Outside California Governor Gavin Newsom’s presser in Little Tokyo announcing that California will hold a special election to determine whether to engage in midterm redistricting in reaction to Texas’ gerrymandering to give Trump the five additional House seats he demanded, dozens of heavily armed and masked federal agents appeared. Why then? Why there?

They did arrest one person who was selling strawberries, but there was no reason why they would be outside Newsom’s presser except to make a statement. We have the guns and can go and do whatever we want. And there is nothing you can do about it.

As the governor was preparing to speak inside the Japanese American National Museum in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles, the agents assembled outside, many of them masked and armed, and some wearing tactical helmets and carrying rifles.

Continue reading →

When Emma Camp, now of Reason but then a senior at the University of Virginia, wrote a New York Times op-ed, about her reluctance to express views that failed to align with progressive orthodoxy, she was excoriated for saying aloud what everybody knew. There is now a study that reaches the same uncontroversial conclusion.

Northwestern University researchers Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman report in an op-ed on the results of a series of interviews they conducted with undergraduates.

Between 2023 and 2025, we conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. We were not studying politics — we were studying development. Our question was clinical, not political: “What happens to identity formation when belief is replaced by adherence to orthodoxy?” Continue reading →

There has been a flurry of activity from the White House, from the bizarre to the banal, and the scope and breadth of matters into which President Trump has poked his very small fingers is, many people say, overwhelming. There is only one thing that he hasn’t done

Unsealing the transcripts would be an exception to the secrecy of grand juries, wrote the judge supervising Ms. Maxwell’s case, Paul A. Engelmayer. Permitting such an exception “casually or promiscuously” would erode confidence in people called to testify before future panels, the judge wrote in a 31-page opinion.

This was, of course, about as easy a decision as could be, there being no exception under law to permit the unsealing of the grand jury transcripts, and there being no purpose for doing so in any event. Continue reading →

Such niceties as geopolitical diplomatic messaging elude him, being from a world where nothing matters other than getting the thing built and stiffing the contractors. So when Trump invited a man who was shunned by the rest of the free world, the democratic world as an invading pariah to come to the United States, which he occasionally misunderstood to still be Russia, it likely didn’t register that he gave away a key sanction for nothing.

Vladimir Putin, invading war criminal, was coming to the United States at the invitation of the President. Putin was being welcomed back into international society, embraced by that society’s matron. The red carpet will be rolled out for him. Hands will be shaken, not stirred. There will camaraderie with the comrade. Comrades. Continue reading →

Students go by many names. Someone named Andrew might prefer to be called Andy, or perhaps even Drew. So what? What if Andy was chosen because the student was transgender and the person who was once known as Andrew was now Andrea?

As Prawf Jon Adler explains, the Sixth Circuit held in Meriwether v. Hartop that forcing college professors to use preferred pronouns violated their First Amendment rights of free expression and free exercise. But that was pronouns. In Kluge v. Brownsburg Community School Corp, the issue was whether a teacher could be required to use the student’s chosen name as reflected in the high school’s database under Title VII. Continue reading →

Andrew Sullivan chronicles some of our president’s abuses of power for his own personal gain. If you’re unfamiliar with what this is about, or refuse to believe that Trump isn’t your savior doing everything for you rather than him, feel free to read the sordid details in Sullivan’s post. My hope is that it’s not necessary as you’re already well aware of it. All of it. All of it increasing monthly, weekly, daily, as it pops into Trump’s head that there is someone out there he wants to crush and will happily abuse the power of his office to impose suffering on his enemies or to gain his advantage.

But then, it’s only for another three and half years, right? After all, his bluff notwithstanding, his two terms as president is all he gets, and it’s not as if he can or would try to violate the Constitution. Right? Right?!? Continue reading →

Do they look Hispanic? Do they speak Spanish or English with an accent? Do they have Hispanic names? Do they work in construction or lawn care? Do they pick up day jobs at Home Depot? Does that give rise to reasonable and articulable suspicion that they’re in the United States unlawfully? Central District of California Judge Maame E. Frimpong said no, it was racial profiling and prohibited roving ICE patrols from rounding up all the Hispanic-looking people as if they were “illegal aliens.” The Ninth Circuit affirmed the temporary restraining order.

ICE didn’t care.

The Department of Homeland Security said that the operation, named Trojan Horse, was a “targeted raid” that led to arrests of 16 undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua. Continue reading →

Ed. Note: As much as I wanted to write about RFK Jr.’s inane decision to cancel almost $500 million in vaccine contracts, I realized that I was no more qualified to challenge his action than he was to take it. Instead, I have asked an academic who is exceptionally well qualified to address the mess. This academic has chosen to stay anonymous for obvious reasons, but I very much appreciate his effort here.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy announced his decision to end 500 million dollars’ worth of development contracts covering 22 projects on vaccines using messenger RNA (mRNA). This is a decision that will result in many unnecessary deaths, especially when (not if) the next pandemic arrives. Former Surgeon General Jerome Adams stated, “this move is going to cost lives. University of Minnesota Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm said, “I don’t think I’ve seen a more dangerous decision in public health in my 50 years in the business.” Continue reading →

There have been merely a handful of trade deals announced, none of which have been reduced to serious writings and most of which are characterized by the other side as conceptual frameworks rather than actual deals. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from announcing that he’s made fabulous deals, including the one with the European Union which includes, according to him, $600,000,000,000 to be spent anyway he wants.

There might be a problem or two with Trump’s grasp of the deal. Continue reading →

Most people can agree that gerrymandering is wrong, whether done by the Democrats or Republicans, as it is designed to undermine the will of the voters. But it’s been done by both Dems and Reps to gain an improper advantage. We’re long past the question of who started it or who is more at fault. It’s wrong, and yet both parties have employed it.

But now that Trump has ordered his Texas minions to redistrict to add five House seats to the Republican roster to bolster the Republican majority in the House and stave off the potential midterm backlash against him, the Democrats in the Texas lege have taken to the wind, having no ability to prevent the Republicans from doing Trump’s bidding. Continue reading →