Tag: hit&run

Since a Democratic trifecta took control of Virginia’s government in the 2025 election, two longtime progressive labor policy priorities have been front and center: repealing the state’s right-to-work law and mandating public sector collective bargaining. Now, less than six months into the Democratic reign in Richmond, pro-union forces have come away empty handed. While unions may be disappointed, Virginia taxpayers have new reason to celebrate.

They also have an unlikely person to thank, at least for the moment: Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who vetoed collective bargaining legislation last week.

The drama traces back to the campaign trail. Then-candidate Abigail Spanberger secured the Democratic nomination amid strong support for unions. She even managed to  secure the endorsement of the Virginia Police Benevolent Association—a police union that had largely supported GOP candidates in recent elections—over Republican candidate Winsome Sears, further underscoring Spanberger’s pro-union appeal.

Despite her strong affiliation with organized labor, Spanberger said several times during her campaign that she did not support a “full” repeal of Virginia’s right-to-work law, which has existed in the state for close to 80 years. This led many observers—including yours truly—to try to read the tea leaves behind her statements, including whether she might still support some version of a “partial” right-to-work repeal.

Yet there was much less ambiguity when it came to public sector collective bargaining. During the campaign, Spanberger answered “yes” on a candidate questionnaire that asked if she would “champion and sign legislation to ensure collective bargaining rights for all public employees.”

Virginia is one of a handful of states that bans public sector collective bargaining, having done so since a 1977 state supreme court decision. In 2021, when former Gov. Ralph Northam was in office, Democrats changed the law to an opt-in system, whereby localities could pass ordinances to allow public sector collective bargaining. (Only a small fraction have opted in).

The goal of Virginia Democrats in 2026 was to turn collective bargaining into a statewide mandate, not a local choice. Earlier this year, Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill to make this mandate a reality. The bill cleared the state legislature and went to Spanberger’s desk, where union interests were confident it would be signed by the governor.

But Spanberger surprised many by sending a revised version of the bill back to the Legislature. The governor’s amended version made material changes to the bill, including changing “shall” language—as in, the scope of collective bargaining “shall include” bargaining over wages, hours, and benefits—to “may,” thereby cutting back on the prescriptive text. It also delayed the law’s implementation for localities from 2028 to 2030 and opted for advisory arbitration, rather than binding, to settle contract disputes.

Perhaps most significantly, Spanberger’s version gave more power to a new government agency that would be created under the legislation, known as the Public Employee Relations Board. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute noted that the original bill contained detailed rules about union elections and contract negotiation timelines, while Spanberger’s version left these matters up to the body’s discretion.

Unions argued that this amounted to a regulatory death sentence given that the board’s five members are appointed by the governor, raising fears that a future Republican leader could stock the board with anti-union members. Spanberger’s revised version also eliminated a requirement that two of the board’s members must be union representatives, further watering down union influence over the process.

Faced with this revised bill, the state assembly bowed to union pressure and rejected Spanberger’s amendments. This put the ball back in the governor’s court, daring her to veto the original bill or acquiesce. Spanberger chose the veto.

Predictably, union interests cried foul, viewing it as a bait and switch and likening Spanberger to her Republican predecessor Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Despite her veto, Spanberger maintains that she supports public sector collective bargaining and that she will “continue to look forward to a place where we’ll have a bill that I’ll sign into law.” Virginia Democrats will retain their trifecta through at least the 2027 state elections, perhaps providing enough time for them to iron out the dispute before the balance of power in Richmond potentially changes.

In the meantime, Virginians can enjoy the reprieve—because public sector collective bargaining continues to be a bad bet from a policy standpoint. Research has found that mandatory bargaining raises state and local government spending anywhere from $600 to $750 per person annually, which could amount to a substantially larger tax burden for a small family. It is estimated that the proposed Virginia legislation would have cost the state $50 million annually, while the costs for localities could have ranged anywhere from $50,000 to $403 million over a two-year period.

Virginia taxpayers, in other words, dodged a bullet with Spanberger’s veto. They’ll have to hope she continues holding the line.

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5/23/1991: Rust v. Sullivan is decided.

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From Judge David Alan Ezra (W.D. Tex.) today in Wilkins v. Seraphin:

This case arises from allegedly defamatory statements made by Defendant Kyle M. Seraphin on his podcast show, the Kyle Seraphin Show, about Plaintiff Alexis Wilkins ….

Plaintiff Alexis Wilkins [alleges she] “is a patriotic, conservative, Christian, country music artist and published writer, who also works for a conservative advocacy and educational company, PragerU.” Since January 2023, Plaintiff has been in a long-term relationship with Kashyap “Kash” Patel, the Director of the … FBI ….

Defendant Kyle M. Seraphin is a U.S. Air Force veteran and former FBI special agent in the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. A self-proclaimed “Podcaster,” “Whistleblower,” and “Recovering FBI agent,” Defendant hosts the Kyle Seraphin Show, during which he “trades on his insider knowledge of the FBI and his experience in law enforcement” to tell his audience the “uncomfortable truth.”

The show, which is livestreamed on YouTube, “Rumble,” and Defendant’s website, garners wide reach. According to Plaintiff’s Complaint, Defendant has over 271,800 followers on X, and his posts frequently reach tens of thousands of views and numerous re-posts. Plaintiff also alleges that Defendant receives income through his video sponsorships, paid membership through YouTube, and donations through YouTube.

On August 22, 2025, Defendant stated the following on the Kyle Seraphin Show:

[FBI Director Kash Patel] has had his own little ‘honeypot’ issue that’s been going on of late, so we’re just going to acknowledge it real publicly. He’s got a girlfriend that is half his age, who is apparently is both a country music singer, a political commentator on Rumble, a friend of John Rich through Bongino, who also now owns a big chunk of Rumble, and she’s also a former Mossad agent in what is like the equivalent of their NSA. But I’m sure that’s totally because, like, she’s really looking for like a cross-eyed, you know, kind of thickish built, super cool bro who’s almost 50 years old who’s Indian in America.

Like it has nothing to do with the fact that uh we’re really close to the Trump administration. Anyway, I’m sure that’s totally just like love.

That’s what real love looks like.

Plaintiff alleges that, in making this statement, Defendant falsely and maliciously characterized her as a “honeypot”—which she defines as an agent of a foreign government who began a relationship with another for purposes of manipulating and compromising them—and accused her of “conduct[ing] espionage to undermine [] national security” and “committing treason.” …

The court concluded that Wilkins had adequately alleged that the statements about her were false factual assertions (rather than opinion or hyperbole); recall that at this stage, the question is just about whether the allegations are legally sufficient—determining their truth or falsity is for later in the case:

First, Defendant asserts that his “sarcastic, humorous, and hyperbolic statements” that Plaintiff is a “honeypot” and “former Mossad agent” are not defamatory as a matter of law. Because these “tongue-in-cheek” comments were given “in the context of a political podcast,” a reasonable listener would understand that these “purposefully over-the-top representations” were not assertions of fact, but rather “an effort to make news of the day interesting to listeners,” he contends….

A statement is considered defamatory under Texas law if “a person of ordinary intelligence would interpret it in a way that tends to injure the subject’s reputation and thereby expose the subject to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule, or financial injury, or to impeach the subject’s honesty, integrity virtue, or reputation.” …

In First, Defendant’s statements here are verifiably false [in context, this appears to mean “verifiable as false,” which is to say capable of being proved true or false -EV]. Second, when viewed in context, the Court finds that these statements would reasonably be understood as describing actual facts, rather than “opinion masquerading as fact.”

In the episode at issue, Defendant begins by describing himself as a “real whistleblower” and former FBI agent who presents the “uncomfortable truth” during his podcast. As pleaded by Plaintiff, the introduction to the podcast also begins with a voiceover that says, “this program has no time for comforting lies.”

In addition, preceding the statements about Plaintiff in his show, Defendant surveyed news reports of undercover and “honeypot” techniques used by the FBI in various investigations. Then, Defendant discussed Director Patel having his own “little honeypot issue that’s been going on of late” and proceeded to talk about Plaintiff. After these statements, Defendant continued his criticism of Director Patel by wading into “the Epstein situation,” the FBI’s New York Field Office, and the “New York Mafia” to “break it down for people so we have this real clear idea of … who’s really running the FBI[.]”

When viewed in this context, the Court finds that a reasonable viewer would take Defendant’s statements as part and parcel of the show’s stated aim of presenting “uncomfortable truths” and a continuance of the factual discussions immediately before and after the statements. Defendant’s arguments to the contrary ignore this context.

{The Court is also not persuaded by Defendant’s citation to Patel v. Figliuzzi (S.D. Tex. Apr. 21, 2026). There, the court found that a statement that Director Patel has “been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building” was mere “rhetorical hyperbole.” However, that statement is different in kind from the statement at issue here. Id. (explaining that by saying Director Patel spent “far more” time at nightclubs than his office, the defendant delivered his answer ‘in an exaggerated, provocative and amusing way'”). When viewed in context, the Court does not agree with Defendant that the statements here are mere “rhetorical hyperbole.”} …

And the court concluded that Wilkins had adequately alleged “actual malice” on Seraphin’s part:

Plaintiff has sufficiently pleaded actual malice and so declines to rule on Plaintiff’s status as a public or private figure at this stage of the proceedings. Actual malice requires a statement made “‘with knowledge that it is false, or with reckless disregard of whether it is true.'” … [R]eckless disregard is a “subjective standard that focuses on the conduct and state of mind of the defendant.” … [M]ere negligence is insufficient.

In her Complaint, Plaintiff alleges that Defendant acted with actual malice in making the allegedly defamatory statements. She asserts that Defendant “published his defamatory statements across numerous outlets, knowing that they were false” and “entirely fabricated the story to generate video engagement revenue and to indulge in his obvious animus against Dir. Patel and against Ms. Wilkins.”

In support of these allegations, Plaintiff states that she and Defendant met in person approximately two years ago at a political event. Plaintiff alleges that, because of that meeting, which took place before Director Patel became the FBI Director, Defendant knew that Plaintiff was American, not Israeli, that she was not a Mossad agent, and that her relationship with Director Patel began long before he became Director. Plaintiff also alleges that Defendant had never once reached out to her and that she stated publicly prior to Defendant’s statements that the allegations regarding her affiliation with Israel are false.

Based on this, Plaintiff contends that Defendant knew she was not part of any foreign intelligence agency, and instead “fabricated this accusation at the expense of [Plaintiff] to obtain personal profit, generating outrage to drive up his viewership.” This animus and “malicious intent,” Plaintiff asserts, “is further emphasized by [Defendant’s] desire to spread this lie ‘real publicly.'” Taking these well-pleaded allegations as true and viewing them in light most favorable to her, the Court finds that Plaintiff has sufficiently pleaded actual malice….

Jared Joseph Roberts and Jason C. Greaves (Binnall Law Group PLLC) represent Wilkins.

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From today’s D.C. Circuit decision in Butters v. Nat’l Acad. of Sciences, by Judge Douglas Ginsburg, joined by Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson and Florence Pan:

This consolidated appeal involves claims of defamation, defamation by implication, and false light invasion of privacy relating to the rescission of Luis Jaime Castillo Butters’s membership in the National Academy of Sciences. Castillo brought these claims against the NAS and its president, Marcia McNutt, after they made statements concerning Castillo’s ouster….

Castillo is a professor of archaeology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. The NAS, a “private, nonprofit organization of the United States’ leading researchers,” elected Castillo to be an international member in 2012. In the Spring of 2021, a former student of Castillo’s filed a complaint with the NAS. She publicly accused Castillo of sexual harassment in Peru and asked the NAS to expel him.

The NAS rescinded Castillo’s membership on October 9, 2021. On the 13th, President McNutt informed NAS members by email that Castillo’s membership had been rescinded for a Code of Conduct violation. That email mentioned a password-protected website with further information for NAS members. On October 15, the NAS made the news of Castillo’s ouster publicly available on the organization’s website: “Luis Jaime Castillo Butters; NAS Code of Conduct violation, Section 4; membership rescinded.” Section 4 not only requires members to treat others with respect and collegiality but also broadly prohibits all forms of discrimination, harassment, and bullying.

The court concluded that Castillo had adequately alleged that these statements were false and had a defamatory meaning:

In the [district] court’s view, Castillo’s allegation that he did not violate the Code of Conduct was insufficient. Instead, Castillo needed to allege that the defendants rescinded Castillo’s membership for a reason unrelated to a Code of Conduct violation.

[T]he issue of falsity relates to the defamatory facts implied by a statement. For instance, the statement, “I think Jones lied,” may be provable as false on two levels. First, that the speaker really did not think Jones had lied but said it anyway, and second that Jones really had not lied. It is, of course, the second level of falsity which would ordinarily serve as the basis for a defamation action, though falsity at the first level may serve to establish malice where that is required for recovery.

The district court considered only the first level, that is whether Castillo claimed the proffered reason for Castillo’s membership rescission was false, which he did not. At the underlying second level, however, the question is whether Castillo violated the Code of Conduct. Because Castillo denied that he violated the Code of Conduct, he has effectively as well as expressly alleged that both the October 13 and October 15 statements were false….

[Moreover, a]fter summarizing a D.C. Court of Appeals decision that a certain statement was capable of a defamatory meaning, the district court then wrote: “Here, by contrast, Defendants stated only that they rescinded Plaintiff’s membership because he violated the Code of Conduct, which could have meant anything from harassment to bullying to discrimination to treating others with disrespect.”

To the extent the district court held the October 13 and the October 15 statements are not capable of a defamatory meaning, we disagree. The October 15 statement that Castillo violated Section 4 of the Code of Conduct is capable of a defamatory meaning because Section 4 proscribes odious conduct, to wit, sexual harassment. That Section 4 encompasses some less serious conduct—such as “treating others with disrespect”—does not defeat the commonsense conclusion that the statement could be “reasonably understood in [a] defamatory sense,” The October 13 statement may not have specified which section of the Code of Conduct Castillo supposedly violated, but considering that other sections of the Code likewise proscribe serious forms of ethical or scientific misconduct, that distinction is inconsequential. Moreover, members of the scientific community both inside and outside of the NAS would also likely understand that the NAS would not expel a member absent a serious transgression of the Code of Conduct….

The parties briefed whether Castillo adequately alleged the defendants were negligent in publishing the allegedly defamatory statements [which is another necessary element of a defamation claim under D.C. law]. We do not reach this issue because the district court did not pass upon it. On remand, the district court should determine in the first instance whether Castillo alleged facts that plausibly suggest negligence.

But Judge Ginsburg, joined by Judge Pan, concluded that Butters hadn’t adequately alleged defamation by implication as to McNutt’s comments

[On October 15], ScienceInsider published a story about the revocation of Castillo’s NAS membership under the subheading: “Sexual harassment investigation triggered ejection of Luis Jaime Castillo Butters.” It further said this was the “third time in 5 months that the prestigious academy has ejected a member for sexual harassment.” McNutt, presumably contacted by ScienceInsider to provide a comment, was quoted as saying NAS “members need to be role models not only in what they have achieved, but also in setting the highest standards for professional conduct.” …

Defamation by implication is “an area fraught with subtle complexities.” Courts have required “an especially rigorous showing where the expressed facts are literally true.” This court has summarized the analysis as follows:

[I]f a communication, viewed in its entire context, merely conveys materially true facts from which a defamatory inference can reasonably be drawn, the libel is not established. But if the communication, by the particular manner or language in which the true facts are conveyed, supplies additional, affirmative evidence suggesting that the defendant intends or endorses the defamatory inference, the communication will be deemed capable of bearing that meaning.

For example, an article that includes “suggestive juxtapositions, turns of phrase, or incendiary headlines” may indicate the author intended or endorsed a defamatory meaning….

[McNutt’s “need to be role models”] statement alone provides no indication that McNutt intended or endorsed a defamatory implication. As the defendants argue, any possible defamatory inference necessarily arises from other parts of the ScienceInsider article, for which neither the NAS nor McNutt is responsible.

Castillo’s claim of defamation by implication also lacks any supporting factual allegations about “the particular manner … in which the true facts [were] conveyed.” The allegation that “McNutt encouraged and fueled the production of the article by providing the statements quoted” is conclusory; the allegation that the NAS and McNutt failed to “correct the implication that [they] indeed revoked Castillo’s membership due to sexual harassment” charges is a negative inference, not affirmative evidence that they intended or endorsed a defamatory inference. In sum, the Second Amended Complaint contains no allegation that, when viewed most favorably to Castillo, renders plausible his claim of defamation by implication.

Judge Henderson dissented as to the McNutt statement in the ScienceInsider article:

The majority concludes that none of “the content of the [ScienceInsider] article beyond the [defendants’] statements” is relevant because the article was written by a third party. But the defamatory content of a third-party news article is absolutely relevant in an implied defamation case to the extent the defendant “impliedly adopt[s]” the “stigmatizing allegations contained in [the] news[ ] article.” …

As for the article, ScienceInsider published its piece the same day that NAS publicly announced it had expelled Castillo for violating Section 4 of its Code of Conduct that prohibits, among other things, sexual harassment. The ScienceInsider article recounted at length the sexual harassment allegations lodged against Castillo by his former student, Marcela Poirier, the complaint Poirier lodged with NAS and the subsequent “[s]exual harassment investigation [that] triggered [Castillo’s] ejection” from NAS. The article stated that Castillo’s ouster from NAS “mark[ed] the third time in 5 months that the prestigious academy has ejected a member for sexual harassment.”

“The ejection,” the article continued, “was confirmed by [an] NAS spokesperson.” And after summarizing the earlier sexual harassment cases—one involving an astronomer and the other an evolutionary biologist—the article quoted McNutt with the following statement: “NAS President Marcia McNutt says the removals should convey that ‘[NAS] members need to be role models not only in what they have achieved, but also in setting the highest standards for professional conduct.'” …

The majority does not dispute that the ScienceInsider article was “capable of defamatory meaning.” “Its very title indicated” that NAS revoked Castillo’s membership “because of sexual misconduct.” See J.A. 57 (“Leading Peruvian archaeologist ousted by U.S. Academy of Sciences[:] Sexual harassment investigation triggered ejection of Luis Jaime Castillo Butters.”). And the body of the article made the connection explicit: Castillo’s “ouster … marks the third time in 5 months that the [NAS] has ejected a member for sexual harassment.”

The sole question, then, is whether it is plausible at this stage to conclude that NAS’s and McNutt’s statements in the article “intend[ed] or endorse[d]” that defamatory inference. With no difficulty, I conclude that it is….

For more on this dispute between the majority and the dissent (and on other matters), read the whole opinion.

Milton Johns represents Butters. Thanks to Andy Patterson for the pointer.

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President Donald Trump is taking a lot of heat for the military operations he launched unilaterally as Commander in Chief of the U.S. armed forces against the Iranian pirates/terrorists: (1) striking Iran militarily, (2) closing tshe Strait of Hormuz to Iranian oil exports, and (3) aiming (I expect successfully) to force Iran into capitulation. In fact, what President Trump is doing today with Iran is nothing more than a long overdue exercise of U.S. military power, of the sort that Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison engaged in, without congressional approval, against the Barbary Pirates from 1801 to 1815.

The Barbary pirates were an early 19th century analog of the modern-day Iranian terrorist regime. They preyed on American and European trading ships and enslaved their crews. It is estimated that over 1 million American and European sailors were sold into slavery by the Barbary pirates during the centuries in which they preyed on American and European shipping. Robert Davis, British Slaves on the Barbary Coast BBC (February 17, 2011). The Barbary pirates sailed out of Libya and North Africa generally until France conquered Algeria in 1830.

Congress never declared war against the Barbary pirates, but Presidents Jefferson and Madison rightly used their executive Commander-in-Chief powers unilaterally to cause American ships and marines to subdue them with the use of U.S. armed force. This defeated the Barbary pirates, and the Framing generation, which was still mostly alive from 1801 to 1815, acquiesced in the constitutionality of this unilateral presidential use of military force. The United States has fought only five declared wars in our history since 1789—the War of 1812, the Mexican American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II. But U.S. Presidents, acting as Commanders in Chief, have unilaterally deployed our armed forces many other times.

Presidents have deployed the U.S. military without congressional permission on at least 125 occasions like the one that subdued the Barbary Pirates (1801-1815). Some of those engagements have been quite bloody such as the Korean War (33,700 deaths in battle), the Vietnam War, for which congressional authorization was withdrawn from 1971 to 1975 (3,246 deaths in battle), and the overthrowing of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi by President Obama, in 2011 (4 deaths including of a U.S. Ambassador). These engagements were not authorized but were paid for by Congress. John C. Yoo & Robert J. Delahunty, The President’s Constitutional Authority to Conduct Military Operations Against Terrorist Organizations and the Nations that Harbor or Support Them. In addition, the U.S. has fought four undeclared wars with congressional authorization in my lifetime: the Vietnam War (1964-1971), the Gulf War (1991), the Afghan War (2001-2021), and the Iraq War (2003-2011). The gloss of history on the constitutional text supports everything that President Trump is now doing.

It is settled constitutional law after 237 years of practice that presidents have the power to use the U.S. military without Congress’s permission to subdue pirates, and terrorists, like the now dead Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who was quite simply a modern-day pirate. Iran has been a huge problem for the U.S. since its Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Iran captured and held hostage the U.S. Ambassador to Tehran and more than 50 American embassy personnel from November 1979 to January 20, 1981. It killed 241 U.S. Marines with a terrorist attack on a U.S. military base in Lebanon on October 23, 1983. And for the last half-century, Iran has funded a host of Islamic terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East including Hezbollah (in Lebanon), Hamas (in the Gaza Strip), and the Houthis (in Yemen), all of which have attacked Israel and Saudi Arabia, who are American allies, as well as attacking U.S. military personnel in the Middle East.

The Ayatollah Khamenei appeared to be planning to destroy Israel with a nuclear weapon, and Iran has been developing ballistic missiles that could hit Europe today and eventually, perhaps, the United States. The Ayatollah Khamenei routinely led crowds that denounced America as the “Great Satan” and led chants of “Death to America.” Continuing to kick the can of dealing with Iran down the road as a problem was unwise behavior on the parts of the second President Bush, President Obama, and President Biden.

President Trump is the first President since 1979 who has had the guts to stop Iranian terrorism, which is a modern-day form of piracy in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint in the global oil supply. He should be loudly praised for doing so. The American blockade on Iranian oil exports is likely to eventually cause Iran to surrender unconditionally, which will cause the much-needed end of Iran’s nuclear program and its efforts to charge tolls for ships passing in international waters off the Strait of Hormuz (something Iran of course has no right to do). China’s Xi Jinping agreed at the just-concluded summit with President Trump that (1) Iran could not be trusted to have nuclear weapons, (2) Iran cannot charge tolls on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, and (3) Iran should immediately end its blockade of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. The two most powerful militaries on earth are in complete agreement here.

When regime change happens in Iran, as I expect it will if the U.S. persists, the U.S. can help Iran to pump much more oil and natural gas, as the U.S. is now trying to do in Venezuela having seized former Venezuelan President, Nicholas Maduro. And when that happens oil prices will likely tumble to $40 a barrel or so, which may cause Vladimir Putin’s vicious and corrupt regime to end in Russia, thus ending the Ukrainian War on terms favorable to Ukraine. Americans need to be patient and to give the blockade time to work. Iran cannot live without 90% of its budget, which comes from oil and gas sales in the long run.

The Constitution says that the executive power shall be vested solely in the President, as is the Commander-in-Chief power. From President George Washington’s use of the army to put down the Whiskey Rebellion, to President Jefferson’s and Madison’s use of the navy and marines to put down the Barbary Pirates, to President Abraham Lincoln’s use of the army and navy to win the Civil War, to President Harry Truman’s use of the U.S. military to win the Korean War, to President Barack Obama’s use of our air force to overthrow the terrorist regime of Muhammar Gaddafi in Libya, we Americans have from the outset construed presidential war powers to generally allow the President to take military action without prior congressional approval to put down terrorist threats or threats from pirates.

Congress’s powers to (1) declare war and (2) grant letters of marque and reprisal are powers to trigger the international treaty obligations of our allies as a matter of international law, and to grant privateers the power to seize enemy ships as prizes. They do not block the President from commanding armed forces to engage in the behavior discussed above. It would be unconstitutional for one or both of Houses of Congress to pass an Act to stop the Iran hostilities, given that the President alone has the executive power, which includes the Commander-in-Chief power. For more on the constitutional arguments in this post, see Robert Delahunty & John Yoo, Making War, 93 Cornell Law Review 123 (2007), as well as their other writings on presidential war power.

Congress could, of course, constitutionally stop what President Trump is doing by cutting off funding for military actions related to Iran. But, for the practical reasons given above, this would be a foolish thing for Congress to do. Yes, domestic gas prices are temporarily high right now. But if President Trump sticks with the blockade, we will likely get regime change in Iran, and much lower oil and gas prices very quickly for the foreseeable future. Still, Congressional restriction of funding, unwise as it may be, would at least be within Congress’s powers; a Congressional Act purporting to order the President to stop hostilities or to prematurely end the blockade would be outside Congress’s powers. And it would wrongly end an important struggle with a group of pirates and thugs who do not have the support of the Iranian people.

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How long should it take an innocent person to get confirmation that they will be compensated after the government destroys their home? Should, of course, is subjective. Some such victims will never get that confirmation.

For Vicki Baker, it came today from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, almost six years after her house in McKinney, Texas, was destroyed by a SWAT team in pursuit of a fugitive who had barricaded himself inside.

The scene that followed was chaotic. As I wrote in 2021:

Prior to the SWAT showdown, Baker’s daughter, Deanna Cook, gave officers a key to the home, as well as a garage door opener and the back gate code. Agents took a different route. They smashed six windows. Instead of using the code, they maneuvered a BearCat armored vehicle through her fencing. Instead of using the clicker, they detonated explosives to blow off the garage entryway. And instead of using the key, they drove right on through her front door.

Baker’s insurance declined to cover the damage, as it was caused by the government—a common stipulation. But the government countered that it was not responsible either, as she did not meet its definition of a victim. “I’ve lost everything,” Baker told me over five years ago. “I’ve lost my chance to sell my house. I’ve lost my chance to retire without fear of how I’m going to make my regular bills.”

The legal argument the government relied on is a surprisingly common one. The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment promises “just compensation” when private property is usurped for public use. Community safety is, after all, a public benefit, which is typically shouldered not by the individual but by the whole. To evade paying out such claims, however, some municipalities have said that constitutional pledge is not absolute, particularly as it relates to property that is destroyed in the exercise of police powers.

Many innocent property owners have failed to overcome that in court. Baker, meanwhile, was able to rack up a rare win—if you can call it that?—after completing what can be accurately described as a federal courts–themed game of human pinball.

What exactly did Baker’s game—er, legal experience—look like? Her home was left in ruins in July 2020. After the government refused to pay her, she filed suit in March 2021. The city tried to stop her from suing; a federal judge declined to dismiss. In 2022, a jury awarded her about $60,000 in what seemed like a major victory. Yet in 2023, the 5th Circuit reversed, ruling her claim was doomed because police acted by “necessity during an active emergency.” In 2024, the Supreme Court rejected her appeal. Last year, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas affirmed she could recover damages—$60,000 plus interest—under the Texas Constitution as opposed to the U.S. Constitution. The government naturally appealed, which brings us to 2026.

So Baker, who is in her 80s, will finally get her payout. She is more fortunate in that way than several others. Yet one wonders how much money local officials spent fighting this lawsuit instead of paying the judgment that was handed down almost four years ago.

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A South Florida immigrant detention center that’s been the subject of numerous allegations of poor conditions and abuse was the national leader in using physical force against detainees, according to leaked incident reports.

Use-of-force data published by The Washington Post in conjunction with a May 4 story show that staff at the Krome North Service Processing Center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center on the western edge of Miami-Dade County, reported more uses of physical force against immigrant detainees than any other detention center over a two-year period.

The Post culled the data from hundreds of internal ICE emails, called the “Daily Detainee Assault Report,” which summarizes incidents of physical force against detainees. The reports covered 98 ICE detention facilities from January 2024 to February 2026, covering the last year of the Biden administration and the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term in office.

The data show that Krome reported 176 uses of force over 26 months, accounting for 12 percent of all 1,460 documented use-of-force incidents captured in the data. Reported use of force at Krome appeared to have decreased between the last year of the Biden administration and the first year of Trump’s second term, dropping from 109 reports to 62.

However, that drop coincides with a nationwide documentation collapse that occurred several months after Trump took office. Biden-era reports often contained short narratives of the incidents, including the circumstances and types of force used, but those narratives largely disappear from ICE reports in 2025, replaced by boilerplate language.

Detainee injuries are still reported, but not their exact cause. For example, a September 2025 report notes that a Bahamian detainee at Krome “sustained several contusions and a lacerated lip,” but all other details are omitted.

Katie Blankenship, an attorney at Sanctuary of the South, an immigrant legal aid organization that is involved in several lawsuits challenging conditions at South Florida immigration detention centers, is not surprised by the numbers.

Blankenship says Krome is the largest ICE facility in the region. The data also don’t cover county jails and other holding facilities that aren’t subject to the same reporting standards.

“Lack of transparency is the norm,” Blankenship says. “Are these numbers troubling? Absolutely, because just what they self-report is terrifying, so imagine what’s actually happening.”

Krome was also a significant outlier in its use of four-point restraint chairs, one of the most extreme methods of restraining someone.

During the Biden administration, 23 incident reports from Krome mention the use of four-point restraint chairs. There are only 38 restraint-chair uses total in the dataset, meaning that Krome accounts for 61 percent of all documented uses of restraint chairs during the two-year period. The Trump-era reports never mention restraint chairs, although that is probably due to the previously mentioned switch to boilerplate language.

“I don’t know why this is, but for some reason Krome has been using these four-point restraint chairs for years,” Blankenship says. She says she had a client at Krome during the Biden administration “who suffered basically complete nerve damage from the restraints on this chair.”

“It’s not typically used as restraint,” Blankenship says. “It’s used as corporal punishment, which is forbidden in civil detention. They shouldn’t be doing that at all.”

In one 2024 incident included in the data, a wheelchair-bound detainee in Krome’s medical unit was placed in restraints after becoming agitated: “While being transported in a wheelchair, the detainee resisted [Krome] staff, refused…instructions, became aggressive, and attempted to eject himself from the wheelchair, prompting them to use a calculated use of force to put him in a four-point restraint chair and spit mask.”

Krome has been the subject of numerous reports by civil rights groups and news outlets. A report published last July by Human Rights Watch, Americans for Immigrant Justice, and Sanctuary of the South, found that staff at Krome and two other South Florida immigrant detention centers “subjected detained individuals to dangerously substandard medical care, overcrowding, abusive treatment, and restrictions on access to legal and psychosocial support.”

The report echoed multiple news stories that similarly documented allegations of overcrowding, filth, and negligence at the Krome detention center.

As the number of people in federal immigration detention has swelled due to the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, deaths in ICE custody have reached an all-time high, and allegations of abuse and neglect continue to pour out of federal detention centers.

“You’re just seeing this level of apathy and cruelty that’s literally killing people,” Blankenship says.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post A Florida Detention Center Was the Harshest in the Country. Then ICE Stopped Tracking Details on Use of Force. appeared first on Reason.com.

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Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice.

New case! Pennsylvania requires real estate brokers to maintain a physical office space even if they don’t need one and never use it. Indeed, IJ client Kevin Gaughen’s office has been visited more often by state inspectors—who ensure there is a conference table, a landline phone, a filing cabinet, and an outdoor sign—than by actual clients. The rule chiefly serves to impose unnecessary costs that are harder for small brokers to absorb than big firms. So this week Kevin teamed up with IJ to challenge the rule under the Pennsylvania Constitution, which protects the right to earn an honest living free of unreasonable regulations. Click here to learn more.

New on the Short Circuit podcast: We take a long drink from the Fifth Circuit’s waters. Including those of the Panama Canal.

1. In 2022, New York passes the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, banning the possession of firearms (1) on private property where the owner has not given express consent to the carrying of firearms, and (2) in public parks. Gun-rights advocates sue. Second Circuit: The private property restriction violates the Second Amendment, but there’s enough of a historical basis to uphold the restriction in public parks. Dissent: No there isn’t.
2. Maryland prohibits renewable energy suppliers from advertising “green power” unless the electricity is at least 51% renewable or backed by renewable energy credits from within a specific geographic region. As a result, an energy company whose electricity is fully backed by renewable energy credits from outside that region cannot advertise its electricity as “green.” Energy companies seek a preliminary injunction. Fourth Circuit: Granted. None of the regulated terms are inherently misleading, nor has the state shown the law will clear up consumer confusion.
3. Over 100 W. Va. local gov’ts sue Express Scripts for a boatload of cash over its part in furthering opioid addiction. They want to create a fund that would then spend money on Good Things. Express Scripts: We get a jury trial! District court: No. Fourth Circuit: On the first day of kindergarten law students learn that there is law and there is equity. The Seventh Amendment guarantees juries for the first but not the second. And asking for a boatload of cash is very much the first. Mandamused!
4. “Death and taxes,” that’s what they say, amirite? What they don’t tell you is that taxes can follow you beyond the grave, or at least can follow your spouse. Learn from the Fourth Circuit about how a couple’s taxes that were both underpaid and overpaid in the early 1980s led to decades of squabbles and litigation with the IRS—something to do with the IRS accidentally overpaying interest—and how the widow now claims it was her husband’s fault anyway. Also, the IRS loses this round, so that’s nice.
5. In 2020, a fugitive evades police officers from McKinney, Tex. in a high-speed chase, then breaks into Vicki Baker’s home, where he barricades himself inside. A SWAT team tears the house apart—saturating it with noxious gas—in an effort to capture the fugitive (he commits suicide). The officers promise Ms. Baker that the city would compensate her, but the city refuses to pay. Fifth Circuit: The Texas Constitution requires the city to pay the owner the $60k it cost her to repair the house and replace damaged items. (This is an IJ case. For a lovingly crafted podcast episode on what the federal Constitution requires, click here.)
6. After learning that probationer has burglarized his ex’s Beaumont, Tex. home and threatened to murder her, federal probation officer tells the ex that she is safe at home and that the officer will seek an arrest warrant immediately. Instead, the officer does nothing for two days, and the probationer returns and stabs the ex, leaving her a quadriplegic. Fifth Circuit: When an officer decides on a proper course of action and then negligently fails to follow through, that is not the discretion excepted by the Federal Tort Claims Act’s discretionary function exception. Case undismissed. To trial this must go.
7. We don’t lightly use the f-word (“forum-shopping,” obviously), but it is curious that Starbucks’s challenge to NLRB rulings about two stores in upstate New York has landed in the Fifth Circuit. One of the employees at issue used the other f-word quite liberally in sexist remarks about his co-workers, and the court thinks the NLRB should give that a closer look before concluding that firing said potty-mouth was a labor-law violation.
8. In which the Fifth Circuit (unpublished) holds that a statute commanding pipeline companies to establish a particular maximum operating pressure for their pipelines does not implicitly require the companies to maintain records proving that they’ve done so, especially when a totally different part of the statute governs what records they have to keep.
9. Look, we understand that judicial opinions have to focus on the dispositive facts in a case, but we still think the Fifth Circuit (unpublished) could have given us at least a little more about this DNA expert who “was impeached by her training in veterinary medicine, running of an unaccredited laboratory, and involvement ‘in the DNA quest for Bigfoot.'”
10. Texas felon is convicted for possessing a firearm, challenges the conviction under the Second Amendment. Fifth Circuit (per curiam): Easy-peasy affirmance under our precedent. Concurrence (Judge Ho): But categorical lifetime disarmament for all felonies is a problem. Concurrence (Judge Oldham): This is an easy-peasy affirmance, even though our precedent is egregiously wrong.
11. Man is convicted of burying three people alive. This despite the lack of any physical evidence implicating him, and his conviction hinges on the since-recanted testimony of a snitch. He unwillingly and badly represented himself at trial, which the Tennessee Supreme Court blessed on account of his forfeiting his right to counsel. The Sixth Circuit (2018) denied habeas relief, and the state set his execution for May 21, 2026. Before that happens, he wants fingerprints and DNA from the crime scene (which don’t match him) to be tested against an alternative suspect, but the state courts refuse under Tennessee law. Sixth Circuit (2026): And those statutes are constitutional. (Ed. note: Officials called off the execution after spending more than an hour trying to find a vein while he groaned in pain. The governor has since granted the man a one-year reprieve from execution.)
12. Seventh Circuit: “We see [] sloppy work in briefs fairly often, and almost always let it pass without comment as we try to focus on the merits of appeals. But … “
13. Feds’ letter to company: Your special brake-lights are illegal; tell us all your customers so we can inform them your product makes their cars inoperative, and we will fine you up to $26.3k per day if you don’t comply. District court: That letter is rough, but it’s not a “final” agency action you can challenge. Eighth Circuit (over a dissent): Yes it is.
14. Indigent criminal defendants in Benton County, Ark., sue for an injunction requiring state-court judge to appoint them counsel before their bail hearings. Eighth Circuit: But we have no reason to think you’ll be arrested again in the future, much less brought before the same judge. No standing!
15. Black Hawk County, Iowa jail requires inmates to sign “confessions of judgment” upon their release, binding them to pay fees for booking, room, and board. Two former inmates sue, claiming that the coerced confessions of judgment violate the Due Process Clause. Eighth Circuit: And contrary to the district court’s view, they do indeed have standing, since they say the confession-of-judgment workaround short-circuited their right to process. (Without the confessions, the jail would actually have to litigate a reimbursement action against them.) Case undismissed.
16. Eleventh Circuit (unpublished): Alabama state law does not immunize police officers from suit for making bogus arrests or filing made-up charges if the officer was acting out of personal animus. So the case against this officer, who is alleged to have arrested and charged the plaintiffs for complaining about him, can proceed.
17. And in en banc news, the Fourth Circuit will reconsider its decision allowing the military not to enlist people with undetectable viral levels of HIV. (With modern medication, such people can take a daily pill and be otherwise healthy.) A prior Fourth Circuit decision had held that the military could not discharge such people because of their HIV status, and the two decisions are, in technical legal terms, conflict-y.
18. And in more en banc news, the Sixth Circuit will not reconsider its decision that the owner of an Ohio-based trucking company lacked standing to sue his insurance company over racial discrimination related to a small-business grant program open only to black-owned businesses. The panel held that the owner should have applied for the grant even after learning his company was ineligible for it. Dissental (Judge Thapar): “If a hungry black customer—ready and willing to purchase lunch—walks up to a restaurant with a sign reading ‘Whites Only,’ does he need to open the door, request a table, and get thrown out to be harmed?”

New case! The federal gov’t is demanding that IJ client Tuncay Saydam—an 88-year-old retired computer-science professor (and truly delightful human)—pay $437,564 in penalties for unwittingly failing to file a short form identifying bank accounts he kept in his native Turkey. The feds say that not only are the penalties not “excessive,” but they’re not even “fines,” meaning the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause doesn’t apply at all. Which is gale-force bananapants. Click here to learn more.

The post Short Circuit: An inexhaustive weekly compendium of rulings from the federal courts of appeal appeared first on Reason.com.

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Rumors about the astonishing weight loss potential of Eli Lilly’s triple hormone drug retatrutide have been circulating for months. The results of its Phase 3 clinical trial, just released by the drugmaker, amply justify the buzz. The company reports that “participants on 12 mg retatrutide lost an average of 70.3 lbs (28.3%) over 80 weeks with 45.3% of participants achieving ≥30% weight loss, a level long associated with bariatric surgery.”

Retatrutide is the latest compound to emerge from the revolution in hormonal treatment begun with the introduction of semaglutides like Ozempic in 2018 to treat Type 2 diabetes. Rebranded as Wegovy, the compound was approved for weight loss in June 2021.

Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but adult obesity peaked at around the same time.

Besides helping people to control their diabetes and to lose substantial amounts of fat, these compounds appear to offer many additional health benefits. These include improved outcomes in people with cardiovascular, kidney, liver, arthritis, sleep apnea, and substance abuse disorders, along with reducing inflammation generally. More recent data suggest that these compounds also significantly reduce the risk of cancer overall and lower the risk of cancer spread. Recent research somewhat allays concerns that taking the compounds not only reduces fat but also muscle mass.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. initially disparaged the compounds for treating diabetes and obesity, instead insisting that Americans eat better. He declared that the drug companies are “counting on selling it to Americans because we’re so stupid and so addicted to drugs.” However, when President Donald Trump endorsed the drugs, the secretary adroitly reversed course.

The uptake of these compounds by Americans already seems to be reshaping aspects of the economy. Specifically, demand for higher protein foods is up, and demand for alcoholic beverages is down. As it happens, the drugs encourage people to improve their diets just as RFK Jr. has been demanding.

The post Is the End of the Obesity Epidemic Near? People Lost Up to 85 Pounds Using New Weight Loss Drug appeared first on Reason.com.

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