Now, the proper response to what is becoming a full on PR nightmare for the company would be to do some serious introspection, realize that its behavior is antagonistic and ultimately counter-productive, and then promise the public to do things better and differently in the future. Or, if you’re the Buc-ee’s brass, you instead publicly state that the only real problem here is all them damned libs.

Gas station and travel center chain Buc-ee’s said it will seek out “conservative, business friendly” states for new locations after receiving pushback over its decision to go after small business owners with allegedly similar logos. 

“We have a lot of opportunities. We’re growing. We’re building in a lot of places, but when you find a conservative, business-friendly state with a phenomenal workforce, it makes a difference,” CEO Arch Aplin III said in a video clip posted by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R). 

“And I’m starting to realize life’s too short to try to build in places that people don’t appreciate what you’re bringing versus a place like this, where people do appreciate what you’re building,” Aplin continued.

This response is so absurd as to be nearly a non-sequitur. Buc-ee’s has received public pushback for its trademark bullying ways in Missouri, Texas, South Carolina, and most recently Ohio. These are not bastions of left-wing government, folks. Hell, some of the most direct pushback in Ohio has come from its governor, Mike DeWine, who is a tried and true Republican.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) has argued the company’s decision to sue a local business operator in Beavercreek, Ohio, for alleged trademark infringement was “ridiculous.”

I realize that the way we’re supposed to operate in 2026 is to reduce any and all conflict and conversation into some kind of red team, blue team partisanship, but that’s stupid and I won’t participate. And neither should you, in case that weren’t obvious. The pushback Buc-ee’s has received isn’t another spoke in the fabricated culture wars some craven politicians are attempting to push on everyone. It’s a result of a big company bullying tons of local small businesses for no reason that is actually justified by trademark law.

But if Buc-ee’s wants to take it’s beaver-ball and go home, fine. Whatever limits the spread of its trademark bullying is just fine with me.

US PIRG tells the Guardian that this year alone, legislators have introduced more than 50 bills across 22 states, including a Florida bill that addresses wheelchairs, a motorcycle-oriented bill in Missouri, and a proposal in Ohio that would apply broad new consumer repair protections across everything from digital devices to aircraft and construction equipment.

In Iowa, state lawmakers passed a first draft of right-to-repair legislation in April that focuses heavily on agricultural equipment and tractors, a subject that has driven broad, bipartisan support:

“Farmers have been fixing their own equipment as long as they have been farming, and it’s essential to the sustainability of our farms that we be able to have that control over the equipment,” said Aaron Lehman, who is also president of the Iowa Farmers Union.”

And on the federal level, efforts remain slow but ongoing to pass the Repair Act, which states that “a motor vehicle manufacturer may not employ any technological barrier or specified legal barrier that impairs the ability of a motor vehicle owner” to “access vehicle-generated data.”

One strange trend I keep seeing however (and this is perpetuated in the Guardian piece): despite major progress on passing new legislative proposals, I’ve yet to see a single state enforce any aspect of a new right to repair law despite absolutely no shortage of corporate offenders. And in several of these states these laws are approaching four or five years of age.

So while the momentum the movement has built is impressive, it’s decidedly less impressive if the new laws passed are so full of loopholes as to be pointless (as we saw when New York’s right to repair law was watered down post-passage), or enforcement doesn’t result in any actual observable reform. At some point activism has to start hammering real-world enforcement of laws already on the books.

Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on Patreon.

In this week’s episode, Mike and Ben cover:

• Meta Just Paid Nearly $17 Billion To Make Sure It Gets To Write The Kid Safety Rules For Every Other Social Media Platform (Techdirt)
• Mark Zuckerberg Wants to Make Sure His Competitors Share His Pain (New York Times)
• Meta settlement opens new front in global fight over social media harm (Reuters)

And in the extended episode for Patreon supporters, they cover:

• UK expects Meta to match US child safety measures after $18bn settlement (The Guardian)
• What Meta’s US Settlement on Child Safety Means for Europe  (TechPolicy.Press)
• Did Meta’s Big Settlement Actually Help It? (New York Times)

Our fun links this week include a new table format for food recipes and Rainbolt’s tear-jerking Geoguessr video.

If you’re already a Patreon supporter, you can get the extended episode on Patreon.

While the previous victory resulted in a preliminary injunction being issued against Hegseth and his Department of Defense (unfortunately the court and Anthropic referred to it by the Trump Administration’s nickname, “Department of War,” but until Congress agrees to the renaming, we won’t), the court has now ruled on the merits, finding in favor of Anthropic on most of its claims and giving it all the relief it sought, namely both a permanent injunction and vacatur of Hegseth’s agency action.

In short, the court found that the action to “designate Anthropic a supply chain risk to national security, order all federal agencies to permanently stop using Anthropic’s products, and ban all defense contractors from doing any business with Anthropic, even if unrelated to the military” violated Anthropic’s First Amendment rights, as well as its due process rights, and it further violated the APA as an arbitrary and capricious action.

The undisputed record shows that the challenged actions constituted unlawful retaliation in violation of the First Amendment, and that Anthropic was denied the pre-deprivation process required under the Fifth Amendment. The record further shows no material dispute that Secretary Hegseth’s decision to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk violated the governing statutory scheme, 10 U.S.C. § 3252, and was arbitrary and capricious. Though the Department of War is undisputedly free to select the AI vendor of its choice, the evidence demonstrates that the broad measures imposed on Anthropic were illegal and baseless.

On the First Amendment claims, “The undisputed facts establish that Anthropic’s protected speech, on a matter of great public importance, was a substantial motivating factor for Defendants’ speech-chilling conduct, and that Defendants would not have taken the retaliatory action absent their desire to make an example of Anthropic for its public stance on the weighty issues at stake in the contracting dispute.” In reaching this conclusion the court found that Anthropic had been engaging in speech on matters of public concern—such as the safeguards built into an AI system—and that the Administration’s own social media posts made it clear that designating Anthropic as a national security risk was designed to punish it for this very expression articulating why it did not want to sell the government a version of Claude without those safeguards, rather than for any legitimate purpose.

Secretary Hegseth expressly tied Anthropic’s punishment to its attitude and rhetoric in the press. He stated that “Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance.” (AR 255B.) Referring to Anthropic and Amodei, he further stated: “Cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of ‘effective altruism,’ they have attempted to strong-arm the United States military” through their “corporate virtue-signaling” and “Silicon Valley ideology.” (Id.) “Anthropic’s stance is fundamentally incompatible with American principles.” (Id.) The President described Anthropic as a “RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY” and its employees as “Leftwing nut jobs,” who “made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War.” (AR 255A.) […] Furthermore, the decision to publicly broadcast Anthropic’s punishment via social media—even before the formal, administrative process of making the necessary findings to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk had begun—makes little sense except as an attempt to swiftly make a public example of Anthropic for daring to criticize the Administration.

In other words, the government did not have to buy Claude if it couldn’t agree with Anthropic on what it should be able to do, but designating it a supply chain risk ineligible for any government contract was a punishment inflicted because it did not like Anthropic’s viewpoint that AI should have the safeguards Hegseth did not want it to have.

On its First Amendment claim the court found that Anthropic had shown “that (1) it engaged in constitutionally protected activity; (2) the defendant’s actions would ‘chill a person of ordinary firmness’ from continuing to engage in the protected activity; and (3) the protected activity was a substantial motivating factor in the defendant’s conduct.” It decided that the alternative Pickering test did not apply (“The Pickering framework is inapplicable here because the Challenged Actions were an exercise of sovereign power, not contractual power. […] Furthermore, the public labeling of Anthropic as an adversary of the United States and an “out-of-control, Radical Left AI company” that was attempting to “seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military” reflects a concerted effort to make an example of Anthropic” for its viewpoint resisting government demands, and not part of ordinary contract negotiations.), but even if it did, Anthropic would have still prevailed.

Moreover, even if the more flexible Pickering framework were applied, Anthropic has still shown that it is entitled to summary judgment. Under the framework, Anthropic must show it engaged in expressive conduct about a matter of public concern; government officials took adverse action against it; and its expressive conduct was a substantial or motivating factor for the adverse action. Damiano v. Grants Pass Sch. Dist. No. 7, 140 F.4th 1117, 1137 (9th Cir. 2025). In other words, Anthropic’s prima facie showing under the traditional test satisfies its burden under the Pickering framework so long as Anthropic is speaking on a matter of public concern. As already explained, Anthropic satisfies this burden. The government argues that “Anthropic’s public airing of its objections to DoW’s contractual terms does not transform this into a matter of public concern protected by the First Amendment.” (Dkt. No. 214 at 10.) However, “attempt[s] to reach the general public” are “considered relevant in other public concern cases.” Havekost v. U.S. Dep’t of Navy, 925 F.2d 316, 319 (9th Cir. 1991). And as the Supreme Court explains in Janus, matters of “great public concern” can arise in the context of contract negotiations, and the government does not get a pass on upholding First Amendment protections simply because it is engaged in contract negotiations. Janus, 585 U.S. 878, 910–14 (“[I]t is impossible to argue that the level of . . . state spending for employee benefits,” the subject of the contract negotiations between the union and the government, “is not a matter of great public concern.”). Anthropic was not critiquing a “single contract” (Dkt. No. 238 at 8); it was discussing the appropriate limits on the government’s use of frontier AI technology. That is a matter of public concern.

And the government had nothing to rebut Anthropic’s case, including any sort of true national security argument.

Defendants’ asserted national security concerns are further contradicted by their actions shortly before, immediately after, and since the Supply Chain Designation. Shortly before, in the February 24 meeting, Secretary Hegseth raised the possibility of invoking the Defense Production Act, meaning Anthropic was essential to national security rather than a threat to it. (Dkt. No. 166-5 ¶ 17; Dkt. No. 166-9 at 3.) Immediately after the designation, Under Secretary Michael told Anthropic that a deal was “very close.” (Dkt. No. 166-5 ¶ 27.) Since the designation, the White House has “discussed opportunities for collaboration” with Anthropic utilizing its new Mythos model, and these discussions appeared to range across a variety of sensitive contexts. (Dkt. No. 166-4 ¶ 81.) Those actions are inconsistent with any genuine belief that Anthropic is an adversary of the United States who might secretly poison its model to undermine national security. As such, the government has failed, under even a deferential review, to show that a legitimate national security interest outweighed Anthropic’s speech rights.

The court also found that the government’s action violated Anthropic’s due process rights. “Due process requires notice ‘reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the pendency of [a government] action and afford them an opportunity to present their objections,'” but here Anthropic had none before it was suddenly blacklisted and designated a supply chain risk. That action deprived it of a liberty interest unconstitutionally.

“[A]bsent exigent circumstances,” due process must happen “before [a] final deprivation.” Esparraguera v. Dep’t of the Army, 101 F.4th 28, 40 (D.C. Cir. 2024). The record reflects that the Challenged Actions were taken without any meaningful notice or pre-deprivation process (and, in the case of the Presidential Directive and the Hegseth Directive, without offering any post-deprivation agency process either). Although Anthropic was on notice that the government objected to its contracting terms, it had no notice or opportunity to object before Defendants publicly barred it from all federal government work and blacklisted it with defense contractors. It also had no notice or opportunity to object to the factual basis for its designation as a supply chain risk, which it learned of in this litigation.

And then, in addition to the constitutional violations, the court also found that the designation was an arbitrary and capricious act under the Administrative Procedure Act as well.

Under the APA, an agency action must be set aside and held unlawful if it is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion,” “in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right,” or “without observance of procedure required by law.” 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), (C), (D). Anthropic has shown that the Hegseth Directive and the Supply Chain Designation were in excess of statutory authority, contrary to law, and arbitrary and capricious. […] Secretary Hegseth’s February 27 order that “[e]ffective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic” is a final agency action and thus is subject to APA review. (AR 255B.) On its face, the order is the “consummation” of a decision-making process and “legal consequences [] flow” from it. Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 178 (1997) (citations omitted). Absent recission, which has not occurred to this day, any company doing business with both Anthropic and DoW between the time of the post and when the preliminary injunction issued in this case would have been in violation of the order. Indeed, Anthropic submits evidence that several law firms sent client alerts “describing the potentially far-reaching nature of the government’s actions and suggesting that Department contractors may be best served by reevaluating their relationship with Anthropic.”

The court didn’t buy the government’s defense that “Secretary Hegseth could not have meant what he said because he concededly lacked the requisite authority to issue such a broad order.” To do so would have eviscerated the APA and its prohibition against arbitrary and capricious acts.

After all, if courts were to find agency actions unreviewable as non-final simply because the agency had not met its statutory obligations or did not have authority to take the action, that would defeat the entire purpose of APA contrary to law review. There is no way to read Secretary Hegseth’s words as anything other than a “consummation” of a decision-making process. (See Dkt. No. 238 at 17 (conceding in Defendants’ reply brief that “[w]hatever else, there is no doubt about the Secretary’s commitment to his course of action”).) And his Directive imposed “legal consequences” by declaring, effective immediately and in unqualified terms, that companies could not continue doing business with both Anthropic and DoW, with the implicit threat that DoW would stop contracting with violators. See San Francisco Herring Ass’n v. Dep’t of the Interior, 946 F.3d 564, 580 (9th Cir. 2019) (finding legal consequences flowed from Park Service orders where there was “no suggestion that compliance . . . was somehow optional”).

Furthermore, Anthropic did not meet the statutory definition for “supply chain risk” anyway.

The Administrative Record establishes that Anthropic’s conduct does not meet the requirements for finding a “supply chain risk” under Section 3252. The Michael Memo states: “By embedding unreasonably restrictive terms that restrict DoW’s warfighting operations beyond the limitations imposed by law, Anthropic seeks to grant itself an operational veto. This triggers the legal definition of supply chain risk at 10 U.S.C. § 3252(d)(4) . . . .” (AR 213.) But Section 3252 defines a supply chain risk as limited to “the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert . . . a covered system.” 10 U.S.C. § 3252(d)(4). The plain text of the statute is directed at covert acts or hacks, not overt, public positions regarding contract terms. The legislative history similarly explains that the statute aims to address “increasing risk that systems and networks critical to [the Department of Defense] could be exploited through the introduction of counterfeit or malicious code and other defects introduced by suppliers of systems or components.” S. Rep. No. 111-201, at 162 (2010). Contrary to Under Secretary Michael’s conclusion, Anthropic’s contracting position does not appear to bear any relation to the conduct that Section 3252 is aimed at addressing.

And per the other statute in play, it also did not grant Hegseth the authority to do any of this either.

Agencies may not impose sanctions or issue orders “except within jurisdiction delegated to the agency and as authorized by law.” 5 U.S.C. § 558(b). The Court has already found that the Presidential Directive to “EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology” was a retaliatory act, taken without due process, meant to punish Anthropic for its protected speech. Supra § V.A–B. The record shows that the following Agency Defendants issued orders to terminate use of Anthropic’s products pursuant to the Presidential Directive, most within hours of the directive being issued: Treasury, FHFA, State, GSA, OPM, NRC, DHS, and Energy. Supra § II.G–H. DoW did the same, in reliance on the Hegseth Directive and Supply Chain Designation. Supra § II.E. These orders, in violation of Anthropic’s First Amendment and due process rights, were not “authorized by law,” and violate Section 558(b).

The court did not, however, find in favor of Anthropic’s ultra vires claim, because it hinged more on Trump, who was not named in this case, and seemed to have been underpled, compared to the other claims, but ultimately it was not necessary for Anthropic to prevail on to get all the relief it sought.

When a presidential order does not stem from powers granted through “an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself,” the order violates the separation of powers doctrine, and a district court may enjoin federal agencies from implementing the order as ultra vires. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 584–86 (1952). Anthropic argues that the president lacks “statutory authority” or a “constitutional basis” to direct “EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology.” (Dkt. No. 166 at 30; AR 255A.) In passing, Anthropic cites four statutes regulating “exclusion from federal contracting.” (Dkt. No. 166 at 30 (citing as “examples” 10 U.S.C. §§ 3203(a)(1), 3204(a); 41 U.S.C. §§ 3303(a)(1), 3304(a)).) However, Anthropic is not asserting a claim for violation of a specific procurement statute, see, e.g., State v. Su, 121 F.4th 1, 5 (9th Cir. 2024), and “claims simply alleging that the President has exceeded his statutory authority are not ‘constitutional’ claims.” Dalton v. Specter, 511 U.S. 462, 473 (1994). Anthropic’s passing references to the statutory provisions and Congress’s “power of the purse” are insufficient to carry its burden of showing the President clearly exceeded “any background constitutional authority” to issue the Presidential Directive, thereby rendering the order ultra vires in violation of the separation of powers. Sierra Club v. Trump, 929 F.3d 670, 696 (9th Cir. 2019).

That the court found liability for both the constitutional claims and APA claims is why Anthropic was able to get all that relief, including both vacatur of the agency action and also a permanent injunction.

First, despite the government’s arguing that the matter should simply be remanded back to the agency for further action, rather than the court vacating what the agency had earlier done entirely, the court disagreed that such a remand would be adequate (“In light of Anthropic’s showing that the Supply Chain Designation violates the substance of Section 3252 and that Secretary Hegseth lacked any authority to order a secondary boycott, remand without vacatur would be an inadequate remedy.”). There was no point giving the government another bite of an apple it wasn’t entitled to eat in the first place.

Nor were the government’s claims it would be harmed by this more extreme remedy availing, given how the government had been coping just fine with its action already having been enjoined for quite some time (“[T]here has been no showing by the government that vacatur would result in a national security risk or any other harm—despite the fact that the Supply Chain Designation and the Hegseth Directive have been preliminarily enjoined for over five months.”). It is also why the court denied an automatic stay of its order, since the government had obviously not been harmed by the preliminary injunction already in place.

And as for why the court also granted a permanent injunction on top of vacatur, it found that vacatur alone would not redress the constitutional injury.

Furthermore, to the extent Defendants rely on their voluntary cessation of the challenged conduct, it is not “absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.” Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Env’t Servs., 528 U.S. 167, 189 (2000) (citation omitted); Enrico’s, Inc. v. Rice, 730 F.2d 1250, 1253 (9th Cir. 1984) (“We recognize that the voluntary cessation of allegedly illegal conduct does not deprive a court of the power to grant injunctive relief.”). Defendants continue to defend and have declined to stipulate to enjoin the Challenged Actions. For these same reasons, legal remedies would be inadequate. As to Defendants’ argument that Anthropic “continues to speak freely,” has experienced an increase in its valuation, and has not had its federal contracts terminated yet (Dkt. No. 214 at 33–34), that reflects the restoration of the status quo pursuant to the preliminary injunction in this case. The record shows no indication that, upon lifting the preliminary injunction, the harms at issue would still be averted.

In sum, the vindictive petulance of Hegseth and the Trump Administration has led to a particularly obvious constitutional injury, which no statute otherwise privileges. Per the court, the directives are now nullities and Hegseth and his agency are prohibited from trying again. Pursuant to the separate order, if they want to take any action, it can only be what they were lawfully allowed to do in the first place.

This Order does not bar any Defendant from taking any lawful action that would have been available to it on February 27, 2026, prior to the issuance of the Challenged Actions. For example, this Order does not require the Department of War to use Anthropic’s products or services and does not prevent the Department of War from transitioning to other artificial intelligence providers, so long as those actions are consistent with applicable regulations, statutes, and constitutional provisions.

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Prior to ICE’s big purchase, it may as well have never existed. It only had a few clients, and those few clients purchased a few pairs for prison guards and jail staffers. That’s the sort of thing that kind of makes sense. Controlling inmates in enclosed spaces requires a bit more finesse than just beating them with batons.

Given the increased chance of losing control of a “compliance” option, turning gloves into quasi-stun guns made it easier to deploy force while simultaneously reducing the probability of losing a baton/Taser/OC canister to an inmate who’s stronger and faster than the average prison guard (i.e., most of them).

But ICE decided it wanted even more force to deploy, even though deploying force (a lot of it “excessive”) is basically all ICE does. Under-trained officers tend to underperform in the field, especially when they’re asked to do something more than seize the occasional website or find illegal substances hidden in cargo containers.

Here comes the shocker. Not only did a cop shop give officers some stun G.L.O.V.E.s (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters), but it allowed them to deploy them in Omaha, Nebraska schools. With the G.L.O.V.E. backlash now fully engaged due to ICE’s interest in inflicting further unnecessary pain, an Omaha school district is “asking” cops not to use these gloves.

And the best thing we can say about this development is that the cops have actually agreed to stop glove-stunning students, without engaging in too much extracurricular bitching:

Omaha police agreed this week to stop carrying gloves that can deliver electric shocks to students in the halls of Nebraska’s largest public school district.

The Omaha mayor and police chief said in a joint statement Monday that the gloves were used twice in the last school year, including in a program for students with learning deficits.

Reread that last sentence a few more times. That’s extremely disturbing. While officers claim to have only used them “twice,” it did deploy them at least once to stun “students with learning deficits.”

And I only said there was a minimum of bitching by the cops. There was still some bitching, which arrived in the form of belated justification for stun-tech I can almost guarantee no parent was aware school resource officers (a fancy phrase for “school cop”) had access to, much less using on students.

“We believe it is the safest use-of-force option in the rare times when it is used,” the statement said.

“Safest?” As compared to what?!?! At what point do you decide a school discipline issue necessitates an ambush with literal shock tactics? Is this safer than NOT FUCKING DOING THIS AT ALL? I’m not an expert in “low voltage emissions” but I would like to believe any option that is less violent than stunning a student into submission is actually safer than any option that involves incapacitating someone with an electric shock.

What’s wild is that the school district actually had to make this request and then hope the cops would comply. And they had to hold onto this hope despite there being significant pushback from the community these cops are supposed to be serving. That it took the cops an entire day to simply agree to use the multiple violent force options they already have available to them doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.

Destroying this minimal amount of confidence is the fact that this “agreement” (which hasn’t been made official) only extends to the Omaha PD. For some fucking reason, a bunch of Omaha-area cops “serving” Omaha schools apparently also have these gloves and aren’t promising to change a damn thing about how they handle policing schools.

However, the suburban Bellevue police department that patrols two Omaha schools and the large Bellevue district said its officers will continue carrying the gloves. Three other large school districts in the metro area that have Omaha school resource officers assigned to their buildings have not taken action to stop police from using the devices.

This agency saw the backlash and the semi-capitulation of the city’s largest law enforcement agency and then… did absolutely nothing. As far as the Bellevue PD is concerned, it’s still open season on students when it comes to SROs (school resource officers) and their stun gloves.

The schools in that district appear to be led by people who will never take issue with anything cops might do. Nothing to see here, says the district spokesperson, whose statement sounds like something delivered by someone who developed Stockholm Syndrome while undergoing a lobotomy:

Bellevue schools spokeswoman Amanda Oliver said the district has a great relationship with Bellevue police and doesn’t see a need to alter anything.

Oh, I’m sure the district has a “great relationship” with the cops. But we’re not worried about the administrators. We’re worried about the kids, who are the ones who will be subjected to violent force, including these novel stun gloves the kids at ICE keep talking about. And the Bellevue PD has used them just as often on students as the Omaha PD. And even though it was only “two” instances, the Omaha PD was at least willing to swear off using this tech in schools.

Meanwhile, in Bellevue, it’s apparently business as usual, even though no one (other than the PD and this weirdly cheery PR person) wants cops to have this option when patrolling schools.

At last week’s school board meeting, about 30 people spoke out against police using the gloves. Residents and board members alike said they were appalled at the practice. No one spoke in favor of it.

No one except the people who will never be subjected to the stun gloves, which the company helpfully points out won’t leave evidence “burn or contact marks” on the minors subjected to them. Bellevue schools — via its PR flack — said everything is fine. The chief of the Bellevue PD, Ken Clary, similarly claims to have a healthy relationship with the G.L.O.V.E.

“I am not comfortable having our officers give up a tool that has repeatedly proven to be safe, effective, and less harmful than the alternatives,” Clary said in a statement.

Again: as compared to what? You can’t just say this option is better than others without providing any evidence to support this statement. I mean, you can, but you shouldn’t expect anyone to believe you. This just sounds like a top cop claiming each new force option is more “effective” and “safer” than whatever the department is already using. Adding yet another option is never viewed as adding to the excess. It’s just folded in with everything else and glossed over in public statements until the public’s attention is focused elsewhere.

There’s no reason for ICE to have these gloves. Officers already have tons of force options, as well as the full permission/judicial immunity to use whatever option they feel will inflict the most pain at any given point. The G.L.O.V.E. may have started out as a prison option, but now it’s clear cops want this option whenever they’re dealing with… shall we say… captive audiences. And the defenders of this tech are making it clear they think inmates and students are interchangeable, at least when it comes to deploying force.

Previously, under the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), political parties were subjected to strict statutory caps on how much money they could spend in direct coordination with their candidates’ campaigns. The Supreme Court’s June ruling eliminated candidate contribution caps, made it much easier for rich people to flood Joint Fundraising Committees (JFCs) with cash, and basically gave a giant green light for more quid-pro quo corruption to be exploited by dark money groups.

Given the broad disparity in how much money the two U.S. parties have ($125 million for the GOP versus a bunch of debt for the mismanaged DNC) Republicans were keen to use the Supreme Court ruling to their advantage in the coming midterms, hoping to flood the airwaves with more dark money-funded agitprop than ever before in a bid to try and offset Donald Trump’s nose-diving popularity.

Hoping to embolden their plan and provide discounts, the Brendan Carr FCC’s media bureau quietly issued an announcement late last March saying they were making some changes to the FCC’s lowest unit charge (LUC) requirements governing broadcast TV political ads. The changes expanded which political entities qualified for discounted broadcast advertising rates.

Historically, a subset of political candidates were given a discounted rate on ads starting 60 days before the midterms (generally the lowest rate any advertiser has to pay during that block of time). The Supreme Court and FCC collaborated to extend that discount to effectively all dark money political groups and JFCs, giving the GOP a massive advantage in midterm messaging and spending.

But things have since gotten slightly more complicated for Republicans.

Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic Commissioner (because Republicans refuse to fill the other empty Democrat seat), issued a statement this week belatedly blasting the Carr FCC for expediting America’s steady decline at the hand of billionaire donors and political corruption:

“In the final stretch of a national election, this FCC is unleashing a flood of coordinated
campaign money into broadcast advertising, just as the Supreme Court has cleared the way
for unlimited coordinated spending between parties and candidates. This unprecedented,
last-minute decision gives the biggest political spenders an even bigger advantage over
everyone else by expanding the candidate-only discount established by law to joint
fundraising and party committees, an advantage that will make it hard for anyone else to
catch up before Election Day.

According to Gomez, Carr’s FCC also made the changes with all the transparency you might expect:

This decision was made behind closed doors by agency staff, not by the full Commission, and it contradicts what this administration itself told the Supreme Court less than a year ago about who qualifies for this discount. In direct conflict with the administration’s position, the FCC relies on alleged staff-level guidance that was never provided in writing and that nobody could find, and adopted it with no opportunity for the public to weigh in. The American people should not have sweeping election-year rule changes forced on them in the dark, on the eve of an election, without a single opportunity for public input.

But there’s some new bad news for Brendan Carr and the Republican midterm agitprop machine: Sen. Jon Ossoff, Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet and Senate candidates Roy Cooper and Sherrod Brown filed a lawsuit last June attempting to stop the FCC. And this week, The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals sided 2-1 with the four Democrats, temporarily suspending the FCC effort:

“The [lowest unit charge] requirement and campaign finance statutes are clear that neither political parties nor joint fundraising committees with non-candidate members can be entitled to the LUC.”

The court found that the Carr FCC also basically ignored numerous complaints by broadcasters and politicians about the unfairness of the discounted ad rate plan:

“Despite the time-sensitive nature of these proceedings, the Commission intentionally took no action and offered no response to the Application for more than three months. The Commission did not, for example, seek responses from impacted parties, or engage in fact finding, or secure supplemental briefing, or solicit public comment, or schedule or conduct an oral argument.”

Funny, that.

Republicans will inevitably appeal. Though the Republican effort to get highly discounted rates for their midterm agitprop campaigns has stalled out at an inopportune time (for them). But overall, the general direction of U.S. lobbying and corruption safeguards generally has only been headed one direction, with fairly ugly and obvious results everywhere you look.

]]> http://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/28/republicans-stumble-in-bid-to-flood-midterm-airwaves-with-discounted-ads/comments/feed/ 2 548114 http://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/27/irony-catholic-bishops-tell-fl-officials-to-respect-its-religious-liberty-to-not-accept-religious-exemptions-for-vaccines/ http://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/27/irony-catholic-bishops-tell-fl-officials-to-respect-its-religious-liberty-to-not-accept-religious-exemptions-for-vaccines/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2026 03:18:57 +0000 https://www.techdirt.com/?p=548134&preview=true&preview_id=548134 The country is continuing to reel from multiple infectious disease outbreaks in America, even as childhood vaccination rates continue to fall. Measles, cyclosporiasis, whooping cough: you don’t actually need me to go on. With RFK Jr. using his position as Secretary of HHS to further muddy the waters on vaccines and their safety, some states are going even further than the federal government. Even as states like South Carolina have fielded proposals to end religious exemptions for public school inoculations, states like Florida have attempted to go the opposite direction and simply end all school vaccine requirements by law. While that attempt has so far failed, there are state laws that mandate schools accept religious exemptions for vaccines.

And not just public schools. This mandate is written to affect private religious schools as well and the irony here is thick. For example, Florida AG James Uthmeier wrote a letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops warning them that they might not qualify for state scholarships and vouchers any longer. Why? Because Florida Catholic schools don’t accept religious exemptions for vaccine requirements.

As you can read for yourself in Uthmeier’s post, his letter did far more than issue that warning. It also went into great detail in explaining to a group of Catholic Bishops why they don’t have any legitimate religious reason to refuse those exemptions. Uthmeier did correctly identify that there is irony in all of this, but his targeting computer is off. The actual irony is in a government official, an Attorney General no less, telling religious elders what their own religion says, all while blatantly violating the First Amendment.

Here’s the First Amendment’s opening text, in case you need it.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

If an AG can tell a religion what it means to express its faith, then there is no point to the opening of the First Amendment. They can’t. This is obvious.

But let it never be said that Florida Bishops aren’t a patient lot, I suppose. The FCCB took the time to respond to Uthmeier to demonstrate precisely their religious justification for refusing vaccination exemptions.

Florida’s Catholic schools do not accept religious exemptions for vaccines. In a letter to Attorney General James Uthmeier, made public last week, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops said Florida bishops don’t have to justify their position, but are doing so “out of respect for you and your office.”

The letter goes on to say that the position against religious exemptions for vaccines is rooted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states that, “Life and physical health are precious gifts entrusted to us by God. We must take reasonable care of them, taking into account the needs of others and the common good.” 

A better justification for vaccinations in general this writer could not come up with. And the debunking of Uthmeier’s misguided attempt to tell Catholic leaders what they should believe is fairly easy, as well. The AG’s letter makes much of the idea that today’s vaccines include the cells of presumably newly aborted fetuses and, since the Catholic Church is very much anti-abortion, that means that they should I guess be anti-vaccine as well. Which, if you’re following along, isn’t an argument that Catholic schools should accept religious exemptions for students, but rather an argument that no Catholic anywhere should get vaccinated at all.

Except he’s wrong. Vaccines produced today, and even going back decades and decades, don’t contain any cells from newly aborted fetuses.

Vaccines do not contain fetal cells. As the American Academy of Pediatrics explains, some vaccines involve growing viruses in human cell cultures originally developed from two aborted fetuses in the 1960s: “These cell lines are still going, so no new aborted fetuses are ever needed. Purification processes filter the vaccine during production, and no fetal tissue remains.”

The Catholic Church says it’s morally permissible to receive these vaccines and that people who choose to vaccinate their children can do so with a clear conscience because, as the Florida bishops note, “the parent is not cooperating with the original immoral act.” 

Additionally, in 2021, Pope Francis told people to get the COVID-19 vaccine, calling it an “act of love,” even though fetal cell lines were used to develop both the Moderna and Pfizer shots. 

Does AG Uthmeier really intend to argue with the Pope, the vicar of Christ to Catholics, about what is permissible under Catholic dogma and what is not? This from the same party that absolutely adores playing religious victim when it suits their own political desires, or when they want to encroach on American secular society.

If the Uthmeier had any shame, he’d immediately apologize for disrespecting Florida Catholics, Catholic leadership, and for wildly overreaching in his attempt to carry out his state government’s stupid attempt to make everyone sicker. But he won’t. At best he’ll slink away and say no more on the topic at all.

But if we’re really lucky, there will be a conflict that pits the Florida government against the Catholic Church with the latter crying foul over an encroachment on its own religious liberty. Were I of a praying sort, that is what I would pray for.

In his White House Correspondents’ Association dinner speech on July 24, 2026, President Donald Trump made his usual diatribes against the news media. He derided the “failing” New York Times and reiterated his complaint that CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins doesn’t smile enough. He dismissed the award she received at the dinner as “fake” and celebrated the recent firing of top CBS News employees.

Such ongoing extreme hostility from the president has contributed to Americans’ loss of faith in the news media, which has plummeted to an all-time low.

While the situation is in many ways unique to this moment, a perceived crisis around the very notion of “objective reporting” – and presidential use of that idea to denigrate and delegitimize the press – has a long history.

Nixon administration played hardball

Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon, for example, attacked coverage of police brutality at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention as one-sided in favor of antiwar protestors. Once in office, Nixon deployed Vice President Spiro Agnew to verbally assault journalists for their putative bias and elitism.

In an infamous 1969 speech, Agnew denounced TV newsmen – they were, indeed, mostly men – as “an effete corps of impudent snobs,” hostile to the president and therefore out of touch with average Americans. Agnew singled out NBC anchorman David Brinkley for his claim that “objectivity is impossible” and that “fairness” was a more reasonable objective. Like many journalists, Brinkley understood “objectivity” as implying an almost mechanical delivery of pure facts, while “fairness” was more realistic, an earnest effort to be judicious.

Agnew concluded with a challenge: People should “let the networks know that they want their news straight and objective.” He framed this populist turn as an alternative to government interference. But journalists felt the looming threat of censorship.

Brinkley’s statement was not impudent. It was realistic: an acknowledgment that journalists are humans with preconceptions and values, but that their professional mandate is to strive for impartiality.

Carefully balanced reporting was not only the baseline of journalists’ training but also a business imperative. There were only three national nightly news shows, all seeking the widest possible audience. Moderation was more profitable than swinging hard left or right.

Although frustrated with journalism in general, Agnew zeroed in on TV in his speech because it had displaced print as Americans’ leading news source. And the reality of Federal Communications Commission licensing, whereby a federal agency determined who could use publicly owned airwaves, made broadcasters vulnerable to the actions of a vengeful president.

The licensing issue still resonates. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel, a frequent Trump critic, had his show briefly suspended by ABC after angering the president’s supporters.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” FCC chair Brandon Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Kimmel survived this attack largely because public support surged, and he continues to satirize the White House. Others have been less fortunate.

Journalists fought back

Struggling to compete, newspapers in the 1960s and ’70s could have easily downplayed Agnew’s criticisms of a rival medium.

Instead, they stood up for TV. In the course of my research, I’ve found that not only in publicly accessible material but also in unpublished archival papers both broadcasters and newspapers consistently understood an attack on one media outlet as an attack on all, a lesson that holds true in 2026.

One of Agnew’s “snobs” was the liberal New York Times columnist Tom Wicker. Wicker was on Nixon’s “enemies list,” and he voiced concerns about not just Nixon and Agnew but also more generally about the very notion of objectivity.

Agnew raised hackles across the American journalism community. But Wicker’s reactions stand out in particular, because he was employed by what was then known as “the paper of record,” whose grandiose credo had long been “To Give the News Impartially, Without Fear or Favor.”

In a column published on Nov. 16, 1969, Wicker granted that it was legitimate for Agnew to ask “how the power of that extraordinary medium (TV) can be most equitably controlled and exercised in the general public interest.”

But Wicker underscored that Agnew “couched his argument in direct political attack on those who differed with Mr. Nixon” and “came close to claiming immunity from criticism for Presidential utterance.”

Taking on ‘objectivity’

Two years after Agnew’s “effete snobs” speech, Wicker wrote an essay for Columbia Journalism Review objecting to journalism’s “tradition of objectivity” and “orientation toward nationalism in politics and toward establishmentarianism in other areas of society.”

The consequence, he wrote, was a heavy and generally uncritical reliance on official sources, all in the name of a spurious notion of objectivity.

Deeply offended, New York Times executive editor Abe Rosenthal sent a confidential memo to publisher Punch Sulzberger.

“In essence,” Rosenthal wrote, “what Tom’s piece adds up to is a public statement by … a well-known columnist of the Times … that objectivity and comprehensiveness, the journalistic foundations of this paper, are no longer valid and that the kind of paper the Times is now is no longer meaningful.”

Rosenthal said Wicker’s public expression of these thoughts was “bad for the paper” externally and “bad for morale” internally.

Regardless, such disputes at The New York Times were always waged behind the scenes. The gold standard for journalism was – and remains, whenever possible – to tell the story, not be the story.

Denouncing bias as deflection

Today, by contrast, it is widely known that the CBS News division “is on fire,” as longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley said, shortly after he was sacked.

Newly installed CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, who has no broadcast experience, positions herself as an advocate for “free speech and free thinking” and her Free Press newsletter as a reclamation of objective reporting. Yet at CBS she has made editorial choices, including killing a story highly critical of the Trump administration, that consistently favor the White House.

Like Agnew, in other words, Weiss appears to cloak uncritical acceptance of presidential positions as a battle against “bias.”

Denouncing “bias” is usually an attempt by those in power to deflect from what reporters have uncovered – from Vietnam to Watergate to Iraq. It is thus startling for someone within journalism to use the establishment’s word – bias – to self-censor.

The apparently deliberate imploding of CBS News and its flagship investigative journalism program “60 Minutes” is all the more shocking when you consider the network’s past triumphs in serving the public interest while angering politicians and presidents.

Holding government accountable

In 1971, for example, the Army and the Nixon administration attacked “The Selling of the Pentagon,” a CBS documentary about military public relations activities. Officials charged that the editing had been misleading and malicious, and the U.S. House of Representatives subpoenaed CBS journalists’ raw footage.

This congressional investigation ended as a victory for the press and the public’s right to know. CBS refused to share its outtakes, and the network’s president risked going to jail for contempt of Congress.

In his column, Wicker declared the documentary excellent, and he correctly painted the subpoena of CBS materials as resulting from White House pressure.

That same year, The New York Times and The Washington Post printed the Pentagon Papers, revealing that the government had been misleading Americans for years regarding Vietnam. The two newspapers were briefly silenced by the White House, which persuaded the courts to order them to cease releasing the documents, and then were vindicated when the Supreme Court barred the government from restraining publication.

Wicker argued that “no statute exists that says government officials must be protected from the exposure of their follies or misdeeds,” and that the Pentagon Papers’ culprit was the government, not the newspapers.

Here, Wicker made a fair, if not strictly objective, evaluation.

Such opinionated defenses of the press still ring true today. Agnew repeatedly attacked naysayers as “nattering nabobs of negativism,” but journalism serves a positive function in particular when its stories are negative.

That’s how the public is able to hold government accountable, and accountability is crucial to the fight for democracy and against censorship and authoritarianism.

Heather Hendershot is Professor of Communication Studies and Journalism at Northwestern University.

Instead, numerous prominent California Democrats have been buckling to Paramount demands aimed at settling a 12-state antitrust lawsuit aimed at protecting consumers, labor, and markets from the $111 billion deal’s obvious looming labor and competition harms.

That includes California Governor Gavin Newsom, who recently quietly leaked word that he’d prefer it if California AG Rob Bonta settle the lawsuit instead of taking it to court (which still has the very real potential to kill the terrible deal entirely). Same for gubernatorial nominee Xavier Becerra, who recently insisted “you get way more done in the conference room than you do in the courtroom.”

Settlement also appears to be the position of Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who seems to believe that a patchwork of conditions will somehow protect Hollywood, and the country at large, from Trump-allied billionaire Larry Ellison and his plan for U.S. media domination:

“While there are varying perspectives on the proposed transaction, today we are united around one clear message: It is time for all parties to come to the table. The continued uncertainty is not good for workers, not good for productions and not good for the future of this industry,” Bass said during a press conference.

She added, “Too many productions are at a standstill, which means Angelenos are out of a job and they’re not getting paid. As mayor, I cannot stand by as the job security of thousands of hardworking union members is being put at risk. That is why we are calling on Paramount, Attorney General Rob Bonta and all relevant parties to come together, engage directly and in good faith and work urgently to find common ground and keep our vital industry in Los Angeles.”

As somebody who has covered big telecom and media mergers for the better part of an adult life, such conditions (which sound like they could include a forced sale of some TV channels) generally aren’t well crafted, routinely aren’t meaningfully enforced (especially across states), and almost always have a short shelf-life in a way that does nothing to address long-term consolidative harm.

And the Paramount deal, to be clear, is an irredeemable turd. Data indicates it’s likely to result in endless price hikes, less competition, and untold thousands of layoffs as the massive debt load is offloaded (as always) onto the backs of labor, creatives, and consumers. So understandably, labor unions like WGA West were not impressed by Bass’ push for a settlement in a statement issued to the press:

“We are disappointed that Mayor Bass has chosen to join Paramount’s pressure campaign on public enforcers to push through a merger that is being rightfully challenged as illegal and will lead to job losses in the entertainment industry. Her statement comes on the heels of a county report estimating thousands of jobs will be lost if the merger proceeds.”

Beyond the labor impact, there’s the fact that 49.5% of the debt financing is coming from overseas autocrats like the Saudi government, raising no limit of foreign influence concerns (that Republicans like Brendan Carr, who suffered an endless embolism about TikTok’s foreign ties, suddenly and curiously couldn’t care less about).

It’s also before you get to the fact that billionaire Paramount owner Larry Ellison is an overtly anti-democratic fan of Trump authoritarianism, and very clearly has ambitions to turn outlets like CBS and CNN into oligarch-friendly right-wing agitprop machines. Or, to be clear, even more overtly oligarch-friendly right wing agitprop machines.

The push for meaningless conditions and approval is a characteristic disappointment for Democrats, which haven’t had a functional media reform strategy in the last decade, part of the reason they spend so much time being dog-walked by right wing propaganda seeded across a shaky press.

Outside of spotty exception they’ve also routinely failed to be consistent on antitrust, resulting in Trump authoritarians being able to openly delude the electorate that they were the party of meaningful antitrust reform last election season.

Democratic incontinence has left it to actors like Mark Ruffalo to be the voice of coherent reason and leadership on antitrust, culminating in Paramount falsely claiming he was being “antisemitic” for criticizing Larry Ellison, Oracle, and the entire gambit’s documented tether to Benjamin Netanyahu.

California AG Bonta so far doesn’t seem inclined to settle, cancelling a planned meeting earlier this week after he claimed Paramount both leaked — and misrepresented the focus and intent of — the meetings to the press. But it’s clear the political pressure on him is mounting.

If Bonta does settle, 50 years of U.S. history generally suggests one consistent outcome: the deal moves forward, the conditions don’t really work, the new Paramount/CBS/Warner/CNN empire fires thousands of people, jacks up prices, and releases ever-shittier product in order to cut corners. The debt of the pointless deal strangles whatever’s left of Warner Brothers, resulting in yet more shitty acquisitions by somebody else later on (Netflix, Disney, Amazon).

And, like clockwork, all of the people involved in normalizing it (including the press and a bipartisan parade of politicians and pundits) will memory their role while ignoring the longer-term impact, immediately moving on to supporting the next giant terrible merger having been completely unwilling to learn anything meaningful from experience.