Podcasts about ninth circuit

On this edition of The Adult in the Room, Victoria Taft is joined by Marco Polo founder and former White House aide Garrett Ziegler for an explosive, inside look at the publication of the 644-page Report on the Biden Laptop and the multi-year legal war that followed:The Dossier That Documented 459 Crimes: Garrett Ziegler details how Marco Polo authenticated 128,000 emails, thousands of photos, and financial records from Hunter Biden's hard drive, cataloging 140 business crimes, 191 sex offenses, and 128 drug-related violations with over 2,000 archived footnotes.The Lawfare Lawsuit Over "Redacted Genitalia": Ziegler recounts the bizarre California federal lawsuit brought by Hunter Biden—alleging data modification because Marco Polo covered the genitalia of Hunter and dozens of women with black boxes—and breaks down the ongoing Ninth Circuit appeal for legal fee reimbursement.Foreign Influence & The FARA Blueprint: A forensic examination of the foreign millions funneled to the Biden family across Ukraine (Burisma), China (CEFC), Romania (Gabriel Popoviciu), Mexico (the Magnani family), and Kazakhstan (Kenneth Rakishev), including direct violations of 18 U.S.C. § 219 by public officials.The Federal Judiciary's "Priestly Class": Ziegler introduces Marco Polo's upcoming 18-month project to build a public dossier profiling all 850 lifetime federal judges, sparked by his experiences with Biden-appointed judge Hernan Vera.The Seth Rich Mystery: Ziegler shares insights from his investigation into the DNC leak, revealing the existence of a suppressed second police report detailing multiple attackers.The Lindsay Clancy Holdout Juror Breaks His Silence: Victoria and Garrett review revelations from the lone holdout juror who refused to acquit Lindsay Clancy on insanity grounds, exposing that he stood alone as a Black Catholic Republican against a pro-insanity jury.

The mail-in ballot saga has come to an end — for now. Mary and Andrew detail yesterday's Supreme Court decision rejecting President Trump's restrictions on mail-in voting, which they call “good news” in the fight against election interference. “Knock it off,” Andrew says to paraphrase the Supreme Court: “we are not engaging in this.” Then, the co-hosts delve into two more examples of what they consider attempts by government bodies to meddle in the midterms, the first being Missouri's failed redistricting effort as the Supreme Court rejects the state's new Trump-backed congressional district map. The second: the Solicitor General's emergency motion to stay an injunction on the Trump administration's SAVE database, urging the court to restore the immigration verification system that was blocked by a lower court. Plus, the prosecutor who led the “grand conspiracy” investigation into Trump's political enemies earlier this year has left the probe. And former CIA Director John Brennan preemptively goes to court ahead of the government's likely prosecution against him. A Note to Listeners: As the 2026 midterm elections heat up, MS NOW is headed to the Lone Star State. Join more than a dozen of your favorite hosts - including Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Jen Psaki, Michael Steele, Ali Velshi and more - in Arlington, Texas on September 26 for a day of community and conversation about the issues that matter most to you. Get your tickets at ms.now/together. Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The updates just keep coming. On Sunday, the Trump administration returned to the Supreme Court to ask for more control over mail-in ballots, coming two days after U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani's order blocking the government from implementing parts of the new Postal Service rule. Mary and Andrew analyze the case's implications as states begin sending out their ballots ahead of the midterms before turning to another update: a preliminary injunction issued in the CASA Inc. v. Trump case on birthright citizenship. Then, the co-hosts turn to the ICE agent involved in the shooting of a Venezuelan man during Trump's “Operation Metro Surge” in Minneapolis, who is now being federally charged with making false statements to the FBI about the event. They call this “good news” — an instance of the federal government choosing to intervene in an “outrageous” case instead of leaving it up to the states' discretion. Plus, the Supreme Court allows the construction of Trump's White House ballroom to continue.A Note to Listeners: As the 2026 midterm elections heat up, MS NOW is headed to the Lone Star State. Join more than a dozen of your favorite hosts - including Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Jen Psaki, Michael Steele, Ali Velshi and more - in Arlington, Texas on September 26 for a day of community and conversation about the issues that matter most to you. Get your tickets at ms.now/together. Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Seattle public safety is facing renewed scrutiny after three separate shootings in the Belltown neighborhood left three people dead and three others injured, with no arrests announced in connection with the killings at the time of this episode. Seattle Police Officers Guild President Kent Lou is now calling for broader changes to Seattle's criminal justice system, arguing that adding police officers alone will not solve the city's crime problems without consequences for repeat offenders, functioning jails, prosecutors and judges working alongside law enforcement. Lou says Seattle police officers repeatedly encounter difficulties booking suspects into jail and argues the city's revolving-door criminal justice system is making it harder for officers to address repeat crime. He is also calling for stronger action against illegal street takeovers, including vehicle seizures and expanded use of surveillance cameras. The criticism comes as Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson responds to the deadly Belltown weekend. Wilson says Seattle Police Department data show shootings and homicides remain at their lowest levels in a decade and says her administration will soon unveil a comprehensive gun violence prevention strategy. The mayor's office also responded to criticism over Seattle's surveillance camera policy. Wilson paused camera expansion pending a data security and privacy audit after cameras were temporarily used during the FIFA World Cup. The Seattle Police Officers Guild is questioning why those cameras aren't currently operating around Seattle's stadium district. Also on Washington in Focus Daily: More than $100 million in federal funding has gone toward the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, or LEAD, model that originated in Seattle and King County and has since been replicated around the country. Washington Policy Center researcher Eric Zimmerman is calling for Congress to pause additional LEAD funding and scrutinize claims about the program's effectiveness. Zimmerman has challenged statistics used to promote LEAD's success, including recidivism data, and argues policymakers need stronger evidence before committing additional taxpayer dollars. LEAD co-founder Lisa Daugaard disputes attempts to connect the diversion program to Washington's broader homelessness and drug overdose problems, arguing LEAD has produced successful outcomes even as Seattle and Washington struggle with larger homelessness, addiction and public safety challenges. Finally, Washington high school wrestler Kallie Keeler and her mother are taking their girls sports and Title IX case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Alliance Defending Freedom has filed an emergency motion seeking protections before the upcoming wrestling season. Keeler and her mother are asking for advance notice if she is scheduled to compete against a transgender opponent so that her family can decide whether she participates in the match. Washington in Focus Daily breaks down Seattle's deadly Belltown shootings, Mayor Katie Wilson's public safety response, criticism from the Seattle Police Officers Guild, Seattle surveillance cameras, the $100 million LEAD diversion controversy, federal taxpayer funding, homelessness and drug policy, and the Washington girls wrestling case now before the Ninth Circuit. #Seattle #SeattleCrime #SeattlePolice #KatieWilson #SeattleNews #PublicSafety #Belltown #LEAD #WashingtonState #WashingtonNews #GirlsSports #TitleIX #NinthCircuit #WashingtonPolitics #TheCenterSquare Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Episode 306- Big Brother’s Eye on Guns Also Available OnSearchable Podcast Transcript Gun Lawyer — Episode Transcript Page – 1 – of 15 Gun Lawyer — Episode 306 Transcript SUMMARY KEYWORDS Gun laws, Second Amendment, Ninth Circuit, California law, Surveillance, FFL, Self defense, Firearm storage, Heller decision, New Jersey, Guillotine, Weapon definition, Propaganda, CDC data, Gun training SPEAKERS Evan Nappen, Teddy Nappen, Speaker 2 Evan Nappen 00:18 I’m Evan Nappen. Teddy Nappen 00:20 and I’m Teddy Nappen. Evan Nappen 00:21 and welcome to Gun Lawyer. Teddy, welcome back, you new father, you. And I’m the new grandfather. Teddy Nappen 00:29 Yes, I know, and don’t worry, all is good. Just sleep is for the weak. Evan Nappen 00:34 Ah, right, exactly, exactly. Oh my! And how is beautiful, Aliyana, doing? That cute little peanut that she is. Teddy Nappen 00:45 Aliyana is doing quite well. She is. Evan Nappen 00:47 And your lovely wife? How is she? Teddy Nappen 00:50 She’s doing also well. It’s definitely one of those moments when you see your wife holding your newborn child. Definitely that kind of spark. Oh yeah, very special, Evan Nappen 01:01 Oh yeah, very special, special. Teddy Nappen 01:02 Yeah, but they’re both doing quite well, and I’m eternally blessed for that. Page – 2 – of 15 Evan Nappen 01:08 That’s right. And we got the baby to the range. She did great on her first shooting experience there. Teddy Nappen 01:15 I know we took out. Evan Nappen 01:17 She got her CCARE. She’s good. She took out a Charter Arms .22. The trick was the range officer allowed us to just put up balloons to make it easier. It worked. Evan Nappen 01:19 She took out a Charter Arms .22. The trick was the range officer allowed us to just put up balloons to make it easier, and it worked. Evan Nappen 01:28 It was good. It was good. We start them young in the Nappen family. You know, you have to give one day of birth, and then you’re at the range. Teddy Nappen 01:40 There’s two things. Evan Nappen 01:41 Training begins. Teddy Nappen 01:42 The two things Aliyana will grow up with having. Number one, I want to teach her to be a critical thinker, and number two, all I can show her for self-defense. Everything I can for her to be a critical thinker. Evan Nappen 01:56 That’s right. And you do that for all kids. It’s a way of not being a victim, not being a victim. Critical thinking and knowing how to defend yourself – two very important things. Well, I’ve got to tell you, the Ninth Circuit in California had a very interesting decision. The reason I want to discuss it is, I believe this decision may give us hints as to what may be coming in New Jersey and other places. As we see the power of the newly, relatively speaking, empowered Second Amendment crushing gun laws that are literally over a century old, the anti-Second Amendment crowd, the Second Amendment oppressors, are, of course, looking for avenues to oppress our rights, and they have to work within this new framework. This decision out of the Ninth Circuit, I find of great concern because of its potential to possibly be utilized as a mechanism and tactic for the anti-Second Amendment Left. And what happened in the Ninth Circuit is an Appellate Decision, after the trial court in the Ninth, and what it did was leave in place California’s 24/7 gun store surveillance law. Page – 3 – of 15 Evan Nappen 03:31 Now you may say, okay, well that’s just gun stores. Yes, but it’s very easy to expand this, and I’m going to show you why this should be of great concern. So, let’s take a look at what happened in the Ninth Circuit with California law, and then I’m going to discuss where I think the gun rights oppressors may see an opening for shenanigans. We’ve got to be prepared and recognize that this could be a potential area of penetration where they will probably strike and try to oppress us. So, California, requires licensed dealers to video record and audio record. By the way, interior video and audio, and retain all the recordings for at least one year. Now I’m getting this, by the way, from a great article in AmmoLand by one of our favorite authors, John Crump, and it’s called “Ninth Circuit Leaves California’s 24/7 Gun Store Surveillance Law in place”. (https://www.ammoland.com/2026/08/ninth-circuit-leaves-californias-24-7-gun-store-surveillance-law-in-place/?utm_source=Ammoland+Subscribers&utm_campaign=fb0c8bc3fc-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6f6fac3eaa-fb0c8bc3fc-21268623) Evan Nappen 05:02 The article discusses how a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld California’s controversial gun store monitoring law by a two-to-one margin. Now, the case is Richards v. Newsom. No shock that the defendant is Governor Newsom. And what happened in this case was brick and mortar FFLs, two home-based FFLs, gun rights groups, including GOA, GOC, CRPA, and SAF, and individual patrons of the shop, were all plaintiffs in this action. They challenged California’s law, which was enacted in 2024, that requires every California FFL to operate a 24/7 digital video system that also records audio inside the premises. Cameras must cover entries and exits, display areas, points of sale, and clearly identify people, and run at least 15 frames per second. They have to store footage for one year. In addition, dealers must post a conspicuous warning that says, in all bold, THESE PREMISES ARE UNDER VIDEO AND AUDIO SURVEILLANCE. YOUR IMAGE AND CONVERSATIONS MAY BE RECORDED.” Evan Nappen 06:49 At the District Court level, the level below the Appellate level, the law was found constitutional, and the plaintiffs then appealed to the Appeal Court in the ninth, which came out with this decision. It was a three-judge panel, and it was Judge (Lucy H.) Koh, Judge (Ana) de Alba, which were both appointed by Biden, and a Trump appointee, Judge Kenneth Lee. In this case, one of the claims they made was that this violates the Fourth Amendment. That’s the constitutional protection against illegal search and seizure, and the panel rejected the claim, saying that the dealers’ recordings are not themselves a Government search. There is no physical intrusion by the State, citing another case of Jones, and no government acquisition of data, citing two other cases of Carpenter and Chatrie. Dealers are not transformed into state actors by merely being required to keep cameras. Wow, let that sink in. And, of course, the two Biden judges rejected Judge Lee’s inspection theory on three grounds. And that is that the law doesn’t authorize inspections, though there are other penal code provisions that do, and that even if it did, the statute is facially valid under New York versus Burger because it limits who may inspect and what may be inspected. Page – 4 – of 15 Evan Nappen 08:45 The plaintiffs also claim that the law violated the Fifth Amendment takings clause. The Court said no good to that one as well. The majority, again, the two Biden appointees, said it’s not a physical taking. Dealers own and install the equipment, and the Government doesn’t occupy the premises. hey claimed it’s not a regulatory taking. That dealers in this heavily-regulated industry have reduced investment-backed expectations, and the alleged compliance costs, by the way, of $17,000, without a before and after value comparison, do not suffice. And the character of the action is a “public-safety regulation, not a physical invasion”. he Court also rejected the First Amendment claims, where the judge held that overbreadth fails because the statute doesn’t punish or regulate speech. The anonymity claim failed because one, no one must identify themselves, even though cameras must be positioned to identify customers easily. And the Association claim fails because membership is not compulsory, and it shot it all down. hen the majority also declined to adopt the dissent, you know, the good guys’ dissent of the right to receive and exchange information. They rejected that theory, claiming the plaintiffs didn’t raise it, and cited other cases that involved actual prohibitions. So, this is incredible. The one dissenting Judge Lee would have also held that inspection scheme violates the Fourth Amendment as applied to FFLs. There’s no time or place limits. So, agents could theoretically enter home at any hour to check the system, and they left the audio and visual surveillance requirement in place. Evan Nappen 11:08 Now this is California, granted, and this is, of course, on dealers. However, what are the requirements, constitutionally speaking, when it comes to firearm storage, and we’ll argue regulation? You see, we have heard rumors and things have been printed that one of the things that New Jersey is going to pass, particularly in response to the finding of unconstitutionality of both the assault firearm ban and the magazine ban is something having to do with storage. Well, I’m thinking that it probably isn’t simply going to be focused on storage, but may in fact try to utilize a visual and audio surveillance requirement as well, and place that upon anybody that possesses so-called assault firearms magazines, maybe even all guns. Who knows how far they’ll take it? Evan Nappen 12:20 If we take a step back and we look at the Heller decision, in (District of Columbia v.) Heller, the Supreme Court ruled, of course, that requiring lawfully-owned firearms in a home to be kept unloaded and disassembled, or bound by a trigger lock is a violation of the Second Amendment. The Heller Court found that this storage requirement was unconstitutional because it rendered firearms inoperable and prevented individuals from using them for immediate self-defense in the home. Scalia, when he wrote the majority opinion, said the Second Amendment protects the right to keep a working firearm ready for core lawful purpose of self-defense. Now, of course, if it’s surveillance, surveillance does not stop you from keeping the gun ready for lawful purpose of self-defense. t’s simply a surveillance and “security requirement”. Evan Nappen 13:36 Further, the court in Heller noted that the ruling did not cast out on certain other traditional regulations, stating that laws regulating the storage of firearms to prevent accidents under specific or different regulatory contexts were not necessarily invalidated by Heller. Scalia, when he wrote the Heller decisions, suggested that the Court’s analysis did not “suggest the invalidity of laws regulating storage Page – 5 – of 15 of firearms to prevent accidents”. When he talked about that distinguishing feature. He was drawing a sharp legal line. The Court did not say that all storage laws are unconstitutional. Instead, it distinguished between complete baseline disabling of a gun versus conditional safety rules. And you know how the Second Amendment oppressors always try to exploit to the max anything they’re given in any way, and this is an opening that I expect they’re going to attempt to. Evan Nappen 15:01 Let’s take a further look and elaborate. So, for example, the absence of a self-defense exception. ow, the fundamental flaw in the District of Columbia storage law was that it was an absolute 24/7 mandate. Well, in terms of the DC code, a firearm had to be unloaded and bound by a trigger lock, even if an intruder was actively breaking into the home. Now, Heller struck that absolute mandate down, but what Heller preserved was storage regulations that maintain a flexibility enough to allow a person to access and use their weapon dynamically when facing an immediate threat. So, it might still be able to require lock boxes that can instantly be opened. Let’s say with a fingerprint or something like that. This may be a direction they’ll go. Evan Nappen 16:11 There’s a distinguishing between immediate control and unattended storage. The lower courts heavily relied upon in the Heller quote to uphold secure storage and child access prevention, and New Jersey in fact has a law that says you can’t allow a minor to access a loaded firearm. But the crucial legal distinction is whether the gun is currently in use or whether it’s sitting unattended. One of the distinctions is the on-person distinction. In challenges that followed Heller, courts ruled that laws requiring guns to be locked up only when not under direct personal control of the owner are constitutional. So, they’re going to be exploiting that. f you’re awake and carrying a firearm or have it on your nightstand while home, that’s within your immediate control. But if you leave the house, if you well, if you leave the house and you go to sleep, and the children are present. The state has a valid interest in regulating the unattended storage to prevent an accidental discharge or theft. Teddy Nappen 17:30 So, my question would be, when it comes to, if they were trying to regulate, let’s say they force everyone to have, okay, you need to have X amount of storage. You need to have a safe in requiring of that. Could there be you’re putting the undue burden of saying, well, now you’re adding essentially a poll tax to a right? Evan Nappen 17:50 That may be one of the arguments about that. I’m not sure how that’ll play out. It’s interesting. Well, and the third thing to keep in mind in Scalia’s reference to “different regulatory contexts”, it means that certain storage laws can be tailored to high-risk environments and specific populations, and they’re historically and legally permissible. So, for example, commercial and public contexts, the Government can mandate strict storage requirements for commercial gun dealers, and California has completely exploited that. You know, usually to prevent like smash and grab robberies or public housing, military barracks, government workplaces, stuff like that. Then there’s preventing vulnerable access. And that’s laws specifically punishing gun owners if a child or legally prohibited person, like a convicted felon, can Page – 6 – of 15 gain access to an unsecured firearm and causes harm are widely considered valid under Heller. So, these do not ban self-defense. They penalize essentially negligence. Evan Nappen 19:04 This is the playing field that we’re going to see the antis try to exploit. And now you can combine that with possibly requiring 24/7 surveillance to the degree that it could be applied to an individual, even in their home. Because remember you had home-based dealers as well that were part of this that were trying to raise these claims. Now, granted, this is the Ninth Circuit’s view of it. New Jersey, frankly, has often taken a strong view when it comes to Fourth Amendment protections. But who knows whether their desire to have Second Amendment oppression will overcome their desire to have Fourth Amendment protection? We’ve got to be aware of this. Teddy Nappen 19:56 I would take it a step further, Dad. Now say, you need to have an AI program required for your camera, and now that AI can calculate and determine firearms, where they’re going, who has them, how many you have, and no longer need it. We’re always worried about Universal Background Check as the way of the national registration. Imagine an AI in every home, and it determines each firearm. There’s your national registration, and now they have their list to come collect them. Evan Nappen 20:26 And then it could be viewed at any time. You could see these things happen. I mean, it’s just outrageous the implications. This is very scary stuff when you combine the potential of a surveillance requirement and mandating alarm systems in a home. Cameras, audio, lighting-all these different things. To what degree can the Government extend its power in the name of public safety? Given what is apparently allowed and disallowed by way of Heller and subsequent courts’ rulings and determinations over those things. So, I see this as a new battlefield, a new front that we’re most likely going to have to be very much vigilant about and wary. I also can see this type of California law, at a minimum, applying to New Jersey dealers. At a minimum imposing and trying to create because New Jersey often follows California for their extreme gun rights oppression, and California often follows New Jersey for what they do. They work often hand in hand, and its extension to citizens is something we need to be very concerned about. Hey, Teddy. What do you have of interest in Press Checks? You had mentioned something that I thought was kind of fascinating, and it reminded me of the French Revolution. What is that you need to tell us about this? Teddy Nappen 22:24 As you know, Press Checks are always free, and this comes from the Capitol Police as they had to arrest. Evan Nappen 22:26 The Capitol in Washington D.C. Page – 7 – of 15 Teddy Nappen 22:34 Yeah. United States Capitol Police seized a guillotine, shot a man, and arrested him for carrying a dangerous weapon, for being in possession of a guillotine. (https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/uscp-arrests-driver-guillotine-truckbed) Evan Nappen 22:48 Oh, a guillotine. How did he possess it? Teddy Nappen 22:51 In the back of his pickup truck. Evan Nappen 22:53 So, he’s driving around with the guillotine on the back of his pickup truck. Was he going to use it in a theatrical play or movie, or was he going to use it to make political speech, or did he actually want to start chopping heads? Teddy Nappen 23:09 There was no clarification, but he was just pulled over. There was this giant guillotine on the back of the truck. Evan Nappen 23:16 Could have been a Halloween display in advance. I mean, I don’t know. Well, you know, it’s an interesting kind of weird to say a guillotine is a weapon unless it’s being utilized as a weapon. I mean, what do, you know? What are you gonna say to somebody? You know, give me your wallet, or I’m gonna cut off your head. I mean, what? I don’t really see how. It’s not like it fires a projectile. It’s not like it’s easily carried in one’s pocket. How is it gonna qualify as a weapon unless it is somehow intentionally used as a weapon? Teddy Nappen 23:55 Here’s the problem, though, for the law. From what I was able to pull on DC. They have to prove that he’s able to carry the guillotine in order to charge him with that. Evan Nappen 24:09 Well, I guess it’s a vehicle-mounted weapon. I don’t know. But it’s not a weapon. It’s not firing anything. It’s not projecting anything. It’s harmless unless you actually get somebody to stick their head in it. Other than that, you know, it’s as much a weapon as somebody’s shoe is a weapon. You could take off your shoe and start beating somebody in the head. Now your shoe is a weapon, right? Otherwise, shoes just aren’t weapons. I don’t necessarily see how. If I was handling that case, I would immediately bring a motion that this doesn’t qualify as a weapon. Now, I don’t practice in D.C. So, I don’t know how broad their description of weapons are. But if we were to look at New Jersey, the best they could claim is that it falls under the “other weapons” section of N.J.S. 2C:39-5d. But even with that, the definition of weapon under New Jersey, I don’t even think it’s fitting it unless there’s some allegation that fits it under NJ’s definition of weapon and meets all the elements of it. Page – 8 – of 15 Teddy Nappen 25:33 I want to go a step further and just have someone drive a truck with like an electric chair on the back. Then have another one where he’s driving with the car, and it has the torture device that was used to stretch people. I’m just curious to like what does the extent of where do they can where do the line drawn is it just because it has a blade? Evan Nappen 26:03 Well, here’s where it gets odd, and it’s an interesting thing. Because New Jersey’s definition of weapon, which you’ll find under N.J.S. 2C:39-1r. says that a weapon means anything readily capable of lethal use or inflicting serious bodily injury. However, there are so many things out there. I mean, a kitchen knife, a chainsaw, a hammer, a golf club. I mean, it never ends because anything is readily capable of it. But you still have to fit into New Jersey’s other weapons. Because even before we go there, the term “weapon” under New Jersey law includes, but is not limited to firearms, even though not loaded or lacking a clip. They say a clip. Can you imagine this? I mean, magazine, but okay, or other component to render them immediately operable. Components which can be readily assembled into a weapon. I always hate a definition that tries to define it by using the term itself. That’s frickin’ useless. And then Teddy Nappen 27:30 Definition. Evan Nappen 27:30 And then, gravity knives, switchblade knives, daggers, dirks, stilettos, or other dangerous knives, billies, blackjacks, bludgeons, metal knuckles, sandclubs, slingshots, cesti, or similar leather bands studded with metal filings or razor blades embedded in wood. Well, that sure gives you a lot of great ideas. At least I give it credit there. But anyway, and stun guns or any weapon or other device which projects, releases, or emits tear gas or other substance intended to produce temporary physical comfort, discomfort, or permanent injury through being vaporized or otherwise dispensed into the air. But if you notice, all these things that they’re putting in this category of weapons require a person to use them in a way that an individual would be targeted for being struck or hit or cut. Evan Nappen 28:37 Whereas, a guillotine would require the person themselves putting their head into the guillotine, or being forced to put their head in a guillotine, and that seems like a bit of a challenge to still fit it under the definition of weapon. But even if it did fit under, just for argument’s sake, of being arguably a weapon because it’s capable of that lethal use, you’d have to say. But the definition of weapon isn’t the prohibition in New Jersey law. The prohibition for weapon you’ll find in the weapons prohibition statute, which is the 2C:39-5d. “Other weapons”. And 2C:39-5d. says other weapons. Any person who knowingly has in his possession any other weapon under circumstances not manifestly appropriate for such lawful uses as it may have is guilty of a crime of the fourth degree. It’s felony level offense, and it carries a year and a half max in State Prison. Evan Nappen 30:02 So, what would be circumstances not manifestly appropriate for such lawful uses as it may have? f you’re riding around with the guillotine, let’s say, for political speech purposes, which could be legit, or Page – 9 – of 15 you’re transporting it for making a movie, let’s say, or using it in a play or in a magic show. Okay, because there are magician guillotines. I personally have one called the Arm Chopper, where you do a whole routine where you get a volunteer, and you chop carrots with it. Then you put their arm in it, and it’s a whole fun thing. Of course, it doesn’t chop the person’s arm; it magically does not, and everything’s fine. en there’s another one. A guillotine version, magician, where when you chop it, it’s rigged so that the arm looks like it’s falling into the bag below, but of course it isn’t. Yet you can still lock it in place to cut carrots and demonstrate its effectiveness before you do the trick, you know. But there’s a legitimate, lawful purpose – a magician’s prop. Maybe you are into it for decorative purposes, for craftsmanship purposes. I mean. Teddy Nappen 30:03 You’re trying out a new thing. Teddy Nappen 30:03 You’re trying out a new Gallagher routine with watermelons. Evan Nappen 30:03 I don’t know, but this is intriguing to say the least. I’ve done a lot in almost 40 years of practicing this area of law, but I will have to say that I’ve yet to have anybody charged with possession of a guillotine as a weapon. But I’m ready to defend it; should it be necessary. But there you go. That’s a crazy, interesting story, Teddy. Thanks. Evan Nappen 30:03 Hey, I want to talk about our good friends at WeShoot. WeShoot is a range in Lakewood, New Jersey. That is a range where Teddy and I both shoot, and my family shoots, and my brother shoots. We love it. WeShoot is an awesome resource right there in Central Jersey, easily accessible right off the Parkway. You’ll love it at WeShoot. If you haven’t checked out WeShoot, you really need to. It is a great place, a special place. They have a fantastic state-of-the-art range, a great pro shop with awesome toys, and they can set you up whether you’re a beginner or advanced shooter. They can get you the right equipment, the right gear, the best ammo, best guns, right there at WeShoot, and the best people. They will help you and guide you so that you make the right choices for what your needs are. You need to go to WeShoot, try it out. You’ll see what I’m saying. Evan Nappen 30:03 You can check WeShoot out at weshootusa.com. They have a great website, beautiful photography. They pride themselves on their great photography. They have all kinds of great courses, not just courses, so you can get your CCARE and other certifications that you may need, and other courses for getting permits from even other states, but advanced training and other types of fun shoots and very Important advanced training, and if you are brand new, they can start you off right by learning the basics and beginning with proper instructions so that you don’t become a GOFU. It’s very important training and having a place to shoot. It’s critical in New Jersey, and WeShoot can give it all to you. So check out WeShoot at weshootusa.com. Page – 10 – of 15 Evan Nappen 30:03 Let me also shamelessly promote my book New Jersey Gun Law, the Bible of New Jersey Gun Law, used by, well, everybody that needs a gun law book. They’re using it, and you need to have one so that you don’t become a GOFU. I’ve taken great pains to explain the insane matrix called New Jersey gun law. It’s done in only five over 500 pages, but don’t let that intimidate you. It’s 120 topics all broken down in question and answer, so that you can even you can get an understanding of New Jersey’s insanity and so that you can protect yourself and stay legal. Go to evannappen.com, evannappen.com, and get your copy today. Evan Nappen 30:32 And, of course, we’re all very excited about the Federal Relief From Disabilities Program being reinvigorated by the Trump administration and the DOJ. It’s been 33 years since I’ve been able to help people regain their Second Amendment rights that may have federal disqualifiers. If you’d like to get a free evaluation of whether you qualify and what it can do for you, and what you need to know as its interplay with other states and Jersey law, and to see what it can do for you, go to evannappen.com, and you can fill out our little contact form there for getting federal relief. And if you need state relief, we do rights restoration, including New Jersey expungements, and getting rid of other disqualifiers that may be in your past, whether it’s old restraining orders or other things that create bars to the exercise of your Second Amendment rights. Go to evannappen.com and learn about those things. And feel free to get in contact with me. I’ll be happy to speak with you, or someone from my team will be happy to help you with your issues. And let me also mention that Teddy has other Press Checks. I’m sure. What else do you have? Teddy Nappen 36:34 This is the famous double Press Checks. I could not pass this one up. When I saw this article, I was shocked, and then reminded that the vast majority of the Left can’t be funny. If you go back to maybe the ’90s, and you’d have. Teddy Nappen 36:54 You laugh at them all the time, though, Teddy. Teddy Nappen 36:56 Yeah, we laugh at them. They try to be funny, and they try to joke on us. But they just come off as boring because comedy was always about pushing the envelope. The all-time favorite movies of comedy, like Blazing Saddles, or even like George Carlin’s bit, “Seven Things You Can’t Say on Television”. George Carlin. Evan Nappen 37:17 George Carlin. I saw him live twice. Yeah. Teddy Nappen 37:20 And you have, you know, Nick DePaolo, Norm Macdonald, people who would their whole idea was to push the envelope. Funniest man alive, Richard Pryor. These are all the ideas, and then comes to the Marxist Left. This is, you know, we’ve got to give it to The Trace, who decided to give them free Page – 11 – of 15 advertising. They decided to make a musical pushing to repeal the Second Amendment. (https://www.thetrace.org/2026/08/good-guy-with-a-gun-musical-interview/) Evan Nappen 37:48 Oh my God! A gun oppression musical. Teddy Nappen 37:53 A musical called “Good Guy with a Gun”. That is their comparison. Evan Nappen 37:57 That’s about as wokey as you can get. A musical doing this. Teddy Nappen 38:02 It’s gay. It’s really gay. Evan Nappen 38:05 Oh my G-d! Teddy Nappen 38:07 And going through this. By the way, you can go on Spotify. You go wherever they have the song list. You can listen to it if you want to. Evan Nappen 38:16 Oh, that’s it. I want to listen to anti-Second Amendment songs. Teddy Nappen 38:20 Yeah. Songs, yes. Evan Nappen 38:23 What are they trying to do this like the other play? What was it that going after or mocking Mormons? Teddy Nappen 38:30 Yeah, the Book of Mormon. It was. Evan Nappen 38:31 There you go. Right. This is the Left’s one of their tools of pushing their agenda is doing. Yeah, I know, real, Teddy Nappen 38:40 Real, real stunning and brave to mock Mormons and going after the Second Amendment. Now, do one on Sharia law and see how that goes. Evan Nappen 38:51 Oh yeah, right. Yeah, that’ll go over big. Sure. Yeah, that’ll be the yeah. Page – 12 – of 15 Teddy Nappen 38:57 Or what is the Chinese play where it’s China before communism, where Chinese have actually sent agents to attack their bus, and do stuff like that. But here. Evan Nappen 39:10 That’s really edgy. Teddy Nappen 39:12 Yeah, no kidding. Evan Nappen 39:13 You know, not this stuff. That’s just you know agenda driven with just another potential way of somehow getting their effed up message implanted. Teddy Nappen 39:27 Yeah. So, they got a bunch of F tier celebrities who wanted to show their virtue signal. They took a pay cut, so they would do this play out of Los Angeles, of course. It is a theatrical concept, billing it as the Book of Mormon for the NRA. The action satire swells on the day the Second Amendment is wiped away, and the numbers reminiscent to Les Misérables begins with the right winger singing, “The day that we’ve always feared the liberals have come to take our guns away. Then comes a brief monolog from a Cockney woman spiles into mania. They came in the night. They took the little ones, the Glocks, the small handguns you keep under your pillow. It was invasion of basement of ant and basement and antics violated antiques violated. Evan Nappen 40:15 Well, they think it’s really hilarious that they’re going to come for the little ones, the handguns”, and then build up from that. That’s so funny, Teddy. It’s just so funny the way they crush our rights. Teddy Nappen 40:29 Well, you have this. It’s the screeching Left who still believe in going after the little ones. Just look at Lindsey Clancy. But anyways. The whole and going I love how they like say this famous actor from “This Is Us” and this other lady from “Orange is the New Black” and the way there and George voice the voice of God was George on Seinfeld. Okay, cool. The whole plot is the character gets a magic gun that turns people conservative. His daughter gets a magic megaphone that turns people liberal, and the antics ensue. In the end, they go into the whole article about the whole point is to dispel the myth of the good guy with the gun. Evan Nappen 41:11 Oh, the myth of the good guy with the gun. Like all these folks that have made a difference in stopping crime, criminals, terrorism that are average citizens, that no longer want to be victims but have chosen to be defenders. And not just defenders of themselves, but defenders of others. As a matter of fact, Teddy, this goofy crap by them on the play, but weren’t you telling me about that very fact? About the difference being made by people that try to stop, for example, mass shootings? What were you telling Page – 13 – of 15 me about that? Let’s talk about good guy with a gun. What have we learned about good guys with a gun? Teddy Nappen 42:02 So, the CDC again have added the data showing that it’s two. Evan Nappen 42:06 And this is their data from the CDC? Teddy Nappen 42:08 Up to 2 million self-defense uses of a firearm. Self-defense uses. That doesn’t even mean pull the trigger. Defensive uses of a firearm. Evan Nappen 42:18 Right. Just the mere presence of a firearm. Teddy Nappen 42:19 So, if it saves one life . . . how about 2 million? Two million lives saved! That is from the CDC’s website. Also the fact that they are now including the FBI reports showing mass shootings. Now they’re showing civilian intervention and stopping the bad guy. Evan Nappen 42:35 You mean, good guys with a gun, or good guys no longer wanting or agreeing to be victims, and good guys making a difference, right? Teddy Nappen 42:47 Yeah. This is something to where they are. This is a logical fallacy right here. It’s called false premise. They’re starting with a false premise, believing that there’s never any good guy with a gun. Even though we can clearly debunk that immediately just by that argument. But going into this whole insanity of the play, I want to remind you all. This is what they’re about. This is what they try to do through propaganda, and yeah, it’s in the gayest way possible. And I’ll take the citizen vigilante that’ll probably sell out more than this play out of. Evan Nappen 43:21 Well, that’s the crazy thing because movies and other things that were not necessarily designed to be propaganda, but that have the message of individuals who fight back. I mean, you can look at “Red Dawn”, which is still considered a classic today, and what was that? Individuals fighting back. You can look at virtually the entire genre of westerns is the individual who fights back. I mean, that’s what we’re really about. Teddy Nappen 43:55 The funniest scene I ever saw for this as a pro gun argument was in the movie “Death Proof”. It’s rated as one of the worst for Quentin Tarantino. I happen to like it. Page – 14 – of 15 Evan Nappen 44:07 I enjoyed Death Proof. I like the music, too. Teddy Nappen 44:07 Oh yeah, it was good there. Just seeing Kurt Russell play a weird twisted serial. Evan Nappen 44:16 Oh my G-d, yeah, did he ever. Teddy Nappen 44:17 There’s one scene where it’s the four girls are sitting on the table. They’re having a discussion. That’s what Quinn Tarantino always does: is having table conversations. The one girl says, “You still carry a gun? Why do you do that? And it’s like, “Why not?” And goes into that whole argument of where, like, “Why you don’t you know you can risk that? You know what I want? I want to carry my gun. I want to go where I’m able to go. I want to be able to defend myself, and she makes and hits home every argument. Where then they say, “What about pepper spray? I don’t want to give them a rash. I want to put them down. Like that’s the whole. Like they’re trying to be satirical. They’re going to be showing it. Evan Nappen 44:55 Big spoiler is that’s what she uses. Yeah, saves the. Teddy Nappen 45:00 hoots it. Shoots at Kurt Russell to get him to go away to save the girls. So, it’s one of those demonstrations. But even I’ll even give it another way, just satirical. Always Sonny did the exact thing where you have two both sides, ones for pro, ones against, and the anti side is like it’s so easy to get a gun. Both of them get denied their background checks immediately. Then they try, and then immediately try to go to a gun show, and they’re trying to do under the table. And the gun dealer’s like, “No, I’m not going to do that. And finally, they try to do a deal to buy it from an illegal alley, and that falls through, and to the point where they’re arguing. They see like, wow, it really is hard to get a gun. Then we realize, and it’s satirical because they show it in a way. This one here in the whole article, they’re trying to like joke on the liberals by she shops at Trader Joe’s. If you’re using a bazooka on one side and a squirt on the other, it’s you’re not both sizing it very easily. Evan Nappen 46:00 Right. Well, that’s not their goal, but that is really interesting. But I don’t think that play will be coming to a playhouse nearby anytime soon. And if it is, it’ll be a financial failure. Teddy Nappen 46:12 Remember, this is the Left’s game, though. Do you remember when they did Julius Caesar? They dressed him as Donald Trump. This was in 2017. In the play where he’s killed. In the play where he’s violently stabbed to death. Evan Nappen 46:15 No, gee, what were they trying to say there? I wonder. Page – 15 – of 15 Teddy Nappen 46:31 Yeah, exactly. And then you have the New Yorker here trying to say, it’s hardly bears the point that art is not life. I love how they play that game every time. Oh, really? Okay. Now cast Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Gosling as Black Panther for in Wakanda. Then tell me it’s not that. No big deal. I love how they always bring that up when it comes to oh art takes that. Cut to the musical of assassins that they had to cancel after the first attempted assassination. Evan Nappen 47:06 Yeah. Teddy Nappen 47:06 Where it’s a musical about Evan Nappen 47:08 Yeah. This is part of their M.O., and it’s disgusting. Well, Teddy, thanks for bringing that to our attention, so we know what play we’re going to never get a playbill for or see. Now, I’ve got to tell you about this week’s GOFU. You know the GOFU is Gun Owner Fuck Up. It’s where gun owners make mistakes that can cost them their freedom, their firearm rights. It cost them a lot of money, and you get to learn for free, so you don’t become a GOFU. And this week’s GOFU is really basic. Some of you listening may say, “Really, seriously?” I’m telling you, why am I talking about this? Because my friends, I get the phone calls. I get the phone calls from the GOFUers. I get those calls. Evan Nappen 48:01 This week’s GOFU is real simple. Practice your draw. Know your firearm. Okay, simple. Practice drawing and firing if you’re carrying. Practice reholstering. Practice it with an empty firearm. Make sure you are proficient in how to handle your specific firearm and know your gun. Know how it operates. You know, some guns have manual safeties. Some guns do not. Know your gun. Know how to use it. Practice and train. Not just on shooting. Not just on hitting the target. But practice on understanding the function of your gun – the loading, the unloading, how to absolutely know it’s empty. How to work your gun and how to draw your gun. How to holster and unholster your gun. Make sure you’ve practiced that with a safe, empty firearm. That you’ve had the right training. That you’re doing it properly, and that you are proficient in that. Because if you’re not and you have a problem, if you have an A.D., if you have some issue, you’ll become the next GOFU, and I don’t want to see that. Evan Nappen 49:35 This is Evan Nappen and Teddy Nappen reminding you that gun laws do not protect honest citizens from criminals. They protect criminals from honest citizens. Speaker 2 49:48 Gun Lawyer is a CounterThink Media production. The music used in this broadcast was managed by Cosmo Music, New York, New York. Reach us by emailing Evan@gun.lawyer. The information and opinions in this broadcast do not constitute legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney in your state. Downloadable PDF TranscriptGun Lawyer S5 E306_transcript About The HostEvan Nappen, Esq.Known as “America's Gun Lawyer,” Evan Nappen is above all a tireless defender of justice. Author of eight bestselling books and countless articles on firearms, knives, and weapons history and the law, a certified Firearms Instructor, and avid weapons collector and historian with a vast collection that spans almost five decades — it's no wonder he's become the trusted, go-to expert for local, industry and national media outlets. Regularly called on by radio, television and online news media for his commentary and expertise on breaking news Evan has appeared countless shows including Fox News – Judge Jeanine, CNN – Lou Dobbs, Court TV, Real Talk on WOR, It's Your Call with Lyn Doyle, Tom Gresham's Gun Talk, and Cam & Company/NRA News. As a creative arts consultant, he also lends his weapons law and historical expertise to an elite, discerning cadre of movie and television producers and directors, and novelists. He also provides expert testimony and consultations for defense attorneys across America. Email Evan Your Comments and Questions  talkback@gun.lawyer Join Evan's InnerCircleHere's your chance to join an elite group of the Savviest gun and knife owners in America.  Membership is totally FREE and Strictly CONFIDENTIAL.  Just enter your email to start receiving insider news, tips, and other valuable membership benefits.   Email (required) *First Name *Select list(s) to subscribe toInnerCircle Membership Yes, I would like to receive emails from Gun Lawyer Podcast. (You can unsubscribe anytime)Constant Contact Use. Please leave this field blank.var ajaxurl = "https://gun.lawyer/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php";

Ralph welcomes sportswriter Dave Zirin to talk about his new book, "The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn." Then Ralph speaks to labor activist Gene Bruskin about their upcoming Labor Day event at Busboys and Poets in DC, "Galvanizing Labor Day for a Workers' Compact."Dave Zirin is the sports editor for The Nation, a columnist for the Progressive, and the author of eight books on the politics of sports, including What's My Name, Fool?: Sports and Resistance in the United States and A People's History of Sports in the United States. His new book is The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn.There's a despondency that exists now, I believe, among people who are also very angry about the state of our politics. And the thing that Howard always insisted upon—he was an activist who happened to be a historian, not a historian who was an activist. And that doesn't denigrate his incredible skills as a historian, it just says where his priorities were in his time on this planet. And one of the things that Howard believed so strongly is that the movements themselves needed to have a strong sense of history. The movements needed to know that we live in a time of great ups and downs.Dave ZirinPeople did step up to create the Zinn Education Project. And every book event I'm doing, I'm showing up with copies of their materials and they usually have somebody on the ground doing the organizing at the event. And at the very least, we're helping it be a little bit sticky. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's not just a book event. It's not just celebrating Howard. But it's also something that allows us to be able to make it matter in a way that it otherwise would not—because it's not just about selling books, it really is about building a movement.Dave ZirinGene Bruskin is a veteran of the labor movement as a local union president, an organizer, and campaign coordinator for numerous local and national unions. He has done extensive international labor solidarity work, including with Iraqi workers and unions, and is a founder of US Labor Against the War.What we're breaking through here now (and partly this has been the definition of this resistance movement) it's workers versus billionaires. And I think the labor movement in general coming out of World War II has been captured by this mythology that “What's good for General Electric is good for the nation.” And the more the economy “prospers,” the more it's good for everybody. And it turns out that that's not really the case, because we don't have that kind of equality. And also what's in the national interest in terms of our foreign policy is not in the interest of the average working class person. A lot of that stuff is being challenged and reversed—not enough, but it's forcing some of the more moderate forces to the left, just as we're seeing in some of these Senate and House elections.Gene BruskinI think this is a really important moment for Labor Day because Labor Day, among other things, is generally the kickoff for whatever elections are happening in November. And it's going to be that on steroids this year. But I think the important thing is that, of course, we want to throw out a bunch of these Neanderthal Republicans in the House and Senate. But it's not just a matter of restoring a Democratic majority in the House and Senate. The question is: to what end? And what is on the agenda of a Democratic-majority Congress at this minute? What is the vision that we have for our future that we have to be fighting for? … We have to change this whole climate so that people have some kind of hope, some kind of vision for what we want and what we deserve. And the same old, same old, whether it's a Democratic Congress or not, is not acceptable anymore.Gene BruskinGalvanizing Labor Day for a Workers' Compact (Sep 7, 2026 2:00 pm ET): Busboys and Poets and Ralph Nader present Galvanizing Labor Day for a Workers' Compact, a discussion of how unions can maximize the impact of Labor Day to mobilize workers and voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections and afterwards. (Event is in-person @ Busboys and Poets 14th & V + Livestreamed. Free and open to all, but registration is required.)News 9/4/26* Our top story this week is the neo-colonial oil extraction deal that has been struck between the Trump administration and the government of Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela. This government has been running the country under the barrel of a gun since Trump sent Delta Force to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro from his home in the Bolivarian Republic in January. According to the BBC, the new deal “grants a US-led company 100-year concessions over 17 oilfields in Venezuela, amounting to a staggering 65 billion barrels of crude,” or over one-fifth of the country's proven oil reserves. The White House has released a fact sheet, stating that much of the new extraction will be conducted by North American Blue Energy Partners (Nabep), and that the U.S. government will have “veto power over the appointment of any member of the board of directors, and a majority of Nabep's board of directors must be US citizens.” The announcement of this deal drew scorn from a wide variety of sources. These range from Trump's former special representative on Venezuela and Iran, Elliott Abrams who called the deal “terrible” and sees it as Rodríguez “simply complying with the demands she's getting from Washington,” to Rafael Ramírez, who served as the head of the state-run energy firm, PDVSA, and as the oil minister under former President Hugo Chávez, who is quoted saying the deal “hands over [the oil] and opens the doors to a new colonialism of the United States.”* In more outrageous foreign policy news, Reuters reports the Trump administration has designated the United Kingdom-based pro-Palestine activist group Palestine Action a ”terrorist organization,” part of the administration's “campaign to crack down on left-wing groups” using post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws. The United Nations has decried this move, with the UN's human rights office chief Volker Turk calling it a “disproportionate and unnecessary ⁠restriction on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association as well as the right ​to participate in public affairs,” adding that the “expansive use ​of the term ‘terrorism' has been documented to have a chilling effect on civic space.” The UK has sought to bring the legal hammer down on Palestine Action, though these efforts have been somewhat stymied by the courts. Sarah McLaughlin, senior scholar of global expression at free speech group Foundation for Individual Rights and Free Expression (FIRE), ​said that the US “must reject that censorship - not import it.” Reuters notes that “Israel's foreign ministry welcomed the designation.”* This is not the only case wherein the Trump administration has gone to extreme lengths to punish pro-Palestine activism. California District Judge Noel Wise highlighted this in her recent decision, excoriating the State Department and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for their attempts to deport noncitizens over protected speech. This ruling, stemming from a lawsuit filed by FIRE, “centred on how the second Trump administration revoked visas and detained international students studying in the US after they engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy.” Judge Wise stated in her decision that “in the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people..It is not the government's to take.” She added that the strength of our democracy is “diminished when members of our society — citizens and noncitizens alike — must self-censor and ‘behave' or suffer the government's retaliation.” Mahmoud Khalil, the most prominent victim of the administration's policy of seeking to deport activists they want to silence, applauded the decision, saying “No one should fear speaking up for Palestine.” This from Al Jazeera.* Our final Palestine-related story for this week takes us to Hollywood, where prominent actor and activist Mark Ruffalo's recent comments in opposition to the Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. merger, related to Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison's ties to his father's software company Oracle, have been cynically branded as “antisemitic tropes.” According to the LA Times, Ruffalo shared a clip of Safra Catz, Oracle's former CEO and a current Paramount board member speaking at an Israeli-American Council National Summit conference, where she said that “she couldn't discuss Oracle's work with Israel's military, but ‘we have some profoundly scary technology at Oracle and we wanted to make sure that it was available' to Israel,” after October 7th. Paramount's lawyers quickly sought to smear Ruffalo with the charge of antisemitism, including by deploying their allies in pro-Israel groups like the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League. In response, over 150 Jewish filmmakers, academics, writers and even rabbis, signed an open letter which reads, in part, “Pointing out the crucial connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Hollywood is the exact opposite of antisemitism. It is, for us, the very essence of Jewish ethical duty.”* In other news, NBC reports the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Friday that “federal commodities-trading law does not preempt Nevada's gambling law as to the regulation of placing wagers on sports.” This piece notes that the 3-0 ruling marks the prediction markets industry's most significant legal setback yet and sets up a showdown at the Supreme Court, since the Third Circuit has already ruled that New Jersey cannot regulate Kalshi. The Trump administration has sought to keep regulation of betting markets under the jurisdiction of the federal body known as the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Notably, the commission, usually composed of five appointees, currently boasts only one single member: Michael S. Selig. Selig is extremely friendly to the prediction market industry and has sought to stave off state-level regulation by arguing for federal preemption.* Kalshi has been in the news for other reasons as well, namely for its attempts to self-regulate. For one, the Wall Street Journal reports that Kalshi issued its first ever lifetime ban this week, to none other than former Congressman and notorious grifter George Santos. This ban was precipitated by Santos' making over $17,000 by “placing bets on his attendance at President Trump's State of the Union address.” Kalshi adds that they issued a $71,356 fine to Santos. For his part, Santos tweeted “Hey @Kalshi thanks for the lifetime ban from your gambling platform…Let's see how much longer you guys are around for.” Newsweek reports that at the same time, Kalshi fined and suspended North Carolina Republican congressional candidate Laurie Buckhout for betting on her own race. Buckhout dismissed her bet as a “dumb mistake” and joked that her “career as a Kalshi trader was short-lived.” Buckhout is running against incumbent Congressman Don Davis in a newly-redrawn district engineered to favor Republicans, but polling shows a tight race. If Buckhout narrowly loses, many will point to this “dumb mistake” as a key reason why.* Another legal battle is unfolding in New York City, where landlords are challenging Mayor Zohran Mamdani's rent freeze for rent-stabilized tenants. PIX11 reports that the suit, originally filed in Staten Island but now moved to Manhattan, centers on complaints from landlords that the decision by the rent guidelines board (RGB) to keep rents flat on one and two-year lease renewals for NYC's million rent-stabilized apartments was “predetermined and illegal.” They argue that the board “cherry-picked data and was packed with supporters of Mayor…Mamdani's campaign promise to freeze rents,” while the Mamdani administration maintains that the board is an “independent body and considers both tenant and landlord concerns.” The mayoral administration will defend the decision in court, while the Legal Aid Society and Legal Services NYC have filed a request for the court to dismiss the suit entirely. An article in POLITICO from earlier this month reports that the plaintiffs in this suit hope to bring this case all the way to the US Supreme Court.* Our final stories this week take us back to the campaign trail. First up, Alaska Public Media is out with a report about a “chain of political maneuvers in the governor's race,” kicked off by former Anchorage mayor Tom Begich's “decision to step down to give fellow Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins a better shot at winning.” Kreiss-Tomkins finished first in the August primary, followed by Begich in second place and two Republicans in third and fourth respectively. Under Alaska election law, the top four finishers advance to the general election. This piece recounts how Begich's withdrawal sent shockwaves through the Republican candidate field. With Begich out, “Republican Treg Taylor moved into the fourth spot. But on Sunday, Taylor called for [fellow Republicans Bernadette] Wilson and [Dave] Bronson to consolidate their campaigns and pledged to endorse a combined Republican ticket. In a statement, Taylor urged Republicans to unite behind a single candidate, to counter Kreiss-Tompkins.” While fascinating for political junkies, many have observed that the maneuvers on display here and in Alaska's Senate race seem to undercut many of the arguments in favor of ranked-choice voting, with more effort being put into confusing voters or seeking to induce so-called “ballot exhaustion” rather than facilitating a more enlightened civil discourse.* Our final two stories cover the Massachusetts primaries held this Tuesday. The topline, as Semafor reports, is that incumbents swept their primaries in a stark reversal of the insurgent trend in Democratic primaries this cycle. The most notable of these was the crushing victory of 80-year-old incumbent Senator Ed Markey over his 47-year-old challenger, Congressman Seth Moulton. Markey won with approximately two-thirds of the vote. This piece notes that Moulton, younger but running to Markey's right, was never able to establish the “generational change” dynamic he wanted in this race, as “progressives and LGBTQ rights groups rallied behind…[Senator Markey].” On this latter point, Moulton was roundly criticized by Democratic voters, even in his own district, for “scapegoating” transgender people in the wake of the 2024 election. Reporter Dave Weigel adds a coda to this piece: “The subtext of Markey ‘26 was that he would be a reliable progressive vote for whatever the movement wanted for six more years, and then Ayanna Pressley could come in and replace him. Pressley campaigned [with] Markey, starred in ads; [and] at rallies he gushed about how she was the ‘north star' and if you wanted to know what the right side of an issue was, it was the side she was on.”* Finally, with all of that said, the pro-incumbent wave in Massachusetts did cut both ways. Progressive challengers to moderate Democrat incumbents fell short in the state's eighth congressional district – reelecting Congressman Stephen Lynch for a 14th term over progressive voting rights advocate Patrick Roath. Meanwhile, in the first district, WAMC reports Congressman Richie Neal, a longtime scourge of progressives, fended off a primary challenge from teacher Jeromie Whalen in his bid for a 20th term in the House – though Whalen, a political newcomer, won an impressive 46% of the vote. Neal will however face the formidable independent candidate Nadia Milleron in the general election. Milleron won nearly 40% of the vote against Neal in 2024; perhaps, if she wins over enough of Whalen's primary supporters, she can pull out a victory in November.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for September 3, 2026. We open by digging into Enos Cantor Freedom's federal lawsuit against the Chicago Sky, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, and the city of Chicago after he was escorted out of a WNBA game and banned from Wintrust Arena for wearing a shirt defining womanhood and cheering for the Indiana Fever. We walk through the video of his confrontation with Sky guard Natasha Cloud and debate whether he was singled out for his viewpoint rather than any actual rule violation, and what that means for his First Amendment claim. From there we hit our Top 3 things you need to know: the Ninth Circuit allowing Idaho's abortion ban to take effect for now, ICE setting a new record with 51,000 detentions in August as three million illegal immigrants have left or been removed since President Trump returned to office, and a federal judge tossing the DOJ's lawsuit against California's law letting biological males compete in girls' sports. Our American Mamas, Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson, join us to answer why 85-year-old actress Donna Mills has launched an OnlyFans page, which spins into a broader conversation about the platform, a politically outspoken creator monetizing her looks alongside her commentary, and the personal costs that can come with that kind of income. We Dig Deep on two fronts: a Maine Supreme Court ruling that a mother cannot take her 12-year-old daughter to church without the father's consent amid the parents' custody dispute over religion, and a Columbia Journalism Review report on New York City Mayor Mamdani's office paying influencers with taxpayer money to spread city messaging on immigration and tenants' rights, which we argue crosses the line from public information into propaganda. We also talk about North Carolina's Roy Cooper calling for healthcare over handcuffs for jailed offenders, and why we think that overlooks crime victims, before landing on a Bright Spot out of Pittsburgh, where a church is reporting a wave of young people, including hundreds of University of Pittsburgh students, coming forward for baptism. We close out with George Clooney warning about the rich and powerful while accepting a lifetime achievement award, and a father-son team in Michigan fixing cars for neighbors who can't afford repairs. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

National bank preemption is headed toward another Supreme Court showdown. The Second Circuit has held that New York's mortgage escrow-interest requirement is preempted, directly conflicting with the First Circuit's decision upholding a comparable Rhode Island requirement and the Ninth Circuit's decision allowing a similar California law to remain in effect. The OCC has sided with the Second Circuit, issuing final preemption regulations concluding that state laws requiring national banks to pay interest on mortgage escrow accounts are preempted. In the latest episode of the Consumer Finance Monitor podcast released today, Alan Kaplinsky (founder and former chair for 25 years, and now Senior Counsel of our Consumer Financial Services Group) is joined by Professor Emeritus Arthur Wilmarth of George Washington University Law School to discuss the Second Circuit's post-remand decision in Cantero v. Bank of America, the Supreme Court's 2024 decision in the case, the conflicting decisions in Conti v. Citizens Bank in the First Circuit and Kivett v. Flagstar Bank in the Ninth Circuit and the OCC's The immediate dispute is whether national banks must pay interest on residential mortgage escrow accounts under state law. The broader question is whether state consumer financial laws (other than state usury laws) may regulate national banks and, if so, when those laws are preempted by the National Bank Act. With certiorari petitions pending in Cantero and Kivett, further proceedings in Conti potentially bringing that case back before the Supreme Court, and the OCC's regulations now under challenge by ten state attorneys general, the circuit split and the OCC's intervention make another Supreme Court review increasingly likely. Our podcast with Professor Wilmarth explores these issues in depth and provides an important perspective on what could become one of the most significant national bank preemption disputes in years. Consumer Finance Monitor is hosted by Alan Kaplinsky, Senior Counsel at Ballard Spahr, and the founder and former chair of the firm's Consumer Financial Services Group. We encourage listeners to subscribe to the podcast on their preferred platform for weekly insights into developments in the consumer finance industry.

This month on Entertainment Law Update, Gordon Firemark and Tamera Bennett dig into parody and trademark tarnishment, documentary filmmaking and defamation, Lady Gaga's Mayhem trademark victory, copyright royalty jurisdiction, and a significant Fifth Circuit ruling rejecting the Ninth Circuit's familiar … Read the rest The post Bad Spaniels, Mayhem & Trademark Mischief – Entertainment Law Update 194 appeared first on Entertainment Law Update.

A lot can happen in a week. Mary and Andrew begin with the most recent movement in the court battle against President Trump's three-tiered mail-in voting executive order. Last week, Judge Talwani issued a fresh injunction blocking one provision of the EO centered around the Postal Service, two days after the Supreme Court lifted a block from the same judge, saying the provisions in the EO could not be applied to November's midterms. The co-hosts affirm that this fight is far from over before moving to two more updates from cases they talked about last week: a motion brought by Mary's ICAP team alongside others challenging the 2026 birthright citizenship EO and a decision on Minnesota's effort to extradite an ICE agent from Texas, after he was charged with shooting Julio Sosa-Celis through the door of a Minnesota home. Next, a win for Anthropic after a federal judge ruled against the Pentagon, saying it acted illegally in labeling the AI company a “supply chain risk.” Plus: a moving video from an active-duty Marine Colonel pleading for an Afghan national to return to the US after he was deported- despite his asylum status after his family helped the US military in Afghanistan. A video edition of this episode is available on YouTube now. Further Watching: Here is the full video that Andrew mentioned about Khalil from Active-duty Marine Colonel Zach Schmidt, via Ryan Goodman's Bluesky post: https://bsky.app/profile/rgoodlaw.bsky.social/post/3muagjmc35k23 A Note to Listeners: As the 2026 midterm elections heat up, MS NOW is headed to the Lone Star State. Join more than a dozen of your favorite hosts - including Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Jen Psaki, Michael Steele, Ali Velshi and more - in Arlington, Texas on September 26 for a day of community and conversation about the issues that matter most to you. Get your tickets at ms.now/together. Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

NFL weekend chaos, Week Zero heartbreak, and plenty of drama. Aaron Donald is back — so what does that mean for the Rams and their futures? Plus, Jacobs lands on the commissioners list, a fantasy league debacle unfolds, and we investigate the very real possibility that the “49ers guy” is completely fake. We break down the brutal Hawaii beat from Week Zero, roast Knish for celebrating way too early, dive into the Ninth Circuit's Kalshi ruling, and ask why “pros don't want to share.” Plus: Storm Buonatony on sports media salaries, the latest GRP saga, and another edition of the Chopping Block. Drop your questions in the chat! Jacob Gramegna hosts this episode of Circle Back alongside Rob Pizzola and Geoff Fienberg for another edition of Circles Off, part of The Hammer Betting Network.

In this episode, Ray Cochrane digs into Anthropic’s Model Hardware Standard. It is a shared driver that lets an AI agent run real lab equipment, from pipetting robots to the lasers inside a quantum computer. He also covers OpenAI’s builder’s guide to GPT-5.6, Google’s new Expert Intelligence book feature, Apple’s M5 Ultra Mac Studio, and a judge’s order forcing Google to stop hiding rival app stores. Finally, he weighs in on Apple’s proposed 15 percent link-out fee, Meta’s Australia numbers, the White House deputizing private hackers, and why rivers obey a 1957 math rule. – Want to start a podcast? Its easy to get started! Sign-up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Cochrane opens with a quick personal update. He is hunting for tickets to Michigan for his dad’s anniversary, and he has been learning Blender and Godot on the side, mostly modeling and blocking out levels. Consequently, he asks listeners for advice on starting a big game project, and he plans to record his progress, maybe as a time lapse. Then it is straight into the featured story. Anthropic’s Model Hardware Standard: A Driver for the Physical World The featured story comes from Anthropic, which opened a research preview of the Model Hardware Standard, or MHS. Cochrane frames it as the other side of the question NVIDIA’s world models raised two weeks ago: when do AI agents start touching actual machines? A typical lab runs a microscope, a liquid handler, a robotic arm, and a plate reader, each from a different vendor with its own control software. One Janelia researcher in the post launches seven programs in three languages just to start an experiment. Anthropic says wiring a setup like that takes weeks or months of specialist work. MHS is a driver, the same kind of translation layer a printer uses, except every device gets described with a tiny set of commands like read and write. Devices announce themselves on the network. A plain-English reference file then records what each machine measures, what can be adjusted, and which safety limits get enforced no matter what the agent asks. Agents then reach the hardware through the Model Context Protocol, the command line, or plain code. Cochrane sees the same move the industry keeps making, from coding harnesses to RSS and JSON: agree on a standard and let everyone build against it. In fact, he calls MHS the hardware version of MCP. The partner results carry the segment. QuEra builds quantum computers from individual atoms held by lasers that must hold their frequency to about one part in a trillion. A four-person team spent months on a relock script that worked 58 percent of the time. However, four copies of Claude iterating overnight through MHS produced a decision-tree script that recovers the laser in about six seconds, and it passed 99.3 percent of 700 blind trials. Carnegie Mellon wrote MHS drivers for four instruments across three incompatible computers in about eight hours, then ran dose-response experiments three times faster and blocked all six deliberately induced faults. Genentech, meanwhile, showed the limits. Claude used the same pump speed for water, a foamy protein solution, and a human had to explain that the bubbles were a physics problem. That gap in physical intuition is what sticks with Cochrane. He doubts it will change soon, and he suspects the fix will arrive as sub-agents or sub-models that judge a request against an expected outcome. He also connects MHS to a video of racing robots that never learned to stop at the finish line. What happens, he wonders, once they can read a distance sensor through a shared standard? Still, he calls the announcement a fantastic read and points listeners to the full article. Sponsor: GoDaddy Economy hosting $6.99/month, WordPress hosting $12.99/month, domains $11.99. Website builder trial available. Use codes at geeknewscentral.com/godaddy to support the show. GPT-5.6 Does the Same Work for a Fraction of the Cost OpenAI’s builder’s guide to GPT-5.6 leads the headlines. Cochrane recaps the three tiers from episode 1870, Sol, Terra, and Luna, plus the separate dial for reasoning effort. On BrowseComp, a benchmark for digging up obscure facts on the web, the old GPT-5.5 flagship scored about 84 percent on a run that cost 33 dollars three months ago. Luna now matches that score for a dollar thirty-three, and OpenAI has since cut Luna’s price another 80 percent. Browser Use reports Luna finishing 78 percent of its hardest browser tasks for about 14 dollars, against 80 percent for roughly 235 dollars from the best available model. The guide’s other big addition is a multi-agent beta flag. It lets the model handling a request spawn parallel helper agents that report back to a root agent inside a single API call. However, Cochrane is unimpressed by the timing. He has been running that pattern in Claude Code for months, so he sees OpenAI copying a workflow other companies already ship rather than inventing its own. Along the way, he plugs Claude Code’s remote-control sessions, which let him send prompts from his phone to a terminal session at home. Google Lets Gemini Read the Books You Actually Bought Google launched Expert Intelligence, a name Cochrane calls quite the reach. The feature lets you drop a book you bought on Google Play Books into Gemini Notebook, formerly NotebookLM, and ask questions answered only from that book, with citations. Cochrane sees real power here for students, since he once used NotebookLM to organize scattered course PDFs. Additionally, publishers get a cut, which he calls a far better deal than the wholesale scraping of books that trained earlier models. Nevertheless, he asks who loses out, because a paid publisher does not automatically mean a paid author. He floats the same idea for artists, even a penny per use, then admits that may be too idealistic. Apple’s M5 Ultra Mac Studio Is Built to Run Big Models at Home Back in episode 1861, when Apple killed the Mac Pro, an M5 Ultra Mac Studio was expected later this year. Now it is here. The M5 Ultra brings up to a 36-core CPU, an 80-core GPU, and 512GB of unified memory moving 1.2 terabytes per second. Apple claims up to 4.3 times the AI performance of the M3 Ultra. Thunderbolt 5 can also cluster four machines into one memory pool for up to three times faster inference. The M5 Max model starts at $2,499 and the Ultra at $5,499, with shipping on September 22 and the 512GB configuration arriving in late October. Cochrane finds the clustering pitch ridiculous at that price, but he invites anyone who spends the money to report back. Apple Opens a Manufacturing School in Houston Apple also opened a 20,000-square-foot Advanced Manufacturing Center in Houston. It offers free classes for small and midsize manufacturers, from circuit board design to hands-on time on a scaled-down production line, with college students joining later. Cochrane calls it a solid step in the bring-manufacturing-home movement. The bigger story is the campus itself, which builds Apple’s AI servers and will add the first US-assembled Mac mini line later this year. That ties back to the Mac mini shortage that followed the OpenClaw rush, when Tim Cook warned of months-long waits. Cult of Mac was still reporting four-month waits in late July. However, Cook blamed chip supply rather than assembly, so Cochrane is not counting on relief just yet. Amazon EC2 Turns Twenty Amazon EC2 turned twenty this week, which Cochrane admits makes him feel old. The 2006 beta offered one server size in one region for ten cents an hour. Each came with a 1.7 gigahertz Xeon and under two gigabytes of memory, and accounts were capped at twenty servers. Today AWS offers more than 1,200 instance types across 39 regions. Consequently, Cochrane credits the company with turning that tiny product into the backbone of cloud and AI computing. Intel Gamer Days: Two Free Games, With Fine Print Intel Gamer Days runs through September 13. Buy a qualifying Core Ultra Series 2 or 14th Gen desktop chip, a Core Ultra Series 3 laptop, or an Arc graphics card. In return you get Star Wars: Galactic Racer plus the Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis remake. GamesRadar values the pair at about 120 dollars. However, neither game is out yet, and codes must be redeemed by October 31 even though the Tomb Raider remake ships in February. Cochrane calls that awful, but he still tells qualifying buyers to claim the deal early. Note that 13th Gen chips do not qualify. Judge Orders Google to Stop Hiding Rival App Stores A jury found Google’s Android app monopoly illegal in late 2023, and Judge James Donato ordered rival stores into the Play Store in 2024. On August 13, Epic’s lawyer demonstrated that searching Play for “store for apps” returned Walmart instead of any app store. Donato called that “not acceptable” and ordered three fixes within a week. Searches must surface third-party stores, listings need a plain install button, and the “are you looking for” interstitial has to go. Cochrane welcomes the monopoly being chipped away, but he notes that a controlling entity still sits atop every app store. In his view, community hubs like app stores and social media need a public infrastructure layer. He suspects governments skip that investment because companies already run the services, while selling your data. Apple Wants 15 Percent of Purchases Outside Its Store The other half of the Epic saga is Apple’s proposed link-out commission. After the 2021 anti-steering injunction, Apple charged 27 percent on purchases made through external links. A judge held it in contempt last year, and the Ninth Circuit then allowed a fee limited to the cost of running the system. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers refused to wait for the Supreme Court, writing that “further delay is unwarranted.” Apple filed 15 percent for standard apps, 10 percent for subscription renewals and partner programs, and 5 percent for small businesses. It also conceded the rate would be “essentially zero” under the appeals court’s cost yardstick. Since Apple has charged nothing on link-outs since the contempt ruling, Cochrane sees this as a raise. He calls a cut on purchases made on a developer’s own website disturbing. He also recalls reading about the size of Uber’s payments to Apple, and he questions whether that kind of percentage is sustainable for companies without funding. Meta Says It Has Cut Off 750,000 Australian Kids Meta reported locking out more than 750,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts in Australia by the end of June under the country’s under-16 social media law. Over 500,000 of those were removed before the law even took effect. Detection relies mostly on AI scanning posts and bios for tells like birthday messages, plus user reports and blocks on re-registration. However, the post gives no count of mistaken removals or appeals, and the regulator’s early data shows under-16 usage falling only from about 86 to 81 percent. Meta wants a single age signal at the operating system or app store level, and Cochrane agrees completely. He connects it to the MHS idea from the top of the show: platforms need a standard flag to reference instead of guessing. The White House Deputizes Private Hackers Earlier this month the White House signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum that lets vetted private security firms run surveillance and disruption operations against overseas criminal groups. The Justice Department and Homeland Security hold the contracts and oversee the work. Firms need a proven track record, vetted staff, and a bond of at least $1 million, and must submit operating procedures within 60 days. Cochrane finds the measure aggressive in a good way and hopes it deters attacks on innocents. Still, he takes Kevin Beaumont’s warning seriously that the private security industry profits from ransomware existing. He compares it to the old Head and Shoulders myth: why solve the problem that drives your revenue? A Weather Satellite Watched the Eclipse Shadow Cross Europe Cochrane skips the readout on this one and simply sends listeners to ESA’s site. The MTG-I1 weather satellite captured the Moon’s shadow sweeping across Europe during the August 12 eclipse. Watching a shadow cross an entire continent, he says, was a first for him. Additionally, it leaves him excited about the research happening beyond the planet. Rivers, Deltas, and the Number 0.6 Quanta Magazine explains Hack’s law, which John Hack discovered in 1957 while measuring streams in Virginia and Maryland. A stream’s length tracks its drainage area raised to the power of 0.6, regardless of the rock underneath, and satellite data later confirmed it worldwide. Computer models in the 1990s showed why. Channels that capture extra runoff cut deeper and steal from their neighbors until the network settles into the arrangement that wastes the least energy. Now a University of Texas Rio Grande Valley team has found the same 0.6 exponent in river deltas, which spread water out rather than gathering it. Nobody knows why yet, and Cochrane calls it a really cool read. Sugar Helped Grow the Human Brain, Too A new paper in Science, co-authored by Jennie Brand-Miller at the University of Sydney, adds a third ingredient to the story of early human brain growth. Alongside meat and cooking, natural sugars from ripe fruit and honey may have fueled it too. The brain is about two percent of body weight but burns twenty percent of resting energy. It runs on glucose, which meat and marrow barely supply and raw starch cannot release without fire. The team modeled ancestral diets from a chimp-like baseline through Homo erectus and concluded that the earliest hominins may have drawn over 65 percent of their energy from natural sugars. Cochrane stresses that it is a model, not fossils, and notes that paleoanthropologist Marina Lozano thinks the authors place widespread cooking too early. Still, he loves this kind of deep research. Retracing the steps to our own intelligence, he suggests, could hint at what it takes for intelligent life to develop at all. A Brain Rhythm That Tells Doctors Where to Aim Finally, Science Daily covered a University of Cologne study on deep brain stimulation. That is the implanted-electrode treatment that eases Parkinson’s tremors for some patients but not others. Andreas Horn’s team recorded from 50 patients using both the implanted electrodes and an external magnetic scanner. They identified a circuit between the electrode’s target and the frontal cortex that oscillates at 20 to 35 cycles per second. Stronger coupling there predicted bigger improvement after surgery, though the study, published in Brain, shows correlation rather than cause. First author Bahne Bahners hopes the finding helps tune DBS more precisely, especially for patients who have not responded well. Cochrane half-jokingly asks whether MHS might one day drive those electrodes, and he calls brain disorders the hardest thing in the body to treat. Cochrane wraps with housekeeping: become a GNC Insider at geeknewscentral.com/insider, email geeknews@gmail.com with questions or comments, subscribe to the newsletter, and grab a modern podcast app at podcastapps.com. He thanks GoDaddy for over twenty years of keeping the show on the air, promises to catch everyone next Monday, and wishes listeners a great night. The post Eyes, Hands, and a Sense of Timing #1874 appeared first on Geek News Central.

This Day in Legal History: The Murder of Emmett TillOn August 28, 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was abducted, tortured, and murdered in the Mississippi Delta by two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, after Till—a Black teenager visiting from Chicago—was accused of offending a white woman in a grocery store. His killers beat him, shot him, weighted his body, and threw it in the Tallahatchie River. He was a child, and his murder, and what came after, helped ignite the modern civil rights movement.The legal story is one of justice utterly failing, and then, slowly, refusing to disappear. Bryant and Milam were tried the next month in a segregated Mississippi courtroom. The trial lasted five days; the all-white, all-male jury deliberated for barely an hour before acquitting both men, with one juror later saying it wouldn't have taken that long if they hadn't stopped for a soda. Protected by double jeopardy, the two men then sold their confession to a magazine for a few thousand dollars, describing in detail how they'd killed the boy they had just been acquitted of murdering. It was one of the starkest demonstrations imaginable that the machinery of Southern justice was not built to deliver justice to Black victims.The significance of August 28, 1955 reaches across the decades. Emmett's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, made the searing decision to hold an open-casket funeral and let the world photograph her son. That act of witness galvanized a generation. And there is a haunting piece of calendar symmetry worth honoring: exactly eight years later, on August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the Lincoln Memorial and delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech to the March on Washington. The law eventually, partially, caught up—the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and, only in 2022, a federal anti-lynching law that bears Emmett Till's name. It's a reminder that some of the most important developments in American law began not in a courtroom win, but in a courtroom failure so profound that the country could not look away.The brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate were back in a Miami federal courtroom this week, shackled, asking a judge to release them on bond while they fight extradition to the United Kingdom. The two, who have built a massive and controversial online following, have been held in a federal detention center since their July arrest on U.K. rape and sex-trafficking charges. Their lawyers made a pointed argument: if Romania, where the brothers face a separate sex-crimes case, is willing to let them remain free pending those proceedings, then a U.S. court should free them too—especially since, they argue, two of the most recognizable men on the internet can't exactly disappear. Prosecutors pushed back hard, and here the law is decidedly against the Tates. In ordinary criminal cases, release pending trial is the norm. But international extradition is different: there is a strong, long-standing presumption against bail, rooted in the idea that the United States has a treaty obligation to actually produce the person for the requesting country, and that letting an extradition target go free risks a diplomatic and legal failure if they flee. Courts generally require “special circumstances” to grant bail in an extradition case—a demanding standard—and prosecutors noted the brothers have money and have bragged about holding multiple passports. Legal experts quoted in the coverage thought it unlikely they'd win release. The significance is a useful window into a corner of the law most people never see: that fighting extradition is not like fighting ordinary charges, and the presumption of liberty that normally protects defendants is largely flipped when a foreign government is waiting to prosecute.Tate brothers press for release from US jail during extradition fight | ReutersPBS NewsHour · NPRA federal appeals court has cleared a significant hurdle for Bayer's $7.25 billion settlement of tens of thousands of Roundup cancer claims. The Eighth Circuit dismissed a challenge by a group of objecting plaintiffs who were trying to derail the deal—and the fight was about forum, which sounds dry but matters enormously in mass litigation. Bayer structured this as a class-action settlement in Missouri state court, an unusual move: it's using a single state-court proceeding to try to resolve claims nationwide. The objectors argued that a state court has no business fast-tracking a nationwide resolution, and that the whole thing belongs in front of the federal judge already overseeing the consolidated federal Roundup litigation. A federal judge ruled in June that the case could stay in Missouri state court, and now the Eighth Circuit has agreed, dismissing the appeal. Why does the forum matter so much? Because a settlement that binds a nationwide class of people—including people who haven't actively participated—raises real due-process questions about whether a single state court can bind absent claimants across the country, and because plaintiffs and defendants often have strong strategic preferences about which court, and which rules, govern a mega-settlement. This connects to the Bayer story we covered earlier this summer, when the Supreme Court handed the company a big win on failure-to-warn claims; this settlement is the other half of Bayer's campaign to finally contain a decade of Roundup litigation. A hearing to approve the deal is set for September 14, with roughly 65,000 claims hanging in the balance. The significance is that Bayer is close to buying its way out of a liability that has dogged it for years—and the courts just removed one of the last procedural obstacles.US court dismisses appeal over objections to $7.25 billion Roundup deal | ReutersRTÉ · Maryland Daily RecordAnd finally—though this is anything but a footnote—the biggest story of the week, and arguably the summer: Meta has agreed to pay up to $18 billion and fundamentally change how its apps work for teenagers, settling the landmark case accusing it of designing Facebook and Instagram to addict children. This is the resolution of the very trial we watched begin just ten days ago—the 29-state case in Oakland, with the whistleblower testimony from Arturo Bejar. Rather than let it run to a verdict, Meta settled, and the numbers are staggering: more than $17.6 billion to 48 states, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the territories, plus another $459 million to resolve privacy claims tied to the old Cambridge Analytica scandal. But the money may be the less important part. For the next decade, Meta has agreed to concrete design changes: teens will be capped at two hours a day on the apps, and blocked from using them between midnight and 6 a.m. without a parent's consent. And in a clever pressure mechanism, part of the payout is contingent on whether YouTube and TikTok adopt similar protections—effectively using this settlement to try to move the whole industry. Everything we've tracked all summer led here: the New Mexico verdict, the Tennessee trial, the bellwether cases, the Ninth Circuit clearing these suits past Section 230. This is the reckoning arriving. It still needs approval from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who presided over the trial, but if it holds, it's one of the largest consumer-protection settlements in American history—and, more consequentially, the first time a court-supervised deal will reach inside these platforms and re-engineer them for the safety of kids. The era of treating social media's effect on children as an unregulated externality may have just ended, not with a verdict, but with $18 billion and a clock that shuts the app off at midnight.Meta reaches $18 billion of settlements over children's social media addiction | ReutersCNN · Al Jazeera This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

In this episode of The Consumer Finance Podcast, host Chris Willis is joined by colleagues Stefanie Jackman and Brian Hays to discuss the Seventh Circuit's landmark July 2026 ruling in Steidinger v. Blackstone Medical Services, a unanimous decision holding that text messages do not qualify as "telephone calls" under § 227(c)(5) of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), eliminating a private right of action for National Do Not Call Registry violations based solely on text message communications. The trio unpacks the court's textualist reasoning, which anchored the definition of "telephone call" to the plain meaning of the term at the time of the TCPA's 1991 enactment — when a telephone was understood as an instrument for reproducing sounds at a distance, and the first text message had not yet been sent. They also examine how Steidinger relates to the Ninth Circuit's earlier decision in Howard, which reached the opposite conclusion under a different TCPA subsection, and whether a genuine circuit split now exists that the Supreme Court will be compelled to resolve. The conversation then turns to practical implications for litigators and compliance teams. Brian walks through how defense counsel should be leveraging Steidinger in pending cases within and outside the Seventh Circuit, what to expect from plaintiffs pivoting to state telemarketing statutes and state attorney general enforcement actions, and how class definitions are likely to shift. Stefanie delivers a clear compliance message: Steidinger is not a green light to abandon text message compliance controls. Section 227(b) liability, FCC enforcement authority, and a growing patchwork of state laws remain fully intact, and consent remains the most important risk management tool available. The episode closes with broader context on how Steidinger fits into the post-Loper Bright and post-McLaughlin era of TCPA jurisprudence, in which courts are increasingly willing to reject long-standing FCC interpretations and reexamine foundational assumptions about the statute's scope. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Jordan and Greg Bombard unpack the case of Comet Technologies USA, Inc. v. XP Power, LLC, in which the Ninth Circuit reversed a $40 million verdict, clarified the burden of proof in DTSA cases, and provided a cautionary tale about jury instructions when claims are dismissed mid-trial.

We've launched Minimum Competence CLE, and our first course is now available completely free. Researching Federal Tax Issues After Loper Brightlooks at how the Supreme Court's decision ending Chevron deference changes the way lawyers should research and evaluate Treasury regulations, IRS guidance, and other federal tax authorities.Take the course and earn CLE credit at cle.minimumcomp.com.This Day in Legal History: The Declaration of the Rights of ManOn August 26, 1789, France's National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, one of the foundational documents of modern constitutional government. The Marquis de Lafayette played a major role in drafting it, with input from his friend Thomas Jefferson, who was then serving as the American minister in Paris. In just seventeen articles, the Declaration tried to turn Enlightenment ideas about natural rights and legitimate government into law.A lot of it will sound familiar to American ears, in part because the American and French revolutions were very much in conversation with each other. Article I declares that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights”—today's opening quote. The Declaration identifies liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression as natural rights. It says the law must apply equally, punishment must be authorized by law, defendants are presumed innocent, and the free communication of ideas is “one of the most precious of the rights of man.” It also makes separation of powers part of the definition of constitutional government: a society where rights are not secured and powers are not separated “has no constitution at all.”The Declaration mattered well beyond France. Its ideas influenced constitutions throughout Europe and Latin America and eventually found echoes in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. There was also an enormous gap between the Declaration's promises and what followed. Within a few years, the French Revolution had descended into the Terror, and the supposedly universal rights announced in 1789 were plainly not being extended to everyone.That makes August 26 an especially fitting date for another reason. In the United States, it is Women's Equality Day, commemorating the 1920 certification of the Nineteenth Amendment. The coincidence is a useful reminder that declaring people “equal in rights” is considerably easier than actually making them so—and that many of the people supposedly covered by universal declarations of equality had to spend generations fighting to make those words apply to them.A federal judge previously issued an injunction barring the administration from renaming the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after President Trump. Then, earlier this month, the Kennedy Center's board—now dominated by Trump appointees—voted 20 to 3 to change the building's signage to read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” and to name the surrounding grounds “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.” The administration's argument, in a new filing, is essentially semantic: it says this doesn't violate the injunction because the building is still named the John F. Kennedy Center, and the added inscription is merely a donor acknowledgment—the kind, it says, that's “ubiquitous in similar facilities.” Democratic Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, who's part of the suit, says the board “openly defied” the court's ruling and has asked the judge to block the signage. Here's the legal question, and it's a real one: when does creative compliance with a court order become defiance of it? Courts don't just police the literal words of an injunction—they police attempts to accomplish the forbidden thing through a technical workaround. If the injunction's purpose was to stop the center from being turned into a monument to the sitting president, a judge may well look past the “we didn't technically rename it” framing to the practical reality. The judge, Christopher Cooper, has set a fast briefing schedule with deadlines today. The significance is that this small, almost absurd dispute over building signage is really a test of something fundamental: whether the executive branch will comply with a court order in substance, or look for the narrowest possible reading to get what it wanted anyway. Trump administration says new Kennedy Center renaming does not violate court order | ReutersBloomberg Law · TimeDeloitte has agreed to pay $21.5 million to settle Justice Department allegations that its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs amounted to illegal discrimination—a landmark in the administration's campaign against corporate DEI. And note the legal vehicle, because it's clever and aggressive: the DOJ brought this under the False Claims Act, the federal government's primary anti-fraud statute. The theory is that Deloitte, as a federal contractor, certified compliance with anti-discrimination requirements while allegedly running DEI programs that themselves discriminated—making its certifications false. The specific allegations: Deloitte's business units received monthly summaries tracking progress against “demographic goals”; roughly 150 senior partners and managing directors had part of their compensation tied to hitting those targets, some risking tens of thousands of dollars; and race and sex were allegedly factored into promotion decisions and access to certain training and mentoring programs. Of the $21.5 million, about $10 million is designated as restitution. Crucially, Deloitte denies the allegations and the settlement includes no admission of liability. The significance is that this reframes DEI from a corporate HR initiative into potential fraud against the United States. We've tracked the administration's use of Title VI against universities—Harvard, Columbia, William & Mary—and this is the corporate front of the same campaign, deploying the False Claims Act against a major government contractor. That's a powerful deterrent, because the False Claims Act carries treble damages and invites whistleblower suits. Whatever you think of DEI programs on the merits, the legal move here is significant: it puts every federal contractor on notice that diversity targets tied to pay and promotion could be recast as discriminatory, and therefore as a false certification the government can prosecute. Deloitte to pay $21.5 million to settle US government probe over DEI | ReutersJustice Department · Fox BusinessAnd finally, a federal appeals court has ruled that the administration cannot attach ideological conditions to federal grants for homelessness and transportation—another entry in the running saga over the limits of the executive's power over the money. The Ninth Circuit, in a decision backing Santa Clara County and other local governments, affirmed a lower court and found that the administration abused its authority by imposing new strings on grants like the Continuum of Care program, which has funded homelessness services since 1987. Those grants have long been built around a “housing-first” philosophy—the approach of getting people into permanent housing without preconditions like sobriety or employment—and the administration sought to attach conditions cutting against that model and advancing its own policy priorities. The court found the cities would suffer irreparable harm if the funds were withheld. Here's the legal principle, and longtime listeners will recognize it: back in July, we covered the anniversary of South Dakota v. Dole, the case that lets the federal government attach strings to the money it gives states—but only within limits. The conditions have to be clearly stated, related to the purpose of the funding, and not coercive. When an administration tries to bolt novel, ideological conditions onto grants Congress created for a specific purpose, courts have repeatedly said that exceeds those limits. This fits a pattern we've followed all summer—from the OMB grant clawbacks to the EPA's frozen climate funds—of courts telling the executive that money Congress appropriated for a purpose can't be turned into a lever for unrelated policy goals. The significance is that the spending power, real as it is, keeps running into the same wall: you can fund homelessness programs, or not, but you can't quietly rewrite what they're for. Trump cannot impose conditions on transportation, homelessness grants, US appeals court rules | ReutersPalo Alto Online · Mountain View Voice This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

CannCon flies solo for Tuesday with Ghost calling in for a meaty geopolitics segment on the Mecca agreement, an Article 5 style defense pact between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey that has now reportedly extended invitations to Iran and Syria. Ghost walks through Turkey's rising role inside NATO, US troops leaving Iraq, and a genuinely surprising revelation about who was actually serving as the back channel into Iran, which flips the widely reported narrative on its head. The back half turns domestic, with the Supreme Court allowing some vote by mail limits ahead of the midterms, a Ninth Circuit immigration ruling, and two brave Michigan township clerks publicly inviting federal officials in to cross check their voter rolls after a whistleblower claim. CannCon closes with a WNBA eligibility story that is equal parts absurd and pointed.

John is joined by Daniel C. Posner, a partner in Quinn Emanuel's Los Angeles office, and Renita N. Sharma, a partner in Quinn Emanuel's New York office. Together, they discuss the recent victory secured by a team led by John, Dan, and Renita in the Amazon v. Perplexity case before the Ninth Circuit. The case addressed how the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) applies to agentic AI.Perplexity's Comet browser includes an AI assistant that performs multi-step tasks for users, including shopping on Amazon. Amazon objected because purchases made through the assistant may bypass Amazon's advertising and upselling opportunities. Amazon sued under the CFAA and the California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA).The CFAA is the primary federal anti-hacking statute. To establish a violation, a plaintiff must prove that a person intentionally accessed a computer without authorization, obtained information through that access, and caused the plaintiff to suffer losses of at least $5,000. The CFAA is also a criminal statute, so case law has emphasized that it must be construed narrowly. The CDAFA is substantially similar to the CFAA, except it does not require proof of $5,000 in losses. CDAFA and CFAA claims typically rise and fall together.Amazon moved for a preliminary injunction almost immediately after filing its complaint. Amazon argued that Perplexity intentionally accessed its computers without authorization after Amazon expressly told Perplexity not to send its agents to Amazon's website. Perplexity responded that its servers never directly accessed Amazon's servers. Instead, the Comet browser resides on the user's computer and acts only when the user instructs it to perform a task. The user's computer communicates separately with Amazon and Perplexity, much as a conventional browser, such as Apple's Safari, facilitates access without Apple itself accessing the website. Perplexity also argued that it did not obtain any information from Amazon or cause any cognizable damages.Although the district court granted Amazon a preliminary injunction, the Ninth Circuit initially stayed and then reversed that decision, holding that Perplexity had not “accessed” Amazon's computers within the meaning of the CFAA. The court examined the technical architecture of the Comet browser and the broader principle that agentic AI, however sophisticated, remains a tool operated by a person. Because the user directs the assistant, the user—not Perplexity or the AI itself—is the relevant actor. In light of its ruling on access, the Ninth Circuit did not need to decide whether any access was unauthorized, whether Perplexity obtained information from Amazon, or whether Amazon suffered cognizable damages.The decision is likely to become an important early precedent governing agentic AI. Future cases could raise additional issues as AI agents become more autonomous, circumvent safeguards, enter into contracts on unfavorable terms, cause tortious harm, or are jointly controlled by users and developers. The ruling could also have implications for journalists and researchers who use automated tools to gather publicly available information online.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. QuinnProducer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

This is Thinking in Public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about frontline theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.Steven D. Smith is the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law. Since earning his law degree from Yale University, Professor Smith has taught at numerous institutions, including the law schools of Notre Dame University and the University of Virginia. Prior to that, he served as a law clerk for three years on the prestigious United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He's a sought-after legal authority, especially on issues of religious freedom. His book Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac was the topic of a previous Thinking in Public conversation, but it is his most recent book, The Godless Constitution and the Providential Republic, that is the topic of this episode of Thinking in Public.You can purchase Professor Smith’s book, The Godless Constitution and the Providential Republic, here.Sign up to receive every new Thinking in Public release in your inbox.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.

LIVESTREAM REPLAY: A declassified NSA memo just confirmed what we've said for years: the NSA deliberately buried intelligence on 2016 election interference because leadership feared being lumped in with the "Deep State." Plus — DOJ fights to reinstate criminal charges, Kash Patel's FBI HQ move gets blocked by an Obama judge, blue states sue to shield illegal immigrant truckers, Minnesota's AG sues Texas Gov. Abbott, and a Virginia court lets an accused killer flee the country.00:00 DEM State AGs Are Out Of Control12:48 MN Vs TX. Gov. Abbot Comes Out On Top18:48 DOJ Once Again Go After Kilmar Obrego Garcia22:58 NSA MEMO EXPOSES DEEP STATE COVER-UP FROM TRUMPSTORIES COVERED IN THIS REPORT:

This Day in Legal History: The Nineteenth Amendment Is RatifiedOn August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment—the final state needed to reach the three-quarters threshold—and with that vote, the constitutional guarantee that the right to vote could not be denied on account of sex became part of American law. It enfranchised, at a stroke, roughly half the adult population of the United States.The story of how it happened is almost unbelievably close. Tennessee's state senate had ratified comfortably, but the house was deadlocked, tied 48 to 48. The decisive vote belonged to a 24-year-old representative named Harry Burn, who had a red rose on his lapel signaling opposition to the amendment—and a letter in his pocket from his mother, Phoebe, urging him to “be a good boy” and vote for suffrage. He did. His single vote broke the tie, Tennessee ratified, and the amendment was certified into the Constitution days later. A generational struggle turned, in the end, on a young man listening to his mother.The significance of August 18, 1920 is best understood as the payoff to a story we told on this show back in July. When we covered the Seneca Falls Convention and its 1848 Declaration of Sentiments—the founding document of the American women's rights movement, which dared to demand the vote—I noted that it would take seventy-two years to win the ballot. This is that day. The distance from Seneca Falls to Nashville is the distance from a bold, ridiculed demand to a line in the Constitution. And like the Fifteenth Amendment before it, the Nineteenth didn't instantly deliver on its promise—many women of color, in particular, remained effectively disenfranchised for decades until the Voting Rights Act. But it permanently changed who “the people” are in a democracy. It's a reminder, on a day full of stories about the law's unfinished business, that some of the most fundamental rights we now take for granted were won slowly, against fierce resistance, and sometimes by a single vote.A landmark trial has begun in California federal court that could reshape the most popular apps on the planet: a bipartisan coalition of 29 states has put Meta on trial, alleging it deliberately designed Instagram and Facebook to addict and harm children. This is the big one we've been building toward all summer—the federal counterpart to the state cases in New Mexico and Tennessee. The states, led by Colorado, California, New Jersey, and Kentucky, told the court that Meta engineered features like infinite scrolling, notifications, “likes,” visual filters, and algorithmic recommendations to drive compulsive use, and misled the public about the platforms' safety for young people. Here's an important procedural wrinkle: while there's an eight-person jury in Oakland, it's serving only in an advisory capacity—the case will ultimately be decided by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. That's because this is largely an equitable case, and what the states are really after isn't just money but sweeping changes to how the platforms work: stronger age verification, restrictions on algorithms trained on children's data, limits on notifications, and the removal of features like infinite scroll. On damages, Meta itself has floated the staggering figure of $1.4 trillion as its potential exposure, though the states haven't named a number and legal experts consider an award anywhere near that scale unlikely. The significance is that this trial could force concrete, structural redesign of Instagram and Facebook for young users—not a settlement negotiated in private, but a judge's findings after a public trial. Everything we've tracked, from the multistate penalties to the New Mexico verdict to the Ninth Circuit clearing these suits, has been leading here. This is where the social-media reckoning gets its fullest public airing yet. Meta faces 29-state trial that could reshape Instagram and Facebook | ReutersYahoo Finance · anewsThe Justice Department has opened a civil-rights investigation into the College of William & Mary, alleging the Virginia public university runs scholarship and mentorship programs that unlawfully discriminate in favor of minority students. The Department's Civil Rights Division announced a “compliance review” under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act—which bars race discrimination by institutions that receive federal funding—targeting several specific programs: a fellowship in the education school that gives preference to Hispanic or Latina women with financial need, a doctoral mentorship program for “future education leaders of color,” and a law-school scholarship program. Here's the legal backdrop that makes this a national trend and not a one-off. After the Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ended race-conscious admissions, the fight didn't end—it moved. The administration is now using Title VI to argue that race-conscious scholarships, fellowships, and pipeline programs are themselves a form of unlawful discrimination, framing programs designed to expand opportunity for underrepresented groups as illegal “discrimination in favor of minorities.” Supporters of these programs say they're lawful efforts to remedy historic exclusion and build diverse professions; critics say any use of race, even to help, runs afoul of the post-SFFA legal landscape. It's worth being precise: this is a compliance review, an investigation, not yet a lawsuit or a finding of wrongdoing. The significance is that this is part of a systematic campaign we've tracked against universities—from Harvard to Columbia—and it signals that the enforcement frontier after affirmative action has shifted from the admissions office to the financial-aid office. Every race-conscious scholarship in the country is now, potentially, a legal target. DOJ probes College of William & Mary alleging discrimination in favor of minorities | ReutersBloomberg · Fox NewsA federal judge has ordered the release of a woman charged with vandalizing the World War II Memorial in Washington—and the top federal prosecutor there, Jeanine Pirro, is not happy about it. The defendant, 41-year-old Melissa Farris of Kentucky, was arrested last week and charged with two felony counts after the memorial's fountain was filled with soap suds and the words “Clean hands Dirty $” were spray-painted across a surface in red and green. A judge ordered her released on conditions—surrendering her passport and not leaving the continental U.S. without approval—and Pirro publicly criticized that decision. Let's unpack the legal pieces, because there are two distinct ones. First, pretrial release: in the American system, the default is that a defendant awaiting trial should be released unless the government shows they're a flight risk or a danger, with conditions used to manage any risk. A judge ordering release with conditions is the system working as designed—the presumption of innocence is not an empty phrase—even when a prosecutor would prefer detention. Second, the underlying conduct: Farris reportedly said on social media that she acted to protest tax dollars not being spent on ordinary Americans and alleged corporate wrongdoing. But political motivation doesn't convert property destruction into protected speech—you can hold the message and still prosecute the spray paint. The significance ties into a thread we've followed: this is the same U.S. Attorney, Jeanine Pirro, at the center of the Reflecting Pool saga, again clashing over how a memorial-vandalism case should be handled—this time frustrated that a judge released a defendant rather than that a case was dropped. A preliminary hearing is set for September 3, and it's a reminder that the everyday machinery of bail and pretrial release keeps operating regardless of how politically charged the underlying act may be. US judge orders release of woman accused of vandalism at World War Two Memorial | ReutersWashington Post · CBS NewsAnd finally, in my column this week, I take on a well-intentioned proposal to tax artificial intelligence in order to help the workers it displaces—and argue that, while the instinct is right, the mechanism is wrong. The proposal in question is Representative Greg Casar's AI Tax and Work Protection Act. Its premise is sound: if firms are capturing the gains from replacing human workers with AI while pushing the costs—unemployment, lost tax revenue—onto workers and society, those costs look like an externality, the same way pollution does. And we tax externalities all the time: cigarettes, gasoline, carbon. So taxing AI to fund worker protections is a reasonable idea in principle.My problem is with the particulars. Casar's bill doesn't actually tax worker displacement—it taxes AI “tokens,” the technical units of AI computation, with the rate keyed to the unemployment rate. That creates an appealing feedback loop on paper: as AI drives up unemployment, the tax rises and generates more money to put people back to work. But it asks the Treasury to do two things it's genuinely bad at. First, it has to figure out, in real time and on a political calendar, how much of any given rise in unemployment is actually caused by AI, as opposed to a recession, a pandemic, or a war. That's a causal judgment the tax code has no machinery for. Second, and worse, it has to put a stable dollar value on a “token”—an unstable, non-standardized unit that spans text, code, images, audio, and video, and isn't sold in any clean arm's-length market. You're trying to tax the meter, and the meter doesn't have a reliable price.So here's the alternative I argue for: instead of taxing AI use, give the public an equity stake in the companies that capture AI's gains—let the government own a piece of the franchise rather than tax the meter. This isn't as exotic as it sounds; scholars like Jeremy Bearer-Friend and Sarah Polcz have proposed having AI firms pay tax in kind, transferring equity rather than cash, and Senator Sanders has floated a far more aggressive version—a 50% stake funding a sovereign wealth fund. My point is that you don't have to go to 50% to adopt the underlying architecture. Equity is a better proxy than token usage: it scales with the actual size of the economic reallocation AI produces, and it only asks the government to value a company once, rather than to price billions of individual computations or adjudicate whether a particular prompt cost a particular job. If AI merely augments workers and produces modest gains, the public's share stays modest; if it produces extraordinary gains, the public shares in the upside. A smaller equity assessment on the largest firms, held through an independently managed vehicle, would let the public participate in AI's wealth without handing a shrunken Treasury an impossible measurement problem. The instinct to make sure the public benefits from AI is exactly right—we should just own a piece of the thing, not tax the ticker. Taxing AI to Help Workers Sounds Good, But Public Deserves More | Bloomberg Tax This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

DOCKET ALERTS:   The Kennedy Center board of trustees is back on its BS. After being ordered to take Trump's name off the side of the building, they've now voted again to put it back on. They also voted to close the facility for two years. Rep. Joyce Beatty, who brought the lawsuit that forced them to back off the first time, vows to fight on.   Meanwhile musician Chuck Redd was just awarded $252,000 in attorneys fees after the Center sued him for breaching a contract he never signed.   Judge Roy Altman is Aileen Cannon-balling it up in Trump's trollsuit against the BBC. This week he allowed Trump to amend his complaint yet again for "good cause." What good cause could there be to sue a company which never broadcast the supposedly defamatory documentary in the US?   MAIN SHOW:   The Washington Post reports that Jeanine Pirro, the US Attorney for DC, has empaneled a special grand jury. Corruption incoming!   The DOJ has amended the indictment of the SPLC again. This time they've added a former employee who ran its Intelligence Project and managed its paid informants. The case is no less preposterous with an extra defendant and a couple more charges.   The Ninth Circuit issued a hugely consequential ruling on Section 230 immunity for websites, and Liz and Andrew do not agree at all about it.   SUBSCRIBER BONUS:   Judge Richard Stearns in Massachusetts swatted down the DOJ's effort to shout "antisemitism" and steal $950 million from Harvard.   Trump v. BBC https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72040010/trump-v-british-broadcasting-corporation/   Pirro, in rare move, convenes special grand jury in Washington https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/08/12/pirro-convenes-unusual-grand-jury-dc-that-can-focus-single-case-issue-report/   US v. Southern Poverty Law Center  https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73223865/united-states-v-southern-poverty-law-center-inc/   Colorado v. Meta [9th Circuit opinion] https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2026/08/10/24-7265.pdf   US v. Harvard https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72520538/united-states-v-president-and-fellows-of-harvard-college/   Show Links: https://www.lawandchaospod.com/ BlueSky: @LawAndChaosPod Threads: @LawAndChaosPod Twitter: @LawAndChaosPod  

This Day in Legal History: The Weimar ConstitutionOn August 11, 1919, President Friedrich Ebert signed the Weimar Constitution into force, creating the first parliamentary democracy in German history. It came into effect a few days later, ending the provisional government that had followed Germany's defeat in the First World War and the fall of the monarchy. On paper, it was a strikingly modern and liberal document—and its story is one of the most important cautionary tales in all of constitutional law.The Weimar Constitution rested on genuinely progressive foundations: popular sovereignty, a separation of powers, and an extensive bill of fundamental rights, including—remarkably for 1919—formal equality between men and women and the right to vote for both. It established a directly elected president, a parliament, the Reichstag, and a framework that looked, in many respects, like a model twentieth-century democracy. For a document drafted in the chaos of postwar Germany, it was an ambitious attempt to build a rights-respecting republic from the ground up.But the Weimar Constitution is remembered today largely for the flaw that helped destroy it: Article 48, which gave the president sweeping power to rule by emergency decree, suspending civil liberties when he deemed public order to be threatened. That emergency clause was invoked more and more frequently as the republic's politics fractured—and in 1933 it became the legal mechanism through which the Nazi regime dismantled democracy from the inside, using the constitution's own emergency powers to suspend rights and seize dictatorial control. Which brings us back to today's opening quote: the Weimar experience is the definitive real-world example of Justice Jackson's warning that an emergency power, once available, “lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.” The significance of August 11, 1919 is that it stands as an enduring lesson that a constitution's protections are only as durable as the limits it places on emergency power—that a democracy can be subverted not in spite of its own laws, but through them.Luigi Mangione is due back in court for a pretrial hearing ahead of his murder trial, set to begin September 8, in the December 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel. Mangione, who is 28, has pleaded not guilty to murder, weapons, and forgery charges brought by the Manhattan District Attorney, and he has separately pleaded not guilty to federal stalking charges. At today's hearing before Justice Gregory Carro, the parties are expected to take up jury selection and the thorny question of public access to what is shaping up to be one of the most closely watched trials in years. Let's talk about the real legal challenges here, because this case is unusual on several fronts. First, Mangione faces parallel state and federal prosecutions arising from the same killing—something the Constitution permits under the “dual sovereignty” doctrine, even though it can feel like being tried twice. Second, the defense has signaled it may argue that Mangione lost control of his actions due to an extreme mental-health breakdown, and notably has not conceded that he was even the shooter, despite prosecutors citing surveillance video, DNA, ballistics, and a notebook. And third—the elephant in the courtroom—is that this case became a cultural flashpoint, with a wave of public anger at the health-insurance industry curdling, in some corners, into sympathy for the accused. That makes jury selection genuinely difficult: finding impartial jurors amid saturation coverage and strong public feeling is exactly the kind of problem that tests the machinery of a fair trial. The significance is that beyond the headlines, this is a serious test of whether the system can give a fair, dispassionate trial to a defendant the public has turned into a symbol—which is precisely when the guarantees of criminal procedure matter most. Luigi Mangione due in court ahead of insurance CEO murder trial | ReutersUPI · 6abcPresident Trump has said that whether to revive the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” is now up to his newly confirmed attorney general, Todd Blanche—a statement that lands like the punchline to a story we've been telling for weeks. Recall the sequence: Blanche rescinded the fund on the eve of his confirmation to win over Republican holdouts, but Trump then acknowledged that he himself never signed the rescission order, which left the door open. Now, with Blanche confirmed as attorney general by that razor-thin 50-49 vote, Trump is saying the future of the fund rests with Blanche. And that is exactly the scenario that critics warned about. Think back to what senators extracted as the price of confirmation: a promise to kill a fund that would have used taxpayer money to pay people, including January 6 defendants, who claimed to be victims of the prior Justice Department. But a promise made by the executive branch can be unmade by the executive branch, and here the president is openly signaling that his former personal lawyer, now running the Justice Department, could bring it back. The significance goes to the very heart of the concern that dogged Blanche's nomination: the independence of the attorney general. When the president publicly frames the revival of a controversial payout fund as a decision for “his” attorney general to make, it underscores the worry that the Justice Department's most consequential choices may run through the lens of the president's personal and political interests. The confirmation fight is over, but the question it raised is very much alive. Trump says future weaponization fund is up to Blanche | ReutersForbes · AxiosA federal appeals court has cleared thousands of lawsuits to proceed against the major social-media companies over claims they deliberately designed their platforms to addict young users. The San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit rejected the bid by Meta, Google's YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat to escape roughly 2,400 lawsuits consolidated in federal court, brought by states, municipalities, school districts, and individuals. The legal fight here is all about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—the 1996 law that shields online platforms from liability for content their users post. The companies argued that Section 230 also immunizes them from claims that they failed to warn about, or engineered, the addictive nature of their platforms. The court said no, and the distinction it drew is the crucial one: Section 230 protects a platform from being sued over what its users say, but it does not necessarily protect the platform's own product-design choices—the infinite scroll, the algorithmic feeds, the notification schedules engineered to maximize engagement. Claims aimed at that design, the court reasoned, are different from claims aimed at user content. If you've been listening, you know this is the federal counterpart to everything we've tracked at the state level—the New Mexico judgment, the Tennessee trial, the multistate penalty fight. The significance is that the industry's most powerful legal shield, Section 230, is being narrowed: plaintiffs are increasingly framing their cases around addictive design rather than harmful content, and courts are increasingly letting those cases through. That reframing may prove to be the key that unlocks the courthouse door for the whole wave of social-media harm litigation. US appeals court allows thousands of lawsuits against social media companies to proceed | ReutersNBC News · Al JazeeraAnd finally, in my column for Bloomberg Tax this week, I dig into a question hiding underneath the AI gold rush: who's actually paying for it? My starting point is a striking data point—Microsoft's current federal tax expense fell year over year from about $14.1 billion to just $2.5 billion, even as its revenue surged. And a big part of that drop comes from accelerated deductions in last year's massive 2025 tax law, which restored 100% bonus depreciation—letting companies write off the full cost of huge investments, like AI data centers, in the very first year.My core argument is that the tax law is financing the AI infrastructure boom, but it isn't creating it—and that distinction matters enormously before anyone declares the policy a success. The political narrative writes itself: capital spending soared after the tax cut, therefore the tax cut worked. But I think correlation is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting there. Microsoft and its rivals aren't pouring tens of billions into AI infrastructure because Congress rediscovered depreciation. They're doing it because falling behind in AI could threaten their core businesses—it's become about as close to a strategic necessity as it gets. And here's the tell: Microsoft announced its roughly $80 billion AI data-center plan in a blog post in January 2025, a full six months before the tax law was even signed. The trajectory was public, budgeted, and well underway before the depreciation rules changed.So my point to Congress is: prove it. Before congratulating yourselves, you owe the public evidence that these tax benefits actually changed corporate behavior rather than just rewarding investments companies were already racing to make. And I want to push back on the idea that this is “just” a timing benefit and therefore basically free. Timing isn't free—letting a company keep its cash now in exchange for tax revenue later is like giving it an interest-free loan, and every dollar of accelerated depreciation is a dollar the Treasury can't use for something else this year. That's a real opportunity cost, felt in deficits or forgone public investment. My recommendation is concrete: Congress should require the Treasury and the Joint Committee on Taxation to regularly estimate how much of this investment is genuinely induced by the tax break, how much was simply pulled forward, and how much would have happened anyway. Because the public is quietly helping finance the AI revolution—and if Congress intends to make taxpayers silent investors in it, it should at least have the honesty to say so, and to show the math. Tax Law Is Funding the AI Infrastructure Boom, Not Creating It | Bloomberg Tax This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

A poop-themed dog toy took on one of America's most iconic whiskey brands and after 12 years in federal court, it helped reshape trademark law. In this episode of The Valley Current®, Jack Russo unpacks the extraordinary legal battle between Jack Daniel's and VIP Products, tracing the case from the trial court to the Supreme Court and back to the Ninth Circuit. Along the way, he explains how parody, source identifiers, and brand dilution collided in a dispute that became far bigger than a squeaky toy. More importantly, Jack explores what the case reveals about the true cost of intellectual property litigation, where persistence can be as valuable as legal strategy, and why the party that changes the law is often the one that simply refuses to quit. Jack Russo Managing Partner Jrusso@computerlaw.com www.computerlaw.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackrusso "Every Entrepreneur Imagines a Better World"®️  

Part 4 of 5, this one focused on as-applied versus facial challenge of the penal code in California. The Ninth Circuit defends open carry in California, Part 4 of 5 (Part 4 was 17 April 2026, Part 2 was 19 Feb 2026 and Part 1 was 15 Jan 2026) of our study of open carry in America's Constitutional tradition by spending more time today with Baird v. Bonta (2 Jan 2026, 9th Circuit) from the top of page 37 (Roman Numeral II) through to the top of page 49 at VII. The pro-Second-Amendment opinions, both of them that we take a look at, were written by Republican appointees (Trump, with a Republican US Senate). We will pick up at page 49 and Roman Numeral VII. https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2026/01/02/24-565.pdf Here's a link to the article I wrote 9 April 2020 for San Diego County Gun Owners, published on Gun Owner's Radio, that I entitled : "Two Types of Self-Defense" here. https://gunownersradio.com/two-types-of-self-defense/ This episode and this series is dedicated to the memory of my closest first cousin, Little Dan Mountain Jr, closest in age by just a couple of weeks, who died earlier this year in January. I picked a topic that would bring a smile to his face and that would honor the bright spots in our childhood together in Colorado. The Republican Professor is a pro-Second-Amendment-in-California podcast. The Republican Professor is produced and hosted by Dr. Lucas J. Mather, Ph.D.

We're back — maybe getting a little too scheduled — with one opinion on the docket: West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, where the Court held that states may limit girls' and women's sports teams to biological sex without violation Equal Protection or Title IX. First, though, Will collects on a two-year-old prediction when the Court grants Jouppi v. Alaska, an Institute for Justice case about a five-figure airplane forfeited over a six-pack of beer. On the main event, we work through how the opinions are written (no pronouns, no "Lindsay"), what the litigants' Title IX concession did to the case, and whether there is any such thing as an as-applied equal protection challenge. Will makes a big-swing prediction about transgender status and heightened scrutiny, and we ask whether the Court's reasoning can be squared with VMI and the anti-stereotyping cases. Along the way: fencepost problems, Magneto's powers, Magic: The Gathering's crossover-IP wars, scrawny men, and Justice Kavanaugh's ode to the championship trophy.Highlights[00:00:21] Opening: continuing the roll, "starting to get a little scheduled," and record-setting season ambitions[00:02:05] Summer interim-docket check-in: a new SG filing on mail-in voting; still no rehearing petition in the birthright-citizenship case[00:03:23] Filing-day counting and the classic fencepost problem[00:04:50] Will doesn't condone violence, Dan; UFC, violent video games, and Dungeons & Dragons[00:07:46] The prediction workflow pays off: Will called the IJ excessive-fines cert push back in May 2024 (Culley)[00:08:05] Cert granted in Jouppi v. Alaska: a 5-figure aircraft forfeited over a 6-pack of beer[00:09:58] Scorecard methodology: easy predictions, Magneto clauses, and a slugging-percentage proposal[00:12:51] Dan's good news: Constitutional Rights in General Private Law, accepted at Harvard Law Review[00:13:32] The main event: West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox — states can keep transgender athletes off girls' and women's teams[00:15:25] How the opinions are written: no pronouns, and the majority never says "Lindsay"[00:18:44] The Thomas concurrence: suspect class, "biological men and boys who identify as girls," and the Josef Pieper abuse-of-language quote[00:21:49] Title IX: the statutory text, the litigants' concession, and what the dissents are trying to preserve[00:29:39] The Equal Protection Clause: Skrmetti, two kinds of anti-trans laws, and Will's big-swing prediction on heightened scrutiny[00:35:29] VMI's inherent differences, bathrooms, and the anti-stereotyping mainstays (Craig v. Boren)[00:43:33] Is there such a thing as an as-applied equal protection challenge? Footnotes 7 and 9, scrawny men, and Nguyen[00:52:35] The Ninth Circuit's dropped thread: Idaho's invasive verification testing and the cis-woman plaintiff[00:54:41] Justice Kavanaugh, the sports justice: the championship-trophy passage and Flood v. Kuhn lore[00:56:52] The flip side: does Title IX sometimes require excluding transgender athletes? Dueling predictions[01:00:30] Why this isn't Bostock: Gorsuch, formalism, and a contested Indian-law analogy[01:02:49] Sign-off — and a preemptive accusation that Will will game the scorecard by refusing to recordRelevant linksCasesWest Virginia v. B.P.J. / Little v. Hecox — slip opinionJouppi v. Alaska — Institute for Justice case pageCulley v. MarshallUnited States v. SkrmettiUnited States v. Virginia (VMI)Nguyen v. INSFlood v. KuhnCommentary & articlesD'Onfro & Epps, "The Fourth Amendment and General Law" — the Yale Law Journal predecessor to the new Harvard Law Review piece announced on the showOtherDivided Argument, "Originalism Hulk" — the back-catalogue episode whose new custom cover art comes up in the Marvel tangent

In Episode 403 (Rebroadcast of Ep 107), our guest is Todd Engel who was thrown in prison by the Obama administration for Todd's attendance at the Bundy Ranch, but - miracle of miracles! - his conviction was tossed out by the Ninth Circuit. He served over four years in federal prison before being freed.. He tells us what it's like to be a political prisoner. In the After Show, available for Patreon supporters, he answers Patreons' questions about prison and freedom. Please support our sponsors EMP Shield, Numanna Foods, Backwoods Home Magazine, CATI Armor, and Minutemen Coffee. Learn more about our podcast at Prepping 2-0.com  

In Episode 403 (Rebroadcast of Ep 107), our guest is Todd Engel who was thrown in prison by the Obama administration for Todd's attendance at the Bundy Ranch, but - miracle of miracles! - his conviction was tossed out by the Ninth Circuit. He served over four years in federal prison before being freed.. He tells us what it's like to be a political prisoner. In the After Show, available for Patreon supporters, he answers Patreons' questions about prison and freedom. Please support our sponsors EMP Shield, Numanna Foods, Backwoods Home Magazine, CATI Armor, and Minutemen Coffee. Learn more about our podcast at Prepping 2-0.com

A Ninth Circuit judge calls for SCOTUS to "bench slap" anti-2A courts while Paul Markel joins Mark Walters to explain why major Second Amendment victories may be just ahead. Plus DOJ action, Bruen, magazine bans and the future of gun rights.

John is joined by Bill Patry, of counsel in Quinn Emanuel's New York office and author of numerous treatises and law review articles, including Patry on Copyright and Patry on Fair Use. Bill also served as in-house counsel at Google for 17 years. During that time, Google never lost a copyright case. They discuss a pending Ninth Circuit copyright appeal that could reshape how courts determine substantial similarity, the central test for copyright infringement.The dispute arises from a tattoo created by celebrity artist Kat Von D using a copyrighted photograph of Miles Davis taken by photographer Jeff Sedlik. She documented the process of creating the tattoo on social media and acknowledged copying the photograph exactly, creating the expectation that liability would be straightforward. Instead, the trial court denied the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment, the case proceeded to a jury, and the jury found no infringement, prompting an appeal focused less on the facts than on the Ninth Circuit's governing legal standard for infringement.For decades, the Ninth Circuit has applied two separate tests for infringement: the extrinsic test and the intrinsic test. The extrinsic test attempts to identify objectively protectable elements, while the intrinsic test asks jurors to compare the overall concept and feel of the two works, even though neither “concept” nor “feel” is copyrightable.The panel that heard the appeal affirmed the judgment in an unpublished opinion, concluding that the copying was fair use. However, the panel also issued three separate published opinions sharply criticizing the long-standing intrinsic test as confusing, overly subjective, and inconsistent with meaningful appellate review. The opinions suggested that the existing framework undermines copyright protection by making erroneous jury verdicts difficult to correct. They explain that copyright plaintiffs may lose cases even where copying is undeniable because the intrinsic test effectively shields jury decisions from appellate review.The en banc rehearing, scheduled for September 29 or 30, 2026, will present an opportunity for the Ninth Circuit to reconsider decades of precedent and replace an unpredictable doctrine with a clearer, more reviewable framework that could significantly influence future copyright litigation.The proposed alternative standard would require judges to determine, as a matter of law, which elements of a work are protectable before the case reaches a jury. Jurors would then decide only whether the defendant materially copied that protected expression.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

Civil Rights: Do citizens have a constitutional right not to be unnecessarily tear gassed? - Argued: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 16:39:44 EDT

Free Speech: May California prohibit employers from requiring employees to attend meetings where religious or political views will be discussed? - Argued: Tue, 07 Jul 2026 16:45:13 EDT

Free Speech: Does the Chamber of Commerce have standing to challenge California's prohibition requiring employees to attend meetings where religious or political views will be discussed? - Argued: Tue, 07 Jul 2026 16:41:16 EDT

This Day in Legal History: Vermont Bans SlaveryOn July 8, 1777, delegates meeting in Windsor adopted the Constitution of the Vermont Republic—and in doing so, Vermont became the first place in North America to write the prohibition of slavery into its founding law. At a moment when the newly declared United States tolerated and protected human bondage, a small, unrecognized republic on the frontier put a very different principle on paper.The relevant language was striking for its era. The Vermont constitution declared that all people are born equally free and independent, and it provided that no adult could be held as a servant, slave, or apprentice against their will—specifically, no man over twenty-one and no woman over eighteen. It was not a complete abolition; the age limits meant the document did not immediately free everyone, and enforcement in practice was uneven and incomplete for years afterward. But as a matter of constitutional text, it was the first time on this continent that a government's foundational law declared slavery inconsistent with the very idea of being born free.The context matters. In 1777, Vermont was not yet a state—it wouldn't join the Union until 1791—and it existed in a kind of legal limbo, claimed by both New York and New Hampshire and recognized by neither. That outsider status may have given its drafters room to be bolder than their contemporaries. While the framers of the national government were negotiating the compromises that would embed slavery in American law for another four generations—the three-fifths clause, the fugitive slave clause, the twenty-year protection of the slave trade—Vermont's drafters wrote the opposite conviction into their first article.The significance of July 8, 1777 is partly symbolic and partly practical. Symbolically, it established that abolition was not some later invention imposed on a reluctant founding generation, but a principle that existed at the founding itself, chosen by people who could see the contradiction between declaring all men free and holding some in bondage. Practically, Vermont's provision became an early data point in the long argument that would run through the Northwest Ordinance, the gradual emancipation statutes of the northern states, the abolitionist movement, the Civil War, and finally the Thirteenth Amendment. It's a reminder that constitutional law is not just handed down from the most powerful actors—that sometimes the boldest legal principles come from the margins, from a place that wasn't even sure it counted as a state, writing down what it believed the law ought to be.A former Milwaukee County judge, Hannah Dugan, has been sentenced in federal court after being convicted of obstructing an immigration arrest outside her courtroom—a case that became a flashpoint in the fight over the Trump administration's use of courthouses to stage immigration enforcement. Dugan, who is 67 and was an elected circuit court judge, was found guilty of obstructing a federal proceeding, though a jury acquitted her of a lesser concealment charge.Federal immigration agents came to Dugan's courthouse to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a Mexican man who was scheduled to appear before her on misdemeanor assault charges. Prosecutors said Dugan directed him out through a non-public “jury door” in an effort to help him avoid the agents waiting in the public hallway. It didn't work—Flores-Ruiz walked through a public hallway with his attorney anyway, and agents arrested him outside after a brief foot chase. But the government charged Dugan criminally for what she did inside the courthouse, and a federal jury convicted her in December.Think about the competing principles colliding here. On one side is the idea that no one, not even a judge, gets to physically obstruct federal law enforcement carrying out its duties. On the other is a real institutional worry that animated a lot of the coverage: if immigration agents stake out courthouses, people with pending cases—victims, witnesses, defendants—may stop showing up at all, which grinds the ordinary work of the state courts to a halt. Dugan's defenders framed her actions as protecting the functioning of her courtroom; prosecutors framed them as obstruction of a federal operation. The jury sided with the government on the core charge.At sentencing, the two sides were far apart. Federal prosecutors declined to recommend a specific term but argued the guidelines called for fifteen to twenty-one months in prison. Dugan's lawyers disputed that calculation and asked U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman for time served—no prison at all. The significance of the case goes well beyond one judge. It's a marker of how aggressively the administration is willing to pursue anyone perceived to interfere with immigration enforcement, up to and including a sitting judge, and it sends a message to state and local officials everywhere about the personal legal risk of getting between federal agents and their targets.Ex-Wisconsin judge to be sentenced for obstructing immigration arrest | ReutersBayer is moving to bring an end to the sprawling federal litigation over its Roundup weedkiller, following a significant win at the Supreme Court. Late last month, the Court ruled 7-2 in Bayer's favor, and the company is now trying to convert that decision into the dismissal of the failure-to-warn claims that have driven nearly a decade of lawsuits.Thousands of plaintiffs have sued Bayer alleging that Roundup, and specifically its active ingredient glyphosate, caused their non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and that the company violated state law by failing to warn them of that cancer risk. Bayer's winning argument was about federal preemption—the principle that when federal and state law conflict, federal law wins. Bayer argued that because the Environmental Protection Agency has concluded glyphosate poses no cancer risk and requires no cancer warning on the label, plaintiffs can't use state failure-to-warn law to demand a warning the federal regulator affirmatively says isn't needed. The Supreme Court agreed, overturning a $1.25 million Missouri verdict in the process.Consider why this is such a powerful tool for Bayer. A failure-to-warn claim says, in essence, “you should have told me this was dangerous.” But if the federal agency in charge has studied the product and decided no warning is warranted, then a state jury ordering the company to warn anyway would effectively be overriding the federal regulator. Preemption resolves that conflict in favor of the federal standard. The practical effect is that the single most common theory in the Roundup litigation—failure to warn—is now largely off the table in the cases this ruling reaches.The significance is real but, importantly, not total. This should let Bayer dismiss current warning-based claims and block future ones, which is exactly why the company is now pressing courts to wind down the federal litigation, and it's pairing that push with a proposed $7.25 billion class-action settlement to sweep in remaining Roundup users. But the decision doesn't make every claim disappear. Plaintiffs may still pursue theories that don't depend on a failure to warn—like defective design—and the settlement obligations remain. So this is a milestone in Bayer's long campaign to contain its liability, not the final word. It's also a notable example of how federal regulatory findings can become a shield against state tort law, a doctrine with implications well beyond weedkiller.Bayer seeks end to federal Roundup litigation after Supreme Court win | ReutersFederal judges are sounding skeptical of a California law that bans employers from forcing workers to attend so-called “captive audience” meetings—mandatory gatherings where a company shares its views on political or religious matters, most often its opposition to unionizing. The law has already been blocked by a district court, and the signs from the bench suggest that skepticism may carry through on appeal.Here's what a captive audience meeting is and why it's contested. When a union organizing drive is underway, employers have long held mandatory meetings where attendance is required and workers listen to management make the case against unionizing. Unions call these coercive; employers call them protected speech. California's SB 399 tried to ban compelling attendance at meetings covering “political matters,” a category defined broadly enough to include unionization. Judge Daniel Calabretta of the Eastern District of California blocked the law, and his reasoning is the crux of the whole fight.He gave two independent grounds, and it's worth separating them. The first is federal preemption—the same principle at work in the Bayer story. Calabretta found that the National Labor Relations Act, which governs labor relations nationwide, occupies this field and preempts California's attempt to regulate it under the Machinists and Garmon preemption doctrines. The second ground is the First Amendment: he held that the law was a content-based restriction on employer speech, singling out “political” and “religious” topics, and that it couldn't survive strict scrutiny—the most demanding test in constitutional law, which almost nothing passes. In his view, banning all speech on those topics in mandatory meetings swept far too broadly.The significance here is that this is a collision between the labor movement's priorities and employers' free-speech claims, and right now the free-speech and preemption arguments are winning in court. A number of states have passed captive-audience bans, so how the Ninth Circuit ultimately rules—California and Attorney General Rob Bonta are expected to appeal—will shape whether this entire category of worker-protection law survives. It's a reminder that even popular labor legislation has to run a gauntlet of federal preemption and the First Amendment, and that employer speech, including anti-union speech, gets substantial constitutional protection.US judges leery of California ban on workplace captive-audience meetings | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Prediction markets are a multi-billion dollar industry, led by companies like Kalshi and Polymarket. They are also controversial. Some want them banned and believe they are operating illegally, while others see them as invaluable truth-seeking markets.This podcast is a multi-hour deep dive on prediction markets, starting from conclave betting in 15th century Rome to the CFTC's proposed rulemaking on Rule 40.11 earlier this month.My goal: The internet's most comprehensive explainer on prediction markets.By the end of this episode, I promise you'll be in the top percentile for understanding prediction markets, regardless of where you're starting from. (You just might need to listen twice. There's a lot here.)Timestamps:0:00 Intro1:40 16th century papal betting (Koleman Strumpf)11:13 Insider trading rules on prediction markets (Bobby DeNault)16:20 The Google search insider case and Rule 180.1 (Sam Enzer)27:38 Why prediction markets matter (Chris Giancarlo)33:20 Election betting in America38:35 Iowa Electronic Markets and the 1992 no-action letter45:56 Dodd-Frank, swaps and the Special Rule48:08 Senator Lincoln on Super Bowl and Derby contracts55:49 Parlays as swaps (Josh Sterling)1:01:23 CFTC's exclusive jurisdiction (Thania Charmani)1:07:30 Perspective on the CFTC's NPRM (Michael Passalacqua)1:14:55 Exceptions that swallow the rule (Paul Grewal)1:27:25 How prediction markets actually work1:36:05 Kalshi's probability-weighted fee structure1:38:18 Cardi B and the resolution problem (Dustin Gouker)1:45:05 Oracles, UMA and decentralized resolution (Jeff Amico)1:51:55 Inside the Ninth Circuit case2:07:49 The CFTC's June 2026 proposed rulemaking (Brad Bourque, Stefan Schropp)2:19:06 Kalshi's landmark 2024 win2:23:05 PASPA, Murphy v. NCAA (Daniel Wallach)2:45:14 The case against banning prediction markets (Bobby DeNault)Newsletter: Stay updated on emerging tech law for free at lawofcode.fm. https://www.lawofcode.fm/Any feedback on this episode? Or how to improve the podcast? Click here. https://forms.gle/W4d2a5aHuLJjuNdn7Sponsors: This episode is sponsored by Cahill Gordon & Reindel, the Hyperliquid Policy Center, and the Solana Policy Institute. To get in touch with the Cahill team about how the issues discussed in this episode apply to your situation, email mtomsky@cahill.com. Subscribe to Cahill's free client alerts on digital assets and emerging technology at https://www.cahill.com/news/index?search=1&practice=litigation-digital-assets-and-emerging-technology.In this episode, you'll hear from the world's leading experts on the legal layer of prediction markets:Josh Sterling, partner at MillbankBobby DeNault, Head of Enforcement at KalshiChris Giancarlo, former Chairman of the CFTCDaniel Wallach, founder of Wallach Legal LLCStefan Schropp, Senior Regulatory Counsel at ParadigmSam Enzer, partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel and co-chair of CahillNXTPaul Grewal, Chief Legal Officer at CoinbaseKoleman Strumpf, economics professor at Wake ForestBrad Bourque, Policy Counsel at Hyperliquid Policy CenterThania Charmani, partner at Winston & TaylorMichael Passalacqua, Senior Advisor to CFTC Chairman SeligJeff Amico, Chief Operating Officer at GensynMatt Kalish, co-founder of DraftKings and CEO of HardscopeDustin Gouker, author of the Event Horizons newsletterDisclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship.

It's Friday, June 26th, A.D. 2026. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com.  I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Adam McManus 250,000 British girls sexually assaulted by Pakistani Muslims Last week, a group called Restore Britain released a summary report of an inquiry into the widespread and systematic sexual exploitation of vulnerable working-class women and children across the nation, reports Breakpoint. At least 250,000 girls were sexually assaulted, trafficked, tortured, and even killed, mostly by gangs of Pakistani Muslims. The details in the report are so horrifying, it's difficult to believe they are true.   Evidence of the abuse and reports by victims were downplayed and ignored.  To his shame, when atheist British Prime Minister Kier Starmer, who resigned Monday, was Director of Public Prosecutions and the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, he shockingly dismissed 13,000 cases of suspected child sexual offenders with a warning letter rather than attempt to prosecute. British citizens who spoke out about the abuse or expressed criticism of mass migration were often prosecuted, especially if the criticisms were directed at Pakistani or Muslim communities.  The gangs that have been operating in Britain have deep ideological and cultural roots shaped by Islam, including Sharia law. Also ignored is the difficult truth that Islam, on its own terms, allows child sexual exploitation and trafficking.   Many of the young Muslim men responsible for these atrocities believe they are answerable to Sharia law, rather than to British law. They believe their devious assaults are approved by Islam's false god Allah, especially when done to an enemy who is oppressing them.  Send a 2-3 sentence letter urging that British authorities prosecute the rapists. Christian Turner, British Ambassador, British Embassy, 3100 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008. Twin earthquakes in Venezuela killed 164, injured 1,000 At least 164 people have been killed and 971 injured in Venezuela after powerful back-to-back earthquakes rocked the country on Wednesday night, June 24th, reports Yahoo News. Thousands more are feared dead after a magnitude 7.2 earthquake hit about 100 miles west of the capital, Caracas, followed less than a minute later by a magnitude 7.5 tremor, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In a Truth Social post, President Donald Trump said, "The U.S.A. stands ready, willing, and able to help! I have instructed all agencies of our government to get ready to move quickly. We will be there for our new and great friends." Supreme Court delivers major win to Trump On June 25th, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration's decision to end Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from Syria and Haiti, reports TownHall.com. In a 6-3 decision, the justices found that the statute bars judicial review of non-constitutional claims. After the Department of Homeland Security moved to terminate Temporary Protected Status for people from Syria and Haiti, it was hit with a deluge of lawsuits challenging the move. Congress created Temporary Protected Status back in 1990 to grant short-term humanitarian relief to foreigners who cannot safely return home due to armed conflict, natural disasters, or other extreme conditions. Syrians were able to take advantage of the program in 2012 because of the brutality of the Bashar al-Assad regime. Haiti received it in 2010 after a devastating earthquake. However, both designations went on for longer than the “temporary” label suggested. Alarm over Abortion Pills & dead babies in U.S. water supply Based on an alarming 86-page report entitled “Abortion in Our Water,” 14 state attorneys general sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency warning about a “growing threat to the country's waterways as a result of the pharmaceutical abortion drug mifepristone,” reports Liberty Counsel. They're asking the EPA to place mifepristone and its generics on the federal list of drinking water contaminants that need further investigation. The abortion industry has moved from clinics to toilets. Chemical abortions now account for 63% of all U.S. abortions in the formal health care system in 2023 — up from 31% in 2014 and 14% in 2005. Women are told to take the Abortion Kill Pills and flush everything directly into our water supply. About 700,000 chemical abortions each year send long-lasting abortion drugs and human remains into America's wastewater systems. Mifepristone blocks progesterone, thus starving the baby. This drug has long-lasting metabolites that remain in the water because the water treatment plants are generally not capable of filtering out these chemicals. In addition to these chemicals, the water systems were never designed for the resulting 30-40 tons of human remains which becomes hazardous medical waste! By contrast, hospitals and abortion mills are not allowed to flush medical waste down the drain for good reason. Through a special link in our transcript today at www.TheWorldview.com, you can send faxes to Congress and demand they take action to stop this public health threat. Court blocks California “gender secrecy law”, affirms parental rights California parents scored a big victory as a court blocked a law that kept school districts from reporting a child's “sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression” to parents, reports the Daily Citizen. America First Legal announced the decision on behalf of the City of Huntington Beach and parents.  “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit entered a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of key provisions of California's AB 1955 – a law that prohibits schools from disclosing information to parents about a child's sexual orientation, ‘gender identity,' or gender expression, unless the child consents.” In other words, the State of California sought to prevent parents from obtaining information about “gender transitions” of their own children without the child's so-called consent. Democrat California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1955 which, as California Family Council explained, prohibited schools from notifying parents if their gender-confused children asked to be referred to with a biologically incorrect pronoun and a new name. In Matthew 19:4, Jesus said, “Surely you have read in the Scriptures: When God made the world, 'He made them male and female.'” Singer Forrest Frank unashamedly affirms exclusive truth about Jesus And finally, Christian hip-hop musician Forrest Frank is playing in sold out arenas and boldly declaring the exclusive truth about Christianity. Listen to a portion of his hit song "Jesus Is Alive" which was released on May 8th. By the time of its release, the song already had 19 million views on social media. FRANK: “Muhammad is still in his tomb. Joseph Smith is still in his tomb. Buddha is still in his tomb. Confucius is still in his tomb. “But there is one man who was not found in the tomb. I've been there. The tomb is empty. He was seen alive by over 500 eyewitnesses who wrote down accurate accounts that we saw the man who hung on the cross, and we touched the scars. “Watch this word: Alive. Jesus is the King, and He's alive. Jesus is alive.” Matthew 28:5-6 records, “The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; He has risen, just as He said. Come and see the place where He lay.'” Close And that's The Worldview on this Friday, June 26th, in the year of our Lord 2026. Subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com.  Plus, you can get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

We report on a wave of highly targeted legislative, legal, and medical updates aimed at curbing market disorder and protecting public health.In the United States, Virginia has advanced a budget deal to its governor establishing a definitive July 2027 timeline for adult-use dispensary sales, while Illinois has enacted precise safety guardrails by banning intoxicating hemp sales to minors and enforcing strict child-proof packaging. This regulatory tightening faces immediate constitutional hurdles in the courts, where Ninth Circuit judges are currently deadlocked over whether sweeping state bans on cannabis billboard advertisements violate free speech.Meanwhile, international markets are facing severe enforcement crises; Thailand's Ministry of Public Health has rolled out an aggressive penalty framework targeting rule-breaking dispensaries with immediate license suspensions, and Canada's regulated sector is suffering such severe economic pressure from a deeply entrenched illicit market that a major national cannabis organization was forced to suspend its operations.Underpinning these legislative shifts is an escalating medical concern highlighted by The Epoch Times, which details how high-potency THC stores itself long-term in bodily fat and organs, continuously triggering low-grade, system-wide immune inflammation even after active consumption stops.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode, we explore the transformative experience of law school clinics and their pivotal role in shaping the careers of aspiring lawyers. Today, we have the privilege of hearing from three exceptional graduates of Loyola Law School of Los Angeles' Ninth Circuit Clinic: Tina Kuang, Sydney Wong, and Molly Okamura. Under the guidance of our host, M.C. Sungaila, these talented alumni share their remarkable journeys, where they, along with their law school teammates, took on the challenge of briefing, arguing, and ultimately prevailing in immigration appeals before the esteemed Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Their stories exemplify how participation in law school clinics can sharpen legal skills, nurture professional growth, and accelerate careers in the legal arena.

Artificial Intelligence: Does a user's deployment of AI agents to make purchases violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? - Argued: Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:0:32 EDT

The SEC's “Gag Rule” long conditioned settlement of enforcement actions on the defendant's agreeing never to publicly deny the agency's allegations, even where the defendant admitted no wrongdoing. In Powell v. SEC, now before the Supreme Court on a petition for certiorari, Petitioners argue that this condition violates the First Amendment; the Ninth Circuit had upheld the rule as a permissible voluntary waiver. The case has already produced major developments. Last month, the SEC rescinded the Gag Rule, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has now rescinded its own comparable no-deny settlement policy. The SEC now contends that its rescission of the rule renders Powell moot. Join us for a litigation update on Powell and a broader discussion of what these reversals mean for agency enforcement, settlement negotiations, mootness, and government efforts to control the public narrative. Featuring: --Margaret A. Little, Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance --Hon. Gregory G. Garre, Partner, Latham & Watkins LLP --(Moderator) Jill Jacobson, Litigation Associate, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP

After a string of high-profile climate lawsuits, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has delivered a ruling that supporters of sound energy policy may have reason to celebrate.In this episode of Sanity Check, David Legates examines a lawsuit brought by twenty-three young activists challenging President Trump's executive orders aimed at expanding domestic energy production. The plaintiffs argued that policies supporting oil, gas, hydropower, and other energy resources violated their constitutional rights and threatened their future. Both the district court and the Ninth Circuit ultimately disagreed, concluding that the sweeping relief requested was beyond the proper role of the judiciary.David unpacks the legal arguments, the court's reasoning, and the broader strategy behind climate litigation campaigns led by organizations such as Our Children's Trust. He also argues that while constitutional and procedural challenges may continue to derail these cases, the long-term battle must be fought on scientific grounds. Courts may dismiss lawsuits for lack of standing or separation-of-powers concerns, but unless exaggerated claims about climate catastrophe are challenged directly, the underlying narrative remains intact.What does this ruling mean for future climate litigation? Why are activists increasingly turning to the courts to achieve policy goals? And why does David believe the scientific debate remains the most important front in the fight against climate alarmism?Join us as we take a closer look at a significant legal victory—and the larger challenges that still lie ahead.Sources: https://montanafreepress.org/2026/06/02/ninth-circuit-court-denies-young-americans-lawsuit-challenging-trumps-handling-of-climate-change/https://www.climatecasechart.com/documents/lighthiser-v-trump-memorandum_7eaeVisit our podcast resource page: https://cornwallalliance.org/listen%20to%20our%20podcast%20created%20to%20reign/Our work is entirely supported by donations from people like you. If you benefit from our work and would like to partner with us, please visit www.cornwallalliance.org/donate. 

We Like Shooting - Ep 666 This episode of We Like Shooting is brought to you by: Foxtrot Mike (Code: WLSISLIFE) C&G Holsters (Code: WLSISLIFE) Midwest Industries (Code: WLSISLIFE) Gideon Optics (Code: WLSISLIFE) Flatline Fiber Co (Code: WLS15) Otis Technology (Code: WELIKESHOOTING15) Second Call Defense Text Dear WLS or Reviews +1 743 500 2171 Public   Show Titles   GOA GOALS Aug 1-2 in Iowa. https://goals.goa.org/ JUNE 20th, 2026 GunCon.net Tickets on sale now. Use code AGENCY171 GEAR CHAT Note Mike 102 – foxtrot mike products CANCONTRAST(Nick) CanContrast Suppressor Comparison Tool Choose a can CanContrast is an online database and interactive comparison tool for suppressors (“cans”). It enables users to select, compare, and contrast the physical size and weight of over 500 suppressor models from dozens of brands, with automatic adjustments for mounts. The site emphasizes data-only with no sales, featuring visual representations such as ruler overlays or weight bars. TRIGGER KICKER – HOFFMAN TACTICAL Hoffman Tactical Trigger Kicker Investigating some site issues, will restock in the morning. The Trigger Kicker is an active reset mechanism that replaces the disconnector in a standard AR-15 fire control group. It is contacted by the hammer to reset the trigger, then tucks under the standard safety selector to lock the trigger in the reset position until the bolt carrier returns to battery. Manufactured from hardened 4130 alloy steel, it is designed for AR-15 rifles with standard mil-spec bolt carriers and fire control groups. BULLET POINTS GUN FIGHTS Play the best Price Is Right-style GunBroker game on the internet. BANGRANK A live cast ranking segment for anything and everything in the gun world, powered by questionable certainty, strong opinions, and audience voting. THE AGENCY BRIEF WLS IS LIFESTYLE Masters of the Universe Masters of the Universe ODYSEE NVG Mono PVS-14 Hat Clip Adapter by stankycheeseman Lets you clip a PVS-14 or similar monocular to a hat. How neat is that?? It's going to be as sturdy as the hat you select for the job. Mount is pretty solid. Peep the readme. This is a 3D-printable CAD model (available as STEP files) for a hat clip adapter designed to mount a PVS-14 night vision monocular directly to a hat or cap. It includes components such as an IPD Knuckle and J Arm for compatibility with standard PVS-14 mounting interfaces. The design enables a lightweight, non-helmet alternative for monocular NVG use. GOING BALLISTIC PEW REPORT(Savage) Aero Precision, LLC and Ballistic Advantage, LLC Court-Appointed Receivership (Pierce County Superior Court Case No. 26-2-08316-4) Aero Precision and Ballistic Advantage Enter Court-Appointed Receivership Aero Precision and Ballistic Advantage are now under court-appointed receivership following an order entered in Pierce County Superior Court in Washington State on May 5, 2026. According to a public legal notice published in the Tacoma Daily Index, the court appointed J.S. Held LLC as receiver over […] On May 5, 2026, Pierce County Superior Court in Washington State appointed J.S. Held LLC as general receiver over the assets of Aero Precision, LLC (Lakewood, WA) and Ballistic Advantage, LLC (Ocoee, FL). Creditors must submit claims to the receiver; it is currently unclear whether assets will be available for distribution to general unsecured creditors. The public notice does not disclose the underlying causes or petitioner, and no filings indicate the companies have ceased operations. AMMOLAND SHOOTING SPORTS NEWS(Savage) Wilson v. Katz: Lynchburg Circuit Court Judge Patrick Yeatts Reaffirms Injunction Blocking Virginia HB 1525 Universal Background Checks A Lynchburg judge rejected Virginia's attempt to revive universal background checks on private firearm sales, keeping the injunction against State Police enforcement in place. On June 3, 2026, Lynchburg Circuit Court Judge Patrick Yeatts denied the Virginia State Police and Attorney General's motion to dissolve his October 2025 permanent injunction. The injunction struck down Virginia's universal background check requirement for private firearm sales (originally enacted in 2020 and codified at Va. Code § 18.2-308.2:5) after finding it unconstitutional under Article I, Section 13 of the Virginia Constitution, particularly as applied to those under 21, and non-severable. The ruling came after the legislature passed and Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed HB 1525 in April 2026 with an emergency clause directing VSP to resume checks; plaintiffs including Gun Owners of America, Virginia Citizens Defense League, and individuals filed to enforce the existing injunction. YouTube DOES RAREBREED HAVE A GOVERNMENT SANCTIONED MONOPOLY?(Savage) Rare Breed Triggers v. DOJ Settlement and ATF Director Robert Cekada Congressional Testimony on Forced Reset Triggers YouTubeVideo | Does RareBreed Have a Government Sanctioned Monopoly? Today we are going to be discussing the most recent development in the RareBreed Triggers situation. Since the settlement with the Department of Justice there have been many lawsuits filed and a major discussion about the legality of other devices that are similar to the FRT-15. Recently the new director of the ATF, Robert Cekada, testified in front of congress and had some interesting things to say about Forced Reset Triggers. ALL LINKS, Join the Email List, and get discounts from the affiliates page: https://linktr.ee/vso_gun_channel #vsogunchannel #rarebreeds #atf #gunlaw #MONOPOLY The VSO Gun Channel video in the Going Ballistic series examines the DOJ settlement with Rare Breed Triggers allowing continued FRT-15 sales contingent on patent enforcement, alongside recent congressional testimony by the new ATF director (referred to as Robert Cekada or Sacuta in sources) clarifying the settlement's narrow scope to Rare Breed's specific forced reset trigger design rather than all similar devices. The discussion covers legal distinctions between rate of fire, trigger function, drop-in auto sears, and potential implications for competing forced reset trigger products. AMMOLAND SHOOTING SPORTS NEWS(Savage) United States v. DeBorba (9th Cir. 2026): Suppressors Not Protected as 'Arms' Under Second Amendment The Ninth Circuit ruled suppressors are not Second Amendment arms in United States v. DeBorba, a bad-facts illegal alien gun case that may hurt future suppressor challenges. The Ninth Circuit affirmed João Ricardo DeBorba's convictions for unlawful possession of firearms, ammunition, and an unregistered silencer under the National Firearms Act (NFA). The court held that silencers/suppressors are optional accessories or ‘accoutrements' rather than ‘arms' covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment, citing prior precedent such as Duncan v. Bonta. It further ruled the NFA's shall-issue registration and taxation regime is constitutional as DeBorba failed to show abusive enforcement. NRA BLOWS WHISTLE ON NRA FOUNDATION, FILES LAWSUIT IN COURT(Savage) National Rifle Association of America v. NRA Foundation (1:26-cv-00015, D.D.C.) The National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit against the NRA Foundation, asserting ownership of intellectual property and alleging the foundation's leadership is operating in bad faith and withholding funds. NRA CEO Doug Hamlin stated the foundation has declined to approve 2026 grant funding, jeopardizing programs like the NRA National Firearms Museum and Eddie Eagle GunSafe program. On January 5, 2026, the National Rifle Association filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against its affiliated charitable arm, the NRA Foundation. The complaint asserts NRA ownership of trademarks and intellectual property used by the Foundation, alleges the Foundation's leadership (described as a disgruntled faction of former NRA directors) is operating in bad faith, misleading donors, withholding or misappropriating funds intended for NRA charitable programs, and attempting to break away. The suit seeks to prevent trademark infringement, unfair competition, and separation from the NRA. REVIEWS by Listener What's frustrating you most in gun culture right now? Review: Roadrunner gunner If you haver ever heard the phrase “hes got a face for radio.” Refering to someone who is ugly. Then Savage has the charisma to stand in a field like steel fucking gong. He means well but jesus christ, im a grown man with a stutter, but everytime he reads the news, i catch myself saying “T -T- T – today jr!” I never thought id say it but i wish AAron would come back, just to read the news even he couldn'tfuck that one up. Anyways the rest of you are sufficient enough that i dont regret being in the agency/cult or whatever it is now. Thanks for tickling my ear pu$$y twice a week. Review: Kyle R. from Iowa Dear WLS,Question I'm turning into a product review because I'm glad to hear about Foxtrot Mike signing on. What is the oddest, or most expensive fix you've ever done to get a trash gun running? For yourself, friend, customer, anyone. I got a Turkish 410 AR upper to play around with. Put it on a known functioning lower with their supplied modified buffer because the proprietary BCG is slightly longer. Slam fired half a magazine. Looked it over, tried a different lower with their other buffer they supplied. Slam fired 3 rounds, had an out of battery, sheared the bolt off. Sent it back. They sent me a whole new upper right around the same time I listened to the last episode you had Foxtrot Mike on. They were talking about slam firing 9mm and buffer weights. I immediately picked up a couple recoil mitigation buffers for PCCs. When the new 410 upper showed up I weighed the supplied buffers to

CannCon and Zak Paine open the Monday show with California's election count turning into a full display of the machine in operation. Spencer Pratt held a lead of over 20,000 votes on election night in the LA mayoral race, then batch after batch of late mail-in ballots arrived giving Nithya Raman 40% while she had been polling at 23% all week. The statistical probability of that shift is compared to finding a single grain of sand on Earth twelve separate times. CannCon maps out California's full fraud architecture: Smartmatic VSAP machines, motor voter automatic registration of noncitizens, gym memberships as valid voter ID, ballot harvesting with no limit on collectors, and mail-in ballots sent to every registered voter with a seven-day post-election acceptance window. The DOJ has been fighting California in the Ninth Circuit for over a year to audit the voter rolls. Trump calls it a rigged election live in his NBC interview with Kristen Welker, tells her she is either crooked or stupid, and walks out. CannCon plays the full exchange and makes the murder witness analogy: evidence dismissed on procedural grounds is still evidence. Zak and CannCon close by discussing the Resolute Desk bugging theory, noting Trump removed it on day one of his second term.

What do immigration attorneys need to know about the biggest legal developments this month? In this episode, John Q. Khosravi, Esq. sits down with monthly returning guest Kevin A. Gregg, Esq. for their latest immigration law roundup. Kevin breaks down the wave of circuit court decisions pushing back on mandatory detention, the adjustment of status memo fallout, the Haitian TPS case at the Supreme Court, and key Ninth Circuit rulings on consular non-reviewability and I-130 denials. Sharp legal analysis and real passion for the people behind the cases, every single month. Spotify | iTunes | YouTube Music | YouTube Follow eimmigration by Cerenade: Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn Start your Business Immigration Practice! (US LAWYERS ONLY - SCREENING REQUIRED): E-2 Course EB-1A Course Get the Toolbox Magazine!  Join our community (Lawyers Only) Get Started in Immigration Law! The Marriage/Family-Based Green Card course is for you Our Website: ImmigrationLawyersToolbox.com Not legal advice. Consult with an Attorney. Attorney Advertisement. #podcaster #Lawyer #ImmigrationLawyer #Interview #Immigration #ImmigrationAttorney #USImmigration #ImmigrationLaw #ImmigrationLawyersToolbox  

Docket Alerts:   Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard led a raid on the Fulton County Election Hub and Operating Center in Atlanta. ProPublica got the warrant. Mo Ivory, a Democratic commissioner for Fulton County, breaks it down on Instagram.   In Chicago, Marimar Martinez has moved to unseal evidence from DOJ's failed effort to prosecute her for getting shot by ICE.   Reuters reports that Marcos Charles, the top official in ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division, issued new guidance instructing ICE to target only immigrants who have been arrested or convicted of crimes. This would be a huge improvement, but DHS won't comment.   Main Show:   Once again, this is all the Supreme Court's fault. Specifically, its rulings in J.G.G. v. Trump and Trump v. CASA led directly to the mayhem in Minnesota. First the Court forced immigrants challenging their detention to file thousands of individual habeas cases. And then they drastically limited the power of federal judges to issue relief when it "discovered" that nationwide injunctions are illegal.    The Trump administration took this as an invitation to break the law, irrespective of how many courts tell them not to, on the theory that CASA means precedent doesn't count any more. DHS dummied up a memo saying that actually everyone without a green card must be held indefinitely. This is a gross misstatement of the law, as literally hundreds of courts have already ruled. But the Trump administration says because of CASA, they can continue to lock up people who've lived here for decades, checking in with DHS, working, paying taxes, and taking care of their families.   Judges are deluged with habeas petitions, which differ from each other only in the particulars of the cruelty being visited upon the individual immigrant. After ICE failed to obey a court order to release a habeas petitioner, Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz in the District Court of Minnesota ordered Todd Lyons, the Acting Director of ICE, to either release the guy or show up and explain why he shouldn't be held in contempt of court.    ICE released the petitioner, but Judge Schiltz was still furious. He published a list of 96 violations of court orders in January alone — and that's only in Minnesota! Thanks, Chief Justice Roberts!   On the plus side, Judge Schiltz's colleague Judge John Tunheim issued a TRO ordering ICE to release every refugee detained under the erroneous memo and quit kidnapping them and spiriting them away to Texas.   And for subscribers, we'll discuss the Ninth Circuit's ruling that bars Kristi Noem from unilaterally canceling temporary protected status for a million Venezuelans and Haitians.   Hundreds of judges reject Trump's mandatory detention policy, with no end in sight https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/05/trump-administration-immigrants-mandatory-detention-00709494   Fulton County Election Hub Warrant https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26513986-1-28-26-fulton-warrant/   Marimar Martinez Motion to Unseal https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ilnd.487595/gov.uscourts.ilnd.487595.100.0.pdf   Exclusive: ICE officers in Minnesota directed not to interact with 'agitators' in new orders https://www.reuters.com/world/ice-officers-minnesota-directed-not-interact-with-agitators-new-orders-2026-01-29/   J.G.G. v. Trump https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a931_2c83.pdf   Trump v. CASA https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a884_8n59.pdf   Tobay Robles v. Noem https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72120823/tobay-robles-v-noem   Judge Tunheim TRO https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230526/gov.uscourts.mnd.230526.41.0.pdf   Show Links: https://www.lawandchaospod.com/ BlueSky: @LawAndChaosPod Threads: @LawAndChaosPod Twitter: @LawAndChaosPod  

Buckley v. Blanche, No. 24-1957 (1st Cir. May 29, 2026)review of adjustment of status denial; later filed BIA brief; failure to provide reasoned consideration; substantial Lozada compliance; IJ duty to develop the record; prejudice  Matter of A-H-D-, 29 I&N Dec. 642 (BIA 2026)past persecution in the Ninth Circuit; police beatings; unable or unwilling to protect and tribal resolution of conflict; Mauritania Matter of Germain, 29 I&N Dec. 648 (BIA 2026)untimely DHS appeal; LPR cancellation of removal; weighing factors with criminal history; failure to show remorse; denying criminal conduct where there is no conviction  Matter of Nwagwu, 29 I&N Dec. 651 (BIA 2026)INA § 204(c); revoking I-130 petition; sworn statement from ex-spouse; failure of mother to identify spouse Matter of Martinez-Rodriguez, 29 I&N Dec. 656 (BIA 2026)   bond; dangerousness; single misdemeanor conviction Matter of Richards, 29 I&N Dec 658 (BIA 2026)                                                                                                                                                           LPR cancellation of removal; lack of candor about criminal history; Texas marijuana possession; adverse credibility; discretionary weighing; rehabilitation  United States v. Scott, No. 25-4048 (4th Cir. May 26, 2026)crime of violence; robbery; Parham; VA Code § 18.2-53.1 Lopez-Vasquez v. Blanche, No. 25-1338 (8th Cir. May 29, 2026)extreme and exceptionally unusual hardship; voluntary departure moot when removed during petition for review; no due process review to non-LPR cancellation of removal denial Nwosu v. Blanche, No. 25-3831 (6th Cir. May 29, 2026)corroboration; kidnapping in Nigeria; opportunity to explain missing evidence; exceptional and extremely unusualn hardship; substantial evidence  Argueta Castillo v. Blanche, No. 25-1297 (1st Cir. May 27, 2026)exceptional and extremely unusual hardship; sleep walking; lazy eye; aggregate hardship Kurzban Kurzban Tetzeli and Pratt P.A.Immigration, serious injury, and business lawyers serving clients in Florida, California, and all over the world for over 40 years.eimmigration"Immigration law software you'll love to use."get.eimmigration.com/IRP Gonzales & Gonzales Immigration BondsP: (833) 409-9200immigrationbond.com Stafi"Remote staffing solutions for businesses of all sizes"Click me!Want to become a patron?Click here to check out our Patreon Page!CONTACT INFORMATION:Email: kgregg@kktplaw.comFacebook: @immigrationreviewInstagram: @immigrationreviewTwitter: @immreviewAbout your hostCase notesRecent criminal-immigration article (p.18)Featured in San Diego VoyagerSupport the show

──────────────────────────────────────── [00:04:09] Operation Warp Speed Killed More Americans Than Any Other War — Trump Calls Himself the Father of the Vaccine VAERS shows COVID shots produced more deaths and injuries than all other FDA-approved vaccines combined. Trump forced FDA approval and still boasts. Johnson blames Biden's FDA, not Trump. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:15:25] Ron Johnson: Biggest Government Scandal of My Lifetime — FDA Knew It Was Hiding the Safety Signals FDA's vaccine division head was briefed their algorithm would mask signals — 26 days later hiding 60 signals including sudden cardiac death and stroke types. Johnson refuses to name Trump. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:24:39] Trump's EPA Reversed the Fluoride Ruling by Banning All Scientific Evidence Produced After 2020 The Ninth Circuit sent the case back with instructions to exclude all evidence from the last six years. Lee Zeldin is also pushing to keep PFAS forever chemicals in the water. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:32:57] Merck Is Lobbying to Give HPV Vaccines to Infants — Sales Are Down 40% Globally HPV is sexually transmitted — a four-year-old cannot be exposed to it. Merck hired former Gates Foundation advisors who declared no conflicts of interest. Childhood vaccine classification means zero liability. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:43:48] Josh Shapiro: Tracking AIPAC's Money Is Racist — They Can Buy Congress, You Are Not Allowed to Watch Pennsylvania's governor said AIPAC tracking is intimidation. Knight: they're calling for speech to be criminalized. AIPAC doesn't register as a foreign agent — you can't look at who they're buying. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:51:48] Todd Blanche's Background: Fake Mossad Agent, Twin Grifters, Forgery and Malpractice Accusations Before representing Trump, Blanche's clients used a fake Mossad agent to threaten witnesses and bribe DOJ officials. The case ended with forgery and malpractice accusations against Blanche. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:15:23] Blanche Is Setting Up the Ghislaine Maxwell Pardon — After a Long Interview, She Was Moved to Club Fed Blanche visited Maxwell for a long interview; shortly after she was moved to comfortable quarters. He pushed prosecution of political enemies and declined to investigate those tight with Epstein. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:21:24] The Trump Phone Is Finally Shipping — It's an HTC Running on American Values, Assembled in a Box After months of broken promises and removing buyer protections, Trump Mobile is shipping. CNET found the processor identical to a Taiwanese HTC. Designed with American values in mind. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:41:44] SWAT Team Destroyed a Texas Woman's Home — Government Said She Wasn't a Victim — Six Years Later She May Get $60,000 Police were given the key, garage opener, and gate code — drove a Bearcat through the fence, blew up the garage, drove through the front door. Government argued she wasn't a victim. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:50:06] Texas Woman Arrested Under a Bomb Threat Law for Posting That Her Town's Water Was Brown The police chief applied a felony false alarm statute — designed for fake bomb threats — to a woman warning neighbors about brown water. The city later admitted the water was undrinkable. ──────────────────────────────────────── Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code “KNIGHT” For high quality made in America products go to HomeSteadProducts.shop and use promo code “Knight” for 10% off your purchases Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

──────────────────────────────────────── [00:04:09] Operation Warp Speed Killed More Americans Than Any Other War — Trump Calls Himself the Father of the Vaccine VAERS shows COVID shots produced more deaths and injuries than all other FDA-approved vaccines combined. Trump forced FDA approval and still boasts. Johnson blames Biden's FDA, not Trump. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:15:25] Ron Johnson: Biggest Government Scandal of My Lifetime — FDA Knew It Was Hiding the Safety Signals FDA's vaccine division head was briefed their algorithm would mask signals — 26 days later hiding 60 signals including sudden cardiac death and stroke types. Johnson refuses to name Trump. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:24:39] Trump's EPA Reversed the Fluoride Ruling by Banning All Scientific Evidence Produced After 2020 The Ninth Circuit sent the case back with instructions to exclude all evidence from the last six years. Lee Zeldin is also pushing to keep PFAS forever chemicals in the water. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:32:57] Merck Is Lobbying to Give HPV Vaccines to Infants — Sales Are Down 40% Globally HPV is sexually transmitted — a four-year-old cannot be exposed to it. Merck hired former Gates Foundation advisors who declared no conflicts of interest. Childhood vaccine classification means zero liability. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:43:48] Josh Shapiro: Tracking AIPAC's Money Is Racist — They Can Buy Congress, You Are Not Allowed to Watch Pennsylvania's governor said AIPAC tracking is intimidation. Knight: they're calling for speech to be criminalized. AIPAC doesn't register as a foreign agent — you can't look at who they're buying. ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:51:48] Todd Blanche's Background: Fake Mossad Agent, Twin Grifters, Forgery and Malpractice Accusations Before representing Trump, Blanche's clients used a fake Mossad agent to threaten witnesses and bribe DOJ officials. The case ended with forgery and malpractice accusations against Blanche. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:15:23] Blanche Is Setting Up the Ghislaine Maxwell Pardon — After a Long Interview, She Was Moved to Club Fed Blanche visited Maxwell for a long interview; shortly after she was moved to comfortable quarters. He pushed prosecution of political enemies and declined to investigate those tight with Epstein. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:21:24] The Trump Phone Is Finally Shipping — It's an HTC Running on American Values, Assembled in a Box After months of broken promises and removing buyer protections, Trump Mobile is shipping. CNET found the processor identical to a Taiwanese HTC. Designed with American values in mind. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:41:44] SWAT Team Destroyed a Texas Woman's Home — Government Said She Wasn't a Victim — Six Years Later She May Get $60,000 Police were given the key, garage opener, and gate code — drove a Bearcat through the fence, blew up the garage, drove through the front door. Government argued she wasn't a victim. ──────────────────────────────────────── [01:50:06] Texas Woman Arrested Under a Bomb Threat Law for Posting That Her Town's Water Was Brown The police chief applied a felony false alarm statute — designed for fake bomb threats — to a woman warning neighbors about brown water. The city later admitted the water was undrinkable. ──────────────────────────────────────── Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code “KNIGHT” For high quality made in America products go to HomeSteadProducts.shop and use promo code “Knight” for 10% off your purchases Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-david-knight-show--5282736/support.