Last month the FCC quietly issued a public notice saying the Brendan Carr run agency was demanding that the TV Oversight Management Board (TVOMB) create new TV ratings to alert viewers to “transgender and gender non-binary programming” and “the discussion or promotion of gender identity themes” included in children’s programming.

You are to ignore that the FCC has no actual authority to even be proposing this. The TV Oversight Management Board is an independent, industry-created coalition that manages the TV ratings system without legal influence by the FCC.

The FCC’s justification for these demanded changes are based entirely on the false claims of a bunch of anonymous “parents” who may or may not even exist:

“Recently, parents have raised concerns that controversial gender identity issues are being
included or promoted in children’s programs without providing any disclosure or transparency to parents. Specifically, the industry guidelines that parents rely on are rating shows with transgender and gender non-binary programming as appropriate for children and young children, and doing so without providing this information to parents, thereby undermining the ability of parents to make informed choices for their families.”

Of course these issues have only been made “controversial” by Republicans, who have taken brutal and ignorant aim at a very small segment of the population in order to actively hurt marginalized people and divide, misinform, and disorient the electorate. Like gay marriage was during the George W. Bush administration, trans rights are an effective wedge issue that exploits public fear, bigotry, and ignorance to redirect public attention away from things like, say, historic levels of corruption.

The idea that media and tech companies are actively flooding the population with a bunch of dangerous “gender non-binary programming” aimed specifically at children is a popular Republican lie designed to agitate and mislead, but there’s no evidence to support the claim. Still it pops up a lot; like Josh Hawley’s false claim at a recent hearing that Netflix is pushing trans-heavy kids programming.

Understandably the proposal didn’t sit well with organizations like GLAAD, which pointed out that it’s grotesque, ignorant, and dangerous to conflate gender fluidity with obscenities, drug abuse, and violence:

“And the Public Notice does not state how a change in TV ratings will impact gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters and stories on TV. Applying warning labels to programs with transgender and nonbinary characters and stories incorrectly equates them to programming with coarse and crude language, sexual situations, or violence. 

This makes life harder for LGBTQ Americans. It sends a message that the FCC can pressure the TVOMB to add even more ratings that stigmatize other diverse groups.”

A broader coalition of 40+ public interest groups ranging from Free Press to Public Knowledge were equally disgusted by the proposal:

“This is Carr’s latest attempt to shut down speech and shift U.S. public discourse to please President Trump. Television-program ratings are wholly outside of the FCC’s control, and the use of this public-comment procedure to coerce change raises constitutional concerns. The FCC should abandon this contrived and morally repugnant exercise.”

Part of Carr’s actual job at the FCC is supposed to involve protecting the public from corporate power, whether it’s a telecom monopoly that leverages corruption to rip off broadband customers, to a cable company using sleazy fees to jack up the cost of TV service. Carr’s not interested in that. He’s repeatedly given large companies free reign to engage in whatever consumer abuses they see fit.

Carr likely figures that the more time the public spends freaking out about nonexistent trans kids’ programming, the less time they have to realize that he’s been captured by industry to the detriment of everyone.

Instead of doing his job, Carr’s obsessed with being a weird little zealot and authoritarian lapdog, whose post-FCC legacy, if he has one, will be one of ignorance, censorship, distraction, and fear.

I’ve written quite a bit about the Stop Killing Games movement, in no small part because I think it’s way more important than most people think. Preserving cultural output is both important and, frankly, a key part of the bargain that is supposed to be copyright law. The fact that we offer video game publishers copyright protections, which are supposed to come with an eventual appearance in the public domain, only to watch as game servers are shut down and gaming source codes are not preserved such that it all just goes away breaks that bargain completely. The Stop Killing Games movement is designed to get government to enforce that bargain with some basic rules around what publishers can and can’t do, and primarily to eliminate this disappearance of culture.

But it’s largely been a European effort thus far. That’s why I think it’s worth noting that the movement is now starting to gain traction in America as well. In California, where the Protect Our Games Act is seeking to add some of the same protections for consumers, and was constructed under the advice of Stop Killing Games.

California’s Protect Our Games Act, as currently written, would require digital game publishers who cut off support for an online game to either provide a full refund to players or offer an updated version of the game “that enables its continued use independent of services controlled by the operator.” The act would also require publishers to notify players 60 days before the cessation of “services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game.”

As currently amended, the act would not apply to completely free games and games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription. Any other game offered for sale in California on or after January 1, 2027, would be subject to the law if it passes.

And here’s the meat of the bill’s language itself:

1. (A) 60 days before a digital game operator ceases to provide services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game, the operator shall communicate all of the following information to purchasers and prospective purchasers of the digital game:

(i) The date on which services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game will cease.

(ii) Any services that will no longer be provided by the operator.

(iii) Any game features that will no longer be available to the purchaser.

(iv) Any known security risks that may result from the cessation of services.

(v) How the purchaser can continue to use the digital game, or obtain a refund, pursuant to paragraph (2).

(B) A digital game operator shall communicate the information required by subparagraph (A) by doing both of the following:

(i) Notifying purchasers directly through the operator’s digital game.

(ii) Posting the information publicly on the operator’s internet website.

(2) Beginning on the date a digital game operator ceases to provide services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game, the operator shall provide the purchaser with one or more of the following:

(A) A version of the digital game that can be used by the purchaser independent of services controlled by the operator.

(B) A patch or update to the purchaser’s version of the digital game that enables its continued use independent of services controlled by the operator.

(C) A refund in an amount equal to the full purchase price paid for the digital game by the purchaser.

What this is really saying is that game publishers moving forward would either have to find a way to allow those who bought the game to keep playing it as intended when they don’t want to support it with backend requirements any longer, or else offer a refund. And I remain in a place where it’s very hard to argue with any of this. Publishers can talk all they want about how they aren’t selling games, but merely a license to play those games for some indeterminate period of time that is solely at the discretion of the publisher.

As Stop Killing Games mentions commenting on the California Bill, there is no other place in commerce where such an insanely anti-consumer scenario is allowed to exist.

In a formal statement of support for the bill sent to the California legislature, SKG wrote that “there is no other medium in which a product can be marketed and sold to a consumer and then ripped away without notice… As live service games rise in popularity for game developers and gamers alike, end-of-life procedures are essential tools to ensure prolonged access to the games consumers pay to enjoy.”

The ESA, which is lobbying hard against the bill, responded with nothing beyond the exact license-focused reasoning I mentioned above.

The Entertainment Software Association, which helps represent the interests of major game publishers, publicly told the California Assembly last month that the bill misrepresents how modern game distribution actually works. “Consumers receive a license to access and use a game, not an unrestricted ownership interest in the underlying work,” the ESA wrote. The eventual shutdown of outdated or obsolete games is “a natural feature of modern software,” the group added, especially when that software requires online infrastructure maintenance.

My response to that is simple: then modern software shouldn’t fucking get copyright protection. If that’s the route the ESA really wants to go in, then let’s do it.

That’s true north on this entire question and the one thing that lobbyists like the ESA never, ever comment upon. Copyrighted works are supposed to end up in the public domain. If a publisher actively keeps that from ever happening by essentially making a product that is unusable without its backend support, but plans to stop that backend support, then that publisher is breaking the copyright bargain.

And while I am a fan of all of these incremental preservation efforts, the copyright fight is the real fight.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The United States is experiencing one of the steepest declines in violent crime in modern history, including a murder rate at its lowest point in more than a century.

Homicides across 35 major American cities fell 21% in 2025, amounting to 922 fewer people killed. Robberies dropped 23%. Gun assaults declined 22%. Carjackings plummeted 43%.

Yet the Trump administration has yanked hundreds of millions of dollars from the programs that helped make those numbers possible.

As a scholar focused on how policy decisions and structural conditions shape crime in marginalized communities, I see a pattern forming that could put these historic gains at serious risk.

‘Wasteful grants’

In April 2025, the Department of Justice terminated 365 previously awarded grants. About US$500 million in promised funds evaporated, affecting more than 550 organizations across 48 states.

The cuts stretched across the public safety landscape: community violence intervention, victim services, law enforcement training, juvenile justice, offender reentry and criminal justice research.

Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi described the cancellations as eliminating “wasteful grants.” The White House argued that the grant programs had been “funding DEI and cultural Marxism” rather than helping to keep Americans safe.

The DOJ’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal reduces the pool of funds for public safety and justice programs by an additional $850 million – about a 15% decrease from the prior year.

Bipartisan programs

On the ground, the effects of the cancellations were immediate.

Initiatives implementing a federal law to support ex-inmates with temporary housing, job training and healthcare lost $40 million in funding, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York Unversity.

Many of the terminated programs had deep bipartisan roots.

Project Safe Neighborhoods, a crime-reduction initiative launched in 2001 under President George W. Bush, lost its training funds, the Council on Criminal Justice found. Also axed was an anti-terrorism program that had trained more than 430,000 state and local law enforcement officers and other partners since 1996.

More modest programs were targeted as well.

In rural Oregon, a DOJ grant had allowed the Union County district attorney to hire an investigator who, after a few years of probing a 43-year-old cold case involving the killing of a 21-year-old woman, finally developed some leads. When the money was cut, the investigation stopped.

Funding cliffs

The funding cuts couldn’t have come at a worse time. States and local jurisdictions were already facing looming cuts, as billions of dollars provided by President Joe Biden’s COVID recovery plan run out on Dec. 31, 2026.

Many local governments had used that money to build violence prevention programs from the ground up: employing community-based mediators, launching youth employment initiatives and expanding behavioral health teams.

And now? A double funding cliff with the sudden cancellation of DOJ grants, paired with the expiration of COVID recovery money.

In Chicago, this cliff has already forced a 43% cut to the city’s domestic violence prevention budget for 2026 – even as its share of domestic-related homicides rose 13% over the previous year.

Larger and more targeted

Criminology research helps explain the particular risks of abrupt disinvestment. Emory sociology professor Robert Agnew’s General Strain Theory identifies a direct relationship between increased strain – economic pressure, blocked opportunities, the withdrawal of institutional support – and higher risks of criminal behavior.

Historical precedent reinforces the concern. In 2013, federal across-the-board spending cuts eliminated services for more than 955,000 crime victims in a single year. The capacity of the FBI and related agencies was slashed by the equivalent of more than 1,000 agents.

Between 2014 and 2016, the violent crime rate climbed 7%.

The 2025 cuts are substantially larger and more targeted, and have devastated some groups.

Equal Justice USA, a national organization working to end the death penalty and reduce violence through community-based interventions, shut down in August 2025 after losing more than $3 million in DOJ grants.

Local programs like Baltimore’s LifeBridge Health’s Center for Hope lost $1.2 million to provide therapy for gun violence survivors.

“What shocked me the most … was what feels like the utter cruelty of it,” said Adam Rosenberg, who runs the center, referring to the cancellation of the funds.

As of April 2026, the DOJ has not paid out $200 million in approved grants to assist victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking.

This comes after the department last year allowed more than 100 grants for human trafficking survivors to expire, affecting more than 5,000 victims, despite Congress allocating $88 million for these services.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania warn that cuts to violence prevention programs are likely to lead to increases in gun crime.

What happens next

The initiatives now losing funding are the ones that helped drive crime down in many American cities.

Community members trained in conflict mediation help extinguish tensions before they turn lethal. Youth programs provide alternatives to street economies. Forensic labs process the evidence that solves cases. Reentry programs keep people from cycling back through the system. With each serving a distinct function, together they form the infrastructure of public safety.

As funding for crime prevention from two main sources runs out, whether progress continues depends on what happens next.

Andrea Hagan is Instructor of Criminology & Justice at Loyola University New Orleans

There are two major reasons that the U.S. doesn’t pass an internet-era privacy law or regulate data brokers despite a parade of dangerous scandals. One, lobbied by a vast web of interconnected industries with unlimited budgets, Congress is too corrupt to do its job. Two, the U.S. government is disincentivized to do anything because it exploits this privacy dysfunction to dodge domestic surveillance warrants.

If we imposed safeguards on consumer data, everybody from app makers to telecoms would make billions less per quarter. So our corrupt lawmakers pretend the vast human harms of our greed are a distant and unavoidable externality (unless the privacy issues involve some kid tracking rich people on their planes, of course, in which case Congress moves with a haste that would break the sound barrier).

I’ve warned about this for the last decade here at Techdirt, and the check is coming due. The Pentagon is steadily coming to realize that enemies are using location data purchased from unregulated data brokers to target and kill U.S. troops overseas:

“In a letter shared with Reuters by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, U.S. Central Command said it had “received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater.” 

Poor Ron Wyden. The guy has been warning about this outcome for longer than Techdirt, and his reward is generally an apathetic congressional body too corrupted by greed to function.

This should surprise absolutely nobody.

Two years ago, Wired released an excellent report documenting how it was relatively trivial to buy the sensitive and detailed movement data of U.S. military and intelligence workers as they moved around Germany. And for much of the past decade cellular providers had been found to be collecting user movement data, selling it, and either not telling consumers or outright lying about it.

If foreign governments can’t get your sensitive location data from a litany of apps that track your every movement, they can get it from data brokers or the wireless carriers themselves.

When the FCC tried to fine wireless carriers like AT&T for spying on and monetizing consumer movements, the fines were vacated by Trump’s Fifth Circuit appeals court. Wyden had previously revealed how right wing extremists were able to easily purchase the location data of abortion clinic visitors and then target them with dangerous health care disinformation. The congressional response: bupkis.

It’s not subtle: the U.S. is too corrupt to function. Instead of fixing that problem, Republicans, “free market” Libertarians, and many centrist Democrats spend most of their time figuring out new ways to lobotomize our regulators, pre-empt meaningful privacy legislation, and completely defang what’s left of corporate oversight. You know, because we just love free market innovation so much.

In his latest letter to the Pentagon, Wyden once again makes the case that the ad tech industry, as currently formulated, poses a direct national security threat:

“Commercial location data can be used to identify where U.S. troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries ​to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs, as well as for counterintelligence purposes,” the letter warned. Wyden said in a statement that it ​was time to “start treating the adtech industry as a national security threat.”

Of course, it’s not just the ad industry that poses a national security threat, it’s corruption. It’s the mindless deregulation of industry by bad faith actors. It’s lax government privacy and security oversight of private companies (and their executives). It’s regulatory capture at the hands of corrupt, weird zealots. And it’s a government obsessed with hyper-scaled domestic surveillance with no meaningful guardrails.

Thirty-five (thirty-five!) former federal judges are asking a current federal judge to reopen the case where Donald Trump sued his own IRS, and then “settled” the case on terms extremely favorable to himself, his family, and his MAGA loyalists.

Law schools are famous for coming up with “hypotheticals” to try to test students’ knowledge of the law. Sometimes the hypos are fun. Sometimes they’re just bizarre. But the reality of the Trump world now throws out things crazier than law school hypos every few days. As you’ll recall, earlier this year, sitting President Donald Trump sued his own IRS because during his own first administration, a contractor had leaked hundreds of thousands of tax returns, including Trump’s. As we keep pointing out, every single President since Nixon has regularly released their tax returns as a sign of transparency to the American public… except Trump. Who has promised to release his tax returns for a decade now and then not done so, often claiming he couldn’t because he was being audited (leaving aside that when Nixon started this practice, he was being audited).

Of course, the real reason that Trump probably didn’t release his tax returns was because (as we found out thanks to the leak) his actual tax returns showed evidence of pretty significant tax fraud to the tune of $100 million.

Either way, the Biden administration (not Trump) prosecuted the guy who leaked the tax returns and that guy, Charles Littlejohn, is sitting in prison as part of his sentence. But Trump still sued his own IRS and demanded an astounding $10 billion, which would be significantly more than Trump is worth all combined, even with his net worth going up by by over $2 billion since becoming president this time around.

Last month, the judge in the case suddenly called for a timeout, noting that she was unsure that she could actually hear the case, given the fact that it appeared both sides were one and the same, meaning there could be no cause or controversy. She had asked the “parties” (again, effectively one and the same) to brief the court on whether or not the case could even continue. Desperate to end the case before such filings were due, the parties (Donald Trump and Donald Trump’s DOJ) “settled” the case, setting up an unlawful and unconstitutional $1.776 billion fund for MAGA loyalists who claimed Biden wronged them, as well as ending and forever preventing IRS audits of the entire Trump family and family businesses for any transactions up until now.

This is a massive windfall for the president (and I’ve seen some people suggest that perhaps he should face a tax bill for both, since they are positioned as part of a settlement on his behalf) that shouldn’t be allowed without serious judicial scrutiny to make sure that the president is not engaged in the sort of self-dealing he is pretty obviously engaged in.

But the judge in the case did close the case, noting that the voluntary dismissal gave her little choice:

Because the dismissal with prejudice extinguishes the claims regarding the unlawful disclosure of Plaintiffs’ tax returns, the Court cancels all deadlines, including the date that the Parties were required to submit briefing as to whether an actual case or controversy existed in this matter.

The judge does note that the court has no way of knowing whether or not the “settlement” is reasonable given the circumstances:

Because the Notice does not reference any settlement or include a stipulation of settlement, there is no settlement of record. Additionally, Defendants—federal agencies represented by the Department of Justice, which has an independent obligation to uphold the “public’s strong interest in knowing about the conduct of its Government and expenditure of its resources” and the “fair administration of justice,” 28 C.F.R. §§ 50.9, 50.23—neither submitted any settlement documents nor filed any documents ensuring hat settlement was appropriate where there was an outstanding question as to whether an actual case or controversy existed.

Perhaps I’m cynical, but there’s a detectable whiff of snark in that order.

Either way, dozens of former federal judges are now asking Judge Kathleen Williams to reopen the case. They argue the fake “settlement” and dismissal prevented us from ever finding out if the original case could have been heard in the first place. Furthermore, they point out that because the DOJ and Trump have publicly discussed the “settlement” the court should have some jurisdiction over whether or not it was legitimate, even if it wasn’t filed with the court:

On May 18, 2026, this Court dismissed this action with prejudice (ECF No. 62) in response to Plaintiffs’Notice of Voluntary Dismissal with Prejudice (the “Notice,” ECF No. 52), filed earlier that day. The Court expressly noted in its Order dismissing the case that “the Notice does not reference any settlement or include a stipulation of settlement,” and thus “there is no settlement of record.” The Court further noted that Defendants “neither submitted any settlement documents nor filed any documents ensuring that settlement was appropriate where there was an outstanding question as to whether an actual case or controversy existed.

The Court was deceived. Despite Plaintiffs not having mentioned any settlement in their Notice, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) publicly announced a “settlement” of this action shortly after Plaintiffs filed their dismissal. That “settlement” commandeers the contrived sum of $1.776 billion from the United States Treasury, to be handed out to recipients chosen by a commission effectively controlled by the President. 3 The DOJ is calling this the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” The day after the “settlement” containing the Anti-Weaponization Fund was announced, the DOJ announced that it had subsequently agreed to release “any and all claims . . . whether presently known or unknown, that—as of the Effective Date of the Settlement Agreement—have been or could have been asserted by [the United States] against any of the Plaintiffs or related or affiliated individuals . . . or parties . . . by reason of, with respect to, in connection with, or which arise out of . . . any matters currently pending or that could be pending . . . before Defendants or other agencies or departments.”4 The plain language of this extremely broad provision sweeps in Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) audits of Plaintiffs’ tax returns and all other claims the United States might have against Plaintiffs—extraordinary benefits for which no consideration was provided to the government.

They further note just how blatant the Trump DOJ has been in tying these “settlements” to the present case, despite not telling the court about any such settlement agreement:

The parties to this case are using this lawsuit as the legal justification for these actions. This is not speculation; the parties themselves have proclaimed it, repeatedly. For starters, the DOJ implemented all of the actions described above via a document expressly titled “Settlement Agreement,” captioned with this case’s caption, plus a three-paragraph addendum that references that “Settlement Agreement” in its first paragraph and in its third paragraph purports to “forever bar[] and preclude[]” the United States from pursuing claims that could have been asserted “by Defendants against any of the Plaintiffs” in this case. The “Settlement Agreement” was signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward the same day Plaintiffs filed their Notice; in fact, Plaintiffs’ filing of the Notice was expressly required by the “Settlement Agreement.” The addendum granting the extraordinarily broad releases to the President and his family and businesses was signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche the next day, May 19. Yet none of the parties filed either of these documents with the Court. In addition, shortly after announcing the “settlement,” the Acting Attorney General issued an order creating the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” That order—which references the “Settlement Agreement” in this case—explicitly identifies the Judgment Fund statute, 31 U.S.C. § 1304, under which Congress has authorized appropriations for payments of settlements against the United States, and 28 U.S.C. § 2414, which authorizes payments of “final” judgments against the United States including compromise settlements and “imminent” claims, as the statutory bases for the creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund. Payments purportedly made pursuant to these statutes in the absence of a genuine case or controversy are not authorized.

That last bit is particularly interesting. The entire trick that the Trump administration is trying to pull here to route this around congressional “power of the purse” approval is by taking it from the Judgment Fund, which is used to pay off any judicial monetary awards against the US government. But here, there is no judicial award. The Trump/Blanche DOJ is trying to pull a fast one on everyone by announcing a settlement, but avoiding telling the court about it, other than to say that the case is dismissed. And then just announcing a separate settlement, while pretending that this out of court (and not reviewed or approved of by any court) satisfies the rules for access to the Judgment Fund.

That’s just stealing from the American taxpayer.

And thus, these former federal judges argue, the court should be asked to review the settlement.

Movants submit that this “settlement” is a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the Court. But the Court need not decide that ultimate issue now. At this juncture, Movants request only that the Court exercise its powers under Rule 60 to set aside its order ending the case based upon Plaintiffs’ voluntary dismissal. That will allow the Court to commence an inquiry into whether the Court was deceived, including with respect to the existence of an underlying case or controversy and any purported arms-length negotiations undertaken to resolve it. As set forth below, this Court has the power under Rule 60 to determine whether there has been a “corruption of the judicial process itself,” 11 Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2870 (3d ed.), and may set aside a judgment and reopen a case under Rule 60(d)(3), as well as other subsections of Rule 60, whether by this motion or sua sponte. Doing so will allow judicial review of the extraordinary—and historically unprecedented—circumstances presented by this litigation and by the collusive “settlement” that invokes this litigation as the legal justification for its terms.

The rest of the filing makes a fairly compelling (these are former federal judges, after all) argument for (1) why the court has jurisdiction to review the settlement, and (2) why these judges as non-parties to the case can move to have the case re-opened to allow the judge to review the terms of the settlement, especially when there’s evidence that a fraud has been perpetrated on the court.

Even if the Court declines to entertain a non-party motion under Rule 60, it has the authority to issue sua sponte relief where, as here, the parties have effectuated a fraud upon the Court. Rule 60(d) specifically states that it does not “limit a court’s power to . . . set aside a judgment for fraud on the court,” Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(d)(3), and the Supreme Court has long recognized that courts have certain inherent powers that cannot be displaced by statute or the Rules of Civil Procedure. See, e.g., Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 43 (1991). These inherent powers flow from “the nature of [the] institution” and “cannot be dispensed with . . . because they are necessary to the exercise of all others[.]” United States v. Hudson, 7 Cranch 32, 34 (1812). The court’s inherent powers include, as relevant here, the power to vacate a judgment upon proof that it was procured by fraud, Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co., 322 U.S. 238, 245 (1944), or conduct an investigation to determine whether a fraud upon the court has been committed, Universal Oil Products Co. v. Root Refining Co., 328 U.S. 575, 580 (1946) (“The inherent power of a federal court to investigate whether a judgment was obtained by fraud, is beyond question.”). Thus, the Court has the authority to sua sponte invalidate the voluntary dismissal.

They also point out that simply by reopening the case, the court could stall the ridiculous and corrupt anti-weaponization fund, since the Judgment Fund is only available for final settlements. And if the case is still open the settlement is no longer final.

Should the Court exercise its authority to reopen the case and hold additional proceedings, it would effectively preserve the status quo. Importantly, the Judgment Fund is only available for “final” settlements. 31 C.F.R. § 256.1(a)(1). A settlement premised on a dismissal that has been voided is not “final.” Similarly, voiding the Notice and reopening the case would allow the Court to continue its jurisdictional inquiry. And, if the Court ultimately concludes that it did not have jurisdiction and dismissed the case on those grounds, such a dismissal would deprive the parties of their claimed justification for the settlement.

The former judges don’t mince words about how ridiculous this whole damn thing is:

To be clear, the parties’ settlement was not, and never will be, legally justified. That is because the Acting Attorney General’s Order creating the Anti-Weaponization Fund identified the Judgment Fund, 31 U.S.C. § 1304, and the Attorney General’s authority to enter “compromise settlements” under 28 U.S.C. § 2414, as the basis for the creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund. Both of those authorities require the existence of a legitimate litigation and not, as here, one that is collusive, feigned, or fraudulent.

The DOJ is only allowed to enter “compromise settlements of claims”—such as this one— “for defense of imminent litigation or suits against the United States, or against its agencies or officials upon obligations or liabilities of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2414. And a feigned or collusive suit is not active or “imminent” litigation against the United States pursuant to which the DOJ is authorized to access the Judgment Fund and § 2414. See U.S. Gov’t Accountability Off., GAO-08-978SP, 3 Principles of Federal Appropriations Law 14-35 (3d ed. 2008) (requiring that “[t]he agency must be confronted with a genuine disagreement or impasse” and “[t]here must be a legitimate dispute over either liability or amount”); 31 C.F.R. § 256.1(b) (“Fiscal Service requires that requests for payment identify the statute that forms the basis of the underlying claim. The award or settlement must comply with the statutory and regulatory requirements that authorize the award or settlement.”).

None of this means Judge Williams will reopen the case. But she was already suspicious, she was already asking questions the parties clearly didn’t want answered, and she’s now been handed a formal legal basis to pick this apart. The former judges aren’t asking her to do something radical — they’re asking her to finish what she already started before the parties ran away from her courtroom.

Whether she does it or not, the filing itself is useful: 35 former federal judges have now put on the record, in plain language, that a sitting president sued himself, settled with himself, hid the settlement from the court, erased his own tax liability, and raided the Treasury for $1.776 billion in the process.

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Poll everyone you can. Even the most MAGA never dreamed up this scenario. There’s no single-issue voter whose kink is “surely the people wanting green cards can get that done in their own countries.”

Nope, this is Trump’s kink. This is a blatant attempt to juice the deportation numbers to soothe the throbbing bald skull of Stephen Miller, who still has yet to see his 3,000 arrests per day bigoted fantasy become reality, no matter how many billions we’re (forced to) throw at ICE.

This is just blatant racism masquerading as slightly-less-blatant racism. The law was never unclear. The system wasn’t being exploited by immigrants. Pretty much everyone has always been fine with the US’s green card program. And yet, this is what America means now, just as it heads into its 250th year.

Foreigners in the U.S. who want a green card will need to leave and apply in their home country, the Trump administration announced Friday, in a surprise change to a longstanding policy that sowed confusion and concern among aid groups, immigration lawyers and immigrants.

The obvious question is “WHY?” The obvious answer is this: this administration hates people who aren’t white. If you think this policy might affect the small percentage of migrants from predominately white nations, you’re living in a self-induced psychosis. If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe the words falling out of the administration’s collective mouth:

In an emailed statement to the Associated Press the agency said people who provide an “economic benefit” or “national interest” could likely stay in the U.S. while others would have to go abroad to apply.

No need to read between the lines here. This administration is as unsophisticated as a used Croc. Both terms stated here can be read as “white” and “also white.” If you think this means otherwise, be sure to show your whole bigoted ass in the comment section below.

The “agency” mentioned here is the USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services), which used to be more concerned with ensuring applicants kept on their path to citizenship. That’s no longer the case. It should rebrand as GTFO, since all it does now is give Trump whatever he wants when it comes to expelling non-white people from this nation.

I’m not even exaggerating. More than 90% of successful asylum seekers are white people from other nations. Any actions taken to limit lawful access to citizenship have targeted non-white people. Pretending that living in the US while seeking a green card is the exploitation of a legal loophole is nothing more than more blatant racism from an administration that has already been pretty fucking blatant about its racism.

The fully-suborned USCIS had this to say about a directive I can’t imagine it saw coming:

USCIS described the change as a return to “the original intent of the law” and closing a “loophole.”

Get thee to a white shoe law firm, he said in a Shakepearian voice. Bro, the “original intent of the law” never resulted in a demand to “close” a “loophole” for over FIVE DECADES. To claim it’s imperative NOW is to pretend you’d rather honor the law, rather than the nation’s foremost golf club groundskeeper.

To sum up: get fucked, Trump. This is nothing more than the administration deciding Lady Liberty is free to assault just because she showed a bit of ankle more than 100 years ago.

The Trump Organization still hasn’t shipped their promised Trump phone to most customers who laid down a $100 deposit a year ago. But rubes patriots who signed up did get something else instead: their private data leaked to the public. According to Techcrunch, the Trump Mobile website openly shared customer emails, addresses, phone numbers, and other sensitive data.

Trump Mobile has subsequently confirmed the leak, which they’re blaming on somebody else:

“Phone provider Trump Mobile has confirmed that it was exposing customers’ names, email addresses, mailing addresses, cell numbers, and order identifiers to the open internet…[a spokesperson] said that the exposure was linked to a third-party platform provider that supports “certain Trump Mobile operations.” He did not name the provider.”

Whoops.

Even calling Trump Mobile an actual company is generous. As we noted when it was “launched” last year, the company is really just a lazy rebrand of an existing MAGA-friendly MVNO provider, Patriot Mobile, which itself just resells T-Mobile service.

A cornerstone of the venture was a “made in America” gold “Trump phone” named the T1 that was supposed to launch last August. Though shortly after launch the Trump Organization eliminated all the “made in America” claims. And the actual phone still hasn’t arrived in the hands of most customers, despite people paying $100 as early as June last year to reserve one. So very on brand, really.

Some of the Chinese-made phones have started showing up with reviewers, and it’s not going great. The screen is smaller than promised, the gold is more of a sickly yellow, the American flag is missing two stripes, and the phone, despite promises that it was “made with American values in mind,” appears to just be a lazy rebrand of an existing two-year-old Chinese-made Android phone (the 2024 HTC U24 Pro).

So it’s a dated Chinese phone, slathered with Trump’s name, gold paint, and an incorrect depiction of the U.S. flag — that’s a year late, not particularly secure, and pre-loaded with propaganda (Truth Social). Again, very on brand. Though curiously in stark contrast to all of the Trump bravado about how he’d personally ensure most smartphones would now be made in the States.

Still, Trump Mobile execs are trying to put on a brave face and pretend this is going well:

“The technology business is more difficult than some may realize, as parts must be tested for quality assurances,” Trump Mobile CEO Pat O’Brien said in a statement to CNET earlier this month. “We have experienced delays during a variety of steps in getting the T1 to completion, but those delays were worth it in our minds as we are delivering an amazing product.”

Except there’s no real indication that last bit is true. Like most Trump efforts to make money off his name, it’s clear this entire thing was aggressively half-assed.

Alright, this is getting dire. In addition to all of the anti-vaxxer bullshit that has infected HHS thanks to RFK Jr.’s appointment to run the department, we have also made the point recently that an equally big problem is the talent drain occurring at HHS as well. Between the voluntary exits by smart people who don’t want to be part of something this stupid and the scores of smart people who have been fired by Kennedy and his hand-picked goon squad, HHS and its child agencies have significantly less talent within them today than they did a year and a half ago. And I haven’t even mentioned yet that we don’t currently have Senate-confirmed heads of the FDA, the CDC, or a Surgeon General. What’s the point of these positions if they mean so little that the Trump administration isn’t going to bother to fill them?

But Kennedy isn’t done, yet. Just recently, he fired the leadership of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a volunteer group that works with government to mandate what preventative care procedures are approved such that insurance services have to cover them without copay.

In letters dated May 11, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. notified the two doctors who chaired the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that he was terminating their appointments immediately, before the end of their multiyear terms.

The Department of Health and Human Services already had largely sidelined the task force, indefinitely postponing scheduled public meetings over the past year and thus leaving some long-expected updates on cervical cancer screenings and other topics in limbo.

Kennedy didn’t inform Drs. John Wong and Esa Davis as to why their positions were being terminated in his letter. But he did go before Congress recently and talked about wanting to reform the task force because he considered their approach and work lazy and not transparent enough. We’ve heard Kennedy make these noises about transparency in the past and we know that they are bullshit. He is almost certainly instead looking merely to install sycophants that will do whatever his bidding happens to be. Particularly as it appears that the task force was prevented from publishing some of its work.

Some health advocates had worried that Kennedy was preparing to replace the expert panel with less experienced political appointees, like he had done with a critical vaccine advisory committee. Over the past year, the task force wasn’t allowed to publish its final update to the cervical cancer screening guideline or take steps to update recommendations about maternal depression, said former task force chairman Dr. Michael Silverstein, a pediatrician.

“This is a level of government intrusion into scientific processes that I’ve not experienced in my 10 years on the task force,” he said.

What chaos comes out of this move remains to be seen, though there can be no doubt that chaos is on the menu. There are treatments out there that could benefit from approval from the task force, but insurance won’t cover them without that approval. We’re talking about screenings for cancer and other dangerous afflictions. Kennedy could also install people who will approve whatever crazy whim he comes up with next. Perhaps insurance will have to cover snorting cocaine off of toilets while supervised by a doctor.

You may laugh at that, but look around you. Does it really sound that crazy with all that has gone on at HHS the past 18 months?

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In the months leading up to the implementation of Australia’s social media ban in December 2025, there was much discussion about the possible negative consequences.

Among these were concerns that teenagers would consume less news. As most young adults use social media for news and many rely on it, this was a real risk.

So months on, has this come to pass? In our newly-published research, we found the more young people are impacted by the ban, the more likely they are to report they are getting less news and having less opportunity to discuss news and the issues that matter to them.

Our research

In February we surveyed 1,027 young people aged 10 to 17, just two months after the legislation took effect.

As part of a longitudinal survey that has examined young Australians’ news engagement since 2017, we asked young people questions about the ban’s impact on their social media use and their news engagement.

First, we investigated if the ban had affected young people’s social media use by asking them if their engagement with each banned platform had changed at all, and if so, whether the change was a complete stop or if they just used it less.

We found 61% of under-16s who had previously been using banned platforms reported little or no change in their social media use. For the majority of young people surveyed, the ban was ineffectual.

In fact, only one in four (26%) reported their social media use had been affected.

Next, we asked young people if the ban had affected their engagement with news.

For those whose social media use was significantly disrupted, the result was stark: 51% reported getting less news as a direct result of the ban.

This finding is a significant concern because it suggests that as the ban becomes more “successful”, with a greater number of young people being removed from platforms, their news engagement will fall in parallel.

The impact on civic involvement

A 2025 report from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, based on testing of year 6 and year 10 students, finds school students’ civics knowledge is the lowest it has been since testing began 20 years ago. This is despite most young people believing it’s important to take action in the community on issues that matter to them.

Our findings show that when young people are impacted by the social media ban they lose access to news about issues they care about. They are also talking less about news and finding fewer opportunities to share their views or take other forms of action.

Our previous research shows news engagement makes young people feel knowledgeable and more capable of responding to issues.

A large body of research also shows news interest and engagement is closely associated with civic engagement. The more engaged people are with news, the more likely they are to become involved in community and social issues.

Social news or no news

It’s unlikely that being cut off from news on social media will lead young people back to traditional news sources.

Most young Australians say they don’t feel represented or heard by traditional news organisations. They also feel the news mainstream outlets create isn’t accessible to young people and doesn’t focus on the issues that matter most to them.

In our survey, 75% said news organisations have no idea what their lives are actually like, and 71% said they find it difficult to find news relevant to people their age.

Our earlier research also shows Australian news organisations rarely include young people in news stories. When they are included, they are seen but not heard.

For instance, young people are shown in news stories in photographs and video footage ten times more than their voices are heard or they are quoted in stories.

In addition, another study of news has shown that when young people are included in breaking news events, they are often stereotyped as being lazy, dangerous and entitled.

These findings demonstrate some of the reasons young people have likely turned to social media for news in recent years.

So what should we do?

It’s likely that over time, more young people will be cut off from social media as loopholes in the ban are ironed out. This emphasises the need to find ways to encourage young people to engage with other news sources in productive and meaningful ways.

A key concern is trust. We need to educate young people about the importance of news to democratic process, providing them with insights into how high quality journalism is produced and supporting them to make informed decisions about who and what to trust online.

This can happen as part of media literacy education but this requires investments in high quality curriculum resources and teacher training.

In Australia, we are in the fortunate position that we already recognise the need for media literacy in the Australian curriculum. High quality news literacy resources are being produced by the ABC through programs such as BTN (Behind The News), and other organisations such as Squiz Kids.

At the same time, to develop trust, mainstream news organisations need to do a much better job of representing young people in fair and inclusive ways so they feel seen and heard.

Finally, it’s important to recognise that amid all of these changes to young people’s technology access, our research shows family is the first and most trusted source of news for young people. We need to help parents understand the important role they play in helping their kids navigate the news.

Michael Dezuanni is Professor, Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology; Simon Chambers is a Postdoctoral research fellow at Western Sydney University, and Tanya Notley is Professor in Digital Media at Western Sydney University