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Tag: in-the-news
There Is No Equitable Constitutional Cause Of Action To Challenge The Presidential Record Act Policy
Last month, I wrote about the Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion finding that the Presidential Records Act was inconsistent with Trump v. Mazars. Somewhat remarkably, several writers have attacked the opinion, but minimize, or even ignore, Mazars.
The American Historical Association filed suit, arguing that it is injured because at some point in the future, it will not be able to access certain presidential documents. Federal district court Judge Bates has found the new policy is likely unconstitutional. You know things are going south when the first sentence is a quote from 1984.
Again, even more remarkably, the court finds that Mazars has little bearing on the case.
Mazars is even less on point. There, the Supreme Court only concluded that the legislative subpoenas in question implicated the separation of powers, without determining how each factor panned out. And Mazars involved Congress’s implied investigative powers; it focused on the lack of authority to issue legislative subpoenas without any discernable legislative purpose. That discussion is not relevant here because Congress has independent, enumerated authority to enact the Records Act under the Property Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause, without relying on any implied authority.
Mazars was a delicate compromise by the Supreme Court, with a different composition at a different time. I suspect that even the Chief will not be pleased with how his ruling is being cast aside.
Lets put aside the merits for now. The plaintiffs have no equitable constitutional cause of action. Yet Judge Bates finds a cause of action on two grounds.
First, the court invokes Youngstown:
Most importantly here, plaintiffs likely have an equitable constitutional cause of action under Youngstown (Historian-Oversight Count I and Press-CREW Count IV) . . . In other words, and as in Youngstown, this case “involve[s] the conceded absence of any statutory authority, not a claim that the President acted in excess of such authority.” Dalton, 511 U.S. at 473. And “[w]hen the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter.” Youngstown, 343 U.S. at 637 (Jackson, J., concurring). “Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution.” Id. at 638. As icing on the cake, the government itself argues that the President has “conclusive and preclusive” power over presidential records, squarely placing this case within the Youngstown framework.
This analysis completely misunderstands why there was a cause of action in Youngstown. In the Steel Seizure case, the government seized the plaintiffs’ property. That control of private property created a traditional cause of action. The court here conflates the merits analysis (“conclusive and preclusive”) with the threshold question of whether there is a cause of action that was recognized in 1787. Seth Barrett Tillman and I discuss this issue in our article on causes of action:
In Youngstown, the mill owners did not assert a free-floating equitable cause of action to challenge Secretary Sawyer’s illegal seizure. Rather, the mill owners’ brief explained that their cause of action was based on resolving “a simple cloud on title” of the mills.307 The cause of action to resolve a cloud on title, the mill owners argued, “has always moved equity to grant relief because no other remedy is complete or adequate.”308 The mill owners contended that “[t]he seizure of the properties and business of the plaintiffs, with its host of uncertainties and legal and practical problems arising from the ambiguous position in which the owners are left, should appeal to equity at least as strongly as a cloud on title.”309 Youngstown was decided half a century before Grupo Mexicano. Still, the mill owners used a Grupo Mexicano-like framework to establish equitable jurisdic-tion. They demonstrated that their cause of action was “analogous” to an equita-ble cause of action that would have been recognized by the High Court of Chancery in 1789.310 The government seized the mill owners’ property. That sei-zure, much like a taking or temporary taking, nullified their property rights. The plaintiffs did not rely on a generalized allegation of ultra vires conduct by the Secretary of Commerce; instead, they relied on a cause of action to quiet title— their title to their property. Here too, Youngstown was in the heartland of histori-cal equity jurisdiction involving disputed property rights.
Youngstown is completely inapposite. The government is not regulating any property the plaintiffs currently have. At most, they are asserting some future interest in property. The Plaintiffs fail to identify any analogous equitable cause of action.
Judge Bates invokes a second ground for an equitable cause of action: Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center.
For similar reasons, plaintiffs likely also have an equitable cause of action under Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center. There, the Supreme Court observed that the “power of federal courts of equity to enjoin unlawful executive action is subject to express and implied statutory limitations.” 575 U.S. at 327 (quotation omitted). As a result, where a statute implicitly precludes review, plaintiffs cannot circumvent that preclusion by relying on equity. Id . . . Here, in contrast, Armstrong I and Armstrong v. EOP, 1 F.3d 1274, 1294 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (Armstrong II), establish that certain kinds of review involving the Records Act are implicitly precluded by the statutory scheme while others are not.
It is remarkable that civil rights groups have been citing this case for more than a decade, even though the Court found there was no cause of action. Every single case that cites Armstrong has to distinguish the precedent.
In recent years, the Court has clawed back on implied and equitable causes of action. Should this case ever make it to the Supreme Court, I would predict five solid votes to find there is no cause of action, and in the process reject these free-floating claims based on perversions of Youngstown and Armstrong.
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US Court of International Trade Refuses to Stay Injunction Against Trump’s Section 122 Tariffs
On May 8, the US Court of International Trade ruled that Donald Trump’s massive new Section 122 tariffs are illegal, in cases brought by the Liberty Justice Center (on behalf of two small businesses) and 24 state governments, led by Oregon. Today, the CIT rejected the Trump Administration’s motion to stay the injunction blocking further collection of the tariffs until the litigation over the case is done.
This is a potentially very significant ruling. Last year, in the case challenging Trump’s IEEPA tariffs, LJC and I secured an injunction against them from the CIT, but that injunction was then stayed until the Supreme Court finally decided the case, almost a year later. That led to the collection of some $166 billion of illegal tariffs, and caused all sorts of harm that cannot be compensated by refunds (which the Trump administration only recently finally began to pay). As I explained at the time the IEEPA stay motion was being litigated:
One factor courts consider in assessing a motion to stay is which side is likely to ultimately prevail on the merits….
Another key factor is which side is likely to suffer “irreparable harm” if they lose on the stay issue. We argue that our clients – and thousands of other businesses – will suffer great irreparable harm if a stay is imposed. They will lose sales due to higher prices, good will can be lost, relationships with suppliers and investors will be disrupted, and more. Those harms can’t be made up merely by refunding tariff payments months from now, after the appellate process concludes.
In today’s ruling, the CIT recognized the significance of these issues, noting that “[a] stay will compound the losses, such as ‘lost profits and damage to business relationships, investments, and innovation’ as a result of the Section 122 tariffs.”
The immediate effect of this ruling is limited. The administration is likely to appeal it to the US Court of Appeals to the Federal Circuit, and ultimately perhaps even the Supreme Court. Moreover, the CIT injunction in this case is limited to the state of Washington and the two businesses represented by LJC. For procedural reasons, the court decided these are the only plaintiffs who have standing to challenge the tariffs, because they are the only ones who presented sufficient evidence that they directly import goods subject to the tariffs. But, as noted in my post about the CIT ruling on the merits of the case, many of the other states involved in the litigation likely also import covered goods, and they should be able to move to get a broader injunction, quite possibly one that would apply nationwide.
The CIT seems to have learned from the mistaken decision to stay the injunction against the IEEPA tariffs. Hopefully, the Federal Circuit and (if the issue gets there) the Supreme Court will rule the same way.
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Matt Yglesias on Libertarianism, Abundance Liberalism, and a Possible Alliance Between the Two
In April, I wrote a post praising “abundance liberalism” (despite some reservations about it) and urging an alliance between abundance liberals and libertarians. Matt Yglesias – one of the most prominent abundance liberal political commentators – has written an insightful piece responding to mine. He supports the idea of an alliance and notes other points of agreement, but also makes various criticisms of libertarianism.
First – and most important – Yglesias endorses the proposal for alliance:
Somin argued that his fellow travelers in the libertarian camp should seek an alliance with the center-left. The traditional Cold War-era “fusionist” alliance between libertarians and cultural conservatives is, he thinks, dead and should be replaced by an effort to build bridges with the abundance camp on the center-left, even if he thinks we don’t go far enough.
I am all for this alliance.
Welcome! Yglesias’s support – while much more significant than mine (because he has much greater political influence) – may not by itself be sufficient to make this alliance happen. But it’s definitely a step in the right direction.
Second, Yglesias seems to at least partly agree with my argument that many liberals are inconsistent in endorsing deregulation in some areas (e.g. – housing and immigration), while refusing to do so in others, without offering any consistent rationale for the distinction:
[T]he concept of abundance ought to mean more than progressives owning up to overregulation of the housing sector being a problem.
Housing is the single largest sector of the economy, so problems there loom unusually large….
But the basic principles about the positive-sum nature of market exchange and the tendency of regulatory systems to become cesspools of rent seeking are quite general.
In a saner, better world, the Trumpian turn away from liberalism inside the Republican Party coalition should have meant a process of reconciliation between Democrats and at least some of the market liberals of the center right. Instead, a large share of the Democratic Party has reacted to the Republicans’ abandonment of markets by simply embracing alternative zero-sum accounts of the economy like greedflation.
The point here is indeed “quite general” and Yglesias and other abundance liberals have done valuable work in making that clear, including, for example, in his recent article condemning efforts to bar institutional investors from owning housing. They don’t generalize this insight as much as they should. But the recognition that it is indeed a general insight that applies to most, if not all, policy areas is significant.
Yglesias nonetheless offers several criticisms of libertarianism, which I will now address. Even if we continue to differ on these points, they don’t preclude an alliance. But they are worth considering, regardless.
First, Yglesias argues libertarians have a tendency towards “extremism”:
Normal ideologies have a directional valence relative to the status quo without committing their adherents to the most extreme possible version of the ideology. But the concept of a “moderate libertarian” doesn’t seem to exist.
Most libertarians are indeed extreme relative to the status quo. But, as I have argued elsewhere, extreme ideas are often right. Whether a position is moderate or extreme relative to the current distribution of opinion, or relative to status quo public policy, says little about its correctness:
[E]xtremist defenses of liberty often turn out to be right. Before the Civil War, abolitionists who wanted to immediately free all the slaves and grant equal rights to blacks were extremists. The moderate position was either to maintain the status quo or seek gradual abolition, perhaps coupled with relegating blacks to second-class citizenship or deporting them to Africa.
For most of human history, only extremists favored giving women the same liberties as those enjoyed by men…..
We would be much worse off if not for these and other examples of extremism in defense of liberty. Some of the greatest historical triumphs of liberty were set in motion by people who were extremists relative to the mainstream views of their day.
None of this proves that extreme views are always right, and moderate ones always misguided. The point is not that we should always adopt the most extreme possible positions, but that there is often little or no relationship between the validity of a position and its distance from mainstream opinion. Mainstream public opinion is heavily influenced by ignorance and irrational thinking, and therefore is at best a very weak barometer of truth. Extremism isn’t always a virtue, but neither is it necessarily a vice, either.
I think extreme libertarian views are largely correct. Yglesias thinks otherwise. But such disagreements should be resolved by logic and evidence, not appeals to “moderation.” Whether a view is extreme or not says little about its truth.
Extreme views are often politically more difficult to push through for political reasons than more moderate ones. But, as noted in my earlier post on extremism, there is still often value in advocating them. In addition to the reasons I gave before, I would note that promoting true-but-extreme ideas can help expand the “Overton Window” of what is politically feasible in the long run.
Yglesias also argues that libertarians too often claim that “the worries [cited by advocates of regulation] are overblown — because if they’re not overblown, there is a reasonable argument for regulation, and a libertarian is never going to say there’s a reasonable argument for regulation.” For example, he cites libertarians who he believes downplay the risks of smoking.
There is some truth to this point. When people advocate regulation to solve some problem, many libertarians do indeed tend to dismiss evidence that there is a problem at all. And sometimes this dismissal overlooks strong empirical evidence to the contrary. Notable examples include global warming and the Covid pandemic (in both of which cases libertarians were overrepresented among those wrongly claiming there is little or no problem at all).
Libertarian economist Bryan Caplan once outlined “six stages of libertarian denial” that government regulation to address some issue is justified (I commented on Caplan’s theory here). Stage 1 is “Deny the problem exists.” Often, that denial is warranted, as many restrictions on liberty really are enacted in response to bogus or vastly overstated problems. But not always.
But it’s also important to remember that there are a range of other libertarian criticisms of government intervention, which apply even if there is some genuine problem out there. As Caplan summarizes, they include 1) arguments that government is the cause of the problem, 2) arguments that intervention will make the problem worse rather than better, 3) arguments that the the government solution isn’t worth the cost, and 4) appeals to non-consequentialist principles of liberty and autonomy. Caplan also notes the possibility of 5) “Yield on libertarian principle, but try to minimize the deviation.”
More sophisticated libertarian thinkers recognize that we often have to rely on points 1-4, and that rare cases of 5 also exist. Thus, on smoking, gambling and other similar issues, which Yglesias raises, most libertarians recognize that there are risks to health and financial well-being. But we argue that 1) people still have a right to decide for themselves whether the risks are worth the benefits (a person can rationally decide that the enjoyment they get from smoking or gambling outweighs the risk), 2) government systematically does a poor job of such balancing, worse than individuals deciding for themselves, and 3) enormous harm is caused by creating large black markets for risky goods that many people want to consume (the harm caused by alcohol Prohibition and the War on Drugs are notable examples). Escaping Paternalism: Rationality, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy, by libertarian economists Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman (which I reviewed here), is a great overview of these sorts of flaws in paternalistic policies. And most of their points apply even in cases where the behavior in question really is risky.
Yglesias’s next critique of libertarians is that “[t]hey rightly sing the praises of capitalism as a driver of growth, prosperity, and progress. But they tend to ignore the extent to which actual modern industrial economies were built with a large state role in transportation, electrical utilities, banking and monetary policy, and other commanding heights of the economy.” Serious libertarian thinkers recognize there has been a large governmental role on many of these issues. But they argue that all or most of them would be better handled by the private sector.
Elsewhere, I have summarized how libertarian scholars have done extensive work showing that the private sector is superior to government at providing a wide range of local and regional public goods, but are not as strong on issues involving nationwide and worldwide public goods. But even if we need government intervention to deal with some of the latter, that’s only a small portion of the activity of the modern state.
Yglesias claims libertarians don’t sufficiently appreciate the value of democracy:
From Nozick’s “demoktesis” thought experiment, where he analogized voting to slavery, to Peter Thiel’s 2009 proclamation that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” there have always been those who resolve the contradiction between property rights and democracy in favor of property.
I believe this resolution breaks faith with the fundamental classical liberal commitment in the Declaration of Independence and elsewhere to equal rights under law. Democratic self-governance has many well-known flaws, but Winston Churchill’s famous turn of phrase “the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried” holds true today.
Most libertarians would agree that democracy is superior to other forms of government. Nozick’s “demoktesis” parable from his classic book Anarchy, the State and Utopia, is not to the contrary. He wasn’t trying to show that authoritarianism is superior to democracy, but that unjust policies that violate human rights cannot be justified merely because they are enacted through a democratic process. As for Peter Thiel, the man is not a libertarian and has not been for a long time.
But, even if democracy is better than dictatorship or oligarchy, it still has severe flaws, such as tyranny of the majority, and widespread voter ignorance and bias. Thus, it needs to be subjected to tight constitutional constraints. Many left-liberals readily recognize this when it comes to noneconomic “personal” liberties, and discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, and other such categories. Libertarians’ distinctive contribution is to emphasize that these concerns also arise when it comes to the economic powers of the state, and that the distinction between “economic” and “personal” freedoms is largely fallacious, or at least misleading. Abundance liberals may not be willing to go so far. But their appreciation for the importance of economic liberty and property rights in many spheres should lead them to at least recognize that the economic powers of government should be subject to at least some significant constraints.
Lastly, Yglesias notes that “the abusive aspects of Trumpian governance have relatively little to do with the specific state functions — infrastructure spending, the welfare state, paternalistic regulation — that divide progressive liberals from right-libertarians.” At least as to paternalistic regulation, this isn’t true. The War on Drugs is a form of paternalistic regulation, and it is a key rationale for some of Trump’s worst abuses, such as the murderous Caribbean boat strikes, and efforts to claim there is an ongoing “invasion” of the United States justifying invocation of sweeping emergency powers. In addition, Trump’s assault on free speech relies heavily on the FCC – the type of regulatory agency libertarians have long warned against and argued for abolishing.
In sum, I am largely unpersuaded by Yglesias’s critiques of libertarianism. He, perhaps, will not be persuaded by my response. But he is right that libertarians and abundance liberals have much in common, and have much to gain from an alliance. As noted in my original post on abundance liberalism, that alliance can be based on extensive agreement on multiple key issues (housing, immigration, free trade, nuclear power, and perhaps others), and some important broader principles (individualism, understanding of Econ 101), even if there are persistent differences on other points.
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Justice Department Indicts Cuba’s Raúl Castro for 1996 Shootdown That Killed 4 Americans
Raúl Castro, Cuba’s 94-year-old former dictator, was indicted Wednesday for his alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of two civilian aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based humanitarian group founded by Cuban exiles.
The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in South Florida on April 23 and unsealed Wednesday in Miami, charges Castro and five Cuban military officials in connection with the February 24, 1996, attack that killed three American citizens and one legal permanent resident. The Justice Department announced the charges at Miami’s Freedom Tower, a symbol of the Cuban exile community and the site where hundreds of thousands of Cuban refugees were processed after fleeing Fidel Castro’s revolution.
Brothers to the Rescue was founded by Cuban Americans to help locate and aid Cubans fleeing the island by sea. But by the early 1990s, Cuban intelligence had infiltrated the group, placing spies inside its Miami operation and posing as exile pilots.
In January 1996, after a Brothers to the Rescue aircraft dropped pro-democracy leaflets over Cuban territory, Raúl Castro, then Cuba’s defense minister, allegedly authorized the use of deadly force against the group’s planes. Cuban authorities then launched what became known as Operation Scorpion, instructing spies inside Brothers to the Rescue to provide information about upcoming flights while avoiding the deadly February mission themselves.
One of those agents, Juan Pablo Roque, had cultivated a relationship with the FBI while secretly working for Cuban intelligence. On February 21, 1996, three days before the attack, Roque told the FBI that Brothers to the Rescue would not be flying that weekend. Two days later, he fled to Cuba.
On February 24, two Brothers to the Rescue Cessnas were flying over international waters when Cuban fighter jets fired air-to-air missiles and destroyed them. A third plane escaped. Cuba has long claimed the aircraft were inside Cuban airspace, but international investigators concluded the planes were shot down over international waters. The pilots received no warning before they were killed. According to the indictment, the strike was the product of a planned Cuban military operation.
Castro and the five other defendants are being charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals. Castro also faces two counts of destruction of aircraft and four counts of murder. At Wednesday’s press conference, Sen. Ashley Moody (R–Fla.) said the charges could carry a sentence of up to life in prison or the death penalty.
The evidence against Castro may include a recording in which he discussed the shootdown, a recording that has reportedly circulated for years within U.S. intelligence circles, according to policy analyst Imdat Oner.
The indictment comes as the Trump administration escalates pressure on Havana. Earlier Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio marked Cuban Independence Day with a message in Spanish to the Cuban people, attacking the regime’s economic record. Rubio argued that Cuba is not controlled by revolutionaries but by GAESA, the military-run conglomerate built under Raúl Castro, which Rubio says dominates much of the Cuban economy.
The move also follows a recent Axios report that Cuba has acquired more than 300 military drones and that Cuban officials have discussed potential attacks on the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay, U.S. military vessels, and possibly Key West, Florida, according to classified intelligence cited in the report.
The Castro indictment is difficult to separate from the administration’s recent Venezuela playbook. Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, indicted in 2020 on narcoterrorism charges, was captured by U.S. forces in the capital city of Caracas in January and brought to the United States to face trial. The question now is whether Washington is preparing a similar strategy for Castro, or whether the indictment is meant primarily as leverage against Havana’s current leadership.
“This is not a show indictment,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Wednesday. “We expect that he will show up here by his own will or by another way.”
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Jeff Bezos Is Right: Taxing Billionaires Won’t Solve the Affordability Crisis
In a wide-ranging interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and the fourth-richest man in the world, disputed claims that solving America’s affordability crisis starts with increasing taxes on the wealthiest people in the country.
“When you don’t know how to solve a problem, create a villain, blame them, but it won’t solve the problem,” Bezos said, referring to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax proposal. The idea would generate between $340 to $510 million in annual revenue, according to City Comptroller Mark Levine.
Bezos also floated the idea of low-income earners paying nothing in individual income tax, which is already the case for about 40 percent of American households (many of which are low-income), according to a 2025 report from the Tax Policy Center.
The U.S. tax system is highly progressive. The top 10 percent of earners—households earning more than $228,000—take home 45.7 percent of all income but pay 61.3 percent of all federal taxes, according to the latest available data from the U.S. Treasury. In contrast, the bottom 50 percent of earners collectively pay very little, with the lowest income groups actually receiving more in credits than they pay in taxes.
When progressive politicians talk about an unfair tax system, they’re ostensibly referencing the difference between one’s effective and statutory tax rates. With exemptions, deductions, and credits unequally distributed—even amongst taxpayers with similar incomes—tax liability often boils down to which provision a filer qualifies for.
Differing tax rates for capital gains, business profits, mortgage interest, and family size mean that those at either end of the statutory rate can end up with a higher effective tax rate than others in their tax bracket. Taxes such as the estate tax, gift tax, and payroll and corporate taxes are also paid almost entirely by the wealthy, who are more likely to have non-wage income. At the same time, policies like the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit favor low- and middle-income families.
Bezos is right when he says higher taxes on the rich won’t solve the affordability crisis; more revenue for the government doesn’t mean wiser spending.
So far, the federal government has collected $3.32 trillion in FY 2026, a $210 billion increase from the same period last year, according to the latest available data from the U.S. Treasury. With 53 percent of that funding coming from income taxes, it’s fair to wonder how the money has been spent.
Not well, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which has found about $3 trillion in “improper payments” by the federal government since 2003. In FY 2025, GAO found $186 billion in improper payments, often caused by the government overpaying for services. It was an increase of $24 billion over the prior fiscal year, including $21 billion in improper payments due to the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has waged a war in Iran that has reportedly cost taxpayers over $72 billion in its first 60 days. Framing a tax hike on the wealthy as the solution to rising costs overlooks that the drivers of inflation are often excessive government spending and policy decisions, such as tariffs, that raise production costs while limiting the supply of goods and services.
Instead of increasing the burden on wealth-generating taxpayers who already pay their fair share, lawmakers could focus on reducing the size, scope, and pocketbook of a government that continues to waste taxpayer dollars.
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The New York Times Sues Pentagon Over ‘Retaliatory’ Escort Requirement
The New York Times is once again suing the Pentagon over its press rules, this time challenging a policy implemented in March that requires reporters to be escorted by Defense Department officials. In a lawsuit filed Monday, The New York Times argues the rules are “patently retaliatory, utterly unreasonable, and manifestly arbitrary and capricious.”
The lawsuit is the latest development in the fight over press access at the Pentagon during the second Trump administration. Last fall, the Defense Department asked members of the press corps to agree to a new policy or “lose access to press credentials and Pentagon workspaces,” reported Reuters. Among other restrictions limiting unescorted access within the Pentagon, the policy stated that reporters “who solicit or encourage personnel to disclose the information without authorization may be deemed a safety risk” could lose their credentials, Axios reported at the time. Dozens of outlets, including Fox News and Newsmax, refused to sign a statement acknowledging the rules.
The new press access rules prompted the Times to sue for the first time in December, alleging the Pentagon’s policy violated the outlet’s First Amendment rights by giving “free rein to grant or deny Pentagon access to journalists and media outlets on the basis of viewpoint.” It also alleged that the policy’s vague language violated the Due Process Clause because it authorized “arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”
In March, a federal judge ruled in favor of the Times, blocking the policy and ordering the Pentagon to reinstate press credentials for seven of the paper’s journalists, according to the Associated Press. Although some legacy media reporters had been let into the briefings, the Pentagon Press Association called for the restoration of all “press passes to all reporters who decided to give them up rather than sign the Department of Defense’s restrictive new policy,” reported The Hill at the time.
Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell expressed his disagreement with the ruling, writing on X that the “court removed every provision that allowed the Department to screen press credential holders for security risks.” He said the Pentagon would appeal the ruling and unveiled an interim policy that would comply with the judge’s orders. In addition to closing the Correspondents’ Corridor workspace, the new policy requires all journalists to be escorted by Defense Department officials.
The New York Times’ latest lawsuit challenges the Pentagon’s newest policy, claiming its purpose “is to restrict journalists’ ability to do what they have always done: ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories that take the public beyond official pronouncements.”
It’s understandable why the Pentagon would want to limit unsupervised interactions between the press and public officials, given how the Defense Department has failed to justify its unpopular and costly war in Iran. But doing so limits the media’s ability to hold public officials accountable.
In the documentary Cover-Up about the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, Hersh recalls how, as a reporter for the Associated Press, he made small talk with the young officers in the Pentagon while his colleagues in the press corps went to lunch. Hersh’s interactions with lower-level officers prompted him to report on U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, including the My Lai massacre.
Not every reporter is like Hersh. In fact, he is somewhat of an anomaly. In Cover-Up, he remarks that his colleagues got paid “an awful lot of money for doing things like listening to the news conference and waiting an hour till the transcript’s typed up.” But if Pentagon reporters today can only rely on government press briefings for information, where they may seldom get satisfactory answers from government officials from either party, many of them may as well serve as stenographers of the state.
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How Tom Steyer Used His Money To Fuel Climate Hysteria
Billionaire Tom Steyer used his money to attack a lone climate researcher.
Roger Pielke Jr.’s research on climate and disaster policy wins awards and is cited by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“My views are entirely mainstream,” says Pielke. “My work is cited by all three working groups of the IPCC. There’s nothing contrarian.”
Both Steyer and Pielke agree that “greenhouse gases warm the climate,” but Pielke’s sin was saying, “it’s not the apocalypse.”
Because of that, “the Center for American Progress decided to make me a target,” he says.
The center is a lefty group that pushes climate hysteria, running articles claiming, “Climate change is fueling more deadly and destructive floods,” “Extreme weather is only intensifying,” etc.
Anyone who disagrees is labeled a “climate denier.”
Steyer, now running for governor of California, gave the center enough money to run hit piece after hit piece that describes Pielke’s work as “fantastical falsehoods,” and calls him a “disinformer” who “ignores the data on climate science.”
Pielke didn’t know who funded the smears until WikiLeaks revealed an email to Steyer from ThinkProgress‘ editor: “Thanks for your support of this work…it’s fair to say, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change.”
Think about that.
“Progressive” activists are proud to stop a researcher from writing about what he knows.
Pielke describes his persecution in my new video.
It began after Al Gore’s Oscar-winning movie in which Gore claimed that temperature increases create stronger storms.
Pielke had the nerve to disagree.
“Doesn’t warmer water create bigger storms?” I ask him.
“All else equal, yes, it does. But the atmosphere is a complicated place. You have things like windshear, which knocks over storms….We haven’t observed changes in the frequency or intensity beyond natural variability.”
Pielke’s research acknowledged that there were “increasing impacts of extreme weather, mostly economic costs and loss of life,” but said the impacts were not caused by bigger storms but by “what we build, where we build, how much wealth we have in harm’s way.”
“When the climate advocacy movement shifted to extreme weather, I was on the ‘wrong’ side,” he adds. “I had a choice to make. Was I going to call things like I see them, or was I going to succumb to pressure to say things that maybe I didn’t believe?”
Pielke called it as he saw it, and paid a price.
“There was an enormous effort to try to silence people who had a voice,” says Pielke.
Testifying before Congress, Pielke said, “It is misleading…to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or drought have increased.”
That information is also in the findings of the IPCC.
But the Obama White House put out a 3,000-word memo attacking him: “Dr. Pielke’s statements…are seriously misleading” and “not representative of mainstream views.”
“It was the sort of thing your crazy uncle might put on Facebook,” laughs Pielke. “I’m the only academic or researcher that any president, including Donald Trump, has ever singled out.”
The University of Colorado, where Pielke worked for 24 years, caved in to the pressure. They closed Pielke’s research center, canceled his classes, and moved his office into a closet.
“What I went through was not what a university is supposed to be for,” says Pielke.
The state-funded school, after dumping Pielke’s actual scientific research, now calls “climate change and sustainability…the central focus of our campus-wide initiatives” and hosts silly things like “climate summits” with panels on “youth climate advocacy.”
It’s so dumb. And so wrong.
Fortunately, Pielke found another job. Now he researches climate at the American Enterprise Institute, one of many think tanks that does research universities once did.
As I write, betting sites have Steyer in second place in California’s governor’s race.
COPYRIGHT 2026 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
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House Transportation Bill Eliminates Obscure Rule That Effectively Bans Driverless Trucks
The bipartisan surface transportation reauthorization bill released earlier this week by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee would reform an obscure safety rule that has served as a de facto ban on driverless commercial trucks.
The BUILD America 250 Act would allow driverless truck operators to use cab-mounted beacons to warn drivers of a disabled truck on the road. Current federal regulations require that roadside warning placards be placed around disabled trucks.
That requirement has been a serious source of grief for autonomous trucking companies, as it effectively requires a human operator to be on board to place those warning placards.
For that reason, they’ve been agitating for a rule change that would allow cab-mounted warning beacons that wouldn’t require a human to place them.
In 2023, the autonomous trucking company Aurora and Waymo’s now-shuttered driverless trucking division requested a waiver from the regulation from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).
The Biden administration ultimately rejected that waiver request.
The companies then challenged that denial in court. Last October, they reached a settlement with the Trump administration that granted Aurora a limited waiver allowing them to use cab-mounted warning beacons, provided they collect data on the safety efficacy of this alternative.
This was still only a partial win for the industry.
The terms of the waiver require it to be reapproved every three months. It also only applied to Aurora. Other companies seeking regulatory relief must apply for their own specific waiver. Under a new administration, FMCSA could also revoke the waiver.
To give the industry greater regulatory certainty, Section 5405 of the BUILD America 250 Act declares that “cab-mounted warning beacons shall be considered permissible warning devices for a commercial motor vehicle stopped upon the traveled portion or the shoulder of a highway” and that they can be used in lieu of roadside placards.
Section 5405 would also forbid the FMCSA from issuing rules in the future that disallow cab-mounted warning beacons.
The safety case for requiring roadside warning placards has always been weak. The Biden administration conceded as such when, after denying Aurora’s request for a waiver, it announced it would perform its own study on the efficacy of the warning devices.
In support of their waiver request, Aurora and Waymo submitted their own safety studies showing drivers reacted similarly to cab-mounted warning beacons and roadside placards. In theory, the cab-mounted beacons could improve safety by relieving a driver from having to walk out onto the road to place physical warning placards.
Beyond the warning device rule, the BUILD America 250 Act would also create a whole new framework for regulating autonomous trucks going forward.
Traditional federal safety regulations establish objective “performance” standards that regulated commercial vehicles must meet.
Marc Scribner, a transportation policy analyst at the Reason Foundation (which publishes this website), says performance standards are a poor fit for emerging driverless technologies.
“There isn’t agreement yet on what an appropriate performance standard is and how you’d test that,” he says.
The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s bill would instead allow manufacturers to establish their own “safety case” showing that their technology is at least as safe as human-operated commercial vehicles.
Scribner describes this more flexible approach as “a strong step in the right direction.”
A Transportation and Infrastructure Committee markup of the 1,000-page bill is scheduled for tomorrow.
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Britain Pressures Supermarkets To Cap Food Prices
The British government is preparing to ask supermarkets to freeze prices on certain products in exchange for easing regulations, which politicians hope will keep prices down for consumers. The price cap would apply to essential foods such as eggs, bread, and milk, reports the Financial Times.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, who oversees the Treasury and the government’s economic policy, is expected to announce the policy on Thursday as part of a package of measures to help ease the cost of living. Food and nonalcoholic beverage prices rose 3.7 percent annually in March—the most recent month for which government data are available—a jump from 3.3 percent in February. The rising cost of living is of particular concern to the British public, with 62 percent of voters saying it was the top issue that decided their vote at the last local elections, according to Ipsos.
While the price cap would technically be voluntary, Reeves is bringing forward measures to directly pressure businesses to control prices. In a Wednesday press release, touting Reeves’ use of “new anti-profiteering powers” to fight back on “rising bills,” the chancellor committed to cracking down on “anyone exploiting a crisis to make a quick buck.” This includes giving new powers to the Competition and Markets Authority, the U.K.’s main competition and consumer protection regulator, allowing them to “name and shame” firms that have allegedly “changed their margins.” It will also get new investigatory powers to identify firms that are “taking advantage of crises to unfairly raise costs.”
Supermarkets aren’t happy about the proposed policies.
“The UK has the most affordable grocery prices in Western Europe thanks to the fierce competition between supermarkets. The challenge facing retailers is a combination of higher energy and commodity costs resulting from the Middle East conflict, and the soaring cost of the government’s domestic policies,” Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the trade association for the British Retail Consortium, tells Reason.
“Rather than introduce 1970s-style price controls and trying to force retailers to sell goods at a loss, the Government must focus on how it will reduce the public policy costs which are pushing up food prices in the first place,” Dickinson adds.
Interestingly, Brits think supermarkets have far larger profit margins than they actually do. According to a poll of over 3,000 British voters, most estimate supermarket profits to be around 50 percent, when in reality, these margins are far lower, usually around 2 percent to 4 percent.
“The British government’s war on supermarket prices is what happens when inflation after years of relative price stability destroy economic seriousness,” Ryan Bourne, author of The War on Prices, tells Reason. Bourne argues that groceries in the U.K. feel especially expensive because “bigger ticket items like housing and energy costs” affect the prices of all goods. He says that this policy will “hide scarcity, distort competition and further entrench the idea that governments can just mandate inflation through such price fixing.”
Julian Jessop, economics fellow at the free market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, described the move as a policy “based on vibes rather than evidence.”
“Crucially, the supermarket sector is already highly competitive, and retailers work on tiny margins. Price caps are only likely to reduce both the supply and quality of the items that are capped, while raising the prices of others,” he added in a post on X. “The government should focus on freeing up the supply side of the economy and easing the constraints that are contributing to higher prices, rather than distorting markets further.”
Price controls do not change economic reality; they merely relocate the problem. If larger retailers are leaned on to suppress prices on politically sensitive goods, the real costs do not disappear. Instead, they are shifted onto other products, firms, and consumers. When this happens, British politicians probably won’t denounce the very price rises their own interventions have helped produce. Instead, they will likely go after the next alleged “gouger” with equally draconian measures.
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