From Lawfare

Some articles touching on constitutional conflict: 


- The State of FARA.

Last March, Arkansas proposed a bill that would require foreign agents to register in the state. It wasn’t alone: Similar bills were also introduced in Florida, Louisiana, Maine, Nebraska, and other states. This slew of legislation is part of a broader trend by states to engage in national security and foreign policy-related issues, with states increasingly adopting analogues to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Collectively, these actions portend increasing compliance burdens for companies and nonprofits with certain foreign connections, in particular due to differences between state statutes and their federal cousin.

- - Foreign Agents Registration Act.
- - Supremacy Clause.


- Minnesota’s Compelling 10th Amendment Case Against Trump’s ICE Surge.

Control over state and local government personnel is one of the powers reserved to the states by the 10th Amendment. In addition, as legal scholar Michael Rappaport has shown, the original meaning of the Constitution indicates that such control is a basic element of the sovereignty inherent in being a state in the first place.

- - The Tenth Amendment.


- Grok, ‘Censorship,’ & the Collapse of Accountability.

While the ability to misuse AI image generation technology for purposes of harassment came as no surprise, researchers long assumed that such behavior and content would remain confined to dark pockets of the internet. Experts expected that these images would be generated primarily via open-source models and shared via underground or encrypted chats. Such models also support “nudify” apps, which could be used to generate virtual “revenge porn,” create fake content featuring celebrities distributed on dedicated domains, or be used as tools for teenagers to harass their classmates. But Grok’s unique integration with X enables creation, prominent public distribution, and effortless resharing via the retweet button—and could thus normalize such behavior at scale.

Elon Musk, CEO of xAI, dismissed the torrent of outrage that followed the proliferation of the content, explicitly stating that calls to curtail Grok amounted to an effort to “suppress free speech.” Musk’s fanboys, in his X mentions and elsewhere, reflexively echoed this position.

- Free Speech: Obscenuty.

From the Washington Post: A mysterious delay in the Supreme Court tariffs case

An opinion weighing in on the process in the Supreme Court.

The case it discuses is Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump.
- Oyez: Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump.
- ScotusBlog: Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump.

It regards the constitutional taxing powers, and whether the president improperly used an act of Congress to bypass its limits.
- Overview of Taxing Clause.
- International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

 Click here for the full article. 

. . . more than 12 weeks have already passed since the Nov. 5, 2025 arguments in the tariffs case. Now the court is on break, meaning a decision is unlikely for at least a few more weeks. Judging by the oral argument, Trump is the underdog in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump. But the longer the case drags on without resolution, the less likely it is that the president got licked.

. . . The lengthy deliberations are a puzzle because the case is not particularly complex. The 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act allows the president to “regulate” imports in an emergency. Trump says this IEEPA language means he can impose unlimited tariffs on any country at will, even though the Constitution gives the tariff power to Congress. The Supreme Court has decided a series of similar cases in recent years emphasizing that Congress needs to speak clearly to give sweeping powers over the economy to the executive branch. This legislation doesn’t mention the power to tax or tariff.

It’s still hard to see how Trump wins this case, given the three liberal justices inclined against him, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s strict view of the separation of powers and the chief justice’s concern with the court’s nonpartisan reputation. But the odds of a clean and decisive defeat for the president are going down, and the odds of some sort of negotiated settlement are going up. Perhaps the justices are trying to engineer a way to block the tariffs only prospectively, without inviting an avalanche of lawsuits over refunds. That could be a worthy goal, but the damage from judicial delay is growing.