“The federal government agreed to temporarily hold off on construction of a planned Immigration and Customs Enforcement [concentration camp] in Northern California. The voluntary pause until Sept. 9 comes after the California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Santa Clara County officials sued the Trump administration last month to block the facility from being developed near Gilroy. The lawsuit remains ongoing. … Community members and advocates for immigrants swiftly opposed the project. ICE has consistently looked to increase its detention capacity in California, where eight [concentration camps] can now hold a combined 9,000 people, though the state has long been a thorn in the agency’s side.” (07/14/26)
“The network of ALPRs that is expanding across the country is rife with abuse and raises serious concerns about grand promises of greater security at the expense of serious encroachments on Americans’ civil liberties. The explosion of ALPRs along American roadways has given law enforcement considerable access to data on American motorists and their behavior. That these tools are marketed to agencies in heavily populated areas and constructed along our busiest roads is no coincidence.” (07/14/26)
“There’s a long history of federal government intervention in the internal affairs of unions. The grounds for such interventions have usually run the gamut from ideology and politics (e.g., the Taft-Hartley Act’s purge of Communists from the ranks of union leaders) to corruption (the control of various unions by organized crime, e.g., much of the Teamsters until roughly 1990). But the personal pique of a government official was never really the reason behind any such intervention—until today. In the past three weeks, the federal monitor charged with overseeing the United Auto Workers has become, in effect, the most significant supporter of UAW Vice President Rich Boyer’s campaign to unseat UAW President Shawn Fain in the union’s upcoming quadrennial election, to be decided by a vote of the rank and file in the next few months.” (07/14/26)
“A federal judge on Tuesday blocked U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration from enforcing a policy that targets foreign nationals who study disinformation and hate speech on social media for visa denials and deportation. Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington sided with the Coalition for Independent Technology Research in finding that the administration’s policy likely unlawfully burdens the speech of non-citizen researchers in the United States in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. The group’s lawsuit alleged that the U.S. State Department, while claiming it is fighting online censorship that Trump’s allies have argued has affected conservative speech on social media, had been engaged in a far-reaching campaign of censorship targeting researchers and anti-disinformation advocates.” (07/14/26)
“[Lindsey] Graham’s supposed transformation into the Apostle of Trump on his personal road to Damascus should have come as no surprise, for it was completely consistent with his entire career of living out one lie after another. As Mary McCarthy once said of Lillian Hellman, every word Graham ever uttered was a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’ Indeed, everything about Graham was a lie – just as are all the sickly sweet, sentimentalized tears now pouring forth at his passing.” (07/14/26)
“Several people have been killed in Russian attacks on port infrastructure in Odesa and Mykolaiv, and Ukraine said it launched drone strikes on 20 Russian vessels as the warring sides escalated their battle over the Black Sea and key trade routes. Odesa region Governor Oleh Kiper said on Wednesday that a ‘massive’ Russian drone and missile attack on the southern region continued for a fifth day, with civilian, industrial and port infrastructure coming under attack. At least three people were killed and three others wounded in the Russian strikes on Odesa, the city’s military administrator Serhiy Lysak said on Wednesday. … Moscow said on Tuesday that it was preparing to redirect exports following waves of attacks on Russian shipping in the Sea of Azov, while Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the Ukrainian attacks on shipping ‘terrorism’.” (07/15/26)
“How can one sign a contract before birth? That question can’t be answered by President Bill Clinton, who said ‘we mustn’t break the solemn compact between generations,’ in a 1998 address on Social Security. Such a speech constructs Social Security as a contractual mandate in need of protection rather than an insurance and redistribution program. Grand national ‘contracts’ should face significant scrutiny, as they borrow the moral force of a contract without the requirements that define one. … Legally, the four requirements of a contract are offer, consideration, acceptance, and an intention to create legal relations. A person not yet born cannot be offered a contract, consider it in any manner or ask for compensation, accept it in any way, or intend legal relations. By any measure, Social Security cannot be a legal contract.” (07/14/26)
