Author: nick

[ad_1] NA In my last post, I did a brief overview of the new lawsuit challenging Trump’s massive new Section 301 lawsuits filed by the Liberty Justice Center on behalf of two small businesses. LJC is the public interest law firm  I worked with on V.O.S. Selections v. Trump, the IEEPA tariff case decided by the Supreme Court in February. There is now a second lawsuit challenging the tariffs, Learning Resources, Inc. v. United States. Their complaint is available here. This case was filed by a group of several businesses, with  Learning Resources, Inc., as the lead plaintiff. Learning Resources,…

[ad_1] For those of us who are more interested in policy than politics, it’s frustrating to try a rational discussion about any issue once it’s caught up in a partisan maelstrom. Few matters are more given to hysteria than crime, for the obvious reason that everyone (except criminals) is against it—and politicians are incentivized to use crime-related policy to score political points. We have to await the passage of time to analyze which anti-crime policies worked, which created unintended consequences, and which made little difference. I’m long past expecting politicians to learn about past policy, but it’s worth trying. So…

[ad_1] Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair Having burned through billions of dollars and depleted critical munitions stockpiles, the Pentagon is running out of money. Our money. According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon is facing an urgent budget shortfall caused largely by the Iran war, with some critical funding accounts expected to run dry within weeks. Training, maintenance and other military priorities are reportedly being squeezed as the government struggles to sustain Trump’s escalating conflict. Once again, the government is looking to the American people for a taxpayer-funded bailout—this time to the tune of $67 billion. Nor is the $67 billion emergency infusion the end…

[ad_1] From yesterday’s Report and Recommendation by Magistrate Judge Jeff Armistead in Doe v. Portland Ass’n of Teachers, Doe’s allegations: Doe was born in Israel and takes his Jewish religious faith and ethnic heritage seriously. For Doe, the State of Israel is essential and integral to his devout religious faith. Although Doe immigrated to the United States, he maintains close ties to Israel and his family there. In the 2023-24 school year, Doe worked for PPS [Portland Public Schools] as a high school math teacher. When he started working for PPS, he chose not to become a dues-paying member of…

[ad_1] Call of duties. After most of President Donald Trump’s unilateral tariffs were struck down by the Supreme Court earlier this year, the president reinstated a sweeping global 10 percent tariff under a different—and also questionable—legal authority. But the new legal authority comes with a 150-day clock, meaning the reinstated tariffs would eventually expire.  Today, the 150 days are up. And as of yesterday afternoon at 4 p.m. in Washington, D.C., no one knew precisely what the next tariff regime would look like.  The Reason Roundup Newsletter by Liz Wolfe Liz and Reason help you make sense of the day’s…

[ad_1] Becoming Benjamin Lay isn’t a documentary about an actor portraying dwarfism, actor Mark Povinelli explains. It’s about portraying one of the great figures of history—who happened to be a dwarf. The documentary is a behind-the-scenes story of how a play named The Return of Benjamin Lay was performed in London (2024), and later in New York, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia (2025). So, who was this great figure of history? An 18th-century abolitionist who stood about four feet tall and made quite a splash in the 1700s—before sliding into obscurity. In the words of University of Pittsburgh professor Marcus Rediker, “the…

[ad_1] It was early in the morning on August 25, 2000. As Devin Bennett tells it, he put his 10-week-old son Brandon in a car seat and put the car seat on his bed—and then, as the father dozed in and out of sleep, Brandon fell. The baby didn’t appear to be hurt in the immediate aftermath of the fall, Bennett says, but hours later he noticed the boy was having trouble breathing. He rushed him to a hospital in Rankin County, Mississippi, where Brandon’s heart stopped beating and he stopped breathing. After being transferred to another hospital, Brandon died.…

[ad_1] Standard Chartered sees communication challenges facing the biggest digital asset treasury company as “muddying the waters” for Bitcoin in the near term. Strategy co-founder and chairman Michael Saylor again took to social media on Sunday to offer his latest signal to investors, even as one analyst said Saylor’s messaging needed more clarity to help Bitcoin regain its momentum. “Orange dots tell only part of the story,” was Saylor’s message in a post that accompanied a chart from Saylortracker.com, similar to previous social media messages that have preceded news of Strategy’s Bitcoin (BTC) purchases, typically announced the day after his posts. In recent…

[ad_1] The union for Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees is worried about the agency’s turn toward privatization. Earlier this week, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE)—which represents 47,000 Transportation Security Officers at 400 airports across the country—issued a press release calling the Trump administration’s “push” to put airport security screening in the hands of private contractors a threat to its members’ jobs and public safety. The statement came after three airports—Tampa International Airport, Des Moines International Airport, and Charleston International Airport—announced that they would join the TSA’s Gold+ program, a “public-private partnership” initiative by the Trump administration soft-launched in…

[ad_1] It’s hard to keep up with the fascism that is unfolding as the Trump MAGA regime and party bid to consolidate a new form of governance atop the United States. Below I attempt to catch readers up with some of the more relevant developments in the Trump fascist project this month. . “We’re Not Going to Lose an Election for 100 Years” Let’s start with a chilling speech Trump gave two weeks ago at Mount Rushmore, one night before the 250th anniversary of the United States’ Declaration of Independence. The following passage deserves special mention: “There is now a…