The federal government says there are about 48 million cases of foodborne illnesses in the United States each year, resulting in roughly 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths.

Meanwhile, older Americans are most at risk for hospitalization and death due to foodborne illness as a result of their weakened immune systems.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says people aged 65 and older account for 53 to 56 percent of foodborne illness deaths in the U.S. They are four times more likely than young people to be hospitalized due to foodborne illness, and 10 to 15 times more likely to die when compared to healthy young adults.

It is therefore disconcerting that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) seem to be scrambling around like keystone cops on an ice skating rink in their response to the current food poisoning outbreak related to iceberg lettuce that has now spread to 20 states.

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The FDA began investigating what some are calling “Lettuce-gate” in mid-July.

Thousands of people have reported sickness after eating lettuce containing the parasite, Cyclospora, a single-celled organism found in human feces. Authorities suspect the contamination occurred when the lettuce was irrigated with dirty water.

On July 18, the FDA accused Taylor Farms de Mexico of Guanajuato, Mexico, of distributing contaminated lettuce, claiming it had tested a sample of Taylor lettuce that tested positive for the Cyclospora.

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The day before the FDA announcement — on July 17 — Taylor Farms initiated a voluntary recall of iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico and distributed to 18 states. The lettuce was sold to restaurants like Taco Bell and to consumers of Marketside-branded bagged lettuce products at Walmarts.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Taylor Farms contacted the White House in an effort to delay a recall announcement linking it to the outbreak. The Trump administration reviewed the FDA’s findings, and gave the agency the green light to go forward with the recall.

On July 19, the FDA backtracked, announcing that the sample of Taylor lettuce it had tested yielded a “false positive.”

After the FDA’s announcement, Taylor Farms issued a statement claiming: “No Taylor Farms branded products are involved in this recall.” (Whatever that means?)

The FDA continues to blame Taylor Farms’ lettuce as a likely culprit in the outbreak. The FDA said cases “with Taco Bell exposure” have been reported in Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The FDA also reported that “Taco Bell has indicated they are no longer using lettuce from Taylor Farms.”

“Do not eat recalled iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico. FDA’s investigation is ongoing.” - the FDA

The importance of food inspections and recalls cannot be understated.

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The Judicial Conference of the United States is the de facto board of directors for the third branch of government.

Very few Americans know about the existence of the 27-member Conference, which is led by Chief Justice John Roberts. And no outsider knows what the Conference does when it meets because its proceedings are secret — and it has always been so.

The double standard is glaring. A federal judge is currently micromanaging media access at the U.S. Department of Justice’s facilities in the Pentagon, while the Judicial Conference excludes the media altogether from its meetings, issuing occasional press releases that are dutifully reported as news.

On Monday, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he was introducing a package of bills to bring the federal judiciary into compliance with ethical rules that govern the executive branch. He also seeks to require judges to put their assets into a blind trust, something members of Congress are not required to do.

Both Sides

Make no mistake. Schiff’s effort is overtly political. However, it noteworthy because both sides of the aisle are now demanding reform of the U.S. Supreme Court and federal judiciary in the wake of its feckless handling of recent scandals involving blatant judicial misconduct.

U.S. Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) last week introduced articles of impeachment against a federal judge for allegedly disregarding the threat to the public by releasing a convicted plane hijacker from federal detention and giving ICE less than 24 hours to appeal.

Several Republican leaders have called for the impeachment of federal judges for allegedly overstepping their constitutional authorities and engaging in judicial activism to thwart the Trump administration.

After dozens of nationwide injunctions were issued last year, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to curtail the ability of federal judges to issue universal or nationwide injunctions.

The U.S. Supreme Court adopted its first code of conduct in 2023, but it lacks an enforcement mechanism. (Meanwhile, the lower courts’ supposed code of conduct is increasingly seen as a modern-day farce, due in part to the lack of independent oversight of judicial misconduct complaints.)

Three Bills

The package of proposed bills introduced by Schiff include:

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The decision by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City chronicles a massive usurpation of authority by a lower court judge, who in 2023 dismissed 550 cases filed by parents and children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

The lawsuits, consolidated into multi-district litigation, allege that Johnson & Johnson, which manufactured acetaminophen, and major retailers—from Dollar Tree stores to Walgreens— failed to warn pregnant women that using acetaminophen during pregnancy increased the risk of a child developing autism / ADHD. Johnson & Johnson has sold its consumer health division to Kenvue, based in Summit, NJ.

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The three-judge panel found that U.S. District Court Judge Denise L. Cote erred in 2023 when she excluded the testimony of experts for the plaintiffs.

Cote ruled the plaintiffs’ experts’ conclusions did not “constitute reliable evidence of general causation” to support the theory that prenatal acetaminophen exposure causes neurodevelopmental disorders like autism/ ADHD.

The panel unanimously concluded that Cote greatly overstepped her authority.

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The panel focused on the main expert for the plaintiffs, Andrea Baccarelli, a physician, epidemiologist, elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, and dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Baccarelli concluded that there is a causal relationship between prenatal exposure to acetaminophen and autism / ADHD.

Autism and ADHD cause children and adults to experience myriad life-long symptoms; some are completely disabling.

Moreover, diagnoses for autism and ADHD have exploded in the past decade. Prevalence of autism and developmental disabilities increased from one in 150 children in 2000 to one in 36 children in 2020. The annual cost to society is estimated at billions of dollars, not to mention the incalculable cost of personal suffering.

This is one of the most important lines of cases in the federal courts. The stakes are astronomical.

The panel noted that experts reach different conclusions based on the same set of contested facts. The panel said Cote “frequently overstepped” her “gatekeeping function” by, among other things:

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It all comes down to this.

When people of any race and gender (real or imagined) get sick, they want to see a good doctor. Not a mediocre doctor who got into medical school because of an immutable or irrelevant characteristic (i.e., race, LGBTQ+ status, citizenship, etc.). We want a doctor who is smart, knowledgeable, and highly competent.

But getting …

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The era of men on the winner’s stand in female athletics may be coming to a close.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Tuesday that males who identify as female have no legal right under either the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause or Title IX — the milestone 1992 federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational institutions — to compete in female athletics.

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The majority concluded that states (which currently number 27) can segregate athletics into distinct male and female categories.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, said that separating sports by biological sex is “reasonable” and serves important and lawful state interests by protecting competitive fairness and safety for female athletes.

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He notes that students don’t have an inherent right to play on a particular school sports team; some cannot qualify athletically.

“While it is an unhappy occasion whenever a student who wants to play school sports cannot do so, the Title IX regulations guarantee only ‘equal athletic opportunity.’” wrote Kavanaugh.

After today’s decision, it appears the remaining question is whether girls and women have a right to keep males off female sports teams and out of their locker rooms.

The majority agreed that biological differences create distinct athletic advantages for the vast majority of males. Kavanaugh wrote that states are not required to constantly evaluate and manage sports eligibility to ferret out individualized exceptions. Imposing such a requirement would “fundamentally undermine women’s and girls’ sports,” he wrote.

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It is no coincidence that 10 of the 11 states that have boycotted the Great American State Fair are governed by Democrats.

Meanwhile, the event is being mercilessly mocked by the media elite, who focus on limited weekday crowds, the absence of funnel cakes a…

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A terrible thing happened in 2020.

A disgruntled attorney showed up at the house of a federal judge, shot and wounded her husband, and killed their only child.

This is a loss so profound that it cannot be measured.

But the public ramifications stemming from the shooting can be measured.

The federal judiciary received an astronomical increase in federal fund…

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U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of Washington, D.C., on Monday blocked the Trump administration from using a centralized database to, among other things, prevent illegal immigrants from voting in American elections.

In a 75-page ruling, Sooknanan, who was appointed by Democrat Joe Biden, said the Trump administration’s 2025 reboot of the Department of Homeland Security’s Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system violates privacy laws because it relies on Social Security numbers.

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She concluded that comparing Social Security numbers with citizenship status violates privacy provisions of the Social Security Act (SSA), notice requirements under the Privacy Act, and constitutes “capricious and arbitrary” actions by federal agencies in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA).

Sooknanan claimed the federal government “has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote… This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

She concedes the old, pre-Trump, SAVE system permitted access to Social Security numbers but states it was “in very limited circumstances.” Additionally, she said, the old SAVE system could conduct individual searches while the new one can conduct “bulk searches.”

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The Trump administration argued the plaintiffs had failed to produce evidence of actual harm to Americans in the form of voter disenfranchisement or any privacy-related injuries.

Whose Privacy?

Sooknanan’s ruling was couched in terms of protecting the privacy of Americans but it is likely to have a far greater impact on non-citizens. It eliminates the major barrier to their identification on state voting rolls.

The SAVE system is also used by states to screen for eligibility for government benefits like Medicaid and SNAP, and for meeting licensing requirements (e.g., driver’s license, federal financial aid). This will allow non-citizen fraudsters to continue operating.

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It seems the world has forgotten the suffering of our female forebearers.

The United Nations recently created a hierarchy of atrocities in which it ranked the transatlantic slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity.”

Forgotten apparently are the practice of throwing female babies off a cliff due to a preference for sons (China), throwing widows on their husbands’ funeral pyre (South Asia), female genital mutilation (Africa), and executing women as witches because they threatened the male social order (New England).

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Also forgotten are the centuries of legally classifying women (like slaves) as chattel to deny them rights to their children, to own property, or to be free from violence.

(This may be hard to believe but many older women today remember (because they experienced it) when women were denied entry to medical and law schools due to quotas, unable to get a credit card in their own name, and were blamed for sexual assault because they sipped a beer and and wore a v-neck sweater.)

Domestic Violence

I researched the legal history of women when I wrote an introduction to a three-volume series on domestic violence, Domestic Violence: From a Private Matter to a Federal Offense.

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I wrote about the 1849 case of Susannah Palmer, an English charwoman who was married to a drunken thief. He threw her into the streets one night to make room in their bed for another woman. The next morning, he blackened her eyes and knocked out five of her front teeth. After a number of such incidents, she fled with their children. He pursued them, took her meager earnings, and sold her furniture. Police said nothing could be done because he had not deserted her.

The common law in England — and America — then held that husbands could beat their wives with a stick that was no bigger than their thumb.

One night, Susannah was cutting bread for the children’s supper, and he began to beat her. He was cut slightly by the knife blade when she raised her hands to protect herself. She was arrested, convicted of unlawful wounding, and sent to Newgate prison.

What’s the point of comparing violence against African Americans and women? There is none. So why is the UN insistent upon doing so?

Fast forward 150 years. There were some laws in place to protect wives but they were not enforced.

Tracey Thurman, a Torrington, CT, homemaker, notified police of repeated threats on her life by her estranged husband, Charles J. Thurman, Jr., a short-order cook at a local diner frequented by police. Police did nothing.

On June 10, 1983, Charles appeared at her doorstep in violation of a civil restraining order. Tracey called the police but, after 15 minutes they hadn’t arrived. She tried to talk to Charles and opened her door. He stabbed her in the chest, neck, and throat. Twenty five minutes after Tracey’s call, a police officer finally arrived. In his presence, Charles kicked Tracey in the head and ran into the house and to get their baby. He dropped the infant onto her bloody chest. Again, he kicked her in the head.

Three more officers arrived but they didn’t take Charles into custody until until Charles approached his wife a third time — as she was lying on an ambulance stretcher (now partially paralyzed).

The Thurman case became an important legal milestone because she was the first to sue a municipality for violating her civil rights by failing to protect her. A jury awarded her $2.3 million in damages (later reduced to $1.9 million) and her son $300,000 in damages.

Police departments around the country suddenly recognized they faced liability for not taking domestic violence seriously and they began to enforce domestic violence laws.

Women today are still far more likely than men to be killed by an intimate partner. Black women are disproportionately affected. While black women make up 13.4% of the population, they accounted for 29.9% of female intimate partner homicide victims between 2018 and 2021.

FYI, the enslavement of Blacks in America spanned approximately 250 years, and ended after the Civil War with the 1865 ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. By contrast, the Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in the 1920s, officially failed in 1982, with three states short of the required number for ratification.

The African country of Ghana spearheaded the resolution declaring the transatlantic slave trade as the “gravest” crime against humanity, arguing the classification is valid based on the trade’s unparalleled scale, systemic brutality and enduring legacy. The UN resolution calls for reparations.

The resolution was adopted by a vote of 123 to three (with 52 abstentions, including the United Kingdom and EU member states). The three countries who cast a “no” vote were the United States, Israel and Argentina.

U.S. Deputy Ambassador Dan Negrea said the U.S. condemns slavery but argued the resolution has no basis in international law. He said the U.S. "does not recognize a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred." Moreover,, Negrea said, “The assertion that some crimes against humanity are less severe than others objectively diminishes the suffering of countless victims.”

Countless women around the world and throughout history have suffered serious crimes against humanity because they were women. To my knowledge, there has never been an organized movement to demand reparations. If African Americans are entitled to compensation, maybe women should be too?

By now, almost everyone has read about Atlanta U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross, who received an inconsequential private reprimand after a law clerk complained about her loud sexual trysts in her chambers with a police officer over a two-year period.

The Judicial Conference of the U.S. told Ross to write a letter of apology to her clerks.

But few have heard about Linda Crawford, a tenured Spanish professor at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island who taught from 2004 to 2022, when she was fired after assigning students to read an article that identified transgender men as “transvestites.”

“Transvestite” is the term that was historically used for men who dress as women, and is still used today in many countries in Latin America.

During a class discussion, Crawford said LGBTQ+ rights “have not evolved to the level such rights have evolved to in the United States.” A student (identified as Student D) objected to the reference to transvestites in the article. Student D rallied a group of fellow students to meet with Modern Languages Department Chair James G. Mitchell to complain. Mitchell encouraged them to submit written statements to the university criticizing Crawford. She was subsequently fired.

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit recently affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Crawford alleging hostile work environment and discrimination based on gender, race, sexual orientation, age, and religion. Crawford also alleged Mitchell coordinated and inflated the student complaints to retaliate against her for supporting a teacher who had filed a grievance against Mitchell.

The absurdity of Crawford’s situation is obvious.

Many Latin American countries are far less tolerant of LGBTQ+ people than the West. The reading assignment was evidence of this. Crawford teaches about Spanish culture.

‘Ignorant Cis Woman’

Nevertheless, “Student D” wrote a lengthy letter to the Provost “explaining his view that the reading’s use of the word ‘transvestite’ was ‘inappropriate.’” He wrote that “he told Crawford ‘he was a ‘transgender gay man,’ and that because she’s a white straight cis woman,’ she cannot tell him what he finds offensive.’” He also called Prof. Crawford “ignorant.”

Another student wrote that the language of the assigned reading was “triggering” and opined that a “classroom should be a ‘warm and safe space.’”

The “university” then arranged and held a group Zoom meeting where students complained about Crawford’s supposed “offensive language and hateful rhetoric.” Crawford was not informed about the meeting or permitted to participate.

Without even conducting an investigation, the university emailed Crawford a “Notice of Interim Action” that restricted some of her duties.

The university then conducted an expedited “investigation” in which, again, Crawford was not given an opportunity to respond.

On Jan. 3, 2022, the University informed Crawford that her employment was terminated “for cause.” The university essentially said Crawford had a long history of not being able to get along with people.

What Caving Looks Like…

U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy summarily dismissed Crawford’s complaint — without a trial — on the grounds she failed to state a plausible claim. Crawford appealed. A three-judge panel of the 1st Circuit appellate judges upheld the dismissal, finding that Crawford failed to connect the actions of the University (as opposed to the students) with any discrimination she suffered.

The panel writes that Crawford’s complaint “supplies no facts suggesting that the decisionmakers referenced Student D’s language when deciding to fire her, endorsed his characterization of Crawford, or acted for reasons tied to her protected traits.”

The panel wrote that the University supplied “independent reasons” — mainly that she was hard to get along with — which Crawford alleged were pretextual. The panel agreed there were “multiple procedural irregularities” but “that does not mean we must credit Crawford’s unreasonable inferences from it.”

I could go on but, by now, surely you get the idea.

Crawford teaches about Spanish culture. She was fired because a transgender student didn’t like an assigned reading that stated Latin American countries consider men who dress like women to be “transvestites” - a fact that no one disputed.

Judge McElroy and the three appellate judges found vague and unconvincing reasons to ignore the evidence that Crawford was railroaded out of a tenured job by an overly sensitive student, a conniving boss, and a bunch of sniveling bureaucrats.

So now we return to Judge Ross.

Anything Goes?

After the law clerk complained about Ross’s loud sex trysts with a police officer in her chambers, Ross lied to her boss and claimed the clerk was retaliating because she was forced to work in the office. An investigation quickly found that the clerk was telling the truth and that Ross had violated judicial conduct rules.

Instead of firing Ross — as almost any private employer would — the 11th Circuit’s judicial council told Ross to write letters of apology to her clerks. This was affirmed by the national Judicial Conference.

Ross penned a three-line letter of apology for her “harmful” behavior that did not reference the specifics of her misconduct. Apparently, some clerks shared the letters, prompting Ross sent out a revised letter on Thursday.

This time, she wrote to the complaining clerk that she is “profoundly sorry for exposing you to my inappropriate relationship during your clerkship and the harm that I have caused you… I also want to convey my deepest apologies to you for my false accusation against you.”

Double Standard

Does anyone else see a marked difference between the treatment of Professor Crawford and Judge Ross? How do we explain this?

One factor is that federal judges, with lifetime tenure, either have no clue about what it is like to actually work for someone, and/or they fear criticism from the LGBTQ+ community.

The other factor is undoubtedly the federal judiciary’s farcical self-serving system of handing judicial misconduct. Crony judges have conflicts of interest and are no different from police or lawyers. They are demonstrably incapable of policing their own.

Judge Ross lied to Judge William H. Pryor, Jr., the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit about her conduct and tried to blame her clerk. A group of crony judges in the circuit decided this was not significant enough even for suspension. The Judicial Conference agreed.

***I, of course, have experienced this farcical system first hand. If anyone is interested, read this.

Was the 2024 election stolen?

What caused the World Trade Center Building 7 to collapse on 9/11? It was not struck by an airplane.

Who killed U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy in 1963 and why?

Ultimately, these and many other conspiracy theories are fueled by a growing lack of trust in the U.S. government and the media.

A Pew Research Center poll in 2024 found t…

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In a troubling decision, two judges on a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit based in San Francisco have rejected a woman’s plea to avoid deportation to protect her from rapists in her home country of El Salvador

The immigrant, Fatima Guadalupe Monjaras-Segovia, testified that she fled El Salvador after she was raped b…

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Who is at fault?

It’s easy to blame a dog for biting someone.

But the dog owner also bears responsibility, especially if the owner ignores aggressive behavior or allows the dog to roam free.

This “fault” scenario is playing out in the U.S. Court system, which has declined precipitously in recent years in the court of public opinion.

Bloomberg reports that…

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Lost in all the hoopla was the importance of the trial to history.

Artificial intelligence could have been developed to benefit mankind, rather than to line the pockets of assorted Silicon Valley hustlers.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk alleged in a lawsuit that Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Altman’s long-time associat…

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It’s undoubtedly more efficient and cheaper for employers to have a non-diverse workforce where everyone is young and healthy.

However, when employers prevent broad swaths of qualified workers from participating in the workforce, it harms society as a whole. Employment discrimination limits commerce, reduces productivity, wastes talent, deters innovation, and raises health and social service costs. It also destroys social cohesion, causing workers on the “outside” to resent the favored class.

For that reason, the U.S. Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of sex, race, religion, color, and national origin. Additional federal laws were later passed to prohibit discrimination against older, pregnant, or disabled workers as well as veterans.

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Today, tens of thousands of workers are being replaced by artificial intelligence. The vast majority of these workers are simply cast out, without any consideration of their plight.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the primary enforcer of federal civil rights laws, states it is illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or employee because of the person’s “protected characteristic” (sex, race, etc.). Perhaps, then, being human should be a protected characteristic?

Should human workers be a new protected class?

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Many workers who lose their jobs to AI are subjected to treatment by employers that might be deemed actionable if they were members of a class of workers protected by federal discrimination laws.

Reuters recently reported that Meta, which operates Facebook, has installed tracking software on U.S.-based employees’ computers to capture employee mouse movements and keystrokes for AI training data. The no-opt-out tool also takes occasional snapshots of the content on employees’ screens. Reuters wrote that the program is part of a broad initiative at Meta to build AI agents that can perform work tasks autonomously.

It is easy to jump to the conclusion that Meta is effectively making workers train their replacements. This is reminiscent of employers that require older workers to train younger replacements, which potentially violates the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967.

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This time the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which advocates for privacy and anonymity on the internet, is leading the charge against the proposed GUARD Act, which was approved recently by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.…

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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 st…

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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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*On 5/13/26, U.S. District Judge Thomas Ludington was placed on six months probation and ordered to pay fines/costs totaling more than $1,000. The court also ordered 93 days in jail, with credit for two days served, but the remaining 91 days are held in abeyance, meaning he will not serve that time unless he violates probation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is investigating a misconduct complaint filed against Ludington to determine whether disciplinary measures are warranted. Ludington’s hired an ethics lawyer. The Detroit News quoted the director of FixTheCourt, a supposed court reform group, as stating that Ludington should not be impeached for a one-time offense. Meanwhile, there was no word on whether Ludington has a history of drunk driving, or why there was a spent cartridge from a bullet found on the floor of Ludington’s car. Oh, and did Ludington hide his arrest for several months and continue to preside over cases, or did his superiors know about it? Do taxpayers who pay his $249,000 salary have a right to know?

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%.

Ludington pled “no contest” to the lower misdemeanor charge, refusing to acknowledge guilt.

Unless a pre-sentence investigation reveals prior DUI offenses, Ludington faces a maximum sentence of up to 93 days in jail, a $100 to $500 fine, 360 hours of community service, and a 6-month license suspension when he is sentenced on May 13.

Lasher also ordered Ludington to undergo a substance abuse assessment.

After the hearing, Steffy insisted this was Ludington’s first offense and issued the following statement: “Judge Ludington looks forward to continuing to serve the federal court at the highest level and focus on his work, along with his wife and family."

Reservations?

According to published reports, the prosecutor went along with the deal despite expressing a reservation about it at the hearing.

"The recommendation in this case from (Ludington’s attorney) was to, I think, educate himself on alcohol,” said Michael Schuitema, Emmet County prosecutor. “I've never quite seen that recommendation before. It seems inadequate given the BAC and the offense in this case."

Schuitema did not respond to a request for comment Monday about why he agreed to the plea agreement.

Ironically, Schuitema was arrested for an alleged DUI-related offense in 2020 and pled guilty to leaving the scene of a property damage accident. He hit a parked car and left the scene. He then got into a second accident when his car hit some trees. Police called him that night and reported that he slurred his words, claimed he did not know who had his vehicle, and hung up. He didn’t turn himself in until the next day, when he presumably sobered up.

Good Behavior

Article III of the U.S. Constitution states that federal judges "shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour." But what constitutes good behavior? Unfortunately, that term is not defined.

Conveniently, federal judges have interpreted the U.S. Constitution to grant them lifetime tenure, barring impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives followed by conviction by a two-thirds vote in the Senate. This has proven to be an ironclad job guarantee.

Throughout U.S. history, only eight federal judges have been convicted by the Senate and removed. Interestingly, the first to be removed was John Pickering in 1804. He was charged with intoxication on the bench and making unlawful rulings.

The reality is that federal judges are effectively unaccountable to the public, even for serious, costly and disruptive misbehaviors. Most are allowed to retire with a full pension, which may be the likely scenario in Ludington’s case.

Judges have gotten away with this state of affairs for years because the system is highly decentralized, without a strong governing body, and courts traditionally are highly secretive. In the past, judges were held in high esteem, though this is changing.

The bottom line is that federal judges are responsible for according equal justice to everyone but, apparently, not to themselves.