University Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law student, John Simms, argues that car dealerships routinely and lawfully exploit consumers by secretly marking up interest rates in indirect auto financing, a practice that remains undisclosed despite imposing significant financial harm—especially on subprime and marginalized borrowers. It concludes that existing legal justifications for nondisclosure are outdated and flawed, and calls for regulatory reform requiring dealers to disclose interest rate markups to restore transparency, bargaining power, and consumer protection.
Read moreAlone in the Storm: Trump's Plans to Dismantle Federal Disaster Response Will Leave Vulnerable States Behind the Federal Preparedness and Response Elimination Agenda
Helmuth’s piece argues that the Trump Administration’s proposed dismantling of FEMA and retreat from federal disaster preparedness represents a fundamental misreading of the causes of past emergency management failures. By shifting responsibility for disaster response and mitigation onto the states through executive action and funding cuts, the administration threatens to undermine economies of scale, institutional expertise, and cooperative federalism that have long defined effective disaster response. Because Kentucky is both resource-constrained and among the most disaster-prone states in the nation, Helmuth contends that these policies would leave the Commonwealth uniquely vulnerable to increasingly frequent and severe climate-driven disasters, exposing the dangers of replacing federal coordination with fragmented, state-level systems.
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