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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a new database on Tuesday, highlighting “the worst of the worst criminal aliens arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).” Dubbed the “dictionary of depravity” in a post on X, the DHS data categorize just 4 percent of immigration arrests since President Donald Trump took office in January as “the worst of the worst.” At a congressional hearing on Thursday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem faced tough questions about why the agency’s deportation reality doesn’t match its claim of targeting violent criminals.

Of the roughly 281,000 people arrested by ICE from January 20 through December 9, fewer than 10,000 individuals are classified as “the worst of the worst” by the DHS, according to analysis done by the Cato Institute’s Director of Immigration Studies, David Bier. Of those classified, “a majority (56 percent) of the list has not been charged or convicted of a violent crime,” according to Bier, “and nearly a quarter…had nothing but a vice, immigration (e.g., illegal entry), or non-DUI traffic charge.” Thousands of faces and names have been placed on the DHS’ list for minor offenses, like drug possession charges. 

The DHS database tracks closely with previous findings by Bier. After analyzing data on immigration arrests between October 1, 2024, and June 14, 2025, Bier found that 65 percent of people arrested by ICE had no criminal convictions, and 93 percent had no violent convictions. Even more recently, data on individuals booked into ICE custody since October 1 showed an increase in the number of detainees with no criminal convictions—73 percent—and even fewer people with violent convictions—only 5 percent. (Note that Bier’s analysis estimated an even higher percentage of violent criminals in ICE custody than the new DHS database.) 

The DHS’ own data now confirm that the majority of individuals being targeted in the Trump administration’s immigration raids are simply not the “worst of the worst criminal aliens.” 

This point was further exemplified during a House Homeland Security hearing on Thursday, in which Rep. Seth Magaziner (D–R.I.) asked Noem to answer for the deportation of Sae Joon Park, a U.S. Army combat veteran who had a green card and received a Purple Heart, who joined the hearing via Zoom. 

Park was deployed at the age of 19 to Panama in 1989. There, he was struck by gunfire. Upon returning home and being honorably discharged, he began experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and turned to drugs to cope, according to NBC News. In 2007, Park pleaded guilty to drug possession and went to prison in 2009 after not complying with a drug treatment program and failing to return to court. 

After serving three years in prison, Park received a removal order. But rather than deporting, Park attended annual check-ins with ICE until his latest check-in in early June, in which he was given an ankle monitor and ordered to self-deport within three weeks. Park is now in South Korea, a country he hadn’t lived in since he was 7 years old. 

Magaziner also asked Noem about the immigration case of an Irish woman, the wife of Navy combat veteran Jim Brown, who was present during the hearing. Brown’s wife, who immigrated legally to the U.S. 48 years ago, has been held in custody for the last four months. She faces deportation for the crime of writing two bad checks, totaling $80, 10 years ago, according to Magaziner. 

Noem defended the DHS’ actions by asserting that it isn’t her “prerogative, latitude, or…job to pick and choose which laws in [the United States] get enforced,” and that the laws must be followed and enforced. Magaziner pushed back, stating that Noem has broad discretion in these cases that she is choosing not to use.

It’s clear the DHS is using a relatively small number of immigrants who have committed violent crimes to justify a slew of rights violations, including excessive force, due process violations, and overcrowded, inhumane conditions in detention facilities as a means to achieve one of the Trump administration’s chief goals: deporting 1 million people by the end of the year. Given this reality, Noem’s suggestion that the current methods of immigration enforcement are done in the name of following the law rings hollow.

The post The Feds' 'Worst of the Worst' Database Is Stuffed with Nonviolent Offenders. Who Exactly Is ICE Arresting? appeared first on Reason.com.

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President Donald Trump announced his executive order, “ensuring a national policy framework for artificial intelligence,” on Thursday. While the order self-admittedly does not create a national regulatory framework for the burgeoning technology, the reactions of both AI pessimists and AI optimists suggest that it is a meaningful step toward stymieing state regulation.

Before Thanksgiving, Trump took to Truth Social to call on congressional republicans to put a federal AI standard in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Trump’s plea did not fall on deaf ears, but was ultimately of no avail. While restrictions on advanced AI chip sales did not make it into the House version of the NDAA—a boon for American GPU manufacturers Nvidia, AMD, and for the growth of the American semiconductor industry—neither did a federal AI regulatory framework.

Trump’s Thursday executive order says that “a carefully crafted national framework can ensure that the United States wins the AI race,” but such a framework does not yet exist. The executive order implicitly acknowledges that the president cannot impose such a framework single-handedly, but emphasizes that the current state-by-state patchwork “imping[es] on interstate commerce.”

As the regulation of interstate commerce is the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government, the order seeks “to check the most onerous and excessive laws emerging from the States that threaten to stymie innovation,” but notably not those that relate to child safety protections, data center infrastructure, or state government AI procurement and use. To this end, the order includes everything presaged in the unreleased executive order, “eliminating state law obstruction of national AI policy,” which was leaked in November.

First, it conditions federal broadband funding and other discretionary grant programs on the nonenactment and nonenforcement of state AI regulations deemed onerous by the administration. Second, it establishes the AI Litigation Task Force within the Justice Department to evaluate and challenge such regulations. Third, it directs the Federal Communications Commission “to determine whether to adopt a Federal reporting and disclosure standard for AI models that preempts conflicting State laws.” And finally, it directs the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to issue a statement explaining how state laws that “require alterations to the truthful outputs of AI models are preempted” by the FTC Act’s prohibition on unfair or deceptive acts or practices affecting interstate commerce.

The Center for Democracy and Technology, a progressive technology policy nonprofit, argues that the order is a “set of largely toothless directives,” given that the president “cannot constitutionally preempt state laws.” Neil Chilson, head of AI policy for the Abundance Institute, has a different view. He says the order “is rhetorically less polarizing and legally more watertight” than the leaked executive order. Only time will tell whether the executive order has Trump’s desired effect.

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From the Capital Gazette (Katharine Wilson):

Annapolis Mayor Jared Littmann fired City Attorney D. Michael Lyles, effective immediately, as part of his effort to clear the way for a new administration, Littmann said Wednesday.

The firing comes a day after plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Housing Authority of the City of Annapolis and the City of Annapolis accused the city’s counsel of including fabricated citations and quotes in a motion, which they called “hallmarks” of artificial intelligence use.

Lyles is the first major departure since the mayor took office Dec. 1…. However, the mayor said in an interview that his decision to end Lyles’ employment was “unrelated to any particular legal case,” and that he is looking for a city attorney with a “fresh perspective.” …

Thanks to Michael Smith for the pointer.

The post Annapolis "Accused of AI Fabrication in Legal Filing," City Attorney Fired (but Maybe Not Because of That) appeared first on Reason.com.

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From Graham v. T.T., decided Nov. 26, by D.C. high court Justice Catharine Friend Easterly, joined by Justices Joshua Deahl and Vijay Shanker:

T.T. was the sole witness who testified at the hearing on her motion for an anti-stalking order. She and Mr. Graham were neighbors; they lived in the same apartment building on 13th Street NW, on the ground floor. Of particular relevance, T.T.’s bedroom window was at the front of the building and was directly accessible from the street.

Prior to the four alleged incidents that gave rise to her motion, T.T. had had very little interaction with Mr. Graham and had seen him only a few times around the building. Then, on September 13, 2023, and November 30, 2023, Mr. Graham took food that had been delivered to the front door of her apartment. T.T. did not witness these incidents first-hand; rather, when she inquired with the building management about the stolen food, they told her Mr. Graham was the culprit and provided her with video footage from the hallway camera, which she played in court.

In December of the same year, Mr. Graham knocked on T.T.’s bedroom window and crudely propositioned her for sex on two separate occasions. On the first occasion on December 28, 2023, Mr. Graham came to her window at 6:00 a.m., knocked three times, and said, “come here; I got something for you[.] I want you … I want to eat your pussy.” She “told him to get away” and that she was “going to call the cops” and Mr. Graham “ran away.” She reported the incident to the police. Two days later, on December 30, Mr. Graham again came to her window at 4:00 a.m. and “banged” or “knocked” and “repeated the same thing that he said the first time he came,” “come here, let me eat your privacy part.” When she told him to leave, he repeated, “ma’am, I’m trying to eat your privacy part.”

T.T. then said she was going to call the police, and he ran away. She filed a petition for a temporary anti-stalking order the next day. She explained to the court that she filed the petition “because, not only that I’m afraid [for] my life, I am a victim of getting molested. Also, I’m scared for my life because he is registered as a sex offender and has history as that.” { T.T. testified that when the police came, they told her that Mr. Graham was a sex offender, and she also “look[ed] it up.”} {It is unclear if T.T. was asserting that she had previously been molested or that she considered Mr. Graham’s propositions for sex to be “molestation.” Because of this lack of clarity and in an abundance of caution, we refer to T.T. by her initials.} …

A trial court may issue an anti-stalking order if it “finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the respondent stalked the petitioner, with at least one occasion of the course of conduct occurring within the 90 days prior to the date of petitioning.” The crime of stalking, in turn, requires proof that an alleged perpetrator “purposefully engaged in a course of conduct” defined as two or more occasions, “directed at a specific individual” that the perpetrator intended, knew, or at least should have known “would cause a reasonable person in the individual’s circumstances to … fear for his or her safety or the safety of another person; feel seriously alarmed, disturbed, or frightened; or suffer emotional distress.” …

The court concluded that the food-stealing incidents didn’t qualify as stalking:

First, there is no indication in the record that Mr. Graham “directed” his food-stealing specifically at T.T., or even that he wanted anyone to know that the food had been stolen. As T.T. acknowledged, Mr. Graham did not take the deliveries “out of [her] hands,” but rather took them “[i]n front of [her] door.” And videos of the thefts indicate that Mr. Graham acted quickly so as not to draw anyone’s, much less T.T.’s, attention. The trial court’s finding that he “knows it’s her apartment,” is unsupported by the record. The court inferred this knowledge “because he lives just down the hall,” but T.T. did not testify that Mr. Graham had ever seen her in the hall, and the video evidence she introduced shows that Mr. Graham could not see her doorway from his own because he had to turn a corner in the hallway to get to T.T.’s food. In short, T.T. failed to present evidence that these incidents were anything other than crimes of opportunity for the purpose of Mr. Graham obtaining free food.

Second, these facts preclude a determination that Mr. Graham should have known that his conduct would “cause a reasonable person in [T.T.’s] circumstances to fear for … her safety,” “feel seriously alarmed, disturbed, or frightened,” or “suffer emotional distress.” … “[t]o trigger criminal liability, the level of fear, alarm, or emotional distress” to support a stalking incident “must rise significantly above that which is commonly experienced in day to day living … and must involve ‘a severe[ ] intrusion on the victim’s privacy and autonomy.'” “Ordinary uneasiness, nervousness, [and] unhappiness are insufficient.” Specifically with respect to “fear for safety,” there must be proof of “fear of significant injury or a comparable harm” because the stalking statute is “meant to prohibit seriously troubling conduct, not mere unpleasant or mildly worrying encounters that occur on a regular basis in any community.”

Similarly, “emotional distress” must be “high, reaching a level that would possibly lead to seeking professional treatment.” And “alarm” likewise requires a showing of “mental harm[ ] comparable to fear for one’s safety or significant emotional distress.” On the record before us, no court could determine that Mr. Graham should have known that his surreptitious food stealing from a person with whom he had no relationship would cause the level of mental harm required by the stalking statute.

And the court concluded the same as to the window-knocking incidents:

As this court explained in Mashaud v. Boone (D.C. 2023), … to avoid running afoul of the First Amendment, the crime of stalking may not be proved by incidents of protected speech. To follow Mashaud, the trial court was obligated to consider whether each of the two sets of statements that it found amounted to “propositioning [another adult] for sexual acts” fell within any of the well-established categories for constitutionally unprotected speech, namely, “threats, obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, and speech integral to criminal conduct.” …

Mr. Graham’s statements were manifestly not defamatory, fraudulent, or a call to incitement. His statements cannot be classified as obscenity, despite their sexual nature. “[S]ex and obscenity are not synonymous. Obscene material is material which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest.” We know of no court that has held that an adult’s verbal request to engage in sexual activity with another adult—even an unwanted and crude request—can be considered “obscene material” within the meaning of the First Amendment and we decline to be the first.

Nor were Mr. Graham’s statements “integral to criminal conduct,” unless that conduct is stalking; but we rejected such an argument as “fatally circular” in Mashaud (explaining that to fall under this exception, “the speech must be integral to conduct that constitutes another offense that does not involve protected speech,” because “it makes no sense as an exception if the speech both constitutes the crime itself and thereby avoids First Amendment protections by being integral to its own commission”).

This leaves threats. True threats are “serious expression[s] conveying that a speaker means to commit an act of unlawful violence,” and a defendant must have a “subjective” understanding of his statements’ threatening character. Because the First Amendment protects the “clueless speaker [who] fails to grasp his expression’s nature and consequence,” it is not enough that Mr. Graham spoke negligently, i.e., that a reasonable person would have known that his expression of interest in sexual activity with T.T. would put her in fear of a sexual assault. Rather, we must be able to conclude that Mr. Graham spoke recklessly—he must have been subjectively “aware that [T.T.] could regard his statements as threatening violence and deliver[ed] them anyway.”

The evidence does not support such a conclusion. As the trial court found and as the record supports, Mr. Graham simply “propositioned [T.T.] for sexual acts” (“I want to … “); he never suggested that he would proceed forcibly or attempt to hurt her. To the contrary, he left when she told him to go away and said that she was calling the police. And speaking to T.T. from a location outside the building, where others could possibly hear and see him from the street, further weighs against inferring that he was aware that his statements might be perceived as threatening sexual assault. In short, as distasteful as his conduct was, there is nothing in the record to suggest that he wanted to use force or violence to engage in nonconsensual sexual activity with T.T. or was aware that T.T. might fear that was his aim. Mashaud (explaining that “it is a foundational principle of the First Amendment that speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt”; “the First Amendment protects lots of speech that is substantially emotionally distressing”; and “if there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable”).

With the understanding that Mr. Graham’s constitutionally protected speech on December 28 cannot be punished as stalking, we look to his conduct on that date, namely his act of knocking on T.T.’s bedroom window at 6 a.m. See Mashaud (explaining how the court can consider the act of communicating, provided that “we [ ] ignore the content of [any] communications”). Here, we cannot say with confidence that the trial court would have ruled that Mr. Graham’s window-knocking on that date, without consideration of his speech, constituted an incident of stalking, i.e., that it was “a severe[ ] intrusion on [T.T.’s] privacy and autonomy,” such that Mr. Graham should have known that it would cause a reasonable person the requisite “fear, alarm, or emotional distress,” discussed above. We note that the trial court found that Mr. Graham knocked at T.T.’s window—not that he attempted to break the glass; there are a number of innocuous-perhaps-rising-to-annoying reasons someone might knock on a person’s window; there is no evidence that, at least on December 28, Mr. Graham knew he was knocking on T.T.’s bedroom window; and, as the trial court also found, once T.T. told Mr. Graham to leave, he ran away. In short, based on the record and the court’s findings, we cannot say it is “highly probable that [that] error did not contribute to the verdict.” …

The court therefore reversed and remanded, noting “that T.T. or Mr. Graham will, on remand, seek to reopen the record to present new evidence in support of or in opposition to an anti-stalking order.”

The caption lists the respondent as “Antwan K. Graham,” and I found a D.C. sex offender registry for an “Antwan Kitrell Graham” (though the home address listed in the sex offender entry is in Connecticut). The offense of conviction is listed as having been a “Sexual Offense in the Third Degree” in Maryland, in 2018.

Claudia Benz represents Graham.

The post Sex Offender Knocking on Neighbor's Window at 6 am and 4 am, Propositioning Her for Sex Isn't "Stalking" appeared first on Reason.com.

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For the second time in a week, a federal grand jury has refused to approve an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James. Since grand juries almost always ratify charges proposed by prosecutors, a one-sided process in which defense attorneys play no role, those back-to-back rejections are a striking sign that the grudge-driven case against James is legally shaky.

Last month, a federal judge dismissed the original indictment against James, which charged her with bank fraud and false statements to a financial institution in connection with a mortgage loan. U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie concluded that the sole prosecutor who signed the indictment, Lindsey Halligan, had been illegally appointed as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. That embarrassing setback also flowed from the case’s weakness.

James earned a prominent spot on President Donald Trump’s enemies list by successfully suing him for business fraud in New York. She alleged that Trump had systematically exaggerated the value of his assets while applying for loans and buying insurance. A judge agreed that Trump’s conduct qualified as fraud under New York law, and so did an appeals court, although it set aside the judge’s jaw-dropping “disgorgement order,” which would have required Trump and the other defendants to pay the state half a billion dollars.

In a September 20 Truth Social message to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the president made it clear that he wanted her to prosecute James and another Trump nemesis, former FBI Director James Comey, as soon as possible. “We can’t delay any longer,” he said. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

In that message, Trump noted that he had picked Halligan, a White House aide with no prosecutorial experience, to replace Erik Siebert, a career prosecutor who had proven insufficiently enthusiastic about charging James and Comey with federal crimes. Although Trump himself had nominated Siebert as U.S. attorney, he regretted that choice because Siebert did not think those cases were worth pursuing—a view shared by his staff.

Halligan, a neophyte prosecutor who had practiced insurance law for a decade before serving on the legal team defending Trump in one of his federal criminal cases, quickly delivered the indictments that the president had demanded. She obtained an indictment against Comey, charging him with lying to Congress, on September 25, three days after taking office. She delivered the James indictment two weeks later.

Currie dismissed both indictments without prejudice because Trump, in his rush to install Halligan as interim U.S. attorney, had ignored a statute barring that maneuver. That result was necessary, Currie said, because Halligan had taken the highly unusual step of presenting the indictments on her own—a move that reflected internal skepticism about both cases.

Career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia evidently still have strong doubts about the charges against James, which would explain why Bondi assigned an assistant U.S. attorney from the Eastern District of Missouri, Roger Keller, to handle the case. Last week, Keller presented a new indictment to a grand jury in Norfolk, which declined to cooperate with Trump’s vendetta. Keller tried again on Thursday with a grand jury in Alexandria, which likewise did not find probable cause to believe that James had broken the law while applying for a mortgage to finance her 2020 purchase of a three-bedroom house in Norfolk.

James paid $137,000 for that house, including $109,600 from the loan. According to the original indictment, she misrepresented the house as a “second home,” a characterization that enabled her to receive a seller credit and a favorable interest rate that would save her $17,837 over the course of the 30-year loan. Those advantages, Halligan averred, amounted to $18,933 in “ill-gotten gains.”

The indictment said James never lived in the house, which was actually “a rental investment property.” It alleged that she received “thousand(s) of dollars in rents” from a family of three, apparently referring to James’ great-niece, Nakia Thompson, who has lived in the house with her children for years and reportedly told a Norfolk grand jury last summer that she does not pay James rent.

Although James listed $1,350 in rental income on her 2020 tax return, ABC News reports that the money “was said to cover the cost of utilities.” That same year, in a financial disclosure filed with the New York State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, James described the home as “investment real property” and reported rental income between $1,000 and $5,000. James did not report any rental income from the property in subsequent financial disclosures, which described it as an “investment” valued at $100,000 to $150,000.

According to the indictment, James’ mortgage contract included a “second home rider” that required her to “occupy and use the property as her secondary residence.” The rider also prohibited any “shared ownership arrangement or agreement that requires her either to rent the property or give any other person any control over the occupancy or use of the property.”

That second provision does not seem relevant to the case against James, since the indictment did not allege that she entered into any such agreement. But James admittedly did not live in the house. Does that mean she committed bank fraud?

Not necessarily. To convict James of that crime, which is a felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison, prosecutors would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she “knowingly” tried to defraud a financial institution. The charge of making false statements to a financial institution, which carries the same maximum penalty, likewise requires proving that James “knowingly” said something that was not true.

The indictment alleged that “the property was intended and used as an investment property with no intended or actual personal occupancy or use,” meaning James knew when she applied for the loan that she would not occupy or use the house. “If she changed her mind, thought she might use it, or even had any reason to spend time in Virginia, it would be difficult to convict her,” Fordham University law professor James Kainen, whose specialties include real estate and white-collar crime, told FactCheck.org in October. “Responsible prosecutors do not spend their time on minor cases that are hard to win.”

After Siebert resigned under pressure from Trump in September, The New York Times reported that he “had recently told senior Justice Department officials that investigators found insufficient evidence to bring charges against Ms. James.” Citing unnamed Justice Department officials, the Times said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche also “questioned the legal viability of bringing charges against Ms. James.”

One reason for that skepticism: According to the Times, “Ms. James’s exchanges with the lender showed her having communicated clearly that she did not plan to live in the house.” Another reason: Prosecutors in Siebert’s office, according to an October 23 ABC News report, “expressed concern that the case could likely not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt because federal mortgage guidelines for a second home do not clearly define occupancy, a key element of the case.”

Under those guidelines, it is “unclear if a person needs to sleep overnight at the home or just visit multiple times each year,” ABC explained. “Witnesses told prosecutors that James repeatedly informed realtors and loan officers that the home would be for her niece, but that she would occasionally stay there when visiting her family in Virginia.” Thompson reportedly “told investigators that James visited their home multiple times a year but had not stayed overnight.”

According to ABC, prosecutors “concluded that any financial benefit derived from [James’] allegedly falsified mortgage would have amounted to approximately $800 in the year she purchased the home.” Contrary to the numbers offered in the indictment, ABC reported that “a loan officer who worked with James” told investigators the interest savings from identifying the house as a secondary residence would have totaled no more than $10,800 over 30 years.

Even assuming it is accurate to describe that sum as “ill-gotten gains,” it is a pretty small windfall, amounting to a few hundred dollars a year. During the Great Recession, Kainen noted, “prosecutors overlooked potential mortgage fraud cases involving applicants who lied about thousands of dollars in income and then defaulted on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.” Given the evidence against James, he said, this is “hardly” the sort of case that “would have resulted in an indictment for two federal felonies” based strictly on its legal merits.

George Washington University law professor Paul Schiff Berman agreed that the charges against James seemed like overkill. “It is very uncommon for prosecutors to bring these sorts of claims absent a pattern of malicious activity or evidence that the individual has actually harmed the bank by not paying their mortgage or [that] it’s part of a much larger fraudulent scheme,” he told the Associated Press in October.

The uncertainty about whether James’ conduct meets the elements of these crimes, coupled with the mismatch between the gravity of the charges and the benefit that James allegedly obtained, was enough to deter Siebert and his staff. Halligan’s main qualification to replace him was her willingness to overlook those problems. But assuming the charges that Keller presented to the grand juries in Norfolk and Alexandria were essentially the same as the allegations in the original indictment, it is not surprising that he encountered resistance.

Keller is free to try again with yet another grand jury. But after failing twice to persuade grand jurors that there is probable cause for the charges, he might want to reassess the odds that he can meet the much heavier burden he would face at trial.

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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.

Neat: IJ’s own Dan Alban is a featured guest on the latest episode of the Collateral Damage podcast, talking the early history of civil forfeiture.

New on the Short Circuit podcast: More civil forfeiture fun. Feds seize over half a million big ones, hold on to it for three years, never give a reason, and give it back without explanation.

1. New Jersey allows doctors (in certain circumstances) to assist in the suicide of terminally ill patients—but only if those patients live in New Jersey. Unconstitutional? Third Circuit: Even if there were a fundamental right to assisted suicide (which we doubt), New Jersey has a pretty strong interest in preventing New Jerseyans from killing Pennsylvanians in violation of Pennsylvania law.
2. Philly police are generally not to engage in vehicle pursuits because of the high risk to innocent bystanders. So are these two officers who chased a drug dealer, who then crashed and killed a woman, liable under Section 1983? Third Circuit: Nope. Might have been a violation of dept. policy, but there’s no constitutional violation, and, even if there was, qualified immunity.
3. Nonprofit hires woman, but she quits after a few days, asks for pay for that time; they refuse, and things get worse from there. But! They don’t turn off her email access to a board member’s email. She and a friend comb through the account, download internal documents, and then ask for a lot of money. Federal crime? Third Circuit: Not until they actually revoked her access. Dissent: That’s not what the statute says.
4. Hoi polloi (the “hoi” means “the,” by the way, making “the ‘hoi polloi'” as much a blundering misstep as “ATM machine”) will doubtless relish the culture-war aspects of this 2-1 Fifth Circuit decision about ::deep breath:: whether a woman who photographed a transgender politician hand-washing in the women’s restroom of the Texas State Capitol has shown a likelihood of success in her First Amendment challenge to Texas’s no-snapping-pics-in-bathrooms statute. For the more refined palate? Judge Oldham’s “history of federal injunctions against state court proceedings, both before and after Younger.”
5. Two versions of a fatal altercation in Lake Worth, Tex. One: Police officer wildly shot at a fleeing suspect, nearly hitting another officer, only to discover after killing the suspect (by shooting him in the back) that he had a gun. The other: Officers knew suspect had been involved in drive-by shootings; had fled police in a different, 120-mph car chase; and was holding a gun with his finger on the trigger. Fifth Circuit (unpublished, despite featuring three opinions, one a dissent): “The accuracy of these competing narratives is precisely the kind of question that cannot be resolved at summary judgment.” Qualified immunity reversed; to a jury this must go.
6. The Video Privacy Protection Act, passed after a newspaper published Robert Bork’s video-rental history, is having a bit of a renaissance (and circuit split) these days. Woman: It bars the local movie theater from tracking my movie-trailer views on its website and sharing with Meta for targeted ads. Eighth Circuit: It does not. Movie theaters are not similar to video cassettes, so they aren’t covered by the statute.
7. Allegation: In violation of dept. policy, which forbids chasing misdemeanor suspects, St. Louis County, Mo. officers chase red-light runner and then ram his car. He crashes and dies. The officers leave without providing aid and falsely report a single-car crash. Eighth Circuit: Qualified immunity.
8. A nonprofit publishes The Habeas Citebook and sends to thousands of prisoners across the country. Washington state officials decline to deliver the book to inmates, citing a concern about “paper checking,” which is when inmates demand to see peers’ papers to determine if they are sex offenders, if they’ve ever snitched, etc. Refusals result in violence. The citebook doesn’t have anyone’s papers, however, and officials reverse course—but still take nearly 500 days to deliver the books. District court: No harm, no foul. Ninth Circuit (2023): Try again. District court: Gov’t wins again. Ninth Circuit (2025): Try again. Qualified immunity means no damages for some of the claims, but there are constitutional violations here giving rise to injunctive relief.
9. Oregon man facilitates the sale of a Russian machine gun to man he does not realize is an undercover federal agent. He’s convicted of illegally transferring a machine gun. Twist! Although federal law prohibits the transfer of machine guns, that prohibition does not apply to “a transfer to . . . the United States or any department or agency thereof.” Is he off the hook? Ninth Circuit (over a dissent): No. “Simply put, context matters, which is why we still have human beings interpret statutes, rather than MU-TH-UR 6000, Skynet, or Hal 9000 donning black robes.”
10. App developers don’t want to pay Apple’s 30 percent commission on in-app purchases, and after Epic Games won an injunction letting developers steer users to outside payment options, Apple “complied” by hiding links to those options, scaring users with a warning screen, and imposing a 27 percent commission on outside transactions that made steering economically pointless. Ninth Circuit: The district court was right to find Apple in contempt; most of its sanctions stay in place and the injunction stands. However, permanently banning Apple from ever collecting any commission on external purchases was a smidge enthusiastic, so that part goes back for a do-over.
11. Oklahoma man has a friendly relationship with his next-door neighbor until one day he shoots the neighbor 10 times, alleging that the neighbor molested the man’s daughter. The neighbor was innocent and the shooter was suffering paranoid delusions and psychosis, probably because of the extremely high doses of Adderall he was prescribed. He raises an involuntary intoxication defense but is convicted. Tenth Circuit: Unfortunately, the trial court’s jury instruction on involuntary intoxication was erroneous. New trial.
12. Escambia County, Fla. officer fires into the driver’s side window of a truck from eight feet away, killing man wanted for driving on a suspended license. Officer: I thought I was about to be run over, so good shoot. Eleventh Circuit: The district court should have granted qualified immunity, and we do so now. Dissent: The parties disagree on (among other things) whether the truck was even moving. To a jury this should have gone.
13. And in en banc news, the Third Circuit will reconsider its decision that various New Jersey restrictions on owning and carrying firearms comport with history and tradition and that a handful of other restrictions probably don’t.
14. And in more en banc news, the Ninth Circuit will not reconsider its decision that a set of parents and nonprofits do not have standing to challenge Washington state’s laws allowing teenagers to request treatment related to gender dysphoria without parental consent. Dissental: “Is our court’s position really that, in such a hypothetical, a parent must first have a dead child before it could sue?”
15. And in further en banc news, the Ninth Circuit will reconsider the question of the mobilization of national guard troops for work in Portland, Ore. Statement in Support 1: Let’s do this en banc, but when we do how about we look at the Domestic Violence Clause too? Statement 2: Statement 1 is wrong.

Earth-shattering victory! Friends, IJ has been fighting the good fight on rental inspections—that is, code-enforcement officials forcing their way into people’s homes without real warrants based on individualized suspicion—for decades. So we’re thrilled to announce that a Pennsylvania appeals court issued a first-of-its-kind ruling this week, holding that the state’s constitution indeed provides more protection than the federal Constitution against such searches. We filed the case nearly a decade ago, and along the way discovered that yes, inspectors gossip about the incredibly private things they see; that yes, the inspections are a backdoor for law enforcement; that yes, renters find it extremely demeaning that they must open their doors when homeowners do not; and that yes, the public health and safety justifications for such regimes cannot withstand any scrutiny. Click here to learn more. And click here for a lovingly crafted podcast episode on what went wrong with the federal Constitution.

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