The Latest News from Across the Web

The “Debate Me Bro” Grift: How Trolls Weaponized The Marketplace Of Ideas

2025-09-17 16:31:00 UTC

The Washington Post Fires Its Last Black Opinion Columnist For Directly Quoting A Bigot

2025-09-17 12:25:00 UTC

RFK Jr. Adds Five More Unqualified, Anti-Vaxx Members To ACIP

2025-09-17 02:54:11 UTC

Missed The Kickstarter? You’ve Got One Last Chance! Limited Copies Of Our Social Media Card Game Are Now Available

2025-09-16 20:33:11 UTC

Trump’s Selective Memory: “Not Familiar” With Assassinated Democratic Lawmaker While Raging About “Left-wing Violence”

2025-09-16 19:02:27 UTC

DOJ Is Now Investigating University Professors For Wrongthink

2025-09-16 17:49:16 UTC

Daily Deal: Sun Chaser Mini 10,000mAh Solar-Powered Wireless Phone Charger

2025-09-16 17:43:56 UTC

Pam Bondi Threatens To Prosecute Hate Speech, Which Charlie Kirk Himself (Rightly) Said Was Protected Speech

2025-09-16 16:28:12 UTC

Rightly

CBS/Paramount And The Ellisons Look To Buy Time Warner In Latest Destructive Major Media Megadeal

2025-09-16 12:23:00 UTC

Flock Safety Claims It Can Rid The US Of Crime, Even As Cities Rid Themselves Of Flock

2025-09-16 03:03:45 UTC

Trump Says He’s Sending The National Guard To Another City Run By A Democratic Party Member

2025-09-15 23:13:20 UTC

The FTC’s Settlement With Aylo: This Isn’t Really About Fighting CSAM And Revenge Porn

2025-09-15 20:42:06 UTC

The Trump FTC’s War On Porn Just Ensured That Accused CSAM Offenders Will Walk Free

2025-09-15 19:03:38 UTC

Charlie Kirk Doesn’t Deserve What’s Happening To Him

2025-09-15 17:46:33 UTC

Daily Deal: The Ultimate Software Testing Bundle

2025-09-15 17:41:33 UTC

Stop Begging. Start Building

2025-09-15 16:25:25 UTC

Trump GOP Redirected Essential Cybersecurity Funding To Give Rich Assholes More Tax Cuts

2025-09-15 12:24:00 UTC

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

2025-09-14 19:00:00 UTC

This Week In Techdirt History: September 7th – 13th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2020, we learned about how the White House supposedly blocked Walmart from buying TikTok, and we asked why amidst all the fear around the site, nobody was equally worried about advertising tech and location data sales. GOP Senators released the latest stupid attempt to reform Section 230, the FISA court decided to loosen the restrictions on searching 702 collections, and Ajit Pai’s FCC was ignoring falsely inflated broadband numbers to pat itself on the back and killing rules that would have brought competition to cable boxes. We also took a look at the historic Zeran v. AOL case and what it could teach us about more recent cases.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2015, Getty Images did some copyright trolling around the “socially awkward penguin” meme, while one of its subsidiaries was going even further with a totally baseless copyright claim. Some anonymous plaintiffs filed a misguided lawsuit against Amazon and GoDaddy over the Ashley Madison hack, while security researcher Brian Krebs received a legal threat from a former Ashley Madison executive over allegations that they did some hacking themselves. Meanwhile, Ajit Pai was desperately trying to pretend he was right about net neutrality killing broadband investment, and we looked at a great example of the USTR’s “transparency” in taking three months to reveal the names of the chapters in the TPP.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2010, Righthaven’s mass lawsuit scheme found its way to a Senate candidate, and the company was demanding the domain names of sites it sued, while we responded to a ridiculous love letter to Intellectual Ventures. There were raids across Europe targeting file sharing websites, just as the Swiss Supreme Court ruled that tracking online file sharers was a violation of privacy laws, and the EU Parliament rejected ACTA. There was some rising awareness that censoring Craigslist only helps bad actors, while we wrote about the appeal of a ruling in which the court said Craigslist lost its Section 230 protections. And the ACLU took a somewhat new tack in suing Homeland Security over laptop searches at the border.

2025-09-13 19:00:00 UTC

Newly Granted Nintendo Patents An ‘Embarrassing Failure’ By The USPTO, Says Patent Attorney

As you will hopefully recall, that very strange patent lawsuit between Nintendo and PocketPair over the latter’s hit game, Palworld, is ongoing. At the heart of that case is a series of overly broad patents for what are generally considered generic game mechanics that also have a bunch of prior art from before their use by Nintendo in its Pokémon games. These include concepts like throwing a capture item at an NPC to collect a character, as well as riding and mounting/dismounting NPCs in an open world setting. The result, even as the litigation is ongoing, has been PocketPair patching out several of these game mechanics from its game in order to protect itself. That it feels this is necessary as a result of these broad patents is unfortunate.

And, because of the failure of the USPTO to do its job, it seems things will only get worse. Nintendo was awarded two additional patents in just the past couple of weeks and those patents are being called an “embarrassing failure” by patent attorney Kirk Sigmon.

The last 10 days have brought a string of patent wins for Nintendo. Yesterday, the company was granted US patent 12,409,387, a patent covering riding and flying systems similar to those Nintendo has been criticized for claiming in its Palworld lawsuit (via Gamesfray). Last week, however, Nintendo received a more troubling weapon in its legal arsenal: US patent 12,403,397, a patent on summoning and battling characters that the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted with alarmingly little resistance.

According to videogame patent lawyer Kirk Sigmon, the USPTO granting Nintendo these latest patents isn’t just a moment of questionable legal theory. It’s an indictment of American patent law.

“Broadly, I don’t disagree with the many online complaints about these Nintendo patents,” said Sigmon, whose opinions do not represent those of his firm and clients. “They have been an embarrassing failure of the US patent system.”

And as Sigmon goes on to note, the failure is multifaceted in both instances. Sigmon notes that both patents are for mechanics and concepts that ought to be obvious to anyone with a reasonable amount of skill in this industry, which ought to have made them ineligible to be patented. That standard of patent law only works, however, if the USPTO acts as a true interlocutor during the filing process. In both of these cases, though, the USPTO appears to have not been in the mood to do their jobs.

Sigmon notes that it is common for patent applications like this to show some amount of questioning or pushback from the examiner. In both of these cases, that seemed almost entirely absent from the process, especially for patent ‘397.

Most of the claims made in the ‘387 patent’s single parent case, US Pat. No. 12,246,255, were immediately allowed by the USPTO, which Sigmon said is “a very unusual result: most claims are rejected at least once.” When the claims were ultimately allowed, the only reasoning the USPTO offered was a block quote of text from the claims themselves.

The ‘397 patent granted last week is even more striking. It’s a patent on summoning and battling with “sub-characters,” using specific language suggesting it’s based on the Let’s Go! mechanics in the Pokémon Scarlet and Violet games. Despite its relevance to a conceit in countless games—calling characters to battle enemies for you—it was allowed without any pushback whatsoever from the USPTO, which Sigmon said is essentially unheard of.

“Like the above case, the reasons for allowance don’t give us even a hint of why it was allowed: the Examiner just paraphrases the claims (after block quoting them) without explaining why the claims are allowed over the prior art,” Sigmon said. “This is extremely unusual and raises a large number of red flags.”

It’s hard to know what to say here. I obviously can’t crawl inside the head of whoever examined these patents at the USPTO. To that end, it would be irresponsible to claim that this is obvious laziness by a government employee, though on the surface that’s certainly what this looks like. Absent more information that is not currently available, any alternate theories as to why these applications were handled is mere speculation.

But with the Palworld example fresh in our minds, we do certainly know what the granting of patents like this will result in: more patent bullying by Nintendo.

“Pragmatically speaking, though, it’s not impossible to be sued for patent infringement even when a claim infringement argument is weak, and bad patents like this cast a massive shadow on the industry,” Sigmon said.

For a company at Nintendo’s scale, the claims of the ‘397 patent don’t need to make for a strong argument that would hold up in court. The threat of a lawsuit can stifle competition well enough on its own when it would cost millions of dollars to defend against.

And in the current environment, where challenging bad patents has become essentially pointless, you can bet we’ll see Nintendo wielding these patents against competitors in the near future.

2025-09-13 02:39:00 UTC

Trump Is Accusing Foes With Multiple Mortgages Of Fraud. Records Show Three Of His Cabinet Members Have Them.

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.

The Trump administration has vowed to go after anyone who got lower mortgage rates by claiming more than one primary residence on their loan papers.

President Donald Trump has used it as a justification to target political foes, including a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, a Democratic U.S. senator, and a state attorney general.

Real estate experts say claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time is often legal and rarely prosecuted.

But if administration officials continue the campaign, mortgage records show there’s another place they could look: Trump’s own Cabinet.

Underscoring how common the practice is, ProPublica found that at least three of Trump’s Cabinet members call multiple homes their primary residences on mortgages. We discovered the loans while examining financial disclosure forms, county real estate records and publicly available mortgage data provided by Hunterbrook Media.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer entered into two primary-residence mortgages in quick succession, including for a second home near a country club in Arizona, where she’s known to vacation. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has primary-residence mortgages in New Jersey and Washington, D.C. Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, has one primary-residence mortgage in Long Island and another in Washington, D.C., according to loan records.

In a flurry of interviews and rapid-fire posts on X, Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, has led the charge in accusing Trump opponents of mortgage fraud. “If somebody is claiming two primary residences, that is not appropriate, and we will refer it for criminal investigation,” Pulte said last month.

A political donor to the president and heir to a housing company fortune, Pulte’s posts online tease big developments and criminal referrals, drawing reposts from Trump himself and promises of swift consequences. “Fraud will not be tolerated in President Trump’s housing market,” Pulte has warned.

Real estate experts told ProPublica that, in its bid to wrest control of the historically independent Fed and go after political enemies, the Trump administration has mischaracterized mortgage rules. Its justification for launching criminal investigations, they said, could also apply to the Trump Cabinet members.

All three Cabinet members denied wrongdoing. In a statement, a White House spokesperson said: “This is just another hit piece from a left-wing dark money group that constantly attempts to smear President Trump’s incredible Cabinet members. Unlike [Fed Gov.] Lisa ‘Corrupt’ Cook who blatantly and intentionally committed mortgage fraud, Secretary DeRemer, Secretary Duffy, and Administrator Zeldin own multiple residences, and they have followed the law and they are fully compliant with all ethical obligations.”

Mortgages for a person’s main home tend to receive more favorable terms than for a second home or an investment property. That includes better interest rates and the ability to borrow more money.

The idea is that borrowers are more likely to pay back — and less likely to default on — a loan attached to the home they actually live in. That makes those loans less risky for lenders. Interest rates are typically a quarter- to a half-point lower for primary mortgages, according to Pulte. On the low end, that could save around $75 each month over the life of a 30-year, 5% interest, half-million-dollar loan — or a total of around $25,000.

Standard mortgage documents commonly include an occupancy clause that requires the borrower to use the property as their principal residence for at least a year. They also include a section where borrowers can check a box when the mortgage is for a second home.

Misrepresenting occupancy status is not rare, according to a widely cited 2023 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. In interviews, real estate lawyers said that mortgage lenders are typically well aware of their clients’ other loans and sometimes even encourage the primary-residence language for second homes.

They also pointed to a mundane reason that innocent mistakes are common: Homebuyers simply sign stacks of forms without reading them.

“Few consumers understand this issue, and if there is someone at fault here, it is likely the loan officer who likely advised them to sign up for this loan that obviously wasn’t for their primary residence,” said real estate lawyer Doug Miller. “Loan officers who are competing for business will often quote lower rates in order to get a customer’s business.”

Mortgage fraud is rarely prosecuted, according to real estate lawyers and federal sentencing data. Pulte has pointed to a case from 2016 in which a California woman was found guilty of obtaining multiple loans for condos that she falsely stated would be her primary residence. But that case had an added layer of fraud: The woman never intended to live in the homes. She was secretly being paid because she had good credit to act as a front for the true buyer of the properties, to whom they were later transferred. She later defaulted on the loans, causing more than half a million dollars in losses for the lenders.

Lawyers told ProPublica that determining ill intent would be key to prosecute. “Fraud requires the borrower to be aware that the borrower was making a false representation,” said Jon Goodman, an attorney focused on real estate at Frascona, Joiner, Goodman and Greenstein.

But Pulte has framed the issue in black-and-white terms: “Your second home is not your primary home,” he warned in one recent post on X.

By that standard, Trump’s labor secretary, Chavez-DeRemer, could be in the wrong.

In her financial disclosure form, she listed two mortgages on personal residences, both obtained in 2021. Mortgage records show her home is in Happy Valley, a city near Portland where Chavez-DeRemer served as mayor before being elected to represent the area in the U.S. House.

She and her husband, Shawn DeRemer, who leads an anesthesia company in Portland, refinanced their longtime Oregon home in January 2021. Two months later, the couple bought a newly built house near a golf course in Fountain Hills, Arizona.

The pair had previously enjoyed vacationing in Arizona, according to news reports and social media posts. (In one incident that made the news, Chavez-DeRemer was briefly hospitalized after a golf cart accident on her way back from watching a Sonoran Desert sunset.)

The mortgage agreement for the Arizona property required them to occupy the home as their “principal residence” for at least a year, barring “extenuating circumstances” or the lender allowing them to violate the stipulation.

A spokesperson for Chavez-DeRemer said that the couple bought the Arizona home with the intent to retire there, but then Chavez-DeRemer decided to run for Congress representing her Oregon district and did not move.

“This is nothing more than a left-wing rag inventing a story just to attack the Trump Administration. It’s common for families to refinance then buy a home with future plans in mind — trying to spin that as some type of scandal is pure nonsense,” said spokesperson Courtney Parella.

In response to questions from ProPublica, a White House official said that although DeRemer opted to stay in Oregon, her husband “continued to move forward with the process of becoming” an Arizona resident. Political donation records list his home in Oregon as recently as late 2023.

Duffy, Trump’s transportation secretary, and his wife also have two primary-residence mortgages, obtained a few years apart.

In August 2021, the Duffys, who have nine children, purchased a large $2 million home in Far Hills, New Jersey, about an hour’s drive from Manhattan, where Rachel Campos-Duffy works as a Fox News host.

They got a $1.6 million mortgage to purchase the property, and documents show it was a “principal residence” loan.

In February, after Duffy took the job in Trump’s cabinet, the couple bought another home, in Washington, D.C. Again, they got a principal-residence mortgage, this time for $1.76 million. Both Duffy and his wife are listed as borrowers on both mortgages, which came from the same bank.

It’s not clear where Sean Duffy lives most of the time, and a Department of Transportation spokesperson declined to answer questions about where Duffy and his wife each make their primary home. In late May, several months after they purchased the Washington home, “Fox & Friends Weekend” ran a segment in which Rachel Campos-Duffy cooked a “Make America Healthy Again” breakfast for host Steve Doocy. Sean Duffy and some of the couple’s children were also in the segment, and it was filmed in the New Jersey home.

Duffy’s spokesperson said in a statement that after being confirmed, “Sean purchased a home in Washington D.C. where he works full-time. The home in DC is not a rental, investment or vacation property. The same bank holds both mortgages and was fully informed of Secretary Duffy’s new employment location and need for a DC residence.”

A White House spokesperson said, “The bank, not the Secretary, determined and classified both mortgages as primary residences.”

Like the Duffys, Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, and his wife also have two concurrent primary-residence mortgages.

One, obtained in 2007, is on a home in Shirley, New York, on Long Island, which Zeldin represented in Congress for several years. Last year, Zeldin and his wife obtained a second mortgage, for $712,500, on a property in Washington, D.C., a short walk from the EPA’s headquarters. Both are primary-residence mortgages.

An EPA spokesperson said in a statement that Zeldin’s primary residence was previously on Long Island but is now in Washington. The spokesperson didn’t respond to questions about where his wife lives. “Administrator Zeldin followed ALL steps to complete the move in accordance with all laws, rules, and contracts, notifying his mortgage company, insurance company, and local government,” the spokesperson said. “EVERY ‘I’ was dotted and ‘t’ was crossed 1000% by the book without exception.”

The dual mortgages identified by ProPublica among Trump’s cabinet secretaries resemble the loans obtained by U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, whom Trump accused of mortgage fraud.

In May, Pulte referred Schiff to the Justice Department for taking out a primary-residence mortgage in Maryland, for a home he purchased in 2003 after being elected to the House, while also claiming his primary home was in Burbank, California, in the district he represented. Schiff and his wife refinanced the Maryland home several times as a primary residence, Pulte noted, until a 2020 refinance in which they reclassified it as a secondary home.

“Schiff appears to have falsified records in order to receive favorable loan terms,” Pulte concluded in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Representatives for Schiff called the allegations “transparently false” and said his lenders had “full knowledge of the senator’s year-round bicoastal work obligations” and “his use of two homes for that reason.” Schiff, according to his office, navigated the two mortgages in consultation with a House lawyer.

Pulte made similar allegations in a criminal referral about New York Attorney General Letitia James, alleging she may have committed fraud by getting a primary-residence mortgage for a home in Virginia, even though her position required her to live in New York. Her lawyer has said James helped a family member buy the property and notified the mortgage broker at the time that it would not be her primary residence. James became one of Trump’s top political enemies after she brought a fraud lawsuit against the president and his company in 2022. Representatives for James have called the fraud claims made against her politically motivated and false. (Pulte did not respond to a request for comment from ProPublica.)

Pulte’s most consequential allegations thus far were made against Cook, a Federal Reserve governor. Trump has been going after Fed Chair Jerome Powell for months for not lowering interest rates, even raising the specter that he would take the unprecedented step of attempting to fire the chair. Pulte’s criminal referral against Cook presented Trump with another avenue for bending the traditionally independent Fed to his will, securing a majority of the Fed’s board by firing Cook, a move that Cook has sued to block.

Pulte pointed to mortgage records that show that within just a couple of weeks, Cook signed primary-residence mortgages for homes in Michigan and Georgia. Legal experts said the close proximity was a red flag but that much was still unknown, including Cook’s intent and what her lenders were told. Pulte also flagged a third property, in Massachusetts, that Cook represented as a second home in mortgage documents but as an investment property in subsequent financial disclosures. Investment properties can be hit with higher mortgage rates than second homes.

“3 strikes and you’re out,” he posted on X.

Cook’s lawyers have denied that she committed mortgage fraud but have not provided a detailed explanation of the context for the various mortgages. They argued in court this week that her loans cannot be legally used as grounds to terminate her.

The Justice Department has begun investigating all three Trump foes singled out in Pulte’s referrals, according to news reports. The department has issued subpoenas in Cook’s case, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

ProPublica’s review of mortgage agreements by Trump cabinet officials shows that some made clear to lenders they were purchasing second homes.

When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for example, got a mortgage for his home near the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, the agreement included a rider making it clear he would be using it as a second home.

2025-09-12 22:35:40 UTC

The Judiciary Is Breaking Down: Federal Judges Now Openly Revolt Against SCOTUS Shadow Docket During Live Court Hearing

We’ve been tracking the growing judicial revolt against the Supreme Court’s shadow docket nonsense, from individual district judges getting snarky in footnotes to anonymous judges speaking to reporters. But what happened Thursday at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals crosses into entirely new territory: a full en banc panel of federal judges openly criticizing the Supreme Court’s approach during a live oral argument session.

This isn’t normal. Federal judges don’t usually air their grievances about the Supreme Court in open court. The fact that an entire appeals court panel—including respected conservative judges—turned their oral argument into what Politico called “a remarkable, 80-minute venting session” tells you everything about how broken the system has become.

The immediate catalyst was trying to figure out what to do with a case about DOGE’s access to Social Security data after the Supreme Court issued one of its trademark unexplained emergency orders. But the real issue was much bigger: how are lower courts supposed to function when the highest court in the land operates like it’s playing Calvinball?

“They’re leaving the circuit courts, the district courts out in limbo,” said Judge James Wynn… “We’re out here flailing. … I’m not criticizing the justices. They’re using a vehicle that’s there, but they are telling us nothing. They could easily just give us direction and we would follow it.”

Judge Wynn didn’t stop there:

“They cannot get amnesia in the future because they didn’t write an opinion on it. Write an opinion,” Wynn said. “We need to understand why you did it. We judges would just love to hear your reasoning as to why you rule that way. It makes our job easier. We will follow the law. We will follow the Supreme Court, but we’d like to know what it is we are following.”

I’ve been writing about the law for almost three decades. I’ve never seen anything like this. Ever. Not even in the same zip code as this. These are judges crying out for help under a completely lawless Supreme Court.

And, no, this wasn’t just liberal judges complaining. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III—a Reagan appointee and one of the most respected conservative jurists in the country—was right there with them:

“The Supreme Court’s action must mean something,” said Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee. “It doesn’t do these things just for the kicks of it.”

Even Wilkinson can’t figure out what the hell the Supreme Court is doing. When you’ve lost Harvie Wilkinson—a judge so conservative and institutionally minded that he’s basically judicial royalty—you’ve completely broken the system.

The specific case that triggered this judicial revolt involves the Supreme Court’s typical shadow docket bullshit. In June, the Court overruled the Fourth Circuit’s decision and lifted an injunction against DOGE’s use of Social Security data. But they did so in the most bizarre and troubling way. After sending the case back to the Fourth Circuit for more review, it said that even if the Fourth Circuit rules that DOGE is breaking the law, the stay will remain in place.

By an apparent 6-3 vote, the justices went further, saying that no matter what the appeals court decided, the injunction would remain on hold until the case returned to the Supreme Court. Yet, the high court’s majority offered no substantive rationale for the lower court to parse.

So the Supreme Court basically said: “We’re overturning you, and also whatever you decide doesn’t matter anyway, but we’re not going to tell you why.” This left the entire Fourth Circuit panel wondering what the fuck they’re even supposed to do.

That left many of the 15 4th Circuit judges on hand for Thursday’s unusual en banc arguments puzzling at their role. One even suggested the appeals court should simply issue a one-line opinion saying the injunction is lifted and kick the case back to the Supreme Court to resolve.

Some judges thought they should just give up entirely and punt the case back to SCOTUS since SCOTUS has already said whatever they decide here doesn’t actually matter. Others insisted they had a constitutional duty to actually do their jobs:

“It sounds like some of my colleagues think that there’s no work to be done, that we’re done because the Supreme Court has told us what the answer is,” said Judge Albert Diaz, an Obama appointee.

Judge Robert King said punting on the case would be a mistake.

“We each have a commission and we have a robe and we have an oath to abide by,” said King, a Clinton appointee.

This perfectly captures the impossible position the Supreme Court has created. Lower court judges literally don’t know if they’re supposed to do their jobs or just rubber-stamp whatever vibes they think they’re getting from the shadow docket.

The whole mess stems from a series of recent Supreme Court shadow docket rulings (without much explanation) basically telling lower courts they have to follow SCOTUS shadow docket rulings (also without much explanation) as binding precedent. But as we’ve written about extensively, these aren’t reasoned legal decisions—they’re often unexplained orders issued with minimal briefing, no oral arguments, and little to no explanation of any reasoning.

This has created a situation where experienced federal judges—people who’ve spent decades interpreting legal precedent (often longer than the Justices themselves)—literally can’t figure out what the Supreme Court wants them to do.

What we’re witnessing is the breakdown of the federal judiciary as a functioning institution. When Reagan and Obama appointees are united in open revolt, and Harvie Wilkinson can’t figure out what the Supreme Court wants, the system has collapsed.

The three liberal Justices have been warning about this in dissent after dissent, while the conservative majority just keeps issuing more unexplained orders and then getting pissy when lower courts can’t read their minds. This isn’t jurisprudence. It’s government by judicial decree, where constitutional law operates on vibes and the only consistent principle is “give Trump whatever he wants.”

When federal judges with decades of experience are reduced to public pleading for basic guidance during oral arguments, we’ve crossed into judicial authoritarianism. The Supreme Court has effectively told the entire federal judiciary: “Follow our orders, but we won’t explain what they mean, and if you guess wrong, we’ll scold you for defying us.”

That’s not how precedent works. That’s not how courts work. That’s not the rule of law. It’s just nine people in robes demanding deference to their unexplained whims.

2025-09-12 20:41:47 UTC

After 30+ Deaths In Protests Triggered by Nepal’s Social Media Ban, 145,000 People Debate The Country’s Future In Discord Chatroom

The Himalayan nation of Nepal has featured only rarely on Techdirt. The first time was back in 2003, with a story about an early Internet user there. According to the post, he would spend five hours walking down the mountain to the main road, and then another four hours on a bus to get to the nearest town that had an Internet connection he could use. As a recent Ctrl-Alt-Speech podcast explained, Nepal’s digital society has moved on a long way since then, with massive street protests in the country’s capital, Kathmandu, triggered by a government order banning 26 social media platforms, later rescinded. Those protests turned violent, leaving more than 30 people killed in clashes with the police, key government buildings in flames, and the prime minister ousted. Although the attempt to block the main social media platforms for their failure to submit to governmental registration — and thus control — may have been the final spark that ignited the violence, the underlying causes lie deeper, as NPR explains:

Frustrations have been mounting among young people in Nepal over the country’s unemployment and wealth gap. According to the Nepal Living Standard Survey 2022-23, published by the government, the country’s unemployment rate was 12.6%.

Leading up to the protests, the hashtag #NepoBaby had been trending in the country, largely to criticize the extravagant lifestyles of local politicians’ children and call out corruption, NPR previously reported.

The use of popular digital platforms to criticize the government in this way was probably a key reason for the authorities’ botched clampdown on social media, which in turn led to the large-scale protests and ensuing chaos. And now another popular digital platform is being used in an attempt to find a way to move forward:

After the government’s collapse on Tuesday, the military imposed a curfew across the capital, Kathmandu, and restricted large gatherings. With the country in political limbo and no obvious next leader in place, Nepalis have taken to Discord, a platform popularized by video gamers, to enact the digital version of a national convention.

As one person participating in the discussions told the New York Times: “The Parliament of Nepal right now is Discord.” It is a parliament like no other: in just a few days, more than 145,000 people have joined a Discord server to discuss who should lead the country, at least for the moment:

The channel’s organizers are members of Hami Nepal, a civic organization, and many of those participating in the chat are the so-called Gen-Z activists who led this week’s protests. But since the prime minister’s abrupt resignation on Tuesday, power in Nepal effectively resides with the military. The army’s chiefs, who most likely will decide who next leads the country, have met with the channel’s organizers and asked them to put forth a potential nominee for interim leader.

Whether this unprecedented experiment in large-scale digital politics succeeds in bringing order and stability to Nepal remains to be seen. But it is certainly extraordinary to watch history being made as, once more, the online world rapidly and profoundly reshapes the offline world.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky.

2025-09-12 19:12:36 UTC

Fake “Free Speech” Champion Clay Higgins Now Wants To Use Gov’t Power To Silence Anyone Who “Belittles” Kirk’s Death

Rep. Clay Higgins wants to use his government power to ban Americans from the internet for life if they say unkind things about Charlie Kirk’s death. Yes, the same Clay Higgins who just two years ago co-sponsored the “Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act“—a performative bill that did literally nothing except restate that government actors cannot engage in censorship.

Back then, he sanctimoniously declared:

“The American people have the right to speak their truths, and federal bureaucrats should not be dictating what is or isn’t true. We must continue to uphold the First Amendment as our founding fathers intended.”

The snarky thing to say here is that he’s had a change of heart. The more accurate thing to say is that Clay Higgins is a huge hypocrite. In the wake of the unfortunate killing of Charlie Kirk, Higgins suddenly thinks that the First Amendment no longer applies to him, and he can use his government power to force private companies to ban people for life over First Amendment protected speech:

In case you can’t see that, he says the following:

I’m going to use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk. If they ran their mouth with their smartass hatred celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man who dedicated his whole life to delivering respectful conservative truth into the hearts of liberal enclave universities, armed only with a Bible and a microphone and a Constitution… those profiles must come down.

So, I’m going to lean forward in this fight, demanding that big tech have zero tolerance for violent political hate content, the user to be banned from ALL PLATFORMS FOREVER. I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked. I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

I’m starting that today.

That is all.

That is a US government official saying that he’s going to use state power to silence voices “for life” for protected speech, such as “belittling” Kirk’s death. He claims he’s going to directly seek to assert state power (removing licenses and permits, something that Congress has no actual authority to do).

That does not appear to be “upholding the First Amendment as our founding fathers intended.” It sure seems to be the opposite of that.

And, of course, you know that Higgins is an even bigger hypocrite than that. He has, somewhat famously, belittled others in similar situations. When Nancy Pelosi’s husband was subject to a violent politically motivated attack he absolutely belittled Pelosi, spreading a blatantly false conspiracy theory about who the attacker was.

By Higgins’ own standard, he should be “banned from ALL PLATFORMS FOREVER” for that tweet. But of course, rules are only for the other team.

Indeed, we know he would freak out if sites actually banned him for something like that, because this is the same Rep. Clay Higgins that once told Twitter execs that he was going to have the FBI arrest them and have them sent to jail because they made the editorial choice to (very briefly) block the sharing of a NY Post article (a story that is widely misunderstood due to misleading conspiracy theories):

“You, ladies and gentlemen, interfered with the United States of America 2020 presidential election, knowingly and willingly,” Higgins said. “That’s the bad news, it’s gonna get worse because this is the investigation part. Later comes the arrest part. Your attorneys are familiar with that.”

Not surprisingly, when the Elon Musk-owned X was way, way, way more aggressive in blocking a story with hacked materials about JD Vance, I don’t recall Higgins threatening him with investigations and arrests.

This perfectly encapsulates the entire MAGA approach to “free speech”: it’s not a principle, it’s a weapon. Free speech is sacred when they want to spread lies about election fraud or attack their enemies. But the moment someone says something they don’t like, suddenly these self-proclaimed First Amendment champions are demanding government censorship that would make Xi Jinping proud.

Higgins’ threat isn’t just hypocritical—it’s genuinely dangerous. A sitting member of Congress is promising to use federal power to punish constitutionally protected speech. The founders he claims to revere would have been appalled by such authoritarian overreach.

But, as I keep asking, where are all those people who falsely claimed that any effort to encourage social media companies to change their moderation practices was the worst attack on free speech in the history of the country? Where are Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Shellenberger, the three most vocal spouters of that lie? All three are attacking the responses… of Democrats. Not a one appears to have said anything about Higgins’ direct attack on speech.

The silence is deafening and revealing. These supposed free speech warriors are nowhere to be found when actual government censorship is being threatened by their political allies.

Incredibly, Shellenberger, who testified multiple times before Congress, including saying “one’s commitment to free speech means nothing if it does not extend to your political enemies” was whining on his Substack about how some amorphous group of NGOs are trying to censor him, while simultaneously retweeting Pennsylvania’s Senator Dave McCormick calling for UPenn to apparently punish Michael Mann for saying that the “the white on white violence has gotten out of hand,” which is a clear satirical reference to racist claims regarding crime.

But also, Mann’s literally saying the violence has gotten out of hand. How is that something worth punishing? And how is Michael Shellenberger, who claims that any effort by any government official to pressure private entities to punish people for their speech is a huge attack on free speech, suddenly now in favor of government official Dave McCormick ordering punishment for Michael Mann’s protected speech? And how is Michael Shellenberger, who testified before Congress about the importance of standing up for the free speech of your political enemies, suddenly silent on Higgins?

It’s hypocrites all the way down.

The performative bullshit about “censorship” from these clowns was always garbage. We’re just able to show it more clearly now.

2025-09-12 17:50:27 UTC

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2025-09-12 17:45:27 UTC