Environment and Natural Resources

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Frank Thompson's challenge to Maine's rule requiring lobstermen to carry a government GPS tracker on their boats at all times. The denial leaves in place a lower court decision that lets the state track Frank, a fifth-generation lobsterman from Vinalhaven, without a warrant 24 hours a day, whether ...

The federal government is America's largest landowner. For decades, policymakers and experts have assumed that the "quick" way to access resource-rich federal lands works as advertised. New research suggests otherwise. Developing the vast energy and mineral resources under federal control often means going through the National Environmental Poli ...

Author Margaret Mitchell once wrote, "Land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts." For Jerry Bingham, his family's Idaho farm is more than land. It's the only home he's ever known. In 1950, his father purchased the thousand-acre farm near Blackfoot, Idaho. Je ...

The Supreme Court formally begins its new fall term with oral arguments on October 5. It will hold its "long conference" the week prior to consider the petitions submitted during its summer recess. This year, the Justices will consider three PLF petitions challenging warrantless surveillance and compelled speech. A lobsterman's fight for his Fourt ...

Remember 2018, when every city council, major airline, and coffee giant suddenly decided that plastic sip-lids were the frontline of planetary salvation? It was the great Plastic Straw Panic. Celebrities made somber videos, corporate PR teams scrambled, and public policy shifted on a dime. The entire crusade was built on an eye-popping stat repe ...

In her new book, Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right, Stephanie Slade sets out to describe and recover a political philosophy that faded in the years after it succeeded. Fusionism helped shape the movement that Ronald Reagan led. But what it fused — liberty and virtue — came apart over the four decades since he left ...

I'm a farmer in California. As you may have read on PLF's blog, I recently fought an overzealous state agency and won after it tried to invoke California's anti-SLAPP statute. The victory was a win for the First Amendment and all future plaintiffs who might have lawsuits against the government. I wanted to write to you from a different perspecti ...

In the 2023 case Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated a number of sweeping federal regulatory burdens, particularly relating to environmental issues. Some states are now deciding whether to bring them back. Before they do, lawmakers should ask whether those burdens will actually produce, for example, cleaner ...

Cody Peterson is a farmer and property owner in North Dakota. My family has been farming in North Dakota for generations. Like most farmers, we have lived and worked through droughts, floods and price swings that would make a Wall Street trader's head spin. Now the government is adding an obstacle that threatens my ability to work my land. In ...