Maga Inc, the main political fundraising group supporting Donald Trump, has amassed a nearly $350mn war chest, an unprecedented haul for the president’s allies to defend the Republican Party’s control of Congress in November’s midterm elections. It all comes from Trump's tech bro friends.
"In the first major case in which the Court granted emergency relief as a means of shaping nationwide policy, it turns out that the justice who led the charge was the one who was doing quite a bit more than calling balls and strikes."
Me on Saturday's @nytimes.com scoop in today's "One First":
TRADEMARK'S PARODY PROBLEM 48 Pages Posted: Christine Haight Farley American University - Washington College of Law Date Written: February 15, 2026 Abstract This Article challenges the Supreme Court's recent assurance that trademark parody is adequately protected under ordinary infringement doctrine without the need for special speech safeguards. In Jack Daniel's Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC, the Court curtailed the principal First Amendment defense for expressive trademark uses while predicting that parodies would nonetheless prevail under the likelihood of confusion test. This Article shows why that prediction is mistaken. Drawing on recent case law and trademark doctrine, it identifies four structural vulnerabilities that now confront parody: the expansion of "trademark use" as a gatekeeping device that excludes parodists from speech-protective analysis; courts' reliance on consumer surveys that mistake legal beliefs about permission for actionable source confusion; the routine application of infringement factors that disregard expressive purpose; and judicial demands that parodies be "successful," obvious, or directly targeted to merit protection. Together, these developments systematically bias trademark law against subtle, critical, and uncomfortable forms of expression. The Article concludes that without doctrinal recalibration, trademark law risks becoming a regime of private censorship over cultural meaning and proposes concrete adjustments to preserve parody as a constitutionally protected form of speech. Keywords: Trademark Law, Parody, First Amendment, Likelihood of Confusion, Trademark Use, Jack Daniel’s Properties v. VIP Products, Rogers v. Grimaldi, Expressive Works, Approval Confusion, Lanham Act, Consumer Surveys, Trade Dress, Free Speech, Chilling Effects, Trademark Infringement
On my reading list: "Trademark's Parody Problem" by @christinefarley.bsky.social: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
The key here is how utterly impoverished the discussion was. There was no real debate and no in-person meeting to hash out differences of opinion; just a brief exchange of remarkably short memos over five days (two of which were a weekend). I’ve suggested before that folks would be floored to see just how little analysis and deliberation go into rulings like this that produce massive real-world effects; here, for once, is pretty compelling direct evidence in support of that speculation—and a pretty powerful rejoinder to those who have insisted that the Court’s internal debates in these cases are rigorous and deeply substantive. Whatever else this was, it wasn’t that.
Vladeck is exactly right.
Also, I’ve suggested before that it’s outrageous for the Court to nuke carefully reasoned lower court rulings so casually.
Federal judges ought be enraged to see this cavalier approach confirmed.
👏👏👏 Wife of LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer steps in to save NPR’s future with $80M gift www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...
This war is so damn confusing. It’s why we shouldn’t let drunks and dementia patients run it.
“a pretty powerful rejoinder to those who have insisted that the Court’s internal debates in these [shadow docket] cases are rigorous and deeply substantive.”
Now DOJ is demanding 2024 ballots from Michigan without a proper legal basis. Is it just a coincidence that it’s targeting swing states like Michigan, Georgia, and Arizona in the lead-up to the 2026 election?
www.nbcnews.com/politics/ele...
I hope the coloring books act as a catalyst to resume your relationship with your daughter.
Yikes! Always something…
We better wake up to what’s happening online. The right isn’t just posting anymore; they’re scaling influence with AI.
📌 AI-generated pro-Trump “influencers” are surging on social media and are starting to shape what people see and believe.
"Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial: Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later."
Indeed—Elect more women!
oh if they start letting this stuff on the app store have I got something fun for yall
Welcome back – we have missed you!
Thank you, Seattle 💙
Whelp, I just received an email that B&N Press is setting a new minimum price of $14.99 for any indie books published through them. Between that and Draft 2 Digital now charging an annual fee, they are pushing people to Amazon KDP.
Would watch tho.
A teensy bit closer to the truth…
Big Tech, Few Rights: Even on appeal, presumably to a human, YouTube says the below is "not suitable" while not explaining why (considering the things deemed suitable). Onward...
The story of ed tech is a repeated loop of massive hype and massive disappointment
See MOOCs, and now AI
Evidence can interrupt this unproductive cycle
The Stanford SCALE Initiative, led by rock star Prof Susanna Loeb, brings evidence to the conversation scale.stanford.edu/sites/defaul...
From some of the quotes I’ve seen afterward, their “negotiation” was to show up, tell the Iranian side what they wanted, and then when the Iranians didn’t accept it without changes, they ended things. I almost said “ended discussions” but “discussions” implies back and forth which didn’t happen.
Who else is still feeling the joy this morning? 🙋♀️🚀🧑🚀 THIS is what science can do!!
So far, US book bans are driven by Christianity-based autocrats. Politicians in some states are codifying the power of one religion to decide which truths can be stolen from the children, and in some states, from adults too.
No-one is discussing how a federal bill changes or normalizes that theft.
“Oh but Republicans would…”
Lemme stop you right there. I know that Republicans are okay voting for men accused of sexual assault. Republicans are also okay with voting for racists, child rapists, genocidal maniacs, and whatever the fuck pathology is a “Ted Cruz.”
So miss me with that argument.
When Mississippi was trying to keep James Meredith out of Ole Miss despite federal court orders, the state legislature rushed through a bill barring anyone convicted of a crime from attending a state school.
They referred to it as "Meredith's Law" in the debate.
/2
I too have written about white conservatives in southern state legislatures rushing through bullshit changes to the law just to thwart the advancement of literally one black man, but I'm a historian who writes about the Jim Crow era South and not a reporter discussing current fucking events there.
👀
BREAKING: the judges who dismissed high-profile cases in immigration court against two international students who have advocated for Palestinian causes, Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi, were fired yesterday, alongside four other judges.
/w @haleaziz.bsky.social and @nicknehamas.bsky.social
This won't kill this technology, it just makes pharma a sector dominated by European, Chinese and Indian corporations
