Thomas A. Berry Today, in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional a Texas law mandating that websites impose age verification if those websites feature one-third or more content that is obscene for minors. In rejecting a First Amendment challenge to the law, the Supreme Court held that the law should neither be subjected to the most ...
David Inserra Brazil’s Supreme Court finalized its decision to fundamentally undermine Brazil’s liability protections for platforms hosting online speech. The ruling continues a series of decisions by Brazilian courts to act as unaccountable prosecutors, judges, and legislators, who have seized the right to determine what online speech is allowed. And particularly relevant to Americans, it clearly shows the importance of ...
Neal McCluskey Parents have a right to opt their children out of readings in public schools that violate parents’ religious beliefs. So argued the Supreme Court today in a case that typifies a fundamental problem with public schooling: forcing people with diverse values to fund a single system of government schools inherently leads to either imposition or avoidance of material ...
Colleen Hroncich “If you really want to get better at golf, go back and take it up at a much earlier age.” ~Thomas Mulligan It’s unlikely former professional golfer Morris Brown was influenced by Thomas Mulligan—the fictional character humorist Henry Beard credits with inventing the “do-over” in golf—when he founded Savannah Legacy Academy. But by creating a unique school that incorporates ...
Charles Silver One of the odder changes the Senate made to the House of Representatives’ version of the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” was Sen. Thom Tillis’s (R‑NC) insertion of a provision that will put commercial litigation funders out of business by subjecting them to absurd taxes. The provision won’t reduce the deficit, fix the health care system, or address ...
Krit Chanwong and Dominik Lett For years, states have used creative financing schemes to game the Medicaid system, effectively laundering billions in federal dollars with little transparency or accountability. Even the Government Accountability Office (GAO), tasked with auditing how federal programs spend taxpayer dollars, can’t keep track of the full costs of these schemes. Finally, Congress is considering cracking down ...
Neal McCluskey In the last couple of days, we have seen not one but two survey reports addressing how American adults feel about teacher-led prayer in public schools. I’m not sure why the one-two punch, but today, a new AP-NORC poll came out showing a majority opposition to such prayer. I wrote yesterday about a Pew Research Center survey finding ...
Neal McCluskey I study values in education, and this surprised me: A new Pew survey has found that a majority of Americans—52 percent—favor teacher-led prayer in public schools that specifically mentions Jesus. Fifty-seven percent favor prayer that, less specifically, mentions God. For a country in which official prayer has been verboten in public schools since the early 1960s, and posting the Ten Commandments seems politically daring, ...
David Inserra A recent Guardian article argued that “rampant climate misinformation is turning the crisis into a catastrophe” and favorably cited climate experts who called for the “criminalization” of such climate “greenwashing.” The LA Dodgers claimed that they had denied Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents access to their stadium grounds, while ICE denied its agents were even there, joining ...
Adam N. Michel You’ve probably heard the claim that fossil fuels are heavily subsidized by the federal government. The Biden administration estimated there were at least $35 billion of fossil fuel subsidies in the tax code alone. Elon Musk recently expressed a similar sentiment, insinuating that oil and gas receive subsidies comparable to those received by electric vehicles and solar. ...