6/30/2014: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores is decided.
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Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 30, 2026
Today in Supreme Court History: June 30, 2014
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Archives: July 2026
50 years ago
July 1976
"Historians friendly to the Revolution have insisted that the Americans fought for political freedom, for independence, for constitutional rights, or for democracy; critical historians maintain that the fight was merely for economic reasons, for defense of property and trade against British interference. But why must the two be sundered? Why may not a defense of American liberty and property, of political and economic rights be conjoined? The merchants rebelling against the stamp tax, or sugar or tea taxes, or restrictions of the Navigation Laws, were battling for their rights of property and trade free from interference. In doing so, they were battling for their own property and for the rights of liberty at the same time. The American masses, similarly, were battling for all property rights, for their own as well as those of the merchants, and acting also in their capacity as consumers fighting against British taxes and restrictions.
In reality there need be no dichotomy between liberty and property, between defense of the rights of property in one's person and in one's material possessions. Defense of rights is logically unitary in all spheres of action. And what is more, the American revolutionaries certainly acted on these very assumptions, as revealed by their essential adherence to libertarian thought, to political and economic rights, and always to 'Liberty and Property.' The men of the 18th century saw no dichotomy between personal and economic freedom, between rights to liberty and to property; these artificial distinctions were left for later ages to construct….
An opposition or revolutionary movement, or indeed any mass movement from below, cannot be primarily guided by ordinary economic motives. For such a mass movement to form, the masses must be fired up, must be aroused to a rare and uncommon pitch of fervor against the existing system. But that requires an ideology. Only ideology, guided either by a new religious conversion or by a passion for justice, can arouse the interest of the masses (in the current jargon, 'raise their consciousness') and lead them out of the morass of daily habit into an uncommon and militant activity in opposition to the State. This is not to say that an economic motive—for example, defense of their property—does not play an important role. But to form a mass movement in opposition means that they must shake off the habits, the daily mundane concerns of several lifetimes, and become politically aroused and determined as never before in their lives. Only a commonly held and passionately believed-in ideology can perform that role. Hence our conclusion that a mass movement such as the American Revolution must have been centrally motivated by a commonly shared ideology….
In the deepest sense, the American Revolution was a conscious majority revolution on behalf of libertarianism and against Power, a libertarian ideology that stressed the conjoined rights of 'Liberty and Property.' The American Revolution was not only the first great modern revolution, it was a libertarian revolution as well."
Murray Rothbard
"America's Libertarian Revolution"
"Just what is it we are celebrating with the Bicentennial? With a few notable exceptions, much of the reality and significance of the American Revolution seems to have escaped the American people and a large segment of the historical profession, judging from what has been published during the Bicentennial. Was the American Revolution, for example, a people's war?…
Despite the fact that the means by which the American Revolution progressed were not so very different from revolutionary struggles of the past and of this century as some Americans have at times imagined, it was a very different and radical revolution in its ends. That legitimacy shift toward natural law, republicanism, and sovereignty of the people was something very new, and the Americans of that era realized it and were justly proud of the fact….
It was the one great revolution in history in which the idea of equality triumphed over either an accommodation with the inequalities of the old order, or radical egalitarianism."
William Marina
"The American Revolution as a People's War"
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Brickbat: TMI
The Denver Public Schools Board of Education unanimously voted to fire French teacher Jennifer Honka for incompetence and neglect of duty. The move came after numerous student complained that as part of graded assignments, she used classroom skits in which female students felt pressured to kiss classmates of the same sex. Some students said they were embarrassed or uncomfortable. One received a zero after refusing to participate, and another's attendance dropped after the incident. The investigation also found that Honka repeatedly shared deeply personal information with students, including her experiences with childhood abuse, infertility, being a lesbian, and suicidal ideation. One student who had struggled with suicidal thoughts left the classroom after hearing those discussions. An independent administrative law judge concluded that both the skits and Honka's repeated sharing of sensitive personal experiences had little educational value, harmed students' well-being, and justified her dismissal.
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Open Thread
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Monday, June 29, 2026
Today in Supreme Court History: June 29, 1992
6/29/1992: Planned Parenthood v. Casey is decided.
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Local Officials Vow To Shield the Public from Virginia's Authoritarian New Gun Laws
Everybody loves local control when they run towns and counties and their opponents hold federal or state offices. It works in reverse, too, with presidents and governors denouncing rebellious officials who won't follow dictates from the state or federal capital.
So it is in Virginia, where Democrats who dominate the state government are upset that local prosecutors and police decline to enforce new restrictive gun laws they justifiably view as unconstitutional and dangerous to their constituents' liberty.
Officials Refuse To Enforce 'Obviously Unconstitutional' Gun Ban
"The assault weapons ban and the public carry ban are obviously unconstitutional," Spotsylvania County Commonwealth's Attorney Ryan Mehaffey, a Republican, informed 7News earlier this month. "And it's incumbent upon constitutional officers in Virginia to come out and clearly state that they cannot be lawfully enforced, and to defend the people's rights to keep and bear arms."
Mehaffey has been joined by prosecutors from at least 15 other jurisdictions. On June 5, Hanover County Sheriff Gregory Six announced that he "shares many of the concerns that have been expressed regarding the constitutional implications of these laws" and that "the Hanover County Sheriff's Office will exercise its lawful discretion and will not pursue enforcement actions under these new laws while the courts consider the pending constitutional challenges."
These skeptics make a strong case. Last week, Lancaster County Circuit Judge John Martin issued a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the ban on so-called "assault weapons." He considers it likely the prohibition will be found in violation of state constitutional protections.
The list of new laws in question include the ban on the purchase, sale, manufacture, and transfer of "assault weapons"—popular semiautomatic firearms with certain largely cosmetic features that make them look scary to some people. They also include a ban on magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds of ammunition (a problem when standard magazines for popular firearms like the Sig Sauer P365 Fuse hold 17 rounds or more). Other laws include impossible-to-enforce restrictions on home-built guns, increased liability for firearms makers, and enforcement-resistant background checks for private sales.
Basically, Democrats won the last election and immediately moved to implement their long-stymied gun control agenda in a state populated by people with widely divergent views and lifestyles. They're running up against a lack of cooperation from local officials who do most of the arresting and prosecuting.
Unsurprisingly, the politicians who pushed for the restrictive new laws that are set to take effect next month are unhappy that so many local officials disdain their legislative efforts.
"Commonwealth's Attorneys are elected to enforce our laws, which is what we expect them to do when these laws take effect on July 1," complained Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones.
Advocating Local Control or Centralized Power When They're Convenient
Ironically, as Gov. Abigail Spanberger pushed for the gun law package that's meeting resistance, she claimed that old cooperative agreements with the federal government "improperly cede accountability and discretion over Virginia law enforcement to the federal government by requiring that Virginia law enforcement agents work 'under the supervision or direction of' the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ('ICE')." She not only terminated those agreements but also advocated legislation that would limit federal immigration enforcement in the state.
Spanberger insists Virginia isn't becoming a "sanctuary state" that resists enforcement of federal immigration laws, but that's a distinction without a difference. Virginia's Democrat-dominated state government is unfriendly to the Republican Trump administration's migrant policies and plans to withhold assistance and place roadblocks in the way of enforcement. Localities within Virginia, such as Arlington, have already done the same.
Fundamentally, Virginia Democrats view federal immigration laws much the same way that Virginia Republicans see state gun laws: They're dangerous, illiberal, and should be resisted.
And yes, of course, the Trump administration has excoriated sanctuary jurisdictions.
"We are exposing these sanctuary politicians who harbor criminal illegal aliens and defy federal law," huffed Department of Homeland Security then-Secretary Kristi Noem last year in an expression of the sort of sentiment Virginia's Jones would undoubtedly endorse in a different context.
The Long History of Legal Local Resistance to Laws
Such confrontations have repeatedly played out across the country over guns, immigration, drugs, and more. During the 1920s, New York City and state officials withheld police cooperation in enforcing Prohibition. Later, many local prosecutors, including Norman Vroman, the onetime Libertarian district attorney of Mendocino County, California, refused to enforce marijuana laws. Sanctuary jurisdictions, as mentioned above, opt out of immigration enforcement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, county sheriffs in multiple states declined to arrest people for violating lockdowns and mask mandates. Second Amendment sanctuaries won't commit resources to enforcing gun laws they consider repugnant. The law is largely on the side of the rebels.
"Thanks to the Tenth Amendment, the federal government cannot force states to help them enforce federal law," George Mason University Law School's Ilya Somin wrote in 2016 about immigration.
Localities technically don't have the same constitutional protections against state mandates as states have against the whims of Washington, D.C. But as a practical matter, prosecutors, sheriffs, and police chiefs must prioritize the use of their personnel and resources and can drop the enforcement of laws they consider unconstitutional or immoral to the bottom of the list.
Importantly, local officials are likely to more closely represent local sentiment than their state and federal counterparts. They're elected to office by smaller, more cohesive communities and have a better handle on how constituents want to live and what laws and policies regarding guns or anything else they're willing to tolerate.
Ultimately, the most local authority is that which individuals exercise over their own lives. Just as sheriffs and prosecutors run interference against state officials who themselves intervene against the feds, so we all must decide how much meddling we're willing to tolerate from the various levels of government. Refusing to enforce or obey authoritarian laws isn't the only tool for defending liberty. But it is an effective and necessary check on power.
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Open Thread
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Sunday, June 28, 2026
The Gun That Won the Revolution
In a special America 250 issue, Reason takes a look back at our country's founding people and ideas. Read more here.
"No bigger than half a piece of soap" was how history remembered the diminutive James Madison, who weighed barely a hundred pounds. At 5 feet, 4 inches tall, he would later become the shortest American president ever. Yet firearms are the great equalizer, and in June 1775, two months after the American Revolution had begun, Madison had no doubt that he and his fellow Virginians could take out the British redcoats.
In a letter to Rhode Island patriot William Bradford, Madison wrote: "The strength of this Colony will lie chiefly in the rifle-men of the Upland Counties, of whom we shall have great numbers. You would be astonished at the perfection this art is brought to." The "most inexpert hands" could usually hit a man's head at 100 yards. Most Virginia riflemen could pick off enemy officers "before they get within 150 or 200 Yards," Madison noted. "Indeed I believe we have men that would very often hit such a mark 250 Yds. Our greatest apprehensions proceed from the scarcity of powder but a little will go a great way with such as use rifles."
Madison was right. Citizen expertise with the iconic American Long Rifle would change the course of the Revolution and secure a new nation stretching all the way to the Mississippi River. Later, when Madison was president, American marksmen with American Long Rifles would win America's smashing victory over the British at the 1815 Battle of New Orleans.
God and Guns
It is fitting that the First Amendment and the Second Amendment are adjacent: Both guarantee natural rights, and each amendment safeguards the other. So it is unsurprising that the story of America's greatest gun begins with religious freedom.
Founded in 1681 by the wealthy English Quaker William Penn, Pennsylvania was different from most other colonies: It had no government-established church supported by taxation and compulsory attendance. Instead, religious freedom was guaranteed for "all persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and eternal God." As long as persons would "live peaceably and justly in civil society," they would enjoy complete liberty "in matters of faith and worship," with no compulsion of any sort.
America was attracting skilled immigrant craftsmen, who could set up their own businesses and prosper, free of the extensive controls of guilds and government in their homelands. For Central Europeans—whose religious faiths were neither the established Church of England (most colonies) nor the Congregationalist offshoot of that church (most of New England)—Pennsylvania was especially attractive. When George Louis of Hanover, Germany, became King George I of Great Britain in 1714, many German-speaking gunsmiths decided the time was right to emigrate to America. These riflemakers from Germany and Switzerland usually settled around Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
There, they introduced a new type of firearm to British North America.
Ever since English immigration had begun in the early 17th century, almost all American guns had been smoothbores—that is, the interior of the barrel was smooth. Today, the most common smoothbores are shotguns. Smoothbores are well-suited for bird hunting but not for long-distance accuracy.
The German immigrants, however, were used to making rifles. In a rifle, spiral grooves (rifling) are cut in the bore. The grooves make the bullet spin on its horizontal axis, so the bullet's flight is more aerodynamically stable. Superior for long-range shooting, rifles had been well-established in the mountainous regions of southern Germany and northern Switzerland since the late 15th century. But rifles had not caught on in Great Britain or in the British colonies.
The Pennsylvania gunmakers initially produced the Jaeger model, which they had made in Central Europe. But it was very heavy to carry, the bullets were large and slow, and it required adjusting the rear sight to shoot at different distances.
Americans wanted a firearm suitable for an activity that did not take place in Germany or Switzerland: long hunting. Some of the first long hunters in America were the 17th century Finnish settlers of New Sweden (centered on the Delaware River). They were later copied by Scotch-Irish and German immigrants. Either alone or in groups, long hunters would spend days, weeks, months, or longer in the densely wooded interior. Hunting for themselves and trading with Indians, they would return with animal pelts for transatlantic export. The long hunting expeditions also scouted new areas for future settlement.
While the American colonies had originally been narrow strips huddled along the Atlantic coast, long hunting was the vanguard of westward American expansion toward the Appalachian Mountains and beyond.
The Impossible Rifle
As historian Robert Held explained in his book The Age of Firearms, "what Americans demanded of their gunsmiths seemed impossible": a rifle weighing 10 pounds or less, for which a month's ammunition would weigh 1–3 pounds, "with proportionately small quantities of powder," that was "easy to load," and had "such velocity and flat trajectories that one fixed rear sight would serve as well at fifty yards as at three hundred, the necessary but slight difference in elevation being supplied by the user's experience."
"By about 1735," Held added, "the impossible had taken shape" with the creation of a new type of rifle.
Some called it the "Pennsylvania rifle" because Pennsylvania was where it was made. Some called it the "Kentucky rifle" because Kentuckians were the most prominent early users. ("Kentucky" originally referred to an area extending from what is now southern Ohio and Indiana all the way to northern Tennessee.)
During the 1700s, riflemaking knowledge spread nationally, as apprentices who trained in Pennsylvania moved south and west. Today, their guns are called the American Long Rifle.
The American Long Rifle's barrel was longer than the Central European Jaeger's. The extra length improved balance and helped the user obtain a more accurate sight of a distant target.
While European rifles generally had a caliber (the interior bore diameter) of .60 or .75 inches, Americans preferred a smaller caliber—usually somewhere from .40 to .46, sometimes as low as .32. A smaller caliber meant smaller bullets. One pound of lead will make just 16 bullets for a .70 caliber gun but 46 bullets for a .45 caliber. With the smaller caliber, a person on a hunting expedition that might last for months could carry more ammunition.
The most accurate firearm in the world until the early 19th century, and not surpassed until the 1840s, the American Long Rifle was ideal for hunting mammals and for the irregular tactics of Indian-fighting. Indians preferred the rifle for the same reasons—it fit the forest.
Whether on hunting expeditions or in frontier cabins, riflemen were careful to learn the exact quantity of powder their rifle needed so that none was wasted. They adjusted the quantity as appropriate, such as adding more powder for an especially long shot. Long-distance shooting contests were major events in rural communities. Everyone was expected to be a master of precision.
In America, accurate shooting was not just for prestige; it was for dinner. For example, a shot to the center of a squirrel's body would ruin much of the meat. So Americans could "bark" a squirrel: A shot just under the tail would knock the squirrel off a tree branch, and the squirrel would fall to the ground intact. The American Long Rifle helped create the American "cult of accuracy," as Alexander Rose described in his book American Rifle: A Biography.
Excellent as the American Long Rifle was, it was not the most common firearm on the eve of the Revolution. More numerous by far were smoothbore muskets, which were simpler and less expensive to make, faster to reload, and sturdier. American muskets were usually based on British or French military designs and modified for American conditions, such as lighter weight to improve utility for hunting.
While American Long Rifles had spread all over the Middle and Southern Colonies, they were rare in New England—until the Revolution.
Rifles of the Revolution
On April 19, 1775, the British military garrison in Boston attempted to confiscate American arms and ammunition at Lexington and Concord. On the march back to Boston, the redcoats barely escaped annihilation by swarms of armed Americans. Now the British were besieged in Boston, surrounded by New England militia.
The Second Continental Congress, assembled in Philadelphia, created the Continental Army on June 14, 1775, a date now celebrated as the birthday of the U.S. Army. The Continental Army began with the New Englanders surrounding Boston, to be augmented by 10 companies of "expert riflemen"—six from Pennsylvania and two each from Maryland and Virginia. These riflemen astonished their New England cousins by picking off British officers, sentries, and other soldiers at distances over 200 yards. This bolstered American morale and demoralized the British.
During the Revolution, rifles were less important than muskets. One reason was reloading speed. At the time, all guns were muzzleloaders. The user would insert a spherical bullet in the front opening of the gun (the muzzle) and use a ramrod to shove the bullet all the way down to the base (breech) of the barrel, on top of the gunpowder charge. Rifle bullets needed a tight fit so that they could engage with the spiral rifling grooves, and forcing the bullet into the barrel therefore took longer.
Also, battles usually ended with hand-to-hand combat. Soldiers would stab and slash each other with bayonets attached to the ends of their muskets or use their muskets as clubs. American Long Rifles were too delicate for such usage. While all riflemen carried a tomahawk, a hatchet, or some other edged weapon, opponents who had bayonets at the ends of their muskets had a much longer reach.
Yet rifles changed the course of the Revolutionary War. The most decisive shot in the entire conflict came from a rifleman on October 7, 1777, at the Second Battle of Saratoga—the turning point of the Revolution. British forces marching down from Canada were attempting to seize the Hudson River Valley and isolate New England from her sister states. Boldly astride a gray horse, Brig. Gen. Simon Fraser was rallying, stabilizing, and encouraging the British troops at a critical point amid heavy fighting.
From the amazing distance of at least 300 yards, an American rifle bullet felled Fraser. This threw the British into panic, broke their offensive momentum, and contributed to the American victory that day. The British commander, Lt. Gen. John Burgoyne, attempted to lead a retreat, but he could not escape. Ten days later, and for the first time in history, an entire British army surrendered in the field.
When the French government learned about Saratoga, it opened negotiations with Benjamin Franklin to create the Franco-American alliance and bring France into the war on the American side.
Later, the British shifted to a southern campaign, hoping that Loyalists in the region would rise in their support. Three years to the day after Saratoga, on October 7, 1780, patriot militia with American Long Rifles crushed a large Loyalist militia at the Battle of Kings Mountain, near the North Carolina–South Carolina border. On that woody, rocky mountain, the Loyalists' muskets could not reach the patriot backwoodsmen. The patriot rifle shots from 200 yards or more annihilated the Loyalists and thereby impaired Loyalist recruitment.
A few months later, in 1781, the path to the final American triumph at Yorktown, Virginia, was laid by victory at Cowpens, South Carolina. Brig. Gen. Daniel Morgan put 150 American riflemen on an exposed front line. As the British approached, the riflemen picked off British officers from more than 200 yards away, far beyond the range of British muskets. When the British came closer, the riflemen retreated, seeming to flee. The British rushed to give chase, only to find themselves led into a trap and enveloped by hidden American forces.
For several years, the British had been willing to concede American independence—but only for lands between the Atlantic and the Appalachians. The Americans insisted on more: everything up to the Mississippi River. Throughout the Revolution, in the deep interior, the patriots and their Indian allies used their American Long Rifles to defeat the British and their Indian allies. The realities on the ground forced the British to surrender their claims to America's interior in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
The Battle of New Orleans
The War of 1812 was sometimes called the Second War of Independence. For the Americans, the climax of the war came on January 8, 1815, at the Battle of New Orleans. The British forces at New Orleans were the best in the world, fresh from defeating Napoleon's forces in the Peninsular Campaign in Spain.
Although the war had formally ended with the December 24, 1814, Treaty of Ghent (Belgium), nobody in the Western Hemisphere knew. Had the British captured New Orleans, they might have kept it to strangle Western American commerce—just as they had illegally squatted in various Western forts they were supposed to evacuate after the Treaty of Paris. British Gen. Edward Pakenham had promised his soldiers "beauty and booty," meaning that they could rape the women and pillage the city.
Led by Gen. Andrew Jackson, the American forces were a combination of professional soldiers, militia, irregulars, free black people, white people, Creoles, Cajuns, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Portuguese, Germans, Italians, Indians, lawyers, privateers, farmers, and shopkeepers. Confronted by the best units of the best army in the world, the Americans brought their own guns because the federal government lacked the resources to supply them with standardized military weapons.
Although outnumbered, the Americans were still experienced hunters and skilled marksmen. Firing their American Long Rifles from improvised fortifications, they demolished the British while suffering hardly any casualties themselves.
The victory in the Battle of New Orleans became central to American patriotism. Until the Civil War, it was celebrated nearly as much as the Fourth of July.
Although artillery and muskets had contributed substantially to the New Orleans triumph, the rifles got top billing. "The Hunters of Kentucky" became the most popular song in the nation, exulting: "For Jackson he was wide awake, he was not scared of trifles. Full well he knew what aim we'd take with our Kentucky rifles." Americans believed that they were free because they were excellent marksmen.
From Our Cold, Dead Hands
When the American frontier later crossed the Mississippi River, the American Long Rifle did not come along. On the open plains, Americans needed a shorter rifle for use on horseback, and they needed a bigger bullet for larger game, such as bison.
Yet the American Long Rifle has never vanished from daily manufacture and use in America. John G.W. Dillin's 1924 book The Kentucky Rifle detailed how Appalachian gunsmiths were still manufacturing Kentucky rifles by hand. They were keeping alive a long American tradition of home manufacture—what Robert Held described as a time when a man "could build a rifle out of a maple tree and two bars of pig iron, as was expected of any Pennsylvania riflesmith about the time of Bunker Hill."
In 1954, Dixie Gun Works began producing build-at-home kits for modern replicas of Kentucky rifles and other historic muzzleloaders. Other companies have followed suit. Because the 1968 federal Gun Control Act does not apply to muzzleloading guns, the flintlock builder is free to give his gun to a friend or to sell it. Those kits initiated a continuing revival of muzzleloading. Many states now have special early hunting seasons for muzzleloaders.
In 1955, Ohio gunsmith Cecil Brooks began what would become a half-century tradition. Every year at the National Rifle Association (NRA) Annual Members Banquet, he would present the speaker with a custom American Long Rifle that he had spent hundreds of hours building. Recipients included President Ronald Reagan, Vice President Dick Cheney, Sen. Barry Goldwater (R–Ariz.)—and, most famously, actor and future NRA President Charlton Heston.
Pro-gun bumper stickers had long said, "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands." When Heston was presented with the rifle after concluding his speech, he raised it overhead with both arms and declared: "I have only one more comment to make: from my cold, dead hands." The members rose for a thunderous and prolonged standing ovation.
Today, the "Pennsylvania Long Rifle" is honored as the commonwealth's official firearm, and the "Kentucky Long Rifle" is similarly honored in that commonwealth. For all Americans, the American Long Rifle is part of our common American heritage of inventive genius in the service of human rights.
Created by immigrants seeking religious freedom, the American Long Rifle helped win the Revolution and build the country. A feat of engineering once considered impossible, the American Long Rifle reigned for a century as the world's most accurate firearm. A hybrid that was suited for hunting, personal defense, and community defense, the rifle cultivated the gun culture that made Americans the most proficient weapon-using people on Earth. Thanks to modern replicas, the American Long Rifle has always remained in common use, an enduring icon of American self-sufficiency and freedom.
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Saturday, June 27, 2026
L.A. Delays Its $30 Hotel 'Olympic Wage' Until After the Olympics
In May of last year, the Los Angeles City Council voted to raise the minimum wage for hotel workers in the city to $30 an hour by 2028. This represented the culmination of over a decade of hotel-specific minimum wage rises in the city, which have hampered the hotel industry and reduced employment.
But last month, at the last minute, the city council voted to delay the enactment of the $30 wage by two years to 2030, buying a temporary reprieve for the hotel sector. While a delay is better than nothing, the City of Angels—and progressive politicians across the country—should use the experience of L.A.'s hotel wage to revisit their misguided wage policies entirely.
The drama over L.A.'s hotel minimum wage dates back to 2015, when the city enacted a $15.37 minimum wage for the lodging sector. The wage was indexed to inflation, meaning that it steadily increased over time, reaching just over $21 an hour by 2025. For comparison, L.A.'s regular minimum wage was $10.50 in 2016 and stands at $17.87 today, with an increase to $18.42 scheduled to take place on July 1.
The impact of L.A.'s heightened hotel wage has been palpable. Year-over-year employment growth in the hotel industry has declined since 2015, going from 6.2 percent growth in 2014 to 0.2 percent growth in 2024. It fell to -1.7 percent in December 2025, which made for the largest year-over-year decline in a decade. (The industry did experience rapid employment growth from 2021 through 2023, though this was driven by a rebound from the cataclysmic losses across the tourism industry in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.)
Despite this economic reality, L.A.'s city council decided to double down. Last May, the council enacted an even more supersized hotel minimum wage. Dubbed the "Olympic wage"—since it was set to correlate with L.A. hosting the 2028 Olympics—the council voted to increase hotel wages to $30 an hour by 2028.
Business owners in the industry quickly sounded the alarm about the potential effects of such a drastic wage hike, timed to hit hardest right when the city was expecting a massive influx of tourists. A 2023 analysis by Oxford Economics predicted that a $30 hotel wage would lead to job losses of almost 15,000 in Los Angeles' economy.
A January 2026 survey from the American Hotel and Lodging Association found that 88 percent of Los Angeles hotels had undergone layoffs or cut hours for staff during the prior year—which coincides with the city council officially approving the new wage hike in May 2025. This suggests that hotel owners were already taking steps to reduce labor costs ahead of the planned wage increases.
One prominent hotel owner, whose company began looking to exit the L.A. hotel scene, noted that it was difficult to find any willing buyers of hotel property due to the city's aggressive minimum wage stance. Another owner reported increasing the use of AI—via robotic cleaning and AI-based customer relations—to offset looming labor costs.
Given these impacts, the hotel and tourism industry decided to fight fire with fire. A broad array of trade associations and travel businesses—from the Asian American Hotel Owners Association to Delta Airlines—managed to qualify a ballot measure for the November 2026 election to repeal L.A.'s gross receipts tax. That would cost L.A. over $800 million annually, thereby triggering a fiscal crisis for the city.
"Thousands of layoffs would be required, said Matthew Szabo, L.A.'s city administrative officer, at a May city council meeting. "The city would be forced to implement austerity measures far worse than seen during the Great Recession or the COVID-19 pandemic." Szabo went on to predict the layoff of around 2,000 police officers, which would put L.A.'s preparation for the Olympic games "in severe jeopardy."
The backers of the ballot measure offered to withdraw it, however, if the city council agreed to delay the hotel wage hike. In the face of this potentially catastrophic threat, the city council stood down. Last month, it voted to delay the Olympic wage to 2030, sparing the hotel industry for a couple more years. (It will still operate as a phased-in increase with graduated annual hikes.)
But while the issue has been temporarily quelled in L.A., it's clear that the concept of high hotel-specific minimum wages is only spreading. A host of other California cities have followed L.A.'s lead, with Santa Monica, Long Beach, and San Diego enacting their own hotel wages. A similar proposal was considered but ultimately rejected in Anaheim.
And it isn't just California. New York City is currently considering a citywide $30 minimum wage, while UNITE HERE Local 11, a prominent local labor union that supported L.A.'s Olympic wage for hotels, has pushed to extend the $30 wage to all workers in the city.
Rather than continuing to double down on clearly harmful wage hikes, L.A.—and progressives writ large—should use the experience of the Olympic wage to reconsider their push for $30 altogether.
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The British Statesman Who Recognized America's 'Fierce Spirit of Liberty'
In a special America 250 issue, Reason takes a look back at our country's founding people and ideas. Read more here.
In 1790, the British statesman Edmund Burke published the work that made his name. Part diatribe and part manifesto, Reflections on the Revolution in France denounced that world-shaking upheaval not only for its "crude and violent schemes of liberty," but also for its "prattling about the rights of man." Aghast at what he called the "tyranny and cruelty employed to bring about and to uphold this revolution," Burke preached the virtues of "a monarchy directed by laws, controlled and balanced by the great hereditary wealth and hereditary dignity of a nation; and both again controlled by a judicious check from the reason and feeling of the people at large acting by a suitable and permanent organ." An immediate hit upon release, Burke's Reflections would seal its author's reputation as the great conservative defender of traditional values and the settled social order.
It also drew the fury of Burke's more radical contemporaries. His Reflections revealed him to be no "friend of liberty," declared Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering British feminist and liberal whose daughter, Mary Shelley, would achieve literary immortality as the author of Frankenstein. "If there is anything like argument, or first principles, in [Burke's] wild declamation," Wollstonecraft wrote in A Vindication of the Rights of Men, her book-length attack on the Reflections, it is "that we are to reverence the rust of antiquity, and term the unnatural customs, which ignorance and mistaken self-interest have consolidated, the sage fruit of experience."
The great American revolutionary Thomas Paine, who was by then a passionate supporter of the French Revolution, was also horrified by what Burke had wrought. "I am contending for the rights of the living, and against their being willed away, and controuled and contracted for, by the manuscript assumed authority of the dead," Paine wrote in The Rights of Man, his own book-length assault on the Reflections. "Mr. Burke is contending for the authority of the dead over the rights and freedom of the living."
Yet when it came to the cause of American liberty, Burke actually stood closer to Paine than to King George III. While the British monarch and his ministers were weighing increasingly severe reprisals against the wayward colonials, Burke used his perch in Parliament to advocate peace, accommodation, and a hands-off approach that would restore the "wise and salutary neglect" that had once characterized relations between the colonies and the Crown.
Why did the famously hardline foe of the French Revolution adopt a far softer line toward the rebellious Americans?
'The More You Tighten Your Grip'
In 1774, several months after the storied colonial uprising known as the Boston Tea Party, Burke rose in Parliament to call for repealing the offending tax on tea. He also took the opportunity to blame the British government for senselessly pushing the Americans to the brink.
"Leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself," Burke urged. "When you drive him hard, the boar will surely turn upon the hunters. If [British] sovereignty and [American] freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. No-body will be argued into slavery."
A year later, Burke delivered what some scholars consider his greatest speech, a moving plea for Parliament to seek "conciliation" with the colonies before it became too late to patch the breach.
"This fierce spirit of Liberty is stronger in the English Colonies probably than in any other people of the earth," Burke observed. Like it or not, he told his colleagues, that overriding American spirit had left the British authorities with only one viable option going forward.
The British might attempt to alter the American spirit of liberty by "removing the causes" or even "prosecut[ing] that spirit in its overt acts, as criminal," he observed. But such repression would inevitably backfire: "Will it not teach them that the Government, against which a claim of Liberty is tantamount to high treason, is a Government to which submission is equivalent to slavery?" Burke demanded. "It may not always be convenient," he dryly added, "to impress dependent communities with such an idea."
A similar point was once made by a great fictional rebel leader, Leia Organa. "The more you tighten your grip," she told an imperial commander in a galaxy far, far away, "the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
'A Necessary Evil'
As far as Burke was concerned, the spirit of American liberty was an incontrovertible fact that the British government had to face. There was just no getting around it. In fact, every attempt to get around it only made matters worse. "To prove that the Americans ought not to be free," Burke noted, "we are obliged to depreciate the value of Freedom itself."
So if the Americans could not be talked out of their principles, and if they could never truly be stripped of them by force, what else was left to do but to "comply with the American Spirit as necessary; or, if you please, to submit to it as a necessary Evil"? The Americans had protested "that they are taxed in a Parliament, in which they are not represented," Burke noted. So be it. "If you mean to satisfy them at all," he declared, "you must satisfy them with regard to this complaint." Otherwise, the king would surely lose control over the colonies forever.
Surprisingly, it is here where the Burke of 1775 most nearly resembles the Burke of 1790. The latter Burke opposed the French Revolution because of its shattering effect on the established order. Now we find the earlier Burke opposing the British crackdown on American liberty for similar reasons. "We never seem to gain a paltry advantage over [the Americans] in debate," Burke noted, "without attacking some of those principles, or deriding some of those feelings, for which our ancestors have shed their blood."
In effect, Burke thought it far wiser for the British to back down and let the Americans enjoy much greater freedoms, lest any attempt to cure them of their rebellious ways prove more deadly than the disease. With the French Revolution, Burke thought that particular outbreak had already reached epidemic proportions, and he reacted accordingly.
What If?
What if the British government had followed Burke's advice in 1775? Might the American Revolution never have been fought? Might we be living today in a Burkean America that still retained some sort of official loyalty to the king?
Burke's own analysis suggests that the answer to such questions is probably no. As he had tried to warn Parliament, the American colonies were already well on their way to independent self-government by 1775. "Until very lately, all authority in America seemed to be nothing but an emanation from" British authority, Burke said. "We thought, Sir, that the utmost which the discontented Colonists could do, was to disturb authority; we never dreamt they could of themselves supply it."
Yet supply it themselves they did. In 1774, the first Continental Congress had begun meeting in Philadelphia, gathered, in the words of its members, to "obtain such establishment, as that their religion, laws, and liberties, may not be subverted."
Burke correctly saw that development as a momentous step toward independence. "The Colonists having once found the possibility of enjoying the advantages of order in the midst of a struggle for Liberty," he said, "such struggles will not henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and sober part of mankind as they had appeared before the trial."
In short, Burke's speech may have come too late even if its advice had been followed. For a growing number of Americans in the mid-1770s, there was already vanishingly little chance of turning back. The road to American independence would prove long, twisted, and bloody, but the journey had begun.
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Friday, June 26, 2026
Review: A Fresh-Eyed Tour Through Revolutionary America
In his 2012 page-turner, My American Revolution: A Modern Expedition Through History's Forgotten Battlegrounds, Robert Sullivan embarks on a journey that will be familiar to the 50-something male of the species, noticing with fresh eyes the historical stuff in his immediate surroundings, steadily expanding the scope and intensity of his search, and ending up in a state so obsessive that he's sending mirrored sun signals to his blasé teenaged daughter in Brooklyn from George Washington's winter headquarters in Morristown, New Jersey.
Sullivan surfaces some of the flame keepers all around us: the historical reenactors, but also the motley crew that pays annual homage to the mostly forgotten 11,500-plus Americans killed by Brits on prison ships in the East River, a delightfully deranged artist recreating and illegally launching Benjamin Franklin's attempted revolutionary submarine, and some pals he dragoons for his own futile attempt to retrace Washington's inaugural flotilla.
Along the way there are low-key ruminations on the randomness of historical memory (why don't we universally recognize Washington's magical Battle of Brooklyn retreat as America's Dunkirk?), intriguing documentation of extreme weather (the Hard Winter of 1779–80, Sullivan persuasively argues, was the coldest in recorded North American history), and, above all, a constant motivational whisper that it's never too late, never too embarrassing, to begin seeing and asking naive questions about the inspiring American history surrounding us.
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Brickbat: A Shocking Abuse of Power
A federal judge sentenced former Hapeville, Georgia, police officer Shevoy Brown to three years and one month in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release, after a jury found him guilty of using excessive force against a handcuffed detainee and trying to cover it up. In June 2024, officers arrested a man for trespassing and handcuffed him to a bench in the jail's holding cell. Even though the suspect posed no threat, prosecutors say Brown entered the holding cell and shocked him with a Taser at least six times, including in the genitals, causing injuries that required medical treatment, and only stopped when another officer got involved. Brown then falsely claimed in an incident report that the detainee was being disruptive, and that he used the Taser only twice.
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Second Amendment Roundup: Supreme Court Decides Wolford
On June 25, the Supreme Court decided Wolford v. Lopez, holding 6-3 that Hawaii may not "prohibit licensed concealed-carry permit holders from carrying handguns on private property open to the public unless the property owner gives express permission." Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the Court, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Justice Kagan dissented, as did Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor.
The Court calls out both lower courts and states that have resisted its Second Amendment jurisprudence. In the dozen years between McDonald and Bruen, "lower courts rejected nearly all Second Amendment claims based on reasoning that resembled that in Justice Breyer's Heller dissent." "After Bruen, Hawaii and four of the other five States called out by our decision adopted a new method of restricting law-abiding citizens from carrying firearms for self-defense by flipping the default rule on private property open to the public." They enacted what has become known as the "Vampire Rule," under which guns are banned on private property open to the public unless a "Guns Welcome" sign is posted or other affirmative consent is given. As to such signage: "Some proprietors who do not themselves object to entry by carry-permit holders may be reluctant to post a sign welcoming such individuals for fear of alienating other customers."
The same states also enacted "sensitive place" bans in public parks, assemblies, and certain establishments. As Wolford notes about Hawaii, "On a large portion of the land within the State's boundaries, possession of a firearm is now flatly prohibited." While these absolute bans have been challenged, the Court's comments do not bode well for them should they reach the Court. (On the Second Circuit's false historical narrative in Antonyuk upholding New York's place bans, see my exposé here.)
To consider the overwhelming impact of Hawaii's Vampire Rule, the Court lists places that people routinely visit on a daily basis where they cannot be armed, such as gas stations, convenience stores, restaurants, coffee shops, drug stores, grocery stores, "big box" stores, home improvement stores, barber shops or hair salons, dry cleaners, and laundromats. A day in the life of a hypothetical Ms. Caetano (based on Justice Alito's concurrence in Caetano) is traced to show the impossibility of asking for actual consent to enter one place after another when armed – the person is already in violation when in the parking lot and when looking for someone with authority to give consent.
At the jurisprudential level, Wolford starkly clarifies the methodology of text first and history second, which are often flipped to uphold infringements. In determining whether a law clashes with the plain text, three questions arise:
First, does the law apply to "the people"—which is to say, to "all members of the political community"? …. Second, does it concern any form of "Arms," i.e., any weapon customarily used for offensive or defensive purposes? … Third, does the law place any restrictions on either the "keep[ing]" (i.e., possession) or the "bear[ing]" (i.e., carrying) of arms?
Regarding "the people," in the Court's recent decision in Hemani, the Court referred to "the right of 'all Americans' to keep and bear firearms for self-defense." Curiously, the summary of prior precedents in Wolford does not mention Hemani. Maybe that's of no significance, as Hemani tested purported historical analogues as applied to the ban on firearm possession by pot users (see my post here) without introducing any new doctrines. It has also been suggested that Wolford was finalized before Hemani but simply not handed down before it.
Arms "customarily used" for offense or defense, the Court elsewhere noted, "refers to implements used for offense or defense," such as handguns that are (quoting Heller) "overwhelmingly chosen by American society" for self-defense. Perhaps next Term the Court will grant cert in a case that will confirm how the American people customarily and overwhelmingly choose semiautomatic rifles for self-defense.
Given that Hawaii banned activity that is clearly within the text – "the people" are "bearing arms" – the burden is on the state to justify it by historical tradition. That entails consideration of the number of jurisdictions that adopted analogous laws, the extent to which they were well-accepted (such as being judicially upheld or being "open, widespread, and unchallenged"), and whether the analogues are "relevantly similar" to the modern law. That last factor entails "how" and "why" the analogue restricted the right.
For analogues, Hawaii "recounts its long history of antipathy to the private possession of firearms. It tells us that one of the very first written laws of the Kingdom of Hawaii, issued in 1833 by King Kamehameha III, prohibited the possession of all deadly weapons." That fell flat with the Court, as "the Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States…. It cannot give way to 'the spirit of Aloha' in Hawaii [citing State v. Wilson (Haw. 2024)], any more than it can yield to the spirit of the Big Apple (Bruen) or the Windy City (McDonald)."
But most of Hawaii's analogues were colonial or founding laws that prohibited unauthorized hunting of deer or small game on someone else's private property, which flunked both the "how" and "why" tests. They are not "relevantly similar" to Hawaii's law because prohibiting unauthorized hunting on private land has no relation to banning the carrying of a handgun for self-defense at a gas station or other private property open to the public without express consent.
But "the State's most remarkable analogue" is the 1865 Louisiana statute that made it unlawful "for any person or persons to carry fire-arms on the premises or plantations of any citizen, without the consent of the owner or proprietor…." Not only was that law "neither widespread nor widely accepted," it was "part of Louisiana's Black Code" that "provided a tool for disarming blacks and thus leaving them defenseless against attacks." "Unless we put history entirely out of our minds, Hawaii's claim that this tainted artifact illuminates the original understanding of the right to keep and bear arms cannot be taken seriously." (For more details, see my amicus brief for the National African American Gun Ass'n.)
Justice Barrett, joined in part by Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch, doubled down on the discrepancy between the purported analogues and Hawaii's law, which "does not target any particular abuse of firearms at all. Rather than identifying a specific threat to public peace and safety, Hawaii admits that it enacted the rule because many of its citizens oppose the public carry of guns." However, "Mere disapproval of protected conduct is not a valid reason to severely restrict it."
Justice Kagan's brief dissent simply asserts that the historical laws cited by Hawaii sufficed as proper analogues, which "is enough for me to resolve this case, without addressing Bruen's step-one inquiry or the use at step two of Louisiana's Black Code." Good way to avoid two of the case's sticking points.
Finally, Justice Jackson, with whom Justice Sotomayor joins, dissenting, reminds us once again that, "For what it is worth, I think Bruen was wrongly decided." As to the analogues, Louisiana's 1865 law and the other Black Code provisions violated the antidiscrimination portion of the Fourteenth Amendment (although the words "equal protection" don't appear in her dissent), but did not violate the Second Amendment.
In so arguing, Justice Jackson quotes General Sickles' 1866 order rescinding South Carolia's Black Code where he stated, "The constitutional rights of all loyal and well-disposed inhabitants to bear arms will not be infringed." She adds that "in his view, no person (of any race) had the right to carry a firearm onto private land without consent." But Sickles actually said that the right to bear arms "did not "authorize any person to enter with arms on the premises of another against his consent." That expressed the traditional common-law rule that Wolford upholds, namely that private property open to the public implies a license to enter, absent notice otherwise.
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