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The Modern Passport Has Eliminated Fraud, Forgery, and Heroes Who Can Bend the Rules To Save Lives

2026-05-20T15:54:02Z

The history of the 20th century, and especially the history of the Holocaust, is replete with bureaucratic heroes like Raoul Wallenberg, Chiune Sugihara, Frank Foley, and Aristides de Sousa Mendes, diplomats who combined to save hundreds of thousands of lives by bending the rules and issuing unauthorized passports or visas to people fleeing persecution. Now, in the 21st century, as we stand ever closer to repeating the horrors of the past century, these rule-bending insiders are nowhere to be found. It isn't that people aren't capable of morally taking a stand. It's that they physically can't do so.

I would know, because I once tried. As a midlevel visa manager at the U.S. Consulate-General in Mumbai in 2022, I tried to help an Afghan family marooned by the Taliban takeover. The parents already had U.S. visas, but when I tried to issue a visa to their baby, a computer overrode my decision. To this day, I don't know what happened to that family. These kinds of scenes are repeating around the world, from the closed-up Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt to U.S. deportation proceedings that end in shipment to Salvadoran prisons. Photographs of emaciated people peering through gates are once again becoming common—and their fate is increasingly controlled by faceless systems.

Ironically, the modern immigration system was designed to prevent the repetition of the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. Implicit in the hopes of the founders of refugee aid societies and the legislators who wrote immigration law was that the 20th century's mass displacement and mass murder could be made impossible via international cooperation and the codification of human rights. The much more anodyne charters of functional international organizations like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) also carried the assumption that making things systematized and efficient was the way to do that.

Years ago, in my diplomatic training, State Department instructors sat us down and somberly told us about what Wallenberg did in Hungary. The day might come when we have to choose between our values and the rules, they said. The stories of Sugihara, Foley, Sousa Mendes, and others are also famous in migration management circles, held up as exemplars because they were noble people who did the right thing when it mattered. How many times does a bureaucrat stamping visas get to become a moral hero?

The Diplomats Who Went Rogue

Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat in Budapest who pushed procedure to the limit. In the bygone days of Hungary's fascist regime, Wallenberg was creative with his embassy budget: He rented dozens of buildings around the city, declared these buildings Swedish diplomatic facilities with full diplomatic immunity, and sheltered thousands of Hungarian Jews inside. These were people who, absent Wallenberg's absurdist rule bending and personal initiative, would have been rounded up and sent to concentration camps in a matter of days.

As an Imperial Japanese diplomatic official during World War II, Sugihara makes for an odd hero. But when he found himself in charge of visa issuance at the Japanese consulate in Lithuania, at the time occupied by the Soviet Union, he saw no harm in bending the rules to help people. Sugihara started signing transit visas (permission to travel to and pass through Japan) for basically anyone who needed to flee Lithuania. He didn't check for onward tickets or financial means. He just stamped the passports and filled out what he had to. At first, Sugihara mostly gave these visas to middle-class businessmen and Jewish yeshiva students fleeing the Soviets, but then he gave them to anybody fleeing the Nazis. This allowed thousands of Lithuanian Jews to make their way from Japan to any country that would take them. As German troops closed in, Sugihara worked tirelessly to issue as many as he could, sometimes working for 18 hours a day. On his way out of the country, Sugihara kept filling out visas until the last possible moment, tossing his final signed and stamped passports out of the train window.

Foley was a British passport control officer in Berlin in the late 1930s who individually saved thousands of German Jews by issuing British visas in Berlin to anybody who needed them before the war even started. Nobody knew it at the time, but Foley was actually a British spy and was only given immigration responsibilities as busywork to cover his identity. That cover story ended up mattering more, for more people, than any spying he ever did.

Sousa Mendes was an aristocratic Portuguese diplomat serving as the consul-general in Bordeaux during the fall of France. In the midst of the general European refugee crisis, the fascist dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar issued Circular 14, an order that directed Portuguese consulates to restrict visa issuance to, among others, "Jews expelled from their countries or those from whence they issue, stateless persons, and all those who cannot freely return to the countries whence they come." This meant essentially everyone who was crowding the streets of unoccupied France looking for visas to neutral countries. Sousa Mendes found Circular 14 disgustingly racist and tried to subvert it. He issued transit and tourist visas without waiting for proper clearance and bent the rules.

One applicant he bent the rules for challenged him. Why just help a few? Why not everybody? The refugee, a Polish rabbi named Chaim Kruger, refused to accept his visa unless everybody got one. Sousa Mendes fell into a deep moral crisis, and when he snapped out of it, he agreed with Kruger completely. He went rogue and took the entire consulate in Bordeaux with him, completely ignoring not just Circular 14 but every law in the book. He issued visas to everyone, at times even filling out and issuing Portuguese passports to people who were not citizens. (This could be done with a pen, paper, and stamp in 1940.) When he personally drove to the Spanish border to argue with guards to let refugees through, he had gone too far. Lisbon ordered the French government to stop recognizing visas with Sousa Mendes' signature. Sousa Mendes was recalled to Portugal, investigated by the Salazarist secret police, demoted, fired, and died in ignominious poverty in the 1950s with his own family eating at refugee soup kitchens. By best estimates he saved over 30,000 people.

How the Modern Passport Became an Unbeatable System

In 1938, the German author Irmgard Keun wrote Child of All Nations while on the run from Nazi persecution. The book follows a middle-class exile family running out of options as they flee across Europe. The child protagonist takes note: "A passport is a little booklet with stamps in. Basically, it's to prove that you're alive. If you lose your passport, then as far as the whole world is concerned you might as well have died."

Keun's child protagonist is right. If you aren't documented, you don't exist. This situation came into being quite recently. For most of human history, you just didn't need a passport, and well into the 20th century, most border control was perfunctory. But passports keep becoming more important, more accurate, and harder to subvert.

Many people who have handed over their ID or passport to a government official have idly wondered what exactly the passport officer is looking at on their screen. How much does the government see about me? The modern biometric passport system is based on standards administered by ICAO, the U.N. body responsible for air travel. Malaysia was the first country to issue a biometric passport in 1998. Now after almost 30 years of regulatory effort by the ICAO, there are only a handful of in the world that don't use them. The passport contains both a scannable data strip and an embedded chip, meaning any country on Earth can instantly pull up a traveler's information at the border. The biometric information that's uploaded to the chip is basically the same on the passport page: age, place of birth, name, birthday. Some countries opt to include significantly more information than that; the United States, for the time being, excludes fingerprints.

More important than the passport itself is the way it is integrated into worldwide databases. The ICAO standard was rolled out shortly before 9/11, and after the attacks, countries everywhere moved away from purely physical visa stickers or stamps to visas backstopped by centralized computer systems. You have a machine-scannable passport that correlates to a database in your home country. In that passport, you have a visa that correlates to a database in the issuing country. Everything gets cross-referenced.

The security benefits are obvious. A "fake passport" in the 21st century essentially does not exist (at least not without the resources of a state). Identity theft is much more difficult. The 21st century system also complicates espionage significantly. If an intelligence agency wants to send a spy to another country, but that person traveled there as a child, their face and fingerprints and legal name are already on file, and their fake identity will be exposed as soon as the passport is swiped at border control. After Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was assassinated in 2010, the Israeli assassins' fake or stolen western passports were almost immediately unmasked by Dubai police, causing an international incident. It was enough of a cover to get into the country and choke a man to death in a hotel room, but it never fooled anyone long term.

Oversight Became a Tool of Control

The tracking and cross-referencing are deeply restrictive for bureaucrats themselves. Immigration officers and diplomats with an immigration portfolio are now cogs in the wheel of a bigger machine, with their own decisions subject to instant review. They cannot choose to look the other way to slow-roll unjust policies or let vulnerable people escape to safety. They scan passports into government software suites that have user IDs and performance metrics reports that track every action the officer takes. Their names and decisions are entered into government records and associated with the same biometric data that get tagged to the applicant.

Take this hypothetical scenario. Customs and Border Protection officer John Smith admitted traveler Mehmet Yilmaz to the United States at 8:35 a.m. last Tuesday after asking him this set of questions and recording his answers. Mehmet Yilmaz has this face and these fingerprints and this birthday and used a visa issued in the Istanbul consulate by visa officer Jane Doe two months ago with these justifications and this work history and this travel history. All of this information is instantly populated into a centralized database accessible from Washington, D.C., and if Mehmet Yilmaz feels like he's being surveilled, maybe it gives some cold comfort to know that officers John Smith and Jane Doe are having their own decisions double-checked and assessed by their superiors every step up the chain.

This accountability can be a good thing. The State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs maintains its own internal "Wall of Shame" of visa officers who extorted sex or cash bribes from applicants. Due to robust internal tracking, these officers are almost always immediately caught. But the accountability only works in one direction to make the system more restrictive. If you take away individual agency, you expose everyone to the whims of executive power, centrally directed.

Years after the Holocaust, living in retirement, Sugihara mused to himself about what would have happened if his own fascist, Nazi-aligned government had discovered what he did for Lithuanian Jews. "No one ever said anything about it," he recalled. "I remember thinking that they probably didn't realize how many I actually issued." He was just there at his desk in the Japanese consulate in Kaunas with his visa stamp and his pens and his conscience. That world doesn't exist anymore.

Headquarters today would have instantly noticed the discrepancy, the lack of full vetting, and the slippage in issuance standards. Officials in an office in Tokyo could have digitally canceled every transit visa issued by Sugihara's user ID and made it show up in other countries' computer systems. The modern biometric passport system and ID technology foreclose the possibility of individuals of conscience acting alone to do the right thing.

How the Computer Stopped Me From a Common-Sense Solution

I saw it firsthand, soon after putting in my resignation letter from the State Department. One of my last jobs was working at an improvised call center after the U.S. evacuation from Kabul. Every visa officer there had listened to the Afghan interpreters and their family members sob over the phone as they tried to beg their way onto planes without visas, still waiting on the completion of paperwork that didn't come in time.

Six days before my last day, one of my subordinates came to me with an Afghan baby's passport, which had been submitted in the interview waiver drop box. (At the time, the U.S. didn't ask toddlers to show up at visa interviews; the Trump administration changed that rule in October 2025.) "This one is strange. Check it out," she said. We scanned the passport, and the baby's entire story appeared. This was the child of two Afghan diplomats, posted to the former Afghan consulate in Mumbai right across town from us, whose situation was now uncertain due to the Taliban takeover. In other words, they were fellow diplomats from an allied government that no longer had a country. Both of this child's parents had U.S. visas already. If the baby also got one, they could all go to the U.S. together and claim asylum together. Otherwise, they would potentially have to wait for years in penniless exile (or worse, in a concrete-floored Qatari processing camp without functioning toilets) while their case made its way through the shambolic U.S. program for Afghan allies.

"Just issue it," I told my subordinate. "It's the least we can do."

"I'm not comfortable doing that," she replied. "My name is going to be on the case."

It was against the rules to issue a tourist visa if you suspect the applicant would use that visa to travel and claim asylum. She was right too; her user ID would go on the case. It would definitely be noticed, and this subordinate was a first-tour officer at the very beginning of her career.

"I quit in six days," I told her. "I don't have a career to lose. Hand it over."

The first-tour officers, fresh out of training on proper procedure, were viscerally uncomfortable as I snatched the passport away from them. I walked to my desk, plugged in vague but acceptable justification notes necessary to print the visa sticker, and hit the issue button. This was my Sugihara moment, trying to throw visas out the train window. I saw a bright red warning and a grayed-out issue button that the computer wouldn't let me press. Central counterterrorism screening in D.C. had flagged the case for further review. It did not say how or why an infant ended up on this watch list. Red button, can't issue. I tried to call in a favor from my boss to override it, but was sympathetically told that I didn't get to do whatever I wanted just because it was my last week. The passport was sent back with a rejection slip. I still don't know what happened to that baby or the family of young diplomats in the end.

Even if you have nothing to lose, even if you're in a position of authority in the bureaucratic apparatus, you can't override the system. The world and the systems used to traverse it feel broken, much like they must have felt in the 1930s and 1940s. Most bureaucrats back then just followed the rules, as they do today. Governments still failed to save most people from the Holocaust and other atrocities. But there was at least the possibility of individual heroism. Rather than being diffused throughout the system, accountability rested directly on the shoulders of individuals in power.

Where in the world today could anyone at a camp gate or border crossing be a hero?

The post The Modern Passport Has Eliminated Fraud, Forgery, and Heroes Who Can Bend the Rules To Save Lives appeared first on Reason.com.

America's Highway Fund Is Running Out of Money. Congress Wants To Spend New Funds on Not Fixing Highways.

2026-05-20T15:40:38Z

As the national debt rises ever higher, Congress is gearing up to pass an enormous infrastructure spending bill.

Earlier this week, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released the BUILD America 250 Act. The sprawling 1000-page bill combines some hits—including provisions to streamline environmental reviews of infrastructure projects—with some obvious misses.

Lawmakers claim that the bill would strengthen the Highway Trust Fund, which pays for both road maintenance and mass transit investments, by levying a new registration fee on electric vehicles (E.V.) and plug-in hybrids. But Marc Scribner, senior transportation policy analyst at Reason Foundation (the nonprofit that publishes this site), tells Reason that it "won't come close to eliminating the revenue-outlay gap," since the bill fails to rein in the "irresponsible spending" that has doomed the fund to insolvency by 2028. Scribner's assessment seems to be shared by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which finds that although the E.V. fee could raise around $30 billion in the next decade, "the Highway Trust Fund will remain severely out of balance."

"This may well be the last federal highway bill," Scribner warns.

If it is, then Congress sure isn't making the most of it. Throughout the bill, there are several provisions that have little to do with building smooth roads and sturdy bridges.

For instance, in its current form, the BUILD America 250 Act would legally require any public-facing establishment larger than 800 square feet to allow commercial delivery drivers to use its bathroom. If a store's owner had an employee-only policy for their toilet, or were worried about the cleaning costs associated with its use by delivery drivers, or were just plain stingy and particular about who they wanted on their property, they would be out of luck. This might sound like an odd matter for Congress to involve itself in, with the full weight of the law behind it, but Scribner assures Reason that, "yes, the bathroom access thing is real." And the exemptions it outlines, he says, are "pretty narrow"—bathroom access would be required as long as it "would not pose an obvious security risk to the…establishment."

Even more astounding, Scribner says, is "the perennial congressional interest in Amtrak food and beverage service." Indeed, the bill would require the comptroller general to conduct a review of Amtrak's snack offerings, including their adherence to the new Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) dietary guidelines and "the feasibility of providing traditional dining to all passengers" on Amtrak trains. After the comptroller general files her report, Amtrak would be required to review it in an internal committee made up of delegates from the company itself, organized labor, "nonprofit organizations representing Amtrak passengers," and state governments.

In an email to Reason, Ross Marchand, executive director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, characterizes the food-and-beverage review as "a complete waste of taxpayer dollars" and thinks "lawmakers should have Amtrak focus less on tinkering with its current fresh vegetable crudité offerings and more on its $47 billion repair backlog."

And then there's the yellow paint. Tucked in the bill is a provision that directs the transportation secretary to study the feasibility of buying solely American-made yellow paint for road and highway markings, in line with federal Buy American requirements. With only one factory in the country that makes the right kind of paint for the job, this part of the bill—if passed—would amount to a handout for Sun Chemical and its facility in Muskegon, Michigan. In February, John Nichols, the union president at the plant, told the local ABC affiliate that these Buy American provisions would bring 20 new jobs to the factory.

Marchand says that "paint-specific figures are hard to come by, but…because domestic procurement requirements result in a 5.6 percent increase in taxpayer costs, a wider push toward 'Buy American' for pavement marking would put taxpayers on the line for an extra $200 million per year."

However, Scribner cautions that mere "studies" like the one in this bill are often an indication that "the supporters of whatever measure…being studied lost the debate for inclusion." So it may be a while before Congress actually appropriates the money to buy the paint.

Given the sorry state of the Highway Trust Fund, one might expect lawmakers to apply serious fiscal discipline or try novel ways to fund road and bridge upgrades. Instead, Congress seems intent on maintaining the status quo with another piece of legislation that authorizes wildly reckless spending and threatens more in the future.

The post America's Highway Fund Is Running Out of Money. Congress Wants To Spend New Funds on Not Fixing Highways. appeared first on Reason.com.

There Was No Delcy Rodríguez in Iran

2026-05-20T14:56:10Z

The operation to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January was as successful as it could have been. U.S. operatives seized Maduro from his palace without losing a single man, and Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez has been completely compliant with U.S. demands since then. Earlier this week, she handed over former Industry Minister Alex Saab to face trial in the U.S. for financial crimes.

U.S. President Donald Trump said publicly that he was expecting the same thing to happen when he attacked Iran alongside Israel, which assassinated Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in February. "What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario," Trump told the New York Times a few days into the war. A couple of days after that, he said that he would be involved in picking Iran's new leader, "like with Delcy in Venezuela." An administration official told The Wall Street Journal that the new model for U.S. intervention would be called "decapitate and delegate."

Trump did not, in fact, get to choose Iran's new leader. The Iranian government crowned Khamenei's son Mojtaba the new supreme leader, which Trump said he was "not happy" with. The administration had originally hoped that Iran's National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani could be a "transitional candidate," a source told CNN, but decided to kill him after he led Iran's retaliation in the war. Later, administration officials told Politico that they were "testing" whether Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf could be the Delcy of Iran.

However U.S. officials try to spin it, the Trump administration simply does not control Iran like it controls Venezuela. For nearly three months, the Trump administration has tried using a combination of carrots and sticks to get Iran to accept U.S. demands. On Sunday, the United Arab Emirates blamed Iran for a drone attack near an Emirati nuclear power plant. The next day, Trump said that he was delaying a planned attack on Iran at the request of Arab states, including the Emirates.

Why hasn't the Trump administration been able to repeat the Venezuelan model in Iran? In short, it's because Trump didn't actually try to "decapitate and delegate" in Iran. Unlike the U.S. operation in Venezuela, which was aimed at the man in charge and left the political regime intact, the U.S. campaign in Iran was a war against the entire Islamic Republic. While Trump's specific demands of Iran have shifted around quite a bit, he has consistently asked for a public, humiliating surrender.

Some observers—from Mehdi Parpanchi, editor of the opposition outlet Iran International, to Danny Citrinowicz, former head of Iranian affairs for Israeli military intelligence—have tried to claim that a Venezuelan scenario was always impossible in Iran, because the Islamic Republic is too ideologically entrenched. But that ignores important overlaps between the two countries. Maduro also had an army of ideological enforcers, which Rodríguez now has to wrangle. And plenty of Iranian insiders were disillusioned enough with Islamist ideology to look for an exit or even spy for foreign powers.

The core issue is that Trump attacked the interests of the Iranian state in ways that go beyond ideology. His opening message of the war told every Iranian in uniform, from high commanders to cops on the street, that they were a target for "certain death." That message also hinted that the U.S. was going to foment revolution in Iran. A few days into the war, the administration began telling the media about a plan to use Kurdish rebels to get the uprising rolling.

The U.S.-Israeli attacks killed hundreds of Iranians, both military and civilians, in the first two days alone. Trump himself admitted that some of them were "the people we had in mind" to lead Iran. An Israeli military operation to free former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from captivity nearly killed him, too.

Although U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio blamed Iran's intransigence on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite branch of the military, Trump's proudest attacks were on the Iranian air force and navy, part of the regular conscript military that dates back to before the Islamic Revolution.

In other words, the entire Iranian elite (and a good chunk of the rank-and-file) had their backs to the wall. The Delcy of Iran was dead before she could even cut a deal. And if they weren't killed by foreign bombs, these leaders might face a firing squad for their role in suppressing the January 2026 uprising, which Trump was promising to avenge.

As the war dragged on, the U.S.-Israeli military campaign began to target infrastructure that any Iranian government—whether Islamist or secular, dictatorial or democratic—would need to run the country. Bombs destroyed Iranian steel mills, railroads, bridges, and even college campuses as Trump threatened to do the same to the country's electrical infrastructure. It doesn't take a true believer in political Islam to want to deter these attacks from happening again.

The Trump administration was right to see Larijani and Ghalibaf as "pragmatists." Larijani reportedly presented Khamenei with a plan for Chinese-style reforms after violently putting down protests, and Ghalibaf is a ruthless, transactional operator who has constantly shifted his public image depending on the ideology of the moment. But "pragmatic" doesn't mean "pushover." Precisely because these men wanted to save their own skins and preserve their power, they had to play hardball with the United States. The same cost-benefit calculation that led Rodríguez to submit would lead Iran's leaders to resist.

Rather than asking why Iran wasn't like Venezuela, the question should be why Trump thought that the scenario would turn out that way. For all the contradictory reporting on what Trump's advisers did or didn't tell him, it's important to bear in mind that the Biden administration was also considering an attack on Iran at the end of its term. Iran had been shockingly passive while suffering setback after setback in its post–October 2023 conflicts with Israel. Expert warnings about a regional war were proven wrong.

And the high of Maduro's overthrow was intoxicating. The success of that operation seemed to show that anything was possible, and the January 2026 uprising in Iran presented an opportunity to rack up a streak of wins, caution be damned. Despite setbacks in Iran, the inner circle of foreign policy elites may still be chasing opportunities to repeat the Venezuelan model. Trump administration sources told Politico that it is seriously considering a military attack on Cuba, which would present a much weaker target than Iran.

"The initial idea on Cuba was that the leadership was weak and that the combination of stepped-up sanctions enforcement, really an oil blockade, and clear U.S. military wins in Venezuela and Iran would scare the Cubans into making a deal," one of the sources said. "Now Iran has gone sideways, and the Cubans are proving much tougher than originally thought. So now military action is on the table in a way that it wasn't before."

The post There Was No Delcy Rodríguez in Iran appeared first on Reason.com.

Why Populism Leads to Decline

2026-05-20T13:53:25Z

Today's guest is Johan Norberg, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of Peak Human: What We Can Learn From the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages.

He talks with Nick Gillespie about the historical patterns behind flourishing civilizations, from the Roman Republic to modern America. Norberg argues that societies thrive when they remain open to trade, immigration, experimentation, and new ideas, but begin to decay when fear and nostalgia push them toward protectionism, centralization, and tribal politics.

They also discuss the resurgence of populism in the United States and Europe, why tariffs and anti-globalization politics keep returning throughout history, and whether America is becoming more risk-averse and nativist. Norberg explains why he believes optimism and innovation can still win, explores the promise of artificial intelligence, and reflects on whether China is entering a new golden age or repeating the mistakes that led past civilizations into decline.

0:00—Why open societies thrive

3:07—The Roman Republic

10:05—America as a creedal nation

11:57—The rise of nativism

16:15—The dangers of nostalgia

20:31—What sparks renaissance?

26:40—Are older societies more risk averse?

28:33—Populism and Viktor Orbán's defeat

32:04—Left-wing populism

34:10—Javier Milei

35:42—Tariffs and free trade

40:28—Is China in a golden age?

The post Why Populism Leads to Decline appeared first on Reason.com.

Data Centers Use Less Water Than Almond Farms—and Do More Good

2026-05-20T13:38:58Z

Opposition to data centers is all the rage among populists of all stripes. On the left, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) has proposed a national moratorium on new data center construction; on the right, Tucker Carlson describes them as "dystopian" and "devouring American energy and jobs." In recent days, X has become flooded with images of pristine American forests, plains, beaches, and lakes alongside captions warning that no data center is worth losing this. (The images are often AI-generated, and many of the accounts sharing them are foreign.)

Data center panic is fueled by concerns about electricity and water usage. Many Americans wrongly believe that data centers are driving up their electric bill, even though evidence suggests the exact opposite: Data centers may actually decrease electricity costs for their neighbors. Water use fears are even more unreasonable. Data centers don't actually use all that much water.

For example, a chart comparing data centers' water requirements to almond farms helps put things in perspective.

Over at Substack, @JoshEakle asks: "It's 2026, and I have yet to see an anti-almond farm protest." pic.twitter.com/UZwP7KgPCY

— Nick Gillespie (@nickgillespie) May 19, 2026

California's almond farms consume 4.2 billion gallons of waters per day, according to Reason's Christian Britschgi. Data centers consume just 46 million gallons per day. Those numbers will certainly rise over time, but compared to all the other things that use water—golf courses account for 1.4 billion gallons per day—it's just a drop in the bucket.

Unfortunately, many foes of data centers do not find this comparison very compelling. Speaking for the opposition, The Federalist's Sean Davis points out that almonds are, you know, food. People eat almonds. They can't eat data. Thus, almond farms are a good use of water and data centers are not.

Carlson made a similar argument during his debate with Kevin O'Leary, in which he took it as a knock against data centers that they wouldn't provide as many jobs as the city of Manhattan despite taking up more space and using about as much power.

It's a problem for data center advocates, I suppose, that the good being produced is not as obvious as a job or an almond. But you have to be pretty dense not to realize that the data centers make possible a huge amount of economically beneficial activity. Storing massive amounts of data is a necessary precondition for the modern economy. It will be used to power and train AI models that will improve everyone's lives. AI is already making medical diagnoses more accurate and reducing car crash fatalities via driverless vehicles. AI can swiftly navigate legal, regulatory, and licensing issues, making it easier to start a business or buy a home. As a research tool, it can cut down on time spent learning about a complicated issue.

Reducing the time it takes to complete an annoying (or dangerous) task is a huge benefit that allows people to spend their time—the ultimate finite resource—more effectively, if only for leisure. If this doesn't seem obviously beneficial, then consider where we would be without search engines at all. Not so long ago, people had to trek to the library and consult an encyclopedia when they wanted information. They had to obtain physical copies of relevant documents: books, newspapers, etc. Being able to summon these things instantly—electronically—has inarguably led to huge gains: There are countless jobs that simply would not exist without it (including internet commentator).

The United States' economic future is inexorably tied to the tech sector. Gains from AI are vital to the country's stability. In that sense, it's not very surprising to discover that some of the arguments against AI are being made in coordination with the Chinese government. According to the Bitcoin Policy Institute, the Chinese Communist Party has indirectly encouraged a pause or slowing of AI developments in the U.S.—but not in China. That's one reason Sen. John Fetterman (D–Pa.), a self-described "pro-capitalist Democrat," called Sanders' data center moratorium proposal "China first."

The emerging chassis of AI must be built by America.

We can put appropriate guardrails in place without handing the win on AI to China.

A moratorium is China First. pic.twitter.com/NfZnzxMxBY

— U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) March 25, 2026

In any case, you can't eat an oil rig, a suspension bridge, or a satellite. Yet it should be obvious that these are no less useful—even factoring in land, energy, and water use—than almonds, even if the benefits are slightly less straightforward. This is plainly true for data centers as well, and anyone arguing otherwise deserves suspicious looks.

The post Data Centers Use Less Water Than Almond Farms—and Do More Good appeared first on Reason.com.

End of an Era

2026-05-20T13:24:43Z

Massie's out: Yesterday, voters in Kentucky made their choice. Ed Gallrein, who is backed by President Donald Trump, defeated longtime representative Thomas Massie, who always skewed pretty darn libertarian. Unfortunately, it was nowhere near a close call; Gallrein won by a huge margin. The age breakdown is fascinating:

KY-04 GOP Primary: Results by Age Group

Age 17-25: Massie +25
Age 26-35: Massie +56
Age 36-45: Massie +38
Age 46-55: Massie +17
——
Age 56-65: Gallrein +18
Age 66-75: Gallrein +35
Age 76+: Gallrein +33@QuantusInsights | 5/11-12 | 908 LV https://t.co/H7juBRgxXr pic.twitter.com/pjcRguiF4a

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) May 13, 2026

Tons of money—$32 million, to be specific—was poured into this race by Trump and allies to get Massie out; he had earned Trump's ire by challenging the president on COVID relief bills, inflated spending, his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein (and lack of transparent disclosures), and his penchant this term for foreign adventurism.

"In various ratings systems maintained by groups such as Heritage Action and Conservative Review, Massie has always been an exemplary congressman. Once, that would have meant something," writes Reason's Eric Boehm. "When Massie was first elected to Congress in 2012, the Tea Party era was in full swing, and Republicans were expected to pass those purity tests or be cast out. Now, being liked by Trump is the only test that matters. Gallrein passed it."

Case in point: Rep. Lauren Boebert (R–Colo.), who campaigned for Massie this go-around, has earned Trump's ire for her perceived lack of fealty to him. "Boebert is campaigning for the Worst 'Republican' Congressman in the History of our Country, Thomas Massie, of the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky, and anybody who can be that dumb deserves a good Primary fight!" wrote Trump on Truth Social. "Even though I long ago endorsed Boebert, if the right person came along, it would be my Honor to withdraw that Endorsement, and endorse a good and proper alternative."

It's not really clear what Gallrein is offering voters; this race has been rather light on how the people of Kentucky will be helped and rather heavy on who is (or is not) loyal to the president. It's a far cry from the Tea Party era Massie came up in, focused on cutting taxes, reining in the debt, and returning to more limited-government principles that have since fallen out of fashion. I'm now old enough to remember when minimizing the size and scope of the government was something Republicans in Congress cared about, instead of promoting feckless one-man rule.

But there's still something there, some relic of Tea Party DNA that animates maybe not a majority of GOP voters, but a chunk: "For the Republicans with an ideological identity, Thomas Massie is kind of their id," writes Matt Fuller for MS Now. "You want to talk about the national debt? Massie is just about the last Republican in Congress who takes that issue seriously. You want to preserve individual freedoms? Massie is the one annoyingly pointing out that your government surveillance bill would allow the National Security Agency to collect reams of data about your telephone calls. And, in the case of Epstein, you want to expose sex traffickers? Massie led the charge on the GOP side to release the files. He hasn't actually run away from Trump. In many ways, Massie is doing something more damaging: He's pointing out how Trump and Republicans are undermining Trumpism, how they're betraying their own voters, how Trump's governing prose is very different—sometimes antithetical—to his campaign poetry."

Check out this interview Zach Weissmueller and I did with Massie a few years back:

End of an era.

Scenes from New York: When a makeup company can do a better job than the Metropolitan Transportation Authority can:

why is a skincare brand fixing my biggest frustration with NYC transit https://t.co/rrEie1Srct

— kasey (@kaseyklimes) May 19, 2026

Related dynamic:

This is Central Park. Which was in such decay due to the City's horrible mismanagement that a non-profit took it over the 80s & the wealthy folks on the board did such an amazing job cleaning it up, that Low IQ posters like this enjoy it, without even understanding who to thank https://t.co/f2Nn4aoDib

— Sean Fitzgerald (Actual Justice Warrior) (@IamSean90) May 19, 2026

QUICK HITS

"There are basically three main elements of long-run fertility change," writes Lyman Stone as a means of pushing back on Tyler Cowen, who is skeptical that smartphones are a driving cause of birthrate decline in the West (also covered by Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown in her wonderful newsletter). "This is not to say that other things don't matter, but we can conceptualize fertility change in three components and, when we adopt that conceptualization, my own experience has been that new information is very easy to incorporate with minimal creativity or rationalization. The three big factors are: Selection pressure via mortality and replacement; Recurrent emergence of cultural valuation of selfishness; Changing cost of fertility and especially intergenerational wealth transfer dynamics." Stone continues: "A demographer in 1700 would probably not have talked about mortality per se as a fertility regulator since low-mortality societies had simply never existed. What will be a big obvious factor the future sees that our historic models miss? To me, the answer is clearly related to the fact that young people are spending way less time socializing independently….Basically everything people do together is in decline. 'Bowling alone' but on steroids. What force would simultaneously cause all social life in person to decline?"
How Brownsville, Texas, has changed since SpaceX moved in
LFG:

instead of hostile architecture nyc should install public bloomberg terminals. let crazy guy generate shareholder value

— Elena Nisonoff (@elenanisonoff) May 19, 2026

"Global health officials warned on Tuesday that the number of people infected in an Ebola outbreak in central Africa could be much higher than reported and that the outbreak could last for months," reports The New York Times. The outbreak is centered in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (a place I've actually spent a bit of time, by nature of my youngest siblings being adopted from there), and the likely death toll stands at 130 people. Horrible.
I think the corrosive thing is that it feels like we're less in control of our own destinies in a lot of ways, despite having an explosion of options:

In general I think there's something fairly corrosive about living in a world where all material goods are extremely cheap compared to housing and healthcare, because it feels completely futile to be frugal on the small stuff. https://t.co/3RFAeGTF5o

— Kelsey Piper (@KelseyTuoc) May 19, 2026

The post End of an Era appeared first on Reason.com.

"Plaintiff Was Enticed by an Attractive, Busty Jewess, and Wet His Mouth with a Drink of Partially Unknown Provenance"

2026-05-20T09:19:28Z

That's from plaintiff's follow-up arguments for pseudonymity filed Saturday in Doe v. Trustees of Univ. of Pa. (E.D. Pa.). Judging by the address listed in the filings, as well as the rhetoric (e.g., "The Jews are a racial supremacist organization whose stated goal is to exterminate and enslave all non-Jews"), this seems to be the same John Doe who was denied pseudonymity in a case I wrote about in February, see No Pseudonymity for Man Suing Harvard Alleging Jews Aim "to Exterminate or Enslave All Non-Jews".

I expect the same ruling on pseudonymity in this case as in that one (despite the addition of the busty Jewess, who did not seem present in that case); to quote Judge Allison Burroughs' decision in that case, Doe v. President & Fellows of Harvard College:

While it is within the Court's discretion to allow a party to proceed under a pseudonym, "[a]s a general rule, the presumption is that all judicial proceedings remain open to the public." "The presumption against pseudonymous litigation gives way only in 'exceptional cases.'" The analysis is as follows: "1) there is a presumption in favor of disclosure; 2) a party may rebut the presumption by showing that a need for confidentiality exists; 3) the court must balance the need for confidentiality against the public interest in disclosure." Alleged risks of harm that are speculative in nature, generalized, or without corroboration do not justify anonymity.

Having considered Plaintiff's Motion, the Court finds that Plaintiff has not rebutted the presumption in favor of disclosure. Plaintiff states that the litigation involves sensitive personal information regarding Plaintiff's ethnic heritage and academic records, and Plaintiff's identification would risk causing Plaintiff "unusually severe" professional, financial, and physical harm. The alleged risks that Plaintiff sets forth in his motion are without corroboration and do not rise above a level of mere speculation. Further, lawsuits often "implicate substantial amounts of private information," and if warranted going forward, the Court may employ tools such as redacting or sealing documents to manage privacy concerns that arise during the litigation. In light of the foregoing, Plaintiff's Motion, is DENIED.

To be precise, it does seem likely that being publicly known to have made such arguments may cause "professional" and "financial" "harm." But many plaintiffs face the risk of professional and financial harm from their lawsuits.

Consider, for instance, employment law plaintiffs who might reasonably worry that future employers won't want to hire them if they're identified as litigious employees. Or consider plaintiffs who think they were fired based on race, sex, etc., but worry that the defendants will argue that they were instead fired because they acted incompetently or unethically. Or consider libel plaintiffs who worry that public filing will just further amplify the allegations over which they're suing.

Courts generally conclude that such risks are a normal feature of our open system of civil justice, and can't themselves justify pseudonymity. (See pp. 1457-60 of The Law of Pseudonymous Litigation for citations to many such cases.) That is likewise so, I think, for this particular would-be Doe's cases. There's a motion for reconsideration of the Harvard no-pseudonymity decision pending, but I don't expect Judge Burroughs to change her mind, and I don't expect Doe to prevail in this new case, either (or on his motion for pseudonymity in Doe v. Regents of Univ. of Cal.)

The post "Plaintiff Was Enticed by an Attractive, Busty Jewess, and Wet His Mouth with a Drink of Partially Unknown Provenance" appeared first on Reason.com.

Imposing Imposter Syndrome

2026-05-17T04:36:44Z

I often hear people describing "imposter syndrome." At a high level, imposter syndrome is a self-doubt that you are able to accomplish the role you have been chosen for. I think virtually everyone has self doubts about their own abilities. Indeed, it should happen to all of us. Under the so-called Peter Principle, employees are promoted based on their success until they reach a level at which they can no longer be successful. This principle afflicts almost all lawyers, professors (present company included), and judges.

Imposter syndrome takes on a different meaning in the DEI context: a non-white person feels like they do not belong in a predominantly white environment. In other words, they have to act as an imposter in that space. A primary goal of DEI is to reduce imposter system, and make everyone feel welcome and included (that is the "inclusion" in DEI). But in many regards, DEI creates, and exacerbates the very problem of imposter syndrome.

First, imposter syndrome may often be a byproduct of mismatch theory. If a person is admitted to a university, or promoted to a higher position, based on their race, and has objectively lower credentials, that person very well may feel the doubt of imposter syndrome. It may objectively be true that a person admitted through racial preferences does not belong, but for the misguided intentions of social architects. Justice Thomas has written eloquently about how his degree from Yale was worthless because of the perception that affirmative action created. And Thomas has likely explained that would-be beneficiaries of affirmative action would not suffer from affirmative action at an institution where they are matched.

Second, DEI attempts to mitigate imposter syndrome by establishing racial "affinity" groups within organizations. Many workplaces held retreats and offer other mentoring events solely for people based on their race. Universities had separate graduation ceremonies for black and hispanic students. Some colleges even arranged separate housing for minority students. Again, these are efforts intended to make people feel more included and less like an imposter. But in reality, these groups serve to balkanize people based on the very barriers that led to the imposter syndrome in the first place. Moreover, these groups raise doubts among those outside the affinity groups about how inclusive the organization actually is.

Third, speaking of people outside the affinity groups, DEI mandates cultural re-education to eliminate these doubts. Separate graduation ceremonies and racial housing are described as the most normal thing possible, and opposition to them is anti-anti-racist. People are taught to believe, simultaneously, that everyone is welcome but programs are needed to provide a greater welcome to certain people. To paraphrase George Orwell, all workers are equal, but some workers are more equal than others.

At some point, I hope there is a true and complete reckoning about the harms caused by DEI. We have come so far from the days of intentional racial discrimination that an entire industry was concocted to make people feel racial resentment. First, there was a shift from disparate treatment (actual discrimination) to disparate impact (well, there's no actual discrimination, but let's make up some statistics). Second, there was the concept of political correctness ("PC"), where even if you were not being racist, you still could not talk about certain topics that would offend people. Third, there was the concept of microagressions--racism so subtle that you need a microscope to even see it. Fourth, there was implicit bias--people needed to take a completely debunked test to identify non-existent latent racism in their subconscious. Imposter syndrome is in keeping with all of these tests. The Supreme Court's decision in Callais was a long-time coming, and a reflection of how far we've come as a society: actual racial discrimination violates the Constitution, but all of these other attempts to find "razzle dazzle" racism should be discarded.

My advice to young law students and lawyers facing these sorts of self-doubts that you do not belong or lack the ability to succeed? Do what I did: fake it till you make it. Figure out what the successful people in your field do and do that, or even better, do more than that. And if you suffer defeat (we all do), don't wallow in it. Don't hang onto that defeat. Don't blame other people for your defeat. Don't blame society for your defeat. Don't latch onto abstractions like imposter syndrome or white privilege. Figure out how others have overcome that sort of setback, and do that, or even better, do more than that.

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Use This One Weird Trick to Keep Your Name Out of an Upcoming Sexual Assault Lawsuit Against You

2026-05-17T20:15:29Z

Here's the story, somewhat simplified, from a case now labeled Breskin v. Blattberg (D. Mass.) (I had filed an amicus brief opposing pseudonymity, as part of my general opposition to pseudonymity in defamation cases, see, e.g., Roe v. Smith):

Son v. mother federal lawsuit threatened: Blattberg accuses his mother, Breskin (a psychologist), of having sexually abused him 30 years ago, when he was 4 to 7 years old. The son claims he "did not remember the abuse until 2024." The son's lawyer sends a demand letter to the mother, threatening to sue, with a draft Complaint attached. They apparently agree that the son's lawsuit won't be filed until the end of February. (Again, remember that these are just the son's claims; nothing has been proved.)

Mother v. son state lawsuit filed first, pseudonymously, and under seal: In late February, the mother gets to the courthouse first, by suing the son in Massachusetts state court for defamation over his sexual assault allegations, which the mother says the son had made to third parties (including her mother and other relatives). She claims the son is trying to extort her, and has long "suffered from serious and severe mental illness." The case is filed as Doe v. Doe. The same day, the mother asks that the Complaint be sealed (impounded, in Massachusetts terminology), and the Massachusetts court agrees immediately:

After review, the court treats the current motion as an ex parte motion to impound under MA R Impound P Rule 3. The court finds that immediate and irreparable injury may result if the motion is not allowed. See MA R Impound P Rule 3(a). Nevertheless, under the Rule, an interested party must have an opportunity to be heard in opposition within ten days of this order. MA R Impound P Rule 3(a).

Son v. mother federal lawsuit filed, mother v. son removed to federal court: The next day after the mother sues, the son sues the mother in federal court (there's apparently diversity jurisdiction), using the caption Blattberg v. Breskin. The day after, he removes the mother's Doe v. Doe case to federal court, as he's entitled to do because he and his mother are citizens of different states.

Mother's motion to dismiss and seal son v. mother lawsuit, and to proceed pseudonymously on the strength of the pseudonymous mother v. son lawsuit: Four days after the son sues, the mother moves to dismiss the son's federal case, on the grounds that she "previously filed a prior pending action against the Plaintiff arising from the same alleged facts and causes of action." She also moves to seal the son's federal case, and seeks a protective order "against any additional disclosure of the parties' identities." Judge Richard Stearns (D. Mass.) shows at least temporary openness to this; he declines to dismiss the case, but consolidates the mother's and son's now-federal cases, and rules,

[I]n light of the Impoundment Order issued in the previously filed state-court action involving the same parties which has been removed here and is now pending before Magistrate Judge Donald Cabell, this court will provisionally seal the Complaint and this motion. The court will revisit the issue in sixty days when the procedural posture of these cases will be sorted out.

Denial of pseudonymity for the consolidated lawsuit: Finally, a week ago, Judge Stearns' denies pseudonymity and largely unseals the case (except for one affidavit), which is now called Breskin v. Blattberg (and will contain, consolidated, both the mother's defamation claims and son's sexual assault now-counterclaims):

Although there is a strong presumption against litigants proceeding anonymously, the First Circuit has identified four general categories of cases in which party anonymity may nonetheless be warranted:(1) cases in which disclosure of the would-be Doe's identity would "cause him unusually severe harm"; (2) "cases in which identifying the would-be Doe would harm 'innocent non-parties'"; (3) "cases in which anonymity is necessary to forestall a chilling effect on future litigants who may be similarly situated"; and (4) "suits that are bound up with a prior proceeding made confidential by law." Doe v. Town of Lisbon, 78 F.4th 38, 46 (1st Cir. 2023), quoting Doe v. Massachusetts Inst. of Tech., 46 F.4th 61, 71 (1st Cir. 2022). Plaintiff contends that she satisfies each paradigm.

The court does not agree. As to the first paradigm, she has not shown that her distress, although no doubt severe, is unusually so for a defamation plaintiff.

As to the second paradigm, the court does not see how allegations against plaintiff would make plaintiff's mother more vulnerable or impact former clients with whom the treatment relationship has ceased. [The mother had argued that the son's "allegations will likely have a rippling and destructive effect on innocent third parties such as [the mother's] former patients and current community of bereavement group members, none of whom are parties to this litigation, and all of whom may well question her and their relationship with her in the face of such public and scandalous lies. Encountering allegations like those made by [the son] will imperil the trust, stability, and well-being of the many people who have in the past counted on [the mother's] professional advice and counsel" -EV]

As to the third paradigm, the court does not credit the suggestion that publicizing plaintiff's name will have a chilling effect on future defamation plaintiffs. Because the point of a defamation suit is to prove the falsity of allegations like those made by defendant here, similarly situated defendants will still be motivated to pursue litigation.

Finally, as to the fourth paradigm, plaintiff does not sufficiently identify which "prior proceeding" upon which she relies. If she intended it to be the state court action consolidated with this action, that proceeding is ongoing, not prior. In any event, a plaintiff cannot rely on the ruling of the state court, which applies a broader standard than federal court, to justify proceeding pseudonymously in federal court. [In an earlier order, the judge noted that, "anonymity in federal court is governed by the standard set forth in [Doe v. MIT], rather than any state court procedural rule which may have underlain the prior grant of impoundment." -EV]

In denying the motion, the court does not mean to downplay plaintiff's understandable desire to maintain as much privacy as possible in this sad family dispute. The court is merely constrained by the narrow approach taken by the First Circuit (and other Circuits) to anonymous pleadings.

This ultimate outcome quite correct to me. I can understand, of course, why the mother would want to proceed this way, and if the son is indeed trying to extort money from her through false assertions, I can sympathize with her preferences. But of course it's not clear who's telling the truth here—and presumably if the mother have prevailed here, the same trick could have been used by a wide range of defendants to seal cases against them (whether sexual assault cases or other cases).

The post Use This One Weird Trick to Keep Your Name Out of an Upcoming Sexual Assault Lawsuit Against You appeared first on Reason.com.

Trump Is the High-Prices President

2026-05-19T19:36:43Z

When Donald Trump won his second presidential election in 2024, supporters crowed that this time would be different. Trump's sometimes chaotic instincts had been honed and refined into a populist-nationalist conservative policy agenda that was supposed to make Americans better off and build a broader, more durable right-wing coalition, with a particular appeal to working-class voters.

MAGA 2.0 would be predicated on a rejection, or at least a skepticism, of the free market, libertarian economics that Trumpian intellectuals insisted were hobbling the GOP. These ideas filtered up to the presidential ticket itself. In 2024, then-Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) told The New York Times that mainstream economists were simply wrong about the effects of clamping down on immigration and the deployment of tariffs, and that free market libertarians were out of touch.

In many ways, the administration has governed accordingly. No, Trump hasn't abandoned capitalism entirely. But his second term has been a populist-statist-protectionist mishmash, with a heavy dollop of crony self-dealing.

That approach has left Americans worse off and struggling with economic uncertainty and the highest inflation in years. And it has resulted in cratering approval ratings for the president and his party—including, notably, with the white, non-college-educated voters the new Trumpism was supposed to win over.

There are many reasons for voters' turn against Trump, but one looms above all others: the persistently high cost of living, and rising energy and food prices in particular.

Trump has become the high-prices president. Voters correctly view those high prices as a direct consequence of his policies.

Three of Trump's signature initiatives are the war with Iran, crackdowns on immigration, and his on-again, off-again tariffs. All three have contributed to rising prices, especially on household essentials. This was borne out in the government's most recent inflation report, which showed the highest inflation rate in three years, a larger-than-expected increase driven by increasing energy and food prices. Wage gains have been eaten by inflation, leaving American families feeling squeezed and uncertain.

Voters see a direct connection between Trump's policies and the worsening economic situation, and it's not hard to understand why. There's plenty of evidence linking Trump's policies to higher prices and economic sclerosis, and the combination of tariffs and immigration restrictionism hasn't led to the boom in domestic manufacturing jobs Trump used to predict. On the contrary, recent research by economists at the University of Colorado Boulder looked at labor market changes in areas highly affected by immigration raids and found that employment for low-skilled, native-born men dropped by 1.3 percent.

Notably, all three of Trump's signature initiatives—the war, the tariffs, and the immigration crackdowns—have been implemented through the executive branch. They are all a direct result of Trump's personal whims and preferences. Trump can't blame Congress or a political rival for policies that come directly from him.

What's more, Trump and other administration officials have at times all but admitted that their policies have pushed up prices on food and gas. After gas prices shot up in response to the war, Trump pushed to suspend the federal gas tax, an implicit nod to the war's impact on pump prices. Last October, Trump's Labor Department warned in a document that "the near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens" threatened "the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers," drawing a direct link between immigrant workers and grocery prices. And recently, Trump proposed reducing beef tariffs in response to the high price of meat—effectively acknowledging that trade levies make consumer goods more expensive. High prices are the crime, and Trump keeps admitting that he's the perpetrator.

So it's no surprise that even sympathetic voters have turned on Trump and his economic performance. Trump's approval ratings have crashed, driven by pessimism about inflation and the economy. Early in his second term, voters gave Trump positive marks on the economy, but multiple recent polls show declines of 30 points or more in his economic approval rating. Part of the problem for Trump is that he campaigned on improving the economy and addressing high prices after inflation spiked under President Joe Biden. Yet on inflation, Trump's poll numbers are now significantly worse than Biden's ever were. MAGA 2.0's insistence on ignoring free market ideas has backfired spectacularly.

One thing you can say about Trump is that he has decidedly not governed as a libertarian. Even beyond the tariffs, immigration restrictions, and foolhardy war, Trump has refused to manage runaway federal spending, allowed the deficit to grow, and taken federal stakes in multiple private companies. He has discarded free market ideology and governed as a populist, personalist, nationalist, unbound by Congress, constitutional strictures, or the tenets of economics—just as so many MAGA intellectuals encouraged him to do. Yet instead of growing the conservative coalition, Trump has wrecked it.

Maybe the laws and principles of economics mattered after all.

Too often, populists and nationalists seem to think they can succeed by shouting over the dull realities of the market. But economies can't be tricked by policy chicanery or silenced by political rhetoric. They have ways of speaking back—often through prices, which reveal the burdens and inefficiencies imposed by politics. And prices are a language that voters understand.

There's a lesson here for populist politicians of all political persuasions: Ignore free market ideas at your own risk.

You can shrug at the lessons of Economics 101 and dismiss its adherents, but that way lies political peril. Voters see the consequences of that dismissal every time they go to the grocery store or put gas in their cars—or have to choose between one or the other. And they will hold you to account.

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Today in Supreme Court History: May 20, 1996

2025-05-20T03:18:19Z

5/20/1996: Romer v. Evans is decided.

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A Half-Million Dollar Fine for a Tax Paperwork Oversight

2026-05-19T21:07:34Z

Most of us would consider a half-million dollar fine for overlooking less than $30,000 in federal taxes to be excessive. Our astonishment at the penalty would only increase upon learning that the oversight resulted from a paperwork violation, with no evidence of deliberate evasion. But a federal judge signed off on the fine, saying that she deferred to the IRS in finding the punishment "not excessive." Now, 88-year-old retiree Tuncay Saydam is hoping the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will reach a more reasonable conclusion.

Running Afoul of an 'Obscure and Seemingly Benign Tax Form'

According to the IRS, "per the Bank Secrecy Act, every year you must report certain foreign financial accounts, such as bank accounts, brokerage accounts and mutual funds, to the Treasury Department and keep certain records of those accounts. You report the accounts by filing a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) on Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Form 114."

Tuncay Saydam was born in Turkey and has dual U.S. and Turkish citizenship. For years, he maintained bank accounts in Turkey, where he lived until 1980 before coming to this country to become a computer science professor at the University of Delaware. The overseas accounts eventually became substantial, since he deposited into them the proceeds of payments he received for consulting jobs he did for communications companies in Europe. At one point, he had over $875,000 in those accounts.

Legally, Saydam was supposed to file an FBAR form on his foreign accounts since they contained more than $10,000—but like many Americans, he didn't know that. "The FBAR is one of many obscure and seemingly benign tax forms that can trip up otherwise compliant taxpayers," Brown Advisory, an investment management firm, notes on its website. The firm adds that "tax penalties are generally imposed for filing errors or failures regardless of whether those errors were intentional or accidental."

Because Saydam didn't file FBARs, the federal government didn't have an opportunity to tax proceeds generated by the overseas accounts. According to court documents from his Eighth Amendment challenge to the excessiveness of the resulting penalties, "including Saydam's advance payments and tax credits, and not including penalties, the Government's final tax loss is $29,006."

The IRS discovered this "tax loss" in the course of an audit. "When the government audited Tuncay, it determined that he owed around $29,000 in back taxes, for which it assessed an additional $11,000 in late penalties," notes the Institute for Justice (I.J.), which supports Saydam in his battle with the federal government. But the IRS also penalized the retiree for failing to file FBARs.

A $544,933 Fine for Failing To File Paperwork

"The Government calculated the penalties by taking the aggregate balance with the highest amount in this time span, which was Saydam's 2014 foreign accounts ($875,127). This amount was then divided in half ($437,564), and split proportionally among the five years," according to the court. "With interest, the total penalty owed is $544,933."

"No fraud, no evasion, no criminal charges. Merely five-years of paperwork failure punished as if he'd stashed millions in the Caymans and shredded the records," Andrew Leahey, a Drexel University law professor, commented about the case at Forbes. "When did reporting of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) stop being about transparency and start functioning as a fiscal firing squad?"

Leahey noted that FBAR penalties began as tools for combating "serious financial crimes…like money laundering, tax evasion, and organized fraud schemes" but has become a weapon for penalizing anybody who maintains a financial presence overseas without keeping Uncle Sam in the loop. Falling afoul of the penalties doesn't require criminal intent or fraud. Simply failing to file paperwork can result in a financial death sentence for unlucky taxpayers.

"What the Saydam case illustrates, perhaps better than any FBAR case in recent memory, is how the regime now punishes form failure more harshly than some forms of fraud," he added.

Criminal Penalties Would Have Been Less

In Saydam's case, Judge Donna M. Ryu agreed that the penalty is punitive and vastly exceeds other fines that have been ruled excessive. She also conceded, as did the federal government, that had the retired professor been criminally charged, the penalty would have been less: "Saydam's total FBAR penalty of $437,564 is 3.1 times greater than the maximum fine of $139,000 under the Sentencing Guidelines." But she sniffs that "the fact that the penalty is greater than the Guidelines maximum is not dispositive."

In Ryu's assessment, "it is not the court's role to legislate, or to second-guess the wisdom of the FBAR statutory penalty scheme." She quotes earlier decisions to the effect that "so long as a government provides an unrebutted commonsense explanation or some — even relatively weak — evidence to justify its fine, it will likely prevail against an Excessive Fines Clause challenge." Never mind that the Excessive Fines Clause is in the Eighth Amendment and trumps laws and administrative interpretations.

Well, anybody can come up with a "relatively weak" justification for just about anything, so it's unlikely that a challenge to excessive fines will ever prevail with this judge. That gives government officials free rein, within the very broad parameters established by Congress, to harshly penalize people for failing to successfully navigate byzantine financial paperwork requirements. The judge's comments suggest that for her (and many of her peers), the Eighth Amendment is essentially a dead letter in non-tax cases, too.

Fines, then, are more of a means of hammering the population into submission than of proportionally penalizing people for doing measurable damage.

To this point, Leahey responds, "when civil penalties break free from any connection to actual harm caused, the tax system stops looking like a regulatory framework and starts looking like a collection racket—in this case, targeting immigrants."

A Continuing Fight Against Excessive Fines

With the support of attorneys from the Institute for Justice, Tuncay Saydam is continuing his challenge against the I.R.S.'s draconian penalties.

"The Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause enshrines a timeless teaching: The fine must fit the crime," comments I.J. Attorney Mike Greenberg. "A runaway civil penalty for a minor reporting violation is just the sort of punishment the Framers designed that provision to check."

The question is whether the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals takes the Eighth Amendments bar against excessive fines seriously. Too many courts have written it off.

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Body Cam Video: Tulsa Police Arrest Food Not Bombs Volunteers for Feeding Homeless People

2026-05-20T14:00:38Z

Recently released body camera footage of an incident earlier this month shows police officers in Tulsa, Oklahoma, ordering the anti-war group Food Not Bombs (FNB) to stop handing out meals to the homeless and arresting four activists after they insisted they had a First Amendment right to continue.

Local news outlets reported that Tulsa police arrested four members of the local FNB chapter on May 6 on charges including attempting to flee, obstruction, and resisting arrest. Six other volunteers were cited. The crackdown is the latest flare-up in what a 2023 Reason column called "an ongoing tug-of-war that pits public order against the First Amendment right to perform charity as a form of expression." Groups like FNB and Christian charities say feeding the needy is political and religious expression, while city governments say unpermitted food distribution is a public health concern and a nuisance.

The Tulsa chapter of FNB says it has been handing out hot meals on a weekly basis since 2020 without any problems. "We have been able to do this with absolutely no issue whatsoever for nearly six years," a Tulsa FNB member told local news outlet KJRH.

But that stopped on the evening of May 6, when numerous Tulsa police officers showed up to shut down an FNB meal handout.

Recently released body camera footage from the Tulsa Police Department shows a Tulsa officer arriving and asking for the organizer or whoever is running the event. When the activists respond that no one is charge, and they're all just "volunteers handing out food," the officer says that they need a special permit.

"We're protesting right now," one of the activists responded.

"No, you're not," the officer replied.

"We are," the volunteer argued.

"OK, we'll just start citing whoever's out here," the officer said.

The officer then walked over to where volunteers were boxing and handing out hot meals and told them to tear everything down.

"You guys have to have a special permit to be out here," the officer repeated.

When the FNB volunteers ignored the officer and continued boxing food, he demanded their IDs and called for backup.

The body camera footage shows the volunteers starting to pack up their station. One woman, Savannah Davis, attempts to leave with a plastic tub of supplies when the officer grabs her arm and tells her, "Stop or you're going to go to jail."

Davis pulled away and said, "This is our First Amendment right."

"That's it, you're going to jail," the officer said.

"She's literally holding a bin of supplies that she had just cleaned up to comply with their order," Ana Barros, a Tulsa FNB member, told KJR.

Another volunteer was arrested for interfering with Davis' arrest. A third Tulsa FNB member was arrested for grabbing an ID off another detained volunteer's belt loop, and according to Tulsa FNB, a fourth man was arrested for recording the incident.

The body camera shows Davis arguing at length with officers about her First Amendment rights after she is handcuffed.

"You might want to reread the Constitution," another Tulsa officer said to her at one point.

"Oh really? I think you should, considering you're the one with a badge and a gun," Davis responded.

FNB chapters argue they don't need permits because their activities are protected First Amendment speech, and despite the Tulsa police's flippant response, some federal courts agree.

In 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that distributing food was "expressive conduct" protected under the First Amendment. That decision was a response to a lawsuit by the FNB chapter in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

More recently, a U.S. district court judge issued a preliminary injunction against the city of Houston in 2024, blocking it from enforcing an ordinance that prohibits feeding more than five needy people anywhere—including on public property—without permission.

The judge found that the Houston chapter's food sharing is expressive conduct under the First Amendment and that the group had a substantial likelihood of succeeding on its claims that Houston's ordinance, as applied, created an unconstitutional prior restraint.

The FNB chapter of Roswell, New Mexico, sued the city, earlier this month arguing that the city's permit and insurance requirements violated the group's constitutional rights.

In his 2016 book Biting the Hands That Feed Us, food lawyer Baylen Linnekin wrote that crackdowns on good Samaritans began spreading across the country during the first decade of the century. Reason has covered government suppression of food charities in Tampa, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, Newark, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Philadelphia, and Kansas City. In the latter case, health officials poured bleach on food meant for the homeless in 2018.

The Tulsa Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, in a statement to News On 6, the city of Tulsa said: "While at this time the City can't speak directly to the arrests or on-scene communication at the event, prior to last night, the City previously engaged with this group at least 20 times dating back to last April and notified them of the permitting requirements for organized activity in public roadways. The activity has continued to occur, and participants have continued blocking the street with tables and equipment - with a history of leaving trash and debris behind following the event."

In the body camera footage released by the Tulsa Police Department, the first FNB volunteer the officer encountered was cleaning up trash.

The post Body Cam Video: Tulsa Police Arrest Food Not Bombs Volunteers for Feeding Homeless People appeared first on Reason.com.

Brickbat: Failing the Test

2026-05-19T15:41:27Z

Former Winnipeg police officer Matthew Kadyniuk accepted a two-year non-custodial sentence after pleading guilty to breach of trust and theft under $5,000 ($3,638 U.S.). In 2024, Kadyniuk and another officer were caught stealing during an undercover "integrity test." While responding to a fake vehicle break-in, the two officers took items—including cash, cigarettes, and bear spray—from a backpack allegedly belonging to the suspect. The theft was secretly recorded as part of the undercover operation. Kadyniuk, who resigned from the police force after his arrest, will spend the first year of his sentence under house arrest and the second year under a curfew.

The post Brickbat: Failing the Test appeared first on Reason.com.

Open Thread

2026-05-20T07:00:00Z

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

A State Assault Case Against an ICE Agent Could Illustrate the Limits of Supremacy Clause Immunity

2026-05-19T15:21:53Z

The day after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Christian Castro shot Minneapolis resident Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg, Kristi Noem, then the secretary of homeland security, described that use of force as a clearly justified response to "an attempted murder." Sosa-Celis and two other Venezuelans had "ambushed and attacked" Castro, Noem averred, "beat[ing] him with snow shovels and the handles of brooms."

Although the Department of Homeland Security has not retracted that account of the January 14 incident, federal prosecutors later admitted it was not true. The fallout from that lie continued on Monday, when Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced criminal charges against Castro, initiating a case that will test the ability of state prosecutors to hold federal law enforcement officers accountable for violent misconduct.

A month after Noem portrayed Sosa-Celis as a would-be murderer, Daniel N. Rosen, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, asked a federal judge to dismiss charges against him and Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, another alleged assailant. Rosen said "newly discovered evidence" was "materially inconsistent" with those allegations.

That evidence, according to Todd Lyons, then the acting ICE director, indicated that Castro and another agent had made "untruthful statements." Lyons said the U.S. Attorney's Office was "actively investigating these false statements," adding that "lying under oath is a serious federal offense."

At a press conference on Monday, which was the first time Castro was publicly identified as the agent who shot Sosa-Celis, Moriarty said he and Aljorna "were both here lawfully." But ICE tried to stop Aljorna, who was delivering food for DoorDash, after confusing him with another man.

Aljorna drove back toward the duplex apartment he shared with Sosa-Celis, their partners, and two young children. After a brief car chase, Aljorna hit a light pole, exited his vehicle, and ran toward his home, where Sosa-Celis was standing on the porch. Aljorna slipped and fell, at which point Castro pounced on him.

During the ensuing struggle, which lasted about 12 seconds, Castro "was not hit by a shovel or a broom," Moriarty said. "In fact, he was not hit at all." And after Aljorna and Sosa-Celis escaped into their home, she added, they "presented absolutely no threat to him or anyone else."

Castro nevertheless fired a round through the front door, striking Sosa-Celis and endangering the other residents. Castro "was not under any physical threat when he fired his weapon, or even beforehand," Moriarty said, explaining her decision to charge him with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.

Can Moriarty do that? No, according to Vice President J.D. Vance, who says "a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action" has "absolute immunity" from state prosecution.

As a Yale Law School graduate, Vance should know better. There is in fact a long history of state charges against federal officials. And while federal courts have blocked some of those prosecutions as unjustified interference with U.S. law enforcement, they have allowed others to proceed.

In 1906, for example, the Supreme Court greenlit a state murder case against two soldiers who had allegedly killed a suspected copper thief at a federal arsenal in Pennsylvania after he surrendered. A century later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit tentatively approved an Idaho prosecution of the FBI sniper who had killed Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge in 1992.

Under the law that has emerged from such cases, defendants can invoke "Supremacy Clause immunity," which applies when they "reasonably" believed their actions were "necessary and proper" to execute their federal duties. If a defendant makes a "colorable claim" to that effect, he can have the case removed to federal court.

If that happened with Castro, Minnesota prosecutors would still be involved, but a federal judge would decide prior to trial whether Castro qualified for immunity. That very process contradicts Vance's claim that federal officers are automatically shielded from liability when they are accused of committing state crimes.

The post A State Assault Case Against an ICE Agent Could Illustrate the Limits of Supremacy Clause Immunity appeared first on Reason.com.

Thomas Massie Loses, Proving That Deficit Hawks and Foreign Policy Doves Aren't Welcome in Trump's GOP

2026-05-20T12:19:30Z

Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), the libertarian-adjacent lawmaker who clashed with President Donald Trump over spending, tariffs, wars, and the Epstein files, was defeated in Tuesday's primary election by Ed Gallrein, a Trump-backed challenger.

The Associated Press called the race shortly before 8 p.m., with Gallrein leading Massie by about 10 points with nearly three-quarters of the vote reported.

The contest was widely regarded as the most expensive primary election in congressional history. More than $32 million was spent on the race, much of it by pro-Trump and pro-Israel groups that sought to give Massie the boot.

Clearly, the stakes here were higher than just determining a spot on the November ballot in Kentucky's 4th congressional district, a deep red stretch along the state's northern frontier.

Tuesday's result further solidifies Trump's firm hold on the Republican Party, even at a time when that grip seemed to be loosening amid an unpopular war, rising inflation, and Trump's falling approval ratings. With Republican primary voters, however, Trump's endorsement is still the most important thing—at least as long as it is backed by millions of dollars in campaign spending.

In various ratings systems maintained by groups such as Heritage Action and Conservative Review, Massie has always been an exemplary congressman. Once, that would have meant something. When Massie was first elected to Congress in 2012, the Tea Party era was in full swing, and Republicans were expected to pass those purity tests or be cast out.

Now, being liked by Trump is the only test that matters. Gallrein passed it. He's even defended Trump's war in Iran as part of a "five-dimensional chess" effort to reset "the entire global power structure."

Massie held on longer than most, but his path into political retirement is well-worn. It has been trodden by many Tea Party–era Republicans who stuck to their principles only to discover that principles no longer matter in the contemporary GOP.

"With Trump's ascendance, whatever energy was left in the Tea Party was pure populist rage and tribal animus rather than anti-government in character," wrote Reason's Nick Gillespie this week. Even if Massie had won, Gillespie observed, "the GOP of which he is part is very different from the one he belonged to when he first arrived in Washington."

There is some irony in the fact that Massie once wrote, in the pages of Reason, that libertarians ought to work within the Republican Party to achieve their political ends rather than eschew the two-party system. "If you want to field another team, you have to either completely replace one that's there now (within an election cycle or two) or work inside one that already exists," he wrote. "The most expedient path for libertarians is to work within the red team."

And Massie was, in many ways, the best example of what that collaboration might achieve. He worked his way up in the House to land a coveted seat on the powerful Rules Committee (until being removed last year). He played a significant role in the budget process, though he did not have enough support to reduce the growth of spending. He was a key figure in the debate over toppling then–Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.), whose removal Massie opposed. He helped lead an effort to block Trump's tariffs that were later ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court.

Through all that, Massie was committed to the principles of limited government. But he also put a huge target on his back. And, in the end, he was dismissed by the party's voters for being insufficiently loyal to its dear leader. It is difficult to find any other explanation.

That happened despite the fact that Massie's positions on war, spending, and the Epstein files are more in line with Trump's campaign promises than Trump's actions in office have been. For taking those stands, Massie has been labeled a "moron" by Trump, who has also accused the congressman of being "disloyal to the United States."

If this is how the Republican Party treats the libertarian-leaning lawmakers in its midst, then libertarians should take note and act accordingly.

The post Thomas Massie Loses, Proving That Deficit Hawks and Foreign Policy Doves Aren't Welcome in Trump's GOP appeared first on Reason.com.

Court Rejects First Amendment Claims Against NYPD Commissioner Brought by "Most Wanted CEOs" Card Makers

2026-05-19T23:12:47Z

From yesterday's decision by Judge Hector Gonzalez (E.D.N.Y.) in Harr v. City of N.Y.:

In 2003, in connection with the invasion of Iraq, the United States Department of Defense developed a deck of playing cards, titled "Iraqi Most Wanted," to help familiarize troops with members of Saddam Hussein's government and inner circle. Approximately 20 years later and days after UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, was shot and killed, Plaintiffs James Harr and Comrade Workwear, LLC developed a deck of cards, modeled after the U.S. military's deck, titled "Most Wanted CEOs." … Plaintiffs' cards:

featured a well-known corporate executive, their affiliated company, and a QR code linking to educational content about the harm their company allegedly caused, with each suit representing an industry—pharmaceuticals and chemicals, essential goods and housing, finance and tech, and weapons and oil—all based on public information, with no contact details or other personal information included.

On December 15, 2024, Plaintiffs unveiled the final designs for the Most Wanted CEO cards and launched preorders. The product description for the cards read: "For educational and entertainment purposes only." Later that day, NYP [the New York Post] published an article on its website that claimed Plaintiffs "call[ed] online for the death of corporate executives" and linked "the release of the playing cards to the recent homicide of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson" (the "Article"). The Article included a screenshot of one of Plaintiff's social media posts which contained the phrase: "The CEO must die." The screenshot in the Article omitted Plaintiffs' caption to the post, a "disclaimer" that read, in part: "When we say the CEO must die, we mean the structure of capitalism must be broken."

On December 16, 2024, NYP published the Article as its cover story. Overnight, the Article, and, consequently, Plaintiffs' playing cards were front-page news. That same morning, New York City Police Department ("NYPD") officers arrived at Harr's home and spoke with his fiancée. A little later, officers interviewed Harr at his workplace and "questioned him about the cards and whether he had violent intent or ties to any extremist groups." Plaintiffs allege Harr informed the officers that "he was an independent artist running a merchandise company, that the cards were a symbolic and educational project, and that he had [already] made public disclaimers rejecting violence."

The next day, [NYPD] Commissioner Tisch spoke at a press conference announcing that an individual had been arrested in connection with the investigation of Mr. Thompson's homicide (the "December Press Conference"). Plaintiffs allege that Commissioner Tisch "held up [the print edition of the Article] and falsely described [Plaintiffs'] playing cards as a 'hit list,' call[ed] him an 'extreme activist,' and part of a 'lawless, violent mob' calling for the 'targeted assassination' of CEOs." …

The Commissioner's statements, Plaintiffs claim, marked the inception of a campaign to punish Plaintiffs for the cards. In their view, the Article, NYPD interviews, and December Press Conference were part of "a coordinated effort to distort the nature of [Plaintiffs'] work and publicly reframe [them] as a threat in order to support a broader narrative around political violence and public disorder." Before and after the December Press Conference, Plaintiffs were "de-platformed" (i.e., permanently disabled from accessing) several social media and e-commerce platforms that were integral to their business.

Approximately two months after the December Press Conference, law enforcement officials from the NYPD "served a seizure warrant on the FedEx facility where Plaintiff[s'] inventory of playing cards was being stored, resulting in the confiscation of [their] entire preorder shipment." Plaintiffs assert that confiscation of their merchandise was carried out at the behest of Commissioner Tisch and part of Defendants' coordinated effort to "systematically strip[ ] [Plaintiffs] of access to the platforms and tools that allowed [them] to speak, sell, and operate," and inflict "reputational, financial, and constitutional harm." …

Plaintiffs sued Commissioner Tisch, arguing that she unconstitutionally retaliated against them based on their constitutionally protected speech. The court concluded that plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged that their speech didn't fall within the First Amendment exceptions for true threats and incitement:

A "true threat" is a "'serious expression' conveying that a speaker means to 'commit an act of unlawful violence,'" regardless of whether "the speaker is aware of, and intends to convey, the threatening aspect of the message." …

"[A]ccept[ing] as true all of the factual allegations set out in [Plaintiffs'] complaint," and "draw[ing] inferences from those allegations in the light most favorable to [Plaintiffs]," as the Court must at this juncture, the Court concludes that the speech at issue does not constitute a true threat because Plaintiffs' speech does not amount to "serious expression[s] of [their] intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals." The playing cards are not enough to convey to a reasonable listener that they were intended as a threat of violence against the "well-known corporate executive[s]" featured on them. The cards included anodyne, publicly-available information about the executives and "educational content about the harm their compan[ies] allegedly caused." Simply, the cards do not convey anything about Plaintiffs' intent. At most, the cards are suggestive, but that is far from a serious expression of violent intent. And, any incidental suggestion of violence is negated by Plaintiffs' disclaimers.

Plaintiffs' statement that "[t]he CEO must die" also cannot reasonably be interpreted as a serious threat of injury. As a practical matter, that statement is directed at "the CEO"—an archetypal executive, not a particular individual or group—and, again, Plaintiffs' disclaimer in the caption of the social media post clarifies that the statement was not one of violent intent, but a more general critique of capitalism writ large.

Plaintiffs' statement "calling Mr. Thompson's killer a 'fucking hero'" does not reflect a threat at all—serious or otherwise. The statement, standing alone or considered alongside the others, may be coarse or disquieting, but that does not remove its First Amendment protection. If anything, it does the opposite.

As for Plaintiffs' statements that purportedly encouraged their social media followers to "do more" to identify where another healthcare CEO lived, City Defendants' argument is far too speculative to establish it as an expression of violent intent, let alone a serious expression of violent intent against that person.

{Had City Defendants argued that this particular statement was incitement, they might have had a stronger point. Ultimately, however, that argument would also fail because there is "no evidence or rational inference from the import of the language, that [Plaintiffs'] words were intended to produce, and likely to produce, imminent disorder." See Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) (Speech is presumptively protected unless it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.").}

Even if the Court were to take the playing card design and all the accompanying social media statements together, it cannot conclude that "an ordinary, reasonable recipient who is familiar with the context of the communication would interpret it as a threat of injury." Thus, Plaintiffs' speech is not a true threat. Nor is it incitement, obscenity, or any other form of unprotected speech; it is protected speech. Plaintiffs are constitutionally entitled to condemn and disparage well-known executives of major corporations….

The court didn't consider whether the speech might have fallen within the related but separate exception for solicitation of crime against a specific person (presumably because that argument hadn't been raised); see this post for more on that exception, which the Supreme Court has recognized in recent cases, including U.S. v. Hansen (2023).

But the court nonetheless rejected plaintiffs' First Amendment claims, because it concluded that they hadn't adequately alleged that Commissioner Tisch took adverse action against plaintiffs:

At bottom, the relevant "action" that Plaintiffs allege is an adverse action for purposes of their First Amendment claim is Commissioner Tisch's speech at the December Press Conference. That is insufficient because speech, in response to speech, is not an adverse action, even if it is harsh… "[I]t is well settled that criticism of [a speaker] alone" does not amount to an adverse action "for retaliation purposes." …

Even if Commissioner Tisch's statements are read "in the light most favorable" to Plaintiffs, they would not "deter a similarly situated individual of ordinary firmness from exercising his or her constitutional rights." In condemning Plaintiffs' speech, Commissioner Tisch exercised her own First Amendment rights…. [T]o interpret Commissioner Tisch's constitutionally protected speech as an adverse action would effectively flip the First Amendment on its head and allow Plaintiffs to enlist the judiciary to block speech that they do not like….

Even if the Court credited Plaintiffs' speculative argument that Commissioner Tisch's statements amount to an adverse action, their First Amendment Retaliation claim would fail, nonetheless, because Plaintiffs' theory of causation is supported only by their own conclusory allegations.

The Court disagrees with Plaintiffs that it is reasonable to infer that Commissioner Tisch's statements and her official position "significantly encouraged" or "influenced" third parties to remove Plaintiffs' access to social media and e-commerce platforms. Nor does the Court agree that "[t]he timing and context make the causal link [between Plaintiffs' speech and seizure of their work] unmistakable." Both of those assertions are far too attenuated to be plausible. Indeed, a significant amount of second- and third-order thinking is necessary to find it plausible that Commissioner Tisch's statements at the December Press Conference were intended to set off a chain of events ultimately designed to silence Plaintiffs or others from participating in public dialogue. In fact, to conclude that Plaintiffs' speculative and conclusory allegations are sufficient to survive City Defendants' Motion to Dismiss, the Court would have to make a series of unreasonable inferences.

For example, Plaintiffs assert that the de-platforming decisions were made because of Commissioner Tisch's statements on December 17, 2024. For the Commissioner's speech to have the outsized effect that Plaintiffs claim it did, one might expect that all the de-platforming decisions were made after the December Press Conference. But, according to Plaintiffs, their "main Instagram account was permanently banned" a day before Commissioner Tisch said anything about Plaintiffs publicly.

One also might expect there to be some allegation that Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Shopify, or other platform providers were directed to disable Plaintiffs' accounts, or at least that they provided some pretextual reason for the decisions. Plaintiffs allege neither. In fact, they concede that the platforms explained their decisions were based not on the Commissioner's or the City's say-so, but on the platforms' own internal policies or decisions from "its banking partners, including Mastercard and Visa." In that case, one might expect, if nothing else, that there would be some allegation that the platform providers saw or knew about Plaintiffs' playing cards, or Commissioner Tisch's statements. But there are no such allegations in the Amended Complaint….

The court also rejected plaintiffs' claims that Commissioner Tisch violated their federal constitutional rights by, essentially, defaming them in a way that imposed "a material state-imposed burden or state-imposed alteration of [their] status or rights" (to oversimplify slightly). The court concluded, among other things, that plaintiffs' hadn't "plausibly allege[d] defamation":

The first allegedly defamatory statement Plaintiffs highlight is that Commissioner Tisch "falsely described [Plaintiffs'] playing cards as a 'hit list.'" However, based on the Court's review of the entirety of the December Press Conference, Commissioner Tisch does not use the term "hit list" once during her address….

Plaintiffs also allege that Commissioner Tisch made defamatory statements … when, while holding up a copy of the December 16, 2024, New York Post, she said: "Yesterday the New York Post reported that some extreme activists were circulating a deck of cards with other Most Wanted CEOs to be targeted for assassination." Plaintiffs take issue with two parts of that statement. They object to Commissioner Tisch's use of the term "extreme activists," and they object to her assertion that the so-called activists were "circulating a deck of cards with other Most Wanted CEOs to be targeted for assassination." …

First, the Commissioner's description of certain individuals as "extreme activists" is not defamatory because it is nonactionable opinion. "New York law protects derogatory statements which may be categorized as 'opinion' as opposed to 'fact.'" …

At the December Press Conference, after summarizing an uptick of "shocking and appalling celebration[s] of cold-blooded murder" in the wake of the Thompson homicide, Commissioner Tisch used the phrase "some extreme activists" to describe a subset of individuals who "were circulating a deck of cards with other Most Wanted CEOs to be targeted for assassination," Here, it is clear that "extreme activists" is an expression of the Commissioner's opinion, not fact. When analyzed in context, the term is used as an insult, a denigration of those who make light of tragedy. It is not an official edict, nor is it "precise, unambiguous [or] definite." Moreover, because the term was "accompanied by a recitation of the facts upon which it [was] based," it is pure opinion. When considered in context, it is merely an epithet and "hyperbole and therefore not actionable opinion."

Even if "extreme activists" was not an expression of Commissioner Tisch's view of individuals capitalizing on the homicide of Mr. Thompson, it is not defamatory because it is substantially true…. Recall that, in context, "extreme activists" was used, among other things, to describe individuals who "were circulating a deck of cards with other Most Wanted CEOs to be targeted for assassination." That is substantially true based on Plaintiffs' own allegations. Harr is a self-described "activist and political artist." Plaintiffs concede that their designs were well-received and garnered positive attention from their followers on social media….

As for the second component of the Commissioner's statement—that individuals "were circulating a deck of cards with other Most Wanted CEOs to be targeted for assassination"—the same point applies. This part of the statement may not be completely true, but it need not be, as long as "the overall gist or substance of the challenged statement is true." Given the context of the December Press Conference and the circumstances surrounding it, the Court concludes that describing Plaintiffs' product as "a deck of cards with other Most Wanted CEOs to be targeted for assassination" captures the "overall gist."

As a preliminary matter, the entire project was inspired by the "Iraqi Most Wanted" cards issued to soldiers in 2003 to help them identify key members of Saddam Hussein's inner circle. This inspiration is apparent in the cards themselves, which, as depicted in the Article, include imagery reminiscent of shooting-range targets. Moreover, the print edition of the Article draws a not-so-subtle connection between Plaintiffs' cards and a "twisted card game to hunt down CEOs."

The fact that Commissioner Tisch did not explicitly mention Plaintiffs' disclaimers renders her statements not "completely true," but it does not mean that "the overall gist" of her statement is demonstrably false. Taken together, "the full context of the communication in which the statement appears," and "the broader social context or setting surrounding the communication," an individual could arrive at the same conclusion Commissioner Tisch did. Accordingly, the Commissioner's description of the playing cards was substantially true….

Commissioner Tisch's third statement, which characterizes social media threats against executives in the wake of the Thompson homicide as "the threats of a lawless, violent mob" … is nonactionable opinion….

Given that the federal claims were dismissed, the court left the purely state law claims (including a defamation claim) to state courts. For more on that, and on the claims related to the seizure of the materials, see the full opinion. Plaintiffs had also sued the N.Y. Post, but dropped those claims.

Gregory J.O. Accarino represents Commissioner Tisch and the city.

The post Court Rejects First Amendment Claims Against NYPD Commissioner Brought by "Most Wanted CEOs" Card Makers appeared first on Reason.com.

Pennsylvania Family Says the DEA Battered Down Their Door While Raiding the Wrong Home

2026-05-19T19:28:13Z

A Pennsylvania family is suing the federal government, Drug Enforcement Administration officers, and their local police department, claiming the parties violated their Fourth Amendment rights when officers mistakenly raided their home.

According to the federal civil rights lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the McLaughlin family was awoken by "repeated, forceful banging" on the front door of their Bucks County home around 4:30 a.m. on May 16, 2024. Resident Robert McLaughlin claims he was startled by the loud noise downstairs. Fearing for his family's safety, he allegedly "shouted towards the front door in an attempt to scare off the intruders."

Officers then used a "battering ram" to breach the front door and dragged McLaughlin into the front yard, pointing assault rifles directly at him and forcing him into handcuffs, "all while still being undressed," according to the lawsuit. McLaughlin also alleges officers forced his wife and children out of the home and into the front yard in their pajamas and underwear, where they saw him being detained. McLaughlin claims he "attempted to deescalate the situation by not only identifying himself, but also stating his address, several times."

According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which reported the story on Friday, the raid was targeting Jose Correa, a man who federal prosecutors say "was a member of a New Jersey-based drug ring that spread the drugs under the orders of the Latin Kings street gang." His trial is "pending in federal court" in Newark, New Jersey, the Inquirer reports. According to the lawsuit, officers intended to execute a warrant for Correa at 905 Morgan Drive, a different address from the McLaughlin residence.

Wrongful home raids by law enforcement are nothing new. For instance, in 2022, Texas cops entered the wrong house and held a couple at gunpoint in the middle of the night. Also in Texas, cops raided a home based on faulty info, realized they had the wrong address, and continued the operation anyway. Between 2017 and 2020, Chicago police accidentally raided homes at least 21 times, according to an inspector general report.

One family's "nightmare scenario" made it all the way to the Supreme Court last year.

In 2017, the FBI burst into the home of Georgia woman Curtrina Martin. Agents handcuffed her then-fiancé, Hilliard Toi Cliatt, while they held Martin at gunpoint and "screamed" at her. "But law enforcement would not find who they were looking for there," Reason's Billy Binion explained at the time, "because that suspect, Joseph Riley, lived in a nearby house on a different street."

The family attempted to sue the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which allows citizens to bring certain tort claims against the federal government. The federal district court and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed their case, holding that the Supremacy Clause—which asserts that federal law takes precedence over state law—barred the family from bringing the suit, according to the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that represented the family. In a 9–0 ruling last June, the Supreme Court ruled that the Supremacy Clause did not prevent Martin from suing the federal government and sent her case back to the lower court, reported SCOTUSblog. Still, the Supreme Court found that key exceptions to the FTCA could still apply in Martin's case, depending on the 11th Circuit's findings.

The McLaughlins are suing under the same law—the FTCA—"for the negligent and wrongful acts and omissions of employees of the United States."

Brian Fritz, the McLaughlins' lawyer, tells Reason that his clients' rights "exist for a reason, and when they're not observed by those acting under law enforcement, something should be done about it."

Fritz says a jury would determine any damages owed to the family. For now, what is most important to his clients, he says, is ensuring that this does not happen to another family.

The post Pennsylvania Family Says the DEA Battered Down Their Door While Raiding the Wrong Home appeared first on Reason.com.

The Congressional Black Caucus Opposes a College Sports Bill Because of Gerrymandering

2026-05-19T16:26:13Z

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Take a seat and crack open a beer, because summer is here (where I live, anyway).

It's Sports Week on Capitol Hill, apparently. Typically we try to discuss news happening all across the country or world, but this week all the expected collisions of sports and politics are happening on a small bump of land in Washington, D.C. We've got to cover college sports, sports betting, and youth sports, so let's get to it.

Locker Room Links

UFC President Dana White wants President Donald Trump (and Congress, presumably) to undo a tax change in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that is hurting gamblers. It's one of several sports-related tax changes the House Ways and Means Committee might soon consider.
Good on the NHL for cracking down: The Vegas Golden Knights lost their second-round draft pick and the head coach was fined $100,000 for media violations after knocking the Anaheim Ducks out of the playoffs. The Knights didn't allow media into the locker room after the game, and coach John Tortorella didn't speak to reporters.
The weekly NFL schedule is getting spread out as more games get standalone windows—some people are sad about this, but as an out-of-market NFL fan I'm in favor of the Lions getting as many national night games as possible.
The latest trend in sports stadia is mixed-use development—now colleges are getting into stadium-related development too.
Another sports show is entering the streaming arena: Will Ferrell plays an obnoxious, aging golfer trying to get his game back in The Hawk on Netflix.
Elsewhere in Reason: "Samurai vs. Squatters: On the Street With the Hired Swords Reclaiming California Property Owners' Stolen Homes"
Novel idea!

The whole "save college sports" movement is rooted in the myth that NIL is going to force schools to cut Olympic sports.

As Arkansas found out, like Stanford and others before them, these sports all have alumni who care deeply about those programs and stepped up to fund them. https://t.co/tDWq4qDp1i

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) May 14, 2026

Will Gerrymandering Bring Down the NCAA?

The NCAA has been asking Congress to regulate college sports for over six years now, and was hoping this week would mark a major milestone. The SCORE Act was supposed to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives this week—but just as in December, it was pulled from the floor due to lackluster support.

Just a few hours before the vote was postponed indefinitely, the bill apparently hit a major roadblock when the Congressional Black Caucus and its 54 voting members in the House announced unanimous opposition to the SCORE Act—because the SEC, ACC, and NCAA aren't talking enough about gerrymandering and redistricting. Yes, really.

"The Congressional Black Caucus cannot support legislation benefiting major athletic institutions that continue to remain silent while Black voting rights and Black political power are being systematically dismantled across the South," their statement said. "The Congressional Black Caucus has transmitted formal letters to SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, ACC Commissioner James J. Phillips, Ph.D., and NCAA President Charlie Baker demanding immediate engagement and a public response regarding the ongoing assault on Black political representation throughout the South and across the nation."

To be fair, I am no fan of the tit-for-tat gerrymandering that both sides of the aisle have been doing for the past year. But that wouldn't affect my opinion on a completely unrelated bill to reform college sports.

The SCORE Act would not upend college sports as we know them—your alma mater's teams would still stink, sorry. Some of the status quo would be solidified, especially on rules governing name, image, and likeness (NIL) payments. Athletes would not be classified as employees, and thus not eligible for collective bargaining. Transfers would be modestly restricted, but not by much: Athletes would have to spend an entire academic year at their school before transferring. Eligibility rules would be tightened: Anyone who's ever gone pro would be unable to return to Division I sports (perhaps former G-Leaguer R.J. Luis will sneak in), and general eligibility would be capped at five years, based on age (the age aspect could upend college hockey as an NHL pipeline).

The NCAA is hoping this legislation will pass because various court decisions over the last decade basically told them the old ways the NCAA wanted to run college sports were illegal. Transfer restrictions? Illegal. Eligibility rules? Illegal. Even if Congress thinks the SCORE Act would settle these questions once and for all, it's just going to lead to more lawsuits (billable hours remain undefeated). What's awkward is that the NCAA has spent the last few weeks making decisions that are unpopular with their fans—namely, playoff expansion in basketball and football. But maybe that's part of the point: The more broken the NCAA looks, the more people might clamor for legislation that will, supposedly, fix it.

For the time being, though, the SCORE Act isn't going anywhere. The good news for the NCAA is that there's a bipartisan bill rumored to be in the works by Sens. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D–Wash.). The contents of that rumored Senate bill are unclear, but according to CBS Sports, it will try to implement a stricter cap on NIL payments per school. That would be at least the fourth bill in the Senate that attempts to fix the NCAA, including one earlier, more narrow bipartisan effort involving Cantwell.

Anything is possible, even on Capitol Hill, and there's plenty of energy behind a just do something! attitude on college sports. But things move slowly in Congress, and come January 1, bills expire and new members come into town with their own ideas of how things should go. The NCAA is running out of time for congressional help, and, of all things, its deafening "silence" on gerrymandering appears to be a new obstacle.

Congress Talking About Thinking About Doing Something

Meanwhile, the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Technology, and Data Privacy is holding a hearing on Wednesday morning, entitled "No Sure Bets: Protecting Sports Integrity in America." (You can watch here, but this is not going to be the real game of the week.) Based on its name, it seems safe to assume just do something! will be the prevailing mood of the hearing.

The hearing is inspired by the recent game-fixing scandals in American sports—most notably the scandals involving NBA player Terry Rozier and MLB pitcher Emmanuel Clase, which were detected and resulted in federal charges. The witnesses include the head of the American Gaming Association (pro–sports betting, anti–prediction markets), a former GOP congressman who's now a "senior advisor" to The Coalition for Prediction Markets, a gambling counselor who says there's a gambling "public health crisis," the head of Tennessee's sports betting regulator, and the co-CEO of Integrity Compliance 360 (a company that flags suspicious bets for possible match-fixing or insider trading).

The hearing might not result in any kind of legislation—it may just be yet another chance for politicians to get on camera and get a soundbite in on whatever their opinion may be.

Private Equity and the 'Travel Team Trap'

Admittedly, I have not been personally exposed to the alleged evils of private equity in youth sports, although I've seen stories about changes that have made me think "I would probably not want to give that organization my money anymore." Sen. Chris Murphy (D–Conn.) and Rep. Chris Deluzio (D–Pa.) have a new bill to make sure no one can give any money to private equity in youth sports, because the bill would ban private equity firms from getting involved in youth sports in almost any way: leagues, facilities, tournaments, and player platforms (which leaves equipment and uniforms, I guess). Private equity would have two years to get out of youth sports.

The private equity firms, naturally, say they're saving leagues and venues from closing altogether, while parents say they're getting hit with higher costs and more restrictive rules. "We are growing youth hockey at four times the national rate, providing free and low-cost programs and letting more kids play by saving and revitalizing ice rinks," a spokesperson for Black Bear, a private firm that runs youth hockey leagues and tournaments, told USA Today. Murphy's son plays in a Black Bear-run league, which sounds awkward for everyone involved.

Private equity makes for an easy bogeyman, especially in a sacred space like youth sports. But parents who are perturbed by what my friend Timothy P. Carney calls the "travel team trap" are always free to exit instead. Kids should play sports as long as they're having fun, and as long as their parents are having fun instead of thinking about the cost. Parenting is hard—kids and parents are never going to get everything they want. A ban on private equity in youth sports isn't going to solve all the problems.

Replay of the Week

The only guarantees in life are death, taxes, and the New York Yankees fumbling away 5–10 important games a year because of bad fielding.

METS WALK OFF THE YANKEES TO TAKE THE SERIES pic.twitter.com/XLHEsks7TH

— Talkin' Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) May 17, 2026

That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real event of the weekend, the Enhanced Games (streaming all evening long on Sunday, with the main events starting at 9 p.m. Eastern).

The post The Congressional Black Caucus Opposes a College Sports Bill Because of Gerrymandering appeared first on Reason.com.

Trump Settles His Own Lawsuit Against the IRS for $1.8 Billion of Your Money

2026-05-19T16:03:32Z

This week, President Donald Trump agreed to drop his lawsuit against the IRS, and in exchange the government would set up a fund for victims of overly aggressive federal law enforcement actions. But the entire affair reeks of corruption, and the money is most likely to become a slush fund for Trump and his cronies.

"The U.S. Department of Justice today announced that as a part of the settlement agreement in President Donald J. Trump v. Internal Revenue Service, the Attorney General established 'The Anti-Weaponization Fund' to provide a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare," according to a DOJ press release. It would receive $1.776 billion from the Judgment Fund, an intragovernmental account funded by taxpayer money that pays out claims against the government.

"The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department's intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again," said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. "As part of this settlement, we are setting up a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress."

The case originated in January, when Trump sued the IRS and the Department of the Treasury. In 2020, The New York Times reported on the contents of Trump's tax returns, which the authors said "reveal the hollowness, but also the wizardry, behind the self-made-billionaire image."

According to a 2023 Department of Justice indictment, the Times' source was IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn, whom a federal judge later sentenced to five years in prison.

In his lawsuit, Trump sought $10 billion in damages, claiming the IRS "had a duty to safeguard and protect [his] confidential tax returns" and "failed to take…mandatory precautions."

But this was an awkward ask: As the sitting president, Trump was effectively negotiating on both sides of the table.

"For a lawsuit to be valid, the two parties must actually be on opposite sides; otherwise, the judge can throw out the case," The New York Times reported last week.

The presiding judge in the case had the same concern. "Although President Trump avers that he is bringing this lawsuit in his personal capacity, he is the sitting president and his named adversaries are entities whose decisions are subject to his direction," Judge Kathleen Williams of the U.S. District Court for the District of Florida wrote in an order last month. "Accordingly, it is unclear to this Court whether the Parties are sufficiently adverse to each other."

Williams appointed six attorneys, unrelated to the case, to weigh in. The resulting memo, filed last week, did not make a definitive determination, but its tone was decidedly skeptical.

The attorneys noted that all the principal players involved—the secretary of the Treasury, the attorney general, and the commissioner of the IRS—are appointed by the president, who may fire them at any time. They also noted objections to any sitting president suing his own government, much less one who demands such fealty from his subordinates.

"Since taking office, President Trump has significantly expanded the President's oversight and control over the Attorney General and DOJ, including in ways that blur the line between fidelity to the President's policy priorities and fidelity to the President himself," they wrote. "There is also reason to believe that the President is, in fact, exercising his control over the Defendants in this litigation. President Trump's own statements suggest that he believes he has control over the Defendants and the DOJ lawyers charged with defending this case."

As to the merits of the case itself, the attorneys noted that the government had already asserted multiple "substantial defenses" in related litigation. Last year, for example, the government successfully argued that under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, it was not liable for Littlejohn's actions. In addition, "DOJ has also successfully argued in a related case" that Trump "did not sufficiently plead damages traceable" to a criminal act. Further, Trump's claims "are based on conduct that occurred more than two years ago" and therefore may be outside the statute of limitations.

Other than the fact that Trump sat on both sides of the negotiating table, there was no reason at all for the government to take the lawsuit seriously, much less settle for nearly $2 billion of taxpayer money.

It seems clear that the settlement was timed to avoid judicial oversight. In her April order, Williams ordered attorneys for both Trump and the government to explain if there was "adverseness" sufficient to justify the court hearing the case. She set a deadline of May 20; the parties announced the settlement just two days before. And in the motion withdrawing his lawsuit, Trump said it "is self-executing, terminates the action upon filing, and divests the district court of jurisdiction," and further "does not require judicial action."

The Anti-Weaponization Fund's most likely beneficiaries are the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Over the following four years, over 1,500 were arrested, and 1,270 were convicted, for attempting to prevent Congress from certifying the election Trump lost. Of the total arrests, 38 percent were charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.

Trump vowed that if reelected, he would grant the rioters "full pardons with an apology." He pardoned the rioters on his first day back in office, wiping away their federal criminal convictions. And this week, the IRS settlement agreement granted the Anti-Weaponization Fund the power to not only "issue monetary relief owed to claimants as a result of their legal rights" but also "to issue formal apologies."

But it's also possible that Trump could avail himself of some of that cash. The settlement agreement notes that Trump is still pursuing two other claims against the government, relating to the 2022 raid on his Florida home "and the Russia-collusion hoax throughout his first term as President, and beyond." If Trump also decides to settle with himself in one of those other cases, there's no guarantee he won't seek a portion of the money—which, again, would come from taxpayers.

According to the DOJ, the fund would be administered by five members, with a three-person quorum required for any settlements. But it's not clear what oversight function this is supposed to serve: The attorney general appoints each member, and the president can remove any of them at any time without cause.

In fact, while it could be beneficial to have a dedicated form of recourse for anyone subjected to selective or vindictive prosecution by the federal government, it's clear Trump is only interested in rewarding his allies and correcting the perceived wrongs of the Biden administration: The settlement agreement notes that all claims must be received by December 2028, and all funds must be disbursed by January 1, 2029—Trump's final month in office.

But it's not as if weaponization is entirely a thing of the past. Right now, Trump's DOJ is vindictively prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey. After news broke of the Anti-Weaponization Fund, Comey facetiously asked, "Do I get to apply?…If it's for people who have been targeted for reasons other than the normal standards of the Department of Justice, I'm ready to get in line."

"I say without hyperbole that this is the most brazenly corrupt action in US Presidential history," wrote Harvard University government professor Ryan Enos. "That it does not immediately lead to impeachment is a dangerous sign of how far the rule of law has declined."

It appears that even members of the administration see the potential for abuse: Just hours after the fund was announced, Treasury Department general counsel Brian Morrissey resigned.

The post Trump Settles His Own Lawsuit Against the IRS for $1.8 Billion of Your Money appeared first on Reason.com.

Filming Cops Is a First Amendment Right. The Feds Keep Harassing People for It Anyway.

2026-05-18T19:03:50Z

Renée Good had just died. Hours after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot the Minneapolis protester on January 7, Kristi Noem, then the secretary of homeland security, said Good had been engaged in "domestic terrorism." She had "weaponize[d] her vehicle," Noem claimed, and "attempted to run a law enforcement officer over." President Donald Trump soon chimed in, averring that Good "violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer" and that "it is hard to believe he is alive."

A couple of weeks later, a U.S. Border Patrol agent and a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer fatally shot another Minneapolis protester, Alex Pretti. Noem promptly claimed that Pretti had been "brandishing" a gun and had "attacked those officers." A statement from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) portrayed him as a would-be murderer who "wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement." Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R–Okla.), who would later replace Noem as DHS secretary, echoed that assessment the day of the shooting, describing Pretti as "a deranged individual" who "came in to cause max damage."

Both of those narratives quickly collapsed under the weight of video evidence. Cellphone footage of Good's encounter with Ross did not definitively confirm that she "clipped" him (as the New York Post put it). But it showed she did not actually run him over and suggested she was not trying to do so, since she was steering her car away from him and the other officers at the scene when he shot her. In Pretti's case, the videos showed he never "attacked" the officers or drew his holstered pistol, which he was licensed to carry. The officers did not see the weapon until after they tackled Pretti, and he had been disarmed by the time the shooting started.

Those episodes highlighted the crucial role that bystander video can play in resolving questions about the use of force by law enforcement officers—a benefit that was already clear from nationally notorious incidents such as the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles and the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Such documentation is not just useful but constitutionally protected: Most federal appeals courts, including all that have squarely addressed the issue, have held that the First Amendment encompasses the freedom to record the public conduct of on-duty police officers.

That does not mean those officers are always inclined to recognize that right. A decade and a half after Radley Balko wrote a Reason story chronicling the war between camera-wielding observers and camera-shy cops, the latter are still threatening, assaulting, arresting, and forcibly interfering with the former.

The people in charge of law enforcement agencies are not necessarily any more enlightened. Noem maintained that "videotaping" ICE officers is a form of "violence." Her underlings, who frequently reacted to cellphones as if they were dangerous weapons, seemed to be taking their cues from her.

Even after Noem was fired on March 5, DHS harassment of observers recording immigration enforcement operations persisted. According to a lawsuit that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed on May 13, members of the Memphis Safe Task Force, which includes ICE agents, CBP officers, and U.S. marshals as well as Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) officers, have systematically tried to deter activists from documenting their public conduct.

The ACLU's complaint, which describes incidents extending beyond Noem's tenure, says the intimidation tactics include photographing activists and their license plates, calling them out by name, using vehicles to box them in, surveilling their homes, shining bright lights at their phones and cameras, detaining and grilling them without reasonable suspicion, and threatening them with arrest. In one case, the ACLU says, a THP officer tackled an observer and arrested her, after which she spent 27 hours in jail.

Noem's equation of peaceful recording with violent aggression was no more accurate than the stories she told about Good and Pretti. But until the Supreme Court definitively upholds the right to record armed agents of the state as they earn their taxpayer-funded paychecks, law enforcement officers will have a license to continue treating that right as a crime.

'The Right to Gather Information'

The first circuit court victory for the right to record the police was also a defeat. James and Barbara Smith complained that cops in Cumming, Georgia, had prevented them from videotaping public police activity, thereby violating their First Amendment rights. U.S. District Judge Julie Carnes granted summary judgment for the city and its police chief, concluding that the right asserted by the Smiths did not exist. In the 2000 case Smith v. City of Cumming, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit disagreed. It nevertheless sided with the defendants.

"We agree with the Smiths that they had a First Amendment right, subject to reasonable time, manner and place restrictions, to photograph or videotape police conduct," the 11th Circuit said. "The First Amendment protects the right to gather information about what public officials do on public property, and specifically, a right to record matters of public interest." In support of that proposition, the three-judge panel cited prior decisions by the 11th Circuit and other courts upholding the right to film public meetings or "matters of public interest" and recognizing that the right applies to all Americans, not just professional journalists.

"The district court erred in concluding that there was no First Amendment right," the 11th Circuit said. But "although the Smiths have a right to videotape police activities," the panel added, "they have not shown that the Defendants' actions violated that right." Exactly why the 11th Circuit reached the latter conclusion is not clear from the four-page opinion, which is short on details.

The appeals court noted the skimpiness of the Smith panel's reasoning 21 years later in Crocker v. Beatty, which involved a Florida man who was taking pictures of a fatal car crash while standing in the median of Interstate 95. Martin County Deputy Sheriff Steven Beatty grabbed James Crocker's cellphone and told him to leave, which Crocker refused to do until he got his phone back. As punishment for Crocker's disobedience, Beatty arrested him for "resisting an officer" and "left him in a hot patrol car for about 30 minutes."

Although Beatty showed little respect for the right that the 11th Circuit had recognized two decades earlier, the appeals court held that he was protected by qualified immunity, a doctrine that shields police officers from federal civil rights claims unless the plaintiff alleges a violation of "clearly established" law. "Smith's declaration of a right to record police conduct came without much explanation," the appeals court said. "The dearth of detail about the contours of the right announced in Smith undermines any claim that it provides officers 'fair warning' under other circumstances."

As that case illustrates, vindicating "the right announced in Smith" can be a challenge even in circuits where that right has been acknowledged. But Smith, despite its "dearth of detail," started a trend. By 2023, eight of the 12 regional circuit courts had recognized a First Amendment right to record police.

'You Have Taken Enough Pictures'

Just as Beatty did not like it when Crocker took pictures of a car crash, Boston cops did not like it when Simon Glik recorded an arrest. But unlike Crocker and the Smiths, Glik got a green light to sue the officers who were vexed by his videography.

On a Monday evening in October 2007, Glik was walking by the Boston Common when he saw three police officers arresting a young man. Glik stopped, he said, because he heard a bystander remark that the officers were hurting the arrestee. He began recording video of the encounter with his cellphone from about 10 feet away. After the suspect was in handcuffs, one of the cops turned to Glik and said, "I think you have taken enough pictures."

Glik corrected him: "I am recording this. I saw you punch him." When Glik confirmed that he was recording audio as well as video, the cops arrested him for violating a Massachusetts law against "wiretapping." Since that law applied only to surreptitious recordings, a municipal judge dismissed the charge, along with a charge of disturbing the peace. The fact that the officers "were unhappy they were being recorded during an arrest," the judge noted, "does not make a lawful exercise of a First Amendment right a crime."

But was Glik exercising a First Amendment right? Yes, a federal judge ruled after Glik sued the cops who had arrested him on bogus charges. In the 1st Circuit, U.S. District Judge William G. Young said, "this First Amendment right publicly to record the activities of police officers on public business is established."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit agreed. "Is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public?" the appeals court asked in the 2011 case Glik v. Cunniffe. "Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative."

The Supreme Court had made it clear that the First Amendment "encompasses a range of conduct related to the gathering and dissemination of information," the 1st Circuit noted. In the 1978 case Houchins v. KQED, for instance, the justices said "there is an undoubted right to gather news 'from any source by means within the law.'" As the 1st Circuit saw it, "the filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles."

That conclusion was consistent with the 1st Circuit's 1999 ruling in Iacobucci v. Boulter, which involved a journalist who was arrested for filming in the hallway outside a public meeting of the Pembroke, Massachusetts, Historic District Commission. Although that case hinged on other legal issues, the decision noted that the videographer was exercising "his First Amendment rights." Glik also cited "the decisions of numerous circuit and district courts" recognizing "a right to record matters of public interest," including "what public officials do on public property."

Like the 11th Circuit in Smith, the 1st Circuit said "the right to film is not without limitations" and "may be subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions." But unlike the 11th Circuit in Crocker, the 1st Circuit said that right was clearly established, giving the officers who had arrested Glik "fair warning" that their conduct was unconstitutional. In fact, it said, "the brevity of the First Amendment discussion" in Iacobucci and other appeals court decisions recognizing the right to record public officials "implicitly speaks to the fundamental and virtually self-evident nature of the First Amendment's protections in this area."

'Retaliation by Officers'

Glik's experience illustrated the threat that wiretapping laws could pose to people who record the police. Unlike the Massachusetts statute under which he was wrongly charged, Illinois had a law that criminalized audio recordings, surreptitious or not, without the consent of all parties. The ACLU of Illinois, which planned to record on-duty officers as part of a "police accountability program," challenged that law in federal court. Although U.S. District Judge Suzanne Conlon did not perceive a relevant constitutional right, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit did.

"The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts a medium of expression commonly used for the preservation and communication of information and ideas, thus triggering First Amendment scrutiny," the appeals court said in the 2012 case ACLU v. Alvarez. "The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests; as applied to the facts alleged here, it likely violates the First Amendment's free-speech and free-press guarantees."

Five years later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit considered a First Amendment claim by Phillip Turner, who was arrested in 2015 after two officers saw him recording video of a Fort Worth police station while standing on the sidewalk across the street. In the 2017 case Turner v. Driver, the appeals court ruled that the officers were protected by qualified immunity because the right to record them was not clearly established in the 5th Circuit at the time of Turner's arrest. But it also said that would no longer be true going forward: "First Amendment principles, controlling authority, and persuasive precedent demonstrate that a First Amendment right to record the police does exist, subject only to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions."

Three months later in Fields v. Philadelphia, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit noted that observers like Turner were still being harassed by police. The opinion opened by citing George Holliday's momentous 1991 video of Rodney King's encounter with Los Angeles cops. Such recordings "have both exposed police misconduct and exonerated officers from errant charges," the appeals court noted. Yet "despite the growing frequency of private citizens recording police activity and its importance to all involved, some jurisdictions have attempted to regulate the extent of this practice. Individuals making recordings have also faced retaliation by officers, such as arrests on false criminal charges and even violence."

The incidents at the center of that case were especially striking because they involved cops in Philadelphia, where the police department had recognized that "private individuals have a First Amendment right to observe and record police officers engaged in the public discharge of their duties." Despite that acknowledgement, an officer forcibly prevented Amanda Geraci, a member of the police watchdog group Up Against the Law, from recording an arrest during a 2012 anti-fracking protest at the Philadelphia Convention Center. Another officer likewise flouted department policy in 2013, when Temple University student Richard Fields used his iPhone to photograph police as they broke up a house party. Although Fields was standing across the street at the time, the officer who confiscated his phone arrested him for "obstructing" a "public passage."

The 3rd Circuit noted that "every Circuit Court of Appeals to address this issue" had "held that there is a First Amendment right to record police activity in public." The court joined that "growing consensus," ruling that "the First Amendment protects the act of photographing, filming, or otherwise recording police officers conducting their official duties in public." It rejected U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney's assumption that such conduct is protected only when it includes an "expressive" intent. The issue, it said, was not whether Geraci and Fields "expressed themselves through conduct" but "whether they have a First Amendment right of access to information about how our public servants operate in public."

That right, the 3rd Circuit duly noted, is "subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions." But it said there was no need to "address at length the limits of this constitutional right" because the defendants "offer nothing to justify their actions."

The 3rd Circuit nevertheless granted the officers qualified immunity. Although the Philadelphia Police Department had "adopted official policies recognizing the First Amendment right of citizens to record police in public," the commissioner's policy adviser testified that "officers didn't understand that there was a constitutional right." And since the 3rd Circuit had not specifically upheld that right prior to this case, the appeals court said, "we cannot say that the state of the law" in 2012 or 2013 "gave fair warning so that every reasonable officer knew that, absent some sort of expressive intent, recording public police activity was constitutionally protected."

'Clearly Established Law'

While the 3rd Circuit saw no need to address the question of which restrictions on the right to record are "reasonable," that issue was at the center of a case that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit decided in 2018. The dispute involved two activists who were detained by CBP officers because they were taking pictures near ports of entry in California. In both cases, the officers deleted the photos, ostensibly for security reasons.

The 9th Circuit ruled that U.S. District Judge Thomas Whelan had improperly dismissed the resulting lawsuit. Because "the First Amendment protects the right to photograph and record matters of public interest," it said in Askins v. DHS, the government "had the burden of demonstrating that its restrictions on speech were the least restrictive means necessary to serve a compelling government interest." The appeals court remanded the case for further consideration of the facts necessary to determine whether the government could meet that test.

No such analysis was necessary when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit decided Irizarry v. Yehia in 2022. That case involved Abade Irizarry, "a YouTube journalist and blogger" who ran into trouble while recording a DUI stop in Lakewood, Colorado, early on a Sunday morning in May 2019. Officer Ahmed Yehia, evidently displeased, stood in front of Irizarry, obstructing his view. When Irizarry and another reporter objected, Yehia aimed a flashlight at Irizarry's camera and "then drove his police cruiser at the two journalists."

Because Irizarry's lawsuit "alleged a First Amendment retaliation claim under clearly established law," the appeals court held, "Officer Yehia is not entitled to qualified immunity." Although the 10th Circuit "has not recognized a First Amendment right to film the police performing their duties in public," it said, "we recognize that the right exists and was clearly established when the incident occurred." In reaching that conclusion, the court relied on the prior decisions recognizing that right in other circuits, a 10th Circuit precedent noting that "an individual who records a police encounter" is "creating speech," and the Supreme Court's rulings regarding newsgathering.

The following year, by contrast, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit granted qualified immunity to Myers Helms, a Winterville, North Carolina, police officer who tried to prevent motorist Dijon Sharpe from livestreaming his own traffic stop. Helms claimed he was enforcing a town policy aimed at protecting officer safety. "Creating and disseminating information is protected speech under the First Amendment," the 4th Circuit noted in the 2023 case Sharpe v. Winterville Police Department, "and other courts have routinely recognized these principles extend the First Amendment to cover recording—particularly when the information involves matters of public interest like police encounters."

The 4th Circuit embraced that view, ruling that "livestreaming a police traffic stop is speech protected by the First Amendment." It overturned a lower court's contrary conclusion and remanded the case for further consideration of Winterville's justification for restricting that right. But the court dismissed Sharpe's claim against Helms, noting the lack of precedents recognizing the specific right to livestream your own encounter with police.

By the beginning of 2012, Thomas A. Perez, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, thought it was already clear that "private citizens have a First Amendment right to record police officers in the public discharge of their duties." At that point, just two federal appeals courts had explicitly recognized that right. The six decisions since then add further weight to Perez's conclusion that such conduct is "unquestionably protected by the First Amendment."

During the Biden administration, the Justice Department reiterated that "the First Amendment protects the right to record police officers performing their duties in public, subject to reasonable time, place and manner restrictions." That right, it noted, had been upheld by "every court of appeals" that had addressed the issue.

The Trump administration's lawyers, by contrast, have not shown much interest in defending the right to record law enforcement officers. To the contrary, they have questioned whether protesters who object to the administration's immigration crackdown can assert such a right. In response to Tincher v. Noem, a lawsuit alleging that DHS employees retaliated against Minnesota protesters for constitutionally protected conduct, the Justice Department said that claim "fails at the threshold because the Eighth Circuit has not recognized a 'First Amendment right to observe police officers.'"

That was a reference to Molina v. Book, a 2023 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, which includes Minnesota. But as U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez noted when she granted the Tincher plaintiffs a preliminary injunction in January, Molina merely addressed the question of whether, for purposes of qualified immunity, the right to record police officers was clearly established in the circuit as of 2015. "Whether a right was clearly established is a separate inquiry from whether a right is constitutionally protected," she wrote.

Menendez ruled that "the First Amendment protects a right to peacefully observe and/or record law enforcement officers who are engaged in their official duties in public." In support of that conclusion, she cited several 8th Circuit precedents that she deemed relevant and noted the consensus among other appeals courts that have considered the question.

'You're Not Free To Record'

Outside court, the Trump administration has shown even less regard for the First Amendment rights of protesters who record immigration agents. In a 2025 bulletin, the Federal Protective Service, a division of the DHS, described "surveillance" of law enforcement officers (LEOs), including the production and sharing of videos, as a "tactic" used by "demonstrators" and "violent offenders" who were fomenting "unlawful civil unrest." The bulletin also cited "livestreaming LEO interactions" as a "common method" of "threatening LEOs."

Noem employed similar rhetoric at a July 2025 press conference. "Violence is anything that threatens [ICE agents] and their safety," she told reporters, "so it is doxing them, it's videotaping them where they're at when they're out on operations, encouraging other people to come and to throw things, rocks, bottles."

A couple of months later, Tricia McLaughlin, then the assistant DHS secretary for public affairs, likewise described "videotaping ICE law enforcement and posting photos and videos of them online" as a form of "doxing." The government, she added, "will prosecute those who illegally harass ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law." In January, McLaughlin told Wired that "videoing our officers in an effort to dox them and reveal their identities" is "a federal crime and a felony."

During a hearing in February, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, wondered how that could be true. He noted that Pretti was "filming in the middle of the street" immediately before his deadly encounter with immigration agents. "Is filming of ICE or Border Patrol either an assault or a crime in any way?" Paul asked CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott and Todd Lyons, then the acting ICE director. "No, sir," they both replied.

CBP and ICE employees often seem to disagree with that assessment. In Illinois last November, David Brooks was recording an immigration arrest when a Border Patrol agent turned to face him and said, "Get back, or I'm going to shoot you." The agent, who refused to give his name or badge number, then drew his pistol and aimed it at Brooks.

"Shame on you," Minnesota protester Abigail Salm tells an ICE agent in a video posted on X a few days after Good's death. "Listen," he replies, "have y'all not learned from the last couple of days?" When Salm wonders "what's our lesson here," he grabs her phone. The agent then "told me I needed to leave," according to a declaration that Salm submitted in support of the Tincher plaintiffs. When she refused to leave without her phone, she says, he "grabbed me, slammed me down on the hood of my car, and handcuffed me."

A declaration that Minnesota protester Ann Kreitman submitted in the same case includes video stills showing an ICE agent grabbing a woman by the arm and shoving her into a snowbank. Kreitman says the woman, who "had her phone out like she was recording or attempting to record," was not "doing anything violent or aggressive."

In a video posted on X in January, an ICE agent in Minneapolis approaches a man who is standing in the street, holding up his cellphone, and shoves him to the pavement. A cellphone-wielding protester in St. Paul got a similar reaction from an ICE agent, who told him to "get back," shoved him, ran after him, and tackled him.

Yet another video shows an ICE agent telling a driver who is holding a cellphone to stop recording, saying, "You're detained right now, so you're not free to record." When the driver disagrees, saying "we're not detained," the agent reaches into the car to grab the phone, then opens the door, precipitating a struggle. "Give me your phone," he says.

These videos do not necessarily show the full context of what happened, but they do suggest that DHS employees precipitously resorted to the use of force because they were angry at protesters. DHS officials encouraged such hotheaded reactions by describing peaceful recording of immigration agents as "violence" and felonious "doxing." Although it is no doubt irritating to be scolded for doing your job, such speech is indisputably protected by the First Amendment, and so is the "surveillance" that the DHS views as contributing to "unlawful civil unrest."

Constitutional issues aside, this sort of harassment is apt to have a chilling effect on the DIY documentation that can be crucial in uncovering the truth about government violence. "There's an element of necessity here for accountability," Will Creeley, legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, noted the day after Pretti's death. "If we didn't have video footage of what happened to Mr. Pretti yesterday, what would the government tell us? What would we know about it?"

The post Filming Cops Is a First Amendment Right. The Feds Keep Harassing People for It Anyway. appeared first on Reason.com.

The Dangerous Allure When Untalented People Use AI

2026-05-19T15:34:56Z

I recently spoke at my daughter's Girl Scouts troop about America's 250th birthday. I brought a box of tea bags, and hid them in the students' backpacks. I then had the girls search through everyone's bags to illustrate the dangers of the writs of assistance. We then threw all the tea bags into a bucket of water to simulate the Boston Tea Party. (I wanted to simulate the Boston Massacre with nerf guns, but I was overruled.) My daughter often complains that no women signed the Declaration of Independence, so I brought a huge parchment copy of the Declaration, and had all the girls sign them with ballpoint quills. They really felt part of the movement.

At the end of the session, I showed them the classic Schoolhouse Rock video, "The Shot Heard Round The World." I wondered how these young kinds would react to such an old school video from 1975. The animation is crude but the narrative is timeless. The music is still entertaining and the lyrics are clear. The Scouts were enraptured and understood exactly what happened. Plus they connected my lesson earlier about the Revolutionary War with the video. They all booed at the Red Coats and King George.

There is a reason we still watch these videos five decades later. Great care, art, and attention was put into producing this video.

This brings me to the Federal Circuit's attempt at a "School House" rock video. I've since learned that Judge Newman was in the room when Chief Judge Moore played the video. The consensus was "WTF?" They literally erased a federal judge from the video. I understand there is a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing coming up with the Judiciary. The Administrative Office should be held to account for Moore's narcissistic taxpayer-funded fever-dream.

But beyond the substance, I have to criticize the art. It is obvious someone asked AI to generate a theme song about the Federal Circuit. And the output reflects that process. The tune was so bland and boring. The lyrics were completely unmemorable. Even now, I can't remember a single line from the song. The animations were clean enough, but the motions were so unnatural. And the imagery made no sense. Why was Ronald Reagan leading a Conga Line with Uncle Sam in the caboose? Why did the Judges wave glow sticks at Studio 54? Why did Chief Judge Moore fly off the bench to do a dance routine?

Anyone with artistic talent would have realized this video was terrible. But that is the dangerous allure of AI: it allows people without talent to pretend to be talented. Before AI, this video could have never been made. With AI, this video should never have been made. And, because everyone at the Judicial Conference was a captive audience, they have to dutifully applaud. No one will be watching this video in fifty years. I doubt anyone will be watching it in five days.

If I may draw a contrast, the award-winning Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston puts on an annual musical review. This year, in honor of America 250, the Inn produced a show about those who signed the Declaration of Independence, and those who did not. It was funny, moving, and always entertaining. We are blessed in Houston to have such talented judges and lawyers (some of whom are my former students). Chief Judge Elrod and Judge Charles Eskridge were among the leads. One of the lead singers had performed on Broadway. The group did a reprise at the Fifth Circuit Judicial Conference. It was a rousing success.

Even during the pandemic, members of the Houston bench were able to produce a hilarious video inspired by Hamilton.

Patent nerds should not pretend to be talented enough to boast about making a Schoolhouse Rock video. Also, they should stop erasing Pauline Newman.

The post The Dangerous Allure When Untalented People Use AI appeared first on Reason.com.

Bill Maher On The Blatant Double Standard For Antisemitism

2026-05-19T14:59:09Z

I am not a fan of Bill Maher. I saw him perform when I was a Summer Associate in 2008 in Washington, D.C. I found him far more smug than funny. Whatever. Not my cup of tea. But I was moved by his recent segment titled "New Rule: No Jews, No News." He makes the obvious, and powerful point, that modern discourse about "colonialism" and "genocide" is simply anti-semitism dressed up in academic garb. It is also noteworthy that there were only scattered applauses in the crowd. The reliably liberal audience was unsure whether it was safe to laugh. Watch it all, or read the transcript after the jump.

Since yesterday was Israel's birthday, having become a nation on May 14th, 78 years ago, everyone must either wish her a happy birthday or admit they're anti-Semitic.

Now, it's everyone's right in a free country to be anti-Semitic, but enough with hiding behind Israel or Zionism or Netanyahu.

If you think, as so many do now, that when it comes to human rights, Israel is the monster country of all time, you either don't read or you don't care about your own hypocrisy.

Because there are so many worse places. But that's where we are these days. No Jews, no news.

But China, Russia, Sudan, Iran, Myanmar, Haiti, the Congo, North Korea, all way worse.

And that's how you know it's anti-Semitism. It's the inconsistency.

People talk about Jews these days like something out of Stormfront, except it's not Stormfront.

It's an editor from The American Prospect, which is a venerable liberal publication that launched the careers of journalists like Ezra Klein.

And yet no one blinks when one of their editors says, "Israel is a brainwashed, psychopathic death cult that might need to be nuked to save the human race." Uh-huh.

People say the left and the right can't agree on anything these days. Well, there is this one thing they agree on. Right-winger Tucker Carlson has Nick Fuentes and Holocaust deniers on his podcast and wonders along with them,"Who really was the bad guy in World War II?" And The New York Times has on their podcast super leftist Hasan Piker, who they call "a progressive mind," and who says Zionists "should be treated the same as Nazis," which I assume means hung at Nuremberg.

That's what progressive is now? I guess so. The kids are sure into it. They went nuts last year at Coachella for Kneecap. That's the name of an Irish rap group. As if Ireland hasn't suffered enough. Their stage set is a sign that says, "Fuck Israel." And then they send a beach ball around the crowd.

Again, ha ha.

Because again, Israel is the only country in the world doing anything bad. I see why the meathead manosphere and the Code Pink people are on the same page. Because they both went to high school in America and they don't know anything.

So we really could someday soon have the tiki torch "Jews will not replace us" crowd and the Queers for Palestine people working together to elect the next Hitler. There's a North Carolina teenager who's been charged with plotting to drive through a synagogue to fulfill her life goal of killing "as many Jews as possible," because a kid's gotta have a dream. I'm just asking why in the world would this be the dream of some kid in North Carolina?

Why is it the dream of Dan Bilzerian, who's running as a Republican to win a House seat in Florida? Who's Dan Bilzerian? Well, he's a professional douchebag who's attracted 30 million followers by doing this all day and posting it. Yes, he'll fit in fine with the current congress And Dan is fairly typical of the guys in the manosphere when he says, "The only real battle in the world today that I see worth fighting is, fuckin', you know, exterminating Israel. I would sign up tomorrow to go fuckin' put boots on the ground and go fuckin' kill Israelis." Why? Why is this asshole's life about two things, getting more Viagra and exterminating the Jews?

Israel was founded on the idea that anti-Semitism made a Jewish state necessary because Jews would never be safe without one. Can you honestly listen to this rhetoric and not see why that turned out to be true? If you don't have the right-wingers on your side and you don't have the progressives, what do you have?

What's more progressive than college, where professors now say things that would make Kanye wince? Osman Umarji calls Zionists "bloodthirsty animals." Who's he, the leader of ISIS? No, he's a professor right here in California at UC Irvine. And Candace Owens agrees with his assessment of Jews as animals because she says, "Wherever they go, they bring their filth with them." Another "professor," Hamid Dabashi, says of Israelis, "They have a vulgarity of character that is bone deep and structural to the skeletal vertebrae of its culture." These are the kind of statements Goebbels would have read and said, "No notes." I mean, where are the Jewish space lasers when you need 'em?

Now, there are absolutely horrible things said about Muslims, too. That should also be, of course, roundly condemned, like Republican Congressman Randy Fine saying, "If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one." That's awful. But it's not the same as, "They need to be nuked," and "Let's exterminate them."

This is why Jewish people here and in Europe now say they sometimes hide their identity, afraid that the Star of David will get them attacked, as has happened in almost too many places to mention lately. Leave your Star of David at home. But the keffiyeh? You can wear that anywhere. You can wear it to Fiddler on the Roof and you'll get applause. Jew hatred isn't just acceptable now, it's cool. Celebrities love it and make it trendy. It's the new Che Guevara t-shirt.

The "Islamophobia is just as bad" argument is simply a false equivalency. Can you name a Jewish professor who talks about Muslims the way they get talked about? No. Anti-Jewish crimes, hate crimes, now outpace anti-Muslim hate crimes nine to one. It's not a contest, and I'm certainly not saying do more of the other.
I'm just saying these are the numbers, the facts, the reality.

There is a frothing anxiousness for the literal extermination of this one group. And Democrats, where are you? If any other minority group was being talked about this way, you'd break out the kente cloth and have ten benefit concerts. But because you see that so many of your brainwashed-by-TikTok constituents now have an unfavorable view of Israel, you indulge them when you should be correcting them. You don't tell your woke idiots Israel isn't a colonizer or an apartheid state or committing genocide, and that if you brats had to spend a week anywhere in the Middle East other than Israel, you would understand what liberalism is not. All the people likely running for president now on the Democratic side want it known they don't take money from AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, a stance which gives permission to actual anti-Semites to say, "See? We're right about Israel. hat's dirty money from a dirty country." Oh, please, you take money from crypto, and factory farmers, and big tech, from Diddy, and Weinstein, and Epstein, but AIPAC is too far?

Let me just say this to all who ask me, "Why are you harder on the Democrats than you used to be?" Until you fix this whole issue, stop asking me.

The post Bill Maher On The Blatant Double Standard For Antisemitism appeared first on Reason.com.

What I Learned Shadowing California's Katana-Wielding Anti-Squatter Enforcers

2026-05-19T18:13:35Z

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free.

In this week's newsletter, I wanted to share a recent feature story I wrote for Reason about the strange world of California's professional squatter removal services.

For some time in February this year, I was camped out in an Airbnb in Oakland, California, shadowing James Jacobs, founder of ASAP Squatter Removal, as he went about his work of reclaiming properties from squatters with his trusty katana.

It was a fascinating story to report out, and one that involved being in slightly dicier situations than this housing and zoning reporter is typically used to. The experience taught me a lot about the extreme edges of California's housing crisis and the limits of what Reason will allow me to expense for a story. (Body armor, yes. A sword, no.)

Truly, we are living in Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash.

The reporting process yielded a few observations that didn't make it into the final draft, one of which I'll share here.

A major setting of the story is an apartment building off Oakland's International Boulevard that had been overrun by squatters. Jacobs had been hired by the owner to attempt to remove them.

Running down the middle of International Boulevard is a dedicated lane for the new Tempo bus rapid transit line. The lane was completed in 2020 for a total cost of $232 million.

That's a significant investment in new public transit infrastructure. Its presence means that properties along International Boulevard now qualify for new transit-oriented height and density allowances created by last year's Senate Bill 79.

Thanks to S.B. 79, one can now build a six-story apartment building, at a density of 100 dwelling units per acre, within a quarter mile of the Tempo line.

The apartment building that features heavily in my story should be a prime candidate for redevelopment into more, better housing under S.B. 79. The two-story building that currently occupies the land is badly deteriorated, thanks in no small part to the presence of squatters there.

Unfortunately, no one is in a position to do anything productive with the property so long as squatters continue to occupy it. It'll continue to be what it is today, a badly run-down apartment building that the owner and neighboring business owners say has been overrun by criminal activity.

As I detail in my story, California's law enforcement agencies typically refuse to remove squatters. Property owners who report squatters are invariably told they need to file for eviction in civil court to remove them.

That's inherently not unreasonable. But California's civil court process is long. In that process, squatters can claim a host of procedural rights granted to legal tenants (which they are not) that stretches out the process for months, and in extreme cases, years.

The upshot is that the state does very little to protect the basic property rights of owners who see their units fall prey to squatters.

That's an injustice all on its own. It leads to a law-and-order problem when desperate property owners turn to gray-market squatter removal services to solve a problem the courts and the cops won't.

This lack of orderly property rights protections also undermines the efforts California's policymakers have put into making its urban areas more affordable and transit-served.

All the upzoning laws and transit investments in the world won't induce the development of badly needed housing on a property that cannot be reclaimed from squatters who are occupying it illegally.

Even the best-conceived urban planning can't make up for the nonenforcement of basic property rights.

My feature is a little too long to fully include in this newsletter. Below is a short excerpt. If it piques your interest, I'd encourage everyone to read the whole thing at Reason.

Samurai vs. Squatters

"We're probably not going to use grenades on this one, right? Because I got 'em."

James Jacobs had hired a motley crew of toughs online to help him clear squatters out of an Oakland, California, apartment building. None of the hired muscle accept the offer of smoke grenades. They intend to complete this job with the baseball bats and firearms they brought from home.

"All right, let's do this," says Jacobs. He grabs his katana and sets off in his long black leather jacket toward the apartment. His improvised militia follows single-file behind him. Half a minute later, they confidently walk through the front door of a two-story building off of Oakland's busy International Boulevard.

From across the street, I watch them enter and wait anxiously for the sound of gunshots.

It was another battle in California's low-burning turf war between the squatters who invade homes and the enforcers hired to reclaim them.

Across the Golden State, uninvited occupants have taken over countless residential properties and then refused to vacate. Homes undergoing renovations, vacant rental units, and even whole apartment buildings have fallen prey to squatters. Once they move in squatters are very difficult to dislodge. The legal process to remove them is expensive and can take months or years.

In their desperation, owners are increasingly turning to a rising crop of private rights enforcers to solve the problem. That includes Jacobs and his company, ASAP Squatter Removal.

Jacobs claims to have developed a long list of tools and tactics that enable him to remove squatters far faster than the court system, all while staying within the bounds of the law. Chief among them is a weapon he carries on every job: a katana, a curved Japanese sword that's more synonymous with samurai warriors than clearing squatters.

"In most industries, swords just don't make any damn sense," Jacobs says. "In this particular one, it actually does." The lightly regulated katana, he explains, is an ideal weapon for indoor self-defense and intimidation.

It's also an ingenious marketing ploy in the competitive world of squatter removal services. Jacobs' company has received a healthy amount of media attention from local and international outlets that never fail to mention his sword in the headline.

According to Jacobs, his company has had a near-perfect success rate of removing squatters.

If they were Jacobs' only adversary, his katana might be the only weapon he needs. But ASAP Squatter Removal is engaged in a two-front war. His main competition comes from law enforcement agencies that are none too keen on ceding their monopoly on the use of force to people like Jacobs.

Every job that ASAP Squatter Removal performs requires it to dodge criminal charges. The company has had only mixed success on the latter front. In January, Jacobs and two associates were charged with a long list of felonies stemming from one of their jobs.

The legal and physical risks inherent in anti-squatter work are why California's landlords have called for more systemic reforms that would make Jacobs' business obsolete.

But with reforms stalled in the state Legislature, many property owners feel they have no choice but to turn to gray market services and the unique set of characters, with a very particular set of skills, willing to take on this dangerous work.

On the streets, it's samurai vs. squatters.

(Read the whole thing here.)

Quick Links

The latest House version of the 21st Century Road to Housing Act removes an effective ban on build-to-rent housing that the Senate had included it's version of the bill. The bill retains restrictions on large institutional investors purchasing homes. A vote on the House's bill is expected this week.
Tokyo's housing is cheap, even if its land is incredibly expensive, writes Alex Armlovich in a new essay.
In Illinois, a state upzoning bill supported by Gov. J.D. Pritzker is encountering predictable opposition from the state's cities and towns.
The Trump administration is using eminent domain to seize a Catholic pilgrimage site on the U.S.-Mexico border as part of a border wall project.
The City Council of Providence, Rhode Island, failed to overcome Mayor Brett Smiley's veto of a rent control ordinance it had passed. On X, the mayor had some wise words about the failure of rent control in other cities.

The rent in Providence is too high and we need real solutions to bring down costs for families. And I understand why rent control sounds compelling, but the reality is that it has consistently been shown to hurt those it is meant to help. In Cambridge, in Berkeley, in Portland,… pic.twitter.com/vEagSDrXca

— Mayor Brett Smiley (@PVDMayor) May 15, 2026

The post What I Learned Shadowing California's Katana-Wielding Anti-Squatter Enforcers appeared first on Reason.com.

Union Summer

2026-05-19T13:24:07Z

They're at it again: Yesterday, the unions representing the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) workers reached an agreement with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the railroad. It's not yet clear what's in the agreement, but the demands of the striking workers were rather extraordinary: Pay raises of 5 percent, plus three years of retroactive raises since their last contract was hammered out in 2022. This might make sense if they were destitute, but they are not: "More than 325 Long Island Rail Road workers are raking in over $100,000 a year in overtime on top of their lucrative salaries, with 11 of them netting at least twice that huge figure in OT," reports New York Post (below yesterday's perfect headline: "Gravy Train").

"The LIRR workers are already the best-compensated transit workers in the United States," the Manhattan Institute's Ken Girardin told the Post. Not wrong. Workers routinely game the overtime system to rake in huge amounts of cash beyond their (already-huge) union-negotiated sums: Supervising foreman Leonardo Espinosa, for example, earned $244,954 in overtime last year on top of his $129,483 salary. Jeffrey Davies (working the same role) brought in $233,808 in overtime on top of $130,291 base. And we haven't even started talking about pensions, and how overtime reporting factors in:

Sounds like they're working hard, right? Thing is though, LIRR has had repeated scandals about overtime fraud. And they look for ways to report massive overtime in their final years approaching retirement, massively spiking their pension payments for the rest of their lives. https://t.co/tYdzE4HZCA

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) May 18, 2026

The LIRR—with its 270,000 daily commuters—brings a lot of value to the many residents of New York City's eastern suburbs (even if it does us the disservice of bringing the Lawnguylanders in*). But in this case, like many others, unions representing public employees have bilked taxpayers.

But wait, there's more!

Yesterday, union representatives advocating for hotel housekeepers reached a deal with management: The average pay of housekeepers at New York City hotels will, per the terms of the agreement, increase to over $100,000.

"The owners of nearly 250 hotels in the city reached agreement with the union, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, on an eight-year contract that would increase wages by more than 50 percent for workers, union officials said," reports The New York Times. "The hotel owners will continue to pay the full cost of providing health-care benefits for 27,000 union members and their families." Here's another highlight: The new deal will "raise the pay of housekeepers from slightly below $40 an hour to more than $61 an hour by 2034."

New York City's average hotel room rates run around $335 a night. The union representatives seem confident that there's room for prices to be raised without demand being affected. I doubt this is true, and I think this type of market distortion will have bad results in the long run:

These feel like the early innings of UK-style destruction of the price mechanism.

Regulatory capture + unions extracting fees through means that are not legible to the general public. The results — college grads can't find work, but housekeepers get $100K+ — are counterintuitive https://t.co/8gIAg2GNKK

— John Loeber (@johnloeber) May 18, 2026

*I am sorry for lightly poking fun at Long Island but I will not stop. My husband is from there, so I've seen a little too much.

Voters' choice: Today, freedom fighter and national debt lapel pin wearer Thomas Massie goes up against former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein in what has become the most expensive U.S. House primary on record down in Kentucky.

Followers of this newsletter are surely aware of how President Donald Trump absolutely hates Massie's guts. Massie has proven himself no sycophant, challenging the president first on the passage of a massive COVID relief bill, then on his spending, his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein, and his penchant for sinking boats in the Caribbean (the legality of which the Pentagon's internal watchdog will investigate).

Campaign spending has totaled over $32 million, mostly due to Trump-aligned and pro-Israel organizations attacking Massie. "Give me somebody with a warm body to beat Massie," Trump said back in March. ("And I got somebody with a warm body, but a big, beautiful brain and a great patriot," he followed up.)

"When President Trump needs backup, Massie wants to debate process," said Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at a rally yesterday. "When the movement needs unity, especially at the biggest moments, Massie's willing to vote with Democrats." Yes. That's exactly why some of us like him: It's about principle, not blind allegiance to party. The role of a member of Congress is not to just give the president "backup."

"On Saturday, Trump successfully ousted Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., after recruiting and backing a primary opponent, GOP Rep. Julia Letlow," notes NBC News. "And earlier this month in Indiana, Trump helped unseat GOP state lawmakers whom he blamed for foiling his redistricting there." It looks very likely that Massie will be out come tomorrow, and Trump's power over Republicans in Congress will be further solidified.

Scenes from Texas: I got back from Texas yesterday, and on the transportation front, it's a glimpse of the future. I mentioned the peace of mind Tesla's self-driving capabilities gave me when having those cars around my toddler, playing on the driveway. But driverless Waymos have overtaken Austin, too (which may be in danger of being recalled due to an incident in nearby San Antonio where a car got swept away in floodwaters, thankfully with no person inside), and Tesla Cybercabs—two-passenger driverless robotaxis—could be seen on the road, though it's not clear whether they're legal yet or in testing or what. Uber seems like it's basically going to be replaced by driverless fleets, and soon. Meanwhile, in my city, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has stopped road testing of Waymos.

QUICK HITS

"Disputed bets are a growing headache for prediction markets, including Polymarket, as they contend with a surge of new traders and dizzying growth in trading volume," reports The Wall Street Journal. "The platforms aim to write clear yes-or-no questions for traders to wager on. But the messiness of real-world events means it isn't always obvious which side was right." (More from "The Mysterious Crypto Judges Who Settle Polymarket Disputes.")
It looks like Hungary might be trying to use the euro.
"Cuba has acquired more than 300 military drones and recently began discussing plans to use them to attack the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, U.S. military vessels and possibly Key West, Fla., 90 miles north of Havana," reports Axios, having received some classified intelligence.
"Three people were killed at a mosque in San Diego on Monday in a shooting authorities said they were investigating as a hate crime," reports The Wall Street Journal. "Two teenage gunmen are believed to have killed three men, including a security guard, at the Islamic Center of San Diego, Police Department Chief Scott Wahl said at a news briefing Monday. Authorities said one of the shooters was a teenager whose mother reported him missing hours earlier."
The only group of refugees the president seems to like:

SCOOP: The Trump administration is proposing increasing the refugee admissions ceiling for fiscal year 2026 to 17,500 for White South Africans, according to an emergency determination sent to Congress and obtained by CNN. That's an increase of 10,000.

— Priscilla Alvarez (@priscialva) May 19, 2026

Kind of a strange rhetorical turn on Taiwan (and allegations of chip stealing make no sense):

Trump on Taiwan: When you look at the odds, China is very, very powerful, big country. That's a very small island. Think of it, it's 59 miles away. We're 9500 miles away. That's a little bit of a difficult problem. Taiwan was developed because we had presidents that didn't know… pic.twitter.com/bKhDQ65vTS

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 15, 2026

The post Union Summer appeared first on Reason.com.

"Instead, Claude Just Made Up More Stuff"

2026-05-19T04:24:56Z

From Brooks v. Lowes Home Centers LLC, decided yesterday by Judge Jerry Edwards, Jr. (W.D. La.):

In resolving a prior motion in this case, the Court discovered that the plaintiff's briefs contained misquoted or mischaracterized precedent…. Mr. Wilkins[, one of plaintiff's lawyers,] took full responsibility. Wilkins explained that he utilized an artificial intelligence ("AI") platform, Claude, to generate the brief. As part of his process, Mr. Wilkins had Claude's draft reviewed by a human law clerk, who discovered that Claude had hallucinated quotations. Mr. Wilkins then confronted Claude with the identified errors and entrusted Claude to correct them. Instead, Claude just made up more stuff. Mr. Wilkins filed that second output into the record without review.

To prevent this from happening again, Mr. Wilkins will have "a human with a law degree" perform a final check of every citation and quotation before filing briefs with the Court. Now for the Court's sanction.

We commend Mr. Wilkins for his candor, honesty, and the remedial measures he has undertaken since the filing of the offending brief. But these mitigating factors do not excuse Mr. Wilkins' conduct. "At the very least, the duties imposed by Rule 11 require that attorneys read, and thereby confirm the existence and validity of, the legal authorities on which they rely." Unchecked, unleashing AI on the Court creates a "burden." Ignorance of the risks of AI usage is no longer an excuse. And here, Mr. Wilkins affirmatively knew the risks. How he then could have blindly and solely trusted Claude to remedy the brief is difficult to fathom.

Wilkins was therefore sanctioned $1000.

The post "Instead, Claude Just Made Up More Stuff" appeared first on Reason.com.

Should a Murder Victim Have Rights in the Criminal Justice Process?

2026-05-17T14:11:25Z

In every state and in the federal criminal justice system, when a crime victim is killed, the law allows a family member or other representative to step into the victim's shoes and assert the victim's rights. That framework has become a routine and influential feature of modern criminal justice, embedded in statutes, constitutional provisions, and everyday courtroom practice. Yet despite its centrality, the justifications for this arrangement have received relatively little sustained scholarly attention. That gap has become more apparent following Professor Lee Kovarsky's recent article, "The Victims' Rights Mismatch," which offers a serious and thoughtful challenge to prevailing assumptions about deceased-victim representation and calls for sharply limiting victims' rights in such cases.

In a new article available on SSRN (and soon to be published in the U.C. Irvine Law Review), Professor Peter Reilly and I defend the conventional wisdom. Our article explains why a victim's death does not extinguish the justification for victim participation when that participation is exercised through a representative. Drawing on history, doctrine, and experience in actual criminal litigation, our article shows that representation of deceased victims is deeply rooted in Anglo-American law and consistent with related doctrines such as survival actions. It further demonstrates that the core justifications for victims' rights—expressive, participatory, and institutional—do not disappear when asserted through a representative. Nor does representative participation reduce sentencing to judgments of "social worth."

Finally, through a detailed examination of United States v. Boeing—the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history, arising from two Boeing 737 MAX crashes (as I have blogged about previously here, here, and here)—our article illustrates how deceased-victim representation operates in practice as an important check on prosecutorial discretion and as a safeguard for transparency, accountability, and public confidence in the criminal justice system.

To give you a flavor our argument, here's our introduction:

A generally recognized legal principle in every state and the federal criminal justice system is that, when a victim is killed by an alleged criminal, a family member or other appropriate representative can step into the shoes of the victim and participate in criminal justice proceedings. The theory is that, because the victim is deceased, someone should be allowed to represent the victim and exercise rights on the victim's behalf. In a recent article, Professor Lee Kovarsky challenges this widely accepted approach. In "The Victims' Rights Mismatch," Kovarsky finds representation for deceased victims "puzzling." He contends that, in such "third-party" scenarios, the justifications for victim participation and influence collapse.

We disagree. While Professor Kovarsky's important and thoughtful article is the first to analyze these issues at any length, ultimately it fails to make a convincing case against the conventional wisdom. When a victim has been killed as the result of a crime, it remains appropriate and useful for a representative of the victim to assert the victim's rights. A recent criminal case—United States v. Boeing— illustrates the importance of victims' representatives' participation. Strong institutional and instrumental justifications exist for allowing representatives to assert victims' rights.

This Article makes the case for deceased-victim representation in criminal proceedings in five steps. Part I describes the legal framework and factual circumstances surrounding rights of victims of deadly crimes. The Article first explains how, in all states and the federal criminal justice system, representatives for victims of lethal crimes step into the victims' shoes to assert rights. Although these representatives (often family members) may have been harmed in and of themselves by the crime, this Article focuses on—and defends—victims' representatives asserting rights on behalf of deceased victims. Such representation is the historically accepted approach in this country. Part I concludes with a factual description of the kinds of crimes involving deceased victims. Although Professor Kovarsky asserts that such crimes are "almost always homicide cases with a harsh penalty," many criminal cases in fact involve a defendant who caused a death without the case being classified as a homicide.

Part II illustrates the importance of representation for deceased victims. In United States v. Boeing, the Boeing Company killed 346 people as a direct and proximate result of its conspiracy to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) about the safety of the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft. In this case, the "deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history," the families of the 346 victims served an important checking function on the prosecutors—a valuable role that Professor Kovarsky fails to recognize. And this checking function also exists in the law of other countries.

Part III turns to broader institutional reasons why representatives of deceased victims should be able to participate in criminal proceedings. This approach tracks other bodies of law, where after death the interests of a deceased person transfer to a representative. Indeed, it would be odd to extend participatory rights to persons injured by crimes but not to those actually killed. And representation of deceased-persons can help provide important information to judges handling criminal cases—information that turns on the unique value of the individual who was killed, rather than the social worth of that individual.

Part IV discusses instrumental reasons for allowing representatives of deceased victims to participate in criminal cases. First, having the victims' voices heard enhances the legitimacy of criminal proceedings. Second, allowing victims' representatives (such as families) to participate in criminal proceedings may have therapeutic benefits, regardless of any impact on the outcome. Third, victims' representatives can help judges reach appropriate outcomes in criminal cases, such as awarding appropriate restitution. Fourth, by delivering victim impact statements, victims' representatives can drive home to criminal defendants their crimes' full impact, which may help in rehabilitating defendants. Finally, at sentencing, deceased-victims' representatives can help serve a public educative function.

Part V responds to Professor Kovarsky's policy proposal of a system of "tiered" rights. Under the plan, deceased-victims' representatives would receive some, but not all, of the panoply of crime victims' rights. Notably, Kovarsky would extend a right to restitution, a right that necessarily involves representatives participating in criminal proceedings. Given that representatives would necessarily be participating extensively in restitution proceedings, there is little justification for excluding them from other aspects of the case.

The Article briefly concludes by observing that eliminating representation for deceased victims would be swimming upstream against an overwhelming tide of public opinion in this country. On the issue of whether deceased victims should have a voice in the process, this widely shared conception of justice is well-founded.

This issue of deceased-victim representation is an important one, and I hope our article leads to more discussion of the issue. You can download our whole article here.

The post Should a Murder Victim Have Rights in the Criminal Justice Process? appeared first on Reason.com.

Plaintiff's Immigration Concerns Don't Justify Pseudonymity

2026-05-17T19:48:34Z

From Thursday's decision by Magistrate Judge JoAnna Gibson McFadden in Doe v. Amazon.com Servs. LLC:

Jane Doe has sued Amazon.com Services LLC for employment discrimination and seeks to proceed under a pseudonym in all public filings….

In short, Doe is concerned that naming herself publicly in this suit will somehow impair her ability to acquire documents necessary for her pending permanent residency application…. According to her motion, she is present in the United States on an employer-sponsored work authorization, and her lawful status "is dependent on maintaining continuous, non-disrupted employment." She "is engaged in an active employment-based permanent residency process," and her "permanent residency application is currently pending before the United States Department of Labor." This process "consists of multiple sequential stages that must be completed in a defined order and within specific timing constraints." Once the Department of Labor completes its review, Doe "must initiate the next phase within approximately three months" and must complete the phase in "December of this year."

Among the materials Doe must submit and verify is "detailed experience documentation, including letters from prior employers describing specialized skills." … She acquired "a substantial portion of the specialized skills that [she] must document" while she worked for the defendant. She "must therefore rely on documentation, verification, or references associated with Defendant, or individuals associated with Defendant, to satisfy immigration requirements." …

Doe contends that "[p]ublic identification of [her] in connection with this [employment discrimination] litigation creates a material risk of impairing [her] ability to obtain necessary cooperation, references, or documentation from the limited available sources during this critical period" of her immigration process. "Delays in obtaining required documentation within the relevant window may affect the sequencing and timing of subsequent stages." …

She argues that she "faces concrete, time-sensitive[, particularized] harm that extends beyond generalized reputational concerns" and "creates a specific vulnerability not shared by most litigants." "[D]elays in obtaining required documentation could disrupt the sequencing of her permanent residency application and jeopardize her lawful status."

Doe describes her "request [as] narrowly tailored" "to prevent public dissemination that would occur through routine internet searches of court filings." The defendant already knows her identity, and granting her motion would not prejudice the defendant's ability to defend itself.

She also contends that "the public interest in open proceedings is not substantially impaired by permitting pseudonymous litigation in this case" because her "claims involve private employment matters rather than governmental action or matters of significant public concern" and "the factual and legal issues in this case can be fully understood and evaluated without public knowledge of [her] specific identity." …

Rule 10(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires that "[t]he title of the complaint … name all parties …." As the Fourth Circuit recently explained,

There is a presumption that parties must sue and be sued in their own names.

Pseudonymous litigation undermines the public's right of access to judicial proceedings because [t]he public has an interest in knowing the names of the litigants, and disclosing the parties' identities furthers openness of judicial proceedings. For that reason, few cases warrant anonymity, and few litigants request it.

Matters of a sensitive and highly personal nature involve sexual assault victims, minors, birth control, welfare cases involving minors born to unmarried parents, homosexuality, "and other particularly vulnerable parties or witnesses."

Doe's suit is not of similar ilk. She is suing the defendant for national origin discrimination and alleges that her new management team wrongfully criticized her work, put her on a Focus Plan with no objective performance standards, and did so immediately after she complained about management. Her complaint has no sensitive or highly personal allegations that warrant protection.

To the extent that Doe is claiming some sort of immigration-related privacy interest, Doe v. Merten (E.D. Va. 2004), is instructive. In Merten, the plaintiffs challenged the alleged policies of Virginia colleges "to deny admission to illegal alien applicants" even though "they fall within the acceptable academic ranges for admissions." The plaintiffs sought approval to proceed pseudonymously, claiming "that if they are required to reveal their identities, the federal government will seek to deport them or their families and they will thus likely decide not to proceed with this suit, effectively rendering them unable to vindicate their rights in this matter."

The court found that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated the need to preserve privacy in a sensitive and highly personal matter. "This is so because unlawful or problematic immigration status is simply not the type of 'personal information of the utmost intimacy' that warrants abandoning the presumption of openness in judicial proceedings….

Doe also fails to show that publicly identifying her as the plaintiff in this action will pose a risk of retaliatory physical or mental harm to her or "more critically" a non-party.

Her concern that "[p]ublic identification in connection with employment discrimination litigation against her former employer creates a material risk of impairing [her] ability to obtain critical documentation from limited available sources" is speculative. This will not suffice. Specifically, there is no information suggesting that the defendant would not timely respond to her request for employment verification.

Furthermore, the defendant knows that Doe filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"). And, in support of her motion, Doe argues that she "does not seek to conceal her identity from Defendant." There is thus no evidence that identifying Doe here would provide additional retaliatory incentive.

Likewise, there is nothing to suggest her current or future employer would take adverse action against her for suing her former employer. Other than the defendant, who already knows of Doe's EEOC charge and will know of her suit, Doe provides no information from which the court can determine who would retaliate against her.

In addition, the defendant's potential unwillingness to provide documentation (or to the extent her motion refers to retaliation by her current or future employer) is not the type of retaliation courts have recognized supports anonymity…. "… [P]seudonymity has not been permitted when only the plaintiff's economic or professional concerns are involved" …. [C]oncern about current and future employment is insufficient to support anonymity ….

Regarding immigration-related retaliation, Merten is again instructive. As described above, the plaintiffs challenged the alleged policies of colleges "to deny admission to illegal alien applicants" even though "they fall within the acceptable academic ranges for admissions." They sought approval to proceed pseudonymously, claiming "that if they are required to reveal their identities, the federal government will seek to deport them or their families and they will thus likely decide not to proceed with this suit, effectively rendering them unable to vindicate their rights in this matter."

The court found that this was an insufficient threat of retaliation …. The plaintiffs relied on a memorandum from the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia that urged colleges "to report undocumented students to federal authorities." But the court found that "there is no sound reason to believe that disclosure of plaintiffs' identities in this suit increases their chances of being deported." "In the first place, the federal government is already aware of each plaintiff's immigration status." …

Doe's stated privacy interests—avoiding a speculative risk of retaliation and/or adverse actions by future employers—do not outweigh the public's right of access to judicial proceedings. She has accused her employer of discrimination based on her national origin. Under well-settled case law, the public's right of access to the related proceedings is crucial for the public's continued trust in the rule of law and the judiciary and, therefore, outweighs Doe's privacy interests. Because Rule 10(a) requires that the complaint name all parties, Doe must file an amended complaint using her real name to proceed….

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Ranking the Worst Supreme Court Decisions of All Time

2026-05-18T20:40:14Z

When Reason magazine celebrated its 50th anniversary back in 2018, I helped mark the occasion with a column about "the 5 worst Supreme Court rulings of the past 50 years," a list that featured destructive and far-reaching decisions on issues ranging from qualified immunity to eminent domain.

I got to thinking about that list when I noticed that yesterday was the 130th anniversary of one of the worst Supreme Court rulings of all time, the Court's notorious decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which upheld a Louisiana law that forbade railroad companies from selling first-class tickets to black passengers. The Supreme Court purported to justify this obvious violation of liberty on the grounds that "the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power" should not be subjected to meddlesome second-guessing by the judiciary.

Plessy is the case, of course, which enshrined the notorious pro-Jim Crow doctrine of "separate but equal," a doctrine that stood as the law of the land until the Supreme Court finally reversed course in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Plessy thus surely belongs at or near the top of any list of the worst SCOTUS decisions ever made.

What else should be on there?

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which said that black Americans "are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution," also clearly belongs in the hall of shame. Indeed, the legal and intellectual travesty of that ruling was exposed in real time via the dissenting opinion of Justice Benjamin Curtis, who pointed out:

At the time of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, all free native-born inhabitants of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, though descended from African slaves, were not only citizens of those States, but such of them as had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors, on equal terms with other citizens.

This means that when the U.S. Constitution came up for ratification in 1787–1788, a number of black Americans were literally among "the people" who "ordained and established" the document by participating in its ratification as lawful electors in the above-named states. Dred Scott's pro-slavery holding ignored this clear historical evidence and trampled on the actual events of the founding.

Another awful Supreme Court decision that should be included in our parade of horribles is Korematsu v. United States (1944), which upheld President Franklin D. Roosevelt's wartime internment of innocent Japanese-American citizens. You will probably not be surprised to learn or recall that this blatant violation of civil liberties was justified by the Supreme Court on the all-too-familiar grounds that the executive branch is entitled to receive broad judicial deference during an emergency.

Much like what happened in Dred Scott, the flaws of the Korematsu judgment were also exposed in real time by a dissenting member of the Court. "It is essential that there be definite limits to military discretion, especially where martial law has not been declared," protested Justice Frank Murphy. "Individuals must not be left impoverished of their constitutional rights on a plea of military necessity that has neither substance nor support."

Now it's my turn to ask you, the readers, to weigh in with your own votes. What other cases belong on the list of the worst SCOTUS decisions of all time? Email me at injusticesystem@reason.com. Also, if you'd like to subscribe to this newsletter (it's free), you can sign up right here. Perhaps The Slaughter-House Cases (1873), which gutted the 14th Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause? Or what about Buck v. Bell (1927), which upheld a state eugenics law that permitted the forced sterilization of the "feebleminded and socially inadequate"?

If enough votes are cast, I'll discuss the results in a future newsletter.

The post Ranking the Worst Supreme Court Decisions of All Time appeared first on Reason.com.

Today in Supreme Court History: May 19, 1921

2025-07-12T04:25:33Z

5/19/1921: Chief Justice Edward Douglass White dies.

Chief Justice Edward Douglass White

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Coffee Is Good for Your Brain

2026-04-24T13:18:30Z

Greek immigrant Pasqua Rosée opened the first coffeehouse in London outside the Royal Exchange in 1652. In his advertising handbill on "The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink," Rosée claimed that coffee was "a most excellent Remedy against" all manner of ills, including consumption, dropsy, gout, scurvy, "the Kings Evil" (scrofula), and miscarriages.

Although Rosée may have been exaggerating, modern medicine strongly suggests he had a point. Drinking coffee is associated with a wide range of health benefits.

Caffeine is the most widely used legal psychoactive drug in the world. Nearly two-thirds of American adults get their daily doses from coffee, according to a 2025 National Coffee Association poll, and they seem to be getting more than a jolt of energy.

A study published by JAMA in February tracked the brain health of 130,000 people for more than 40 years. It found that moderate daily consumption of coffee was associated with a reduced risk of dementia and slower cognitive decline. The researchers reported that dementia risk was 18 percent lower in people who drank up to five cups of coffee a day compared to those who drank little or none. Surprisingly, dementia risk was similarly reduced for carriers of the APOE4 allele, which confers a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease. Caffeine seems to be the key, since people who drank decaffeinated coffee did not experience any cognitive benefits.

A roundup of studies compiled by the National Center for Health Research (NCHR), a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., details the manifold other health benefits of drinking coffee. The NCHR cites a 2018 study in JAMA Internal Medicine that correlated coffee consumption with health outcomes among more than half a million people in the United Kingdom. The researchers found that coffee drinking was inversely associated with mortality over a 10-year period. Compared to nondrinkers, people who drank one cup a day were 8 percent less likely to die, while the mortality rate for those who quaffed six to seven cups daily was 16 percent lower.

During a 10-year period, a 2025 European Heart Journal study of 40,000 Americans found, morning coffee drinkers were 16 percent less likely than nondrinkers to die of any cause and 31 percent less likely to die of heart disease. Afternoon drinkers did not experience those benefits. The NCHR also cites studies indicating that drinking coffee reduces the risks of colorectal cancer by 11 percent to 24 percent, endometrial cancer by 19 percent, Parkinson's disease by 30 percent to 60 percent, and Type 2 diabetes by 33 percent.

Coffee drinkers have enjoyed the beverage's benefits for centuries and will do so for years to come. After all, Starfleet Capt. Kathryn Janeway in the 24th century declared coffee "the finest organic suspension ever devised."

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Brickbat: Let's See Some ID

2026-05-19T04:25:38Z

The British government is considering a law that could include internet curfews for younger users and restrictions across services ranging from games and VPNs to websites. Critics say this will require everyone—not just children—to prove their age to use the internet. Privacy groups, tech companies, and civil liberties organizations warned that the proposal could damage online privacy, weaken anonymity, and turn the web into a "patchwork" of age-restricted spaces. They add that mandatory age checks could create major security risks if personal information is leaked or hacked. Supporters believe stronger protections are needed to keep children safe online.

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Open Thread

2026-05-19T07:00:00Z

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

Chief Judge Moore Commissions Bizarre AI Cartoon About The Federal Circuit Without Judge Newman

2026-05-19T12:20:03Z

On Monday afternoon, I received an email from a PR firm that I thought was a fake. It began:

Please see here for the fun Schoolhouse Rock-style cartoon theme song for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that Chief Judge Kimberly A. Moore played at their Judiciary Conference on Fri. in Washington. The crowd seemed to enjoy, and it does a good job of explaining the court.

For starters, I have spent several year ripping Moore for her stealth impeachment of Judge Pauline Newman. What brilliant PR flack put me on the distribution list? But then I clicked on the link and realized the video was in fact real. Moore actually retained a PR firm to publicize a cartoon theme song that she apparently commissioned.

I didn't think it was possible, but Moore has given Neal Katyal a run for most cringey YouTube video in recent memory. This video was clearly generated by AI. And I would wager AI also composed the lyrics and generated the vocal tracks. Everything about this video is fake. And it is awful.

Try to watch it without wincing. I've downloaded the video, in the likely event they take it down.

Given the standard applied to Judge Newman, this colossal error in judgment by Chief Judge Moore should warrant some sort of cognitive evaluation. How could she possibly think this was a good idea--so good to hire a PR firm to publicize it? Chief Justice Roberts, if you're reading, take away her cases, immediately. Hell, this video is so bad, Judge Moore may have failed to serve during "good behaviour."

After the jump, I'll break down this ridiculous feature, line-by-line.

The opening scene has a monkey riding a rocket ship. There is no explanation. A monkey is riding a rocket ship. Too bad they didn't include Judge Moore jumping over some sharks, like Fonzie on Happy Days. [Update: I am told this image is a nod to the fact that the courthouse once housed NASA.]

Well, it started with a law back in 82. Federal Court's Improvement Act came through. Congress said, "We need a brand new way to bring some consistency to cases every day." They merged some courts. Made a brand new seat, a national court with a special beat. Not by region, not by state, but by subject matter, keeping ruling straight.

Next, we see President Reagan signing the Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1982. I'm not quite sure who those other two people are. Tip O'Neil on the left? No clue who the person on the right is. AI tends to hallucinate people. Do you know what else President Reagan signed: Judge Pauline Newman's commission, which Kimberly Moore has tried to wipe out of existence.

Get ready for the chorus.

Oh, I'm the Federal Circuit. Hear me say. I handle special cases from across the USA. patents, claims, and veterans appeals. International trade and government deals.

Yes, there are three singers who dance and twirl about the Federal Circuit's jurisdiction. [Update: I am told these are supposed to be Judges Reyna, Cunningham, and Stoll.]

Next, we get to the conflict.

When inventors say, "Hey, that's mine." I review those patents and draw the line. If it's trademarks too I'm in the mix, making sure the law stays uniform and fixed.

A mad scientist is fighting over some machine with a bearded man, who looks like a younger (and redder) Alexander Graham Bell.

There is also a man is confused about the difference between Starbeans and Starbeens.

Then there is a music interlude. I kid you not. Ronald Reagan leads a conga line, followed by one of the chorus singers, a scientist holding a beaker, a park ranger, and Uncle Sam.

Again, an Article III judge had to sign off on this idea, and hired a PR firm to publicize it. Things get worse.

I really wish they would leave Uncle Sam out of this travesty, but he isn't free yet. Now Uncle Sam is used to illustrate the jurisdiction of the Court of Federal Claims.

From the court of federal claims, you'll see our appeals come up the chain to me.

And she drags the troops into this quagmire:

Veterans seeking benefits fair. I review each case with thoughtful care.

The greatest generation didn't storm the Omaha Beach for the federal government to publish this slop.

The park ranger and scientist return, joined by a man in uniform with a headset, and a letter carrier.

Federal workers bring their cases along. From board rulings, I decide right from wrong.

The Titanic had a better fate than this Transatlantic journey.

And if trade crosses oceans wide, I help decide what rules apply.

We're back to the twirling chorus singing the bridge.

Oh, I'm the federal circuit. Hear me say. I handle special cases from across the USA. Patents, claims, and veterans are appeals. International trade and government deals.

If you've made it this far, I apologize for what comes next.

Now, you might ask, who wears the robe? who gets to judge cases we know. The president picks. That's how it's done.

Chief Judge Moore created an AI version of herself shaking hands with George W. Bush. There is so much wrong with this picture. For starters, it never happened. President Bush took a famous photo op with his first batch of circuit nominees, including John Roberts, Jeff Sutton, and Miguel Estrada. But Bush did not make this a regular habit. And he certainly did not announce Moore's nomination in 2006 with any fanfare.

The bigger problem is this AI looks nothing like Chief Judge Moore. Let's just say she had an AI-glow up. Her long blonde hair is flawless, her suit is perfectly tailored around her waist, and her makeup is on point. This is how I remember Judge Moore when she taught at George Mason circa 2006. I usually would not opine on a person's appearance, but when an AI video is commissioned, there must have been some sort of approval process for the look.

It gets worse. We go to the Senate.

Then the Senate confirms each one.

In case you can't tell, the nominee is actually singing the lyrics of the song, with the Senators sitting behind him.

They serve for life to stay independent and fair. Applying the law with the utmost care.

They serve for life, of course, unless Judge Moore decides to take away all their cases.

Get ready for the chorus. But our twirling dancers are gone. Instead, Judge Moore twirls. I wish I were joking.

It starts with a group shot. Notice something is missing here?

There are 12 active judges on the court, including Newman. So this group of 16 oddly excludes one active judge (Newman) but includes 5 senior judges. But there are currently 19 total judges (active, including Newman + senior). So it is excluding Newman and two other judges. Judge Jay Plager appears to be one of those senior judges being excluded (who apparently also gets no cases assigned to him by Moore but isn't fighting it). I can't quite figure out who the third 'missing' judge is but I would be curious to know. All of the female judges other than Newman are accounted for. Phew. Chief Judge Moore apparently feels free to include or exclude judges from the bench as she sees fit! She wants to remove Pauline Newman from existence. Again, this was a conscience choice. Unless Harvey AI knew that Judge Moore would not be happy to see Judge Newman, and excluded the nonagenarian.

The NCLA, which represents Judge Newman, had a brilliant response:

It gets worse. Judge Moore jumps off the bench and starts dancing with another judge.

I've…had…the time of my life.

This is far more disturbing than any memes Alex Kozinski ever shared.

The judge at the end makes the Taylor Swift heart hands thing (I think it is supposed to be Kara Farnandez Stoll.)

Seriously, it gets worse.

A disco ball comes down, the Judges whip out glow sticks, and they start a Federal Circuit rave.

Oh, I'm the Federal Circuit. Hear me say. I handle special cases from across the USA. Patents, claims, and veterans appeals. International trade and government deals.

Sadly, they couldn't leave Uncle Sam out of this one last time.

Yeah, that's the law. Stay uniform, America.

I have no more words. Please, no more cringey YouTube videos. I can't handle anymore. You're welcome. The things I do for my country.

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The Missing Part of the State Court Mangione Suppression Ruling?

2026-05-19T00:02:17Z

The state trial court handed down its ruling in People v. Mangione, on whether to suppress part of all of the contents of the backpack Luigi Mangione was carrying at the time of his arrest in the state prosecution against him. In the federal case against Mangione, the federal court back in January denied the motion to suppress the contents of the backpack. But today the state court suppresses some of the contents for the state court prosecution (in particular, the magazine, cellphone, passport, wallet and computer chip) and allows the government to use other contents (in particular, the red notebook).

I found the new opinion a little odd. There's a part I was expecting that wasn't addressed. I thought I would explain what it is. [UPDATE: See below for what appears to be the explanation, rooted in New York state constitutional law.]

First, the opinion. The court begins by concluding that the relevant law is the federal Fourth Amendment and the New York Constitution, even though the actions were those of Pennsylvania police in Pennsylvania. So the heightened restrictions of New York law apply to the Pennsylvania officers, even though they presumably didn't know (and maybe couldn't know) they would be governed by New York state search and seizure law.

Second, the court concludes that New York search and seizure law settles what I have called the "moving property problem": If someone has a backpack, and it is moved away from a person, New York law says it can't be searched incident to arrest because the exigency is gone and the backpack is no longer in the area of the suspect's control.

Third, the court turns to the search at the police station, where the items in the backpack were searched. This search was fine, the court says: although the search at the McDonalds can't be allowed as an incident-to-arrest search, the search at the police station was valid as an inventory search. In particular, this allows admission of the notebook found in the backpack that wasn't searched at the McDonalds.

Fourth, the court says that the warrant the government obtained later that today to search the backpack does not make the contents admissible under the independent source doctrine, as this wasn't an independent source.

Beyond the part about New York law applying—a matter of the scope of New York law that I don't have a view of myself—I'm puzzled as to why there's no inevitable discovery argument based on the inventory search. That's the main argument that the federal court rested on in denying the motion to suppress, based on the same facts: the police were going to inventory everything anyway and find everything anyway, so everything they found in the backpack was going to be discovered anyway in the inventory, regardless of whether they initially searched it lawfully or not.

As far as I can tell, the state court does not address this argument, although I would think it's the key argument to address. Did the state not raise it? Or is there something about New York state law that makes that an improper argument? I don't know, as I haven't followed the case closely enough to say.

UPDATE: A New York lawyer writes in that it's an issue of New York law, where the inevitable discovery exception is a lot narrower than it is under federal law. See People v. Stith, 69 NY2d 313, 318–19 (1987):

When the inevitable discovery rule is applied to secondary evidence, as in Payton, Fitzpatrick and Nix, the effect is not to excuse the unlawful police actions by admitting what was obtained as a direct result of the initial misconduct. It is not the tainted evidence that is admitted, but only what was found as a result of information or leads gleaned from that evidence. The rationale is that when the secondary evidence would have been found independently in any event, "the prosecution [should not be] put in a worse position simply because of some earlier police error or misconduct" (Nix v Williams, supra, at 443; emphasis in original). In contrast, when the inevitable discovery rule is applied to primary evidence, as was done here, the result is quite different. It is the tainted evidence itself and not the product of that evidence which is saved from exclusion. Permitting its admission in evidence effects what amounts to an after-the-fact purging of the initial wrongful conduct, and it can never be claimed that a lapse of time or the occurrence of intervening events has attenuated the connection between the evidence ultimately acquired and the initial misconduct. The illegal conduct and the seizure of the evidence are one and the same.

In the case before us, the suppression court and the Appellate Division, in holding that the illegally seized weapon should not be suppressed, hypothesized that the gun would inevitably have been discovered through a source that was independent of the initial taint. Viewing the situation at the moment of the illegal seizure, the courts below simply assumed the chain of events which would customarily have been set in motion following defendant Newton's failure to produce a registration certificate: that a radio check would have revealed that the truck was stolen, defendants would have been arrested, the truck would have been impounded and the gun would have been found in an inventory search.

We hold that applying the inevitable discovery rule in these circumstances, and effecting what would amount to a post hoc rationalization of the initial wrong (see, Nix v Williams, supra, at 448), would be an unacceptable dilution of the exclusionary rule. It would defeat a primary purpose of that rule, deterrence of police misconduct (see, People v Bigelow, 66 N.Y.2d 417, 427, supra). 320 *320As noted by the Oregon Court of Appeals in State v Crossen (21 Ore App 835, 838, 536 P2d 1263, 1264), in declining to apply the inevitable discovery rule to primary as distinguished from secondary evidence, failing to exclude wrongfully obtained primary evidence "would encourage unlawful searches in the hope that probable cause would be developed after the fact" (see, United States v Massey, 437 F Supp 843, 852-854; Stokes v State, 289 Md 155, 423 A2d 552; State v Williams, 285 NW2d 248, 256-257 [Iowa]; contra, Clough v State, 92 Nev 603, 555 P2d 840; for a discussion of the distinction between primary and secondary evidence, see, 3 LaFave, Search and Seizure § 11.4, at 620-628).

So here the decision to apply the limits of New York state constitutional law to the Pennsylvania search ends up being critical, not only because it answers the moving property issue but also because it limits inevitable discovery.

I have thought about writing an article on the extraterritorial application of state constitutional search and seizure rules, as it presents a fascinating issue. But it comes up so rarely that I couldn't find much on it. This is a particularly interesting application of the issue.

The post The Missing Part of the State Court Mangione Suppression Ruling? appeared first on Reason.com.

Donald Trump, Thomas Massie, and the Long, Slow Death of the Tea Party

2026-05-19T00:25:34Z

In one of Tuesday's most-watched primaries, libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) will go up against an opponent backed by President Donald Trump. The winner of the primary will almost certainly win the general election in Kentucky's 4th congressional district. As Reason's Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward opined in The New York Times last week, "Congress, and the Republican Party, would be worse off without the friction and clarity Mr. Massie provides."

I share her estimation, adding only that the country would be worse off, too. Since arriving in Congress in late 2012, Massie has been a reliable advocate for smaller government, lower spending, and abstention from foreign conflicts. More of all that, please.

But as important: What kind of country have we become if unlikely characters like Massie no longer haunt the halls of power? By his own account, he's equal parts country boy and tech genius, and his "gateway issue into liberty was gun rights" when he showed up at the urbane, liberal Massachusetts Institute of Technology after growing up in the wilds of Kentucky. As he told me a decade ago, "I grew up in a rural area where everybody had guns. And then I went to college and realized people in college wanted to ban these things." As an engineer, he went from that insight to building a mental system that consistently puts him on the side of a federal government that does less and controls less.

But if Massie loses, it's not just the end of his career. (He told Mangu-Ward that if GOP primary voters send him packing, he's going back to his plow and "nobody will ever hear from me again"). It would also effectively be the end of what used to be called the Tea Party, a loose conglomeration of Republican representatives and senators who rode a wave of anti-Barack Obama and anti-George W. Bush sentiment to office in the early 2010s.

Although some said that the tea in Tea Party stood for the "taxed-enough already," the rallying cry of the early Tea Party movement was "stop the spending." For a brief, shining moment, the populist right was fully in favor of actually reducing government spending across the board, full stop.

Covering the movement for Reason, including a truly massive demonstration in Washington, D.C., on September 12, 2009, what was striking to me about the Tea Party back then was that it pulled in many types of people from all over the country. As Reason's Matt Welch observed:

The general vibe was that they were conservative, and then either Republican, formerly Republican, or independent. Every single one had unkind words to say about George W. Bush's spending and governing record, though none had protested him. None expressed trust in Republicans, and most preferred a "throw-all-the-bums-out" strategy. All but one did not care about Obama's birth certificate controversy, and those I asked thought it was foolish to bring guns to political gatherings.

As our early video coverage suggested, this was a movement that was pretty tightly (though not exclusively) focused on spending and debt issues. Recall that under the self-styled compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush, the federal budget grew by about 50 percent over eight years, including huge increases in domestic programs such as prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare and the No Child Left Behind education initiative. Bush was a big-government disaster, and, taking office at the start of a major recession with a large Democratic majority, Obama kicked spending into even higher gear, first in the name of stimulus and then in the name of health care for all.

The 2010 and 2012 elections swept dozens of Tea Party candidates into office, including such high-profile senators as Ted Cruz (R–Texas), Marco Rubio (R–Fla.), Mike Lee (R–Utah), and Rand Paul (R–Ky.), and representatives such as Justin Amash (R–Mich.), Mick Mulvaney (R–S.C.), Mark Meadows (R–N.C.), and Massie himself.

In 2011, Amash and others created the Liberty Caucus, which was very much in keeping with Tea Party principles and explicitly libertarian. By 2015, Tea Party Republicans still had enough swagger to create the Freedom Caucus, a wider-ranging coalition still committed to Tea Party ideals and focusing on procedural rules to ensure even a GOP-led Congress allowed for fair hearings of pending legislation.

At its peak, the Tea Party could claim credit for electing dozens of people to the House and the Senate, and fueling the 2013 government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). But even as all that was happening, leaders in the movement, including veteran House members such as Reps. Michele Bachmann (R–Minn.) barely kept their seats or lost them like Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), while rookies like Reps. Allen West (R–Fla.) and Joe Walsh (R–Ill.) were sent home.

Often discussed as a "leaderless" and "decentralized" movement, key organizations claiming to speak for Tea Party voters started to include anti-immigrant appeals in their communications and call for defense exemptions to spending cuts. The dramatic failure of Mitt Romney not only to beat an eminently beatable Barack Obama in the 2012 election but also to seriously advance a small-government agenda didn't energize the GOP to get more principled as much as it opened the door for Donald Trump, who promised all things to all people.

With Trump's ascendance, whatever energy was left in the Tea Party was pure populist rage and tribal animus rather than anti-government in character. Senators like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz rarely cross Donald Trump, and Marco Rubio continues to fill more and more roles in his second administration. Members of Congress like Mark Meadows and Mick Mulvaney joined the first Trump administration, only to face his wrath and get cashiered, even after pledging fealty to his big-spending ways. Justin Amash left the Republican Party in July 2019, voted to impeach Trump in December 2019, drew rebukes from the Freedom Caucus, and left Congress in 2021 in the face of a very difficult primary. His 2024 bid for the Republican nomination for Senate in Michigan put him at odds with a Trump pick who lost the general election.

The only consistent, libertarian-leaning Tea Party politicians left from the early 2010s are Rand Paul, who seems to be tapping into his small-government bona fides with renewed vigor, and Thomas Massie, who may be on his way back to civilian life. Indeed, even if he wins his primary and reelection, the GOP of which he is part is very different from the one he belonged to when he first arrived in Washington.

And the question remains: What might jumpstart the next broad-based political movement to challenge and reduce the size, scope, and spending of government that is also capable of electing dozens of people to office?

The post Donald Trump, Thomas Massie, and the Long, Slow Death of the Tea Party appeared first on Reason.com.

Why Is Trump Trying To Purge Thomas Massie?

2026-05-18T23:45:24Z

This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Matt Welch are joined by Reason Senior Editor Robby Soave to discuss Rep. Thomas Massie's (R–Ky.) competitive Republican primary challenge and why President Donald Trump has made him one of his top political targets. The panel examines Massie's opposition to the Iran war, his push to release the Epstein files, his longstanding focus on spending, and why his brand of libertarian-style politics has become increasingly rare inside today's Republican Party.

Next, the panel turns to the economy, where inflation continues to rise, the U.S. debt has surpassed gross domestic product (GDP), and working-class voters appear increasingly frustrated with Trump's economic agenda. The editors then examine New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's claim that he closed the city's massive budget gap without cutting services and whether the plan relies more on gimmicks than serious fiscal reform. Finally, a listener asks how to develop political confidence without losing intellectual humility.

0:00—Massie's primary challenge

20:57—Inflation and the national debt

40:31—Listener question on intellectual humility

51:15—Mamdani's $12 billion budget gap

57:41—Weekly cultural recommendations

Mentioned in the podcast:

"Thomas Massie's Moment Has Come," by Robby Soave

"Thomas Massie's Enemies Are Attacking Him With an Unfair Accusation," by Robby Soave

"The War Comes for Your Wallet: Inflation Hits 3.8%, Highest Level in 3 Years," by Eric Boehm

"When Businesspeople Run Government, the Government Doesn't Become a Business," by Veronique De Rugy

"Pete Hegseth Can't Explain Why America Needs a $1.5 Trillion Military Budget," by Eric Boehm

"Trump's 'Golden Dome' Estimated To Cost $1.2 Trillion, New Report Reveals," by Meagan O'Rourke

"Mamdani 'Balanced' New York City's Budget—With a Bailout From Albany," by Joe Lancaster

The post Why Is Trump Trying To Purge Thomas Massie? appeared first on Reason.com.

Donald Trump and Josh Hawley's Federal Gas Tax Holiday Would Save Drivers Less Than $9 Per Month

2026-05-18T22:14:53Z

The week before the United States launched its war with Iran, the average gas price in America was less than $3 per gallon.

The war was supposed to last about a month. Twelve weeks later, it is ongoing with no end in sight. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. Global oil prices have spiked and, as a result, drivers are now paying an average of more than $4.50 per gallon of gas. In all, the higher gas prices have drained an estimated $42 billion out of Americans' wallets.

And with the midterms looming, it is understandable why President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress would want to provide drivers with some relief.

The president has floated the idea of suspending the federal excise tax on gasoline, which adds 18.4 cents per gallon to the price at the pump (and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel).

Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) quickly responded by introducing a bill to suspend the federal gas tax for 90 days. "American workers and families deserve immediate relief and this legislation will do just that," Hawley said in a statement as he introduced the bill.

But how much relief will the gas tax holiday actually provide? Very little, it turns out.

The average driver would save less than $9 per month if the federal gas tax was suspended, according to an analysis published Monday by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which advocates for sound fiscal policies. Every dollar counts, of course, but those savings would not provide meaningful relief from higher gas prices.

Meanwhile, suspending the gas tax for three months, as Hawley is proposing, would create an $10.5 billion shortfall in the federal Highway Trust Fund, which is fueled by revenue from the excise taxes on gasoline. That includes about $3 billion in additional interest costs on the borrowing that would be necessary to close the shortfall, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).

The trust fund is already facing insolvency as soon as 2028, and a temporary gas tax holiday would accelerate that crisis. The CRFB estimates that a three-month gas tax holiday would cause the trust fund to run dry seven weeks earlier than currently expected.

It's good to see politicians instinctively turn to tax cuts as a way to lower the cost of living—but, like with all tax cuts, that is a policy that only works if you cut spending too. Unfortunately, road construction and repairs are still necessary even when gas is expensive.

Could we find better ways to finance highways and other transportation infrastructure that don't require a federal gas tax? Sure! But Trump and Hawley are not proposing to do that. They are proposing to blow another hole in the federal budget in an attempt to escape the political consequences of poor decision making.

This is another situation where Trump's second term is mirroring the failures of Joe Biden's presidency. When inflation was surging during 2022, the Biden administration also floated the idea of suspending the gasoline excise tax for three months.

Then, like now, serious analyses of the proposal showed that it would save the average driver very little money. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated that per capita savings would total between $4.79 and $14.31 over three months. Meanwhile, the tax holiday would have blown an estimated $6 billion hole in the federal highway budget.

It was a bad trade-off then, and it is a bad trade-off now.

Thankfully, some prominent Republicans seem uninterested in going along with it.

"The best way to get gas prices to normalize in my view is to get the [Strait of Hormuz] open," Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R–S.D.) said last week. "We do have a Highway Trust Fund and it does perform an important service in making sure that we've got highways and roadways across our country that are serviceable."

Exactly.

If Trump wants to relieve Americans from the pain of higher gas prices, he could swiftly end the war in Iran (and avoid stumbling into more conflicts like it). Until that happens, global oil prices will remain high—and a gimmicky tax holiday won't fix it.

The post Donald Trump and Josh Hawley's Federal Gas Tax Holiday Would Save Drivers Less Than $9 Per Month appeared first on Reason.com.

Jared Polis' Controversial Commutation of Tina Peters' Prison Sentence Upholds Freedom of Speech

2026-05-18T18:17:02Z

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, is catching a lot of flak for granting clemency to former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, a conspiracy theorist who was sentenced to nearly nine years in jail and prison for compromising election security in a vain effort to show that voting machines were rigged against Donald Trump in 2020. Yet despite the vehement criticism of Polis' decision and legitimate questions about its timing, his stated reasons for approving Peters' early release are compelling.

On Friday, Polis commuted Peters' sentence to four years and four and a half months, saying she would be released on June 1 to serve the rest of that sentence on parole. Trump, who had repeatedly said Peters should be freed and had even granted her a pardon that had no practical effect because the president's clemency powers do not extend to state crimes, was predictably pleased.

Just as predictably, Trump's detractors were incensed. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, warned that the commutation would "validate and embolden the election denial movement and leave a dark, dangerous imprint on American democracy for years to come." Matt Crane, a former Republican election official who is now executive director of the Colorado Clerks Association, said the organization's members were "furious, disgusted, and deeply disappointed" by the governor's "shameful" decision, saying it "supports the attack on the legitimacy of American elections."

Such reactions fail to grapple with Polis' avowed justification for commuting Peters' sentence. In his May 15 clemency letter to Peters, Polis mentioned two main concerns about her punishment. First, he said, nine years of incarceration is "an extremely unusual and lengthy sentence for a first time offender who committed nonviolent crimes." Second, Polis agreed with a state appeals court that the sentence was based partly on Peters' beliefs rather than her illegal conduct, thereby violating her First Amendment rights.

The bizarre episode at the center of the case against Peters involved unauthorized access to voting machines, which she facilitated by falsely identifying Gerald Wood, a local I.T. consultant, as a county employee, and allowing Conan Hayes, another promoter of Trump's stolen-election fantasy, to pose as Wood. Using Wood's ill-gotten employee badge, Hayes made a copy of voting machine software during the county's annual update of the system in May 2021. Peters disabled security cameras while that was happening but used her own cellphone to record the process. The scheme was uncovered after employees at the Colorado secretary of state's office learned that stills from that video, including one showing the county's passwords, had been posted online.

In 2024, a state jury convicted Peters of seven felonies and misdemeanors: three counts of attempting to influence a public servant by deceit and one count each of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty, and failure to comply with the secretary of state's requirements. District Court Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced her to six months in the Mesa County jail for the misdemeanors, plus eight years and three months in prison for the felonies.

"Your lies are well documented, and these convictions are serious," Barrett said when he imposed that sentence. "At bottom, this case was about your corrupt conduct," he said, noting that "you abused your position."

Barrett also faulted Peters for her lack of contrition. "I'm convinced you would do it all over again if you could," he said. "You're as defiant as a defendant as this court has ever seen."

Here Barrett began to venture into considerations that a state appeals court would later deem legally irrelevant and constitutionally problematic. "You're a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that's been proven to be junk time and time again," he said, alluding to her continuing promotion of the false claim that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election. "This is what makes Ms. Peters such a danger to our community. It's the position she held that has provided her the pulpit from which she can preach these lies, the undermining of our democratic process, the undermining of the belief and confidence in our election systems."

Barrett said "the damage that is caused and continues to be caused is just as bad, if not worse, than the physical violence that this court sees on an all too regular basis." He added that "it's particularly damaging when those words come from someone who holds a position of influence like you." Peters had made "every effort to undermine the integrity of our elections and [the] public's trust in our institutions," Barrett said. "You've done it from that lectern the voting public provided you with. Everything you've done has been done to retain control, influence. The damage is immeasurable. And every time it gets refuted, every time it's shown to be false, just another tale is weaved."

Those remarks, the Colorado Court of Appeals noted last month, suggested that Peters' constitutionally protected advocacy figured in the sentence she received. "It is well settled that the First Amendment generally prohibits punishing someone for their protected speech," Judge Ted C. Tow noted in an opinion joined by the two other members of the panel. "Here, the trial court's comments about Peters's belief in the existence of 2020 election fraud went beyond relevant considerations for her sentencing. Her offense was not her belief, however misguided the trial court deemed it to be, in the existence of such election fraud; it was her deceitful actions in her attempt to gather evidence of such fraud. Indeed, under these circumstances, just as her purported beliefs underlying her motive for her actions were not relevant to her defense, the trial court should not have considered those beliefs relevant when imposing sentence."

Although "some of the trial court's considerations were tied to proper sentencing considerations," Tow wrote, "it is apparent that the court imposed the lengthy sentence it did because Peters continued to espouse the views that led her to commit these crimes. The tenor of the court's comments makes clear that it felt the sentence length was necessary, at least in part, to prevent her from continuing to espouse views the court deemed 'damaging.'"

Barrett "failed to acknowledge that Peters is no longer the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder," Tow noted. "She is no longer in a position to engage in the conduct that led to her conviction. So it cannot be said that the lengthy prison sentence was for specific deterrence. To the contrary, the sentence punished Peters for her persistence in
espousing her beliefs regarding the integrity of the 2020 election."

The appeals court concluded that Barrett "obviously erred by imposing sentence at least partially based on Peters's protected speech." It therefore remanded the case for resentencing.

Polis obviated the need for that step by commuting Peters' sentence. Thanks to his intercession, Peters, now 70, will serve less than two years behind bars. Under her original sentence, by comparison, she would have been eligible for parole after serving about four years in prison.

"The crimes you were convicted of are very serious," Polis said in his letter to Peters, "and you deserve to spend time in prison for these offenses." But he added that "your application demonstrates taking responsibility for your crimes, and a commitment to follow the law going forward." He said Peters' expression of remorse, combined with the appearance that she had been punished for her opinions as well as her actions, justified the commutation.

"I made mistakes, and for those I am sorry," Peters said in an X post on Friday afternoon. "Five years ago I misled the Secretary of State when allowing a person to gain access to county voting equipment. That was wrong. I have learned and grown during my time in prison and going forward I will make sure that my actions always follow the law, and I will avoid the mistakes of the past."

Polis emphasized that he had not granted Peters a pardon. "She committed a crime," he told The New York Times. "She deserves to be a convicted felon." But he added that "she was given an unusually harsh sentence." Although her beliefs about the 2020 election are "dangerously wrong," he said, they should not have increased her punishment.

The political context of Polis' decision nevertheless raises questions about his motivation. Even as Trump was urging Polis to pardon Peters, the Times notes, his administration was punishing Colorado with "a series of funding cuts and other actions," including "killing a water pipeline for rural ranchers, moving the U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado Springs to Alabama and dismantling a leading federal climate center in Boulder." Although none of those actions was explicitly tied to the Peters case, the governor's critics accuse him of succumbing to Trump's bullying.

Polis, for his part, insists that the hope of appeasing the president played no role in his decision. He notes that Trump wanted a pardon for Peters, which Polis refused to grant, and that the administration was irked at Colorado for additional reasons, such as its liberal policy regarding mail-in ballots. "There was no immediate indication" that Trump would reward the commutation by reconsidering his punitive actions against Colorado, the Times notes. "That's not something I ever considered," Polis told the paper.

Whether or not you believe that, the arguments against clemency for Peters tended to glide over the central issue of whether nine years was an appropriate sentence for her crimes. "The harm caused by Tina Peters has spread well beyond the borders of Mesa County," Griswold said in a January 13 letter to Polis. "Her actions have been
repeatedly used to spread conspiracy theories, amplify falsehoods, and fuel dangerous election lies. This in turn has increased the threats to election officials and election infrastructure across our state. Releasing Tina Peters via pardon or commutation would validate her actions and embolden election denialism in Colorado and across the country."

Like Barrett, Griswold implied that Peters should be punished not just for abusing her office and betraying the public trust but also for "spread[ing] conspiracy theories," "amplify[ing] falsehoods," "fuel[ing] dangerous election lies," and "embolden[ing] election denialism." But as the Colorado Court of Appeals recognized, that aspect of Peters' conduct, however empirically faulty or morally objectionable, is not a proper basis for criminal punishment in a society that respects freedom of speech.

The post Jared Polis' Controversial Commutation of Tina Peters' Prison Sentence Upholds Freedom of Speech appeared first on Reason.com.

Samurai vs. Squatters: On the Street With the Hired Swords Reclaiming California Property Owners' Stolen Homes

2026-05-19T21:05:52Z

"We're probably not going to use grenades on this one, right? Because I got 'em."

From across the street, I watch them enter and wait anxiously for the sound of gunshots.

It was another battle in California's low-burning turf war between the squatters who invade homes and the enforcers hired to reclaim them.

In their desperation, owners are increasingly turning to a rising crop of private rights enforcers to solve the problem. That includes Jacobs and his company, ASAP Squatter Removal.

According to Jacobs, his company has had a near-perfect success rate of removing squatters.

The legal and physical risks inherent in anti-squatter work are why California's landlords have called for more systemic reforms that would make Jacobs' business obsolete.

But with reforms stalled in the state legislature, many property owners feel they have no choice but to turn to gray market services and the unique set of characters, with a very particular set of skills, willing to take on this dangerous work.

On the streets, it's samurai versus squatters.

Why Won't California Police Remove Squatters? 'It's a Civil Matter.'

Though aggregate numbers are hard to come by, squatting appears to be on the rise in California. The state's housing cost crisis has helped produce the nation's largest population of homeless and housing-insecure people—many of whom are willing to take on the risks of squatting.

High home prices and an arduous eviction system have also helped make squatting a lucrative scam. Owners will often pay squatters exorbitant sums in "cash-for-keys" agreements to reclaim their valuable real estate.

Meanwhile, property owners who call the police about a squatting situation will receive a near-universal response from law enforcement: "It's a civil matter," meaning, "It's not our problem."

Responding officers often feel they lack the competence to tell on the spot whether someone is an illegal squatter or a lawful occupant. They are thus eager to avoid the legal liability that would come from charging a lawful occupant with a misdemeanor trespassing offense.

Police "have been told in training: If somebody says, 'I live here,' leave them alone. Why risk the lawsuit of removing somebody from a house that they may lawfully occupy?" says Sidharda Lakireddy, who manages a few hundred units in the Bay Area and has dealt with multiple squatting situations.

Even in seemingly clear-cut cases, the first instinct of many police officers is to avoid getting involved.

Devlin Creighton tells the story of a squatter who moved into a rental unit he owns in San Jose just a few hours after he managed to convince the previous squatting occupant to leave in a cash-for-keys arrangement.

When the police showed up at the property, they initially told Creighton he'd have to follow the months-long civil eviction process to get his squatter out.

"I'm like, 'She's not going to live here for three months for free. She got here today!'" Creighton recalls telling the officers. "The police, these new guys, were like, 'Well, you know, it's not our job. We're crime. This is civil.'"

Fortunately for Creighton, a more seasoned police sergeant soon arrived who was more willing to hear his side of the story. Creighton's new squatter couldn't answer the sergeant's basic questions, such as "What is your address?" and "When's trash day?" So he forced her to leave. But if the sergeant hadn't been willing to hear Creighton out, the property owner would have had no choice but to go to civil court.

Having to go through a court process to remove a squatter isn't inherently unreasonable. Most states treat squatting as a civil matter to be handled by the courts. California's civil courts move slowly, however. The civil eviction process also enables squatters to claim a long list of procedural rights granted to legal tenants (which they are not) that can stretch a case out for months or longer.

Some lawyers openly sell themselves to potential clients based on their ability to stretch out the eviction process in court. "When it comes to you, the landlord is not stepping on a cockroach; he is stepping on a landmine," reads one eviction defense attorney's website which claims that fighting an eviction in court can prolong one's occupancy for years. "All during the [civil eviction process], you are paying no rent," it says.

The experience some landlords have removing squatters shows this landmine claim is not a bluff.

How Long Does It Take to Remove a Squatter in California?

Zachary, a landlord who owns seven units in the Los Angeles area and who asked only to be referred to by his first name because he fears retaliation from squatters, learned just how lengthy and expensive the civil court process can be when a longtime tenant died in January 2025.

When Zachary went to reclaim the unit, he found four strangers already inside.

"They definitely looked disheveled," he says. "They were people who lived out of suitcases. Their clothes weren't well-kept."

The men showed Zachary a letter claiming they were subtenants of the deceased. They claimed they had a legal right to take over the unit after that person's death.

Zachary's lease with his deceased tenant explicitly forbade subletting, making this claim a legal nonstarter. But when the squatters refused to leave and police refused to eject them, Zachary was forced to file for an eviction in Superior Court of Los Angeles County in February 2025.

Zachary describes the following months as a nightmare. In response to his eviction filing, the new occupants of his home countersued him. They produced phony documents purporting to show they were legal tenants being harassed after they raised habitability issues with the unit. While Zachary waited for a court hearing on the case, his squatters also allegedly moved in several more occupants who proceeded to trash his units, do drugs on the property, and menace his legitimate tenants—some of whom moved out.

The squatters also demanded $50,000 in compensation for the emotional and financial toll that Zachary's "illegal" eviction efforts had caused them.

When a hearing on Zachary's eviction complaint and his squatters' counterclaims was finally held in late March 2025, the judge ruled in his favor in a matter of minutes. Through appeals and hardship claims, however, the squatters managed to delay their actual eviction for another two months.

When Zachary finally reclaimed the apartment in late May, "It was really in disarray. They had left needles and rotting food. They had a cat that had made a mess in there. It was really a terrible scene."

After they'd left, Zachary found out more about who his squatters were. In the papers of his deceased tenant, there was a request for a restraining order against the squatters. That request described how his former tenant had met the squatters on a dating app and agreed to let them stay in his spare bedroom for a week when they claimed to have nowhere else to go.

When his former tenant finally asked them to leave, the document said, they blackmailed him: The squatters said they'd accuse him of rape if he called the cops to kick them out.

Per the restraining order statement, Zachary's former tenant did eventually call the cops on the squatters. The police did not believe their claims of being raped, but they also told Zachary's former tenant that they couldn't remove the squatters without a court order. An officer encouraged the former tenant to file for a restraining order instead.

California's tenants' rights advocates, who uniformly oppose any efforts to expedite the removal of squatters, would describe Zachary's experience as an example of the system working as intended: A property dispute was raised, and after a few months of process, the legal owner was able to reclaim his unit.

But during the time it took for that process to play out, the squatters were able to exploit procedural protections designed to safeguard tenants' rights to menace actual tenants and destroy Zachary's property.

Zachary estimates he spent $14,000 on fees to lawyers and to Squatter Squad, a Los Angeles–based outfit that handled direct negotiations with the squatters, served them legal documents, and helped secure the unit when it was finally vacated. He had to pay another $43,000 to fix the damage the squatters had done to the unit. He also lost rent on both the squatter-occupied unit and on those neighboring units that were vacated because of the squatters' disruption.

Given the costs and ordeal, it's unsurprising other property owners in desperate situations would turn to solutions outside of the court system, such as katana-wielding men in black leather coats.

How James Jacobs Became a Squatter Removal Enforcer

Illustration: Christian Britschgi/Midjourney

Jacobs got his start in squatter removal while working in property management after college. Occasionally, a unit would get taken over by a squatter and the owner would pay him some extra money to figure out a way to get rid of the intruder.

One of his first jobs involved a reclusive squatter who had barricaded himself in a vacant apartment unit. Since the squatter almost never left the unit, Jacobs couldn't simply wait for him to leave and change the locks.

Instead, he settled on a blunter solution: He damaged a water line leading to the apartment. As the property manager, he was then responsible for hiring the plumber to fix it. He hired a plumber friend who continually delayed the job. Without water in the unit, the squatter eventually left.

More anti-squatter jobs soon followed. His day job in property management also gave Jacobs a free legal education in the laws squatters used to stay in units and how the law could be used to get them out.

Over time, Jacobs saw demand for squatter removal services grow.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down most of public life, including the civil courts that process squatting cases. The state of California effectively banned landlords from evicting tenants through 2022. Local eviction moratoriums and other restrictions persisted for years after that.

Eviction filings predictably fell, dropping from around 120,000 per year pre-pandemic to 35,000 in 2021. The number of these filings that led to actual tenant removals is far less. In effect, property owners were stuck with whoever was occupying their home, be they delinquent tenants or illegal squatters. Moreover, the rising price of real estate also raised the returns squatters could demand through extortionary cash-for-keys schemes.

Though California treats squatting as a crime on paper, the cumbersome civil process that determines who is and isn't squatting means the law's criminal penalties mean little in practice.

In 2025, California landlords supported a bipartisan bill—S.B. 448, authored by state Sen. Tom Umberg (D–Santa Ana)—that would have required law enforcement to remove squatters "without unreasonable delay" if they did not vacate a property within 72 hours. Critics of the bill included social justice advocates and legal aid groups who argued that lawful tenants without formal written rental agreements would have no effective protections against eviction.

"This has the potential to target undocumented and marginalized communities without due process of law," said the Western Center on Law & Poverty's Benjamin Henderson in an April 2025 committee hearing. In additional written testimony the center said: "The right to one's home is too fundamental to ignore constitutional due process." Landlords counter that requiring owners to spend months in civil court to reclaim their property poses its own due process problems.

California's S.B. 448 passed unanimously out of two Senate committees in 2025, but it stalled in the legislative process. Lawmakers have not taken up the bill this year.

Meanwhile, California passed legislation giving tenants more time to file responses to their landlord's eviction complaints. It's another procedural right that squatters can claim while delaying their removal.

In Jacobs' view, the entire situation provides a powerful incentive for people to become squatters. "People are realizing, 'Oh yeah, there's money to be made, and I'm not going to get arrested for this," he says.

That insight led him to recognize a business opportunity of his own. He started ASAP Squatter Removal in 2020 as a standalone "eviction alternative" service provider.

How Do Professional Squatter Removal Services Work?

For all the laws and regulations that govern real estate in California, Jacobs' business operates on a more anarchic principle: You truly own only what you physically possess.

The standard ASAP Squatter Removal job involves surveilling a property, reclaiming it through a "breach-and-clear" operation when the squatter leaves for the day, and then boarding up the unit and holding it down for as long as necessary.

This seemingly simple process can get complicated fast.

In a world of real estate scams, Jacobs has to do legal due diligence to ensure that the person hiring him is the actual owner and the people to be removed are, in fact, illegal squatters.

"I've been hired to kick out the owner of the property. That's disgusting," he says. "Sometimes the client is a scumbag."

When homes have been taken over by multiple squatters or by organized gangs, it's also not always possible to breach and clear an empty unit. When the squatters are still inside, the risk of physical altercations is high.

For that reason, Jacobs has his clients sign up him and his fellow squatter removers as tenants of the property to be reclaimed. California is a "castle doctrine" state, meaning you can physically defend yourself in your own home. Jacobs claims the castle doctrine has saved him from legal jeopardy when he or one of his hired contractors has shot a squatter in self-defense. (He declined to provide details on these incidents for fear of getting sued by squatters he's removed.)

ASAP Squatter Removal's website claims a 95 percent success rate. The company's (now private) YouTube channel and Yelp page both include effusive praise from clients who've used Jacobs' services to reclaim their property.

"I was faced with a very difficult squatter situation & no help from local law enforcement. ASAP Squatter Removal resolved my squatter problem in just 3 days!" reads a review on the company's Yelp page.

But happy customers don't negate the physical or legal perils of Jacobs' work.

The risk of serious criminal charges is one reason Jacobs has transitioned to using a sword on jobs. "There's really no gun defense. It's really just gun offense," he says. "But with swords, there is [defense]. I can make a cut towards somebody's hand and disable their hand. And that's not attempted manslaughter."

On the more complex jobs, Jacobs needs every defense he can muster.

Why California Landlords Are Hiring Private Enforcers

The Oakland building Jacobs was hired to clear was one such complex job.

The owner, Maria Auervonderhaid, and a partner purchased the 11-unit building in the late 1990s. For decades, they rented out apartments without incident.

Shortly before the pandemic, Auervonderhaid's business partner died suddenly, leaving her to manage the building by herself—a challenge the aging woman, now in her 80s, was not fully up for. Auervonderhaid also started to show signs of Alzheimer's, which further eroded her ability to take care of her property.

Conditions at the building started to deteriorate. Protected by pandemic-era eviction moratoriums, her tenants also stopped paying rent. Soon word got around that Auervonderhaid was losing her grip on the property.

Her "declining health became readily apparent to people to take advantage of," says Auervonderhaid's lawyer, Thomas Meagher. "Before, she was capable of managing the building. That has changed, and obviously other people saw that too."

Squatters moved into some of the units and changed the locks. Evidence of criminal activity followed. Neighboring business owners reported seeing drug deals, weapon sales, and prostitution at the property.

Christian Britschgi

Maria's son, Theo Auervonderhaid, took over managing the building. He says one of the occupants pulled a gun on his uncle when he showed up to remove accumulated trash. The occupants also ran up enormous power bills by charging allegedly stolen electric vehicles, according to Meagher.

In 2024, Auervonderhaid's nonpaying tenants sued her, citing numerous habitability issues at the property, including pests, overflowing trash, and a lack of security. Meagher says that many of these issues were caused by the squatters themselves—and can't be fixed so long as squatters threaten anyone hired to repair the property.

The police have also been of little help in getting the property under control. Theo Auervonderhaid says that when the cops do respond to calls at the building, they write a report and quickly leave. Meagher says that he's even contacted the FBI to report gang activity at the property, and that they also proved to be no help.

At this point, Theo Auervonderhaid says, he would like to sell the property and be done with it. "I have to take care of my mom's healthcare needs, and I want to go back to work. I don't want this to dominate my life like it has been," he says. "The building has become a money pit."

But the presence of menacing squatters means almost no one is willing to buy it. Before anything can get better at the property, the squatters have to go.

Initially, Theo Auervonderhaid and Meagher had tried to hire conventional security guards to provide protection so that work crews could clear trash and make repairs.

"Security [companies] said we'd need a really aggressive crew to do this one," says Meagher. "What does aggressive mean? You find out when you do research."

Meagher's online research turned up Jacobs, who had been profiled by the local outlet Oaklandside in September 2025 and had since done a number of media hits touting his expertise at removing squatters. At first, Meagher says, hiring someone like Jacobs did not seem appealing. "We did not consider that a choice." But as problems at the property continued to mount, Meagher and his client started to get desperate. "You cycle back to the unpleasant choices like ASAP Squatter," says Meagher.

By February, Meagher had hired Jacobs' crew to do surveillance of the property, figuring that this would at least give him and his client a better idea of what was going on.

Squatters Don't Just Hurt Landlords, They Ruin Neighborhoods

The complex situation at Auervonderhaid's apartment building, with its mix of legal tenants, nonthreatening squatters, and others who Meagher describes as likely gang members, required a lot of surveillance before any move could be made on the property. Jacobs hoped his men could gain a foothold by occupying an empty unit and then go room by room, removing the squatters in whatever way worked.

ASAP Squatter Removal signed an initial three-day contract with Meagher to observe the property. This work began in earnest on Valentine's Day. Jacobs agreed to let me shadow him during this surveillance phase.

At the beginning of the night, we stationed ourselves across the street from the target property in a parking lot that had been taken over by temporary stands offering flowers and oversized teddy bears. Unfortunately for Jacobs, his initial scouting from earlier in the day had turned up no good news.

A unit on the top floor of the building was boarded up and dark. Jacobs declared this a likely sign of counter-surveillance being conducted by the gangsters squatting in the building. He speculated they were filming the street from that unit to ensure that no one, be they police or rival gangs, was sneaking up on them.

There was also a lot of nighttime activity in front of the building. One heavyset man poured gas into a generator out front. A half dozen people appeared to be occupying one of the ground-floor storefront units, which from the outside looked like a drug den.

In the alcove entrance of the neighboring tattoo parlor, we saw what looked like a few drug deals going down. That was bad news too. The outdoor drug dealing meant Jacobs can't pose as a buyer to get inside the building and see the situation from the inside.

Since he was stuck on the outside looking in, Jacobs started circling the property, looking for additional entrances that could be used in an eventual breach-and-clear operation.

The key to good surveillance, Jacobs told me, is to not be detected by the squatters. To avoid attention, Jacobs will sometimes observe a property from a camper van with blacked-out windows. Other times, he'll disguise himself as a homeless person. "You should see me in my rags," he laughs.

On that Valentine's Day, he opted for a simpler dark hoodie and beanie.

As we circled the property, Jacobs said he saw his business as a mission. Squatters don't just victimize property owners, he told me; they ruin neighborhoods. "I'm just trying to make the world a better place," he said, stepping around a homeless guy smoking a white powder off a piece of tin foil.

Our walk revealed no easy additional entrances. The property was sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and a funeral home. Residences covered the rear of the property. Jacobs likes to secure three points of entry, to avoid dangerous bottlenecks during a breach-and-clear operation; that would require traversing other properties.

That looked doable, especially if Jacobs could obtain permission from the adjacent owners to stage on their property. Normally, he said, that's something the neighbors agree to, given the problems squatters can also cause for them. But having to hop a few fences makes it much more difficult to coordinate simultaneous entry of the property from multiple angles.

With this information, we made our way back to the parking lot across the road from the target property, where we met up with Arthur Gutierrez, a tall man in a backward baseball cap who serves as Jacobs' right-hand man.

In the parking lot, Jacobs and Gutierrez hit a marijuana vape pen and reviewed intelligence emailed by the client. Jacobs became excited when he saw that squatters were using the property for a pimping operation. Maybe they could hire a girl to pose as a prostitute to gain access to the building, he suggested.

Gutierrez thought it would be simpler to pose as a john "looking for some ass." Jacobs readily agreed and tried to give Gutierrez some cash to pull off the ruse that night. The latter demurred, joking that he'd need additional hazard pay for that. Besides, the heavyset man feeding gas into the generator had been giving us hard stares the whole time we'd been hanging out in the parking lot. Gutierrez proposed returning a day later, when hopefully there would be fewer prying eyes around.

The next day, the scene outside the building was sleepier. The lack of activity gave Jacobs enough confidence to try to get inside on the pretext of looking for "Sharice."

A few minutes after setting off on this gambit, he comes back with both good and bad news.

The good news was that the heavyset man who'd been giving us hard stares the night before was now sitting in front of the property, so stoned that he didn't recognize Jacobs. Incapacitated drug users will likely offer less resistance in a breach-and-clear operation.

The bad news was that the front door opened onto a single long hallway with a staircase to the second floor at the back and no doors on either side. That could make for a dangerous bottleneck if Jacobs and his men eventually try to take the property.

Jacobs soon left to meet with the client, leaving Gutierrez and me at the property. We left when about a half-dozen young men left the building and started striding toward us. "Let's take a walk," said Gutierrez.

'That's Why It Pays To Rock the Sword'

Gutierrez needed to charge his phone, so I invited him back to my nearby Airbnb. While there, he expressed some trepidation about the Oakland job.

Gutierrez told me he initially connected with Jacobs through a friend who had met the latter in a bar. Jacobs had mentioned that he was looking to hire military veterans for jobs removing squatters from homes.

That kind of work sounded perfect for Gutierrez. He had served in Iraq during the height of the surge, but after getting out of the military he "didn't have the tools in my tool-belt" for civilian employment. What Jacobs was offering sounded more familiar. "I was infantry. Clearing rooms? That's cake."

Most of the ASAP Squatter Removal jobs he'd worked on had been straightforward operations in which they'd move in on a property, board it up, and hold it down, sometimes for months at a time. Gutierrez said he was getting good enough at it that Jacobs had even floated the idea of him starting a Los Angeles branch of the operation.

But things had gone south on a job in San Bruno in January.

The target property was a single-family home their client had purchased in an estate sale. The last legal occupant was a widow who had since moved out. But her son, whom Gutierrez describes as a hoarder with a history of substance abuse, had occupied the property and refused to leave.

ASAP Squatter Removal had managed to secure the property once, but the son had resumed squatting after the client let him return to retrieve some belongings. Then some of the squatter's friends moved in too.

Jacobs later showed me screenshots of texts a woman named Dawn had sent to the new owner. The messages said the son would leave only after being paid $60,000 for moving expenses and lost wages. With the client unwilling to submit to this apparent extortion, ASAP Squatter Removal was hired to go back in.

This time the strategy would be more inventive—and more risky. The plan was to sign Gutierrez, a registered firearm owner, up as the tenant. Because several of the squatters were reportedly out on parole for felony charges, and because felony parolees can't have guns at home, Gutierrez's presence would technically violate their parole and hopefully lead the cops to arrest and remove them.

Christian Britschgi

It was a clever idea, in theory. But it didn't work out well in practice, as the bodycam footage Gutierrez recorded during the operation makes clear.

The video shows eight men entering the property in the middle of the night through a locked side gate that they destroy with a battering ram. "We're the new tenants. We're moving in," the men shout in the same kind of harsh bark used by cops announcing a search warrant.

They encounter the first squatter on the ground floor, a man who appears to be so high that he doesn't even get up when the men burst in.

Things get more tense as the ASAP Squatter Removal crew try to move to the second floor. "If you come up these stairs, we'll shoot you in the face," a woman shouts.

At that threat, both Gutierrez and Angel, a heavyset man who'd taken point, draw firearms. Angel continues up the stairs, his weapon aimed in front of him. Gutierrez follows with his pistol aimed at the ground.

The woman's claim was a bluff. Gutierrez's bodycam footage shows no gun in sight. Instead, they find the woman with a man screaming that he's the real tenant.

"I've been paying the electricity bill. I've lived here for 48 years," he declares.

"48 years? Well, you should have started paying some rent," Gutierrez responds.

Jacobs comes up the stairs. Wire-thin and about 5'8'', he normally cuts a slight figure. That night, confidently strolling through the recaptured home in his black coat, sword at his side, he has all the gravitas of a victorious battlefield commander.

But the victory proves short-lived as the male squatter from upstairs announces that he's calling the cops. "Hide the weapons," Jacobs can be heard saying on Gutierrez's bodycam footage.

Then Gutierrez realizes that he left his phone in his car and that it has their only copy of the lease on it. He grabs Angel and they hustle out to get it.

That's the end of the footage. According to Gutierrez, things only went further downhill after they left.

On their way to get the lease, Angel admitted that he's a felon and is therefore in unlawful possession of a firearm. Meanwhile, the property was now swarming with cops and the rest of the crew were put in handcuffs, though nobody was arrested.

A few days later, Gutierrez was invited to the police station to help account for the situation. When he explained their parole violation plan, the police were not happy to hear it.

Worse still, Jacobs had posted the bodycam footage to the company's YouTube channel, including the part showing the drawn firearms and the part where you can hear him telling the crew to hide the guns. All of which led to the arrests of Gutierrez and Jacobs, who were charged with a litany of felonies, including burglary, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, and a long list of gun enhancements.

At an arraignment hearing in March, Jacobs and Gutierrez arrived without lawyers and entered not guilty pleas to all the charges they'd been hit with. Angel was absent from the arraignment hearing. A warrant for his arrest was issued in January. He was not reachable for comment.

The presiding judge issued a "no contact" order forbidding Jacobs and Gutierrez from going near either the San Bruno property or the alleged victims. The order also forbade them from possessing firearms and body armor.

Outside the hearing room, a defense attorney whom the judge had provisionally asked to represent Jacobs advised the two men to quickly comply with the order and surrender their guns.

At any moment, the police could kick down their door looking for forbidden firearms, he said. That would be an additional charge. "I've seen it a thousand times," said the lawyer, before giving the two a quick fist bump and walking off.

Gutierrez seemed dismayed by this outcome. But when I asked Jacobs about it, he told me he was ecstatic. "That went so well!" he gushed. He'd been afraid they were going to be arrested again at the hearing.

But what, I asked, about the terms of the no-contact order? Will he still be able to do the Oakland job, or any job, without guns or body armor?

"That's why it pays to rock the sword!" he laughed, slapping me on the back. "They didn't say anything about swords!"

The Oakland job was still on.

Some Landlord Advocates Say It's the 'Wrong Way to Handle It'

Professional advocates for property owners advise against using services like ASAP Squatter Removal, citing the legal risks and the potential for physical violence.

"Sure, it's effective, but eventually a property owner is going to be hurt trying to deal with it themselves, a squatter is going to get hurt," says Daniel Yukelson, head of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles. "It's just the wrong way to handle it."

But the fact that people are turning to such extreme solutions is evidence of how broken the state's system for dealing with squatters has become. In a 2024 survey of California landlords conducted by Yukelson's group, 26 percent of respondents had personally been victimized by a squatter at some point.

"I think if you find anybody who's been in the business long enough, it would be hard for us to find somebody who hasn't had to deal with" a squatter, concurs Lakireddy, the Bay Area landlord.

As media coverage of squatting has picked up, some states have passed laws increasing penalties for squatters and expediting the process for evicting them.

In 2024, eight states had laws that criminalized squatting, according to a research brief published by the Pacific Legal Foundation. In 2025, another 15 states made squatting a criminal offence.

Kyle Sweetland, co-author of the brief, says that whether squatting is a criminal offense is a secondary concern. The real issue is whether owners can quickly reclaim their property in court.

Sweetland says states can strike a balance between the rights of owners and tenants by creating expedited civil proceedings for removing squatters. He cites recent reforms in Georgia as a model. Under that state's new system, property owners can serve alleged squatters with a notice to either clear the property in three days, under threat of misdemeanor charges if they don't, or else produce a valid lease.

If occupants do produce a lease, a court must hold a hearing within seven days to determine its validity. If the lease is fake, law enforcement must remove the squatter and the squatter is charged with a felony.

In California, however, reforms like that still remain elusive.

A Squatter Removal Attempt in Oakland: How It Unfolded

In the days following his arraignment over the San Bruno job, Jacobs did some more surveillance of Auervonderhaid's building in Oakland. He didn't learn much from it. It was time to attempt a breach-and-clear, he told me, which he scheduled for the upcoming Saturday.

Now a squad of about a half-dozen rough-looking auxiliaries is mustering in the parking lot of a laundromat a few hundred feet from Auervonderhaid's property. One of the men is wearing a vest with a "security" label and a gun strapped to his thigh. Two others are gripping baseball bats and sipping on McDonald's milkshakes.

Jacobs arrives in his leather jacket, carrying his katana and a large bag of body armor.

It's immediately apparent that things are not going according to plan. Jacobs had told me he wanted at least 12 guys for the Oakland job, so he's about six men short. Gutierrez is noticeably absent.

To make matters worse, no one brought bolt cutters or crowbars to clear any physical barricades they might encounter. Jacobs showed up without the particle board they'd need to board up any units they do manage to secure.

Jacobs is undeterred. "We got to do this smart," he says. "It just takes one slip-up."

Though he's just a few hundred feet from the property they're planning to take down, Jacobs then launches into a loud description of breach-and-clear tactics. As he explains how to enter a hostile building, I recognize several apparent squatters from the earlier days' surveillance passing behind him on their way to get gas for the generator. They look quizzically at the very conspicuous crowd of men with baseball bats and guns. An Oakland police cruiser makes several slow, repeated passes on the street.

During Jacobs' demonstration, a few of his hired helpers start to look side-eyed at each other. This is clearly not the kind of work they signed up for.

With Gutierrez absent, Jacobs has a spare sword that he offers to anyone who wants it. No one takes him up on the offer.

"I'm more proficient with a bat," says one of the men. "I ain't trying to chop someone's head off for someone else's stuff."

Finished with his tactical briefing, Jacobs runs back to his car to grab the leases he's printed off for the job. While he's gone, two of the men, including the one with the security vest and the gun, walk off without saying anything.

After Jacobs returns, he and the remaining enforcers sign the papers that they hope will protect them from any criminal charges if they get into a fight with the squatters.

With the papers signed, Jacobs offers the smoke grenades. With no takers, he and his improvised militia set off down the street to take the apartment.

An exceptionally chaotic scene follows.

From across the street, I watch Jacobs' men enter the property. They are inside for 30 minutes, during which time some of the occupants start to filter out the front door. Jacobs then reappears and runs back to the parking lot, where he meets a late-arriving guard-for-hire.

The two men go back into the building for a few minutes before coming back out. In the parking lot, they both claim that people on the second floor flashed guns at them.

They were only pistols, the late-arriving guard assures me. "No ARs or shotguns or nothing," he says. "They won't blow your legs off."

Jacobs and the late arrival then take off in a car to a Home Depot 20 minutes away to grab the wood they'll use to board up the recaptured units. The rest of the hired muscle is still inside the building.

A few more tense minutes pass before the police arrive.

From across the street, I see the ASAP Squatter Removal men filter out onto the street with their leases in hand. After a brief conversation with the cops, the officers leave and these men start walking back down the street toward the parking lot where they'd initially mustered. Jacobs is nowhere to be seen.

When I approach the rousted anti-squatter crew, they tell me the cops told them to leave after taking a quick report.

"They just looked at [the lease] and said, 'It's a civil matter. You have to go to court,'" one of the men tells me.

One of Jacobs' hired men lights up a cigarette and shakes his head. I ask him if he's ever been hired to remove squatters before. He nods. To do it successfully, you have to be willing to really intimidate people, he says with a dark look in his eyes.

As we stand in the parking lot, some of the squatters who'd left the building start returning to the property. One of them goes to a car, pulls out a sheathed machete, and starts to walk towards us.

I take this as my cue to leave. The job is over. The squatters won the day.

"We made an honest attempt," Jacobs tells me later. "It should have worked." The cops are more interested in protecting the squatters, he complains.

Now that there's been an incident at the property, Jacobs says there's too much heat to attempt another breach-and-clear. He suggests he might try to get the property condemned so that code enforcement will remove all of the occupants. He also shares a few more elaborate ideas for clearing the property, which he asks me not to print.

Will California Ever Reform Its Squatter Eviction Process?

A critical legislative committee assessment of California's S.B. 448, the stalled reform measure, noted that modern eviction procedures are descended from medieval laws that sought to reduce the violence that came with removing illegal occupants from a landlord's property. The idea was for the state to provide an orderly legal process as an alternative to such violence.

Few would deny the orderliness of California's process for evicting squatters. Voluminous tenant protections and civil procedures ensure that every "i" is dotted and "t" is crossed before an owner can reclaim what's been taken from them.

Yet this very process has produced its own form of chaos. People have learned that if they invade a property, they can physically occupy it for months or, in extreme cases, even for years, all while the legal owner spins his or her wheels in costly court proceedings.

Meanwhile, the police, who hold a monopoly on the lawful use of force, cite the same orderly process as an excuse to wash their hands of the squatter problem and reduce the services they provide to property owners. When new market entrants arrive to provide their own rough form of property-rights enforcement, police and prosecutors respond, as legal monopolies typically do, by seeking to crush the competition.

The criminal cases against Jacobs, Gutierrez, and Angel are ongoing. A preliminary hearing on the charges was held in March. And while the presiding judge dismissed the kidnapping counts, the other charges, including assault with a deadly weapon, still stand. A trial readiness hearing is currently scheduled for mid-July.

Jacobs founded ASAP Squatter Removal for the same reasons any entrepreneur starts a business. He observed a demand for a service that was not being provided. He believed he had developed some innovative techniques that would succeed where others had failed. He was willing to absorb the associated risks.

In a more anarchic world, Jacobs might be more successful. In a world where the state was a more effective guarantor of property rights, there might be no demand for eviction alternative services to begin with.

But in this world, as long as California's eviction system remains ineffective and unreformed, some entrepreneur with a sword, literal or figurative, will always step forward to meet the need.

On the streets, it'll still be samurai vs. squatters.

The post Samurai vs. Squatters: On the Street With the Hired Swords Reclaiming California Property Owners' Stolen Homes appeared first on Reason.com.

The Smartphone Theory of Birth Rate Decline Doesn't Hold Up

2026-05-18T16:02:22Z

Just when you think smartphone panic can't get any more dumb, it always does. Case in point: People are insisting that phones are why people worldwide are having fewer kids.

There's one very simple, very obvious flaw with this theory: Fertility rates have been falling for hundreds of years.

History Time!

In the U.S., the total fertility rate—that is, the average number of kids a woman in a given time period will have in her lifetime—has been falling since the U.S. founding. (Cue panic: Is democracy to blame for declining birth rates???)

In 1800, the fertility rate for white American women was 7.04. By 1850 it had dropped to 5.42, and by 1900 it was 3.56. For black women, the fertility rate in the 1850s (the earliest period for which we have data) was 7.9; by 1900 it was 5.61.

By 1930, the U.S. fertility rate had fallen below 3 for both white (2.45) and black (2.98) women, and the decline continued into the 1940s.

Fertility trend lines have not always been a linear decrease. By 1960, fertility rates had ticked up again, reaching 3.53 for white women and 4.52 for black women.

Then they once again tumbled, reaching just 1.74 in 1976.

The fertility rate continued to hover below 2 until 1989, after which it bounced back and forth between just under and just over 2 for a couple decades. It fell to 1.97 again in the 1995–1997 period, then saw small but sustained increases from 2002 (fertility rate 2.02) through 2007 (2.11).

Then it started falling again, going back down to 2 by 2009. It has mostly declined modestly but consistently since then, reaching 1.89 in 2011, 1.76 in 2017, 1.66 in 2021, and 1.62 in 2024.

It's this post-2007 fall that has the technology alarmists going off. Don't you know the iPhone was introduced in 2007?

Moral Panic Alert

In a new piece for the Financial Times, John Burn-Murdoch—author of a criminally misleading and data-torturing article about conscientiousness last year—suggests that "the most recent [birth rate] plunge appears connected with our use of technology." He notes that in the past 15 years, birth rates have been falling "across different cultures and levels of economic development." And what unites all these disparate countries? The use of smartphones, of course.

It sounds so obvious! That is, until you consider the other things that have united many countries over the last few decades.

A giant decline in child mortality. (People have fewer kids when they're less worried that several will die.) Rising housing costs. A big financial crisis. Rising material wealth nonetheless. Rising expectations about the levels of comfort and adult supervision that kids must have. A global pandemic. Globalized media and culture. Increased access to contraception and abortion.

And, of course, better economic options for women and less stigma around remaining unmarried, making it economically and culturally unnecessary for women to marry and have kids. This goes in hand with Increasing educational opportunities for women and other factors leading to later marriages and, in turn, later childbearing.

To suggest that smartphones are driving the trend in fewer births is to ignore these myriad other potential causes in favor of a simple, sensational, and ideologically motivated narrative. It's the epitome of moral panic—honing in on one correlation (birth rates have fallen since the smartphone was introduced) while ignoring the larger context (birth rates have been falling since long before its introduction) and other potential explanations (feminism, economics, etc.) in order to push an attention-getting and easy-to-understand narrative that aligns with prevailing political priorities and scapegoats.

Going out on a limb here, but I don't think the phones did it. pic.twitter.com/zwkSMZNusd

— The Alex Nowrasteh (@AlexNowrasteh) May 17, 2026

4G Connectivity

In his case against smartphones, Burns-Murdoch points to a paper from Nathan Hudson and Hernan Moscoso-Boedo at the University of Cincinnati. It found "the number of births fell first and fastest in the areas that received high-speed mobile connectivity earliest," Burns-Murdoch writes.

This is one of those points that might seem damning—until you think about it for two seconds. What sorts of areas were more likely to get connectivity early? Densely populated metropolitan areas, where residents are more likely to be culturally liberal, where young people with big professional ambitions are more likely to move, and so on. Places that got connectivity later are going to be more isolated and less densely populated areas, which tend to be more conservative and likely to be hubs of economic opportunity.

It could be the phones—or it could be the entirely different set of social, economic, and political circumstances between places that would have had early 4G connectivity and those that wouldn't.

Besides, while Burn-Murdoch suggests that the study found this 4G/fertility-drop link for birth rates generally, the authors of the study directly contradict the idea that smartphones are the main culprit for fertility declines beyond teenagers.

"Whatever the smartphone shock is doing to fertility, it is doing to teens," they write. "The entire 25+ population, which accounts for roughly 80 percent of women of reproductive age in these countries, exhibits no detrended response in the typical country."

Bye, Teen Moms!

The 4G study brings us to another important point: One of the biggest factors driving a decline in fertility rates in the U.S. is a decline in teen pregnancies.

We've gone from more than 80 births per 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19 in 1950 to just under 50 births per 1,000 in 2000 to just 12.7 births per 1,000 in 2024.

The drastic decline in teen births is something to be celebrated. But it does mean fewer births generally.

We've simultaneously seen a big rise in births to women in their late 30s and early 40s. Demographically speaking, this cannot make up for the dearth of teen moms. But it's an important reminder that for a lot of women, motherhood isn't being rejected, just pushed back. And while Americans are having fewer kids, the ones they do have are on average more wanted and more likely to be raised in a stable and financially sufficient environment.

If the smartphones-did-it theory of fertility rate decline turns out to have some merit because high-school sophomores are too online to be having unsafe sex, that's not exactly the kind of thing I think we should lose sleep over. If the iPhone means fewer unplanned pregnancies among people not old enough to vote, well… good.

I prefer this version xD pic.twitter.com/6dqmtlSyOQ

— Θωμᾶς del Vasto (@Thomasdelvasto_) May 17, 2026

The Mexican Example

Historically, fertility rates have fallen as countries get richer. Burn-Murdoch suggests that that can't explain our current predicament, pointing out that Mexico now has a lower birth rate than the U.S.

But this decline not only started before smartphones were introduced; it has coincided with a drastic increase in Mexico's GDP, especially in recent years. At the same time, feminism—legally and culturally—has been ascendant there too.

Access to abortion in Mexico has also changed drastically in recent decades, with Mexico City decriminalizing first-trimester abortion in 2007 (while it remained illegal in most of the country) and more areas only starting to do so around 2019.

The Marriage Correlation

Burns-Murdoch goes on to suggest that the main reason we have fewer children is that we have fewer couples. Many have latched onto this to make a case against phones. The theory goes something like this: Smartphones mean less imperative to date, less dating means less marriage, and fewer marriages means fewer babies.

Again, I must note that there are a whole lot of things other than "too busy on TikTok to date" that can explain declining marriage rates. But there's also no reason to assume that the correlation between fewer kids and fewer marriages goes the way that Burns-Mudroch suggests.

As Stephanie Murray has pointed out, a big driver of marriage is a desire to have kids. Conversely, people who don't want children are likely disincentivized to marry. Dwindling desire for children or a decline in the economic and social imperative to do so could be driving marriage rate declines rather than the other way around.

When It All Comes Back to Feminism

Even when Burns-Murdoch explores broader cultural explanations for fertility rate decline, he also blames smartphones. For instance, while noting that women's rising expectations for relationships could contribute, he suggests that smartphones made it easier to access ideas that helped fuel this phenomenon.

OK. That seems plausible enough.

But if the argument here is that birth rates are down because smartphones let women access information and cultural ideas that convinced them to dream bigger, demand better treatment, etc., that's a rather circuitous way to assign blame to technology. It's like saying "pharmacies let women access birth control pills, therefore drug stores are the cause of birth rate declines."

It also falls into the same category of complaint as "phones led to fewer teen girls having risky sex and unintended pregnancies." Arguing that smartphones caused these things and therefore smartphones are bad starts to seem like a socially acceptable way of saying women's rights and declines in teen births need to be rolled back.

Fewer teen pregnancies, fewer women feeling like they have no choice but to marry and reproduce with people whom they find undesirable, and fewer women feeling trapped into marriage and motherhood may be phenomena aided by smartphones. But if that's the case, good for smartphones!

In the News

Remote prescribing and mailing of abortion pills remains legal, for now. The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in last Thursday, pausing a 5th Circuit ruling that banned both things as the appeals court considered the case. (More details on that case here.) The order comes in the form of an emergency stay, as requested by two abortion pill manufacturers. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.

"Here's what happens now: the case goes back to the Fifth Circuit to be decided on the merits," explains Jessica Valenti. "The stay holds through that process—meaning that mifepristone will continue to be available as it is now. But it's almost certain that this case is going to end up back at the Supreme Court. Several abortion rights leaders tell me they see this as SCOTUS' way of delaying that inevitability for as long as possible. Or at least until after the midterms."

Read This Thread

The Comstock Act is back! (guh)The right has been aching to resurrect the zombified laws prohibiting mailing of "obscene" or "immoral" materials (sex toys! contraceptives! LGTBQ+ books!)Glad this was only a dissent, but not thrilled to see it rear its head at SCOTUS.

— Mike Stabile (@mikestabile.bsky.social) 2026-05-14T22:38:57.037Z

On Substack

The "vibesession" wasn't caused by social media. "The Biden economy was largely defined by a divergence between consumer sentiment and traditional economic indicators," sometimes referred to as the "vibecession," notes Lakshya Jain at The Argument. And this vibesession, many argued, was being driven by TikTok and other media. But research conducted by The Argument suggests this wasn't true:

At The Argument, we've been tracking both media consumption and voter sentiment for the last nine months. With more than 15,000 individual poll responses from voters across America, we were able to assemble incredibly detailed pictures of platform-level ideologies and sentiment across a host of different issues.

In all of that data, I have yet to see anything indicating that the vibecession is—or was—a TikTok-driven phenomenon.

In our March survey, we actually asked people a battery of questions about how they viewed the economy today compared to 25 years ago. When it came to quality of life indicators like "taking a vacation," "buying a house," or "raising children," virtually everyone agreed that the economy is worse today than it was in 2001.

Here's the interesting part, though: The least pessimistic groups were the voters who got their news from social media and cable television. In every single question, those who consumed information from TikTok, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), or cable television were actually slightly more optimistic than other voters were.

More Sex & Tech

Don't call it age verification. Call it centralised personal data collection. And understand that it serves surveillance, not safety for children.

— Tuta (@TutaPrivacy) May 17, 2026

• An Oklahoma bill that would have raised the minimum age for strippers to 21 has failed.

• A bill in North Carolina would assess a $10 tax on anyone entering a strip club.

The post The Smartphone Theory of Birth Rate Decline Doesn't Hold Up appeared first on Reason.com.

Why is the Court GVRing Cases In Light Of Callais That Did Not Turn On The Issues In Callais?

2026-05-18T15:39:49Z

Today the Supreme Court GVR'd two cases in light of Callais. State Board of Election Commissioners v. Mississippi NAACP and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. North Dakota presented the same issue: whether there is a private cause of action under Section 2. And, in both cases, Justice Jackson dissented. She wrote:

This case presents only the question of Section 2's private enforceability, which our decision in Louisiana v. Callais, 608 U. S. ___ (2026), did not address. Thus I see no basis for vacating the lower court's judgment.

Last week, the Court GVR'd a case from Alabama, Allen v. Caster, in light of Callais. Justice Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson. They contended that in addition to a Section 2 claim, the District Court also found a vote dilution claim, so there was no reason to GVR.

Today, the Court vacates a District Court order enjoining Alabama's 2023 Redistricting Plan and remands for reconsideration in light of the Court's new interpretation of §2 of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, 608 U. S. ___ (2026). There is no reason to do so. In addition to holdingthat Alabama's 2023 Redistricting Plan violates §2, the District Court held, in one of the three cases before this Court, that Alabama violated the Fourteenth Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters in Alabama. That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of, and unaffected by, any of the legal issues discussed in Callais. Vacatur is thus inappropriate and will cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week. I respectfully dissent.

What is going on here?

I think much of the criticism of the "shadow" docket is overblown. When the Court grants or denies a stay, you can usually figure out why they did so. But the GVRs are often more cryptic. Often the Court is telling the parties to look at one issue, but in reality know another issue will resolve it.

For example, the cases from Mississippi and North Dakota are Section 2 cases. The question of whether there is an enforceable private cause of action only matters if in fact there is a Section 2 violation. You usually think of the existence of a cause of action as a non-merits threshold issue, but in reality, if there is no discrimination, the Supreme Court won't have to decide the threshold issue.

In light of Callais, I think it very, very unlikely that the Plaintiffs can prove an intentional racial gerrymander. And they may not want to. Remember, the Court vacated the entire judgment of the lower court. The parties have to start from square one. They would have to hold a new trial based on new evidence. And, as all know, Mississippi will likely redistrict in the near future, so the case would be mooted out. The NAACP may simply decide this particular case is not worth fighting. Why litigate over old maps that will not affect anyone? Thus the case goes away I am less familiar with the facts in North Dakota, but I suspect similar dynamic are at play. The Justices may never have to actually decide the private cause of action case under Section 2 because Section 2 will have very little vitality post-Callais. (Derek Muller has a new paper on private rights of action for election litigation.)

The Alabama GVR is a bit trickier to figure out. It isn't clear to me that the vote dilution case is controlled by Callais. But perhaps the Justices are hoping the District Court extends the Callais rule to the Fourteenth Amendment context. Then, the Court can summarily affirm, or something to that extent.

The Court's general practice, it seems, is to issue a landmark ruling then hide for a while. They took this path with affirmative action, abortion, guns, and now will do it with voting rights.

The post Why is the Court GVRing Cases In Light Of Callais That Did Not Turn On The Issues In Callais? appeared first on Reason.com.

The Second Amendment, Guns on Private Property, Guns in Parks, and "The Fifth Element"

2026-05-18T15:23:28Z

From today's Second Circuit decision in Christian v. Keane, in an opinion by Judge Joseph Bianco, joined by Judge Eunice Lee and, as to the Private Proverty Provision, Judge Steven Menashi:

These two appeals involve Plaintiffs' Second Amendment challenge to New York's Concealed Carry Improvement Act ("CCIA") provisions prohibiting firearm possession in two types of locations: (1) private property "where [a] person knows or reasonably should know that the owner or lessee of such property has not permitted such possession by clear and conspicuous signage indicating that the carrying of [guns] on their property is permitted or by otherwise giving express consent; and (2) "sensitive locations. Plaintiffs challenge the Private Property Provision, as applied to private property open to the public. Plaintiffs asserted only a facial challenge to the Public Parks Provision in the district court, but now also seek to raise an as-applied challenge based upon its application to rural parks.

We conclude that the Private Property Provision, as applied to private property open to the public, is unconstitutional because the State did not carry its burden of demonstrating that the restriction falls within our Nation's historical tradition of gun regulations, as required under the framework set forth in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022). On the other hand, we conclude that the Public Parks Provision survives Plaintiffs' facial challenge because the State has carried its burden of showing that regulation is consistent with our Nation's historical tradition of banning gun possession in urban public parks. Finally, we decline to address any as-applied challenge to the Public Parks Provision, to the extent it applies to rural parks, because Plaintiffs failed to raise that challenge in the district court.

Judge Menashi dissented in part as to the Public Parks Provision.

The post The Second Amendment, Guns on Private Property, Guns in Parks, and "The Fifth Element" appeared first on Reason.com.

Court Refuses to Order Pam Bondi to Delete Tweeted Booking Photos in Prosecution for Interference with ICE in Minneapolis

2026-05-17T21:00:55Z

From Magistrate Judge Elsa Bullard (D. Minn.) Wednesday in U.S. v. Doyle:

On January 26, 2026, the Government filed a complaint alleging that Defendant Joshua Doyle "did forcibly assault, resist, oppose, impede, or interfere with … Victim 1, a United State[s] Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent" performing official duties, and made physical contact with the victim, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1)….

Mr. Doyle moves for a "gag order" based on two posts that he alleges former Attorney General Pam Bondi made "regarding Mr. Doyle" prior to his initial appearance. Mr. Doyle asks me to "prohibit[ ] the Government from making further statements about [him]" and to direct Bondi to remove the two posts.

On January 28, former Attorney General Pam Bondi allegedly made two posts on the social-media platform, X.

In the first post, made at 12:53 pm., she stated:

I am on the ground in Minneapolis today. Federal agents have arrested 16 Minnesota rioters for allegedly assaulting federal law enforcement—people who have been resisting and impeding our federal law enforcement agents. We expect more arrests to come. I've said it before and I'll say it again: NOTHING will stop President Trump and this Department of Justice from enforcing the law."

In the second post, made at 1:10 p.m., Mr. Doyle alleges that Bondi posted a "'booking' style photo" of him….

Mr. Doyle's briefing suggests three separate grounds for a gag order.

First, he suggests that a gag order should issue based on his compelling privacy interest in the booking photos. He relies on a civil, Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") case, Detroit Free Press Inc. v. United States Department of Justice (6th Cir. 2016) (en banc). There, a newspaper asked the Government to disclose booking photos of defendants in an active criminal prosecution. When the Government denied its request, the newspaper sued, arguing that FOIA required disclosure. The Government argued that nondisclosure of the booking photos was permissible under FOIA's Exemption 7(C).

The court's extensive Exemption 7(C) analysis considered whether the defendants had a privacy interest in the photos and, if so, whether the privacy interest outweighed "the core purpose of the FOIA, which is contributing significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government." The court agreed with the Government that defendants generally have "a non-trivial privacy interest" in booking photos. It remanded to the district court to assess whether public interest in understanding government operations or activities under FOIA outweighed the defendants' privacy interests in that particular case.

Mr. Doyle plucks from Detroit Free Press's lengthy analysis the holding that defendants have a privacy interest in booking photos; he notes that this is consistent with policy and regulations recognizing that booking photos are sensitive information. But as Mr. Doyle seems to acknowledge, a privacy interest alone doesn't authorize me to issue a gag order. Indeed, even Detroit Free Press indicates that booking photos may be disclosed under some circumstances. Mr. Doyle certainly has some privacy interest in his booking photo. But the parties do not provide fulsome discussion of Mr. Doyle's privacy interest weighed against the Government's interests. I therefore reject any suggestion that I can restrain the Government from publicizing the booking photo based solely on Mr. Doyle's privacy interest in it.

Second, Mr. Doyle argues that a gag order should issue because Bondi's X posts violate his Sixth Amendment rights to a fair trial, undermining the presumption of innocence and "creat[ing] an unacceptable risk of prejudice" by tainting "'the minds of the jurors at trial.'" He claims that Bondi deleting her posts would "minimize[ ] the ongoing damage that the Government has already done."

Mr. Doyle relies on Beck v. Washington (1962), which concerned a high-profile criminal case that received significant, lengthy pre-trial publicity. During jury selection, venire "members were examined by the court and counsel at length." Those admitting bias or "preformed opinion" were excused. The defendant used all his peremptory challenges.

The Court's "study of the voir dire indicate[d] clearly that each juror's qualifications as to the impartiality far exceeded the minimum standards this Court established in its earlier cases." Thus, the Court could "[ ]not say the pretrial publicity was so intensive and extensive or the examination of the entire panel revealed such prejudice that the court could not believe the answers of the jurors and would be compelled to find bias or preformed opinion as a matter of law."

Beck concluded: "While this Court stands ready to correct violations of constitutional rights, it also holds that it is not asking too much that the burden of showing essential unfairness be sustained by him who claims such injustice and seeks to have the result set aside, and that it be sustained not as a matter of speculation but as a demonstrable reality." It held that the defendant there hadn't met this burden.

Beck thus teaches that even with significant pre-trial publicity, a robust jury-selection process can safeguard against essential unfairness. Here, the two X posts are far less intensive and extensive than the prolonged media campaign in Beck. Rigorous jury selection can safeguard against any potential prejudice caused. Therefore, I find that Mr. Doyle has not met his burden under Beck to demonstrate the "reality" that Bondi's publication of the two X posts will cause essential unfairness at trial in violation of his Sixth Amendment rights.

Third, Mr. Doyle suggests that a gag order should issue because former Attorney General Bondi was a legal representative in this case when she made the posts. Mr. Doyle acknowledges that prior restraints on speech are strongly disfavored as a serious infringement on the First Amendment rights of the public and the press. But he relies on Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada, (1991), to argue that these concerns are lessened when the speech being constrained is that of the case's lawyers.

In Gentile, the Court considered a challenge to a Nevada Supreme Court rule prohibiting an attorney from commenting about a case to the media if the attorney knew or should have known the comments would "have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding." The Court's earlier opinions "expressly contemplated that the speech of those participating before the courts could be limited," indicating that "a less demanding standard than [the clear-and-present danger standard] established for regulation of the press" applied to legal representatives. Gentile therefore held that the "substantial likelihood of material prejudice" standard was constitutionally sufficient to justify proscribing an attorney's extrajudicial comments under the state rule.

Here, neither party addresses the fact that Bondi is no longer a lawyer in this case [since she was dismissed as AG on April 2] or what impact her now-non-legal-representative status has on the applicable standard. But even under Gentile's relaxed standard for lawyers, I find that Mr. Doyle has not met his burden.

Bondi's two posts do not amount to a prolonged, overly divulgent, inflammatory mainstream media campaign against Mr. Doyle. And if Bondi's posts were reposted by others (a point Mr. Doyle doesn't address), ordering her to delete her original posts wouldn't resolve the problem of potential prejudice. Thus, Mr. Doyle has not shown that prejudice is substantially likely or that the requested remedy could alleviate any likely prejudice. As discussed, jury selection is the best guard against this risk.

The post Court Refuses to Order Pam Bondi to Delete Tweeted Booking Photos in Prosecution for Interference with ICE in Minneapolis appeared first on Reason.com.

Thomas Massie's Moment Has Come

2026-05-18T22:13:31Z

Friends of Rep. Thomas Massie flocked to his Kentucky district to campaign for him over the weekend, drawing the ire of the libertarian-leaning Republican's number one hater: Donald Trump. The furious president called for a new wave of reprisals against those who would defy him, including Rep. Lauren Boebert (R–Col.), who said she supported both Massie and Trump.

"Boebert is campaigning for the Worst 'Republican' Congressman in the History of our Country, Thomas Massie, of the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky, and anybody who can be that dumb deserves a good Primary fight!" seethed Trump on Truth Social. "Even though I long ago endorsed Boebert, if the right person came along, it would be my Honor to withdraw that Endorsement, and endorse a good and proper alternative."

Boebert, to her credit, was not cowed, replying on X that she was "proud to stand by my friend Thomas Massie."

Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) and Rep. Victoria Spartz (R–Ind.) have also campaigned for Massie.

Massie's Race Matters! pic.twitter.com/gdiW7kIUkE

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) May 18, 2026

The president's allies are throwing everything they can at Massie, including a last-minute accusation of personal misconduct involving a former girlfriend. Despite headline after headline proclaiming that the congressman was involved with some sort of "hush money" payment, the actual details are not nearly so salacious: According to Massie, he gave the ex-girlfriend, Cynthia West, between $5,000 and $10,000 to help her move to Washington, D.C. West subsequently obtained, and then lost, a job in Sparz's office, and filed a wrongful termination suit. Both Massie and Sparz deny that she was offered "hush money" by Massie. On the contrary, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights offered her $60,000 to settle the suit, which she refused.

It's the sort of non-scandal that wouldn't even merit media coverage, but Trump's social media boosters have seized upon it. Laura Loomer has posted about Massie incessantly on X, and is even planning to release some sort of interview with West.

This all goes to show that within the Republican Party, crossing Trump is still a risky move. Massie is popular within his district, but Trump is putting everything he can to tip the scales in favor of Massie's challenger, Ed Gallrein. With both sides spending a combined $35 million on the race, it has already become the most expensive congressional primary in history.

Meanwhile, Gallrein is running an anemic campaign that consists entirely of coasting on Trump's endorsement. Gallrein has skipped every debate and refused to answer basic questions about his background. Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein notes that Gallrien has been deliberately vague about his time as a Navy SEAL, leaving voters to assume that he was involved in secret missions. Gallrein has bragged that Trump reviewed his classified files—and if he's good enough for Trump, he suggests, he should be good enough for Republican primary voters.

Needless to say, Gallrein has dutifully backed Trump completely, even on issues that are a tough sell for some Republicans, to say nothing of general election voters. Gallrein has defended Trump's war with Iran and dismissed concerns from constituents about higher gas prices. He has claimed that Trump is playing "five-dimensional chess" against the Iranians. He subsequently altered the analogy to "nine-dimensional chess." Trump's ability to win at chess is expanding beyond the physical constraints of this universe.

Tuesday's primary is expected to be close. Some recent polling has Massie trailing Gallrein, and the challenger is also ahead in prediction markets. Another occasional Trump foe, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R–La.), lost his primary over the weekend, coming in third and missing the run-off. Cassidy had voted to remove Trump from office after January 6 and thwarted some of the Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s initiatives. Now he's gone: Trump may be unpopular in national polls, but within the Republican Party, he's still collecting scalps.

Scenes from Washington, D.C.: It was a gorgeous weekend in the nation's capital, with temperatures finally consistently in the 80s on Sunday. I attended a graduation party, a brunch with other journalists, and the annual Dragon Boat Festival, a Taiwanese cultural event.

QUICK HITS

Trump's statements about delaying weapons sales to Taiwan have raised some eyebrows.
Trump also said that China pledged not to provide military assistance to Iran during the current war.
Some students protested Jonathan Haidt, who spoke at New York University's commencement last week. His remarks were published by The Atlantic.
New data center construction is becoming more and more controversial.
Megan McArdle: "Is France really poorer than Mississippi?" The answer is yes.
Elon Musk just can't stop complaining about the casting for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Here is the academic Oliver Traldi's excellent contribution to this idiotic discourse:

To settle a troublesome discourse, I have provided here the most faithful and poetic possible translation of the beginning of the Odyssey.

We male sex. We
complex. We

fake horse. We
off course. We

sail long. We
hear song. We

pig crew. We
home soon.

— Oliver Traldi (@olivertraldi) May 17, 2026

The post Thomas Massie's Moment Has Come appeared first on Reason.com.

Plaintiff Can Sue Pseudonymously Because She's a Criminal Defense Lawyer with a Gambling Addiction

2026-05-17T19:27:13Z

From E.B. v. Kimi Crush Ltd., decided Thursday by Judge Michelle Peterson (W.D. Wash.):

On March 3, 2026, Plaintiff E.B. filed a complaint on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated, bringing Washington state law claims alleging that Defendants Kimi Crush Limited …, Ant Hive Creations, Inc. …, Prinsloo Global Group, Inc. …, JoyBox Studio Limited …, and Starfish Technology Limited … operated illegal online casino games. Plaintiff states that she is a criminal defense attorney who faces reputational and professional harm if her diagnosed gambling addiction becomes known….

Plaintiff requests to proceed under the pseudonym E.B. to "(i) maintain her privacy when disclosing personal and highly sensitive details, such as her diagnosed gambling addiction; and (ii) protect her from the significant risk of professional and reputational harm[.]" …

A party's use of a fictitious name or pseudonym runs counter to "the public's common law right of access to judicial proceedings and Rule 10(a)'s command that the title of every complaint 'include the names of all the parties[.]'" Nevertheless, the Ninth Circuit "permit[s] parties to proceed anonymously when special circumstances justify secrecy." Proceeding under a pseudonym is permissible when "necessary … to protect a person from harassment, injury, ridicule or personal embarrassment." …

The Court finds Plaintiff has made a sufficient showing of the "need for anonymity to at least warrant provisionally granting her leave to continue pseudonymously until Defendants have appeared." … Plaintiff contends she risks substantial social and professional stigma should her gambling addiction become public knowledge. She raises reasonable concerns that this would affect her ability to attract and retain clients.

The Court also finds, at this stage, that the public has a limited interest in learning Plaintiff's identity. While the public has an interest in the matters being litigated, it is unclear how disguising Plaintiff's identity would obstruct public scrutiny of the important issues in this case.

Finally, without any defendant having appeared in this case, it is too early to assess the prejudice to Defendants. Moreover, Plaintiff states she will share her identity with them during discovery. The Court will therefore defer considering prejudice to Defendants and the availability of mitigating procedures until it has the benefit of Defendants' arguments. Accordingly, the Court PROVISIONALLY GRANTS Plaintiff's Motion for Leave to Proceed Pseudonymously….

I can understand why plaintiff wouldn't want to "[p]ublicly link[] her name to a gambling addiction diagnosis and six-figure losses," because it "would directly threaten her ability to attract clients and sustain her practice." I just don't think that her desire to keep this secret should outweigh the public's ability to supervise what the court does in this case—and indeed prospective clients' ability to decide whether to trust a lawyer who has this problem.

Indeed, the E.B. decision seems inconsistent with the Ninth Circuit nonprecedential decision in Roe v. Skillz, Inc.(9th Cir. 2021), which came out the opposite way on very similar facts, rejecting pseudonymity for someone who said she was a gambling addict and argued "that disclosure could negatively affect her professional standing, as her employer is unaware of her struggles and her work requires interaction with the public who may 'weaponize' it against her." Generally speaking, "That a plaintiff may suffer embarrassment or economic harm is not enough" to allow her to proceed pseudonymously (Doe v. Megless(3d Cir. 2011)); pseudonymity "has not been permitted when only the plaintiff's economic or professional concerns are involved" (M.M. v. Zavaras (10th Cir. 1998), quoting National Commodity & Barter Ass'n v. Gibbs (10th Cir.1989)).

Moreover, courts have mostly rejected pseudonymity as to claims of drug and alcohol addiction, though some courts have disagreed (see nn. 302-05 and accompanying text in The Law of Pseudonymous Litigation). And some courts have concluded that pseudonymity is particular inapt for would-be class representatives—which E.B. seeks to be here—because it "may … preclude potential class members from properly evaluating the qualifications of the class representative," though here too others have disagreed (see nn. 155-156 and accompanying text). E.B. further adds to this disagreement.

The post Plaintiff Can Sue Pseudonymously Because She's a Criminal Defense Lawyer with a Gambling Addiction appeared first on Reason.com.

Notre Dame Pro-Abortion-Rights Professor Ordered to Pay $200K in Fees in Failed Libel Lawsuit Against Student Newspaper

2026-05-16T23:06:23Z

So Special Judge Steven David (Ind. Super. Ct. St. Joseph County) ruled Friday. There had been a dispute about the reasonableness of the attorney fees, as there often is, but the court largely ruled that defendant's fee request was indeed reasonable (with only modest deductions). It also noted that the plaintiff didn't use the opportunity to present live evidence at the fee hearing, which might have offered more of a chance at successfully challenging the fees:

No questions were asked of [defendant's] Lead Counsel. No one asked him to be placed under oath to give additional testimony other than his previous declarations. He was not asked to justify the hours. He was not asked any questions at all that may have helped the trial court judge determine what was reasonable or unreasonable. Such an examination would seem to this trial judge as to have been very helpful to it in its determination of what is reasonable and what is not.

For more on the substance of the case, here's an excerpt from the opinion in Kay v. Irish Rover Inc., decided last year by Indiana Court of Appeals Judge Paul Mathias, joined by Judges Elaine Brown and Dana Kenworthy:

Dr. Tamara Kay appeals the St. Joseph Superior Court's order granting The Irish Rover, Inc.'s, motion to dismiss her defamation claim…. On the dates the alleged defamation occurred, Dr. Kay was a tenured professor in the Keough School of Global Affairs and the Sociology Department at the University of Notre Dame. Her "academic research and teaching is focused on trade, labor, social movements, globalization, organizations, and global health which includes reproductive health and rights." Many of Dr. Kay's extensive writings in journals, newspapers, and on Twitter focus on advocating for abortion legalization.

The Irish Rover is an independent, student newspaper at the University. {[O]ne of its missions is to articulate and defend the Catholic character of the University.} …

After the United States Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Woman's Health Organization on June 24, 2022, Dr. Kay "became more outspoken on the issue of abortion access," including more frequent posts on Twitter. On September 15, 2022, the Indiana General Assembly's legislation limiting abortion in Indiana took effect, although it was enjoined shortly thereafter….

Kay sued over two articles published by the Irish Rover that concerned Dr. Kay's speech. To oversimplify matters somewhat, under Indiana libel law, a libel claim based on speech on matters of public concern can only prevail based on a showing of knowing or reckless falsehood—mere negligence isn't enough, even if plaintiff is a private figure. (In this respect, Indiana libel law is more speaker-protective than the constitutional minimum set forth by First Amendment law.) And here, the court concluded that the Rover's statements were either true or at least reasonable interpretations of the facts that the Rover had, and certainly weren't knowingly or recklessly false:

Here, we agree with the trial court that the undisputed facts established that The Irish Rover's two articles were written in good faith and that the alleged defamatory statements were not false. The October 12, 2022, article is titled "Keough School Professor Offers Abortion Access to Students." The article discusses a panel Dr. Kay participated in and her opinions on the ineffectiveness and immorality of abortion bans. The newspaper quoted Dr. Kay as stating that her "view runs afoul of Church teaching, but in other areas, [her] positions are perfectly aligned [with the Church.]"

The article included a photograph of the sign on Dr. Kay's office door, which stated, "This is a SAFE SPACE to get help and information on ALL Healthcare issues and access – confidentially with care and compassion[.]" The sign also included the letter "J" in a circle, which the article recognized to "denote Notre Dame professors who are willing to help students access abortion." In support of that statement, the article cited to a social media post where Dr. Kay stated, "'[w]e are here (as private citizens, not representatives of ND) to help you access healthcare when you need it, and we are prepared in every way. Look for the 'J'[,] Spread the word to students!'"

The article also discussed the legality and availability of Plan B and Plan C abortion pills. In particular, the article stated that, "in reference to these pills," Dr. Kay had tweeted, "'Will help as a private citizen if you have issues w access or cost. DM me [sic].'" The article described Dr. Kay's retweets of posts from groups concerning reimbursement of costs of obtaining an abortion out of state or getting Plan C pills by mail. The article stated that the sign on her office door was later removed and her tweets referencing abortions for students were later deleted. The article reported that, during the panel event, Dr. Kay was asked if her statements promoting abortion were aligned with "Church teaching and Notre Dame policy," and Dr. Kay responded that she was not actively promoting abortion, but then later clarified, "[o]h, I am doing that as a private citizen …."

{In her complaint, Dr. Kay did not specifically allege that any of the statements in the October article were untrue or defamatory…. As most of the article contains quotes from Dr. Kay's social media or the sign on her office door, she could not reasonably question the veracity of the statements in the article. It appears that her claim of defamation regarding the October article is based solely on the title of the article.}

The Irish Rover published its second article on March 22, 2023, which was titled, "Tamara Kay Explains Herself to Notre Dame Democrats." The College Democrats had invited Dr. Kay to speak about her career and research and how her work has impacted "'her activism around abortion rights post-Dobbs[.]'" In her complaint, Dr. Kay challenged the following specific statements from the article as false and defamatory: 1) that Dr. Kay was "posting offers to procure abortion pills on her office door"; 2) that Dr. Kay said to the audience, "if you have that academic freedom, you should use it"; and 3) that Dr. Kay acknowledged that the students in the crowd could not be as forward in their pro-abortion activities as she is and stated, "I can't impose that on you … but I'm doing me, and you should do you."

{During the panel discussion [before the College Democrats], an audience member asked Dr. Kay how students should have conversations about abortion "during this time" and referenced the University's statement that the students have academic freedom. Dr. Kay responded, "you have to really be fully committed to activism to be able to stick your neck out like I am right? [B]ecause I can't impose that or say you should do it. You know, you have to do what you have to do. And I think what I've come to is I'm doing me, and other folks can do them." Dr. Kay also stated, "if you don't have academic freedom, you don't have a university. You can't call it a university."}

The article also included Dr. Kay's faculty photo, which she did not give the paper permission to use. [The court doesn't analyze this photograph point separately, but generally a photographed person doesn't need to give permission for a newspaper to use the photograph; and any copyright claim would have had to be asserted in federal court by the copyright owner, which was likely the University rather than the professor. -EV]

The Irish Rover's statements in their articles concerning Dr. Kay were quotes from Dr. Kay's social media, statements paraphrasing Dr. Kay's statements at the panel event, or statements discussing Dr. Kay's prior publications. Included in its designated evidence, The Irish Rover submitted copies of the tweets referenced or quoted in the October article and a transcript from the March panel event. The newspaper also submitted articles published in 2022 and 2023 by (or co-authored by) Dr. Kay addressing access to abortion, and the burdens and negative effects of abortion bans.

Dr. Kay never explicitly stated that she would assist a student by procuring abortion pills for that student. But The Irish Rover made a reasonable inference from Dr. Kay's own statements that she would do so. It was reasonable for The Irish Rover reporters to conclude that assistance or help would include providing information to a student on how abortion medication could be obtained…. [T]he articles were not fabricated and were not based on unverified anonymous sources or sources wholly lacking in credibility. Therefore, The Irish Rover presented a prima facie case that the articles had a "reasonable basis in fact."

Dr. Kay was therefore required to designate evidence to establish that the statements lacked a "reasonable basis in fact." In response to The Irish Rover's motion to dismiss, Dr. Kay designated her own affidavit and described her only interaction with a student staff member of The Irish Rover. In particular, she stated that Joseph DeReuil had spoken with her after the September 2022 panel event but did not ask to interview her or disclose the fact that he was recording their conversation. Dr. Kay stated that DeReuil did not ask her about the sign on her office door, what she meant by "healthcare" or what the "J" symbolized. Dr. Kay averred that the "J" stood for "'Jane Doe,' which is how victims of sexual assault are typically referred to" and that she had used the "J" to express that she is "an ally for victims of sexual assault."

Dr. Kay's affidavit also quoted an email she had received from DeReuil asking for a meeting to continue their discussion about Dr. Kay's abortion position and an email received within hours of DeReuil's email from a Holy Cross student asking for Dr. Kay's assistance in procuring Plan C. Dr. Kay did not respond to either email because she assumed that "the close proximity in time" of receipt "was not a coincidence …."

Dr. Kay averred that the sign on her office door "pertained to student sexual assaults" and "did not pertain to abortion." And she claimed that a statement in the October article that she used the "panel as a platform to explain why she thought abortion bans are ineffective and immoral, complementing her work to bring abortion to Notre Dame students" was false and defamatory. Likewise, Dr. Kay claimed that The Irish Rover's statements that she offered help to obtain abortion medications and abortion services were false and defamatory. {However, as we noted above, Dr. Kay did not specifically claim that any of these statements were false and defamatory in her complaint.}

None of Dr. Kay's public statements discussed in The Irish Rover's articles referenced her specific concerns for victims of sexual assault. She expressed those concerns in private emails between herself and other University faculty members. However, her public statements, her social media posts, and her writings concerned access to abortion services or reproductive healthcare.

We therefore conclude that Dr. Kay's designated evidence does not create a genuine issue of material fact concerning whether The Irish Rover had a reasonable basis in fact to publish the statements in the two articles. The Irish Rover's reporters reasonably concluded that Dr. Kay was generally addressing access to abortion and assistance to students who needed information about procuring an abortion.

Even if Dr. Kay would be able to prove that she intended only to assist sexual assault victims who wanted an abortion, Dr. Kay would also have to prove that The Irish Rover acted with actual malice at trial….

The Irish Rover designated evidence via deposition testimony from the authors of the articles that they believed that the inferences that they made from Dr. Kay's own statements, publications, and social media posts, which they published in the articles, were true. While it is true that DeReuil could have specifically asked Dr. Kay what the "J" on her office door stood for and what she specifically meant by her statements about helping individuals who needed access to healthcare, DeReuil's failure to do so is not evidence of actual malice, particularly in light of the undisputed fact that he asked to meet with Dr. Kay before the article was published but she did not respond to the request. {The Irish Rover designated evidence that the "J" could have been a reference to the Jane Collective, a pro-choice group that offered to assist women to obtain abortions by transporting them across state lines.} …

The designated evidence thus established that The Irish Rover reporters believed that the statements in their articles were true, and, therefore, Dr. Kay would not be able to prove her claim of defamation…. For the same reasons, The Irish Rover also presented a prima facie case that its publications were made in good faith….

Jim Bopp and Taylor C. Shetina (The Bopp Law Firm, PC) represent the Irish Rover.

The post Notre Dame Pro-Abortion-Rights Professor Ordered to Pay $200K in Fees in Failed Libel Lawsuit Against Student Newspaper appeared first on Reason.com.