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5/17/1954: Brown v. Board of Education and Bolling v. Sharpe are decided. The post Today in Supreme Court History: May 17, 1954 appeared first on Reason.com.

In March, longtime Senior Editor Brian Doherty died in a hiking accident. He was 57. To celebrate his life, this month's archives are excerpts from his 30 years of work at Reason. 3 years ago March 2023 "In the post–Donald Trump GOP, support for the Iraq War has largely become anathema. Yet the U.S. has still not fully internalized that war's lessons. The Iraq debacle should have taught the U.S. it can never again scare itself into war based on guesses about how sinister some enemy is or will be

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

5/16/1918: The Sedition Act of 1918 is enacted. The Supreme Court upheld prosecutions brought under this law in Schenck, Debs, and Abrams. The post Today in Supreme Court History: May 16, 1918 appeared first on Reason.com.

In recent years, observers have closely tracked the rise of pro-union sentiments on the political right. During his reelection campaign, President Donald Trump garnered headlines for skipping a presidential debate to visit United Auto Workers (UAW), who were on strike in Michigan, while officials like Vice President JD Vance and Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) have made waves for their pro-union bent. Perhaps most prominently, Teamsters President Sean O'Brien was featured as a speaker at the GOP conven

https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/d2h6a3ly6ooodw.cloudfront.net/reasontv_audio_8371064.mp3 1x 1.1x 1.25x 1.5x 2x 3x :15 :15 Download Why Civilization Needs Better Manuals Stewart Brand has spent decades shaping how we think about technology, the environment, and the future. He first came to prominence in the 1960s as co-creator of t

Sixty years ago today, Mao Zedong issued the May 16 Notification, a document frequently seen as the opening shot of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. In this period, Mao fought his rivals in China's power structure by declaring them counterrevolutionaries and urging the country to rise up against them. Young radicals known as Red Guards heeded the dictator's call, and soon a mishmash of groups were chaotically clashing. The ensuing years saw violent rebellion, even more violent repressi

The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

Today's order is here; the application that was denied is here. The state's argument for a stay, which the Court rejected, begins thus: Days before Virginia's deadline to begin administering the 2026 election for members of the United States House of Representatives, the Supreme Court of Virginia invalidated an amendment to the Commonwealth's Constitution that authorizes the General Assembly to adopt new congressional maps. The Court purported to find a procedural flaw in the amendment's passage

From yesterday's decision by Judge Anthony Trenga (E.D. Va.) in Fseisi v. O'Keefe Media Group: The Complaint alleges the following: Defendant James O'Keefe is a conservative political activist whose organization, Defendant O'Keefe Media Group ("OMG"), frequently engages in "sting" operations in which its agents use false identities to arrange meetings with individuals affiliated with government, mainstream media, or progressive organizations, and surreptitiously record them with the goal of publ

Our politics have been analogized to Veep. A more apt comparison some days is that we are living in a cartoon. Every good cartoon needs a supervillain or three. Our supervillains created millions of jobs, made goods cheaper and far easier to obtain, and revolutionized access to information, among other terrible, terrible things.  I am referring to billionaires. Reasonable people will debate, and disagree on, the best way to sketch out the tax code. Protestations to "tax the rich" have long been

A woman is suing Houston County in southeast Alabama for violating her constitutional rights after she was forced to give birth preterm with no medical assistance in the county jail.  The lawsuit, filed in federal court earlier this week, accuses the county, jail, and officers involved, in part, of deliberate indifference to serious medical needs and the denial of medical care in violation of the 14th Amendment.  Tiffany McElroy was 34 weeks pregnant with a history of preterm labor when she was

PJM Interconnection, the largest electricity grid operator in the nation, held its annual company meeting in Baltimore earlier this week. For Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, the event was an opportunity to voice grievances about rising energy costs.  "I am here to say plainly that PJM can—and must—do more for ratepayers," Moore said, adding that PJM's system "isn't working." Moore's comments come as the price of residential electricity in the state has reached 22.4 cents per kilowatt-hour. T

Last week, I recorded a We the People podcast episode for the National Constitution Center discussing the increased volume of applications and orders on the Supreme Court's interim docket, aka the "shadow docket," with Professor Steven Vladeck of the Georgetown Law Center, moderated by Julie Silverbrook. The podcast has now been released as is available for listen here, or on your podcast platform of choice. The post Vladeck v. Adler on the Shadow Docket appeared first on Reason.com.

From Payne v. State, decided last week, in an opinion by Justice Benjamin Land: Hannah Payne was sentenced to life in prison plus 13 years for the murder and false imprisonment of Kenneth Herring and the possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. In response to Payne's motion for new trial, the assistant district attorney assigned to the case, Deborah Leslie, filed a brief that contained non-existent cases and cases that do not stand for the proposition asserted in the brief. In

  Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice. Good news! With near-unanimous bipartisan support, the Colorado General Assembly this week passed HB26-1250, a civil forfeiture reform bill that closes a longstanding loophole in Colorado law allowing property to be forfeited without a criminal conviction. The bill also makes Colorado one of the first states in the nation to grant forfeiture defendants the right to

Maria and Peter are students and meet up for a late dinner. Peter asks Maria whether Tom is at the party that they intend to go to after dinner. Maria answers that Tom is at the party. After all, Tom had told her that he would be at the party. When they arrive at the party, it turns out that Tom had changed his plans, and is not at the party. This was the scenario posed to research participants in a new study by a team of European researchers. They were then asked: Was Maria's answer true or fa

Last month, Virginia became the 12th state to enact an "assault weapon" ban, which Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed into law on April 13. That new law is plainly unconstitutional, the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and two other Second Amendment groups argue in McDonald v. Katz, a lawsuit they filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. "Spanberger's insane law criminalizes constitutionally protected conduct and bans arms the Second Amendment protects," said

Over the past few years, the U.S. government has been experimenting with using economic sanctions to shut up voices that annoy it. In 2021, the Biden administration seized the websites of several news outlets it accused of being Iranian propagandists (including some that turned out to be Iranian dissident outlets). And in 2025, the Trump administration sanctioned U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for recommending prosecutions of companies that benefit from the Israeli-Palestinian confli

President Donald Trump's grand vision for the "Golden Dome" national missile defense system may cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars more than originally expected, according to a new estimate by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which found that the system could cost $1.2 trillion to build and operate for 20 years. The CBO conducted its analysis based on Trump's 2025 executive order directing the Defense Department to draft plans for a ground- and space-based system to detect and