On Wednesday, New York supreme court justice Barry Ostrager ordered ExxonMobil and its accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), to produce 40 years’ worth of the energy giant’s documents pertaining to climate-change. Ostrager’s decision sets a dangerous precedent: A public-policy debate can be settled through judicial fiat.

The ruling comes in response to an investigation opened last November by New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman. He, along with other members of an attorney general–led coalition known as “Green 20,” allege that the company suppressed its scientific findings about the consequences of burning fossil fuels for the climate. Schneiderman holds that by doing so the company would have violated New York’s anti-securities fraud statute, the Martin Act, because it would have deceived investors. ExxonMobil attorneys argue that Schneiderman’s subpoena is void because any lawsuit should be filed in Texas where ExxonMobil is headquartered, and Texas has accountant-client privilege laws that would shield the company from Schneiderman’s subpoena. Ostrager ruled against that legal argument. New York is the correct jurisdiction since the company does business in the state, he argued, and even if the lawsuit was in Texas, ExxonMobil attorneys had a flawed interpretation of the state’s accountant-client privilege.

Wednesday’s ruling marks the first, and what ought to be the only, victory for Schneiderman in what is bound to be a long, politically motivated lawsuit.

Green 20 is not a legal coalition; it’s a political coalition that has abused its law-enforcement authority in the context of a public-policy debate. From the get go, Green 20 members explicitly stated their common interest: “Limiting climate change and ensuring the dissemination of accurate information about climate change.” Virgin Islands attorney general Claude Walker, a member of the coalition, said that the goal of his ExxonMobil probe was to “make it clear to our residents as well as the American people that we have to do something transformational [on climate change].” He proceeded to label climate-change skeptics as “selfish”; after all, they are acting “to destroy the planet.” Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey has also demonstrated the extent to which she has been playing politics, as I previously wrote for National Review Online:

A month before the subpoenas were even issued, Healey forcefully highlighted the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s climate-change-policy achievements while promising to hold ExxonMobil accountable for its supposed fraudulent activity. That timetable and Healey’s overheated rhetoric make it clear that the “investigation” has been nothing but a witch hunt from the very beginning — with politics, not the law, in mind.

Schneiderman, Healey, Walker, and other members of Green 20 have made ExxonMobil and climate-change skeptics out to be the enemy, all while political-advocacy organizations have aided their agenda by attempting to sway public opinion. In January 2016, the Rockefeller Family Fund held a meeting with environmental activists, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, the agenda was “to establish in public’s mind that Exxon is a corrupt institution that has pushed humanity (and all creation) toward climate chaos and grave harm.” To date, ExxonMobil has released over 1 million documents related to its climate research, none of which provide evidence that it pushed humanity toward climate chaos.

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On Tuesday, the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic (FME Law) filed a lawsuit against New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman, in an attempt to obtain correspondence between Schneiderman’s office and progressive billionaire Tom Steyer. FME Law alleges that the correspondence may reveal a political motive behind the attorney general’s controversial probe into ExxonMobil — specifically, that Attorney General Schneiderman hoped to gain Steyer’s support for a potential 2018 gubernatorial run, and that launching an investigation into one of Steyer’s enemies represented a quid pro quo.

Schneiderman’s ExxonMobil probe began last November, when he subpoenaed the energy giant for 40 years’ worth of internal documents related to climate change. In March of this year, he launched Green 20, a coalition of 20 Democratic attorneys general, with one mission: “Limiting climate change and ensuring the dissemination of accurate information about climate change.” Schneiderman, Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey, and others have argued that ExxonMobil was aware of climate change and its consequences for decades, but failed to disclose its findings to the public. Green 20 critics such as Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, however, have contended that the coalition is making a “grave mistake”: using its law-enforcement authority in the context of a public-policy debate.

The timing of Schneiderman’s suit is certainly suspicious. Just four months after Schneiderman filed, he attempted to arrange a meeting with Steyer, an environmental activist and the founder of NextGen Climate Action — a political action committee that focuses on climate change. “Eric Schneiderman would like to have a call with Tom regarding support for his race for governor . . . regarding Exxon case,” a March 10 e-mail by Steyer’s lawyer Ted White read.

Two months after that email was written, FME Law requested correspondence between Steyer and the attorney general’s office under New York’s freedom of information law. But the attorney general’s office denied FME Law’s requests on the grounds that Schneiderman was investigating ExxonMobil; “disclosure of the requested records,” Schneiderman’s office argued, “would interfere with the Attorney General’s law enforcement powers.” It’s certainly unclear how granting FME Law access to correspondence with a billionaire donor would interfere with Schneiderman’s law-enforcement powers.

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Rachel and P. J. Anderson live with their two children in Germantown, a neighborhood just outside of Nashville. P. J., a musician, often brings his family along while traveling. Like many Nashville residents, the Andersons rent out their home through Airbnb, an online marketplace and homestay network, to supplement their income while traveling. Unfortunately, the Metropolitan Council (the legislative body in Nashville and in Davidson County) implemented strict regulations that were a burden to families such as the Andersons. The rules, for instance, set an arbitrary cap on the number of households that can obtain short-term rental permits. Friday’s court decision, however, was a win for the Andersons and other Airbnb users: It rightfully recognized the rights of property owners.

Circuit judge Kelvin Jones ruled in favor of the Andersons in a lawsuit that the Beacon Center, a free-market think tank, filed last year on the Anderson’s behalf. Jones concluded that Metro Council’s ordinance is unconstitutional. Specifically, Jones held that the definition of a “short-term rental property” was ambiguous: “An ordinary person of average intelligence would not be able to understand the distinctions between [short-term rental], hotels, bed and breakfasts, boarding houses, hostels, et cetera,” he wrote. In doing so, he “delivered a big victory for property rights,” Braden Boucek, director of litigation for the Beacon Center, tells National Review Online.

The ordinance in question had provided strict guidelines for renters (such as by limiting the number of guests who could be hosted), and required Airbnbers to pay hotel taxes as if they were in the hostelry business full time. The regulations had disastrously blurred the line between hotels and short-term rental properties. “Are P. J. and Rachel running a hotel or aren’t they?” the Beacon Center analysts ask at the think tank’s website. “The way the ordinance is written, no one could know.”

Furthermore, Metro Council’s ordinance had categorized short-term rentals by doling out owner-occupied rental permits and non-owner-occupied rental permits, which sought to identify whether the property owner lived in his or her home full time while renting. The classification allowed Metro Council to cap the number of non-owner-occupied rentals in a census tract at 3 percent. This categorization is ineffective, though, since even homes with owner-occupied permits only have to be “generally present during the rental,” a phrase that is as ambiguous as the ordinance itself.

Worst of all, Metro Council had implemented the ordinance long before city officials had worked out how to enforce it. Although it has been a year and a half since Metro Council passed the ordinance, key local officials had not been brought on board by the time Kelvin Jones issued his ruling Friday. Nashville’s police department have strongly opposed giving police officers the tedious task of Airbnb rules enforcement, and Nashville’s mayor Megan Barry had yet to decide which department was best suited for the duty.

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On November 8, voters across the state of Washington will decide Ballot Initiative 1501, the Seniors and Vulnerable Individuals’ Safety and Financial Crimes Prevention Act. If passed, the measure’s proponents claim, I-1501 will increase criminal penalties for targeting seniors and vulnerable individuals in acts of identity theft and consumer fraud and will prohibit the release of any public records that may facilitate such crimes. But it would accomplish neither objective. The measure’s sole sponsor, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is brazenly attempting to deceive voters and misuse the statewide initiative process.

To look into the facts is to discover that I-1501’s intent has nothing to do with protecting citizens, and everything to do with altering the Public Records Act to prevent the Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank, from obtaining the membership list of the SEIU – and, specifically, from obtaining the names of members who serve as home care providers and informing them of their constitutional right to opt out of paying union fees.

In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state-employed care providers have the option of leaving unions such as the SEIU, and since then, the Freedom Foundation has aggressively taken action. Its strategy is to file public records requests, obtain union membership lists, and contact every member, even if it has to go door to door, to inform those who have been left in the dark that they can stop paying into the union. “A lot of people didn’t even know they were in the union, or that they were having the dues being deducted from their Medicaid reimbursement checks,” Brian Minnich, the executive vice president of the Freedom Foundation, tells National Review.

The Freedom Foundation effortlessly obtained SEIU 925’s membership list through the Public Record Act and notified members of their rights. The union shrunk nearly 60 percent. In the courts, Washington’s other SEIU chapter, SEIU 775, challenged the Freedom Foundation’s use of public records, and the Freedom Foundation prevailed. The state supreme court refused to hear the union’s appeal. In the aftermath of its legal loss, SEIU has donated $1.6 million to fund I-1501 public advocacy in a final attempt to prevent the think tank from obtaining its membership list. The authors of I-1501 don’t explicitly state its true purpose, though. They have disguised the initiative with the spin that it protects seniors and vulnerable individuals from identity theft.

This notion that I-1501 would impede identity theft by prohibiting the release of public records is ludicrous. The state’s Public Records Act does not allow individuals to request sensitive information, and, as Minnich notes, the lists in question show only a member’s name and date of birth. “I-1501 is a Trojan horse,” as the Seattle Times editorial board perfectly describes the initiative and the SEIU’s attempt to deceive voters. Identity theft is a hot topic, and few people would oppose what seems to be an effort to close significant loopholes that identity thieves could exploit.

The SEIU has fully funded the campaign for I-1501, but it’s not just the powerful union that has deceived voters. The state’s attorney general has a responsibility to validate the title of each initiative, and clearly I-1501’s title does not represent that it would alter the Public Records Act. “The whole thing is just insidious,” Minnich says. “How in the world could you come up with a ballot title like that?”

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Illegal immigration apprehensions along the southwest border have surged 23 percent this past year, according to Monday’s U.S. Department of Homeland Security report. What’s remarkable, however, is not the drastic increase in the total number of illegal immigrants caught at the border between Fiscal Year 2015 and Fiscal Year 2016, (since 2015 had far fewer apprehensions than both 2013 and 2014) but the surge in the past four years of unaccompanied children and families illegally crossing the border.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson explained in a statement that illegal migration along the southwest border is now dominated by children and families attempting to escape Central America’s hardships and violence. “Border security alone cannot overcome the powerful push factors of poverty and violence that exist in Central America,” Johnson said. “Ultimately, the solution is long-term investment in Central America to address the underlying push factors in the region.” The notion that Central Americans are fleeing their home countries became clear in 2014 when apprehension demographics on the southern border revealed that Central Americans outnumbered Mexicans for the first time in history, and in 2016 they did so again.

137,366 unaccompanied children and family members were apprehended at the southwest border in 2016, a slight increase in comparison to 2014; that was the year the record of unaccompanied children was set, with 68,541 children nabbed before entering U.S. territory. But the juxtaposition of border statistics from 2013 to 2016 is the most alarming — 2013 had 53,614 family members and unaccompanied children apprehended, while total apprehensions remained well over 400,000. In other words, total apprehensions in 2013 and 2016 were equivalent as the number of unaccompanied children and family members crossing the border surged.

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U.S. District Judge Mark Walker has handed the Florida Democratic party a second court victory in less than a week. Both of his decisions bode well for Democrats in November’s election. Last Wednesday, Walker ruled that the state’s voter-registration deadline must be extended a week in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew. And yesterday, Walker again sided with the Florida Democratic party, confirming that voters now have until 5 p.m. the day before the election to fix absentee ballot signatures, if their ballot signature differs from that of the voter-registration form. Previously, only ballots with contradicting signatures were thrown out.

Walker’s ruling requires the Secretary of State to have county election supervisors notify any voter with conflicting signatures so that their error can be fixed before election day. This notification, he argued, would be appropriate since election supervisors already notify those who forget to sign their absentee ballots before election day.

“It is illogical, irrational, and patently bizarre for the State of Florida to withhold the opportunity to cure from mismatched-signature voters while providing that same opportunity to no-signature voters,” Walker said. He also explained that under current law, voters with poor handwriting — or “handwriting that has changed over time” — may have their votes thrown out.

Walker’s decision to rule Florida’s election laws unconstitutional is a boon for the state’s Democratic candidates this election cycle.

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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg apologized Friday for describing San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem as “dumb and disrespectful.” “Barely aware of the incident or its purpose, my comments were inappropriately dismissive and harsh,” Ginsburg said. The apology came after Ginsburg was chastised by progressives for the comments.

In a Yahoo News interview on Monday, Ginsburg compared Kaepernick’s protest — in which he takes a knee during the national anthem to call attention to racial intolerance and oppression — to flag burning: “I think it’s a terrible thing to do, but I wouldn’t lock a person up for doing it.” She proceeded to discuss the protest’s stupidity and the arrogance of Kaepernick and other players who sit during the anthem, suggesting that people should “strongly take issue with the point of view that they are expressing.”

Within one week, Ginsburg’s reputation went into a downward spiral: Liberal media outlets denounced her as arrogant and hypocritical. Slate’s Mark Stern opined that Ginsburg had never deserved the affectionate nickname “Notorious RBG,” describing her as “a (white) liberal icon [who] condescendingly maligned an emerging (black) protester for failing to pay respect to a song that celebrates slavery.” Stern declared that the justice who actually aligns ideologically “with the activist internet community” is Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and the Notorious RBG should just “fade away.”

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After extensive review, the U.S. Department of Justice declared yesterday that the San Francisco Police Department has exhibited bias against minorities. Although the DOJ assessment found the SFPD to be “an organization of good intention,” it “sometimes failed in execution with respect to accountability and ensuring appropriate cultural standards.” The 400-plus-page review made 272 recommendations, all of which the DOJ’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services plans to help implement over the next 18 months.

“I’m proud to report that the San Francisco Police Department will accept and implement every single recommendation,” Mayor Ed Lee said. “We must restore trust and these measures are important steps forward.” City officials requested that the DOJ review the SFPD after officers were caught sending racist text messages, and Mario Woods, a 26-year-old black man, was fatally shot by police; when Woods refused to drop his knife, the police opened fire, shooting him 21 times.

Among the 94 findings, the DOJ concluded that African-American drivers were disproportionately targeted during traffic stops, and minorities were involved in the majority of SFPD incidents with use of deadly force. Asian drivers were also more likely than other drivers to be questioned and found with contraband.

The DOJ’s report found that of the eleven times SFPD used deadly force between May 1, 2013, and May 31, 2016, nine of the fatalities were minorities. The DOJ recommended that the department collaborate with research institutions to determine the root of the biases, improve relationships with minority communities, and train law-enforcement officers in ways that minimize their use of deadly force.

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U.S. District Judge Mark Walker on Monday night ruled in favor of the Florida Democratic party’s demand that the voter-registration deadline be extended in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew. Republican governor Rick Scott had refused to extend the deadline, saying that Florida law didn’t give him the power to do so and that it was unnecessary: “Everybody has had a lot of time to register,” he said. But Walker rebuked Scott — and the state’s relevant law — granting a 24-hour extension through the duration of the court hearings that may result in Floridians receiving a weeklong voter-registration extension.

The Florida Democratic party argued that not extending the voter-registration deadline would be a violation of the Voting Rights Act as well as the First and Fourteenth Amendment. The lawsuit noted that Scott had advised 1.5 million people to evacuate their homes as the hurricane neared landfall, saying “this storm will kill you” and “time is running out.” The Florida Democratic party claimed voters were therefore forced “to choose between their safety and the safety of their families on one hand, and their fundamental right to vote on the other.”

Scott had said that the original voter-registration deadline of Tuesday had allowed residents more than enough time, and suggested that the demand to extend the deadline was politically motivated. He may be right: Florida is the largest swing state, and last election cycle  80 percent of the 156,000 Floridians who registered just days before the deadline were Democrats. The Democratic party would unquestionably benefit from an extended voter-registration deadline.

Walker sided with the Florida Democratic party, dismissing Scott’s comments about the lawsuit’s political motives as “poppycock.” “This case is about the right of aspiring eligible voters to register and to have their votes counted. Nothing could be more fundamental to our democracy,” he said in the ruling.

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The Mexican peso’s strength has a negative correlation with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign polls. Over the weekend, the peso jumped nearly 2 percent against the dollar; analysts have attributed it to the near-implosion of Trump’s campaign after a leaked audio recording revealed the presidential candidate making lewd comments about women. And while political pundits and polls provide conflicting conclusions about who won the second presidential debate, the peso indicator illustrates that Trump’s debate performance did not fare well — the peso has continued to strengthen over the course of Monday’s market exchanges.

Trump’s threat to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and build a wall along the U.S. southern border has cast uncertainty over U.S.-Mexico relations if he were to win in November. In a Bloomberg study, the majority of economists surveyed predicted that under a Trump presidency, the peso would weaken to approximately 21 to 23 against the dollar — today, the peso is at 18.88 against the dollar. Before Trump’s scandal this past weekend, the peso was well over 19 against the dollar, and it nearly reached 20 just two weeks ago as Trump’s poll numbers were competitive.

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