Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior…
CFIF on Twitter CFIF on YouTube
More Legal Shenanigans from the Biden Administration’s Department of Education

Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior of federal administrative agencies, whose vast armies of overpaid bureaucrats remain unaccountable for their excesses.

Among the most familiar examples of that bureaucratic abuse is the Department of Education (DOE).  Recall, for instance, the United States Supreme Court’s humiliating rebuke last year of the Biden DOE’s effort to shift hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt from the people who actually owed them onto the backs of American taxpayers.

Even now, despite that rebuke, the Biden DOE launched an alternative scheme last month in an end-around effort to achieve that same result.

Well, the Biden DOE is now attempting to shift tens of millions of dollars of…[more]

March 19, 2024 • 08:35 AM

Liberty Update

CFIFs latest news, commentary and alerts delivered to your inbox.
Notable Quotes
 
Reporting on the Continuing 'Great Migration' from High-Tax States to Low-Tax States:
 
 

"The exodus from high-tax states continues.

"A growing number of Americans are migrating from predominantly blue states with steep taxes like California and New York to red states with lower taxes like Florida and Texas, according to a Bank of America analyst note that is based on aggregated and anonymous internal customer data.

"'We constructed near real-time estimates of domestic migration flows and found that pandemic migration trends are not reversing,' the analysis said. Since the first quarter of 2023, the data 'suggests that cities that saw a large influx of people during the pandemic have still been growing faster than other cities in recent quarters.' ...

"'This population shift paints a clear picture,' said Janelle Fritts, a policy analyst at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. 'People left high-tax, high-cost states for lower-tax, lower-cost alternatives.'"

Read the entire article here.

 
 
— Megan Henney, Fox Business
— Megan Henney, Fox Business
Posted June 07, 2023 • 08:50 AM
 
 
On the Attacks Against Capitalism:
 
 

"By now, much of the country has heard or read about the City University of New York law school graduate who was allowed to unspool a spiteful tirade as the school's commencement speaker. She made a number of vile statements, but her call to 'fight against capitalism' stood out to us. She and her fellow travelers know what few casual observers are aware of, that is, an attack on capitalism is an attack on liberty.

"Condemning capitalism is nothing new in this country. We've heard the angry criticisms all of our lives, and they weren't novel when we were young. It's tragic, really, that so many in the West see the tension between 'capitalists' and their ideological opponents as merely a conflict between ideas about which economic system we should have.

"But it's more than that. It's a battle between freedom and subjugation."

Read the entire article here.

 
 
— Issues & Insights Editorial Board
— Issues & Insights Editorial Board
Posted June 06, 2023 • 08:54 AM
 
 
On the U.S. Supreme Court's Decision in Tyler v. Hennepin County:
 
 

"While left-wing attacks on the Supreme Court continue, the justices demonstrated again last week that simple partisan categories cannot explain their work. In Tyler v. Hennepin County, the court unanimously agreed that the right to property continues even when the government seizes land to recover a tax debt.

"Even with a court sharply divided over questions of race, religion and government power, the justices came together to re-affirm the most basic of constitutional freedoms.

"Tyler was another case that pitted an individual property owner against a government Leviathan."

Read the entire article here.

 
 
— John Yoo, Law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and Robert Delahunty, Washington Fellow of the Claremont Center for the American Way of Life
— John Yoo, Law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and Robert Delahunty, Washington Fellow of the Claremont Center for the American Way of Life
Posted June 05, 2023 • 07:52 AM
 
 
Reporting On the U.S. Supreme Court's Decision in Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters:
 
 

"The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday dealt another setback to organized labor by making it easier for employers to sue over strikes that cause property destruction in a ruling siding with a concrete business in Washington state that sued the union representing its truck drivers after a work stoppage.

"The 8-1 decision overturned a lower court's ruling that said the lawsuit filed by Glacier Northwest Inc, which sells and delivers ready-mix concrete, against a local affiliate of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters was preempted by a U.S. law called the National Labor Relations Act. Glacier Northwest is a unit of Japan-based Taiheiyo Cement Corp.

"Glacier Northwest filed a lawsuit in Washington state court accusing the union of intentional property destruction during a 2017 strike.

"A group of drivers went on strike while their mixing trucks were filled with concrete. Although the drivers kept their mixing drums rotating to delay the concrete from hardening and damaging the vehicles, the company was forced to discard the unused product at a financial loss."

Read the entire article here.

 
 
— John Kruzel, Reuters
— John Kruzel, Reuters
Posted June 02, 2023 • 08:11 AM
 
 
Reporting On the Growing Scandal Alleging Then-Vice President Joe Biden Accepted Money from a Foreign National to Affect Policy Decisions:
 
 

"After a confidential human source claimed then-Vice President Joe Biden agreed to accept money from a foreign national to affect policy decisions, FBI agents used what's called an FD-1023 form to record the allegation. Now FBI Director Christopher Wray is defying a May 3 congressional subpoena to provide this form. On Tuesday, in response to Wray's refusal to hand over the documents, Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer announced the House will move to hold the FBI director in contempt of Congress.

"It isn't that announcement -- or even the other explosive ones released over the past year by Comer's Senate colleague, Chuck Grassley -- that prove the most telling, however. Rather, it is the combination of all the details, big and small, that suggests the scandal set to unfold over the coming weeks will be bigger than anyone imagined."

Read the entire article here.

 
 
— Margot Cleveland, Senior Legal Correspondent at The Federalist
— Margot Cleveland, Senior Legal Correspondent at The Federalist
Posted June 01, 2023 • 08:14 AM
 
 
Reporting On a New Poll Showing West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice Leading Sen. Joe Manchin in a Race for U.S. Senate in 2024:
 
 

"West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) is leading incumbent Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) by 22 points in a hypothetical U.S. Senate matchup in 2024, according to a poll released Tuesday.

"Justice leads Manchin 54 percent to 32 percent, with 13 percent of respondents saying they are undecided, according to an East Carolina University Center for Survey Research poll of registered voters in West Virginia.

"The same survey found that Justice has a job-approval rating of 57 percent and a 29-percent disapproval rating. Manchin's job-approval rating sits at 33 percent, with a 59-percent disapproval rating."

Read the entire article here.

 
 
— Sarah Fortinsky, The Hill
— Sarah Fortinsky, The Hill
Posted May 31, 2023 • 08:34 AM
 
 
On a Provision in the Debt Ceiling Deal to Partially Defund the IRS:
 
 

"The debt ceiling deal reached by the Republican leadership and the administration is far from perfect in the eyes of anyone who cares about runaway government spending (which is the only government spending we know of). But it appears House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was able to block, at least for a year, the hiring of a field army of IRS soldiers. Like a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, it's a good start, though there's still a long way to go.

"Among the hundreds of sections in the 99-page bill, No. 251 is 'Rescission of certain balances made available to the Internal Revenue Service.' More specifically, the legislation, if passed and signed as is, cuts almost $1.4 billion 'of the unobligated balances of amounts appropriated or otherwise made available for activities of the Internal Revenue Service' through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022."

Read the entire article here.

 
 
— Issues & Insights Editorial Board
— Issues & Insights Editorial Board
Posted May 30, 2023 • 08:32 AM
 
 
Reporting On the U.S. Supreme Court's Ruling in Sackett v. EPA:
 
 

"The Supreme Court scaled back the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers to regulate 'waters of the United States' broadly under the Clean Water Act, a win for landowners and business groups that argued the agencies have been overregulating small bodies of water such as wetlands.

"In a technically unanimous ruling authored by Justice Samuel Alito, the court said the 1972 Clean Water Act's reference to 'waters' that can be regulated are limited to "geographic[al] features that are described in ordinary parlance as 'streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes"' and to 'adjacent wetlands that are "indistinguishable" from those bodies of water due to a continuous surface connection.'

"While the ruling was unanimous, the justices were divided in their reasoning, issuing four separate concurrences. They ultimately contended the landowners lacked enough connection to a nearby lake, meaning they're not required to get a permit under the CWA."

Read the entire article here.

 
 
— Washington Examiner Reporters Jeremy Beamanand Kaelan Deese
— Washington Examiner Reporters Jeremy Beamanand Kaelan Deese
Posted May 26, 2023 • 07:45 AM
 
 
Reporting on the IRS's Tax Probe of Journalist Matt Taibbi:
 
 

"The IRS opened an examination of journalist Matt Taibbi's 2018 tax return on Christmas Eve of last year -- three weeks after he exposed sensitive documents about government officials pressuring Twitter to censor content.

"The House Judiciary Committee said Wednesday it obtained that detail and other information about the case from the IRS following the outcry over a tax agent visiting Taibbi's home on March 9, 2022 -- the same day he testified to Congress about the 'Twitter Files.'

"Documents provided to the committee 'raise more questions than they answer,' Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel in a letter requesting that he make further disclosures."

Read the entire article here.

 
 
— Steven Nelson, New York Post
— Steven Nelson, New York Post
Posted May 25, 2023 • 08:39 AM
 
 
Reporting on Problems With President Biden's Student Loan Cancelation:
 
 

"President Joe Biden has another headache emerging as he continues navigating the debt ceiling.

"His $400 billion-plus student debt transfer is under attack on three different fronts, threatening to undo a campaign promise and nix a policy strongly favored by progressives and younger Democratic voters.

"'President Biden's student loan transfer scheme shifts hundreds of billions of dollars of payments from student loan borrowers onto the backs of Americans who did not agree to take out the loans,' Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) told the Washington Examiner on Monday. 'I am proud to lead the fight against President Biden's reckless, unilateral, and unauthorized action that would unfairly penalize those who worked hard to pay off their loans or who never took them out in the first place.'

"Good and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) announced House Joint Resolution 45 in March, which would use the Congressional Review Act to repeal Biden's program. Republicans have had success at passing resolutions under the Congressional Review Act through the House and Senate to Biden's desk and fought against the debt transfer from the day it was announced.

"The House is scheduled to vote on the resolution today."

Read the entire article here.

 
 
— Haisten Willis, Washington Examiner
— Haisten Willis, Washington Examiner
Posted May 24, 2023 • 09:16 AM
 
Notable Quote   
 
Happy Easter!…[more]
 
 
— From All of Us at CFIF
 
Liberty Poll   

Do you believe the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately reject the new Biden administration automobile emissions rule as beyond the scope of administrative agency authority?