Some excerpts from the long opinion in R.J. Reynolds Tobacco v. FDA, written by Judge Don Willett and joined in relevant part by Judges Leslie Southwick and James Ho:
When Congress legislates in broad strokes, constitutional trouble sometimes follows. This case presents the opposite problem: Congress legislated with precision, and an agency treated that precision as optional. In the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA), Congress provided a detailed framework with nine prescribed warning statements that must appear on cigarette packages and advertising, while granting the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only limited, conditional authority to adjust it. The FDA's rule, however, requires the display of eleven warnings, prompting multiple cigarette manufacturers and retailers (Plaintiffs) to challenge it.
At this preliminary stage, the statutory text points one way: the FDA may require the nine warnings Congress prescribed—no more. The district court agreed and temporarily postponed the Rule's effective date after finding that Plaintiffs had shown a substantial likelihood of success on their claim that the FDA exceeded its statutory authority. Because that interim relief was no abuse of discretion, we AFFIRM….
Relevant here, the TCA made it "unlawful for any person to manufacture, package, sell, offer to sell, distribute, or import for sale or distribution" cigarettes if the package "fails to bear … one of the following labels[.]" The statute then enumerates nine warning labels addressing specific health risks associated with smoking:
An excellent piece today by Jesse Singal in The Dispatch; the whole thing is worth reading, but here are some excerpts (by the way, I much enjoy Singal's and Katie Herzog's work on Blocked and Reported; it's one of the few podcasts to which I have a paid subscription):
In the U.K., Labour MP Dawn Butler published a letter to the head of the Independent Press Standards Organisation, an independent regulatory body, arguing that "Jason would still be alive today if not for the relentless and pernicious coverage by the Times, Telegraph, Mail and Spectator, to name a few," and calling for (unspecified) "decisive action" in response to his death. The British journalist and broadcaster Will Self took things even further, posting a lengthy open letter to Prime Minister Andy Burnham calling for a crackdown that sounds far more Moscow than London. Self argued that the Crown Prosecution Service "should be examining the matter, and the police should be impounding computers" before claiming that "This is not an attack upon a free press—it is a necessarily immediate defence of one." An open letter arguing that "Self-regulation of the press has comprehensively failed" was signed by a number of British academics and politicians, including Green Party leader Zack Polanski…..
[But] the call for more scrutiny of media, or even outright censorship of it, is astonishing in light of the facts of this case. It was because of the U.K.'s lack of press protections that this story took so long to come out, which, in the end, increased the damage done to Arday. Times Higher Education had a story in the works last year, but Arday sicced an infamous British law firm, Carter-Ruck, on the outlet, killing it. That would not have happened in the United States, because our defamation laws are much more media-friendly (as strange as that might sound during the Trump era).
Yesterday, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit concluded that states cannot limit "no excuse" absentee voting to the elderly. Judge Gregory wrote for the panel in Grant v. Belangia, joined by Judges Harris and Richardson. His opinion begins:
The Constitution grants states broad authority to regulate "[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections," U.S. Const. art. 1, § 4, including whether to permit absentee voting. But when a state offers a method for casting a ballot, the Constitution forbids restricting access to that voting method based on any prohibited ground, including age. U.S. Const. amend. XXVI. Because the South Carolina statute at issue restricts access to "no excuse" absentee-by-mail ballots to voters sixty-five years of age or older, we agree with Plaintiffs that it violates the Twenty-Sixth Amendment.
While concluding South Carolina's law violated the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, the panel rejected the challengers' Equal Protection claim.
The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
In rejecting South Carolina's law, the court concluded that the differential treatment of voters based upon their age constitutes an "abridgement" of the right to vote. From the body of the opinion:
Construing the Twenty-Sixth Amendment in harmony with the Constitution's other voting rights amendments, we find that the unequal allocation of voting access based on age constitutes an abridgement of Plaintiffs' right to vote. . . .
the Twenty-Sixth Amendment's text, structure, and history demonstrate its purpose to place age-based restrictions on adult citizens' electoral participation within the same family of constitutional prohibitions as other forbidden bases for denying or abridging the right to vote. . . .
State governments retain the primary authority to determine the contours of the right to vote, and the voting rights amendments do not change that basic structure or create a freestanding universal "right to vote." See U.S. Const. art. I, § 4. However, the amendments do forbid states from administering their voting rules in a discriminatory manner based on a protected characteristic. . . .
the right to vote "ought to be" what a state has defined it to be, but administered without discrimination based on a protected characteristic. So, Plaintiffs must have the same access to the ballot provided to the favored group of voters—here, those age sixty-five and over. . . . Voting laws must adhere to the Amendment's "mandate of neutrality" when it comes to age. . . . In other words, a voting law cannot make it harder for one group to vote than another because of their age. . . .
We do not doubt that South Carolina retains "broad powers to determine the conditions under which the right of suffrage may be exercised," but . . . once the state makes absentee-by-mail voting available, it may not allocate access to it in a manner forbidden by the Constitution.
So what's the remedy for this constitutional violation? The panel punted on that question:
We leave questions about the timing of a remedy to the district court in the first instance, recognizing that "considerations specific to election cases" counsel against court ordered remedies that might cause voter confusion when elections are imminent. See Purcell. . . .
As the opinion notes, the Fourth Circuit's conclusion here is in conflict with recent decisions from the Fifth and Seventh Circuits. Thus I expect South Carolina to seek certiorari and, given the circuit split, I would think a grant is reasonably likely.
East Plano Islamic Center ("EPIC") brings this action to vindicate its right to conduct religious funeral and burial rites in accordance with Islamic faith and tradition. EPIC is a nonprofit Islamic organization in Plano, Texas, formed to "provide religious, social, and educational services to inspire the Muslim community to fulfill its responsibility and contribute to the betterment of society by following the principles of Quran and the noble life of Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him)."
One of the sincerely held religious beliefs of EPIC and its Muslim membership is the collective obligation held by the religious community to perform proper Islamic funeral rites for the deceased. Islamic religious law calls for prompt ritual cleansing, shrouding, prayer, and burial in which the integrity and dignity of the decedent's remains are scrupulously maintained throughout. To that end, EPIC offers traditional, non-commercial, Muslim funeral services and burials; especially for Muslim families unable to afford the services. EPIC assists Muslim families by arranging and facilitating religious funeral services (washing, shrouding, and performing the Janaza prayer) in partnership with licensed funeral providers. …
Chapter 651 of the Texas Occupations Code regulates the funeral industry in Texas, requiring licensure for persons or entities that engage in the business of funeral directing or operating a funeral establishment. The Texas Funeral Services Commission ("TFSC") is tasked with enforcing these provisions ….
On March 26, 2025, TFSC issued a cease-and-desist letter (the "C&D Letter") to EPIC, ordering it to immediately halt what the Commission alleged were unlicensed funeral service operations. Specifically, the C&D Letter accused EPIC of operating as a funeral home without an establishment license, in violation of Texas Occupations Code § 651.351…. The C&D Letter did not include which specific practices EPIC was engaging in that were alleged to be in violation of the Occupation Code…. EPIC alleges it was not running a place of business and was not in the business of embalming or funeral directing….
EPIC contends that the TFSC's action violates both state and federal constitutional and statutory protections for religious exercise, as well as exceeds its statutory authority. EPIC points to TFSC's prior affirmations that religious organizations could perform burial-related rites so long as they were not doing so for profit….
The court concluded that, if the facts are as plaintiff has plausibly alleged them to be, the conduct of defendants TFSC and its then-Chair Kristin Tips would be unconstitutional:
In 2017, Indiana passed what we call the "aid-or-assist" law, which forbids knowingly or intentionally aiding or assisting an unemancipated pregnant minor in obtaining an abortion without first satisfying Indiana's parental consent and notice requirements. Plaintiff Planned Parenthood provides to its clients factually accurate information about abortion providers who operate lawfully in other states. Plaintiff provides such information to unemancipated pregnant minors who seek it. Defendants are Indiana state officials who maintain that providing such information violates the aid-or-assist law unless plaintiff can show that it first satisfied the same stringent parental consent requirements that must be satisfied before a minor may obtain an actual abortion….
Defendants argue that First Amendment protections do not apply here on the theories that the information and referrals are "speech integral to criminal conduct" or merely "incidental" to conduct. We are unpersuaded by both arguments. The aid-or-assist law, as applied to the information and referrals at issue, is a content-based regulation of speech.
The court rejected the state's argument that the law regulates only speech that fits within the First Amendment exception for speech "integral to unlawful conduct":
The Routledge Handbook of Classical Liberalism is now available - for free! - on Amazon Kindle. I don't know how long this generous offer will last, so interested readers should act fast. The volume is edited by big-name libertarian/classical liberal scholars Richard Epstein, Mario Rizzo, and Liya Palagashvili. Epstein, of course, is probably the most prominent living libertarian legal scholar in the world. There are chapters on a wide range of issues in law, economics, and political theory, including one by me on "Land-Use Regulation." A version of my chapter is also available on SSRN here. Other contributors include such luminaries as Peter Boettke, Tom Merrill, Richard Wagner, Alex Nowrasteh, and many, many more.
Here is the publisher's summary of the book:
The Routledge Handbook of Classical Liberalism provides a comprehensive analysis of classical liberal theory including a survey of the theory's central ideas and arguments, and the application of these ideas to contemporary issues.
Chapters providing theoretical analyses are interwoven with coverage of wide‑ranging, concrete applications such as public health and healthcare, technology, policing, taxation and wealth, constitutional structures, and more. Across these areas, this handbook demonstrates how classical liberalism provides a unified approach over a divergent set of problems, providing a statement of modern classical liberalism serving as a research tool for a wide variety of individuals across the ideological spectrum. Classical liberalism is a systematic effort to ensure that the existence of the state does not abridge the fundamental rights and liberties of individuals, especially including property and contract rights. It holds that laws must satisfy the criteria of the Rule of Law so that stable relations between the individual and the state may develop.
The Routledge Handbook of Classical Liberalism is an authoritative and key reference text for students, academics, and researchers engaged in the study of political ideologies, political science, political economy, economics, law, social policy, and related fields.
Land-use regulation is a major function of virtually every government in the world. It raises many issues for classical liberalism. This chapter provides an overview of three of the most important areas of land-use policy: the use of eminent domain to forcibly take property for government-approved projects, regulations that restrict property owners' use of their land, and the relationship between property rights in land and migration restrictions.
Section 2 covers the use of eminent domain to take private property and arguments for its limitation to genuinely "public" projects, as opposed to coerced transfers between private owners. Unconstrained use of eminent domain is a serious threat to property rights and hampers economic development.
Section 3 considers regulatory restrictions on land use that do not involve physical occupation of property. There is a long-standing debate about the value of such restrictions and whether the government should pay owners compensation. The most significant regulatory restrictions of this type in many nations are zoning rules restricting housing construction.
Finally, Section 4 provides a critical overview of property rights rationales for restricting mobility, particularly in the form of international migration. Such theories justify severely constraining the liberty and property rights of both migrants and natives.
Although I'm a contributor to both this volume and the earlier Routledge Handbook of Libertarianism, as well as the Cambridge Handbook of Classical Liberal Thought, I am still not sure whether there really is a meaningful difference between libertarianism and classical liberalism. See here for my analysis of possible distinctions between the two, and why I'm not convinced they work. I myself prefer the term "libertarian" to describe myself. But that's mostly an aesthetic preference, not one based on substance.
From yesterday's Complaint in Republic of Azerbaijan v. CNN, Inc. (D. Del.):
… Azerbaijan … brings this defamation complaint against [CNN] … for intentionally falsely reporting that Azerbaijan permitted Israel to use its territory to launch attacks against Iran, causing immeasurable reputational harm to Azerbaijan and endangering Azerbaijani civilians….
On March 5, 2026, four drones penetrated Azerbaijani airspace and struck several targets. One of the drones exploded near a secondary school, injuring two civilians. Another damaged a terminal at the nearby Nakhchivan Airport.
Five days earlier, war had broken out between Iran, on the one hand, and the United States and Israel, on the other (the "Iran War"). Azerbaijan, which shares a border with Iran to the south, is not and has never been a participant in the Iran War. Azerbaijan has not supported military operations by any of the warring nations.
Azerbaijan maintains a policy of neutrality and independence. Azerbaijan does not host any foreign military bases on its territory and, as a non-aligned state, maintains a strict official policy and legislative framework against foreign military footprints.
But, on June 5, 2026, CNN's reckless reporting threatened to drag Azerbaijan into war. In a CNN World post titled "Exclusive: Israel sent troops to Azerbaijan during Iran war, sources say," CNN falsely claimed that Azerbaijan had allowed Israel to use its territory to launch attacks against Iran.
An NBC News report raises some serious First Amendment concerns for potentially prosecuting someone for having dishonest motives in running for office:
A grand jury last week issued subpoenas to compel information from witnesses linked to the campaign of Dan J. Sullivan, a law enforcement official told NBC News.
The former schoolteacher who recently registered as a Republican is under investigation for potentially being part of a conspiracy to confuse voters and steal votes away from the incumbent, Dan S. Sullivan, who has been in office since 2015….
As to the potential charges, NBC reports:
The federal investigation is looking for possible wire fraud or a conspiracy to deprive Alaska voters of a free and fair elections process, which could be a civil rights violation, two people familiar with the probe previously told NBC News.
From an Arizona Supreme Court panel in Metke v. Oxford Bank(Justices Clint Bolick, William Montgomery, Kathryn King, and Maria Elena Cruz):
Petitioner contends that the court of appeals abused its discretion by denying his motion to seal in a one-sentence order that made no findings of fact and performed no balancing of interests. He argues that Rule 123 of the Rules of the Supreme Court, Rule 5.4(c)(2) of the Arizona Rules of Civil Procedure, and controlling case law require the court to weigh his asserted privacy interests against the public's interest in access and to set forth written findings before denying relief.
Petitioner maintains that the litigation reveals sensitive information, including "health-related absences and details of his termination." His affidavit explains that he has been advised that job offers have been withdrawn when background investigations reveal "pending civil litigation." He incorrectly cites A.R.S. § 23-364(G) as reflecting a legislative policy of confidentiality for retaliation claims. He maintains that the court is required to consider and articulate the factors in Ariz. R. Civ. P. 5.4(c)(2) before denying his request.
Rule 123 articulates a policy of open access to the records of the judicial department. Its open records policy declares that "this state has always favored open government and an informed citizenry," and that "the records in all courts and administrative offices of the Judicial Department of the State of Arizona are presumed to be open to any member of the public for inspection or to obtain copies at all times during regular office hours." Ariz. R. Sup. Ct. 123(c)(1).
More than a decade ago, states began enacting laws to prohibit so-called "revenge porn." Some partners would voluntarily exchange sexual photographs, but after the relationship ended, one of the partners would share the intimate images as a form of revenge. Later, the term "non-consensual pornography" became more common, as the pictures were not always shared by former partners.
Many of the early bills imposed what was effectively a strict liability standard without any scienter requirement. Over time, these bills were modified to include a scienter requirement, and these guardrails were essential to survive strict scrutiny.
While I doubted the constitutionality of early revenge porn bills, I came to the conclusion that the scienter requirement, as well as other guard rails, saved the laws. For example, the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the state's revenge porn law in light of this narrow tailoring. That court observed in State v. Casillas (2020):
Second, a defendant must "intentionally" disseminate the image. Minn. Stat. § 617.261, subd. 1. This mens rea requirement means that a defendant must knowingly and voluntarily disseminate a private sexual image; negligent, accidental, or even reckless distributions are not proscribed. This specific intent requirement further narrows the statute and keeps it from "target[ing] broad categories of speech." Muccio, 890 N.W.2d at 928.
This background helps explain why a new Minnesota law is unconstitutional. This statute is commonly called an AI "Nudification" Ban, but it sweeps far more broadly. It provides in part:
Subd. 2. Nudification prohibited.
(a) A person who owns or controls a website, application, software, program, or other service must not:
(1) allow a user to access, download, or use the website, application, software, program, or other service to nudify an image or video; or
(2) nudify an image or video on behalf of a user.
The statute defines "nudify," in part, as "an image or video is altered or generated to depict an intimate part not depicted in an original unaltered image or video of an identifiable individual." The only exemption is when the web site "requires the technical skill of a user to nudify an image or video." The statute lacks any scienter requirement. The statute also lacks any exemption for images that have artistic, political, medical, or other educational value.
xAI, the maker of Grok, challenged the constitutionality of the ban. The district court denied the TRO and set the case for a preliminary injunction proceeding. That briefing has now completed.
xAI argues (correctly in my view) that the statute's lack of a scienter requirement renders the law unconstitutional:
The Act then compounds the problem by omitting every limit that might have confined it to addressing the harm the Legislature described. It has no scienter requirement, so liability turns on what a user managed to do rather than on anything the provider knew or could have prevented. It never mentions consent, so a woman who edits a photograph of herself is treated exactly like a stranger who edits her picture.
Minnesota doesn't really engage that argument, but instead contends that under intermediate scrutiny, there is no scienter requirement. I don't think this argument works. This statute is content-based, as it triggers liability directly based on the content of the generated image. (This is an argument I have advanced for some time in the 3D-printed gun litigation.) An image generated with people fully-clothed would not be subject to liability. But a picture of a shirtless man wearing speedos could generate liability. The absence of a scienter requirement, in this case, means the statute lacks the requisite narrow tailing. xAI's brief cites the Minnesota Supreme Court case mentioned above.
xAI recognizes how this tool can be abused, and the brief demonstrates numerous safeguards that Grock has put in place. The PI brief begins:
A state that seeks to guard its citizens against real harms nevertheless must also respect those same citizens' fundamental rights in the effort. In enacting HF 1606, the trouble is not that Minnesota sought to advance a legitimate interest in prohibiting the dissemination of artificially generated nude images of real people without their consent. xAI does not contest that interest, and it strictly prohibits its users from generating nude or sexualized images of people without their consent. Indeed, xAI has filed suit against users who evade its extensive technological blockers to generate such images in violation of this strict prohibition. The problem is that HF 1606 stretches far beyond the Legislature's claimed target to hit other, equally important rights protected by the Constitution.
The problem of overbreadth is something Minnesota should be familiar with. More than three decades ago, in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, the Supreme Court declared another well-intentioned law from the Land of 10,000 Lakes as a violation of the First Amendment. Justice Scalia observed:
Let there be no mistake about our belief that burning a cross in someone's front yard is reprehensible. But St. Paul has sufficient means at its disposal to prevent such behavior without adding the First Amendment to the fire.
Much the same can be said about the nudification law. The intentional use of AI for generating nude images of people is reprehensible. but Minnesota has the means to craft a carefully tailored statute to achieve this goal. In the First Amendment context, the court reviews the statute as drafted, and not the statute the lawyers present.
Voter confusion caused by candidates with similar names - as in the current Alaska Senate race - is part of the much larger problem of political ignorance.
As Cornell law Professor Michael Dorf explains in an interesting recent blog post, the currently ongoing Senate election in Alaska includes two candidates with almost identical names, one of whom may well be in the race to siphon off votes from the other:
In today's Senate primary election, Alaska voters will have many choices, including two named Dan Sullivan. One is the incumbent Republican. The other is a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg, Alaska with the same name. Republicans claim that the man I'll call Teacher Dan is running for the sole (or at least main) purpose of siphoning votes off from the incumbent and thus potentially handing victory to the Democratic challenger in a tight race. That's a plausible allegation given the jungle primary format. The top four finishers in today's primary advance to the general election. If two of those candidates are named Dan Sullivan, that could be enough to tip the outcome in favor of Democratic challenger and current House member Mary Peltola.
Is Teacher Dan in it only (or mostly) to siphon votes from Incumbent Dan? A NY Times story today reaches an uncertain verdict. Teacher Dan vociferously denies that he's running as a spoiler/siphoner, professing a desire to turn the Republican Party away from MAGAism and back towards its traditional norms and positions. However, the same story also indicates that Teacher Dan's views, as expressed through activism and donations, are pretty mainstream liberal Democratic….
The names are not quite completely identical. The incumbent senator is Dan S. Sullivan, and "Teacher Dan" (as Dorf calls him) is Dan J. Sullivan. But the similarity is great.
As Dorf notes, if "Teacher Dan's" campaign succeeds in exploiting voter confusion about the two men's names, there is an obvious sense in which it is undermining effective voter choice. I agree, even though - like Dorf - I would ultimately prefer that Democrat Mary Peltola win this race, as her positions are much less bad than those of most Republicans in the current Trump-dominated version of the GOP.
As Dorf notes, this is far from the first time that voters may get confused by candidates with similar names. In addition to cases he indicates, there is the example of the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, where little-known candidate George Schwartzman finished ninth out of 135 candidates, beating several better-known ones, likely because voters were confused by the fact that his name is similar to that of famous actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger still won easily. But in a close election, the nearly 11,000 votes that Schwartzman got might have proved decisive.
Dorf points out that if "Teacher Dan" really is in the race primarily to siphon off votes through confusion, it is not clear whether his actions are illegal. While such exploitation of confusion is morally reprehensible, I am not sure it is a good idea to prosecute candidates who do this. They are indeed trying to deceive voters. But the same is true of many other candidates who routinely lie about and distort issues of all kinds.
Donald Trump is a particularly egregious example, going all the way back to his first campaign in 2016, and more recently with his lies about the 2020 election and other issues. But more conventional politicians also often resort to lies and deception, even if not to the same degree. President Obama, for example, famously lied when he claimed that, under the Affordable Care Act, "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it." That deception won the 2013 Politifact Lie of the Year award. But it still helped Obama get reelected in 2012. I am not sure exploiting voter confusion about names is any worse than exploiting their ignorance about policy issues like crime, immigration, and health care.
Trying to prevent such exploitation through criminal and civil liability is likely to violate the First Amendment. In addition, it would likely end up giving incumbent political leaders broad power to curb speech and control electoral campaigns that they cannot be trusted with.
Voter confusion about candidates with similar names is just another example of this broader problem. Voters who follow politics closely and pay careful attention to their ballots should have little trouble distinguishing between the two Dan Sullivans. Indeed, they would likely know about this issue ahead of time thanks to all the media coverage it has gotten, and would thereby watch out for it when at the polls. The same goes for the difference between Schwarzenegger and Schwartzman, and other such situations. But, due to the incentive structure of voting, most people do not pay such close attention and are not especially careful in filling out ballots. Thus, many might be confused by candidates with similar names.
There is no easy solution to the problem of voter ignorance. But I assess a range of possible options in my 2023 article on "Top-Down and Bottom-Up Solutions to the Problem of Political Ignorance, and in my earlier book Democracy and Political Ignorance. I believe the best approach is to make fewer decisions at the ballot box and more by "voting with your feet," where incentives to seek out information and evaluate it wisely are much better. But I recognize that any effective approach will take time, and there may be no one fix that is sufficient by itself. We may need to pursue multiple strategies. In the meantime, voters are likely to continue to be ignorant and confused about a variety of issues, and politicians and interest groups are likely to keep on exploiting that.
If J. ultimately is charged with violating the Ku Klux Klan Act (18 U.S.C. s 241), which punishes a conspiracy to "injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State. . . in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States," I think J. would have a very strong First Amendment defense (and likely for the wire fraud claims too, but I don't know enough about what the basis for those charges might be)….
[T]his is not a case about tricking someone about the mechanics of the election not to vote. Nor is it a case of impersonation: J. is really named "Daniel Sullivan." It is not even a case about J. telling a campaign lie….
This is a case about someone running for office with impure motives who is lucky enough to have a name that could confuse some voters….
I don't see how the government could criminalize his running for office for having impure motives. And if it could do so, then it could be a crime every time that the Republican Party backs a Green Party candidate, or Democrats support a MAGA candidate in a primary in the hopes that the candidate would be weaker against a Democrat in the general election. This stuff happens all the time.
It would be quite dangerous for the state to start criminally prosecuting people for their political beliefs and secret motives. Are we going to put people on trial and probe their political allegiances?
I largely agree with Hasen's analysis on this point. "Teacher Dan's" behavior may be reprehensible, as is that of many politicians who use lies and deception exploit voter ignorance. But it probably cannot be prosecuted.
People hold up "mass deportation now" signs at the 2024 Republican National Convention. (Carol Guzy/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom)
Standard estimates of the illegal/undocumented immigrant population in the United States range from about 11 million to 15 million. But right-wing immigration restrictionists often assert the true figure is much higher, as with Donald Trump's claim that it is 25 million. The implicit assumption is that the higher the number, the stronger the case for mass deportation. But, as my Cato Institute colleague David Bier - a leading immigration policy expert - explains in a recent article (fuller, but paywalled version here) the exact opposite is true:
The math is simple. The more illegal immigrants, the more Americans would have to pay to deport them. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that a single deportation costs on average $18,245. This means that when Trump invents the presence of 10 million more immigrants, he's adding a theoretical $182.4 billion to the price tag.
And that's just the cost of deportation. The cost to federal revenue is even starker. Illegal immigrants pay sales tax — and, often, Social Security tax, income tax and property tax. The more illegal immigrants we deport, the more the cost of funding government would shift to American citizens and legal residents. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that recent illegal immigrant arrivals would have cut deficits by nearly $1 trillion over 10 years, and found that Trump's crackdown in 2025 had already erased $500 billion of those savings.
Illegal immigrants receive very few taxpayer benefits because they are ineligible for all the largest federal public benefit programs, and most states also restrict eligibility for smaller state programs. Since the benefits being paid are a known quantity, a larger illegal immigrant population suggests that the cost per immigrant is actually far lower than we think.
But the taxpayer expenses are dwarfed by the broader economic impact: less stuff produced for the American people. The Peterson Institute for International Economics has estimated that just 8.3 million deportations would leave U.S. gross domestic product 7.4% lower than otherwise by 2028, the equivalent of about $2.5 trillion. Lower output means fewer goods and services — everything from food to childcare — for Americans.
Higher figures also imply that the illegal migrants have an even lower crime rate than under conventional estimates of their numbers (which already show them to commit crimes at a much lower rate than native-born Americans):
If the Trump administration's hyperinflated figures were true, it would also suggest that illegal immigrants commit crimes at much lower rates than we thought. Using a far lower estimate of the number of illegal immigrants in the country, scholars had already calculated that, compared to native-born Americans, illegal immigrants were far less likely to be incarcerated. But again, since we know who is in prison, if the free immigrant population were to grow, the immigrant incarceration rate would fall in turn.
In other words, the Trump administration apparently believes that illegal immigrants are far less represented in the crime data than anyone else. Of course, the rate of crime — not the absolute number of crimes — is what matters, because the rate is how we estimate the likelihood that someone will become a victim of a crime. More immigrants would mean a much lower victimization rate — that the presence of illegal immigrants reduces the likelihood that Americans will be victimized.
Furthermore, deporting larger numbers of people increases the number sent back to what for many is a lifetime of poverty and oppression, and sometimes an early death. It is unjust to use force to consign people to such a fate merely because they were born to the wrong parents in the wrong place.
As David Bier notes, some illegal migrants nonetheless do commit crimes, even if at a lower rate than US citizens. The answer to that problem is simple: just punish them the same as anyone else! As I have explained in other writings (e.g. here and here), we can significantly reduce crime rates, overall simply by abolishing ICE and transferring its resources to ordinary police, tasked with fighting violent and property crime.
Plaintiff, a student at the University of Michigan, was disciplined for providing an "assertedly 'fake' telehealth medical note" to obtain an accommodation for her coursework. The University treated this as academic dishonesty, resulting in Plaintiff's suspension for the Winter 2026 semester and the inclusion of a disciplinary notation on her transcript. Plaintiff maintains that the note is genuine and filed this lawsuit against numerous University of Michigan officials and Academic Affairs employees alleging due process violations.
At the same time, Plaintiff filed a motion to proceed under the "Jane Doe" pseudonym. According to Plaintiff, "[t]his case challenges discipline imposed by a public university that is based on, and would necessarily litigate, Plaintiff's private medical information and education records." Moreover, continues Plaintiff, "[p]ublic disclosure of [her] identity would cause concrete and irreparable harm, including stigma associated with an 'academic dishonesty' finding and enduring damage to Plaintiff's educational and professional prospects due to disclosure of protected health information, including her pending graduate and professional school applications."
But cases raising "stigma-plus" due process claims, like this one, involve the disclosure of sensitive or stigmatizing information. Plaintiffs' discomfort with that fact is not sufficient to permit her to proceed anonymously, even absent any opposition from the defense….
Below is my list of speaking engagements for the Fall 2026 semester. Unless otherwise noted, all events are free and open to the public—and in person. The listed times are those in the time zone where the event is being held.
I will likely add additional events and information to this post, as they are scheduled, and update details on existing ones. In the meantime if your university, think tank, research institute or other similar organization would like to invite me to speak (either virtually or in person) on any topic within my expertise, I am open for business!
I will note that there are only very limited potential additional speaking slots during the fall semester, because I am a visiting professor at the University of Virginia, which creates some logistical constraints, given the need to split time between Charlottesville and my family's home in the Washington, DC area. But that arrangement will end in early December, and I can be more flexible after then, and in the spring semester.
September 17, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC, 5:30-7:30 PM: "Tariffs, Nondelegation, and Executive Power" (tentative title), panel on "Democratic Governance and the Rule of Law." Other participants include include Carol Anderson (Emory), Bruce Swartz (Yale), Steve Vladeck (Georgetown), and Mary McCord (Georgetown) as moderator.
September 29, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, time TBA: "Previewing the 2026-27 Supreme Court Term," (tentative title). Annual Supreme Court Preview Panel.
October 5, Washington and Lee University School of Law, Lexington, VA, 11 AM-1 PM: "Tariffs and the Separation of Powers." Sponsored by the Washington and Lee Federalist Society.
October 12, Emory Law School, Atlanta, GA, 12:15 PM-1:45 PM: "The Constitutional Case Against Exclusionary Zoning." Sponsored by the Emory Law School Federalist Society.
October 16, London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom, 2-3:30 PM: "Foot Voting, Federalism, and Political Representation" (tentative title), panel on "Rethinking the Rules of Political Representation," conference on "Taming Polarization: Reforming the American Federal Republic." Other panel participants will be Jenna Bednar (University of Michigan), Jonathan Rodden (Stanford University), and Nicola Lacey (LSE), as chair. Sponsored by the LSE Phelan US Centre. More information about this event available here.
October 21, Georgetown University Law Center, 5:45 PM-7:30 PM: "Is the Major Questions Doctrine Consistent with Textualism?" Debate with Prof. Chad Squitieri, Daniel Webster Debate Series. Sponsored by the Georgetown Federalist Society. I will be taking the affirmative side.
October 23, Boston University School of Law, Boston, MA, time TBA: "Tariffs and Executive Power," Panel on "Legal Interventions and Executive Overreach," symposium on "Presidentialism and the Escalation of Executive Power." Other panel participants will include Aaron Nielson (Univ. of Texas), Matt Segal (ACLU), and Corinne Blalock (Harvard).
November 3, Berry College, Mount Berry, GA, 11 AM-12:15 PM: "Tariffs and the Separation of Powers" (tentative title).
November 3, Berry College, Mount Berry, GA, 7-8:15 PM: "Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom."
The tragic apparent suicide of Cambridge Prof. Jason Arday, following what appeared to be at least credible public allegations that he had engaged in false biographical claims, plagiarism, and (potentially) data falsification, has led people to argue that some in the media misbehaved in the matter. To quote Michelle Goldberg in the N.Y. Times yesterday ("After a Scholar's Awful Death, Mistaken Calls for Censorship"),
In the wake of Arday's death, many on the left are blaming the media. "The media lynched Jason Arday," declared Ibram X. Kendi. The head of a Cambridge college called for an official inquiry into the "media onslaught."
Important British progressives, including Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party, and several Labour M.P.s, signed an open letter demanding some sort of official oversight of journalistic decision making. "Self-regulation of the press has comprehensively failed," it said. The writer Will Self called, in an open letter to Prime Minister Andy Burnham, for the police to begin "impounding computers," presumably belonging to people involved in covering the scandal.
I think it's often helpful in such situations to broaden the frame a bit, beyond the particular cause célèbre before us. It's human nature to be influenced in such situations by one's feelings towards the particular person involved, whether sympathy or antipathy. Looking at a wider range of examples can help us get beyond this bias.
I therefore thought I'd pass along some other examples of people committing suicide following episodes in which they were accused of misconduct, often publicly, and faced actual or possible loss of jobs or other business opportunities:
In 2020, Dartmouth professor and department chair David Bucci was accused of "looking the other way" as to sexual harassment in the department, and "intimidate[ed] those who had spoken out." "Some colleagues shunned him. A woman at his food co-op called him a 'disgusting human being,' said his wife, Katie Bucci." Less than a year later, he committed suicide.
In 2008, two University of Iowa professors (Mark O. Weiger and Arthur H. Miller) accused of sexually harassing their students, killed themselves.
In 2011, University of Idaho professor Ernesto A. Bustamante was accused of threatening his ex-girlfriend (a graduate student), and "was either fired or forced to resign as a result." After that, he murdered the ex-girlfriend and killed himself.
In 2019, German historian Marie Sophie Hingst committed suicide after having been found to have falsified much of her life story, including claims that many of her relatives had been murdered in the Holocaust. According to Wikipedia, "She was castigated in the German media, leading to the destruction of her reputation."
In 2014, Japanese researcher Yoshiki Sasai committed suicide after his papers were retracted by the journal Nature based on "duplicated and mixed-up images, mislabeling, faulty descriptions, and 'inexplicable discrepancies ….'"
In 2017, Japanese researcher Yoshihiro Sato apparently committed suicide after another researcher had uncovered what was described as "fabricat[ing] data."
In 2021, Portsmouth (England) student Alistair Hall committed suicide after having been found to have plagiarized his final dissertation.
In 2020, University of North Carolina Wilmington professor Mike Adams committed suicide after a wave of condemnation for various tweets that were said to be racist, sexist, and the like. His "rhetoric had been labeled 'vile' and 'hateful' by his own university," and the controversy had gotten a great deal of public attention and news coverage. In the wake of the controversy, he had apparently agreed to retire.
In 2017, porn actress August Ames killed herself "after sparking an online backlash over allegedly homophobic comments." "Ames' death occurred after she was criticized on Twitter for refusing to work with a male performers who had previously appeared in gay adult films."
Government censorship is deeply un-American. That fundamental principle predates the Republic, with our Founders recognizing that "the freedom of the press is one of the great[est] bulwarks of liberty." And it is no less true today, as the Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed only two years ago: the government may not "use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression." NRA v. Vullo (2024).
This case concerns the Administration's sustained effort to do just that. Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts.
That campaign began in this Administration's earliest days and has only intensified since. Again and again, the Administration has attacked ABC's speech—the stories its journalists report and the viewpoints its network programs air. Over time, those attacks have escalated into express demands that ABC be stripped of its broadcast licenses because of its speech.
In prosecuting the Administration's campaign against free speech on network television, the Commission fights on several fronts using its expansive regulatory powers. What has unfolded, in the words of sitting FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, is "a sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control, carried out through the weaponization of the FCC's authority as a federal regulator and aimed at pressuring a free and independent press and all media into submission."
