Some areas of controversy of 2025 will continue into 2026

December 23, 2025

As the end of 2025 draws near, there are a few things of interest that will still be with us after the New Year arrives.

There is a proposed $6.2 billion merger of two large media organizations, Nexstar and Tegna. If this deal goes through, the merged company would be the largest TV organization in the country, and would reach more than 80 percent of U.S. households. 

Opposing the merger are some conservative groups, including the Conservative Political Action Conference, Newsmax, and the Zionist Organization of America. Their argument opposes the huge degree of coverage the company would have, viewing it as a threat to viewpoint diversity, particularly at the local news level.

On their side is the Telecommunications Act of 1996, amended in 2004, which limits the degree of television ownership at 39 percent, which is slightly less than half of the 80 percent level of ownership the merger would represent.

The Federal Communications Commission Chairman (FCC), Brendan Carr, has supported raising the cap, which would allow the merger to go through.

However, a legal analysis by appellate scholars titled "The FCC Lacks Statutory Authority to Revise the Telecommunications Act's 39% National Ownership Cap for Television” concludes that the FCC does not have the authority to raise, eliminate, or waive the long-standing 39 percent cap. Only Congress has the authority to make such changes, the analysis states.

Given what we have seen in the news and on social media involving the controlling of certain ideas that the media organizations dislike, having one giant voice that covers 80 percent of the country is a very dangerous prospect.

And, as we have seen, questionable court actions have only added to the concerns that our legal system is sometimes driven more by politics than it is by the law and the Constitution. This trend may continue in 2026.

Federal district judges have been issuing orders with nationwide effect. One example: U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to immediately halt efforts to remove criminal illegal aliens until he has more time to consider whether Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act was illegal. And, there are other instances where a district judge has also intervened in a presidential action.

There are 94 federal judicial districts and each one has at least one district judge, who is appointed for a life term. In total there are more than 670 federal district judges in the U.S. And as some of these judges see it, each of them, having judicial authority over a very small area of the country, somehow has the power to overrule the President of the United States.

A theory on what has led to many judges making rulings and taking other actions beyond their actual authority is the existing assumption that judges hold absolute immunity for their actions. There are cases where obvious errors and deliberately improper actions by judges have been ignored. Judicial immunity has been awarded to judges by other judges.

However, in a fairly recent 6-3 ruling stemming from Trump's bid to end birthright citizenship, the court said nationwide injunctions issued by district court judges "likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts."

"Federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them," said Justice Amy Coney Barrett, author of the opinion.

"When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too," Barrett said in the opinion joined by five other justices on the court.

Unwanted pregnancies that are ended by abortion is a topic that is frequently in the news. Many people favor abortion, and many others oppose it. There is a great deal of emotion on both sides of that discussion.  

This part of the column is not about abortion, per se; it does not speak for it or against it. It is to address a fairly recent and very serious related issue.

Nine states — including New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Maryland, and Oregon, plus the District of Columbia — already allow abortion up to the moment of birth.

California passed a bill that would allow infants to be “aborted” up to 28 days after birth, and Governor Gavin Newsom signed it. Maryland tried to pass a similar law, but it was defeated.

A language device used to “justify” this horrific idea is replacing the term “prenatal” in the written law with the term “perinatal.” “Prenatal” means before birth, but “perinatal” includes a period after birth. This subtle change legalizes infanticide, or murdering newborn children.

How any of us may feel about abortion, this is not permissible or acceptable. It is more than a little frightening to learn that some people in this country would try to justify killing living babies. Could this conceivably be extended to a full year, or more?

While there are other on-going problems in the country, it is possible that one or more of the three issues discussed will be resolved next year. Certainly, we can cross our fingers for that.

A big Supreme Court decision, and crazy things in blue cities

July 1, 2025

The United States Supreme Court has at long last ruled on an important issue. After months of federal district court judges issuing rulings opposing and halting actions by President Donald Trump, the Court ruled 6-3 that Trump's efforts to end "birthright" citizenship are legal and constitutional.

Not only was it found that the decision on birthright citizenship was valid, it also tells these judges to stop issuing these universal injunctions.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in the majority opinion, stated: "Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts. The Court grants the Government's applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue."

“When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too,” she continued. “The Court today puts an end to the ‘increasingly common’ practice of federal courts issuing universal injunctions.”

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson commented in a dissenting opinion: “Make no mistake: Today’s ruling allows the Executive to deny people rights that the Founders plainly wrote into our Constitution, so long as those individuals have not found a lawyer or asked a court in a particular manner to have their rights protected,” she wrote. “This perverse burden shifting cannot coexist with the rule of law.”

However, Barrett promptly and properly corrected Jackson’s flawed reasoning. "We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary."

She further clarified that when these judges issue injunctions to block Trump’s actions, they cannot apply the injunction to more than those parties involved in the case, classifying these nationwide injunctions as judicial overreach.

There are 677 authorized judgeships for these federal courts, with each of those judges having authority over a tiny sliver of the United States of America’s judicial system.  

One has to wonder exactly what these judges, supposedly trained in the law and our Constitution, were thinking when issuing these injunctions. Did they forget their extensive training in the law? Or, did they stuff their judicial integrity under the courtroom bench, and replace legal elements with political preferences?

Does this un-judicial behavior warrant some disciplinary action for those guilty judges.

“GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court! Even the Birthright Citizenship Hoax has been, indirectly, hit hard. It had to do with the babies of slaves … not the SCAMMING of our Immigration process,” Trump commented. “Congratulations to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Solicitor General John Sauer, and the entire DOJ.”

Elsewhere, in San Francisco and New York City, we find the “progressives” hard at it.

Recently, the California Senate reportedly passed a law making it illegal for store employees to confront shoplifters.

Old Navy, which is headquartered in San Francisco, announced that it will close its flagship store there. When asked why, an Old Navy store manager said that his store is hit by shoplifters at least 12 or 14 times a day.

Other name brands have also left the city, including Walgreens, T-Mobile, Whole Foods, Amazon Go, and Nordstroms.

Other downtown stores are merely waiting for their leases to run out, and then they will also leave.

The City of San Francisco just released a $6 million tourism campaign, and the next day the two largest hotels in the city shut down, blaming street conditions, and apparently not believing the tourism campaign would make a difference.

State Farm Insurance has announced that it will no longer provide business and property insurance in California, following Allstate, which left six months ago, due to policies that encourage lawbreaking.

These foolish leftist policies are producing exactly the results that their critics predicted.

And in New York City, a 33-year-old state assemblyman, Zohran Mamdani, is the Democratic candidate for New York City Mayor, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the first Muslim nominee, and a supporter of radical policies.

Predictably, he has an extremely radical plan for New York, should he win the election. 

"This is a city where one in four of its people are living in poverty, a city where 500,000 kids go to sleep hungry every night," he said recently. "And ultimately, it's a city that is in danger of losing that which it makes it so special."

He has proposed the following radical ideas to cure New York’s problems: Free bus service citywide, rent freezes and stricter accountability for negligent landlords, a chain of city-owned grocery stores, and universal childcare for children aged six weeks to five years.

As with so much of the liberal/socialist/progressive mantra, these things sound pretty good. But they don’t work as imagined. Ideas like defunding police, not enforcing some laws, rental price freezes, having the City own and control the grocery stores, and some of his former “solutions” are a recipe for disaster.

Just ask the businesses and residents in San Francisco.

Has politics infected the actions of our judicial system?

May 27, 2025

Hardly anyone disagrees with the statement that America has some serious problems. One of the most serious of those problems is what is happening in our judicial system. Mis-interpretation of our Constitution and our laws is not new, but is a problem.

A prominent interpretation issue has to do with birthright citizenship. In January, shortly after being sworn into office, President Donald Trump signed several executive orders. One of them sought to end birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. 

The liberal left, which supports illegal immigration, immediately reacted. They think that according to the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, if an illegal alien woman with child sneaks across the border on a Thursday and gives birth to that child on Friday, that child is automatically a citizen of the United States of America. 

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Upon first reading, and without thoughtful analysis, this would tend to suggest that anyone born in the U.S. is immediately a citizen, no questions asked. But with thoughtful analysis, and/or an understanding of why the 14th Amendment was ultimately passed by Congress, that interpretation falls on its face.

The liberal’s interpretation ignores both the actual language, and the actual purpose of the Amendment. Properly interpreting the Constitution’s language, and the language of laws passed by Congress, is not just relevant, but essential. And, applying the factors that were responsible for that piece of the Constitution, one of its Amendments, or a particular law — the original intent — is critical. 

Just because many years or decades have passed, and thinking may have changed since the enactment of the item in question does not mean that those factors should be or can be ignored.

A useful analysis of this comes from the Heritage Foundation, via Amy Swearer, Senior Legal Fellow, Meese Center, and Hans von Spakovsky, Election Law Reform Initiative Manager and Senior Legal Fellow.

“For the first century following the 14th Amendment’s ratification, few legal scholars would have batted an eye at a directive like Trump’s. If anything, they’d have been more confused as to why the federal government started issuing passports to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, tourists, and ‘temporary sojourners’ in the first place.  

“Contrary to popular belief, the 14th Amendment doesn’t say that all people born in the U.S. are citizens. It says that ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ are citizens. That second, critical, conditional phrase is conveniently ignored or misinterpreted by advocates of ‘universal’ birthright citizenship. 

“This was intended to constitutionalize the protections of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which provided that ‘all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power’ would be considered citizens.   

“That’s because the sponsors of the 14th Amendment made it clear that ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the U.S. means owing your political allegiance to the U.S., and not to another country. Children born to aliens are citizens of their parents’ native land, and thus owe their allegiance to, and are subject to the jurisdiction of, that native land.”

Another example of problematic judicial action is provided by an article in The Western Journal. This challenges that the idea that a federal district judge in one of the hundreds of districts can routinely issue a ruling that affects the entire country, including the actions of its president and the co-equal administrative branch.

“Trump U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer argued when being questioned by [Supreme Court] Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Thursday that the phenomenon of district court judges issuing nationwide injunctions is relatively new in the nation’s history, becoming prominent in the last four or five administrations.

“Further, they have been meted out in unprecedented numbers against Trump, with 40 in the last four months, he said.

“Sauer directed Kavanaugh to the New Deal under President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a reference point. ‘There were very, very passionate challenges to nationwide policies during the Roosevelt administration, and they were not addressed by issuing universal injunctions,’ the solicitor general highlighted.

“Sauer also addressed the Supreme Court’s past rulings on whether lower courts can issue nationwide injunctions.

“So, when the [Supreme Court] has considered and addressed this, it has consistently said, ‘You have to limit the remedy to the plaintiffs appearing in court,’’ Sauer argued.

“Then [Justice Clarence] Thomas made the most important observation of the day by asking, ‘So, we survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions?’”

“That’s exactly correct. And in fact, those were very limited, very rare, even in the 1960s,” Sauer responded. “It really exploded in 2007.”

So, we are now experiencing a pandemic of improper judicial rulings, it seems. Are these the result of persons appointed to positions of federal judgeships who really do not understand the law and the necessity of judicial neutrality and boundaries? Or, are they more concerned with political goals than with being judicially neutral referees in these cases?

The American legal system badly needs some modifications

April 1, 2025

Since Donald Trump entered the political arena the number of times he has been involved in legal actions has grown enormously. And as he continues to be involved in politics, that list continues to expand.

Each of the times he has been charged with a crime or sued excites his political enemies, and provides them with ammunition to fight him with. And his supporters and some others say that is mostly why these allegations are made and charges are brought in the first place.

The term “lawfare” has become a common term. It means to use legal elements as warfare, or using the law as a weapon of political war.

A shining example provided by Trump supporters of how lawfare is used occurred in New York not too long ago. In May of 2024, he was charged by a Democrat DA who campaigned on “getting Trump,” and he was tried in a court in a heavily Democrat county, presided over by a judge with heavy Democrat ties, and found guilty by a jury of all or mostly Democrats.

Democrats disagree with that description, of course. But the heavy influence of Democrats in that part of that heavily blue state are inarguable.

And as time has passed more questionable actions have only added to the concerns that our legal system is sometimes driven more by politics than it is by the law and the Constitution.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to immediately halt efforts to remove criminal illegal aliens until he has more time to consider whether Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act was illegal. And, there are other instances where a district judge has also intervened in a presidential action.

There are 94 federal judicial districts and each one has at least one district judge, who is appointed for a life term. In total there are more than 670 federal district judges in the U.S. And as some of these judges see it, each of them, having judicial authority over a very small area of the country, somehow has the power to overrule the President of the United States.

Other actions by trial judges have brought about resistance. New York Republican House of Representatives member Elise Stefanik produced two ethics complaints, alleging judicial abuse by two judges in cases against Trump.

One of them was Judge Arthur Engoron of the Manhattan Supreme Court. Stefanik’s complaint noted that Engoron had called Trump “a bad guy,” and had supported Attorney General Letitia James for going after him. When challenged on this, he refused to recuse himself.

During the trial, Engoron told Trump’s attorney, who was trying to file a routine motion, that he wasn’t interested in what he had to say, and “to just sit down.” He then issued a gag order against Trump.

The second complaint was filed against New York state Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial in which Trump was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records. Stefanik provided evidence that Merchan’s daughter was working for the Kamala Harris presidential campaign, calling into question his ability to preside impartially.

The New York Judicial State Commission on Judicial Conduct did not even consider those complaints.

A theory on what has led to many judges making rulings and taking other actions beyond their actual authority is the existing assumption that judges hold absolute immunity for their actions. There are cases where obvious errors and deliberate improper actions by judges have been ignored. Judicial immunity has been awarded to judges by other judges.

One example: An Indiana judge ordered a 15-year-old girl to be surgically sterilized for no better reason than that her parents asked for it. There was no hearing of evidence or a trial that determined this action, and the girl was told she was going to have an appendectomy, not sterilization. She didn’t realize what had actually happened until she was married years later, and discovered she could not have the children she wanted.

The victim later sued the judge, but his peers defended him from being held accountable for his horrific action. You see, he was protected by absolute immunity. The court wrote that, “A judge will not be deprived of immunity because the action he took was in error, was done maliciously, or was in excess of his authority.” 

The idea of judicial immunity was inherited from English common law, and has survived several legal challenges. However, this situation has caused some organizations to seek a change to this assumption of blanket immunity from all actions. 

One of them, the Institute for Justice (IJ) — a nonprofit, public interest law firm — has launched the “Project on Immunity and Accountability.” The basis for this, IJ states, is this simple idea: “If we the people must follow the law, our government must follow the Constitution.”

We do not want a situation where judges and their decisions will be challenged every time one side or the other in a legal matter is displeased with the outcome. 

But what we must have are conditions in existence that will insure that judicial decisions are based upon the law and the Constitution, as written, not on personal or political opinions.