality control protocols."
Without the new cost-sharing requirement, would those efforts be happening? It seems unlikely.
Additionally, the survey shows a limited risk of disruption to SNAP recipients. Only 11 percent of states said there is a possibility that they could withdraw from SNAP as a result of the new costs, and 5 percent said they might need to temporarily pause SNAP operations.
Both seem like empty threats, since they would require state officials to build new food stamp programs that they would have to fully fund out of their budgets. That would be far more costly than having to fund a relatively small portion of the total cost to run SNAP.
The new requirements in the OBBA are far from perfect. Some states with exceptionally high error rates—hello, Alaska—got a special exemption from having to pick up part of the cost right away. That's not fair to federal taxpayers and creates a perverse incentive for states to make their error rates worse before the new rule kicks in. Overall, however, this seems like a win for fiscally responsible federalism. Food stamps and other welfare programs really should be fully (or mostly) funded at the state level, particularly if they are going to be administered by state officials.
Despite the complaints about the new rules for SNAP, the policy seems to be doing as it was intended.
The post States Will Soon Face Huge Penalties for Their Food Stamp Mistakes appeared first on Reason.com.
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Automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) are among the fastest-growing forms of mass surveillance, logging over 20 billion license plate scans per month. This technology, which can track and locate vehicles and their drivers in near real time, is increasingly used by law enforcement to help investigate crimes without first obtaining a warrant. But without proper oversight, privacy experts warn such a trove of personal data is ripe for abuse.
Take the case of Lamar Roman, a 28-year-old married sheriff's deputy living in South Florida, who couldn't resist the temptation to use these powerful surveillance tools for his own personal gain.
Dashcam footage published earlier this week by 404media shows the Monroe County sheriff's deputy speeding through traffic in early February. He dangerously weaves through traffic on a two-lane highway, hitting speeds over 70 mph. At one point, he almost causes a head-on collision. Roman eventually catches up to and pulls over his target: a 27-year-old woman suspected of no wrongdoing. He'd simply met the woman a few weeks earlier while he worked a security detail on the set of Bad Monkey, an Apple TV series filmed in the Florida Keys.
In a recorded police interview, the woman, whose identity is being kept private, told investigators that Roman made her feel uncomfortable as soon as she arrived on set as an extra. "Immediately it was like, 'Oh my God, why did nobody tell me they were bringing models to set?'" the woman told investigators. At first, she didn't know whether Roman was a real cop or dressed to play one on the show when he pressured her for her name, number, and Instagram handle, reports 404media.
"I need your name and number just in case I pull you over someday," Roman told the woman, according to the arrest warrant reviewed by 404media. The woman later told investigators that Roman appeared to be flirting and joking. In response, she tried to be "standoffish" and told him she had a boyfriend.
So when she was pulled over a few weeks later, the woman told investigators she knew it was Roman. When she asked him during the stop how he'd known it was her, she told investigators he replied, "I told you I'd find you and pull you over," and stated, "I was hoping your boyfriend was in the car so I can pull him out and give him a hard time," reports 404media. Roman then asked why she hadn't followed him back on Instagram.
Eventually, Roman allowed the woman to leave. But it wasn't until the woman spoke with investigators that she was "advised [on] the full extent to which Deputy Roman utilized law enforcement databases to search her and obtain personal information about her," one police investigator wrote, according to 404media. Shortly after meeting the woman on set, Roman used a sophisticated network of police surveillance tools "to pull the woman's identity, vehicle information, and current photo," reports Gadget Review.
In the video of his interview with police, Roman told investigators that he was "just teasing" the woman on the set of Bad Monkey, and that he believed she was flirting back with him. He also said he messaged her on Instagram but didn't receive a reply.
Roman then admitted to running the woman's name through the agency's identification database and finding her driver's license number. In turn, he put the woman's driver's license number into the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles database used by law enforcement to find her license plate number. Finally, Roman added her license plate to a hotlist on the Guardian ALPR system, according to 404media. The Guardian system then provided Roman with real-time alerts on the woman's vehicle location, which he used to track her and pull her over. Throughout this process, Roman admitted to having no legal justification, and he was never required to obtain a warrant.
"I know it's stupid," Roman told the investigators. "It's a tough month," he continued, "and I saw a shiny thing."
According to court records, Roman was arrested on March 10 on three counts of misusing a law enforcement database, a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. He was subsequently fired from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office following his arrest. On July 1, he entered a two-year-long pretrial intervention agreement that, if completed, will result in the dismissal of all charges against Roman.
"The fundamental problem with these systems is that they place private information about people's movements over time in the hands of every officer," Michael Soyfer, an Institute for Justice attorney who has brought legal challenges against ALPR surveillance networks, said in a statement. "Without the constitutional safeguards of a warrant requirement, that predictably allows officers to abuse their access to these systems for things like stalking romantic partners."
The post Florida Police Officer Used Mass Surveillance Network to Stalk Romantic Interest appeared first on Reason.com.
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The U.S. government came to like the work of historian David Kahn, who passed away in 2024. The National Security Agency (NSA) honored him three times for his research on cryptography and espionage: with a "scholar-in-residence" title in 1993, a ceremony making his personal library part of the National Cryptological Museum in 2010, and a hall of fame induction in 2020.
But decades before, the U.S. government considered that personal library an alarming security threat. The FBI has declassified its files on Kahn, which Reason obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Although it is publicly known that the NSA tried to stop Kahn from publishing his 1967 magnum opus, The Codebreakers, the new files show that Kahn had caught the feds' attention a decade before, with the case making its way up to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself.
Kahn's FBI file is one of those rare government documents with a personality. His curiosity, equal parts cheeky and naive, shines through the FBI agents' dry recap of events. The file is also a time capsule from the early Cold War, an age when cryptography—now the infrastructure that makes the modern internet possible—was still an obscure dark art for math nerds.
In 1953, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps caught wind that Kahn, then a 23-year-old enlisted reservist and part-time ice cream truck driver, was mailing "restricted Army documents" to another man named Frederic C. Flindt. The corps alerted the FBI, which set up a stakeout on August 6 at the post office in Flindt's hometown of Woodbury, New Jersey.
As expected, Flindt picked up a certified mail package from Kahn with a collection of government cryptography manuals inside. The FBI agents pounced, but Flindt was totally cooperative, even showing the agents his other letters with Kahn.
Alongside his Army reservist training, Kahn was taking correspondence courses on how to use the Army's cipher machines and forwarding the materials for Flindt to copy and return. He wrote to Flindt that the course material would "be a valuable permanent addition to both our libraries. But I do not have the time nor the money either to copy it myself or to get it copied."
Kahn also warned Flindt "to take the greatest precautions" lest they be "chucked into the calaboose." Flindt agreed to keep it "confidential," and offered to show Kahn his own collection of translated European cryptography guides. In other words, they were building an unauthorized archive of cryptographic history.
"It was my intention to use the material obtained from David Kahn for reference material to write a history of cryptology after it had been declassified," Flindt told the FBI agents.
Flindt and Kahn had met through a civilian club called the American Cryptogram Association. A few years later, The New York Times covered a meeting of the association as a nerdy curiosity. Kahn excitedly spoke to a reporter about his hobby under the pseudonym "Ishcabibel," the same pen name he signed his letters to Flindt ("Nip N. Bud") with.
After interrogating Flindt, the FBI moved on to Kahn, who told his interrogators that he sent Flindt that particular manual because "he considered it to be a collector's item and to be well-written." Both Flindt and Kahn come off as painfully naive; Kahn admitted that he "realized that classified material should not be passed on to unauthorized individuals but from his review of the material he saw no reason for its being restricted as there was nothing in this material which was not known to cryptographists," according to the FBI agents' paraphrase of the interview.
A point in Kahn's favor: All of the material he sent to Flindt was about to be declassified in a few months anyway. The documents were marked "Restricted," a security classification that President Dwight D. Eisenhower abolished in November 1953, automatically declassifying the materials in that category. Indeed, Kahn pointed out to the agents that he was able to buy a cipher machine and its "Restricted" manual from military surplus vendors "before I ever had access to any restricted Army cryptographic material."
But betting on the forgiveness and graciousness of government agents is a very bad wager, especially from behind an interrogation table. The FBI confiscated both the papers and the cipher machine. On September 17, a little over a month after the post office sting operation, the agents' report landed on the desk of Hoover. He wrote to the Department of the Army asking "whether your Department would interpose any objection to the introduction of the material not legally in subject's possession in evidence in the event of prosecution." It was not looking good for Ishcabibel and Nip N. Bud.
A few days later, Kahn's father called the FBI. By coincidence, Kahn had just returned home to his parents in Great Neck, New York. His father, a lawyer, was no doubt horrified that his son had been blabbering about potential crimes to government agents. In November, the younger Kahn was kicked out of the Army, and the elder Kahn called the FBI again to say "that his son was immature in many respects and was definitely not a person who should be given the label 'a security risk' for the rest of his life," according to a Department of Justice memo.
The momentum within the FBI to prosecute Kahn and Flindt seems to have died out soon after. In February 1954, Kahn actually called the FBI asking to get back the papers and cipher machine from before his Army service because he "wished to continue code studies." A few weeks later, FBI agents knocked on Flindt's door—this time, to return his belongings.
That close brush with the law didn't deter Kahn. In fact, he started actively reaching out to the FBI. In March 1955, he asked the local FBI field office whether anyone would be interested in giving a speech to the New York Cipher Society, another cryptographic club. The assistant special agent in charge noted in the margins of the letter that "even though Dept. of Justice declined prosecution," Kahn was obviously unworthy of having his request considered.
The feds eventually started warming up to Kahn. In 1961, while Kahn was working at the newspaper Newsday, the FBI gave him information about Soviet spy Rudolf Abel and other espionage cases. (Kahn had excitedly raved about the Abel case in the Times story about the American Cryptogram Association.) In April 1964, Kahn asked the FBI for another photo of Abel's codebook and an explanation of its color scheme for a new book he was writing.
"Despite Kahn's background," an FBI official wrote in a memo, "there appears to be no reason why we should not make a copy available to Kahn."
However, the same memo warned that Kahn was interviewing retired military officers and the book "likely falls within the scope of national policy against release of information related to communications intelligence." It noted that the U.S. Intelligence Board, a council of spy agency leaders, recommended "further low-key action short of legal action to discourage Mr. Kahn or his publishers from providing possible available security information to foreign governments."
According to Kahn's New York Times obituary, the NSA actually considered breaking into Kahn's house. Instead, the agency contacted Kahn's publisher, asking for the book to be censored. Kahn agreed to take out only a few paragraphs about World War II-era codebreaking efforts that were still classified.
The new files show that the FBI, too, opened an investigation into him while he was working on the book. Although most of the details are redacted, the file shows that FBI agents contacted no less than 11 informants in April 1964 to ask about Kahn, to no avail. They closed the case "in view of the fact that subject is currently self-employed as a writer, and an interview of him might cause possible embarrassment to the Bureau, and he has used extremely poor judgement in the past, and he is believed too unreliable for the informant program."
Decades later, the feds would have a very different view of Kahn. The NSA website states that "hundreds [of NSA staff] told him they had first gotten into cryptology because of his writings" and that Kahn "has done more than any single individual to educate the public, around the world, about the importance of cryptology to international peace and security." His ultimate legacy in the government's eyes is a far cry from the security threat that the FBI saw in the 1950s or the unstable but harmless crank that the bureau saw in the 1960s.
Still, the same doggedness and sense of whimsy that got a young Kahn in trouble also enabled his later success. When the photo of Abel's codebook turned out to be too small for print, Kahn appealed to Hoover himself to send a bigger copy. "I am reluctant to trouble you again, but, following the principles of persistence I learned from the FBI…feel that it is necessary," he wrote.
The post Before the NSA Honored Historian David Kahn, the FBI Investigated Him appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>[Plaintiffs] assert that TSA [The Salvation Army] maintains a policy at its Adult Rehabilitation Centers that prevents such individuals from accessing medication for their disorder [including methadone and buprenorphine for Opiod-Use Disorder [OUD]], in violation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794, and the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3604…. [The Salvation Army] operates twenty-nine Adult Rehabilitation Centers ("ARCs") in that territory. TSA refers to ARC participants as "beneficiaries." ARCs provide beneficiaries with housing and basic living necessities for six to twelve months, during which time beneficiaries live on site and participate in "work therapy" by working full time at the ARCs or processing donated goods for resale at Salvation Army thrift stores….
TSA views ARCs as "residential churches," and it considers the operation of ARCs to be one of the ways it practices its religion. TSA considers "the highest priority of the ARCs" to be "bring[ing] the beneficiaries into a personal relationship with God." ARCs "serve[ ] men and women with social, emotional and spiritual needs who have lost the ability to cope with their problems and provide for themselves."
Beneficiaries need not be Salvationists—the vast majority are not—and they may continue to practice their own religion if they do so on their own time. But all beneficiaries are required to acknowledge that The Salvation Army is a church and must agree to participate in Salvationist religious activities as a condition of their ARC participation. Beneficiaries meet at least biweekly with their assigned spiritual counselor. They must also attend Sunday morning chapel services, a midweek service, daily devotions, and weekly Bible classes.
Abstinence from alcohol and addictive substances is a core tenet of The Salvation Army's religious beliefs. sincerely believes, as a matter of its religion, that long-term use of narcotics to treat addiction is not true rehabilitation, and that "abstinence and the power of God unto salvation is the only form of successful rehabilitation."
TSA requires, as a condition of ARC participation, that beneficiaries abstain from alcohol and certain drugs [including methadone and buprenorphine]. Beneficiaries must submit to urine drug testing when they apply for ARC admission and at regular intervals thereafter. Applicants with positive urine tests for a proscribed drug are generally required to "detox" before admission, although under some circumstances ARC policy permits such an applicant to be admitted if they have not used drugs for the prior forty-eight hours….
TSA operates other social-service programs, and in some of those programs, it permits—and even provides—buprenorphine and methadone to participants with OUD. At TSA's Harbor Light Centers, for instance, TSA permits participants to use buprenorphine and methadone if those MOUDs are deemed medically appropriate for the participant and as consistent with state and federal guidelines. Harbor Light Centers include state-licensed halfway houses and certified "residential subacute detox" and "intensive outpatient treatment" facilities….
The court concluded that TSA was immune from liability under the church autonomy doctrine:
The undisputed facts establish that TSA regards ARCs as residential churches whose highest priority is to "bring the beneficiaries into a personal relationship with God." The facts describe a lengthy evangelist program, running six to twelve months, aimed at rehabilitation through spiritual healing—essentially, a religious conversion program that requires beneficiaries to practice Salvationism…. The Court can no sooner order TSA to abandon its Salvationist understanding of "abstinence" than it can order an Orthodox Jewish synagogue not to separate its congregants by sex….
Plaintiffs assert that the Medication Policy reflects a flawed, outdated understanding of
"addiction" and is internally inconsistent, permitting beneficiaries to use some substances with the potential for abuse or addiction while prohibiting prescribed MOUD [medications for OUD]. They note TSA permits or provides methadone and buprenorphine as MOUD in some of its other social-service programs, and they hold up that fact as evidence both that nonbelievers' use of those medications does not violate TSA's sincerely held religious beliefs and that TSA could, as a practical matter, permit beneficiaries to safely use these medications.On the facts of this case, these contentions miss the mark. The Salvation Army—not the Court—determines Salvationist doctrine. That TSA drew some aspects of its Medication Policy from a secular source does not render its policy nonreligious. Indeed, from a lay perspective, any number of religious rules or doctrines can be viewed as arbitrary, inconsistent, or irrational—but these rules or doctrines are matters of faith, not susceptible to civil adjudication under our Constitution. The Court may not and does not evaluate the correctness, internal consistency, or centrality of TSA's religious beliefs. See Hernandez v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue (1989) ("It is not within the judicial ken to question the centrality of particular beliefs or practices to a faith, or the validity of particular litigants' interpretations of those creeds."); cf. Thomas v. Rev. Bd. (1981) ("Courts are not arbiters of scriptural interpretation."). The "abstinence" rule is part and parcel of TSA's evangelist efforts to bring ARC beneficiaries into a "personal relationship with God." Judicial scrutiny of this church doctrine is precluded by the First Amendment.
And the court rejected the argument that TSA had waived its rights by accepting federal funding:
To the extent TSA may waive its church-autonomy defense (something the Court assumes without deciding), such a waiver must be knowing and voluntary. A generic agreement to abide by all terms of federal funding does not sufficiently put TSA on notice that, by accepting federal funds, it waived its fundamental constitutional right to determine matters of faith and doctrine free from governmental interference….
Andrew Holmer, Daniel William Wolff, and Thomas P. Gies (Crowell & Mooring LLP) and Kevin M. Hensley (Barton Gilman LLP) represent The Salvation Army.
The post Salvation Army Has First Amendment Right to Ban Methodone Use by People in Its Adult Rehabilitation Centers appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Schiman posted on Facebook—falsely—that [Dr.] Sullivan sexually abused her during [a medical examination at a hospital] …. Following a multi-day bench trial, the circuit court agreed that Sullivan was actually (not just presumptively) harmed but awarded $1 in nominal damages….
On January 23, 2022, Schiman went to the St. Margaret's Hospital emergency room for treatment of severe abdominal pain. Sullivan, an emergency physician, performed a physical examination of Schiman. Based on the examination, Sullivan informed Schiman that he recommended performing a rectal exam to assess for the presence of blood and mucus. Schiman consented, and Sullivan performed the exam with a nurse present.
Shortly after the exam, Schiman accused Sullivan of performing an unnecessary rectal exam in an aggressive manner. The next day, she filed complaints with the hospital, the Illinois Medical Board, and the Spring Valley Police Department, alleging that Sullivan sexually assaulted her during the exam. On March 25, 2022, the Bureau County State's Attorney's Office declined to file any charges and closed the case.
On March 31, 2022, Schiman posted the following statement (the Post) on Facebook:
"WARNING SPRING VALLEY/PERU/SURROUNDING AREAS: DR. WILLIAM SULLIVAN, an ER doctor at St. Margaret's Hospital, Spring Valley—SEXUALLUY ASSAULTED ME IN THE ER, WITH a nurse in the room. He was supposed to give me a rectal exam (I have had endless exams like this, I'm a 30 year Crohns pt) & without lube, he shoved his fingers aggressively up my rectum & when I cried out he violently twisted his hand inside of me. My rectum was torn. The nurse told me 'he didn't know you had been raped before!' When I called someone in from the hospital, they isolated me & wouldn't let my mom back. When they finally let her back, they gave her 5 min & stood with us the entire time. They then let him continue to treat me all evening. I had to do a rape kit exam & police interrogation. The state [sic] attorneys [sic] office threw out charges without even speaking to me. HE HAS A MEDICAL MALPRACTICE LAW DEGREE AND A MEDICAL DEGREE. He knows EXACTLY what he can get away with. The police told me this is not his first complaint to them. Yet St. Margaret's keeps him on & defends him. DO NOT GO THERE. This man is violent & aggressive. Please don't let your loved ones near him or this hospital!!!"
Schiman posted the statement on the City of Peru Updates and Information Facebook page (the City of Peru Facebook page). Perez, the page's administrator, commented that he believed the post was true and compared Sullivan to another local physician who had been charged with a sex crime. Perez then made the Post a "featured post" so that it would be the first post on the Facebook page….
Here's an excerpt from the appellate court's discussion of the evidence at trial regarding the examination:
Sullivan learned that Schiman came to the emergency room complaining of abdominal pain. She had also visited the emergency room the previous day with a complaint of a headache. The earlier-treating physician had ordered lab work and an anti-inflammatory named Toradol.
According to Sullivan, when he first evaluated Schiman, she told him that she had taken Toradol that day and that she had already exceeded the maximum dose, so Sullivan cancelled the dose of Toradol. Schiman indicated her pain level was 10 out of 10. Schiman asked Sullivan what he was going to do about her pain and he stated that he was not comfortable giving her additional opiates to treat the pain. Sullivan was also uneasy prescribing opiate medication because "several things with her story weren't matching up" and the previous day she received a large dose of Dilaudid, a strong opiate.
Sullivan did a full exam of Schiman. Based on the exam and her history of colitis, he was concerned Schiman had a colitis flare-up. In light of her pain and medical history, Sullivan informed Schiman that a rectal exam was needed, and she consented to the exam.
Per normal procedure, Sullivan asked a nurse, Megan McNally, to be present during the exam. McNally retrieved the lubrication and gloves and set them on a tray next to Schiman's bed. Sullivan put on the gloves and lubrication and performed the exam. Sullivan indicated there was no blood on the glove, disposed of the gloves, washed his hands, and left the room.
After Sullivan exited the room, McNally likewise left the room and informed Sullivan that Schiman was upset because he had not asked her if she had been raped before. She also told Sullivan that Schiman made a complaint to an administrator at the hospital that the exam was aggressive and unnecessary. Schiman also requested that Sullivan stay out of her room unless absolutely necessary. Sullivan did not go back into the room….
And the appellate court's analysis:
Here, the trial court found that the defendants' statements and comments constituted defamation per se. That finding is not contested. The trial court acknowledged that the law presumes damages for per se defamatory statements and further found that Sullivan suffered damages of "mental anguish." …
This case involves defamation per se, which has presumed damages. "Presumed damages are those which the law presumes must actually, proximately and necessarily result from the publication of the defamatory matter." Again, these damages are inherently imprecise in connection with the harm suffered. The damages awarded are "an estimate of the extent of the loss the plaintiff has suffered in the past and would suffer in the future, either from a monetary or enjoyment of life standpoint." … [T]he evidence "need only tend to show a basis for the computation of damages with a fair degree of probability." …
Here, the trial judge awarded only nominal damages, seemingly due to a lack of understanding of how reputational harm damages are assessed. Nominal damages are issued when a legal wrong has taken place but there was no actual, meaningful loss as a result of the legal wrong. Such damages are awarded when the insignificant character of the defamatory statement leads the trier of fact to conclude that no substantial harm has been done to the plaintiff's reputation, and there is no proof that serious harm resulted from the defendant's attack on the plaintiff's character and reputation….
Here, a physician was publicly accused of committing a violent sexual assault under the guise of a medical examination. Several thousand people allegedly saw the accusation. No reasonable person can describe such an allegation as trivial or inconsequential. And even though Sullivan was not required to plead or prove reputational harm because the statement was defamatory per se, we observe that he testified that he was humiliated following the Post. He testified, and his wife corroborated, that he suffered loss of sleep, embarrassment, concern, changes in temperament, and changes in the way he treated patients….
The court therefore remanded the case for the trial judge to determine the magnitude of emotional distress damages.
The post Nominal Damages Aren't Enough When There's Evidence of Emotional Distress in Defamation Per Se Case appeared first on Reason.com.
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Stay-at-home moms: Reader, let me take your hand and guide you to a realm of the internet that I inhabit, which you probably don't even know exists. Welcome to Mom Twitter, where the discourse vacillates between dumb and enlightening. Today's topic? What exactly the term "stay-at-home mom" means, and whether "work"—presumably meaning formal participation in the labor force—disqualifies you.
moms on TikTok that are like "SAHMs what are you doing to make income from home
I need to make $200 a week" and the comments are all giving them suggestions…..idk how to tell them that they aren't SAHMs. they are working.
— bunnie (@CuriousBunnie12) July 7, 2026
An online creator I follow was like "yeah I'm a SAHM but I make an income from here and it's more than my husband's so it's a bit different". That's called work from home, not stay at home. You're the main breadwinner. You're self-employed. Why cling to the SAHM label so much? https://t.co/LhcmNguuJH
— pasiem kone na betóne (@Sabrina45X) July 7, 2026
"Stay-at-home mom" means "primary caregiver for her own children." It does not mean "mom who doesn't work at all" (in fact, the primary caregiverness of it all sure is a whole lot of work!) just as it does not generally mean literally "stays at home all day." https://t.co/3LhuOawD9x
— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) July 9, 2026
Perhaps you're thinking, Why should I, a reader of Roundup, care about any of this at all? There are a few reasons. One, at some point in the past, you probably benefited from the work of a stay-at-home mom or homemaker. A wife who fielded the domestic work and raised the kids, or maybe a mom who made sure your clothes were neatly pressed and that dinner was on the table by 5 p.m. each night, or maybe even a very 1970s mom who made you a latchkey kid, throwing some benign neglect your way that ended up helping you develop independence (and keeping the bills paid). Maybe the homemaker was you.
Two, as an economic phenomenon, the fact that there are plenty of syncretic options available to women—serving as primary caregiver for the kids and doing some laptop-job work part-time on the side, or selling stuff on Etsy, or watching a neighbor's kids in addition to her own—is an underdiscussed component of our labor market that we still don't really know how to characterize (and that the Social Security Administration sure as hell doesn't know what to do about). It's also the type of person that socialists like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani pretend doesn't exist: Universal childcare solves problems (at a very high cost) for one segment of the working-parent population, but what about the many industrious mothers who actually want to have their children at home with them? Or those who also want to pursue other types of work simultaneously? (Mamdani could serve this population by loosening restrictions on home daycares, homeschooling co-ops, and the like, but he doesn't seem to want to serve this constituency.)
Part of the reason policymakers don't seem to know what to do is because this type of person has long existed but is often denigrated. "No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor," wrote Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique (1963), proving she's never met a true homemaker. Friedan continued:
"Millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their stationwagonsful of children at school, and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor. They baked their own bread, sewed their own and their children's clothes, kept their new washing machines and dryers running all day. They changed the sheets on the beds twice a week instead of once, took the rug-hooking class in adult education, and pitied their poor frustrated mothers, who had dreamed of having a career. Their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers; their highest ambition to have five children and a beautiful house, their only fight to get and keep their husbands. They had no thought for the unfeminine problems of the world outside the home; they wanted the men to make the major decisions."
It's possible the women Friedan was writing about truly had "no thought for the unfeminine problems of the world outside the home," but I doubt it. She's portraying women as vapid and unconcerned, not legitimate contributors to the household that powers, and could even be considered part of, the economy. Friedan goes on to describe, at length, "the problem that has no name"—comparing the home to a "comfortable concentration camp." What she describes sounds an awful lot like depression, which she attributes to the domestic realm these women have been seemingly forced to inhabit. "We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my home,'" Friedan writes. And indeed, we didn't. Women's liberation followed, along with the flourishing of choice that allowed many women who would have otherwise succumbed to a lifetime of ennui the option to lead meaningful, important careers. But somewhere along the way, Friedanism got mighty powerful, such that smart, educated women began to believe that domestic life shouldn't even be on the menu of options before them.
"The cultural messaging seemed to me that I would waste my potential by not doing something professionally," says my friend Meredith Thornburgh, mother of two and a historian of the domestic economy who studies "technological change in the modern home," as well as our "thinking about the economy and what counts as work."
Many such cases.
Now, our thinking about domestic work frequently falls into meme form: Should girls grow up to become girlbosses or tradwives? (Ill-defined terms that don't encompass the majority.) The truth is less memed, less likely to go viral, and more serious: many women desire careers they can ratchet up and down to accommodate the years of childrearing; work that allows for time spent with children and time spent away (mentally away, if not physically away); to be meaningful contributors to their household budgets either by removing childcare as a line-item or by adding income, or possibly both. The more we embrace these realities, the better we'll be able to meet the economic moment and take seriously the cultural moment. (After all, The Two-Income Trap was kind of right, even if Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) is smoking crack when it comes to all the solutions.)
Scenes from New York: "The New York attorney general on Thursday sued several chemical and manufacturing giants, including 3M and DuPont, accusing them of continuing to expose consumers to products containing chemicals linked to health problems and environmental damage, long after the companies knew of their danger," reports The New York Times.
People in NYC used to say that Trump was "a poor person's idea of a rich person"--which was supposed to be a dunk and actually described his political appeal. Dems trying to tap that same populist energy instead selected a rich person's idea of a poor person. https://t.co/ihlW9oAiyh
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) July 8, 2026
The post How Do We Feel About Women's Work? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>In October 2024, the full court voted to rehear the case en banc (as I noted in this post). Interestingly enough, the grant of rehearing expanded the issue before the court, perhaps for the purpose of cleaning up circuit precedent in this area.
Oral argument was held in February 2025.
It is now July 2026, and there is still no opinion.
It's been over two-and-a-half years since the original panel opinion, and over twenty months since the panel opinion was vacated, and the case is still not resolved.
As I noted in my post from 2024, this case implicates important questions concerning judicial review of agency non-enforcement decisions. So what is taking so long? Is there not a majority in support of a single rationale? Something else? Those of us interested in judicial review of agency action--and, in this case, agency inaction--would like to know!
Back in the day, the D.C. Circuit was known for relatively quick resolution of cases. The court does not typically hear oral argument over the summer and judges were expected to finish up their opinions during that time--and well before oral arguments were held in the fall. (This also meant that clerks rarely had to hand off cases to their successors, as the cases one set of clerks worked on would be largely resolved when the new clerks began.) I do not recall whether this informal rule applied to en banc decisions, but a single case sitting around this long is still quite unusual for this court.
Perhaps the reasons for the delay with End Citizens United PAC will become evident once the opinion is ultimately released. Until then, we will just keep waiting.
The post What Happened to <i>End Citizens United PAC v. FEC</i>? appeared first on Reason.com.
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There was a time, not long ago, when Democrats could have branded their organization as the sane party. With Republicans moving in a sharply nationalist/populist direction that looked more over time like a cult of personality for Donald J. Trump, there was an opening for the donkey party to offer refuge to normies. All Democrats had to do was hold the ground against crazy.
They didn't rise to the moment.
Instead, Democrats told the country to hold their beer while they embraced socialism, antisemitism, and hostility to western civilization. Inevitably, we arrived at a moment when they eagerly supported Graham Platner through his Nazi tattoo, self-described communism, attacks on Jews and Israel, and abusive behavior towards women, not to mention his phony posturing as a working-class hero. They are finally drawing the line at allegations by an ex-girlfriend that he forced his way into her home and raped her.
At least they still have standards. Of a sort. If only Platner was the full extent of the problem.
I wrote last month that Platner is a symptom of "a movement that seemingly holds ideological lunacy as its highest value." All can be forgiven by the rising force of progressives so long as a candidate voices sufficiently radical ideas—all can be forgiven, that is, except unelectability. Platner's train wreck of a life was no problem so long as Democratic primary voters seemed in a forgiving mood; once the horrifying revelations threatened to alienate the public, his support was cut off.
But if Platner is out, the Democratic Party's rejection of sanity continues. High-profile New York congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier has also endorsed communism, while Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson sticks with garden-variety socialism, like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and Washington, D.C.'s presumptive new Mayor Janeese Lewis George and her city council allies. The same is true of a wave of progressive primary winners running as Democrats in upcoming mid-term elections.
Most of these left-wing candidates and officeholders are formally affiliated with or at least supported by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the not-a-party that's rapidly displacing old-fashioned Democrats and wearing their organization like a skin suit. Despite its name, though, the DSA doesn't really offer a democracy-friendly alternative to totalitarian brands of socialism.
Jonathan Chait wrote last week for The Atlantic, "In 2025, the group's convention voted to officially remove its founding language allowing for the expulsion of members who worked for communist cells, and added a provision calling the Palestinian 'right to resistance' a central tenet of the DSA." He added that the DSA is run by far-left factions that "have realigned the organization in firm opposition to liberal democracy."
A key—even mandatory—part of modern progressives' ideology is hostility to Israel and its American supporters that is largely an overt rebranding of old-school antisemitism as antizionism.
"For many Jewish Democrats, the Democratic Party is just the latest institution that welcomed us and is turning hostile," Democratic strategist Howard Wolfson told Axios.
It's also turning hostile to the U.S. Chevalier once commented online that "I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me." That was after founding a group calling for "total eradication of Western civilization." Mamdani gave an Independence Day address that described his city as one of "contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world—one where children go to sleep hungry while the world's first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections." That dim view of the United States permeates progressive/DSA thinking.
But, on the plus side, most of these politicians have avoided allegations of home invasions and rape.
Some normie Democrats are alarmed by the radical drift of their party. A group of House Democrats put together a "Promise to America" group promising to bring "common sense back to the Democratic Party." They say, "we are capitalist, not socialist," and that "we are proud, not ashamed of America."
But, a group of elected officials trying to reclaim one of the two major political parties from socialists who are ashamed of America suggests that maybe they've waited a bit too long. Recent YouGov polling finds that, among supporters of the two major parties and independents, Democrats are the only group that favors socialism over capitalism. Sixty-two percent of Democrats say they would vote for democratic socialists, compared to 24 percent of independents and 3 percent of Republicans. And Democrats aren't exactly proud to be American, according to Gallup polling.
So, the Democratic Party passed on its chance to be the sane party. That's unfortunate because the other major contender is still consumed by the populism, nationalism, and Trump idolatry that has marked it for a decade since it stopped being a generally conservative party and morphed into a vehicle for the ambitions of one man.
President Trump, of course, has his own messy life to contend with, including a civil judgement finding him liable for sexual misconduct. He's joined by such Republicans as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who agreed to pay $300,000 to settle securities fraud charges and is running for the U.S. Senate as a Trump favorite.
Ideologically, the GOP now represents the president's latest whims more than consistent ideas, though Vice President J.D. Vance, a likely heir to Trump, is openly hostile to free markets.
That said, the cult-of-personality Republican Party may actually be the less crazy of the two major parties at the moment, though that's not saying much. If the Democrats remain on their current path, perhaps Trump's exit from politics in 2029 will create an opportunity for the GOP to offer itself as the sane option by comparison to the party of socialism, antisemitism, and hostility to the U.S.
But I wouldn't hold out hope for that eventuality. If the last decade has demonstrated anything, it's that America's politicians see their enemies' radicalism and stupidity as opportunities to venture further towards the fringes themselves. Graham Platner may be on his way out, but his shadow lingers over a rotten political culture that is infested with bad people who endorse terrible ideas.
The post Graham Platner Dropped Out, but His Shadow Lingers Over Democrats and U.S. Politics appeared first on Reason.com.
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If you like history but don't care what actually happened, check out Fin vs History. The podcast features two British comedians, Fin Taylor and Horatio Gould, poking fun at some of history's most revered figures and events.
The humor in the pod is frequently juvenile and occasionally exhausting, but chaos is part of the appeal. For instance, an episode about Mahatma Gandhi punctures the bubble surrounding the saintlike icon, treating him as a flawed human being, "the biggest killjoy there's ever been," rather than the sacred figure from our history lessons. Much of the humor is deliberately adolescent, with extended riffs about Gandhi's sexual anxieties and "self-control" repeatedly derailing the historical narrative.
Taylor is sometimes labeled "right-coded" for his contrarian and politically incorrect jokes. But he's far more interesting than the classic woke-baiters of culture-war comedy. "The truth is that I don't really believe in anything beyond getting the next laugh," Taylor once told The Guardian. His attitude channels Oscar Wilde's "art for art's sake" creed, rejecting the need for entertainment to serve a political purpose.
The post Review: A Chaotic History Podcast for People Who Don't Care About Historical Accuracy appeared first on Reason.com.
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In England, a major report found that more than 500 mothers and babies died or were seriously harmed at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust because of poor care over 13 years. The inquiry looked at problems at two hospitals and blamed a "toxic" culture with bullying, understaffing, and staff who often ignored women's concerns or treated them cruelly. Common mistakes included not watching babies closely during labor, missing signs of distress, and not getting doctors involved quickly enough. These failures led to avoidable deaths, stillbirths, brain injuries, and other harm. The report also said leaders knew about the dangers but didn't fix them.
The post Brickbat: Hard Labor appeared first on Reason.com.
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ASPEN, Colo.—The senior U.S. officials who coordinated and enforced the response to 9/11 have long since left government. But the legal architecture put in place in the wake of the terror attacks remains, in many ways, more robust than ever.
How do some feel now?
Alberto Gonzales—who was White House counsel on September 11, 2001, and later attorney general—and Jeh Johnson—who was general counsel of the Department of Defense and secretary of homeland security under former President Barack Obama—provided a rare window into that question at the Aspen Ideas Festival late last month in a conversation that spanned the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), torture, and Guantanamo Bay.
"I think President Bush and certainly I were stunned, were surprised that the AUMF is still in existence and relied upon, quite frankly," said Gonzales. That resolution—which gave the president power to use force against the nations, groups, and people involved in 9/11—has been invoked continuously to carry out counterterrorism activities in a slew of countries, even when the mission appears to have little connection to the terrorist attacks almost 25 years ago.
"We never envisioned that it would go beyond dealing with the particular threat that existed in 2001," Gonzales continued. "I think all of us have an obligation to ensure that our branches of government are checked when they exercise power, particularly the executive branch, even in a time of war."
This is relevant right now amid the war in Iran. "I interviewed a bunch of members of Congress who voted for the 2001 authorization and the 2002 authorization," said Johnson. "One of them told me that once an authority is conferred, it's almost impossible to take it back." (This is true in many ways.) "The interpretation of the 2001 authorization is way beyond what I'm sure any member of Congress in 2001 would have envisioned….So in principle, a sunset is a good idea." Gonzales' answer was a bit more direct: "I think it should sunset," he said. "If a new threat arises, go to Congress, make a case, and Congress gives another authorization or a declaration of war."
On torture, Gonzales sought to draw a distinction between the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by the George W. Bush administration and the notorious human rights abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq War. When it came to waterboarding, Gonzales said he takes "comfort in the fact that there've been sworn testimony by the director of the CIA, by the director of the [National Security Agency] NSA and by my successor at [the Department of] Justice, is that information was extracted from these interrogations that made a difference in keeping America safe." In response to a question from journalist Mary Louise Kelly about it violating the Geneva Conventions, he responded: "That was certainly not the position of the Department of Justice."
Johnson, meanwhile, got at one of the more eternal dilemmas: Do we prioritize freedom or feeling safe? "There's a pendulum effect between what Americans are willing to accept by way of an imposition on our civil liberties during times of high anxiety and more security," he said. "By 2009, that pendulum had swung in the other direction, and we wanted change….I think the big challenge for Americans is to recognize manufactured fear, manufactured anxiety spun up by our leaders."
Yet the most sparks flew when the two were pressed about Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. military base and detention camp in Cuba that has held many detainees—some of whom have long been cleared for release—for years without charge or trial.
"It was never the intention this would be a long-term solution," Gonzales said. "It was a short-term solution to an immediate problem." On the subject of why they weren't transported to the U.S. to stand trial, he conceded that "perhaps there is a basic rule of law question" but countered that "some people don't" want them brought here, though it's worth noting that the beauty of a constitutional right like due process is that it is not supposed to be up for a vote.
Johnson, meanwhile, admitted to being the Obama administration's "biggest proponent of keeping that system," but said he would not have done so "if you had told me that there had been not a single trial."
Johnson's most notable role, as the head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was itself an outgrowth of the 9/11 response. "The thinking that created [DHS] in 2002 is way outdated. The thinking then was…we didn't need a ministry of interior or Department of Homeland Security because we're separated from the rest of the world by two oceans. And that all changed on 9/11," he said. "And if we consolidate into one Cabinet-level department, the regulation of all the different ways somebody can get into this country—land, sea, and air, TSA, Coast Guard, Border Patrol, Customs—we will have kept the bad guys out. That thinking is now outdated."
So now what? "Frankly," he said, "I think we need to scrap it and start all over again."
The post 'Scrap It and Start All Over': Ex-Bush and Obama Officials Say the War on Terror's Powers Have Gone Too Far appeared first on Reason.com.
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It's Sunday. You want to go into town to run errands and perhaps see your friends at a bar, but you stay home because blue laws have forced businesses to close on the Lord's day. You consider going online, but there is an excise tax on data usage, and all non-essential webpages have been disabled for the day. You have been invited, however, to a city-sponsored lecture by a C-list celebrity on the importance of restoring the fertility rate. Do you want to have a baby now? Are you feeling in the mood?
This may sound like an outlandish scenario cooked up by Margaret Atwood or a pussy-hat Resistance lib, but bringing back blue laws, impeding internet access, and enlisting celebrities to promote fertility are all real proposals from the pronatalist nonprofit, the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), outlined in its 2026 State of Fertility Report released on Tuesday.
With U.S. birth rates now below 1.6 children per woman, IFS warns that cultural and sometimes political interventions are necessary to increase the fertility rate, as "the future of liberty for all of us depends on the future of family." And so, in pursuit of "the future of liberty," IFS proposes a litany of social-engineering policies that restrict freedom and empower the government.
Many of the proposal's reforms are conventional and similar to the pro-family, big-government politics of Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.): doling out baby bonus money and child caregiver credits, eliminating marriage penalties in tax and benefit programs, and incentivizing more housing. As Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown has noted, many of these top-down pronatalist policies often fall short of meaningfully increasing the birth rate.
IFS not only proposes individual pro-family policies; it also proposes a holistic change to the lawmaking process itself, suggesting that Congress and state legislatures evaluate bills by their impact on marriage and fertility, "giving legislators a constant reminder that their choices have consequences for the physical survival of the nation, not only of its financial accounts."
The other IFS proposals about changing societal fertility norms are even more bizarre, including recruiting celebrities to convince the public to have kids. One of the IFS graphs asserts, "When celebrities have more kids, their fans want more kids." This finding is hardly scientific; instead, it demonstrates an association between a fan's desire to have children and the number of children born to a celebrity. In other words, pro-family fans seem to like pro-family celebrities.
Per the IFS methodology, the researchers asked respondents to "report a public figure whom they most admired and why." They then collated the reports and identified how many kids each celebrity had based on public information. They then found "that each additional child born to an admired public figure predicts higher desired family size for the survey respondent," and these effects were "more statistically credible" for women.
The graph in the IFS report says it controlled for the following factors: college degree, recent household financial change, household income, sex, age, and satisfaction with housework level. Notably, the celebrity study does not appear to control for a key predictor of having children: religiosity (as past IFS studies have shown, religious Americans tend to have higher fertility rates than secular Americans). The IFS appears to acknowledge religiosity as a possible confounding variable elsewhere in the report, but does not account for it in the celebrity model. Political affiliation could also be another confounding variable, but it is not mentioned in the celebrity study.
Based on this association (which may be caused by fans having pre-existing values that likely align with those of their favorite celebrity), IFS claims that "enlisting celebrities to promote American family life may work." The Institute then suggests that "governments interested in boosting fertility should consider enlisting the support of celebrities popular in their jurisdictions, or perhaps even finding a way to obliquely encourage those celebrities to marry and have more children."
What would this social engineering look like? Would taxpayers foot the bill for vapid PSAs by Abby Shapiro telling people to increase the fertility rate for the good of the nation? Could they make a more convincing case than Eric Adams, who famously encouraged New Yorkers to make babies during a snowstorm? Would a government official be responsible for secretly recruiting celebrities to have children?
The government-sponsored baby-making propaganda team would also have to carefully select its celebrity ambassadors if IFS is to follow its own standards. The celebrity recruiting team would likely want to avoid someone like Alex Cooper because she is, according to an IFS contributor, a "grifter and a liar" for promoting hookup culture and then getting married and having a baby, although her life path is rather conventional.
IFS also suggests some more "creative options" to increase fertility rates, including forcing businesses to close on Sundays in a paradoxical effort to create "in-person community." It also floats impeding "access to non-essential digital services on certain days or at certain hours" to push users offline and promote real-life socializing. IFS suggests these policies may increase fertility, as it claims research suggests that iPhones, pornography, and social media are negatively impacting U.S. fertility. But, as Reason has noted, the evidence supporting the smartphone theory of falling birth rates is disputable. And supposing the digital revolution is to blame for falling birth rates, this solution would curtail internet freedom. A nonprofit monomaniacally devoted to increasing the population sees no issue in suggesting censorship measures to encourage fertility, but the rest of Americans may object to this.
In its report, IFS acknowledges that restoring the birth rate is a largely cultural and social matter. And yet, it proposes several government-enforced policies—some of which read like a bizarre Nathan for You-style scheme—to increase the fertility rate. This approach fails to recognize that Americans do not trust their government, and they most likely do not want to be manipulated into having children by technocratic policymakers.
The post Pronatalists Want To Boost Fertility With Blue Laws and Government-Enlisted Fertility Influencers appeared first on Reason.com.
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Ask historians or laymen to name the most blatantly corrupt pardon over the first 230 years or so of American presidenting, and most will likely arrive at the same answer: Marc Rich.
Rich, a multiple-passport-holding, proudly amoral oil trader who specialized in sanctions-circumventing commerce with the likes of Nicolae Ceaușescu and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, fled to Switzerland in 1983 rather than face a potential life sentence and $1.6 million in fines on 65 counts of wire fraud, trading with the enemy, and tax evasion. (It was the biggest tax evasion case to date in U.S. history, at $48 million—around $150 million today.) Yet Bill Clinton, in the final minutes of his presidency, gifted Rich a midnight pardon.
All normal pardon protocols had been circumvented. The Justice Department was blindsided, and the longtime fugitive—a veteran of the FBI's Most Wanted List—had never expressed the customary remorse. Reporting soon revealed that Rich's ex-wife, the songwriter Denise Rich, had donated $1.1 million (roughly $2.3 million in 2026 dollars) to Democratic causes during the Clinton presidency, including (in nominal dollars) $450,000 to the Clinton Library, $120,000 for Hillary Clinton's Senate race, and $25,000 to Al Gore's Florida recount effort. "Not just a large donor," Sen. Russell Feingold (D–Wisc.) noted at the time, but "a huge donor."
Rich's last-ditch clemency drew widespread bipartisan condemnation. "Disgraceful," judged former President Jimmy Carter. Added New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani: "The fact that Bill Clinton and Eric Holder engineered a pardon for him—without input from me, as the U.S. Attorney who prosecuted him, or Janet Reno, as Attorney General, will forever be a blemish on our justice system."
You have likely never heard the name Trevor Milton, yet in a couple of key respects his 2025 pardon by President Donald Trump was worse. The founding CEO of the electric vehicle manufacturer Nikola Corporation, Milton in 2022 was convicted on three counts of investor fraud that could have brought him four years in prison and a staggering $676 million worth of mandated restitution to shareholders. Among his more notorious stunts was a 2018 promotional video of a supposedly functional prototype Nikola truck that was not in fact operational but had instead been rolled down a desert hill. Milton, represented in court by the brother of then–Attorney General Pam Bondi, was still awaiting final sentencing when he got the call from Trump announcing an unconditional pardon, no restitution (or remorse) required. When asked about the clemency, the president said: "They say the thing that he did wrong was he was one of the first people that supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for president….He supported Trump. He liked Trump." Milton and his wife, The Wall Street Journal reported, had donated "at least $3.2 million to Trump's 2024 election and to political groups and people in Trump's orbit." The couple had not previously demonstrated a financial interest in politics.
Milton's family paid more in political donations than Rich's. He had exponentially more in fines and restitutions taken off the table, and he has spent his post-clemency life not in humiliated exile but in lavish Washington excess, hobnobbing with the president and Cabinet members at investment conferences and black-tie events to gin up interest in his latest schemes. Such is the rule, not the exception: When it comes to plausibly pay-for-play pardons, Trump in his second term makes Bill Clinton and every other president look like pikers.
Paul Walczak, a nursing home executive who'd pled guilty to spending his employees' federal tax withholdings on such baubles as a $2 million yacht, was in May 2025 on the verge of commencing an 18-month sentence and paying $4.4 million in fines when Trump issued his get-out-of-jail-free card. On his pardon application, Walczak made the explicit pitch that his mother, Elizabeth Fago, had raised millions of dollars for Trump and the GOP in 2024 campaigns, and additionally assisted the president by publicizing embarrassing revelations from the diary of President Joe Biden's daughter Ashley. Less than three weeks before the pardon, Fago accepted an invitation to attend a million-dollar-per-head fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, crowned by a one-on-one with the president.
Trump's second-term pardons and sentence commutations have wiped away more than $2 billion in fines and restitutions. The Wall Street Journal reported in December 2025 that the president's forgiveness spree "has spawned a pardon-shopping industry where lobbyists say their going rate is $1 million." The Atlantic in June 2026 set the updated price at $2 million. Whereas Bill Clinton conceded within 15 months that the Marc Rich clemency had been a mistake (even while hotly denying that political donations had anything to do with it; he claims to have been persuaded by testimony from high-profile Israelis such as Ehud Barak), the always-unapologetic Trump barely feigns interest in the process, even while his family and Cabinet members forge business deals with the ex-cons and their companies.
Queried by 60 Minutes in October 2025 as to why he had just pardoned Changpeng Zhao—the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who had already served four months in prison and had his company pay $4.3 billion for money laundering—Trump said: "I have no idea who he is." The president might have asked his son Don Jr., who had recently introduced his dad to Zhao's pardon lobbyist and in the preceding months had contracted Binance to exclusively host and build the blockchain technology for the Trump family crypto trading platform World Liberty Financial. (That company's stablecoin, USD1, was used in May 2025 as the currency for a $2 billion investment into Binance by the United Arab Emirates company MGX, a transaction that, according to The Wall Street Journal, "rocketed USD1 up the rankings of largest stablecoins," thereby "pushing its market capitalization up from $127 million to over $2.1 billion.") When asked about the controversial clemency, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a one-size-fits-all denial: "Neither the president nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest."
Say what you will about Clinton's skeevy pardon of Marc Rich, at least it wasn't preceded by Rich forging billion-dollar partnerships with a company owned by the president and managed by his daughter. Yet here we are in Trump's second term, so overwhelmed by dodgy-sounding deals that any attempt to measure or characterize the scope of corruption can seem preemptively futile. The numbers are too big, the conflicts too brazen, the examples too numerous.
In a companion piece to this one, Senior Editor Jacob Sullum drills down into the tawdry details of the president's most audacious self-dealings, from having the federal government settle his own lawsuits to selling access to himself and his memecoin in a dinner that raised an estimated $148 million. Here, to visualize the contours of the overall problem, we work backward from whataboutism, dividing up the greatest scandals in American history by category, then checking in on Trump 2.0 to see how he compares. The results reveal a pattern: The 47th president has serially exceeded the most infamous corruptions in U.S. history while generating a fraction of the outrage.
At its heart, the otherwise complicated and multi-stage Teapot Dome affair of the 1920s, which until Watergate was considered the greatest federal government scandal of all time, was about secret bribes to an administration official that lubricated lucrative regulatory outcomes. In 1921, Interior Secretary Albert Fall clandestinely accepted $404,000 ($7.6 million in today's money) in cash and no-interest loans from two oil executives, who then became recipients of no-bid leases to exploit oil fields in California's Elk Hills and Wyoming's Teapot Dome. As part of the scheme, Fall had previously convinced the secretary of the Navy to transfer authority over those lands to the Department of the Interior. The no-bid contracts were legal (at the time, anyway); the bribes were not, and the secrecy exploded upon revelation.
Fast forward a century. Four days before Trump's second inauguration, a company called Aryam Investments 1 signed a deal with the president-elect's son Eric to buy a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial for a reported $500 million, half of it in cash up front. The Trump family received $187 million overnight, and the family of World Liberty Financial co-founder Steve Witkoff, who by then was already conducting sensitive Middle East diplomacy on behalf of the incoming president, received an additional $31 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. Amazingly, the transaction was made in secret, revealed only one year later.
Did Aryam Investments have any pressing regulatory business in front of the U.S. government? Quite a bit, yes. The firm is owned by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the national security adviser for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), brother of the nation's president, and head of the country's $800 billion sovereign wealth fund. Tahnoon's artificial intelligence company G42 had been prevented by the Biden administration from acquiring advanced Nvidia AI chips over national security concerns that it might share the technology with China. That was reversed with a bang in May 2025, when Tahnoon received what The Wall Street Journal described as "a coup for the U.A.E.'s ruling family"—an agreement from Washington to send the UAE 500,000 high-powered AI chips per year, including to the previously verboten G42. "Enough to build one of the world's biggest AI data center clusters," the Journal noted.
So a foreign government official's secret $500 million deal that personally enriched the president and his family, plus a key Mideast diplomat and his family, preceded by six months a massive regulatory reversal that will further enrich said official and his country. But that's not all. In December 2024, Tahnoon's asset management firm Lunate was one of two entities to inject $1.5 billion into the investment firm owned by Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner (who has co-led Mideast diplomatic initiatives with Witkoff). And we are still not done. Remember that aforementioned $2 billion Trumpcoin-denominated investment into Binance by the UAE company MGX in May 2025, just prior to the UAE chip deal? MGX is owned by none other than Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Albert Fall was found guilty of bribery and served a year in prison. The Supreme Court nullified the no-bid oil leases on the grounds that they had been corruptly obtained. President Warren G. Harding had been oblivious to the Teapot Dome scheme, yet he nonetheless was tarred from his 1923 death onward as an enabler of corruption. The Trump family net worth increased by more than $1 billion as a direct result of Sheikh Tahnoon's frenetic and sometimes secret investments in the six-month run-up to producing a long-sought diplomatic and economic victory for his country. Will school children 100 years hence know the name World Liberty Financial?
In 1938, The Saturday Evening Post published an exposé of James Roosevelt, son of President Franklin Delano, under the headline "Jimmy's Got it." What Jimmy had was a family name and connections he could leverage by selling insurance policies to prominent individuals (such as oil magnate Harry Sinclair) and corporations (such as CBS), even while holding a number of key positions in the White House. "My name got me into a lot of places I might not have got into if my father hadn't been President," he acknowledged in response, while releasing tax returns showing annual compensation from 1933 to 1937 that averaged an inflation-adjusted $850,000 per year. "And that's all right, too….If you want to do business with a man you get in to see him by whatever legitimate means you can." Defiance notwithstanding, Roosevelt resigned from government by the end of 1938.
Billy Beer was more punchline than scandal, but it was still seen as unseemly that the shambolic brother of the rectitudinous Jimmy Carter lent his name in 1977 to a low-rent lager that quickly went bankrupt.
Hunter Biden was shambolic too, but also brazen enough to serially cash in on his father's name and office, including $4 million in compensation (around $5.5 million in 2026 money) to work for the Ukrainian oil company Burisma from 2014 to 2019, and another $4.8 million ($6.5 million) from a Chinese energy tycoon seeking to expand U.S. operations. These malodorous foreign dealings, which would not have been imaginable had Joe Biden not served as vice president, then leading presidential candidate, then president, became the subject of congressional hearings and Justice Department investigations that started under Trump's first presidency and continued under Hunter's father. Until the moment that a lame-duck Joe Biden issued a blanket pardon of all his son's activities from 2014 through 2024, Hunter faced prison time, further prosecutions, and a seemingly permanent stink of scandal.
These three most famous examples of familial influence-peddling are dwarfed to the point of miniaturization by the business Donald Trump's heirs conduct on a daily basis, right out in the open.
Jared Kushner, as Jacob Sullum recounts, has amassed north of $6 billion in his Affinity Partners private equity firm since launching in 2021, the bulk of which has come from the leadership of the same Middle Eastern countries he has been a senior negotiator with during both of his father-in-law's presidencies. Companies owned by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have forged deals with Dad's government in the hundreds of millions. Eyebrows barely get raised anymore when the president, during official overseas trips, cuts ribbons on his latest golf course.
A financial disclosure report released June 30 showed just how good it is to be the president: "Trump's revenue in 2025 jumped to at least $2.2 billion, compared with a minimum of $622 million in 2024 before he returned to office," The New York Times noted. "It is," All the Presidents' Money author Megan Gorman told the Times, "completely unprecedented."
"I'm actually fascinated by [Richard] Nixon as a character in history," Vice President J.D. Vance said at the Nixon Library in June. "His historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, but I think deservedly so….[I]f Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. Like, the idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy. And, by the way, if you look at the story of how the Deep State took down Richard Nixon, it's not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration."
Watergate, the only Washington scandal that impelled a president to resign and the English language to add a suffix, was a 26-month news story, stretching from the break-in at the Democratic National Committee by Nixon loyalists through President Gerald Ford's pardon of his predecessor. One of the reasons the saga lasted so long is that the perpetrators, employers, and intended beneficiaries of the burglary—very much including Richard Nixon, beginning immediately after the initial arrest—could not stop lying their faces off about it, destroying evidence, concocting schemes to quash the resulting investigations, and (if they had the power) just straight-up firing the most nettlesome investigator. Nixon attempted to use the Deep State to make it all go away, ordering the CIA to tell the nosy FBI that its inquiry would jeopardize national security. In the end, 48 people were convicted or pleaded guilty, including Nixon's attorney general, chief domestic adviser, and chief of staff.
Still, you could see why Vance might want to minimize Nixon's transgressions. Each of the 37th president's most notorious Watergate-related infractions have analogue comparisons unflattering to Vance's boss.
In the "Saturday Night Massacre" of October 20, 1973, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox over the latter's court-backed insistence that the president hand over tapes from a secret White House recording system. Richardson refused, then resigned; his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, also refused, then resigned. Only third-in-command Robert Bork was willing to carry out the defenestration. Trump's obvious first-term comp was when he fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating links between Russia and the Trump 2016 election campaign.
But there have been massacres aplenty during Trump's second term, albeit without the added frisson of a president fighting for his political life. Not one, not two, but 10 federal prosecutors resigned in 2025 rather than carry out an order from acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to dismiss federal corruption charges against then–New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in part because the "prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams' ability to devote full attention and resources to illegal immigration and violent crime." The first resignation, from Danielle Sassoon, the Trump-appointed acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and a longstanding member of the Federalist Society, was withering: "The reasons advanced by Mr. Bove for dismissing the indictment are not ones I can in good faith defend as in the public interest and as consistent with the principles of impartiality and fairness that guide my decision-making," Sassoon wrote. The mayor's lawyers, she added, "repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed."
One of the bombshell moments in the Watergate hearings was the revelation of a Nixon administration "enemies list," upon whom (in the contemporaneous words of then–White House counsel John Dean) "we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies." Suggested punishments included Internal Revenue Service audits and the manipulation of "grant availability, federal contracts, litigation, prosecution, etc." The very concept and name was shocking enough to those who expect presidents to faithfully and impartially execute federal law, even if no corresponding audit activity was ever detected.
Trump, on the other hand, nominated as FBI director a man who vowed in 2023 that a second MAGA administration "will go out and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we're gonna come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're gonna come after you." Jacob Sullum details the results of the president going after his enemies; one new wrinkle this time is how open he is about it. Trump in September 2025 mistakenly posted on Truth Social what was intended to be a private excoriation of then–Attorney General Pam Bondi for not going hard enough after his enemies: "all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam 'Shifty' Schiff, Leticia??? They're all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done," he wrote. "We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!"
Nixon incurred a generation's outrage and mockery for insisting to interviewer David Frost that, "When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." Trump, within the first month of his second term, asserted on social media that, "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law," a formulation frequently attributed to Napoleon. When asked the previous month by The New York Times whether there were any constraints on his power, he said: "Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me." These statements are much closer to reality than they were during his first term, thanks to a 2024 Supreme Court decision, Trump v. United States, granting presidents absolute immunity from criminal prosecutions for the exercise of "core constitutional powers," plus lesser forms of immunity for "official acts."
John J. Cafaro looks like a mafia don from a bad TV movie. Hefty frame crammed into a double-breasted suit, thick shock of black hair with matching mustache, giant cigar as often as not. Cafaro, a longtime Republican and friend of Trump (who calls him a "fantastic man"), lives next door to Mar-a-Lago and was previously best known for pleading guilty to bribing the former Ohio congressman James Traficant. Until now: Cafaro's company, Greenwater Services, received a $1.7 million no-bid contract from the Department of the Interior this spring, at the suggestion of the general manager of Trump's Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, to renovate the water purification system of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Twinned with another no-bid contract for $14.7 million to paint the bottom of the pool a fetching "American-flag blue," Cafaro's rush job was touted by the president as a historic fix to a longstanding eyesore on the National Mall, just in time for America's 250th birthday.
Things did not turn out that way. Within days, the blue water bloomed with greenish-brown algae, clumps of new sealant splintered off, and a furious Trump blamed antifa vandals and other n'er-do-wells for a construction project gone horribly wrong. Some political metaphors are a bit too perfect to ignore.
Americans have cycled in and out of corrupt eras: the blatant patronage of Tammany Hall, the lobbying Christmas trees of President William McKinley's tariffs, the '60s–'70s outrages from the security/surveillance state. These rotted systems never self-corrected with a collective national shrug.
Donald Trump and his family are executing corruption at a scale never previously contemplated in the American experiment. If we are to ever graduate from this era of brazen graft, the first step is to notice.
The post The Most Corrupt Presidency in American History, by the Numbers appeared first on Reason.com.
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"I'm supposed to work out a settlement with myself," President Donald Trump told reporters a few days after he sued the IRS. He wasn't kidding: His January 29 lawsuit, which alleged damages caused by an IRS contractor's illegal leaking of Trump's tax returns, pitted him against an agency he oversees, represented by Justice Department lawyers who also answer to him.
The result of Trump's admitted self-dealing was not pretty. The "settlement" that the president reached with himself, which Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on May 18, included $1.8 billion in taxpayer money for purported victims of the Biden administration's "lawfare and weaponization." It also included protection from liability for tax violations and any other federal offenses that Trump or his family might have committed.
Neither of those provisions had anything to do with Trump's claims against the IRS, which in any case were legally barred because he missed the statutory deadline for filing his lawsuit. But Trump, who prides himself on being a tough negotiator, has a soft spot for himself.
Trump's "Anti-Weaponization Fund," which was designed to reward his political allies, provoked a fierce bipartisan backlash that persuaded Blanche to abandon the scheme two weeks after announcing it. The sweeping immunity deal got less attention, and Blanche says it remains in place. Judging from just one IRS dispute involving Trump's claims of business losses, that dispensation could save him more than $100 million in taxes, interest, and penalties.
Under the pretext of a bogus lawsuit, Trump obtained favors for himself, his family, and his supporters, approved by underlings eager to please their boss. And that jaw-dropping scam is just one example of the many ways Trump has used his office for personal gain. He has shown a complete disregard for the appearance of impropriety, conflicts of interest, the ethical implications of self-dealing, and even the rule of law. His corruption is so flagrant and multifaceted that previous presidential scandals in this category pale by comparison.
The May 18 "settlement agreement," which was signed by IRS CEO Frank Bisignano, Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr., and Trump's personal lawyers, described the Anti-Weaponization Fund as a response to abuses of "government power" by "Democrat" officials. It complained that "the Biden Administration" had "target[ed]" people for "improper and unlawful political, personal, and/or ideological reasons."
Although Trump himself would not have been eligible for compensation, he counts himself among those victims. The agreement noted that he had filed "two claims for relief pursuant to the Federal Tort Claims Act" based on the federal investigations of his 2016 campaign's alleged ties to Russia and his handling of classified documents that he took with him when he left office in January 2021.
Trump sought financial compensation from the Justice Department for "the Russia-collusion hoax" and "the unlawful raid of Mar-a-Lago." Those claims were "pending at the administrative level," meaning that officials serving at the president's pleasure were deciding how much taxpayer money he should get to make up for his ordeals. Their boss thought $230 million was about right, but he magnanimously dropped his claims in exchange for a much bigger payout: $1.8 billion in rewards for his friends and followers.
According to the agreement, the five members of the board charged with doling out that money would be appointed by Blanche and could be dismissed by Trump at any time for any reason. The board would not be required to publicly disclose its procedures or decisions, and it would stop accepting claims a month and a half before the inauguration of the next president.
Trump made it clear who the intended beneficiaries were. "I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE!" he explained four days after the "settlement" was announced. Those "others" presumably included the 1,600 or so Trump supporters charged with participating in the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, since Trump had already pardoned them and had frequently portrayed them as victims of government persecution.
Trump confirmed that impression in a Meet the Press interview a few weeks later. "People have been hurt so badly by radical-left lunatics that worked for the Biden administration and Sleepy Joe," he said. The rioters "were destroyed by dirty cops and by weaponization," he added, and "many of those people should be compensated." Including rioters who had been convicted of assaulting police officers? Trump did not rule it out, even though that prospect had dismayed the Republican legislators who objected to the Anti-Weaponization Fund.
By that point, Blanche had declared that "we're not moving forward with the fund, period." But he said the "separate attorney general order" that he issued on May 19 was unaffected by that change of heart. Blanche's order, which he presented as an addendum to the "settlement agreement," barred the IRS from pursuing claims against Trump or his family based on their past tax returns.
The protection went beyond the IRS. The addendum said "the United States" is "FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED" from pursuing "any and all claims" against Trump or his family regarding "any matters currently pending or that could be pending" before the IRS, the Treasury Department, or "other agencies or departments."
The immunity deal resembles a preemptive self-pardon, except that it extends further, encompassing civil violations as well as criminal offenses. No president has ever attempted to pardon himself, and it is not clear whether such an act of clemency would be legal. It would certainly generate a vociferous political response, since it would create the appearance that the president is above the law and contradict the principle that no one should be a judge in his own case. Blanche's order, which shields Trump and his family from the penalties that ordinary Americans face when they run afoul of federal law, is outrageous for the same reasons.
Neither the immunity deal nor the promise of payouts to Trump's allies was logically related to his complaint that the IRS had failed to properly supervise contractors entrusted with confidential tax information. And Trump obtained those huge favors even though his lawsuit was fatally flawed.
Trump preposterously claimed the disclosure of his tax returns had caused "at least" $10 billion in damages. In addition to offering that improbable estimate of the injury he had suffered, he 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 conflicts of interest created by a case in which both sides were represented by lawyers who worked for Trump. Further compromising the Justice Department's ability to defend the IRS, an executive order that Trump issued in February 2025 bars the government's lawyers from taking legal positions at odds with the president's.
The situation was so bizarre that Kathleen Williams, the federal judge overseeing the case in the Southern District of Florida, questioned whether it involved a genuine controversy between adverse parties, as required for the lawsuit to proceed. Trump dropped his case two days before the deadline for briefing on that issue, so Williams never resolved it. Nor did she have a chance to review the settlement. But on May 29, Williams ordered Trump's lawyers to address "grievous allegations" about that cozy arrangement, including "charges of collusion" and "the assertion that the dismissal in this case was premised on deception by the Parties." Williams was mulling "whether the case should be reopened because the Court was the 'victim of a fraud.'"
In a June 12 response to that inquiry, Trump's lawyers insisted that the Justice Department had reached "a fully proper government settlement" after weighing the merits of their client's claims and assessing the cost of defending against them. They conceded that "no Defendant ever filed an answer, a motion for summary judgment, or any other responsive pleading" at "any point in this case." But they said "the absence of filed appearances" and the government's "decision not to assert defenses that were available in parallel litigation" did not count as evidence of collusion.
Responding to that brief a week later, 35 retired federal judges, including former 4th Circuit Judge Michael Luttig and several other Republican appointees, said it "only underscores the need to investigate whether the parties have perpetrated a fraud on this Court and corrupted the integrity of the judicial process." The suggestion that the Justice Department thought opposing the lawsuit would cost more than settling it, Luttig et al. noted, was "laughable given the facts of this case: a settlement worth nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer funds plus a capacious and extraordinary general release that purports to forfeit claims for substantial sums in unpaid taxes and other potential damages and fines." Such "monumental relief," they noted, "dwarfs any conceivable 'cost of defense.'"
Blanche "did not want the Justice Department to go into court and fight the suit, as it normally would, but also did not want to settle it by paying Mr. Trump directly," The New York Times reported in May. According to the newspaper's unnamed sources, Blanche thought "ending the case by funneling taxpayer money straight to the president" would be "politically untenable."
Blanche evidently perceived an important distinction between handing Trump $100 million and saving him the same amount (or more) by protecting him from IRS claims. But the upshot is the same. In any event, Trump himself clearly does not feel constrained by such concerns.
According to a recent YouGov survey, 59 percent of Americans think Trump "is using his office for personal gain." That poll was mostly conducted before the Anti-Weaponization Fund was announced, and it was completed before Blanche revealed Trump's immunity deal. The public's impression nevertheless was well-grounded in Trump's prior record.
Two weeks before Election Day in 2016, the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., had its grand opening. The luxury hotel, which occupied the Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue, less than a mile from the White House, was open for business throughout Trump's first term, charging $500 to $900 a night for standard rooms and upward of $1,000 for suites.
The hotel's customers included Republican political organizations and a long list of trade groups, such as the National Mining Association, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the National Confectioners Association, and the Vapor Technology Association, whose interests might be served by currying favor with the president. The Trump International Hotel also took money from the governments of foreign countries, such as Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, and Romania, that likewise may have been investing in Trump's goodwill.
That situation extended to other Trump properties, and it provoked several lawsuits based on the Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause, which says federal officials may not receive "any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind" from a "foreign state" without congressional approval. Those cases, which ultimately fizzled after Trump left office, hinged largely on the meaning of "emolument." Trump argued that the term should be read narrowly, encompassing benefits received in exchange for official acts but not market transactions that happen to enrich the president. The plaintiffs argued that any "profit, gain, advantage, or benefit" received from a foreign government counted as an "emolument."
Regardless of how you define emolument, the potential for conflicts of interest was clear. Trump "has a financial interest in vast business holdings around the world that engage in dealings with foreign governments and receive benefits from those governments," one lawsuit noted. In addition to hotel and golf resort revenue, those benefits included rent from tenants of Trump Tower in Manhattan, licensing fees for The Apprentice, trademarks granted by the Chinese government, and regulatory approval of Trump projects around the world. But Trump's hotel in Washington was the most conspicuous illustration of the ethical issues raised by his business interests.
"Believe me, all the delegations will go there," a "Middle Eastern diplomat" told The Washington Post after Trump's election. "Why wouldn't I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, 'I love your new hotel!'" an "Asian diplomat" said. "Isn't it rude to come to his city and say, 'I am staying at your competitor'?" The Embassy of Kuwait, which had previously held its annual National Day celebration at the Four Seasons, reportedly canceled its reservation there and switched to the president-elect's hotel under pressure from the Trump Organization.
Trump saw no problem with any of this. "The law is totally on my side," he told The New York Times in November 2016. "The president can't have a conflict of interest." He reiterated that take at a press conference nine days before his inauguration. "I have a no-conflict situation because I'm president," he said. "I have a no-conflict-of-interest provision as president."
Trump presumably meant that no law required him to sell his assets or eschew profits from his businesses while he was president. If we leave aside the question of constitutional constraints, he was right about that: The federal statute governing official acts "affecting a personal financial interest" exempts the president and the vice president. But ethical requirements go beyond the letter of the law, which is why Trump's recent predecessors had taken steps to separate their official duties from their financial interests.
Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush placed their assets in blind trusts while they served in the Oval Office. Barack Obama opted for "a mix of bank accounts, treasury notes, index funds and college savings" that "was unlikely to pose a direct conflict of interest," Forbes reports. Even Richard Nixon, hardly known for his ethical rectitude, bragged about selling all his stocks before entering the White House. Joe Biden took a similar approach.
Even as Trump insisted that he could not possibly have a conflict of interest, he contradicted himself by making a show of transferring the Trump Organization's operational control to his sons. "They're going to be running it in a very professional manner," he said. "They're not going to discuss it with me." Trump also promised that the Trump Organization would avoid new foreign deals during his term, and he said he would donate the profits from money spent by foreign governments at his hotels to the U.S. Treasury.
Walter Shaub, director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, described those moves as "meaningless." The problem was that "the president of the United States is also the ultimate owner of a worldwide business enterprise," Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer said. "There is such an entanglement between the president and these businesses that in my view it's going to be completely unmanageable. He doesn't solve this problem by saying his sons are going to manage the business."
Even when it came to hotel revenue, Trump's solution fell short. It did not address the money he was taking in from various domestic interest groups or his ability to enrich himself by encouraging Republican organizations or other federal officials to patronize his businesses. One example of the latter: Vice President Mike Pence and his party stayed at Trump's golf resort in Doonbeg, Ireland, during an official trip in 2019. Although Trump insisted he "had nothing to do" with that decision, critics perceived a violation of the Domestic Emoluments Clause, which says the president may not receive additional compensation from the federal government beyond his official salary.
Trump also invited criticism by declining to disclose his tax returns, as every president since Nixon had done. Trump's determination to keep that information under wraps not only made it harder to track potential conflicts of interest, but it also provided the excuse for his brazenly corrupt "settlement" with the IRS.
The main lesson Trump drew from those first-term controversies was not that he should do more to address concerns about conflicts of interest. To the contrary, he concluded that any gestures in that direction were not worth the cost to his bottom line.
Twelve days before his second inauguration, Trump said he regretted the constraints he had placed on his family's international deals during his first term. "I prohibited them from doing business in my first term, and I got absolutely no credit for it," he told The New York Times. "I didn't have to do that. And it's really unfair to them….I found out that nobody cared, and I'm allowed to." The conviction that "nobody cared" seems to be driving Trump's business ventures during his second term, which include many attempts to capitalize on his status as president.
Trump, whose business model depends largely on licensing his brand, has a long history of attaching his name to things, including Trump Tower, the Trump National Golf Club, the Trump Taj Mahal casino, Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, and Trump: The Game. Last December, he followed that pattern by adding his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. A federal judge nixed that revision in May, saying Congress had clearly established the center's name and only Congress could change it.
Another Trump vanity project, the huge White House ballroom he wants to erect on the site of the demolished East Wing, also ran into a judicial roadblock. In March, a federal judge said the project cannot proceed without congressional approval because "no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have." The president is "the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families," wrote U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush nominee. "He is not, however, the owner!"
Most of Trump's exercises in shameless self-promotion have been less clearly illegal. They are nevertheless unprecedented attempts to generate income based on his official position, and they create opportunities for favor seekers eager to ingratiate themselves with Trump by spending money on his presidential products.
You can buy Trump's "God Bless the USA" Bibles for $60 each or, for just $40 more, invest in a "Presidential Edition" embossed with Trump's official seal. The other $100 options include a "First Lady Edition," a "Vice Presidential Edition," a "Golden Age Edition," an "Inauguration Day Edition," and a "Veteran Edition." The "Signature Edition," which bears the president's autograph, will set you back $1,000, but that's only $90.26 a month if you opt for the 12-month payment plan at 15 percent interest. And if you buy two or more Bibles, Trump will throw in a "singing gift bag" that plays the Lee Greenwood song to which the brand's name alludes.
In addition to ordinary MAGA enthusiasts, Trump's Bibles appealed to Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters, who wanted to buy 55,000 of them for classroom use. Walters' department, which had set aside $3 million for the purchase, was specifically interested in Bibles featuring the King James text, leather or leather-like binding, and copies of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Pledge of Allegiance—criteria that happened to uniquely qualify Trump's product. Walters thought better of the plan after it provoked widespread criticism.
God Bless the USA also hawks Trump guitars for $1,500 and Trump jukeboxes for $2,500. Cheaper items include a Donald Trump Record Player decorated with his signature and the presidential seal ($150), MAGA T-shirts and hats ($30), and a Trump squeeze toy ($30), which "Thousands of Patriots Love."
Wait, there's more: Trump Sneakers sells "Official President Donald Trump Footwear," including Never Surrender low tops ($199), Trump Fight for America boots ($299), and the Trump Presidential Golf Shoes ($499). A bottle of Victory 47 cologne, topped by a golden Trump idol, goes for $249. Ordinary Trump Watches cost $499, and you can preorder a "special edition" celebrating the man along with the nation's 250th anniversary for $899. Trump Mobile, a phone service launched in June 2025, charges $47.45 a month without a contract and offers customers golden Trump phones for just $100.
Trump-branded Bibles, guitars, watches, footwear, fragrances, and NFTs earned him about $8 million in 2024. Last year, he received $4.7 million in licensing fees for Trump watches, plus another $3.3 million from various other products and publishing deals, including his Save America coffee table book.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) noted that the online Trump Store "launched at least 168 new products" from Election Day through Inauguration Day, which was "168 more items" than any previous president-elect had offered for sale. As of April 2026, CREW later reported, the Trump Store had introduced "at least 622 products" since the beginning of the president's second term. Although "it's not normal for a president to profit off of the presidency," CREW says, "Trump has done so blatantly before and even more unabashedly this time."
Those Trump Store products do not include the $TRUMP meme coin, a cryptocurrency that Trump launched three days before beginning his second term. The coin's price immediately quadrupled, and its market capitalization hit a peak of $15 billion on the Sunday morning before Trump's inauguration. At that point, Axios noted, about 200 million of 1 billion coins had been sold, and the rest were still owned by "Trump-controlled entities," meaning "Trump's crypto holdings were worth as much as $58 billion on paper."
Pretty flimsy paper, it turned out. The price of the meme coin fell from $27.38 on Inauguration Day to $1.65 as of July 6, 2026. Still, the Financial Times reported that the initial $TRUMP sale had generated "at least $350 million" in revenue, and Trump continued to earn fees on subsequent trades. According to his latest financial disclosure filed with the Office of Government Ethics, revenue from the meme coin totaled $636 million in 2025.
The long slide of Trump's meme coin was interrupted in April 2025, when the top 220 $TRUMP holders were invited to "an intimate private dinner" with the president on May 22. The "top 25 coin holders" were promised "an Exclusive Reception before Dinner with YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT," plus a "Special VIP Tour" of the White House the next day. The coin's price rose by more than 50 percent immediately after that announcement.
"Since the announcement, crypto investors around the world have raced to expand their holdings of $TRUMP," The New York Times reported 10 days before the dinner. "Certain buyers, in interviews and statements, have said they bought the coins or entered the dinner contest with the intention of securing an action by Mr. Trump to affect United States policy."
In response to complaints that Trump was openly selling access to him, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said he was "abiding by all conflict-of-interest laws"—i.e., the laws Trump had repeatedly emphasized do not apply to him. "I can assure you the president acts with only the interests of the American public in mind, putting our country first and doing what's best for our country, full stop," she added.
NBC reported that the coin investors who attended the dinner, which was held at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, had collectively spent $394 million on $TRUMP. On average, that worked out to about $1.8 million a plate.
"This is my president that we're talking about, but I am willing to say that this gives me pause," Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R–Wyo.) said a few weeks before the dinner. "In abstract," Sen. Thom Tillis (R–N.C.) allowed, the event "is hard to understand." Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska) drew an analogy: "I don't think it would be appropriate for me to charge people to come into the Capitol and take a tour."
Donald Sherman, CREW's executive director, was blunter. "This is one of the most blatant and appalling instances of selling access to the presidency I've ever seen," he said.
The sale of access is by no means the only way Trump's cryptocurrency ventures, which include investments via family companies as well as the $TRUMP offering, are ethically problematic. Trump is earning money from the industry even as he plays a leading role in setting the policies governing it.
"I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money," Trump tweeted during his first term, saying their value "is highly volatile and based on thin air." In a 2021 Fox Business interview, he said cryptocurrency "seems like a scam." But he had become an unabashed enthusiast by the time he ran for president in 2024, when his campaign attracted $22 million in support from the cryptocurrency industry.
Trump appointed crypto-friendly officials, including Paul Atkins as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and David Sacks as the White House "AI and crypto czar." The SEC under Atkins later dropped a bunch of crypto-related cases, and the Justice Department disbanded its National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team.
Six days after launching $TRUMP, the president issued an executive order aimed at "strengthening American leadership in digital financial technology." The goal, the White House explained, was to "establish regulatory clarity for digital financial technology and secure America's position as the world's leader in the digital asset economy, driving innovation and economic opportunity for all Americans." Through sensible regulation, Trump promised, the United States would become the "crypto capital of the planet."
The following month, the SEC announced that meme coins like $TRUMP would no longer be subject to its regulation. In July 2025, Trump signed the GENIUS Act, which likewise made asset-backed "stablecoins" such as Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC exempt from regulation as "securities" or "commodities." Trump did that four months after World Liberty Financial, one of his family's cryptocurrency businesses, introduced its own stablecoin, USD1.
Last October, Trump pardoned billionaire crypto tycoon Changpeng Zhao, who had served four months in federal prison after pleading guilty to money laundering offenses. The New York Times noted that Zhao's firm, Binance, had recently agreed to a business deal that promised to "generate tens of millions of dollars a year for the Trumps and the family of Steve Witkoff, the president's top Middle East adviser." That deal also involved MGX Fund Management, an investment firm owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Leavitt portrayed the pardon as a repudiation of the Biden administration's crypto policies. "President Trump exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr. Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency," she said. "The Biden Administration's war on crypto is over."
Whatever your take on the inherent merits of these moves, Trump's financial interests in the industry clearly gave him a personal stake in the decisions he made. In June 2026, Reuters reported that "the Trump family has made $2.3 billion" from four cryptocurrency ventures: the meme coin, World Liberty Financial, AI Financial Corp., and American Bitcoin. In 2025, according to Trump's disclosure, he earned about $1.4 billion from his family's cryptocurrency businesses. That accounted for the lion's share of his income that year, which totaled at least $2.2 billion, up from at least $622 million in 2024.
Trump intermittently acknowledges that policymakers should not personally profit from their decisions. In April 2025, he said he would "absolutely" sign a ban on stock trading by members of Congress. He reiterated his support for such legislation during his 2026 State of the Union address, saying it was necessary to "ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider information." But as is often the case, Trump does not feel obliged to follow the rules he thinks should apply to other people.
Trump "went on a stock-buying spree in early 2026," NOTUS reported in May. According to Trump's official financial disclosure, he bought $1 million to $5 million in Nvidia stock on February 10, "only a week before Nvidia announced a major computer processing power deal with AI and social media giant Meta." Trump had previously bought $500,000 to $1 million in Nvidia stock on January 6, "a week before the Commerce Department officially approved the sale of some Nvidia chips to China." Trump also bought stock in government contractors such as Palantir Technologies, Axon, Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, and Alphabet.
KFF Health News noted another eyebrow-raising purchase: Trump "bought as much as $680,000" in Eli Lilly stock. The transactions coincided with "several favorable government decisions benefiting the drugmaker's GLP-1 business, including progress toward a long-held goal: qualifying the drugs for reimbursement from Medicare" when "they are prescribed for weight loss."
Leavitt insisted there was nothing inappropriate or suspicious about the president's stock purchases. "President Trump's assets are in a trust managed by his children," she told NOTUS "There are no conflicts of interest."
Since fathers do sometimes talk to their children, that defense seemed less than ironclad. It is doubtful that Trump would accept similar assurances from legislators, who he thinks should not be allowed to buy stocks at all. When Trump endorsed that policy during his State of the Union speech, Rep. Mark Takano (D–Calif.) offered a suggestion: "How about you first?"
The stock purchases are not the only Trump investments that have raised ethical questions. A shell company backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump recently merged with Cove Kaz Capital, which has a 70 percent stake in a Kazakh tungsten mining operation that last year received $1.6 billion in funding from the U.S. government. The month before the merger, the Financial Times reports, Cove Kaz Capital sought an additional $400 million from the Defense Department's Office of Strategic Capital.
Last November, the Office of Strategic Capital announced a $620 million loan to Vulcan Elements, a manufacturer of rare earth magnets partly owned by Donald Trump Jr.'s venture capital firm. The Pentagon and Donald Jr. said he played no role in that agreement. But in May, ProPublica reported that presidential adviser Peter Navarro, a friend of Donald Jr.'s, had greased the skids for the deal. According to an unnamed Defense Department source, "The call came from the White House: We have to get this done."
The Pentagon also figures in the business plans of two drone manufacturers tied to the president's sons. In April, the U.S. Air Force agreed to buy interceptor drones from Powerus, a company in which Donald Jr. and Eric had acquired a stake the previous month. Donald Jr. also has invested in Unusual Machines, which lists him as a member of its advisory board. In May, The Wall Street Journal reported that Unusual Machines was negotiating a possible funding deal with the Defense Department. After that news broke, Bloomberg noted, the company's stock price rose by 57 percent, reaching "an all-time high."
During a CNBC interview on July 2, Trump conceded that his sons "have inside information" regarding "almost anything they do." Although "I tell my kids, 'Stay away from as much as you can stay away from,'" he said, "they also have a life."
Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, is also cashing in. Last March, The New York Times reported that Kushner, "one of the U.S. government's chief negotiators in the Middle East," was trying to raise "$5 billion or more for Affinity Partners, his investment firm." The potential investors included "Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which invests the proceeds of the kingdom's vast oil reserves" and is headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Kushner had previously received a $2 billion investment from the fund, which its board approved in July 2021, six months after he left his position as a presidential adviser during Trump's first term.
That was not the only Kushner deal involving Middle Eastern investors. In April, the Times reported that Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, had approached Syrian billionaires Moutaz and Ramez Al-Khayyat about investing in "a multibillion-dollar resort in Albania." At the time, the Al-Khayyat brothers were lobbying the U.S. government to lift economic sanctions against Syria that were imposed before the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime. Trump removed those sanctions in June 2025.
The president, who during his first term thought a moratorium on his family's foreign business ventures was appropriate, or at least politically advisable, now says he sees no reason for such restraint. Last year, for instance, Trump earned $14 million in licensing fees by lending his name to properties in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Shortly before Trump's second inauguration, an investment firm backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, national security adviser to the UAE government, secretly agreed to pay $500 million for a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial. "At the same time that the crypto deal came together," The New York Times reported, "the Emirati government secured an agreement with the Trump administration for the export of hundreds of thousands of advanced chips to power A.I. technology."
Trump has not been shy about accepting favors that look like attempts to influence U.S. foreign policy. In May 2025, the government of Qatar offered to let him use a luxury 747 worth about $400 million as a replacement for Air Force One. Trump saw no reason to pass up that gift.
"I could be a stupid person and say, 'No, we don't want a free, very expensive airplane,'" Trump told reporters. "I thought it was a great gesture." About a year later, the State Department approved $5 billion in arms sales to Qatar. Around the same time, the U.S. Air Force said Trump's new plane, described as a "palace in the sky," had been modified to accommodate the president and would be ready to fly this summer.
Sometimes the personal benefits that Trump has obtained thanks to his official position are less tangible than a flying palace. When Trump perverts the criminal justice system to punish his enemies, as with his attempts to imprison Democratic legislators and former FBI Director James Comey for saying things he did not like, the payoff is whatever pain he manages to inflict. But in other cases, Trump's pursuit of his vendettas has reaped quantifiable rewards.
Beginning in February 2025, Trump issued a series of executive orders aimed at punishing law firms for representing clients or causes he despises. He suspended the security clearances of lawyers at those firms, barred them from federal contracts and government buildings, and suggested that anyone doing business with them might also suffer reprisals. Those penalties posed an existential threat to the firms. Some of Trump's targets responded by fighting him in court, successfully arguing that his retaliation for constitutionally protected conduct violated the First Amendment. But nine major firms folded, granting concessions in exchange for presidential mercy.
Those concessions included promises of pro bono legal services valued at nearly $1 billion, to be used on behalf of Trump-favored policies, causes, and clients. That coerced legal work reportedly has included helping the Justice Department with immigration cases, assisting the Commerce Department in trade negotiations, and representing police officers accused of misconduct.
Last year, The New York Times reported that "White House officials" thought "some of the pro bono legal work could even be used toward representing Mr. Trump or his allies if they became ensnared in investigations." In December, the watchdog group American Oversight sued the Justice Department and the Commerce Department under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking records that might further illuminate how the dragooned lawyers have been deployed.
We also have a dollar figure for the benefit that Trump obtained last year after suing CBS over a pre-election 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris: $16 million in legal expenses and funding for Trump's presidential library. That was just 0.08 percent of the $20 billion in damages that Trump claimed CBS had inflicted by editing the Harris interview in a way that made her seem slightly more cogent. But it was $16 million more than he should have received.
By Settling Trump's Laughable Lawsuit Against CBS, Paramount Strikes a Blow at Freedom of the Press
Trump's lawsuit, which alleged violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and the federal Lanham Act, was patently preposterous. After he filed the original complaint in October 2024, CBS accurately noted that it was "completely without merit" and vowed to "vigorously defend against it." But Paramount, which owned CBS, decided to settle eight months later, apparently because its executives were anxious to avoid retaliation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Before the 2024 election, Trump said the FCC should punish CBS for the Harris interview by yanking its broadcast licenses. After Trump appointed Brendan Carr as FCC chairman, the agency became a willing tool of the president's vengeance. Among other things, it reopened an absurd "news distortion" investigation of CBS based on its allegedly deceptive editing of the Harris interview. And when Paramount agreed to settle Trump's lawsuit, the FCC was deciding whether to allow the company's merger with Skydance Media, which it finally approved a few weeks later.
Paramount's payout to Trump was small change compared to the original terms of Trump's "settlement agreement" with the IRS and the Justice Department, which involved more than 100 times as much money. Even without the Anti-Weaponization Fund, the immunity deal could be worth much more than Trump got from Paramount, and it directly benefits him, as opposed to a Trump-glorifying library.
Both lawsuits were fundamentally phony. But the resolution of the CBS case at least involved an actual agreement between adverse parties, although one of them was acting under intense government pressure. And Paramount used its own money, while the Justice Department was playing with funds forcibly extracted from taxpayers who had no say in the matter.
It is not hard to see why the Cato Institute's Walter Olson has suggested that the IRS "settlement" may be "the most corrupt act ever taken by an American president." Maybe the attention it has attracted will renew interest in the long train of unethical conduct that preceded it.
The post Trump's 'Anti-Weaponization Fund' Marks a Pattern of Trying To Profit From the Presidency appeared first on Reason.com.
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On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled in favor of Ausencio Martinez, finding that Illinois State Police Trooper and K9 handler Anthony Muzzillo had violated his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures by using an administrative inspection of Martinez's semitruck as a pretext to engage in a criminal search.
At 3:16 a.m. on October 7, 2021, Muzzillo and another K9 officer—acting on a tip from an unnamed law enforcement agency—pulled over Martinez. The two weren't on regular patrol and had been waiting on the side of the highway for "at least thirty minutes," looking out for Martinez's semitruck.
Under Illinois' Motor Carrier Safety Law, state police are authorized to "stop and inspect" commercial vehicles or drivers "at any time" to ensure they comply with state regulations. The statute empowers officers to conduct administrative inspections at seven varying levels of intrusion. Muzzillo and the other K9 handler conducted a Level 3 search on Martinez, which included a review of his driver's license and other documents, as well as an interview.
Even though a Level 3 administrative inspection does not include a search of a person's vehicle or effects—and administrative inspections cannot substitute for the normal procedure of obtaining a search warrant where no probable cause exists—police searched Martinez and his vehicle. Through a K9 drug sniff, the police found narcotics in the truck, and charged Martinez with possessing cocaine with intent to distribute, and sentenced him to 120 months' imprisonment.
Martinez appealed and filed a motion to suppress the evidence, but the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois denied the motion. In its ruling, the 7th Circuit found the district court had wrongly reasoned that Muzzillo's "subjective intent" for stopping Martinez was irrelevant.
Martinez argued that Muzzillo used his authority to conduct an administrative inspection "solely" as a pretext to investigate the tip he received, circumventing the Fourth Amendment's protection against warrantless searches.
The 7th Circuit agreed, finding that Martinez's motion to suppress turned on "whether the stop was, in fact, pretextual." The 7th Circuit also rejected the government's argument that, even if Muzzillo's search was pretextual, it was still permissible under the exclusionary rule and its good-faith exception—a judicial doctrine that allows the government to use illegally obtained evidence in court, provided the police were acting in an "objectively reasonable" manner.
For Muzzillo to have been acting in good faith, the 7th Circuit ruled that the government would have had to "sufficiently rebut" the claim that the initial stop was not based solely on the narcotics tip. As the 7th Circuit notes, the Supreme Court has for decades allowed warrantless administrative inspections only "in furtherance of the administrative scheme, not as a pretext for criminal investigation."
But Muzzillo's own words give away his intent.
When he first approached Martinez's truck, Muzzillo stated he noticed an "overwhelming odor of air freshener" and surmised Martinez was trying to hide the smell of drugs. Muzzillo described Martinez as "extremely nervous" during the inspection, noting that he was breathing heavily and had a "dry mouth."
He later testified he only stopped Martinez because his truck was "possibly carrying large-load narcotics," all but confirming he always intended to use the administrative inspection as an excuse for a criminal investigation.
It's unclear whether Martinez will be retried now that the evidence against him has been suppressed.
Still, with administrative inspections en vogue at the state and federal levels—and the Supreme Court's inconsistent rulings on privacy—the 7th Circuit's decision is a win against warrantless government searches.
The post Police Used a Truck Inspection To Search for Drugs. The 7th Circuit Said the Fourth Amendment Forbids It. appeared first on Reason.com.
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It's over for Graham Platner. Maine's Democratic Senate candidate is officially dropping out of the race, which will give the party until July 27 to find a replacement.
This is the best move for the party, as Platner's poll numbers had collapsed following revelations of a serious sexual assault allegation. A different candidate will likely stand a stronger chance of defeating incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
It's also the best thing for the country. Platner was a deeply flawed candidate with no special qualifications to serve in office and a long history of bizarre behavior: from the Nazi tattoo to the edgy Reddit posts to the alcoholism and mistreatment of past girlfriends. Even if some of this stuff could plausibly be excused—he claimed he didn't know about the tattoo when he got it—taken together, that's just too many red flags.
But it's worth noting that beyond his personal issues, Platner was also running on a far-left platform of dubious electoral viability. It's true that Democratic primary voters are happy to select socialist and quasi-communist political figures, though that probably reflects anger at the party establishment rather than specific enthusiasm for seizing the means of production. Whether statewide voters in a general election are excited about socialism remains to be seen.
Platner did not identify as a democratic socialist, but his entire campaign was geared around supposed populist outrage at oligarchs and "the Epstein class," whoever that is. Indeed, when Platner initially came under scrutiny for alleged violence toward women, he announced that this was a concerted effort by the Epstein class to get rid of him. His platform reflected the progressive left's notion that very wealthy people are responsible for all of the misery in society, and they need to be destroyed.
Ironically, this is a view that mostly attracts support from affluent, highly educated people—not the working-class voters that someone like Platner apparently speaks to. Working-class people should be more than a little offended that a cabal of far-left Democratic consultants—Morris Katz and Rebecca Katz (no relation) seem to deserve most of the blame—decided that their own idiosyncratic crusade against billionaires would serve just fine as a policy agenda to appeal to working-class voters. All they needed was a rough-around-the-edges sort of guy with a deep voice and…a penchant for violence? That's downright insulting.
So good riddance to Platner, and with any hope, good riddance to the class of political operatives who see socialism as both the solution to the world's problems and the obvious winningest campaign strategy.
I spoke with Christian Britschgi about the Platner situation and a plausible conspiracy theory involving Sen. Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.).
I finished Pluribus, which is one of the best television shows I've watched in years. Highly recommend!
The post Good Riddance to Graham Platner appeared first on Reason.com.
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There are moments when history reaches across the centuries with startling clarity. Standing in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, Italy, and looking at Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good and Bad Government, I had one of those moments.
Nearly 700 years old, the series of fresco paintings includes a depiction of a bustling city that illustrates the effects of good government, as well as representations of the decay that results from arbitrary and unjust rulers. The visual treatise on political economy holds important lessons for us today.
Lorenzetti's city isn't thriving because its government is energetic or ambitious. It's thriving because a wise government knows its place.
The people creating its wealth aren't politicians. They're merchants opening shops, artisans practicing their crafts, builders raising new homes, farmers bringing goods to market, families walking safely through the streets, and a couple getting married. Prosperity comes from their voluntary cooperation. The government appears as the guardian of the rules that make prosperity possible: justice, security, predictable laws, and limits on arbitrary power.
That distinction is everything. America did not become the richest nation in history because Washington, D.C., was exceptionally good at directing the economy. It thrived because its institutions largely prevented Washington from interfering. The rule of law and constitutional limits have allowed millions of individuals to make sound decisions that no central authority could possibly coordinate.
Lorenzetti understood that institutions shape incentives, and incentives shape civilization. When political institutions protect a people's liberty, property, and contract rights, they will invest, innovate, trade, build, and cooperate. When institutions become vehicles for arbitrary power, society reorganizes itself around politics instead of production, and everything decays.
That's why the most troubling trend in American politics today isn't just how remarkably bloated the government has become. It's that both major political parties are now comfortable using their power to direct private economic life, and they seem unbothered by whether this undermines the rule of law.
Federal spending and debt continue their relentless rise because politicians prioritize today's voters over future generations. They support industrial policy to prop up their favorite industries. The Trump administration is taking equity stakes in companies like Intel and USA Rare Earth, with some members enriching themselves in the process.
Meanwhile, many Democrats champion taxes on held wealth and unrealized capital gains, challenging the principle that property exists independently of political permission. Genuine socialists who aspire to subordinate property rights and voluntary exchange to political power are now winning elections.
Today, Democrats and Republicans share an understanding that the government should actively allocate resources, direct investment, and determine economic outcomes, which can translate to votes, campaign contributions, or other benefits.
That's a shift Lorenzetti's frescos implicitly warned against. The danger is not poorly executed government; it's that society's rules eventually begin to break down. Businesses learn that political influence matters as much or more than serving customers. Investors devote increasing attention to Washington rather than to innovation. Entrepreneurs spend more time competing for subsidies than for customers. Citizens become clients of the state instead of participants in a free society. Political discretion displaces voluntary cooperation.
This transformation rarely arrives dramatically. It instead comes one exception at a time: one bailout, one industrial policy, one new entitlement, one emergency spending bill, another emergency bill that no one feels any need to repay, one "golden share," one creative tax hike. Together, these changes reshape the relationship between citizen and state.
Lorenzetti's companion depiction of a bad government is often interpreted as a portrait of tyranny. Justice lies bound at the feet of a horned, demonic ruler, her scales broken and cords cut. Around them, the city decays: Buildings crumble, the streets are empty of commerce, stores are looted, and the only workshop still doing business belongs to the armorer. Soldiers seize a woman—a dark reflection of the happy bride processing through the city on the opposite wall—while a man lies slain at her feet.
Similarly, in one painting of the countryside, the figure of Security, guaranteed by law and not by whim, flies above cultivated fields. In another, Fear hovers over villages burning and barren ground. Same land, same people, different institutions.
But tyranny isn't simply oppression. It's the condition under which political power, no longer constrained by enduring principles, becomes society's organizing force. That's where bad becomes worse. High taxes become levies meant to punish and confiscate. Regulating industries becomes the locking down of an economy. Constraints on speech become censorship and book burning.
That's why institutions matter. A constitutional government's purpose is not to directly produce prosperity. It's to prevent political power from suffocating the countless acts of creativity, exchange, investment, and cooperation through which free people produce prosperity themselves.
America's greatness has never rested on the brilliance of its politicians. It rests on institutions that leave enough room for people to flourish. The lesson from Siena is that we must restore and preserve what keeps political power in check. Without it, the government does not merely redistribute wealth; it coarsens and corrupts the character of the people, leading to its destruction.
COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM
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In 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, causing an 11-month blackout in some parts of the island. In the years since, the federal government has allocated billions of dollars to fix the grid. However, only a quarter of this funding has actually reached the island, according to a new government report.
A federal audit released last week by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that of the $14 billion obligated for grid repair and modernization in Puerto Rico since 2017, around 75 percent, or $10.7 billion, remains undisbursed. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was the slowest mover of funds identified in the report, with only $2.7 billion of its total $11.1 billion in obligated funds disbursed. According to the GAO, a measly nine FEMA-funded projects have been completed as of December 2025, while 249 are "at different stages of completion."
Approximately half of the island's frequent outages are caused by vegetation growing too close to transmission and distribution lines. Luma Energy, the island's private utility, estimated that clearing vegetation around power lines, substations, and facility access roads would cost $1.2 billion. The utility has submitted funding requests for 34 vegetation-clearing projects to FEMA as of December, but FEMA has obligated only roughly $103 million for nine of them. And, thanks to the many layers in the federal bureaucracy, numerous environmental reviews, and complex permitting, most of these projects are still less than halfway complete. Overall, federal funding has cleared only 400 of the 16,000 miles planned for vegetation clearing, according to the GAO.
With the island's antiquated power plants unable to generate about a third of the electricity needed during peak demand last year, upgrading Puerto Rico's aging power generation is critical to ensuring reliable electricity for the island. However, here too, the federal government has been slow to provide a solution.
As of December 2025, FEMA had obligated about $1.3 billion to 24 generation projects, only seven of which were complete. Part of these delays was due to the island's aging infrastructure; as some stakeholders told the GAO, given the age of Puerto Rico's generation assets, finding replacement parts often requires "reverse engineering or long wait times, sometimes up to 2 years." Luma officials have identified substations as a key area for grid stability, yet just one of 32 substation projects for which FEMA has obligated almost $482 million has been completed. FEMA has also obligated $44 million for a project to upgrade Puerto Rico's energy management system, which was only about 65 percent complete as of late 2025. According to one stakeholder, these and other grid projects continue to face delays due to FEMA's lengthy review process, which includes "conducting an environmental and historic preservation review."
Operators also have to contend with the growing number of Puerto Ricans who have switched to rooftop solar panels—which generate over 10 percent of the island's electricity—to provide a buffer against the grid's instability. Consequently, the rapid growth of decentralized rooftop solar creates grid-management challenges for an aging system, especially if the grid lacks the smart inverters, storage, and controls needed to balance variable output.
However, it is not just the federal government that has failed the Puerto Rican taxpayer; the Puerto Rican government is also at fault for actively inhibiting the timely use of recovery funds and basic grid repairs. This includes legislation passed in 2024 to levy a construction excise tax on federally funded recovery projects—resulting in higher project costs and slower grid repairs—and a series of legal battles between the Puerto Rican government and Luma Energy, which has compounded the delays and mismanagement of the island's grid recovery.
The GAO, with federal concurrence, outlines several recommendations to address the island's grid woes. These include streamlining FEMA's environmental review process and establishing strong mechanisms to facilitate coordination between the federal and Puerto Rican governments.
While not mentioned in the report, another clear fix would be repealing the Merchant Marine Act of 1920. Often called the Jones Act, this law requires any goods shipped between two U.S. ports to be transported on an American-built ship manned by a mostly American crew. Since there is only one Jones Act-compliant ship for liquefied natural gas, which accounts for a significant portion of the island's electricity generation, the law has forced the island to pay more for American liquefied natural gas than its neighbor, the Dominican Republic, and regularly slowed down hurricane recovery.
In March, President Donald Trump issued a Jones Act waiver, which has allowed "bulk propane shipments [to reach] Puerto Rico from Texas and Pennsylvania for the first time ever," writes the Cato Institute's Colin Grabow. Repealing the law would ensure that shipments like these become a regular thing and allow Puerto Rico to deliver more affordable electricity to its grid.
Government infighting and incompetency have condemned 3.5 million Puerto Ricans to suffer under what is perhaps the worst power grid system in the Western world. Even without accounting for natural disasters, customers in Puerto Rico experienced an average of 27 hours of power grid interruptions per year between 2021 and 2024. For the continental United States, that number is only two hours. Yet, despite this abysmal quality, Puerto Ricans continue to pay electricity bills up to 31 percent above the national average.
As Washington drags its feet and San Juan plays politics, ordinary Puerto Ricans are left paying high rates for a grid that routinely fails them, while mainland taxpayers fund what has essentially become an endless money pit.
The post Washington Promised Puerto Rico $14 Billion To Fix Its Grid. Most of the Money Is Still Stuck. appeared first on Reason.com.
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Sen. Bernie Moreno (R–Ohio) recently announced that he was working with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) to eliminate the cap on Social Security taxes. Moreno would be a very odd Republican if he thinks this is a good idea, or else he simply doesn't understand the math.
Under current law, employees and employers each contribute 6.2 percent in Social Security payroll taxes on the first $184,500 in income. By eliminating the cap, that 6.2 percent tax would become a new top marginal tax rate. For example, a taxpayer in California would pay a 37 percent federal income tax rate, a 13.3 percent state income tax rate, a 1.45 percent Medicare tax, a 0.9 percent additional Medicare tax, and a 6.2 percent Social Security tax, for a top marginal rate of 58.85 percent. For self-employed people, who pay both sides of payroll taxes and Medicare taxes, the top marginal rate would rise to 66.5 percent—among the highest marginal rates in the world.
We should be having hard conversations about the future of Social Security. Of course, this has been true for a while. With collapsing birth rates and rising life expectancy, a declining pool of workers will be unable to generate enough revenue to support an ever-increasing class of benefit recipients. Everyone knows this.
The big question is what to do about it. There are only a handful of ways to shore up the program:
In terms of the math, eliminating the cap on Social Security earnings unsurprisingly has the largest impact and can actually go a long way toward making the program solvent. But is it worth having top marginal tax rates in the 60s to preserve the program? This is a hard question we need to answer.
The last time marginal tax rates approached this level was in 1979, when a 70 percent tax rate applied to income above about $215,400 (which would be just over $1 million in today's dollars). Back then, it was understood that with all the available deductions and credits, even very wealthy people paid nothing close to the 70 percent top rate. Even in the 1950s, with a top rate of 92 percent, the effective rate for those in the top tax bracket was about 42 percent. Marginal rates in the 60s today, by contrast, would be inescapable—there are very few deductions and credits available to offset them. The government's take as a percentage of gross domestic product would go to European levels and beyond.
If we find that unappealing, we could simply raise the payroll tax rate by a percentage point or two, which would also have a measurable impact. This would be preferable to abolishing the cap altogether, and as a side benefit, lower-income workers would be contributing more as well, so the burden would not entirely fall on the wealthy. But again, this has a much smaller impact than doing away with the earnings cap and would only be a temporary fix.
Conservatives are generally in favor of raising the retirement age, which is eminently reasonable, because not only are people living longer, they're staying healthier for longer. The minimum retirement age is currently 62, and if you know any 62-year-olds, they're probably in pretty good shape. The idea that someone could or would stop working at age 62 nowadays seems hard to justify. People reach full retirement age at age 67, and we could easily raise the full retirement age to 70, perhaps grandfathering in people born before an arbitrary date, such as 1980.
When Social Security was first implemented, average life expectancy was much lower, the ratio of workers to beneficiaries was much more favorable, and the actuarial mathematics behind it worked. However, raising the retirement age, while worthwhile, has even less of an impact than raising tax rates.
What's interesting is that people are starting to have some honest conversations online about actually reducing benefits, the ultimate political third rail. But the reality is that Social Security benefits can be very generous. If you had a hypothetical married couple who each retired at the maximum age of 70, they'd collectively be receiving about $124,000 a year in benefits in retirement, assuming they were high earners during their working lives. Benefits are much lower for those who retire earlier, but it's important to understand that baby boomers, as a class, are fabulously wealthy. And yes, while there are those who are indigent, the vast majority of them don't necessarily need the benefits. Reducing benefits could have a large impact on the solvency of the program, but politically, it is the hardest to accomplish.
One very popular idea is means-testing the benefits. For example, if a hypothetical senior citizen had assets in excess of $2 million, they would then be ineligible to receive Social Security. Many years ago, billionaire Ken Langone was a big proponent of means-testing benefits. There are a few problems with this. The first is that if one has paid into the system for decades, it seems unfair to then deprive them of benefits, no matter how well they have handled their financial affairs. The other is that in order to do this, you'd have to create an entire bureaucracy at the IRS for determining someone's wealth. (Once you have the IRS in the business of counting assets, it is just a hop, skip, and a jump to wealth taxes.) Also, means-testing benefits is mostly symbolic—it doesn't do much to preserve the solvency of the program.
People have been talking about privatizing Social Security for years, going all the way back to 2005, when President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary John Snow actually made an honest attempt at it. The idea was that we would all contribute to personal retirement accounts that would be invested in stocks and bonds. There was an enormous backlash to the proposal, and Bush retreated on it.
From an academic standpoint, privatizing Social Security makes much more sense than the current system. The annual return on a 60/40 portfolio of stocks and bonds has averaged about 9 percent in the last 50 years, while the rate of return on Social Security is negligible. We would all be richer in the end. But there is an aspect of this that the privatization proponents haven't considered: Stocks and bonds can lose value, and if we have a protracted bear market, and people experience a drawdown in their retirement savings, the politics around that will be a nightmare. The capital markets do not reliably return 9 percent a year—sometimes it is more, sometimes it is less. There have been long periods of time when the stock market has returned zero or negative. The fact is that we aren't all cut out to be investors. Having said that, Canada has a public pension program that invests in private financial markets, managed by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which has done quite well. It is a superior system to ours, so it can be done.
Finally, we could simply abolish the program altogether—the most libertarian and radical of the proposals. People would be responsible for saving for their own retirement. Of course, some people wouldn't, and they'd be living at a subsistence level in old age. The interesting thing is that most people have been operating under the assumption that Social Security won't be around forever, so they have been contributing aggressively to tax-advantaged retirement plans such as IRAs and 401(k)s. Many people are anticipating using Social Security as a supplement to retirement savings, not a replacement for them. And there is a certain social Darwinism to abolishing it that is attractive to some people.
Outside of abolishing Social Security or privatizing it, all of the choices are unappetizing, and many people would argue that taxes are high enough, for crying out loud. Raising the cap on Social Security earnings, as Moreno and Warren want to do, would seem to be a nonstarter. But these ideas are gaining traction in today's political climate. There are only so many more years that we can kick the can down the road.
The post The Social Security Fix That Would Send Tax Rates Soaring appeared first on Reason.com.
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Lines at Rhode Island grocery stores are about to get a whole lot longer.
In late June, Rhode Island became the first state to limit grocery self-checkout lanes after Democratic Gov. Daniel McKee signed the Restrictions on Self-Service Checkout Stations Act. The legislation mandates that every grocery store in the state have at least one staffed checkout for every three self-checkouts operating. The law takes effect on January 1, 2027, and failure to comply can result in fines of up to $500 per day.
"Today, we're protecting jobs and strengthening customer service," McKee said in a press release. "Whether it's helping a customer with an issue, assisting a senior or ensuring accessibility for people with disabilities, this law is about preserving choice and keeping people at the center of the shopping experience."
The bill's supporters frame the policy as both a consumer protection and job protection measure. State Rep. Megan Cotter (D–Exeter) argued that self-checkout lanes are "specifically used to reduce the number of people that stores employ, and the number of hours that their employees work." Cotter also accused "big corporations" of trying to get customers to gradually accept the shift toward self-checkouts when "many people still want the advantages of checking out with a real human being."
Yet survey data suggest that many shoppers do, in fact, value self-checkouts. A 2024 NCR Voyix survey of 1,133 U.S. shoppers found that 43 percent of consumers prefer self-checkout over traditional checkout, with that preference rising to 53 percent among shoppers ages 18 to 44. Their 2025 Commerce Experience Report found that among shoppers who prefer self-checkout, 77 percent say they do so because it is faster, while 36 percent cite shorter lines and 43 percent say they prefer bagging their own items. A 2026 CapitalOne Shopping Research report found that 79.3 percent of consumers use self-checkout regularly, and among them, 61.4 percent use it for most or all purchases.
The legislation was also supported by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), which argued that self-checkout has led grocery chains to cut cashier hours. Domenic Pontarelli, secretary-treasurer at UFCW Local 328 (which represents Rhode Island workers), said in a press release that grocery workers are "often overburdened, having to monitor too many self-checkouts while shoppers face delays," and that "staffing ratios fix this issue for all parties."
Rhode Island grocers, on the other hand, described the bill as an "egregious" attempt to micromanage how stores staff their checkout lanes. The Rhode Island Food Dealers Association, which represents chain and independent grocery retailers and other food-related organizations, argued in a March letter that the bill "puts Rhode Island grocers at a significant competitive disadvantage." The bill's arbitrary staffing requirements "severely limits our members' ability to properly utilize their staff as needed."
"This bill while labeled as a restriction on self-checkout is in fact a ban on self-checkout. There is no way a grocery retailer would be able to keep self-checkout with these restrictions," the group added.
Indeed, while policymakers often portray grocery stores as "big corporations" that make massive profits, they are usually operating on razor-thin margins. The Food Industry Association says the average net profit for food retailers was just 2.1 percent in 2025. This means that costly regulations risk pushing up prices for customers and threatening the viability of many of those businesses altogether.
Self-checkout restrictions have been tried before. Last year, Long Beach, California, introduced a similar law in 2025 in an attempt to combat theft. Two weeks after the city approved its "Safe Stores are Staffed Stores" law, which requires larger grocery stores and pharmacies to staff at least one employee for every three self-checkout stations, Vons closed self-checkout lanes at all four of its Long Beach locations, according to the Long Beach Post. Signs at Vons told customers the lanes were unavailable "due to a new City of Long Beach ordinance (25-0010) regulating self-checkout operations."
"There was an unusually long line at Whole Foods self-checkout today. Of 10 self-checkout kiosks, only 2 were working," claimed one Reddit user in late 2025. When the shopper asked an employee why so many kiosks were down, the employee allegedly replied that it was because of "a new law in Long Beach." Another shopper said the self-checkout area at a Target on Bellflower Boulevard was "completely closed," leaving "long lines everywhere."
Now Rhode Island is on track to repeat Long Beach's mistakes. The fundamental question is why lawmakers think they should be deciding how grocery stores organize their checkout lanes in the first place. Every store has different customers, staffing pressures, and peak hours. Some shoppers may want a human cashier, and others may want to scan their groceries more quickly with a self-checkout. A functioning market can and does accommodate both preferences.
At a time when Americans are already worried about food prices, potentially making a basic necessity more costly and grocery shopping more stressful is a strange way to help them.
The post Rhode Island Is Regulating Grocery Checkout Lines Now appeared first on Reason.com.
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It all started with a fight. Dominique Jenkins-Millage, 29, saw the person who killed his cousin while they were both serving time at Oregon State Penitentiary. He started punching the killer, which escalated into a brawl between multiple inmates.
That fight landed Jenkins-Millage in solitary confinement, where he spends at least 23 hours a day locked in a cell about the size of a parking space. His interactions are limited to prison guards and medical staff. He describes the conditions as torturous, worse than being homeless or being shot. He expects to be released from solitary sometime this month, but could be held longer.
"I would not wish this on anyone," said Jenkins-Millage.
Jenkins-Millage is one of a handful of prisoners in Oregon who filed a proposed class action lawsuit in mid-June challenging the Oregon Department of Corrections' (ODOC) solitary confinement practices. It alleges that the ODOC is violating the state constitution's "Unnecessary Rigor Clause," which goes above and beyond the Constitution's Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. States like Indiana, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming also have similar protections in their constitutions.
The plaintiffs seek a declaration that the ODOC's practices are unconstitutional and an injunction prohibiting the department from continuing the practices in the future. They also want to establish a monitoring regime so that the ODOC does not fall back into its old habits.
"It's ironic that in a state that is pushing back against the Trump administration and is a progressive leader in so many ways is at the same time subjecting people to these degrading, cruel and inhumane issues," said George Mills, a staff attorney at the Prison Law Office, a nonprofit public interest law firm representing some of the plaintiffs.
A spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Corrections told Reason that the agency can't comment on the specifics of the lawsuit but remains committed to maintaining "safe, secure, and humane operations for adults in custody, staff, and the communities we serve." That includes, but is not limited to, increasing out-of-cell time for people in solitary confinement, building peer mentorship programs, and enhancing violence prevention tools.
"DOC remains committed to this long‑term cultural transformation and to ensuring our practices continue to evolve in alignment with research, safety needs, and constitutional standards," the spokesperson wrote in an email.
Solitary confinement—also known as restrictive housing or administrative segregation—has a long and sordid history in the U.S. The Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia is widely considered the birthplace of solitary confinement. As early as 1829, some prisoners were kept in tiny cells only containing a worktable, a toilet, a skylight, and a Bible. Historian William Kashatus argued in a 1999 article for Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine that the cells were designed in such a way to "remind the inmate that penitence would only be achieved through the light from heaven, the word of God, and honest work."
In 1890, the Supreme Court recognized that the assumption underpinning solitary confinement is inhumane and counterproductive in a case known as In re Medley. The case concerned a convicted murderer named James J. Medley who was held in solitary confinement for 45 days in Colorado before his execution. Chief Justice Samuel Miller, after going through a lengthy historical analysis of the practice, found that prisoners subjected to solitary confinement often "did not recover sufficient mental activity to be any subsequent service to the community."
Keeping prisoners in solitary confinement is also inherently dangerous. Studies have shown that extended time in solitary can permanently damage an individual's brain by shrinking the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory and sociability. That is one reason why many prisoners who are sent to solitary return with symptoms of "depression, paranoia, lack of concentration or memory, anger, and hallucinations," according to a 2018 study. Solitary confinement can also cause muscular degeneration, cardiovascular issues, and dermatological conditions because of the lack of regular exercise and restricted hygiene habits.
Jenkins-Millage claimed in the lawsuit that he has experienced similar symptoms since he was sent to solitary confinement. For instance, he said he developed symptoms of depression or bipolar disorder, including suicidal ideation, while he was in solitary. He attributed these symptoms to a lack of meaningful human contact, recreation, and mental stimulation.
Even so, reforming solitary confinement practices has been slow and arduous work. According to 2023 estimates, more than 122,000 people are held in solitary confinement across the U.S., representing just under 7 percent of the nation's total prison population. While many assume that the worst of the worst criminals live in solitary confinement, multiple studies have found that prisons routinely use solitary confinement as punishment for nonviolent offenses like tobacco use and talking back to a prison guard. Solitary confinement is also often considered the "de facto mental health unit" in many prisons, according to the Vera Institute of Justice.
"When we made the decision to do whatever put us in prison," Jenkins-Millage told Oregon Public Broadcasting in June. "We didn't stop being humans."
The lawsuit claims directors at the ODOC are aware that their practices may run afoul of best practices. In the 91-page complaint, lawyers point to memos sent by senior ODOC leaders outlining the need to "reduce the use of segregation" and acknowledging that the practice is "detrimental to an individual's health." Another superintendent at Oregon's Coffee Creek Correctional Facility claimed that "segregation isn't an effective tool to change behavior."
Still, the ODOC has been slow to address its issues. For instance, a 2015 study by Disability Rights Oregon found that prisoners in solitary confinement had no access to mental health treatment. A 2016 study conducted by the Vera Institute found that segregated prisoners in the ODOC lived in conditions marked by "isolation, idleness, and sensory deprivation" that created or exacerbated serious mental health issues.
"They know that this is wrong, and they know that they need to make progress on this," Mills said.
The lawsuit was filed at a time when solitary confinement is under strict scrutiny across the globe. In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly revised what are known as its Nelson Mandela Rules, which seek to create an international standard for the treatment of prisoners, to state that solitary confinement should be used only as a "last resort" and should not last longer than 15 days. That led to prison reforms in European countries such as Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, and the Netherlands, as well as in South Africa.
Several U.S. states are creating more humane approaches to solitary confinement. Nevada reduced the amount of time prisoners can spend in solitary confinement to 15 days in 2023. A bill passed in Virginia adding new restrictions on when a prisoner can be sent to solitary confinement. Other states like Louisiana passed a law to increase access to educational materials for people in solitary confinement, and Tennessee now prohibits pregnant women from being sent to solitary.
To Mills, these initiatives come back to one of America's original principles: "You can't torture people, and that's a foundational principle of our country."
The post 'I Would Not Wish This on Anyone': Prisoners Fight Back Against Solitary Confinement in Oregon appeared first on Reason.com.
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Robert Reich, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former U.S. labor secretary, makes popular economics videos arguing that the U.S. economy is rigged against workers.
One of his recent pieces caught my eye because it makes heavy use of numbers and charts. The video is a great example of how to misuse economic data to support a preconceived narrative—in this case, a fairy-tale account of evil CEOs stealing wealth from their employees.
At the outset of the video, Reich presents a chart showing that in 2024 the "typical worker" earned $36.49 per hour, while CEOs made—"ready for this?" Reich asks viewers—$431.80!
There are lots of problems with this chart, starting with the fact that it's labeled "CEO Salaries," but that's not what the $431.80 figure represents. Though he rarely sources his work, Reich's chart matches data from a report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which measures what the leaders of the largest 350 public corporations in America earn, not all CEOs.
There are about 4,000 publicly traded corporations headquartered in the U.S., and even more privately held companies. They all have CEOs. Reich has cherry-picked the wealthiest and most successful faces in the crowd. This is like measuring what the highest-paid actors earn, setting aside all the struggling performers waiting tables, and claiming that acting is the world's most lucrative profession.
If you broaden the lens to include CEOs at ordinary-sized companies, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data show their pay looks a lot like that of other professionals: Median CEOs make about $200,000 a year, and their pay is growing at about the same pace as everyone else's.
Another problem is that the $431.80 is compensation realized in 2024. Most of it came from stock options granted for performance in previous years. In the prior five years, stock prices had roughly doubled, allowing CEOs to cash in compensation from past years. It's a lot of money, but perhaps not out of proportion to five years of service steering the world's largest and most successful businesses through the pandemic and doubling shareholder wealth. And only the CEOs who survived the turmoil and delivered the doublings were around to collect it. In a down year for the stock market, you might see compensation drop by 80 percent.
The CEOs of the largest American companies have seen their compensation grow at an extraordinary pace, but that's because the businesses they run have grown so large. A highly regarded paper by economists Xavier Gabaix and Augustin Landier, "Why Has CEO Pay Increased So Much?" showed that CEO compensation should scale with firm size, and that this effect explains the entire rise in CEO pay.
Today, Nvidia's market cap alone is more than two and a half times the entire S&P 500's market cap when it was created in 1957, adjusted for inflation. Comparing CEO pay at the largest firms in 1968 vs. what they make today is like equating the director of a late-night commercial for a personal injury law firm to the director of a Hollywood blockbuster. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang impacts more economic value in an afternoon in 2026 than James Roche did as the CEO of General Motors in all of 1968.
The same compensation explosion has occurred across every winner-take-all field, affecting top athletes, movie stars, and best-selling authors. The highest NBA salary in 1968 was Wilt Chamberlain's $250,000-a-year deal with the Lakers, and the team also agreed to cover his taxes. Chamberlain's salary alone works out to roughly $2.2 million in today's dollars. Compare that to Steph Curry's record-setting $62.6 million pay package in the upcoming NBA season.
Yet Reich claims that "the system is rigged." Is the NBA also rigged in favor of Curry? Against whom?
Reich has more evidence that the economy is rigged against workers. He presents another chart showing, in his words, that "big corporations chronically underpay workers compared to the workers' productivity on the job. Productivity, that is, the value of their output, has soared and resulted in record corporate profits."
The source of Reich's chart, which shows the productivity-pay gap, was once again the EPI, which compares workers' earnings over time to the productivity of the U.S. economy.
The measure they used for worker pay doesn't include all employees. It's just "nonsupervisory workers," so it excludes management. The EPI says that it uses this dataset because it represents "the typical worker," or "roughly 80% of the U.S. workforce." The purpose of the chart, they explain, is to answer "a crucial question: Do typical workers in the United States share in the benefits of economic growth?"
The problem is that the EPI is drawing on an untrustworthy dataset. In 2005, the BLS published a note in the Federal Register repudiating its measure of nonsupervisory workers' earnings, stating that it had "limited value."
The agency also noted that the distinction between a "supervisory" and "nonsupervisory worker" was "not meaningful to survey respondents" and "that it is not possible to tabulate their payroll records" to reflect this distinction.
In 2003, Patricia Getz, who was in charge of employment statistics at the BLS, noted that "records are not kept for these groupings of workers," so employers weren't filling out this portion of the survey.
And this series only counts regular paychecks. Bonuses, profit sharing, and stock grants, which represent how a growing share of American workers are paid over the exact period this chart covers, are excluded entirely.
The BLS sought to discontinue this data series altogether in favor of the all-employee series. In the end, it continued to collect and publish data on nonsupervisory workers, but the poor data quality renders this chart essentially worthless.
The wage measure favored by the BLS tracks compensation for all employees at all levels, not only because this is a more trustworthy dataset, but on the logical assumption that a company's gains in productivity reflect the combined efforts of all employees, including its officers and supervisors.
Reich also cites gross productivity before depreciation. Consider an Uber driver whose passengers pay $85,000 over a year, of which $30,000 goes toward expenses such as gas, insurance, and fees. The driver's gross productivity is $55,000. But her car might have depreciated $15,000, so the net productivity is $40,000. That $15,000 wasn't stolen from her paycheck by a greedy CEO; it's a true loss in economic value.
This matters because over the period Reich discusses, corporate assets shifted from slow-depreciation assets such as steel mills to faster-depreciating assets such as computers and software. Depreciation has risen from 12 percent of national income to 17 percent. Reich is counting that 5 percent difference as stolen from workers, but in fact, it disappeared.
Regardless, if we use the data favored by the BLS and compare all worker compensation to productivity, the divergence between pay and productivity disappears.
Reich's theory that workers are getting shafted has a third component: He claims that CEOs are "siphoning" profits into stock buybacks to boost their own compensation.
"Stock buybacks," he claims, "reduce the number of shares available for investors to purchase, which drives up the value of the remaining shares. Just simple supply and demand."
This is an elementary accounting error. Take a $10 billion market-cap company with 100 million shares trading at $100 each. It decides to do a 10 percent buyback, spending $1 billion to buy 10 million shares for $100 each. The $1 billion cash it spends makes it a $9 billion company. It now has 90 million shares outstanding. The stock price is the same $100 per share outstanding.
Of course, in real life, things are not so neat. Investors tend to take a buyback announcement as good news; the insiders think the stock is undervalued, and bid the price up a few percent. There are other cases where investors take the opposite view: The buyback is a sign the company has no better use of its cash and is fading. But the point is it's not "simple supply and demand"; it's a signal that might or might not help the stock price.
Moreover, Reich misunderstands the purpose of a stock buyback. Companies have two ways of transferring profits to their shareholders: They can pay a dividend or they can do a buyback. The economic effect is the same.
Reich sees buybacks as a way of diverting profits to themselves rather than sharing them with their workers. "Corporations and their CEOs are instead siphoning them off into stock buybacks," he says.
They're not "siphoning" money. They're paying out profits to their owners. All investors, even greedy ones, are entitled to a share of the earnings of the companies they own. That's the deal. And without it, nobody would invest in the first place.
"Stock buybacks used to be considered illegal stock manipulation until Ronald Reagan came along," Reich says. "CEOs can now effectively give themselves a raise while workers get the shaft."
Stock buybacks were never "considered illegal stock manipulation." In 1982, the SEC clarified a gray area, simplifying the legal treatment of stock buybacks and making it easier for companies to use them as an alternative to paying dividends.
Reich claims that stock buybacks are worse than paying dividends because they're a way for CEOs to enrich themselves. "These rising share prices bump up CEO pay because increasingly part of their compensation is in shares of stock," he says.
The problem with this theory is that boards of directors, not CEOs, decide whether to pursue stock buybacks. These are the same directors who negotiate CEO compensation. Buybacks are an item on the negotiation checklist, like benefits and contract length, not something CEOs sneak in afterward to inflate their earnings.
What's the evidence on how buybacks affect CEO compensation? A study in the Journal of Accounting and Economics found the relationship between buybacks and CEO compensation was spurious. Research by a compensation consulting firm that examined S&P 500 buybacks from 2018 to 2021 found the same picture from inside the boardroom: Pay packages rest on multiple performance metrics, and the companies making the largest buybacks adjust their incentive targets to cancel out the share-count effect.
So what does Reich conclude from all of this misinformation and misconceived data? That we need a slew of policies to rein in American capitalism. He says we should "raise the federal minimum wage," "strengthen labor unions," "use antitrust laws to break up big corporate monopolies," "raise taxes on corporations," and "ban stock buybacks."
Apart from his misinformed discussion of stock buybacks, Reich doesn't address those issues in his video. Instead, all he's done is cherry-pick the compensation of the top CEOs in America and use a faulty data series to claim the economy is rigged against workers.
The charts and numbers we use to argue about important questions in public life are too often presented in deceptive ways. It doesn't get much more deceptive than this video.
To keep up with our video series Wrong Number featuring Aaron Brown, and to receive bonus content and more, click here to enter your email address. By joining our list, you'll also have a chance to win a copy of Brown's new book, Wrong Number: How to Extract Truth From a Blizzard of Quantitative Disinformation.
The post Robert Reich's CEO Pay Chart Is Wrong. Here's the Real Math. appeared first on Reason.com.
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I was recently reminded of one of the Epigrams of the Roman poet Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis, colloquially pronounced in English as "Marshall"). It is about the lawyers of his day, but it reflects—in an exaggerated way, of course—something that some lawyers, and many law students, tend to do today in their briefs, especially briefs that deal with glamorous subjects such as constitutional law. Here is a translation I much liked, by Roger Dickinson-Brown, reprinted with permission:
There is no poison here, no rape or force—
a simple case: my neighbor stole my goats.
But my expensive lawyer will discourse
on the whole history of law. He quotes
book, precedent and chapter 'til he's hoarse.
Fine, noble words! But what about my goats?
Meredith (For Keats' Sake!) also has a translation I like, and here's one more from two centuries ago, by John Quincy Adams, himself a lawyer of some distinction. It comes from his "Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory: Delivered to the Classes of Senior and Junior Sophisters in Harvard University" (more about that later), delivered when Adams was a senator. Note that Adams keeps Martial's historical references in his translation—which would have been vivid to Martial's audience, but come across differently to us today—while Dickinson-Brown chooses to omit them:
No dagger keen, no poison'd bowl
Forms, of my suit, the constitution
'Tis of three kids my neighbour stole
I come to court for restitution.
With thundering voice, and outstretch'd arm
my lawyer fights o'er all our battles;
Now thrills with Cannae's dire alarms
And now of Mithridates prattles.
Oh! let thy tongue, Verboso, cease,
Which trust in Punic faith forbids;
Let Sylla, Marius, sleep in peace;
And say—one word about my kids.
Or, if you prefer, from Claudius:
Not violence, murder, poison—none of these,
My suit concerns three humble goats, and please:
I claim my neighbor stole them from my pen.
The judge wants proof, not rhetoric again—
Yet you rant on of Cannae's bloody plain,
The war with Mithridates, and the stain
Of Punic oaths broken in ancient strife,
Of Sulla, Marius, Mucius and their life,
With booming voice and arms flung wide and wild—
Come, Postumus: the three goats, my good child!
And here's Martial's original Latin:
Non de vi neque caede nec veneno,
Sed lis est mihi de tribus capellis:
Vicini queror has abesse furto.
Hoc iudex sibi postulat probari:
Tu Cannas Mithridaticumque bellum
Et periuria Punici furoris
Et Sullas Mariosque Muciosque
Magna voce sonas manuque tota.
Iam dic, Postume, de tribus capellis.
If this post leads some small voice inside you to occasionally say, as you're writing or editing, "But what about my goats?," then Martial's life will not have been in vain.
My brother Sasha points out that this is "One good contribution of Martial law."
The post "But What About My Goats?": The Roman Poet Martial on Lawyers appeared first on Reason.com.
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Gas what? Something you eventually learn when you write about American politics for the better part of two decades is that a lot of it just comes down to the price of gas. This is something that Donald Trump, the American president now serving his second term, seems to have learned as well, albeit belatedly.
This week on social media, the Trump administration touted the launch of Freedom Fuel, a network of gas stations "lowering the price at the pump to $3.47 for our 47th president."
FREEDOM FUEL HAS ARRIVED.
The FIRST Freedom Fuel Network gas station has LANDED in Philadelphia, lowering the price at the pump to $3.47 for our 47th President.
President Trump is leading the charge to lower gas prices this summer - putting more money in your pocket.
pic.twitter.com/lcrCuioQv5
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 7, 2026
Technically, this wasn't the cheapest gas in the region. "At least two nearby stations started their prices at two cents cheaper per gallon," USA Today reported. But all things considered, it was a pretty good deal. According to AAA, yesterday's average price for a gallon of gas was $3.79 nationally.
Inevitably, this initiative produced cries of socialism and comparisons to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's sure-to-be-a-boondoggle government-run grocery store initiative.
But these comparisons were misplaced, at least if the Trump administration is to be believed. According to CBS News, the Freedom Fuel network "is private and owns 25 filling stations across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The spokesperson said the Trump administration is not involved with the company and is not subsidizing the gas stations."
So this probably isn't a case of government-run gas stations. Instead, it's another familiar feature of Trump-era politics and media: something happening that has little to do with the White House—and Trump taking credit. This is a branding exercise, not a policy.
Trump is far from the first politician to boast about welcome economic outcomes he had little to do with. But Trump did play a causal role here, in a different way. Much of the recent increase in gas prices is a result of his pointless, fruitless, on-and-off war with Iran. We wouldn't need Freedom Fuel if the president had simply chosen not to start a quixotic bombing campaign in the Middle East.
Strait and narrow. Speaking of the war in Iran, it isn't over.
The already-shaky ceasefire agreement between the United States and Iran appears to have collapsed. Last night, the United States launched new strikes against the country. The strikes were intended to weaken Iran's ability to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping corridor for the global energy trade. The U.S. military said the strikes were in response to "recent unjustified aggression against commercial shipping and civilian crews," according to The New York Times.
In other words, Trump started a war. The war (among other things) increased the price of gas. So now Trump is continuing the war—because of the price of gas. If only Trump had discovered that the price of gas was important a little bit sooner.
The Maine event: Graham Platner suspended his campaign for Senate in Maine, saying he intended to withdraw from the race, which is viewed by many as critical for determining control of the Senate.
The move was widely expected after a rape accusation earlier this week. (He denies the accusation.)
On his way out, Platner blamed a rigged system, saying, "We live in a political system that is not built for normal people. It is a system that is built structurally to make sure that movements like ours cannot flourish, that if they begin to succeed, they can be crushed."
The Democratic State Committee of Maine said it would hold a nominating convention to determine who will replace Platner.
Scenes from the greater Boston area: Massachusetts might become the first state to undo the legalization of recreational marijuana. Cannabis business owners in the state are fighting back.
Today, Demand Progress Education Fund put up a billboard outside the @FTC and @TheJusticeDept with one message: NETFLIX IS A MONOPOLY.
These agencies can't ignore it any longer. pic.twitter.com/ZWZzKLMorl
— Demand Progress (@demandprogress) July 7, 2026
Not even close! But progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) like to use that word because they seem to think it gives them permission to regulate and/or take public ownership of a company without any further argument.
The post Freedom Fuel? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>In 2018, Becky Spengler started working as a special education administrator in Wisconsin. A couple years into the role, her supervisors pushed her and the rest of her team to adopt an "equity mindset," which required everyone to interrogate their implicit racial biases and privileges. Spengler understood the demand differently. She thought she had to believe that all white people—and only white people—are naturally racist. Spengler refused to adopt the equity mindset, and as a result, her employer demoted her to a different job….
Spengler … alleges that her employer violated the First Amendment by retaliating against her for what she believes and what she declines to believe. The district court never considered this claim, determining that Spengler insufficiently pleaded it…. [W]e disagree and remand for further proceedings….
In 2018, [Wisconsin state] Cooperative Educational Service Agency 7 hired Spengler as an Integration Director…. CESA 7 hired Spengler to effectuate a contract with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction [DPI] …. Spengler trained and supported the special-education directors for the 38 school districts within CESA 7. She also worked as a coach who provided professional learning to help teachers and staff implement training and particular workplace practices….
Spengler claims that after a couple years, DPI began focusing on race by requiring coaches to adopt an "equity mindset." According to DPI's Coaching Competency Practice Profile, a coach with an equity mindset "cultivates … the willingness and ability to see and speak to how their power and privilege are at work to systematically advantage some while simultaneously disadvantag[ing] others," helps others understand "how their thoughts and actions may negatively impact marginalized … communities," and "surfaces the impact of white supremacy and the history of whiteness on systems" while working "to disrupt and dismantle its effects."
Spengler thought the push for coaches to have an equity mindset was itself racist and discriminatory against white people. As she saw it, DPI's worldview anchored itself in a belief that "the natural state of White people—unlike people of color—is to be racists." When she voiced her disagreement with this perspective, tension emerged among Spengler and her co-workers.
Over time, DPI officials requested that CESA 7 replace Spengler as Integration Director for the 2022-2023 contract year…. DPI's pressure appears to have worked. In May 2022, Dickert met with DPI representatives and realized that CESA 7 would lose funding if Spengler continued as Integration Director. Colleen Timm, CESA 7's Learning Services Director, informed Spengler that DPI viewed "points in the [new] [c]ontract" as non-negotiable and that she could keep her position as the Integration Director only if she "could commit to the role without pushback or questioning." Spengler claims that one of those points required CESA 7 staff to have "a demonstrated commitment to examining their personal biases in the areas of race and ability, and to dismantling racist and ableist educational systems."
Spengler declined to make that commitment. She promised in correspondence with Dickert and Timm "to effectively carry out DPI's direction with regard to … [her] work within the Districts." But she was unwilling to "agree to keep silent regarding DPI's racist philosophy, policies, and plan of action." Indeed, she maintained that she had the "right to express" her "personal views and opinions regarding matters of race" and to "express those views in the same respectful manner as any other employee of DPI and/or CESA 7 might express their views." She also "retain[ed] [her] right to continue to oppose racial discrimination in the workplace."
In June 2022, CESA 7 declined to re-up Spengler as the Integration Director and instead employed her in a different position that paid much less….
[Spengler] does not appeal the district court's entry of summary judgment for CESA 7 on her claim that it retaliated against her because of what she said and what she declined to say. But she does appeal the district court's failure to address her claim that CESA 7 retaliated against her because of what she believes and what she declines to believe….
The district court should have considered Spengler's claim that CESA 7 retaliated against her because of her beliefs. As a matter of law, we have no doubt that her claim is cognizable. The First Amendment "protects a public employee from discharge … based on what he believes." That protection guards against more than just retaliation for "political affiliation." It also extends to any attempt to force public employees to "conform their beliefs … to some state-selected orthodoxy." "[U]nless the government can demonstrate an overriding interest of vital importance requiring that a person's private beliefs conform to those of the hiring authority, his beliefs cannot be the sole basis for depriving him of continued public employment."
We are also confident that Spengler's operative complaint provided CESA 7 with "fair notice" that she was bringing this claim. Most directly, she alleges that "[d]espite her positive job performance and track record," CESA 7 "repeatedly informed [her] that she could not properly perform the Director of Integrated Services job unless she believed and otherwise agreed with and embraced DPI's racist philosophy, programs, and actions," even saying this demand "violated [her] constitutional rights."
And more broadly, as the district court recognized, the overarching thrust of Spengler's complaint is that she lost her job as CESA 7's Integration Director "because she did not share DPI's views" on race. She emphasizes that CESA 7 never "complain[ed] about the work she performed" or "otherwise legitimately assert[ed] that [she] had failed to provide all agreed-upon 'deliverables.'" Yet she alleges that CESA 7 warned her that "if she remained in the Director of Integrated Services role, she would need to fully embrace DPI's racist philosophy, actions and agenda, and that she could no longer question or voice disagreement with DPI's racist assumptions, philosophy, actions and agenda."
Put even more directly, the complaint states that "[b]ecause [Spengler] declined to accept DPI's beliefs and to 'demonstrate' that she embraced and agreed with DPI's racist philosophy, beliefs, actions, and agenda, [CESA 7] removed her from her role as Director of Integrated Services," in violation of her "constitutional rights." CESA 7 had fair notice of Spengler's claim that it retaliated against her because of her beliefs. Rule 8(a) [the federal pleading requirement] required no more.
The court concluded, though, that plaintiff had not adequately pled her separate claims that she was illegally fired based on her race.
The post Claim That State Employee Was Unconstitutionally Demoted "Because She Did Not Share" Education Agency's Views on Race Can Go Forward appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Dennis and Lisa Wysocki were issued New York State pistol licenses by the Nassau County Police Department's ("NCPD") Pistol License Section ("PLS") in September 2017 and February 2021 respectively. In 2022, both applied for and were issued unrestricted concealed-carry pistol licenses.
The Wysockis live with their minor daughter, who was in middle school in February 2023. On February 8, 2023, their daughter told a school counselor she had been feeling depressed and described past thoughts of harming herself using a rope. The counselor asked her if there were firearms in the home, and she confirmed their presence.
On February 10, 2023, the Wysockis took their daughter to the Cohen Children's Medical Center. She was evaluated by psychiatrist Dr. Joshua Stein who concluded she "does not represent an imminent danger to self or others" and could return home. On February 11, 2023, Child Protective Services ("CPS") caseworkers and NCPD officers visited the Wysockis' home in response to the school report. The NCPD officers examined their gun safes, confirming that the firearms were stored in locked safes with trigger locks.
On February 13, 2023, Dennis Wysocki called the PLS and spoke with Officer Vito Scaglione ("Scaglione") to report his daughter's comments and the visit from the police. He relayed that the officers had examined the safes, confirmed that their firearms were properly stored, and that his daughter had been evaluated and discharged by Dr. Stein as not an imminent danger to herself or others.
During the phone call, Scaglione informed Dennis that their pistol licenses were going to be suspended given their daughter's expressed thoughts of self-harm and that they would have to surrender their guns. That same day, the Wysockis took their firearms to a federal firearms licensee for safekeeping and went to the PLS office to provide Scaglione with a receipt confirming this transfer.
Scaglione instructed the Wysockis to prepare written statements. He also gave them each a "Notification of Pistol License Suspension" stating that their pistol licenses had been suspended in accordance with New York Penal Law § 400.00 and the PLS Handbook Chapter 1, §§ I(1) and I(2). The Notices advised them that the PLS would investigate the suspensions and during that period they were required to surrender their guns.
Chapter 1, Section I of the PLS Handbook states:
Pursuant to NYSPL § 400.00(11), a pistol license issued by the Nassau County Police Department may be revoked and cancelled by the Commissioner of Police at any time. Furthermore, a person whose pistol license is suspended or revoked for any reason is required to surrender their license and firearms, including their rifles and shotguns, to the NCPD Pistol License Section.
Subsection 1 details circumstances for automatic revocation including when a licensee is convicted of a felony or deemed mentally unfit. Subsection 2 provides for discretionary revocation: a pistol license "may be suspended and/or revoked based upon evidence of any disqualification pursuant to this Handbook or applicable law." It is NCPD policy to "immediately suspend the pistol license of any licensee who violates any of the terms and conditions of the license or [the] Handbook and commence an investigation to determine whether or not the license should be revoked."
The PLS Handbook requires a report to the PLS when "the licensee or a member of the licensee's household receives professional treatment for mental health issues (including depression)" or is admitted to a hospital for mental-health treatment. Lieutenant Marc Timpano testified that PLS officers have discretion when deciding whether to suspend a pistol license, and that PLS uses the Handbook as a "guide" when making suspension determinations, including whether to act after reports of a mental health incident.
The Wysockis submitted the statements explaining the incident with their daughter, along with Dr. Stein's letter on February 14, 2023. They then submitted on April 18, 2023 a letter from CPS that the investigation was closed as "unfounded." Scaglione instructed them to provide a letter from their daughter's treating doctor stating that it was safe for her to live in a home where guns are kept, and that he would continue the investigation and would see them "in about 8–12 months."
In June 2023, Dennis informed the PLS that they were unable to obtain a letter from a doctor stating that it was safe for their daughter to live in a home with firearms. The Wysockis maintain that Scaglione informed them that even with such a letter, their licenses would not be reinstated until they purchased two biometric safes, which they have no intention of purchasing, and that if their daughter "ever did anything like this again" they would never have their licenses returned. The Wysockis' pistol licenses remain in suspended status and the PLS investigation remains open.
This, the court concluded, violated the Wysockis' Second Amendment rights:
Defendants present zero evidence that the PLS's actions are consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. They provide no citation to law, tradition, or any other evidence, nor do they provide a particular historical analogy to match the practices employed against the Wysockis. Instead, they rely on Rahimi, which is inapposite.
Rahimi addressed the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which disarms individuals subject to certain domestic violence protective orders. The Supreme Court upheld the provision based on a historical tradition of disarming individuals that pose a clear threat of physical violence to another person.
Defendants contend that the founding-era surety and going-armed laws in Rahimi establish a more general principle: the government may act in a "targeted and time-limited way, based on reliable evidence of dangerousness, to prevent serious harm while the risk is appropriately managed." But Rahimi does not establish such a such a broad exception to the Second Amendment. It only condoned the Government's ability "to disarm individuals who present a credible threat to the physical safety of others."
The disarmament here is not based on the Wysockis posing a credible threat to the safety of others nor to prevent their misuse of firearms. Defendants' initial firearms seizure and license revocation was not based upon their risk to others (or their risk of misuse). Instead, it was based on the Wysockis' daughter's mental-health emergency and her danger to herself, based on firearms owned by others. And Defendants' ongoing refusal to return the firearms or licenses appears to be entirely arbitrary or unlawful—it is based not on any existence of mental health treatment or even current threat that the daughter poses to herself or others.
The evidence in the record is that that threat long ago dissipated (if it ever existed at all). Yet, Defendants refuse to let the Wysockis have their firearms or licenses and have imposed a set of requirements—additional letters from mental health practitioners and the purchases of particular kinds of safes—not based on any policy or laws, but on requirements of Defendants' own-making. While "[a]nalogical reasoning requires only that the government identify a well-established and representative historical analogue," not a "historical twin or 'dead ringer,'" the Defendants have failed to provide any relevant analogy, historical evidence, or relevant argument at all. Defendants' conduct is a plain violation of the Second Amendment.
{Defendants dedicate much of their brief to what amounts to counsel's musings about the reasonableness of the PLS's actions as to the Wysockis. At issue is not whether Officer Scaglione acted unreasonably, but whether Scaglione's exercise of discretion in suspending the Wysockis' licenses and imposing obligations based on their daughter's mental health incident, is supported by history and tradition.}
The court also noted that there seemed to be no state-law authority for the revocation, or even any municipal policy supporting it:
Chapter 1, Section I of the Handbook provides that Nassau County can revoke a license under New York Penal Law § 400.00(11). And Penal Law § 400.00(11)(b) provides that:
[w]henever the director of community services … makes a report pursuant to section 9.46 of the mental hygiene law, the division of criminal justice services shall convey such information, whenever it determines that the person named in the report possesses a license issued pursuant to this section, to the appropriate licensing official, who shall issue an order suspending or revoking such license.
Here, there was no report from the division of criminal justice or other similar entity to Nassau County. Scaglione simply informed the Wysockis—based upon Dennis's self-reporting—that their pistol licenses were going to be suspended given their daughter's expressed thoughts of self-harm. In other words, it appears that Nassau County revoked the Wysockis' licenses, not based upon the authority granted by § 400.00(11), but some other (unidentified or nonexistent) authority altogether. (As for the seizure and surrender of the firearms, that appears to flow from the license revocation, under Penal Law § 400.00(11)(c).) …
[I]t appears Defendants—in seizing the Wysockis' firearms (or requiring their surrender) and creating new barriers to their return (and for the reinstatement of their licenses)—have acted entirely outside of the PLS Handbook….
The court, however, rejected plaintiffs' facial challenge to Penal Law § 400.00(11):
A facial constitutional challenge "is 'the most difficult challenge to mount successfully, because it requires [the challenger] to establish that no set of circumstances exists under which the [law] would be valid.'" Their briefing contains no explication of the PLS Handbook or § 400.00(11) to circumstances other than their own, and they make no argument that there is no set of circumstances where the law could be applied consistent with the Second Amendment. The Wysockis rely only on their own experience and general assertions that the Nassau policies are unconstitutional. The Court cannot, therefore, rule out that at least "in some of its applications," Penal Law § 400.00(11), as implemented by the PLS Handbook, is consistent with the Second Amendment.
Amy L. Bellantoni (The Bellantoni Law Firm, PLLC) represents plaintiffs.
The post Banning Parents from Possessing Guns Because Their Child Has Described Thoughts of "Harming Herself Using a Rope" Violated Second Amendment appeared first on Reason.com.
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What are the limits of executive power, and how should such limits be enforced by the courts?
If there was a single dominant theme in the U.S. Supreme Court's recently concluded 2025–2026 term, then those two questions capture it in a nutshell. This was a SCOTUS term uniquely focused on the debate over the proper scope of presidential authority.
That makes sense, given the current occupant of the White House. In his second term, President Donald Trump has pursued an agenda of maximalist executive power on every front. Trump was not the first president to bypass Congress and seek to govern via executive fiat alone, of course. But the brazenness of Trump's executive overreach still stands out.
Trump did ultimately lose some of these cases when they finally reached the Court. But he was not without certain dependable allies on the bench. Indeed, one justice in particular made it clear that if it were up to him, Trump would have prevailed in every single case that tested the scope of his executive power.
Consider the tariffs case. Six members of the Supreme Court, including two justices appointed by Trump himself, argued that the president violated the separation of powers by wielding a tariff-making authority that he did not lawfully possess. Writing in dissent, however, Justice Clarence Thomas not only maintained that Trump deserved to win, but also argued that the tariff-making power—which the Constitution places in the hands of Congress only—could be surrendered entirely by Congress to the president without raising a single constitutional eyebrow.
Congress "has many powers that are not subject to the nondelegation doctrine," Thomas asserted in Learning Resources v. Trump. Among them, he claimed, are "the powers to raise and support armies" and "the power to regulate external affairs." In other words, according to Thomas, the president may act unilaterally in such vastly important areas and Congress, the branch of government actually vested with such powers under the Constitution, would suffer no constitutional injury at all.
Consider also the legal wrangling over immigration. In Mullin v. Doe, a 6–3 majority led by Justice Samuel Alito affirmed the Trump administration's decision to strip Haitian and Syrian nationals of a legal protection known as temporary protected status (TPS). Thomas joined Alito's majority opinion in full. But Thomas also wrote separately to argue that Trump should have won the case on even broader grounds.
The Haitian nationals involved in the case had pointed to numerous discriminatory statements made by the president to argue that the decision to strip them of TPS was motivated by racial animus, thus violating the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. Alito's majority opinion rejected that claim, holding that Trump should win because there was a plausible "race-neutral" explanation that could also account for what happened.
In his solo concurrence, Thomas argued that the Court had no business even weighing the Haitians' equal protection claim in the first place because "'courts cannot examine' 'the President's actions on subjects within his "conclusive and preclusive" constitutional authority,' regardless of whether he violates the Constitution in exercising that authority." For Thomas, this is yet another area in which the president may act unilaterally without facing any constitutional check from any other branch of government, including judicial review by the Supreme Court. Notably, not even Alito, another reliable vote for Trump, was willing to go that far.
The president of the United States—both Trump and every president who comes after him—is now more powerful than before, thanks in part to the Supreme Court. Had Clarence Thomas gotten his way this term, the executive would be even stronger still.
The post Clarence Thomas Doubled Down on Presidential Power appeared first on Reason.com.
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In February, President Donald Trump might not have had red-hot economic numbers to point to, but at least he could say gas prices were down 7.3 percent since he took office and annual inflation was at just 2.4 percent. Then Trump started a war with Iran, the Strait of Hormuz closed, and chaos engulfed a big chunk of the world economy. In the two months after the war began, gas prices rose 29 percent. Airfares are up 5.6 percent as well. Some items are resistant to war-induced price hikes, such as sugar and sweets (down 1.7 percent since February). But the war against Iran has clearly caused a price hike at the pump, and pretty much everywhere else in the economy too. All these numbers come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest data from April 2026.
| Category | Change since Trump took office | Change since Iran war began |
|---|---|---|
| Overall Inflation | 4.2% | 1.5% |
| Tobacco and smoking products | 9.2% | 0.5% |
| Cable, satellite, and livestreaming services | 1.4% | 0.8% |
| Medicinal drugs | -1.6% | -1.3% |
| Meats | 10.7% | 1.2% |
| Televisions | -5.4% | 0.2% |
| Cigarettes | 10.3% | 0.2% |
| Prescription drugs | -2.2% | -1.5% |
| Sugar & Sweets | 6.8% | -1.7% |
| Airline fares | 9.4% | 5.6% |
| Gasoline, unleaded regular | 19.6% | 29.0% |
| Alcoholic beverages | 2.7% | 0.5% |
The post The Sindex: Gas Prices Rose 29% in 2 Months After Trump Went to War With Iran appeared first on Reason.com.
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In 2022, sheriff's deputies in Adams County, Ohio, showed up at the home of the Grammy-nominated rapper Joseph Foreman, a.k.a. Afroman, with a warrant and a tip about a basement dungeon. They busted down the front door, rifled through his belongings, and seized thousands in cash. The search turned up nothing—the house didn't even have a basement.
Rather than let it go, Afroman made music about it and used surveillance footage of the raid in music videos and on merchandise. Seven of the deputies sued him in 2023, claiming he'd used their likenesses for commercial gain and caused them embarrassment and reputational harm. In March, Afroman showed up to trial in an American flag–print suit, arguing he had a First Amendment right to mock the deputies who kicked down his door. A jury agreed.
In a conversation with Reason's Andrew Heaton, Afroman says the verdict was a win for ordinary Americans who want the right to criticize public officials without being dragged into court. They also discuss small government, Afroman's potential presidential platform, and why the man behind the anthem "Because I Got High" may be the unifying figure America needs.
Q: If I think you've kidnapped somebody and I break into your house, but I apologize and I fix the door, would we be OK? What could the cops have done to make the situation OK?
A: It's OK to make mistakes in this lifetime. It's not OK to not apologize for making those mistakes. They put erasers on the end of pencils because they expect you to make mistakes. I expect a human being to make a mistake, but when a human being knows they made a mistake and they're not apologetic and they're arrogant about it, then that takes you down a whole other road.
Q: Why do you think the deputies thought this would work? I assume the threshold for this is so high that it was very unlikely they'd pull it off.
A: Yes. I believe they live in a small world. Being government officials, they control that small world. The police department is inside the courthouse. They all meet up at the snack machine and laugh, and they've got ongoing relationships with each other. They are accustomed to bullying the civilians of Adams County. They are accustomed to influencing the jury with intimidation, or just the whole "the police are always right every single time, under every single circumstance." They are accustomed to those types of situations. They figured that they could violate me and then sue me and then win.
Q: Is this a First Amendment case from your perspective and from the case that your attorney pushed?
A: Yes. We the people. The government is for the people, by the people. The people supervise the government. I am the government supervisor. I have the right to criticize and critique my government, my employees.
Q: Do you think this is going to embolden people in terms of free speech in general?
A: Yes, sir. But it's nothing that I gave the people. It was something that the Founding Fathers of America gave the people hundreds of years ago. I just microwaved it and reinstated it. Just reminded people about it.
Q: Is there anything about your trial that people don't understand?
A: I don't think so. I think everybody gets it. The police raided my house, didn't find nothing, were sarcastic, ornery, and unapologetic about the damages they did. I did the most peaceful, positive thing I could do: made songs about them to raise money for the damages they caused. They had the arrogance and the audacity to try to sue me. I told them that I had freedom of speech. They lost. Beautiful story. Beautiful American story!
Q: If you run for president again, would your campaign be weed legalization? Would you also want to get into police reform? What kind of stuff would you want to have in your platform?
A: I'm going to do a whole lot more with freedom of speech, corruption in the government. I want a smaller government. I want to get crooked judges and police officers out of the government. I want better-character people. I want people with integrity.
Q: If you end up running on legalizing weed, getting rid of corruption, and pro–free speech, you'd probably have my vote. I think there are a lot of people who would very much resonate with that message.
A: I'm not a scholar on paperwork, but I think this world is missing common sense, and I'll bring it back. Everything will be all right. People might think about me being president; they might roll their eyes and think that's the most absurd thing. I believe I can unite America. I've been in every circle, every circle—circles that you might feel I shouldn't be in. I realized that we're not as different as we think we are. Just with that knowledge, I believe that I know how to move in a way that will unite us. We were united when I was celebrating freedom of speech. I had Republicans jumping with me. I had Democrats jumping with me. I had Libertarians jumping with me. I had white people. I had country hillbillies with long beards and overalls jumping with me. I had some thugs jumping with me. I believe I can unite America. I love everybody, and a lot of people love me. Of course, everybody ain't gonna love everybody. But I believe I can unify the country, get the patriotism going again, get the spirit going again, and bring us all together.
This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.
The post Afroman on Free Speech, Government Abuse, and Election 2028 appeared first on Reason.com.
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