SCOTUS Takes Aim At Sentencing Deference Via Gun Case

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The Supreme Court just heard the case that could do to criminal sentencing what it already did to the administrative state: end automatic judicial deference to the bureaucrats who write the rules.

 

The justices heard argument Tuesday in Beaird v. United States, a case asking whether courts must keep deferring to the US Sentencing Commission’s own interpretations of its sentencing guidelines. It is dry on its face and enormous underneath, the next logical step after the Court spent recent terms dismantling the deference regime that let agencies grade their own homework.

Why it matters: When an unelected commission writes a rule and then gets to tell judges what its own rule means, the people sentenced under it lose twice, once to the rule and once to the gloss. Conservatives who cheered the end of Chevron deference for federal agencies have been waiting for the Court to ask why the same logic should not apply when someone’s prison term is on the line.

What the case is about

The question is deference, not guns. The Court granted review limited to whether Stinson v. United States, a 1993 precedent, still correctly states how much deference courts owe the commentary to the Sentencing Guidelines (SOURCE HERE).

It was argued this week. Beaird v. United States was heard on Oct. 13, the lone case on the Supreme Court’s calendar that day (SOURCE HERE).

The gun detail is just the hook. The petitioner, Kendrick Beaird, a felon with four prior convictions, saw his sentence raised under a commission note defining a “large capacity magazine” as holding more than 15 rounds, because his Glock held 17, but the Second Amendment question was not the one the Court agreed to decide (SOURCE HERE).

Why conservatives are watching

  • It is the sequel to the Chevron fight. After the Court ended automatic deference to federal agencies, legal conservatives argued that deference to the Sentencing Commission’s self-interpretation was the next unjustified holdover (SOURCE HERE).
  • The anti-deference bar has lined up. The New Civil Liberties Alliance filed a brief arguing that with Chevron gone, Stinson deference should fall next (SOURCE HERE).
  • It is not a clean hero case. The government supports only a limited remand and says Beaird loses either way, and a court-appointed lawyer is defending the old deference rule, so the principle matters more here than the defendant (SOURCE HERE).

In Their Own Words

The New Civil Liberties Alliance put the stakes plainly in its brief, arguing that Chevron deference is gone and that unlawful Stinson deference should be next (SOURCE HERE), framing the case as the unfinished business of the Court’s war on agency self-dealing.

What The Other Side Is Doing And How To Neutralize It

The defenders of deference, mostly on the legal left but also among institutionalists who prize predictability, argue that the Sentencing Commission is an expert body, that its commentary brings consistency to thousands of sentences a year, and that stripping deference will unleash a wave of litigation and uneven outcomes as judges reinterpret the guidelines on their own.

That argument has both surface appeal and a deep flaw. Consistency imposed by an unaccountable body interpreting its own rules is not the rule of law; it is administrative convenience wearing the robes of law. The same case was made for Chevron deference for fifty years: agencies were expert, courts should defer, and the Court correctly concluded that expertise is not a license to escape judicial review.

There is no principled reason the commission that sets prison terms should enjoy deference that agencies regulating commerce no longer receive.

The organizations driving this are ones a conservative donor can back with confidence. The New Civil Liberties Alliance has made ending administrative deference its signature cause and filed directly in this case (VISIT HERE). The Pacific Legal Foundation has spent decades litigating against the administrative state’s self-granted powers (VISIT HERE). The Cato Institute’s legal shop has been the intellectual engine behind the deference-skepticism movement (VISIT HERE). To answer the “chaos” objection, note that judges interpreting law are not chaos; it is their job, and the Constitution assigns it to them rather than to the commissions whose work they are meant to check.

How this plays out

The facts of this case are unglamorous and the defendant unsympathetic, which is exactly why it is a good vehicle for a serious principle. Nobody is going to rally for a four-time felon’s sentencing enhancement, and nobody should have to, because the question the Court agreed to decide has nothing to do with whether Kendrick Beaird deserves his time.

It has to do with whether the body that writes the sentencing rules gets to be the final judge of what they mean, and the answer, after everything the Court has said about deference in recent years, should be no. A rule is only as lawful as the review that checks it, and a commission that interprets its own commentary, with the courts bound to follow it, has slipped the leash.

Conservatives spent a generation arguing that agencies should not grade their own homework. That principle does not get a carve-out because the subject is prison instead of pollution. End the deference. Let judges read the law. Let the chips fall on the merits, where they belong.

Facts are prickly things,

-The Editors

Liberty · Upstream of the Swamp · October 13, 2026

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

Feds Search Ilhan Omar’s Home: What The Media Is Skipping

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant at Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington home early Monday morning, part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation. No charges have been filed, Omar denies wrongdoing and calls it political targeting, and only anonymous sources have reported the probe’s specific subject.

Omar is one of the most disliked figures on the right, and the temptation to cheer is real. But the standard that governs an early-morning federal search of an elected official’s home does not change based on whose home it is. Conservatives learned that the hard way, and a principle that only protects your own side is not a principle.

If there is real evidence Omar committed a crime, this process should be allowed to play out. But exercise caution in case the scales of power in D.C. swing back. Here is the state of play.

What is known

It was a federal search under a warrant. The DOJ said Homeland Security Investigations “executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice,” and border czar Tom Homan said a judge signed it (SOURCE HERE).

No one has been charged. The DOJ described only “an ongoing federal criminal investigation”; Omar has not been charged with any crime, and she denies wrongdoing (SOURCE HERE).

The subject is reported, not confirmed. Fox News, citing unidentified sources, said the search concerned immigration paperwork Omar’s late father filed when she was a child; the DOJ itself has not stated the subject, and the claim remains an allegation (SOURCE HERE).

What is not known

What, if anything, was seized. Agents were photographed carrying boxes from the residence, but no source has disclosed the contents, and no source confirms what was taken (SOURCE HERE).

Which court authorized it. A judge approved the warrant, but no outlet has named the court or the judge who signed it (SOURCE HERE).

Whether this is the probe Homan flagged. Homan confirmed a criminal investigation involving Omar back on Sept. 13, but the subject aired then was an older, unproven marriage-fraud claim, not the father-paperwork allegation attached to Monday’s search (SOURCE HERE).

In Their Own Words

“Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” Omar wrote, adding “I will not be silenced” (SOURCE HERE), a line that lands differently depending on which administration is holding the warrant.

What The Other Side Is Doing And How To Neutralize It

The left’s framing is that this is naked political targeting, a Trump administration sending agents to the home of a prominent critic over decades-old paperwork as a form of intimidation. The administration’s answer is the one every administration gives: no one is above the law, a judge signed the warrant, and the process cleared independent review.

Both of those are familiar scripts, because we heard them almost word for word when the target was Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, only with the parties reversed. That is the uncomfortable fact we have to sit with. The tactic conservatives called a banana-republic abuse when it was aimed at a Republican president is the same tactic, with the same justifications, now aimed at a Democratic congresswoman.

The way through is to insist on the process, loudly and in advance, so the standard survives the next reversal. The Due Process Institute works these questions on an explicitly bipartisan basis, which is exactly the posture this moment requires (VISIT HERE). The Cause of Action Institute is a right-of-center watchdog that sues the government over exactly this kind of overreach (VISIT HERE). The Project on Government Oversight brings a nonpartisan eye to how federal law enforcement uses its power (VISIT HERE).

How it stands

Let the investigation proceed, and let it proceed properly. If Ilhan Omar or anyone in her orbit committed immigration fraud, a court should hear the evidence and a jury should decide, with every protection the law affords, the same protections conservatives rightly demanded for their own.

What a serious outlet or voice should not do is convict her from a leak, treat a search warrant as a conviction, or let an old and unproven narrative get laundered into fact because the agents finally showed up at her door. We have no brief for Omar’s politics, which we find consistently wrong. We have a very large brief for the principle that the government does not get to search the home of an elected official it dislikes without meeting the same bar it must meet for everyone, and that the public does not get to assume guilt before a charge is even filed.

Report the facts. Demand the process. And remember that the weapon you cheer when it is pointed at your enemy is the weapon that will be handed, intact, to theirs.

Facts are prickly things,

-The Editors

Politics · Upstream of the Swamp · October 13, 2026

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

Removing Foreigners for Ideological Incompatibility with America

By Ilya Shapiro

Written by Ilya Shapiro

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Should we admit — and if admitted, should we revoke the visas of and remove — foreigners opposed to our constitutional order and way of life?

Two weeks ago, I had a debate at UCLA Law School on the topic: “Can and should the federal government deny visas to, detain, and deport noncitizens who advocate for causes inimical to the United States?” In other words, should we remove foreigners who undermine our system of government and, more broadly, are hostile to American values? (Query why people who hate America would want to come here, but that’s an indication that their revealed preference—wanting to come to a peaceful and prosperous place—doesn’t align with their Third-Worldist beliefs.)

It was touch and go whether we’d even have the event, as my debate opponent, Prof. Ahilan Arulanantham, after having initially agreed to participate, insisted less than a week before on playing a video. I objected to that—this is a debate, not dueling multimedia presentations—but was fine with his putting up a slide (because PowerPoint is typically counterproductive in this context). When he explained that what he wanted to show was footage of the arrest of Rümeysa Öztürk—the Tufts grad student whose visa was canceled for advocacy that the secretary of state determined to be harmful to our foreign policy interests—I was even more opposed. That video was both inflammatory and irrelevant. After all, I wasn’t there to debate ICE operations—UCLA had that opportunity in the spring, when DHS general counsel James Percival was shouted down—but the idea of removing people for ideological incompatibility.

But all’s well that ended well. The event came off without any disruptions, and indeed with no protests of any kind (watch the video1). It was unfortunate that we had to spend time devising a security strategy, complete with “free-speech facilitators” inside and a police presence outside. But any potential shenanigans were defused by Vice Dean Andrew Verstein’s excellent introductory admonition, which should go down as a “best practice” for these sorts of things. He shared the key part of this opening with me:

This is a timely and controversial topic for debate. As such, it behooves us to spend just a moment discussing the format and rules for this debate. Some of those rules are for the speakers, and some of them are for the audience. My job as moderator is to let everyone know about the rules so that we can have a productive exchange.

Let’s start with all of you, out there. I’d like to let you know about disruptions and recordings. On point of recordings. Tonight’s debate is being filmed and live-streamed by the organizers. I know many of you like to record these events yourselves; you are welcome instead to put the phone away, watch the debate, and trust that the public record will exist. If you do keep your phone out, please silence it and turn off alarms. Those are disruptive.

And with regard to disruptions. This is a university. We do not shy away from disagreement. We honor freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas as core values at UCLA. Each member of the UCLA community has the right to present speakers and programs, as well as to protest speakers and programs. However, nobody has the right to be disruptive. Camus officials are present in case I deem activity disruptive. Those officials will approach disruptive individuals, warn them -and if the disruption continues, will require them to leave. Anybody sent out in this way may face arrest and consequences under UCLA policy, and applicable criminal laws. Our goal is to have a peaceful and respectful event. So please be mindful of other audience members and thank you for your attention.

With that warning given, Verstein asked me to open the debate, which I did with the following prepared remarks:

The resolution asks whether the federal government can and should deny visas to, detain, and deport noncitizens who advocate causes inimical to the United States.

My answer is yes—subject to the statutes Congress has enacted, procedures appropriate to the person’s immigration status, and meaningful proof that the person actually supports the disqualifying cause.

Begin by separating criminal punishment from immigration eligibility. I’ve spent my career defending freedom of speech. American citizens have the constitutional right to praise communism, denounce capitalism, burn the flag, advocate the dissolution of NATO, or express almost any other repugnant idea. The government generally can’t prosecute them for it.

But the First Amendment isn’t a universal visa. It doesn’t give every person in the world a right to enter the US; nor does it erase Congress’s authority to attach substantive conditions to the admission of foreign nationals. Immigration law is necessarily selective. We exclude people for diseases, crimes, fraud, espionage, terrorism, totalitarian affiliations, and expected foreign-policy consequences.

Tonight’s debate asks if ideological hostility to our constitutional order must be the one risk the government is forbidden to consider.

A free society is entitled to preserve the conditions that that freedom possible:

  • Constitutional government;
  • The rule of law;
  • Equal citizenship;
  • Peaceful political change;
  • Religious liberty;
  • Freedom of expression;
  • Rejection of political violence and coercive authoritarianism.

Those principles don’t enforce themselves. A free society may tolerate virtually unlimited dissent among its own citizens while declining to import people who seek to destroy the system that protects dissent. There’s no contradiction here. Citizenship creates membership in the political community—the polity. A visa grants a foreigner limited permission to enter for specified purposes and under specified conditions.

The relevant distinction is between suppressing ideas already within the American political community and deciding whom to add to that community, even temporarily. For example:

  • The government may not imprison an American communist for praising communism. It need not issue a visa to a foreign communist revolutionary seeking to organize here.
  • It may not prosecute an American for praising Hamas. It need not admit a foreign Hamas propagandist who wants to recruit sympathizers on an American campus.

This principle should be ideologically evenhanded. It applies to communists, fascists, Islamists, racial supremacists, agents of hostile governments, and anyone else who knowingly supports the displacement of our constitutional order by coercive, authoritarian rule.

I would use the same substantive eligibility principle before and after admission, while recognizing that someone already here receives more procedure. If a fact would have justified denying a temporary visa on Monday, the government should not be helpless when it discovers that fact on Tuesday. Nor should an alien acquire immunity by concealing his views until after he passes through customs.

And the principle applies regardless of the ideology:

  • Communism;
  • Fascism;
  • Islamism or other authoritarian theocracy;
  • Racial supremacy;
  • Foreign-government subversion;
  • Any movement seeking coercive displacement of constitutional rule.

Watch the rest here. I’ll note that we built into the debate format two short periods of cross-examination. Prof. Arunanthalam’s questioning of me focused on the propriety of and standards for detention, much of which I pled ignore to because I’m not a law-enforcement expert. I imagine there are some people set for removal you’d want to detain—those who are particularly dangerous, those who may be flight risks, etc.—and others you don’t. But again that’s not the focus of my argument, which is that there should be some (and indeed there are already in the Immigration and Nationality Act) certain ideological criteria that make someone “ineligible” for admission, and then drawing those disqualifying lines.

More revealing was my cross-examination, when I got Prof. Arunanthalam to answer yes to the following two questions:

  1. Congress expressly makes inadmissible an alien who endorses or espouses terrorist activity. Do you believe that provision is facially unconstitutional?
  2. Suppose an otherwise qualified F-1 applicant truthfully tells a consular officer, “I support Hamas’s October 7 attacks and intend to persuade American students to support more such attacks.” Should the United States still grant the visa?

He said that if a person had actually engaged in terroristic or criminal activity, that was of course disqualifying, but holding, expressing, or advocating certain beliefs could not be. I found that astonishing, and said so.

And here’s how I concluded, with my rebuttal reproduce here as prepared for delivery:

Prof. Arulanantham has stated many true propositions. Lawfully present foreigners have rights. Criticism of Israel is protected expression. Vague labels such as “extremist” or “anti-American” can be abused. The government must prove an actual statutory ground.

But none of those propositions establishes the conclusion he needs: that the Constitution forbids Congress and the executive from considering ideology, advocacy, or association when deciding whether someone may enter or remain.

The statutory text refutes that categorical position. Congress expressly excludes aliens who endorse terrorist activity. It excludes those seeking to overthrow the govt. It excludes Communist and totalitarian-party members. It authorizes exclusion/removal for potentially serious foreign-policy consequences, including exceptional cases based on otherwise lawful beliefs or statements. Those provisions may produce difficult cases. But difficult cases don’t erase statutory authority.

The Supreme Court points in the same direction. Mandel upheld the exclusion of a Marxist scholar despite the First Amendment interests of Americans who wanted to hear him. Harisiades rejected a First Amendment challenge to deportation based on Communist Party membership. Galvan likewise upheld ideological deportation. Trump v. Hawaii reaffirmed broad political-branch authority over entry.

Prof. Arulanantham may want those cases overruled, but they can’t substitute his preferred future Supreme Court for the law existing today. Bridges doesn’t establish his categorical position. It protected the speech rights of resident aliens and required meaningful affiliation rather than guilt by association. That is entirely consistent with my position: require knowledge, voluntariness, purpose, and actual evidence. Bridges supplies a limiting principle, not an ideological sanctuary provision.

Prof. Arulanantham invoked recent cases involving students whose alleged misconduct consisted of op-eds and protests. Those cases may reveal factual weakness or executive overreach. If the government can’t prove terrorist endorsement, purposeful association, a legitimate foreign-policy consequence, fraud, or another removal ground, it should lose. But incorrect application of a legitimate power, let alone mistakes in arrest or detention, is an argument for accurate adjudication and better law enforcement. It doesn’t prove that the power cannot exist.

Prof. Arulanantham may say that speech cannot be both constitutionally protected and evidence of immigration ineligibility. That is wrong. A statement may be protected from criminal punishment while revealing intent, knowledge, motive, affiliation, or future purpose. A consular officer need not pretend not to hear an applicant who announces his intention to recruit support for a terrorist cause. Congress need not pretend that endorsing terrorist violence conveys nothing about immigration risk.

Prof. Arulanantham also invoked the danger that a future administration will use these powers against its opponents. That danger supports precise statutory definitions:

  • Undermining our system of government rather than “bad opinions”;
  • Authoritarian objectives rather than “views we dislike”;
  • Knowing and purposeful support rather than casual association;
  • Peaceful constitutional reform expressly protected.

Every government authority can be abused. The legal response is to define the authority and police its boundaries, not to disable the nation from protecting itself.

Finally, Prof. Arulanantham may defend the current statutory categories while resisting any modernization. That leaves an indefensible anomaly. Congress may exclude an old-fashioned communist or someone who expressly praises terrorist violence, but must admit a modern authoritarian who seeks the abolition of political opposition, or constitutional supremacy, provided he avoids the statutory vocabulary of 1952.

The relevant question is the objective, not the historical label. Does the alien knowingly seek to replace constitutional government and peaceful political competition with coercive authoritarian rule? If so, Congress may treat that purpose as incompatible with admission and continued immigration eligibility.

The First Amendment protects Americans against government censorship. It doesn’t require us to admit every foreign national who wishes to exploit American openness against the constitutional system that sustains it. While the government can’t send noncitizens to jail for saying things it doesn’t like, it can and should deny or pull visas for those who advocate for causes inimical to the United States. There’s also nothing objectionable about removing those who harass, intimidate, vandalize, and otherwise interfere with an educational institution’s core mission.

A confident liberal society welcomes argument. A responsible liberal society also exercises judgment about whom it admits. Those principles can coexist. Our existing statutes and precedents demonstrate that they already do. And Congress should modernize the law to confront new ideological threats.

-Ilya Shapiro

Ilya Shapiro is a Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies. author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025), Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020) Shapiro’s Gavel on Substack. Visit HERE to learn more.

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

How Much Freedom Are We Willing to Trade for Safety?

By Frank Barbaro

Written by Frank Barbaro

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

When I was a new detective, one of my most valuable tools was a Rolodex. I developed personal relationships with people who knew things, and when I needed information, I picked up the telephone. Investigations started with a crime, a suspect or at least a reason to believe something was happening. We identified a target and then tried to learn where he was going, whom he was meeting and what he was doing.

Technology has changed all of that. Today, investigators can search digital footprints, telephone records, location information and vast networks of license-plate cameras. Those tools can solve crimes faster and more efficiently than anything we had when I started. But they also represent a fundamental change in the relationship between government and the public.

We used to collect information because someone was suspected of a crime. Now we increasingly collect information about everyone in case someone commits a crime later. That difference should concern anyone who values both public safety and individual liberty. As a narcotics officer, I used a commercial license-plate database operated by Vigilant Solutions. Much of its information came from cameras mounted on tow trucks and repossession vehicles. Those trucks drove through neighborhoods and parking lots looking
for vehicles subject to repossession. Along the way, they collected the locations of countless other vehicles.

Law-enforcement officers could access that information through a website. We used it for legitimate investigations. A vehicle sighting could help place a suspected drug dealer or drug user at a particular location. That information might become one piece of a larger investigation that eventually established probable cause for a search warrant. The system was extremely useful. It was also easy to misuse. I remember an officer using the database to track a girlfriend he suspected of cheating. That incident exposed the weakness of relying primarily on a password, an agency identifier and the expectation that every authorized user would always act properly.

The problem was not that the technology failed. The problem was that it worked. We had serious discussions about these issues at the sheriff’s office. I remember Sheriff Scott Mascher opposing the collection and storage of information about people who had done nothing wrong. Others in the room offered compelling examples in favor of it. What if a child had been abducted? What if there had been a murder, a bank robbery or another serious crime? If cameras recorded vehicles entering and leaving the Prescott area, investigators might identify the suspect quickly enough to save a life.

Both sides had a point. That is what makes this debate difficult. Whenever a major crime occurred, we conducted what we called a video canvass. Investigators went to every business, home and other location along the suspected route to or from the crime scene. We asked whether cameras had captured a suspect, a vehicle or some other piece of evidence. Then investigators spent hours – sometimes hundreds of hours – collecting and reviewing the recordings. The investigation came first. The collection followed.

Today, much of the collection has already occurred. Automated license-plate cameras create searchable records of vehicles, times and locations. Modern software can examine in moments what once required an entire team of investigators. A partial plate, vehicle color, body style, travel direction or distinctive feature may narrow thousands of observations to a small number of possibilities. That is an extraordinary investigative advantage. It is also an extraordinary concentration of power.

License-plate readers mounted in police cars started as a way to identify stolen vehicles and wanted persons. Larger databases made it possible to see where vehicles had been observed across jurisdictions and, in some cases, across the country or near the border. Investigators could look for travel patterns associated with the movement of drugs or money.

A vehicle making repeated cross-country trips would not be stopped merely for traveling. Instead, officers might identify it for attention and follow it until they observed a traffic violation. After the stop, the driver might receive a warning or citation and leave. If the officer developed additional suspicion, the officer might request consent to search or use a narcotics-detection dog within the limits imposed by law.

Many reasonable people will accept that process if it helps catch a trafficker. But lawful travel can reflect employment, family responsibilities or countless innocent choices. Once the government can assemble those trips into a pattern, the important question becomes: How far should that power extend?

For years, law enforcement relied on the premise that people generally had little expectation of privacy while traveling on public roads. We could watch a vehicle from another car. At one time, officers also attached electronic trackers to vehicles when they could reach them in a public place and then monitored their movements without a warrant. If the vehicle was inside a garage or another protected area, officers would seek judicial authority to reach it.

The Supreme Court eventually confronted that practice in United States v. Jones. In 2012, the Court held that attaching a GPS device to a vehicle and using it to monitor the vehicle’s movements constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment. The legal reasoning involved the physical intrusion onto the vehicle, but the case also exposed a larger truth: electronic surveillance can reveal far more than an officer observing a car on a public
street.

There is a practical difference between seeing a car pass once and secretly cataloging its movements for days or weeks. Technology can accomplish surveillance on a scale that human beings never could.

That brings us to Flock and similar automated camera networks. No device has to be attached to a vehicle. The cameras are already in place. Each individual observation occurs in public, but the network can assemble those observations into a history of movement. The result can resemble electronic tracking even though no officer ever touches the car.

The routine retention period does not resolve the larger question. Even a short period may contain an enormous number of searchable observations. Once information becomes evidence in a felony investigation, copies may be downloaded, disclosed to the defense and retained in evidence systems for years. The issue is not simply how long the original vendor keeps a record. It is who can search the information, for what purpose and under whose authority.

We already require judicial oversight for many intrusive searches and forms of electronic tracking. A warrant forces an investigator to explain the facts to an independent judge, establish probable cause and define the scope of the search. Requiring a warrant to reconstruct a person’s movements would not prevent police from using the technology. It would place constitutional process between an investigator and a powerful record of
someone’s life.

Requiring a warrant would not leave officers helpless during an emergency. The Fourth Amendment already recognizes exigent circumstances when an immediate threat to life, the escape of a dangerous suspect or the destruction of evidence makes waiting for a warrant impractical. Federal law also provides special mechanisms for rapidly obtaining certain information in national-security and terrorism investigations. The USA PATRIOT Act
expanded several of those authorities, although they are not a single blanket exception and some provisions have since changed or expired.

A warrant is not the only form of legal process available to investigators. Federal agencies have statutory authority in certain investigations to issue administrative subpoenas without first obtaining approval from a judge or grand jury. In national-security cases, authorized FBI officials can issue National Security Letters for limited categories of records without prior judicial approval. State investigators in Arizona generally obtain investigative subpoenas through the grand-jury process. These different levels of authority already allow
the law to account for the urgency and nature of an investigation.

Those existing rules show that the law can distinguish an actual emergency from ordinary investigative convenience. If a child has just been abducted or someone faces an immediate threat of death or serious injury, police can act quickly under established legal principles.

What should concern us is allowing the exceptional power justified by those cases to become routine access to everyone’s movements. I am not suggesting that we tear down every camera or force detectives to return to Rolodexes and handwritten notes. I used these tools. I understand their value, and I would have welcomed many of today’s capabilities when I was working cases. Technology can recover stolen vehicles, identify violent offenders, find missing people and save lives. Usefulness, however, cannot be the only test.

Not every technological improvement demands the same sacrifice of privacy. Telephone service once depended on operators physically connecting calls through switchboards. Automation allowed people to call almost anyone directly and made the service faster and more reliable. Few people would choose to return to the old system. Although modern telephones created privacy issues of their own, comprehensive surveillance was not the central purpose of automatic switching.

Automated license-plate systems are valuable precisely because they collect, organize and search information about where vehicles travel. The more cameras they install, the more jurisdictions they connect and the longer they preserve the information, the more powerful the system becomes.

The hardest questions about privacy involve technologies that genuinely work. An abducted child, a murderer escaping a crime scene or a trafficker carrying fentanyl provides a compelling reason to want every available tool. But constitutional protections were never intended to apply only when they are convenient.

We have moved from surveillance based on suspicion to collection in anticipation of future suspicion. Before that transformation becomes permanent, the public deserves to decide where the limits belong.

How much of our lawful movement should government be allowed to record? How long should it be kept? Who should be permitted to search it? And should an officer have to convince a judge before turning a database of everyone’s movements into surveillance of one person?

Those questions do not require us to choose between supporting law enforcement and protecting liberty. They require us to decide how law enforcement should operate in a free society.

-Frank Barbaro

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

Flock Sheds 18% As Cities Flee

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The surveillance company that blanketed America with license-plate cameras is laying off workers, because a backlash that crosses party lines is finally costing it customers.

Flock Safety, whose roughly 120,000 cameras read and log American drivers’ movements in 49 states, is cutting about 18 percent of its staff as cities cancel contracts and a federal judge calls its searches “indiscriminate mass surveillance.” For once, the market is punishing a surveillance business rather than rewarding it, and the revolt is not coming from one side of the aisle.

Automated tracking of where ordinary people drive, without a warrant or suspicion, is one of the quiet frontiers where the Fourth Amendment is being redrawn. The Flock retreat shows that Americans across the political spectrum have noticed, and that a conservative instinct against government surveillance still has teeth.

What is happening

The layoffs are steep. Flock is cutting about 18 percent of its roughly 1,500 employees, around 270 jobs, after offering voluntary buyouts in September (SOURCE HERE).

Cities are walking away. The anti-surveillance group Secure Justice counts 214 cities and towns that have dropped Flock since 2021, including 90 that canceled in August 2026 alone (SOURCE HERE).

This is a richly valued company stumbling. Flock was valued at $7.5 billion in a March 2025 round led by Andreessen Horowitz, which makes a workforce cut this size a signal, not a rounding error (SOURCE HERE).

The legal crack

  • A federal judge threw out a search. In United States v. Kyle, US District Judge Sara Hill of the Northern District of Oklahoma ruled in early October that a deputy’s warrantless use of Flock violated the Fourth Amendment, suppressing the evidence it produced (SOURCE HERE).
  • She called it what it is. Hill described the system as “a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance,” after a single query surfaced roughly a month of one driver’s location history, more than 50 records (SOURCE HERE).
  • The ruling does not yet bind the country. The decision is limited to its facts and sets no controlling precedent, and Flock is expected to appeal, so the constitutional question is open (SOURCE HERE).

In Their Own Words

Judge Sara Hill called the deputy’s use of the system “a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance” (SOURCE HERE), a phrase that captures why the backlash has found support well beyond the usual privacy activists.

What The Other Side Is Doing And How To Neutralize It

The interesting thing about this fight is that there is no clean partisan “other side.” Flock’s customers are more than 4,800 law-enforcement agencies, many of them in red counties, and plenty of law-and-order conservatives genuinely value the tool for catching car thieves and tracking Amber Alerts.

That is the real tension, and it runs inside the right, not only between parties. Florida, a Republican-led state, banned automated plate readers on its highways this year. The sharpest lawsuit against Flock, in Norfolk, Virginia, was brought by a libertarian public-interest firm, not the ACLU. The backlash is bipartisan because mass location tracking offends a principle that predates the parties: the government should not log the movements of people it has no reason to suspect.

The organizations carrying that principle are ones a conservative can back without hesitation. The Institute for Justice brought the Norfolk case and litigates against exactly this kind of warrantless dragnet on behalf of ordinary people (VISIT HERE). The Cato Institute has built a deep bench of Fourth Amendment and policing-surveillance scholarship from a limited-government view (VISIT HERE). The Electronic Frontier Foundation does the technical investigative work that maps where these cameras are and how they are used (VISIT HERE).

How it stands

It’s rare and welcome to watch the market discipline a surveillance company. Flock built a nationwide tracking grid on the premise that cities would keep buying and courts would keep looking away, and this month both assumptions cracked at once: 90 towns walked in a single August, a federal judge called the product mass surveillance, and the layoffs followed.

The lesson is not that the technology is useless, because it is not, nor that police should be blinded, because they should not. The lesson is that the Constitution already drew the line in the right place, at the warrant, and that a company which built its business on erasing that line was always going to run into the Fourth Amendment eventually.

Conservatives who cheer limited government should cheer this, because the principle that the state cannot track you without cause is not a left-wing principle or a right-wing one. It is an American one, and it is worth more than any camera.

Facts are prickly things,

-The Editors

Liberty · Upstream of the Swamp · October 12, 2026

This piece does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Investing involves risk; please consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions.

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

DOJ Targets Five Networks Over Boycott: Your Briefing

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The Justice Department is using antitrust law to investigate five TV networks for how they covered the president, and conservatives should be uneasy even about a probe aimed at outlets they distrust.

The DOJ’s Antitrust Division confirmed on Oct. 10 that it is investigating ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox over their brief, coordinated suspension of White House press-pool coverage last month, demanding internal communications on a theory that the networks illegally colluded. It is a real legal escalation dressed in antitrust clothing, and the clothing does not quite fit.

The power to investigate news organizations for how they cover the government feels satisfying when it is pointed at outlets you dislike and terrifying the moment it turns around. Conservatives learned that lesson when the machinery of the state was aimed at them. The lesson does not expire because the networks are the target this time.

What is happening

The probe is real and official. DOJ spokesperson Emily Covington confirmed on Oct. 10 that the Antitrust Division is investigating whether the networks’ boycott violated antitrust law, saying “group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act” (SOURCE HERE).

Five networks are named. ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox News all received demands for communications and materials, with Fox joining a boycott of a Republican White House (SOURCE HERE).

The trigger was already over. The networks jointly suspended pool coverage on Sept. 21 after the White House barred CNN, a suspension that lasted only days and ended weeks ago, so the live event here is the probe, not the boycott (SOURCE HERE).

The weak spot in the case

  • The legal theory needs a commercial motive. Former FTC chairman William Kovacic said antitrust liability requires showing the networks acted from “unmistakably a commercial motive,” which is hard to prove when the motive was plainly about press access, not money (SOURCE HERE).
  • It began with the White House barring outlets. The sequence started when the administration banned CNN, Politico, and MS NOW over coverage it disliked, which is what the networks were protesting (SOURCE HERE).
  • The demands are not yet subpoenas. DOJ asked for communications and materials, but it has not been confirmed whether those are formal civil investigative demands or subpoenas, so the probe is an opening move, not a filed case (SOURCE HERE).

In Their Own Words

“Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act. The Antitrust Division is simply investigating to determine whether these news organizations have violated” the law, DOJ spokesperson Emily Covington said (SOURCE HERE), a framing that treats a press-access protest as a corporate cartel.

What The Other Side Is Doing And How To Neutralize It

The press is framing this as pure intimidation, and that framing is largely correct. Reporters Committee director Bruce Brown called it “another and even more brazen attempt to try to intimidate journalists,” and free-press advocates have labeled the antitrust theory a pretext for seizing records. The reflexive move is to wave that away because it is the networks crying foul, and because a Fox-included boycott of a Republican White House is genuinely rich. That is the trap.

The right spent the last decade documenting how the administrative state was weaponized against conservatives, from the IRS targeting to the pressure campaigns on social media. A DOJ that stretches antitrust law to punish disfavored coverage is the same weapon with the same serial number, and cheering it now is how the right loses the standing to object when it is aimed back.

To hold both truths, back the groups that defend the principle regardless of whose ox is gored. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression fights speech-suppression across the spectrum and is trusted on the right (VISIT HERE). The Cato Institute brings a long tradition of antitrust skepticism and limited-government principle to exactly this kind of overreach (VISIT HERE). The Institute for Justice litigates against government abuse of ordinary people and businesses and knows how a pretextual investigation works (VISIT HERE). The networks can be biased, and the DOJ can be wrong at the same time.

How this is being positioned

There is a real argument that the networks behaved badly, that a coordinated blackout of presidential coverage is a kind of collusion, and that an industry which lectures everyone else about transparency should not get to switch off the cameras in a fit of pique. Fine. Make that case in public, where it belongs.

What does not belong is the Justice Department reaching for the Sherman Act, a statute written to stop price-fixing cartels, to punish news organizations for a motive everyone knows was about access and coverage rather than commerce. Even the experts sympathetic to tough antitrust enforcement doubt the theory holds, because the commercial motive it requires is not there.

Conservatives who have spent years warning about a weaponized DOJ cannot pocket that warning the moment the weapon points somewhere convenient. Beat the networks on the merits, in the arena of audience and argument, where they are already losing.

Do not teach the government that it may audit the press for coverage it dislikes, because that is a lesson the next administration will be delighted to have been taught.

Facts are prickly things,

-The Editors

Politics · Upstream of the Swamp · October 12, 2026

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

In NYC, Black Lives Don’t Matter Unless They’re Illegal Aliens

By Catherine Salgado

Written by Catherine Salgado

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Within the last couple weeks, two black men suffered serious injuries in NYC that made national headlines. One of them was a New York Police Department detective stabbed seven times by two illegal aliens whom Democrats had previously released multiple times. The other was a gang-affiliated serial criminal illegal alien who got shot while trying to run over federal officers. Guess whom NY Dems care about?

Oscar Belgal had a five-year-old child in the car with him when he weaponized his vehicle to ram into officers in order to resist arrest, but Belgal didn’t care how he endangered his kid. His potentially deadly actions caused DHS officers to shoot Belgal non-lethally. Belgal previously committed assault, grand larceny, and robbery, among other crimes, and has ties to the Trinitarios gang.

But NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-Hamas) called Donald Trump to demand Belgal be released back onto the streets. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) is talking as if the fact that the violent criminal has a kid automatically makes him an object of sympathy, and as if DHS wants to gun down illegal alien kids.

Migdalia Martinez lost her 12-year-old son Jacob Freytas when he accidentally rode his bike into gang crossfire, likely the Trinitarios gang — you know, Belgal’s pals. She is furious that Mamdani called Belgal a “New Yorker” and defended him. “The only thing I do consider [Belgal] as is trash, nothing else but trash. And I don’t consider New York, my home, as trash,” Martinez told the New York Post.

Perhaps Jose Mercedes’s family might feel a little of that same anger. What Police Commissioner Tisch does not explain in the post below is that the stabbers, Sneider Mejia Bautista and Dangelo Rafael Jean Caraballo, are illegal aliens. They committed crime after crime and kept securing release back onto the streets. In Bautista’s case, there was an ICE detainer request for him which NYC. lefties ignored. Incidentally, ICE also had a detainer request for Belgal.

The message jihad-loving Commie Mamdani and Hochul are sending is that black and Hispanic lives only matter when they are criminal foreigners.

-Catherine Salgado

Catherine Salgado is a contributor for PJ Media. She also writes for The Rogue Review, Media Research Center, and her Substack Pro Deo et Libertate. She received the Andrew Breitbart MVP award for August 2021 from The Rogue Review for her journalism.

Any opinions articulated herein are those of the author, not The Prickly Pear. To read the original piece, please visit HERE.

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

The Night Linden Avenue Stopped Feeling Safe

By Salena Zito

Written by Salena Zito

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

EDGEWOOD, Pennsylvania — The Evans family threw a Halloween party every year in their backyard on Linden Avenue. Neighbor Jeannine Fisher told WPXI, the local NBC affiliate, that she remembers “tons of people and kids” there. She also remembers the first time she met Idris Evans: He helped carry her groceries from down the street to her house.

It’s the kind of street where that still happens. It’s also the kind of street where people don’t think much about whether the kitchen window is open on a warm September night.

Just after midnight on Sept. 24, police say someone came through that window.

Evans, 46, and his wife, Gina, woke up in their third-floor bedroom to find a man in his underwear attacking them with a kitchen knife. Gina Evans later told police, according to the criminal complaint, that the man was “psychotic” and kept talking about God and being God. She yelled for their boys, 8 and 12, to run to a neighbor’s house, and they did. Then, badly wounded, she ran to another neighbor’s house herself.

Her husband died in the hospital. He was a pediatric critical care physician at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, co-medical director of its pediatric transport team, and an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Police found the suspect hiding in neighbor Sandra Trappen’s garden, bleeding from deep cuts on his hands.

His name is Elijah Hemingway. He is 32 and from Pittsburgh’s Hazelwood neighborhood. He is charged with criminal homicide, attempted homicide, burglary and aggravated assault. He is presumed innocent.

What has unsettled people well beyond this block is what came out over the next 72 hours. Hemingway had been arrested in Allegheny County in July on a felony burglary charge and released without posting a dime. He had spent most of 2025 in a Florida jail and a court-ordered mental-health commitment after allegedly beating a girlfriend and fighting sheriff’s deputies. And on Saturday, county police charged him with raping a woman on a footpath in Wilkinsburg, a working-class borough bordering Pittsburgh, about 14 hours before the Evans family was attacked.

Here is what the record shows about how Hemingway ended up on the street.

On Feb. 6, according to police, a woman on the North Side of Pittsburgh came home from dropping her child off at day care and noticed her laptop had been moved. Her Nest camera showed her former partner, a man she said had never lived there and wasn’t allowed inside, forcing his way in and leaving with two iPhones and the laptop.

He wasn’t arrested until July 9. A day later, Senior District Judge Anthony Ceoffe released him on nonmonetary bond — that is, without payment.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that a nonmonetary bond is “not at all unusual” for that charge. Pittsburgh attorney Phil DiLucente, who isn’t involved in the case, told KDKA that Pennsylvania’s online court system showed Hemingway with no prior criminal history, “just summary offenses.”

That is technically true, and it is also where the story starts to turn.

Hemingway had pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in Allegheny County in 2018, 2021 and 2023. In each case, the Tribune-Review found, the criminal complaint listed a current or former domestic partner as the victim. WPXI counted 16 prior charges on his record. And when the Volusia County, Florida, sheriff’s office ran his history last year, it reported “multiple prior arrests in Pennsylvania for assault and aggravated assault with no prosecution.”

Three domestic cases that ended as disorderly conduct pleas. A burglary of an ex-partner’s home. On paper, Hemingway was a man with no record that counted.

District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. said his office wasn’t in the room. Prosecutors, he explained, don’t attend preliminary arraignments “unless we are asked to attend those by police or concerned citizens, victims who are being intimidated.”

“Had we known about this and known about his rap sheet,” Zappala said, “we probably would have taken an appeal with Judge (Edward) Borkowski.”

“This was not a good result, so we’ll have to revisit our schemes,” he added.

District Court Administrator Joseph J. Asturi said judges at Pittsburgh Municipal Court arraignments receive the criminal complaint, affidavit, warrant, a pretrial risk assessment and criminal history. What nobody has said publicly yet is whether that history included Florida, or what the risk assessment recommended.

Allegheny County’s chief public defender, Andy Howard, pushed back on the idea that the answer is simply to hold more people. Under Pennsylvania law, he noted, bail can be denied only for a potential life sentence or when no condition of release can ensure public safety.

“If every defendant charged with nonviolent offenses were denied bond, contrary to recommendations of pretrial services and the evidence presented in court, there would be over 20,000 residents at the county jail,” he said.

Hemingway’s Florida troubles began in March 2025 in Deltona, where he was living with a girlfriend. On March 19, deputies were called to the home. According to the sheriff’s office, the woman said he grabbed her by the neck, pushed her down onto a bed, and hit her two or three times, and she took her son and locked them both in a bedroom. Deputies wrote that Hemingway “began rambling on to deputies about not accepting vampires.” He was charged with domestic battery and released.

Thirteen days later, he was arrested again, and he was still on pretrial release in the domestic case. On April 1, 2025, a bank employee said Hemingway threatened to hurt the employee’s wife and children. When a deputy tried to take him in for a mental health evaluation, Hemingway, who kept calling himself “Egyptian Pharaoh King (Tutankhamun),” punched the deputy in the face and fought off others.

This time, Florida held him. In June 2025, Circuit Judge Karen Foxman found him incompetent to stand trial, noting a “substantial likelihood” that without treatment he would be a danger to himself or others, and ordered him held until he could be restored. His handwritten letters to the court read like a man at war with the world: “Let me go or I rain all Hell on you for this!”

In October 2025, the Department of Children and Families told the court that he was competent. On Nov. 21, he pleaded no contest to the officer battery charges and was sentenced to time served, roughly eight months. Adjudication was withheld, which means Florida did not formally convict him of those felonies. On Dec. 1, he was adjudicated guilty of misdemeanor battery and of violating the conditions of his pretrial release.

The first release, after the domestic battery arrest in March, looks bad in hindsight. He was back in handcuffs within two weeks, this time for fighting deputies. The second release, at the end, followed the formal steps: an incompetency finding, months of treatment, a state agency certifying him competent, a plea and a sentence.

The problem isn’t that a judge cut him loose early. It’s what happened after the door opened. Nothing in the public record I could find shows anyone kept watching a man a Florida judge had called a likely danger without treatment, or that anyone passed that warning to Pennsylvania.

And “adjudication withheld” matters. Pennsylvania’s online court system doesn’t show out-of-state cases at all. And on a national background check, a Florida felony case involving three counts of battery on officers can show up as something less than a conviction. Either way, a Pittsburgh arraignment could easily see a guy with a few summary offenses.

How did this county come to release a man like this so easily?

Part of the answer is a decade of deliberate policy. Some of it was paid for by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation when it awarded Allegheny County a Safety and Justice Challenge grant. The initiative describes its mission as fighting “the misuse and overuse of jails.” The county’s own first-year report is blunt about what the money was for: “to reduce the population of the Allegheny County Jail by 20%.”

The county reported a 36% reduction in its jail population during that first two-year grant.

The MacArthur Foundation then renewed: $2 million in 2020, $1.17 million in 2022 over four years, and $334,000 in 2024. In all, $5.5 million since 2018. The county has said it was chosen for the 2021 renewal “based on the promise and progress of work to date.”

In other words, results got rewarded.

What did the money buy? The county’s reports list public defenders at overnight arraignments, hiring staff so every district judge could get a pretrial risk assessment, and faster court processing. At the overnight arraignments where public defenders began appearing, district judges set money bonds 39% less often than in the same period of 2018. And the county’s pretrial office, in its own words, “never recommends money bail, which is ineffective and unfair to people who are poor.”

That recommendation creates a system built to say yes to release, one that measures success by how many beds sit empty. Keeping a man in jail requires somebody — a judge, a prosecutor, a victim — to push against that current. At Hemingway’s arraignment, by the district attorney’s own account, nobody from his office was there to push.

Nonmonetary bond for a burglary charge with a thin Pennsylvania record was common in Allegheny County before the MacArthur Foundation arrived. Florida, remember, let him go the first time too. What the record does show is a county that took foundation money on the promise of shrinking its jail, reported that shrinkage back to the funder, and got more money for it.

Allegheny County doesn’t publish a running count of people released pretrial and then charged with a violent crime. What’s available points in different directions. The MacArthur Foundation’s own evaluators report that across all participating sites, people released pretrial were “no more likely to return to jail for a new crime after strategies were implemented than before,” and about 2% came back charged with a new violent crime.

A 2018 county pretrial outcome report put the local “safety rate” at 89% — roughly 11 in 100 released defendants picked up new criminal activity while their cases were pending.

Two percent sounds small until you remember the volume. Allegheny County Pretrial Services completed more than 18,000 bail investigations in 2019. Even a small share of that, in a single county, is not an abstraction. It’s a woman on a footpath off West Street. It’s a family on Linden Avenue.

And Western Pennsylvania has seen this before. KDKA Investigates reviewed hundreds of arraignments by district judges who ran on not setting cash bail. One of those cases was Anthony Quesen, released on nonmonetary bond after a 2023 assault at Point State Park. He was later charged with stabbing an off-duty state liquor enforcement officer to death on the Montour Trail; he pleaded guilty but mentally ill to third-degree murder.

Hemingway was arraigned on Sept. 26 and denied bail. His preliminary hearing is on Friday.

“(W)e are sure that many of you may be feeling shaken,” an Edgewood Borough Police Department statement said.

Shaken is the right word. People here aren’t calling for anyone’s head in a jail cell because he’s poor. They’re asking something narrower and harder.

When a man shows up at a bail hearing with a record that includes three domestic cases, a burglary of an ex-partner’s home, and a Florida judge’s warning that he’s dangerous without treatment, and nobody at that hearing knew it, why doesn’t someone in the system stand up and say, “Not this one”?

-Salena Zito

Salena Zito is a Pittsburgh-based columnist for the Washington Examiner. She is the author of “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.”

This piece was reproduced with the permission of The Daily Signal. Any opinions articulated herein are those of the author, not The Prickly Pear. To read the original piece, please visit HERE.

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

A Stain On The Record But Not The Whole Story

By Neland Nobel

Written by Neland Nobel

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Much of our educational system is busily teaching our children to hate America.  In this process, they exaggerate every failure and minimize every success.

The two big cudgels used to hammer America in our schools are slavery and the treatment of indigenous Indian tribes.

Concerning the latter, an often-cited example of American racist genocide is the forced removal of Indian tribes from the Southeast in the late 1830s, culminating in the horrible “Trail of Tears,” which claimed almost a quarter of the lives of the Cherokee Nation.  Many have advocated removing Andrew Jackson’s image from our $20 bill because of his involvement in this affair.

Clearly, it was not America’s finest moment, but the contemporary debate flattens important facts and distinctions conveniently to make the nation look as bad as possible.  The real story is more complicated.

A closer examination of the political, tribal, and comparative record reveals a more complicated sequence: deep internal divisions among the Cherokee, a narrow and contested congressional process, a treaty negotiated by Cherokee leaders themselves, a multi-year window for voluntary departure, and a broader pattern of population transfers that has recurred across many societies. Questions of ancestry and “blood” further complicate modern invocations of racism, because leadership and factional alignments did not map neatly onto simple racial categories.  As for the supposed bigot Jackson, he adopted an Indian boy into his family. This is not a simple story.

The injustice done to the Cherokee Nation seems worse because they were integrating very well into society, something other tribes had not done as well.   They had newspapers, a legislature, a written language, and farmed.  They were integrating so well into Southern society; some are shocked to find that, in their trek to Oklahoma, they took over 2,000 black slaves with them. Again, it is not a simple racist story.

But as a product of their democratic institutions, Cherokee internal policies were not unified. By the mid-1830s, long-standing disagreements over strategy had crystallized into two factions. Principal Chief John Ross and the National Party majority insisted on remaining in the East, relying on earlier treaties and the Supreme Court’s decision in Worcester v. Georgia (1832). A minority Treaty Party, led by Major Ridge, his son John Ridge, Elias Boudinot, and Stand Watie, concluded that further resistance was futile and that negotiating the best available terms was the only realistic path to survival.

On December 29, 1835, members of this smaller faction signed the Treaty of New Echota, ceding remaining eastern lands in exchange for territory west of the Mississippi, $5 million, and other provisions. So it was a land swap plus cash compensation.

The treaty never passed the Cherokee National Council or Ross; a petition bearing roughly 15,000 signatures (nearly the entire eastern population) protested it. The United States Senate nonetheless ratified the instrument by a single vote. The signatories were Cherokee. The tribe’s principal organized opposition was also Cherokee. Broader political resistance to the larger removal policy, however, came predominantly from white Americans—Northern Whigs, missionaries, and religious figures who argued that the measure violated existing treaties and moral obligations. Prominent opponents included Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen, and even Tennessee Congressman Davy Crockett, who broke with his party and declared that his vote against removal would “not make me ashamed in the Day of Judgment.”

Insofar as charges of “racism” are concerned, John Ross, who opposed the treaty, was 7/8ths white; those in favor of the treaty were mostly Indian, although, to be fair,  Cherokees largely opposed the treaty.

Those who voluntarily emigrated in the two years after ratification were predominantly associated with the Treaty Party, not a clear full-blood bloc either.  Both factions contained mixed and higher-blood individuals; the decisive split was strategic and political, not racial.  The point being made is that white and mixed-breed Americans were talking with largely white and mixed-breed Indians.

The removal had more to do with the pressure of Western expansion and the regional political aspirations of the South (more slave states).  Oddly, one slave society was causing the forced removal of another.

The Indian Removal Act itself, which authorized the president to negotiate land exchanges, passed only after intense debate. The Senate approved it 28–19; the House passed it by the razor-thin margin of 102–97 on May 26, 1830. President Andrew Jackson signed the measure two days later.

Opposition was concentrated among Northern members and those who viewed the policy as a breach of faith with tribes that had entered into prior treaties. The act did not itself compel removal; it authorized treaties of exchange. Implementation varied by tribe and by the degree of internal consensus.

The Treaty of New Echota granted a two-year period after ratification (deadline May 1838) for voluntary emigration with government assistance. Roughly two thousand Cherokee, largely associated with the Treaty Party, departed under these terms. The large majority under Ross’s leadership refused, continuing legal and political efforts to overturn the treaty.

When the deadline passed, President Martin Van Buren—Jackson’s successor, who took office in March 1837—authorized General Winfield Scott to enforce removal. The resulting forced marches in 1838–1839 produced high mortality, estimated in the range of several thousand deaths from disease, exposure, and inadequate logistics. To be fair, about half died in camps due to disease, not because of the forced march. Jackson was therefore not president when the Cherokee Trail of Tears occurred, although his administration had secured the authorizing legislation and the contested treaty.

Revolutionary-era alignments further complicate simple narratives. Many eastern tribes, including significant portions of the Cherokee and most of the Iroquois Confederacy, fought alongside or in alliance with the British during the War of Independence. British agents had long cultivated these relationships, and tribal leaders calculated that British victory offered a better chance of restraining American settlement.

They bet on the wrong side, and the consequences followed. Postwar treaties and land cessions reflected the military outcome as much as abstract principles of justice.

But it would be fair to say the high number of frontier deaths due to Indian depredations during the Revolutionary War likely made the surviving white population less charitable towards the Indians.

Now we come to a very important historical point.  America as a nation can be compared both to its expressed ideals and to the practices of other nations.

Population transfers of this scale are not uniquely American. Medieval and early-modern Europe saw repeated expulsions of Jewish communities from England (1290), France, Spain (1492), and numerous German principalities; these were typically royal or ecclesiastical decrees without negotiated treaties, land exchanges, or systematic compensation.

The 1755–1763 British deportation of Acadians (Cajuns) from Nova Scotia was a wartime measure of military security; families were loaded onto ships and dispersed with little notice, no voluntary option framed as a treaty, and no exchange of sovereign territory. During this expulsion from Canada, white Englishmen killed white French pioneers in Nova Scotia, with a mortality rate during the forced removal even higher than the Trail of Tears.

The Ottoman Empire’s 1915–1916 deportation of Armenians during World War I was carried out under emergency decrees, accompanied by mass killings, and lacked any recognized legal process of land swap or compensation. While estimates vary, most put the number in the range of 650,000 killed.

At the end of World War II, some 12 million Germans were expelled from East Prussia and Pomerania. Estimates vary between 600,000 and 2 million died in transit as they were forced to march overland back to Germany.  No due process, no compensation, no land exchange.

Turkey expelled about hundreds of thousands of Greeks from Northern Cyprus in 1974.  Thousands died.

In 1947, Pakistan split from India, and huge numbers of people were expelled on both sides, with civilian deaths upwards of one million.

In each case mentioned (and space does not permit more examples),  the process was more arbitrary, offered no formal voluntary window negotiated with representative authorities, and provided no residual territorial base comparable to the Indian Territory guarantees (however imperfectly honored) of the American treaties. In these comparable expulsions, there was no compensation of any sort in land or cash, or both.

By today’s standards, the machinery of American jurisprudence and representative government made a bad decision.  That is the problem with “presentism”: judging all historical decisions by today’s morality. Our point, though, is that courts made decisions where Indians had counsel, and legislative bodies voted ( both Indian and American).  And there was compensation before, after, and during the move to Oklahoma.  There were also chances for voluntary migration under Indian control; some chose that option, and some did not. However, today’s students likely do not know that even was an option.

None of these observations erases the human cost of the Cherokee removal, the fraud alleged against the Treaty of New Echota, or the suffering of those forced west under Van Buren. They do, however, restore necessary context: the existence of a genuine Cherokee faction that signed the removal treaty, the narrow and contested congressional vote, the two-year voluntary period that most declined, the fact that the deadliest Cherokee marches occurred under Jackson’s successor, the prior military alliances of many tribes with Britain, the mixed ancestry of leaders on both sides (with Ross’s majority faction enjoying strong full-blood support), and the comparative absence of even the flawed treaty mechanisms that characterized American policy as opposed to the expulsions of Jews, Acadians, Germans, Greeks, Indians, and Armenians.

Historical judgment requires weighing these elements rather than reducing the episode to a single, uncontested narrative of pure coercion or racial hierarchy.

Finally, it is worth observing the twisted position of the critics of America.  They rightfully find fault that our imperfect democratic and judicial processes sometimes fall short of the ideas of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But rather than saying these ideals are good and that we, as a nation, need to do better in implementing them, they turn around and attack the ideals themselves. It is sort of like saying: Our democratic institutions have failed; therefore, let’s abandon them and implement what Castro did in Cuba. In short, if democracy and the rule of law don’t work, let’s try dictatorship to make things better. Let’s put everyone in a forced march in wintertime to get what we want. 

The fact that so many teachers seem to use such historical events as the Trail of Tears in this way suggests they really don’t care about the nuance of history; they simply want to use this horrible event to undermine the Founding principles and move the country to socialism.

America is a good country, certainly in comparison to any other.  But we are not a perfect country; that is true.  Where is the perfect country?  When and where did it exist?  Anything designed by man is likely to fall short on that score, and that includes us.

The Trail of Tears is an ugly stain on our history, but the story is far more nuanced than you might know. A stain, yes, but it doesn’t come close to describing America’s story in its totality.

-Neland Nobel

Neland ‘Neil’ Nobel was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and moved to Arizona in 1961. He attended ASU and earned a B.A. and an M.A. in history, with a specialty in economic and military history.  He graduated Summa Cum Laude and received a Richard M. Weaver Fellowship from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.  He spent the next 45 years in the financial services industry, ending his career with a 25-year run with UBS as a portfolio manager and Certified Financial Planner. In retirement, he remains active, having founded the Prickly Pear in 2020 and continuing to contribute content.  In his spare time, he is a certified firearms instructor and runs a hiking club and two shooting clubs.  He is married with three children and three grandchildren.

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

Trump Takes Putin’s Diesel: How Will This Impact Americans?

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Trump announced Oct. 9 that Russia will ship diesel to American and global markets, and Treasury issued a license that suspends sanctions on Russian diesel until April 2027 (SOURCE HERE). The first shipment would cover hours of U.S. demand, not weeks, and the deal comes three weeks after Trump signed a sweeping Russia sanctions law.

What’s in it

The tonnage: Trump said Russia will “immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel,” followed by 500,000 tons in November, 1,000,000 tons after that, and 3,000,000 tons “based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries” (SOURCE HERE). That is 8 million tons in total, most of it conditional.

The license: Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a Russia-related general license on Oct. 9 (SOURCE HERE). It is the first diesel waiver since the war began to run longer than the standard 30-day window (SOURCE HERE).

The blanks: The White House has not said who is buying the fuel, who pays for it, or when it arrives (SOURCE HERE).

By the numbers

  • S. demand: Distillate product supplied averaged 3,769,000 barrels a day over the four weeks ending Oct. 2 (SOURCE HERE).
  • The relief math: Ukraine’s sanctions official Vladyslav Vlasiuk calculates that the first 300,000 tons “cover just 15 hours of U.S. demand” (SOURCE HERE). His figure is consistent with EIA’s demand data.
  • The pump: Diesel averaged $6.199 a gallon in the week of Oct. 5, up $2.488 from a year earlier (SOURCE HERE).

What changed

  • 18: Trump signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, which passed the House 262-159 and the Senate 86-11 (SOURCE HERE).
  • 22, 2025: Treasury sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil. Secretary Bessent said then, “Now is the time to stop the killing and for an immediate ceasefire” (SOURCE HERE).
  • This week: Witkoff and Kushner scheduled two days of talks in Miami, starting Oct. 9, with Ukrainian negotiators and European officials (SOURCE HERE). Moscow is seeking U.S. sanctions relief in exchange for halting strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid (SOURCE HERE).

What they’re saying

Kyiv: Zelensky called it “a weak decision, unfortunately, a weak decision by strong partners” (SOURCE HERE).

The market: Energy analyst Tom Kloza said, “Russia does not have the capability of contributing any meaningful amount of diesel to the world market in the foreseeable future” (SOURCE HERE).

In Their Own Words

“We need lower diesel prices for American farmers, ranchers and consumers, but buying Russian fuel is the wrong answer.” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) (SOURCE HERE)

What the other side is doing and how to neutralize it

  • Democrats have their midterm talking point. Shaheen, Schumer and Warren called the deal “a total betrayal of Ukraine, our European allies and American national security” and tied it to ending the Iran war (SOURCE HERE). Republicans who wrote the sanctions law are the ones positioned to answer it.
  • The odds of peace: Polymarket traders give a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire agreement by Dec. 31, 2026 a ~13% chance (SOURCE HERE). The license runs months past that date.
  • The real supply levers are at home. Keeping domestic refineries running and easing Jones Act shipping limits are the alternatives on the table. Learn more in the Institute for Energy Research’s breakdown of why diesel prices are so high (VISIT HERE).
  • The allied stockpile option: Read IER on the administration’s push for Europe to release its own diesel reserves (VISIT HERE).

Looking ahead

Cheaper diesel for farmers and truckers is a worthy goal. Buying it from the Kremlin, in the same week Moscow asked for sanctions relief at the negotiating table, trades leverage for a headline.

Facts are prickly things,

-The Editors

National Security / Energy & Manufacturing · Upstream of the Swamp · October 10, 2026

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

In France And Britain, Multiculturalism Is Leading To Authoritarianism

By John Daniel Davidson

Written by John Daniel Davidson

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

The leaders of France and Britain are calling for censorship regimes because enforcing multiculturalism requires suppressing freedom.

Rioting that began late last week in the suburbs of Paris has now spread across France. This week there have been riots in Marseille, Lyon, Dijon, Lille, Bordeaux, Nantes, Strasbourg, and elsewhere. Every corner of the country, it seems, is beset by a coalition of violent left-wing activists and second- and third-generation immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.

The rioters are not calling for education reform or protesting poor classroom conditions, despite what the corporate press has reported. These are not “school protests” but rather an intifada. The rioters themselves are the footsoldiers of a “Red-Green alliance” between the radical left and pro-Palestinian Islamist activists, whose shared goal is to clear the ground for a “New France” that will replace the actually existing French nation.

This “New France” is largely a Third World horde, imported in successive waves beginning in the 1970s, when France scrapped its immigration regime and adopted a family reunification system similar to the United States’ Hart-Celler Act of 1965. In the ensuing decades, and especially since 2000, France has seen a massive influx of migrants from its former colonial holdings in North Africa and the Middle East. These people have for the most part refused to assimilate, and instead have formed discrete Muslim enclaves, retaining the ethnic and religious identity of their homelands. They are not French in any meaningful sense, and do not wish to be.

The consequences of this failure of assimilation and acculturation are now apparent on the streets of French cities. For more than a week now the unassimilated children and grandchildren of migrants from the Third World have been  attacking police and firefighters (and teachers in some cases), burning schools and public buildings to the ground, and calling for the overthrow of the French Republic. They have done so in many cases while waving Palestinian and Algerian flags, and chanting Antifa and pro-Hamas slogans.

However, they are not doing this all on their own. French authorities said last week the riots were being organized by proxies of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left party La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”), or LFI, which is, in addition to being a communist front organization, is also France’s “Great Replacement” party. Indeed, Mélenchon, who is running for president in next year’s national election, has been rather explicit in his desire to erase the French people and replace them with foreigners. On a recent panel, echoing remarks from Britain’s Jacob Rees-Mogg on how the English are a “mongrel people,” he derided the very concept of “native French people,” declaring that a “process of creolization has already taken place” in France, and that those wanting a “static world” are dreaming of something that is gone for good.

No wonder, then, that Mélenchon has publicly supported the unrest, or that LFI politicians have been notably visible during the riots, in some cases appearing at the barricades around schools and urban centers, even as the party has officially denied fomenting violence. Simply put, there is broad crossover between radical-left political activism and pro-Palestinian, Islamist mobilization in France.

Most of this is fairly well known and follows a pattern we see in other western countries, most notably the United Kingdom, where one in every 30 people is a foreigner who arrived there in the last five years.

What is less well known is that mass immigration on this scale doesn’t just destroy a country and a people, it also ushers in forms of authoritarian government that become necessary as a way to manage the problems that arise from a population that includes significant unassimilated ethnic enclaves.

This is why we now see the political leadership of western countries making hard turns toward authoritarianism, and especially against free speech. Freedom of expression is the one thing you cannot tolerate if the state is going to enforce multiculturalism and impose a large foreign population on a native one. Indeed, managing tensions between disparate ethnic groups, and each group’s relationship to the state, is a hallmark of imperial rule, not republicanism. It’s how the millet system of the Ottoman Empire operated.

In our day, it means the liberal leaders of France and Britain are openly arguing that their societies must become less free, more controlled, more monitored. Recently French President Emmanuel Macron said the American idea of free speech is “the opposite of free speech,” and that freedom can only exist within a “common framework” created and managed by the state. In his view, freedom is a privilege granted to individuals by the state, which defines the range of acceptable discourse in accordance with “public order.” He compared limits on speech to prohibitions on assault or the destruction of public property — essentially declaring that speech is violence and must be suppressed by the state, if necessary.

Macron then called for state-funded fact-checkers to decide what is allowed online and what isn’t, and said the EU’s censorship law, the Digital Services Act, should be used “much more, much faster, much more forcefully.”

It’s the same in Britain, where the Labour Party prime minister, Andy Burnham, recently announced the creation of something called the National Centre for Information Defence —essentially a Ministry of Truth straight out of 1984. The pretext for this new censorship regime is the supposed safety of the British people, who, according to Burnham, must be protected from Russian disinformation and “far-right narratives.” This so-called protection will come in the form of limits on free speech, anything that contradicts or calls into question the prevailing worldview or policies of the Labour left.

We already know what that will look like, because an informal version of it is already in place in Britain. Thousands of Britons are arrested and jailed every year for expressing their views online. Police literally knock on doors and haul British citizens away in handcuffs for expressing skepticism about immigration or Islam, or complaining about Palestinian flags flying in public. The authorities do this under the cover of laws against harassment and incitement, but in reality it’s nothing more than a thin justification for speech codes and blasphemy laws.

This is an aspect of mass Third World immigration to the West that tends to get less attention than crime or rioting or the imposition of Islam in the public square. To deal with all these things, to manage the tensions that arise from having unassimilated ethnic and religious communities residing in a nation, requires authoritarian measures that are incompatible with a free society.

When the smoke clears from the riots now underway in France, we will see not just emboldened Third World ethnic enclaves, but an emboldened and increasingly authoritarian state.

In the end, multiculturalism and authoritarianism are a package deal, and the global leftist leadership of the West is foisting it their native populations. There is only one way to avoid such authoritarianism, and it requires a total rejection of multiculturalism.

What that means, in concrete terms, is mass deportations, denaturalization, and remigration. Anything less will not be enough to save these countries, assuming it’s not too late already.

-John Daniel Davidson

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

This piece was reproduced with the permission of The Federalist. Any opinions articulated herein are those of the author, not The Prickly Pear. To read the original piece, please visit HERE.

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

Poll: 1 In 5 Undergrads Says U.S. Deserved 9/11, Nearly Half Endorse Violence Against ‘Hate Speech’

By Brianna Lyman

Written by Brianna Lyman

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Just weeks after the United States commemorated the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorists attacks, a new poll reveals more than one in five undergraduate students believe America deserved the attacks, while nearly half of all undergraduate students think physical violence is justified to stop so-called hate speech.

The Buckley Institute’s 2026 National Undergraduate Student Survey polled 803 American undergraduate students between September 5 and 14.

A shocking 22 percent agreed that America deserved 9/11, including 28 percent of liberal students. Notably, leftist streamer Hasan Piker — who campaigned with Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and cozies up to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — has said America deserved 9/11. Meanwhile, Aber Kawas, a Democratic Socialist of America member and nominee for the New York state Senate, has said that America brought on 9/11 because of capitalism, alleged white supremacy and racism, and alleged Islamophobia.

The poll also found that 45 percent of American college students believe physical violence can be justified to stop hate speech — among which 54 percent of liberals agree compared to 30 percent of conservatives.

“Interestingly, 72% of those who agree that physical violence can be justified to stop hate speech also agree that hate speech is protected by the First Amendment,” The Buckley Institute found.

Shortly after Charlie Kirk was murdered on a Utah college campus for his free speech, a YouGov survey conducted from September 10-12 asked respondent whether they think “it is ever justified for citizens to resort to violence in order to achieve political goals?” Twenty-five percent of respondents who identified as “very liberal” said it can be justified, while 17% of self-identified liberals said the same. Just nine percent of people who identify as either conservative or very conservative said it was justified.

Meanwhile, a recent poll conducted by the Center for Strategic Politics found “Democrats want Trump out by (almost) any means necessary” — including assassination.

The Buckley Institute similarly found that support for criminalizing free — but offensive — speech has reached its highest levels in the three years that the survey has polled this question. Forty percent of college students agreed that “offensive speech should be subject to criminal prosecution.” Forty-seven percent of liberal students supported criminalizing offensive speech and was “the only ideological group among which a plurality agree with doing so,” according to the poll.

“This year’s survey demonstrates that censorious attitudes remain stubbornly high on America’s college campuses,” Buckley Institute Founder and Executive Director Lauren Noble said in a statement.

The study also found that college students have swung in favor of socialism. Forty-two percent of respondents would rather live under socialism compared to 28 percent who would prefer to live under capitalism. The Buckley Institute states that the 14 percentage point gap is the highest one in the five years the question has been asked. Notably, the same students who favor socialism over capitalism were more likely to support shouting down speakers they disagree with and violence to stop so-called hate speech, according to the study.

The same students who favored socialism were also more likely than students who favored capitalism to believe America deserved 9/11 and think offensive speech should be criminalized.

And, in America’s 250th birth year, only 65 percent of college students said they were proud to be American.

“Liberal students are the least proud ideological group at 62%, then moderates at 67%, and conservatives at 86%. Notably, men were 20 points more likely to agree that they are proud to be American than women,” the study found.

-Brianna Lyman

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2

This piece was reproduced with the permission of The Federalist. Any opinions articulated herein are those of the author, not The Prickly Pear. To read the original piece, please visit HERE.

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

New Poll: 43% Of Likely Young Voters View Islamic Sharia Law Positively

By Bethany Blankley

Written by Bethany Blankley

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

(The Center Square) – Nearly half of likely young voters, 43%, view Islamic Sharia law positively, according to a new poll.

The demographic of likely voters between the ages of 18 and 24 hold a different view than the majority of voters polled of all ages, 57%, who hold a negative view.

The poll was conducted by Rasmussen Reports and a nonprofit organization, Our Republic, on Sept. 20. The results were released just a few weeks ahead of the November 3 election.

In response to the findings, outgoing U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said, “Sharia law is incompatible with our Constitution and has no place in America. But it’s on the rise.” That’s why he and U.S. Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, launched the Sharia Free America Caucus, he said.

Roy has introduced several bills related to Sharia law and other Islamic-related issues, which have gone nowhere in Congress, The Center Squarereported.Roy, anoutspoken opponentof Sharia law, lost his primary in March.

According to the poll, voters were asked, “Sharia is a system of Islamic religious principles and law, derived primarily from the Quran and the teachings and practices of Muhammad, that addresses matters including religious practice, personal conduct, family life, finance, and often civil and criminal law. Do you have a positive or negative opinion about sharia?”

According to the responses, 43% of likely voters between the ages of 18 and 24 hold a positive view. However, they are not alone. Significant percentages of voters under 40 hold positive views of Sharia Law.

They include 39% of voters (between 25 and 29); 36% of voters (between 30 and 35); 22% of voters (between 35 and 39) polled.

When it comes to whether they would support a law requiring public schools to teach students “about the benefits of sharia law,” 76% said they wouldn’t.

When asked “if a majority of people in an American town, city, or state were to want sharia law, would you support a proposal that would allow sharia to become the legal code for all citizens in that town, city, or state?” The majority, 83%, responded no. Only 7 percent said they would support it; 10% said they weren’t sure.

When asked, “What poses a greater threat to America’s future: sharia law or America’s alliance with Israel?” the majority, 43%, said Sharia law; 25% said the U.S.-Israel alliance.

Notably, a plurality of Democrats polled said that the U.S. alliance with Israel poses a greater threat than Sharia law.

When asked, “Which religious ideology poses a greater threat to America’s future: sharia law or traditional Christianity?” 55% said Sharia law. A small minority, 13%, said traditional Christianity.

The poll was conducted among 1,026 likely voters and has a margin of error of 3%. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC, it says.

The findings were released after Sharia law remains a key issue in the largest Republican-led state: Texas. Texas leaders have prioritized combatting Sharia law in the next legislative session and the majority of Republican primary voters voted to ensure it is banned.

Gov. Greg Abbott has taken a series of actions, including directing the Texas Rangers to launch a criminal investigation into Islamic organizations in Texas, including an alleged Sharia tribunal, and state and federal investigations are ongoing, The Center Square reported.

Most recently, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that a Sharia law divorce in Pakistan was not valid in Texas.

-Bethany Blankley

This piece was reproduced with the permission of The Center Square. Any opinions articulated herein are those of the author, not The Prickly Pear. To read the original piece, please visit HERE.

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

Do You Know Who Alvin York Is?

By Catherine Salgado

Written by Catherine Salgado

Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

Alvin C. York was a devout Christian, an educator, and a pacifist. But he was also a patriot, and when he was called upon to serve in World War I, this pacifist became a legendary hero in the annals of the American military.

Especially during this 250th year of America’s existence, we must remember the heroes of the past and draw inspiration from them.

In June 1918, York deployed to Europe and soon was in the thick of the bloody Meuse-Argonne offensive, in which the U.S. casualties were 120,000. On October 8, York and his unit misread their French map as they headed for the Decauville Railroad and ended up behind enemy lines. They did capture a few Germans, but the Germans began yelling for help and their comrades were so close they quickly shot down nine Americans. York took command and used his Tennessee mountain hunting skills to defeat five Germans at once, destroy an enemy machine gun nest, and force the German commander to surrender. The Americans took 132 prisoners and made it back to their line. York received the Medal of Honor and the French Croix de Guerre.

I highly recommend that you read my Untold Stories article about York for more details on his life and courage. Below is a clip from the movie about York, where Gary Cooper won an Academy Award for his portrayal of the remarkable World War I hero.

-Catherine Salgado

Catherine Salgado is a contributor for PJ Media. She also writes for The Rogue Review, Media Research Center, and her Substack Pro Deo et Libertate. She received the Andrew Breitbart MVP award for August 2021 from The Rogue Review for her journalism.

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

Jewish Democrats Cave to Anti-Semites

By Bruce Bialosky

Written by Bruce Bialosky

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Those of us who are not of the Democrat politic party have believed that the Democrats have done little to stop the disease of Jew hatred from infiltrating their party. They have encouraged anti-Semites to operate and run for and get elected to public office. This past week has demonstrably proven that with the caving of two elected officials to the anti-Semites.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel would seem to be someone particularly sensitive to this issue. She recently skipped the Michigan Democrat Party’s state nominating convention due to her concerns. She stated she was not attending the convention over safety fears due to anticipated harassment, verbal abuse, and being “booed off the stage.” These attacks were coming from anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian activists. This was not just an anticipated fear. She experienced the same actions at the party’s state convention in April. She did not want to go through another harrowing experience.

This past week she did what no one would have ever expected. She not only forgot her horrible experiences, but she also asked everyone to do the same. She asked the Jewish voters of Michigan to disregard their own previous disturbing experiences “in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity.” For a long time, I have stated Jewish Democrats vote against their own self-interest, but I never dreamt a high-level Democrat official would ask Jews to disregard their own safety for the sake of humanity unless maybe we were in the middle of a war.

She even went further and told her voters, “We have the moral imperative to place the needs of the world above even our own self-interest and, yes, even our own survival.” I may be mistaken, but I do not believe that is what God meant when he suggested to Jews the obligation of Tikkun Olam (repairing the world).

We are not sure why Nessel went so off the rails. There is speculation that she was preparing people for her endorsement of the raging anti-Semite, Abdul El-Sayed. He has only recently backtracked on a couple of his Jew hating comments. Only a fool like Nessel would believe he will change his stripes if elected to the U.S. Senate.

Nessel is bad enough on her own with slapping around Jewish Democrats, but she is not the lone Jewish office holder who decided to insult voters. Brad Lander has made it twice as bad.

You may remember that Lander was previously elected the city comptroller of New York City. Despite coming from a well-to-do family and having an expensive education at the University of Chicago, he became a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). He then was elected New York City Comptroller though he had no financial background and a master’s degree in anthropology.

Lander became very well-known throughout the country when he ran against a fellow Jew, stating during his campaign that his opponent was “too Jewish.” Dan Goldman (who is a very left-wing guy) was not left-wing enough for Lander. Worse, Goldman committed the sin of supporting Israel and taking money from that “radical” group, AIPAC. Lander won the primary framing Goldman as a lover of Israel and the Jewish people. Being elected in the Democrat primary in New York City is akin to winning the general election.

Lander attended a multi-faith protest because that is what DSA members do – they protest. It was against a Hindu nationalist leader who was attending an event at Madison Square Garden. Lander was verbally harassed and heckled at the protest by fellow demonstrators.

A group of fellow protesters went after his supposed self-identification as a “liberal Zionist.” They screamed in his face and demanded that he leave the rally. They told him, “We don’t want Zionists here” and called him a Zionist ball sack.

You might think Lander would understand something clearly at last. Instead, he doubled down on his misguided ways. He again accused Israel of committing a genocide which is clearly a blood libel and disproven in a previous column of mine. He went further and stated they were committing an occupation and apartheid — two significant lies. And to top it all off after being screamed at he stated he was “glad to participate” in the protest.

These two people have done great harm to the Jewish people. If elected officials will act this way in the face of blatant attacks against the Jewish people, what would stop others from attacking Jews on the street, in their businesses, or in their homes. Other Jewish Democrats should chastise these people, but the response has been deafeningly silent. We are in a danger zone when elected Jews not only do not stand up to these kinds of attack but become cowards in response.

-Bruce Bialosky

Bruce L. Bialosky is a former presidential appointee to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

39 States Target Prediction Markets

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

A bipartisan army of 39 state attorneys general just asked the Supreme Court to stop the betting apps, and it has split the right down the middle.

 

Attorneys general from 39 states, and the D.C., filed a brief on Oct. 7 urging the Supreme Court to take up New Jersey’s fight to regulate prediction markets like Kalshi, which argue a federal license lets them offer sports-betting contracts in every state no matter what local law says. It is a federalism brawl with conservatives on both sides.

The question is who gets to regulate a fast-growing new financial market that looks a lot like gambling: the states, under their centuries-old police power over wagering, or a single federal agency in Washington. The answer will shape not just betting but how far a federal license can override state law in any emerging industry.

What happened

39 states lined up at the Court. A coalition of 39 states plus the District of Columbia filed an amicus brief on Oct. 7 urging the justices to hear the case, confirmed on the Supreme Court’s own docket (SOURCE HERE).

New Jersey is the one appealing. The state is asking the Court to overturn a Third Circuit ruling that sided with Kalshi and blocked New Jersey from enforcing its sports-betting laws against the platform (SOURCE HERE).

The coalition is bipartisan. Republican and Democratic attorneys general joined together, led by Ohio, to defend state authority over wagering (SOURCE HERE).

The legal fight

  • It turns on federal preemption. The case asks whether the Commodity Exchange Act, which gives the federal CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over “event contracts,” overrides state gambling law for Kalshi’s sports-event wagers (SOURCE HERE).
  • Courts have been split. The Third Circuit found federal law preempts the states, while other circuits have drawn different lines, a split that often prompts the Supreme Court to step in (SOURCE HERE).
  • This is about sports, not elections. The contracts at issue are sports-betting wagers, a separate fight from the earlier battle over Kalshi’s election-betting contracts (SOURCE HERE).

In Their Own Words

“Congress did not silently make the sports-betting industry immune from state law,” New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport argued in the state’s petition (SOURCE HERE), framing the case as a defense of the states’ traditional authority over wagering.

What The Other Side Is Doing And How To Neutralize It

The federalism and anti-gambling conservatives line up with the 39 states: regulating wagering is a core state police power, the people closest to the harm should set the rules, and a federal agency should not be able to wipe out state law by relabeling a bet as a “financial contract.” Stop Predatory Gambling makes the social-cost case from that side (VISIT HERE). The free-market and libertarian conservatives line up with Kalshi: prediction markets are lawful, innovative, and useful price signals, a single national regulator beats fifty conflicting ones, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute has argued these contracts belong under the CFTC (VISIT HERE), with the Cato Institute making the broader light-touch case (VISIT HERE).

This is something to think through honestly, which is rarer and more valuable. A conservative who reflexively cheers “states’ rights” should notice that the same logic constrains federal power he likes elsewhere; a conservative who reflexively cheers “free markets” should notice that an unlimited federal license to override state law is itself a form of central control.

Facts are prickly things,

-The Editors

Politics · Upstream of the Swamp · October 9, 2026

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

DOJ Moves To Strip 40 Citizenships

By The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The DOJ announced on Oct. 5 that it had filed civil actions to strip the citizenship of 40 naturalized Americans accused of hiding serious crimes and fraud, a batch Attorney General Todd Blanche called “the largest denaturalization effort in modern history.” The cases target genuinely alarming conduct. Anyone who values citizenship as something more than a revocable license should take a second look at the method.

More than 25 million Americans are naturalized citizens. The security of that citizenship, whether it is permanent or something the government can reach back and undo decades later, touches everyone and goes to the heart of what naturalization even means.

What the department did

DOJ filed 40 civil actions. The department moved to revoke the naturalization of 40 people in cases the DOJ says were filed between Aug. 21 and Oct. 2, 2026 (SOURCE HERE).

The alleged conduct is serious. The cases cite concealed convictions including child exploitation, money laundering, voluntary manslaughter, false identities, hidden deportation orders, and marriage fraud.

No one has lost citizenship yet. The filings ask courts to revoke naturalization; none have been stripped of anything, and judges still must rule.

The fine print conservatives should notice

  • The pace is accelerating. A DOJ spokesperson told Axios the department has filed more than 200 denaturalization complaints to date and is targeting about 250 cases this month (SOURCE HERE).
  • The civil route removes protections. Because DOJ is pursuing civil rather than criminal denaturalization, defendants face a bench trial with no jury, no right to a government-appointed lawyer, and no statute of limitations, so the government can reach back decades (SOURCE HERE).
  • The evidence bar stays high. The civil standard is “clear, convincing, and unequivocal” evidence, which DOJ says is comparable to the criminal standard, so the loss of a jury is the sharper concern, not a lowered burden (SOURCE HERE).

In Their Own Words

“Today’s announcement marks the largest denaturalization effort in modern history,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in the department’s statement (SOURCE HERE), a boast that is also an admission of how far and how fast this tool is now being used.

What The Other Side Is Doing And How To Neutralize It

The immigrant-rights left frames this as the creation of a two-tier citizenship, with 25 million naturalized Americans left permanently insecure and exposed to error, default judgments, and political targeting because the civil process carries no statute of limitations and no right to counsel.

On the facts of the procedure, parts of that critique are correct, and a conservative who dismisses it reflexively is not thinking it through. The honest division is this: stripping citizenship from a man who concealed a child-exploitation conviction to obtain it is not persecution, it is the correction of a fraud, and the law has always allowed it.

The danger is not the 40 cases announced this week. The danger is the machinery, a fast-moving civil pipeline with the jury removed and the clock disabled, pointed at 250 cases a month, because machinery built for the worst cases rarely stays pointed only at them.

The principled move is to support the people who will police the tool regardless of who holds the levers. The Cato Institute has warned directly about the abuse potential when an administration can reach for denaturalization against its opponents (VISIT HERE), the Due Process Institute works the procedural-rights question on an explicitly bipartisan basis (VISIT HERE), and the R Street Institute brings a center-right lens to exactly this kind of governance-and-overreach concern (VISIT HERE).

What the media misses

If the allegations hold, the people described in these filings lied their way into the most valuable status this country confers, and no one should shed a tear if a court takes it back. Fraud in the acquisition has always been grounds to undo it, and an administration that enforces that is doing its job.

But conservatives, of all people, should understand that the procedure outlasts the case. The tool being built here, civil denaturalization at the scale of hundreds of cases a year, with no jury to check the government and no time limit to bound it, will still be sitting there when a very different administration decides whose citizenship it finds inconvenient.

The right answer is not to stop removing the frauds. It is to insist that a process capable of unmaking an American be slow, be checked, and be hard, precisely because the power is so large. Take the citizenship back from the man who lied for it. Then make the government prove it to a jury every time, so the day never comes when proof isn’t required.

Facts are prickly things,

-The Editors

Liberty · Upstream of the Swamp · October 8, 2026

Rediscovering Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Charge Against Abusive Taxation

By Kevin Mooney

Written by Kevin Mooney

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Virginia ratepayers smacked with 153 percent increase in auction prices used to determine carbon tax.

Thomas Jefferson would not be a fan of the energy tax plan his gubernatorial successor has coerced into place this year at the expense of ratepayers and without public input.

The second governor of Virginia and third president of the United States argued that small farmers who lived off their own land should pay little or no federal taxes. Jefferson also opposed the Excise Whiskey Tax of 1791 because, in his view, the tax provided the federal government with too much power. Moreover, this founding father, along with his fellow Virginians, took on the Stamp Act of 1765 that led to the American Revolution.

By contrast, Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D), who assumed office this past January, has implemented what some policy analysts aptly describe as a “backdoor carbon tax” that could add $1 billion in electricity costs over the next year. That process began this past summer when Spanberger had Virginia rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, widely known as RGGI, a multistate climate change plan advertised as a “cap and trade” regulatory scheme. Spanberger bypassed the traditional public comment period along the way toward cementing the climate initiative back into place. She also did not allow for a vote from the state’s Air Pollution Board, which would be the normal procedure.

The 153 Percent Increase in Auction Prices

Power generators in RGGI states must purchase an allowance for every ton of carbon dioxide their plants emit from using coal, oil, or natural gas. They then pass the cost of that allowance on to consumers in their electricity bills. That’s where the carbon tax comes into play.

RGGI holds quarterly auctions to determine what the allowance costs will be. The latest round came in with an enormous price hike, meaning Virginia ratepayers will need to hold onto their wallets. The September 9 auction came in at $37.65 per allowance in comparison to $14.88 in December 2023, which was the last auction Virginia participated in before Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin exited RGGI. That’s a 153 percent increase.

A carbon tax is a tax on every human activity imaginable since it ties a fee to greenhouse gas emissions that flow out of fuel production and consumption. Even the most mundane activities would involve carbon taxes. Anyone going out to the store to buy groceries, deliver mail, or pick up the kids at school will be paying carbon taxes. This is what Spanberger has unleashed in a state where Jeffersonian antipathy toward intrusive government policies once held sway, and she’s not done yet.

In September, the governor signed an executive order that could pull hundreds of artificial intelligence data centers into RGGI. If Spanberger succeeds, these data centers could soon be competing with Dominion Energy Virginia and other retail electricity producers in RGGI’s quarterly auctions. This added layer of participation would only serve to put upward pressure on consumer electricity bills.

But what should most unsettle Virginia ratepayers is the fact that the specter of higher costs associated with RGGI was evident even before the September auction. Back in June, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chairman Mark Cristie noted that a filing from Dominion with the Virginia State Corporation Commission for the purpose of recovering RGGI costs tells a sobering story. The typical residential consumer is projected to pay $13 more per month, which adds up to $156 per year. Ouch!! That’s bad enough, but keep in mind this filing was made before the higher prices kicked in with the September auction.

The new clearing price of $37.65 per ton of carbon emissions RGGI announced on September 11 is 8 percent higher than the price set in June and 69 percent higher than it was a year ago in September 2025.

Where is All This Money Going? 

Stephen Haner, an energy and environmental policy analyst for the Jefferson Forum, has some answers. Virginia’s new sale of carbon allowances is expected to pull in $259 million from electricity producers along with allowance market speculators. As a matter of law, more than half of this amount is to be used for energy conservation projects benefiting low-income households. Some of the money may go into flood mitigation efforts.

In June, the Virginia General Assembly voted to create a refund for residential consumers, small businesses, and churches paying the carbon tax. Only about 45 percent of the tax is expected to go back into rebates.

Dominion’s largest customers (think in terms of large industrial centers, retailers, and possibly data centers) will not receive any rebates. So, who are the real winners in the RGGI scheme? It would seem government officials looking to pull in more tax dollars, alongside a few well-connected special interests, come out on top.

Haner told Restoration News that a genuine “cap and trade” system is not at work in Virginia and utilities can have incentives to hold onto their allowances rather than selling them. He said,

RGGI is not about carbon reduction. It is about revenue enhancement. The allowances are granted to the states, not to the utilities. The states sell the allowances either to a utility or a secondary investor. There is a cap, and that cap does go down with every contract year. There is trading, and, in theory, if a utility had a surplus of allowances, it could sell them on the secondary market, but it makes more sense to hold them and buy fewer next time. If you bought it at $25, the one you don’t have to buy might be $35, so better to hold it. But in the true cap-and-trade model, the allowance would have been issued to the utility based on its initial need, and then the shrinking cap would be giving it fewer and fewer allowances to use, forcing it to go bid to buy from someone else.

Virginia ratepayers appear to be stuck with carbon taxes for the time being. But it’s possible that demand from data centers could push RGGI to the breaking point. Spanberger’s ploy to avoid public comments could also lead to legal challenges. Other RGGI states might also balk at the rising prices coming out of Virginia. There’s also the possibility that these other states could exit the program. In Delaware, there’s a bill to do exactly that. The other problem Spanberger and crew have is that the one large energy-producing state that had briefly been in RGGI has already pulled out. That would be Pennsylvania, which never participated in any auctions to begin with because of legal complications. Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) pulled Pennsylvania out of RGGI last November. Apparently, it had become clear to the governor that the coalition of industry and labor groups opposed to the plan had the upper hand in court.

Another cautionary tale for Virginia comes from the Institute for Energy Research (IER), which has released an updated version of its report “Blue States, High Rates.” IER points to RGGI participation as one of the key factors behind rising energy prices in certain states.

Virginia had a reprieve from carbon taxes under Youngkin, whose resistance to RGGI offers a sharp Jeffersonian contrast to Spanberger. The good news is that it may not be too late for the state to turn back. The Virginia governor cannot run for consecutive terms, and the carbon tax plan could become very unpopular very fast.

As president, Jefferson eliminated the excise tax on whiskey in 1802. By then, the country had ripened toward his message. Jefferson believed the phrase “to provide for the general welfare” was meant as a strict limit, so taxation was constrained to funding enumerated constitutional powers.

That’s not what the carbon tax is about since it provides government officials with wide latitude to put a price on productive activity. Virginia residents who find they can’t move more than two inches without paying the carbon tax will hopefully come to understand the unfortunate reality they now face and vote to restore their earlier, prouder Jeffersonian traditions.

-Kevin Mooney

Kevin Mooney is the Senior Investigative Reporter at the Commonwealth Foundation’s free-market think tank and writes for several national publications.

This piece was reproduced with the permission of CFACT. Any opinions articulated herein are those of the author, not The Prickly Pear. To read the original piece, please visit HERE.

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

Can Washington Pull ABC’s Broadcast Licenses? New Actions

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The government is using its power to license broadcasters as leverage against one it does not like, and the people warning against it are Republicans.

Trump’s FCC has ordered an unprecedented early review of all eight of ABC’s owned television stations, and ABC is in federal court arguing the move is punishment for coverage the administration dislikes. While anyone with common sense should distrust ABC, this is still an alarming action and vindictive strategy.

If a government agency can threaten a broadcaster’s licenses to punish disfavored speech, that weapon does not retire when the administration changes; it just points the other way.

What is happening

The hearing was this week. A federal judge in Washington heard ABC’s bid to block the review on Tuesday, with no ruling issued and a decision expected no sooner than mid-October (SOURCE HERE).

The review is sweeping. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr ordered an early, accelerated renewal review of all 8 ABC-owned stations, six of them in major markets, a step free-speech groups call unprecedented (SOURCE HERE).

ABC is suing over retaliation. Disney’s lawsuit, filed in August, asks the court to halt the review as First Amendment retaliation, with ABC’s lawyer telling the judge the FCC holds the network’s “head on a guillotine” (SOURCE HERE).

The fine print

  • Timeline is the case. The review was ordered one day after Trump publicly urged ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel, and ABC says “The View” has stopped inviting candidates under the pressure (SOURCE HERE).
  • The grievance is real. ABC paid Trump a $16 million settlement in December 2024 over a false on-air claim, and conservatives’ complaints about the network’s slant are not invented (SOURCE HERE).
  • The FCC claims a different reason. The agency says the review is a hiring-discrimination probe, not retaliation, a rationale critics call pretext given the timing (SOURCE HERE).

In Their Own Words

“The current FCC has repeatedly used its power over broadcast speech to jawbone, punish, and threaten censorship of its political opponents (SOURCE HERE),” said David Inserra of the Cato Institute, warning that no agency should police speech it deems unfair.

What The Other Side Is Doing And How To Neutralize It

The striking thing about this fight is who is on which side. The usual media-left isn’t raising the alarm; the conservative and libertarian free-speech world is. Three former Republican FCC chairmen, Mark Fowler, Dennis Patrick, and Alfred Sikes, joined a filing warning that the agency “seeks to censor” ABC’s speech (SOURCE HERE), with Fowler, Reagan’s own chairman, calling it a gross denial of due process.

Oddly, the people defending the administration’s leverage over a broadcaster are the ones who should know best how that leverage gets abused.

For readers who want to follow the principle rather than the personalities, the organizations carrying the free-speech argument here are ones a conservative can trust. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression signed the brief against the review (VISIT HERE), as did the Cato Institute, whose David Inserra has made the cleanest case that licensing must never become a speech weapon (VISIT HERE), and the Institute for Free Speech fights exactly these battles (VISIT HERE).

The way to neutralize a bad precedent is to kill it before it hardens, and the donor-minded move is to fund the groups holding the line on a principle that has protected conservatives before and will again. Conservatives spent the last four years, rightly, attacking the government for leaning on social-media companies to silence dissent. That argument does not get an exception when the hand on the lever is one you voted for.

Looking ahead

The question here is not whether ABC deserves criticism; it does. The question is whether the federal government may use its power to grant or deny broadcast licenses as a cudgel to punish coverage it dislikes, and the answer has to be no, because the power conservatives cheer when it is aimed at ABC is the same power that was aimed at conservative voices not long ago and will be again.

Facts are prickly things,

-The Editors

Liberty · Upstream of the Swamp · October 7, 2026

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

Is Cancel Culture Really Over?

By Ilya Shapiro

Written by Ilya Shapiro

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

A new book argues that it migrated from online mobs into institutions with the power to punish.

President Trump has found plenty to dislike about Canada lately. He slapped 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods and even renamed Lake Ontario.

If the president is looking for another Canadian import worth taxing, he might consider the country’s particularly virulent strain of political correctness. America has certainly developed one of its own, but Canada has put the stuff on steroids: weaker protections for speech, aggressive human-rights tribunals, professional regulators eager to police opinions, and an elite culture remarkably comfortable empowering bureaucrats to enforce ideological conformity.

Collin May learned all this the hard way. A Calgary lawyer with graduate training at Harvard, May had served for three years on the Alberta Human Rights Commission when the province’s conservative government appointed him to lead it in May 2022.

Then activists discovered a book review.

Thirteen years earlier, May had reviewed Efraim Karsh’s Islamic Imperialism, a scholarly history published by Yale University Press. Critics seized on passages discussing the militaristic aspects of Islamic history and accused May of Islamophobia and hate speech. Muslim organizations demanded his resignation from the commission. Alberta’s justice minister eventually joined that call, and the government rescinded his appointment. Karsh himself, who had known nothing of the review before the controversy, later wrote that he saw nothing “Islamophobic” in it.

The episode had a certain Canadian absurdity. The Alberta commission already had a dismal free-speech record. It investigated Ezra Levant after his Western Standard published the Danish Muhammad cartoons—a complaint eventually dismissed—and its tribunal ordered Christian pastor Stephen Boissoin to apologize for publishing disparaging comments about gay people and pay damages. (A court overturned that ruling, finding the remedies unlawful.) Now the head of this dubious apparatus had himself been cancelled for an academic book review.

May used this “lived experience” to fuel his new book From Cancel Culture to Incarceration Culture. It’s part memoir, part collection of previously published essays, and part political theory. The seams occasionally show—a more diligent editor could have eliminated some repetition—but the structure also gives the book an unusual immediacy. May developed many of these ideas while lawsuits were pending and the financial and professional consequences of his firing remained painfully real.

From Cancel Culture to Incarceration Culture: Prosecutorial Democracy and the Future of Cancellation, by Collin May (Academica Press, 196 pp., $25)

Many readers know that I have an involuntary credential in cancellation studies myself, which I also turned into a book. My Georgetown ordeal followed the familiar sequence: online pile-on, deliberate mischaracterization, demands for punishment, institutional panic, investigation, and ultimately my resignation after a four-month process.

May describes that cursus inhonorum and is particularly perceptive about the psychology of apologizing. Drawing on research into false confessions, he explains why targets make conciliatory statements even when they believe the central accusation against them is false. They assume that demonstrating good faith will cause reasonable people to calm down. Frequently, the apology simply becomes Exhibit A for the prosecution—a dynamic that I’ve written about for City Journal.

Any cancellation, May writes, has three essential participants: the target, the cancellers, and the institutional “witness” with the power to turn denunciation into punishment. That last actor is crucial. May calls the resulting phenomenon “institutional betrayal,” a useful description of the particular sting that comes when a place you trusted joins your attackers.

His more original—and more troubling—argument concerns what comes next. May thinks cancel culture has morphed into something more pernicious. Public opinion has shifted, DEI has suffered political defeats, and denunciation mobs no longer possess quite the potency they enjoyed five years ago. But the underlying ideology has solidified into coercive power.

May calls this successor “incarceration culture.” The label is a bit of hyperbole: losing a professional license or paying an administrative fine is obviously not equivalent to sitting in a prison cell. But his larger point survives the terminological stretch. Once regulators, tribunals, and prosecutors start policing ideological deviations, the consequences become considerably more serious than social-media shaming.

May labels the broader political system “prosecutorial democracy”: government by administrators and credentialed experts who increasingly pursue “equity” through compulsory mechanisms rather than persuasion and ordinary democratic politics. Canada, with its sprawling universe of human-rights bodies and professional regulators, supplies abundant examples.

Readers of my own book, Lawless, will recognize the trajectory. I described Canada as providing “a glimpse into the future,” particularly when legal institutions abandon traditional rule-of-law norms in service of fashionable theories of oppression. May even cites Lawless in tracing how universities’ bureaucratic expansion helped spread campus ideology into corporations, government, and the professions.

May contacted me a few years ago while developing these ideas, and we wound up having terrific conversations about the response of legal institutions to what’s now called “Woke 1.0,” as well as the increasingly bizarre state of the Western world. I’m pleased that the resulting book rises well above score-settling by a man who was treated badly.

The social-media mobs may have lost their bite. May’s warning: don’t celebrate too quickly.

-Ilya Shapiro

Ilya Shapiro is a Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies. author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025), Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020) Shapiro’s Gavel on Substack. Visit HERE to learn more.

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

STAY INFORMED

Receive regular news, commentary, and analysis straight to your inbox.

POWERED BY

DrRichSwier.com | ThePricklyPear.org

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.