Author: nick

[ad_1] The Roberts Court is often derided as a pro-corporation Court. I’ve lost count of how many stories measure the Chamber of Commerce’s success rate before the Supreme Court. The reality, however, is different. The Court often leans in a jurisprudential directions that corporations do not like. One leading example is preemption. As a general rule, corporate defendants favor broad preemption to avoid liability from state suits, while plaintiffs favor narrow preemption so they can bring state tort suits. But on the Supreme Court, things do not line up so neatly. Justice Thomas, a federalist, has long been a skeptic…

[ad_1] The United Kingdom’s online regulators/censors are at it again, attempting to punish American websites for publishing information that’s perfectly legal in the United States but violates the law in the U.K.’s increasingly constricted environment for speech. This time, Ofcom—the U.K.’s telecom regulatory body—slapped a U.S.-based forum where some discussions are sympathetic to suicide with a £950,000 ($1,273,000) fine, despite its efforts to block British users. The censorship agency is unlikely to ever see a penny of the penalty, but its efforts to control speech well beyond its jurisdiction threaten to result in a walled online environment for Britons. You…

[ad_1] Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain From Beijing this week, the first US state visit to China in nine years is being staged for the world to see. The Great Hall of the People is open to Donald Trump, who has traveled with eighteen US executives—Apple, Tesla, BlackRock, Boeing, and Nvidia among them. A state banquet on Thursday, followed by tea and lunch on Friday. On the streets of Beijing, ‘the Beast‘ has been securing the motorcade route since last week, flown in by C-17 ahead of Trump’s arrival to meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping. The international mainstream…

[ad_1] The federal Food and Drug Administration nannies have been tormenting Americans for decades, which is no surprise given the pitfalls of putting bureaucrats in charge of such an important function as determining the safety of our food supply, and evaluating drugs and medical devices. Frankly, it’s amazing that we all haven’t starved to death or been denied basic medications, given the FDA’s Byzantine approval process. One need only look at, say, the FDA’s nine-page regulation regarding the proper classification of “frozen lasagna” to understand its arbitrariness: “The lasagna noodles shall comply with the FDA Standard of Identity for Macaroni Products (21…

[ad_1] I am happy to pass along a guest post from Professors Bruce A. Green and Rebecca Roiphe, who are experts in the ethical standards for prosecutors. They wrote about a recent case from Santa Clara, California, in which a judge disqualified District Attorney Jeff Rosen from prosecuting pro-Palestinian protestors who occupied the Stanford University.When New York Attorney General Letitia James was campaigning for office, she called Donald Trump an “illegitimate president” and vowed to investigate him, his family, and anyone in his orbit. New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg was less explicit. While he emphasized his experience investigating Trump’s…

[ad_1] Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky had suggested Ukraine could attack Russia’s Victory Day parade before later declaring he’d “permit” it to proceed. So no bombs went off last week during the annual event. But in the press conference that followed, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin dropped a number of bomb shells, revealing four important details that had never been disclosed before.  The only revelation that the media seized on is an apparent statement by Putin that the war in Ukraine is almost over. “I believe,” Putin said, “that the matter is coming to an end, but this is a really serious…

[ad_1] Photograph Source: Longestview – CC0 On May 8, the Republican-controlled legislature of Tennessee passed new redistricting maps that divide Memphis’s 63 percent Black population across three white-majority districts. This eliminates the state’s sole Black-majority district. Republicans in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia are similarly pushing redistricting maps that would decimate their majority-Black districts. These moves come on the heels of the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which effectively killed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This was the latest in a decades-long effort by the Supreme Court to dismantle the law, reversing a signature accomplishment of the Civil Rights Movement. This systematic assault against the…

[ad_1] When Donald Trump exploded into national politics a decade ago, he had two characteristic policies: the Wall, that is to say, immigration enforcement; and “China, China, China,” that is to say, reorienting American relations with a large, ambitious, and increasingly wealthy and powerful competitor.  Few would say that the first Trump administration was a total success, but at the level of theory there was a certain coherence to it. On the China side of things, Elbridge Colby articulated the line of thought in the 2018 National Defense Strategy and his book-length elaboration on it, The Strategy of Denial. The…

[ad_1] From Robinson v. Damphousse, decided Wednesday by Judge Alan Albright (W.D. Tex.): Plaintiff Dr. Idris Robinson is a non-tenured, but tenure track Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Texas State University. On June 29, 2024, Dr. Robinson delivered a speech in Asheville, North Carolina titled “Strategic Lessons from the Palestinian Resistance” (“Asheville Speech”). Professor Robinson in no way affiliated the talk with Texas State University. During the Asheville Speech, audience members who disagreed with Dr. Robinson’s views attempted to livestream the event. A scuffle broke out. The police report documenting the incident does not identify Dr. Robinson as a suspect…

[ad_1] Despite the Trump administration’s effort to conceal their victims’ identities, journalists and researchers have disclosed some biographical detail about some of the people “blown away over vast stretches of ocean.” Unclassified still from footage of the first airstrike on Sept. 1, 2025. (U.S. Government, Wikimedia Commons) By Julia ConleyCommon Dreams The 57 confirmed bombings of boats that the Trump administration has carried out so far since last September have shattered families and communities across Latin America, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. Southern Command never acknowledging the identities of the at least 192 people they’ve killed, beyond declaring…