Metro is making some changes to the transit service’s plan to manage commuters during summer construction that’s closed down three stations on the Red Line in Maryland. The adjustments come Thursday as some riders have been waiting in long lines to board the temporary shuttle buses. The closure between the North Bethesda and Friendship Heights […]
The agency appears to have actually done something useful in striking a new settlement with agricultural giant John Deere to address the company’s longstanding “right to repair” abuses. According to an FTC announcement, the settlement to the joint lawsuit brought by the FTC and five states requires that the FTC spend at least ten years trying to make repairing its tractors easier:
“The FTC’s settlement requires Deere—for the next 10 years and under the supervision of the FTC and plaintiff states—to provide farmers and independent repair providers with the same equipment repair resources, including applicable software capabilities, that it currently provides to authorized Deere dealers.”
As is often the case, whether this actually sees any meaningful enforcement will remain an open question. But right to repair advocates like U.S. PIRG’s Nathan Proctor say the settlement is a meaningful one, and a step up to the agreement John Deere made when recently settling a different right to repair class action lawsuit for $99 million.
“The agreement between Deere and the FTC is much better than the deal secured in a similar class action lawsuit,” Proctor said. “For example, it protects independent mechanics from anti-competitive practices in the repair marketplace.”
As we’ve covered for years, John Deere went out of its way to acquire smaller, independent repair centers to force users to use more expensive John Deere dealership repairs. Then it went out of its way to make tools, manuals, and parts as difficult as possible to get. In short they worked tirelessly, for years, to create a monopoly on repair — dramatically driving up costs for consumers.
John Deere’s behaviors had one positive net benefit: they directly sparked a nationwide and bipartisan right to repair reform movement that sparked Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Washington to pass state level right to repair laws. All 50 states have considered such laws, and several (like Maine and Ohio) have gotten close in recent years.
More recently, John Deere had been striking meaningless “memorandums of understanding” with key trade groups, pinky swearing to stop their bad behavior if the groups agreed to not support state or federal right to repair legislation. Several such groups backed off their criticism, only to have John Deere continue its monopolistic behavior, the FTC’s original complaint noted.
It’s worth reiterating that since passage not a single state has actually enforced the laws despise no shortage of offenders, so a lot of work needs to be done on the enforcement front. And again, a settlement with the FTC is also only as good as enforcement; not exactly the Trump administration or U.S. government’s strong suit when it comes to standing up to consolidated corporate power.
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of developmental psychologist Candice Odgers. I’ve mentioned her and her work on the site many times, and she was a guest on my podcast as well. She actually has expertise and has done the work to look at the impact of social media on kids. In many ways she’s the anti-Jonathan Haidt with actual facts, not made up nonsense (which is why when she debated Haidt, he came out of it looking pathetic).
Odgers gave a TED Talk recently, which is now online. It’s worth watching in its entirety (only about 12 minutes) as she details how the moral panic about kids and social media is bullshit, and how banning kids from social media will do way more damage to their mental health:
A few choice quotes (though, again, watch the whole thing). First, she points out that on many important metrics (including the metrics many teenagers were judged by in past generations), we’re doing incredibly well:
in the past 20 years, we’ve had some major wins.
Rates of teen violence, alcohol use, pregnancy have plummeted to historic lows.
You are looking at the most educated generation ever in terms of high school graduation. Young people are inventors. They’re activists. They’re leaders. They’re amazing singers. They’re Olympians. They’re amazing.
And, yes, in some cases they’re more anxious and sadder about the world. Though, some of that may just be the state of the world today. And while she doesn’t say this, I know I’ve heard her talk about it before: some of her work from way back started from the premise that the reason kids were stressed out and anxious was because of social media, but repeated studies failed to find any indication of that (some of which we’ve reported on).
As Odgers points out, the reality is that it’s the adults that are the problem. There’s a mental health crisis among adults, and much of it may be driven by issues like the opioid epidemic:
Now, since 2008, we’ve seen an uptick in youth suicide risk. But perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising, because adult suicide has been increasing dramatically in the United States since 1999.
Remember when I said that adult mental health and caregiver mental health is the most important predictor of child mental health? Well, with that in mind, I want to take a look at this slide.
This graph here shows you that between 2011 and 2021, the rate of overdoses due to drug use among parents more than doubled. People ask me all the time: what could have happened during this period other than social media coming online?
The answer is that adults were in distress and parents were dying.
And, she points out that the data suggests no significant impact for young boys, and for young girls the correlation is reversed. Those who are facing mental health problems and don’t have support go online more — not the other way around.
She also discusses how adults keep closing off spaces for kids to be kids, and banning them from social media just takes away yet another space for kids to be a part of a community.
We are punishing victims.
We’re kicking them out of the spaces they go to be with friends, to consume youth culture, and yes, sadly, many times to escape people that are harming them offline.
We’ve already kicked teenagers out of public spaces.
In the US, we’ve created a society where firearms are the number one killer of our children, and now we’re telling our kids that we’re going to take away the spaces that they’re going to virtually gather and create community, because adults broke that, too?
Yeah, I’m saying adults broke the internet and they’re trying to fix it by kicking kids off.
So a social media ban might feel good for the adults in the room, but teens tell me, and I believe them — it’s not going to work.
It’ll push them into less safe and less regulated spaces, and it will prevent us from doing what we really need to help them be well.
And, no, contrary to some of the YouTube comments on the video, she’s not giving a talk in support of social media platforms. She admits that there are issues there, but notes that kicking kids off doesn’t solve them. It also makes it more difficult to fix the actual underlying societal problems. She comes up with a list of solutions which I won’t spoil, but it involves taxing some of the tech companies to pay for better support for children.
It’s a 12-minute TED talk, so it’s designed to be quick and straightforward, without going too deep into the data and the science, but given how those in favor of banning social media have taken over the narrative, it’s good to have the counter narrative out there.
As Odgers herself said about this talk when she posted it to Bluesky, the kids can be alright. “This isn’t an anxious generation, it’s a resilient one. Let’s start treating them that way.”
Scary stories about teens sell. The data tells a different story.After decades studying adolescent mental health, here's what I found: This isn't an anxious generation. It's a resilient one. Let's start treating them that way. go.ted.com/candiceodgers
I’m a supply chain scholar who studies food banks. I conduct research about how food retailers and food banks work together to save food that would otherwise be wasted. I’ve found that those retailers don’t regularly tell food banks how much food they have available. That lack of communication, combined with capacity constraints at food banks, limits the volume of what food banks can get from supermarkets and similar stores.
No way to plan with precision
Food banks are large-scale warehouses that procure, store and distribute donated food from businesses, including supermarkets. Food pantries, by contrast, are smaller nonprofits that distribute food directly to those in need, such as faith-based soup kitchens and community food assistance programs.
Food banks are largely responsible for picking up food that retailers wish to donate and would otherwise discard. The donated food is then distributed to food pantries, where it is ultimately provided to low-income individuals and families.
Food banks manage fleets of vehicles of various sizes. Food bank logistics managers design routes and dispatch vehicles to visit as many retail store locations as often as possible. A food bank’s procurement territory could stretch across 20 counties and include hundreds of stores.
However, a big problem is that retailers rarely tell food banks how much food to expect, making all logistical decisions even more complicated than you might expect. For example, food banks usually don’t know how big a truck to send, how many staff members and volunteers will be needed to load and unload, or the quality and remaining shelf life of the donated items.
Consequently, food banks set somewhat arbitrary schedules.
A standard pickup schedule might involve dispatching a tractor-trailer to the local Costco store each day, while sending a smaller box truck to a rural Kroger supermarket once per week. This approximately matches the food banks’ pickup capacity with the stores’ demand for pickups or the expected volume of food available to donate.
Not enough trucks or labor
Scheduling pickups week in and week out helps food banks make long-term plans. They can figure out, for example, how many trucks they need in their fleets to haul donations.
But it doesn’t help with short-term planning. Without accurate information about what to expect, there’s no way for food banks to change course to accommodate any unexpected change in the volume of food available to donate.
Food banks also manage the flow of food from other sources besides retailers, such as federal commodity programs, items that food banks buy from wholesalers and donations from farmers, manufacturers and distributors.
Managing this diverse portfolio of food sources tends to exceed what a food bank’s fleet and staff can handle. Because every pickup requires trucks, labor and time, capacity constraints often prevent food banks from collecting donations from every retail store on a daily basis.
Over the past decade, I’ve seen most U.S. food banks adjust their supply chains to boost donations.
Starting in 2016, the usual system began to change. Many stores now donate directly to food pantries, bypassing the food bank altogether. A hybrid model, with both food banks and food pantries picking up food from stores, is especially popular with the high-volume, big-box retailers that are located far from any food bank warehouse. In those cases, local pantries are often closer by.
Operations management scholar Ken Boyer and I studied what happens when food pantries begin to pick up donated food directly. We observed what happened at five big-box stores from April 2017 to March 2018 as food pantries began to directly pick up more donated food.
The best-performing store increased its average monthly donations from 972 pounds (441 kilograms) across five pickups to 2,066 pounds (937 kilograms) across 16 pickups, a 110% increase in donation volume alongside a 220% increase in pickup frequency. But we couldn’t estimate the donation rate at that store or the other four due to a lack of data on how much food was available for those in need.
Unpredictable staffing was also an issue. Since food pantry pickups often relied on volunteers with their personal vehicles, rather than a food bank’s paid staff driving its own trucks, those pickups were much less reliable. And when a food pantry missed a scheduled pickup, it significantly disrupted in-store donation processes and undermined the store managers’ confidence that donated food would be collected as planned.
This uncertainty affected whether food was set aside for donation or thrown out.
Today, most food banks across the country have incorporated at least some pickups by food pantries from retailers into their donation systems. Yet data on what food will be available, at what time and at which store is still missing. This data could go a long way in closing the gap between the amount of food that’s available to donate and what actually is donated.
It is worth noting that food pantries have tighter budgets than food banks, with stronger preference than food banks for certain kinds of food, such as meat and produce. They also have less storage space than food banks, compounding the capacity constraints that were already limiting donations when only food banks were picking food up from stores.
Better data and more reliable staffing would go a long way in making sure that more donated food gets to those who need it the most.
John Lowrey is the founder of Food ALERT, a B2B SaaS platform that helps retail grocers achieve 100% donations. He is also on the Board of Directors for the Arizona Association of Food Banks.
The Federal Communications Commission will vote to eliminate a rule that requires Internet service providers to list all of their so-called "passthrough" fees on an easily accessible broadband price label. The FCC vote could also make the price labels themselves a bit harder for consumers to find.
ISPs routinely advertise prices much lower than those actually charged to consumers on their monthly bills. One method of raising monthly bill prices above advertised rates is to tack on fees that, ISPs claim, are used to offset charges imposed by local governments.
ISPs would be well within their rights to advertise accurate monthly prices and charge those exact prices on monthly bills. But because ISPs rarely do that, the FCC has required them to make specific price disclosures to consumers for the past decade.
If you were hoping to cool off from this weekend’s heat wave with some ice cream at Westfield Montgomery mall, we’re sorry to tell you that Häagen-Dazs has gone dark. The mall is calling this a “temporary” closing, so it’s possible the longtime kiosk will be back. In a case of unfortunate timing (heat wave and all), Häagen-Dazs is/was the only place to get premium ice cream at the mall.
In other news on sweet spots at the mall, Gold Bunny Donut has announced it will close July 9th after just six months. This corner spot near Macy’s Home is a basically a dessert desert: Gold Bunny is the third business to flame out there since 2023, following the equally short-lived Adonni’s Desserts and Donutchew.
The Supreme Court is deciding more consequential rulings than ever before in secret, issued in unsigned orders with little to no justification. Bryan Dozier/NurPhoto via AP
In its term that ended last October, the Supreme Court passed an important milestone that went unnoticed: For the first time, it decided more cases by secret ballot, and with few signed opinions, than it did for cases argued in open court.
These decisions, which make up the court’s “shadow docket,” are a fast-track way to get a decision from the top court. They rarely include arguments, have limited briefings and have expedited timetables, and justices infrequently provide explanation of how they voted or to cite legal precedent.
The Supreme Court’s increased willingness to bypass its regular process has empowered President Donald Trump at the same time as the administration has increased use of executive authority. The court has repeatedly green-lit policies of his that lower courts have blocked — and has done so with little to no explanation.
These emergency decisions have thrown lower courts’ processes into turmoil and have sometimes directly contradicted longstanding legal precedent. The outcomes have been consequential: The high court has used the process to limit federal courts from issuing nationwide injunctions and diminished Congress’ authority over federal agencies, and it has allowed for the detention of American citizens by immigration agents.
ProPublica analyzed over two decades of Supreme Court rulings, which cover all of the years under Chief Justice John Roberts and go as far back as the online archives allow. We found that when the last court term ended, justices had issued 63 orders on the shadow docket, as opposed to 56 orders on the more traditional merits docket — where the court hears oral arguments scheduled months in advance and the justices issue signed opinions.
Legal scholars and court watchers were shocked by our finding. They told ProPublica it’s likely the first time in modern history that so many consequential decisions were made in secret by its nine members.
“The patterns show a court going out of its way to enable Trump,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University and a Supreme Court analyst. He said that our findings reinforce the appearance that the justices are voting on their political preferences.
“That’s the real blow to the court’s credibility,” he said.
Representatives from the Supreme Court did not respond to a detailed list of questions.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the White House wrote, “President Trump has faced a historically unprecedented number of injunctions by liberal lower court judges, the same judges who would rather push their own policy schemes and undermine the Administration’s lawful agenda. President Trump will not stop implementing the America First initiatives on which he was elected.”
For the First Time in Two Decades, Decisions on the Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket Outnumber the Merits Docket
Note: Supreme Court terms run from October to October. Ken Morales/ProPublica
There are two ways to get a decision from the Supreme Court. One is to exhaust your appeals to lower courts and ask to argue your case in front of the high court. The justices determine whether to take the case on, and if they do, lawyers argue their case in front of them. The other is to petition the justices directly via the emergency docket — to freeze a lower court ruling or government policy while the case goes through appeal.
The appeals to the emergency docket have long outnumbered those to the merits docket, but most are procedural requests or requests to stay execution for capital offenses. When those are removed, what’s left is known as the shadow docket — cases that seek to skip the usual order of things and ask for a quick ruling from the court’s justices.
The modern shadow docket was born in 2016 when the Supreme Court issued an emergency stay against President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, experts say. Papers obtained by The New York Times show that liberal justices at the time urged Roberts not to decide the case on an emergency basis because it broke with longtime precedent. The conservative justices, meanwhile, forcefully argued that the president’s plan would eventually be overturned by the court anyway and that it would put too much of a burden on the energy industry.
Driven by its numerous losses in lower courts, the current Trump administration appeals to the emergency docket significantly more often than previous administrations, and the court has increasingly agreed to take quick action on its appeals.
The Obama and George W. Bush administrations together filed just eight petitions in 16 years. The Trump administration filed 32 in 2025 alone, an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice found.
The increased willingness of the Roberts court to intervene on Trump’s behalf — as well as in other issues that favor conservatives and Trump allies — has upended American life, said Donald Ayer, a former deputy solicitor general and deputy attorney general who served under the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
“On many subjects of real importance to our future, they’ve demolished what used to be the law,” he said.
Public scrutiny of the shadow docket ramped up in September 2021 after the Supreme Court used it to issue a one-paragraph, unsigned opinion that further rolled back abortion rights established in the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. In the order, the court refused to block Texas’ Senate Bill 8, the “Heartbeat Act,” which banned abortion after an embryo’s cardiac activity is detectable, typically at six weeks of pregnancy and before many people know they are pregnant. Protests erupted nationwide, and the Senate held a hearing on the shadow docket.
In an unusual public acknowledgement, Justice Elena Kagan referenced the shadow docket by name in her scathing dissent, accusing the majority of green-lighting a “patently unconstitutional law” with only a cursory review in less than 72 hours.
“In all these ways, the majority’s decision is emblematic of too much of this Court’s shadow docket decisionmaking — which every day becomes more unreasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend,” Kagan wrote.
That an opinion was even issued and that four of the justices signed their names to it was uncommon. On the shadow docket, justices do not have to make their votes known. In rare cases, their votes are revealed in terse indications that they grant or deny the application, or even more rarely, as an opinion. We found that just 17% of votes cast had any sort of public record of a vote or opinion.
Responding to public criticism, Justice Samuel Alito contended that the court isn’t to blame for the rise in shadow docket cases. “We do not file these emergency applications,” he said. “Parties file them.”
The debate has continued. “We cannot expect the public to have faith in our judicial system if, without clear explanation, we consistently green-light harmful acts that do real damage,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said during an April speech on the shadow docket at Yale Law School.
Until this past Supreme Court term, emergency applications fluctuated year to year but showed no clear upward trend. The applications are given first to a single justice, who decides if a case is worth referring to the full court. In recent years, justices have referred more of such appeals for a review and vote by the full court.
Last term, when there were both more cases and more referrals to the full court, the appeals to the shadow docket finally overtook those to the merits docket.
Emergency Applications Referred for a Full Court Vote Have Risen Sharply
Total applications have varied over the last two decades, with a surge last term under President Donald Trump.
Ken Morales/ProPublica
The cases were consequential. On June 23, 2025, after a lower court had ruled that eight men being deported to South Sudan should have due process, the Supreme Court intervened after a request from the administration to stop that order. The men were deported. The majority didn’t issue an opinion justifying its ruling.
Three months later, the Supreme Court voted to allow immigration agents to stop people based on racial or ethnic characteristics while still-ongoing litigation against it proceeded. To justify the decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a rare shadow docket opinion that people who were in the country legally would be “free to go after the brief encounter.” These became known as “Kavanaugh stops.” Last year, ProPublica found more than 170 citizens who had been stopped and detained by ICE agents. The more than 50 Americans held even after agents learned of their citizenship were almost all Latino.
And in May, while an election in Louisiana was already underway, the justices allowed the state to immediately redraw its electoral map, removing one of the two majority-Black voting districts. Louisiana can now use that map for the 2026 midterms as part of a nationwide redistricting battle for control of the House of Representatives — an effort touched off by Trump’s call for Republican-led states to create more safe seats for themselves.
Roberts once signed on to a Kagan dissent that assailed the shadow docket. But our analysis found that he has referred more substantive cases for a vote by the full court than any other justice, going from just one in the 2005 term when he joined the court to nearly half of all referrals in the last term.
There is an additional difference between the shadow docket and the merits docket. After the court holds public argument, the justices’ ultimate merits decisions are closely watched and extensively covered by the press. The summer’s “decision season,” when the final and most significant rulings come down, has a predictable cadence that ends when the justices go on summer recess. Not so with the shadow docket. Increasingly, the justices are making big decisions after they’ve issued their final merits docket decision, when public attention has waned.
A group of Democrats led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., have sponsored legislation to make the shadow docket more transparent.
Raskin told ProPublica that the court’s legitimacy has fallen with every significant decision made without “real opinions or analysis.”
“Lower federal courts have been deciding against the Trump administration in an overwhelming majority of cases with weighty and well-reasoned opinions,” Raskin said in a written statement. “Yet when things get to the twilight zone of the shadow docket, the Supreme Court is overturning 100-page opinions with a flippant sentence or two.” He added, “The result is a body that looks less like a Supreme Court and more like a Royal Court rubber stamping the madness and folly of the Trump Administration.”
“The jurisprudence of the Roberts Court today is as murky as the green algae water in the Reflecting Pool.”
How We Reported This Story
To compare the number of cases on the Supreme Court’s shadow docket to the traditional merits docket, we compared emergency applications listed on the court’s online docket searchwith counts of decisions compiled in Penn State’s Supreme Court Database (Version 2025 Release 01). For the merits docket, we counted only signed decisions in argued cases, the typical format for those rulings.
The court’s online docket goes back to the year 2000, but our analysis looks at Supreme Court terms from October 2003 to October 2025, where emergency applications are easily identified by the letter “A” in their docket number.
We identified more than 27,000 emergency applications during that period, including thousands of requests that are not commonly understood to be a part of the shadow docket. Most appeals to the emergency docket are the type of requests that were traditionally handled there: procedural requests, such as extending the time to file, and requests to stay execution for capital offenses. The remainder are the focus of our reporting.
Substantive Shadow Docket Cases Are a Small Fraction of All Emergency Applications
Note: The COVID-19 lockdown impacted applications for filing relief in the 2020-21 term. Ken Morales/ProPublica
We defined a substantive application on the shadow docket as any filing where the full court was asked to intervene in the traditional appeals process, such as staying a lower court’s order.
Most of the cases we excluded are decided by just one justice, each of whom oversees one or more federal circuits and has the power to refer filings to the wider court. When the cases are referred to the full court, they are the subject of a vote by the justices. We ran our approach by multiple experts, all of whom found it sound.
A filer can appeal to another justice if their application is denied. The next justice to receive the application always refers it to the full court. We did not include these renewed applications because our analysis found the court has never granted one.
The court has labeled capital punishment cases only since the October 2017 term. To identify them prior to that, we flagged applications for stays of execution. We then manually reviewed every case referred to the full court. For applications decided by a single justice, we used an AI model to flag potential capital cases by examining the parties on the application and the relief requested. The model flagged over 60 possible capital cases, and those were manually reviewed. Despite our effort, it is possible some capital cases may still be included in our final tallies before the 2017 term.
Although rulings on the shadow docket are typically unsigned and do not include vote breakdowns, we were able to identify how a justice voted in some cases. The analysis is based on either the opinions issued by the justices, most of which are dissenting opinions, or if the justice indicated they would have granted or denied. In some decisions, the justices issued a statement not attached to either a grant or denial. We did not record these as votes.
NASA officials said Tuesday that they are seriously considering sending the full-scale engineering model of the Perseverance rover, which is currently housed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, to the Moon to expedite their efforts to explore the south pole region.
The car-sized rover nicknamed "Promise," which serves as a testbed for Perseverance and was not otherwise planned for a launch, would land equipped with a multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG) to power it across difficult terrain and through the lunar night. NASA's other rovers primarily operate on solar power.
"We are thinking very hard right now about sending Promise to the Moon," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Tuesday during a monthly update on the agency's plans to build a Moon base.
It is zero surprise that the Supreme Court officially overturned its 91-year-old precedent first created in Humphrey’s Executor. That case held that when Congress designates an agency as independent of the executive branch, the president cannot just fire its commissioners. The Humphrey’s Executor opinion stopped FDR from trying to fire an FTC Commissioner he didn’t like, and reinforced the important idea that Congress could design independent agencies, staffed by experts, that should be less prone to partisan political influence.
The Roberts Supreme Court has been signalling it wanted to overturn Humphrey’s for years, and it finally took until the case brought by former FTC Commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya* (unceremoniously fired by Donald Trump for being Democratically appointed) to make it official. In Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court said outright that the president can fire commissioners of government agencies and laughed off the idea that Congress could ever create truly independent agencies.
And yet, on the very same day, the same Court said in Trump v. Cook, that the president cannot fire members of the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve. In that ruling, the majority makes it clear that of course the Federal Reserve should be seen as wholly independent from the Executive Branch and the president can’t fire its Board members, because that would cause chaos!
Both cases involve the same basic fact patterns — involving whether or not the president can fire board or commissioner members of independent agencies. Both decisions were written by Chief Justice John Roberts. Both seem to take wholly opposite views without even a remote attempt by Roberts to explain how he can say both things (on the same day, no less).
And, as many people are noticing, about the only thing you can say about these two contradictory rulings coming down on the same day is that John Roberts believes in the imperial presidency when it impacts everyone else, but believes in Judicial supremacy when it impacts his retirement funds.
There is no other consistent principle here at all. None. Zero. Zilch.
As Madiba Denne writes in that last Balls & Strikes link:
Throughout Slaughter, Roberts warned that the “unity” of the executive branch would be “destroyed” if presidents could not fire agency officials at will. But in Cook, Roberts was much more worried about the destruction of the stock market. Roberts traced the development of the country’s first banking systems and asserted that the Framers knew “calamities” could arise from “even the suspicion of political manipulation of monetary policy.” The chief recounted at length how President Andrew Jackson opposed a national bank that “he could not control,” and suggested that the president’s meddling directly contributed to “an era of ruinous financial panics.”
Without an independent central bank, Roberts said, there would be “no way to contain the damage whenever a major institution fell,” “no lender of last resort,” “no elastic currency that could expand to meet demand,” and “no mechanism to ensure that small banks issued loans only within their means.” Roberts concluded that at-will removal would be “corrosive” to the Fed independence that Congress sought to safeguard. The possibility that at-will removal would be similarly corrosive to the independence that Congress sought to safeguard at dozens of other agencies seems not to have crossed his mind.
Roberts ignores that the same reasons the Fed is designed to be independent are why the FTC, FCC, and other agencies were designed to be independent. Congress relied (for basically a century) on the Supreme Court blessing this arrangement to create a variety of independent agencies that lived under the Executive Branch, but were designed purposely by Congress with strong independence in mind.
In the Cook decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh is the one who actually comes close to blurting out the truth, which Roberts carefully avoids. Kavanaugh admits that Slaughter and Cook stand in contrast, but that contrast is okay to him, because Trump fucking up the Federal Reserve would really fuck with monetary policy, and that’s what he really cares about:
I agree with the Court, moreover, that we should not leave open the question whether the Federal Reserve can remain an independent agency in the wake of Slaughter. After Slaughter, there is a clear choice: Either the Federal Reserve may remain independent (with the Governors removable for cause, not at will), or it may not. Leaving that question open would create significant uncertainty about whether the Court might soon eliminate the Federal Reserve’s independence, and thereby expose the Federal Reserve to political influences and jeopardize the efficacy of U. S. monetary policy. Even temporary uncertainty about the status of the Federal Reserve could spark political upheaval, including confusion about whether the President could immediately remove multiple Governors at will, as well as turmoil in the U. S. and world economies.
I would not go down that road. I would not risk destabilizing the U. S. economy just so that we can further mull over an issue that, in various permutations, we have been thinking about for many years.
This is quite the admission, though it’s unclear if Kavanaugh recognizes how astounding it is. He is basically admitting that while Slaughter creates chaos for all sorts of policies — consumer protection, labor relations, financial protection, etc. — that’s all for the little people. As Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern notes, the ruling in Slaughter creates a hugely damaging scenario for all sorts of rights:
The impact of this decision is gobsmacking. It strips independence from a vast range of federal agencies, including those that regulate nuclear energy, consumer safety, unions, hazardous chemicals, mine safety, crypto, and large swaths of the economy.
But those policies don’t matter to the Justices like Kavanaugh. Monetary policy, however, impacts his bottom line, and we can’t have that.
Such is also the situation with Roberts. Those other policies don’t impact John Roberts. But a screwy economic system would really put a dent in his various investment funds.
Denne again:
Part of Roberts’s justification for the outcome in Slaughter is democratic accountability—that removal power is necessary for the president to be the one person “with whom the buck stops.” But Roberts was clear, in Cook, that he’s really just concerned about the bucks: Giving Trump unfettered control over most federal agencies could help the rich get richer, and only screw over the little people, but giving Trump control of the Fed could cause an economic crisis big enough to negatively affect Roberts and his rich friends, too.
Of course, the reality is that this decision isn’t so much about giving the presidency more power, it’s about giving Roberts’ Supreme Court more power. Yes, in the immediate future, this gives Donald Trump, as president, much greater power over the federal government, which will have many dangerous and damaging results.
But does anyone actually believe that the same John Roberts, who blocked former President Obama’s immigration policies or former President Biden’s student loan forgiveness policies, really believes in giving the executive so much power? Of course not. The lesson from John Roberts is clear: when Republicans hold the presidency, they have nearly unlimited power, with the one exception being when Trump threatens to wreck John Roberts’ investment funds. But when a Democrat is president, then suddenly the Supreme Court tut-tuts about how Congress restrains the power of the Executive Branch and it just can’t do anything about it.
The end result is that the power really resides in the ever-consistent view of John Roberts: Republican presidents can do anything they want, so long as it doesn’t harm Roberts’ investments. Democratic presidents are rightly restrained by Congress, and Roberts’ biggest job is swinging that big dial back and forth depending on who is in the White House.
Roberts has spent years whining about how unfair it is that people think his decisions have a political bias. But, really, if he didn’t want that, he maybe shouldn’t have handed down two rulings on the same day that so nakedly confirm exactly what he’s denied.
* Bedoya had to drop out of the case because while he was suing to get his job back, he couldn’t wait around unpaid for the years this case took, and had to go get a real job.
One way Donald Trump plans to celebrate July 4th is by rolling out children’s savings accounts, known as Trump Accounts, and apparently, he’s been angling to get a big donation from SpaceX as part of that push.
A person familiar with talks involving the Trump administration told Semafor that SpaceX has spoken with US officials about donating stock to Trump Accounts. At this stage, however, it remains unclear if a donation will be made or what impact a SpaceX donation might have on the value of the accounts, which Trump hopes will be a defining part of his legacy.
So far, 6 million children have been signed up for Trump Accounts, which officially launch next week on Independence Day. Trump accounts are a new type of individual retirement account available to any child under 18 with a Social Security number, and parents can sign up their kids through a Trump Accounts app that's already available for download. As an extra perk, any child born between 2025 and 2028 can receive a one-time $1,000 contribution from the government.
Although climate change is the primary motivation behind electric vehicle adoption, it isn't the only consideration. Removing internal combustion engines from the road directly saves lives by reducing airborne pollutants that can cause and trigger asthma and other lung diseases.
Now, a report from the International Council on Clean Transportation has tried to quantify that effect, comparing various electrification scenarios over the next couple of decades. Currently, more than 41,800 premature deaths are attributable to air pollution from road transport, the ICCT says.
We've long known that living near a busy road is associated with worse health outcomes. Combustion products like nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), particulates (PMs), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are all found around highways and busy intersections in concentrations high enough to cause health effects, and studies have repeatedly shown that living close to a major roadway is associated with increased mortality.
In an extremely odd case, a single 79-year-old patient was granted early access to Eli Lilly's powerful, still-experimental obesity drug retatrutide through the Food and Drug Administration's "compassionate use" program—raising immediate questions if that sole patient is President Donald Trump, according to a report by Stat News.
Lilly's retatrutide is a highly anticipated next-generation obesity drug that targets GIP and glucagon hormones in addition to GLP-1. It is currently in late-stage trials to treat obesity, diabetes, sleep apnea, and other conditions. Data from a Phase 3 trial that Lilly released in May indicates that patients with obesity (but without diabetes) who took the drug for 80 weeks lost 28 percent of their weight, an amount comparable to bariatric surgery.
Millions of Americans with obesity are eager to get the drug, with options being limited so far to enrolling in a clinical trial or trying to obtain it by dodgy methods.
The Fourth Amendment protects a user’s “location history,” the Supreme Court ruled Monday.
The same logic already applied to a cellphone’s tracking, and the high court found “no good reason exists to reach a different result for Location History” collected by third parties like Google.
Split 6-3, the majority agreed that the government needs a warrant and must show reasonable cause to turn a phone's location-tracking services into a government surveillance tool.
A man fills his water tank at a well a few miles from the Hopi village of Mishongnovi, on the tribe’s northern Arizona reservation.
A deal to bring Colorado River water to Native American communities in northern Arizona, where a third of homes lack running water, is being blocked by neighboring states, caught up in a broader battle over how to divide the dwindling river.
The largest tribal water rights settlement in U.S. history — the product of decades of negotiations to secure water for the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe — was on the verge of being realized before Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming stepped in to oppose it being codified by Congress.
Those four states, known collectively as the Upper Basin, are at a stalemate with the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada over new rules governing how they share the Colorado River, a key water source for nearly 40 million people. Congress and the White House, under both Democratic and Republican leadership, have declined to approve the settlement until all parties reach an agreement.
For 83-year-old Marilyn Tewa, the stalemate means her family will continue to go without running water. Tewa serves on the Hopi Tribal Council, where her duties include working on the water rights agreement, but her village of Mishongnovi, on the tribe’s northern Arizona reservation, lacks indoor plumbing.
Every other day, she loads 5-gallon buckets into her pickup and drives 5 miles to a windmill originally built for livestock that draws untreated water from underground.
“That’s what keeps us alive,” Tewa said, tapping the spigot on a May afternoon.
Back home, Tewa bustled about her kitchen while her daughter kneaded dough for dinner. There’s no faucet in the kitchen, which is decorated with a framed American flag and a painting of a katsina, a figure with spiritual significance in Hopi culture. Instead, the family stores water in large plastic containers. Because of the lack of indoor plumbing, the Tewa family and its neighbors use portable toilets that stand among the houses.
If passed into law, the Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Act would resolve the largest outstanding claim on the Colorado River while providing about $5 billion in federal funding to build infrastructure to transport the water across the reservations. The legislation would also go beyond water rights, creating a reservation for the San Juan Southern Paiute. The tribe’s effort to secure a permanent homeland was added to the settlement due to their difficulty getting it through Congress independently.
“That’s my prayer,” Tewa said, “that we get this settlement through for all three tribes.”
The stalemate over water rights means 83-year-old Marilyn Tewa will continue living without running water.
The tribes need pipes, pumps and treatment plants to use the water secured through the settlement. To defray the cost beyond the federal government’s expected contribution, the Navajo and Hopi plan to lease some of their water rights, almost certainly to growing towns around Phoenix. The towns would pay to use the tribes’ water for a set number of years.
While the Lower Basin states support the settlement, the Upper Basin states have latched onto this provision in particular as they stand in the way of the settlement.
The Colorado River’s upper and lower basins don’t precisely follow state borders. Some states have portions in both sections, and the line dividing the two basins cuts across northeastern Arizona and directly through the Navajo reservation. If water moves across that line, they argue, the rules governing the river give them veto power over the settlement. (It’s an open legal question whether approval from all seven states is necessary.)
The Upper Basin states fear that, in the future, water they currently control might be leased on an open market. They view any monetary transaction that moves water downstream as setting a precedent that could allow the highest bidder — possibly thirsty cities with money such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas — to buy vast quantities of their water.
In an effort to assuage that concern and close the deal, the Navajo and Hopi made major concessions over the volume of water and length of time they could lease. The tribes also offered to leave some of their water in one of the river’s drought-depleted reservoirs to help keep water levels high enough that it could continue flowing downstream. But the Upper Basin has not wavered in its opposition.
Tewa’s family travels 5 miles each way to haul water in 5-gallon plastic buckets from a well initially drilled for livestock.
ProPublica and KJZZ News-Phoenix reached out to the governor, senators and lead negotiator from every Upper Basin state for comment. Utah’s and Wyoming’s lead negotiators deferred to the letter they co-signed. A spokesperson for New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a statement that the tribes addressed most of the state’s concerns but that questions remain as to whether the water that the tribes would lease to Arizona cities could be counted as part of what the Upper Basin states are legally required to send to the Lower Basin. “New Mexico remains committed to finding a workable solution,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for Colorado Gov. Jared Polis also said the state is “committed to finding a path forward” and pointed to the letter that Becky Mitchell, the state’s lead river negotiator, submitted to Congress. Mitchell wrote that the settlement’s leasing provisions violate laws governing the river and that the state was concerned about what the sale of water across the basin would mean for “the security and certainty” of Colorado’s share of the river.
Heather Tanana is an assistant professor at the University of Denver’s law school, where she focuses on federal Indian law. She is also a citizen of the Navajo Nation and said the Upper Basin is “trying to hide behind” how the river has traditionally been managed rather than find a way to give the tribes access to a resource that is rightfully theirs and one that they need to survive.
“It’s a fundamental human rights issue,” she said.
While negotiations drag on, the three tribes continue waiting for water they say will help them to build more housing, grow sustainable economies, better protect public health and preserve cultural practices.
The Hopi believe their ancestors return as clouds to bring the rain that nourishes their corn, but drought is wracking the region. An overreliance on groundwater has dried up springs that have been used for ceremonies and agriculture for centuries. When the settlement brings more water to the reservation, Tewa said, aquifers will have a chance to recharge, restoring the springs.
“I’m speaking on behalf of my children, my grandchildren and their children that haven’t come yet,” she said. “I hope, in the future, that they will have water.”
The village of Mishongnovi, which Tewa represents on the Hopi Tribal Council, sits atop a rocky mesa.Tewa washes her hands with untreated water she hauled from a well.
Fighting for Water Since Elvis Was on TV
That the settlement even reached Congress seemed like a small miracle to those involved.
If the tribes were to use every drop to which they are entitled, the system of sharing the river that supports more than $1 trillion in annual economic output would collapse.
“Everybody’s getting free Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute water right now. The seven basin states are all benefiting in the absence of a settlement,” said Ethel Branch, a former Navajo attorney general who was involved in the negotiations, adding that the water had been “stolen for over a century.”
In 1908, the Supreme Court ruled that, if the federal government confined tribes to reservations, then it owed them enough water to sustain an agrarian economy on that land. But securing that promised water, referred to as “Winters rights,” has proven arduous.
Tribes were excluded from the compacts that apportioned the river. The Navajo in particular were barred from joining a seminal case quantifying other users’ rights, and members of the tribe themselves rejected a proposed settlement in 2012 when they viewed the deal as unfair. So the tribe went back to the Supreme Court, asking that the justices force the federal government to quickly settle the claims. The Navajo once again lost, with the court’s majority deciding that their treaty with the U.S. didn’t require the government to take any “affirmative steps” to deliver the water it owed the tribe.
“At each turn, they have received the same answer: ‘Try again,’” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote of the Navajo in his dissent. “When this routine first began in earnest, Elvis was still making his rounds on The Ed Sullivan Show.”
Arizona politicians and tribal leaders have since concluded that they needed to combine all three tribes’ claims to finally settle their rights.
That was no simple feat. The Navajo and Hopi have long had a contentious relationship. Underlining their thorny partnership, leaders of various tribes around the region have accused Navajo, the largest tribal nation in the U.S., of flexing their political strength to the detriment of other tribes.
About a third of homes on the Navajo Nation lack the pipes and other infrastructure necessary to deliver running water, including near Page, Arizona, close to a large reservoir on the Colorado River.
But Navajo and Hopi struck a deal, and Arizona moved off its bargaining position. Now in lockstep, the settlement’s supporters turned to Congress, only to hit more roadblocks: The House of Representatives balked at the spiraling price tag to fund the deals; presidential administrations were unwilling to expend political capital on such settlements; and more than a dozen settlements are in the works, clogging the system. (No settlement has been enacted since 2022.)
“Partisanship has gone to a new low in this country, and Indian water settlements have gotten swept up into that,” said Pam Williams, who spent about two decades as director of the Secretary’s Indian Water Rights Office in the Department of the Interior before she retired last year.
In November 2024, as President Donald Trump prepared for his return to the White House, the tribes believed they had an opening to get their settlement through Congress while President Joe Biden was still in office.
Navajo leadership had supported the Democratic presidential ticket and feared the incoming administration would be vindictive toward them.
Every basin state’s lead negotiator, tribes’ staff and a federal representative descended upon the Arizona Department of Water Resources’ offices in Phoenix for what several attendees described as a “Hail Mary.” At the meeting, the Navajo offered a major compromise: limiting how much water they could lease and for how long they could lease it.
But the Upper Basin states showed up with a list of grievances, multiple attendees told ProPublica and KJZZ News-Phoenix, and weren’t interested in negotiating over the Navajo leasing concessions.
“It’s difficult for the Upper Basin to wrap their heads around this settlement,” said Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s Colorado River lead.
Navajo President Buu Nygren says the fact that his tribe’s reservation straddles the upper and lower divisions of the Colorado River Basin should not be held against the tribe as it negotiates for water.
In March 2026, leaders from the tribes traveled to Washington for a Senate hearing where they made an impassioned plea for Congress to pass a version of the bill that now included the concessions they had offered in the Hail Mary meeting. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who ran the hearing, expressed support for the settlement but worried its $5 billion price tag was too high, a concern echoed by an Interior Department official who testified. (The tribes and department are currently negotiating to shrink that cost.)
All four Upper Basin states submitted comments opposing the settlement. Their main concerns were about the ability to lease across the basin and whether the water for the settlement would be counted against the upper or lower division of the river.
Leasing would last only as long as it’s needed to pay for infrastructure to distribute their newly acquired water, said Navajo President Buu Nygren. It would not set a precedent, he said, because no other tribe straddles both basins.
“We shouldn’t be punished for being in two basins,” Nygren said, “because other tribal nations, other settlements have been able to lease water.”
A construction crew installs pipes at the new LeChee Water Treatment Plant near Lake Powell, along the Arizona-Utah border.The former Navajo Generating Station’s intakes, which drew water from Lake Powell to cool the coal power plant, sit unused, awaiting funding from the stalled settlement.
“How Precious Water Is to Us”
During the decades that the tribes fought to access their water, they helped quench the thirst of growing cities in the Colorado River Basin.
A water intake plant on Navajo land drew from Lake Powell to cool the nearby Navajo Generating Station. The coal plant powered pumps for the Central Arizona Project, the 336-mile series of canals that sends Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson.
The power station shut down in 2019, and the intake plant was handed over to the Navajo for the iiná bá-paa tuwaqat’si pipeline, which means “for life” in Diné and “water is life” in Hopi, to deliver water to the three tribes. But for now, the massive pumps remain mothballed, the building sitting musty and dark like a tomb, and the pipeline remains an engineering schematic, waiting for funding from the stalled settlement.
The irony is not lost on tribal leaders, they told ProPublica and KJZZ News-Phoenix: After helping deliver water beyond their lands, they are now blocked from using that same water and infrastructure to sustain their communities. The insult is compounded, they said, by the fact that water use is drastically lower on reservations.
“It’s not about green-grass lawns or golf courses or swimming pools,” said Crystalyne Curley, speaker of the Navajo Nation Council. “It’s just basically turning on the faucet and getting water to boil eggs for your children or turning on a faucet to wipe and clean the table or washing your hands after butchering a sheep.”
San Juan Southern Paiute Vice President Johnny Lehi Jr. is fighting for the settlement because it would finally ratify a treaty with the Navajo that would create a reservation for his tribe.
For the San Juan Southern Paiute, the settlement is also about having a permanent homeland. They have no reservation but struck a deal with Navajo in 2000 to transfer some of its land. Since the tribes already reached an agreement, it’s an uncontroversial proposition. But, without political clout to get Congress to take it up, the land transfer was pulled into the water settlement.
“During the COVID era, it took a lot of the tribal elders, and there are only a handful that saw the treaty signed and are really wanting to see this before their time is up,” said San Juan Southern Paiute Vice President Johnny Lehi Jr., whose father signed the 2000 agreement. Finally securing a reservation, he said, means the ability to build housing and develop an economy for a tribe that currently rents its government building.
Nearby, on the Hopi reservation, Councilmember Marilyn Fredericks grabbed a pair of hiking poles, donned a hat with a roadrunner pin on it and set out from her village on a recent spring afternoon. To stay fit as she grows older, she walks up and down the hand-carved steps of a terraced garden that used to produce food for her community.
Seven natural springs once fed the garden, but only two still flow. Ponds that stored their excess sit dry, stains on the rock now just a memory of the water. It’s been six years since there was enough to plant.
The settlement would fund a pipeline that would be “our umbilical cord,” Fredericks said. Future generations of Hopi have a right to clean, reliable water, she said. “This is evidence of how precious water is to us.”
I missed these illustrations by Mona Chalabi showing the ridiculous scale of one trillion dollars. One trillion is a giant number that goes beyond our perception, but one coin versus a Scrooge McDuck-style money vault is easier to imagine.
If it’s any consolation, Musk is not a trillionaire at the time of this writing. He is just a multibillionaire. So ha.
Over the past week, The Square in downtown Rockville has gained a frozen dessert shop and lost a taco joint.
Koala Kreme has opened in the former Marble Slab Creamery space on Gibbs Street. The brightly colored shop offers lots of sweet options, from old-school frozen yogurt and soft-serve ice cream to floats, sundaes, cakes, milkshakes and smoothies. Marble Slab, which closed last September, had been a staple at The Square for more than a decade.
Little Miner Taco, a food truck-turned-restaurant chain with several other locations in the DMV, has gone dark at The Square after less than two years on Maryland Avenue. The restaurant opened in the summer of 2024, but it soon faced tough competition with the arrival of Big Papi’s Tacos just around the corner.
In a voice vote last week, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6028, the “Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act.” The legislation is presented as a technical reorganization of some government agencies, but it’s much more than that.
H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office, and not in a good way. The bill removes the Library of Congress’ current supervisory role over the Copyright Office, transfers several powers directly to the Register of Copyrights, and makes the Register a presidential appointee, confirmed by the Senate.
These changes would make an office that’s already hugely influential in copyright and tech policy much more political. EFF first explained why that’s a terrible idea when it came up nearly a decade ago. This bill, like the older one, weakens the few public-interest checks and balances that do exist. We hope the Senate promptly rejects this bill.
The Copyright Office Doesn’t Need More Politics—Or More Power
The Copyright Office’s main responsibilities are administrative and advisory. It registers copyrights, maintains records, grows the Library of Congress’s collections, and provides expertise to Congress on copyright law. But over the past two decades, the Office has also become increasingly influential in copyright policy debates that affect free expression, libraries, educators, competition—and everyday internet users. Unfortunately, it has not been a neutral advocate. The office’s recent report on the role of AI severely bungled the issue of fair use, prioritizing private licensing market “solutions” over user rights.
Going further back, the Copyright Office supported one of the most infamous anti-internet proposals of all time—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a disastrous internet censorship proposal that sparked one of the largest online protests in history. The Office has repeatedly advanced positions that favored large entertainment-industry interests over the public interest.
The Office also plays a major role in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Section 1201 rulemaking process, which determines when the public may lawfully bypass digital locks for activities such as security research, repair, preservation, or accessibility. EFF has used this process repeatedly to mitigate some of the worst harms of the DMCA. H.R. 6028 would move rulemaking authority over 1201 from the Librarian of Congress to the Register of Copyrights, further consolidating power within the Copyright Office itself.
The bill also makes the Register of Copyrights a presidential appointee confirmed by the Senate. Each administration will be pressured to pick nominees aligned with their own policy preferences, and the powerful copyright owning industries will invest even more heavily in lobbying to get their way, and influence the selection. This position should be focused on administrative ability and actual expertise, not lobbying and politics.
The Copyright Office Should Stay Connected To The Library of Congress
H.R. 6028 would do more than change who appoints the Register of Copyrights. It would sever the Copyright Office from Library of Congress supervision and transfer many Librarian powers directly to the Register.
The supervisory relationship exists for good reason, as the nation’s libraries have pointed out for years. The Library, while far from perfect, at least has the mission of preserving and providing access to knowledge. That should be an important public-interest counterweight in copyright debates. Congress has not explained how weakening the ties between the Library and the Copyright Office would serve the public better, or even seriously inquired about it.
This Bill Was Rushed Through
Back in March, EFF joined Public Knowledge, the Center for Democracy and Technology, library organizations and tech groups, urging Congress not to fast-track this legislation. We told them changes to the Copyright Office will have major consequences for the “speech rights, educational opportunities, and creative freedoms of all Americans.”
Yet Congress moved forward without any hearings on the bill, and without meaningful examination. H.R. 6028 creates a years-long separation of the Copyright Office from the Library of Congress, transfers significant legal authority, and restructures the appointment process for the nation’s top copyright official. Changes like that deserve hearings, debate, and public scrutiny. H.R. 6028 got none of that.
The Senate Should Stop This Bill
Copyright law exists to serve the public and “promote the progress” of science and learning. The institutions that administer copyright law should do the same.
H.R. 6028 would move the Copyright Office further away from that goal. Congress should be strengthening public-interest oversight of copyright policymaking, not looking for ways to concentrate more authority in a single presidentially appointed official.
The Senate should reject H.R. 6028. The Copyright Office should serve the public—not presidential administrations, and not industry lobbyists.
Independent advisors for the Food and Drug Administration on Friday voted 9–0 in support of approving Moderna's seasonal mRNA flu vaccine, which a Trump appointee at the agency initially tried to block from even being reviewed.
In an all-day meeting, members of the FDA's advisory committee—known as VRBPAC for Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee—pored over data and presentations on the vaccine, which is dubbed mRNA-1010 and branded as mFlusiva. The presentations included a review from FDA scientists, which was supportive of the vaccine.
Data from a Phase 3 trial including over 40,000 adults age 50 and older found the mRNA vaccine was around 27 percent more effective against seasonal flu than a standard flu shot. A smaller Phase 3 trial, involving data from nearly 3,000 people age 65 years and older, showed the shot produces stronger immune responses than a high-dose flu vaccine, which is recommended for this age group. The safety profile of the vaccine was also generally good.
by Charlie Hunt, Associate Professor of Political Science, Boise State University
U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner speaks to supporters on June 9, 2026, in Blue Hill, Maine. CJ Gunther/Getty Images
Every election cycle sees its share of controversial, scandal-plagued candidates running for office. But the 2026 midterm elections will feature two such candidates – one from each party – in two of the highest-profile U.S. Senate races.
In Texas, the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, recently secured the Republican Party’s nomination over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.
Cornyn and others have insisted that Paxton’s substantial legal and personal baggage – including corruption and bribery accusations that got him impeached by the GOP-led state House of Representatives – might lose Republicans a seat they’ve held for decades.
These actions can coexist thanks to two forces that political science has much to say about, precepts that have been steadily increasing in relevance over the past few decades: party polarization – or the distance between the two parties – and negative partisanship, voters’ tendency to vote based on negative feelings toward the other party.
Supporters in Plano, Texas, celebrate Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s win on May 26, 2026.
AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez
Political science tells us that this polarized distance has increased feelings of personal animus between members of the two parties. Political psychology says the more different Americans are from each other, the easier it is for them to not just disagree with the other side but to dislike the other side to the point of viewing them as a threat.
These are trends Americans frequently see reflected in public opinion studies, many of which use the “feeling thermometer” to ask respondents to rate their personal feelings toward a person or party on a scale of zero degrees, or coldest/most unfavorable, to 100 degrees, or warmest/most favorable.
In the late 1970s, the average voter in each party was more or less neutral toward the opposing party, with scores hovering just below 50 degrees. By 2024, the average voter sentiment toward the other party had plummeted to 19 degrees.
In 1978, only 9% of Democrats and 7% of Republicans had a very negative opinion of the opposing party. By 2024, vast majorities in both parties – 64% apiece – reported such negative opinions.
In other words, Americans are increasingly making voting decisions based not on who should win elections but rather on who shouldn’t. The opposing party is not just the less preferred option – it’s a threat that must be stopped at all costs.
When feelings about the other side are this negatively polarized, then winning – even with a less-than-ideal candidate as your standard-bearer – becomes more crucial than ever.
In fact, researchers have found that scandals involving candidates in a voter’s own party trigger a “defensive partisanship” that increases their hostility toward the other side. That is, scandals in a voter’s own party can make them more – not less – loyal to their team.
Polarization and negative partisanship are not the only factors at work. The tight competition for control over major political institutions such as Congress and the presidency have raised the stakes of elections higher than ever. And, in the process, it has lowered standards for whom Americans are willing to support.
In her 2016 book, “Insecure Majorities,” political scientist Frances Lee found that partisan control over the federal government is more in question now that it has been in over a century. Lee says that closely fought elections that determine control of government help explain changing governing strategies in Congress.
But Lee’s findings also help explain our choices in elections and how – even in closely fought, high-profile races such as the 2026 Senate contests in Texas and Maine – voters end up nominating such blemished candidates.
In theory, closely fought competition should drive a “race to the top” in terms of candidate selection. Because control over institutions rests constantly on a knife’s edge, Americans might expect both sides to put forward their best, brightest and most electorally compelling candidates to try to win.
But thanks to polarization and negative partisanship, it isn’t always so. Instead, hard-fought elections among a closely divided electorate mean that individual votes matter more; that power hangs by a thread; and as a result, that one’s personal and political enemies are inches away from controlling the government.
Thus, closely divided elections only raise the stakes of one’s vote, along with the cost of defecting from your party’s candidate, however flawed they might be.
The lesser of 2 evils?
Voters constantly report feeling the need to “hold their noses” and vote for the “lesser of two evils.” The alternative – the other party taking power – is too grave to permit a truly principled stand. As a result, the race to the bottom continues, because the other side will always be worse.
Whether Paxton’s or Platner’s partisan voters end up coalescing around them despite their scandals remains to be seen. Regardless, the reappearance of such imperfect candidates each cycle tells a bitter story about what voters will put up with to win.
Charlie Hunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The current proposal for the arch sets the height at 288 feet above sea level. The New York Times mapped air traffic in the Washington, D.C. area to show why that’s an issue.
Among maps that show flight paths from above, a view from ground level shows how close flights from April 2026 would have gotten if the arch existed. The view rotates 360 degrees and makes the distance from arch to air traffic more obvious.
A decade after the global craze for Pokémon Go peaked, an AI company has been using billions of real-world images captured by millions of players to develop navigation technologies for delivery robots and possibly military drones. That represents an intriguing but potentially discomfiting legacy for an augmented reality mobile game that has incentivized gamers to capture short smartphone videos of physical neighborhoods and landmarks.
The AI company, Niantic Spatial, was spun out of Pokémon Gogame developer Niantic in May 2025, after Niantic separately sold its licensed games such as Pokémon Go to the Saudi-backed video game publisher Scopely. But before that deal, Niantic publicly announced plans to use scans from millions of Pokémon Go players along with data captured by users of the company’s Scaniverse app to train and develop a “large geospatial model”—a 3D model of the physical world trained on the geolocated images provided by app users scanning real-world locations.
“Ground scans were one component to help train Niantic Spatial's real-world foundation models —AI systems that learn to recognize and interpret physical spaces,” a Niantic Spatial spokesperson told Ars. “The models are the product of that training, not a copy of or a means of accessing the underlying scans, which were of public points of interest such as statues and fountains.”
One of the world’s most active ransomware groups exploited a critical vulnerability in Oracle’s PeopleSoft software suite and used it to target about 100 customers and extort at least one of them to pay up in exchange for not leaking stolen data, researchers said.
The group, tracked as ShinyHunters, had been exploiting the PeopleSoft vulnerability for more than two weeks before Oracle flagged it. CVE-2026-35273, as the vulnerability is tracked, carries a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10, making the former zero-day one of the year’s most critical vulnerabilities to be exploited.
Google’s Mandiant security team said it’s an SSRF (server-side request forgery), a vulnerability that allows attackers to send requests from a susceptible server to systems used by the targeted organization. Oracle said the SSRF is remotely exploitable, and the company has issued a stopgap mitigation but has yet to fully patch the flaw. Google has confirmed that victims are receiving extortion demands.
