James.galbraith

Remember back in 2019 when Donald Trump refused to sell Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine until President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed to "do us a favor though" (i.e. dig up dirt on his political rival, Joe Biden)?

Well, the very same Republicans in Congress who are currently attacking President Biden for not arming Ukraine fast and furiously enough also vociferously defended Trump's bid to extort Ukraine in 2019 by withholding weaponry from the country.  

In a new mashup contrasting Republican lawmakers' own words circa 2019/2020 with their posture toward Ukraine in 2022, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California praised Trump's actions as "the rightful thing to do." Yet just last month, McCarthy faulted Biden for not providing Ukraine “the armament earlier to deter Putin from ever making this decisions [sic]."

After rationalizing Trump's actions in 2019, Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas offered in February, "Much better lethal aide for Ukraine over the last decade would have really helped a lot here."

House GOP Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana said Trump was required by law to "ensure that corruption is being rooted out" before supplying arms to Ukraine. But in February, Scalise said the Biden administration "slow-walked the anti-tank missiles"—yes, the very same ones that Trump had withheld for dirt on Biden.

And of course, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina went on record saying he had "zero problems" with Trump's so-called "perfect" phone call with Zelenskyy before ticking through a list in February of all the "really lethal weapons" Biden needed to send to Ukraine STAT.

Here's the mashup of GOP hypocrisy then and now:

Doe v. Mckesson is a simply astonishing attack on the First Amendment.

Last week, a deeply chilling case concerning Americans’ First Amendment right to organize protests gained new life. A three-year-old, clearly erroneous decision threatens to bankrupt protest organizers across the political spectrum. But multiple courts keep passing the case among themselves like a hot potato, rather than correcting an obvious error.

At the center of this years-long saga is a conservative federal appeals court’s 2019 decision in Doe v. Mckesson. If it is allowed to stand — or worse, if it is embraced by the Supreme Court — it could potentially chill all public protest in the United States by subjecting the organizers of protests to crippling liability.

That 2019 decision, moreover, is merely the most alarming chapter in a case involving a tragically injured police officer, a prominent civil rights activist, a Trump judge who publicly recanted his own effort to restrict First Amendment rights, and at least four different courts — including the Supreme Court of the United States.

The most recent development is a March decision by the Louisiana Supreme Court that effectively breathes life back into the Mckesson litigation after a US Supreme Court decision gave the state supreme court an opportunity to shut it down. The likely result of that Louisiana decision is months or even years more of litigation — all of which could end in a crippling blow to all political protest in the United States.

The facts of Mckesson are straightforward. DeRay Mckesson is a prominent civil rights activist and a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2016, he helped lead a protest near the Baton Rouge Police Department building in response to the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling.

During that protest, an unknown assailant — who is not DeRay Mckesson — threw a piece of concrete or similar object at a police officer, who is identified in legal documents by the pseudonym “Officer John Doe.” Tragically, Doe appears to have been very seriously injured by this assault. According to the Louisiana Supreme Court, the officer was struck in the face, and experienced “injuries to his teeth, jaw, brain, and head, along with other compensable losses.”

But given that the assailant is still unknown, there is no one to pay those “compensable” damages.

Which brings us to the Fifth Circuit’s decision in this case. The conservative court held that Mckesson may be sued as the organizer of the protest. This decision isn’t just wrong, it is obviously wrong and there is a Supreme Court case that explicitly protects protest leaders from these sorts of lawsuits.

The Court held in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware (1982) that, barring unusual circumstances that are not in play here, “civil liability may not be imposed merely because an individual belonged to a group, some members of which committed acts of violence.” When a group of people gather together in protest, each individual member of the group is responsible for their own actions. But the First Amendment neither permits the group as a whole, or the group’s leaders, to be held liable for one individual’s illegal behavior, unless the group or leader directly incited the illegal acts.

The reason why should be obvious. If protest leaders can be hauled into court — and potentially forced to pay out of their own pockets — for the actions of a single protest attendee, then no sensible person will organize a protest. The personal financial risk is simply too great. And thus the First Amendment right to protest with wither away.

The Fifth Circuit’s decision is dead wrong

Most likely because the person who is actually legally responsible for Doe’s injuries remains unidentified, Doe’s lawyers appear to be casting about for a defendant — any defendant — who could be sued to compensate Doe.

Their original complaint named Mckesson and “Black Lives Matter” as defendants. To be clear, it did not name any particular organization whose name includes the words “Black Lives Matter,” but instead appeared to target the entire Black Lives Matter movement as a whole — which is a bit like if someone injured at the January 6 attack on the Capitol had sued “Make America Great Again.”

Then, at a later stage in the litigation, Doe’s lawyers tried to add a Twitter hashtag, #Blacklivesmatter, as an additional defendant.

With respect to Mckesson, the facts of Claiborne are, in many material respects, identical to the facts of this case. And the Claiborne decision precludes holding Mckesson liable for the actions of an unknown person who attended the Baton Rouge protest.

Claiborne involved a boycott of white businesses led by a Mississippi chapter of the NAACP. During the course of this boycott, according to the Mississippi Supreme Court, some individuals “engaged in acts of physical force and violence against the persons and property of certain customers and prospective customers” of these white businesses.

But the Supreme Court rejected the argument that either the NAACP or specific NAACP leaders who helped organize this boycott could be held liable for the violent actions of people who participated in the boycott.

Claiborne did lay out three circumstances when leaders of a protest may be held responsible for the actions of individual protesters. One is if a protest leader’s “public speeches were likely to incite lawless action,” but Doe’s lawyers do not point to any statements by Mckesson that incited anyone to throw rocks at cops. Similarly, Mckesson could be liable if he gave someone “specific instructions to carry out violent acts or threats,” but Doe does not point to any such instructions from Mckesson.

Mckesson could also be held liable for the rock-thrower’s actions if he “authorized, directed, or ratified” this illegal act. But the Fifth Circuit admitted in its opinion that Doe “has not pled facts that would allow a jury to conclude that Mckesson colluded with the unknown assailant to attack Doe, knew of the attack and ratified it, or agreed with other named persons that attacking the police was one of the goals of the demonstration.”

In short, had the Fifth Circuit followed the Supreme Court’s binding precedent in Claiborne, it would have dismissed the case against Mckesson.

Instead, the court invented a new exception to the First Amendment. To sue Mckesson, Judge E. Grady Jolly wrote, Doe was merely required to “plausibly allege that his injuries were one of the ‘consequences’ of ‘tortious activity,’ which itself was ‘authorized, directed, or ratified’ by Mckesson in violation of his duty of care.” That is, if Mckesson led protesters to commit any illegal act, he risks being stripped of his First Amendment rights and held liable for subsequent illegal activity that results.

In this case, Doe claims that Mckesson “directed the demonstrators to engage in the criminal act of occupying the public highway.” And that was enough, according to the Fifth Circuit, to strip Mckesson of his constitutional rights.

Occupying public streets is, of course, a common protest tactic used by many celebrated political movements — including the civil rights marches of the 1950s and 1960s.

William Lovelace/Express/Getty Images

The Fifth Circuit’s opinion, moreover, is so broadly worded that it could potentially strip any leader of any major protest of their First Amendment rights.

Recall that, under the Fifth Circuit’s opinion, a protest leader is potentially stripped of their constitutional rights if they authorize, direct, or ratify any illegal activity by protesters. This could be illegal activity central to an act of civil disobedience — say, protesters who oppose mask mandates enter a government building maskless, in defiance of a local ordinance — or it could potentially be something only tangentially related. A protest leader could potentially lose their First Amendment rights if they advise a bus carrying protesters to drive slightly above the speed limit in order to make it to the protest on time. Or if they advise a protester to park their car in a no-parking zone.

Indeed, under the traditional common law rule, someone who sets foot on another person’s land without their permission has typically committed the tort of trespass. So a protest leader could potentially lose their First Amendment rights if they encourage protesters to walk in a wide formation where a few of them occasionally spill over from the streets onto private property.

To be clear, a protest leader is still responsible for their own actions. Someone who defies a mask mandate could potentially be prosecuted for refusing to wear a mask, for example. But, under Claiborne, a protest organizer’s decision to violate one law does not normally permit them to be held liable for someone else’s decision to violate a completely different law.

The courts keep treating this case like a hot potato that needs to be passed to someone else

After the Fifth Circuit’s 2019 decision, at least three different courts have had the opportunity to correct this error and restore Mckesson’s constitutional rights. But most of the judges who’ve touched this case refuse to take responsibility for it.

One notable exception is Judge Don Willett, a Trump-appointed judge on the Fifth Circuit, who initially joined Jolly’s opinion inventing a new limit on the First Amendment. Months after the Fifth Circuit’s original decision in Mckesson, Willett published a rare and belated dissent admitting that his initial vote in this case was wrong.

“I disagree with the suggestion that directing any tort would strip a protest organizer of First Amendment protection,” Willett wrote in his new dissent. He added that, had the Fifth Circuit’s rule been in effect in the 1960s, one of its victims would have been Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King’s last protest march was in March 1968, in support of striking Memphis sanitation workers. ... Dr. King’s hallmark was nonviolent protest, but as he led marchers down Beale Street, some young men began breaking storefront windows. The police moved in, and violence erupted, harming peaceful demonstrators and youthful looters alike. Had Dr. King been sued, either by injured police or injured protestors, I cannot fathom that the Constitution he praised as “magnificent” — “a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir” — would countenance his personal liability.

But neither Jolly nor the third judge on the panel, Judge Jennifer Elrod, joined Willett in acknowledging their error. Instead, they issued a longer opinion explaining why they would still strip Mckesson of his First Amendment rights.

Mckesson’s lawyers asked the full Fifth Circuit to hear the case, and effectively toss out Jolly’s decision — using a process known as “en banc” rehearing. But a majority of the court’s active judges must agree to take a case en banc, and the court split 8-8 on whether to do so.

The case then made its way to the Supreme Court, which did hand down a brief decision vacating Jolly’s opinion. But rather than putting the case to bed for good, the Supreme Court merely ordered the Fifth Circuit to seek the Louisiana Supreme Court’s input on whether Louisiana law permits a suit against Mckesson. The Supreme Court avoided the question of whether Mckesson is protected by the First Amendment altogether.

In late March, Louisiana's justices finally weighed in, with all but one of them concluding that state law does permit the suit against Mckesson to move forward. Justice Piper Griffin, the only Democrat on Louisiana’s highest court, dissented, writing that the majority’s decision “will have a chilling effect on political protests in general as nothing prevents a bad actor from attending an otherwise peaceful protest and committing acts of violence.”

And so, because no court wants to take responsibility for correcting Jolly’s error, Mckesson’s rights remain trapped in limbo. He and his lawyers can look forward to more months or even years of litigation before this case is resolved.

This long, torturous process is unfair to Mckesson. It is unfair to Doe, who deserves to know that his lawsuit cannot prevail under the Constitution. And it is unfair to anyone who exercises their constitutional right to protest.

Public opinion, states, and even the GOP have come around to the idea of legal weed. So how hard is it to finally get done?

Part of the Drugs Issue of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.

It has been nearly a decade since the first time a majority of Americans supported legalizing cannabis. Two years ago, that number reached a record high, according to Gallup, with 68 percent supporting marijuana legalization — a number that has held steady since. That same year, as the coronavirus pandemic engulfed the country in March 2020, medical marijuana businesses were declared essential, allowing them to remain open along with pharmacies and grocery stores. It was a triumph for legalization advocates. As the New York Times reported, it was “official recognition that for some Americans, cannabis is as necessary as milk and bread.”

Cannabis is one of the fastest-growing industries in the US; sales of adult-use and medical marijuana products hit $25 billion in 2021 and, by one Wall Street estimate, could reach $100 billion by 2030. Eighteen states have legalized cannabis for adult use, and another 19 currently have at least a comprehensive medical marijuana program. As of 2020, one in three Americans lived in a state with access to legal marijuana, according to Politico, and that number is quickly growing as the East Coast catches up with the West — last year, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia all passed adult-use cannabis laws, joining Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Rhode Island lawmakers are expected to approve a legalization bill this month.

However, under the federal Controlled Substances Act, marijuana remains classified as a Schedule 1 illegal drug with no medical uses, on par with heroin and LSD. The Drug Enforcement Agency strictly limits marijuana cultivation for research, frustrating scientists who are unable to investigate its medical benefits and risks under current regulations.

Rescheduling marijuana for research was an oft-repeated promise of President Joe Biden’s campaign, along with a pledge to decriminalize the use of cannabis and grant clemency to people with federal marijuana convictions.

But after more than one year in office, Biden’s promises remain unfulfilled — and a January YouGov poll of 1,500 people showed that more than half of Americans believe that the Biden administration has made little to no progress advancing marijuana reform. The administration even screened staffers for marijuana use last year, dismissing several incoming candidates because they revealed they’d used cannabis during background checks for positions in the Biden White House. Just this month, employee conduct guidelines were updated to potentially deny security clearance to people who have invested in cannabis companies. All in all, the Biden administration seems to be pretty anti-weed.

Critics of legal marijuana cite the potential for confusion among law enforcement agencies keeping up with evolving regulations, concern about minors gaining access to the drug, a potential drop in property values, and more for maintaining marijuana’s status as an illicit drug. (Though it looks like legal cannabis can actually increase property values.)

Legal cannabis, however, also presents a tremendous financial opportunity, and despite federal inaction, the industry is growing fast; a report from the cannabis website Leafly shows there are more than 428,000 full-time jobs in the cannabis industry, with a 33 percent increase in jobs just last year. Even so, the fallout from the lack of federal legalization is felt by many sectors of society: Medical research is stalled, prisoners are languishing in jails, small businesses are going under without access to federal banking, and big cannabis companies face stiff challenges in raising money to stay afloat as long as marijuana is illegal under federal law.

However, as more states move to decriminalize and legalize cannabis, and as the economic benefits of a legal marijuana industry become apparent, it seems likely that we’ve passed the point of no return on the road to federal legalization. So why hasn’t the federal government been able to unify to enact cannabis legalization nationwide?

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Historically, Democrats have championed legalization as a social justice issue; Gallup poll numbers indicate that half of Republican voters now also support legal marijuana. Support among younger Republicans is especially high, says Morgan Fox, political director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML): “It’s difficult to find any issue right now that enjoys as much public support as ending prohibition for cannabis.” It seems increasingly likely that a bipartisan effort to legalize cannabis at a federal level will pass in the next few years.

It’s still wholly unclear, however, what that policy will even look like. In fact, it’s more likely several pieces of legislation will be necessary to address the labyrinthine issues around marijuana legalization.

To that end, several pieces of legislation are being pushed forward. This February, a bipartisan coalition of House lawmakers including Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) demanded that the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act be “expeditiously considered by the House and Senate.” The MORE Act would deschedule cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act and enact criminal and social justice reforms, including the expungement of prior cannabis convictions. It was approved by the House in a momentous vote in December 2020 that marked the first time in history Congress has moved to end federal marijuana prohibition. However, the bill failed to advance in the Senate.

Another piece of legislation aims to change federal regulations for cannabis-related businesses: The Safe and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act, which has been passed by the House six times since it was first introduced in 2013. If the SAFE Banking Act were signed into law, federal regulators would be prohibited from handing down penalties to banks serving licensed marijuana businesses; those businesses would then be able to access financial services like checking accounts and accept payment with credit or debit cards.

Under current laws, fearing federal prosecution, most large financial institutions, including Visa and Mastercard, refuse to work with marijuana businesses. A lack of access to traditional banking services makes cannabis stores especially vulnerable to theft, fraud, and violent crime since they’re largely forced to operate as cash-only businesses. During one wave of looting in 2020, 43 cannabis dispensaries on the West Coast were targeted and robbed. Federal reform would prevent regulators from penalizing banks who do business with the industry and allow marijuana businesses to operate with safer, more trustworthy financial practices rather than relying entirely on cash.

The SAFE Banking Act, which has had bipartisan support since its inception, was most recently attached to a manufacturing and innovation bill called the America COMPETES Act in February, and passed the House with a vote of 222-210. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell condemned Democrats for including the provision, calling it a “poison pill.” The SAFE Banking Act has also failed to come to a vote in the Senate.

There’s some tension between supporters of the MORE Act, who want criminal justice reform first and foremost, and those backing the reforms in the SAFE Banking Act, which opens a clear pathway for more capitalistic endeavors. After the SAFE Banking Act was approved by the House for the fifth time last December, the Drug Policy Alliance tweeted: “We agree marijuana businesses, like any other businesses, need access to banking services — and in fact, the MORE Act would fully fix the banking issue. The MORE Act also deschedule[s] marijuana to end federal criminalization and repair the harms of prohibition, SAFE Act does not.”

Yet another bill is now also making the rounds: The States Reform Act was introduced by Republican lawmakers last year. Sponsored by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), the legislation was framed as an alternative to Democratic-led reform proposals and would end federal prohibition and regulate cannabis under various agencies, including the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, for growers, consumers, and medical marijuana patients, while notably allowing states to determine their own policies on commerce and other aspects of legalization. It attempts to bridge the partisan divide by including expungements for those with nonviolent cannabis convictions, and a 3 percent federal excise tax to fund law enforcement, small businesses, and veterans’ mental health initiatives. It has not yet been voted on by Congress.

Finally, legalization advocates are hopeful that yet another bill, the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, which could be introduced as soon as April, will provide federal lawmakers the opportunity to debate cannabis policy in the Senate. The sweeping bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, aims to delist marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act while recognizing existing state laws; it would enact banking reform, criminal justice reform, and automatic expungement of federal records for nonviolent marijuana crimes. Under this bill, federal tax revenue would support restorative justice and public health and safety research, with a portion allocated for reinvestment into the communities most affected by the war on drugs.

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Since 1996, when California passed the nation’s first medical marijuana law, a number of factors have driven states to pass some form of legalization, including the rising costs associated with arresting and incarcerating nonviolent drug offenders, growing scientific evidence of the therapeutic benefits of the plant, the shift in the public attitude toward cannabis use, and, of course, marijuana as a source of tax revenue.

The policy gap between state and federal law is now so vast that it has created a patchwork of marijuana markets that could be incredibly difficult to unify under one federal law. Policies vary from state to state, with differing factors including personal cultivation, regulation of producers and suppliers, the types of retail products allowed, prices, and taxes. For example, in Colorado, adults are allowed to possess up to two ounces of cannabis at a time; in California, the limit is one ounce. New York allows growing up to six plants per person at home, while New Jersey only allows licensed cultivators to grow. Each state has its own agency that oversees the enforcement of cannabis regulations and laws. Businesses are unable to trade marijuana legally with one another across state borders, because interstate commerce falls under federal jurisdiction.

Those states with existing marijuana laws may not have to reconcile their laws with federal policy anytime soon. If cannabis were removed from the Controlled Substances Act by the federal government, that wouldn’t mean it would instantly be legal in Nebraska, for example, where ​​the sale of marijuana is a felony under state law. “Federal regulation would not disrupt existing systems, and it wouldn’t force states to legalize,” says Fox.

It’s for this reason, and others, that some believe federal legalization could make things worse, according to Shaleen Title, chief executive of the cannabis policy think tank Parabola Center and a prominent voice in legalization policy.

“If local policies are confusing and chaotic and inequitable, passing a state legalization law doesn’t automatically fix the problem,” Title says. “We’ve seen this in California, Massachusetts, and other states. In the same way, if you add another layer of chaos by putting the federal government in charge when its only expertise has been in arresting and prosecuting marijuana users — not regulation — we could end up with worse problems than we have now.”

Title says that federal regulation could also give the green light for massive corporations, even Big Tobacco, to move into the space. “I’m talking about companies that would never dream of risking their interstate business by getting into something that’s federally illegal, but they’re waiting in the wings,” Title says. “A combination of interstate commerce and enormous new entrants to the industry could put small operations out of business forever, and kill marijuana culture as we know it.”

Last year, Amazon announced its support for legislation to federally legalize marijuana and an end to drug testing of its employees for cannabis. The updated policy was widely celebrated by reform advocates — but also raised questions about whether the company was staking a claim to dominate the industry as soon as cannabis is legal under federal law. (The company sells beer and wine through its grocery delivery services, but notably does not currently sell other regulated products like tobacco.)

A report issued last year by the nonprofit group Drug Policy Alliance outlines protective measures that would allow existing state programs a grace period to transition to federal regulations while limiting large corporations (like Amazon) from capitalizing on a newly legal industry. If a corporation is over a certain size, or controlled by a tobacco company, the report recommends that it should not receive a federal license, adding that the largest corporations should be subject to “the most robust regulation, marketing restrictions, and taxes.”

To protect existing businesses and consumers, federal regulations would need to be rolled out slowly, Title says. She points to Massachusetts, where she served as commissioner of the Cannabis Control Commission from 2017 to 2020, as a successful model for policy change. “We had a huge grassroots movement for decades, and they succeeded in passing small, local-level advisory decriminalization policies,” she says. “That turned into state decriminalization in 2008, then medical legalization in 2012, and adult-use legalization in 2016. We did it really gradually, focused on consumers and small businesses. We were the first to incorporate social equity at the state level. If you look at the way in which we changed the law, you can see that we didn’t try to do too much overnight. And if [we] don’t do that at the federal level, then [we] won’t get another chance.”

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Yet there are myriad reasons for the growing support for federal legalization. Cannabis advocates continue to press forward in their quest to end federal prohibition, saying it will create jobs and economic opportunities, reduce harm, redirect law enforcement resources, generate tax revenue, and promote consumer safety.

The Drug Policy Alliance’s 2021 report of recommendations for federal lawmakers was extensive, authored by a group of reform advocates, public health professionals, regulators, and attorneys (Title among them). It touches on everything from criminal justice reform to environmental regulations to ensuring controls around minors’ access to marijuana. They argued that cannabis policy reform, if done right, could create equity in community, health, housing, and the federal economy. In order to achieve these ambitious outcomes, they wrote, “We must admit, document, and comprehensively assess past harm. We must seek to repair and undo that harm, and replace existing systems with ones that are anti-racist.”

The group’s first recommendation was that federal legislation should require “a historical accounting of what the Drug War was and is.” An evaluation of the damage caused by cannabis prohibition is needed, they wrote — along with an apology. They noted that, because of the history of the war on drugs, regulating cannabis would be vastly unlike regulating alcohol or tobacco, and that the purpose of federal reform would have to be to “end and repair the harms caused by cannabis prohibition, to advance health equity, to foster social and economic equity, and to prevent future harm.”

Those harms include the about 40,000 people currently incarcerated for marijuana offenses in state and federal prisons; Black and Latino Americans make up two-thirds of the prison population in part because of the discriminatory enforcement of drug laws. A 2020 report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) shows that Black people are over three times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession, even though both groups use marijuana at similar rates. Although the total number of people arrested for marijuana possession has decreased in the past decade, law enforcement still arrested 6.1 million people over that period, even in states and cities where marijuana had been decriminalized, and racial disparities in arrests remain intact. If cannabis were federally decriminalized, it could drastically reduce the number of people in the criminal justice system.

Activists have also taken the position that people of color and those with marijuana offenses predating legalization should be afforded the opportunity to participate in the cannabis industry. The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission, for example, implemented a social equity program that serves the individuals most impacted by marijuana prohibition, arrest, and incarceration, by providing participants with education and training for jobs in the cannabis industry. The program could serve as a model for federal reform, with legal-marijuana states being required to create social equity programs that benefit disproportionately harmed communities. Other states that have incorporated social equity programs into adult-use cannabis legislation include California, New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, Michigan, Vermont, Illinois, Connecticut, Arizona, and Virginia, as well as Washington, DC.

Cannabis attorney Cristina Buccola, who also contributed to the Drug Policy Alliance report, says that federal lawmakers need to consider marijuana legalization first and foremost as a justice issue, and that New York state’s Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act could serve as a gold standard. “New York is only one of three states that has earmarked tax revenues that go back to a community reinvestment fund,” she says. “What’s really incredible is that 40 percent of tax revenue is marked for that fund; New York also has a target of awarding 50 percent of legal cannabis licenses to social and economic equity applicants.”

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A big reason that the federal government might also want to legalize marijuana is, of course, cash. If state tax revenues are any indication, legal cannabis would reap massive amounts of income for the feds: California collected around $817 million in adult-use marijuana tax revenue during the 2020-2021 fiscal year, while marijuana taxes in Massachusetts outpaced those garnered from alcohol sales during the same period.

According to a 2018 study by New Frontier Data, a data analytics firm focused on the cannabis industry, legalizing marijuana nationwide could create as much as $130 billion in tax revenue and more than a million new jobs across the United States in the next decade. Legal cannabis could be a massive windfall for the government, pulling in sales tax, as well as payroll taxes, from the burgeoning industry and its new employees. Now, factor in that the nation has spent tons of money in the past two years on Covid-19 research, relief, and care, and the potential money from legalization is probably looking mighty nice.

“When there are budget deficits and the like, everybody wants to know where there is an additional revenue stream, and one of the most logical places is to go after cannabis and cannabis taxes,” Beau Whitney, then a senior economist at New Frontier Data, told the Washington Post in 2018.

Change in a particular federal policy also stands to benefit marijuana businesses: Under current federal law, cannabis businesses are subject to the same Internal Revenue Code statute enacted in 1982 that prevents smugglers from deducting expenses like guns and yachts from illicit operations. However, the IRS applies the same statute to state-authorized marijuana retailers, meaning that they aren’t allowed to deduct many typical business expenses including rent, marketing, payroll, and losses.

Federal reform could repeal that law and allow cannabis companies to deduct such expenses, potentially increasing tax revenue by encouraging growers and retailers to report income, and even offer incentives for environmentally sustainable industry practices like renewable energy and waste reduction. Tax revenue could also be allocated to reparative justice with funding for expunging cannabis convictions, investment in communities harmed by the war on drugs, and assistance for people in the criminal legal system.

There are potential financial pitfalls to federal legalization, too. Marijuana markets in California and Oregon are in crisis due to a collapse in cannabis pricing, largely caused by an overabundance of legally grown product. As prices for wholesale cannabis tank, high taxes and oppressive regulations are putting many companies out of business. If a nationwide industry opened up, struggling cannabis farmers would potentially be able to ship their products around the country to states like Massachusetts and Florida, which could force regional cultivators and small local businesses to compete with cheaper out-of-state marijuana, potentially pushing them out of the market altogether.

The move to legalize cannabis has broad support even in Republican-leaning states like Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Texas — but even though it’s popular, it’s not a top priority for many voters, perhaps in part due to the success of legalization at the state level.

However, as the industry continues to grow, pressure is sure to increase on legislators to end federal prohibition, one way or another. With more than two-thirds of Americans supporting legalization, and bipartisan support for a federal cannabis policy, it seems likely to happen at some point — until then, the states’ solution may be the best anyone can muster.

Mary Jane Gibson writes about cannabis culture and trends for a number of outlets including Rolling Stone. She has been tracking the legalization of medical marijuana and adult-use cannabis since 2007.

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Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, yet tried to overturn it anyway. Will that matter?

As abortion ban proposals make their way nationwide, some GOP states are taking the opportunity to propose other horrific laws. A bill, HB 233, has been proposed in the Tennessee state legislature that would establish a common-law marriage between “one man” and “one woman,” WKRN reported.

Bill sponsors claim the proposed bill would add a new marriage option for residents. “So, all this bill does is give an alternative form of marriage for those pastors and other individuals who have a conscientious objection to the current pathway to marriage in our law,” Tom Leatherwood said. “There is not an explicit age limit.”

However, while the sponsors claim it expands marriage options, they fail to mention the consequences of having no age limit. Since the bill eliminates an age requirement for marriage, child advocates believe it opens the door for child sex abuse. This is because, without an age requirement, there is a possibility of child marriages. 

The move is clearly a step back for the state because the state only signed laws prohibiting the marriage of minors under the age of 17 in 2018. According to The Tennessean, the 2018 bill prohibited anyone under the age of 17 from marrying in Tennessee and anyone under 18 from marrying someone who is four or more years older.

Previous laws before this one allowed a judge to waive the minimum age limit for marriage if guardians of a child consented. 

Various state representatives have pushed back on the bill, including Rep. Mike Stewart, who said he didn’t understand the motivation behind removing the age requirements. “I don’t think any normal person thinks we shouldn’t have an age requirement for marriage.”

He added the potential increase in sex abuse. “It should not be there as it’s basically a get out of jail free card for people who are basically committing statutory rape—I mean it’s completely ridiculous, so that’s another reason why this terrible bill should be eliminated,” Steward said.

According to state data obtained by Unchained at Last, Tennessee granted at least 37 marriage licenses to 17-year-old girls in 2014, the only minors in that year. Additionally, UNICEF found 300,000 girls and boys were married before 18 in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018. 

Removing an age limit only opens up doors for these statistics to grow. GOP states are clearly making moves to take the country in the opposite direction.

“The Sexual Assault Center does not believe the age of consent for marriage should be any younger than it already is. It makes children more vulnerable to coercion and manipulation from predators, sexual and other,” the Sexual Assault Center of Middle Tennessee said in a statement to WKRN. 

Ukrainian wartime humor at its best:

Question: why are all Russian vehicles in Ukraine marked with a "Z"?

Answer: the other half of the swastika was stolen by military contractors pic.twitter.com/wDbNOUKYRk

— Business Ukraine mag (@Biz_Ukraine_Mag) March 24, 2022

The post The Secret of the Z Is Out appeared first on Reason.com.

Like wife, like husband.

We now know that Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, spent the weeks after the 2020 election cheerleading the Trump White House’s efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in that election. One detail we do not yet know, however, is what Justice Thomas knew about his wife’s communications, and whether he tried to use his office to protect her.

In January, the Supreme Court permitted the US House committee investigating the January 6 attacks on the Capitol to obtain hundreds of pages of White House records that may shine a light on former President Donald Trump’s efforts to thwart the peaceful transfer of power to Biden. These records may or may not contain additional evidence linking Ginni Thomas to January 6.

If Clarence Thomas had his way, the House committee and the public would never know. Thomas was the only justice to publicly dissent from the Supreme Court’s decision to let the House committee obtain these records — though he offered no explanation for why he dissented.

But here’s the thing: Yes, Thomas’s vote in this case, Trump v. Thompson, may have been an underhanded effort to protect his own wife. But his vote in Trump was entirely consistent with his record in cases where his spouse does not have a personal interest.

In more than three decades on the Supreme Court, Thomas has consistently voted to make it harder for many Americans to have their vote count; to erode institutions, like a free press, that are essential to democracy; and to dismantle nearly a century’s worth of democratically enacted laws on spurious constitutional grounds. Thomas’s opposition to democracy is not rooted in nepotism. It appears to be quite principled.

Among other things, Thomas is the only sitting justice who voted to install a Republican president in Bush v. Gore (2000) — although three other current justices were part of Republican George W. Bush’s legal team in that case. Thomas would allow Republican administrations to deactivate the entire Voting Rights Act so long as they are in power. He would strip journalists of First Amendment rights that allow them to safely provide critical coverage of government officials. And he would invalidate a long list of laws including the federal bans on child labor and on whites-only lunch counters, based on a widely rejected reading of the constitutional provision that grants Congress most of its power over the private sector.

No matter how the scandal with his wife’s texts shakes out, it’s worth remembering how the Court’s longest-serving justice would shape the world. In Clarence Thomas’s America, elections would be skewed so heavily in the Republican Party’s favor that Democrats will struggle to ever gain power. And if Democrats somehow do manage to squeak into office, Thomas would ensure that they cannot govern.

Thomas v. free and fair elections

The Supreme Court’s Republican majority, in Justice Elena Kagan’s words, “has treated no statute worse” than the Voting Rights Act.

It’s an astonishing attack on liberal democracy. The Voting Rights Act was America’s first meaningful attempt since Reconstruction to ensure that Black citizens could participate equally in selecting their own leaders. And, when it was fully in effect, it was a breathtakingly effective law. Just two years after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, Black voter registration rates in Mississippi skyrocketed from 6.7 percent to nearly 60 percent.

And yet, since its 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, the Court has systematically dismantled the Voting Rights Act’s key provisions. It hamstrung the law’s “preclearance” provision, which required federal officials to screen voting laws in states with a history of racist election practices to ensure that those laws do not discriminate. It imposed such a high burden of proof on voting rights plaintiffs alleging intentional discrimination that such cases are now virtually impossible to win. And the Court has fabricated limits on the Voting Rights Act that appear nowhere in the law’s text, such as a presumption that voting restrictions that were common in 1982 are valid.

Justice Thomas supported all of these efforts to weaken the Voting Rights Act, a law that arguably did more than any statute in American history to dismantle Jim Crow, But he’s also consistently urged his Court to go much further. It’s unclear whether the Voting Rights Act retains any real force after its many harrowing encounters with the Roberts Court, but Thomas would all but ensure that the law is meaningless.

In the late 1960s, just a few years after the Voting Rights Act became law, the Supreme Court recognized that the law “was aimed at the subtle, as well as the obvious, state regulations which have the effect of denying citizens their right to vote because of their race.”

Imagine, for example, a city where 60 percent of the population is white, and 40 percent is Black. Now imagine that the city draws gerrymandered districts which ensure that white voters will be a majority in every city council district. In such a place Black voters might nominally possess the right to vote, but any vote cast by a Black person would be meaningless if the white majority hangs together to deny power to the Black minority’s preferred candidates.

To prevent these kinds of subtle attacks on the right to vote, the Supreme Court has, for more than half a century, understood the Voting Rights Act to prohibit “vote dilution” — that is, laws that diminish the power of voters of color without formally stripping them of the right to vote altogether. Concurring in the judgment in Holder v. Hall (1994), however, Thomas argued that the Court should abolish vote dilution claims, and effectively allow states to deny voting rights to certain racial groups so long as the state does it with a degree of subtlety.

In Holder, a majority of the Court concluded that vote dilution claims could not be used to challenge the number of people who sit on a governing body, but only Justice Antonin Scalia joined Thomas’s opinion seeking to shut down vote dilution lawsuits altogether.

“Properly understood,” Thomas claimed, the Voting Rights Act only forbids “practices that affect minority citizens’ access to the ballot.” “Districting systems and electoral mechanisms that may affect the ‘weight’ given to a ballot,” Thomas continued, “are simply beyond the purview of the Act.”

Thus, a state would be free to lock voters of a particular race out of power entirely, just so long as those voters were allowed to perform the meaningless act of submitting a ballot in an election that their preferred candidate cannot possibly win.

More recently, in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021), Thomas joined an opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch which suggested that no private party is allowed to bring a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act — only the US Justice Department could do so.

As the Supreme Court explained in Allen v. State Board of Elections (1969), such an approach would severely hamper the law’s effectiveness, even if the Justice Department is committed to protecting voting rights. “The Attorney General has a limited staff,” the Court noted in Allen, “and often might be unable to uncover quickly” new state policies that target voters of color.

And there’s no guarantee that the Justice Department will be led by people who care about voting rights. One result of the approach Thomas endorsed in Brnovich is that, in a Republican administration, the Voting Rights Act could cease to function altogether.

Thomas was also an early proponent of the so-called “independent state legislature doctrine,” a theory that would allow state lawmakers to ignore their state constitution altogether when writing the laws governing congressional and presidential elections. In its strongest form, this doctrine would allow a state legislature to simply gift a state’s electoral votes to the Republican presidential candidate (or, in theory, to any presidential candidate), regardless of what the people of the state, the state’s governor, or the state’s supreme court has to say about it.

Thomas would dismantle the freedom of the press

Even if states hold nominally free and fair elections where every vote counts equally, elections lose much of their import if voters cannot learn which candidates support their preferred policies or know what choices politicians make once elected. This is why a free press is essential to any democracy, because the right to vote means little if voters can’t determine who to vote for.

And yet, Thomas called for his Court to overrule New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), the single most important decision enabling journalists to report the news without facing intimidation or sanction from government officials.

In 1960, civil rights activists aligned with Martin Luther King, Jr. ran an advertisement in the New York Times, which alleged that Alabama police used brutal tactics to suppress student protests. The ad, however, contained some minor factual errors. It misidentified the song that protesters sang at a particular demonstration, for example, and it also claimed that police had arrested King seven times, when he’d in fact only been arrested four times.

Pointing to these small errors, a Jim Crow police official won a $500,000 verdict against the Times in an Alabama court — close to $5 million in 2022 dollars. Had this verdict stood, it would have chilled journalism of all kinds, because it would have meant that any newspaper or other outlet that prints even very small factual mistakes could have been hit with a verdict large enough to bankrupt the outlet.

The New York Times decision, however, prevented this outcome by holding that the First Amendment imposes limits on defamation lawsuits. When someone speaks about a public figure and about a matter of public concern, the Court held, they cannot be held liable for making false statements unless that statement was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

Thomas argued in McKee v. Cosby (2019) that New York Times should be overruled. Indeed, Thomas’s opinion suggests that states should be free to define their own defamation law free of constitutional constraints. “The States are perfectly capable of striking an acceptable balance between encouraging robust public discourse and providing a meaningful remedy for reputational harm,” Thomas wrote.

If this approach were to prevail, state officials could once again use malicious defamation lawsuits to target journalists. Suppose, for example, that I mistakenly report that “500 people attended a rally protesting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis,” when in fact the rally was attended by only 450 people. If states can set their own defamation laws, free of constitutional constraint, then DeSantis could sue me and Vox Media for millions, endangering our ability to continue reporting on DeSantis — and potentially bankrupting Vox in the process.

Thomas would make the winner of a federal election largely irrelevant

Thomas’s final avenue of attack on American democracy is perhaps even more subtle and insidious.

Under Justice Thomas’s approach, the winner of a federal election is largely irrelevant, because the federal government would be stripped of its authority to do nearly anything that the current majority on the Court disapproves of.

That’s because his views on the balance of power among the three branches of the federal government, and on the balance of power between Congress and the states, would leave the national government little more than an empty husk.

To back up: Numerous federal statutes lay out broad policy objectives — such as power plants should use the best available technology to reduce emissions or health insurers shall cover vaccines that are recommended by medical experts — then delegates the task of implementing these objections to a federal agency. One advantage of this approach is that it allows the government to be dynamic. As new emissions reduction technology emerges, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency can update the relevant regulations to ensure that power plants remain state-of-the-art. Another is that it allows democratically elected lawmakers — with a diverse set of backgrounds — to set policy goals, but also leaves the difficult details of implementing these goals to officials with specialized expertise.

In recent years, however, the Court’s Republican appointees have given themselves a veto power over all of these agency regulations. Relying on vague doctrines that appear nowhere in the Constitution, such as the “major questions” doctrine or “nondelegation,” the Court has claimed the power to strike down regulations that a majority of its members disapprove of.

Thomas, however, would go even further. In a 2015 opinion, Thomas argued that any federal law that permits an agency to exercise “policy discretion” is unconstitutional. Thus, Congress would be forbidden from creating a modern environmental protection regime, or a dynamic regime where medical experts can quickly make new vaccines available to the public, no matter how the American people vote in congressional elections.

Thomas would also strike down huge swaths of federal law governing the workplace and other private businesses.

The Constitution permits Congress to “regulate commerce ... among the several states.” This provision is what allows the federal government to protect the right to unionize, to ban child labor, to set the minimum wage, to prohibit discrimination by private companies, and to regulate health insurers — among many other things.

Concurring in United States v. Lopez (1995), however, Thomas endorsed the legal reasoning the Court used in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), an anti-canonical decision striking down federal child labor laws. And he’s restated this view in at least three other opinions since Lopez.

For those who want a deep dive, I’ve written about the full implications of Thomas’s opinion in Lopez at considerable length. But the short version is that Thomas’s approach endangers much of the New Deal, the Great Society, and decades of other regulations of private businesses which now form a backbone of American society.

Again, under Thomas’s approach, it is highly doubtful that the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters, which the Supreme Court held was a valid exercise of Congress’s power to regulate commerce in Katzenbach v. McClung (1964), could survive.

Thomas, in other words, imagines a world where state lawmakers have broad authority to skew elections in their party’s favor. He would strip journalists of the First Amendment protections they need to do their job safely. And, if a left-of-center government somehow did emerge despite these constraints, Thomas would strip that government of most of its authority to govern.

Ultimate power would rest with the Supreme Court, and its panel of unelected judges who serve for life, not with the American people. And Thomas would wield that power to turn back the clock on American law nearly an entire century.

After the disastrous Iowa caucuses in 2020 and years of grumbling before that, the Democratic National Committee entertained a draft proposal that would shake up which states vote first on the presidential primary calendar. Ultimately, the proposal wasn’t considered at the DNC’s meeting in March, but the conversation isn’t going away. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew debates which states should vote first.

They also look at a new survey suggesting that most Americans think “The West Wing” and other political TV shows accurately reflect how politics works. And FiveThirtyEight contributor Laura Bronner joins to discuss where public opinion stands on accepting Ukrainian refugees after the White House announced last week that the U.S. would admit up to 100,000.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

On abortion, on race, on LGBTQ rights, Republicans are bolder than they've ever been and they're turning back the clock.

Wallace's explanation for leaving Fox reflects very badly on both the network and its audience.

Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

In early March, contractors working for Google to translate company text for the Russian market received an update from their client: Effectively immediately, the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine could no longer be referred to as a war but rather only vaguely as "extraordinary circumstances." The internal email, obtained by The Intercept, was sent by management at a firm that translates corporate texts and app interfaces for Google and other clients. From the report: The email passed along instructions from Google with the new wording. The instructions also noted that the word "war" should continue to be used in other markets and that the policy change was intended to keep Google in compliance with a Russian censorship law enacted just after the invasion of Ukraine. Asked about the guidance, Google spokesperson Alex Krasov told The Intercept, "While we've paused Google ads and the vast majority of our commercial activities in Russia, we remain focused on the safety of our local employees. As has been widely reported, current laws restrict communications within Russia. This does not apply to our information services like Search and YouTube." According to a translator who spoke to The Intercept, the orders apply to all Google products translated into Russian, including Google Maps, Gmail, AdWords, and Google's policies and communications with users. (The translator asked for anonymity to avoid reprisal by their employer.) The internal memo helps explain why some Google web pages, including an advertising policy and video help document found by The Intercept, use euphemistic terms like "emergency in Ukraine" in their Russian version but âoewar in Ukraineâ in the English version.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you’ve been watching the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings on Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, you’ve seen a whole lot of posturing. Along with that, you’ve seen a lot of discussion about morals. Jackson came under partisan fire for her work on the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz discussed criminal penalties, and why we don’t throw the book at anyone who commits such crimes! They should all be locked away! I want to say upfront that child pornography is a horror, and Congress needs to look at better ways to address the situation.

But for all the concern Republicans are showing now, I am stuck here wondering what the hell these people are going on about while child abuse and pornography infects their own party, and they do and say absolutely nothing. I think we have to go back and look at a bit of history to talk about this.

It was 2006. Mark Foley, a Republican congressman from Florida who served as chairman of the House Committee on Missing and Exploited Children, was exposed for messaging house pages with lurid content and exploiting them sexually. It gets worse: Republicans in the House may have known about his proclivities for over a decade, and done absolutely nothing. Don’t worry though, they still had his back and no one mentioned what he was doing with young men who were his subordinates. 

It all came to a conclusion when Speaker Dennis Hastert presided but apparently did not directly ask for resignation, and Foley resigned. You would think that is where the story would end, right? Except for the fact that years later, Republicans were more than willing to honor and revere Foley at various Republican Party-linked events and fundraisers. So much for locking up child abusers and “throwing away the key,” Josh Hawley.

Well, then we have to talk about Dennis Hastert, the same man who told Foley to resign. 

You see, Dennis Hastert, Republican speaker of the House, was later found to have been molesting 14-year-old boys. Hastert admitted in court that he molested four high school boys. His sentence: 13 months. Was the judge too lenient? He was an older man who coached a high school team and abused young boys. Did the judge not do enough?  

Matt Gaetz, a Republican congressman from Florida, is currently tied up in a scandal where his friend admitted to paying for and helping transport an underage minor for sex. But sex trafficking is apparently is not enough to make Republicans say: “Not cool, bro. We expect you to sit down and leave our party to protect our moral code.”

Don’t expect that to happen anytime soon. 

I could continue the list. Pat Meehan? Roy Moore? Jim Jordan? Current candidates like Herschel Walker? 

But don’t worry, pervy Republicans. I’m pretty sure that your party has your back. 

Republican lawmakers in Utah on Friday voted to override Gov. Spencer Cox’s veto on a bill banning transgender student-athletes from competing in sports aligned with their gender identity. House Bill 11 passed both chambers of the Utah legislature in the last hours of the 2022 legislative session, on March 4, after a last-minute amendment that left LGBTQ rights activists “blindsided” and “devastated.” But Cox, a Republican, later vetoed the legislation, citing high suicide rates among transgender youth. During a special session Friday afternoon, however, Republican lawmakers met the two-thirds…

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The judiciary cannot be part of the chain of command.

The Supreme Court on Friday evening decided, no, it was not going to needlessly insert itself in the military chain of command above President Joe Biden.

The Court’s decision in Austin v. U.S. Navy SEALs 1-26 largely halted a lower court order that permitted certain sailors to defy a direct order. A group of Navy special operations personnel sought an exemption from the Pentagon’s requirement that all active duty service members get vaccinated against Covid-19, claiming that they should receive a religious exemption.

A majority of the Court effectively ruled that, yes, in fact, troops do have to follow orders, including an order to take a vaccine.

The decision is undeniably a win for the balance of power between the executive branch and the judiciary that has prevailed for many decades. But the fact that the Court had to weigh in on this at all — not to mention that three justices, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, dissented from the majority — is a worrisome sign about America’s judiciary.

As Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained in a brief opinion laying out why the lower court erred, this court “in effect inserted itself into the Navy’s chain of command, overriding military commanders’ professional military judgments.” Had the Court ruled the other way in SEALs, it would have effectively placed itself at the apex of the military’s chain of command, displacing Biden as commander-in-chief.

But as Kavanaugh correctly notes in his concurring opinion, there is a long line of Supreme Court precedents establishing that courts should be exceedingly reluctant to interfere with military affairs.

In Gilligan v. Morgan (1973), for example, the Court held that “the complex, subtle, and professional decisions as to the composition, training, equipping, and control of a military force are essentially professional military judgments,” and that “it is difficult to conceive of an area of governmental activity in which the courts have less competence.”

Nevertheless, Judge Reed O’Connor, a notoriously partisan judge in Texas who is best known for a failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, ruled in favor of the service members who refused to follow a direct order. And the conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit refused the Navy’s request to stay key parts of O’Connor’s order.

That left the responsibility of restoring the military’s proper chain of command to the Supreme Court. Though the Court’s order does not wipe out O’Connor’s decision in its entirety, it temporarily blocks that decision “insofar as it precludes the Navy from considering respondents’ vaccination status in making deployment, assignment, and other operational decisions.”

But the astonishing thing about the SEALs order is that the Supreme Court needed to intervene in this case at all.

Order prevailed, but several justices wanted to upend things

The most astonishing thing about the SEALs order is that at least three justices dissented. (While it is likely that six justices sided with the Navy here, only four justices — the three dissenters plus Kavanaugh — chose to reveal how they voted. So it is possible that one other justice silently dissented.)

Thomas did not explain why he dissented, but Alito published a brief opinion, joined by Gorsuch, which lays out why he thinks that judges should be allowed to countermand orders handed down to military personnel by their commanders. Among other things, Alito complains that the Navy did not provide service members with a meaningful process they could use to request a religious exemption from the vaccination requirement.

The Navy provided the Court with several statements from high-ranking officers explaining why it requires nearly every sailor to be vaccinated, and why it generally considers unvaccinated special warfare personnel undeployable.

According to Adm. William Lescher, the Navy’s second-highest-ranking officer, Navy vessels have only limited medical facilities. So, if one of the ship’s crew becomes seriously ill, that “would require a return to port or an emergency medical evacuation by helicopter” — potentially forcing the whole ship to abandon its mission to accommodate one unvaccinated service member.

Special warfare personnel, moreover, often deploy in very small units. So one member becoming sick is a big blow to the team. And, the Navy argued, special operations “are often conducted in hostile, austere or diplomatically sensitive environments” where a severely ill service member might not be able to obtain local medical care and may need to be evacuated by the Navy — an operation that is itself dangerous and that could force the sick service member’s fellow sailors to risk their lives on his or her behalf.

To these concerns, Alito essentially said, “Prove it.”

“In order to win at trial,” Alito wrote in response to the Navy’s warnings, “it would not be enough for the Government to posit that sending an unvaccinated Seal on such a mission might produce such consequences.” Rather, the Navy would have to prove that requiring vaccination “is the least restrictive means of furthering the interest it asserts in light of the present nature of the pandemic, what is known about the spread of the virus and the effectiveness of the vaccines, prevalent practices, and the physical characteristics of Navy Seals and others in the Special Warfare community.”

I want to emphasize the sheer enormity of what Alito is suggesting here. Once the Supreme Court permits a single servicemember to defy a direct order, that opens the door to any member of the armed services who disagrees with an order running to court to seek an exemption.

Think of the kinds of orders that military personnel have to obey — “take that hill,” “guard this prisoner,” “cease fire.” And even if Alito did not intend for his dissent to apply to such battlefield orders, his dissent could effectively neutralize major military assets while religious liberty cases brought by service members are being litigated. Imagine, for example, if the captain of an aircraft carrier is ordered to deploy his ship close to Ukraine — but the captain refuses because, for religious reasons, that captain believes that Vladimir Putin should prevail in his war against Ukraine.

The Court has understood for many decades that the military simply cannot function if its members think orders may be optional. As the Supreme Court held in Goldman v. Weinberger (1986), “the essence of military service ‘is the subordination of the desires and interests of the individual to the needs of the service.’”

Permitting service members to seek exemptions from the courts, Goldman explains, would undermine service members’ “habit of immediate compliance with military procedures and orders” — a habit that “must be virtually reflex with no time for debate or reflection.”

At the end of the day, every service member must know who their commander is, and everyone must respect the chain of command. There can only be one person at the apex of that chain, and it can either be Joe Biden or Samuel Alito.

And, as Kavanaugh notes in his opinion, the Constitution is very clear about who is at the top of that chain. It says, in unambiguous terms, that “the President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.”

It’s going to be a long weekend for Ginni Thomas. 

The right-wing activist and Q-Anon conspiracy theory-spouting wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is reportedly on the cusp of receiving a subpoena from Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol, CBS reported Friday. 

Revelations about her strident efforts to have the 2020 election certification delayed or stopped were made known only 24 hours ago in the wake of a report first published by The Washington Post. Some 29 text messages—and others are expected to exist—were exposed in that report, showing how Thomas plied former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows with debunked election fraud claims and fervent pleas to keep Trump in office. 

[Related: Ginni Thomas wanted to overturn the election]

Robert Costa at CBS reported Friday that “at least two members of the January 6 Committee are now telling colleagues […] in private conversations, that they need to invite Ginni Thomas to come talk, and issue a subpoena if necessary.”

The Jan. 6 committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Daily Kos on Friday. Historically, the committee keeps mum on these matters officially and declines to discuss the nature of who it subpoenas or when. 

According to Costa, a decision on whether to subpoena Ginni Thomas could be reached when the committee meets on Monday at 7:30 PM ET, but talks are still ongoing. At least two committee members, he said, “firmly believe” the committee should act. 

The panel meets Monday to vote on a criminal contempt of Congress referral for former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro and former White House communications director Dan Scavino. Both of the officials have refused to cooperate for months after being subpoenaed. 

Related: Criminal contempt of Congress charges on deck for Trump lackeys pushing election fraud lies

At least two of the committee members “firmly believe” the committee should act, but talks are ongoing. 

Blowback is mounting swiftly in many circles around Justice Thomas. But House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy was unbothered by this week’s reporting when facing questions from the press at a GOP retreat in Florida.

When asked whether the justice should be forced to recuse himself from any cases related to Jan. 6, McCarthy said: “I think Justice Thomas could make his decisions like he's made him every other time. It's his decision based upon law.”

Justice Thomas has never recused himself from a case where his wife’s politics may have overlapped. 

Ginni Thomas is well-ensconced in right-wing and Republican activism in Washington, D.C. and while her text messages have revealed new depths to her advocacy around the push to keep Trump in office, her track record of striking out at the committee investigating the attempted overthrow is known. 

On Dec. 15, she signed off on a public letter from the Conservative Action Project that called on Jan. 6 Committee members Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger to be exiled from the House Republican Conference. As the sole Republicans on the panel, their participation was deemed a betrayal. 

[Related: House Republicans vote a defiant Liz Cheney out of leadership]

A month later, Justice Thomas issued the sole dissent in the high court’s decision tossing Trump’s request to block presidential records related to Jan. 6 from the committee.

Ginni Thomas admitted in an exclusive interview on March 14 with the right-leaning Washington Examiner that she attended the Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6. 

Early that morning she took to Facebook and heaped support on demonstrators amassing near the Capitol who believed the election had been stolen.

“Watch the MAGA crowd today best with Right Side Broadcasting… and then C-Span for what the Congress does starting at 1PM today. LOVE MAGA people!!!!” she wrote. [Emphasis original]

In another message on Facebook 15 minutes later she wrote: “GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING.” 

After blood had been shed in the Capitol and a rush of criticism began circulating online, Thomas tweaked the posts with disclaimers. She noted they were “written before violence in U.S. Capitol.”

Thomas deactivated her Facebook account not long thereafter.

As of Friday, over 30 organizations including Public Citizen, Demand Justice, and the American Constitution Society, have called on the House Judiciary Committee to hold public hearings on the Supreme Court’s code of ethics. 

In a letter made public Friday, the groups noted Ginni Thomas’s regular and open involvement in right-wing activism and profits she earns from her consulting firm, Liberty Consulting.

“Every federal judge in this country except the nine justices of the Supreme Court are bound by a code of ethics that would prevent such blatant conflicts of interest. The lack of a binding code of ethics and basic standards of conduct for the nine justices of our nation’s highest court is a major concern for the country,” the letter noted.

Justice Thomas HJC Letter-2 by Daily Kos on Scribd

Ginni Thomas, according to records obtained by the independent government oversight group American Oversight, had friendly access to people inside the Trump White House. 

Calendar entries from March 2020 belonging to Russ Vought, Trump’s deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, show a breakfast scheduled with Ginni.  Two years before, she was invited by a Trump Health and Human Services official to host a prominent conservative panel.

American Oversight also got its hand on emails that suggested Justice Thomas was in frequent contact with Trump ally and Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.

In one June 2021 email to the governor’s office for a “coalition call of conservative patriots” Ginni Thomas told a scheduling assistant DeSantis should know her because “my husband has been in contact with him.”

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All-indifferent is my favorite theodicy.

Today's News:

A significant percentage of parents whose children wore masks in school during the last year believe it harmed their education, social interactions and mental health, according to a POLITICO-Harvard survey.

The poll's findings come as the Biden administration monitors events in Europe, where BA.2, a subvariant of Omicron, is wreaking havoc, and White House officials warn that masks may be necessary if Covid-19 cases increase in the United States.

That would be an incredibly tough sell to parents of school-aged children, according to the survey. More than 4 in 10 believe mask-wearing harmed their children’s overall scholastic experience, compared to 11 percent who said it helped. Nearly half of parents said masks made no difference.

Forty-six percent of parents said mask-wearing hurt their child’s social learning and interactions, and 39 percent told pollsters it affected their child’s mental and emotional health.

“Even if I’m in a Democratic state or district, I’d pay attention because there are a substantial number of independent parents who think the policy is hurting their children,” said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis, emeritus, at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “If you say something hurts my children, you’re going to feel strongly about it. … Anything that has an impact on your family has a disproportionate impact on how you think of things.”

The survey of 478 parents whose children attend school in person, conducted from March 1 to March 7, also found parents are split over whether a mask is needed to keep their children safe from Covid-19 and variants such as Omicron.

A slight majority of independents — 52 percent — said masks weren’t necessary to keep kids safe, a figure that Blendon said should alarm any politician considering reimplementing masks in schools if cases or hospitalizations spike.

“The parents who are against it are not going back. They’ve concluded it’s not good for children’s education and it's two years of this,” Blendon said. “When you have a substantial number of parents who think their children are being threatened, it's going to matter politically.”

Roughly two-thirds of parents who send kids to schools that no longer required face coverings said masks were unnecessary, twice the number of parents with kids in schools that still required masks.

Blendon suggested that local leaders were responding to parents' concerns.

“Places where parents really felt this was hurting got rid of the mandates,” he said.

A POLITICO/Morning Consult poll from February, when the country was still averaging close to 100,000 new infections a day, showed a slightly higher approval of school mask mandates.

While that poll didn’t limit responses to those with children in school, it did find a similar partisan split, with Democrats far more likely to say masks were needed.

Seventy-one percent of Democrats told Harvard pollsters that it was still necessary for children to wear masks in school compared to 27 percent of Republicans.

Overall, 19 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of independents thought masking hurt their child’s school experience, according to the Harvard poll.

Despite calling abortion bans that impact Republican officials a “personal matter,” GOP lawmakers are issuing abortion bans that take away the personal rights of women nationwide. After a Facebook post from 2012 by North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson detailing how he paid for his now-wife’s abortion resurfaced, the North Carolina Republican Party declined to comment on the issue, noting that the incident was a “personal matter.”

However, these same officials are advocating for extreme abortion bans in which rape and incest are not even included as exceptions.

“Everyone needs access to abortion, even Mark Robinson,” North Carolina Democratic Party spokeswoman Rachel Stein said in a statement. “People from all walks of life – and political parties – have experiences with abortion. The North Carolina Republican Party ought to offer the same respect and privacy to every pregnant person’s health care decisions that they are giving to the Lieutenant Governor.”

Robinson, the highest-ranking North Carolina Republican, said he paid for someone to have an abortion decades ago. “I’m not saying abortion is wrong cause I said so it's wrong cause God says so,” Robinson’s post read. In a comment on the same post, he said: “It's wrong when others do it and it was wrong when I paid for it to be done to my unborn child in 1989.”

Since his entire campaign is based on anti-abortion policies, the post drew heavy criticism, prompting him to create a video addressing the questions.

“Over 33 years ago, before we were married and before we had kids, we had an abortion,” Robinson said in a video statement with his wife Yolanda by his side, according to WBTW. “It was the hardest decision we ever made. And sadly, we made the wrong one.”

While Republicans failed to comment on the issue, Democrats reacted

“They had a chance to make a choice,” said Johnelle Causwell of the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party. “And now he’s saying that women should not be able to make that choice for themselves, but that’s a government body should make that choice for them? That is hypocritical.”

Causwell added, “It’s not fair to take that choice away from women and to disparage women when they had the right to make that choice that was granted to them and by the laws and by this legal system.”

Abortion bans are being introduced across the country at a rapid rate. At least 15 GOP-majority states have introduced bills that ban abortion despite circumstances of incest or rape, with some proposed bans beginning as early as 30 days after conception.

The action rom-com turns Channing Tatum into the damsel in distress.

After I walked out of a screening of The Lost City, the thought that I kept coming back to was that the movie’s leads — Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum — are two of the biggest names in Hollywood who haven’t been in a Marvel movie. I suppose that’s a testament to the superhero genre’s chokehold on the movie-making business. But it also says a lot about Bullock’s and Tatum’s star power (Tatum was involved with a movie about the X-Man known as Gambit, but that ultimately fizzled out) and, reflexively, how rare it is that a movie like The Lost City exists.

Directed by Aaron and Adam Nee, who both co-wrote the movie with Oren Uziel and Dana Fox, based on a story by Seth Gordon, The Lost City is an action-adventure rom-com that isn’t based on already existing IP (unless you count the concept of the model Fabio). The effects and action sequences of said adventure aren’t really the draw here, though — the stars are. The Nees and their movie are more concerned with showcasing Bullock and Tatum’s chemistry, and inverting at least one of the genre’s tropes.

Despite his intimidating physique, Tatum spends a lot of the movie writhing around in a wet t-shirt and inflicting low-damage slaps to henchmen. Bullock is stern and extraordinarily intelligent, playing an academic-cum-romance novelist who manages to summon Indiana Jones energy in a purple sequined jumpsuit.

Bullock is his hero, Tatum is the damsel in distress.

That inversion isn’t particularly clever (the movie’s stars blurt out the phrase “damsel in distress” at one point), and doesn’t feel like a breakthrough, as we’ve seen Bullock and Tatum play versions of their characters before — Bullock has already played a hero in waiting in Miss Congeniality and Tatum a sensitive galoot in the 21 Jump Street franchise. There’s an obviousness to their dynamic. Yet, thanks to its stars, there are still moments of genuine laughter and buoyancy in The Lost City that made me glad it exists — enough to convince me that Bullock and Tatum should be in more mid-budget rom-coms, and that there need to be more, not fewer, movies like it.

---

The Lost City is, at its heart, a warning to think twice before romantically pursuing a writer. Loretta Sage (Bullock) is a successful romance novelist who has grown to resent everything around her. She hates her devout fans that buy her books and allow her to live a plush life of white wine on ice and bathtub soaking. She hates doing publicity for her new book, The Lost City of D, even though said publicity gets said fans to buy said book. She hates her devoted publisher and friend Beth (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) because she is making her do a promotional tour, and she hates her cover model and promo tour co-headliner, Alan (Tatum), for not understanding his role in the writing process (nonexistent).

Part of Loretta’s sourness is due to the death of her husband, an adventuring archaeologist who was on the verge of uncovering the ancient civilization and city on which her book is based. We get about 10 minutes setting up Loretta’s loss — looking longingly at old photos of her and her husband in archaeologist garb but also see her groaning, scolding, and rolling her eyes at the various people trying to make her life easier, to establish that perhaps she always had grumpy vibes about her and that her husband’s death pushed her into this scornful place.

Loretta’s countenance is so glum that when she’s kidnapped, you even feel just the tiniest bit sorry for her captors.

Her kidnapper is a wee media scion named Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe), who needs her to translate the dead language referenced in her book, bringing him to the lost city and the priceless headdress buried in a hidden tomb. If there were a more pleasant or reputable person capable of translating the document he needs Loretta to look at, Fairfax assures both her and the audience that he would have pursued other, less zany options.

Despite Sage’s curmudgeonly attitude, Beth, Alan, and Beth’s assistant Allison (human high point Patti Harrison) decide they must extract her. While Beth and Allison pursue more tried and true methods, i.e. contacting the authorities, Alan reaches out to a special-ops expert/ personal trainer (Brad Pitt, in an extended cameo) he met at a meditation boot camp and gets to Loretta first.

Alan’s clumsy rescue attempt introduces The Lost City’s favorite conceit: making Loretta the action hero and turning Alan into the action hero’s girlfriend.

Kimberley French

In a split-second decision, Loretta steals Fairfax’s ancient parchment for herself, stuffs it in the cleavage of her fuschia jumpsuit, and then spends the rest of the movie piecing together where it leads. She’s resourceful, turning the aforementioned jumpsuit into a henchmen-killing booby trap. She uses her experience in the field as an adventurer and archaeologist to navigate the jungles and caves. At one point, she and Alan could seemingly go home (and ostensibly end the movie) but Loretta’s ambition leads them back into the wilderness and into danger. She doesn’t exactly ask Alan his opinion on what to do next.

Meanwhile, Alan’s sole focus is on Loretta. He wants to protect her but isn’t quite good at it. He doesn’t tell her when she makes him feel small. He affirms her intelligence, with no expectation of it in return. At one point in the movie, Alan tells Loretta that he understands why she feels the corny romance novels she writes are beneath her. He, too, cringed at being on their covers — until he met her fans. Anything that can bring that kind of joy is nothing to be embarrassed about, he tells her.

Other action hero girlfriend qualities: Alan is much younger than Loretta, Alan is bad at driving, Alan is equally bad at swimming, Alan is allergic to water, Alan is an optimist. Alan is not good at punching and can only slap, and Alan also has the movie’s only nude-ish scene.

Tatum has the muscular, chiseled, rugged (but soft in the lips and eyes) look phenotypical for a Marvel superhero, but it’s impossible to say he’s playing against type. Tatum has played this self-aware, soft himbo role before in movies (and mostly sequels) like 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street, and given us flashes in Magic Mike, Magic Mike XXL, and Kingsman: a Golden Circle. There is no man in Hollywood as good-looking as Tatum who’s better at playing a sensitive himbo, and in this case the romantic accessory to Bullock’s Loretta Sage.

Pairing Tatum alongside Bullock, who played Annie Porter in Speed, one of the most famed action hero girlfriends in the action hero girlfriend pantheon, is a meta role reversal that the movie loves and leans into. The conceit operates on knowing who these actors are and who they’ve played, and picking up on winks to their previous work, as well as tropes of action-adventure movies of the past.

The dynamic and nostalgia are effective, but I do wish The Lost City would give us a bit more to think about.

Channing Tatum is so good at swerving away from being the sexy, dashing Channing Tatum that he’s supposed to be, that the jolt of surprise isn’t there. Sweet, kinda wimpy Channing Tatum has become the silver screen’s go-to Channing Tatum. Similarly, Bullock, a human charm offensive if there was ever one, is giving us a variant of her past performances as gruff agent Gracie Hart from Miss Congeniality and rigid agent Sarah Ashburn from The Heat. Like Tatum, the character is right in Bullock’s wheelhouse, but the material here isn’t really pushing her or her co-star to any fresh places.

That said, while The Lost City is by no means perfect, I hope it does well. It’s the right movie for a plane ride, or something I’d put on if I’m not in the mood for Spy, the best action rom-com of all time. But because of the way studios monitor box office hauls, The Lost City and its reported budget of around $70 million represents a trial balloon of sorts. Should it fail to hit numbers executives want, those executives will see it as more confirmation that mid-budget rom-coms and their ilk are not worth investing in the way superhero movies, reboots, and sequels of established hits are.

I hate that!

Pinning all the hopes and dreams of the romantic comedy genre and mid-budget movies generally (even other unsung genres, say, erotic thrillers) onto Tatum’s broad shoulders and Bullock’s sequined jumpsuit is unfair. Tatum’s lats and Bullock’s superpower to defy the rules of human aging should be able to be judged on their own terms. Both go above and beyond what’s necessary. Hopefully The Lost City does well enough to keep the money-driven, movie-making deciders at bay so that we can see more movies like it — or maybe a sequel that’s even better.

[The government undermines its compelling interest to mandate vaccinations for everyone else.]

Just in time for opening day of baseball, New York City has exempted athletes from its citywide vaccine mandate. Now Kyrie Irving and other unvax'd athletes can play in professional sports. Meanwhile, all other employees in the stadiums are subject to the requirement. The New York Post captured the scene with the headline, "Tale of Two Citis."

New York City Mayor Eric Adams was quite candid why he created an exemption for rich athletes, but not other people, including those with sincerely held religious beliefs:

"A small number of people have an outsized impact on our economy."

Yes, he said the quiet part out loud. From the earliest days, of the pandemic. COVID policy was always dictated first by the policy preferences of those in power, and second by #science. The Governor of Pennsylvania deemed the Peeps marshmallow factory to be an "Essential" business, but gun stores were not. Governor Cuomo allowed 7,000 fans to watch a Buffalo Bills game, even as people were barred from assembling for religious gatherings. And now, the Mayor created a Kyrie carveout to help wealthy athletes. Oh, and the Yankees, Mets. and Yankees have been lobbying the Mayor to change the policy.

But privately, efforts were already underway by the owners and executives of some of the wealthiest and most influential sports franchises in the country to persuade Mr. Adams to change his mind.

The Yankees president, Randy Levine, personally reached out to the mayor's team and encouraged officials to consider that baseball is played outdoors where Covid transmission rates are lower than indoors.

Steven A. Cohen, the hedge fund manager and Mets owner who last year gave $1.5 million to a super PAC supporting Mr. Adams's mayoral campaign, has been paying $10,000 a month to a lobbying firm, Moonshot Strategies, to push state officials and City Hall on several issues, including Covid protocols.

Both baseball teams are believed to have players who remain unvaccinated, with opening day now two weeks away.

Corey Johnson, the former speaker of the City Council who now runs his own lobbying firm, is receiving $18,000 a month from the Nets's holding company, and lobbying records suggest that he recently contacted the mayor, his chief counsel and his chief of staff.

Yet, more than 1,500 city employees were fired for not being vaccinated. They probably were not able to afford such an expensive lobby effort. Rent seeking is tough.

In light of Fulton, these exemptions for athletes undermine the state's compelling interest to mandate vaccines. But don't worry. The mayor checked with his lawyers:

Dr. Jay Varma, an epidemiologist and health adviser to Mr. de Blasio, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday evening that vaccines work "unless you're rich and powerful, in which case lobbying works."

Dr. Varma called the new policy the "Kyrie Carve Out" and said he was concerned that the legal standing of the city's vaccine mandates could now be challenged in court as "arbitrary and capricious."

Mr. Adams rebutted that criticism on Thursday: "I would not be standing here today if I did not speak to the attorneys, and they said that this passes legal muster."

Sooner or later, a case will come to the courts that is not on an emergency basis. For example, an employee who lost his pension due to the termination will sue for damages. And in light of Fulton, and the Kyrie Carveout, the employees should prevail.

The post NYC Exempts Wealthy Athletes From Vaccine Mandates: "A small number of people have an outsized impact on our economy" appeared first on Reason.com.

InfoWars’ Alex Jones peddles in the conspiracy theory world of calling major tragedies “false flags” carried out by the ‘deep state’ or other mysterious actors. Everything from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol building are fodder for Jones’ conspiracy theories. It’s his touting of the idea that the tragic mass murder of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012 was entirely faked by secret forces that has gotten him into his most recent legal bind.

Sandy Hook victims’ families have been hounded for years by absolute cretins who believe Jones’ assertions that nobody was killed, and that these parents are really paid “crisis actors” perpetrating a life-long hoax on the American public in some ploy to take away your guns and force you into servitude. After dragging his feet and diligently obstructing the legal process, defamation lawsuits ended in rulings that Alex Jones was indeed guilty of purposefully promoting these unconscionable lies.

On Monday it was reported that Jones was “beset by a mysterious medical condition days before he was scheduled for a deposition” in one such lawsuit about Sandy Hook. Of course, this “medical condition” seems not to have stopped Jones from being able to record the high-octane lie-fest that is his show.

According to The Daily Beast, the mystery illness was seen by most as what Jones might call a “false flag.” Lawyers representing the Sandy Hook families in the case called it an “obvious gambit” to delay Jones’ deposition. A deposition would potentially force Jones to once again admit that the things he says are bullshit and he knows they’re bullshit and he’s a professional liar who makes money by lying to people about the miseries in the world. It is biblical-level dirt-baggery.

According to the report:

A lawyer for Jones provided the court with a doctor’s note claiming Jones was recovering from home. But Jones was still able to record his four-hour show, apparently from his studio, on Monday afternoon—when he was supposedly under the doctor’s care. The lawyers noted that the only doctor he was near at the time, InfoWars guest and prominent ivermectin booster Dr. Ben Marble, didn’t appear to be treating Jones for anything.

Alex Jones is what scientists might call a scumbag. His InfoWars show has the distinction of being the early digital-era version of the Weekly World News. The problem is that Alex Jones doesn’t acknowledge that he peddles lies, unless he is in court. This, combined with the fact that his audience is filled with the kinds of folks that have been fed a steady stream of far-afield conspiracy theory, means his InfoWars is presented, like Fox News, as “news.” The trick ,of course, is that there are very real conspiracy theories that have proven to be true. But that’s not the kind of stuff that Jones peddles in.

Related: After being sued, Alex Jones suddenly believes Sandy Hook actually happened

Related: Judge is fed up with Alex Jones, rules Sandy Hook families victorious in lawsuit

Related: InfoWars mob terrorizes mothers and small children arriving at a Catholic Charities facility

People like Jones base almost everything they do on the foundational idea that what you saw and read and heard not only didn’t happen, it 100% didn’t happen. As a result, everything is an onion layer of conspiracy because the truth is always just one step out of reach. It is this piece of psychological calculus that keeps the suckers on the hook and willing to pony up money. There is no reaching an answer, and every day there is a new revelation that can be had if you just tune in and listen to the ads, and maybe buy the supplements he’s hawking. And while this is a great formula for creating a television series like The X-Files, it is much more destructive when people are basing their view of reality on it.

Jones and others will sprinkle in real conspiracy evidence like the CIA’s clandestine operations in  Central America—and their negligence and/or complicity in allowing drugs to be smuggled into the United States—but instead of speaking to those details, Jones pushes aside that kind of bombshell in order to promote more fantastical, more oppressive, and ultimately much more unwieldy conspiracies of secret deep state agents and aliens controlling the planet’s population.

His interests are so Machiavellian in nature and his pursuits so singularly self-aggrandizing that he has proven himself willing to, time and again, harass and terrorize mothers, children, and families who have experienced unspeakable tragedy. His rise has come alongside the MAGA, QAnon wing of the Republican Party—something that bubbled into the popular political sphere after President Barack Obama was elected in Nov. 2008. His legal woes also mirror those of the our former, twice-impeached president and other once-fringe power brokers.

Whether or not Jones will continue to come down with medical emergencies remains unknown. Whether or not the judge in this case will accept more and more excuses for Jones’ inability to be deposed also remains unknown.

A few rogue Republican lawmakers in Arizona are really working hard to disenfranchise voters in the state. Just this week, a Senate committee moved to advance a bill that hopes to end early voting and would demand that all ballots be counted by hand.

HB 2289 was approved Monday with a 4-3 vote by the Government Committee’s GOP members, and if signed into law it could lead to monumental changes for the state—particularly for people living in rural regions.

RELATED: Debbie Meadows filed three false voter forms while hubby Mark was ranting about fraud

According to the bill, all voting “shall occur on Election Day" and “all ballots shall be cast in person by the voter at the voter’s election precinct polling place.” Additionally, “all ballots shall be counted by hand.” 

The bill, crafted by GOP Rep. John Fillmore, does allow for absentee voting for those who are out of the state on Election Day, are blind, in the Armed Service, living in a nursing home, or are hospitalized.

Arizona Public Media reports that 88% of Arizona’s voters cast ballots early in the 2020 presidential election.

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"Just because it is convenient to vote by mail doesn't mean that is our right," Republican Sen. Wendy Roger told the Senate Government Committee.

Democratic opponents of the measure, such as Sen. Martín Quezada, say the bill will obviously disenfranchise voters on both sides of the aisle.

"Requiring people to show up to vote harms the working class, it harms folks who can't afford to take time off from work and not get paid, it harms people who have no reliable transportation, it harms people who have no reliable daycare," he told Arizona Public Media.

Sally Ann Gonzales, a 3rd District senator from Tucson, told KOLD News-13 in Tucson, Arizona, that the bill is “Taking us back, I don’t [know,] 40 or 50 years maybe.” She added, “And it’s just going to suppress the vote of all communities.”

Even a Republican or two has struggled with why this bill is necessary.

“The thing I wrestle over is in the math,” Rep. JD Mesnard told KOLD. “I’m trying to understand the feasibility of that.”

The bill heads to the full Senate and then must be signed by Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

Texas Republicans are going all-in on stomping out LGBTQ+ youth. The Austin Independent School District (ISD) celebrates Pride Week this week as a way to honor, celebrate, and educate people about LGBTQ+ issues and identities. Great! Not so great? School administrators at Doss Elementary have received death threats over events related to Pride Week. And Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a letter to the district alleging they’re violating state laws by hosting the themed week, period, as reported by The Independent.

Paxton, mind you, is the same conservative who wrote an asinine opinion arguing that gender-affirming care is child abuse, which was the basis for Republican Gov. Greg Abbott directing state agencies to investigate supportive families of trans youth.

RELATED: Texas attorney general's latest lawsuit shows how Republicans don't want any immigrants here, period

“By hosting ‘Pride Week,’ your district has, at best, undertaken a week-long instructional effort in human sexuality without parental consent,” Paxton wrote in the letter to the district, which he also posted on Twitter. He went on to suggest an alternative, which includes the district “cynically pushing” a week-long “indoctrination” without parental consent.

“Either way,” he writes. “You are breaking state law.”

Here is that tweet.

Again: The point of celebrating something like Pride Week is about inclusivity, education, and community building. It’s safe, supportive, and generally involves things like handing out Pride Flags and rainbow stickers. No one is being indoctrinated into anything. 

At the elementary school level, for example, Doss Principal Nathan Steenport told local outlet KUT they made time for teachers to talk to students about identity, feelings, different family structures, and how to respect people who are different. Lovely! Apparently teachers asked students to respect each other’s privacy and not gossip about what people shared, which somehow turned into people saying students were told not to tell their parents about what they were learning, which was … not the case. 

“It doesn’t mean don’t tell your parents,” Steenport added to KUT, saying the concept was so people felt comfortable sharing in a safe space. 

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But after the agenda was shared with parents ahead of time (with the option to opt their students out of the lessons if they wanted), the district began receiving threats over the phone, text messages, social media accounts, and emails. This led to local police getting involved to make sure students and staff are safe.

Notably, not all of the threats are even from people who live in the district. It seems like just another way for conservatives to stir up hysteria and hate even if they don’t have actual skin in the game. 

In terms of Paxton’s letter, Jason Stanford, a spokesperson for the district, told The Washington Post that they’re going to double down on “making sure our kids feel safe and celebrating Pride.” 

We should all be doing our part to support and celebrate LGBTQ+ youth, and at the very least, work to keep them safe. 

They know it won't keep her from getting confirmed. But this is what they think will rile their base.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
People also say Bigfoot, but Bigfoot is actually just a type of alien ghost.

Today's News:

That's what Alaska bill SB 214, sponsored by state senators Lora Reinbold and Mia Costello would do in part.

I think some restrictions on platforms' deleting posts might be constitutional (see my Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? article, or these posts excerpted from that article): To quote Justice Breyer (from a dissenting opinion, but on a point which with the majority didn't disagree with, and which other majority opinions endorsed),

Requiring someone to host another person's speech is often a perfectly legitimate thing for the Government to do.

But banning fact checking doesn't just require platforms to host speech on their property—it expressly bars them from engaging in their own speech, since "fact checking" simply means "speech that expresses the platform's view, or the view of someone selected by the platform, about whether some statement is accurate." That violates the platforms' First Amendment rights.

To be sure, some fact checking might be libelous and actionable on those grounds; but the bill would ban all fact checking of "the religious or political speech of a platform user," regardless of whether it's constitutionally protected speech (such as opinion or true statements of fact) or constitutionally unprotected libel.

Thanks to Mike Masnick (Techdirt) for the pointer.

UPDATE: For why I think some properly crafted state statutes (not this one) barring viewpoint discrimination by social media may be consistent with 47 U.S.C. § 230, see this article; I'm also writing an article about when such state statutes may be consistent with the Dormant Commerce Clause, which is a separate question.

The post "A Social Media Platform May Not Intentionally Fact Check" a User's "Religious or Political Speech" appeared first on Reason.com.

Five hours after Sen. Mike Braun called for the Supreme Court to allow states to ban interracial marriage, he tried to walk it back, saying, “Earlier during a virtual press conference I misunderstood a line of questioning that ended up being about interracial marriage. Let me be clear on that issue — there is no question the Constitution prohibits discrimination of any kind based on race, that is not something that is even up for debate, and I condemn racism in any form, at all levels and by any states, entities, or individuals.”

Sure. He misunderstood. The line of questioning just sort of … ended up on interracial marriage and he didn’t see it coming or have a chance to understand what he was saying. Let’s go to the record on that one. The Indianapolis Star has reprinted all of the questions and answers relating to the Supreme Court from the call on which Braun so sadly failed to understand what question he was answering or what he was saying.

RELATED: Republican senator calls for the Supreme Court to re-allow bans on interracial marriage

Braun got a couple of questions about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Supreme Court nominee now in confirmation hearings. Then he was asked whether he would consider it to be judicial activism if and when the Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortion before viability. 

“I consider it to have been judicial activism when it occurred back almost 50 years ago. So I think this would be bringing it back to a neutral point to where that issue should have never been federalized, way out of sync I think with the contours of America then,” Braun responded. “And this basically puts it back to a point where, like most of these issues when one side of the aisle wants to homogenize it federally, is not the right way to do it. This should be something where the expression of individual states are able to weigh in on these issues, through their own legislation, through their own court systems.”

At that point, having called for states to be allowed to make their own abortion laws no matter how restrictive those laws might be, he got a follow-up on interracial marriage, asking, “Would you apply that same basis to something like Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court case that legalized interracial marriage?”

Braun’s response: “When it comes to the issues, you can't have it both ways. When you want that diversity to shine within our federal system, there are going to be rules and proceedings, they're going to be out of sync with maybe what other states would do. It's a beauty of the system, and that's where the differences among points of view in our 50 states ought to express themselves. And I'm not saying that rule would apply in general depending on the topic, but it should mostly be in general, because it's hard to have it on issues that you just are interested in when you deny it for others with a different point of view.”

So, yes. United States Sen. Mike Braun, Republican of Indiana, would allow states to ban interracial marriage.

But just to be sure, a reporter followed up: “So you would be OK with the Supreme Court leaving the question of interracial marriage to the states?”

“Yes, I think that that's something that if you're not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, you're not going to be able to have your cake and eat it too. I think that's hypocritical,” Braun answered.

He was then asked about Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that banned states from criminalizing the purchase of birth control by married couples. And yup, he thinks states should get to decide that one, too.

Interracial marriage did not somehow surreptitiously sneak into this conversation, catching Braun unawares. He laid out a theory of how the Supreme Court should operate and was asked, as a follow-up, if he would apply that theory to another clearly identified issue. He said yes. He was asked again. He said yes again. He laid out a consistent view of the law—one that would absolutely allow states to ban interracial marriage or contraceptives just as much as abortion. (And I don’t think it’s any stretch at all to say that if Republicans want the court to reverse the 1967 decision legalizing interracial marriage, they also want to overturn the 2015 marriage equality decision.) The claim that Braun misunderstood or wasn't paying attention is blatantly false, no matter how much he’d like to play stupid now.

Despite his backpeddling, Braun isn’t way out on some limb that no one else in the Republican Party would consider joining him on. Just last month, all three Republicans running for Michigan attorney general said they thought Griswold had been wrongly decided for exactly the same reason Braun gave: states’ rights.

So, yeah. They might like to pretend otherwise when people notice a little too much, but Republicans are coming for your marriage and your birth control.

RELATED STORIES:

1965 Supreme Court decision legalizing birth control was wrong, say Michigan Republicans

At least 13 states have introduced legislation to limit or ban abortion since the year’s start