Majestic Realty and its partners own and operate two adjoining open-air shopping centers in Redlands, California. These shopping centers prohibit any soliciting, petitioning, polling for political causes, or distribution of pamphlets on their private property. Alex Salazar, a “men’s rights” activist, nonetheless sought permission to distribute flyers on the centers’ private property. He was denied that permission, and he then sued the centers in the California state court. The California State Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Salazar, holding that the centers’ ban on distributing flyers violated the California Supreme Court’s decision in Robins v. PruneYard Shopping Center (1979).
In Pruneyard, the California Supreme Court held that the free speech provisions of the California Constitution “protect speech and petitioning, reasonably exercised, in shopping centers even when the centers are privately owned.” That decision was then appealed to the US Supreme Court, which held that this newly adopted California rule did not violate the rights of private property owners under the US Constitution. The US Supreme Court rejected a shopping center’s claim that being forced to host speakers violated both its First Amendment speech rights and its Fifth Amendment property rights.
In his recent article, “The Strange Death of Libertarianism,” conservative Daniel McCarthy argues that libertarianism has lost its raison d’être and is no longer relevant. Free markets, he says, triumphed in the 20th century; marijuana and pornography are mainstream; and Americans are supposedly demoralized by “anti-government ideology.” Libertarianism apparently has nothing new to offer, so it’s time to move on with “right-wing populism” in the fight against a resurgent “socialism.” Mr. McCarthy also makes clear that Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, potential 2028 presidential candidates, prefer “common-ground” capitalism and align with right-wing populists.
Two things strike me about his argument. First, libertarianism is much more than a list of policies, such as free markets and legal marijuana. It is a theory of individual liberty and political power, centered on a timeless question: Who decides—the individual or the government? Second, libertarian ideas do not become obsolete because they succeed. Their success shows their power—and why the struggle for individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace never ends. The ominous rise of socialism and right-wing populism, both of which share some economic and political views, only makes libertarian ideas more relevant.
On September 25, the United States Supreme Court reauthorized the federal government’s SAVE program for citizenship checks in voter registration. Predictably, supporters of the Trump administration celebrated the ruling as a “[h]uge victory for election integrity!” (Attorney General Todd Blanche), while opponents claimed the ruling put “millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted by the admin’s unreliable voter purge system weeks before the midterms.” (CREW)
Relax.
As is so often the case with election law rulings, the implications are not nearly as significant as “hot take” social media commentary would have you believe. There is no reason to believe that past elections were riddled with noncitizen voting. As for voter list maintenance and removal, the ruling simply gives election officials one more tool, but as with other tools, its use is narrowly prescribed by state and federal laws.
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President Trump’s White House has repeatedly attempted to deny journalists access to presidential press conferences. This time, the White House has excluded several journalists because their coverage was allegedly “one-sided” and “negative.” Such efforts by the White House are illegal; they have failed in the past, and they will fail in the future.
The reasons the Trump White House has given in the past for its attempts to pick and choose which journalists are allowed to cover it have varied, but all of them have one thing in common: they cannot be reconciled with the law. Jim Acosta’s press pass was revoked because he continued to ask questions and refused to yield his microphone to another journalist. Brian Karem’s press pass was revoked essentially because he made remarks that were understood as rude and confrontational. The Associated Press was excluded because it used the label “Gulf of Mexico,” rather than “Gulf of America.”
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For nearly a decade, the executive branch has abused the broad, highly discretionary tariff authorities Congress granted it throughout the 20th century. These abuses have imposed high economic costs on American firms and consumers; undermined the United States’ international standing; and fueled rent-seeking cronyism in Washington. Thus far, Congress has failed to rein in those abuses by reforming the underlying laws and reasserting its constitutional authority over tariffs and trade policy. To be sure, the political costs of limiting the executive branch’s powers—particularly concerning policies that benefit many well-connected, highly concentrated special interests and are simultaneously intertwined with sensitive issues like “national security” and geopolitical competition with China—are high for most legislators.
But what is indefensible is for Congress, knowing about the economic costs and political dysfunction engendered by executive tariff abuse, to grant even broader and highly discretionary tariff authorities to the White House—and this president in particular. Yet, that is exactly what Congress did on September 16, when the House of Representatives passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026.
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George Anibowei is a Dallas immigration lawyer and a naturalized US citizen who travels abroad regularly. Since October 2016, border agents have searched his cell phone without a warrant five times. During the first search, agents copied the entire contents of the device, including privileged communications with his clients. Nearly a decade later, the government still has that data.
Mr. Anibowei sued the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, challenging the agencies’ policies that let agents rummage through travelers’ devices with no warrant and, for so-called basic searches, no individualized suspicion at all. The district court denied him relief, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed. Mr. Anibowei now seeks Supreme Court review.
Around the country, state and local officials dodged a flaming arrow when the Supreme Court on September 14 struck down a recently adopted rule from the US Postal Service that threatened to throw into chaos this year’s midterms.
Nearly one in three votes in federal elections is cast by mail. Mail voting burgeoned during the pandemic and has remained popular because voters find it convenient. Eight states, mostly in the West, have chosen to conduct federal elections entirely that way.
President Donald Trump has criticized mail voting as rife with fraud, on his usual scanty evidence. He instructed the Postal Service to adopt a rule under which it would refuse to carry ballot mail unless states first sent the federal government a list of voters receiving mail ballots and also put new markings, including unique individual barcodes on the envelopes used to carry ballots in both directions, to and from the voter.