How NIL is Failing College Sports

Editor’s Note (September 2025): This article was first published in May 2025. Since then, NIL controversies have only grown—lawsuits over transfers, new collective rules, and court rulings are fueling even more debate. The problems outlined below remain at the heart of the chaos.

When the NCAA implemented its interim policy on Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) in July 2021, it was heralded as a long-overdue victory for student-athletes. Finally, college athletes could monetize their personal brands while maintaining eligibility. But three years in, the reality of NIL has exposed deep, structural problems that threaten the very foundation of college sports.

Far from the fair, equitable system its proponents envisioned, NIL has morphed into a thinly veiled pay-for-play scheme dominated by wealthy donors, corporate interests, and an increasingly professionalized amateur sports landscape that’s leaving many athletes and institutions behind.

NIL Is Bad in Its Current Form, But the Concept Isn’t

Let’s be clear: this is not to say NIL is all bad. The core principle—that athletes deserve compensation for the use of their name, image, and likeness—remains valid and important. Student-athletes absolutely deserve to get paid. But this implementation ain’t it.

The problem is the execution. NIL went from zero to 200 MPH overnight with no guardrails. It’s like giving someone a supercar capable of high speeds and letting them drive it through downtown at rush hour. Just because a car can go that fast doesn’t mean it should outside of a sanctioned and governed NASCAR race. Similarly, NIL needed careful implementation with proper rules and oversight—not the free-for-all we’re currently witnessing.

NIL Is Bad for Creating the Collective Problem: Pay-for-Play in Disguise

The most troubling development in the NIL era has been the rise of “collectives” – donor-organized groups that pool money to facilitate NIL deals for athletes at specific schools. These collectives have quickly evolved from their original purpose into recruitment vehicles that effectively function as booster-funded payrolls.

College football’s biggest donors have orchestrated business ventures distributing five-, six- and seven-figure payments to athletes under the guise of endorsement opportunities and appearance fees. While technically legal within vague NCAA guidelines, these arrangements clearly violate the spirit of what NIL was supposed to be.

Consider the case of quarterback Nico Iamaleava, whose story perfectly illustrates the chaos. After signing with Tennessee on a lucrative NIL deal, he later tried to renegotiate his contract during the 2025 offseason. When Tennessee refused both because his performance didn’t warrant the increase and the amount was too high, Iamaleava explored other options. After other schools balked at his demands, he eventually landed at UCLA for significantly less money than he was seeking. Meanwhile, Texas will spend an astounding $40 million on its football roster in 2025-26. But that’s not the issue—why wouldn’t they if they can? The problem is that if another team wants to compete, there’s only one way forward: pay up.

This isn’t about athletes receiving fair compensation for actual marketing value – it’s about wealthy boosters creating slush funds to buy talent. And as long as deals include some nominal “deliverable” from the athlete and are signed after their national letter of intent, there’s little the NCAA can do to stop it. (SportsEpreneur Update as of September 2025: read more about the NIL Clearinghouse and the first NIL deal report.)

NIL Is Bad for Boosting Egos Instead of Programs

A particularly troubling aspect that’s emerged is how NIL has become an ego-driven playground for wealthy boosters. For many donors, it’s no longer about supporting their alma mater—it’s about directly influencing outcomes and claiming credit for wins.

These boosters are essentially treating college teams like fantasy sports with real money. They get a dopamine hit from watching “their” players succeed, knowing their financial contribution made it possible. It’s an addiction—the thrill of buying talent and then basking in reflected glory when that talent performs well.

This creates a dangerous dynamic where the interests of boosters, rather than educational or developmental goals, drive decisions. Coaches find themselves answering not just to athletic directors, but to the whims of deep-pocketed collectives who can control the talent pipeline.

[ed. ...and much more:]

NIL Is Bad for Widening the Gap: Competitive Balance Destroyed

NIL Is Bad for Creating Transfer Portal Chaos: The Free Agency Problem

NIL Is Bad for Athletes Making Short-Term Decisions

NIL Is Bad for the Athlete-Fan Relationship

NIL Is Bad for Corruption and Exploitation: The Dark Side

NIL Is Bad for College Sports’ Identity Crisis

NIL Is Bad for International Student-Athletes

NIL Is Bad, But Reform Is Possible

by SportsEMedia |  Read more:

Image: Tyler Kaufman/Getty
[ed. Money is killing sports (and most everything else), and nobody pays even lip service to educational opportunities anymore. See also: Limbo Field (HCB); and,  The college football spending cap is brand new, and here’s how schools already are ignoring it (The Athletic).]

Can Cruising Survive Influencers?

It was a balmy July day and Joseph had dick on the brain. The 25-year-old Brooklyn barista had agreed to walk a friend’s dog in Washington Square Park, so he figured that while he was in Manhattan he’d check in on one of his favorite cruising spots: a men’s restroom at Penn Station. Those in the know know this bathroom; Joseph (his middle name) estimates he’d cruised for sex there about eight times before. He likes that among the fresh faces he will often see the same old queens catching up in their de facto third space. Sure, he could open Grindr or Scruff to find a hookup, but then he’ll get picky and end up scrolling endlessly. Cruising feels more authentic, more real. It’s a ritual. A hunt.

In the early hours of the afternoon, he’d expected the restroom to be livelier. (Rush hour can bring too many commuters seeking to use the bathroom for its intended purpose.) But there was one guy standing at a urinal: a handsome Latino man with dark hair and eyes, and big, beefy arms protruding from his orange high-visability safety vest. This man nodded to Joseph as he entered, which he took as a sign to install himself at the adjacent urinal. The construction worker appeared to be rubbing himself and smiling, Joseph recalled. “He was looking at me. He was trying to peek over. He was doing it. He seemed seasoned at this,” Joseph said. “He was giving an Oscar-winning performance.”

That performance ended when Joseph, thinking he’d met a fellow traveler, flashed the guy his penis. “We got one,” the undercover Amtrak police officer immediately said into a radio microphone hidden in his collar. Stunned and embarrassed, Joseph barely had time to put his penis away before he was handcuffed and marched through the station—his fly still unbuttoned—to a holding room, where he spent the next few hours. One other man was already there, looking humiliated and sad. Two more were eventually brought in as part of the same sting operation: one who was adamant he’d just been in the bathroom to pee and another man in his 20s who spoke only Spanish. Joseph then watched as this man, freaking out, was eventually handed over to immigration agents.

Joseph is among almost 200 people who have been arrested since June 1 as part of a crackdown on cruising in the Penn Station restroom, an Amtrak spokesperson told me. At least 20 of these men were immigrants transferred to ICE custody. While other mass public indecency arrests were made in Indiana, Arizona, and Illinois during the same period, the Penn Station operation was unique in its scale and length. Rep. Jerry Nadler and other outraged lawmakers dubbed it a “hostile arrest campaign reminiscent of anti-LGBTQ policing from the Stonewall era.”

There is a major difference, though, between that era and now: the once-secret world of cruising has never been more out in the open. As Amtrak police were arresting men, nearby cinemas were screening Plainclothes, a movie in which Tom Blyth portrays an undercover New York cop who patrols bathrooms and falls for one of his targets, played by Russell Tovey. When thousands gathered in a Clinton Hill warehouse during Pride Month for the “Twinks vs. Dolls” event, they did so amid ample signage and merchandise from co-sponsor, Sniffies, the map-based cruising app. Mainstream media stories about cruising and orgies have outraged some gay men who say that their safe spaces have been exposed.

But cruising’s real “outing” has occurred on social media, where a growing cottage industry of men are vying to become the Rick Steves of cruising. Guys on TikTok or Instagram will now teach you how to cruise at your gym or how to avoid getting caught in the steamroom. You can learn the best ways to pick up guys in a Barnes & Noble (Step One: “Pick a book you’re not actually reading”) or at your Lowes hardware store. (Step One: “Dress like you know your way around wood.”) You can see videos of men following each other among trees in public parks or tapping their feet in bathroom stalls in the manner of Larry Craig. One creator named Connor (who did not respond to requests for comment) has amassed over 375,000 followers over various accounts with a seemingly endless stream of videos in which he boasts graphically about cruising in airport bathrooms, waterparks, or at his local Macy’s. On X, where content guidelines are much freer, adult performers with hundreds of thousands of followers share explicit videos of themselves having sex with blurry-faced strangers in what appear to be department store changing rooms.

“I’m a teacher by nature and so I thought, Hey, cruising has been around forever. It’s part of our history. Why not teach on it?” said Chandler (his last name), a 34-year-old adult creator who posts instructional guides or suggestive stories themed to what he calls “CruiseTok.” He puts his openness on social media down to a desire for authenticity. “I think in today’s world, it’s more acceptable to be who you are. If that means showing your expression or passion, then yeah!”

But amid a resurgent right-wing that has sought to wind back LGBTQ rights, all this openness has left some, including Joseph, uncomfortable or even worried about what they see as unwanted attention. “I think calling attention to it and trying to get your social media clout from it is annoying,” he said. “The whole point—the whole, historical purpose of cruising was to be super low-key and discreet.” While information about cruising has always been available for people who wanted to seek it out, it’s now being entrusted to algorithms that can push it on people who aren’t, including, potentially, the authorities. All this has left some men wondering whether certain things should still be gate-kept.

“A lot of these much younger people that are 22 and excited about this activity, their natural inclination is just supposed to post it online. There’s no way to control that fire,” said Leo Herrera, an artist and author who self-published a guide to cruising last year. He likened cruising to manning a grill: You need some exposure to act as oxygen to get the fire going, but you want to be able to control it. In the past, cruising might have been fueled by scribbles on bathroom doors or gay hotlines or newspapers, but now it’s an algorithm. “It supercharges it to a level where it just kind of blows up in our face,” Herrera said. “How do we celebrate our sexuality while protecting it?”

by David Mack, The Cut |  Read more:

Image: blissbodywork_, dbchandler_, showoffjonah

The Trump Mind-Set Is Not Complex

[ed. Actions speak louder than words.]

Peering into the Trump mind-set — the logic underpinning his priorities, his morality, his decision making — is like opening up a garbage pail left out for days during a summer heat wave.  [ed. An opening line for the ages.]

The dominant theme is governing by narcissism: Make Trump Great Again.

President Trump can be persuaded with money, the purchase of his crypto coins, contributions and sometimes with plain old obsequious flattery.

The two shining lights that guide his notion of morality are his self-interest and the enhancement of his self-image, both of which crowd out consideration of the national interest and the public welfare.

The strongest example: his refusal to accept the humiliation of defeat in the 2020 election, resulting in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by his followers determined to “stop the steal,” and Trump’s subsequent pardoning of the insurrectionists.

He is blind to the harms, up to and including death, that he and his policies have inflicted here and abroad. The notion that his actions have worsened the economy is, to Trump, intolerable. Asked by Politico to rate his handling of the economy, Trump replied, “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.”

Trump relishes his hatreds. Revenge brings him joy. “I hate my opponent,” Trump told mourners for Charlie Kirk at a memorial service in Phoenix, with a tone of relish. “I don’t want what’s best for them.”

The profit motive — for himself, for his allies and for his donors — dominates Trump’s decision making across the gamut, from his pardons of convicted criminals to negotiation strategies with foreign leaders to the formulation of tax legislation.

Trump lacks a basic sense of fairness, exemplified by his disregard of the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine, and he feels no obligation to honor alliances designed to protect democratic states.

The key measure Trump uses in defining justice, on the one hand, is whether an individual, group, corporation or country supports him (the Jan. 6 insurrectionists), contributes to his wealth (crypto) or elevates his stature (Vladimir Putin’s praise.) On the other hand, he condemns and calls for criminal prosecutions of all those who challenged the legality of what he has done or suggested anything untoward about his relations with Russia.

Trump does not think strategically. Instead, his compulsive need to be a winner, to have his ego or bank account rewarded, precludes anything but short-term tactical calculations shaped by the pursuit of his self-interest.

To quote a once-famous Washington sportscaster, Warner Wolf, “Let’s go to the videotape”:

On Nov. 4, a delegation of Swiss industrialists gave Trump a high-end Rolex desktop clock and a 1 kilogram (2.2 pound) gold bar worth $130,000 inscribed 45 and 47. Ten days later, the Trump administration agreed to cut the 39 percent tariff on Swiss imports to 15 percent.

The initial 28-point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine, drawn by Russia and the United States, makes no mention of the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine, providing instead for Russian retention of land it now controls. The 28 points do provide for substantial American business investment in the region and the end of sanctions against Russia.

In a key article, “Make Money Not War: Trump’s Real Plan for Peace in Ukraine,” the Wall Street Journal reporters Drew Hinshaw, Benoit Faucon, Rebecca Ballhaus, Thomas Grove and Joe Parkinson wrote that the architects of the plan were “charting a path to bring Russia’s $2 trillion economy in from the cold — with American businesses first in line to beat European competitors to the dividends.”

Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, posted a denunciation of the plan on X on Dec. 8:

It’s being described as a peace plan to end the Russian war in Ukraine, but if you look at the details, it has nothing to do with peace. It is a business deal to make the people around Donald Trump rich. It’s just corruption, through and through.

Rich Trump donors, Murphy continued,

are right now trying to get in on the action. One donor just recently paid hundreds of 1000s of dollars to a lobbyist that’s really close to Trump’s inner circle to try to buy the Nord Stream two pipeline that’s a Russian gas pipeline, once again, something that is only possible for these investors to get rich on if the war is over and the US lifts its sanctions. Another close Trump associate is in talks about acquiring a stake in a Russian Arctic gas project.

What does Ukraine get? Murphy asks and answers:

Nothing, nothing. This deal sells out Ukraine. In fact, this deal would require Ukraine to give to Russia territory that Russia doesn’t even currently control. It provides amnesty for all of the war crimes that Putin has committed...

Trump’s transactional mind-set translates into a zero-sum mentality driving his trade and tariffs wars, based on his conviction that other countries are ripping off the United States, causing, in turn, self-inflicted damage through inflationary pressures and strained relations with allies and adversaries alike.

I asked Kim Lane Scheppele, a sociologist at Princeton who has written extensively on the rise and fall of constitutional government, to step back and describe the Trump administration. She replied by email:

Many autocrats have used their positions for self-enrichment — Orban, Erdogan, Putin, Modi and more. But none have raised this possibility for self-enrichment to the heights we have seen here in the U.S., in less than one year of Trump. Economists have called their governments predatory states because instead of providing services, these governments use public wealth for private benefit.

In the forward to a book about Hungary, “The Post-Communist Mafia State,” Scheppele wrote about the regime of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, but she said in her email that her comments apply equally well, if not more so, to the Trump presidency:

When a mafia-like organization goes from underworld to upperworld and controls the state itself, the resulting mafia state takes its newly acquired tools of governance and deploys them with the principles of a mafia — holding its own loyalists in line with rigorously enforced rules of discipline while benefiting them with the spoils of power, and threatening its enemies with criminal prosecutions, libel cases, tax audits, confiscation of property, denial of employment, surveillance and even veiled threats of violence.

Mafias also have another quality: They do not operate through formal rules, bureaucratic structures and transparent procedures. Because mafias have the mentality of criminal organizations, even when they are part of the upperworld, they are accustomed to making their crucial decisions in the shadows. Like in families on which they are modeled, the political relatives in mafias are rewarded for loyalty, not merit, and divorces occur on grounds of disloyalty rather than bad performance. The distribution of available resources within the family rewards solidarity and punishes improvisational deviation. It is precisely not based on law.

Along complementary lines, Erica Frantz, a political scientist at Michigan State University who specializes in the study of authoritarian politics, replied by email to my inquiries:

We know that strongman rule — where power is concentrated in the leadership — is associated with greater corruption. Examples from Viktor Orban in Hungary and Alberto Fujimori in Peru illustrate this well. The more power grows concentrated, the more that we see the leader, their close friends and family and loyal business elites profit.

We are observing this play out in the U.S. context, where Trump and those in his entourage are growing richer through a range of activities, from cryptocurrency to real estate deals in the Middle East.

At the extreme, Frantz continued, “this becomes a kleptocratic system.” (...)

While I agree in the main with Scheppele and Frantz, I think that in key respects Trump stands apart from Putin, Narendra Modi, Orban and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, distinctions that get lost when they are lumped together under such categories as the rulers of mafia states or nascent kleptocracies.

The most important characteristic separating the four foreign autocrats from Trump is that they think in the long term, calculating the broad implications of their decisions, while Trump’s thinking is short term, if not childlike.

Jonathan Martin, a senior political reporter for Politico, described this Trump characteristic well in his Dec. 4 essay, “The President Who Never Grew Up”:

Trump is living his best life in this second and final turn in the White House. Coming up on one year back in power, he’s turned the office into an adult fantasy camp, a Tom Hanks-in-”Big,” ice-cream-for-dinner escapade posing as a presidency.

Trump is one part Orban, Martin wrote,

making a mockery of the rule of law and wielding state power to reward friends and punish foes while eroding institutions. But he’s also a 12-year-old boy: There’s fun trips, lots of screen time, playing with toys, reliable kids’ menus and cool gifts under the tree — no socks or Trapper keepers.

Yet, as with all children, there are also outbursts in the middle of restaurants. Or in this case, the Cabinet Room.

Trump’s petulance is one of the reasons Putin, armed with the discipline of a former lieutenant colonel in the K.G.B., runs rings around our president. At the same time, Trump’s childishness underpins his submissive adoration of his Russian counterpart.

Finally, in an administration known for its erratic adoption and sudden abandonment of policies, Trump has demonstrated an unwavering determination to enhance the fortunes of the rich while doing little or nothing to ameliorate worsening conditions for the working-class MAGA electorate that helped bring him to power.

I wrote about this before, but the MAGA electorate stands out from other political constituencies in its disproportionate share of lower-middle-income and middle-income voters, whose families make from $30,000 to $100,000 a year.

When the effects of the “big, beautiful” domestic policy act — tax cuts and reduced spending on health care and food stamps — are combined with the effects of Trump’s tariffs, these moderate to middle-income voters come out behind.

The Yale Budget Lab calculated that virtually everyone in the $30,000 to $100,000 range would come out a net loser. Households making $75,730, roughly the middle of that range, would lose, on average, $1,060 this year...

The gains, however, are tilted heavily toward the very rich, who hold a majority of the equities. Gains for those in the bottom half of the income distribution do not exceed $8,000 for any decile. For those in the sixth through ninth deciles, gains range from roughly $10,750 to $51,000. In the top decile, the gain balloons to just under $280,000.

The more than quarter-million dollars going to families in the top decile is, however, chump change compared with how well Trump and his family made out during the first months of his second term.

On Oct. 16, Cryptonews reported that “the family of U.S. President Donald Trump has generated pretax gains of around $1 billion in the past year from their diverse array of crypto-related ventures, a new investigation reveals.”

In the meantime, the Trump family’s search for ways to profit continues unabated, with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, taking the lead in the most recent ventures.

On Dec. 11, The New York Post reported that Kushner had initiated talks with Marc Rowan’s Apollo Global Management and Henry Kravis’s KKR “to assist with postwar reconstruction in Ukraine.”

At the same time, Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, has put money up in Paramount’s hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, joining the sovereign wealth firms for Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

For Trump and his family, there is no separation of holding government office and making money.

by Thomas B. Edsall, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Daniel Stier for The New York Times. Source photograph by Doug Mills/The New York Times.
[ed. I'm still in denial that this country elected this guy not just once, but twice. As George W. Bush famously said "fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.” ... or, whatever. But I'm actually a little hopeful these days, with a feeling that things are reorienting, new alliances being formed, new scenarios being gamed out, new calculations. Politicos smell blood in the water like sharks. Also, people don't like losing (or being on a losing team). As players and coaches in the professional and college football ranks will tell you - support can evaporate in an instant when fans decide they've given you enough of a chance. Everyone has a ' let's try something different' threshold. We'll see where it is for Trump supporters. See also: Trump’s Top Aide Acknowledges ‘Score Settling’ Behind Prosecutions (NYT:]

***

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, told an interviewer that she forged a “loose agreement” with Mr. Trump to stop focusing after three months on punishing antagonists, an effort that evidently did not succeed. While she insisted that Mr. Trump is not constantly thinking about retribution, she said that “when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”

Ms. Wiles made the comments in a series of extraordinarily unguarded interviews over the first year of Mr. Trump’s second term with the author Chris Whipple that are being published Tuesday by Vanity Fair. Not only did she confirm that Mr. Trump is using criminal prosecution to retaliate against adversaries, she also acknowledged that he was not telling the truth when he accused former President Bill Clinton of visiting the private island of the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

Over the course of 11 interviews, Ms. Wiles offered pungent assessments of the president and his team: Mr. Trump “has an alcoholic’s personality.” Vice President JD Vance has “been a conspiracy theorist for a decade” and his conversion from Trump critic to ally was based not on principle but was “sort of political” because he was running for Senate. Elon Musk is “an avowed ketamine” user and “an odd, odd duck,” whose actions were not always “rational” and left her “aghast.” Russell T. Vought, the budget director, is “a right-wing absolute zealot.” And Attorney General Pam Bondi “completely whiffed” in handling the Epstein files.

***

[ed. And, as they say - there's more! From one the few token conservatives on the staff of the NY Times, see: Our Petty, Hollow, Squalid Ogre in Chief:]

Though I tend to think it’s usually a waste of space to devote a column to President Trump’s personality — what more is there to say about the character of this petty, hollow, squalid, overstuffed man? — sometimes the point bears stressing: We are led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House.

Markets will not be moved, or brigades redeployed, or history shifted, because Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner were found stabbed to death on Sunday in their home in Los Angeles, allegedly at the hands of their troubled son Nick. (...)

To which our ogre in chief had this to say on social media:

“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”

I quote Trump’s post in full not only because it must be read to be believed, but also because it captures the combination of preposterous grandiosity, obsessive self-regard and gratuitous spite that “deranged” the Reiners and so many other Americans trying to hold on to a sense of national decency. Good people and good nations do not stomp on the grief of others. Politics is meant to end at the graveside. That’s not just some social nicety. It’s a foundational taboo that any civilized society must enforce to prevent transient personal differences from becoming generational blood feuds. (...)

Right now, in every grotesque social media post; in every cabinet meeting devoted, North Korea-like, to adulating him; in every executive-order-signing ceremony intended to make him appear like a Chinese emperor; in every fawning reference to all the peace he’s supposedly brought the world; in every Neronic enlargement of the White House’s East Wing; in every classless dig at his predecessor; in every shady deal his family is striking to enrich itself; in every White House gathering of tech billionaires paying him court (in the literal senses of both “pay” and “court”); in every visiting foreign leader who learns to abase himself to avoid some capricious tariff or other punishment — in all this and more, our standards as a nation are being debased, our manners barbarized. (...)

This is not a country on the cusp of its “Golden Age,” to quote the president, except in the sense that gold futures are near a record high as a hedge against inflation. It’s a country that feels like a train coming off the rails, led by a driver whose own derangement was again laid bare in that contemptible assault on the Reiners, may their memories be for a blessing.

Federal Government Blocks State AI Regulation

President Trump issued an executive order yesterday attempting to thwart state AI laws, saying that federal agencies must fight state laws because Congress hasn’t yet implemented a national AI standard. Trump’s executive order tells the Justice Department, Commerce Department, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and other federal agencies to take a variety of actions.

“My Administration must act with the Congress to ensure that there is a minimally burdensome national standard—not 50 discordant State ones. The resulting framework must forbid State laws that conflict with the policy set forth in this order… Until such a national standard exists, however, it is imperative that my Administration takes action to check the most onerous and excessive laws emerging from the States that threaten to stymie innovation,” Trump’s order said. The order claims that state laws, such as one passed in Colorado, “are increasingly responsible for requiring entities to embed ideological bias within models.”

Congressional Republicans recently decided not to include a Trump-backed plan to block state AI laws in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), although it could be included in other legislation. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has also failed to get congressional backing for legislation that would punish states with AI laws.

“After months of failed lobbying and two defeats in Congress, Big Tech has finally received the return on its ample investment in Donald Trump,” US Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said yesterday. “With this executive order, Trump is delivering exactly what his billionaire benefactors demanded—all at the expense of our kids, our communities, our workers, and our planet.”

Markey said that “a broad, bipartisan coalition in Congress has rejected the AI moratorium again and again.” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said the “executive order’s overly broad preemption threatens states with lawsuits and funding cuts for protecting their residents from AI-powered frauds, scams, and deepfakes.”

Trump orders Bondi to sue states

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said that “preventing states from enacting common-sense regulation that protects people from the very real harms of AI is absurd and dangerous. Congress has a responsibility to get this technology right—and quickly—but states must be allowed to act in the public interest in the meantime. I’ll be working with my colleagues to introduce a full repeal of this order in the coming days.”

The Trump order includes a variation on Cruz’s proposal to prevent states with AI laws from accessing broadband grant funds. The executive order also includes a plan that Trump recently floated to have the federal government file lawsuits against states with AI laws.

Within 30 days of yesterday’s order, US Attorney General Pam Bondi is required to create an AI Litigation Task Force “whose sole responsibility shall be to challenge State AI laws inconsistent with the policy set forth in section 2 of this order, including on grounds that such laws unconstitutionally regulate interstate commerce, are preempted by existing Federal regulations, or are otherwise unlawful in the Attorney General’s judgment.”...

It would be up to Congress to decide whether to pass the proposed legislation. But the various other components of the executive order could dissuade states from implementing AI laws even if Congress takes no action.

by Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica |  Read more:

Image: Kamikaze pilot WWII via:

[ed. Umm... state's rights? Whatever. The main intent of course is to do nothing, allowing AI to progress without any external oversight or regulation. This decision will go to court, lose, be appealed, lose, and then a couple years later get dumped on the Supreme Court - pretty much the same game plan we've seen over and over again on other issues. In the mean time, AI models will become so dangerous (and imbedded) that even if the Supreme Court renders a negative ruling it'll be too late.]

Growing Pains: Taking the Magic Out of Mushrooms

‘The attrition is setting in’: how Oregon’s magic mushroom experiment lost its way.

Jenna Kluwe remembers all the beautiful moments she saw in a converted dental clinic in east Portland.

For six months, she managed the Journey Service Center, a “psilocybin service center” where adults 21 and older take supervised mushroom trips. She watched elderly clients with terminal illnesses able to enjoy life again. She saw one individual with obsessive compulsive disorder so severe they spent hours washing their hands who could casually eat food that fell on the floor.

“It’s like five years of therapy in five hours,” Kluwe, a former therapist from Michigan, said.

In 2020, Oregon made history by becoming the first US state to legalize the use of psilocybin in a supervised setting, paving the way for magic mushrooms to treat depression, PTSD and other mental health challenges. A flurry of facilities like the Journey Service Center, as well as training centers for facilitators to guide the sessions, sprung up across the state.

But five years later, the pioneering industry is grappling with growing pains. Kluwe recalled how early last year, her business partner abruptly told her the center was out of money and would close in March – the first in a wave of closures that set off alarms about the viability of Oregon’s program.

The Journey Service Center isn’t alone. The state’s total number of licensed service centers has dropped by nearly a third, to 24, since Oregon’s psilocybin program launched in 2023. The state’s 374 licensed facilitators, people who support clients during sessions, similarly fell. And just this week, Portland’s largest “shroom room” – an 11,000 sq ft venue with views of Mt Hood offering guided trips in addition to corporate retreats – reportedly closed down.

“The attrition is setting in, and a lot of people are not renewing their license because it is hard to make money,” said Gary Bracelin, the owner of Drop Thesis Psilocybin Service Center.

Many worry about how the program’s rules and fees have pushed the cost of a psilocybin session as high as $3,000, putting it out of reach for many just as psychedelics are gaining mainstream acceptance as a mental health treatment. Insurance typically doesn’t cover sessions, meaning people have to pay out of pocket.

Furthermore, the industry is struggling to reach a diverse group of clients: state data show that most people who’ve taken legal psilocybin in Oregon are white, over 44 and earn more than roughly $95,000 or more a year.

Depending on who you ask, these are either signs of an experiment buckling under hefty rules and fees – or a landmark program finding its footing.

“It’s not totally shocking for a brand new program to have a higher price tag,” said Heidi Pendergast, Oregon director of advocacy group Healing Advocacy Fund. She added: “I think that any new industry would see this sort of opening and closing.”

Pendergast pointed to data showing the program is safe with severe reactions vanishingly rare among the estimated 14,000 people who have taken legal psilocybin in the state since mid-2023.

Some practitioners, however, say the state has a long way to go to realize the program’s promises, while other centers are experimenting with new ways to keep costs down, broaden their clientele, and integrate with the mainstream medical system.

‘Some of them are total overkill’

Legal psilocybin seemed like a natural fit for Bracelin. The self-described serial entrepreneur previously founded a cannabis dispensary chain and did sales and marketing for outdoor products during snowboarding’s early days. When the program launched, he started jumping through the many hoops for Drop Thesis to start taking clients in January 2024.

The first obstacle, he said, was finding a property that met the state’s requirements to be more than 1,000 feet from a school and not located in a residential area – with a landlord willing to rent for the center. Bracelin said more than a dozen landlords turned him down before he found a spot. Then there was the challenge of getting insurance for a business centered on a federally illegal drug. The center used private funders instead of banks, he said.

Drop Thesis charges $2,900 for a session, which can last up to six hours as well as before and after meetings with a facilitator, while offering discounts to veterans and during Pride Month as well as one monthly scholarship that covers the full price, Bracelin said.

Factored into the price of a session is the cost of a facilitator and a “licensee representative” who walks clients through paperwork and other requirements. State rules require centers to pay a $10,000 annual licensing fees, install surveillance cameras, alarm systems and securely store mushrooms in safes.

“Some [rules] are definitely justified,” Bracelin said. “And some of them are total overkill, out of fear from people who don’t understand the product.”...

Adding to regulatory hurdles is the fact that Oregon’s local governments can ask voters to ban psilocybin businesses, creating a patchwork of bans in 25 of Oregon’s 36 counties and in dozens of cities.

Angela Allbee, the manager of Oregon’s psilocybin program, said in an emailed statement that the state became the first to enact regulations for a drug that’s federally illegal, and those regulations were written with broad input that have proven safe. As more data and feedback come in, the state will consider adjusting the rules, she said...

Although psilocybin is associated with mental health concerns, the 2020 ballot initiative that created Oregon’s program was designed to keep it outside of the medical system. Now, many supporters say it needs an outside source of cash, which could come from integration with the medical system.

Oregon lawmakers earlier this year took a first step toward making that a reality.

by Jake Thomas, The Guardian |  Read more:

Images: uncredited/Jake Thomas 

Married Millennials, Here Comes the Crypto Divorce Cliff

Divorce always raises thorny questions of how to divide marital property. In most cases, the remedy is pretty straightforward, requiring a surgical split between the two parties’ assets — although you can’t do that with the family dog or aquarium. But if you thought deciding who gets the dog was complicated, here comes cryptocurrency.

With the crypto wealth accumulation phase still new within many households, and the recent sharp decline in digital assets including bitcoin and ether dinging the confidence of investors who had just seen record highs, the path forward is murky. But for many married Americans, the current price of crypto doesn’t even register as an issue. That’s because the assets are easily squirreled away from an unsuspecting spouse.

“In divorce cases, crypto is creating the same headaches we’ve long seen with offshore accounts, except now the assets can be moved instantly and invisibly,” said Mark Grabowski, professor of cyber law and digital ethics at Adelphi University and author of several books about cryptocurrencies. He added that the problem is that ownership isn’t determined by a name on an account — it’s determined by who holds the private keys.

“If one spouse controls the wallet, they effectively control the assets,” Grabowski said.

Lawyers now have to subpoena exchanges, trace transactions on the blockchain, and determine whether coins were purchased before or during the marriage.

“Without that transparency and given the lack of reporting standards, it’s easy for one spouse to hide or underreport holdings. Courts are still catching up,” Grabowski said. (...)

The first challenge is figuring out what actually exists.

“A retirement account comes with statements. A house has an address. Crypto may be sitting in an online exchange or in a hardware wallet that one spouse conveniently forgot to mention,” Bauer said.

Tracing it then becomes part detective work and part digital forensics. Once the digital asset is authenticated, hashing out custody comes next.

“Some spouses want to keep the digital wallet intact, especially if they are the one who managed it during the marriage, while others want a clean monetary split,” Bauer said.

Courts are still figuring out the best way to handle this.

“There is also the security piece. If one spouse hands over private keys, they are effectively turning over total control. If they refuse, the court has to decide how to enforce access,” Bauer said.

She recounts seeing one lawyer who didn’t know much about crypto try to give the other spouse credit for the value of the bitcoin in another asset, not recognizing it’s not so simple, nor fair.

“Many divorce lawyers are slow to catch up and don’t even ask for disclosure. In my state of Connecticut, there isn’t a spot for crypto specifically on the financial affidavits. And for some, that could mean missing a valuable asset if they aren’t looking for it,” Bauer said.

Crypto hunters, PIs of digital asset divorce era

One of the few companies that can help locate a missing asset is BlockSquared Forensics. Ryan Settles, founder and CEO of the Texas-based company, says that the need for his services has increased exponentially since he founded his company in 2023. BlockSquared is dedicated exclusively to the crypto aspects of family law and divorce.

If a spouse (generally women, Settles says) suspects their partner is hiding crypto, their attorney may call in BlockSquared, which does anything from simple asset verification to deep investigations, tracing crypto across continents and into the murky world of wallets and exchanges. Settles’ company will then present the spouse with a “storyboard” that traces and timestamps the movement of cryptocurrencies.

Investigating whether one spouse has crypto is becoming increasingly common, he says, “especially folks involved in high-net-worth divorces and individuals with high net worth.”

Ferreting out crypto in a divorce is only going to become more common. Settles noted that millennials hold the highest amount of crypto, and over the next six months, this age group will be approaching peak divorce years, converging with increased crypto holdings.

Another aspect Settles looks at is tax liability for the spouse, making sure that gets addressed during the divorce.

“There are a significant number of tax issues that most people, even attorneys, are not even familiar with,” Settles says, adding that the number of taxable events and reporting requirements from even a single transaction can come as a surprise to even the most seasoned litigators.

“Most attorneys don’t understand it, don’t understand the terminology. There is a whole lot of trust without verification going on,” Settles said.

Many of his cases involve wives who were not only unaware of their husband’s crypto dabbling, but when the assets are finally split, can be socked with a massive tax bill from capital gains.

“Unlike a savings account, the value of crypto can swing wildly in a single day,” Bauer said. “Selling crypto to divide proceeds can trigger capital gains. Holding it can trigger new arguments when value changes,” Bauer added. (...)

But companies like his are usually brought in only when there is a good suspicion of a spouse hiding significant crypto assets, he said. With a retainer fee of $9,000 and investigations that can cost $50,000, Settles says his services often cost more than an attorney.

Hard questions about crypto property splits

Roman Beck, a professor at Bentley University, where he directs the Crypto Ledger Lab, says that because this is a relatively new area, it’s best to look at it as courts not dividing the digital wallet but instead the assets the wallet controls.

“The law treats crypto much less exotically than people think. The starting point is simple: for tax and most property-law purposes, cryptocurrency is treated as property, not as money,” Beck said.

In divorce, that means bitcoin, ether, stablecoins, and NFTs acquired during the marriage are usually part of the marital estate, just like a brokerage account or a second home, with how that property is split depending on the state.

“Courts don’t split wallets, they split value,” Beck said.

The real legal question is not “Who gets the wallet?” he said, but ’How do we allocate the economic value the wallet represents, and who is trusted with technical custody afterward?”

This leaves courts and lawyers to do one of three things: split the holdings on-chain, sell and split fiat, or offset with other assets.

“From a technical point of view, a wallet is just a set of private keys, often spread across hardware devices, mobile apps, or even seed phrases on a piece of paper. You cannot safely ‘share’ a hardware wallet or a private key after divorce,” Beck said.

Another wrinkle in a crypto divorce is the volatility of the underlying asset, with price swings in the currency making it more difficult for couples to agree on timing of a split, both as a couple and for the digital assets. In the past two months alone, bitcoin fell from a high over $126,000 to the low $80,000s, a 35% decline, and saw its year-to-date gains wiped out, with plenty of wild daily swings.

If couples are thinking rationally and not emotionally, among the simplest solutions would be splitting the wallet on a chain to create two wallets for each of the divorced partners so they can continue holding their share of cryptos, or drawing up a legal agreement that gives shares of a wallet to each party.

“They would not have to sell immediately,” Beck said.

However, often one party is not familiar with holding a wallet and thus not comfortable with that solution. (...)

Blockchain ledger transparency and the courts

Crypto’s adoption by many Americans — surveys in recent years from Gallup and Pew Research estimate that 14% to 17% of U.S. adults have owned cryptocurrency — is forcing family law to become more data-driven.

“The combination of transparent ledgers and powerful analytics gives lawyers and judges better tools to reconstruct financial behavior than they ever had with cash. The policy question going forward is not whether we can trace, but how far courts will go in requiring that level of scrutiny in everyday divorces,” Beck said.

by Kevin Williams, CNBC |  Read more:

Image: Fizkes|Istock|Getty Images|Ryan Settles
[ed. See also: Why your crypto wealth may never make it to the next generation (CNBC). Hint: estate planning/access issues.]

The Corrosion of America’s Soul

When Trump administration officials post snuff films of alleged drug boats blowing up, of a weeping migrant handcuffed by immigration officers or of themselves in front of inmates at a brutal El Salvadoran prison, I often think of a story St. Augustine told in his “Confessions.”

In the fourth century A.D., a young man named Alypius arrived in Rome to study law. He was a decent sort. He knew the people at the center of the empire delighted in cruel gladiatorial games, and he promised himself he would not go. Eventually, though, his fellow students dragged him to a match. At first, the crowd appalled Alypius. “The entire place seethed with the most monstrous delight in the cruelty,” Augustine wrote, and Alypius kept his eyes shut, refusing to look at the evil around him.

But then a man fell in combat, a great roar came from the crowd and curiosity forced open Alypius’s eyes. He was “struck in the soul by a wound graver than the gladiator in his body.” He saw the blood, and he drank in savagery. Riveted, “he imbibed madness.” Soon, Augustine said, he became “a fit companion for those who had brought him.”

There are many reasons to object to the policies that the Trump administration’s videos and memes showcase. Yet the images themselves also inflict wounds, of the kind that Alypius suffered when he raised his eyelids. The president inhabits a position of moral leadership. When the president and his officials sell their policies, they’re selling a version of what it means to be an American — what should evoke our love and our hate, our disgust and our delight. If all governments rest on opinion, as James Madison thought, then it is this moral shaping of the electorate that gives the president his freedom of action, and that we will still have to reckon with once he is gone.

Amid the swirl of horrors, scandals and accusations, then, it’s worth considering what President Trump and his administration are doing to the soul of the nation — what sort of “fit companions” they’d like to make us. Their behavior during the controversy around a Sept. 2 U.S. military strike on a boat off the coast of Trinidad offers some clarity.

The Washington Post reported last week that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued an order to kill everyone on that boat, which the administration says was ferrying drugs. When an initial missile disabled the vehicle but left two survivors clinging to it, the Special Operations commander overseeing the attack, Adm. Frank M. Bradley, ordered another strike that killed the helpless men. The chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, said, “This entire narrative was false,” then Mr. Trump said he “wouldn’t have wanted” a second strike but “Pete said that didn’t happen.” The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, confirmed that actually, yes, there was a second strike ordered by Admiral Bradley, but it was fine because the admiral was “well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.” Mr. Hegseth posted a cartoon in the style of a children’s book depicting a turtle in a helicopter shooting a rocket-propelled grenade at a boat carrying drugs and “narcoterrorists.”

A legal discussion ensued. Was the “double tap” strike a war crime? The Geneva Conventions say shipwrecked persons must be “respected and protected.” The Department of Defense Law of War Manual states that helpless, shipwrecked survivors are not lawful targets, while The Hague regulations forbid orders declaring that no quarter will be given.

Or was the strike simply a crime? Under the War Powers Resolution, the president must give Congress notice within 48 hours of U.S. forces entering hostilities, and hostilities that last more than 60 days are impermissible without congressional authorization. Since the president’s boat strike campaign has continued well past 60 days, the strikes support no war, and the entire campaign is unauthorized. Adil Haque, an executive editor at Just Security and an international law professor at Rutgers University, put it on X: “There is no armed conflict, so there are no legitimate targets. Not the people. Not the boats. Not the drugs. It’s murder whether Bradley was aiming at the people or aiming at the drugs knowing the people would die.”

This discussion misses the bigger effort the Trump administration seems to be engaged in. In lieu of careful analysis of the campaign’s legality, detailed rationales for the boat strikes and explanations of why they couldn’t be done with more traditional methods, we get Mr. Hegseth posting an image of himself with laser eyes and video after video of alleged drug traffickers being killed. The cartoon turtle is just one example in an avalanche of juvenile public messaging about those we kill. I suspect the question the administration cares about is not “is this legal,” “is this a war crime,” “is this murder” or even “is this good for America,” but rather, “isn’t this violence delightful?”

The president’s supporters seem to grasp this. Fox News’s Jesse Watters responded with utter incredulity that the United States would offer quarter to an enemy. “We’re blowing up terrorists in the Caribbean,” he said on Monday, “but we’re supposed to rescue them from drowning if they survive?” Others went further. “I really do kind of not only want to see them killed in the water, whether they’re on the boat or in the water,” Megyn Kelly, the conservative podcaster, said, “but I’d really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so they lose a limb and bleed out.” (...)

This wounding of the national soul is hard for me to watch. Twenty years ago, I joined the Marine Corps because I thought military service would be an honorable profession. Its honor derives from fighting prowess and adherence to a code of conduct. Military training is about character formation, with virtues taught alongside tactics. But barbaric behavior tarnishes all who wear, or once wore, the uniform, and lust for cruelty turns a noble vocation into mere thuggery. “The real evils in war,” Augustine said, “are love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power.” Such lusts, he thought, drove the pagan world’s wars. We’d be fools not to suspect that such lusts drive some of us today.

In “The City of God,” Augustine distinguishes between a people bound by common loves and those ruled by a lust for domination. A president who wants to lead a nation bound by common loves might offer up something like Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, which sorrows over war, indulges in no bombast, accepts that both sides in a conflict have sinned and declares that we must fight “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” For a nation devoted to the lust for domination, a president needs to foster a citizenry that thrills in displays of dominance and cruelty. Hence this administration’s braggadocio about death, its officials’ memes about suffering, their promises to inflict pain on America’s enemies followed by scant rationales for their own policies.

We are far from the Christian nation Lincoln thought he was addressing, and tried to shape, when he gave his Second Inaugural Address. But we must still ask ourselves a fundamental, private question that, at scale, has broad political implications: Given that we are all, every day, imbibing madness, how do we guard our souls?

by Phil Klay, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Alvaro Dominguez/The New York Times
[ed. If AI decides to wipe out humanity it might be a mercy killing to keep us from commiting slow collective suicide. See also: A Confederacy of Toddlers; and, Pete Hegseth: Kill Everybody (DS).]

Actually, the Supreme Court Has a Plan: Forcing Congress to Do Its Job

Critics of the Supreme Court have argued that it has too often deferred to the Trump administration and that the conservative justices are under the sway of suspicious propositions like the unitary executive theory and the major questions doctrine.

What we are actually seeing at the Supreme Court is the chance to rebalance the separation of powers in the federal government.

On Monday the court will hear oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, a case that could decide the fate of dozens of independent administrative agencies and the president’s ability to control them. The court’s ruling in the case should help elaborate a coherent vision of a renewed constitutional arrangement — one that we have seen hints and glimpses of in recent years from the Supreme Court.

As decades have passed and Congress’s influence has shrunk, the outcome of Slaughter has vast implications for the future — and political legitimacy — of the three government branches. It could offer the chance to see how the major questions doctrine and the unitary executive theory add up to a renewed integrity for the separation of powers.

Our founders would be shocked by the current constitutional order. Not by a presidency that has ballooned beyond recognition — they were well aware of the threats a power-hungry president could pose — but by the state of Congress, for not more jealously guarding its power and prestige. They would be confused that so many of its more than 500 members seem to have no further ambition than to act like glorified Instagram influencers.

As Congress has receded and presidents have filled the void through executive orders, the Supreme Court has been forced to step in to referee our most bitter political disputes, undermining the court’s legitimacy and leading to calls for court reform.

More than a century ago, Progressive-era politicians were obsessed with the idea that unelected experts could solve many of our thorniest political problems. Congress created independent agencies that were largely shielded from political control and could skip the annoying delays and messy compromises of legislating to create rules and regulations. They would be housed in the executive branch, but they wouldn’t answer to the president.

The result has undermined the very theory of our constitutional republic. With all the focus on presidential elections, the truth is that for so much economic and domestic policy — like energy regulation, labor law, telecommunications, securities regulation — the president exercises a relatively small slice of that power. The independent agencies decide many of those questions, but voters have no way to hold them directly accountable.

That is the focus of the unitary executive theory. At its most basic, it is the idea that when the Constitution says, “The executive power shall be vested in a president,” it means only the president. All members of the executive branch derive their authority from the president, and Congress can’t put limitations on the president’s power to remove executive branch officials. In a self-governing republic, voters have to be able to hold someone accountable.

This is the question at issue in Slaughter. If the Supreme Court changes the rules around presidential control of independent agencies, it will be a good first step at re-establishing political accountability over our federal government.

But if the president controls agencies completely while they continue to wield sweeping, ill-defined powers, we risk something far worse than independent agencies. Agencies with broad statutory mandates become instruments of presidential policymaking, whether it’s the Environmental Protection Agency setting emission standards or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regulating unfair financial practices or the Federal Trade Commission determining unfair consumer practices. Giving presidents this discretion will further concentrate both legislative and executive power in a single person.

This means that it is critical for the court to rein in Congress’s bad habit of delegating vast and vague powers to the executive branch. (...)

Presidents used executive orders to advance their agendas and to bypass Congress, which avoided hard votes. Presidents got to take credit for big stuff. Activists didn’t have to compromise. Virtually everything ended up in court. But a headline would read, “Court Strikes Down Student Loan Forgiveness” instead of “Court Says Only Congress Can Enact Student Loan Debt Forgiveness.”

The court has been trying to revive congressional power with a constitutional defibrillator called the major questions doctrine. The doctrine requires Congress to speak clearly before allowing the executive branch to make big policy changes. In this arrangement, the unitary executive theory can ensure the president gets to do his job, while the major questions doctrine (or what we should start referring to as the unitary legislative doctrine) can make Congress do its job.

Some will argue that Congress cannot legislate effectively on the complex issues of the modern worlds of business and economics, regulation of industry and the like. But the solution to gridlock is not transferring legislative power to the president. Constitutional structure exists to prevent the concentration of power that threatens liberty, not to facilitate it for efficiency.

The president should direct priorities within congressionally defined boundaries with appointees that he has the power to remove when they can’t or won’t further his policy objectives. But we cannot tolerate Congress writing blank checks that the president fills in.

If the high court applies these two doctrines, the executive agencies face a variety of paths. Perhaps Congress will claw back some of its authority and narrow its mission. Perhaps we will once again elect people to Congress who care about legislating. Furthermore, they may be willing to forge lasting compromises with the other side to prevent presidents from wielding this much power, understanding that the other side will also have all that power one day soon.

by Sarah Isgur, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Alberto Miranda

Pete Hegseth: Kill Everybody

[ed. What the hell are we doing here?]

[ed. Another day, another atrocity (more so if you count Republican spinelessness and knee-jerk support for anything this administration does, including committing war crimes). See also: November 29, 2025 (LFAA); and,  Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all (WaPo):]

***

As two men clung to a stricken, burning ship targeted by SEAL Team 6, the Joint Special Operations commander followed the defense secretary’s order to leave no survivors. (...)

The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any of the men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.

Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.

***

[ed. Want to guess Hegseth's response to such serious allegations? "As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland." Um no, Pete. The news is focusing on you, not our "incredible warriors" who are currently - at your command - deploying battleships, drones, missles and more to destroy random fishing boats. At least he was sober enough to make a statement, but then couldn't resist reminding everyone of how a dignified cabinet secretary should respond by posting this on his X account). At least he correctly identifies as a cartoon character. But others haven't been so charitable:

"Perhaps Hegseth thinks that sinking boats on the high seas is funny. Maybe he just wanted to own the libs and all that. Or maybe he thought he could disrupt the gathering war crimes narrative, like the school delinquent pulling a fire alarm during an exam. Or maybe he just has poor judgment and even worse impulse control (which would explain a lot of things about Pete Hegseth). No matter the reason, his choice to trivialize the use of American military force reveals both the shallowness of the man’s character and the depth of his contempt for the military as an institution.

Posting stupid memes after being accused of murder is not the response of a patriot who must answer to the public about the security of the United States and its people in uniform. It is not the response of a secretary of defense who values the advice of the officers who report to him. It is not the response of a human being who comprehends the risks—and the costs—of ordering other people to kill helpless men clinging to the wreck of a boat."

This all prompted me to look at his Wikipedia entry, something I haven't had the stomach to do until now. What a piece of work.]

The Bookie at the Center of the Ohtani Betting Scandal

It was a round of poker, fittingly, that upended Mathew Bowyer’s life in spectacular fashion. While he preferred to sate his appetite for risk by playing baccarat, poker had served as his formative introduction to the pleasures and possibilities of gambling. Back in the early Nineties, as an enterprising high school student in Orange County, California, Bowyer ran a regular game out of his childhood home that provided a template for what he later organized his adult life around on a dizzying scale: the thrill of the wager, the intoxicant of fast money, and the ability to shimmy into worlds inaccessible to most. Unlike so many of Orange County’s native sons, for example, Bowyer wasn’t raised with access to bottomless funds. But his adolescent poker winnings netted him enough to buy a pickup, which he tricked out with a thunderous subwoofer that ensured that his presence was felt even when he wasn’t seen.

Thirty years later, on Sept. 8, 2021, Bowyer was behind the wheel of a very different vehicle, his white Bentley GT Continental, driving to a very different poker game. Held in a hotel conference room in San Diego, it was hosted by some players and staff of the L.A. Angels, who were in town for two games against the Padres. For Bowyer, then a 46-year-old father of five who could be mistaken for a retired slugger — confident gait, hulking arms mosaicked in tribal tattoos — attending was a no-brainer. These were the back rooms where he cultivated new clients to expand what he referred to, cryptically, as “my business.”

During the poker game, Bowyer and one of his friends, a stocky guy named Michael Greenberg who had been a fixture at those long-ago high school poker games, began talking to a man seated at the card table. Japanese, slight in build, sporting a gray T-shirt, with inky hair cut into a modish bowl, neither Greenberg nor Bowyer yet knew the man’s name — Ippei Mizuhara. But both were aware that he was the interpreter and close friend of a player being heralded as the most extraordinary in baseball history: Shohei Ohtani, the two-way phenomenon who was then in his third year with the Angels, and finishing up a transcendent season in which he would hit 46 home runs, strike out 156 batters, and be named the American League Most Valuable Player. This connection, however, was not the reason Bowyer was keen to talk to Mizuhara. Between hands at the poker table, the interpreter was obsessively placing bets on sports through his phone.

Bowyer sidled up for a brief conversation — one he’d later come to spend many sleepless nights replaying in his mind.

“What are you betting on?”

“Soccer,” replied the interpreter.

“I run my own site,” said Bowyer, speaking as he always did: polite tone, penetrating eye contact. “We do soccer — we do it all. And with me, you don’t need to use your credit card. I’ll give you credit.” He extended his hand. “My name’s Matt.”

“I’m Ippei.”

“Ippei, if you’re interested, hit me up.”

And that was that, an exchange of the sort that Bowyer had been finessing for the better part of two decades in constructing one of the largest and most audacious illegal bookmaking operations in the United States. He’d had versions of this talk on manicured golf courses, over $5,000 bottles of Macallan 30 scotch, while flying 41,000 feet above the Earth in private jets comped by casinos, and lounging poolside at his palatial Orange County home. He’d had the talk with celebrities, doctors, day traders, trial lawyers, trust-fund scions. Often nothing came of it. But sometimes it led to a new customer — or “player,” in his industry’s parlance — adding to a stable of nearly 1,000 bettors who placed millions in weekly wagers through Bowyer. He used the bulk of his earnings to fuel his own ferocious thirst for gambling and the attendant lifestyle, escaping often to villas at Las Vegas casinos for lavish sprees that earned him a reputation as one of the Strip’s more notorious whales — a high roller with an icy demeanor doted on by the top brass of numerous casinos.

In this case, however, the exchange with Mizuhara sent Bowyer down a different path. Shortly after the poker game, he set up Mizuhara with an account at AnyActionSports.com, the site Bowyer used for his operation, run through servers in Costa Rica. It was the start of a relationship that, while surreal in its bounty, would eventually come to attract the unwanted attention of the Department of Homeland Security, the criminal division of the Internal Revenue Service, Major League Baseball, the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and, as Bowyer’s illicit empire crumbled, the world at large.

‘Victim A’

Two years later, in December 2023, Shohei Ohtani signed what was then the largest contract in professional sports history with the Los Angeles Dodgers: 10 years, $700 million. The deal for “Shotime” dominated the sports media for months. But on March 20, 2024, news broke that threatened to derail the show just as it was beginning.

The revelation that millions of dollars had been transferred from Ohtani’s bank account to an illegal bookmaker surfaced in dueling reports from ESPN and the Los Angeles Times. Both centering on his then-39-year-old interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, the dispatches were as confounding as they were explosive. In an interview with ESPN, Mizuhara initially presented himself as a problem gambler, declared that Ohtani was not involved in any betting, and explained the payments as Ohtani bailing out a friend, going so far as to describe the two of them sitting at Ohtani’s computer and wiring the money.

But the following morning, before ESPN went live, Mizuhara disavowed his earlier statements. The Dodgers immediately fired Mizuhara; investigations were launched by MLB and the IRS; and five days later, Ohtani issued a statement denying any role in a scandal that echoed unsavory chapters of the sport’s past. “I never bet on sports or have willfully sent money to the bookmaker,” Ohtani said. “I’m just beyond shocked.”

Given the whiplash of shifting narratives, the speculation that followed was inevitable. Flip on talk radio, or venture into a conspiratorial corner of the internet, and you were treated to bro-inflected theorizing as to what really happened, what Ohtani really knew. Equally intriguing was the timing. The scandal erupted at a moment when the longtime stigma surrounding sports betting had, following a 2018 Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for wider legalization, given way to a previously unfathomable landscape where pro athletes had become spokespeople for entities like DraftKings and FanDuel; where ESPN operated its own multimillion-dollar sportsbook; and where Las Vegas, a town historically shunned by professional sports leagues, had just celebrated its reinvention as a sporting mecca by hosting the Super Bowl. But if such factors tempered the public’s instinct to rush to the harshest judgments, the ordeal also revealed how the corporatization of sports betting had done little to snuff out a secretive underworld estimated to be responsible for $64 billion in illicit wagers annually. (California is one of 11 states where sports betting remains illegal.)

Yet perhaps most remarkable was the speed at which the matter was seemingly resolved. Acting with uncharacteristic swiftness, the federal government issued a scathing criminal complaint against Mizuhara just three weeks later — on April 11 — that supported Ohtani’s narrative. The numbers were vertigo-inducing. Over roughly 24 months, Mizuhara had placed more than $300 million in bets, running up a debt of $40.6 million to an illegal bookmaking operation. To service it, the government alleged, Mizuhara himself became a criminal, taking control of one of Ohtani’s bank accounts and ­siphoning almost $17 million from the superstar. In June, Mizuhara pleaded guilty to bank and tax fraud.

One person who was not shocked by any twist in this saga was a central character who, throughout, remained an enigma: Mathew Bowyer. Since meeting Mizuhara at that poker game in San Diego, he had received at least $16.25 million in wires directly from Ohtani’s account, had poured most of it into conspicuous escapades in Vegas, and had been braced for a reckoning since the previous October, when dozens of armed federal agents raided his home. While the raid inadvertently unearthed the Ohtani-Mizuhara ordeal, the mushrooming scandal obscured a more complex, far-reaching, and ongoing drama. The agents who descended upon Bowyer’s home were not interested in the private misfortunes of a baseball superstar, but rather in exposing something Bowyer understood more intimately than most: how Las Vegas casinos skirted laws — and reaped profits — by allowing major bookies to launder millions by gambling on the city’s supposedly cleaned-up Strip.

by David Amsden, Rolling Stone |  Read more:

Image: Philip Cheung/Kyodo AP/Matthew Bowyer

Exploring the Implications of the U.S. Supreme Court Decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson

[ed. Why it's now easier to remove or relocate homeless tent encampments.]

On June 28, the United States Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Johnson v. Grants Pass that enforcing camping regulations against homeless persons is not a “cruel and unusual punishment.” Local governments can now enforce camping regulations without fear of being sued for violating the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The Supreme Court’s opinion in Johnson effectively struck down and overruled the underlying Ninth Circuit case, Martin v. Boise. The Ninth Circuit’s decision in Martin had led to widespread tent encampments throughout the western U.S.

Martin held that enforcing camping regulations against homeless people violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment if there were more homeless people in a city than available shelter beds. (...)

Homelessness Turned into a Legal Storm

Martin v. Boise

The Ninth Circuit first held that camping regulations could not be enforced against homeless people in Martin v. Boise. The Ninth Circuit then expanded Martin with its decision in Johnson v. Grants Pass.

Under Martin, the Eighth Amendment means that if there are no “available” shelter beds, it’s cruel and unusual punishment to issue a homeless person any kind of criminal penalty for violating a city’s camping ordinance.

The Ninth Circuit reasoned that because the unhoused have to exist somewhere, fining them for violating camping ordinances is no different than criminalizing their status as a homeless person. This new rule made it very difficult for cities to push homeless individuals into services.

Instead, the ruling empowered homeless individuals to push back at local government. Justice Gorsuch, who authored the decision in Johnson, describes how people in San Francisco who were homeless would cite the Martin case by name when rejecting city services and “as their justification to permanently occupy and block public sidewalks.” Johnson, 603 US ___ at 9 (2024) (citing San Francisco Brief at 8-9).

Johnson v. Grants Pass prior to reaching the Supreme Court

Within weeks of Martin v. Boise being decided, the same lawyers filed Johnson v. Grants Pass in the U.S. District Court for Oregon. Johnson expanded upon Martin. While Martin only prohibited issuing criminal fines to the homeless, Johnson held that even issuing civil citations to the homeless was a cruel and unusual punishment that violated the U.S. Constitution.

The city of Grants Pass’ single homeless shelter was never more than 60% full. Despite that, the trial court held that there were no “adequate” shelter beds available. The court observed since the city’s only shelter was operated by Gospel Rescue Mission, and included a religious component, it was not “adequate” for everyone. Some people did not want to be exposed to a religious message.

 
A second way that Johnson expanded Martin was by finding that homeless individuals did not have to wait until they were cited or prove that no shelter bed was available to sue the city. Instead, all homeless persons could join together in a single class action lawsuit and sue the city preemptively. It was then the city’s burden to prove that “adequate” shelter beds were available for everyone.

Finally, Johnson expanded Martin by giving homeless persons not only immunity from camping laws, but also an affirmative right to protection from the elements. In other words, Martin ruled you can’t cite someone who has no place to go. Johnson said they were also entitled to protection from the elements as well.

The Ninth Circuit rulings left local government officials and law enforcement paralyzed, creating an unmanageable focus on “adequate” daily shelter space. Cities wishing to enforce camping regulations had to count the number of involuntarily homeless people each evening and then how many shelter beds were available. Additionally, each shelter bed had to be matched to each homeless person. Shelter space didn’t count if the shelter didn’t allow pets and the person had a dog, or the shelter didn’t allow smoking and the homeless person used cigarettes, or the shelter was organized by a religious organization and the homeless person didn’t want to be exposed to a religious message.

Practically speaking, matching the various needs of the homeless to the different types of shelters and keeping a daily count of available beds was an overwhelming task for any city. Local government could no longer compel homeless individuals to use services, resulting in widespread tent encampments.

Ending the Storm: Petitioning the Supreme Court

Because this unworkable rule tied the hands of local officials throughout the western United States, there was widespread frustration with Martin and Johnson. CIS encouraged the city of Grants Pass to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. After that, something remarkable happened.

Amicus briefs were filed by numerous entities including: 

• National League of Cities;
• League of Oregon Cities (LOC);
• Association of Oregon Counties (AOC);
• Special Districts Association of Oregon (SDAO);
• California Governor Gavin Newsom;
• San Franciso Mayor London Breed;
• League of California Cities;
• Association of Idaho Cities;
• League of Arizona Cities and Towns;
• North Dakota League of Cities;
• Cities of Anchorage, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Honolulu, Colorado Springs, Milwaukee, Providence, and Saint Paul;
• District Attorneys of Sacramento and San Diego;
• California State Sheriffs Association;
• California Police Chiefs Association;
• Washington State Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs; and
• 20 Different States, and more.

In fact, there was a record number of friend-of-the-court briefs filed in support of Grants Pass’ Supreme Court petition. In response, the Supreme Court not only granted review but made clear that the court heard what cities and counties were saying.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Decision in Johnson v. Grants Pass

On April 22, 2024, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the case. The focus was not on who should do what but on interpreting the Eighth Amendment. They debated whether it was cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to ticket, fine, or jail someone repeatedly trespassing on city property because they were homeless and had “nowhere else to go.” The issue for the court was whether the Eighth Amendment regulates the type of punishments applied to a crime or whether it regulates what types of behavior can be considered a crime.

Those in favor of upholding the Grants Pass case argued that the Eighth Amendment prohibits punishing someone for their “involuntary” status, such as homelessness, deeming it cruel and unusual. The opposing side contended that the Eighth Amendment only addresses the type of punishment, not the status of the person being punished.

The Eighth Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled, addresses methods of punishment, not who can be punished. The punishments in question were a ticket, a small fine, or very short jail terms. The court found none of these to be cruel and unusual. In fact, these are commonly used punishments across the country. The other side argued that these punishments were cruel and unusual as applied to the homeless. But the majority opinion maintained that the Eighth Amendment regulates types of punishment, not who can be punished.

The court specifically found that the Ninth Circuit inappropriately limited local governments’ tools for tackling the homelessness issue. In so doing, the court recognized that homelessness is a multifaceted problem not suited to a single policy. The opinion emphasized that decisions on how to address homelessness should be left to community leaders, not judges:

“Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it. At bottom, the question this case presents is whether the Eighth Amendment grants federal judges primary responsibility for assessing those causes and devising those responses. It does not.” Johnson, 603 US ___ at 34 (2024).
The court observed the historical tradition of communities working hard to solve difficult social issues, then stated:
“If the multitude of amicus briefs before us proves one thing, it is that the American people are still at it.” Johnson, 603 US ___ at 34 (2024).

The opinion quoted extensively from the League of Oregon Cities’ amicus brief, highlighting Oregon’s specific concerns. Our local concerns were heard by the Supreme Court, thanks to the collective efforts of government officials throughout the western states (even throughout the nation) contributing their voices and resources through amicus briefs that told real stories of the struggle to address homelessness under a one size fits all approach mandated by the Ninth Circuit.

The Supreme Court concluded by stating that the Ninth Circuit opinion in Johnson was reversed, and the Eighth Amendment does not prevent local officials from crafting unique solutions to homelessness. (...)

One thing we know for certain, with Johnson v. Grants Pass now overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, local control has returned. Community leaders are no longer in danger of being sued for the “cruel and unusual punishment” of requiring everyone to abide by camping regulations. 

by Kirk Mylander, League of Oregon Cities |  Read more:

Image: via

[ed. Just got back from Honolulu, my old home town. One thing I noticed right away, coming from the airport, was that there weren't any homeless encampments, which in previous years had exploded all over the city. The next day I saw police actively clearing one site down the street that had sprung up just the previous night - they were right on it.  So I asked one of my friends where everyone had gone to and he said Waianae, a small rural community pretty far removed from town on the northwest coast of Oahu. Sounded good to me (maybe not to Waianaeans), but I wondered how the city had figured out how to be more proactive in addressing a problem that had seemed so intractable for years. I'm not sure, but it might have had something to do with this ruling, which I'd never heard of before (thanks, major media). See also: What Happened To SF Homelessness? (ACX)]