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Aryna Sabalenka said it herself shortly after advancing to the semifinals of the U.S. Open: Jessica Pegula has upped her game recently.

The decision comes after the controversy engulfing last week's game between Michigan and Western Michigan.

University Of Washington Settles Case Against Professor Disciplined For Mocking Land Acknowledgment

Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org,

Land acknowledgments have become standard at academic and political events, including the opening of the Obama Presidential Library and a recent Michigan Democratic event. While supporters insist it merely shows respect for original inhabitants, critics argue it is the ultimate virtue signaling and is increasingly being forced on both speakers and audiences. One critic is Professor Stuart Reges, who teaches at the computer science and engineering school of the University of Washington. He has now received a settlement from the University of Washington, which spent a significant amount of time and resources in response to his mocking of the school's land acknowledgment.

University of Washington

We previously discussed the case of Professor Reges, who was disciplined because he refused to post the school's "land acknowledgment" and instead posted an alternative statement. Professor Reges sued the university and various officials in 2022. Professor Reges has declared "Land acknowledgments are performative acts of conformity that should be resisted, even if it lands you in court."

The defendants included Nancy Allbritton, the Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington, Magdalena Balazinska, Director of the Allen School, UW President Ana Mari Cauce, and the Allen School's Vice Director Dan Grossman.

After the university encouraged faculty to add a prewritten "Indigenous land acknowledgment" statement to their syllabi, Reges decided to write his own statement. He has now been told that, while the university statement is optional, his statement is unacceptable because it questions the indigenous land claim of the Coast Salish people.

The school provided a recommended statement for all faculty to post and/or read to their students at the first of every course:

"The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations."

Professor Reges disagreed with that statement and expressed his doubts to the faculty while also noting that "Magda" did not want the faculty to discuss such reservations on the email system. That may refer to the Director of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, Magdalena Balazinska.

Reges' alternative statement read:

"I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington."

The labor theory (which I teach) generally refers to John Locke's theory. In his Second Treatise, Locke laid the foundation for property as a divine gift of God that began in the state of nature, where all was created in common by God. Reges declared that these tribes, indigenous people, "can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land and that the claim of the university land was not sufficiently used or developed to bestow a claim upon the Coast Salish people. That acknowledged group is a broad collection of different groups with ethnic or linguistic associations."

In his lawsuit, Professor Reges says that, after he stated his own views, the university moved against him.

"On January 4, 2022, the day after Professor Reges's Computer Science and Engineering 143 class met for the first time, Defendant [Magdalena] Balazinska, Director of the Allen School, sent Professor Reges an email ordering him to remove the statement from his syllabus because it was 'offensive' and created a 'toxic environment.'"

Reges noted that the university allowed other professors "to include modified statements in their syllabi that were more consistent with the University's recommended statement." The operative point is that "other faculty at the Allen School continue to include land acknowledgment statements in their syllabi that differ from the University's own statement, so long as they express a viewpoint consistent with the University's recommended version."

According to the complaint, Balazinska then allegedly removed his dissenting statement, and the university emailed his students to apologize for their professor's "offensive" land acknowledgment opinion and advised them on "three ways students could file complaints against" him. The students were later allegedly told by Balazinska that, according to the complaint, "all students in Professor Reges's Computer Science and Engineering 143 class section [can] switch into a new 'shadow' class section, which would meet at the same time as Professor Reges's class section."

Reges notes that the alternative class was a series of recorded lectures, but viewed as a reasonable alternative to being in a class with a professor with a dissenting view on land acknowledgments. Some 170 out of his 500 students took the alternative course.

I previously wrote how universities can use course assignments and other collateral means to isolate dissenting professors in an effort to get them to resign. This is especially true of tenured faculty.

I wrote that:

The Reges case could prove a major challenge to that orthodoxy. All university faculty should have condemned the university's actions as an attack on academic freedom and freedom of speech, regardless of how they feel about land acknowledgment. The silence, however, is a reflection of how much has changed in higher education."

It has now resulted in a $600,000 settlement after the university spent massive amounts of public money over four years to fight this lawsuit over the abusive treatment of Professor Reges.

The university settled only after the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in December that administrators were "liable under the First Amendment for retaliation and viewpoint discrimination."

Unfortunately, there is no indication that the university officials who created this fiasco will be held accountable in any way. Millions were spent, and years of litigation were triggered by the orthodoxy of the university. However, these officials will likely be heralded by their colleagues, and nothing is likely to change in the University of Washington's intellectual echo chamber.

However, according to FIRE, the settlement "stipulates that the university cannot take any further action against Reges."

Congratulations to Professor Reges and FIRE for a well-fought case with potentially lasting implications in protecting free speech and academic freedom.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/09/2026 - 20:05

A brush fire near Brentwood's Getty Center and the 405 Freeway has sparked severe Los Angeles traffic delays amid an extreme heat warning.

Shohei Ohtani is not the only Dodgers star suddenly battling an injury.

With the blink of an eye, 49ers defensive tackle Alfred Collins’ second NFL season completely shifted its trajectory. Instead of building off a rookie campaign in which he played in 16 games, he’s now going to spend his second year rehabbing a torn patellar. It’s the first time in Collins’ football career that he will...

Americans agree on little today — except their growing fury with public education.

The producer popped the question to the model during a trip to Indonesia.

The producer popped the question to the model during a trip to Indonesia.

Kickoff time for Giants-Cowboys is 8:20 p.m. on “Sunday Night Football.” It’s the same opponent and stage that made Beckham famous because of his one-handed over-the-head catch Nov. 23, 2014. 

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Lindsay Clancy's murder trial in Massachusetts ended in a mistrial. Had the case been tried in California, however, she would have faced a significantly tougher legal test.

An extreme heat warning has been issued across the region through Thursday.

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Major protests in Spain have taken place in response to the migrant arrivals, with critics blaming Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government for the crisis.

Appeals Court Blocks IRS From Sharing Data With Immigration Authorities

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The IRS may not disclose the addresses of illegal immigrants to immigration officials, a U.S. appeals court said on Sept. 8.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a February ruling from a district court that deemed an IRS policy to share the addresses of tens of thousands of people with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) illegal in part because the policy failed to meet requirements in the law.

The unanimous panel agreed, rejecting arguments from the government to the contrary.

The policy "indisputably contravenes the requirements of section 6103," a law that governs when the IRS can share taxpayer information, Circuit Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote for the panel.

The law allows the IRS to disclose certain tax return information to other federal agencies for use in criminal investigations. To make a request, the head of the agency needs to identify the taxpayer by name and address, specify the relevant tax period, and explain why the information may be relevant to the probe.

Under a memorandum of understanding signed in April 2025 between the IRS and ICE, the latter asked for the last known address for more than 1 million people believed to be illegally present in the United States. ICE did not provide an address for some of the people on the list. Under the agreement, IRS workers sent 47,289 records to ICE before the district court stayed the process.

IRS officials requested the appeals court overturn the ruling. Government lawyers said that the groups that sued did not have standing, that the IRS did not have to follow procedures in the Administrative Procedure Act because the agreement was not a final agency action, and that the practice did not violate federal law.

Pillard wrote that at least one of the plaintiff organizations was sufficiently injured by the policy that it could bring suit, that the IRS did have to follow the procedures because the policy was a final action, and that the action violated federal law because ICE in some cases did not supply an address, as required by the law.

The law provides that the IRS can disclose information about a taxpayer to officials "personally and directly engaged" in criminal proceedings or investigations concerning that taxpayer, allowing disclosure as long as the field for the ICE point of contact is filled in, even if it said "unknown" or "to be determined."

ICE ended up putting the same person as the point of contact for each of the 1.28 million listed taxpayers for whom it requested information.

The judicial panel found that the government's practice "entirely fails to ensure that ICE lists a federal employee, let alone one 'personally and directly engaged' in a qualifying investigation of a particular taxpayer."

"Today's order is a resounding victory for the protection of all taxpayers' right to the confidentiality of their tax information in the hands of the IRS," Nina Olson, executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, one of the groups that sued over the policy, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, ICE's parent agency, told The Epoch Times in an email that the agency disagreed with the ruling.

"We will continue using every lawful tool available to locate and remove illegal aliens with final orders of removal, and this ruling in no way prevents us from doing so," the spokesperson said.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/09/2026 - 19:15