Last year, we discussed Baltimore Ravens QB Lamar Jackson’s opposition to a trademark application from retired Hall of Fame QB Troy Aikman for the word and number “Eight.” While these sorts of oppositions don’t traditionally see us caping for them, this case was a bit different. Jackson’s registered trademarks were not merely for the term or number “eight”, but rather for much more unique trademarks that incorporate the number. An example would be Jackson’s registered mark “Era 8 by Lamar Jackson.” With the additional branding in the mark, it moves from something generic into something that instead functions well as a source identifier. Aikman’s mark, on the other hand, did no such thing.
But Aikman isn’t the only sports figure seeking the generic trademark. Dale Earnhardt Jr., who famously drove the number eight car in NASCAR, also applied last year for a trademark on the number 8. As with Aikman, Jackson has filed an opposition to that trademark, arguing that the generic mark would infringe on his much more detailed trademark.
Jackson has challenged the trademark claim, with his attorneys filing a notice of opposition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The notice states that Dale Jr. uses a slanted font similar to Jackson’s “Era 8” brand. This would lead potential customers to “mistakenly believe the products [Earnhardt Jr.] offers under the mark 8 are related to the products and services provided by [Jackson],” The Athletic quoted Jackson’s filing.
According to trademark attorney Josh Gerben, Jackson has challenged the claim on the basis of his own trademark registrations for ‘ERA 8’ and ‘ERA 8 BY LAMAR JACKSON.’
Again, these type of restrictive trademark actions generally result in a sneer from this writer. But the problem here isn’t that Jackson is being overly aggressive. And, while I hesitate to agree that there will be real widespread customer confusion between gear for NASCAR fans and NFL fans, any chance of that confusion is born of the uncreative and generic nature of the trademark Dale Jr. is seeking. If the application was for “8 by Dale Jr.” or “The #8 Car” and Jackson still opposed it, I’d be on the other side of the argument. But a mark for merely the number eight introduces a much higher chance for confusion than those other examples.
The Aikman case is still pending as Jackson launches this battle on another front, but both are fairly important for the intersection of trademarks and sports. Cars and athletes largely wear number identifiers, which are replicated across other athletes, other than when specific teams retire numbers. Allowing every athlete to trademark their jersey number, for instance, would end very badly and very quickly.
Last week, we told the story of how the Communications Decency Act came to be. On this week’s episode of Otherwise Objectionable, we look at how it quickly went down in flames — except, of course, for the all-important Section 230.
Just four months after being signed into law, the CDA faced its first court challenge on free speech grounds. Online publisher Joe Shea filed a lawsuit in New York, and secured a unanimous ruling that the CDA’s restrictions infringed on the First Amendment. Around the same time, a federal court in Pennsylvania also struck down portions of the law, and soon the law was on its way to the Supreme Court.
While the ACLU argued that the law was unconstitutional, the government defended it by drawing comparisons to the regulation of public television and radio airwaves. But is it right to regulate the internet in the same manner as broadcast media, where the primary concern was “unexpected” encounters with sensitive content? As the court would recognize, no, it’s not. In June of 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the indecency parts of the CDA, leaving only one section in force: Section 230.
But of course, that wasn’t the end of the story. Critical cases, starting with Zeran v. AOL, would test and define the extent of 230 protections. A decade or so later, the rise of Facebook initiated a new era in user generated content, and a new era of importance for Section 230.
I’m not going to rehash the entire recent history of book bans/book challenges in this nation. Suffice to say that ever since Trump first took office in 2017, there’s been a significant increase in the number of suddenly “concerned” citizens seeking to remove books from libraries and a corresponding, equally-significant increase in legislation seeking to enact actual book bans. All this from the “party of free speech.”
In the Elizabeth School District of Colorado, the censorship effort took this form: a committee was formed last summer to determine which books in school libraries dealt with “sensitive topics.” The committee identified 19 books that met this extremely vague criteria. Unsurprisingly, these were some of the books the board flagged as problematic:
The removed books primarily featured Black, brown and LGBTQ people, the ACLU said, including “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas, “Beloved” and “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini and “#Pride: Championing LGBTQ Rights” by Rebecca Felix.
According to the district board of regents, the targeted books depicted things it felt kids shouldn’t be exposed to — things like “racism, discrimination, mental illness and sexual content.” The books the board pulled (and flagged for review with post-it notes on pages dealing with these subjects) are the same ones being targeted all around this country. None of the members of the board were likely familiar with the subject matter. Most likely, a few of them received emails from “concerned” parents with the subject line “FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD Dangerous Books Your Kids MIght,, be Reading!!!”
The ACLU sued the school district. And, at least at this point, it has won. The federal judge handling the case has ordered the district to un-remove these books and stop being so stupid while the court busies itself with making this injunction permanent. (Somehow the Denver Post was unable to locate the court order displayed prominently on the ACLU of Colorado website, so we’ll link to the ACLU here and give it the credit its due, both for the win and for posting a copy of the court order.)
The decision [PDF] runs 45 pages and takes care to point out everywhere the school board went wrong, ranging from its baseless, self-serving claims that damning email conversations were “hearsay” to misrepresenting the standards for obtaining preliminary injunctions. Oh, and there’s also the thing where the school board tries to pretend determining what books can be in libraries is “government speech” that can’t be held to First Amendment standards.
That last argument simply doesn’t work. A library carrying a copy of Mein Kampf wouldn’t be assumed to be representative of the views of the government funding the library. And yet, that’s what the government (in the form of the school district) attempts to claim here in hopes of securing its censorship.
Then there are the emails. No wonder the board of regents wanted these treated as inadmissible hearsay. This one, sent from board of regents director Heather Booth to Superintendent Snowberger, says the quiet part loud. (Emphasis in the original.)
It’s crucial that as we navigate these discussions, we remain mindful of the promises we made and the values we pledged to support. By doing so, we can maintain our integrity and ensure that our actions align with the expectations of those who elected us. As I like to say “we need to keep politics out of the classroom and away from the kids”. However conservative values are exactly what we are and plan to continue to bring into the district.
That one gives the whole game away. Booth doubled down with another email, one that cc’ed the entire board of regents:
[I]n an email between Director Booth and a graduate of the District, Director Booth justified the book removal, stating that, “[a]s an elected official committed to conservative values for our children, I feel a strong obligation to honor the promises made during my campaign.”
And then tripled down:
Director Booth responded, “[p]ersonally, LGBTQ is only regarding sexual preference which doesn’t belong in any school. . . . Our constituents will not be happy about us returning any of these books. That is who we are beholden to.”
If anyone owns this federal court loss, it’s Director Heather Booth. Every example cited by the court contains one of her emails.
These five examples strongly suggest that the District’s motivations behind removing the 19 books is blatantly unconstitutional under Pico and other precedents.
And here’s why the district must put the so-called “challenged” books back on the shelves:
It is unconstitutional—under both the federal and Colorado Constitutions—to remove books from a school library merely because the District “disagree[s] with the views expressed in the books.”
Viewpoint discrimination has always been a non-starter in federal courts. That the district thought otherwise is problematic. So is its attempt to defend its actions, using tax dollars forcibly contributed to it by “constituents” Director Booth seems to feel are so loyal they’ll never realize they’re being steadily fucked by their incompetent representatives.
The Constitution lives to fight another day and, at least for now, students will have access to books that were, for lack of a more concise word, “banned” by people for no other reason than they didn’t like what they contained.
Kennedy said in a social media post that he was working to “control the outbreak” and went to Gaines County to comfort the families who have buried two young children. He was seen late Sunday afternoon outside of a Mennonite church where the funeral services were held, but he did not attend a nearby news conference held by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the outbreak.
As with most of what comes out of Kennedy’s mouth, his claim that he’s working to bring the outbreak under control is dubious. Kennedy is the same man who has spouted vaccine skepticism for decades. He’s the same Secretary of Health and Human Services that opined only weeks ago that maybe everyone should just get the measles. The same man who has compounded the negative outcomes from the outbreak by pushing alternative treatments that have caused some people, mostly children, to get even sicker. And the department he leads, the one charged with keeping diseases like measles in check, has slashed thousands of jobs, including jobs that would be directly employed to help with this very outbreak.
As a result, 50 vaccination clinics in Texas have been scrapped, places that were working to combat the outbreak that has spread largely among those who are unvaccinated.
More than 20 public health workers have also been laid off, including those who administer vaccines and lab staff who are tasked with measles surveillance and prevention.
I don’t believe RFK Jr. is quite so evil so as to be actively trying to ensure people are infected with measles, particularly children. But his attendance at a funeral he helped to author is vulgar, to put it mildly. And that he punctuated that visit first with what should be table stakes for a man in his position, advocating for the MMR vaccine as the solution to the outbreak, and then followed it up by praising doctor’s once again for employing alternative treatments is certainly evil, intentionally or not.
During his visit to Texas, RFK Jr.—a regularly debunked vaccine skeptic—offered his strongest endorsement of vaccination yet. He stated in a social media post Sunday that “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR [the combination measles, mumps, and rubella] vaccine.” At the same time, he continued to promote medically unsound treatments for the viral disease. In a separate post, he stated that he met with two doctors, Richard Bartlett and Ben Edwards, and claimed that they had “treated and healed” some 300 Mennonite children using a combination of aerosolized budesonide (a steroid) and clarithromycin (an antibiotic).
Doctors have occasionally turned to steroids for serious and relevant measles complications, such as brain swelling, but there isn’t strong-enough evidence supporting its standard use. A 2023 study, for instance, failed to find that steroids were associated with better outcomes during a 2017 measles outbreak in Italy (thankfully, they weren’t associated with worse outcomes). Antibiotics can be used to treat secondary bacterial infections that could emerge from measles, but they can’t directly treat viral infections. These medications aren’t risk-free either: steroids are known to weaken people’s immune systems, for instance.
These deaths are a result of Kennedy’s misapplied “advocacy” against vaccination. The blood of two children and one adult are, at least partially, on his hands. That he then hijacked such a tragic moment for these families to turn them into a photo opportunity for his Twitter account represents a level of debasement I honestly wouldn’t have thought possible.
It’s hard not to be angry about all of this. Angry at RFK Jr. for helping create the anti-vaccine climate to begin with. Angry at Trump for daring to put Kennedy in charge of American healthcare. And, I’ll admit, angry at the parents of these children who are willing to sacrifice their children’s lives for a belief structure.
Last month, when The Onion had a headline about how Kennedy had tepidly advocated for the MMR vaccine, one of its fictional man-on-the-street quotes was so brilliant that it made me literally laugh out loud.
That becomes far less funny when you see this very real quote from the mother of one of the children who died from measles. She was asked by a vaccine skeptic if her thoughts on the vaccine had changed after losing a child.
Through a translator, who spoke low German, the parents’ primary language, her response was that she would still say, “Don’t do the shots. There [are] doctors that can help with measles. [Measles is] not as bad as they’re making it out to be.”
This is pure cultish behavior. The idea of essentially burying one of your children but saying what killed them wasn’t all that bad because your other four kids survived is one that I can’t comprehend. But because of a combination of enablement by the likes of RFK Jr. and an administration willing to let him steer our collective healthcare, we’ve reached the point in the story in which mothers of dead children say they’d do it all over again if they could.
And all that really means is we’re not likely to see the end of this measles outbreak any time soon.
For someone who claims he single-handedly “brought free speech back,” Donald Trump sure spends a lot of time trying to silence speech he doesn’t like. His latest attempt just got demolished by one of his own hand-picked judges, as Judge Trevor McFadden ruled against the administration for its blatantly retaliatory ban of Associated Press reporters who refused to use Trump’s preferred proper nouns for the Gulf of Mexico.
Yes, yes, we know: the Trump administration claims that any judge ruling against the administration is a “far leftist radical Marxist who dreams of Mao” or whatever. But they’re going to have a wee bit of trouble making that argument with McFadden.
He isn’t just a Trump-appointed judge (he is), but he’s one of the Trumpiest judges on the bench, who has repeatedly ruled in ways supportive of Trump. When Trump tried to divert billions of dollars to his stupid Mexican wall project, Congress sued to block him, and McFadden ruled that Congress lacked standing (later overturned). In other words, if anyone was going to rule in favor of the White House here, it was likely Judge McFadden. Instead, he finds for the AP, and rather easily too. He notes, obviously, that the White House has the power to block access, but if it is opening up sessions to the media, it can’t block access on the basis of the media org’s expression:
So while the AP does not have a constitutional right to enter the Oval Office, it does have a right to not be excluded because of its viewpoint. And the AP says that is exactly what is happening….
The Court agrees. Indeed, the Government has been brazen about this. Several high-ranking officials have repeatedly said that they are restricting the AP’s access precisely because of the organization’s viewpoint. See supra Section I.A. Government counsel admitted that the AP was not being chosen for access, despite its “eligibility,” because of its viewpoint…. The Government offers no other plausible explanation for its treatment of the AP. The Constitution forbids viewpoint discrimination, even in a nonpublic forum like the Oval Office.
Judge McFadden goes on to point out that the cases the White House raises in response are obviously inapplicable, and the argument in favor of the AP being discriminated against for its speech is so obvious it’s barely worth highlighting.
In sum, precedent is unequivocal that the press does not enjoy any standalone right of access to highly restricted government locations like the Oval Office. Instead, forum analysis applies because the Government has chosen to open the Oval Office to some reporters for newsgathering. Under forum analysis, the Oval Office is a nonpublic forum, so the Government enjoys wide latitude on its restrictions, if they are viewpoint neutral. The AP presented evidence that the Government has discriminated against it based on its viewpoint, a claim the Government all but concedes. The AP is thus likely to succeed on its claim that its exclusion from eligibility to access the Oval Office violates its First Amendment rights.
The White House will likely appeal, though it’s hard to imagine it being successful (though, these days the Roberts Court would probably dream up some nonsense procedural argument for why Trump can do what he wants, while insisting it’s just ruling narrowly and people shouldn’t read anything more into the ruling).
What’s particularly notable here is how clearly McFadden lays out the constitutional principle at stake: the government can limit press access, but it cannot do so based on what reporters say or how they say it.
So the next time Trump or his supporters claim he’s a champion of free speech while simultaneously trying to punish media outlets for their editorial choices, remember: even his own hand-picked judges recognize this for what it is — unconstitutional censorship dressed up as “free speech advocacy.”
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Don’t let the White House (or the media!) get away with calling trafficking people they don’t like to foreign slave labor camps “deportation.” As we’ve noted, deportation involves due process. It also (by definition) means removing a foreigner from a country.
As we’ve covered lately, the government’s belief that it can engage in human trafficking to El Salvadoran slave labor camps with no due process was unlikely to stop at just those who were not citizens. After all, it has already involved tons of people who could not be shown to have been convicted of crimes, and in many cases with no actual affiliation with the “gangs” the administration insists they’re members of.
And, when you don’t believe in due process, then there’s no way to prove you’re a US citizen in the first place. The administration’s hatred and mocking of due process already meant that they believed they could disappear US citizens to a slave labor camp without any chance at review.
But now they’ve come out and said it. On Sunday, Donald Trump hinted at it, and on Tuesday, White House chief propagandist Karoline Leavitt said the quiet part out loud, admitting that the White House would like to traffic US citizens to El Salvadoran slave labor camps (where they now claim they have no ability to get someone out, even if they shipped someone by mistake).
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that President Donald Trump is exploring legal pathways to “deport” U.S. citizens to El Salvador, where the administration has already arranged to house deported immigrants in a prison known for its human rights abuses….
Leavitt suggested the effort would be limited to people who have committed major crimes, but Trump has also mentioned the possibility of sending people who commit lesser offenses abroad.
Let’s be absolutely clear: This isn’t deportation — it’s extra-judicial rendition of American citizens, precisely the kind of authoritarian practice that the Constitution’s due process protections were designed to prevent. The administration’s deliberate misuse of immigration terminology attempts to normalize what would effectively be government kidnapping.
Combined with Trump’s head of human trafficking, Tom Homan admitting that ICE is the main decider in who gets renditioned this way (rather than a judge), and we have a lawless, sociopathic administration that is set to disappear US citizens without due process.
This is something many of us have been warning about for months, and Trump and his minions are now admitting it.
Hopefully, by now, more and more people are realizing that when Trump says stuff like this, he’s serious. He’s not joking. He’s not playing 10-dimensional chess. He’s not trying to make “the woke” upset. He legitimately thinks that people he doesn’t like deserve no rights, no due process, no dignity, and has no qualms at all with shipping them to foreign slave labor camps.
And that’s why people need to speak out and make it clear that this is not just unacceptable and unconstitutional. It is pure sociopathic evil. This is crazed dictatorial “disappear people who annoy me” bullshit.
Yes, many people will try to hide and cower in silence, and that’s what the MAGA crew want. But it’s why we need to be speaking up and calling out what’s happening. The history books will record the unfathomable evil of Donald Trump and his loyalist minions, agreeing to push pure evil in pursuit of power. But those of us living it need to speak out about it now while we still have the chance.
The gravity of this moment cannot be overstated. The administration is not floating trial balloons or engaging in political theater — they are explicitly stating their intent to create an extra-judicial system for disappearing US citizens. With ICE empowered as judge, jury, and executioner, and El Salvador’s prisons serving as black sites beyond US jurisdiction, we’re watching the blueprint for an American gulag take shape.
This represents something beyond a constitutional crisis that transcends typical partisan divisions. When a presidential administration openly advocates for the power to extra-judicially rendition citizens, silence becomes complicity. The time for “wait and see” or “they don’t really mean it” has long passed.
We’ve already seen how quickly “exceptional” measures against non-citizens became normalized. Now, as predicted, those same mechanisms are being turned against citizens. If we don’t forcefully reject this assault on fundamental constitutional rights now, we may soon lose the ability to reject it at all.
The remarkable successes of the decades-old partnership between biomedical research institutions and the federal government are so intertwined with daily life that it’s easy to take them for granted.
The negative consequences of defunding U.S. biomedical research can be difficult to recognize. Most breakthroughs, from the basic science discoveries that reveal the causes of diseases to the development of effective treatments and cures, can take years. Real-time progress can be hard to measure.
As biomedicalresearchers studying infectious diseases, viruses and immunology, we and our colleagues see this firsthand in our own work. Thousands of ongoing national and international projects dedicated to uncovering the causes of life-threatening diseases and developing new treatments to improve and save lives are supported by federal agencies such as the NIH and NSF.
Considering a few of the breakthroughs made possible through U.S. federal support can help illustrate not only the significant inroads biomedical research has made for preventing, treating and curing human maladies, but what all Americans stand to lose if the U.S. reduces its investment in these endeavors.
Basic science research on what causes cancer has led to new strategies to harness a patient’s own immune system to eliminate tumors. For example, all 12 patients in a 2022 clinical trial testing one type of immunotherapy had their rectal cancer completely disappear, without remission or adverse effects.
Despite these incredible successes, there is still a long way to go. In 2024, over 2 million people in the U.S. were estimated to be newly diagnosed with cancer, and 611,720 were expected to die from the disease.
Nearly every family is touched in some way by autoimmune andneurodegenerative diseases. Government-funded research has enabled major advances to combat conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers are also gaining insight into what causes multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks the protective covering of nerves and can result in paralysis. Scientists recently found a link between multiple sclerosis and Epstein-Barr virus, a pathogen estimated to infect over 90% of adults around the world. While multiple sclerosis is currently incurable, identifying its underlying cause can provide new avenues for prevention and treatment.
Alzheimer’s disease causes irreversible nerve damage and is the leading cause of dementia. In 2024, 6.9 million Americans ages 65 and older were living with Alzheimer’s. Most treatments address cognitive and behavioral symptoms. However, two new drugs developed with NIH-supported research and clinical trials were approved in July 2023 and July 2024 to treat early-stage Alzheimer’s. Federal funding is also supporting the development of blood tests for earlier detection of the disease.
None of these breakthroughs are a cure. But they represent important steps forward on the path toward ultimately reducing or eliminating these devastating ailments. Lack of funding will slow or block further progress, leading to the continued rise of the incidence and severity of these conditions.
Infectious diseases and the next pandemic
The world’s capacity to combat infectious disease will also be weakened by cuts to U.S. federal support of biomedical research.
Over the past 50 years, medical and public health advances have led to the eradication of smallpox globally and the elimination of polio in the U.S. HIV/AIDS, once a death sentence, is now a disease that can be managed with medication. Moreover, a new version of treatments called preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, offers complete protection against HIV transmission when taken only twice per year.
Similarly, the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the critical role biomedical research plays in responding to public health threats. Increased federal support of science during this time allowed the United States to emerge with new drugs, vaccine platforms with the potential to treat a variety of chronic diseases, and insights on how to effectively detect and respond to pandemic threats.
The National Institutes of Health contributed over $100 billion to support research that ultimately led to the development of all new drugs approved from 2010 to 2016 alone. Over 90% of this funding was for basic research into understanding the causes of disease that provides the foundation for new treatments.
Defunding biomedical research will result in a cascade of effects. There will likely be fewer clinical trials, fewer new treatments and fewer lifesaving drugs. Labs will likely shut down, jobs will be lost, and the process of discovery will stall. The U.S.’s health care system, economy and standing as the world’s leader in scientific innovation will likely decline.
University shortfalls directly resulting from cuts to research support will dramatically reduce the capacity of American institutions to educate and provide opportunities for the next generation. Funding cuts have led to the shuttering or heavy reduction of training programs for future scientists.
Graduate students and postdoctoral trainees are the lifeblood of biomedical research. Supporting these young people committed to public service through research and health care is also an investment in medical advancements and public health. But the uncertainty and instability resulting from the divestment of federally funded programs will likely severely deplete the biomedical workforce, crippling the United States’ ability to deliver future biomedical breakthroughs.
By cutting biomedical research funding, Americans and the rest of the world stand to lose new cures, new treatments and an entire generation of researchers.
