KELI From Inkwell, this is the Independent News Drop. It's Sunday, May thirty-first. The time is six a.m. Central. I'm Keli, with Hast.
HAST Morning. We're starting with a piece on power and perception — how rules get written and who enforces them. Then we'll move to courts, immigration, and Colombia.
KELI November twenty-twenty. California Governor Gavin Newsom attended a dinner with twelve people indoors, no masks, while telling the state not to gather. One of his guests was the CEO and top lobbyist of the California Medical Association — the same organization funding statewide ad campaigns urging Californians to wear masks and stay home. Newsom said afterward, quote, "I made a bad mistake. Instead of sitting down, I should have stood up and walked back, got in my car, and drove back to my house." The story made news. What the press largely skipped was the structural piece: the people writing the rules, the people enforcing the rules, and the people funding the message were the same social circle. That matters because it's not about hypocrisy as scandal — it's about who gets exemptions and who writes the exemptions in the first place. Watch for this pattern in the coming months and years when you see rule-making agencies dine with industry groups who stand to benefit from those rules. The visibility changes when you know what to look for.
HAST Staying with courts and speech. A federal appeals panel upheld the dismissal of a Coast Guard Auxiliary officer today — the Seventh Circuit Court in Chicago. The officer had posted what the court called crass statements on LinkedIn while in uniform. This is a continuing case we've been tracking. The ruling narrows the window for military and auxiliary personnel who want to speak on social media. The judge wrote that certain statements, even off-duty, carry consequences when someone's wearing the uniform in the post itself. It's a Fourth Amendment balancing act: how much can the military restrict speech that happens to be public.
KELI On immigration and Texas law. A federal judge allowed parts of Senate Bill Four to take effect on Thursday, but blocked others. The provision that does go into effect lets state and local police arrest people suspected of illegal entry — that's new authority in Texas. The judge blocked the part that would have let cops turn people away at the border entirely. So you've got a legal seesaw: some of the law stands, some gets paused, and this will almost certainly move through appeals. The case will keep shifting as different judges weigh in. Expect this to get bigger, not quieter, heading into the general election season.
HAST Different scale, but significant. Colombia held its runoff election yesterday. Far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella won against left-wing Senator Ivan Cepeda. This is an upset — political forecasters had leaned the other way. Cepeda had led in first-round polling. De la Espriella's campaign focused on crime and public safety, which moved voters away from Cepeda's left-wing platform. The result flipped expectations about where Latin American politics was heading. Watch the next government's economic policy and its stance toward Venezuela.
KELI Before we close, a history note.
HAST On this day in nineteen thirty-five, an earthquake measuring seven-point-seven on the Richter scale destroyed Quetta in what is now Pakistan, killing approximately forty thousand people.
KELI That's the Independent News Drop. We'll be back this evening. From Inkwell.