'Death blow to the rule of law'

'Everybody else that is negotiating with us'

'she's going to have very difficult problems'

'Prevent the government from removing'

'The administration is likely to prevail on this issue'

The public knows she's not very bright

Absolutely gripping footage recorded during a recent apartment block fire shows a mother throwing her baby out from the third-floor window to a crowd of rescuers below. The arms of the rescuers envelope the falling child, and Cleveland news 19 reports that both mom and babe made it out unharmed. The ordeal began on June […] The post Hero Tells Mom on Burning 3rd Floor: ‘Drop the baby, I am going to catch her’ appeared first on Good News Network.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic to uphold South Carolina’s strategy for protecting taxpayers from subsidizing abortion through Medicaid. This case reveals how abortion advocates try to force taxpayers to subsidize their agenda—and how pro-life states can respond. Congress’s power to “provide for the… general welfare” is often called the spending power. That’s the power it used in 1965 to enact the Medicaid Act, designed to help those who cannot afford medical care obtain it. While states administer Medicaid, Congress provides, on average, about 57 percent of the funding and adds a long list of conditions. One such condition is the freedom of Medicaid recipients to obtain medical care from any provider “qualified to perform the service.” South Carolina is a pro-life state that prohibits using state funds to pay for most abortions. In 2018, the governor issued an executive order excluding abortion clinics from participating in the Medicaid program. Deciding who is qualified to provide certain medical services falls within the discretion of governors or state legislatures. As Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion, pointed out in Thursday’s ruling, “States have traditionally exercised primary responsibility” over matters of health and safety, including “the regulation of the practice of medicine.” By designating Planned Parenthood “unqualified,” South Carolina removed it from the list of organizations eligible for Medicaid funding. Planned Parenthood—which operates two South Carolina clinics that provide abortions and other services—and one of its clients sued under Section 1983, a federal statute that allows private parties to sue for violation of their federal constitutional or statutory rights. Congress normally enforces laws providing money to the states by simply threatening to cut off funds if states don’t comply. That’s how Congress tried to force states to expand eligibility for Medicaid in the Affordable Care Act. In 2012, the Supreme Court said that this went too far and amounted to unconstitutional coercion of the states. While spending laws provide benefits, the court said, they almost never actually create “rights” that can be enforced through Section 1983 lawsuits filed by private parties. For a spending law to create a right, the court said, it must use clear and unambiguous “rights-creating language.” The alternative would be chaos, with spending laws spawning constant litigation by those who oppose a particular program being funded or support a particular program being defunded. Writing for the 6-3 majority in Medina, Gorsuch explained why the Medicaid Act does not meet this “stringent” and “demanding” test. According to Gorsuch, Congress passes spending laws for many different purposes and to achieve many different goals. “The job of resolving how best to weigh those competing costs and benefits belongs to the people’s elected representatives, not unelected judges charged with applying the law as they find it.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented, describing a more subjective way of reading Congress’ spending laws. She would equate providing benefits (which every spending law does) with creating rights. Rather than requiring the clear and unambiguous “rights-creating language” that the Supreme Court says is necessary, Jackson would be satisfied with “language classically associated with establishing rights.” This may sound like a semantic distinction, but there’s a real difference: whether Congress retains the power the Constitution provides, or whether it loses it to the courts through endless private lawsuits. Abortion extremists have long tried to force everyone to subsidize their agenda. Even under Roe v. Wade’s delusion that the Constitution protects a right to abortion, the Supreme Court repeatedly said that neither the Constitution nor statutes like the Medicaid Act required the government to pay for abortions. Now, with Roe gone, abortion zealots are still searching for sneaky ways to make the American people complicit in killing unborn children. One way is for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, to seek taxpayer money by claiming that those dollars will be used for medical services other than abortion. But as everyone knows, money is fungible—making this nothing but a bookkeeping gimmick aimed at keeping the abortion mills humming. Gov. Henry McMaster issued his executive order to stop that charade. Governors or legislatures in other pro-life states ought to consider using a similar strategy. The post Supreme Court Lets South Carolina Ban Abortion Clinics from Medicaid appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Once again, the issue of building new data centers for tech companies is coming up in Virginia as many local governments are making plans to set up “commissions” to study more regulations on the industry. The naysayers point to the massive energy load required by these centers and the infrastructure needed to deliver that energy as they pump up to 70% of internet traffic through Virginia. However, as we laid out in our June 10 column, it’s the politicians that put us in this pickle, and they are the ones we will need to get us out of it. >>> Sign up for our Virginia email newsletter The Daily Signal sat down with Caleb Taylor, policy director for the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, to find out what the solutions should look like and how long they could take to implement. Here’s our conversation: The post High Stakes for High Tech: Virginia’s Data Center Controversy appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. With a landmark ruling that could shape online content regulation for years to come, the US Supreme Court has upheld Texas’s digital ID age-verification law for adult websites and platforms, asserting that the measure lawfully balances the state’s interest in protecting minors with the free speech rights of adults. The 6-3 decision, issued on June 27, 2025, affirms the constitutionality of House Bill 1181, a statute that requires adult websites to verify the age of users before granting access to sexually explicit material. Laws like House Bill 1181, framed as necessary safeguards for children, are quietly eroding the rights of adults to access lawful content or speak freely online without fear of surveillance or exposure. Under such laws, anyone seeking to view legal adult material online (and eventually even those who want to access social media platforms because may contain content “harmful” to minors) is forced to provide official identification, often a government-issued digital ID or even biometric data, to prove their age. Supporters claim this is a small price to pay to shield minors from harmful content. Yet these measures create permanent records linking individuals to their browsing choices, exposing them to unprecedented risks. We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here. The Court’s opinion, authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, emphasized that the requirement for age verification represents a constitutionally permissible method of enforcing the state’s longstanding authority to shield children from “obscene” content. “The power to require age verification is within a State’s authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content,” the opinion declared. Thomas added that the law “is a constitutionally permissible exercise of that authority.” H.B. 1181 was introduced in response to the increasing ease with which minors can access sexual content online, a challenge that lawmakers argued traditional obscenity laws had failed to address in the modern era. More: The Digital ID and Online Age Verification Agenda This particular law applies to commercial entities whose websites consist of at least one-third of material deemed harmful to minors, requiring visitors to provide proof of age using government-issued identification or verified transactional data. But while the Texas law targets platforms that have one-third or more adult material, other states are pushing broader laws, pushing for digital ID to access social media platforms that pose wider levels of “harm” to minors. The goal is for all access to social media to require digital ID age verification. The X platform, to this data, allows adult material. Supporters of the statute have described it as a necessary update to existing protections. The opinion noted that “requiring proof of age is an ordinary and appropriate means of enforcing an age-based limit on obscenity to minors.” Justice Thomas drew comparisons to common age-verification practices for alcohol, firearms, and other age-restricted goods and services. The Free Speech Coalition challenged the law, asserting it infringes on adults’ First Amendment rights by imposing burdensome barriers to lawful expression and access. The coalition argued that the statute’s requirements would deter adults from seeking constitutionally protected material and that less intrusive alternatives, such as promoting parental controls, could achieve the state’s objectives without chilling speech. Initially, a federal district court sided with the challengers, applying strict scrutiny and ruling that Texas failed to demonstrate that H.B. 1181 was the least restrictive means of achieving its goals. The district court suggested that “encouraging parents to install content-filtering software on their children’s devices would be a less restrictive means of accomplishing the State’s objective.” However, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed that decision, and the Supreme Court ultimately upheld the law, applying intermediate scrutiny rather than strict scrutiny. The Court reasoned that any burden on adult speech was incidental to the legitimate goal of restricting minors’ access to material obscene from their perspective. The ruling was not without dissent. Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, expressed concern that the law sets a dangerous precedent for content-based regulation that could erode free speech rights in the online space. The dissent cautioned that age-verification measures could have a chilling effect by deterring lawful adult access to protected material. Nevertheless, the majority rejected the argument that the law amounted to a content-based restriction requiring the highest level of judicial scrutiny. “Strict scrutiny is not the appropriate standard for laws that are traditional and widely accepted as legitimate,” the Court wrote, underscoring that similar in-person age-verification requirements have long been considered constitutional. The decision is expected to resonate far beyond Texas. As noted in the opinion, more than 20 states have enacted or are considering comparable laws aimed at requiring age verification for adult content online. Supporters argue that the ruling provides a blueprint for states. Opponents warn of potential privacy risks and broader censorship implications as more jurisdictions adopt such measures. The Supreme Court’s ruling marks its first major pronouncement on internet obscenity laws in two decades, updating its guidance in a landscape transformed by smartphones, streaming, and ubiquitous online access. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Supreme Court Greenlights Online Digital ID Checks appeared first on Reclaim The Net.