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A few days ago, someone spray-painted “BHAZ” (for “Black House Autonomous Zone”) on the pillars of St. John’s Episcopal Church, the site of President Donald Trump’s notorious June 1 photo op during protests against police brutality in Washington, D.C. Under the D.C. Code, that act of vandalism, assuming the damage costs less than $1,000, is a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000 and up to six months in jail. But under an “anti-lynching” bill that is part of the police reform packages backed by House Democrats and Senate Republicans, the same act could qualify as a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) uses that example to illustrate the potential unintended consequences of the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act, a.k.a. the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which covers any conspiracy to violate various federal civil rights laws. If more than one person was involved in the church graffiti—if one bought the spray paint and another wrote the letters, for example—that would amount to a conspiracy. And Paul notes that the church had earlier been targeted by arsonists who spray-painted “Matthew 19:24” and “God is still watching” on the building. That context, he argues, suggests that the church was targeted because of its religious character, which violates 18 USC 247, one of the provisions cited in the anti-lynching bill.

“Had the Emmett Till Antilynching Act been federal law, those who conspired to deface St. John’s Church could be prosecuted for lynching and potentially lose their liberty for up to a decade,” Paul wrote in a letter to his Senate colleagues yesterday. “Those who argue that the government will not prosecute such acts as a lynching are willfully blind to the flaws within our criminal justice system….We cannot fight injustice by passing laws that will create more injustice by equating vandalism with lynching.”

If you think it is implausible that federal prosecutors would charge black protesters with lynching in a case like this, I have two words for you: Tiffany Harris. She is the black woman accused of slapping three Jewish women in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn last December, a series of assaults that the Justice Department charged as federal hate crimes under 18 USC 249, another provision mentioned in the anti-lynching bill. The decision to pile federal charges on top of the state charges that Harris already faced dramatically increased the maximum penalty and made it possible to punish her twice for the same conduct. That intervention was U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue’s attempt to make a statement about anti-Semitic attacks at a time when reports of such crimes were rising in New York City.

The constitutional rationale for the law under which Harris was charged, which applies to assaults committed “because of” the victim’s “actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin,” is that it serves to eliminate “the badges, incidents, and relics of slavery,” a congressional power inferred from the 13th Amendment. In other words, Donoghue thinks prosecuting a black woman for slapping Jews in 2020 is authorized by the amendment that abolished slavery in 1865. Given such precedents, it is not hard to believe that, depending on the political incentives, a black vandal could be prosecuted for lynching under a law named after a black Mississippi teenager who was gruesomely murdered for purportedly flirting with a white woman in 1955.

Federal hate crime laws invite capricious, politically motivated prosecutions that have little to do with the facts of the case or justice for the offender. The anti-lynching bill, as currently written, would magnify that problem. Paul’s solution is an amendment limiting the definition of lynching to cases involving “serious bodily injury,” which fits the general understanding and historical meaning of the term and would prevent prosecutors from applying it to minor crimes such as vandalism.

Given that lynching, assault, and murder are already illegal under state and federal law, you may wonder, why is this bill necessary in the first place? The “findings” section offers no real explanation, except to say that the legislation “recognizes the history of lynching in the United States.” I asked Paul whether that seems like a satisfactory justification for a new criminal law.

“Most criminal law should be adjudicated at the state level,” Paul replied by email.  “Crimes that involve conspiracies can and have been abused, so care should be taken in crafting new conspiracy laws. If the national conscience requires a federal law to express its symbolic support for laws that already outlaw lynching, I will not stand in the way as long as the new law of conspiracy clearly defines lynching as murder or attempted murder or at the very least serious bodily harm or an attempt at serious bodily harm. I do not want anyone—black, white, or brown—to be given ten years in prison for slapping someone or painting graffiti on a church.”

That seems like a reasonable position, especially if you agree with Paul that the criminal justice system is excessively and arbitrarily punitive—a problem of special concern to African Americans. Yet Paul has been pilloried for opposing the current version of the anti-lynching bill, which sacrifices the rights of criminal defendants for the sake of symbolism. “Does America need a win today on racial justice?” Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.) said in response to Paul’s proposed amendment earlier this month. “Does the anguished cries of people in the streets? It may not cure the ills so many are protesting about, but God, it could be a sign of hope.”

Far from a sign of hope, this bill is cause for despair about the legislative process. When Congress uses its power to create new criminal penalties, threatening people with longer prison sentences than would otherwise apply, it has a duty to exercise more thought and care than this legislation reflects.

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This week Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R–Ga.) described a handful of protesters carrying guns in public as “mob rule.”

Is Loeffler the rare conservative politician with a history of calling for expanded gun controls? That doesn’t appear the case. Here’s a tweet from her from January expressing appreciation for National Rifle Association President Carolyn Meadows:

Great to be back in Atlanta with @NRA President and fellow Georgian, Carolyn Meadows. Truly appreciate her work in Washington and around the country to protect and defend our 2nd Amendment Rights. #gapol pic.twitter.com/CAWS9FbEUk

— Senator Kelly Loeffler (@SenatorLoeffler) January 17, 2020

What could possibly make a pro-gun-rights senator suddenly take such a dim view of citizens’ rights to bear arms? Watch this Wednesday segment from the Fox show America’s Newsroom, and the answer becomes apparent pretty quickly:

Joined @edhenry on @AmericaNewsroom to discuss my efforts to end the defund the police movement & pass the #JusticeAct. Enough with the political games from Democrats in Washington. Americans deserve better. #gapol #gasen pic.twitter.com/uopR5jiJHU

— Kelly Loeffler (@KLoeffler) June 24, 2020

As you can see, Fox interviewed Loeffler amid a montage of young, armed black people protesting police abuse in Atlanta, where a cop recently shot and killed Rayshard Brooks. Another Fox host, Sean Hannity, reported on Tuesday that there were “at least three men brandishing long guns” near the Wendy’s where the incident happened.

Hannity, Fox, and Loeffler all represented this as evidence of the dangers of defunding police. Indeed, one young man with a gun (who seemed perfectly polite and respectful) told Fox he was carrying a 12-gauge shotgun because he didn’t believe police officers would protect him, adding that cops were not going to be “allowed” in this space. Asked what he’d do if police rolled up and ordered him to drop his weapon, the man insisted he had the legal right under the Second Amendment of the Constitution to bear arms: “And at no point will I allow my right to be disturbed.” Good for him!

Carrying long guns in public is legal in Georgia, by the way (with exceptions for a few places like courts and schools). Fox does not actually accuse any of these men of breaking any laws. But they clearly intend viewers to see these men as a threat—and not just because they have put up barricades and hope to shut out the police, but because they’re bearing arms. By contrast, when a predominantly white group of protesters showed up at Michigan’s capitol in April to protest the state’s COVID-19 rules, Fox’s coverage was reasonably neutral and factual, giving voice to critics but pointing out that guns were legally allowed in the state Capitol building.

Loeffler isn’t just a hypocrite about gun rights. She’s trying to undermine another value conservatives are supposed to believe in: federalism. The senator is introducing legislation that would reduce federal transportation funding from states and municipalities that cut funding to law enforcement, unless they can show a “clear budgetary need.” The idea that the states and cities should have to get permission from the U.S. government to make a budget decision is, of course, absolutely anathema to local rule. It’s up to a community’s citizens to determine how much money their police department should receive—not the U.S. Senate or the Department of Transportation.

Bonus video: ReasonTV on the importance of defending open carry rights in black communities to defend civil rights:

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More than 1 million stimulus payments totaling nearly $1.4 billion were sent to deceased Americans during the federal government’s unprecedented emergency spending in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That’s just one of the major findings in a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report reviewing the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the $2.3 trillion stimulus package passed by Congress in late March. In addition to mailing checks to some dead people, the GAO found that federal agencies—like the Small Business Administration, which was tasked with processing more than $600 billion in payments to businesses forced to close by the pandemic—struggled to handle the massive surge in spending. That’s caused confusion and left government auditors unable to do important oversight work.

“Consistent with the urgency of responding to serious and widespread health issues and economic disruptions, agencies have given priority to moving swiftly where possible to distribute funds and implement new programs,” the GAO concluded. “As tradeoffs were made, however, agencies have made only limited progress so far in achieving transparency and accountability goals.”

A major element of the CARES Act was the direct payments of up to $1,200 sent to every American. As of May 31, the Treasury Department had issued more than 160 million payments worth $269.3 billion via paper checks, prepaid debit cards, and direct deposits to bank accounts.

To distribute the money, the Treasury Department used 2019 tax return records, but it did not use “third-party data, such as the death records maintained by the Social Security Administration (SSA), to detect and prevent erroneous and fraudulent tax refund claims,” the GAO found. As a result, individuals who may have died since filing their 2019 tax returns received direct payments through the CARES Act.

Mostly, that’s because of the complexities of the federal bureaucracy. The GAO report states that the IRS has full legal access to the Social Security death list, but the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Fiscal Service (BFS), which handled the distribution of the CARES Act payments, does not. Congress should allow the BFS to have access to that data if another round of stimulus payments are sent, the GAO suggests.

Officials from the IRS told the GAO that they raised that potential problem to Congress even before the CARES Act was passed. After the bill was passed, IRS attorneys determined that the agency did not have the legal authority to withhold payments from deceased individuals.

Officially, the IRS says that any payment made to a dead person must be returned, but the GAO notes that “the IRS does not currently plan to take additional steps to notify ineligible recipients on how to return payments.”

The small business loans distributed as part of the CARES Act stimulus are another situation where the government’s rush to get money out the door may have led to mistakes. The Paycheck Protection Program backed more than 4.6 million loans totaling over $500 billion, but the GAO found that many borrowers were not given proper guidance on how the loans would operate, including what rules would make a business eligible for loan forgiveness once the pandemic had passed.

“Because of the number of loans approved, the speed with which they were processed, and the limited safeguards, there is a significant risk that some fraudulent or inflated applications were approved,” the GAO concludes.

The Treasury Department is refusing to disclose vital information about loan recipients, which will only make accountability measures more difficult to implement.

Fast-tracking the direct payments and other aspects of the coronavirus response  might have caused money to be wasted, but other reports indicate that the stimulus package accomplished its goal. Stuffing billions of dollars into the economy caused the poverty rate to fall even as millions of Americans were kept out of work by COVID-19 outbreaks, according to a report from the University of Chicago. Meanwhile, Commerce Department data shows that personal income rose by about 10 percent during April.

Still, the full cost of the CARES Act stimulus will be felt for years to come. That one-time infusion of cash has caused the expected budget deficit for 2020 to quadruple from about $1 trillion to nearly $4 trillion.

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