Good News Everyone!

It looks like the Ellison nepo-baby will have to delay the takeover of Warner Brothers, because it was clear that if they were not to do so voluntarily, then the judge would have made it mandatory.

I'm not sure whether the State Attorneys General suing to stop the deal will prevail, it would have been a long shot a decade ago, but antitrust law has shifted a lot in the past 10 years,

Paramount said on Friday that it had agreed to halt its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery until next June at the latest while a judge considers a lawsuit from state attorneys general who sued to block the deal. The delay is the latest curveball in a deal that would remake Hollywood.

In a legal filing, Paramount and the state attorneys general said that they had reached an agreement to freeze the $111 billion merger while the case works its way through court, extending a shorter pause imposed this week by a federal judge in California. The merger agreement expires on June 4, 2027, if the deal has not closed by that date.

The delay could be costly for Paramount. The company, run by the tech scion David Ellison, has agreed to pay Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders a fee of $650 million for every quarter that the deal does not close, beginning in October.

(Emphasis mine)

Given that Oracle corporation, the source of his family's wealth via his father is now approaching junk bond status, this may end up being more than just a delay.

………

The coalition of 12 states led by California includes New York, Connecticut, Oregon and Arizona. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who led the states, said in a statement that the delay was “great news for audiences.” Letitia James, the New York attorney general, called the freeze “a crucial victory” in a statement.

The deal would unite under one roof two major movie studios, the streaming services HBO Max and Paramount+ and networks including CBS and CNN. Mr. Ellison has aggressively pushed to acquire Warner Bros., ultimately outbidding Netflix after proposing a handful of escalating offers.

The deal was already a big bet for David Ellison, his partners at RedBird Capital and his father, Larry Ellison, who personally guaranteed the acquisition. The combined company is expected to carry about $80 billion in debt, a daunting burden for the younger Mr. Ellison. Now, with the delay potentially triggering hundreds of millions of dollars in additional fees, the deal could become even less attractive.

I dunno, the deal is pretty f%$#ing ugly right now.

The merits of the deal are monopoly rents and currying political favor with Trump and his Evil Minions™.

This deal is pretty horrible for the rest of us.

Here is hoping that Oracle ends up in receivership before the deal goes through. 

Headline of the Day

Penis Costume Protester Prevails in Court

—Courthouse News Service

Yeah, I know this is from April, I was doing some bloggy house cleaning, and came across it again.

One could call it a, ahem, hard case. But ultimately, an Alabama judge found, not hard enough.

Fairhope Municipal Judge Haymes Snedeker acquitted Renea Gamble Wednesday of all remaining misdemeanor charges stemming from her decision to wear a inflatable 7-foot penis costume at an anti-Trump “No Kings” protest in October 2025.

Gamble walked out of the courtroom after three hours of testimony cleared of any wrongdoing, but her attorney said her arrest was traumatizing and she may consider legal recourse.

Seriously, in a nation of truck nuts, how is this an arrestable offense? 

Speaking of Defamation Lawsuits

The Guardian has just had the defamation suit filed against it by United Healthcare dismissed.

The judge determined that the story that the paper reported, that UHC was bribing nursing homes to decrease transfers to hospitals, was true, and truth is always a defense against defamation. 

A state judge in Delaware has dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought against the Guardian by the UnitedHealth Group.

Delaware superior court judge Calvin Scott’s ruling stemmed from a lawsuit that the US’s largest health insurance conglomerate pursued against the Guardian in May 2025 over an investigation by the outlet which reported that UnitedHealth secretly made payments to nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers for residents.

………

In a ruling issued on Monday, Scott granted the Guardian’s motion to dismiss. And he dismissed all six defamation claims in the lawsuit.

“The article’s reporting of the bonuses as ‘secret’ or made ‘secretly’ or ‘quietly,’ is substantially true,” Scott wrote in one part of the ruling.

In another part, he added that the Guardian “is not required to publish facts just because United would have preferred more favorable facts”.

Yeah, there's a reason that UHC is the most widely loathed health insurance company in America.

Pass the Popcorn

The BBC has secured an order requiring that Donald Trump provide detailed information about his businesses for his defamation lawsuit.

This is a no-brainer from a legal perspective.  In addition to the requirement that the statements be false (absence of malice for public figures), but it also requires a showing of harm.

In this case, in addition demonstrating harm to the delicate feelings of snowflake Trump, this means that Trump has to demonstrate real and measurable financial harms.

Donald Trump must divulge detailed financial information from his many businesses as part of his $10bn defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation, a federal judge ruled during a discovery hearing on Tuesday, according to news reports.

The ruling by US magistrate judge Enjoliqué Lett could open a unique window into the hundreds of businesses owned by Trump’s family trust. It also highlights a potential drawback for Trump’s strategy of bludgeoning critical media with multibillion-dollar lawsuits.

Trump filed a defamation lawsuit late last year seeking $10bn in damages over a 2024 documentary called “Trump, A Second Chance,” which features a scene of the speech he made before his supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. The scene splices lines together to make it appear that Trump directly urged his supporters to attack. The BBC apologized to Trump last year for the misleading edit, but has argued the president’s defamation claims have no merit.

………

Trump’s lawyers are also trying to dodge the forced release of his financial records by limiting the scope of the lawsuit. Alejandro Brito, a Trump lawyer, told Lett on Tuesday that he intends to amend the current complaint, according to Politico. The amended complaint will say the documentary only caused reputational damage, rather than undermining his businesses, making the financial disclosures unnecessary.

But for now, the BBC can move forward with requests for Trump’s financial records. The BBC aims to argue that Trump’s wealth skyrocketed since the documentary aired, contradicting the claim that the documentary undermined his businesses.

I am thinking that if the BBC gets this data and looks into it thoroughly, they should find some convincing data of self-dealing and bribery.

If they find such evidence, they should report on it. 

How About Adding a Few Zeros?

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch has been threatened with $1,000.00/day in fines for refusing to comply with an order for him to produce document for Journalist and Lawyer Katie Phang's lawsuit for a more complete release of the Epstein files.

Good.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is begging a federal judge to let him off the hook for a $1,000-a-day fine.

This fine is Blanche’s latest setback in a series of back-and-forths surrounding a lawsuit brought against him by journalist Katie Phang, who has accused the Department of Justice of failing to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Phang sued the DOJ in April for a “brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation” of the law, which President Donald Trump reluctantly signed in November.

Despite the Justice Department’s repeated assertions that the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and subsequent release of files has been conducted with “an unprecedented commitment to transparency,” millions of files are still either missing or redacted.

In June, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered Blanche to produce previously redacted materials from the Epstein files, including FBI notes from interviews with a woman alleging that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1980s when she was 13 years old, as well as email exchanges with Epstein regarding a “torture video” and the identities of Epstein’s potential co-conspirators.

Sullivan gave Blanche until July 2 to produce the materials. When the acting attorney general failed to do so, Phang suggested a daily $1,000 fine until he complied.

Fine him, and then go in and take the gold from his teeth. 

It's Only 14 Days, But

I am heartened that federal district judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín has issued a 2 week injunction against the Paramont-Warner merger.

The only way this deal makes sense is through the extraction of monopoly rents, and they need those rents sooner rather than later.

With nepo-baby David Ellison's Paramount Skydance Corporation being largely dependent on his dad's Oracle wealth, and given that Oracle bonds are rapidly approaching junk bond status, any delay in the deal could both kill the deal and Paramount Skydance.

A federal judge on Monday ordered Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery to halt their $81bn merger for at least two weeks, allowing states that are challenging the deal more time to see their case through in court.

Twelve states, led by California, sued to block Paramount’s pending buyout of Warner last week – alleging that such a combination would “extinguish competition” in Hollywood and lead to fewer choices for consumers, particularly moviegoers and cable customers across the US.

The states’ top prosecutors called on Warner and Paramount to not close the transaction until after a court had time to “fully evaluate” their claims. And when the companies refused, they filed for a temporary restraining order – which is what district judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted on Monday. That opens the door to a potential preliminary injunction that the states are also seeking to effectively block the deal.

………

The temporary restraining order granted on Monday halts the deal from progressing for at least 14 days, although the pause could be extended for up to 28 days. The court has set 3 August as a date for a hearing on the states’ preliminary injunction motion, although that schedule could also be pushed back.

This does not appear to be anything more than a delay to allow for evidence to be presented and evaluated, but 14 days is better than no days.

They Will Never See the Inside of a British Jail

Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate were arrested in Florida in response to an extradition request from the U.K. for rape and human trafficking.

I do not think that they will be extradited, at least not while Donald Trump in office.

Not only are they friends of the Trump friendly, particularly Barron Trump, but rape friendly obnoxious white dudes is Trump's base.

Andrew and Tristan Tate, prominent influencers in the so-called manosphere, were arrested by federal marshals in Miami on Saturday in connection with new criminal charges of rape and sex trafficking in England, U.S. and British law enforcement officials said.

Prosecutors in Britain said that they were seeking the brothers’ extradition.

The Tates, who have British and American citizenship, were detained “pending ongoing legal proceedings,” according to a statement from the police in Bedfordshire, a county north of London.

British prosecutors had previously charged the brothers with rape, human trafficking and sexual assault. The new charges stem from alleged offenses involving four women that took place between July 2010 and August 2017, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement on Sunday after the arrests.

British prosecutors said the new charges against Andrew Tate, 39, include seven counts of rape; three counts of sex trafficking; three counts of assault; and 19 more charges relating to sexual images of children and “extreme pornography.”

………

The brothers, who have cultivated a large following of young men by preaching brazen masculinity and have made a fortune from online pornography, have faced criminal investigations in three countries.

In Romania, where the Tates previously lived, prosecutors have been investigating allegations that they coerced dozens of women, including a 17-year-old girl, into pornography. They have also investigated Andrew Tate over allegations that he raped one of the women and had sex with a 15-year-old.

Romanian prosecutors had barred the brothers from leaving the country while investigations there continue, but last year they agreed to lift the travel restrictions. The move was the culmination of a yearslong effort by Andrew Tate to forge alliances with President Trump’s advisers and family members, a Times investigation found.

………

Since the travel restrictions against them in Romania were lifted, the brothers have resumed their jet-setting lifestyle, though they have not returned to Britain. Andrew Tate had been advertised as a co-host for a bare-knuckle boxing event on Saturday night in downtown Miami.

Their arrest on Saturday signaled active efforts by British authorities to extradite the brothers, even without a clear resolution to the cases in Romania.

The whole MAGA-sphere is made up of the worst people in the world.

Now Indict Them

Federal law enforcement is finally sharing data from the Good and Pretti murders with Minnesota law enforcement.

Good.  No go forth and indict the bastards. 

Months of effort between Minnesota’s state and federal law enforcement agencies led the Justice Department to turn over a substantial amount of evidence from the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during Operation Metro Surge, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Monday.

The evidence, which was exchanged with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) over the last two weeks without public acknowledgment by the federal government or Minnesota law enforcement officials, includes the SUV that Good was driving when she was shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross. It also includes hard drives of federal evidence like body camera footage and statements from immigration enforcement agents about the killings.

At a news conference, Moriarty said the new information will allow state investigators to be more thorough in determining whether or not to charge federal agents with crimes in connection with the killings.

 

Sometimes the Good Ones Win

Case in point, E. Jean Carroll, who just got her $5.6 million for the first of her defamation suits against her rapist Donald Trump.

Now, how about that $83 million defamation award from the 2nd suit?

Writer E. Jean Carroll has received some $5.625 million in her sexual abuse and defamation case against President Trump — a payment that was delayed for years as Trump filed appeals in the civil case.

A federal jury in Manhattan awarded Carroll $5 million in damages in 2023, after finding Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her. The final payment includes three years' worth of interest.

………

In a 2019 memoir, Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in 1996. After she leveled that charge, Trump denied the claim, said he'd never met Carroll, and described her as a liar motivated by ulterior goals. Carroll then filed a lawsuit against Trump accusing him of defamation.

I'm surprised. Paying his debts is not a common behavior for Trump.

The French Freddy Krueger Returns

I am referring, of course to Marine Le Pen who was cleared by a French appellate court to run for President of France in the next election.

It appears that French voters will have the opportunity to see the front-runner of the Presidential race wearing an ankle monitor.

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

For a long time, Marine Le Pen believed she was untouchable. So certain was she of her political immortality that she had turned it into a worn-out joke: Nothing would ever stop her from running for office, "unless a truck runs over me." But since March 31, 2025, she was no longer laughing.

On that day, a court had set in motion the inexorable countdown of her political career. Convicted of embezzlement, heavily sentenced, and left disqualified from standing in elections, Le Pen caught a glimpse, for the first time, of her political "death." And while the "miracle" she was hoping for from the Paris Court of Appeal did not quite materialize on Tuesday, July 7, she decided to take her resurrection into her own hands. 

Convicted again for misappropriation of public funds, Le Pen benefited from greater leniency from the appellate judges – with her election ban reduced to the bare minimum – and confirmed that evening she would be running in the 2027 presidential election. No matter if her new appeal to the highest court is uncertain. Now, any potential setbacks will only serve to reinforce her narrative of a political "sacrifice." On her first campaign poster, celebrating a "renaissance," she poses with her arms outstretched, Christ-like.

More details on the electronic monitoring here.

It's fairly clear that she will make it to the runoff.  The only question is how many of Frances polity will support her if her opponent is someone like the left wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

I expect that there are quite a lot of potential Franz von Papen's out there., 

Quote of the Day

The Matter Continues and Appears Likely to Do So Until either the Heat Death of the Universe or the Year of Linux on the Desktop – Whichever Comes Sooner.

—The Register on the seemingly never ending Unix (Eunuchs?) lawsuit between IBM and the remnants of SCO.

The ancient dispute over ownership of UNIX, and perhaps Linux too, has returned to court. Again.

………

SCO and its successors struggled to survive, but interested parties kept the lawsuit alive because the chance to emerge as owner of parts of the Linux codebase, and IBM’s code, had the potential to turn into a colossal payday.

………

The matter continues and appears likely to do so until either the heat death of the universe or the year of Linux on the desktop – whichever comes sooner.

Please just make it stop. 

At Least These Goniffs Have Been Stopped for a Decade

I am referring, of course, to John Deere, who have been forced into a settlement that requires them to allow farmers to fix their own tractors.

The Right to Repair movement is generally associated with electronics, but its latest battle has been fought—and won—on an entirely different front: the ranches of America’s heartland. The issue at hand was a dispute between the Federal Trade Commission and tractor/farm equipment manufacturing company John Deere, and, specifically, a suit filed jointly by the FTC and five states against the company back in 2025. That suit was settled this week, and the settlement represents a resounding victory for the plaintiffs.

The FTC’s statement about the case accused the company of “illegally restrict[ing] the ability of farmers and independent technicians to repair Deere equipment, including tractors and combine [harvesters].” That statement was issued by then-FTC chair Lina Khan, who has since been removed from the position by the Trump administration and replaced by the more “deal-friendly,” in the words of the New York Times, Andrew Ferguson. (She has since served as part of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s transition team.)

………

Nevertheless, John Deere’s eagerness to reap the amber waves of gain that could be had by redefining the concept of ownership has meant that they’ve spent the last decade doing their very best to make it difficult for anyone but authorized dealers to repair their machinery. In particular, as per the FTC’s statement on this week’s settlement, the company “makes the only software repair tools capable of performing all electronic repairs on Deere equipment…[but] has previously made such tools available only to its authorized dealers, forcing farmers to rely on authorized dealers for many necessary repairs.” And as Wien explained in 2025, those software tools are copyrighted, so “not only [were] [John Deere] being anti-competitive, it [was] literally illegal to compete with them.”

That’s all set to change with the settlement reached between the company and the FTC this week. The FTC’s statement on the matter explains that the terms of the settlement require John Deere to “provide farmers and independent repair providers with the same equipment repair resources, including applicable software capabilities, that it currently provides to authorized Deere dealers”—and to do so “for the next 10 years and under the supervision of the FTC and plaintiff states.” 

This is good.  What would have been better would have been to send some Deere senior executives to jail. 

Meanwhile, In Better Sexual Assault Related News

The judge overseeing the E. Jean Carroll case has told Donald Trump, "Dear Orcface, pay up or else!"

Judge Lewis Kaplan has said that Trump must pay the $5 million judgement immediately.

Call me a cynic, but given his reputation for paying his debts, I'm pretty sure that this will not be resolved for many months, if not years.

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered that the writer E. Jean Carroll should promptly receive a $5 million jury award, days after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by President Trump and despite his last-minute attempt to get the justices to reconsider.

In a two-page ruling, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of Manhattan federal court cited the Supreme Court’s June 29 order denying Mr. Trump’s request that the justices review the matter. That cleared the way for the funds, which Mr. Trump had deposited with the court, to be released to Ms. Carroll.

A Manhattan jury awarded the multimillion-dollar judgment to Ms. Carroll in May 2023 after finding him liable for sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. The jury also found that Mr. Trump defamed Ms. Carroll by calling her allegations against him “a Hoax and a lie” on social media. He has continued to deny assaulting Ms. Carroll.

Even Trump's pet judges at the Supreme Court found no reason do deal with his sh%$.

………

After the court’s rejection last week, Ms. Carroll had immediately asked a federal judge to order the president to pay her, asserting that Mr. Trump had “consistently sought to obstruct and delay payment” of the jury’s award.

“In the last analysis, defendant has been stalling this case for years,” Judge Kaplan wrote in a six-page opinion issued Wednesday evening explaining the ruling. The judge cited the jury’s verdict, the fact that it was upheld on appeal and the Supreme Court’s decision not to review the matter, adding that it was time for Mr. Trump to “pay the judgment.”

The Supreme Court wrapped up its term last week and is now in summer recess. Although the justices continue to hear emergency applications, they are not scheduled to meet to consider other cases until September. That is when the justices will convene as they prepare to begin a new term, which officially starts on the first Monday in October. As a result, they may not consider Mr. Trump’s new request for months.

By then, the court may also need to decide whether to review a second case related to Ms. Carroll and Mr. Trump. Lawyers for Mr. Trump said in their petition on Wednesday that the president “will imminently file” to ask the justices to step in and overturn the verdict of a separate jury, which in 2024 had ordered him to pay Ms. Carroll $83.3 million after concluding Mr. Trump had defamed her in 2019.

 Here's an idea, seize the golf course at Mar a Lago, and erect a toll booth on it.

That's Gonna Leave a Mark

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams just issued a ruling stating that Donald Trump, the Department of Justice, and the IRS committed a fraud on the court with their lawsuit, and subsequent "Settlement" creating a 1.7 billion slush fund.

A federal judge just nixed the settlement underlying Donald Trump’s nearly $1.8 billion slush fund.

The fund was the result of an unprecedented deal that Trump made with himself after he dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for the unlawful leak of his tax returns in 2019. The honey pot payments were pitched as reparations, paid for by U.S. taxpayers through the Department of Justice, to virtually any right-winger that felt targeted by the previous presidential administration.

“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” wrote U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in a 56-page order Monday.

Williams ruled that any entities affiliated with the slush fund settlement—including the president, the Treasury Department, and the IRS—were “prohibited” from using the details of the arrangement in any official capacity. She also referred Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, to the Florida bar for possible professional discipline. 

………

“These officials then negotiated on behalf of the United States, with his current lawyers, including his former White House Counsel, to reach a ‘settlement,’” Williams assessed. “It is risible to suggest that there was ever adverseness between the Parties.”

………

But as Williams observed, the jaw-dropping components of the case—such as the billions of dollars in taxpayer funds proposed for undefined grievances, or the blanket immunities offered to Trump—were not put before the court. Instead, the question underlying the legality of the president’s slush fund centered around whether the entities engaged in the settlement arrangement, from government representatives to Trump’s personal attorneys, ever represented different parties while they pretended to engage in a legitimate court proceeding.

“The answer is a resounding ‘no’: the Lead Plaintiff and the Government are one, a fully realized unitary interest,” Williams wrote. 

I find it rather unlikely that the Florida Bar will take any action against Brito, they have been loath to involve themselves in closely related matters, and I believe that there is a good possibility that at least 4 Supreme Court members would be supportive of what is a naked fraud upon the court.

I am not entirely sure where it goes from here. 

Today in Stopped Clocks

The Supreme Court has ruled that geofence demands from law enforcement are a 4th Amendment search which requires a judge issued search warrant, and not just an administrative warrant.

Good.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Monday that geofence warrants count as a “search” under the Fourth Amendment, a decision that will likely impact how police departments around the country seek cellphone location data in the future.

Geofence warrants compel tech companies like Google to provide information about electronic devices that are present in a given area on a particular date during a specific window of time. The case, Chatrie v. United States, involved a man who was convicted of robbing a credit union outside Richmond, Virginia, in 2019.

………

The question at hand was whether these geofencing techniques are considered a “search” under the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Supreme Court found on Monday that police had conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Chatrie’s location data from Google “because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information.” But it didn’t ban the practice completely. Police will now need to show probable cause.

………

“In recent years, police around the country have relied on geofence warrants like the one in this case tens of thousands of times to cast dragnets that violate the privacy of innocent bystanders, all without even targeting a known suspect or device. Although the Court stopped short of striking down these warrants as inherently unconstitutional, we look forward to pressing lower courts to eliminate these warrants once and for all.” 

Here's hoping that these digital dragnet will eventually be made unlawful.

6 — 3 (More like 5½ — 3½)

The Supreme Court just came frighteningly close to invalidating a Constitutional amendment because Donald Trump wanted them to.

I am, of course referring to their ruling on the birthright citizenship case, where 5 justices said that the black letter text of the US Constitution said what it said, 1 justice said that federal law would have to be changed, and 3 justices wanted to give Trump a blank check. (How I get to 5½ — 3½)

The Supreme Court on Tuesday affirmed the principle that almost everyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen, a major decision that rejects a push by President Donald Trump to fundamentally redefine who is American in ways not seen for more than 150 years.

The justices struck down an executive order by the president that said citizenship would not be granted to children born to parents who are in the country illegally or those on temporary visas for work, travel, school or humanitarian reasons.

Trump’s order would have had sweeping political, economic and social ramifications, changing the definition of citizenship in the most significant way since the 14th Amendment guaranteeing citizenship to formerly enslaved people was ratified shortly after the Civil War. 

The ruling reaffirms the long-settled understanding that the 14th Amendment automatically confers citizenship on any child born in the United States, with limited exceptions for children of diplomats and other rare cases. The principle was established in a landmark 1898 high court decision that found that Wong Kim Ark, a man born to Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, was a citizen. ………

Conservative Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh dissented from the 5-4 majority in ruling the executive order violated the 14th Amendment, but he joined the 6-3 majority in finding the order violated federal law.

………

The opinion came over the objections of conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Alito wrote a dissent, while Thomas wrote another that Gorsuch joined.

Alito said birthright citizenship acts as a magnet drawing migrants to the United States to give birth so their children could be citizens, echoing an argument the Trump administration has made.

………

Thomas said the court “adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.”

So, Alito just let his bigot flag fly, and Thomas just showed himself to be a worse historian than he is a jurist, which is a pretty heavy lift.

The Last Refuge of Scoundrels

So, the Pentagon has been refusing to review new wind power projects, and now a group of renewable energy organizations have filed a lawsuit to end this mishugas.

About f%^$#ing time.

A coalition of renewable energy groups asked a federal court on Friday to order the Pentagon to resume reviews of onshore wind projects, in an attempt to end delays by the Trump administration that have brought the U.S. wind power industry to a standstill.

Since April, the Pentagon has stopped all military reviews of proposed wind farms, which are meant to ensure that turbines don’t interfere with local radar or flight paths. Virtually every new wind project in the country needs to undergo these reviews, which until recently were considered routine and often completed within months.

………

The delays have led to a “total halt of all wind development in the United States,” the groups told the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon in a lawsuit filed against the Defense Department last week. At least 106 planned wind projects in 21 states have been stalled indefinitely, representing an estimated $47 billion in potential investment.

The delayed reviews are the latest in a series of extraordinary actions by the Trump administration to halt the expansion of wind power in the United States. On his first day in office, President Trump issued a moratorium on all approvals for wind farms on federal lands, and the Interior Department last year issued stop-work orders for five wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean that were already under construction. More recently, the administration agreed to pay several companies $1.8 billion to abandon their offshore wind plans.

Mr. Trump has called wind turbines ugly and expensive, and has instead pushed to meet rising power demand with fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.

“My goal,” he said in January, “is to not let any windmill be built.”

One does hope that whatever judge gets assigned to the case makes it clear to the government that there is no presumption of regularity, and so they will have to provide evidence supporting every "and" and "the".

I Have One Comment About the Bricks and Minifigs Thing

Do not enter into a franchise agreement without consulting a lawyer. Don't attempts to make changes to any deal without consulting a lawyer.

The whole lawyer thing more generally applies to running a business.

Basically, listen to Mike Monteiro.

He said this 15 years ago.

I will post no more on this subject, even though I will continue to follow it, because it holds a perverse fascination for me.

Good News on the Renewables Front

Arizona's extra fees to solar power users has been struck down in state court.

After years in the courts, the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Vote Solar, striking down the Arizona Corporation Commission’s (ACC) approval of discriminatory charges for customers of Arizona Public Service (APS) who have rooftop solar. In its decision, the Arizona Court of Appeals vacated the solar fees, ruling that they were imposed in an unfair manner that violated due process requirements.

APS, a regulated utility powering 1.4 million households and businesses in Arizona, first created the solar fees in its 2022 rate case, and they currently amount to roughly $2 to $3 in additional monthly charges for households with rooftop solar. Vote Solar filed an appeal in 2025 against the “grid access charge.”

APS has proposed to increase the fees to roughly $6 per month in its current rate case, which is under consideration at the ACC. Vote Solar, the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest (ACLPI) and Earthjustice are opposing the fee in that case as well.

This ruling is about not notifying the public, and not following their own rules, and not about the underlying merits of this fee.

I don't think that the fee will be reinstated, because the ruling requires proper procedure and advance public notice, and if they cannot sneak it in, public outrage would likely force the utility and the regulators to back down. 

Finally

State Attorneys General in New York, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont are over payments made to French firm TotalEnergies to shut down their offshore wind projects.

New York’s attorney general is leading a lawsuit against the Trump administration to challenge its deal that put an end to a French energy company’s offshore wind projects.

As part of an agreement with the Trump administration, TotalEnergies said in March it would stop developing offshore wind projects in the U.S. and will instead invest in oil and gas production in the country. The government said the company would be paid $928 million—the value of its offshore wind leases—which would then be reinvested into oil and gas projects.

The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by attorneys general from New York, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont.

“We are fighting back to stop this illegal agreement that threatens to erase over a thousand union jobs and cheat millions of New Yorkers out of clean, affordable energy,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said.TotalEnergies has said it won’t pursue any further offshore wind leases in the U.S.

“This pay-not-to-play scheme pressuring a foreign company to forgo planned offshore wind projects in America in favor of gas and oil drilling is an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars that hurts our ability to meet our energy needs, create good jobs, and help secure American energy independence while reducing emissions,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said.

It should be noted that before the payment was made, Trump attempted to shut down the program through executive order, and when he lost in court, made it clear that he would continue harassing TotalEnergies, and then offered a payment for them to shut down the project.

This is protection racket gangster bullsh%$.