The latest outrage from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a ruling Wednesday by a three judge panel —all appointed by Democratic presidents — that a state doesn’t have to disclose its voter list.

The U.S. Department of Justice is currently engaged in a nationwide effort to ensure voter integrity on a state-by-state basis. A 2024 poll found that more than half of Americans are concerned about voter fraud.

This particular case was filed in 2023 by Public Interest Legal Foundation, Inc. (PILF), a nonprofit public interest law firm headquarters in Pennsylvania that focuses on election integrity.

The judicial panel acknowledged that the purpose of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) is to ensure that states maintain “accurate and current voter registration rolls.”

Nevertheless, the panel concluded, the public has no right to see the actual result of the state’s efforts -- that is, whether its voter rolls are honest — because the list of registered voters was not created “pursuant to the implementation of efforts to ensure the accuracy of voter lists.”

Hmmmm.

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The practical effect of the decision is that there is no way for the public to ascertain whether a state is maintaining an accurate and current voting list that excludes dead people, people who have moved to a different state, and illegal immigrants.

PILF argues that the NVRA requires all states to maintain publicly accessible statewide voter registration list precisely to promote election integrity through public oversight.

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The panel further concluded that when U.S. Congress enacted the NVRA it “was focused on historical documentation of how states conduct list maintenance, not on the voter lists themselves, which constantly evolve as voters are added or removed, or as their data are updated.”

Logan Churchwell, a spokesperson for the PILF, said on Wednesday that the ruling affirms that nearly every underlying document comprising Hawaii’s voter roll is accessible under the National Voter Registration Act, with the notable exception of the voter roll itself.

“Without access to the ultimate document, it’s difficult to verify that list maintenance obligations are met. This is simply the end of the first act… there’s a lot more of this story to play out,” he said.

Churchwell indicated the case will probably end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The judges on the panel are: M. Margaret McKeown, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1998; Michelle T. Friedland, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2014; and Jennifer Sung, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2021. Friedland wrote the decision.

When it filed suit in 2023, PILF President J. Christian Adams said: “Unfortunately, some states like Hawaii conduct their elections in the shadows. Federal law requires transparency, and voter rolls are an important list maintenance document the public can inspect. We have fought this fight and won it in court in three other states. We are confident that this lawsuit will bring transparency to Hawaii’s elections.”

The Foundation previously won access to voter rolls in Maryland, Illinois and Maine.

The lawsuit is Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Nago, No. 24-6629 (2023).

The notice in my mailbox this week from a local warehouse for a national retail distributor advertised jobs that pay $25 an hour, plus $5 a week health insurance.

That’s great, but how long before those jobs disappear?

It’s only a question of time before warehouses are run by a few workers behind a computer screen using Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the actual work is done by robots.

Thousands of local workers who now earn a decent wage and have access to cheap health insurance, will be laid off. It’s not like they can go to another warehouse, which also will be run by AI and staffed by robots.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, whose federation of 65 unions represents 15 million workers, said Tuesday that AI poses the “single biggest threat to working people of our lifetime.” She said no worker will be untouched and that “every job is now a technology job.”

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White Collar

It’s not just the jobs of warehouse workers that are vulnerable.

A recent Goldman Sachs report found that AI could potentially automate tasks that now account for 25% of all work hours and that it could displace about seven percent of U.S. workers within ten years.

Tech entrepreneur Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, told the Financial Times recently that “AI could eliminate about 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years, causing unemployment to surge… We should not deny that the disruption is going to happen.”

On Tuesday, Anthropic, which calls itself a public benefit corporation, released a report showing that the workers at risk for displacement include lawyers, financial analysts, market researchers and software developers. The report states that workers in the most “exposed professions” are more likely to be older, female, highly educated, and to earn 47% more than average.

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Anthropic estimates that AI can handle 94% of computer and math worker tasks. It is currently handling 33%.

Anthropic reports that computer programmers have the “highest observed AI exposure,” which means they are most vulnerable to job loss from AI, followed by customer service representatives, data entry keyers, medical record specialists, market research analysts and marketing specialists.

The job situation is not all bad news.

Anthropic says 30% of workers are not threatened by job loss caused by AI, including cooks, mechanics, bartenders and dishwashers.

Congress Yawns

Despite the warnings, there is little urgency in Washington to meet the challenges ahead.

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An epic battle is underway in Montana, where citizens are working to provide an off-ramp to the oppressive corporate domination of American elections.

A nonprofit group called the Transparent Election Initiative (TEI) hopes to place a first-of-its-kind initiative on Montana’s ballot this year to alter the definition of a “corporation” in the state and bar corporate spending in state and local elections.

The initiative, known as the Montana Plan, would circumvent the pitfalls posed by the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. There, a narrow 5-4 majority held that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) could not limit independent political expenditures by corporations, labor unions, or other collective entities because doing so constitutes a prior restraint on free speech under the First Amendment.

OpenSecrets, a non-profit group that keeps track of money in American politics, reports that independent expenditures by outside groups skyrocketed by more than 28-fold after the Citizens United ruling — from $144 million in 2008 to $4.2 billion in 2024. Much of the money is spent on advertising by PACs with innocuous-sounding names.

The problem is obvious: since the funders are anonymous, voters have no way of knowing exactly who is sponsoring the ad and why.

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For its part, it is not clear where TEI is getting its money to wage the initiative campaign, and TEI founder Jeff Mangan failed to return requests for comment.

Reports filed with Montana’s Campaign Electronic Reporting System do not list individual donors. However, they do list debts exceeding $10,000 owed to the Cochenour Law Office in Helena, MT.

Attorney Matt Cochenour submitted the original TEI ballot initiative last August. He formerly served as Montana’s Acting Solicitor General, spent 13 years as Assistant Attorney General, and worked as a Senior Tax Counsel at the Montana Dept. of Revenue.

Creatures Of The State

The premise of the Montana Plan is that corporations are creatures of the state, which holds the power to define their form, limits, and privileges. TEI essentially wants to alter the legal contract that permits corporations to do business in Montana.

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Specifically, the initiative bars “artificial persons” — including corporations, non-profits, trusts, and trade associations — from “contributing anything of value to candidate elections, supporting or opposing political parties, or supporting or opposing state or local ballot issues.” A violation would be punished by “forfeiting all privileges to do business in Montana.”

TEI won a victory earlier this month when the Montana Supreme Court unanimously dismissed — as premature — a challenge to the initiative brought by a battalion of industry lobbyists, including the Montana Chamber of Commerce, the Montana Mining Association and the Montana Petroleum Association.

A National Strategy

The Montana Plan has garnered national attention as a possible way to end the infusion of corporate “dark money” into local, state, and federal elections.

The Center for American Progress, a left-leaning public policy research organization, is calling upon all states to perform a “corporate power reset.” The Center argues that the states, and only the states, have the power to define what constitutes a corporation. It argues that states can “drain corporate and dark money from American politics” without overturning Citizens United.

More Money Than People

It’s no coincidence that this battle is taking place in Montana.

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The steaming hypocrisy of the U.S. court system was evident yet again last week when a federal judge in Michigan was allowed to accept a plea deal that could permit him to return to work after a notorious drunk driving incident.

Instead of being held to a higher standard, it appears that U.S. District Judge Thomas Ludington, 72, was held to a lower standard.

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Ludington faced 180 days in jail and a one-year license suspension under Michigan’s ”Super Drunk” statute after his black Cadillac crashed into several street signs near his $2.7 million lakefront vacation home on Oct. 3. His blood alcohol content was 0.27 percent.

According to police body camera footage, Ludington denied having anything to drink. When asked to recite part of the alphabet, he said, “A, B, C, D, E, F, U.” When asked to pick a number between 19 and 21, he picked 15. He could not track the officer’s finger movements and had urinated in his pants. He had no memory of the car airbags deploying, or striking the signs. He refused to blow into the breath analyzer.

Despite informing officers that he is a federal judge, Michigan police arrested Ludington.

Last week, Ludington’s attorney, Jonathan Steffy, revealed for the first time that police found a shell casing from a Luger gun on the front floor of Ludington’s car. Steffy offered no explanation, claiming Ludington doesn’t own a gun. Steffy did not explain why Ludington told police, at the scene, that he had lots of weapons in the car.

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The DUI charge was not publicly disclosed for four months, and Ludington returned to work as if nothing happened.

Questions arise. Did Ludington notify his employer — the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan — of the DUI charge? Did the Court cover it up? Did police cover it up?

The Detroit News found out about DUI in January, prompting the Court to announce that Ludington would be “voluntarily” taking a paid leave of absence “pending resolution of the state legal matter.” Except for a whistleblower, the incident would likely still be secret.

‘No Contest’

Michigan state court Judge Angela Lasher last week allowed Ludington to enter a plea agreement reducing the charge to a lower level misdemeanor — the same offense that is imposed on standard DUI offenses where the driver has a blood alcohol content from 0.08% to 0.17%.

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Lobbyists have successfully lobbied the governing body of the federal judiciary to withdraw a rule that would have required them to identify who they represent when they file amicus curiae or “friend of the court” briefs in a case.

It’s not like on Capitol Hill, where lobbyists buy Congress members a meal at a fancy restaurant to press their clients’ position with the promise of a campaign donation — or the threatened loss of support — during dessert.

In the federal court system, “non-party” groups and organizations submit written amicus curiae briefs to the court with the understanding that these documents present important information or data about issues relevant to the case.

In reality, much of the time these briefs are underwritten by judicial lobbyists.

The problem is that no one really knows who is behind these briefs. Did one of the parties to the lawsuit pay a third party to submit the brief to persuade the court under the guise of an independent third-party? Does one of the parties, or its counsel, have an ownership stake in the legal entity that submitted the brief?

For several years, U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, (D-RI), and Ron Johnson, (R-WI), have demanded the governing body of the federal judiciary, the Judicial Conference of the United States, adopt a rule requiring the identification of those who contribute to the preparation and submission of an amicus curiae brief.

A standing committee of the Judicial Conference, which operates the nation’s federal courts, studied the issue and proposed an amendment to the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure.

The amendment to Rule 29 was approved by the Conference on July 25. It was scheduled to be transmitted to the U.S. Congress for approval by May 1 and, upon approval, to take effect on December 1.

But the rule change was quashed when it was abruptly withdrawn by a Conference committee on March 26. Why? Because lobbyists objected.

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U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman of Washington D.C., a semi-retired appointee of former Democratic President Bill Clinton, ruled on April 9, 2026, the Department of War’s new press policy violated his earlier order. Friedman blocked the prohibition against reporters roaming unescorted in the Pentagon, and the relocation of the press room to an annex.

Did it ever make sense for journalists from around the world — who lack security clearances — to be wandering around the Pentagon, which is the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, the nerve center for U.S. military planning, strategy, and operations?

I suspect that most Americans would agree that it did not.

After the second Trump administration took office last year, the Defense Department, which it infamously renamed Department of War (DoW), adopted new rules for the Pentagon press corps.

The DoW restricted unescorted movement inside the Pentagon.

But the DoW didn’t stop there. It also announced a new policy that discouraged journalists from asking Pentagon staff to violate laws and policies by disclosing non-public information, including classified material. Members of the Pentagon press corps were told they must sign an acknowledgement of the policy or lose their permanent press credentials and workspaces.

“The ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon — the people do. The press is no longer allowed to roam the halls of a secure facility. Wear a badge and follow the rules — or go home,” said DoW Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The New York Times filed a lawsuit that on Monday seemed to have devolved into a test of power between the executive and judicial branches of government.

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New Media Interlopers

More than two dozen journalists from legacy media outlets refused to sign the new restrictive policy last fall, and lost their Pentagon credentials.

Meanwhile, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced on social media that “over 60 journalists, representing a broad spectrum of new media outlets and independent journalists, have signed the Pentagon’s media access policy and will be joining the new Pentagon Press Corps.” The newcomers include The Gateway Pundit, Tim Pool’s “Timcast”, LindellTV (founded by My Pillow CEO and election denier Mike Lindell), and Turning Point USA’s Frontlines.

The worst insult to the legacy media may have been the Pentagon’s decision to credential conservative activist and Trump loyalist Laura Loomer, who was given a desk that previously belonged to a Washington Post reporter.

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Parnell rubbed salt in the wound, stating, “Americans have largely abandoned digesting their news through the lens of activists who masquerade as journalists in the mainstream media.”

U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minnesota, immediately labeled the new contingent “The Pentagon Propaganda Corps.” Others called the new media representatives “far right sycophants,” “illegit,” and “conspiracy theorists.”

Ruling

The New York Times filed a lawsuit that resulted in a ruling by U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman of Washington, D.C, a semi-retired appointee of former Democratic President Bill Clinton.

On March 20, Friedman vacated the part of the Pentagon policy relating to credential revocation based on newsgathering activities. He said the policy violated journalists’ constitutional rights to free speech and due process. He ordered the Pentagon to immediately reinstate the press credentials of New York Times reporters.

Judge Friedman described the Pentagon policy as so vague that it makes “any newsgathering and reporting not blessed by the Department a potential basis for the denial, suspension, or revocation of a journalist’s [credential].” He said that even soliciting classified information can constitute legitimate newsgathering.

Friedman said the Pentagon policy also constituted viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment because its intent was to replace “disfavored journalists” with “new entities” that are “willing to serve” the Pentagon.

Here’s the problem

Friedman works for the federal judiciary, which is governed by the Judicial Conference of the United States. The press is excluded from Conference meetings— which are secret— and the Conference rarely holds a press conference. It typically issues after-the-fact press releases announcing rule changes.

Moreover, the chair of the Conference is U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., who works at the Supreme Court, where judicial chambers are off-limits to reporters without an explicit invitation or escort.

Who is Judge Friedman to tell the executive branch that it must comply with security policies the judicial branch itself does not follow for its own operations?

The Pentagon says it will appeal.

Checkmate?

On Monday, the New York Times returned to court, claiming the Pentagon was flouting Friedman’s order with a new “interim policy” that removes the Pentagon press workspace to an annex facility outside the Pentagon that can only be reached via shuttle bus or a corridor with restricted access.

The Times accused the Pentagon of defying Friedman’s order “in letter and spirit.”

The new interim policy appears to have the effect of the original policy. It prevents reporters from wandering the halls of the Pentagon to solicit information that has not been publicly disclosed — including classified material — from DoW staffers. Does the U.S. Constitution prohibit the Pentagon from establishing a press workplace in an outside annex when Friedman’s boss, the Judicial Conference, doesn’t even have a press workplace.

Why can’t the Pentagon simply stop providing any access to the press, like the Judicial Conference?

Judge Friedman did not rule from the bench.

Data from the Pew Research Center shows that 86% of U.S. adults now get their news from digital devises, including smartphones, social media and websites. Top sources include Facebook, YouTube, news apps, search engines and podcasts. Of course, legacy media outlets now maintain a digital presence.

Almost three years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote, ruled that affirmative action in college admissions violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

That bowling ball has traveled down the lane. It is now hitting the deeply entrenched institutional policies adopted decades ago, when there was serious and pervasive employment discrimination against women and minorities.

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The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which accredits M.D.-granting institutions in the U.S. and Canada, has quietly removed DEI protocols from its official guidance. The WSJ welcomed the move, stating that some of the worst excesses of DEI occurred in medical schools.

Research has shown that medical schools were applying different standards by race, with one study showing that black applicants were more than seven times as likely as similarly situated white applicants to gain admission and more than nine times as likely to be admitted as similarly situated Asians.

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A report by the James G. Martin Center, a think-tank based in North Carolina, found DEI was “embedded” in medical school coursework, “often displacing core scientific content,” and that new faculty members were required to sign “loyalty” oaths to implement DEI. The report encouraged eliminating all DEI policies in medical schools, and advocated mandating the use of “objective” admissions criteria.

Meanwhile, the American Bar Association in May 2025 suspended Standard 206 — which required law schools to demonstrate a commitment to diversity and inclusion - through August 31.

The ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar advanced a proposal last month to repeal Standard 206, noting other professional accreditors have revoked or indefinitely suspended diversity rules.

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Trust in the federal judiciary has plunged in recent years as Americans have come to realize that justice is often tainted by self-interest and partisan politics.

In a talk Tuesday at Houston’s Rice University, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. was asked to name the leading misconceptions about the courts. He dismissed the idea that…

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It’s an epic misstep so, predictably, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco is doubling down.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled 2-1 in May that traditional Korean spas in Washington that feature communal baths for girls and women — who are nude — must admit men who say they “identify” as women but did not undergo gender confirmation surgery to remove their male genitalia.

This week, the appeals court announced that it would not require the panel to rehear the case, and vetoed a request for an “en banc” hearing by all the active judges of the Ninth Circuit.

So the ruling - arguably the “most clueless” of 2025 - stands.

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Not only must preoperative “trans women” (a.k.a., intact men) be admitted to traditional all-female Korean baths, but female spa attendants must give them the same service as if they were women, including deep tissue massages, even if it makes them feel “uncomfortable.”

Smoke and Mirrors

In a written order, Senior Judge M. Margaret McKeown attempts to characterize the Ninth Circuit as powerless to do the right thing because the plaintiffs didn’t argue the case a different way.

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At the same time, McKeown, 74, and Judge Ronald M. Gould, 79, who remains an active judge, the two panel members who ordered the spas to admit fully intact men, voted to deny the appellant’s petition for a rehearing by the panel, so the parties could address the relevant legal issues. Both McKeown and Gould are nominees of former Democratic President Bill Clinton.

McKeown, complains the plaintiffs failed to attack the constitutionality of the state law in Washington that prohibits public facilities from discriminating on the basis of gender identity.

Instead, she said, the plaintiffs sued state officials on First Amendment grounds, claiming the way they enforced the law violated the spa’s First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, religion and association.

It might seem to be a difference without a distinction, but McKeown insists it is not. “The Spa simply did not challenge the statute itself, and it is not our role to rewrite the statute,” she writes.

McKeown argues, in effect, that the court has no choice but to require enforcement of Washington law that potentially (obviously?) violates the U.S. Constitution.

It’s all smoke and mirrors, of course.

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Thomas Jefferson said, “The true basis of a republic is the equal right of every citizen to have an equal voice in the government’s direction.”

Today, a few hundred mega-donors use super PACs that arguably control U.S. domestic and foreign policy, flooding out the voices of ordinary citizens.

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The U.S. would not be bombing Iran if Israel had not exploite…

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There may be no job as thankless and unappreciated as that of the wife of a politician.

But Casey DeSantis, wife of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, has become the rare political wife to break the mold by spearheading a Florida food safety campaign that is having a national impact.

In January, she announced the results of independent heavy metal testing of infant formula products by the Florida Department of Health as part of a new Healthy Florida First initiative with Governor DeSantis and Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo.

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The testing revealed that 16 out of 24 infant formula products tested contained at least one heavy metal in excess of the maximum daily limit compared to health-based screening benchmarks set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The testing screened for arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury.

Since then, the Florida initiative has released the results of additional testing for toxins in bread and candy and published the results at its web page, exposingfoodtoxins.com.

Casey DeSantis said parents and consumers “should have confidence that products sold in grocery stores are safe and free from poison.”

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She expressed hope that more states will serve as a “force multiplier” to support U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, which has targeted ultra-processed food and removed certain food dyes from grocery products.

Consumer Reports

Casey DeSantis is not the first to notice that popular baby formulas are tainted with toxins.

Consumer Reports magazine tested baby foods in 2018 and followed up in 2023. CR reported that “the overall risk hasn’t changed much” in five years. CR’s latest study said that half of 41 powdered infant formulas analyzed still contain at least one contaminant.

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There is something amiss when members of a major U.S. political party refuse to prioritize American citizens over illegal immigrants.

At his State of the Union address, Trump challenged every lawmaker to stand who agreed with the statement: “The first duty of the American government is to protect Am…

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No member of the Sackler family, which owned and controlled Purdue Pharma, has been criminally prosecuted for promoting OxyContin, the opioid that contributed to hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths in the U.S. over the past two decades..

Contrast this with street level d…

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Bad Bunny - VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR
 (I'm Gonna Take You To Puerto Rico)

I'm gonna take you to Puerto Rico, baby, so you can see how we dance perreo
Bring your friend if you like the idea, tell her we're going to hang out tonight...
No one here is going to get married tonight, but you're gonna want to stay (Hey, hey)…

All three of us are drunk, baby, I'm…

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Imagine the chairperson of a top law firm was a secret advisor and friend to perhaps the most notorious misogynist and pedophile in history, Jeffrey Epstein.

Now imagine that the word got out about this guy — Brad Karp — and he stepped down as chairperson, supposedly to avoid being a distraction for the firm. But he remains a partner there.

It’s only har…

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The federal court system historically was accorded extreme deference by the media which dutifully sat and waited for its press releases.

Moreover, the sheer complexity of the U.S. judicial system has made it almost unfathomable to most reporters.

A couple of years ago, I began writing about the system as a decentralized and secretive institution that is self-governed through a complex web of self-serving rules. I wrote about the institution’s failure to modernize and its lack of accountability to the public, especially with respect to judicial misconduct. I wrote about judicial corruption.

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Today, the New York Times, which was once considered the most influential newspaper in America, announced that it is dramatically expanding the scope of its coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The NYT says that henceforth it will assign a team of four reporters to cover the Court, which, in the past, was only covered by one NYT reporter.

What prompted the NYT to suddenly increase its coverage of the Court at a time when other major newspapers are laying off staff. (As reported by the NYT and other media last month, the Washington Post is planning to layoff hundreds of workers.)

It could be that NYT editors closely follow my Substack. Maybe they were surprised to learn about the Court’s secrecy, lack of accountability, and corruption?

The Context

It seems more likely that the NYT, an ardent critic of Republican President Donald J. Trump, is broadening its coverage of the Court because it has proven more powerful than anticipated.

Former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer last year revealed that Democrats had packed the lower courts with ideological partisans to serve as a “bulwark” to thwart Trump. The strategy is failing.

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The NYT noted Trump’s success in filing emergency applications to the Supreme Court to stay injunctions passed primarily by the Democratic-nominated lower court judges. At least three-quarters of Trump’s applications were approved, allowing his administration’s policies to remain in effect until the conclusion of litigation.

The NYT also focuses upon a series of important court decisions that were decided by the conservative majority.

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If Minnesota officials had simply cooperated with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), one thing is certain.

Protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti - both shot by federal agents this month in Minneapolis— would still be alive. Moreover, Good’s vehicle would not have rammed an ICE officer, injuring him.

Minneapolis sits in Hennepin County, a DHS…

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U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk wrote that Founding Era documents reflect a shared vision of the First Amendment that was designed to elevate the public discourse necessary to self-government.

This vision does not include drag performances that demean women via “a sexualized striptease, in the presence of minors,” he wrote.

Judge Kacsmaryk, in a 46-page opinion, recently ruling that West Texas A&M University was not required to host a drag show on its campus.

The ruling was ignored by the legacy media — including the New York Times — apparently because it goes against their progressive agenda. Because it is important, I am providing excerpts from Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling below.

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(Note: I’ve covered the legal machinations of this case for years. Anyone who is interested in that tangled web can find a summary here.)

Kacsmaryk denied a 30-member student group, Spectrum WT, the right to conduct a drag show on campus that featured a “provocative,” “transgressive,” “gender-bending” performance that “shatters” sex, sexuality, and gender norms through exaggerated caricatures of the female sex, sexuality, and sex roles, with invited performers who routinely simulated masturbation, simulate sex acts, and “frottage” audience members. (Frottage refers to drag performers grinding their near-bare crotch against an audience member.)

He noted that Spectrum WT said it could not guarantee the event would be closed to minors. This matters because the 9,000 student population of West Texas A&M, includes many high school students — minors — who attend the university’s pre-university program. He said there is no difference between a minor student’s identification card and that of other students.

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In prior off campus events, Judge Kacsmaryk noted, Spectrum WT failed to enforce a “PG-13” rating, and in 2025 “failed to enforce the advertised ‘R’ rating at a Valentine’s Day lip-syncing event that descended into ‘BDSM’ themed sex acts.” BDSM is an acronym for bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism.

Judge Kacsmaryk said Spectrum WT was seeking only prospective relief — to hold a drag show in 2026 . Although said Spectrum said the show would have a “PG-13” rating, Kacsmaryk noted that such a rating permits “nudity… including a naked backside or breasts.”

Spectrum WT demanded that the event be held at a campus venue, Legacy Hall, claiming that it was a “limited public” venue.

The Texas A&M University Board of Regents, which operates the West Texas campus plus 10 other university campuses, decided last year that it is “inconsistent” with its core values to allow its facilities to be used for drag shows because they are “likely to create or contribute to a hostile environment for women” contrary to federal anti-discrimination law (Title IX).

Freedom of Speech

Here are some excerpts from, or cited by, Judge Kacsmaryk:

• The Fifth Circuit has expressed “genuine doubt… that: pulsing prosthetic breasts in front of people, putting prosthetic breasts in their faces, and being spanked by audience members are actually constitutionally protected — especially in the presence of minors.”

• “Drag, by its ‘provocative,’ ‘transgressive’ nature, veers into sexualized content, and Spectrum’s proven inability to control the content elides any argument that the planned 2026 show will be ‘appropriate.’”

• Spectrum WT argued the show would support charitable donations but “all conduct can be said to convey a message of acceptance and support. This would turn ‘an apparently limitless variety of conduct’ into protected speech in an impermissible way.”

• “If combining speech and conduct were enough to create expressive conduct, a regulated party could always transform conduct into “speech” simply by talking about it.”

• “‘[L]ive entertainment’ includes some First Amendment protection for ‘expressive conduct.’ It does not follow that any live performance is “inherent” expressive conduct.”

• “Spectrum WT does not—and could not—argue that sexualized drag is the ‘acting out of the written word’ like a traditional play or musical.”

Limited Public Forum

Judge Kacsmaryk held that that West Texas A&M’s Legacy Hall is a limited public forum, “open only to ‘public expression of particular kinds or by particular groups.” He observed that the government “is not required to, and often does not, allow everyone to engage in every type of speech.”

According to the opinion:

• Texas A&M President Wendler’s “restriction on Spectrum’s proposed drag show in Legacy Hall is reasonable in light of Legacy Hall’s stated purpose of providing a venue for speech on topics that, pursuant to the University’s core values, do not denigrate any member of the West Texas A&M community.”

• “Content-based restrictions on speech in traditional and designated public forums are subject to heightened scrutiny, while the same restrictions in limited and nonpublic forums are not.”

• West Texas A&M’s “Expressive Activity on Campus” policy states that several types of “[e]xpressive activities” are “not protected” on its campus, including those involving “physical abuse or assault,” inciting “imminent lawless action,” and “illegal harassment.”

• West Texas A&M officials “reserved the right to deny” applications to use Legacy Hall if the proposed event would conflict with the University’s mission or policies.”

Wendler testified at the trial that respect is a '“core value” at West Texas A&M, behind only the health and safety of the student body. He said drag shows “violate the core value of ‘respect’ because such shows caricature and reduce women to nothing more than their sexuality.” Wendler said allowing such shows would “diminish respect” for women on campus, noting women constitute roughly half of all students on campus.

Blackface

Kacsmaryk wrote:

• “President Wendler would never permit ‘blackface’ performances at West Texas A&M. To President Wendler, drag denigrates women in the same way that blackface denigrates African Americans: both mock vulnerable groups by caricaturing aspects of their identity.”

• “Drag exaggerates women’s breasts, buttocks, and other physical attributes, while blackface emphasizes African Americans’ skin color and offensive cultural stereotypes. But the purpose is the same: to reduce an entire group to merely its sexuality (in the case of drag) or skin color (in the case of blackface). The only difference is that one performance is ‘abhorred by cultural elites’ while the other is in vogue—at least for now.”

Cultural elites abhor blackface, while drag is in vogue.

• “In a limited public forum, President Wendler’s actions need only be viewpoint neutral and reasonable in light of Legacy Hall’s purpose.”

Judge Kacsmaryk notes that Wendler clearly does not take issue with the idea that Spectrum claimed it wanted to express — to support the LGBT community— but objects to “the way they would do it: by denigrating West Texas A&M’s female students.”

Kacsmaryk noted that Wendler said he might decline a production of Sherlock that stereotyped Jews, a blackface performance, a white-supremacist rally because they would be “inappropriate for the forum and would harm West Texas A&M mission to promote a culture of respect among its students.”

Conclusion

“Spectrum WT’s proposed show is likely not protected expressive conduct. Even if it were, Legacy Hall is a limited public forum, where Spectrum’s proposed show would not be appropriate. Accordingly, Spectrum WT has not proven by a preponderance of the evidence its claims against President Wendler.”

Judge Kacsmaryk dismissed the case with prejudice - which means it cannot be filed again.

A national 2024 poll found that 58% of American adults — almost six in 10 — worried the 2024 election would be tainted by voter fraud.

Of those voters, nearly 90% of likely Trump voters expressed concern about voter fraud. Donald Trump received about seventy-seven million votes.

Without getting into arguments about the extent of voter fraud, it is clear that voter fraud is a concern for a significant portion of American voters. What is a sensible response to a concern of this magnitude?

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The Trump administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed lawsuits against 24 states and the District of Columbia that have refused to release their full, unredacted voter rolls. Attorney General Pamela Bondi says the DOJ wants to protect the integrity of American elections.

“Accurate voter rolls are the foundation of election integrity, and any state that fails to meet this basic obligation of transparency can expect to see us in court,” said Bondi.

State voter rolls are generally public, and routinely distributed to political parties seeking to get out the vote. There is no inherent right to privacy for voter registration — only with respect to how the registrant voted.

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The point in dispute is that the DOJ is seeking full and unredacted voter rolls that include partial social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, dates of birth, etc. The Department of Homeland Security has stated that it would receive the data from the DOJ to “scrub aliens from voter rolls.”

Setback

Last week, two federal judges in California and Oregon, both nominated by Democratic presidents, issued decisions that constitute a major setback for the DOJ.

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