Historically, stories we’ve covered here about the collision between the beer brewing industry and trademarks have largely been born of the creative nature of the craft beer industry specifically. Far different from the bland trade dress and naming conventions of the macro-brewing industry, the craft industry blended its beer-making with colorfully named brews and artistic art and imagery on the packaging. With all of that creativity at play, names and brands became far more elaborate and distinctive, giving rise to more trademark dispute action.
This one is different. This dispute is over a non-creative term that probably never should have been granted the broad trademark protection it has, a startup and politically conservative brewery making use of that same term, and the open question about whether the real concern is the trademark or the politics.
This all started with the ill-fated advertising campaign that partnered up the Bud Light brand and Dylan Mulvaney, an advocate for the transgender community. If you don’t recall what this was, I’ll summarize the stupidity for you. The beer giant made some cans of Bud Light that had Mulvaney’s face on it. Half the country shrugged and the other half lost their damned fool minds. Apparently this was all somehow a threat to someone, somewhere, and it needed the likes of Kid Rock to shoot Bud Light cans to stave off the threat. This is exactly as sane as the crowd that was shouting “Keep politics out of sports!” when athletes were kneeling during the — checks notes — National fucking Anthem. I’ve spent time in the past attempting to come up with a more perfect paradoxical statement than that and I’ve failed.
One of the reactions to the campaign was the creation of the Conservative Dad beer company. That company produces alcoholic beverages and spirits with exactly the sort of names you’re already imagining. There the Border Wall tequila, for instance. And its signature lager, named Ultra Right.
“Applicant’s ULTRA RIGHT Mark is likely to cause confusion, to cause mistake or to deceive consumers with consequent injury to Opposer,” the beer giant, who is the opposer, continued, “The likelihood of confusion, mistake or deception that would also arise from concurrent use and registration of Applicant’s ULTRA RIGHT Mark with Anheuser-Busch’s use and registration of its ULTRA Marks is that (a) persons are likely to believe that Applicant’s products have their source in Opposer, or (b) that Applicant and its products are a version of Opposer’s ULTRA Marks or are in some way legitimately connected, associated or affiliated with, sponsored, approved, endorsed or licensed by Opposer when, in fact, they are not.”
Now, the folks over at Conservative Dad seem like the exact sort of folks I would not want to have a beer with. I can get enough of that vibe during family holidays, thank you very much. But just because I disagree with these folks on politics doesn’t mean the claims made by AB make any more sense.
AB does indeed have both word and design marks for all kinds of “ULTRA” related terms. Most of them make all the sense in the world to me, such as “Michelob ULTRA”. But why in the hell the USPTO granted word and design marks on the base word “ULTRA” is beyond me. That is a non-distinctive generic term that has all kinds of uses in the beer industry. Hell, there is a species of hops called the “ultra”, for love of Zeus.
The real work is getting that overly generic trademark canceled, at least as a word mark. Beyond that, it’s tough to see how anyone is going to get confused between these brands. The tradedress doesn’t look similar.
The names aren’t all that similar either, once we stipulate that “Ultra” is generic itself. The fonts aren’t the same, either. So, what is this actually all about?
“Anheuser-Busch is furious we helped expose their woke disaster with Bud Light, so now they’re using their billion-dollar legal machine in an attempt to financially bleed us dry. But unlike them, we’re not just a corporation looking to maximize profit — we’re a movement of Americans who have had enough.”
Oh, calm down, you make beer. But at the same time, if there isn’t a real trademark issue here, or at least not one born of likely customer confusion, then there are three likely posibilities. AB’s lawyers are wielding the broad trademark the company has because that’s what big companies do, regardless of anything else, AB’s lawyers have been instructed to do this because of the animosity the two breweries have for one another, or some combination of both.
Chances are the first of those is all or mostly right, I would say. But when companies go trademark bullying using marks that never should have been granted in the first place, particularly in this highly charged political environment, it’s no surprise to see the victim of the bullying pointing to politics as the cause.
So do I think the folks over at Conservative Dad kind of suck? Yeah, totally. Do I think it should be prevented from trademarking the name of its beer? Not at all. Trademark bullying sucks, too.
The acceleration of institutional breakdown in America has reached a point where we must confront a sobering reality: the constitutional system, as designed, may no longer possess the internal mechanisms to save itself. When judges face impeachment threats for ruling against the administration, when court orders are openly defied, and when Fox News hosts declare that a president “doesn’t have the luxury of following the law,” we’ve moved beyond policy disagreements to questioning whether law applies to power at all.
The traditional American narrative assumes our institutions are self-correcting—that checks and balances naturally restore equilibrium when power overreaches. But this theory assumes all actors accept the legitimacy of those checks and balances. What happens when they don’t? What happens when power simply refuses to be balanced?
We are witnessing the answer in real time: institutional capture, norm erosion, and the systematic dismantling of accountability mechanisms. The Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and significant portions of federal agencies are being transformed into instruments of personal power rather than constitutional governance. Meanwhile, DOGE stands as a parallel government structure, implementing radical changes without congressional oversight or judicial review.
A particularly dangerous dynamic is now in motion: the “point of no return” for key figures in the administration. As Elon Musk, Trump family members, and others become increasingly implicated in potentially illegal activities, their incentive to preserve democratic processes diminishes proportionally. The more their personal legal and financial survival depends on maintaining power, the more willing they become to take extraordinary measures to keep it.
So how does this end? Three interlinked forces represent the most likely path toward preserving constitutional governance, though none functions within “regular order” as traditionally understood.
The first is institutional resistance. While many institutions have been compromised, pockets of resistance persist. Career civil servants, military leaders committed to constitutional oaths, and judges willing to rule against power despite personal risk represent the first line of defense. This resistance does not function through formal channels—those are increasingly captured—but through what might be called “constitutional guerrilla warfare”: selective non-compliance, strategic leaks, and informal networks maintaining democratic practices despite official pressure.
The military’s continued neutrality remains the most critical institutional barrier to full-scale authoritarianism. Unlike other agencies, the military’s culture of constitutional fidelity runs deep, and its leadership has maintained distance from partisan pressure. But this cannot be taken for granted—targeted appointments and pressure campaigns could erode this independence over time.
The second force is civil society mobilization. When institutional resistance weakens, civil society must strengthen. Mass mobilization, whether through protests, strikes, or coordinated action, creates costs for authoritarian overreach that cannot be ignored. This goes beyond traditional partisan activism to broad, cross-ideological defense of basic democratic principles.
What makes the current moment different from normal political contestation is that the fight is no longer primarily about policy outcomes—it’s about whether constitutional governance continues to exist at all. This creates the potential for unusual coalitions of traditional conservatives committed to institutions, progressives worried about rights erosion, and business interests concerned about stability.
Mobilization alone cannot restore constitutional order, but it can make authoritarianism costlier and provide critical support to institutional resisters facing immense pressure.
The third force is international pressure. The United States does not exist in isolation. Its democratic health affects global stability, security alliances, and economic relations. As democratic erosion accelerates, international actors have increasing incentives to apply pressure for democratic restoration.
This pressure takes multiple forms: diplomatic isolation, economic consequences, intelligence community cooperation with democracy defenders, and strategic support for pro-democracy forces within the United States. While foreign intervention in U.S. affairs raises legitimate concerns, so does a nuclear-armed superpower falling into authoritarian chaos.
Canada’s response to Trump’s hostile posture and tariffs represents an early example of this dynamic. Rather than capitulating to economic pressure, Canada under Mark Carney has shown remarkable resolve in maintaining democratic principles while imposing targeted countermeasures.
If these three forces fail to check authoritarian consolidation, darker possibilities emerge. We might see true institutional collapse, where key democratic institutions cease functioning as independent entities, becoming mere extensions of executive power. Elections might continue but would be manipulated to ensure predetermined outcomes. Courts would make politically determined rulings. Media would be effectively controlled through legal harassment, ownership changes, and direct intimidation.
Or we might face a constitutional crisis—a direct confrontation between branches of government leading to a legitimacy vacuum, with competing power centers each claiming constitutional authority. This could involve disputed election results, military intervention in civilian matters, or state governments refusing to recognize federal authority.
Most disturbing is the possibility of widespread violence—where political violence moves from isolated incidents to coordinated campaigns, potentially triggering counter-violence and civil conflict. This could emerge from state-sanctioned crackdowns on opposition, militant resistance to authoritarian measures, or breakdown of monopoly on legitimate force.
None of these scenarios is inevitable, but all become more likely as constitutional boundaries continue to erode. The path from democratic backsliding to irreversible breakdown is rarely linear—it involves threshold effects where multiple small violations suddenly produce catastrophic failure.
The uncomfortable reality is that restoring constitutional governance may require methods outside traditional processes. When those processes themselves have been compromised, relying exclusively on them becomes self-defeating.
This doesn’t mean abandoning constitutional principles—quite the opposite. It means recognizing that extraordinary measures may be necessary to restore those principles when normal channels have been blocked. Just as Lincoln took extraordinary actions to preserve the Union, preserving American democracy may require actions that stretch conventional understanding of institutional roles.
Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And the constitutional system, as currently functioning, may not possess the internal mechanisms to save itself. This isn’t defeatism—it’s a necessary recognition that preservation of constitutional democracy may require strategies beyond those envisioned by the framers for a system not yet captured by authoritarian forces.
The end of this story hasn’t been written. But understanding the gravity of our situation is the precondition for writing an ending in which American democracy survives, however transformed by the crisis it now faces.
“Every nation gets the government it deserves.” — Joseph de Maistre
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
Speaking as someone who has covered a whole lot of extremely weird legislating in service of that notoriously under-protected class of citizens (you know: cops), I have to say this is one the most batshit insane things I have ever seen offered up for a vote at any level of government.
Even taking into account that this is happening in Alabama, it’s so off-the-rails there’s no way I could let this pass me by on the internet slipstream. While I can kind of understand half of the bill, I am still in a slack-jawed state of disbelief of the other half.
State Representative Juandalynn Givan has filed a bill in the Alabama House of Representatives for a police abuse registry.
It would require the attorney general to create, maintain and publish a registry for individuals convicted of using or threatening to use force against a law enforcement officer.
So, it’s a sex offender registry, except for people who may have resisted arrest or accidentally bumped an officer during an “interaction,” or simply said something rude about cops in the presence of a cop. Spitting is also a crime. It’s a law that lends itself to abuse, and I’m not even talking about this bill, which is weird af.
The thing about “using force” against cops is that it’s all in the eye of the only beholder cop shops, legislators, and judges will listen to: police officers. What’s often treated and adjudicated as “assault” is often nothing more than any slight display of anger or resistance when being accosted/arrested. Very few people actually assault cops in ways most people would recognize as assault. Even fewer people kill cops, since that’s something that gets every page of the book thrown at the criminal suspect.
Unlike sex offender registries (which have their own set of problems), there appears to be no end date listed in the bill’s text. In other words, lay a finger on a cop (even inadvertently) and you’ll be on the police radar forever.
According to state rep Givan, this new form of registry is essential. Without it, cops might not know which citizens are more threatening than others. (Or which citizens might need a little extra physical “encouragement” when detained or arrested.)
“In many cases, individuals have a history of attacking or threatening officers. It’s past time for officers to have advanced knowledge of who to look out for.”
OK. Still weird, but at least there’s a reason for the creation of the list that won’t immediately provoke gales of disbelieving laughter. No, Givan is saving that part for the end of the pitch.
After ensuring this is all about protecting officers and reminding would-be offenders that it will be “difficult but not impossible” to be removed from the cop-beater list, Givan immediately gives these offenders she thinks are too dangerous to roam around unlisted a way to immediately remove themselves from the registry.
The Attorney General, before January 1, 2026, shall establish a procedure for individuals to request removal from the registry. The procedure shall include the requirement that an individual must pay five thousand dollars ($5,000) for each conviction for a qualifying offense that the individual is seeking to have removed from the registry.
Neat! So, the threat to cops is so real a registry must be created. But anyone on the registry can buy their way off of it with a $5,000 “donation” that will be deposited in the state’s “Law Enforcement Injury Fund,” which is the other thing this bill would create.
Like most laws, it only applies if you don’t have a lot of liquidity. Anyone rich enough can presumably beat on cops in perpetuity if they’re willing to, I don’t know, purchase enough assaulting-on-officer offsets to ensure deletion from law enforcement’s “people WE want to beat on” database.
Established: cop assaulters will be listed on a near-permanent registry… unless, said cop assaulter has a few grand laying around. Then they can fly under the radar until the next time they assault a cop. Perverse, but not much of an incentive.
On the other hand, now cops will have even more reason to exaggerate any physical/verbal affront into assault charges because (1) it allows cops to track the movements of even more people, and (2) it may result in even more money flowing into cop coffers via a slush fund the state AG isn’t likely to subject to scrutiny when cops start asking to make withdrawals.
I can’t see how this makes this to the governor’s desk. Then again, I’m rarely able to forecast what Alabama might do on any given legislative session day. If nothing else, it’s just a reminder there’s nothing some legislators won’t do for cops, even if it means openly courting open corruption.
In a moment of clarity after initially moving forward a deeply flawed piece of legislation, the French National Assembly has done the right thing: it rejected a dangerous proposal that would have gutted end-to-end encryption in the name of fighting drug trafficking. Despite heavy pressure from the Interior Ministry, lawmakers voted Thursday night (article in French) to strike down a provision that would have forced messaging platforms like Signal and WhatsApp to allow hidden access to private conversations.
The vote is a victory for digital rights, for privacy and security, and for common sense.
The proposed law was a surveillance wish list disguised as anti-drug legislation. Tucked into its text was a resurrection of the widely discredited “ghost” participant model—a backdoor that pretends not to be one. Under this scheme, law enforcement could silently join encrypted chats, undermining the very idea of private communication. Security experts have condemned the approach, warning it would introduce systemic vulnerabilities, damage trust in secure communication platforms, and create tools ripe for abuse.
The French lawmakers who voted this provision down deserve credit. They listened—not only to French digital rights organizations and technologists, but also to basic principles of cybersecurity and civil liberties. They understood that encryption protects everyone, not just activists and dissidents, but also journalists, medical professionals, abuse survivors, and ordinary citizens trying to live private lives in an increasingly surveilled world.
A Global Signal
France’s rejection of the backdoor provision should send a message to legislatures around the world: you don’t have to sacrifice fundamental rights in the name of public safety. Encryption is not the enemy of justice; it’s a tool that supports our fundamental human rights, including the right to have a private conversation. It is a pillar of modern democracy and cybersecurity.
As governments in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and elsewhere continue to flirt with anti-encryption laws, this decision should serve as a model—and a warning. Undermining encryption doesn’t make society safer. It makes everyone more vulnerable.
This victory was not inevitable. It came after sustained public pressure, expert input, and tireless advocacy from civil society. It shows that pushing back works. But for the foreseeable future, misguided lobbyists for police national security agencies will continue to push similar proposals—perhaps repackaged, or rushed through quieter legislative moments.
Supporters of privacy should celebrate this win today. Tomorrow, we will continue to keep watch.
Trump seems very interested in speed-running the martial law curve. His previous term in office saw him suggesting the military should help quell anti-police violence protests around the nation, as well as participating in his undeclared war on immigration by aiding in the policing of our southern border.
With Trump taking office for a second time, every bad idea is now worse. Right now, the administration is using a 225-year-old law to justify its unlawful immigrant removal efforts. The 1798 law (one that has no expiration date) was passed to grant the government additional powers to remove enemies of the state in times of war.
Its previous invocations demonstrate when it’s (possibly) prudent to invoke this act. During the War of 1812, it was used to report and remove British nationals. In World War I and World War II, it was used to detain or remove foreign non-citizens. In the latter case, it led directly to one of the most shameful periods in US history — one in which more than 100,000 US residents of Japanese descent were sent to concentration camps located inside the United States for the duration of the war.
That alone should have been enough to keep any post-WWII president from invoking the Alien Enemies Act. But Trump and his enablers are not regular people. They are hateful, spiteful, performative, and completely unworthy of the power they have been gifted with.
The invocation of this power to “justify” the mass deportation of immigrants to whatever foreign country will take them is a deliberate attempt to bypass judicial review of Trump’s deportation programs, which have already been met with injunctions blocking further expulsions.
While controversy immediately arose over whether the administration had defied a court order to stop the deportation flights, the more important question will soon demand an answer: whether the Alien Enemies Act applies at all. The act grants sweeping powers to the executive branch but only during a time of declared war or “invasion or predatory incursion” by “a foreign nation or government.” President Trump will have to make a difficult case that TdA [Tren de Aragua] and other gangs act at the behest of foreign nations that are conducting an invasion of the United States.
Yoo thinks Trump can’t actually make this case. It takes a declared war to invoke this act. But no war has been declared here. Instead, Trump simply insists that mere (alleged) presence of foreign gang members in the US is all the “invasion” or “predatory incursion” he needs to declare war, without… you know… actually getting Congress involved and officially declaring war.
Yoo’s article argues there’s nothing there to support Trump’s assertions. Tellingly, he quotes possibly the only thing that might make that case for Donald Trump, even if Trump himself isn’t smart enough to make this argument on his own. And, of course, it’s from the same entity behind the Project 2025 effort — one that deliberately aims to consolidate executive power at the expense of literally everything and everyone that doesn’t fit into its ghastly, narrow-minded view of the future.
In support of the administration, one could cite a Heritage Foundation report that states that “the goal of the TdA, whether in Chile or the United States, is to establish territorial control to impose a criminal economy that connects illicit networks from urban and suburban areas to penitentiaries in or near those neighborhoods.” According to that report, “once an uptick in crime and violence in a local neighborhood is detected and attributed to Venezuelan migrants, the presence of the TdA is probably already established.”
That appears to be the rationale the Trump administration is using: any signs of violence linked to foreign gangs is enough to trigger a state of war and the executive branch’s ability to wield war powers.
As Yoo sees it, it will likely accomplish exactly what Trump wants: an immediate boost in power and reduced friction from the federal court system. But the long game won’t work out in Trump’s favor, and it’s definitely going to do a lot of long-term damage to the reputation of the US and millions of people who currently reside in this country.
[T]he cost would be the creation of a state of war between the United States and Venezuela. If the United States has been invaded by Venezuelan agents, then the president can go to war in national self-defense without need of a congressional act or declaration of war. Washington could not only detain any and all Venezuelan citizens within the United States but also use military force against Caracas. It could take lethal action against the Venezuelan military, invade and occupy Venezuelan territory, and overthrow the Maduro regime. And Venezuela could try to do the same to the United States.
We hold no brief for Venezuela; the country’s people and the region would be far better off if Maduro fell and were replaced by the democratically elected opposition. But it may not be worth backsliding into a state of war to expedite the removal of illegal aliens, who could be deported under regular immigration laws anyway. Such a symbolic show of resolve on illegal immigration could hamper Trump’s effort to revive the Monroe Doctrine and win the cooperation of Latin American leaders to reduce illegal immigration and drug-trafficking.
While it’s not as full-throated as one would hope in terms of criticizing Trump’s bold and buffoonish invocation of war powers, it’s probably the best we can expect from someone who has always been supportive of CIA torture efforts and, presumably, its occasional foreign government coups.
Trump seems intent on going to war with most of the world, whether its a militaristic show of force, a handy way to consolidate power, or simply by escalating hostilities via public statements and vindictive tariffs that have done nothing more than alienate many of our long-term allies.
Martial law, it may end up being. At the very least, we should definitely expect some form of police state to arise from this situation if the courts can’t shut these efforts down.
This isn’t the only problem with Trump’s War on Immigrants. It now appears the DOJ feels this war power invocation means immigration enforcement agencies (and their local law enforcement partners) will no longer need to worry about the Fourth Amendment.
Trump administration lawyers have determined that an 18th-century wartime law the president has invoked to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang allows federal agents to enter homes without a warrant, according to people familiar with internal discussions.
[…]
“All such alien enemies, wherever found within any territory subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, are subject to summary apprehension,” the proclamation said.
Senior lawyers at the Justice Department view that language, combined with the historical use of the law, to mean that the government does not need a warrant to enter a home or premises to search for people believed to be members of that gang, according to two officials familiar with the new policy.
Swell. That means any home in an area where officers believe some gang members might reside can be searched without a warrant. If the DOJ’s legal team buys into this bullshit, entire apartment blocks and neighborhoods will be raided. And the searches won’t stop until those doing the searching decide they’ve found all they can find or simply need to get back to the station to clock out.
Living in interesting times is fine, if occasionally stressful. But we’re living in times that are far more frightening than interesting. When even torture enthusiasts and CIA-backers think the government is going too far, it’s well past time to start worrying.
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I think lots of people know the kind of person who thinks they’re more clever than they really are. The kind of person who thinks that they can outwit the system by playing stupid games. The kind of person who thinks that this kind of beating the system is because they’re smart. This kind of person is usually viewed as a dipshit. Donald Trump’s DOJ seems to be, as a group, acting like just that kind of dipshit.
Like that overconfident student who thinks they’ve discovered one weird trick to beat the system, the DOJ keeps playing increasingly transparent games in court — making patently ridiculous arguments while acting shocked and offended when judges see right through their obvious nonsense.
It is a form of contempt. Not necessarily in the legal sense. But it is a kind of obvious contempt for the very systems and institutions of our judicial system that they are supposed to be protecting as a part of the constitutional order. And while judges are often willing to give great leeway to bad actors in their courtroom, at some point the outright contempt for the court can turn into something judges will start calling out.
I’m reminded of a college classmate who exemplified this mindset perfectly. He’d spend countless hours finding elaborate ways to game every assignment and test, devising increasingly convoluted schemes to avoid doing the actual work. The irony was that his schemes typically required far more effort than simply completing the assignments properly would have taken. But he sure was proud of the ways he believed he was beating the system.
That same misguided energy now permeates Trump’s DOJ (indeed, I just looked up on LinkedIn if that classmate might now work for the DOJ — thankfully he’s not there). These officials pour tremendous effort into crafting obviously laughable legal arguments, filing misleading declarations, and playing semantic games with court orders — all while seemingly convinced of their own clever brilliance. Just like my former classmate, they’re expending more energy trying to game the system than it would take to actually fulfill their constitutional duties and serve the American people. The result is a particularly toxic form of institutional contempt — not just disregard for the courts, but a sort of smirking certainty that they’re somehow outsmarting the entire judicial system.
It is nearly impossible to keep track of all of the various lawsuits that have been filed against the plethora of illegal actions taken by the Trump administration in the last two months since inauguration (though kudos to folks like Just Security who have been tracking them as best as they can).
The Boasberg case represents a critical escalation in this pattern of contempt. While legal scholars debate what precisely constitutes a constitutional crisis, Corbin Barthold makes a compelling case that we’ve now crossed that threshold. When a federal judge explicitly orders planes carrying deportees to return and the administration simply ignores that order, we’re witnessing something qualitatively different from their usual games.
THE LONG-AWAITED CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS has now arrived. It is time for a court to say so.
On Saturday night, James Boasberg, a federal judge in the District of Columbia, issued a pair of emergency orders. The government, he had just been told at a hastily convened hearing, was removing from the country, without due process, more than a hundred alleged gang members. The planes, he learned, were already in the air. To justify this stunning move, President Trump had issued a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
At around 6:45 p.m., Boasberg orally ordered the planes turned around. “Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” he ruled from the bench. “This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.”
At 7:26 p.m., he issued a briefwritten orderbarring the government from relying on the Alien Enemies Act to remove noncitizens from the country.
The government ignored both orders.
This outright defiance marks a subtle, but notable, departure from the administration’s playbook the past few months. Until now, they’ve preferred more smirking forms of contempt — slow-walking court orders, playing word games with compliance, or burying judges in misleading declarations. But each of these smaller acts of contempt has apparently emboldened them toward more brazen defiance.
A second administration official said Trump was not defying the judge whose ruling came too late for the planes to change course: “Very important that people understand we are not actively defying court orders.”
This argument, that the order came too late, is nonsense. But it’s notable how the administration is trying to insist it’s actually obeying orders in court, while doing wink, wink, nod, nod stuff out of court.
The administration’s attempts to characterize this as a routine “deportation” matter represent perhaps their most cynical wordplay yet (and one the media should stop repeating, though that’s a different issue). Deportation is a legal process with established due process rights. What happened here was something far darker: the US government engaging in what amounts to human trafficking, shipping people to El Salvador as forced labor without any due process. The mask slipped entirely when El Salvador’s President tweeted “Oopsie… too late” in response to Judge Boasberg’s order — a tweet that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Elon Musk both found amusing enough to amplify:
The full scope of what’s happening deserves to be called out directly. Start with the legal sleight-of-hand: The administration has resurrected the Alien Enemies Act, a widely disparaged authoritarian relic that only applies during “a declared war” or “invasion” — neither of which exists. They’re wielding this zombie legislation to deny basic due process rights to people on American soil, shipping them to El Salvador (not even their country of origin) to become literal slave labor — all funded by US taxpayers.
The contempt deepens with their public justification. Without due process requirements, they don’t actually have to prove their claims that these people are gang members. And they can’t — because the claims are false for many of those shipped out. Reports show that many of the deportees have no gang connections at all. Any competent law enforcement official would recognize these allegations as nonsense.
But the most chilling display comes in their response to judicial oversight: when a federal judge attempts to restore basic due process rights, the administration not only ignores his order, but the Secretary of State publicly mocks it while coordinating with their partner in human trafficking. This isn’t just contempt of court — it’s contempt for the entire concept of legal constraints on executive power.
The administration’s response to Judge Boasberg perfectly encapsulates their broader strategy: when the facts aren’t on your side, attack the judge. Their characterization of Boasberg as a “radical left lunatic partisan” would be merely laughable if it weren’t so deliberately misleading. This is the same conservative judge who repeatedly ruled in Trump’s favor in other cases — ordering Hillary Clinton’s emails released, blocking the release of Trump’s tax returns, and limiting disclosures from both the Mueller investigation and the classified documents grand jury.
The contempt here operates on multiple levels: there’s the surface-level dishonesty of painting a conservative judge as a radical leftist, but more insidiously, there’s the implicit message that any judge who dares enforce the law against Trump must be acting from partisan motives. This fits a broader pattern where the administration’s lawyers aren’t just playing games with legal arguments — they’re actively working to undermine the legitimacy of judicial oversight itself.
The Boasberg case may be the most brazen example, but it’s far from isolated. Across multiple courts, judges are increasingly witnessing this administration’s attempts to treat the judicial system like a game they can cleverly exploit. Their contempt generally takes three forms, each more concerning than the last:
First, there’s the malicious compliance playbook — taking court orders so literally they become absurd. The Social Security Administration exemplifies this approach. When Judge Ellen Hollander blocked DOGE from accessing records, interim SSA head Lee Dudek responded by threatening to shut down the entire Social Security system, claiming his entire IT staff were somehow “DOGE affiliates.” This led to an increasingly furious series of clarifications from the judge, culminating in her observation that either Dudek was lying or the DOJ lawyers were.
Second, there’s the strategy of procedural manipulation — exploiting court customs and courtesy to gain tactical advantages. Take the EPA case, where officials used procedural games to try to circumvent judicial oversight. They asked for a routine 24-hour extension on a hearing (which opposing counsel typically grant as a professional courtesy), then used that delay to sneak in actions that would have been prevented by the pending TRO:
Third, we’re seeing increasingly more open defiance of court orders, coupled with attempts to delegitimize any judge who rules against them. The Perkins Coie case perfectly demonstrates this escalation. When Judge Beryl Howell issued a TRO blocking an obviously unconstitutional executive order targeting the law firm for representing Democratic interests, Attorney General Pam Bondi and OMB Director Russell Vought responded with explicit defiance:
The Executive Branch’s position is that Executive Order 14230 is permissible, and that the Court’s order was erroneous. The government reserves the right to take all necessary and legal actions in response to the “dishonest and dangerous” conduct of Perkins Coie LLP, as set forth in Executive Order 14230.
At the same time, the DOJ is trying to disqualify Judge Howell for… “hostility” towards the President, again setting up the idea that any judicial action holding them to account is driven by bias, rather than an actual respect for the Constitution.
The pattern of contempt continues across other cases, each fitting into these three categories of increasingly brazen defiance:
More malicious compliance games appear in the DOGE leadership saga, where pretend DOGE boss Amy Gleason filed a declaration claiming to run the agency even as Trump himself said in his address to Congress that Elon Musk runs it. When called on this discrepancy, Gleason’s response dripped with technically-accurate-but-misleading wordplay: “Elon Musk does not work at USDS. I do not report to him, and he does not report to me. To my knowledge, he is a Senior Advisor to the White House.” The contempt deepened when it emerged that Gleason was simultaneously appointed as an HHS consultant a week after being named DOGE head.
The EPA case shows how procedural games escalate to outright dishonesty. EPA boss Lee Zeldin, fixated on a deceptively edited Project Veritas video, illegally froze a Citibank account, and attempted to launch a grand jury investigation. When challenged in court, DOJ lawyers told Judge Tanya Chutkan they couldn’t provide evidence of any criminal violation because “this Court is not in a position to rule upon whether or not this termination was consistent with the contracts.”
Perhaps most telling is the transgender military ban case, where the administration’s contempt for judicial oversight is laid bare. The DOJ keeps insisting to the judge that there is no ban on transgender service members, while Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth openly declares exactly the opposite:
These examples paint a clear picture of an administration that, like my college classmate from years ago, believes it’s brilliantly outsmarting the system while actually just making itself look increasingly desperate to avoid any accountability. But unlike that student’s academic games, these legal shenanigans carry profound constitutional implications.
What started as wannabe-clever-but-obvious attempts to circumvent court orders has evolved into something far more dangerous: a systematic effort to delegitimize judicial oversight itself. Each time they respond to a court order with malicious compliance, procedural manipulation, or outright defiance, they’re not just showing contempt for individual judges — they’re undermining the very concept of judicial review.
The progression is clear: first came the word games and barely-technically-accurate-but-misleading declarations, then the exploitation of court procedures and customs, and now increasingly open defiance coupled with attempts to paint any judge who enforces the law as politically biased. This is how institutional guardrails get dismantled — not through dramatic confrontation, but through a thousand small acts of contempt that gradually normalize the idea that court orders are merely suggestions to be cleverly evaded.
Trump has already effectively neutered congressional oversight. Now his DOJ appears determined to do the same to the judiciary, treating federal judges like frustrated professors whose rules are just obstacles to be gamed. But unlike my former classmate’s academic adventures, the stakes here aren’t just a passing grade — they’re the continued functioning of our constitutional system of checks and balances.
Judges are starting to catch on, calling out these games with increasing fury. But judicial anger alone won’t be enough. An administration that responds to court orders with winks, nods, and “technically accurate” lies isn’t demonstrating clever lawyering — it’s showing fundamental contempt for constitutional governance itself. Those who shrug this off as mere legal gamesmanship are missing the escalating danger: when government lawyers treat the judicial branch as a system to be cleverly gamed rather than an essential check on power, they’re not just failing their professional obligations. They’re actively participating in the dismantling of judicial review itself.
These officials seem convinced they can keep playing these games forever — or at least until there’s no independent judiciary left to play games with. At some point, judges need to stop writing angry opinions and start issuing contempt charges. And Congress needs to wake the fuck up before it’s too late.
Now that subscriber growth has slowed, streaming TV giants have taken the predictable turn of making their services shittier and more expensive to deliver Wall Street (impossibly) unlimited quarterly revenue growth.
That means higher prices, annoying new surcharges, greater restrictions, more layoffs, more cut corners, worse customer service, more limited catalogs, lower quality engagement-bait content, and a lot of pointless mergers designed specifically to goose stock valuations and provide big fat tax breaks.
The king of this enshittification era in streaming has been the AT&T–>Warner Brothers–>Discovery series of mergers, which resulted in no limit of brand degradation, layoffs, and absolute chaos in the empty pursuit of unlimited scale. The dumb merger already killed Mad Magazine, HBO, and countless television shows, driving millions of subscribers to the exits.
This is well in line with other similar decisions at other streaming giants, as we saw when Paramount (CBS) recently pulled decades of MTV music journalism, and years of Comedy Central comedy programming, out of circulation. They do this largely because they don’t want to continue paying royalties, and the men in charge have no respect for any sort of collective history. They’re purely extractive animals.
“As it currently stands, if you want to watch classic Looney Tunes, your only option is physical media. Warner Bros. Discovery says this is because children’s entertainment doesn’t drive subscriptions (it gave the same excuse for nuking “Sesame Street”), which is obviously a lie given that a good chunk of the new Looney Tunes cartoons, much of which is explicitly aimed at children, is still streaming.”
It’s bad enough that guys like Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslav are fixated on purposeless consolidation, impossible growth, and mindlessly cutting corners. But they’re not particularly competent, either. Their strategies aren’t working in any real sense. They’re not creating quality art, interesting content, longstanding businesses — and their customers are headed for the exists.
Companies like Warner Brothers Discovery have become weird caricatures of sensible business practices. Purely extractive, entirely incoherent, all led by men who aren’t particularly competent. If Zaslav was remotely clever and worth his outsized compensation, the company wouldn’t be desperately waiting to see whether this summer’s Superman retread stands between it and business oblivion.
