Rhode Island property targeted for condemnation to prevent construction of affordable housing on the site. (PLF).
Last year, I wrote about SCLS Realty v. Town of Johnston, a case where property owners challenged a Rhode Island town’s plan to use eminent domain as a tool for blocking a housing project opposed by local NIMBYs. A few days, ago a federal district court invalidated the use of eminent domain there. But not on the “public use” grounds discussed in my 2025 post. Rather, the Court ruled that the Town was never delegated the authority to use eminent domain for this kind of purpose in the first place. In Rhode Island (as in other states) eminent domain is a power of the state government, and localities can only wield it in so far as the state legislature authorizes them to do so.
Robert Thomas of the Pacific Legal Foundation (the public interest law firm that represented the property owners) has a helpful and more detailed summary of the court’s ruling at the Inverse Condemnation blog.
NOTE: PLF is also my wife’s employer. But she has no involvement in this case and does not work on property rights issues.
The Supreme Court Justices (2023). (Pool/ABACA/Newscom)
Debate over the Supreme Court’s performance in recent years has become highly polarized. So it’s worth noting that prominent left-liberal Georgetown law professor David Cole recently published a qualified defense of the Supreme Court’s recent rulings in the New York Review. He emphasizes their crucial role in constraining abuses of power by Trump. Cole is also the former National Director of the ACLU, and thus – to understate the point – not a natural ally of the Court’s conservative majority. As we shall see, he’s far from an unqualified fan of their recent performance, and still takes them to task on some points. But the more positive aspect of his appraisal is still notable:
Can we rely on the courts, and most importantly the Supreme Court, to resist major assaults on the rule of law by the Trump administration? That question was front and center during the Court’s recently concluded 2025–2026 term. With its six Republican appointees—three nominated by Trump—some feared that, much like the Republican-controlled Congress, the Court would reflexively back the president….
By the end of the term, however, the story was more nuanced. The Court blocked four of Trump’s major initiatives: ending birthright citizenship, imposing worldwide tariffs, firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, and dispatching National Guard troops to Chicago, Portland, and other cities. In other significant cases as well, the Court rejected positions advanced by Trump. In a decision that he called “a tremendous loss,” it held that federal law permits the counting of mail-in ballots posted by election day but received thereafter. And it refuted the Trump administration’s assertion of constitutionally unchecked power to demand that Google turn over the cell phone location histories of unlimited numbers of Americans. The justices may not be, as Trump called them after he lost the tariffs case, “fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats,” but this is not Donald Trump’s Court….
These are not the decisions of a Court doing the president’s bidding or voting exclusively along party lines. By contrast, had these issues been put to a vote in Congress, would a single Republican have broken ranks?
The rulings cannot be dismissed as mere token losses for Trump. Each one established important guardrails on the executive branch. The tariffs decision rejected the president’s assertion of emergency powers, a step courts rarely take. Justice Samuel Alito called the birthright citizenship case “one of the most important decisions in the history of the Court.” The decision blocking the firing of Cook protected the independence of the Federal Reserve, the nation’s most powerful financial institution. And the National Guard decision kept troops off our streets, halting Trump’s invocation of a classic authoritarian move.
Some argue that all these cases that went against Trump were so easy and clearcut that the Court deserves little or no credit for them. Cole disagrees:
Nor can the decisions be discounted on the ground that no reasonable judge could rule in Trump’s favor. They all raised serious and unresolved questions. In Trump v. Barbara, the Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment, which extends citizenship to all persons born in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” was intended to adopt the then-existing common law rule of birthright citizenship….
In 1898 the Court affirmed this common law understanding in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. But that case involved the child of Chinese nationals who were permanently and legally domiciled in the United States, so it did not technically involve the classes of persons to whom Trump sought to deny citizenship: children of foreign nationals here illegally and children of transient visitors….
The tariffs case also presented a close question. The majority ruled that the president’s power to “regulate” imports under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not include the power to impose tariffs, as the Constitution generally assigns the power to tax to Congress, a tariff is a type of tax, and the IEEPA does not explicitly delegate the authority to tariff to the president. But Kavanaugh wrote a thoughtful dissent for three justices that echoed an earlier decision by Judge Richard Taranto, a widely respected moderate member of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The Supreme Court had previously interpreted the IEEPA broadly, and President Richard Nixon had imposed tariffs under a predecessor statute. Reasonable people could differ on the legal question, yet the Court sided against the president.
Cole makes similar points about some of the other major cases that Trump lost.
I actually think the birthright citizenship and tariff cases were more clear than Cole suggests. While there were indeed “reasonable” arguments on both sides, the plaintiffs’ arguments were much stronger than those of the administration. In the birthright citizenship case, the administration’s arguments would have undermined the main purpose of the Citizenship Clause: guaranteeing citizenship to freed slaves and other Blacks. In the tariff case (which I helped litigate), there was a long list of strong arguments against the Trump’s position, any one of which would have been enough to justify ruling him. I summarized many of them here. Still, both cases raised largely unprecedented issues, and in both a Supreme Court inclined to do Trump’s bidding could have found at least minimally respectable rationales for doing so. The same is true of the National Guard case, and others.
Overall, I very much agree with Cole’s point that the Court has been a crucial check on Trump’s power grabs, even if it hasn’t always constrained him as much as it should. I have made similar arguments, myself (e.g. here and here). But, in some ways, it means more coming from Cole, as he is more ideologically distant from the Court’s majority than I am.
It’s possible to dismiss the Court’s rulings against Trump on the grounds that, even if they went against Trump, they were still in line with the interests of at least some in the Republican Party. Thus, the Court could still be considered “partisan.” After all, in each of these cases, there were at least some Republicans – including influential Republican legal elites and prominent conservative legal commentators – who opposed the administration’s position.
But that claim runs into the painful reality that – at this point – the GOP overwhelmingly backs Trump’s policies, including on the issues at stake in these cases. If having the support of a few Republicans or conservative legal commentators is enough to make a decision partisan, the claim would be nonfalsifiable. After all, almost any plausible resolution of any major case has the support of at least a few prominent Republicans. For example, there are pro-choice Republicans like Maine Sen. Susan Collins who would have preferred to see the Court preserve abortion rights and Roe v. Wade. It doesn’t follow that a decision reaffirming Roe (the opposite of what the present Court actually did) would be a partisan Republican ruling!
It is fair to say, as liberal Justice Elena Kagan recently did, that this is a conservative Court, reflecting primarily conservative jurisprudential philosophies. As she puts it, “there’s a conservative court doing things that conservative jurists have long thought it appropriate to do.” But, as she also pointed out, that’s different from being either a Trump Court or a bunch of GOP partisans.
In the last part of Cole’s article, he takes the Court to task for neglecting the principle of stare decisis, overruling some precedents and severely narrowing others. I agree with his critiques of some of these decisions (e.g. – the awful Haitian TPS immigration ruling), and differ on others. But in each of these situations, it isn’t so much the doctrine of precedent that is doing the work, as our (sometimes divergent) perceptions of whether the precedent the Court overruled or narrowed was right in the first place.
Few judges, legal scholars, or commentators are genuinely willing to apply stare decisis to preserve constitutional precedents they believe to be badly wrong – and rightly so. I wrote about this in a 2019 post, that I think remains relevant today:
I simply do not believe that stare decisis will prevent either the liberal or the conservative justices from overruling constitutional precedents they believe to be badly wrong, though both are happy to wave the stare decisis flag whenever precedents they like are imperiled…
The liberal justices who appeal to stare decisis today also applaud the work of the New Deal-era and Warren courts, both of which overturned numerous longstanding constitutional precedents. Given the opportunity, they would likely happily overrule such precedents as Citizens United and the travel ban case, both much reviled on the left (the latter deservedly so, in my view)….
The Supreme Court needs to have the power to overturn flawed constitutional precedent, as this is usually the only way to correct wrong constitutional decisions, short of using the extraordinarily difficult amendment process.
If precedent were sacrosanct, the Supreme Court could not have reversed or superseded any of its most notorious past decisions… [I]n the travel ban case, the Court repudiated Korematsu v. United States, the notorious 1944 decision that upheld the World War II-era racially-based internment of over 100,000 Japanese-Americans. Hardly anyone objected that it was somehow inappropriate for the justices to junk a 74-year-old precedent….
Few people, particularly on the left, pine for the return of Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 case in which a narrow majority upheld the constitutionality of anti-sodomy laws. The Court eventually overruled Bowers in Lawrence v. Texas (2003)….
Today, pretty much every…. legal commentator can name Supreme Court decisions they would like to see overruled….
The justices’ highest legal obligation is not to the Court’s past precedents, but the Constitution. If they are convinced that the latter conflicts with the former, they should overrule, if at all possible. There is a good case for adhering to precedent in situations where the court is uncertain whether it is correct or not. In such situations, it might be reasonable to defer to the seeming accumulated wisdom of earlier judges, especially if there was a broad cross-ideological consensus among them…. [I]t is also justifiable to maintain wrong precedent in some instances where massive reliance interests would be upset otherwise.
But none of these considerations justifies maintaining precedents that the Court believes are badly wrong, and causing more harm than good in the real world. In such scenarios, the Court has a special obligation to help undo the evil that it had a major role in creating
See also my discussion here, of overturning precedents that protect individual rights.
I am far from an unequivocal defender of the current Supreme Court majority, and I think they have gotten some issues badly wrong. Just this term, we had the TPS case, and a severely flawed Takings Clause ruling. Earlier, there were clunkers like the Trump immunity decision, Trump v. Anderson, and the travel ban case, mentioned above. But when the Court goes wrong, it’s generally not because they showed too little respect for precedent.
The Court’s work could use significant improvement in a number of areas. But it’s also important to acknowledge its very real achievements. And to resist efforts to destroy those achievements – and judicial review generally – by measures such as court-packing.
California, the most populous U.S. state and the one with the largest economy, ranked as the 35th best state in a new ranking published by U.S. News on July 28.
Utah ranked as the best state, followed by South Dakota, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Nebraska.
The ranking was based on scores in eight categories such as education, healthcare, economy, and fiscal stability, and it was weighted by survey opinions.
Despite a median income of more than $100,000 compared to the national average of $81,600, California ranked last in the category of opportunity. This was partially because it ranked last in affordability, which was based on a cost-of-living index score and housing affordability index score.
The state’s Department of Housing & Community Development considers a six-figure salary as low-income in many of its coastal hubs.
According to the income limits it set on June 23, $100,000 is classified as low in seven counties – San Francisco, Marin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, and Orange.
Santa Cruz County has the highest cutoff for what’s considered low-income at $122,200 for a single-person household.
California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office said a mid-tier house costs about $775,000 in the state, nearly double the national average of $398,771.
“California home prices continue to be much more expensive than the rest of the US,” it said in its 2026 Housing Affordability Tracker.
Among all categories in U.S. News’s ranking, the state’s highest score was in healthcare at 7th place, including 6th in healthcare quality and 5th in public health.
Public health looked at infant mortality rate, mortality rate, obesity rate, smoking rate, suicide rate, and mental health.
The report states that 8.4 percent of California’s population is without health insurance, compared to the national average of 11.3 percent. It added that its obesity rate is 29.1 percent compared to 34.2 percent nationally.
The state also ranked 25th in education but 6th in higher education, which assessed graduation rates as well as low debt at graduation and low tuition fees.
However, California’s K-12 education ranked 41st, which was based on high school graduation rates, preschool enrollment, and test scores.
A separate report last month listed six California cities – Visalia, Bakersfield, Modesto, Fresno, Stockton, and Salinas – among the 10 least educated metropolitan areas in the United States.
The list looked at the share of adults at least 25 years old who have a high school diploma or higher, who have at least some college experience, who have a bachelor’s degree or higher, and who have a graduate or professional degree.
While many Central Valley areas scored low, Silicon Valley’s San Jose metro ranked as the fourth most educated, while the San Francisco metro ranked eighth.
On July 14, the State Leadership Initiative was honored to host the Florida DOGE team and their tech partners, Vulcan, Echelon, and DigiBuild, for the Florida DOGE Showcase in Washington, D.C. Spearheaded by Governor Ron DeSantis, the state has become the leader for providing accountable and efficient governance to its citizens.
Since its creation in 2025, the Florida DOGE team has identified nearly $1 billion in waste and abuse at the local government level and sent over $878 million back to the federal government. But the team’s work extends beyond fiscal savings and budgetary cuts – it also includes auditing university curriculum and state union programs and reining in rogue municipalities that had adopted woke-left policies.
Take Florida’s SB 1134, which banned counties and municipalities from using government funds for discriminatory DEI programs and activities. Florida DOGE found that local governments were forcing employees to undergo “Transgender Humility” training, which included the use of a “wheel of power/privilege” that singled out certain ethnic groups as being worse than others. In some extreme cases, the team found that local governments were directing taxpayer dollars to immigration lawyers who represented criminal illegal aliens. All of this was identified by Florida DOGE and prohibited by law.
This ideological audit was most prevalent in universities, where the team examined over 74,000 syllabi and 100,000 research articles for left-wing ideological content. Funding for these DEI-related activities was effectively halted through SB 266 and SB 7044. While the federal DOGE program failed to codify reform through legislation, Florida DOGE succeeded.
Florida DOGE has proven it is the model to emulate. The next step is to provide the blueprint for bringing it to other states.
Enter the State DOGE Playbook, a collaborative effort between the State Leadership Initiative and the Florida DOGE team. This is a step-by-step guide to ensure that these reforms are not merely a temporary win for a single executive’s tenure, but a long-term fundamental shift in how red states govern.
Instead of Elon Musk drawing from his own stable of engineers, Florida hired volunteers and tech-minded interns to leverage new technologies to conduct investigations and root out waste and ideological indoctrination previously unheard of at the state level. Many of Florida DOGE’s accomplishments were secured with a team of only three full-time employees, supplemented by a staff Florida put together. SLI is proud to be part of this effort; we even sent two of our own to act as special government employees, at no cost to the state, to help identify shadow government organizations funded by the state, local governments, and universities.
All that’s needed are a few liaisons for law enforcement and legislators, and the rest is bulk data analysis. Add to this that Florida DOGE implemented these reforms on just a six-figure budget. Rarely have government initiatives accomplished so much in such a cost-effective manner.
None of these accomplishments would’ve been possible without the power of new AI tools and data-analysis technologies provided by three partners: Echelon, Vulcan Technologies, and DigiBuild. While varying in scope, each was instrumental in identifying waste and abuse during the audits, leading to the most significant reforms in Florida.
Echelon was used to analyze spending and waste in the Lee County school district. Florida DOGE identified up to $80 million in potential savings through contract reviews and more than $8 million in savings by eliminating 170 unnecessary positions spanning 30 departments. Programs like this can restore public schools to their proper mission rather than serving as a patronage scheme for overeducated administrative staff.
Vulcan Technologies was utilized to conduct top-to-bottom payment transaction audits across the state. It was so effective that local governments throughout Florida are implementing it to find opportunities for savings. In a time when property taxes are a dominant issue among voters, AI and DOGE principles are bridging the gap, fulfilling the public’s demand for making cuts and providing the services local governments owe their citizens.
Many other states have similar programs. Texas’s Office of Regulatory Efficiency has generated over 400 reductions in administrative code, and Oklahoma’s DOGE office has produced over $19 million in cuts. But Florida’s success remains unparalleled, and SLI’s State DOGE Playbook explains how to emulate its success.
Blue states across the country continue to bankrupt themselves by allowing endless fraud and overfunded programs that never deliver on their promises. It’s not enough for red states to avoid these pitfalls – red states need to match Florida’s pace and provide the governance their citizens deserve. With this playbook, there are no more excuses, only the will to act.
“Pure Case Of Vandalism”: Trump Rages As DoJ Drops Reflecting Pool Case Against Former Olympian
Update (1245ET): President Trump has not taken kindly to the DoJ dropping their case against the former Olympian for vandalizing the Reflecting Pool, exclaiming his displeasure in a post on X:
I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM…
…that included the grass, which had a big 86 47 emblazoned in giant letters on it, and other elements of the surrounding area.
There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!“
* * *
As we detailed earlier, the Department of Justice dropped the case against a former Olympian accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in a court filing on July 31.
Former U.S. Olympic canoe racer David Hearn, 67, was accused of vandalizing the landmark this summer by allegedly pulling up and tearing the protective liner at the bottom of the Reflecting Pool after a $14.7 million renovation.
According to Jacki Thrapp, reporting for The Epoch Times, court documents reveal that after Hearn was indicted, the Department of the Interior provided additional documents to prosecutors which showed that damage in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings.
According to Friday’s filing, the flawed installation happened during “the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026.”
A defense expert inspected the pool when it was drained, to fix the damage, on July 17 with United States Attorney Jeanine Pirro and staffers and “immediately noted extensive damage.”
The discovery prompted them to dive deeper into installation documents, which showed there were “repeated failures of the lining during the installation process,” according to court docs.
“Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt,” the 20-page filing by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said.
Hearn’s lawyers said in a statement that the case should have never been brought.
“Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong,” the statement read. “The government’s approach was ready, fire, aim. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology.”
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington on June 26, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times
The athlete, who previously owned a company that manufactured materials for vessels and competed in the Summer Olympics in 1992, 1996, and 2000, denied allegations that he intentionally tried to damage the pool.
Hearn previously said that he only reached into the water to inspect a section after he saw that the coating was already peeling.
The patriotic pool is nearly 2,030 feet long, 167 feet wide, and can be as deep as 30 inches at its center.
The Maryland-born competitor’s trial was expected to start on Sept. 28 in D.C. Superior Court before the case was dropped on Friday.
Two Chinese men have been identified as suspects in the shooting and kidnapping of a Chino Hills resident who was later found mortally wounded in the trunk of their vehicle after one suspect fired into it during a police stop, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said in a July 31 statement to The Epoch Times.
The department identified the suspects as Bo Zhengfeng, 67, and Bo Jianquan, 66, both Irvine residents. The victim was identified as Shukur Aikebaer, 60, of Chino Hills.
The sheriff’s department did not identify the suspects’ citizenship.
Investigators said power to Aikebaer’s home was interrupted on the night of July 29. When he went outside to inspect the electrical panel, the two men allegedly shot and kidnapped him.
Deputies later stopped the suspects’ vehicle after a short pursuit. Bo Jianquan surrendered, but Bo Zhengfeng exited the vehicle, approached its open trunk, and fired into it, the department said.
Deputies then shot Bo Zhengfeng and discovered Aikebaer inside the trunk with a gunshot wound. Both men were pronounced dead at the scene.
Gunshots and Screams Reported
Deputies were dispatched to the 2100 block of Monteverde Drive at about 10:14 p.m. after a caller reported hearing gunshots and someone screaming.
While deputies were responding, they spotted the suspects’ vehicle traveling at high speed and attempted to stop it. The driver refused to yield, leading deputies on a short pursuit that ended in the 2400 block of Wandering Ridge Drive.
Deputies ordered both occupants out of the vehicle.
Bo Jianquan, the passenger, complied and was taken into custody. Bo Zhengfeng, the driver, did not comply, according to the department.
Bo Zhengfeng then shot Aikebaer, and deputies opened fire, striking him. Deputies attempted lifesaving measures on both wounded men. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.
Bo Jianquan was not injured, and no deputies were injured.
Prior Business Relationship
The sheriff’s department said Bo Zhengfeng and Aikebaer knew each other through a prior working relationship.
California corporate records show both men were connected to Panshi Inc., an investment company formed in 2018.
Bo Zhengfeng was listed as the company’s chief executive and director. Aikebaer – under the name Aikebaer Abuduxukuer – was listed as secretary and registered agent.
Both were listed at the same Irvine address.
Public property records identify Aikebaer Abuduxukuer as the owner of the Chino Hills home where the kidnapping began. The age and address in those records match the victim identified by the sheriff’s department.
Irvine Home Searched
Investigators later searched the Irvine home that Bo Zhengfeng shared with Bo Jianquan, according to the sheriff’s department.
Public property records identify the address used by several of Bo Zhengfeng’s companies as a home owned by Bo since 2018. Panshi Inc. records also listed the victim, under the name Aikebaer Abuduxukuer, at that address.
The search was carried out with assistance from the Irvine Police Department.
Bo Jianquan was booked at the West Valley Detention Center on suspicion of murder and kidnapping and was being held without bail.
The sheriff’s inmate system listed his first court appearance for Aug. 3 at the Rancho Cucamonga Courthouse.
The sheriff’s department said the investigation would be forwarded to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office for review and the filing of charges.
Airspace Lockdown Looms: US Warns Americans Get Out Of Mideast As Iran Targets Kuwait Again
There were no Friday night into Saturday morning US attacks on Iran, after President Trump warned he has given an order to hit Iran ‘hard’ – though didn’t disclose a timeline. Friday reports in The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and Axios strongly suggested that large US strikes would commence at some point this weekend, as the region remains on edge.
The only new and recent attacks have been more apparent Iranian drone strikes on Kuwait. Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday has confirmed Iran’s “continued aggression” against it after a drone attack earlier targeted “vital installations”.
The ministry called out the attacks as a “flagrant violation” of Kuwait’s sovereignty which reveal a “determination to persist in a hostile approach.” It said the country reserves the right to “take all necessary measures” to protect its security and resources.
Iran fired a drone barrage into Kuwait on Saturday, hitting a U.S. ally following President Trump’s vow to intensify military strikes in a rapidly expanding Middle East war.
Kuwait said it shot down the Iranian volley, but the renewed fire added more tension to a region bracing for more conflict. Trump ordered the military to launch a fresh attack on Iran to bring Tehran to the negotiating table, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
U.S. embassies in the Middle East told Americans to consider departing the region. Airlines are extending flight cancellations to Arab Gulf states, which have spent decades building themselves up as international airport hubs. The U.S. warned airspaces may soon be closed.
Ahead of likely reviewed US attacks on Iran, which could possibly involve Israel too, the US Department of State has re-issued an urgent travel warning for the entire Middle East region, saying “Americans in the region should consider departing, or be prepared to depart should there be escalation.”
“Americans outside the Middle East should seriously reconsider travel to and through the region,” it said on X Saturday, adding that “Iran and groups supportive of Iran may target other US interests overseas or at locations associated with the United States and Americans throughout the world.”
President Trump had made clear on Friday while at Camp David his view that the Iranians can’t be trusted, are ‘dishonorable’ – and so he’s not pursuing talks.
And then a late Friday CBS report sounded the alarm of more escalation, saying that “The United States and Israel are planning what would be one of the harshest bombing campaigns to date against energy infrastructure targets in Iran, multiple sources told CBS News, with strikes possible throughout the weekend.”
The report added, “There was some discussion about trying to conclude by the time financial markets open Monday because of concern about how the bombings will affect the U.S. and global economy, but an end point wasn’t locked in.”
Earlier this week there were reports of Trump exploding at his own advisors amid ongoing debates about how the crisis should be handled, and finding an exit strategy. Likely the word ‘quagmire’ can increasingly be heard around Washington. Trump officials have sought to bat down criticisms of getting the US stuck in another forever war in the Middle East.
Middle East: Americans currently in the Middle East should exercise caution and heightened vigilance and should be prepared for flight cancellations, periodic airspace closures, and potential travel disruptions. Some airlines in the region have postponed resumption of earlier… pic.twitter.com/d1ZmzRBBHN
“Well, they always want to talk, but they break their words so often,” Trump said Friday at Camp David of the Iranians, putting his frustration on display later adding: “All they do is make me angry.”
Also, key line from a recent WSJ report points to where things are likely headed: “Some U.S. officials believe Iran will continue to drag out negotiations, banking that Trump will abandon his war efforts in the long term in the face of mounting domestic political opposition.”
The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence and supercomputing technologies has many Americans worried about the future of their careers. In a survey last month, more than half of U.S. workers expressed concern that AI could take their job or the job of a family member. Another survey in December found that almost 60 percent of young people believe AI poses a threat to their job prospects.
Americans are not naive. They realize that fast-evolving technologies will disrupt how we do business, just like the Industrial Revolution replaced blacksmiths and the horse and buggy. Many young people, particularly, are already pivoting toward “AI-proof” career fields that promise long-term stability.
However, while concerns about AI automation have dominated headlines and sucked the oxygen out of the room, a bigger, more immediate threat to Americans’ job prospects and wages continues to go virtually ignored: That is the crowding-out effect of the rising federal debt on private investment.
Our national debt is not a theoretical boogeyman. It’s a bona fide job-killer that is impeding economic growth and driving up costs on everyday families. And it will only get worse the longer it is ignored.
An analysis by Ernst & Young projects that on the 2025 debt path, which has accelerated in the current fiscal year, the United States will lose over 1 million jobs by 2035, 2.7 million by 2055, and 3.6 million by 2075. These losses will disproportionately impact young people, who are more sensitive to labor market conditions.
At the same time, evidence indicates that the “crowding-out” effect of the national debt—whereby the high cost of servicing the debt pushes investment into Treasury bonds instead of private, job-creating capital—will reduce income growth by 16 percent between now and 2055.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office pegs that number even higher. A 2023 report estimates that the rising debt will cut income growth by a third, or more than $14,000, over the next three decades. It notes that every dollar of federal borrowing causes a 33-cent reduction in private investment.
In other words, our national debt and the interest costs that accompany it are stifling job creation and wage growth, and the situation will only get increasingly worse as our federal debt load continues to balloon.
What’s more, the interest on our national debt—which costs about $2.8 billion per day and is projected to grow to nearly $6 billion per day by 2036—is driving up borrowing costs for consumers, exacerbating the affordability crisis. A Yale Budget Lab report found that every 1-point increase in the permanent deficit relative to GDP adds between $600 and $1,240 per year in loan costs for the median U.S. home.
Sadly, young people bear the worst of these job losses, wage stagnation and borrowing cost increases. Last August unemployment among 20- to 24-year-olds peaked at over 9 percent, more than double the general rate of 4.3 percent. Since 2023, younger Americans’ job-market optimism has fallen 23 points, similar to the Great Recession—which caused millennials to earn about 20 percent less over their careers, with roughly half the wealth of their parents at the same age.
Coupled with Social Security’s 2032 depletion date, all these factors are squeezing young workers from every angle: disappearing jobs and lower wages today, and a shrinking safety net tomorrow.
Our massive national debt and the significant costs it imposes on ordinary Americans is a problem of Washington’s own making. It will take leaders with political courage to address it—leaders who are willing to say no to reckless spending our country can’t afford, even when it may cost them their job.
Government spending builds dependence on the welfare state and obstructs private-sector growth, consolidating power. A powerful government that “provides” for all, picks winners and losers, and usurps personal liberties.
There’s only one problem: This socialist vision doesn’t work. It never has. That’s because government doesn’t create wealth; private enterprise does. As Winston Churchill famously explained, “The inherent vice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
Young people are not wrong to worry about the economic disruptions AI could bring about, but our out-of-control national debt is the bigger, more pressing elephant in the room. And we cannot afford for lawmakers to kick the can down the road.
Verizon Blames ‘Human Error’ For Burying A Jack Smith Subpoena From Congress
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and fifteen colleagues sent a letter to Verizon on Thursday demanding the telecom giant explain how a 2023 grand jury subpoena tied to Jack Smith’s “Arctic Frost” investigation vanished from its own paperwork for more than two years – only to resurface after the company chalked the omission up to “human error.”
The letter, addressed to Verizon CEO Dan Schulman, is the latest turn in Grassley’s monthslong excavation of Arctic Frost – the Biden-era FBI/DOJ probe-turned-Trump-prosecution that has already produced a House criminal referral for Smith himself, revelations that his team accessed the actual text messages of 44 lawmakers, and now a fight over what one of the country’s largest phone companies knew and sat on.
What Subpoena?
Back in October 2023, Grassley asked Verizon to search its files for every DOJ or federal law enforcement request touching Senate devices between January 2016 and October 2023, part of his long-running Crossfire Hurricane oversight. Verizon wrote back that it generally keeps legal process on file for four years and had no records predating October 2019.
What it didn’t mention: a May 25, 2023 grand jury subpoena issued by Smith’s Arctic Frost team for senators’ phone toll records, including two numbers belonging to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms.
Congress didn’t learn the subpoena existed until 2025, when Verizon told Grassley’s office the 2023 omission came down to “human error.” Grassley isn’t satisfied with that. His new letter wants to know whether Verizon actually found the subpoena during its 2023 search and stayed quiet, or genuinely missed a live federal legal demand sitting in its own compliance files for two years.
Two of the numbers swept up in that May 2023 subpoena weren’t just any senators’ lines – they belonged to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms. Under a contract Verizon signed with the Senate in May 2022, that’s supposed to trigger automatic notice to the SAA any time a Senate device or line gets subpoenaed. Grassley’s letter effectively asks how a contractually mandated notification simply never happened.
There’s also a significant timing gap to explain. The gag orders that typically accompany these subpoenas run about a year. If a standard gag applied here, it would have lifted by mid-2024 – well over a year before Verizon finally volunteered the “human error” explanation in 2025. Once free to speak, nothing stopped Verizon from coming forward. It didn’t, until Grassley’s office came asking.
What Grassley wants – and by when
The letter, co-signed by Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) and fourteen other senators, demands Verizon:
Disclose the exact dates Schulman, Hans Vestberg, Craig Silliman, and Vandana Venkatesh were first told about the May 2023 subpoena
Turn over internal records from May 2023 through October 2025 discussing whether Verizon believed it had a duty to notify Congress or the SAA
Explain, in more than two words, what “human error” actually means
Verizon has until August 13 to respond. (Schulman only took over as CEO in October 2025, meaning he wasn’t at the helm for either the original subpoena or Verizon’s flawed 2023 response – which is exactly why senators want to know precisely when he was personally briefed.)
Twelve of the sixteen senators who signed the letter – Grassley included – had their own phone toll records or text messages swept up by Smith’s investigators. For most of the people demanding answers here, this isn’t abstract oversight.
Other Carriers In The Crosshairs
Verizon isn’t the only carrier under scrutiny. Grassley and Johnson’s joint oversight has identified more than 400 Republican individuals and organizations swept into the broader Arctic Frost dragnet – including, per Grassley’s disclosures, Turning Point USA, founded by the late Charlie Kirk. Separately, the two chairmen have tallied 84 Arctic Frost-related subpoenas sent specifically to Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, ten of which sought toll records for 20 sitting or former GOP members of Congress.
Notably, Verizon complied with Smith’s subpoenas while AT&T pushed back – a contrast Senate Judiciary Republicans have highlighted approvingly. The subpoenas were accompanied by gag orders signed by Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee who has repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration on unrelated matters. The House Judiciary Committee, under Chairman Jim Jordan, has opened its own parallel probe into the telecoms.
Smith, for his part, has called the entire controversy overblown, maintaining his office’s collection was lawful and noting that special counsel Robert Hur similarly obtained President Biden’s toll records, and that DOJ under Trump’s first term seized phone records belonging to Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.
Last month we reported on DOJ records showing Smith’s team bypassed the department’s own privilege-screening “filter team” and directly accessed text messages between 44 members of Congress – from both parties – and Trump White House officials including Mark Meadows and Kash Patel, in apparent tension with Smith’s own sworn testimony that his office sought “just toll records.” Weeks later, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan escalated matters further, referring Smith to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution over the same records dispute.
Verizon’s August 13 deadline will determine whether this becomes another entry on Grassley’s growing pile of unanswered questions, or the start of the same reckoning AT&Tand T-Mobile executives already faced before the Judiciary Subcommittee earlier this year. Either way, sixteen senators – a dozen of whom found their own names in Jack Smith’s files – aren’t inclined to let it drop.
Leopold Aschenbrenner’s hedge fund, stuffed like the ass of a Thanksgiving turkey with every trendy AI name you could throw a dart at, reportedly suffered one of the most spectacular drawdowns of recent memory, losing roughly 67% in July after a series of heavily leveraged bets went violently against it.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the losses became severe enough to trigger margin calls, forcing the firm into emergency asset sales. Public positions were reportedly sold to Citadel to raise liquidity, and the fund even negotiated a multibillion-dollar sale of its prized Anthropic stake before apparently changing its mind the following morning.
It is, in every sense of the word, the kind of month that reminds people leverage is not just a way to make returns bigger…it’s a way to make your mistakes arrive all at once.
What’s remarkable isn’t that the fund blew up just weeks after everyone in the media started slobbering over Aschenbrenner as if he was some visionary for figuring out the “strategy” of buying crap featured daily on CNBC using leverage. Markets have been humbling overconfident investors since the Dutch were trading tulips. What’s remarkable is that, according to reports describing the investor letter, Aschenbrenner partially blamed short sellers for accelerating the collapse, likening the experience to a bank run:
Aschenbrenner partially blamed short sellers who targeted the firm’s positions for exacerbating the fund’s losses, the letter said. The letter compared Situational’s experience to a bank run. Aschenbrenner told investors that the firm had removed all leverage from the portfolio.
And that is where this story stops being about investing and starts becoming about accountability. There is perhaps no bigger bitch move in finance than levering yourself to the eyeballs into the most crowded, most euphoric, most narratively beloved sector on Earth, riding the momentum all the way to the top tick of a genuinely pornographic stock bubble, detonating your own portfolio when the inevitable correction arrives, and then looking around the room for someone else to blame.
That’s not what investors pay hedge fund fees for. They don’t wire you billions so you can discover, after the fact, that markets occasionally go down and that other participants are allowed to disagree with your positioning.
Let’s clear something up, because this myth refuses to die every goddamn market cycle: short sellers do not possess mystical powers to force stocks lower simply because they dislike them.
A short sale is not the financial equivalent of Voldemort casting a spell over the tape. A short seller borrows shares, sells them into the market, and eventually has to buy those same shares back. That’s the entire trade. If enough genuine buyers exist who are willing to absorb that selling pressure, the stock doesn’t go down, it goes up and the short seller gets obliterated. Ask me how I know.
We’ve watched this movie countless times. Tesla. GameStop. Nvidia. Countless biotech squeezes. The market has an extensive history of taking arrogant short sellers, introducing them to the concept of unlimited losses, and escorting them directly into bankruptcy.
The reason stocks collapse isn’t because shorts are somehow overpowering reality. Stocks collapse because the marginal buyer disappears. They collapse because valuations become impossible to justify. They collapse because the people who spent months insisting they would “buy every dip” suddenly become strangely unavailable once the dips become serious.
Shorts don’t create that dynamic. They participate in it. If they could simply dictate prices through force of will, every dedicated short seller would be richer than Warren Buffett, and every bubble in history would have ended before it began. Clearly that’s not how markets work.
What’s especially rich about blaming shorts is that leverage itself creates vastly more selling pressure than shorts ever could. Once your lenders start calling, you don’t get the luxury of diamond hands or inspirational letters about long-term conviction. Your positions get sold because they have to be sold. Every forced liquidation pushes prices lower, which triggers more margin calls, which produces more forced liquidations. It’s an ugly feedback loop that has existed for as long as people have borrowed money to speculate. That’s not market manipulation. That’s mathematics meeting risk management.
Or, in this case, mathematics meeting the complete absence of adequate risk management.
This wasn’t some unforeseeable meteor strike. AI stocks had become the most crowded trade in global markets. Valuations had detached from anything remotely resembling traditional fundamentals because everyone wanted exposure to “the future.” That doesn’t necessarily mean the companies are bad businesses. It does mean that expectations become impossibly high and positioning becomes dangerously one-sided. Every competent portfolio manager understands that crowded trades can reverse with astonishing violence precisely because everyone owns the same thing at the same time, often financed with borrowed money.
That’s supposed to be the point of risk management. You’re supposed to ask yourself, “What happens if I’m wrong?” You’re supposed to ask, “What happens if liquidity disappears?” You’re supposed to ask, “What happens if this correction is twice as bad as consensus expects?”
If the honest answer is, “My prime broker starts liquidating me,” then perhaps the position size deserved another look before the market did it for you.
Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the reported letter is the instinct to externalize responsibility. Every market participant, CEO, investor and analyst deals with short sellers. Every market participant deals with volatility. Every market participant deals with critics, momentum reversals, liquidity squeezes, and crowded positioning. Those aren’t extraordinary circumstances. They’re literally the job description.
Professional portfolio management is not about predicting a future where nobody ever sells your favorite stock. It’s about constructing a portfolio that survives the future where they do.
Blaming shorts after a catastrophic drawdown is a bit like blaming gravity after jumping off a roof. Gravity was never hiding its intentions. It has behaved exactly the same way every single day since the beginning of time. The only surprise is that someone apparently built an investment strategy around the assumption that this time it would be different.
Markets are ruthless teachers because they don’t care how compelling your narrative is, how luxurious your head of hair is, how much CNBC worships you, or how impressive your reputation has become. They don’t care whether you’ve become an AI celebrity, whether Silicon Valley hangs on your every word, or whether investors think you’ve cracked the code. They simply tally the gains and losses. When the leverage becomes excessive, the bill always arrives. Sometimes it arrives all at once.
Welcome to reality, young man.
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