Authored by Michael Zhuang via The Epoch Times,

China’s purge of senior military leaders may be pushing Beijing to rely more heavily on military intimidation and gray-zone operations against Taiwan, even as the upheaval leaves the Chinese military with a weakened command structure, according to two Chinese academics and an insider familiar with the Chinese military.

The insider and academics spoke to The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.

The developments are raising concerns that Beijing’s increasingly aggressive operations around Taiwan could become more difficult to control as analysts say political loyalty takes precedence over military expertise within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry has reported near-daily Chinese military activity around the island, describing the operations as increasingly aggressive and unpredictable, according to Taiwan’s national news agency CNA. Chinese military planners are studying drone swarms, long-range strikes, ammunition consumption, maritime blockades and coordination with other countries, while exploring methods that could potentially isolate Taiwan, cut off outside supplies, and weaken its defenses during the early stages of a conflict.

At the same time, the PLA is undergoing an unusually extensive leadership purge. The seven-member Central Military Commission (CMC), which formally oversees China’s armed forces, is down to just two members.

A Chinese military academic told The Epoch Times that the continuing purge suggests Xi remains deeply concerned about the loyalty of senior military commanders.

“The CMC has had so many people fall. There are already very few military members of the Central Committee,” he said. “The possibility of war is not very high, but the harassment [against Taiwan] will not stop.”

Military Pressure Continues

The academic said the purge has created serious gaps in the military command structure at a time when Beijing continues to use military pressure against Taiwan.

He said former CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia had been authorized to oversee simulated training for operations against Taiwan and that it would be difficult to find a replacement with comparable experience.

“At present, the pressure on Taiwan is concentrated on military intimidation,” the academic said. “If they give up intimidation, they simply cannot come up with a better method.”

The leadership turmoil has unfolded alongside a series of high-level purges. In October last year, nine senior military officers, including CMC Vice Chairman He Weidong, were expelled from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the military.

In January, the Chinese regime announced investigations into Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, chief of the CMC’s Joint Staff Department.

The academic said the military could be experiencing an unusually broad leadership vacuum ahead of the CCP’s 21st National Congress next year.

The leadership upheaval does not necessarily mean that Beijing is preparing to launch an invasion of Taiwan. Instead, military pressure could continue precisely because it is one of the few tools available to a command structure weakened by political purges, according to the academic.

Chinese military activity around Taiwan has increasingly extended beyond conventional military exercises. Beijing has also been combining military drills, combat-readiness patrols and China Coast Guard operations, creating pressure that remains between ordinary peacetime activity and open warfare.

Taiwan’s National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen told reporters in July that the months of July through September are typically a period of heightened Chinese military exercises. Taiwan had detected increased activity by the Chinese navy and other maritime forces, including four Chinese naval formations operating in the western Pacific at the time.

A Chinese military academic and researcher told The Epoch Times that Beijing was increasingly integrating military exercises with combat-readiness patrols and coast guard enforcement.

The approach allows China to maintain sustained pressure on Taiwan without crossing the threshold into open conflict, the researcher said.

He cautioned, however, that the pattern should not necessarily be interpreted as preparation for an imminent attack.

“If [the CCP] wants to launch military action against Taiwan, [it] needs to first carry out war mobilization, deploy logistical support, and even more importantly, have powerful offensive weapons and a strong and effective command system,” he said.

Potential Blockade

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry has assessed that China does not yet possess all the capabilities required for a full-scale amphibious invasion of Taiwan. But Beijing has other options, including maritime isolation, a joint blockade, missile strikes, cyberattacks, and information warfare.

A blockade or maritime isolation campaign could require fewer forces than a full-scale invasion and could be conducted under the cover of military exercises or law-enforcement operations, according to researchers who spoke to The Epoch Times.

That creates a dilemma for Taiwan. If Taipei does not respond, Beijing could gradually expand its control over surrounding waters. If Taiwan responds militarily, Beijing could portray Taipei as the party responsible for escalating tensions.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te said on Sept. 2 that Taiwan’s defense budget for next year would exceed NT$1 trillion ($32 billion) for the first time, according to CNA. The government plans to invest in unmanned systems, AI, and Taiwan’s domestic defense industry.

The Chinese military researcher said the continued expansion of Chinese military and maritime operations around Taiwan is reducing the island’s warning time.

The greater concern, he said, is not a deliberate decision by Beijing to start a war, but the possibility that an incident could escalate when military judgment is compromised by political considerations.

For Taiwan, he said, that makes continued vigilance essential.

Shi Youliang contributed to this report.

A federal appeals court on Sept. 10 declined to permit the Trump administration to enforce a new U.S. Postal Service (USPS) rule that changes mail-in voting requirements before the midterm congressional elections on Nov. 3.

The Supreme Court is currently considering a similar request.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit declined to pause an injunction issued on Sept. 4 by Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, which extended a temporary restraining order that she granted on Aug. 27. The injunction halted key parts of the Postal Service’s final rule.

The injunction applies to the Nov. 3 elections and any federal elections that take place before then.

The injunction blocks the mandatory parts of the Postal Service’s final rule published on Aug. 26 that implements Section 3 of President Donald Trump’s executive order 14399. That provision would assign federal agencies a larger role in who receives a mailed ballot and how those ballots are processed by the USPS.

As Matthew Vadum reporets for The Epoch Times, the Trump administration previously said the executive order would help to keep federal elections honest. The Department of Justice argued that the USPS is imposing mailpiece design and data standards under its general authority to regulate the mail, not deciding who is eligible to vote; states are still free to set voter lists and count ballots.

Talwani had said the postal rule could disenfranchise voters, was probably unlawful, and likely violated the U.S. Constitution, which gives states authority to run federal elections taking place within their borders. The judge previously said the postal agency presented no evidence of fraudulent mail-in voting that would justify the new Postal Service rule.

Talwani held that the USPS lacked authority to enforce the rule, and that, as election officials have said, given existing time constraints, complying with the rule for the midterms was “likely impossible.”

Talwani said Congress never agreed to delegate its powers under the Constitution’s elections clause to the USPS, so the rule “clashes with Congress’s statutory scheme, and is unconstitutional where it intrudes not only on … [those] powers but also that power left to the States.”

The judge added that even a small glitch in the new system would be problematic and could mean that ballots never go out, that eligible voters would almost certainly lose the chance to vote by mail, and that the disenfranchisement of plaintiff groups such as the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts was “practically inevitable.”

Advocacy groups and a coalition of Democrat-led states had sued to block parts of the rule, arguing that implementation would lead to voter disenfranchisement. Republican states intervened in support of the federal government, arguing that the rule would promote election integrity.

In its new ruling, the First Circuit said the federal government failed to show that the Postal Service rule was likely lawful or that the district court’s ruling was in error.

The appeals court panel said it agreed with the district court that the rule likely regulated the manner of holding elections for members of Congress, which the Constitution assigns to the states and Congress, not to an executive agency such as the USPS acting without congressional authorization.

The federal government is trying “to avoid the constitutional problem by denying that the Final Rule regulates the manner of holding elections,” but “this denial rings hollow,” the panel said, quoting the district court.

“The title of the Final Rule is ‘Ballot Mail for Federal Elections,’ and the Final Rule explicitly and exclusively regulates election mail,” the panel said.

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Sept. 3 to allow the government to begin implementing a regulation that tightens rules around mail-in voting. After Talwani dissolved the temporary restraining order, the federal government withdrew its application and filed a new one targeting the Sept. 4 injunction.

That application is still pending before the Supreme Court.

Authored by Khaled Mahmoud via Responsible Statecraft,

From the start, the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has been a story of unintended consequences. Contrary to President Donald Trump’s hopes for a quick victory, the conflict has morphed into a sustained crisis, one that has driven up oil prices, driven down tourism in the Middle East, and reshaped the region’s geopolitical map.

Now, a new unintended consequence has emerged: the return of piracy to Somalia’s coasts. This shift, which comes after a decade of quiet, threatens some of the world’s most important shipping lanes and the interests of the United States and its allies.

Pirates have attacked at least 15 vessels in the region this year, a sharp uptick from the five attacks that occurred last year, according to data from the International Maritime Organization. The renewed criminal activity has led to extended hostage situations, including one ongoing seizure of an oil tanker and its crew.

A controversial operation to free the MV LATUF, carried out by Somali forces and the Turkish navy late last month, raised questions about whether a ransom was paid. The government of Puntland, a semi-autonomous region of Somalia, says it has evidence of phone contacts between Somali government officials and the pirates, which undermines the official story from both Ankara and Mogadishu. The vessel was carrying Turkish weapons and satellite and communication equipment bound for a Turkish training facility in Mogadishu.

Global piracy dropped in the first half of 2026 to its lowest level since 1992 – only 38 incidents, compared to 90 in the same period of 2025 and 60 in 2024. But data from the International Chamber of Commerce shows that, by the end of last month, six commercial ships were still being held, with more than 90 seafarers on board.

When ransom money funds the pirates

The pirates recently received a new ransom estimated at around $1.7 million for the release of the hijacked ship MV Sward off the coast of Puntland, along with its crew of Syrian and Indian sailors, after a crisis that lasted more than four months.

On 26 April, about ten armed Somali men in three speedboats intercepted the ship near the town of Garaad. The vessel flies the flag of St. Kitts and Nevis and is managed by Turkey-linked companies. It was only six nautical miles from the coast. The ship had left the Egyptian port of Adabiya/Suez heading to Mombasa in Kenya with a cargo of cement or fertilizer.

According to a well-informed maritime source in Puntland, this incident shows the pirates going back to their classic method: using the hijacked ship as a mother vessel to carry out more attacks, including the hijacking of Iranian fishing boats.

Before the war on Iran, the threat from piracy to international shipping had dropped significantly. Now that the pirates are active again, the international community needs to rethink how military forces are deployed in the Middle East and the Red Sea to close the security gap the pirates are exploiting – a gap that stretches from Somalia’s eastern coast through the Gulf of Aden to the route linking the Indian Ocean with the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

Dr. Ian Ralby, a maritime security expert at Auxilium Worldwide, says the Houthis are playing a key role in the return of piracy. He points to the transfer of know-how and technology from them to Somali pirates, which could increase their ability to disrupt shipping.

Ralby says the main beneficiaries are the pirates themselves. But he does not rule out that other groups, including the Houthis and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, may find an indirect interest in the ongoing chaos. He also notes that the attacks have reached the waters off Yemen, widening the threat and increasing pressure on naval forces and coast guards.

The gaps behind the return of piracy

Somali State Minister for Foreign Affairs Ali Omar admits that the return of piracy shows there are still gaps in maritime security. The long Somali coastline makes monitoring difficult, and the country’s naval capabilities are still being developed, he told RS.

But Omar stresses that today’s Somalia is not the same country that faced the global piracy crisis more than a decade ago. It now has federal institutions, security forces and maritime authorities, along with wider international cooperation, especially with Turkey, to strengthen its naval capacity.

But the problem is not limited to poor policing, Omar said. It is linked to illegal fishing, organized crime, poverty in coastal communities, weak maritime surveillance and the wider security situation in the Gulf of Aden.

This view matches what Ralby says: the return of piracy is no longer a purely Somali issue. Attacks have moved further into the Gulf of Aden, and there are signs of technology and expertise being passed from the Houthis to the pirates. The challenge for Somalia is not only to regain control of its coastline, but also to stop piracy from becoming part of a wider effort to disrupt shipping.

Egyptian national security expert Mohamed Abdel Wahid, who focuses on Somalia, believes the international focus on securing navigation through Bab el-Mandeb (at the mouth of the Red Sea) and the Strait of Hormuz has helped create a security vacuum.

Who benefits from the return of piracy?

Colonel Mohamed Jama, a maritime security expert in Puntland, says the pirates’ return has become a cross-border regional threat that exploits a gap in maritime coverage, partly because Puntland forces are busy fighting ISIS.

According to Jama, the pirates successfully hijacked six commercial ships between April and August. Their operations have extended into Yemeni waters and deep into the Indian Ocean, putting vital shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea at greater risk.

Jama says the beneficiaries of the return of piracy to the region include financiers and investors; arms and ammunition suppliers; fuel and logistics providers; suppliers of khat and drugs; and maritime smuggling networks. Somali and Yemeni networks are also moving resources, people and information across maritime borders.

Jama stresses that the focus should not only be on those who board the ships, but on those who finance the operations, supply the weapons and control the money.

Omar, the Somali minister, has warned about what he calls fragmented security arrangements as an additional reason for the return of piracy off the north-eastern coast. For years, Somalia has cautioned against outside actors training, funding and equipping security or maritime forces without the knowledge, coordination or supervision of the federal government. Such arrangements, he says, create parallel security structures, intelligence gaps and make accountability almost impossible.

The Somali solution

Warships alone will not defeat piracy, the Somali minister says. The whole issue requires unified national institutions and a responsible, coordinated international partnership.

As a journalist who has followed the pirates’ activity for nearly 18 years, both at its peak and in its quiet periods, I can say that those I once described as the jinn of the sea and a headache for the world and international shipping are the result of mistakes both inside and outside the country. Not least among them is the conflict of authority between the federal government in Somalia and the Puntland administration.

But the most dangerous trend now is the security vacuum in the Red Sea created by the war on Iran, which has allowed the pirates to return in force. As long as the war continues, there is little hope of stopping this burgeoning banditry on the high seas.

Authored by Nicholas Zifcak via The Epoch Times,

NEW YORK CITY – Prosecutors in the criminal trial against Chinese telecoms firm Huawei alleged that the company used lies, theft, cover-up, and a criminal conspiracy in its efforts to dominate the global telecommunications market.

In opening remarks at a federal court in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on Sept. 9, Assistant U.S. Attorney Taylor Stout said that Huawei “engaged in a pattern of criminal activity to expand its business empire.” He alleged that its two subsidiaries in the United States, Huawei Device USA and Futurewei Technologies, served as outposts to steal technology.

The trial covers 20 years of Huawei business activity in the United States and around the globe.

The prosecution said it will present evidence against Huawei in three categories: alleged theft of trade secrets from competitors, alleged bank and wire fraud in relation to efforts to skirt sanctions against Iran, and Huawei’s alleged cover-up and efforts to block law enforcement from investigating its business activities.

A subsidiary of Huawei, Skycom, provided Iran’s government with tools to spy on its own citizens, specifically during 2009 protests in Tehran, according to the U.S. government. Huawei employees falsely claimed that Skycom was not owned by Huawei.

Prosecutors allege that Huawei used confidentiality agreements, competitors’ employees, and third parties to acquire trade secrets on technology for routers, storage, and wireless technology.

Huawei “cultivated a culture of crime and corruption,” said Stout, such that employees who stole from competitors were just “following company practice.” Stout alleged that an engineer who stole from New York state-based Quintel, which develops cellular antennae technology, received a bonus for the information obtained.

Huawei defense attorney Brian Heberlig portrayed Huawei as a global player serving underserved and remote communities. He said the government is relying on five incidents that happened over the course of 20 years.

Heberlig argued that the prosecution’s witnesses are unreliable, as many were involved in civil litigation over commercial disputes with Huawei, including Cisco, T-Mobile, and Quintel. He also claimed that the government cherry-picked incidents to support racketeering charges but won’t be able to prove a broad overarching conspiracy.

He challenged the government narrative that Huawei fostered a culture of stealing trade secrets, saying that when such activity was discovered, “Huawei acted appropriately in all three incidents,” including by firing the employee caught taking pictures of a Fujitsu device at a conference.

Heberlig said that to prove a racketeering conspiracy, the government must prove that the “same people agreed to carry out the same criminal plan.” He said the incidents cited by the government are isolated and insufficient to prove that there was some “blueprint for a criminal conspiracy.”

The government also alleges that Huawei violated U.S. sanctions by involving the U.S. financial system in its business dealings with Iran and North Korea.

Heberlig contested prosecutors’ narrative that Huawei knowingly violated U.S. sanctions, arguing that Huawei had no intention to violate U.S. laws but that the banks it was using in its business with Iran caused the funds to route through the U.S. financial system.

Prosecutors allege that Huawei misrepresented to banks its connection with Skycom, a subsidiary that was doing business with Iran, which prosecutors say received instructions to remove all Huawei logos from hardware sold to Iran.

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown ran into two separate legal challenges Thursday, as Denver sued to keep armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents away from polling places while a federal appeals court rejected the government’s attempt to subject millions of illegal immigrants already living inside the United States to mandatory detention without bond hearings.

The disputes involve different statutes and different courts, but the underlying fight is increasingly the same: how far can the executive branch push immigration enforcement under existing federal law before judges conclude that Congress never gave it the authority being claimed?

On one front, Denver and several national advocacy groups filed suit in federal court in Washington seeking to stop ICE officers from carrying out immigration enforcement at voting locations ahead of November’s midterm elections.

On the other, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that immigrants who have been living inside the United States for years – even if they originally entered illegally – cannot automatically be placed into mandatory detention under the provision the administration has been invoking.

Together, the cases put fresh judicial pressure on one of the administration’s signature second-term policies.

Denver Takes ICE To Court Over The Polls

The City and County of Denver joined the League of United Latin American Citizens, Common Cause and UnidosUS in challenging what the plaintiffs characterize as a federal policy permitting armed ICE officers to conduct enforcement operations at polling locations.

The lawsuit, filed Sept. 10 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, invokes a rarely litigated Civil War-era federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 592, that generally prohibits federal officials from bringing “troops or armed men” to places where elections are being conducted, except when needed to repel armed enemies of the United States.

The plaintiffs argue that even the prospect of armed immigration officers appearing at voting sites could deter voters, disrupt election workers and force municipalities to divert resources toward preparing for confrontations with federal agents. Denver officials are already training election personnel on how to identify federal agents, document encounters and de-escalate potential conflicts, according to the complaint.

The complaint also alleges that armed agents have already appeared at polling locations in San Antonio, Ventura County, California, and Syracuse, New York.

The lawsuit follows comments by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who said ICE would not patrol polling places but would not exclude them from normal enforcement activity.

Mullin said agents could enter a voting location if there were a security threat or if officers were serving a warrant on a person they had been tracking, while the administration’s position is not that polling places are enforcement targets. It is that they are not automatically enforcement-free zones either.

DHS has similarly said ICE is not planning operations targeting polling sites, while maintaining that officers could make an arrest there if an active public-safety threat or targeted enforcement action required it.

That distinction is now headed for federal court – where the plaintiffs want a judge to declare the policy unlawful and prevent armed federal immigration officers from carrying out enforcement at polling locations and other places where votes are collected. The case arrives as election officials around the country prepare for a midterm season already saturated with litigation over voting rules, federal-state authority and election administration.

Fourth Circuit Rejects ICE Detention Theory

Hours away from the political fight over polling sites, the Fourth Circuit delivered a more immediate legal setback for the administration’s detention policy.

In Lopez Garcia v. Guadian, a divided three-judge panel held that two immigrants who had lived in the United States for years could not be mandatorily detained without an opportunity to seek release on bond.

The dispute centers on two sections of federal immigration law.

The administration contends that immigrants who entered the country without being legally admitted remain “applicants for admission” under Section 1225 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and therefore can be detained without bond while removal proceedings play out. The detainees argued – and the Fourth Circuit majority agreed – that immigrants already established inside the United States instead fall under Section 1226, which generally allows for bond consideration.

Judge Nicole Berner, joined by Senior Judge Barbara Keenan, said the latter interpretation better fits the text, structure and historical application of the statute. The court noted that Section 1226 had for decades generally governed detention of noncitizens already inside the country, while Section 1225 had traditionally been associated with people seeking admission at the border. 

Berner warned that accepting the government’s interpretation could expose millions of people to mandatory detention without bond and said such a reading would imply Congress quietly authorized an unprecedented expansion of immigration detention when it rewrote immigration law in 1996.

The majority eventually compared the implications to some of the darkest chapters of American detention policy, including the confinement of Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century and the internment of roughly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.

The court ultimately affirmed habeas relief for Oscar Enrique Lopez Garcia and Juan Jose Rivera, ruling that both had to be given an opportunity to argue for release at a bond hearing.

The Dissent: Congress Meant What It Wrote

Judge Allison Jones Rushing rejected the majority’s reasoning – with her dissent focusing heavily on the wording Congress adopted in its sweeping 1996 immigration overhaul. Earlier immigration laws explicitly referred to “arriving” immigrants, ports of arrival and people attempting to enter the country. Congress removed much of that language in 1996 and instead defined a broader category of “applicants for admission.”

If Congress intended mandatory detention to remain limited to people physically arriving at the border, she argued, lawmakers could simply have retained the older language. Instead, Congress deliberately adopted terminology broad enough to include people physically present in the United States who had never been lawfully admitted. The statute treats anyone present without admission as an applicant for admission, and an applicant is by definition seeking admission, she wrote. “It’s that simple.”

The majority, she added, “clearly has strong views about what it considers the ‘moral implications'” of denying bond, but those views do not rewrite the text.

That statutory disagreement is no longer confined to one court – meanwhile, the Fourth Circuit has now joined the First, Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Circuits on the side of bond eligibility for immigrants already living inside the country.

The Fifth and Eighth Circuits have taken the opposite view, concluding that the government’s mandatory-detention interpretation is consistent with the statute.

That 9-2 split puts the issue squarely in territory the Supreme Court often steps in to resolve.

ICE’s Next Battle May Be At The Supreme Court

The two developments illustrate the rapidly expanding legal front surrounding the administration’s immigration agenda. Denver’s lawsuit asks whether federal immigration officers can carry their normal enforcement authority into one of the most legally protected environments in American civic life: the polling place.

The Fourth Circuit case asks a different but potentially far larger question – whether the government can automatically detain broad categories of immigrants already living in the country without first giving them access to a bond hearing.

DHS maintains that the administration is enforcing immigration law as Congress wrote it. The Fourth Circuit majority says the government is attempting to extract sweeping detention powers from statutory language that does not clearly provide them.

And Denver is effectively making the same structural argument from another direction: whatever authority ICE may have to execute immigration law, Congress imposed special limits around elections. So while the administration continues expanding immigration enforcement on the ground, the courts are increasingly being asked to define the perimeter.

For ICE, that means the next phase of the immigration fight may be determined less by how many agents Washington deploys – and more by how the Supreme Court ultimately reads statutes Congress wrote decades ago.

Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org,

Some of us have been closely following challenges to A1765, New Jersey’s gun industry liability law. In my view, the law is facially invalid and preempted under federal law, and we may now find out after the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit greenlit a challenge from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) yesterday. The court found that the NSSF has standing to bring the lawsuit, which could reach the United States Supreme Court.

In 2022, New Jersey enacted A1765 to expose “gun industry members” – gun sellers, manufacturers, distributors, importers, and marketers – to lawsuits as a “public nuisance.” This is a common effort among blue states to circumvent Second Amendment cases that reinforce the right to bear arms.

These laws are designed to achieve indirectly what the Court denied directly to the states: to effectively suppress the availability of guns. Indeed, the law effectively requires manufacturers to self-regulate after the state was prevented from direct regulations, mandating that these companies “shall establish, implement, and enforce reasonable controls regarding its manufacture, sale, distribution, importing, and marketing of gun-related products.” Id. § 2C:58-35(a)(2).

The problem is the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (“PLCAA”) which was passed to “prohibit causes of action against manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers of firearms or ammunition products, and their trade associations, for the harm solely caused by the criminal or unlawful misuse of firearm products or ammunition products by others when the product functioned as designed and intended.” 15 U.S.C. § 7901(b)(1).

PLCAA does have exceptions, including negligence per se. Id. § 7903(5)(A)(ii). The predicate exception requires proof that the manufacturer or seller “knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product,” and that “the violation was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought.” Id. § 7903(5)(A)(iii).

However, in Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 605 U.S. 280, 299 (2025), the Supreme Court stressed that this exception applies only to those cases where the “plaintiff makes a plausible allegation that a gun manufacturer participated in a firearms violation as in something that it wished to bring about and sought to make succeed.” Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 605 U.S. 280, 299 (2025) (citation modified).

In the case, the Government of Mexico sued seven American gun manufacturers, alleging that the companies aided and abetted unlawful gun sales that routed firearms to Mexican drug cartels under the predicate exception. It argued that the companies failed to exercise “reasonable care” to prevent trafficking of their guns into Mexico, and so are responsible for the harms arising there from the weapons’ misuse as “willful accessories.” As some of us predicted, it failed spectacularly in a unanimous decision.

Nuisance is not negligence per se, and gun control advocates have tried to use product liability and nuisance laws to curtail gun sales for years as an alternative to legislative gun bans, which would be struck down. (There are a couple of gun ban cases going before the Court this term).

As previously discussed, public nuisance was originally addressed in England by criminal laws against such offenses as obstructing “the King’s highways.” It evolved into a common-law tort to address a broader range of “interests of the community at large – interests that were recognized as rights of the general public entitled to protection,” in the words of the American Law Institute’s Second Restatement of Torts (1965-79).

Those cases collapsed, and rightly so. In Chicago v. Beretta U.S.A. (2004), the Illinois Supreme Court rejected the claim while acknowledging that “the tragic personal consequences of gun violence are inestimable.” The court found no interference with a legal public right. It held that such theories “would permit nuisance liability to be imposed on an endless list of manufacturers, distributors, and retailers of manufactured products.” The opioid claims are similar. Neither product was defective; both worked – all too well in some cases. The claims were based on third parties’ illegal or harmful use.

The same result appeared in nuisance claims involving lead paint. In State v. Lead Industries Association (2008), the Rhode Island Supreme Court rejected an effort to use nuisance as a substitute for product liability. The court recognized the huge toll from the product while insisting that if it is defective, that should be addressed by product liability: “Our hearts go out to those children whose lives forever have been changed by the poisonous presence of lead. But, however grave the problem of lead poisoning is in Rhode Island, public nuisance law simply does not provide a remedy for this harm.”

Consideration of the merits of the challenge in this case, however, was stymied by that state challenging standing. First filed in February 2025, the lawsuit was dismissed because it was filed before the law was enforced against any industry member companies. The state, under New Jersey’s then-AG Matthew Platkin, sued several industry members, including GLOCK, Inc. NSSF promptly moved to reopen its lawsuit against New Jersey’s gun control law.

The Third Circuit held, “NSSF’s members’ intended actions are arguably precluded by A1765 and affected with constitutional interests. NSSF argues A1765 enforcement actions against its members for otherwise lawful commerce would be an attempt to ‘hold [its members] liable for the acts of third parties who use their legal products to commit heinous crimes.'”

Unless the standing decision is reversed, New Jersey will now face review (and a possible reckoning) over its latest effort to use civil liability as an alternative avenue for gun control.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”

An interesting moment from Thursday night’s Lara Ingraham exclusive with President Trump…

Q: Any regrets about Iran?

Trump: I don’t believe in the word “regret.”

Q: Any regrets about Iran?

Trump: I don’t believe in the word “regret.”pic.twitter.com/cia03v2rvz

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 11, 2026

Trump even commented to Ingraham that he would make the same decisions all over again if he had a chance.

The Fox show host had posed to the president, “If we hadn’t done Iran, you would be cruising to midterms victory right now” – and made reference to high gas prices.

Trump replied: “supposing we were cruising, and all of a sudden Iran has a nuclear weapon. They would use it.”

Explaining that he doesn’t believe in “regrets” and that he has none especially about launching the Iran war, Trump asserted: “If I had it to do again, I would do exactly what I did.“

He further argued that if Iran had a nuclear weapon, its leaders wouldn’t hesitate to “wipe out” Israel and the Middle East, and could go so far as to hit American cities.

In a separate brief interview with the press this week, President Trump was asked about reports that Vice President Vance and Secretary State Marco Rubio warned him of the possibility that the Iran conflict could persist for the remainder of his term…

Reporter: Is it possible that the Iran war will last the rest of your term?

Trump: No. There’s not even a chance of that. pic.twitter.com/lUwxW9iiOL

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 11, 2026

Trump vehemently denied that there’s so much as a chance of this, but didn’t actually explain how he intends to wind down the war in a way favorable to the US and White House policy. Or in other words, the American public still awaits words on a realistic exit strategy.

On going into Iran “full” – Trump did underscore that the midterm elections makes this a bad idea. His administration has also repeatedly said there won’t be boots on the ground in Iran.

Was this a quiet part out loud moment?

Ingraham: “Even the neoconservatives are saying, ‘If you’ge going to go in [to Iran] just go in full.'”

Trump: “Well, maybe I don’t do that because of the election.” pic.twitter.com/ZEXtZv1jsI

— J (@jasonllevin) September 10, 2026

Among the most interesting parts of the interview came when he was asked about the young men in MAGA who are angry over the Iran war:

Q: What do you say to all the young men who supported you in 2024?

Trump: They still do.

Q: Some of them are demoralized.

Trump: I don’t think they’re demoralized. I think they’re very proud of the fact I’m not letting Iran have a nuclear weapon.

President Trump, when asked about the millions of demoralized young men who voted for him in 2024: “I don’t think they’re demoralized. I think they’re very proud of the fact I’m not letting Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/e0YEsKYfXA

— AF Post (@AFpost) September 11, 2026

Trump earlier this week insisted of Iran’s position in the conflict, “I don’t know that they’re gonna be able to hold out,” Trump said. “But it’ll get settled after the elections. Or maybe sooner. But it’ll get settled right after the election.”

The reference to it’ll “get settled” could have ominous meaning. It suggests Trump could ether escalate against Tehran dramatically, or else there could be the opposite: de-escalation. The world will find out within a couple months.

Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Navy is evaluating what to do with its headquarters in the Middle East after the Bahrain-based installation sustained damage during recent months of fighting with Iran.

For years, the Navy has managed its Middle East fleet operations out of Naval Support Activity Bahrain. Iranian forces began targeting the base after U.S. and Israeli forces launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28.

“They blew the hell out of Bahrain,” acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said in an interview with The Epoch Times on Sept. 9, as he concluded a visit to a shipyard in Philadelphia.

While open-source imagery had previously indicated the Bahrain naval base sustained damage, Cao’s comment marked a direct and official acknowledgement of the ongoing conflict’s impact on the facility.

Last month, following reports that the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln were facing strains after months supporting combat operations in the Middle East, the Navy told The Epoch Times that combat actions had disrupted traditional supply hubs in the region. Despite these disruptions, the service said the Lincoln’s crew maintained continuous access to clean water, healthy meal options, and functional air conditioning.

At a Navy town hall event on Aug. 31, a sailor who had been displaced from NSA Bahrain asked Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle whether she would see the return of personal belongings she left on the base. Caudle said the service was working on a plan to reunite personnel with their belongings but said the service doesn’t plan to return to the base “anytime soon.”

When asked whether the Navy would need to repair NSA Bahrain in order to sustain its forces in the region, Cao said, “I have a task force that’s looking at that.”

The Iran conflict has fueled discussion over the continued utility of U.S. military outposts in the region.

Jim Webb, a U.S. Marine infantry veteran and independent national security consultant, said Cao’s latest comments suggest that the current U.S. force posture in the Middle East “is unsustainable without continuing to be under attack.”

“I don’t think there’s any way, you know, in the short, medium, or potentially even long term, that we can adequately defend a place like NSA Bahrain, or let alone the rest of the logistics bases there,” Webb told The Epoch Times.

Webb said keeping U.S. troops at bases in the region makes those troops “constant targets.”

In an interview with The Cipher Brief last month, retired Army Gen. David Petraeus similarly said the current U.S. military outposts in the region “are no longer viable.”

Petraeus previously led the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East.

As he discussed the Iran conflict with The Cipher Brief, Petraeus said the current commander for U.S. forces in the region, Adm. Brad Cooper, has largely overseen recent combat operations from a distance, rather than from CENTCOM’s forward headquarters at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

“This is a result of the Iranians having capabilities they didn’t have before, in terms of the numbers of drones and the numbers of missiles with the range required to hold our facilities at risk and to strike them and to kill our soldiers and wound them,” Petraeus said.

Throughout the Iran conflict, U.S. forces have worked to reduce Iranian drones and missile launchers, and destroy storage and production facilities for those weapons. Still, U.S. forces have had to contend with these threats in recent clashes.

In the past week, U.S. forces reported striking 10 Iran-linked tankers in retaliation for Iranian missile attacks targeting U.S. warships.

Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump on Thursday evening addressed a crowd in Dallas, touting his administration’s achievements on the closing night of the two-day midterm convention and asking voters to back Republican candidates in the upcoming elections.

“I’m seeing spirit like we haven’t seen in this country for a long time, long time,” Trump said.

“But it came back about a year and a half ago. We went through four years of embarrassment, hurt, harm, sickness, filth was bad, but now it’s good, and it’s going to soon be greater than ever before, better than ever before.”

Trump laid out a flurry of proposals that he said Republicans would pursue in the coming two years.

First, Trump said that Republicans would make most-favored nation prescription drug discounts “permanent in law.”

He also mentioned the “No Invasion of Our Country Act,” a proposed bill from the president to make it illegal for future presidents to “open the border again.”

“We don’t want any more invasions of our country,” Trump said.

He also mentioned the related Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which would require most Americans to present documented proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

Trump also vowed that with the help of Vice President JD Vance, “we will win the war on fraud,” and reiterated his past calls to end cash bail.

The speech is the capstone to a two-day meeting of Republicans in Dallas for their party’s first-ever midterm convention, with Trump placed at the center of what has been dubbed a “Trump-a-Palooza” by Republican organizers.

A flurry of key Republican-aligned policymakers, candidates, social media personalities, and political organizations have descended on the Texas metropolis, with a litany of additional events, candidate speeches, and organization activities also taking place across Dallas.

During the speech, Trump highlighted stock market gains under his second term, his administration’s efforts to lower drug prices, decreases in immigration, and other topics.

“Less than two years ago, the American people gave us a mandate to save America, and in 19 months, I’ve delivered on every single promise I made, and I think I delivered on far more,” he said.

Trump delivered his speech on Thursday shortly after Vice President JD Vance addressed the convention.

The president told the crowd near the beginning that he intended to speak less than he had the previous night, when he addressed the convention for more than two hours.

During that earlier speech, Trump described his second term as “the greatest two years in the history of the presidency,” urging voters to support Republicans in the upcoming elections.

Trump also promised voters a $5,000 dividend to every adult citizen if Republicans keep control of the Senate and House this November. Previously, the president had floated a $2,000 check stemming from tariff dividends.

After his administration faced questions about how it will actually carry out the proposal, Trump reiterated the promise during the second night.

“If we win the midterms, we will … provide a let’s call it Trump dividend: $5,000 for every adult citizen in our country,” he said.

Speaking to The Epoch Times at the convention ahead of Trump’s speech, Republican attendees criticized Democrats for what they called the democratic socialist pitch of “free things.”

Sisters Beth Mills of Shawnee, Oklahoma, and Colleen Robishaw of Arlington, Texas, told The Epoch Times that Republicans should tell people that nothing is free: Higher taxes would be needed to pay for free programs, and the government would exert more control over people’s lives.

“I think you need to look at the cost, the overall cost of what free things are. It was never free,” Mills said.

Nationwide, Republicans are facing difficult polling numbers across a variety of races.

Trump sits at 39.6 percent approval on RealClearPolling, compared with 57.1 percent who say they disapprove.

Following a handful of victories for candidates from the Democrats’ rising democratic socialist wing in largely blue-district races, Republicans have criticized the party as shifting too far left for the average American.

According to polling by Pew Research in July, Americans’ top concern at present is the economy, and by a wide margin. That poll found that economic issues were the driving political force this cycle for 29 percent of Americans.

Trump has described affordability, a key plank of his 2024 presidential campaign, as a “Democrat hoax.”

The president doubled down on this position during his remarks on the convention’s first night, calling affordability a “fake” issue, saying “I’m bringing the prices way down.”

The most recent Consumer Price Index report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that annual inflation in the U.S. currently sits at 3.4 percent for all items. That includes a roughly 25 percent increase in the cost of gasoline over the past year – especially after the Iran conflict started in late February and disrupted the global oil supply chain – while inflation on food items sits around 3 percent.

Some voters, meanwhile, told The Epoch Times that they don’t understand the fuss about affordability.

“It’s funny with the economy because, like, you know, under [President Joe] Biden it really wasn’t even talked about at all, and then Trump gets [in], and all of a sudden everyone’s talking about affordability,” convention attendee Rodney Stokes of Fort Worth, Texas, told The Epoch Times.

The second key motivating issue for Americans, according to Pew Research, is government ethics and reform, with 9 percent labeling this a top priority.

Meanwhile, 7 percent of Americans described immigration as a top issue for them. Healthcare, foreign policy, and Trump each polled at around 5 percent.

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

A federal appeals court on Sept. 9 questioned whether Louisiana, which has a near-total ban on abortion, has standing to force a nationwide return of in-person dispensing for abortion drug mifepristone, which patients can now obtain by telehealth and mail.

A medication abortion generally involves mifepristone, which blocks the hormone progesterone, and misoprostol, which induces contractions.

Louisiana says mifepristone can cause heavy bleeding and, in rare cases, life-threatening infection, and that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should bring back the pre-2023 rule requiring the drug to be dispensed in person at a clinic, office, or hospital. The state argues the Biden-era change, which allows a certified prescriber to order the pills by telehealth services and a pharmacy to mail them, skipped an adequate safety review and undercuts Louisiana’s abortion ban.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit temporarily blocked the rule in May, but later that month the Supreme Court lifted that order, allowing the drug to continue to be dispensed through the mail.

The FDA, now under President Donald Trump, is currently reviewing safety claims about the drug.

If the state ultimately wins its ongoing lawsuit against the FDA to reinstate the requirement for in-person dispensing, demand for medication abortions, which now account for most abortions in the United States, could drop. This is because patients who currently obtain the medication through the mail without visiting a doctor would have to do more legwork to obtain it.

Louisiana has been challenging so-called shield laws in places such as California and New York that protect healthcare providers from out-of-state investigations and prosecutions. Louisiana has indicted out-of-state doctors for prescribing mifepristone to Louisiana residents.

But mifepristone continues to find its way into Louisiana.

Louisiana Solicitor General Ben Aguinaga told a newly constituted three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit on Sept. 9 that the FDA rule undermines abortion bans enacted by his state and others after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. That 2022 ruling held there was no constitutional right to abortion and returned regulation of the practice to the states.

“There’s no dispute that Louisiana is experiencing 1,000 abortions a month due to mifepristone mailed into the state,” Aguinaga said.

U.S. Circuit Judges Stephen Higginson and Dana Douglas asked whether the state had legal standing, or a close enough connection to the legal controversy, to sue over the FDA decision, saying Louisiana could not show that abortions taking place in the state were related to the 2023 rule.

“There are too many independent actors to say that actually the government’s assessment of safety is what’s causing your 1,000 abortions a month,” Higginson said.

Daniel Winik, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, said the FDA’s review is still in progress.

“The whole point of our position in this case is that it’s the FDA’s job in the ongoing consideration of mifepristone to address all these issues,” Winik said.

U.S. Circuit Judge Priscilla Richman asked how many complications “would not have occurred had the woman seen a physician in person.”

Attorneys for mifepristone makers GenBioPro and Danco have said the drug is safe and that the FDA appropriately considered the drug’s risks when making its decision in 2023.

“The FDA’s decision was richly supported,” GenBioPro lawyer John Elwood told the panel.

It is unclear when the panel will rule.