“What began as an initiative to improve seismic safety and veteran care now serves as a case study in bureaucratic drift. But this type of administrative breakdown is nothing new; the V.A. has long struggled to manage large capital projects and follow through on institutional commitments. From the Phoenix wait-time scandal in 2014—where staff falsified records to hide long delays in veteran care—to the more recent, failed $16 billion rollout of its Electronic Health Records (EHR) system, which was plagued by cost overruns and usability issues, the agency has a well-documented history of dysfunction.
The OIG report calls on the V.A. to reevaluate whether the project should continue. While that’s a difficult call after spending almost half a billion dollars (as of February 2025), it is very clearly a necessary step if the wasteful project is to be shut down. The center’s board of directors might think so too; it did not prioritize the ambulatory care facility in its FY 2026 budget request, and has been indecisive on how to proceed with future budget requests necessary to finance the project.
These actions, along with the implementation of updated contract guidelines in May and the call for a full departmental review in July, might suggest the V.A. finally recognizes that it has serious problems. However, until systemic accountability becomes ingrained in the V.A., boondoggles like the one in Palo Alto will continue at the expense of taxpayers and veterans’ health.”
“Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to five years in jail on Thursday for criminal conspiracy over attempts to raise campaign funds from Libya and will soon become the first former president of France to serve time in prison.
The sentence was harsher than many expected and Sarkozy, who was president between 2007-2012, will spend time in jail even if he appeals the ruling – which he said he would do…
“What happened today … is of extreme gravity in regard to the rule of law, and for the trust one can have in the justice system,” he told reporters.
“If they absolutely want me to sleep in jail, I will sleep in jail, but with my head held high,” he said, adding that he was innocent. “I will not apologise for something I didn’t do.”
Sarkozy was found guilty of criminal conspiracy over efforts by close aides to procure funds for his 2007 presidential bid from Libya during the rule of late dictator Muammar Gaddafi.”
“Her key example of this alleged judicial malfeasance is the case of Lochner v. New York (1905), in which the Supreme Court struck down a state economic regulation on the grounds that it violated the right to economic liberty that was secured by the Fourteenth Amendment. “Courts owe deference to legislative majorities in determining how to handle economic and social problems,” Barrett writes in opposition to Lochner. The Supreme Court “must not infringe on the democratic process by entrenching issues that the Constitution leaves open.”
Barrett thus favorably invokes, and cites, the Lochner dissent written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who thought the Supreme Court had no business second-guessing the decisions of state regulators and should instead adopt a thoroughgoing posture of judicial deference.
For an originalist, the central question raised by Lochner is whether or not the Fourteenth Amendment, as originally understood, protects an unenumerated right to economic liberty.
According to the Holmes-Barrett view, the Fourteenth Amendment does not.
But the historical evidence says otherwise. According to the principal author of section one of the Fourteenth Amendment, Rep. John Bingham (R–Ohio), “the provisions of the Constitution guaranteeing rights, privileges, and immunities” include “the constitutional liberty…to work in an honest calling and contribute by your toil in some sort to the support of yourself, to the support of your fellow men, and to be secure in the enjoyment of the fruits of your toil.”
Furthermore, as I’ve previously noted, “even those who opposed the passage of the 14th Amendment agreed that it was designed to protect economic liberty from overreaching state regulation—indeed, that was a big reason why they opposed the amendment in the first place.” When both the friends and foes of a constitutional provision agree in real time about what it meant, their agreement counts as important historical evidence for the provision’s original public meaning. In this case, such evidence supports the position of the Lochner majority and undermines the position of the Lochner dissent.
Alas, Barrett’s book doesn’t mention any of this relevant historical material. Instead, she basically just echoes Holmes’s ahistorical dissent and leaves it at that.
That’s too bad. As Barrett herself put it, “interpreting the Constitution today require[s] us to understand its historical meaning.” Yet Barrett neglects to do that very thing in one of the main cases she invokes to support her position.”
“Although Trump frames his unprecedented use of the U.S. military to summarily execute drug suspects as “self-defense,” it plainly does not fit that description. By his own account, he has unilaterally decided to impose the death penalty on alleged drug traffickers for the sake of deterrence. That policy represents a stark departure from both military norms and criminal justice principles.
…
The Trump administration “has not even seriously tried to present a legal argument to justify the premeditated killing of the people aboard these two vessels,” former State Department lawyer Brian Finucane told The New York Times. “The U.S. president does not have a license to kill suspected drug smugglers on that basis alone.”
Rear Adm. Donald J. Guter, who served as the Navy’s top judge advocate general from 2000 to 2002, concurred. “Trump is normalizing what I consider to be an unlawful strike,” he said.
…
Trump does not claim the men whose deaths he ordered were engaged in literal attacks on the United States. The justification in both cases was that the targets were “transporting illegal narcotics,” which Trump dubiously equates with violent aggression.”
““nativism, xenophobia, and racism are hardly uniquely American phenomena. What makes them significant in America is that they run counter to the nation’s founding ideals. At least since the enshrinement of Enlightenment ideas of equality and inclusiveness in the founding documents of the new nation, to be a nativist in this country was to be in conflict with its fundamental tenets.””