(Trade)mark America Great Again: Should Political Slogans Be Able to Receive Trademark Protection?

In late 2016, Donald Trump was granted trademark protection for his presidential campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” This registration is one of few—if not the only—political slogans registered as a trademark with the USPTO. Four years later, and four years after the completion of the presidential campaign which effectuated the slogan, the MAGA registration is still live and President Trump and his campaign committee continue to sell merchandise featuring the slogan prominently. However, looking at the applications and the evidence presented therein, it is not clear that the MAGA slogan constitutes a phrase worthy of trademark protection. This Note examines whether the MAGA trademarks should have been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. In Part I, the Note will look at the doctrinal issues specific to the MAGA applications, highlighting ways in which the registrations may be problematic. Part II discusses the broader issues these applications introduce, namely, the ever-present tension between political and commercial speech in trademark law, and whether political slogans should ever receive trademark protection based on the state of this debate. Lastly, in Part III, the Note examines how President Trump’s treatment of his slogan may be illustrative of a larger issue that has been controversial in the first half of the Trump presidency: emoluments. In essence, this Note considers how Donald Trump is breaking the mold in terms of how presidents navigate and distinguish between their business and their politics

Toxoplasma gondii requires its plant-like heme biosynthesis pathway for infection.

Heme, an iron-containing organic ring, is essential for virtually all living organisms by serving as a prosthetic group in proteins that function in diverse cellular activities ranging from diatomic gas transport and sensing, to mitochondrial respiration, to detoxification. Cellular heme levels in microbial pathogens can be a composite of endogenous de novo synthesis or exogenous uptake of heme or heme synthesis intermediates. Intracellular pathogenic microbes switch routes for heme supply when heme availability fluctuates in their replicative environment throughout infection. Here, we show that Toxoplasma gondii, an obligate intracellular human pathogen, encodes a functional heme biosynthesis pathway. A chloroplast-derived organelle, termed apicoplast, is involved in heme production. Genetic and chemical manipulation revealed that de novo heme production is essential for T. gondii intracellular growth and pathogenesis. Surprisingly, the herbicide oxadiazon significantly impaired Toxoplasma growth, consistent with phylogenetic analyses that show T. gondii protoporphyrinogen oxidase is more closely related to plants than mammals. This inhibition can be enhanced by 15- to 25-fold with two oxadiazon derivatives, lending therapeutic proof that Toxoplasma heme biosynthesis is a druggable target. As T. gondii has been used to model other apicomplexan parasites, our study underscores the utility of targeting heme biosynthesis in other pathogenic apicomplexans, such as Plasmodium spp., Cystoisospora, Eimeria, Neospora, and Sarcocystis