EUGENE VOLOKH: When May Law Require Social Media Platforms to Disclose Basis for Moderation Decisions?

I’LL BET THEY’D NEVER REFUND A TAX HERE EVEN IF IT WAS STRUCK DOWN: Panic Time: Netherlands’ Wealth Tax Gets Shot Down, Must Be Refunded.

WOEING: Now Boeing is Facing Criminal Charges. “As if Boeing didn’t already have enough problems, today the Department of Justice announced that they are criminally charging the company with fraud over Boeing’s response to the crashes of two of their 737 MAX jets in 2018 and 2019. What the DoJ is doing is offering the company a plea deal so they can avoid a trial and potentially larger penalties. The Justice Department is describing the offer as “nonnegotiable.” Boeing can either plead guilty and take the deal or be taken to trial. But as we’ll discuss in a moment, not everyone is happy with the proposed deal, and even if Boeing accepts the conditions, this still may not go through smoothly.”

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Watch India’s reusable space plane prototype ace its final landing test.

LIFE ALL OVER: Incredible Hydrothermal Environment Discovered Deep Beneath The Ocean.

THE LEFT IS FULL OF HYSTERIA, IT’S THEIR MAIN THEME: WATCH: Bill Barr Rips Through Justice Sotomayor’s Hysteria Over the SCOTUS Presidential Immunity Ruling. You might expect Supreme Court justices to be less hysterical, though.

THE REAL NEWS HERE IS THAT SNL IS ACTUALLY MAKING FUN OF DEMOCRATS:

@victimofcensorship #SNL #Trump2024🇺🇸 #ThankALiberal #VotingFelon #GenX #FYP ♬ original sound – VictimOfCensorship

But the key bit is which Democrats they’re not mocking.

AI IS GETTING SMARTER EVEN AS PEOPLE ARE GETTING DUMBER: AI Outperforms Students in Real-World “Turing Test.”

OF COURSE NOT, IT’S GORGEOUS: This Gorgeous Cadillac Coupe Was Never Meant to be Seen. I mean, how long has it been since Cadillac had a truly gorgeous car? The 1959 El Dorado?

MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: The Supreme Court, Chevron, and the Political Class’s Worst Nightmare: Accountability.

As always, if you like these essays, please take out a paid subscription.

OFF YOU GO, NOW: Supreme Court vacates rulings on Texas and Florida social media laws.

DEFENSIVE PISTOL ACCURACY: What Is Good Enough?

STILL A FEW BUGS IN THE SYSTEM: Incomplete Tianlong-3 Ripped Off Parts of Rocket in Accident. “The Chinese Tianlong-3 rocket ripped off parts of the rocket when it broke free of the test stand. It was supposed to be held in place in the test. The rocket was not complete without grid fins. There were pieces falling off when it broke free and the engines did not sound correct and there were no fins to stabilize the flight. The rocket was months from being complete.”

HMM: Decision to offer sedation for often-painful IUD insertion is ‘groundbreaking,’ health experts say.

THAT’S BECAUSE IT DOESN’T: Appeals court seems lost on how Internet Archive harms publishers: Appeals court decision potentially reversing publishers’ suit may come this fall.

DO TELL: Diet that limits ultra-processed foods isn’t automatically healthy, study shows.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:

France is diddled. The UK will change govt in a few days. Joe Biden is out to lunch. The planets are in bad alignment.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) July 1, 2024

Future historians are probably going to name the "Joe was just tired" Camp David statement as the moment operatives threw away information and made catastrophe inevitable, like the iceberg warning ignored on the Titanic.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) July 1, 2024

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: How Tractor Supply Decided to End DEI, and Fast.

The beginning of the end of Tractor Supply’s diversity efforts started on June 6.

That afternoon, Robby Starbuck, a former Hollywood director turned conservative activist, posted a message on the social-media platform X saying, “It’s time to expose Tractor Supply.”

He laid out a string of complaints about stances taken by the company and its leaders, from a warehouse displaying pride flags to the CEO promoting the Covid-19 vaccine.

The company has conservative shoppers who don’t agree, he said. “Let’s start buying what we can at other places,” said Starbuck, who has about half a million followers on X.

The post spread quickly, and within hours executives at the Tennessee retailer began discussing how to quash criticism before the controversy was seized on by conservative media.

Three weeks later, Tractor Supply delivered its decision: Diversity, equity and inclusion at the rural chain were over, including related job roles, and so were some of its environmental initiatives and other causes frequently championed by social progressives.

Starbuck, in an interview, said “we definitely proved a model” of blitzing a company with a primarily conservative customer base. He intends to target other companies soon, he said.

Pushback works.

ANOTHER WIN FOR THE NCLA: In NCLA Amicus Win, Supreme Court Upholds Small Business’s Right to Judicial Review.

SO AS STEVE AND CHARLES HAVE NOTED BELOW, THE SUPREME COURT HAS RULED FOR TRUMP IN THE IMMUNITY CASE. Naturally, the question on everyone’s lips is “what does Glenn think?”

Well. I am in general against all of these immunities: Qualified civil immunity for most government officials, absolute immunity for judges and prosecutors — both doctrines created by judges who benefit from absolute immunity and most of whom are probably former prosecutors. I’ve always opposed both.

If there are to be legal immunities, there’s not much basis in the Constitution. You can make a good policy argument for them — and the unprecedentedly slimy, collusive, and over-the-top lawfare campaign against Trump certainly makes the argument for presidential immunity — but really these are policy choices that should be made by Congress, not by judges. But I’m not expecting that to happen anytime soon, and now that the Court has constitutionalized the issue legislation becomes harder. But while this is a suboptimal solution, we have a very, very suboptimal politico-legal system these days, so so be it.

Full opinion, which I have not read yet beyond the syllabus, is here.

THIS IS REALLY GOING TO CRAMP LEFTISTS’ STYLE: Professors can be punished for calling peer ‘racist,’ court rules.

LEFTIST PROSECUTORS VS. THE RULE OF LAW: Texas prosecutor drops all criminal trespass charges against UT Austin anti-Israel protesters.

OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN IN A RECESSION: It’s Home-Building Season, but No One Is Buying Lumber.

Lumber prices have tumbled into building season, a sign that residential construction and home-improvement markets are buckling under high borrowing costs.

The price of two-by-fours, which skyrocketed during the pandemic, is a reliable leading indicator for the housing market. Lately it is flashing caution.

Lumber futures shed 3% Friday to end at $452.50 per thousand board feet, down 27% since mid-March. Wood has piled up in the market and pushed cash prices even lower.

Trade publication and pricing service Random Lengths said its framing-lumber composite price, which tracks on-the-spot sales, fell this past week to $366, the lowest since May 2020. Southern yellow pine, favored for fences and decks, has also dropped to its lowest prices since the depths of the Covid market crash. Random Lengths’ Southern pine composite price declined to $335 this past week.

“The spring rally never happened,” said Russ Taylor, a Vancouver wood-market consultant. “No one is making much money at these prices.”

Everything is going swimmingly.

MICHAEL BARONE: COVID-19: Another fail-safe institution proves not so safe.

At the time, I thought this was a good idea. Hadn’t health research produced cures and improved treatments for many diseases and conditions? Wasn’t health research the best thing for the government to spend money on after national defense?

Now I’m not so sure. After watching the public health agencies flounder and flail during the COVID-19 epidemic, and in light of testimony and retrospective evidence coming mainly out of Republican-run House hearings, it has struck me that putting all those huge piles of money in a small cluster of government bureaucracies was not such a good idea.

Centralization is supposed to prioritize competence and produce efficiency. But it can also squeeze out intellectual diversity and serve the selfish interests of those in charge.

Case in point: The question of whether COVID-19 resulted from a leak from the Wuhan, China, communicable diseases laboratory financed in large part by Francis Collins’s NIH and Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. I’ve returned to this matter multiple times, in June 2021, March 2023, July 2023, November 2023, December 2023, and February 2024.

Obviously, Fauci and Collins’s centralized control over vast sums of research money produced this change of view among scientists with professional credentials but the personal ethics characteristic of a much older profession. Then, with breathtaking dishonesty, Fauci referred the press to the article as if he had nothing to do with it.

The question remains open, although it seems increasingly likely that a lab leak was responsible. However, given Chinese secrecy, there isn’t and may never be an indisputable answer. Nevertheless, Fauci and Collins sought to supply one almost instantly. They instructed NIH-supported scientists, including some who thought the lab leak theory likely, to write a “scientific” paper claiming that a lab leak was not “plausible.” Facebook and other social media platforms chimed in to suppress and discredit the disfavored theory.

Why the lies and dissembling? The facts point to the conclusion that Fauci, with Collins in tow, wanted to divert attention from the “gain of function” research that NIAID had sponsored and financed at the Wuhan laboratory in the past.

That’s because they’re terrible, horrible, awful people.