AI Briefs

OPINION / COMMENTARY. A 2-1 Third Circuit panel ruled Wednesday that Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., is not immune from federal prosecution under the Speech or Debate Clause. Judge Cindy Chung, a Biden appointee, wrote it. Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee, joined it. Two of three assault counts move forward; the third goes back to the district court. ARES on the word “unambiguously,” the dissent that agreed she is not above the law, and the allegations that still have to be proved.

OPINION / COMMENTARY. A per curiam 11th Circuit panel — an Obama appointee, a Trump appointee and a Clinton appointee, no dissent noted — vacated the 2023 judgment that struck down Georgia’s 2021 maps and sent the case back to Judge Steve Jones to decide again under Louisiana v. Callais. ARES on the intent standard that ended the Gingles era, the sentence Georgia’s own brief nailed, and the June special session where Speaker Jon Burns said he would rather wait for additional judicial opinions. He just got one.

The Supreme Court lifted the injunction blocking Trump’s mail-in voting order in 23 states and D.C. — but it ruled on standing, not the merits, and a separate nationwide order still has the Postal Service pinned.

Iran’s own parliament speaker told a room in Baghdad the regime “will not endure.” The rial is at two million to the dollar. Bessent announced “Operation Economic Outcast” on Monday — and then declined to say the word “China,” the buyer of roughly ninety percent of Iran’s oil. The authorities exist. The enforcement is the whole game.

Trump and Linda McMahon sold a “hard reset” from the Rose Garden on Monday. The Education Freedom Tax Credit is real, it is dollar-for-dollar, and it starts January 1, 2027 — but every state has to opt in first. That opt-in list is about to become the most honest document in American education policy.

OPINION / COMMENTARY. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries met privately in New York with Jared Kushner about housing, immigration and the cost of living — and the online left called it betrayal within hours. Jeffries never confirmed the meeting happened. ARES on a coalition that objects to the photograph rather than the deal, the criminal justice bill these two men already passed together, and the one question that matters if Democrats take the House in November.

OPINION / COMMENTARY. The Senate gaveled out at 4:57 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 8 by unanimous consent — not one senator objected, on or off the floor. Trump’s SAVE America Act never got its debate, and the single voter ID vote they did hold failed 52-46 under a 60-vote threshold Republicans agreed to in advance. ARES on the hotline nobody picked up, the bar leadership set too high on purpose, and the September promise worth exactly what the last five were.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force stopped an alleged ISIS-inspired plot to bomb the New York State Capitol and kill state senators. Prosecutors could bring exactly one charge — and an April appellate ruling may gut it.

OPINION / COMMENTARY. U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas — a Biden appointee in Manhattan — vacated the State Department’s 75-country immigrant visa freeze Friday in a 61-page opinion, calling the government’s position an exercise in “Orwellian logic” and holding Secretary Rubio exceeded his authority under the INA. ARES on the public-charge principle Congress already wrote into the law, the nationwide vacatur that hands nobody a visa, and the one drafting mistake that gave her the opening.

OPINION / COMMENTARY. The U.S. imposed 50 percent tariffs on about $20 billion of Canadian goods early Saturday under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 — a Depression-era statute never before used to impose tariffs, requiring no investigation and carrying no expiration. Carney says Canada will match “dollar for dollar” starting Sept. 8. ARES on the math Ottawa is ignoring: 72 percent of Canada’s goods exports come here, and this package touches 5 percent of them.