Month: September 2026

Examining support systems behind open source, the open web, and everyday life, along with why sustaining these efforts is necessary.

Most Americans know that in all criminal cases – those filed by the government against an accused individual – the defendant has a constitutional right to a lawyer. The Supreme Court established this right in 1963 in the landmark case Gideon v. Wainright.

What many people may not know is that no such right exists in civil cases. Civil cases are those filed by individuals or businesses against other individuals or businesses – for example, a landlord against a tenant, a bank against a borrower or an employee against an employer. These cases affect rights that many Americans take for granted, including housing, healthcare and education.

But calls for a civil right to counsel, or “civil Gideon,” have gone unanswered for years. Meanwhile, the United States ranks 112th of 143 countries on access and affordability to civil legal services. This is 40 spots lower than a decade ago, despite a 6% increase in the U.S. practicing lawyer population during the same period.

Access to justice

Studies show that low-income Americans receive insufficient or no legal help for 92% of their civil legal problems.
Nonprofit legal aid organizations fill some of this “justice gap.”

However, 49% of those whose income is low enough to qualify for services are turned away because legal services organizations lack resources. The number of people turned away does not include those who make too much money to qualify for legal aid, typically 125% of the federal poverty level, or US$37,878 for a family of four.

My scholarship, along with that of others, suggest that the U.S. cannot lawyer itself out of this crisis. The legal system has failed to provide the resources that these seniors, veterans, children, rural Americans and others need to defend their legal rights or even understand their legal problems.

I believe the proliferation of AI-powered chatbots and legal services offers a new means of addressing these unmet legal needs.

AI legal services

Since ChatGPT’s release in November 2022, concerns over lawyers’ sloppy AI use have dominated headlines, including instances where attorneys have cited fake legal cases in court filings.

Typically overlooked is how AI has changed the way ordinary people interact with the law. AI offers not only ready access to free legal information that was once hard to find, but also customized solutions to legal problems.

Two types of AI tools are relevant.

The first type is widely known and broadly available: the multipurpose AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude. Built on massive datasets of information, these tools provide unrestricted, easy access to legal information and resources. They can also provide tailored answers to specific questions, including legal ones.

The second type is less well known. Niche AI tools are built on information relevant to a specific domain, like law. These types of tools are designed to understand the nuance of a field and assist with a narrow task. For example, Legal Aid of North Carolina offers a self-service AI tool that can answer users’ specific legal questions about child custody, domestic violence or consumer law.

Both multipurpose and niche tools can provide generic legal information as well as advice about a person’s legal problem. However, niche AIs are more accurate because they are trained on legal rather than generalized data and, therefore, they are more precise and relevant.

Nonetheless, multipurpose tools have proven skilled at helping litigants without access to lawyers. Early data indicate that these self-represented people are filing more cases as ChatGPT and similar tools became available.

Judges agree that the increase in self-represented litigants may be attributable to AI. However, access to the courts has not yet resulted in better chances of winning one’s lawsuit.

Pros and cons of AI use

Opponents of self-represented litigants have complained about the proliferation of cases and improper filings created by multipurpose AI. Judges have expressed frustration with self-represented parties dumping “hundreds of pages of documents” on the court.

Furthermore, without individualized human interaction, algorithmic-driven legal advice could harm litigants who are most in need of help by providing erroneous or incomplete advice.

Both multipurpose and niche legal tools are plagued by the legal profession’s self-imposed limits on who can deliver legal services. When individuals other than lawyers provide legal advice or otherwise engage in the practice of law, it is known as the unauthorized practice of law, or UPL. UPL restrictions are designed to ensure the public receives competent and ethical legal representation.

However, AI offers those who may not even understand they have a legal problem an opportunity to access information and assistance. AI can help people without counsel better understand the merits of their case and perhaps even understand the court procedure necessary to successfully represent themselves.

These tools are not without risk. But, without them, we may continue to meet only 8% percent of the civil legal needs of Americans. Everyone else will continue to do without.

Ellen Murphy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

ICE ramped up its arrests of immigrants at major airports over the summer of 2026, including in Philadelphia, to help meet the Trump administration’s reported goal of apprehending 1,100 people daily.

The agency is collaborating with the Transportation Security Administration, its sister agency in the Department of Homeland Security. However, decades before TSA existed, local police were used in a similar fashion to help the military catch AWOL Vietnam War soldiers.

I’m a historian of race and policing in Philadelphia after the Civil Rights Movement and I spend a lot of time digging through the city’s archives. I recently combed through a 1967 collection of police incident reports from the 77th district, also known as the airport police, which patrols Philadelphia International Airport.

Most of the cases involved plane crashes and unruly passengers, rental car thefts, larceny of luggage and freight packages, bomb scares and drug smuggling.

But the airport police at times detained drafted soldiers who didn’t want to complete their tours of duty.

A site of civil disobedience

The Vietnam War was unpopular because the goals of America’s fight against communism were unclear and village massacres like My Lai exposed it as unjust.

Approximately 80% of American soldiers drafted were working-class men. The odds of facing injury, amputation, post-traumatic stress disorder and death in this war were higher than that of World War II and the Korean War.

Nearly 60,000 U.S. military personnel lost their lives during the Vietnam War. The death toll was at its highest between 1967 and 1969, when at least 11,000 U.S. troops died each year.

One in five Pennsylvanians who died in the war were from Philadelphia. Edison High School in North Philadelphia had the greatest number of high school students killed in Vietnam nationwide: 64.

In 1967, Philadelphia’s local police functioned as the federal government’s eyes and ears to report anti-war behavior at the airport.

That February, and questioned Fred Batchelder, the president of Ridley Park’s Veterans for Peace in Vietnam, for distributing anti-war pamphlets to servicemen without getting authorization from the Division of Aviation. The pamphlets aimed to bust myths about the war and were written by
Green Beret Master Sgt. Donald Duncan, an early critic of the war.

Four hours later, Batchelder was released and permitted to distribute pamphlets outside the terminal and in the baggage room. But to Philadelphia’s Civil Disobedience Squad and the FBI so those agencies could further investigate him.

Escapes from military custody

As Batchelder protested with literature, AWOL soldiers took advantage of the airport’s busy environment to escape from the military police.

The same month that Batchelder was detained, serviceman D. Green, a sailor already under disciplinary action who was being escorted to his ship in San Diego, ran through the main terminal while a shore patrolman from the Navy Yard pursued him.

Airport police joined the chase that led to an undeveloped section of highway nearby. Both law enforcement agencies hailed taxis to follow Green until he was eventually caught, handcuffed and detained.

A few weeks later, Pvt. T.J. Kee escaped the custody of military police escorting him to Baltimore. Once Kee fled from the Delta Airlines ticket counter, Philadelphia and Tinicum township police were alerted to patrol the airport and the surrounding area, but Kee got away. He enjoyed nearly five months of freedom until Delaware state police caught him in Wilmington.

Soldiers in distress

Servicemen also used medical emergencies to avoid active duty.

In May 1967, Navy officer P. Nahmens fell ill in the baggage claim area of Philadelphia’s airport and asked police to take him to the Naval Hospital. Nahmens complained that for two months he had severe chest pains and an upset stomach before his return to duty aboard the USS Newman K. Perry in Newport, Rhode Island.

Nahmens also said that he did not want to report to his superiors, which I believe made the police suspicious because they used the uncommon classification, “ill sailor” in their files to document the incident.

That same month, Pvt. Wishler had a seizure in the airport’s baggage room after he arrived from Phoenix on a TWA flight. Wishler was scheduled to report to Fort Dix in New Jersey within seven hours of landing in Philadelphia. Airport police attended to him, but it appears from their report that they weren’t fully convinced he was actually unconscious and having convulsions.

Skycap Ben Austin, who assisted passengers with picking up their luggage, reported the emergency and another soldier told the police he witnessed Wishler shaking and saw saliva dripping from his mouth. However, after Officer R.A. D’Ambrosio saw Wishler, he stated in his signed incident report that the serviceman only “appeared” to be unconscious and convulsing.

Wishler was transported to the Naval Hospital, and the police later called the hospital to investigate his medical condition. They closed the case after they learned Wishler had fractured his skull in a prior accident that made him prone to seizures.

Dying by suicide was another option servicemen considered.

In July 1967, Army Officer J. Fries told his sergeant that he was “afraid to go to Viet Nam and was going to end it all.” He later survived an overdose of aspirin in a Philadelphia airport restroom. Airport attendant Marie Jones found the unconscious soldier and informed the police, who later transported him to the Naval Hospital for a stomach pump.

Protesters demand ICE leave PHL

In the decades that followed, local police continued to assist the federal government with national security and surveillance at Philadelphia’s airport until TSA was established in 2001 in the wake of the September 11 attacks by the militant group al-Qaida.

During the spring and summer of 2026, peaceful protesters often gathered outside terminals at Philadelphia International to demand that ICE stop intimidating travelers and leave the airport. Immigration advocates from Asian Americans United have documented at least 10 immigrants arrested by ICE at Philadelphia International Airport since July 2026.

Nationwide, ICE has encouraged immigrants to self-deport with stipends, free travel and fine forgiveness, or face third country deportation and possible incarceration in Latin America or Africa.

Philadelphia’s airport – and airports in cities around the country – remains a frontier for both freedom and apprehension.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Menika Dirkson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The crypto industry has just suffered a paradoxical defeat: Its biggest backer, President Donald Trump, inadvertently helped scuttle chances for a major legislative win thanks to revelations of the riches he and his family have made off of their crypto ventures.

The industry is now scrambling to advance its agenda through crypto-friendly regulation instead of legislation. But the prospect of Democratic control of one or both chambers of Congress after the November 2026 midterm elections, as well as potentially winning the White House in 2028, leaves the long-term durability of those gains uncertain.

At stake was legislation that would have provided light-touch regulation over crypto assets. The industry, which had enjoyed a series of wins since Trump started his second term, had secured bipartisan support for the measure, dubbed the Clarity Act, and poured hundreds of millions into lobbying.

But the steady drip of news in the spring and summer of 2026 about the Trump family’s lucrative crypto businesses ultimately undermined those efforts. Democratic support in the Senate faltered, and after several attempts at a compromise, the bill died on a procedural vote on Sept. 15, 2026, falling short of the required 60-vote majority.

As a scholar of financial regulation, I believe the growing backlash against Trump’s conflicts of interest surrounding his crypto wealth changed the political calculus. The Senate Democrats who had initially supported the measure increasingly feared they would be seen as voting to further enrich Trump. While the final bill contained some ethics provisions, they didn’t suffice to keep those Democrats on board.

This outcome leaves the industry in limbo and unsure of how to spend its considerable campaign war chest ahead of the midterms. If it decides to invest heavily to defeat crypto-skeptical Democrats, I believe it could risk a backlash should Democrats retake the House, the Senate, or both.

Under that scenario, Democrats could launch congressional investigations or introduce legislation to impose stringent oversight over the industry. Furthermore, if voters see the industry as overly partisan, that perception could further erode trust in a sector that has desperately tried to repair its image since the collapse of crypto exchange FTX in 2022.

Crypto interests seize an opening

The Clarity Act was designed to answer a long-standing question: Should crypto assets be regulated as securities, like stocks, or commodities, like gold?

Companies that sell securities face more scrutiny, as they’re required to
register with the Securities and Exchange Commission and disclose detailed information to investors. But commodity trading follows looser rules. There’s another agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, that oversees markets for commodity derivatives. But it doesn’t supervise the markets where people buy and sell commodities directly, known as “spot” markets.

Under President Joe Biden, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler took a stringent approach. He treated most crypto tokens as securities and brought dozens of enforcement cases against crypto issuers and exchanges. Many of those cases involved charges of fraud or unregistered offering of securities.

The industry fought back, arguing that many tokens were decentralized, meaning that no single company controlled them. The implication, in turn, was that there was no one who could make the required disclosures to regulators.

The industry saw a major opening with the 2024 election, prompting hopes of a more crypto-friendly administration and Congress. It spent unprecedented sums – over US$119 million – to back pro-crypto candidates in both parties. Trump also sensed an opportunity, reversing earlier criticism. At one bitcoin conference, he told the crowd that he would fire Gensler “on day one” of his administration and make the United States “the crypto capital of the planet.”

But Trump’s victory didn’t end the industry’s political spending. The crypto exchange Coinbase sponsored the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary parade and joined several other crypto companies and executives in donating funds to the White House ballroom.

That lobbying blitz secured some immediate wins for the industry. In July 2025, Trump signed the GENIUS Act, establishing a federal regulatory framework for stablecoins – digital tokens designed to hold a steady value of one dollar and backed by liquid reserves like Treasury bills.

Revelations of riches

The biggest prize for the crypto industry was the prospect of legislation that would permanently impose light-touch regulation over crypto trading. That framework, in my view, would also have legalized a business model laden with conflicts of interest.

The Clarity Act was the vehicle for this push. It would have permanently placed most crypto trading under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and no longer treat most tokens as securities. This means investors in cryptocurrencies wouldn’t have had the same rights and protections that exist in securities markets.

At first, the bill’s prospects looked good. In the summer of 2025, the House of Representatives passed its version 294-134, with 78 Democrats, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, voting in favor.

The bill’s chances in the Senate, while less certain, still seemed likely at that point, with multiple Senate Democrats expressing support. But just before the Senate Banking Committee was set to vote on its draft in January 2026, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted on the social media platform X that his company wouldn’t support the measure.

Coming from the chief of the largest U.S. crypto exchange, that opposition would have doomed the bill. That unexpected wrinkle forced a postponement of the vote, followed by more rounds of revisions.

The panel finally approved the rewrite in May, but the delay proved costly. In those intervening months, new reports shed light on the Trump family’s crypto businesses, including World Liberty Financial and its stablecoin USD1, the $TRUMP memecoin and a bitcoin mining company, among others.

Then came Trump’s own financial disclosures in June, which reported more than $1.4 billion in crypto-related income for 2025. Separately, a Reuters investigation put the Trump family’s take from four crypto ventures at about $2.3 billion since the 2024 election.

Headwinds from banks

The growing backlash against Trump’s crypto conflicts quickly changed the political calculus. Once-supportive Senate Democrats insisted that the final bill contain ethics provisions barring the president and other government officials from profiting off crypto while in office.

The new draft required officials to either sell significant crypto interests or place them in a qualified blind trust. It also barred them from issuing cryptocurrencies while in office. But those protections fell short of Senate Democratic demands, in part because Trump’s sons would be excluded from those requirements.

Meanwhile, the crypto lobby also ran into strong opposition from banks. At issue was the fact that the crypto exchanges were paying customers interest, or what they called “rewards,” on their stablecoin balances. That loophole came through the GENIUS Act, which prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest to stablecoin holders but doesn’t expressly extend that prohibition to crypto exchanges. That’s why Coinbase offers rewards on customers’ stablecoin balances and receives a share of the reserve income from stablecoin issuer Circle.

Banks wanted Congress to close this loophole, fearing customers would move savings into stablecoins in search of higher yields and leave banks with less deposit funding. In response, the final text of the Clarity Act included a compromise, letting the Treasury Department restrict stablecoin rewards – but only if significant deposit flight had already occurred. Banking groups vehemently rejected that language.

In the end, the compromise on ethics language failed to win over any Democrats, while the opposition from banks prompted an additional defection of three Republicans, dooming the bill.

Lee Reiners does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation