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On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, a case that will determine the balance of power between states and the federal government over cancer warnings on pesticide labels.

In 2019, the defendant, John Durnell, filed a lawsuit against Monsanto Co., arguing that he had developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma due to exposure to glyphosate, an active ingredient in the company’s weed killer Roundup. In 2023, a jury sided with Durnell, awarding him $1.25 million after it found Monsanto liable for failing to warn of the alleged cancer risk from glyphosate, even though the Environmental Protection Agency (and several other studies) have not found a link between glyphosate and higher cancer rates.

Monsanto appealed the decision, arguing that since the EPA has not found a cancer link with the pesticide, it cannot legally add warning labels to the product under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). As a result, the company argues, Durnell’s lawsuit and the thousands like it in state courts should not be allowed to move forward.

Some Justices seemed skeptical of this argument, reports The New York Times. Chief Justice John Roberts appeared leery that, if new scientific information arises and the EPA still had not required a warning, states would be unable to take action, such as allowing failure-to-warn claims to proceed. “The states cannot do anything?” he asked.

Similarly, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pressed on how the law would handle emerging science, suggesting that new evidence could cast “doubt on the efficacy or the safety of this product,” resulting in “a product that is misbranded,” despite initially being registered and labeled correctly.

Other Justices, however, raised the opposite concern: that companies could be held liable for failing to include warnings they were not permitted to add. Justice Brett Kavanaugh warned that such a system could create a “due process problem…where the agency says you have to do this and then sues you for doing what they told you to do.”

Sarah Harris, a deputy solicitor general for the Justice Department (which filed an amicus brief in December), retorted that it would be problematic to have each state “jumping the gun” and arriving at its own conclusions about whether a product can directly cause cancer.

Durnell’s lawyer argued that the EPA had overreached its regulatory power. To fix this problem, the lawyer argued, courts—especially state courts—should be given a stronger role in regulating health and environmental safety. Several justices were skeptical of this argument, reports the Times, and asked whether this could lead to a new patchwork of regulations throughout the United States. This concern was also raised in the Justice Department’s brief. It argued that the uniformity requirement in FIFRA “vests EPA with responsibility” over what warnings are necessary. “If States can compel petitioner to add a cancer warning—contrary to EPA’s scientific judgments—States could drown EPA’s approved warnings in a sea of local health and environmental concerns.”

The decision, which will be announced later this year, is sure to have wide-ranging impacts on the American food system. If the Court rules against Monsanto, it could pave the way for further lawsuits and damages, leading to higher costs across the industry. It would also challenge the notion that if a company follows federal law, they are safe from legal liability. It could also discourage the use of glyphosate, which has been critical in boosting food production, replacing other harmful pesticides, and saving farmers $21 billion annually, according to Graham Matthews, a pesticide expert.

Beyond the implications on food production, the decision is also likely to have political ramifications. After playing a key role in getting President Donald Trump reelected, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement—which wants to ban pesticides like glyphosate—is beginning to sour on the administration.

In February, Trump issued an executive order to promote glyphosate production, calling its continued production critical to America’s food supply and national security and stating that “lack of access to glyphosate-based herbicides would critically jeopardize agricultural productivity.”

This order, along with a lack of progress on other issues, has left MAHA unhappy. On Monday, a group of the movement’s supporters gathered outside the Supreme Court for what they called the “People vs. Poison Rally.” Holding placards stating “No liability protection from pesticides” and “pesticides are a national security threat,” activists hoped to display their dismay at the Trump administration.

Speaking at the rally, Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) said “Americans are under attack” and that these companies “want get-out-of-court free cards.”

“Was the EPA established to protect the environment and the people, or was it established to protect foreign corporations when they harm the environment and the people?” Massie continued.

“Shielding pharmaceutical companies from accountability with lawsuit immunity for pesticides is wrong,” Charity Williamson, who attended the rally, tells Reason. “As a libertarian, I believe that the government has a responsibility to its people to protect life, liberty, and property. If a company has a product that causes cancer, we should be able to hold that company accountable in a court of law.”

The Supreme Court is set to make a decision this summer. Siding against Monsanto could hurt farmers and discourage innovation, ultimately leaving people worse off.

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War hawks love the idea of “credibility.” In his confirmation hearing last year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called his philosophy “peace through strength by restoring the credibility of American deterrence.” When President Donald Trump sent special forces to capture Venezuelan ruler Nicolás Maduro, Vice President J.D. Vance said that “Maduro is the newest person to find out that President Trump means what he says.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth similarly stated last month that “Iran is learning the hard way that President Trump means what he says.”

It’s ironic praise for a president who so often doesn’t mean what he says. In between his Venezuelan and Iranian interventions, Trump threatened Denmark, stating that he would take over the Danish territory of Greenland “the easy way” or “the hard way.” On January 20, in a rant about Greenland, he stated that “there can be no going back.” It turns out there was. The next day, Trump agreed to a “framework of a future deal” over expanded U.S. military access to the island. The whole episode was promptly forgotten, just like his repeated threats to tariff the world. And in the current Middle East standoff, he has issued and extended deadlines for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz multiple times.

There is a method to the madness. “Sometimes it pays to be a little wild,” Trump wrote in his 1987 book on business, The Art of the Deal, explaining that he creates fear and then lets the counterparty come up with a favorable alternative. That tactic may work sometimes, but it’s the opposite of building credibility; the point is the mismatch between statements and true intentions. One common defense of Trump, coined by conservative journalist Salena Zito, is that people should take him “seriously, not literally.” If that’s the case, then why talk about “credibility” in the first place?

The problem isn’t unique to Trump. Decades ago, President Richard Nixon and his top foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger, obsessively talked about maintaining American “credibility.” Yet they also believed in “madman theory,” the notion that acting irrational, erratic, and downright nuts is a useful way to intimidate opponents. That contradiction is at the heart of a lot of hawkish logic. For many hawks, credibility doesn’t actually mean what most people think it means: a reputation for straight talk and serious promises. Instead, it’s a code word for pride, or plain old looking tough, even at the cost of being believed.

The Nixon era also goes to show what happens when the madman strategy of negotiations doesn’t work. Nixon and Kissinger understood that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, but Kissinger believed that “a sudden withdrawal might give us a credibility problem,” because other states might believe that the U.S. was weak. Instead, he resolved to “drag on the process” of losing. Nixon played the madman, swinging between diplomatic overtures and threats of nuclear annihilation, while he escalated the bombing of North Vietnam and secretly invaded Cambodia.

These escalations got tens of thousands of people killed, including thousands of Americans. (The largest shootdown of B-52 bombers ever happened during Nixon’s “Christmas bombings,” just before the Paris Peace Accords were signed in early 1973.) The madman strategy also didn’t work. In the end, communist North Vietnam was able to chase Americans from Vietnam at gunpoint. To the extent that prestige and honor are important, the humiliation of evacuees crowding the last helicopters out of Saigon was a lot more damaging than the Nixon administration accepting a stalemate would have been.

On its own, credibility can be an important asset for a country to preserve. The classic work of Cold War military strategy, Arms and Influence by Thomas C. Schelling, states that deterrence “requires more than a military capability. It requires projecting intentions.” Sometimes, the book states coldly, “the threat has to be made lively when the prohibited action is undertaken.” But the other half of making a threat believable comes from holding back. The target of a threat has to know “that he can avoid the pain or loss if he does comply,” Schelling writes, or else he has no reason to believe that fighting back is worse than backing down.

Many hawks love the first part of Schelling’s argument while ignoring the second. They tend to attack any case of the United States holding back. Sometimes they argue that an enemy backing down is an opportunity to take advantage of their weakness. Or that the enemy is just too evil to leave alone. Either way, a loud domestic lobby for escalation no matter what makes the U.S. government less credible, because it can’t be trusted to hold back.

After all, Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi gave up his nuclear program—and then was killed by U.S.-backed rebels in 2011. And every attack on Iran during the Trump administration came with some bad-faith negotiating trap. Trump agreed to negotiate with Iran in June 2025, allowed Israel to attack Iran a few days before the scheduled talks, said he would take “two weeks” to decide whether to join in, and then did so two days later. This time around, Trump similarly attacked Iran and killed its leaders a few days before he was scheduled to negotiate with them.

These tricks have real, immediate costs to U.S. credibility. Russian ruler Vladimir Putin became obsessed with Gadhafi’s assassination, both because Gadhafi was seemingly punished for agreeing to U.S. terms, and because Russia had green-lit the U.S. intervention based on apparently deceptive promises from the Obama administration. That war radicalized Putin, who sent Russian forces into Ukraine and Syria over the next few years.

Iran’s new leadership, too, has said that it is entering the ceasefire from a position of “no trust” in negotiations with the United States. And the slow pace of peace talks has itself led to a vicious cycle of credibility problems. In an apparent attempt to keep markets optimistic, Trump has put out a steady stream of announcements that Iran is about to fold, none of which have ended up panning out. Traders are now paying less attention to Trump’s statements, while both U.S. and Iranian diplomats have privately acknowledged that these declarations are making negotiations harder to conduct.

Or to put it slightly differently, Trump has come out of the Iran War with the world less sure that he “means what he says.” Even if other countries are more sure that he is willing to use violence, they cannot take his words as a reliable measure of what he wants.

Make no mistake, the United States is better off for the fact that Trump was not a credible speaker when he threatened to invade Greenland or to kill the “whole civilization” of Iran. But the past few months go to show how credibility chasing and madman theory fail on their own terms. Hawks have repeatedly put the United States in a position of having to pay a high price to escalate or look stupid. In more than a few cases, they have landed the country in the worst of both worlds, both stuck in a fight and looking less believable than before.

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Do you want to know the good news about the minimum wage? In most parts of the country, it is practically irrelevant.

The last federal minimum wage increase went into effect on July 24, 2009, raising it from $6.55 an hour to $7.25. We have experienced nearly 50 percent inflation since then, yet the minimum wage has stayed the same. Even in 2009, only 4.9 percent of workers were actually paid $7.25 an hour, and that number has dropped to 1.1 percent today. This is good news: It means that the minimum wage is so low relative to the median wage that it is causing few economic distortions. 

Many states have their own minimum wage laws, and some of those are high—Washington, D.C., is at $17.90 an hour, Connecticut is at $16.94, and California is at $16.50. Then there are roughly 20 states with no minimum wage law at all, many of which are experiencing strong economic growth and in-migration. This is unsurprising because low minimum wages reflect a broader preference for economic freedom. By contrast, in D.C., Connecticut, California, and other states, high minimum wage increases have predictably decreased employment and forced firms to relocate, especially in the fast food industry.

It makes one wonder about the wisdom of a national minimum wage in the first place. The U.S. economy is not one-size-fits-all and the cost of living varies greatly. A $7.25 might be penurious in California but generous in Mississippi. 

The answer is to repeal all the minimum wage laws and get the government out of the business of setting price caps and floors on commodities, even labor. With a floor on prices above equilibrium, supply will exceed demand, producing a surplus of labor willing to work at that price—otherwise known as unemployment. Given three employees, if one had the choice of paying them each $10 or two of them $15 and having the third one on welfare, why wouldn’t you choose the former? 

The jobs that pay the minimum wage are not intended to be careers. They’re intended to be stepping stones for young, unskilled workers to graduate to higher-paying jobs later in life. I personally have one employee who told me that his first job paid the minimum wage, stacking inner tubes at a water slide park. Five years later, he is making multiples of that. But by taking that job, he acquired skills—not in stacking inner tubes, per se, but in putting on a uniform, showing up on time, working in an organization, and having a cheerful, positive attitude. These are skills that he will carry with him through life.

By raising the minimum wage, we are depriving young people of these opportunities. No teenager in Connecticut will get an entry-level job for $16.94 an hour, bagging groceries or stacking inner tubes. Their first job will most likely come at 22, when they graduate from college and the stakes are higher, never having acquired those basic habits of showing up on time and conducting themselves professionally. These are jobs that kids take while they’re going through college to get some spending money and to grow up a little.

A minimum wage is a price floor, and it’s bad for the same reason that price caps are bad. If we capped the price of corn at a level far below the market-clearing price, massive shortages would develop overnight. The same logic applies to labor. If we could legislate prosperity, why not make the minimum wage $100 an hour? $10,000 an hour? The unemployment rate would skyrocket. The federal minimum wage has not moved in nearly two decades, and for now, that is something close to a blessing. We should not be in a hurry to change it. 

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A new study just published by the prestigious American Economic Review may be the most important recent social science article most nonexperts have never heard of. It’s entitled “Zero-Sum Thinking and the Roots of US Political Differences” and the authors are economists Sahil Chinoy, Nathan Nunn, Sandra Sequeira, and Stefanie Stantcheva. Here is the abstract:

We investigate the origins and implications of zero-sum thinking: the belief that gains for one individual or group tend to come at the cost of others. Using a new survey of 20,400 US residents, we measure zero-sum thinking, political preferences, policy views, and a rich array of ancestral information spanning four generations. We find that a more zero-sum mindset is strongly associated with more support for government redistribution, race- and gender-based affirmative action, and more restrictive immigration policies. Zero-sum thinking can be traced back to the experiences of both the individual and their ancestors, encompassing factors such as the degree of intergenerational upward mobility they experienced, whether they immigrated to the United States or lived in a location with more immigrants, and whether they were enslaved or lived in a location with more enslavement.

I have long argued that zero-sum assumptions are central to the dangerous world views of both right-wing nationalists and many left-wing socialists and “wokists.” I have also long warned against the dangers of widespread political ignorance, which has been a central theme of my work for many years. This study provides extensive evidence that zero-sum thinking is widespread, and that it is at the root of many crucial political attitudes.

As the authors show, zero-sum worldviews cut across party and ideological lines (though slightly more prevalent among Republicans than Democrats), and are strong predictors of political views on issues like redistribution, the use of racial preferences for affirmative actions, and immigration restrictions.

The authors’ analysis of the determinants and correlates of zero-sum worldviews is also groundbreaking. Most notably, they find that experiences of upward mobility and immigration (including having immigrant parents or grandparents) are strongly negatively correlated with zero-sum thinking. On the other hand, zero-sum thinking has a strong positive correlation with having ancestors who experienced slavery and others forms of forced labor or even just living in an area where slavery was historically prevalent.

Among American Blacks, this latter effect is, as the authors recognize, partly caused by a history of segregation and discrimination that persisted after slavery was abolished. The same can be said of the impact of living in an area where slavery was prevalent (which also are almost always areas where there was a high degree of later segregation and other discrimination). But it is notable that the impact of past enslavement is also significant among other groups, such as Jews whose parents or grandparents were forced laborers during the Holocaust.

The impact of immigration is particularly noteworthy in light of current debates over immigration restrictions. Libertarians and free-market conservatives sympathetic to restrictionism often argue that immigration should be curtailed because it might lead to increased welfare state spending. But the Chinoy, et al. study shows that zero-sum thinking is a major determinant of support for redistributive policies, and immigrants and children of immigrants are much less prone to it than other voters, even after controlling for a variety of other variables. This is actually an additional important pathway by which immigration is likely to reduce the burden of the welfare state, rather than increase it. I went over some additional flaws in the welfare state rationale for immigration restrictions in this post, and in Chapter 6 of my book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom.

The same goes for concerns that immigration might increase “woke” policies like affirmative action racial preferences. Chinoy, et al. also show that support for these policies is heavily driven by zero-sum assumptions, and immigrants and their children are far less likely to hold such views than natives. I outlined some other ways in which immigration reduces support for affirmative action here.

I don’t want to overstate the importance of these points. As also noted in Chapter 6 of my book, recent immigrants tend to vote and otherwise participate in politics at lower rates than natives. That considerably diminishes any effect they have on political outcomes, whether good or bad. But to the extent they do have a marginal impact, it’s likely to reduce political pressure for redistribution and racial preferences rather than increase it.

I would add that, as the authors point out, zero-sum worldviews are likely to be important for a range of issues beyond those they tested. For example, in addition to heavily influencing views on immigration, I would expect them to also influence views on protectionism. Indeed, a measure of zero-sum attitudes towards international trade is (quite properly) one of the authors’ questions gauging zero-sum attitudes.

I would also expect zero-sum views to be crucial determinants of attitudes on such policies as rent control and “NIMBY” restrictions on housing construction. If you think the economy is a zero-sum game generally, you are probably more likely to also believe that housing is a zero-sum game between landlords and tenants, and between long-time residents and developers and potential migrants. Indeed, survey data on housing issues shows that much opposition to zoning reform is driven by false beliefs that new housing construction will not reduce prices, and other kinds of economic ignorance driven in part by zero-sum assumptions.

While most of the authors’ evidence is limited to the United States, they note some data that suggests similar effects in other countries. Testing their hypothesis further in other countries is an important potential topic for future research.

As regular readers know, I am generally hostile to zero-sum thinking and the policies it leads to. I think zero-sum assumptions about immigration, housing, the interests of the poor and minority groups, and most other issues are largely wrong, and lead to pernicious policies. In previous writings, I have extensively critiqued zero-sum assumptions about immigration (e.g. here and here), and housing, among other issues. In most cases, zero-sum games only arise if pernicious government policies (often themselves based on zero-sum assumptions) needlessly create them. For example, housing can be a zero-sum game when exclusionary zoning blocks new construction in response to demand.

However, those more sympathetic to various types of zero-sum thinking than I am can also find value in the Chinoy, et al. article. Effects I view as pernicious, they might actually see as beneficial (and vice versa). Either way, the impact of zero-sum thinking on political views is an incredibly important field of study, and I commend the authors of this article for making a major advance in our understanding.

The above covers only part of what’s in the article. There is much more. Serious students of this subject should make sure to read the whole thing.

 

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Blanchard v. Augusta Bd. of Ed., decided yesterday by Judge Stacey Neumann (D. Me.), held that the First Amendment was likely violated by school board public commentary policies forbidding

1. “gossip,”
2. “abusive … language.,”
3. “vulgar language,” and
4. “complaints or allegations … at Board meetings concerning any person employed by the school system or against particular students,” also described as “[p]ersonal matters or complaints concerning student or staff issues.”

The parties had agreed that the public comment period was a “limited public forum,” a place opened up by the government for speech on particular subjects. In a limited public forum, speech restrictions must be viewpoint-neutral and reasonable. The court then held that the four restrictions noted above violated one or both of these elements:

[1.] Gossip:

By its terms, the gossip prohibition turns on what is being said: “rumors or information about the behavior or personal lives of other people.” See Gossip, Merriam-Webster. Such a category of speech does not exist solely and definitively outside of that which relates to school or education matters. Comments about the conduct or personal behavior of teachers, administrators, or Board members may indeed bear directly on school operations and policy….

[And] Policy BEDH provides no objective standard to distinguish “gossip” related to school and education matters from other such commentary. That lack of clarity leaves speakers guessing at what is allowed and invites arbitrary enforcement by officials presiding over the meetings. Without a workable line, there is no “sensible basis for distinguishing what may come in from what must stay out.” In practice, the rule allows the presiding officer’s own sensibilities to determine what counts as “gossip,” which “openly invites viewpoint discrimination.”

The overbreadth concerns are equally apparent. Defined as “rumors or information about the behavior or personal lives of other people,” the term “gossip” can easily encompass speech at the heart of the Board’s public comment period—for example, a parent repeating information they have heard about a teacher’s behavior in the school that relates to their child’s education or a citizen relaying information about an administrator’s conduct relevant to policy or budgeting decisions. Such speech may be sharply worded but still fully protected and directly tied to school business. A rule that sweeps this speech broadly into the category of “gossip” risks silencing criticism that the First Amendment protects….

[2.] Abusive language:

Merriam Webster defines “abusive” as “harsh and insulting” or “using harsh and insulting language.” At the July 2025 Board meeting, the Chair similarly defined abusive language as “language that is harmful or offensive to a person.” Read this way, the policy singles out speech that offends or insults its target. This is classic viewpoint discrimination. See Matal v. Tam (2017) (“Giving offense is a viewpoint.”). Other courts evaluating comparable school board policies have reached the same conclusion.

To be sure, the Board is not powerless to regulate all manifestations of abusive speech. A policy that targets narrow, viewpoint-neutral characteristics—such as actual disruption, shouting, threats, or true harassment—or that explicitly and tightly defines the covered category may pass constitutional muster. Rule E, however, does not contain that kind of limiting construction. As applied here, “abusive” functions as a broad bar on offensive speech—an “undercover prohibition” on disfavored viewpoints.

Because the government “may not burden the speech of others in order to tilt public debate in a preferred direction,” the Board’s prohibition on “abusive” language is facially unconstitutional in this limited public forum. Mr. Blanchard is therefore likely to succeed on his facial challenge to the “abusive language” portion of Rule E.

[3.] Vulgar language:

Merriam-Webster defines “vulgar” in several ways, including “lacking in cultivation, perception, or taste,” “offensive in language,” and “of or relating to the common people.” In the context of Policy BEDH, which prohibits “abusive or vulgar language” without reference to sexual content or obscenity, the most natural reading is “offensive in language.” That understanding again steers the analysis toward viewpoint discrimination, because the rule targets speech for its perceived offensiveness rather than for its subject or disruptive effect.

The Supreme Court has recognized that schools may regulate certain vulgar student speech in the school setting. See Bethel Sch. Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser (1986). The Court understands the school board’s desire to model respectful public behavior and to encourage civil discourse. Nonetheless, public school board meetings—open to adults and structured as a limited public forum—differ meaningfully from compulsory K–12 classrooms where the First Amendment permits greater regulation. In this setting, courts have instead focused on whether boards may exclude speech that is truly obscene or actually disruptive….

Nor is there a persuasive narrowing construction available on this record that would confine “vulgar” to unprotected obscenity or similar categories. Rule E does not use the word “obscene,” does not tie “vulgar” to any requirement of disruption, and does not otherwise limit the term to a recognized class of unprotected speech. Instead, particularly when read alongside “abusive,” Rule E leaves policing “vulgar” to turn on the presiding officer’s sense of what language is sufficiently “uncultivated” or “offensive in language” to warrant exclusion. Such open-ended discretion raises the same concerns identified in Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky (2018), where the Supreme Court cautioned that standardless rules invite arbitrary enforcement.

For these reasons, the term “vulgar” in Rule E can only be understood as a broad prohibition on offensive language that operates as an additional restriction on offensive viewpoints rather than as a legitimate, viewpoint-neutral decorum rule. In line with the Court’s analysis of “abusive” speech, the “vulgar language” prohibition is facially unconstitutional, and Mr. Blanchard is likely to succeed on his facial challenge to that portion of Rule E.

[4.] Complaints, allegations, and personal matters concerning employees or students:

Defendants contend Rule H “restricts speakers from discussing a named or identifiable District employee regardless of whether the comment associated with that individual employee is criticism, praise, or something in between.” Read that way, Rule H would operate as a ban on “personnel matters.” A content-based restriction that excludes an entire subject—such as personnel matters—may be permissible in a limited public forum if it is viewpoint neutral (for example, barring all personnel-related comments, positive and negative) and reasonable (for example, by providing effective alternative channels for addressing those matters, such as through Policy KE).

Rule H, however, does not use the term “personnel.” Instead, it refers to “personal matters or complaints concerning student or staff issues.” … The ambiguity in Rule H’s actual language drives the constitutional problem. It is not clear what “personal matters” encapsulates. If the phrase is meant to exclude speech related to purely private affairs—thereby removing it from the ambit of speech that relates to education and the school system—that limitation is not evident from the text alone. And in light of the forum’s purpose, some purely “private matters” would already reasonably fall outside the permissible scope of discussion. But the definition of “personal” also relates to an individual’s “conduct,” “character,” or “motives,” and these words are vague in the context of Policy BEDH. Thus, while the Constitution does not require mathematical exactitude in language, the text of Rule H alone makes it unclear what speech it allows and what it prohibits….

The Board’s shifting explanations of Rule H have not cured this uncertainty…. At the April 2025 meeting, the Chair suggested that “negative comments” about Board members were not permitted, even though Defendants later conceded at the hearing that Rule H does not bar speech directed at Board members, only at school employees. At the May 2025 meeting, a Board member stated that “the policy is that we will not speak positively or negatively about any personnel,” and the Chair responded, “our current policy is only to not speak negatively.” …

The vagueness doctrine “guarantees that ordinary people have ‘fair notice’ of the conduct a statute proscribes” and “guards against arbitrary or discriminatory law enforcement by insisting that a statute provide standards to govern the actions” of government officials. Rule H, as written, falls short on both fronts. The phrase “personal matters or complaints concerning student or staff issues” is steeped in subjectivity, and the record shows that Board members and the Chair have articulated different understandings of what the rule covers. Because the text does not clearly delineate its boundaries and the interpretive explanations have been inconsistent, Defendants have not shown that Rule H is capable of “reasoned application.”

{Notably, Rule H, by its terms, applies only to “complaints or allegations” and “complaints concerning student or staff issues.” For the reasons discussed herein, restricting only “complaints” is not viewpoint neutral. However, the Court need not address this issue further because it has enjoined Rule H in its entirety.}

{That is not to say the Board could not draft a public comment policy with a clear definition of “personal matters” that is appropriately prohibitive.}

But the court upheld the prohibition on “defamatory comments,” “which the Court construes as limited to unprotected defamatory speech” of the sort that can lead to civil liability.

Some excerpts from the pretty long factual backstory, though the court’s analysis generally focused more on the terms of the policies than the particular facts of the plaintiff’s comments:

During [Mr. Blanchard’s] public comment, he stated, “here in Maine, it seems we have too many soft beta males that won’t stand up for what is right” and added “it seems that I am looking at a couple of [them] right here.” The Chair interjected, stating “I’m sorry, but … disparaging remarks are not allowed.” …

[At a later meeting,] Mr. Blanchard said, “I think we should all acknowledge the president of the Maine Principal Association that’s going to cause all of our federal funding to go right out the window,” while gesturing toward the Maine Principal Association (“MPA”) President, who was present in the meeting room. The Chair interrupted him, stating “excuse me, excuse me … excuse me, no disparaging remarks.” Mr. Blanchard asked, “how is that disparaging?” and then continued to express concerns about the potential loss of federal funding for Augusta public schools based on MPA’s stance, specifically invoking the MPA President as the reason for the potential funding cuts.

The Chair replied, “those remarks are inappropriate. I’m sorry.” Mr. Blanchard asked, “how are they? How is that inappropriate?” and added, “they’re true.” The Chair asked whether Mr. Blanchard had comments to make that were “not about … personnel,” and Mr. Blanchard again asked, “how is that inappropriate?” This back and forth repeated itself. Mr. Blanchard then continued to speak against the purported loss of federal funding. A Board member moved to go into recess; the Board voted to approve the motion and went into a brief recess, effectively ending Mr. Blanchard’s time at the podium….

[At another meeting,] Mr. Blanchard approached the podium wearing a t-shirt that displayed the words “YOUR FIRED” and a picture of Principal Kimberly Liscomb on the front. He began by thanking six Board members for their prior vote related to Title IX policies and contrasted their votes with that of the one member who had voted the opposite way; he did not identify any Board member by name. The Chair interrupted part of his commentary, stating the correct spelling is YOU’RE and Mr. Blanchard would be going to grammar jail “negative comments” were not permitted.

The exchange intensified when Mr. Blanchard discussed a petition to fire “Miss Kim” (i.e., Principal Liscomb), prompting the Chair to issue multiple warnings regarding “defamatory remarks about school personnel.” Blanchard attempted to continue by referring to Principal Liscomb only by her professional title rather than her name. The Chair ruled it was “close enough” to a violation of Policy BEDH, however, and ordered Mr. Blanchard to leave the podium with approximately three minutes of his allotted speaking time remaining. As he left, Mr. Blanchard remarked, “wow, communist China right here.” …

During the June 2025 meeting, Mr. Blanchard criticized what he viewed as the Board’s selective enforcement of Policy BEDH and alleged the Board prioritized ideology over academic excellence. He stated that parents were “done watching the alphabet cult shove their propaganda down our throat and in our schools,” prompting the Chair to interrupt and ask speakers to refrain from “disparaging remarks.” …

David Robert Gordon and Stephen C. Smith (Steve Smith Trial Lawyers) and Brett Robert Nolan and Nathan John Ristuccia (Institute for Free Speech) represent plaintiff.

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From N.Y. Times v. U.S. Dep’t of Defense a/k/a Dep’t of War, decided yesterday by Judges Justin Walker and Bradley Garcia:

Last fall, the Pentagon announced a new policy governing Pentagon Facility Alternate Credentials (PFACs), the passes journalists have historically used to access the Pentagon. The new policy restricted this access and implemented rules that would allow the Pentagon to revoke credentials if the holder was determined to be a “security or safety risk to Department personnel or property.” A reporter could be deemed a “security or safety risk” “based on the unauthorized access, attempted unauthorized access, or unauthorized disclosure” of Department information.

The New York Times (NYT) and one of its journalists, Julian E. Barnes, filed suit to enjoin several provisions of the policy as unconstitutional under the First and Fifth Amendments, and as arbitrary and capricious under the APA. On cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court held that the rules governing when a PFAC may be denied for “security” reasons were unconstitutionally vague in violation of the Fifth Amendment because they “fail[ed] to provide fair notice of what routine, lawful journalistic practices” would trigger credential revocation.

Turning to the First Amendment, the court noted there was no dispute that “[t]he regular presence of PFAC holders at the Pentagon … enhanced the ability of journalists and news organizations … to keep Americans informed about the United States military.” Moreover, this arrangement had “pos[ed] no security or safety risk to Department property or personnel.” By contrast, the district court concluded that the record was “replete with undisputed evidence that the Policy” was specifically, and unreasonably, designed to deprive “disfavored” journalists of access to a nonpublic forum. Accordingly, the district court granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs on their constitutional claims, without addressing the APA claim.

The next business day, the government replaced the invalidated policy with a new one that revised provisions the district court had declared unconstitutional and announced new “physical security restrictions” for all PFAC holders. Those restrictions required that PFAC holders be escorted in all areas of the Pentagon “at all times” and limited their opportunities for entry to five approved purposes. At the same time, the Department announced that the previously available workspace in the “Correspondents’ Corridor” was closed and that a new workspace “will be established in an annex facility.”

The plaintiffs promptly moved to compel compliance with the summary judgment order, and the district court granted that motion. In addition to declaring the “adoption and enforcement” of “the escort requirements and access limitations” in violation of its previous order, the district court ordered the Department to reinstate “access” to the Pentagon “commensurate with the access provided to PFAC holders on March 20, 2026, following this Court’s Order vacating certain provisions of the prior PFAC Policy.” The Department responded by asking the district court for a stay pending appeal “to the extent” the district court’s order “vacate[d] and enjoin[ed] the Pentagon’s new physical access restrictions—the escort requirement and the physical access limitations.” The district court denied that motion but granted a fourteen-day administrative stay to allow the Department to seek relief here.

The Department sought an emergency stay pending appeal, limited solely to the order’s “entitl[ing] reporters to access the Pentagon unescorted.” “[The Department represented to the district court that ‘there is no requirement’ under the Interim Policy ‘to make advance requests for an escort’ and there would be ‘no concern that the Department could deny’ a PFAC holder an escort.”

The panel majority agreed:

On the questions of irreparable harm, the balance of equities, and the public interest, both parties identify weighty competing interests. The Pentagon Press Secretary has submitted a declaration explaining that prior to the 2025 PFAC Policy, journalists obtained “sensitive or classified” information “often monthly, and sometimes multiple times per month,” including information concerning “operational plans” and “intelligence assessments.” Unescorted access to the Pentagon was, according to the Department, “a significant contributing factor” to that pattern because it enabled reporters to “observe activity patterns” and identify potential sources of sensitive information. On that basis, the Department argues that unescorted access to the Pentagon will increase the risk that journalists obtain and disseminate sensitive information, jeopardizing national security. The Department has thus supported its claim that this aspect of its policy furthers important national security interests.

For their part, plaintiffs contend that the policy burdens newsgathering by restricting access in ways that impair their ability to “ask questions, confirm information,” and “receive timely updates”—opportunities that once lost, “will be lost forever.” That burden extends beyond the press itself, implicating the public’s interest in the free flow of information about government operations.

Because both sides have established substantial, competing interests, the balance of the equities and the public interest do not strongly favor either party. Our decision therefore turns on the merits.

The Department has shown that it is likely to succeed on the merits of the issue it presents. Under settled law, an agency may respond to an adverse ruling by adopting a revised policy, and it “need not seek modification of [an] injunction before it initiates” those efforts. That principle is implicated here. The escort requirement was not contemplated by the challenged 2025 policy. So the district court’s March 20 summary judgment opinion and order did not address that provision or a similar one.

Moreover, in part because the challenge to the Interim PFAC Policy was presented in a motion to compel compliance, the district court did not hold that the escort requirement independently violates the First or Fifth Amendment. On this record, the Department is likely to succeed in its argument that the escort requirement in particular is a new, generally applicable requirement that is not invalid for violating the district court’s summary judgment order or the constitutional principles underlying it.

And from Judge Michelle Childs’ dissent:

An injunction is not an invitation to circumvention. Once a court has spoken, the party bound by its order may not evade it through creative policymaking. On March 20, the district court ordered the Department of Defense to restore certain New York Times reporters’ Pentagon press credentials. The Department responded by restoring the credentials but stripping away much of what made them matter: regular, unescorted access to the Pentagon and the press workspace inside it.

The district court determined that such conduct was noncompliant with its injunction. My colleagues stay that ruling. Because the Department has not made a strong showing that the district court erred in interpreting its own injunction, I respectfully dissent….

I start with the district court’s authority to interpret its own injunction. As a rule, a district court has both “jurisdiction” and “inherent power to enforce its judgments.” That power reflects the judiciary’s institutional interest “in seeing that an unambiguous mandate is not blatantly disregarded by parties to a court proceeding.” With that in mind, we review a “district court’s interpretation and enforcement of its own orders” for abuse of discretion.

As Justice Scalia put it, “the construction given to the injunction by the issuing judge … is entitled to great weight.” Justice Breyer later described the same principle as “longstanding and well established.” On that understanding, “[t]he court granting the injunction is necessarily invested with large discretion in enforcing obedience to its mandate, and … courts of appellate powers are exceedingly averse to interfering with the exercise of such judgment and discretion.”

That discretion is not exercised by parsing an injunction as though it were a tax code…. [W]e must read an injunction in light of “what the decree was really designed to accomplish.” To identify that purpose, we consider “the relief sought by the moving party, the evidence produced at the hearing on the injunction, and the mischief that the injunction seeks to prevent.” …

Nor may a party exploit uncertainty as a license to disobey an injunction. If an injunction proves “too burdensome in operation,” the party has “a method of relief apart from an appeal.” It may petition the district court “for a modification, clarification or construction of the order.” After all, an appellate court is not the proper forum of first instance for resolving the particulars of an injunction….

These principles decide the point here. The Department was not free to make its own practical construction of the Merits Order, adopt a substitute policy that preserved the very “mischief that the injunction seeks to prevent[,]”and then insist that compliance was complete because the new policy was labeled “interim.” The district court was entitled—indeed required—to measure the Interim PFAC Policy against the Merits Order’s purpose, the record that produced it, and the access it was designed to protect. Viewed through that lens, the district court correctly decided that the Department had not complied….

In light of those principles, the district court’s Merits Order was clear that the Department had to “immediately reinstate the PFACs” of seven New York Times reporters. The Department did not do that. Instead, as the district court found, it “cut off all PFAC holders’ meaningful access to the Pentagon.” That finding matters because the point of the injunction, as the district court interpreted it, “was to restore The Times journalists’ access to the Pentagon, not merely to ensure that they have possession of a physical credential.” The Interim PFAC Policy thus runs headlong into what the injunction “was really designed to accomplish.”

The district court’s factual findings confirm the point. As even the majority notes, the Department announced—on the next business day after the injunction issued—that it was closing the Correspondents’ Corridor. The district court also found that the Department relegated PFAC holders “to work from a space outside the Pentagon building.” And it found more still: the Department announced that journalists could no longer enter the Pentagon “at all without a Department escort,” and that even escorted access would be limited to particular events. The Interim PFAC Policy says just that. PFAC holders may “continue to have access to the Pentagon for scheduled press briefings, press conferences, and interviews arranged through public affairs offices.” Even then, they must be escorted by authorized Department personnel “at all times.”.

That is not the access the Merits Order restored. In explaining why “the remedies available at law [were] inadequate,” the district court expressly relied on the proposition that “the only way to remedy the injury [from the loss of a press credential] is to return the hard pass and the access that comes with it.”

As for the facts it relied upon, the district court explained that the parties did not dispute that the “[t]he regular presence of PFAC holders at the Pentagon has enhanced the ability of journalists and news organizations to keep Americans informed about the U.S. military while posing no security or safety risk.” The district court also found that it was undisputed that from the Pentagon “reporters historically have been able to cover official press briefings, including those called on short notice (or without notice), and to ask questions of Pentagon officials at (and before and after) those briefings.” The district court found next that those reporters “also have engaged in additional semi-formal and informal conversations with senior Department officials and their aides, as well as public affairs staff.” “These in-person interactions,” as the district court determined and the parties did not dispute, “can be crucial to obtaining the context and detail needed to report accurately and effectively about defense policy and military operations.”

That makes sense. Reporters can hardly verify sources, gather information, or speak candidly with Department personnel with an escort looming over their shoulders. Given the district court’s factual findings and the law it applied, the purpose of the injunction was clear: The Department had to give PFAC holders unescorted access. That was the status quo through decades and wars—including after the “terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.” …

Given the foregoing reasons, the Department has not made a “strong showing that [it] is likely to succeed on the merits.” The Department bears the burden of justifying “such an extraordinary remedy,” and its stay application fails on the first stay factor. Since the Department has not shown that the Interim PFAC Policy likely complied with the Merits Order, I would deny the stay without reaching the remaining factors….

The post D.C. Circuit Lets Pentagon Require That Journalists Be Escorted While in Pentagon appeared first on Reason.com.

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