Think More: Tuesday, June 9, 2026
Vance refers Walz and Ellison to the DOJ, Eisen's lawfare network exposed, SCOTUS eyes the EPA, and California's election mess
Lead · The Reckoning Arrives
Vance Refers Walz and Ellison to the DOJ for Criminal Investigation
Vice President JD Vance, who chairs the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, referred Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison to the Justice Department’s new Fraud Division for criminal investigation. It followed Monday’s House Oversight report finding the pair ignored years of fraud warnings, losing roughly $300 million in child-nutrition funds and risking up to $9 billion in Medicaid spending. Vance said the officials “are not above the law.”
The Reckoning Arrives
Norm Eisen’s Nonprofit Quietly Steered Prosecutions of Trump Allies
Ashe Short & John Solomon | Just the News
Tax records and internal memos show Norm Eisen’s States United Democracy Center embedded with Democratic attorneys general prosecuting Republicans over 2020 alternate electors. Minnesota’s Keith Ellison deputized its lawyers as “special attorneys”; Arizona’s Kris Mayes leaned on a 47-page States United memo for search warrants. A Democratic attorneys general group later sent Mayes’ legal fund $200,000. Courts in Arizona and Michigan threw the cases out.
Following the money behind the anti-Trump lawfare network, per tax records and memos
$200K
DAGA to AG Mayes’ legal fund
$100K+
States United to Marc Elias’s firm
$11M
PSLC to the Democratic AGs group
Reining In the Regulators
Boulder’s Climate Suit Asks One County to Set National Energy Policy
Ilya Shapiro argues the Supreme Court should reverse Colorado’s decision allowing Boulder County to sue energy companies for climate damages. In an amicus brief for the Manhattan, Frontier, and Independence Institutes, he calls the suit an affront to “horizontal federalism”: one affluent county trying to set energy policy for Wyoming, Texas, and the country. Suncor v. Boulder is argued next term.
A Refrigerant Maker’s Case Could Revive the Nondelegation Doctrine
Margot Cleveland | The Federalist
Margot Cleveland writes that Choice Refrigerants v. EPA, which the justices weigh on June 18, could rein in the administrative state. Congress’s 2020 AIM Act ordered an 85 percent cut in hydrofluorocarbons but gave the EPA no standard for who receives production allowances; the agency wrote its own, reserving shares for new entrants while invoking equity. She urges the Court to revive the nondelegation doctrine.
Failure Without Consequence
Luna Wants California’s Federal Funds Cut Until It Fixes Its Elections
As Los Angeles slowly counts its mayoral ballots, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna called for Congress to halt federal funding to California until it cleans up what she called a shady election process. Governor Newsom’s press office shot back that California subsidizes red states. The exchange followed Newsom’s earlier boast about a “break glass in case of emergency” election plan.
Bray: California’s Election Mess Shows the Blue Model Dying
Chris Bray | Tell Me How This Ends
Chris Bray reads the Los Angeles mayoral primary, where Nithya Raman overtook Spencer Pratt amid daily ballot dumps and Karen Bass heads toward reelection, as a sign that “end-stage behaviors are piling up.” The blue model, he argues, is financially unsustainable and past course correction, citing the A’s departure from Oakland and the Bears’ planned move to Indiana.
Voters Give the Country’s Best-Known Journalists Low Marks
A Napolitan News Service survey by Scott Rasmussen finds the public cool toward marquee journalists. Recently fired CBS anchor Scott Pelley draws a 29 percent favorable rating; Bari Weiss, who pushed him out, sits at 12 percent, with 60 percent of voters never having heard of her. Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly each reach 30 percent favorable against far higher unfavorables.
The Academy and the Nation’s Edge
A 17 Percent Drop in Foreign Students Exposes Tuition Dependence
With new international enrollment down 17 percent, The College Fix reports that universities’ dependence on full-paying foreign students, who unlike many Americans receive no federal aid, has been laid bare. Admissions expert Shaan Patel argues the problem is the schools’ over-reliance, not the students, and presses for stricter visa-compliance enforcement and a cap on international admissions at public universities.
Narang: Winning the AI and Quantum Race Is an 18-Month Sprint
Prineha Narang | Foundation for American Innovation
Physicist Prineha Narang warns that what looked like a five-year contest to field AI and quantum sensors for the military has compressed into an urgent 18-month sprint. The line between lab research and battlefield capability is collapsing, she writes, and much of the talent to win the race sits in university physics departments and deep-tech startups that must be tapped quickly.
A Nation’s Memory
The Women Who Kept the Memory of the Men Who Won the West
Mary Cuff traces a silver teapot, handed mother to daughter since 1797, through the family of George Rogers Clark and William Clark of the Corps of Discovery. Their matriarch, Anne Rogers Clark, raised ten children and, Cuff writes, elevated wife and mother into a role of genuine grandeur. The men set out to win the West, she argues, to build homes worthy of such families.
