Issues

What is a mine? That shouldn't be an impossible question. You would think that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) would have a reasonable definition—after all, they're charged with regulating (you won't believe this) safety and health at mines. But when MSHA inspectors showed up at KC Transport's facility in Emmett, West Virginia, i ...

In 2021, the Texas Legislature passed Texas House Bill 20, a law that bars social media platforms like Facebook, X, and WhatsApp from banning, censoring, or manually demoting accounts within a social media platform's algorithm so that fewer people see their content based on what those accounts have posted (de-boosting). This bill and others like it ...

The government took his home in 2018 over a $588 property tax debt. But a few days before Christmas 2024, Kevin Fair, an ailing Nebraska widower, found out he was getting back the title to his home.   Now a GoFundMe has raised over $16,000 so Kevin, who recently had a stroke, can build a ramp for his home, make some other repairs, and meet upco ...

There are legal victories, and then there are legal victories—court rulings so decisive, so sharply written, that they can only be considered a judicial knockout.  Case in point: Al Hadian and Ralph Bookout's New Year's Eve victory against the California Coastal Commission.  The (brief) backstory  Al and Ralph sued the Commission in 2022 ...

The Jones Act is a demonstrably bad policy, strangling the economy, driving up costs for ordinary citizens and crippling local businesses in Alaska and Hawaii. Why, then, does it continue to exist? Because protecting a few powerful players from competition moves legislators more than economic freedom. And because lawsuits challenging the Act hav ...

In every state except Massachusetts, at least some types of fireworks are legal. As you prepare for your New Year's Eve celebrations, however explosive, pour one out for the quarantined fireworks that are supposedly prohibited under a peculiar federal regulation, a challenge to which has taken a family-owned business all the way to the doors of the ...

We've heard a lot about draining the swamp over the past eight years, from President-elect Donald Trump when he first landed on the national stage and now, from the dual heads of his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. But what does that actually mean and entail? In short, draining the swamp should mean ...

In one of the first legislative exactions opinions issued since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Sheetz v. County of El Dorado, the New York Supreme Court's Appellate Division just struck down a provision of New York City's rezoning plan that would have imposed "Arts Fund" fees on certain landowners. New York's SoHo and NoHo districts have long be ...

Health care shortages are a nationwide problem, but they are particularly concerning in Oregon – the state with the second fewest hospital beds and second fewest rehabilitation beds per capita. This problem didn't pop up overnight. Instead, Oregon's "certificate of need" laws have been restricting growth for decades, leaving Oregonians witho ...