DOJ Issues Official Denial Of ‘Redact Every Republican’ Epstein Files Statement Via Apps Note Screenshot

Failures

from the implausible-deniability dept

This is the sort of thing any organized government would consider truly embarrassing. We don’t have one of those at the moment, so if there’s any embarrassment to be had, it has to be experienced on behalf of the Trump administration because this administration is thoroughly incapable of feeling shame itself.

Let’s lay a bit of groundwork quickly. Trump gets elected again for some fucking reason. He hires Elon Musk to run a government-destroying government agency for some fucking reason. Trump signs a big ugly budget bill that makes a mockery of the extremely mock-able (and hideously destructive) “work” performed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (or D.O.G.E. to those who like cheap laughs and mass layoffs). Musk quits, gets in a social media fight with Trump, and suggests there’s a good reason Trump won’t release the Epstein files despite leveraging claims of a Democratic party underground sex fight club (or whatever) to get himself elected, but this time with bit more of the popular vote.

Trump, after spending months claiming the files are filled with evidence of Democratic pedophiles preying on minors, suddenly decides there’s nothing to see here. Some members of his vocal fan base are far from amused by this sudden reluctance to release the files they’ve been assured for months, if not years, will finally bury the opposing party once and for all.

The more Trump avoids the issue, the more guilty he looks. But the entire government works for Trump now, and that means the agencies involved in the Epstein investigation are now obliged to act as though there’s nothing Trump to see here.

Enter James O’Keefe and his quasi-journalistic enterprise. Project Veritas has mainly been used as a “gotcha” effort to lead unsuspecting victims into saying things Project Veritas can then edit into proverbial smoking guns, even if that means employing further deception while engaging in the editing process.

Trump’s refusal to release the Epstein files has apparently rubbed O’Keefe the wrong way. Project Veritas engaged in some undercover work that apparently resulted in acting deputy chief of the DOJ’s Office of Enforcement Operations telling a woman he wanted to fuck (but in the sexual sense) that he and the DOJ were going to “redact every Republican” from any future release of Epstein investigation files.

While that is all very hilarious, what’s even funnier is the DOJ’s attempt to distance itself from this mini-scandal while somehow hoping to salvage a bit of its Trump-tainted reputation. You won’t believe it unless you see it with your own eyes, but here’s the DOJ’s official response, which appears to be a dying phone’s screenshot of a Notes app note that looks for all the world like a digital approximation of a forced confession… especially when a separate font is used to denote who’s confessing to this egregious error in judgment.

If you can’t see the embed, I truly feel for you. Click the blue link above and transport yourself to Bluesky to see the original. Trust me, it’s worth it.

But here’s the text contained in the (deep breath) DOJ’s X post of a screenshot from a phone with 30% battery life, repeated verbatim:

Acting Director Pollak:

I met a woman named Skylar on Hinge, a dating app, in July 2025, her profile is no longer findable. We had two dates (August 4 and August 16). She claimed to be an au pair in Georgetown. She gave no clues that she was a reporter or recording our dates. Had I a clue, the first date would have ended immediately and there never would have been a second one.

Let’s pause here briefly to consider what’s being said here and who it’s being said by. This is the Acting Director for the DOJ’s Office of Enforcement Operations. And the defense he’s offering is this: had I known I was being tricked, I never would have agreed to continue being tricked. That’s something that (1) should go without saying no matter who’s saying it, and (2) a pretty stupid thing for someone in his position to be saying after they’ve already been successfully snowed.

Back to the alleged confession:

My profile indicated I did “Government” work but did not specify for which agency. I have never discussed what I do at DOJ.

We’ll stop here as well. The recording shows Schnitt not only telling “Skylar” that he has worked at the DOJ for “twenty-three years” but also telling her he’s going to be the “acting deputy chief” for the “next few months” and that he works closely with federal law enforcement, US attorneys’ offices, and DOJ prosecutors. So, that’s just a lie stuck in the middle of a “I was thinking with my dick” confession.

But before I ride Schnitt any harder, let’s continue with the alleged apology/confession:

The comments I made were my own personal comments on what I’ve learned in the media and not from anything I’ve done or learned via work. I have no knowledge of the circumstances surrounding [Ghislane] Maxwell other than what is reported in the news. I also never divulged anything about what I do at work. I recall that she asked if I had any knowledge about Maxwell and I specifically said I only know what’s been reported in the media.

Obviously, they’re his “personal” comments. He didn’t think he was speaking on the record. And, given Trump and the DOJ’s extreme reluctance to engage in a substantive release of the Epstein investigation files, there’s no way he ever would have been cleared to speak on the record about the case. But he definitely said stuff that hasn’t been reported in the media, most particularly the stuff no member of the administration would dare to state on the record: specifically, the whole “redact all the Republicans” thing.

I don’t doubt that Schnitt is en route to the DOJ exit doors, but it’s hard to believe this is something he wrote himself and handed over voluntarily to his superiors at the DOJ. An official statement generally is delivered via a press release or emailed memo.

This is a screenshot of an app — one so carelessly made the people posting it didn’t even bother to crop the screenshot. And the font used for Schnitt’s alleged signature is a completely different font than the body of the post, which suggests someone else entirely composed this statement and copy-pasted Schnitt’s email signature block into the Notes note.

But even if this is all on the up-and-up and this is actually Schnitt’s confession, why was it handled this way? The DOJ is a multi-billion dollar enterprise and lapses of judgment like these should be treated with firings, not the casual uploading of phone screenshots to the government’s official social media accounts. And no matter what the DOJ says or Schnitt has to say for himself after being suckered into a honey trap, the general public knows better than to believe Trump’s DOJ is going to do anything other than protect the president and party officials from being exposed as committing the sexual crimes they’ve spent years accusing Democratic party members of engaging in.

Filed Under: clown car government, david epstein, doj, fbi, james o'keefe, joseph schnitt, trump administration
Companies: project veritas

Daily Deal: The 6-in-1 Photography Master Class Bundle

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

Capture emotions and tell stories through photography with the 6-in-1 Photography Master Class Bundle. Transform your skills with six diverse courses, including Portrait Photography, DSLR Photography, Wedding Photography, and more. Whether you’re a beginner or experienced, this bundle offers a wealth of knowledge and techniques to enhance your craft. It’s on sale for $40.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Experts Universally Pan Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation” As Unscientific Garbage, But Politicians Keep Buying It Anyway

Overhype

from the that's-gotta-burn dept

The verdict is in on Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation,” and it’s devastating. A new piece in TES Magazine systematically demolishes Haidt’s claims by doing something revolutionary: actually asking experts who study this stuff what they think.

The result reads like an academic execution:

“When I read the book, I found it really hard to believe it was written by a fellow academic,” admits Tamsin Ford, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Cambridge.

“What Jon is selling is fear,” argues Andrew Przybylski, professor of human behaviour and technology at the University of Oxford. “It’s not scientific.”

And this isn’t some fringe criticism. TES is the Times Educational Supplement, which has been around since 1910 and is basically the trade magazine for educators in the UK. At a time when many educators have been swallowing Haidt’s misleading claims, seeing a respected educational trade magazine systematically shred his arguments is remarkable.

But here’s the truly damning part: this expert demolition came out the exact same day that Politico published a breathless piece claiming Haidt’s crusade represents “the only true bipartisan issue left,” gushing about how governors from both parties are embracing policy reform based on his work.

The contrast couldn’t be starker: while actual experts are calling Haidt’s work unscientific garbage, politicians are treating it like gospel.

The TES piece doesn’t just criticize—it comprehensibly destroys Haidt’s core arguments with the precision of actual scientists who know what they’re talking about.

First, his claim that there’s a mental health “epidemic” among teenagers caused by social media. Ford points out the fundamental problems with Haidt’s use of data:

Ford argues that using self-report data for prevalence estimates is tricky owing to a “lack of methodological soundness and ‘noisy’ data”.

“A teenager with high scores on a mental health questionnaire at a single time point will include a mixture of those who have not fully understood the question or are mucking around, those who are having a one-off bad day or adjusting to a life stress and those with persistent difficulties that impair their function. The last are those with mental health conditions,” she explains.

When you look at the actual robust data from the UK’s NHS Mental Health survey, the picture is quite different from Haidt’s “tidal wave” narrative:

In terms of the best UK prevalence data, she says the NHS Mental Health of Children and Young People (MHCYP) survey (which includes input from parents, teachers and clinical assessors) found prevalence of mental disorders in those between 5 and 15 years old increased between 1999 and 2004 by 0.4 percentage points and again between 2004 and 2017 by 1.1 percentage points (data for older teens has only been collected once, in 2017, so there is no data over time).

It’s an increase, but Ford says the data does not support Haidt’s description of a “tidal wave” of mental health challenges, nor a “surge of suffering”.

“He is going beyond the data,” she argues.

The experts also systematically debunk Haidt’s claims about causation. Candice Odgers, professor of psychology and informatics at University of California Irvine and a former Techdirt podcast guest, concludes:

“It is perfectly reasonable to take a safety-first approach to kids and social media,” she argues. “But when these decisions are made, it should not be because someone tells you science has discovered social media is the cause of serious mental disorders or will harm our children’s brains. That is the story that is being told, but not what the science says.”

Meanwhile, Przybylski (another former podcast guest) points out a basic logical flaw in Haidt’s argument:

“By the logic of his argument, the correlation between the use of technology and the outcome should be stronger,” he says. “As the algorithms have got more pernicious, more sophisticated, things should be getting progressively worse. [That hasn’t happened.] There is no sense of mechanism here.”

The article also details how experts are particularly concerned about missing the real causes of mental health issues. Ford notes:

Ford says he has missed some other obvious contributing factors in the UK data, including closures of youth clubs and other safe spaces for young people, the world becoming more expensive and difficult to navigate, social changes with looser community bonds and more.

“One of the strongest and most consistent associations for poor mental health is poverty, and we’ve got more children living in poverty, and then we have this huge drop in accessibility to services…[so] there is no early intervention,” she says. “To pin this on phones doesn’t just go way beyond the evidence – it is actually dangerous, as it does not address these other critical factors.”

The experts are also scathing about Haidt’s proposed solutions, which include banning phones in schools and raising age limits for social media. David Ellis has been a leading critic of the addiction narrative:

“We did a satirical paper a couple of years ago and we followed the mathematical formulas that people had used [in this research],” he says. “We managed to create a friendship addiction scale that demonstrated that 80 per cent of our sample were addicted to their friends, which of course is nonsense.”

Even Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the US and one of the world’s leading experts on dopamine and addiction, disputes Haidt’s claims:

“there’s not a clear-cut definition of what addiction to a phone would be, [so] it is difficult to estimate the prevalence,” she says, adding she knows of no studies that would support Haidt’s 10 per cent addiction figure.

The piece also highlights how Haidt’s claims about educational decline don’t hold up to scrutiny. While he claims there’s been a global decline in learning since smartphones arrived, Christian Bokhove from the University of Southampton points out:

And although “average trajectories” in reading and science were downward, Christian Bokhove, professor in mathematics education at the University of Southampton, argues that beyond the general picture, “many countries were not declining” in that period in any of the three subjects.

Echoing many of the other academics when it comes to their criticisms of Haidt, he argues that even if the data did show a universal decline, “there can be numerous causes for this”.

This aligns perfectly with what I wrote in the Daily Beast piece last year, which was based on many experts as well:

Over the last decade, numerous studies on the impact of phones and social media on children, including a study of studies, conclude that social media is good for some kids, helping them find like-minded individuals. It’s mostly neutral for many kids, and problematic for only a very small group (studies suggest less than 10 percent).

I also highlighted how the country-by-country evidence doesn’t support Haidt’s claims either… unless you cherry-pick your countries, which anyone can do.

Looking at suicide rates (which are more indicative of actual depression rates, rather than self-reported data, given the decreasing stigma associated with admitting to dealing with mental health issues), the numbers show that in many countries it has remained flat or decreased over the past 20 years. Indeed, in countries like France, Ireland, Denmark, Spain, and New Zealand, you see a noticeable decline in youth suicide rates.

If social media were inherently causing an increase in depression, that would be an unlikely result.

But here’s where this gets truly maddening. While experts are thoroughly demolishing Haidt’s claims, politicians are doubling down. That same-day Politico piece reveals the scope of the damage:

39 states now have some sort of phone restrictions in schools, and 18 states and Washington, D.C. have bell-to-bell bans — which ban phones for the entire school day — according to Haidt. After the next legislative sessions, which in many state capitols begin after the new year, more states are sure to enact full bans. The issue has rallied conservatives and liberals, and its potency with parents has largely steamrolled libertarian objections and big tech lobbying.

I first realized a remarkable story was sitting in plain view when I witnessed two governors who are almost comically far apart on the political spectrum both embrace Haidt. Last year, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders sent a copy of Haidt’s book to every other governor. She then hosted Haidt in her home state before joining him earlier this year on stage at Davos, not typically a lovefest forum for Arkansas governors and New York academics.

Shortly after that, at the winter meeting at the National Governors Association, I got to talking to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and one of his top aides, and they also were trumpeting Haidt’s work. A liberal, former Goldman Sachs executive turned northeastern governor, Murphy, 68, sounded a lot like his 43-year-old conservative counterpart from Little Rock.

Different regions, different politics and different generations.

But here’s the thing: bipartisan support doesn’t make something right. It just makes it bipartisanly wrong. As I noted in my original piece, every generation has its moral panic, and this appears to be ours.

The TES piece concludes with the most important point of all, from Pete Etchells, professor of psychology and science communication at Bath Spa University:

“It is becoming increasingly difficult to say, ‘hang on, that’s not what the evidence says’, or ‘we don’t have evidence for that yet’, and I really, really worry about this,” he concludes. “There’s a road here where [people say], ‘well, we don’t need science and evidence because we can see it with our own eyes’.”

And that’s exactly what’s happening. Politicians across the spectrum are implementing policies based on Haidt’s work despite an overwhelming expert consensus that his claims are scientifically unfounded. We’re watching evidence-based policy get steamrolled by moral panic in real time.

Incredibly, even with all these quotes, there’s way more in the TES piece, which should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that the actual experts in the field find Haidt’s book a horrific attack on science and evidence-based policy making.

When professors of child and adolescent psychiatry are saying they can’t believe a fellow academic wrote this book, when experts in human behavior and technology are calling it “fear” rather than science, when leading researchers are pointing out basic logical flaws in the arguments—maybe, just maybe, we should listen to them instead of the guy selling books and giving TED talks.

The verdict from people who actually study this stuff is clear: Haidt’s claims don’t hold up to scrutiny. The fact that politicians find his message appealing doesn’t make it true. It just makes it politically convenient.

And that’s a much scarier prospect than kids having phones.

Filed Under: andrew przybylski, candice odgers, christian bokhove, data, david ellis, evidence, jonathan haidt, moral panic, nora volkow, pete etchells, social media, tamsin ford, tes

Trump’s FCC Just Used A Fake ‘Investigation’ To Shower AT&T And Elon Musk With Billions In Valuable Spectrum

Failures

from the cronyism,-corruption,-and-regulatory-capture dept

What if I told you the Trump FCC just leveraged a fake investigation into an American company to force it to sell valuable assets to companies and billionaires loyal to the administration? Well that’s exactly what’s happening with the news that Dish Network and Echostar are selling $17 billion in valuable spectrum to Elon Musk, after being repeatedly threatened by Trump’s lackey at the FCC, Brendan Carr.

As we’ve covered, the first Trump administration proposed creating a new Dish 5G wireless network to justify their rubber stamping of the competition-killing Sprint/T-Mobile merger. As I predicted back in 2019, the gambit was never serious and never going to work. It was designed to provide cover for harmful consolidation, letting Dish’s spectrum hoard assets appreciate as the company strung regulators along.

That task completed, the second administration is now forcing Dish to strip the project for parts and send its valuable assets to administration friends. AT&T recently scored $23 billion in valuable spectrum from Dish, with Musk now hoovering up much of the rest. This puts to bed the lie that the Trump administration was ever serious about Dish becoming a serious fourth wireless competitor.

The Sprint and T-Mobile merger was immeasurably harmful, effectively killing serious wireless price competition in the U.S. and resulting in more than 9,000 people losing their jobs.

Using Dish Network as a prop to justify this consolidation — then letting the biggest industry players hoover up the spectrum when the gambit inevitably failed — was always the play. Though Carr, when he first launched this “investigation” into Dish last May, did his best to pretend he was a serious adult regulator simply worried about rural ‘merica:

“As you know, buildout obligations are one way that the FCC can ensure that Americans,
including those living in rural communities, have a fair shot at next-generation connectivity.
After all, failure to meet buildout obligations leaves these communities behind.“

Carr’s primary focus has been in destroying whatever’s left of FCC corporate oversight and consumer protection authority, yet he’s curiously involved when it comes to things like pressuring CBS to kiss Trump’s ass, or forcing Dish to sell valuable assets to rich Trump donors. Keep in mind, Dish was technically meeting these requirements; they’d struck an extension with the FCC last year.

Carr’s bullying of Dish pissed off everybody across the political spectrum, from consumer groups incensed at the obvious corrupt cronyism (see this lawsuit against the FCC by Nina Burleigh and Frequency Forward), to “free market” Libertarian groups clearly pissed at the FCC bullying Dish into selling assets less than a year after the previous FCC had granted Dish an extension for its 5G network build (there are probably some lessons here in seeking dependable common cause with authoritarians).

Curiously, most of the media coverage I’ve seen on this Musk sale so far (from TechCrunch to Deadline to the LA Times) doesn’t mention any of the cronyism despite pretty broad bipartisan complaints about it.

And those that do mention it, like this Fast Company report, frame the FCC’s efforts as clinical and in good faith:

“The deal also has one other benefit for EchoStar—it’s another step in helping the company resolve concerns by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over its wireless spectrum licenses.

Notably, SpaceX has long argued that EchoStar’s spectrum was being underutilized. Earlier this year, the FCC opened an investigation into the matter.

“EchoStar anticipates this transaction with SpaceX along with the previously announced spectrum sale will resolve the Federal Communications Commission’s inquiries,” EchoStar said in a statement.”

Again, neither the Trump administration — or its top donors like AT&T — ever wanted this Dish Network 5G gambit to succeed. Neither Trumpism nor Brendan Carr give a fleeting fuck about improving real world connectivity or market competition, and AT&T and Verizon (long GOP allies) never wanted serious wireless competition to materialize. And Dish CEO Charlie Ergen is happy to sell hugely appreciated spectrum assets hoarded over decades and head off into retirement.

A lot was made of Elon Musk’s falling out with Donald Trump. But when it comes to government policy, Musk continues to see unprecedented administration favors. The Trump administration has not only ended dozens of criminal and regulatory inquiries into dodgy Musk business practices, but the billionaire also continues to get showered with untold billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies and perks.

Filed Under: brendan carr, corruption, cronyism, fcc, free market, regulators, spectrum, wireless
Companies: dish, echostar, spacex, starlink

Ohio State University Challenges Trademark Over Silly Football Rivalry

Trademark

from the petty-petty dept

Ohio State University has had a history of being fairly ridiculous when it comes to trademarks. Whether its trademarking the word “the” (yes, seriously) or stretching the concept of public confusion so far that the school challenged the trademark for a random brand of vodka, the Buckeyes sure love some trademark shenanigans.

But I guess I didn’t realize just how petty and thin-skinned the folks that run OSU’s legal department are. The school has once again challenged a proposed trademark, claiming both the potential for confusion and tarnishment of its brand. The trademark in question would be for a Michigan restaurant’s proposed alcoholic drink called “Buckeye Tears.”

The university filed an Aug. 27 notice of opposition with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to contest an application by Ann Arbor restaurant The Brown Jug, Inc. The business is seeking to trademark “Buckeye Tears” for use with beer and liquor products.

In its filing, Ohio State said the mark could confuse consumers into thinking the university was connected to the products. The school cited the value of its brand, pointing out that its licensing program generated more than $145 million in royalties and roughly $2.2 billion in retail sales over the past decade. University attorneys also argued that associating alcohol with its athletics programs could damage its reputation and dilute the strength of its “Buckeyes” identity.

So, neither of those things are going to happen. Nobody is going to bat an eye at an alcoholic drink called “Buckeye Tears” thinking somehow that it means that the OSU brand endorses alcohol or whatever. I’m also quite sure that everyone assumes that roughly a metric ton of alcohol is consumed on OSU campus every week.

As for any amount of customer confusion, give me a break.

Trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who is not involved in the case, wrote in a post that Ohio State’s claim of consumer confusion may be difficult to prove. 

“It’s hard to imagine consumers thinking that they are drinking a ‘BUCKEYE TEARS’ product made or licensed by the University,” Gerben wrote. “The fact that the applicant is based in Ann Arbor only strengthens the perception that this is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the Michigan rivalry, not a genuine product made by the University.”

I can promise you that every single person walking into this restaurant in Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is located, knows damn well that the Buckeye Tears they drink won’t have been endorsed by the Buckeyes themselves.

There’s being overly protectionist of trademarks and then there’s being downright petty over a football rivalry. Here’s hoping the USPTO gives OSU something to cry over.

Filed Under: buckeye tears, buckeyes, the, the brown jug, trademark
Companies: ohio state, ohio state university, the ohio state

CBS Caves Again, Will No Longer Air Edited Interviews After Noem Whined About Cuts To Hers

Journalism

from the perpetual-extortion-guaranteed dept

CBS has decided it likes being in an abusive relationship. A few months ago, it laid the groundwork for perpetual extortion by settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump over allegedly deceptive editing of an interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Trump claimed this was election interference and sued, despite winning the election, re-taking power, and using that power to get even with every person or entity he feels has wronged him.

The motivation for CBS wasn’t the money. It only agreed to donate $16 million to the Trump library, which should be more than enough to cover the costs of erecting a physical tribute to Trump’s artifice. Sure, someone may put a few books in there, but it’s pretty much guaranteed Trump will not have read any of them. The real motivation was greasing the wheels for administration approval of its $8 billion merger with Skydance.

CBS shouldn’t have bothered. All this did was open the door to more direct federal government interference with its day-to-day business, which has since seen CBS dump Stephen Colbert for being too critical of Trump, as well as agreeing to be a propaganda outlet for the Trump administration with the impending installation of an FCC-appointed “bias monitor” to ensure future programming treats Trump as a demigod, rather than the mere politician he actually is.

But too much is never enough for Trump and the GOP. Kristi Noem recently took to X to complain that some of her baseless smears of Kilmar Abrego Garcia — the highly visible face of the administration’s risible “eject all the brown people” deportation program — had been removed from the broadcast version of her interview on “Face the Nation.”

That Noem bellied up to the Nazi Bar to bitch about stuff most people realize is the reality of taped interviews (things get cut for time/clarity/etc. all the time) after CBS had already published a full transcript of the interview as well as the uncut recording didn’t matter to Noem, Trump, or any of their always ready-to-be-roused rabble.

And it apparently didn’t matter much to CBS, either. Rather than defending its perfectly normal editing techniques or pointing out that the things said in the cut portion were mostly baseless criminal accusations that weren’t backed by criminal convictions (much less filed criminal charges), CBS has given Trump and his buddies things they haven’t even asked for, ensuring this cycle of abuse will continue for as long as the GOP remains in power.

Days after complaints over the handling of an interview with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on “Face the Nation,” CBS News said Friday it would no longer allow editing of its guests’ words on the Sunday morning public affairs show.

[…]

Going forward, CBS said it would only broadcast live or live-to-tape interviews on the show, meaning guests’ statements could not be edited, subject to legal or national security restrictions. CBS said the change was made “in response to audience feedback.”

This wasn’t “audience feedback.” This was a powerful administration getting mad about stuff that happens to pretty much everyone who’s ever recorded a taped interview ever. And if there was any “audience feedback,” it came from people who truly seem to desire nothing but pro-Trump propaganda spewing from their TV sets, rather than have to endure things like facts, pointed questions, and journalists refusing to be government stenographers.

Even worse, CBS’s official explanation caters to exactly the wrong sort of people: bullies with executive-level power in the government and the be-hatted asshats that adore the velvety touch of a boot heel applied to their tongue/neck:

In its announcement, CBS News said the policy will allow for “greater transparency” in interviews.

Yeah, I mean… I guess. But CBS had already engaged in “greater transparency” by posting the entire Noem interview and transcript before Noem even started to complain about it. CBS already did the “transparency” thing. Allowing government officials to utilize CBS as a bullhorn for baseless claims and outright lies doesn’t serve the public interest.

But this administration doesn’t serve the public interest either. And it doesn’t want anyone getting in the way of its disservice. With this capitulation, CBS shows that even one of the largest corporations in the United States is unable to stand up to bullies, even though it has all of the law on its side. That’s extremely disheartening, especially when it appears even the system of checks and balances appears to be, for the most part, willing to be steamrolled into submission, if not actively engaged in supporting the rise of Republic authoritarianism.

Filed Under: bullshit, dhs, ice, kilmar abrego garcia, kristi noem, trump administration
Companies: cbs, cbs news, paramount

DC Circuit Makes Rookie Mistake In Actually Following Binding Precedent In A Case Involving Donald Trump Firing People

Legal Issues

from the humphreys-executor-lives-to-die-another-day dept

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals did something remarkable last week—they followed binding Supreme Court precedent. In 2025. Involving Trump. Which, predictably, got them immediately overruled by the Supreme Court just days later.

In a 2-1 decision, the court dissolved the government’s stay and ordered that FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter be reinstated to her position, while essentially admitting that the Supreme Court would almost certainly reverse this decision very soon. They were right: Chief Justice John Roberts granted an administrative stay blocking that ruling from taking effect on Monday morning, with no explanation whatsoever. There will now be more briefing, but the case will still be rushed through the shadow docket, and Roberts putting the DC Circuit ruling on hold without any explanation gives you a sense of where the court is likely to go.

The imperial president will get his wish to fire an FTC Commissioner despite binding Supreme Court precedent to the contrary.

As we covered when the district court initially ruled, Trump illegally fired both Slaughter and Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya without cause, violating the clear statutory protections that require FTC commissioners be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” The Trump DOJ immediately sought and received a stay of that ruling, but this new DC Circuit order dissolves that stay and puts Slaughter back in her job.

The majority opinion makes clear just how legally straightforward this case should be—and how politically fraught it actually is.

The court doesn’t mince words about the government’s chances in normal times:

The government is not likely to succeed on appeal because any ruling in its favor from this court would have to defy binding, on-point, and repeatedly preserved Supreme Court precedent. Bucking such precedent is not within this court’s job description.

At another point, it’s even more direct about the government’s chances (again, with the “in normal times” implied):

The government has no likelihood of success on appeal given controlling and directly on point Supreme Court precedent.

But, of course, all that is based on the flimsy belief that binding precedent remains binding precedent under this Supreme Court.

That binding precedent in this case, of course, is Humphreys Executor v. United States from 1935, where a unanimous Supreme Court told FDR he couldn’t fire FTC commissioners at will. The DC Circuit methodically explains why that precedent remains controlling, despite the government’s arguments that the FTC has somehow “outgrown” the protections the Court established 90 years ago.

The court demolishes the government’s argument that the modern FTC exercises fundamentally different powers than the 1935 version by walking through a detailed comparison:

Then, as now, the Commission could investigate potential violations of federal law, including by issuing subpoenas and seeking their enforcement. As the Supreme Court recognized, the 1935 Commission had “wide powers of investigation[,]” Humphreys Executor, 295 U.S. at 621, including the power to launch investigations “at its own instance[,]”

The opinion continues this “then, as now” structure through multiple paragraphs, showing that the Commission’s investigatory powers, its ability to prosecute violations through administrative complaints, and its rulemaking authority all existed in substantially similar forms when Humphrey’s Executor was decided. Each paragraph includes plenty of details and examples of the FTC in 1935 doing these very same things.

In 1935, as now, the Commission could also prosecute violations by issuing administrative complaints…..

And in 1935, as now, the Commission could promulgate rules and regulations, as well as issue reports….

Even Trump’s strongest argument—that the modern FTC can seek monetary penalties in federal court—gets shot down:

The government emphasizes that the present-day Commission can seek monetary penalties against private parties in federal court. … But much of that authority stems from the Commission’s 1935 authority to issue cease-and-desist orders. See 15 U.S.C. § 45(l), (m)(1)(B). This power is therefore an “outgrowth[]” of the Commission’s original enforcement and remedial powers, not a “dramatic transformation[] of the ‘character of the office.’”

The court systematically refutes the government’s argument that recent Supreme Court decisions have implicitly overruled Humphrey’s Executor. Instead, it points out that the Court has repeatedly and explicitly preserved the precedent:

In the intervening decades, the Supreme Court has not overruled Humphrey’s Executor. Quite the opposite, it has preserved Humphrey’s Executor at every turn.

The opinion walks through case after case where the Court could have overruled Humphrey’s Executor but chose not to—from Wiener in 1958, through Morrison in 1988, and up to Seila Law in 2020 and Collins in 2021. Indeed, it highlights that in Seila Law (about the CFPB), the Supreme Court suggested that if Congress wanted to protect CFPB members from being fired, it should reconstitute it to be more like the FTC:

This trend has continued in recent years even as the Supreme Court has narrowed the constitutional scope of limits on the removal power in other contexts. See Free Enter. Fund, 561 U.S. at 483 (acknowledging and leaving intact Humphrey’s Executor); Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 228 (“[W]e do not revisit Humphrey’s Executor or any other precedent today * * * *”); Collins, 594 U.S. at 250–251 (reiterating that Seila Law did not overrule Humphrey’s Executor, but merely “found ‘compelling reasons not to extend’” Humphrey’s Executor to a “novel context”) (quoting Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 204). In fact, in Seila Law, a majority of the Supreme Court invited Congress to remake the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the same mold as the Federal Trade Commission, which Humphrey’s Executor had upheld. See 591 U.S. at 237 (Roberts, C.J., joined by Alito and Kavanaugh, JJ., concurring in the judgment); id. at 298 (Kagan, J., joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, JJ., concurring in the judgment with respect to severability and dissenting in part).

The court also distinguishes this case from recent Supreme Court stay orders in Trump v. Wilcox and Trump v. Boyle, where the Court allowed Trump to remove members of other independent agencies. The key difference? Those cases involved extending Humphrey’s Executor to new agencies, while this case involves the exact same agency and statute already blessed by Humphrey’s Executor:

The present case, however, differs in material respects from recent removal cases in which the Supreme Court has granted the government’s request for a stay. See Trump v. Wilcox, 605 U.S. ___, 145 S. Ct. 1415 (2025); Trump v. Boyle, 605 U.S. ___, No. 25A11, slip op. (U.S. July 23, 2025). In those cases, an extension of Humphrey’s Executor to a new context would have been required for the removed officials to prevail on the merits. In contrast, the present case involves the exact same agency, the exact same removal provision, and the same exercises of executive power already addressed by the Supreme Court in Humphrey’s Executor and subsequent decisions, and so is squarely controlled by that precedent.

The court even notes that the Supreme Court’s stay order in Wilcox explicitly reaffirmed that removal protections already recognized by precedent—like those in Humphrey’s Executor—remain in effect.

The dissent from Judge Neomi Rao (a very loyal Trump appointee) reads like a legal brief written by someone who really, really wants to be promoted to the Supreme Court someday. She essentially argues that Humphrey’s Executor should be ignored because… reasons.

First, she admits she thinks Humphrey’s Executor should be overruled:

I have long thought that Humphreys Executor should be overruled because it is inconsistent with the Constitution’s vesting of all executive power in the President and with more recent Supreme Court decisions.

But since she can’t actually overrule Supreme Court precedent, she instead argues that the district court’s injunction ordering Slaughter’s reinstatement exceeds judicial authority:

Even assuming that Slaughter’s removal was unlawful, the district court nonetheless lacked the power to issue the injunction… Such injunctive relief is unprecedented and creates a direct confrontation with the President over his core Article II powers.

Her argument basically boils down to: even if Trump broke the law, courts can’t do anything meaningful about it because that would interfere with presidential power. It’s constitutional law by way of “L’état, c’est moi.”

Most tellingly, Rao argues that recent Supreme Court stay orders should control here, even though those cases involved different agencies and statutes and were all on the shadow docket, rather than based on the fully briefed merits:

The reasoning of these orders must be applied to stay Slaughter’s reinstatement. Everyone agrees that FTC commissioners are principal officers who exercise substantial executive power.

Of course, everyone here knows how this likely ends: with the Trump-loyal Supreme Court ignoring all precedent and tossing Humphrey’s Executor into the wood chipper. After the unambiguous ruling by the DC Circuit, Trump’s DOJ quickly asked the Supreme Court to issue a stay of the DC Circuit’s ruling. It made the same arguments that the DOJ has been making all along: that all those recent decisions say that Humphrey’s Executor is effectively overruled, and Trump can fire anyone he damn well wants to fire.

Commissioner Slaughter has filed asking the Court not to grant the stay Trump is requesting, which always seemed unlikely to work. And, indeed, Chief Justice John Roberts put the DC Circuit ruling aside, issuing a stay of the ruling on Monday morning.

Roberts didn’t waste much time. He just issued the stay immediately, proving exactly what everyone already knew: this Supreme Court will bend over backwards to give Trump whatever he wants, binding precedent be damned. The stay puts the DC Circuit ruling on hold while the Court considers the issue on the emergency docket, meaning Slaughter remains out of her job in the meantime.

The DC Circuit did what Judge AliKhan did at the district court level—creating a perfect record for the Supreme Court to reverse while making them own the authoritarian power grab explicitly. It was principled, but ultimately pointless. Everyone involved knows this is just another step in Trump’s systematic dismantling of the administrative state, with the Supreme Court’s eager assistance. The only question now is whether they’ll have the intellectual honesty to overrule Humphrey’s Executor explicitly when the case eventually is ruled upon more fully, or whether they’ll continue the charade of distinguishing it into oblivion while pretending they’re not doing exactly what everyone knows they’re doing.

Filed Under: dc circuit, donald trump, ftc, humphrey's executor, neomi rao, precedent, rebecca kelly slaughter, shadow docket, supreme court

Trump Administration Now Murdering People In International Waters Just Because

Legal Issues

from the 5th-avenue-but-it's-the-Caribbean dept

The “fresh hell” administration keeps on rolling. There’s no need to actually ask what fresh hell awaits. You need do nothing more than exist and a new fresh hell will be delivered, almost daily.

Here’s the freshest: the US military decided to blow up a boat traveling in international waters — one carrying eleven people, all definitely dead — because… well, no one really seems to be able to say definitively.

There’s a whole lot of vibes going on, but not much else. The man presumably capable of making a final call on extrajudicial killings during war time — famed accused day drinker and Signal chat enthusiast Pete Hegseth — said some stuff that lacked substance or, more importantly, any legal backing while being chatted up by PravdaUS:

The Trump administration has not offered any legal rationale. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday that administration officials “knew exactly who was in that boat” and “exactly what they were doing,” although he did not offer evidence.

For whatever reason, Secretary of State Marco Rubio felt compelled to offer his comments on the offshore murders, which went about as well as anything ever does for Marco:

Mr. Rubio had said on Tuesday that it was going to Trinidad, while Mr. Trump said the United States. On Wednesday, Mr. Rubio changed his version, saying the drug-laden boat was bound for the United States.

The secretary said in Mexico City that drug cartels and traffickers, including those on the boat, “pose an immediate threat to the United States, period.”

But no one actually offered any rationale for what happened (and was boasted about by Trump on Truth Social). While officials said some vague stuff about drug trafficking and made unsubstantiated claims about the eleven victims of this attack being Tren de Aragua members, the government was busy working its way backwards from the killings to find some reason for having already killed people:

Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.

A day later, the Defense Department must still have been working on a semi-plausible excuse for breaking all the rules of crime-fighting — especially one in which it certainly appears the US government destroyed a boat carrying eleven people but probably not much (if any!) drugs. The footage of the strike shows a boat more likely carrying refugees/migrants to another country (possibly even Trinidad). Half-mumbled claims about drug dealing and terrorism being pretty much the same thing were made by many in Trump’s cabinet.

The only official comment offered after statements by Rubio and Hegseth was even more useless and insipid than the ones they delivered:

Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, emphasized in a statement late on Wednesday that the strike took place in international waters and did not put American troops at risk. She said that Mr. Trump had directed the attack in “defense of vital U.S. national interests and in the collective self-defense of other nations who have long suffered due to the narcotics trafficking and violent cartel activities of such organizations.”

“The strike was fully consistent with the law of armed conflict,” Ms. Kelly said.

First things fucking last: NO ONE WAS EVER IN THE LEAST BIT CONCERNED ABOUT THE SAFETY OF US TROOPS. This answers a question no one asked and does nothing more than pad an answer that really isn’t an answer. It’s just more of the same deflection and dribble from the Trump administration. Saying it took place in international waters doesn’t mean — like far too many people believe — that all bets are off and any country can do whatever it wants in waters that don’t actually belong to any single country.

Finally, saying the strike was “consistent” with the “law of armed conflict” only means something if the strike, in fact, complied with law of armed conflict. Simply saying it does doesn’t actually make it legal. That’s what judges call a “conclusory statement” and that’s one of the most worthless things any entity can offer in defense of its actions.

If it was indeed “fully consistent” with the law, you’d think the administration would have already released a memo or statement from the White House Office of Legal Counsel explaining (with citations) why this strike complied with all applicable laws.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, we got some people saying it’s defensible because drug cartels have been called “terrorists” by Trump and another person saying “this was legal because I’m saying it was legal.” Instead, what we’ve been given is an extrajudicial killing, followed by some administration gloating, followed by some administration deflection, which is now followed by the unsettling feeling that this is just beginning of a new wave of awfulness. As Charlie Savage’s headline for the New York Times puts it plainly: Trump has claimed the power of summary execution, which aligns him directly with authoritarian leaders he so obviously admires.

And as if all of this weren’t horrifying enough, here’s the president’s official “War Room” account responding to Senator Rand Paul’s obvious question about the morality of summarily executing people only suspected of committing a crime:

This administration has no use for slippery slopes. It races all the way to the bottom of them and then dares anyone to do anything about it. There’s nothing too unethical, immoral, or illegal to be taken off the table when accomplishing its end goals. The justification for the means can always be generated after the fact and if that fails to hold up to judicial scrutiny, the administration will simply move on to the next lawless act on the authoritarian to-do list — whatever it takes to convert the land of the free into the “vast ecumenical holding company” of the GOP’s fever dreams.

Filed Under: defense department, dod, donald trump, evil, extrajudicial killing, marco rubio, murder, pete hegseth, tda, trump administration, venezuela, war on drugs

Daily Deal: The 2025 Complete Splunk Beginner Bundle

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

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Filed Under: daily deal