Michigan Cops Raided a Home, Damaged the House, and Held a Family at Gunpoint. It Was the Wrong Address.


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Michigan State Police (MSP) and a local SWAT team executed a raid on a home in Flint, Michigan, in April, battering down the door and holding the family at gunpoint while they went through their things.

A confidential informant gave them the address—for the wrong house.

This month, attorneys for Renee Dunigan, 56, Michelle Colston, 28, and Colston’s three minor children requested a federal civil rights investigation into the raid that saw scores of officers forcibly enter their home apparently without the proper vetting.

The cops “smashed in their front door without any notice while effectuating a ‘no-knock’ warrant,” reads a letter from William H. Goodman, Julie H. Hurwitz, and Teresa Bingman, the family’s lawyers, addressed to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Pamela Karlan. “They rousted the family at gunpoint, literally from shower, sleep, and bed, and forced them to sit together for one hour—in Michelle’s case unclothed, having just stepped out of the shower—while approximately 50 officers tore the house apart.” The offices of Goodman Hurwitz & James P.C. did not respond to request for comment.

Police set the raid in motion after speaking with their source, who told them that a car parked in the Dunigan-Colston driveway belonged to the family. That same driveway was shared with a neighbor, though law enforcement didn’t verify who actually owned the vehicle before seeking the warrant and executing the raid.

“It appears the police did no pre-raid investigation regarding the Dunigan/Colston home prior to smashing in their front door and never even bothered to confirm the name and registration for the car in question,” notes the letter. “The family has also learned that the [informant] provided this information to protect the neighboring house.”

“They’re clearly still having nightmares, still having problems sleeping, still struggling with seeing police,” Aaron Dunigan, Renee’s son, told the local NBC affiliate. “My three year old nephew sees police and asks, ‘are they going to our house?” he said.

The Michigan family joins an unfortunately long list of people who have been victimized by wrong-door, no-knock raids, where police employed the high-stakes tactic without ensuring basic details were in order, like correct names and addresses.

In 2019, a wrong-door raid on a Chicago woman’s home—who was handcuffed, naked—sparked nearly 100 misconduct allegations in one evening. (It was based on a so-called John Doe warrant, an authorization grounded in confidential, anonymous sources.) Over the last few years, 10 similar lawsuits have been filed in Chicago alone. A few choice examples: Also in 2019, police bust into an innocent family’s house on a John Doe warrant and handcuffed an 8-year-old; during another instance, 17 cops targeted the wrong residence and interrupted a 4-year-old’s birthday get-together with guns drawn.

Consider too the case of Onree Norris, who was sitting in his Georgia home when more than two dozen cops set off flash-bang grenades and barged into his house when they meant to raid the place next door. They originally had the correct address, but diverted to Norris’ home when they showed up on the scene and thought the target residence looked different than expected. Without delay, they turned their attention next door. They had it right the first time.

Most fraught is that all of the officers in that case were awarded qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that bars victims of government malfeasance from bringing lawsuits against state actors if the way in which their constitutional rights were violated hasn’t been meticulously outlined somewhere in a prior court precedent.

Two cops who allegedly stole $225,000 while executing a search warrant, for example, were protected by qualified immunity, because no court ruling said that theft under such circumstances is unconstitutional. So, too, were the four cops who beat a man during a routine traffic stop, the two cops who assaulted and filed bogus charges against a man for standing outside of his own house, and the cop who debased a man’s car during a drug search that he initiated with fabricated information.

Put differently, a federal court told Norris last month that he will not be able to sue the cops who threw explosives in his house prior to doing the most basic homework.

Aaron Dunigan says his family wants compensation. Understandably. Yet should they decide to seek it, it’s not unlikely that they’ll meet the same fate as Norris.

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National Security Agency Leaker Reality Winner Freed from Prison Early


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Imprisoned former National Security Agency contractor Reality Winner, who leaked documents to the press about Russia’s attempt to hack into voting systems during the 2016 presidential election, was released today from prison, her lawyer reports.

Winner was arrested in 2017 when the government tracked her down as the source of documents leaked to The Intercept. In 2018, after being denied bail or pretrial release, she accepted a harsh plea deal that sentenced her to 63 months in prison.

That was the longest sentence handed down to a government contractor who leaked to the press. She appealed to President Donald Trump to commute her sentence. Winner’s leaks did not implicate the president or anybody in his campaign or administration with assisting in the hack campaign or even being aware of it, but nevertheless Trump declined. Last year federal prosecutors also fought Winner’s attempt to get a compassionate release over the risk of COVID-19.

Her early release is not attributable to President Joe Biden’s administration either, according to her attorney, Alison Grinter Allen. Winner had time removed from her sentence for good behavior while she was imprisoned. Biden did not pardon her or commute her sentence.

Don’t expect a big speech from Winner in the near future. Allen says she’s still forbidden from “public statements or appearances.”

When Winner was arrested, I noted that she revealed information that Americans should arguably be allowed access to, regardless of whether Winner should be perceived as a whistleblower. We, as citizens, have a right to know about attempts to compromise our election system. To the extent that Winner violated the federal Espionage Act, it was—as in Edward Snowden’s case—to inform the American public about something that happened, not to engage in any actual espionage. Her long sentence was shameful, and the Biden administration’s failure to act is a useful reminder that federal targeting of whistleblowers and leakers is a bipartisan affair.

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National Security Agency Leaker Reality Winner Freed from Prison Early


realitywinner_1161x653

Imprisoned former National Security Agency contractor Reality Winner, who leaked documents to the press about Russia’s attempt to hack into voting systems during the 2016 presidential election, was released today from prison, her lawyer reports.

Winner was arrested in 2017 when the government tracked her down as the source of documents leaked to The Intercept. In 2018, after being denied bail or pretrial release, she accepted a harsh plea deal that sentenced her to 63 months in prison.

That was the longest sentence handed down to a government contractor who leaked to the press. She appealed to President Donald Trump to commute her sentence. Winner’s leaks did not implicate the president or anybody in his campaign or administration with assisting in the hack campaign or even being aware of it, but nevertheless Trump declined. Last year federal prosecutors also fought Winner’s attempt to get a compassionate release over the risk of COVID-19.

Her early release is not attributable to President Joe Biden’s administration either, according to her attorney, Alison Grinter Allen. Winner had time removed from her sentence for good behavior while she was imprisoned. Biden did not pardon her or commute her sentence.

Don’t expect a big speech from Winner in the near future. Allen says she’s still forbidden from “public statements or appearances.”

When Winner was arrested, I noted that she revealed information that Americans should arguably be allowed access to, regardless of whether Winner should be perceived as a whistleblower. We, as citizens, have a right to know about attempts to compromise our election system. To the extent that Winner violated the federal Espionage Act, it was—as in Edward Snowden’s case—to inform the American public about something that happened, not to engage in any actual espionage. Her long sentence was shameful, and the Biden administration’s failure to act is a useful reminder that federal targeting of whistleblowers and leakers is a bipartisan affair.

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Senate Bill Would Ban Judges from Using Acquitted Conduct at Sentencing


Gavel– Pattanaphong Khuankaew _ Dreamstime

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted last Thursday to advance legislation that would ban federal judges from enhancing someone’s sentence based on charges they were acquitted of—a little-known practice that has drawn the ire of Supreme Court justices, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress, and criminal justice reformers.

By a vote of 16–6, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the Prohibiting Punishment of Acquitted Conduct Act of 2021, which was introduced by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R–Iowa.) and Dick Durbin (D–Ill.). 

“If any American was acquitted of past charges by a jury of their peers, then some sentencing judge down the line shouldn’t be able to find them guilty anyway and add to their punishment,” Grassley said in a March press release announcing the legislation. “A bedrock principle of our criminal justice system is that defendants are innocent until proven guilty. The use of acquitted conduct in sentencing punishes people for what they haven’t been convicted of. That’s not acceptable and it’s not American.”

Reason‘s Mike Riggs once described the use of acquitted conduct at sentencing as “a horrifying bug in the federal criminal justice system.” As Grassley noted, it sounds alien to the idea most people have of the American trial system. A federal judge can decide at sentencing to enhance a defendant’s sentence using facts not found by the jury and based only on a preponderance of evidence—lower than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard required of juries.

For example, Reason recently covered the case of Dickie Lynn, a former Florida Keys drug smuggler who was convicted and sentenced to seven life sentences, thanks to the use of acquitted conduct by the judge and a stiff recommendation from federal prosecutors. Lynn was the only defendant out of the 21 charged in the sprawling drug conspiracy who was sentenced to life in prison. The judge added points to Lynn’s score under the federal sentencing guidelines for being the leader of the drug enterprise, which he was acquitted of, and possessing a firearm, which he was also never convicted of.

Grassley and Durbin’s legislation is supported by a number of groups across the political spectrum, from Americans for Prosperity and the Faith & Freedom Coalition to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

“The consideration of such conduct in sentencing decisions compounds the trial penalty and can often lead to longer federal sentences, exacerbating mass incarceration and depriving defendants of basic due process,” the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said in a letter supporting the bill.

The only other avenue for opponents of acquitted conduct would be to get a case before the Supreme Court, but the Court has been unwilling to take up the issue directly over the past two decades, despite vocal objections from several justices.

In 2014, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by the odd couple of Justices Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, urged the Court to address judicial fact finding and the conflicts it raises with the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. 

Some newer members of the Supreme  Court have also been critical of the practice in the past. In 2015, Brett Kavanaugh, then a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, wrote that the use of acquitted conduct “seems a dubious infringement of the rights to due process and to a jury trial.”

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Senate Bill Would Ban Judges from Using Acquitted Conduct at Sentencing


Gavel– Pattanaphong Khuankaew _ Dreamstime

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted last Thursday to advance legislation that would ban federal judges from enhancing someone’s sentence based on charges they were acquitted of—a little-known practice that has drawn the ire of Supreme Court justices, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress, and criminal justice reformers.

By a vote of 16–6, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the Prohibiting Punishment of Acquitted Conduct Act of 2021, which was introduced by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R–Iowa.) and Dick Durbin (D–Ill.). 

“If any American was acquitted of past charges by a jury of their peers, then some sentencing judge down the line shouldn’t be able to find them guilty anyway and add to their punishment,” Grassley said in a March press release announcing the legislation. “A bedrock principle of our criminal justice system is that defendants are innocent until proven guilty. The use of acquitted conduct in sentencing punishes people for what they haven’t been convicted of. That’s not acceptable and it’s not American.”

Reason‘s Mike Riggs once described the use of acquitted conduct at sentencing as “a horrifying bug in the federal criminal justice system.” As Grassley noted, it sounds alien to the idea most people have of the American trial system. A federal judge can decide at sentencing to enhance a defendant’s sentence using facts not found by the jury and based only on a preponderance of evidence—lower than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard required of juries.

For example, Reason recently covered the case of Dickie Lynn, a former Florida Keys drug smuggler who was convicted and sentenced to seven life sentences, thanks to the use of acquitted conduct by the judge and a stiff recommendation from federal prosecutors. Lynn was the only defendant out of the 21 charged in the sprawling drug conspiracy who was sentenced to life in prison. The judge added points to Lynn’s score under the federal sentencing guidelines for being the leader of the drug enterprise, which he was acquitted of, and possessing a firearm, which he was also never convicted of.

Grassley and Durbin’s legislation is supported by a number of groups across the political spectrum, from Americans for Prosperity and the Faith & Freedom Coalition to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

“The consideration of such conduct in sentencing decisions compounds the trial penalty and can often lead to longer federal sentences, exacerbating mass incarceration and depriving defendants of basic due process,” the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said in a letter supporting the bill.

The only other avenue for opponents of acquitted conduct would be to get a case before the Supreme Court, but the Court has been unwilling to take up the issue directly over the past two decades, despite vocal objections from several justices.

In 2014, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by the odd couple of Justices Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, urged the Court to address judicial fact finding and the conflicts it raises with the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. 

Some newer members of the Supreme  Court have also been critical of the practice in the past. In 2015, Brett Kavanaugh, then a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, wrote that the use of acquitted conduct “seems a dubious infringement of the rights to due process and to a jury trial.”

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The $1.9 Trillion American Recovery Act Could Have Huge Implications for State Tax Policies


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Like many states, Arizona has emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly flush with cash. Its budget surplus exceeds $1 billion.

But as fears of a pandemic-triggered recession have faded, federal policy has yet to catch up. Arizona got an extra $4 billion as part of an unnecessary federal bailout last month and is scheduled to receive another round of payments later this summer. With state coffers overflowing, Gov. Doug Ducey and state lawmakers are faced with an unexpected dilemma: find new ways to spend a one-time influx of revenue, or risk violating federal law by letting taxpayers keep some of their own money.

That last bit is what’s at stake in a series of lawsuits launched by six states, including Arizona. The $350 billion state government bailout included in the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion emergency spending bill passed in March, included a provision expressly telling states that they “shall not use the funds provided…to either directly or indirectly offset a reduction in the net tax revenue,” or do anything that “reduces any tax (by providing for a reduction in a rate, a rebate, a deduction, a credit, or otherwise) or delays the imposition of any tax or tax increase.”

It’s an unusual—and possibly even unconstitutional—rule, and it might trip up Ducey’s plans for a sweeping overhaul of Arizona’s income tax code. While Congress does have the power to limit how states can use federal funds, the broad nature of the provision in the American Rescue Plan may overstep the constitutional boundaries on congressional power in two key ways, according to Joe Bishop-Henchman, a vice president at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF).

The first has to do with legal precedents regarding the conditions Congress can place on states that receive federal aid. Infamously, the Supreme Court in 1987 upheld a federal law that threatened to withhold some highway funds from states that refused to raise the legal drinking age to 21. More recently, however, the Supreme Court struck down a major component of the Affordable Care Act that threatened to withhold Medicaid funding from states that refused to expand Medicaid eligibility. Chief Justice John Roberts described that penalty, which could have cost some states as much as 10 percent of their overall revenue, as an “economic dragooning.”

There is a wide grey area between the amount of money that was at stake in the drinking age mandate and the Obamacare Medicaid expansion mandate. But the more important aspect might be how tailored the mandate is.

“Congress can impose conditions on federal funds, but only if the condition is related to a federal interest in a national project or program, the condition is unambiguous, and the condition encourages rather than coerces states to act,” Bishop-Henchman, who is also the national chairman of the Libertarian Party, writes. In amicus briefs filed by NTUF, the organization argues that the tax policy mandates imposed by the American Rescue Plan—specifically, the ban on “indirectly” using the bailout money to pay for tax cuts—are both too broad and too ambiguous to meet the standards established by courts.

The second issue is the Supreme Court’s “anti-commandeering” doctrine, which prohibits the federal government from dictating policies to states whether money is involved or not. That was the reason why President Donald Trump couldn’t order states to “reopen” after the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic had passed, leaving him to rage on Twitter while governors mostly stayed in charge of state-level pandemic policies. It’s also the reason why the Supreme Court recently struck down a 1992 law that effectively banned sports betting in most of the country.

So these lawsuits speak directly to how much control the federal government will be able to exert over state tax policies in the coming years. Under the terms of the American Rescue Plan, states would be barred from reducing taxes through 2024.

That has potentially momentous consequences for a state like Arizona, where the Republican governor is pushing for a total overhaul of the state’s personal income tax code to create a flat tax of 2.5 percent. That would give a tax cut to all taxpayers in the state—the lowest of the state’s four tax tiers currently is 2.59 percent, while the highest is 8 percent.

Set aside the debate over the merits of those particular tax rates—a debate that continues to rage in the state Capitol, where one vote could swing the bill’s passage. Is this a decision that should be made in Phoenix or in Washington, D.C.? That’s the question that will be in front of federal courts in the coming months.

“Federal lawmakers have put their state counterparts in an impossible spot, forced to budget under significant uncertainty surrounding an expansive claim of federal power,” writes Jared Walczak, a vice president in charge of state projects for The Tax Foundation.

The Treasury Department issued some guidance last month that clarifies a bit of the state bailout provisions, but Walczak says it hardly goes far enough. And it isn’t just major overhauls like the one proposed in Arizona that could be affected. Normal policymaking at the state level could be impacted too.

“Imagine if, for instance, a state reduces the size of its drug enforcement budget within law enforcement and corrections agencies following the legalization of marijuana,” Walczak suggests. “At the same time, suppose that the Department of Corrections uses federal dollars to treat coronavirus cases in prisons, or the Department of State Police uses funding to offset salaries or provide supplemental pay for officers. In neither case would these federally financed expenditures in any way offset the savings from reduced drug enforcement, yet it appears that the federal government would prohibit using these savings to help finance a tax reduction, since they coexist in the same department or agency.”

It’s possible that the federal government will simply decline to go after states that break the rules created by the American Rescue Plans. And it’s possible that courts will strike down this overly broad attempt at dictating state policy. But it’s also possible that state governments will be hamstrung for the next several years by a bailout they didn’t need in the first place.

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The $1.9 Trillion American Recovery Act Could Have Huge Implications for State Tax Policies


cnpphotos179904

Like many states, Arizona has emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly flush with cash. Its budget surplus exceeds $1 billion.

But as fears of a pandemic-triggered recession have faded, federal policy has yet to catch up. Arizona got an extra $4 billion as part of an unnecessary federal bailout last month and is scheduled to receive another round of payments later this summer. With state coffers overflowing, Gov. Doug Ducey and state lawmakers are faced with an unexpected dilemma: find new ways to spend a one-time influx of revenue, or risk violating federal law by letting taxpayers keep some of their own money.

That last bit is what’s at stake in a series of lawsuits launched by six states, including Arizona. The $350 billion state government bailout included in the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion emergency spending bill passed in March, included a provision expressly telling states that they “shall not use the funds provided…to either directly or indirectly offset a reduction in the net tax revenue,” or do anything that “reduces any tax (by providing for a reduction in a rate, a rebate, a deduction, a credit, or otherwise) or delays the imposition of any tax or tax increase.”

It’s an unusual—and possibly even unconstitutional—rule, and it might trip up Ducey’s plans for a sweeping overhaul of Arizona’s income tax code. While Congress does have the power to limit how states can use federal funds, the broad nature of the provision in the American Rescue Plan may overstep the constitutional boundaries on congressional power in two key ways, according to Joe Bishop-Henchman, a vice president at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF).

The first has to do with legal precedents regarding the conditions Congress can place on states that receive federal aid. Infamously, the Supreme Court in 1987 upheld a federal law that threatened to withhold some highway funds from states that refused to raise the legal drinking age to 21. More recently, however, the Supreme Court struck down a major component of the Affordable Care Act that threatened to withhold Medicaid funding from states that refused to expand Medicaid eligibility. Chief Justice John Roberts described that penalty, which could have cost some states as much as 10 percent of their overall revenue, as an “economic dragooning.”

There is a wide grey area between the amount of money that was at stake in the drinking age mandate and the Obamacare Medicaid expansion mandate. But the more important aspect might be how tailored the mandate is.

“Congress can impose conditions on federal funds, but only if the condition is related to a federal interest in a national project or program, the condition is unambiguous, and the condition encourages rather than coerces states to act,” Bishop-Henchman, who is also the national chairman of the Libertarian Party, writes. In amicus briefs filed by NTUF, the organization argues that the tax policy mandates imposed by the American Rescue Plan—specifically, the ban on “indirectly” using the bailout money to pay for tax cuts—are both too broad and too ambiguous to meet the standards established by courts.

The second issue is the Supreme Court’s “anti-commandeering” doctrine, which prohibits the federal government from dictating policies to states whether money is involved or not. That was the reason why President Donald Trump couldn’t order states to “reopen” after the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic had passed, leaving him to rage on Twitter while governors mostly stayed in charge of state-level pandemic policies. It’s also the reason why the Supreme Court recently struck down a 1992 law that effectively banned sports betting in most of the country.

So these lawsuits speak directly to how much control the federal government will be able to exert over state tax policies in the coming years. Under the terms of the American Rescue Plan, states would be barred from reducing taxes through 2024.

That has potentially momentous consequences for a state like Arizona, where the Republican governor is pushing for a total overhaul of the state’s personal income tax code to create a flat tax of 2.5 percent. That would give a tax cut to all taxpayers in the state—the lowest of the state’s four tax tiers currently is 2.59 percent, while the highest is 8 percent.

Set aside the debate over the merits of those particular tax rates—a debate that continues to rage in the state Capitol, where one vote could swing the bill’s passage. Is this a decision that should be made in Phoenix or in Washington, D.C.? That’s the question that will be in front of federal courts in the coming months.

“Federal lawmakers have put their state counterparts in an impossible spot, forced to budget under significant uncertainty surrounding an expansive claim of federal power,” writes Jared Walczak, a vice president in charge of state projects for The Tax Foundation.

The Treasury Department issued some guidance last month that clarifies a bit of the state bailout provisions, but Walczak says it hardly goes far enough. And it isn’t just major overhauls like the one proposed in Arizona that could be affected. Normal policymaking at the state level could be impacted too.

“Imagine if, for instance, a state reduces the size of its drug enforcement budget within law enforcement and corrections agencies following the legalization of marijuana,” Walczak suggests. “At the same time, suppose that the Department of Corrections uses federal dollars to treat coronavirus cases in prisons, or the Department of State Police uses funding to offset salaries or provide supplemental pay for officers. In neither case would these federally financed expenditures in any way offset the savings from reduced drug enforcement, yet it appears that the federal government would prohibit using these savings to help finance a tax reduction, since they coexist in the same department or agency.”

It’s possible that the federal government will simply decline to go after states that break the rules created by the American Rescue Plans. And it’s possible that courts will strike down this overly broad attempt at dictating state policy. But it’s also possible that state governments will be hamstrung for the next several years by a bailout they didn’t need in the first place.

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Novavax Vaccine 100% Effective Against Both Moderate and Severe COVID-19


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The U.S. is likely soon to have a fourth vaccine approved for the fight against COVID-19. Novavax just released the results of its Phase 3 clinical trial: Its two-dose vaccine demonstrates 90 percent overall efficacy and 100 percent protection against both moderate and severe COVID-19 disease. The doses are injected three weeks apart.

The company reports that 77 cases of COVID-19 were observed in its clinical trial involving nearly 30,000 participants. Of those cases, 63 occurred in the placebo group and 14 in the vaccine group. “All cases observed in the vaccine group were mild as defined by the trial protocol,” notes the company’s press release. “Ten moderate cases and four severe cases were observed, all in the placebo group, yielding a vaccine efficacy of 100% against moderate or severe disease.” The vaccine’s side effects were generally mild.

The Novavax vaccine uses a technology similar to hepatitis and pertussis vaccines, in which copies of viral proteins provoke the immune system to create antibodies that protect people when they are exposed to the actual viruses. In this case, Novavax employs the coronavirus spike protein that the virus uses to infect human cells.

More good news: The vaccine is highly effective against the more transmissible COVID-19 Alpha (B.1.1.7) variant first identified in the U.K., and it is somewhat effective against the B.1.351 (Beta) variant first identified in South Africa.

The next big step is to ask the Food and Drug Administration to approve the drug. Novavax plans to apply for that in the third quarter of this year. The company claims that once the vaccine is approved, it can reach manufacturing capacity of 100 million doses per month by the end of the third quarter and 150 million doses per month by the end of 2021.

Before being thawed out for administration, the mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna must be shipped at ultra-cold temperatures. The Novavax vaccine is stored and stable at 2° to 8°C, which makes it easier to distribute through existing vaccine supply chain channels. It could thus play a significant role in abating the ongoing pandemic in the poorer parts of the world.

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Novavax Vaccine 100% Effective Against Both Moderate and Severe COVID-19


novavaxdreamstime

The U.S. is likely soon to have a fourth vaccine approved for the fight against COVID-19. Novavax just released the results of its Phase 3 clinical trial: Its two-dose vaccine demonstrates 90 percent overall efficacy and 100 percent protection against both moderate and severe COVID-19 disease. The doses are injected three weeks apart.

The company reports that 77 cases of COVID-19 were observed in its clinical trial involving nearly 30,000 participants. Of those cases, 63 occurred in the placebo group and 14 in the vaccine group. “All cases observed in the vaccine group were mild as defined by the trial protocol,” notes the company’s press release. “Ten moderate cases and four severe cases were observed, all in the placebo group, yielding a vaccine efficacy of 100% against moderate or severe disease.” The vaccine’s side effects were generally mild.

The Novavax vaccine uses a technology similar to hepatitis and pertussis vaccines, in which copies of viral proteins provoke the immune system to create antibodies that protect people when they are exposed to the actual viruses. In this case, Novavax employs the coronavirus spike protein that the virus uses to infect human cells.

More good news: The vaccine is highly effective against the more transmissible COVID-19 Alpha (B.1.1.7) variant first identified in the U.K., and it is somewhat effective against the B.1.351 (Beta) variant first identified in South Africa.

The next big step is to ask the Food and Drug Administration to approve the drug. Novavax plans to apply for that in the third quarter of this year. The company claims that once the vaccine is approved, it can reach manufacturing capacity of 100 million doses per month by the end of the third quarter and 150 million doses per month by the end of 2021.

Before being thawed out for administration, the mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna must be shipped at ultra-cold temperatures. The Novavax vaccine is stored and stable at 2° to 8°C, which makes it easier to distribute through existing vaccine supply chain channels. It could thus play a significant role in abating the ongoing pandemic in the poorer parts of the world.

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Don’t Ban Critical Race Theory in Education. Embrace School Choice Instead.


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Conservatives in Florida, Idaho, and the nation’s capitol are attempting to block public schools from teaching Critical Race Theory, an ideology that holds that racism is historically fundamental to how America’s political, legal, and cultural institutions are structured.

It’s an authoritarian proposal that would cut off classroom debate about hot-button political issues. Rather than rejecting the idea of forcing students to learn controversial concepts as though they’re facts, it just picks a different side of the controversy and pushes that one instead.

The proposals also tend to be terribly written. Here’s what Florida’s State Board of Education passed unanimously Thursday:

Instruction on the required topics must be factual and objective, and may not suppress or distort significant historical events, such as the Holocaust, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the civil rights movement and the contributions of women, African American and Hispanic people to our country, as already provided in Section 1003.42(2), F.S. Examples of theories that distort historical events and are inconsistent with State Board approved standards include the denial or minimization of the Holocaust, and the teaching of Critical Race Theory, meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons. Instruction may not utilize material from the 1619 Project and may not define American history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence. Instruction must include the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments.

The amendment also forbids educators from sharing their personal views at all during class discussions.

Now, a lot of honestly misguided ideas have come out of Critical Race Theory—its exponents, for example, have pushed the idea that the First Amendment should not protect hate speech. But the notion that embedded racism has played a major role in America’s institutional history should not in itself be controversial. Florida’s new rule defines Critical Race Theory as claiming “racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons.” Would this cover the idea that America’s past is full of obvious examples of institutionally embedded racism? A teacher might argue that the language doesn’t cover that, but it’s close enough that it could have a chilling effect. The results would be untenably absurd: Students would learn that slavery was a result of simple prejudice against black people, not an entrenched political and economic system.

This amendment is, in itself, a lesson about Critical Race Theory. Those with the most political power in Florida are deciding what can and cannot be taught about race relations. While Florida has a significant black and Latino population, it is still predominantly white. The dominant power structure in Florida is telling educators how they’re allowed to characterize racism within America’s power structures.

The parents who are upset at the teaching of Critical Race Theory at school—or, sometimes, upset about “anti-racist” instruciton that doesn’t have much to do with Critical Race Theory but gets lumped together with it anyway—are often reacting to genuinely bad practices. When every aspect of culture gets whittled down to a race-driven conflict, that either turns people defensive or causes them to tune out entirely. But rather than trying to address such concerns in a reasonable manner, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s Department of Education are throwing kerosene on the fire for political gain.

Similarly: It’s inappropriate to ban the teaching of The New York Times‘ controversial and flawed 1619 Project in public schools. You can’t talk about the flaws otherwise! It’s also equally inappropriate to mandate the teaching of the 1619 Project as though it’s an accurate representation of history; in fact, historians have questioned some of its claims.

Better to let families decide for themselves. Florida has a pretty good record of supporting school choice: The state currently has 687 charter schools serving more than 340,000 students. And school choice is the ideal way to address these concerns—certainly better than either a mandate or a ban. Letting families choose which schools their children attend means letting them decide what curricula those children will encounter, without either side of this culture war getting a veto over that choice.

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