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Not long after I spent 11 days in a bare-bones clinic attached to the prison, where staff struggled to provide even ibuprofen, inmates across from my cell told me the loose sheet outside my door carried a new name: Jhon Piamond. I could see the same kind of sheets outside other cells, but the angle prevented me from seeing my own.

The name sounded invented: Jhon was a Venezuelan spelling of John, and Piamond was simply Diamond with its first letter changed.

During bed checks, guards called for Jhon Piamond and waited for me to respond.

“Who the hell is Jhon Piamond?” I asked.

No one explained the name. The guards did not appear confused about who I was, and the other Americans held with me knew my identity. Yet the institution could still put an invented name outside my cell and treat it as official.

This was not ordinary intake confusion. We were at Rodeo Uno, Venezuela’s only maximum-security prison, a place whose electrical system ran through jury-rigged exposed copper wiring. Rodeo Uno held Venezuelans and foreign nationals whose detention was entangled with politics and diplomacy. At that point, I had not yet been formally charged. Nearly four months into my detention, authorities imposed the same one-size-fits-all accusations I saw used against foreign prisoners regardless of nationality or arrival date: terrorism, financing terrorism, espionage, and treason against Venezuela. The paperwork and proceedings inside gave us little reliable information about whether we would leave. The formal process could create the appearance of movement without changing our status.

Twenty-eight days later, on January 31, 2025, four of the six Americans held at Rodeo Uno were released. Two more were brought from another prison in Caracas, replacing me and another Rodeo Uno prisoner on the six-person release list. I was moved from the fourth-floor area known as Gringolandia to a floor with Venezuelan prisoners. People across from me told me the paper outside my cell now said “Joseph St. Clair.”

No official announced a correction or acknowledged that the former identity had been false. The prison stopped calling me Jhon Piamond. Later, foreign prisoners arrived under what I understood to be their real names.

I inferred that the false names had served a concealment function. Once the released Americans could tell the United States government who remained inside, the fiction had lost much of its value. I cannot prove that was the institution’s reasoning. I can say the practice changed when the political circumstances changed.

On March 7, the prison assembled roughly 150 detainees, first men and later women, from many countries. We spoke different languages. We wore blue uniforms and handcuffs. Masked guards carrying rifles moved through the room. We sat on small folding chairs while officials occupied a cheap folding table that looked better suited to a garage poker game than a court.

A lawyer addressed the room in rapid Spanish. I raised my hand and told him to slow down because many of us were not native speakers. He did.

When he finished, I asked two questions.

“What’s my name?”

He could not answer.

“What country am I from?”

He could not answer that either.

I asked how he could represent me without knowing either fact.

The problem was larger than one unprepared lawyer. Whatever officials called the event, it was a kangaroo court. Authorities presented blanket evidence drawn from a case years earlier and reused it for each batch of prisoners, rather than connect any person to an individual accusation. The presiding judge, Carlos Enrique Liendo Acosta, made the lawlessness explicit. When prisoners invoked international law, consular access, and international agreements, he laughed and said they did not matter. Neither did our rights. We would go through the process anyway.

When a prisoner asked a question, an armed guard stepped directly in front of him. The intimidation was obvious. But after I asked my questions and was not immediately punished, other prisoners began asking questions too. Officials eventually cut the session short.

Then nothing happened.

We received no ruling, sentence, deportation order, written disposition, or announced next step. We returned to our cells with the same status we had before.

The proceeding still had an effect. It consumed a day and gave us material to analyze for weeks. Did the lawyer’s arrival mean our cases were moving? Did the judge’s appearance signal deportation? Were releases approaching? Official silence turned every detail into evidence.

I came to think of that effect as breadcrumbing. The proceeding offered a sign of apparent movement, enough to renew hope and speculation, without providing useful information or surrendering control. I don’t know whether that psychological effect was intended. But a proceeding that changed nothing could still occupy prisoners long after it ended.

The reliable signals were quieter and more material.

Before the January 31 release, I watched the treatment of the Americans housed with me change. They received substantially more food. They were taken onto the patio for the first time. Medical staff checked them more often, especially the older men.

A similar pattern began about a week before May 14, the date I had been told I would leave. Staff fed me more, took me outside for sunlight, increased my clinic visits, and quietly provided insect repellent because I had been covered in bites.

Those changes required resources and altered routines. They were not promises or courtroom theater. They were the clearest signs that someone expected to transfer a living person whose physical condition would soon be visible outside the prison. My release did not occur on May 14, but I left on May 20.

By then I trusted an extra serving of food more than a judge. A cell label could be fiction. A kangaroo court could produce weeks of hope and no legal result. Food, sunlight, and medical attention were signs that the institution was preparing to act.

The court told us nothing. The food did.

The post Inside a Venezuelan Political Prison: False Identities and Kangaroo Courts appeared first on Reason.com.

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Readers of the blog may recall a certain John Doe who is suing Penn, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Berkeley for alleged discrimination; he argues, among other things, that “in service of their goal to [exterminate] or enslave all non-Jews, the Jewish supremacists discriminate [against] non-Jewish whites,” including him. He also seeks to proceed under a pseudonym, partly because he claims a fear of physical harm:

So far, courts have rejected his pseudonymity claim, and he’s appealing the decision in his Penn case to the Third Circuit.

But in the meantime, what to do about his other cases? Well, in the Harvard case, he asked Judge Allison Burroughs, who had denied his pseudonymity motion, to stay that case pending appeal. No, the judge held on May 20:

Plaintiff … requests a stay of his disclosure requirements pending interlocutory appeal of the Court’s denial of his motion to proceed under a pseudonym. “In determining whether to grant a stay, courts consider: (1) [W]hether the stay applicant has made a strong showing that [it] is likely to succeed on the merits; (2) whether the applicant will be irreparably injured absent a stay; (3) whether issuance of the stay will substantially injure the other parties interested in the proceeding; and (4) where the public interest lies.” The first two factors are most important.

Plaintiff has made essentially no showing, certainly not a strong showing, that he will succeed on the merits, and he has provided no credible, non-speculative argument that he will be irreparably injured absent a stay. Defendants have taken no stance as to whether a stay would cause them injury, and the Court presumes that it would not. Finally, as explained above, the public has a strong interest in transparency, weighing against Plaintiff’s request for a stay…. “[T]he people have a right to know who is using their courts.” … Accordingly, Plaintiff’s request for a stay is DENIED. Plaintiff is directed to file a notice of his legal name and address no later than June 2, 2026.

He then sought a stay pending the appeal of his Penn case, but the judge again said no (on July 15):

Plaintiff’s motion to stay this proceeding pending resolution of his appeal in the Third Circuit is DENIED. While “the power to stay proceedings is incidental to the power inherent in every court to control the disposition of the causes on its docket with economy of time and effort,” the Court finds that a stay is not warranted here for the reasons set forth in the Court’s May 20, 2026 order.

Though a trial court may stay an action pending the resolution of independent proceedings, this Court is not bound by whatever resolution Plaintiff may achieve in the Third Circuit, and the Court finds that a stay of Plaintiff’s disclosure requirements in the instant case would not promote the interests of judicial efficiency. Plaintiff is ordered to file a notice of his legal name and address no later than July 29, 2026. Failure to timely comply with the Court’s order will result in dismissal of the action.

And today, Judge Burroughs dismissed the case:

In February 2, 2026, the Court ordered Plaintiff to file a notice of his legal name and address no later than February 16, 2026. The Court has since afforded Plaintiff multiple extensions of that deadline, including the latest extension on July 15, 2026, when the Court ordered Plaintiff to file a notice of his legal name and address no later than July 29, 2026, and provided notice that failure to comply with the Court’s order would lead to dismissal of this action. As of August 3, 2026, Plaintiff has not filed a notice of his legal name and address. Accordingly, this action is hereby DISMISSED.

Immediately after that, Doe filed a notice of voluntary dismissal of the Harvard case. Again, the Penn appeal remains pending.

The post Our Friend with the "Attractive, Busty Jewess" Problem Drops Case Against Harvard Rather Than Naming Himself appeared first on Reason.com.

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The article is here; the Abstract:

This paper examines how the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECt­HR or Court) hate speech jurisprudence has been structurally reoriented by the Court’s response to an increasing number of applications brought by victims of hate speech. Whereas earlier case law predominantly assessed hate speech under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, focusing on the permissibility of restrictions on expression, recent victim-initiated claims have directed the ECtHR’s analysis towards Articles 8 and 14 and thus towards the question of State responsibility for pro­tec­tion against harm caused by third-party speech.

Through a reading of the ECtHR’s case law, this paper shows how the Court’s response to this applicant-driven expansion has recalibrated the balance between dignity, equality, and freedom of expression. The paper argues that the resulting framework risks limiting the doctrinal safeguards traditionally associated with Article 10 analysis.

In addition, there has been an increasingly expansive understanding of who qualifies as a “victim” of hate speech, extending this qualification beyond direct targets who are in protected groups to include individuals who are merely associated with such groups. The paper argues that the Court’s expanding expectation of positive obligations owed by States to their citizens in relation to the exercise of their rights may incentivize over-intervention by domestic authorities and chill legitimate public debate.

The post Journal of Free Speech Law: "Positive Obligations, Hate Speech, and the Reconfiguration of Free Expression at the European Court of Human Rights," by Natalie Alkiviadou appeared first on Reason.com.

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On Sunday night, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that he had agreed to change the terms of President Donald Trump’s “settlement agreement” with the IRS. Blanche formally rescinded his May 18 order establishing a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” designed to benefit the president’s friends and followers, and he issued a statement about the scope of the IRS immunity he gave Trump in another order issued on May 19. Those moves were aimed at addressing the concerns of two Republican senators who had held up the Senate Judiciary Committee’s vote on Blanche’s nomination as attorney general.

Although Blanche’s concessions may clear the way for his confirmation, they underline the flagrant phoniness of a brazenly corrupt arrangement that he dishonestly portrays as the result of a bona fide legal dispute between Trump and the IRS. Trump’s lawsuit against the agency, which alleged damages from an IRS contractor’s illegal disclosure of his tax returns, never involved a genuine controversy between adverse parties. It was a transparent excuse for granting Trump, his family, and his supporters huge favors at taxpayers’ expense. By itself, Blanche’s approval of that jaw-dropping scam makes him unfit to run the Justice Department.

Trump’s lawsuit pitted him against an agency he oversees, represented by Justice Department lawyers who also answer to him. It was legally doomed right out of the gate because he missed the statutory deadline for filing such claims. And even if he had filed his lawsuit on time, he would have faced the challenge of arguing that an IRS contractor qualifies as an “officer or employee of the United States”—a point that the Justice Department has disputed in other cases involving similar claims.

Despite those legal weaknesses, the government’s lawyers never bothered to contest Trump’s claims, in sharp contrast with the way they usually handle such lawsuits. Instead, the Justice Department agreed to what Trump has described as “a settlement with myself.”

That product of admitted self-dealing included $1.8 billion in taxpayer money for Trump supporters who claim they suffered from abuses of power during the Biden administration. Blanche approved the Anti-Weaponization Fund and repeatedly defended it. But the plan provoked a bipartisan backlash so intense that he ditched the idea within two weeks, saying, “We’re not moving forward with the fund, period.”

That unilateral decision contradicted the pretense that the fund was part of a “settlement agreement” between the IRS and the plaintiffs: the president, two of his sons, and the Trump Organization. Consistent with that fiction, the document describing the fund was signed by the plaintiffs’ lawyers, IRS CEO Frank Bisignano, and Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. Yet there was Blanche, orally negating the central feature of the “settlement” during congressional testimony without bothering to revise the “agreement” or obtain the plaintiffs’ written consent.

That move was illegitimate on its face, and Trump cast further doubt on the reliability of Blanche’s assurance by continuing to push the idea of payouts to his supporters, including people convicted of participating in the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. After Sens. John Cornyn (R–Texas) and Thom Tillis (R–N.C.) asked Blanche to back up his promise in writing, which they presented as a condition of voting to confirm him, Trump kept talking as if the Anti-Weaponization Fund was a live proposition.

The fund “will not benefit me,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last Friday, “but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration.” If Cornyn and Tillis do not vote to confirm Blanche, Trump warned on Saturday, “I will keep Todd as Acting A.G.” and “push hard” for legislation establishing a fund that “takes care of those who have been so badly treated by the Crooked Joe Biden (and Obuma! [sic]) Administration.”

Blanche’s announcement that he has rescinded his order creating the Anti-Weaponization Fund glides over those presidential signals. Blanche “has repeatedly advised Congress through testimony, including under oath, as well as in written responses, that the Fund is not moving forward, and the Department has repeatedly represented to district courts that the Fund is not moving forward,” it says. Despite that, the rescission order complains, “several frivolous lawsuits have been filed challenging the Fund, and at least one court has declined to dismiss those claims as moot.”

Contrary to Blanche’s take, it was reasonable to wonder whether the Anti-Weaponization Fund might be revived given the president’s public statements that he wanted to do just that. In any case, Blanche’s withdrawal of his order poses the same puzzle as his previous promises: How can one side of a civil case unilaterally revise a settlement agreement? The answer, of course, is that there were never two sides in this case.

As the federal judge who oversaw Trump v. IRS noted two days before the Senate Judiciary Committee began considering Blanche’s nomination, the lawsuit was fake from the beginning because the president controlled both sides. The plaintiffs and the defendants “worked in tandem and were never actually adverse,” U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams wrote, saying the lawsuit was nothing more than a pretext for “a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.”

Blanche’s conduct confirmed that he was simultaneously acting as the head of the Justice Department and Trump’s personal lawyer. Blanche’s abandonment of the Anti-Weaponization Fund “demonstrates his confidence that he could speak for, and bind, both sides of this matter,” Williams noted. “This certitude supports the conclusion that the Parties worked in tandem and were never actually adverse. Indeed, ‘a party may not unilaterally repudiate a settlement agreement once it is reached.'”

Blanche’s grant of immunity reinforces the point that he perpetrated a fraud by pretending that the cozy arrangement he approved was simply the resolution of a legal dispute. Although Blanche presented his sweeping promise of protection as an addendum to the “settlement agreement,” he was the only person who signed it. And like the Anti-Weaponization Fund, the immunity deal had nothing to do with Trump’s complaint that the IRS had failed to properly supervise contractors entrusted with confidential tax information.

On Sunday, Blanche purported to clarify that order, which says “the United States” is “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from pursuing “any and all claims” against Trump or his relatives regarding “any matters currently pending or that could be pending” before the IRS, the Treasury Department, or “other agencies or departments.” Although that broad language suggests that Trump’s immunity extends far beyond the IRS, Blanche has denied that implication, and his statement addresses only the scope of the restrictions on IRS claims.

Cornyn and Tillis wanted Blanche to clarify that his order does not apply to future conduct or extend beyond the plaintiffs. The “mutual release of claims applies by its terms only retroactively,” he says. But while the order does refer to IRS claims that “have been or could have been asserted” as of May 19, the language regarding “any matters currently pending or that could be pending,” which purports to bind every federal agency, is more ambiguous.

Blanche also claims the order affects only “the named parties in the lawsuit.” But that is plainly not true: The order also applies to “related or affiliated individuals” and “parties.” Those categories, it says, include “families or others filing jointly,” plus “trusts, parent, sister, or related companies, affiliates, and subsidiaries.” It is not clear what “related or affiliated” means or whether the list of examples is exhaustive.

Even under Blanche’s dubious interpretation of the order, it relieves Trump and the other plaintiffs of liability for any tax violations they may have committed prior to May 19. Although Blanche says that benefit is “typical” of settlements between the IRS and taxpayers, no other similarly situated plaintiff has ever received such broad relief. And judging from just one dispute concerning Trump’s reported business losses, the immunity approved by Blanche could save Trump more than $100 million in back taxes, interest, and penalties.

Williams concluded that Blanche’s order “directly contravenes” federal law. Under 26 USC 7217, it is “unlawful” for an executive-branch official to “request, directly or indirectly, any officer or employee of the Internal Revenue Service to conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer with respect to the tax liability of such taxpayer.”

If we reject the preposterous premise that the ban on IRS claims was part of a “settlement agreement,” here is what happened: The acting attorney general issued a seemingly illegal order that relieves the president, his sons, and his business of liability based on their past tax returns, requiring the IRS to terminate any existing audits or investigations and refrain from starting new ones. He thereby shielded them from the consequences that ordinary Americans face when they run into trouble with the IRS.

If Blanche had simply done that out of the blue, it would be plainly outrageous. Trump’s bogus lawsuit does not change that reality.

The post Todd Blanche's Concessions Underline the Flagrant Phoniness of Trump's IRS 'Settlement' appeared first on Reason.com.

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