Category: reason

CNN has reached a settlement agreement with Nick Sandmann, the Covington Catholic High School student who was wrongly portrayed in the media as having racially harassed toward a Native American man on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 2019.

The incident was caught on video and widely circulated. The media’s collective condemnation of Sandmann and his classmates was deafening, but subsequent video footage showed that the Native American man, Nathan Phillips, had misrepresented the situation in his public statements to news outlets. Reason was among the first to criticize the media’s rush to judgment.

Sandmann has sued CNN, The Washington Post, and NBC Universal for $800 million, and his lawyers have promised that additional suits are forthcoming. They had asked for $250 million from CNN: The amount of the settlement was not disclosed.

Sandmann’s lawyers stressed that the massive amount of money they are asking for is intended to deter future media misbehavior. Indeed, it would be a good thing if more journalists refrained from tweeting knee-jerk reactions to news developments they don’t fully understand, and were slightly more reluctant to escalate small moments involving non-notable people into major national firestorms.

That said, the lawsuits raise free speech concerns. As Reason‘s Jacob Sullum has observed, there’s a difference between unfair press coverage and libel. The media undoubtedly treated the Covington kids unfairly, but the main culprit here was not CNN or The Washington Post, but Phillips. He was the one who provided bad information to the press. If journalists have to fear massive libel lawsuits for reporting bad information supplied to them by sources they had no reason to distrust, it might make them wary of covering important stories. If successful, Sandmann’s suits could have a chilling effect on necessary and consequential journalism.

In any case, the Covington incident was a debacle for the media, and showed that the tendency of social media to inspire quick reactions is the Achilles’ heel of journalism in the digital age.

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From yesterday’s nonprecedential opinion in Jordahl v. Brnovich:

In 2016 the Arizona Legislature enacted, and the Governor signed, House Bill 2617 (“the Act”) which prohibited public entities from contracting with companies that engage in “boycott[s] of Israel.” A certification that the contractor agreed not to boycott Israel was to be included in every contract with state or local governments. When it went into force, the Act applied to all manners of companies, from sole proprietorships to multinational corporations, and to contracts of any value.

Plaintiff-Appellee Mikkel Jordahl is the sole member and director of Mikkel (Mik) Jordahl, P.C. (“the Firm”), a law firm in Arizona. For the past twelve years, the Firm has maintained a series of contracts with the Coconino County Jail District, under which the Firm provides legal services to inmates. The contract is valued at approximately $18,000 annually. Jordahl engages in a personal boycott of Israel by refusing to purchase products from companies that he believes “perpetuat[e] the occupation of the West Bank,” and wishes for his Firm to do so as well. When presented with a certification to not engage in a boycott of Israel as part of the contract renewal with Coconino County in 2016, Jordahl, on behalf of the Firm, signed under protest. In 2017, he refused to sign, and the Firm was not paid for services performed.

Jordahl filed suit …, arguing that the Act violated the First Amendment both on its face and as applied to him …. The district court granted Jordahl’s motion for a preliminary injunction and enjoined the State from enforcing the certification requirement for public contracts.

The defendants appealed, and in 2019, while the appeal was pending, the State amended portions of the Act with Senate Bill 1167 (“the revised Act”). The revised Act made two key changes that exempt Jordahl and the Firm from the revised Act’s provisions: The Act’s anti-boycott certification requirement now applies only to (1) companies with ten or more full-time employees, and (2) contracts valued at $100,000 or more. These changes took effect in August 2019.

Because the Act no longer apples to Jordahl or his Firm, his claims for declaratory and injunctive relief are moot. See Bd. of Trs. of the Glazing Health & Welfare Tr. v. Chambers, 941 F.3d 1195, 1197 (9th Cir. 2019) (en banc). Accordingly, we vacate the preliminary injunction and remand the case to the district court with instructions to dismiss the claims for declaratory and injunctive relief. On remand the district court retains jurisdiction to determine whether an award of attorneys’ fees is appropriate under 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b). See Watson v. County of Riverside, 300 F.3d 1092, 1094-95 (9th Cir. 2002); Williams v. Alioto, 625 F.2d 845, 848 (9th Cir. 1980) (per curiam).

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Many conservatives have spent the past several years arguing that U.S. intelligence officials not only have attempted to undermine President Donald Trump, they also favor the kind of interventionist foreign policy that Trump condemned on the 2016 campaign trail. Why, then, are these conservatives suddenly willing to parrot baseless claims by American intelligence officials that the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was a strategic necessity?

To be clear, the existence of a cabal of anti-Trumpist officials within the nation’s top law enforcement agencies was exaggerated by Trump’s defenders. That said, the FBI did, in fact, make grave errors in its investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, as demonstrated by the Justice Department Office of Inspector General’s report. The FBI violated the rights and privacy of Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, considered evidence against Page the FBI knew to be misleading, and ignored sources that clashed with their preferred narrative of events.

Of course, the Trump-Russia investigation is hardly the only time that intelligence officials have misled the public about the strength of their case. The intelligence that persuaded President George W. Bush, Congress, and the American people to go to war with Iraq turned out to be spectacularly wrong; and our spymasters and generals have a long history of hiding the extent to which the government surveils American citizens.

One of the only exciting things about Trump’s candidacy was that he condemned the Bush administration’s Iraq campaign and the disinformation that launched it. In 2008, Trump told CNN he thought Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) should pursue impeachment charges against Bush for “getting us into this horrible war by lying.”

But now, following Trump’s decision to order a drone strike on Iranian terror architect Soleimani, Trump, as well as his staffers and supporters, say the intelligence that led to that decision is unquestionable.

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham complained today that “a lot of people are now questioning the intel. That’s really unfortunate.”

Grisham declined to explain what specific, imminent threat Soleimani posed to U.S. persons, and said that the intelligence would soon be shared with Congress. This is unacceptable: The correct order of operations here is to consult Congress before pursuing military action that could start a war with Iran. The Constitution gives Congress—not the president, and not the State Department—the sole authority to declare war.

The State Department, meanwhile, has given every indication that there was no credible, imminent threat from Soleimani. When asked about this at a press conference on Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “We know what happened at the end of last year and ultimately led to the death of an American. If you are looking for imminence, look no further than the days that led up to the strike.” Something that already happened cannot be considered imminent.

Soleimani was a terrorist, responsible for appalling crimes. But there is good reason to question whether killing him serves America’s long-term interest in disentangling its military from Middle East politics. Any conservative who takes Pompeo or Trump on blind faith has lost the right to complain about the deep state.

If you really think the spymasters are out to get Trump—or just frequently incompetent in general—you should be very skeptical that what they whispered in his ear about Iran was the truth.

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Despite running into obstacles twice before, California’s housing supply-siders have re-introduced a controversial bill that would preempt local zoning laws statewide in order to legalize four-unit homes on residential land and allow the construction of mid-rise apartments near job and transit centers.

The state legislature has shot down versions of the bill, Senate Bill 50 (SB 50), twice now—once in 2018, and again last year. Sen. Scott Weiner (D–San Francisco), the bill’s author, is hoping that new amendments he added Monday will be enough to get the legislation passed out of the state senate before a January 31 deadline.

If Wiener’s press conference at Oakland City Hall tells us anything about the bill’s chances, it remains a tough sell.

“We have a terrible housing crisis in California here. We see the results every single day. We have a spike in homelessness, people are being forced into poverty, people are being pushed out of California,” Wiener said over loud jeers from the crowd. “We have a multi-million home shortage. We need more affordable housing. We need more housing of every variety and Senate Bill 50 will help us do that.”

The hecklers, according to reporters at the scene, were from the local Oakland group Moms 4 Housing, which describes itself as “a collective of unhoused and insecurely housed mothers” and which has taken to squatting in investor-owned vacant homes as part of a protest against the real estate speculation they blame for California’s housing crisis.

Housing Crisis clash on the steps of Oakland City Hall Sen @Scott_Wiener tried to announce amendments to his controversial transit density bill SB50. He’s shouted down by @moms4housing and others saying #SB50 doesn’t help build affordable housing pic.twitter.com/kIbJeBLzrC

— Susie Steimle (@SusieKPIX) January 7, 2020

The protesters are members of one of two interest groups that Wiener has been trying to court with recent amendments to his bills, and whose support is essential to getting SB 50 passed; tenant activists and local governments.

The amendments that Wiener introduced Monday would provide more flexibility to local governments by giving them two years to come up with their own alternative upzoning plans, provided they zone for the same amount of housing that SB 50—which would legalize apartments up to five stories tall near rail stations, and smaller apartments in wealthier areas, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“A city could decide to go taller in some areas and shorter in other areas or to focus density in some areas but not other areas,” Wiener wrote Tuesday in a post on Medium outlining his amendments.

State authorities would be in charge of certifying if these local rezoning plans satisfy the bill’s requirements. In addition to zoning for an equivalent amount of housing, these local plans would also have to show that they are not increasing vehicle miles traveled and that they are not exclusively upzoning in lower-income communities.

The latter provision is meant to address the concerns of tenant rights groups and other anti-gentrification activists who worry that upzoning low-income areas will result in a bunch of luxury developments popping up, which will then raise rents and force out long-time residents.

Ameliorating that worry has been behind a number of amendments that Wiener has previously added to SB 50, including strict demolition controls that would prevent the redevelopment of land that’s had rental housing on it in the past seven years.

The bill also includes some pretty stringent affordability requirements. Developers making use of SB 50 to build apartments would be required to rent out as much as 25 percent of their new units at below-market rates to low-income tenants.

Lower-income neighborhoods, described as “sensitive communities” in the bill, would have five years, not two, to adopt their own local upzoning plan before SB 50 would kick in.

The changes have helped win over the support of some local governments. Wiener’s Medium post lists new endorsements from the mayors of Culver City, Carson, Alameda, and the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors.

The government of Wiener’s own city, San Francisco, passed a resolution opposing SB 50 in December.

As the heckling at his press conference demonstrates, Wiener has had less success winning over anti-gentrification groups, most of whom fundamentally disagree with the idea that adding market-rate housing supply will help bring rents down.

Indeed, despite all the affordability and anti-demolition controls that the senator has added to his bill, activists are still writing finger-wagging op-eds telling him he needs to be a “better ally of unhoused people, housing insecure people, low-income people, and people of color.”

Times reporter Liam Dillon also notes that it’s still unclear if SB 50 has enough support in the state senate, where Wiener’s bill stalled last year, to get it to a floor vote. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) also has yet to endorse the bill.

This means that the fight for SB 50 will be an uphill one. In addition to having to pass out of the state Senate by the end of the month, the bill will also have to be approved by the state Assembly by the end of August.

From a free market perspective, the amendments added to SB 50 have generally been for the worse.

The more below-market-rate units developers are forced to include in their project, the fewer of those projects developers will build. The more parcels of land that are excluded from the bill’s upzoning provisions, the less housing supply it will ultimately add.

In addition, Wiener’s focus on spurring the construction of high-density housing near transit does nothing to peel back the state’s urban growth boundaries that prevent the development of affordable housing on the fringes of urban areas.

That’s by design, as SB 50 is supposed to serve as both a “climate bill” and a housing affordability bill.

Privileging one type of housing over another, however, is a clear attempt to interfere with a free market that would, in the absence of government constraints, probably add a lot of new multi-family housing and a lot of new suburban housing.

But at the end of the day, anything that allows private developers to add more housing supply in the state is a good thing. If SB 50 does that, it’ll be an improvement over the status quo.

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An internal investigation uncovered several officers within the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) falsely identified innocent Californians in traffic stops as gang members in an effort to make their police work appear more successful.

A statement released Tuesday by the LAPD says that the investigation began in 2019 when a mother living in San Fernando Valley contacted the department after receiving word from the LAPD that her son was a gang member. A supervisor at a local station investigated body camera footage and other documentation gathered by an officer and found inconsistencies with the information provided. The department has not disclosed any other details about how the investigation began. 

The woman’s son’s name was cleared and three officers were investigated as a result. An Internal Affairs investigation found that over a dozen officers assigned to Metropolitan Division crime suppression duties had falsified information on field-interview cards to identify non-gang members as belonging to gangs. 

The offending officers were either “assigned to inactive duty or removed from the field,” according to the statement.

“An officer’s integrity must be absolute,” said LAPD Chief Michel R. Moore in the statement released Tuesday. “There is no place in the Department for any individual who would purposely falsify information on a Department report.”

Both the LAPD’s traffic stops and California’s gang database have faced scrutiny. The Los Angeles Times reports that nearly half of the drivers stopped by the division are black, despite blacks comprising only 9 percent of the city’s population and the fact that such stops had a low arrest rate. The LAPD announced last fall that it would reduce the number of random stops due to the disparate impact on minorities.

Reason‘s Scott Shackford has also covered the gang database. In addition to its numerous privacy abuses and errors, an audit revealed that some gangs were added to the database without the proper documentation showing that they met the state’s definition of a gang.

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Several criminal justice advocacy groups and a member of Congress are demanding the Justice Department investigate conditions inside Mississippi’s decrepit and understaffed prisons after violence last week left five inmates dead. 

Three inmates were killed at Mississippi State Penitentiary, more infamously known as Parchman Farm, last week. Two more were killed in South Mississippi Correctional Institution and Chickasaw County Regional Correctional Facility. Another two inmates also escaped during the chaos but have since been captured.

Now, in a letter to the Justice Department released today, the Southern Poverty Law Center, The ACLU of Mississippi, and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D–Miss.) say the state’s “deliberate indifference to the risk of harm caused by overincarceration and grossly inadequate staffing violates the federal rights of the people in its custody and care.”

“As indicated by its track record over the last several years and substantiated by the events of the last ten days, Mississippi is deliberately and systematically subjecting people in its care to a substantial risk of serious harm due to understaffing, in violation of the rights secured and protected by the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and it is no exaggeration to say more lives will be lost absent immediate intervention,” the letter says. 

In a statement last week, Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) Commissioner Pelicia Hall said these are “trying times for the Mississippi Department of Corrections. It is never a good feeling for a commissioner to receive a call that a life has been lost, especially over senseless acts of violence.”

The times have been trying for quite a while inside Mississippi prisons, but the state has done nothing about it. About half of the correctional officer positions in Mississippi prisons are vacant, the pay for guards is among the lowest in the country, and the state legislature has cut prison funding by $185 million since 2014.

In August of last year, the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting ran a story on the conditions at South Mississippi Correctional Institution: “Inside The Prison Where Inmates Set Each Other On Fire and Gangs Have More Power Than Guards.”

That same month, a state audit of conditions inside Parchman found inmates and staff were subjected to black mold, raw sewage, broken toilets and sinks, exposed wiring, and vermin.

The severe staff shortage has led to extended lockdowns and months-long suspensions of visitations.

After last week’s disturbances, inmates at Parchman were moved into a maximum security unit that has been closed for 10 years as part of a settlement in an ACLU lawsuit alleging inhumane conditions.

Contraband cell phone video taken by one inmate shows the conditions inside the condemned unit:

Local outlet 12 News also interviewed one inmate who’d been moved into the condemned unit:

12 News talked to a man who claimed he’s an inmate at Parchman. The alleged inmate said, “I ain’t took a shower since December 31st. Ain’t brush my teeth. We ain’t got mats, no blankets, no running water. I’m in Parchman. We are locked in 32, a condemned building. It’s the closest thing to hell.”

12 News asked the man how he got the cellphone. He said, “Soon as I got to 32, an officer sold it to me.”

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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