Think More: Monday, May 11, 2026
Holloway on the constitutional case against Sullivan, Burton on the failed rebrand of liberal economics, Virginia Democrats float court-packing to save their map, and seven more pieces worth reading.
The Constitutional Case Against Sullivan
Carson Holloway • The American Mind
Holloway, a Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute, draws from his forthcoming book No Liberty to Libel (Encounter Books, May 12) to argue that New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) untethered American libel law from the original First Amendment. The “actual malice” standard is judicial policymaking, not constitutional interpretation. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have signaled they would revisit the doctrine.
Liberal Policies Don’t Work When Rebranded as Conservative
David Burton • Washington Examiner
Burton, a senior fellow at the Plymouth Institute, observes that high taxes, heavy regulation, and protectionism do not become workable economics when relabeled “economic nationalism” or “common-good conservatism.” Mississippi is roughly twenty percent wealthier than the United Kingdom. The UK Conservatives lost 251 seats in 2024. Canada’s Progressive Conservatives collapsed in 1993. France’s Les Républicains now hold under ten percent of the National Assembly.
Virginia Democrats Float Court-Packing to Save Their Map
After the Supreme Court of Virginia struck down their 10-1 congressional gerrymander on a 4-3 vote, House Democrats convened a Saturday call with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to weigh lowering the mandatory judicial retirement age from 75 to 54. Governor Abigail Spanberger would have to sign. The justice who broke the tie was appointed by Senator Mark Warner.
Democrats Enter Panic Mode on the House Map
Three court rulings on redistricting and voting access in early May positioned Republicans to add at least ten House seats in 2026, reversing the conventional wisdom on the midterms. Democratic strategists who had spent months projecting a recapture of the House now describe the map as a structural problem rather than a messaging problem.
Red States Move Against Islamist Influence in Local Law
Governor Greg Abbott blocked an Eid al-Adha event at the taxpayer-funded Epic Waters waterpark in Grand Prairie, threatening to withhold $530,000 in state grants, and signed a Texas ban on Sharia compounds. Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating the East Plano Islamic Center. Florida, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas are following. Representatives Keith Self and Chip Roy formed a Sharia-Free America Caucus this spring.
Progressivism Cannot Coexist With Classical Learning
Auguste Meyrat • The Federalist
A New York Times essay by James Traub on Eagle Ridge Academy, a classical charter outside Minneapolis, missed the framework. Meyrat, a high school English teacher, notes that classical schools rely on strict discipline, no-phone policies, demerit systems, and direct instruction. The pedagogy is implicitly Christian and meritocratic. Project-based learning, standards-based grading, and social-emotional learning are incompatible with it.
The Hippocratic Oath Yields to Social Wellbeing
David Randall and Peter Wood • Minding the Campus
The 2,400-year-old Hippocratic principle has been displaced by the World Health Organization’s 1946 Constitution, which redefined health as “complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing.” Randall and Wood, writing for the National Association of Scholars, trace the line from that definition through the University of Michigan’s Transgender Healthcare Curriculum and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ Gender Affirming Care training. They call it a return of Gnosticism in medical form.
Devine on the Weaponizing of Misplaced Empathy
Miranda Devine • New York Post
Devine reports on Organize NYC, the rent-a-mob initiative launched under Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The progressive movement, she argues, systematically exploits women’s empathy to manufacture political coalitions on housing, immigration, and policing. The pattern predates Mamdani. The risk is that misplaced compassion ends in policies that harm everyone in the city, including the women recruited to defend them.
Bray on the LA Mayoral Race as Theater of Decline
Chris Bray • Tell Me How This Ends
Spencer Pratt, the reality-television figure turned independent candidate for Los Angeles mayor, debated DSA councilwoman Nithya Raman last week. Bray reads the contrast between Raman’s symbol-rich progressive rhetoric and the addicts on the sidewalk outside as the action-depiction divide. He also flags California’s new universal-newborn-diaper program, routed through a nonprofit run by close friends of Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
Frazier’s Bright Horizons for AI
Frazier, an artificial-intelligence law fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, replies to Spencer Klavan’s lead essay in this Law & Liberty forum. Critics, he argues, conflate large language models with the field as a whole, treat current limitations as permanent, and demonize developers. Anthropic delayed its Mythos model over cyber-vulnerability concerns. Harvey’s legal AI now produces hallucinations under one percent.
