SDTX Enjoins Biden Administration’s 100-Day Moratorium on Deportations Based on DACA Decision

For much of the last six years, there has been several Texas v. United States cases floating around the federal courts. In each dispute, Texas has asserted that the federal government’s enforcement of immigration law was unlawful. The latest case, which I flagged on Friday, challenges the Biden administration’s 100 day moratorium on deportations.

Today, a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas has issued the first nationwide injunction against the Biden Administration. Co-blogger Sam Bray wrote about the scope of that injunction. Here, I’d like to flag the Court’s “arbitrary and capricious” analysis.

Texas argued that the January 20 memorandum was issued “without any consideration whatsoever of a [more limited] policy.” And, Texas favorably cited Chief Justice Roberts’s DACA decision. Last June, Regents seemed like a John Roberts special to stop the Trump Administration. It very well may have been. But now, lower courts have been charged with Monday-morning-quarterbacking every change in executive-branch policy.

The federal court in Texas has found that the Biden administration did not engage in “reasoned decision-making” to impose a 100-day moratorium on deportations:

Here, the January 20 Memorandum not only fails to consider potential policies more limited in scope and time, but it also fails to provide any concrete, reasonable justification for a 100-day pause on deportations. The January 20 Memorandum states that the 100-day pause is required to assess immigration policies because of the “unique circumstances” present with respect to immigration, including “significant operational challenges at the southwest border as [the United States] is confronting the most serious global public health crisis in a century.” (Dkt. No. 2-2 at 2). DHS specifically cites to its apparent (1) need for a comprehensive review of enforcement policies, (2) need for interim civil enforcement guidelines, and (3) “limited resources” that would necessitate a pause in executing removal orders. (Id. at 2–5). Additionally, the January 20 Memorandum states that the 100-day pause in deportations is necessary to “(1) provide sufficient staff and resources to enhance border security and conduct immigration and asylum processing at the southwest border fairly and efficiently; and (2) comply with COVID-19 protocols to protect the health and safety of DHS personnel and those members of the public with whom DHS personnel interact.” (Id. at 3). The January 20 Memorandum also provides that DHS “must ensure that [the agency’s] removal resources are directed to the Department’s highest enforcement priorities.” (Id.). DHS, however, never explains how the pause in removals helps accomplish these goals. It remains unknown why a 100-day pause is needed given the allegedly “unique circumstances” to which the January 20 Memorandum alludes. Indeed, despite such unique circumstances, DHS did not state or explain why 100 days specifically is needed to accomplish these goals. The silence of the January 20 Memorandum on these questions indicates that the terms provided for in the Memorandum were not a result of “reasoned decision-making.” Allentown Mack Sales, 522 U.S. at 374, 118 S.Ct. at 826. 

Regents may have been a pyrrhic victory for progressives.

Will John Roberts stay true to his 2020 posture in 2021? We’ll see when the Acting Solicitor General files her first stay application in the next few days. (I am presuming the 5th Circuit denies mandamus). The government will have to move quickly, as this TRO expires in 14 days.

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Congressional Democrats Push $15 Minimum Wage on Struggling Businesses

31326059165_b4630b1263_k

House and Senate Democrats on Tuesday reintroduced a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, more than doubling the current $7.25 hourly rate.

The House reportedly plans to include the measure in its upcoming COVID-19 relief legislation. The main problem: That would provide the polar opposite of relief to businesses buckling under the weight of COVID-19 and the associated government lockdowns.

As has been the case over the past year, the congressional aid package is, in part, supposed to resuscitate livelihoods decimated by state-required closures and restrictions. It’s richly ironic that a heightened minimum wage would be yet another mandate that business-owners might need help counteracting. Relief from the relief.

As of September 2020, 100,000 businesses that initially shuttered temporarily were declared dead, a number that has surely expanded through the COVID-19 winter surge. Many other establishments are on their deathbeds. The life support—named the Raise the Wage Act of 2021—could very well do them in, akin to replacing a diabetic’s insulin with a sugary drink and hoping for the best.

The debate around the minimum wage has been muddled by polarized voices on both the left and the right, who struggle to admit that the issue doesn’t fit neatly into a binary. Indeed, studies over the past several years come to entirely different conclusions about the minimum wage’s impact, allowing readers to manipulate the data as they search for the conclusions of their choice.

It was with that mindset that the National Bureau of Economic Research surveyed the existing literature in search of a more concrete understanding. Its main conclusions: There is “a clear preponderance of negative estimates” related to the minimum wage and those effects are “stronger for teens and young adults as well as the less-educated.”

In other words, of course some workers will make more under a higher federal minimum wage. Others, too, will break even or make less as they see their hours reduced, and some still will lose their jobs entirely. The latter group is made up of the lowest-skilled workers—the most vulnerable, and the targets of most Democratic pieces of legislation.

Effects on individual workers and effects on small businesses themselves are, to some extent, mutually inclusive. A stratospheric minimum-wage hike would put yet another financial strain on those businesses, whose owners would have to shoulder a massive increase in labor costs during a time when many entrepreneurs are just hoping they can keep their doors open another day. It might be nice to see a bump in pay, though that benefit evaporates if your employer’s operation no longer exists.

President Joe Biden disagrees. During the final presidential debate, he posited that increasing the minimum wage by more than 100 percent would help small businesses, though he did not explain the particulars. One glaring question: Rural America isn’t operating with the same resources as those in New York City, and states and localities can set their own minimum wages. Why the machete instead of the scalpel?

The bill would also do away with the tipped minimum wage—a lower hourly sum, augmented with gratuity, used in restaurants and other limited service industries. Washington, D.C., attempted to eradicate its tipped minimum in the summer of 2018, though lawmakers overturned that after an outcry from tipped workers themselves, many of whom noted they make far more in tips than they ever would with a minimum wage.

Such a move is particularly inconvenient for this moment, with restaurant patronage hit particularly hard by the pandemic. Danny Meyer, who famously led the way in blitzing gratuities at his New York restaurants, announced in July that he would reintroduce them.

The Democrats’ measure is unlikely to pass in conventional fashion, as it would require the votes of at least 10 Senate Republican to overcome the filibuster. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) said instead that they will pursue a backroad and seek to make it law via budget reconciliation, though the restrictions on that process make success there unlikely as well.

Sanders is undeterred. “Let’s be clear. The $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage is a starvation wage,” he said in a statement. “No person in America can make it on $8, $10, or $12 an hour.” There are a few problems there. The foremost: It’s even harder to make it on $0 an hour.

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SDTX Enjoins Biden Administration’s 100-Day Moratorium on Deportations Based on DACA Decision

For much of the last six years, there has been several Texas v. United States cases floating around the federal courts. In each dispute, Texas has asserted that the federal government’s enforcement of immigration law was unlawful. The latest case, which I flagged on Friday, challenges the Biden administration’s 100 day moratorium on deportations.

Today, a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas has issued the first nationwide injunction against the Biden Administration. Co-blogger Sam Bray wrote about the scope of that injunction. Here, I’d like to flag the Court’s “arbitrary and capricious” analysis.

Texas argued that the January 20 memorandum was issued “without any consideration whatsoever of a [more limited] policy.” And, Texas favorably cited Chief Justice Roberts’s DACA decision. Last June, Regents seemed like a John Roberts special to stop the Trump Administration. It very well may have been. But now, lower courts have been charged with Monday-morning-quarterbacking every change in executive-branch policy.

The federal court in Texas has found that the Biden administration did not engage in “reasoned decision-making” to impose a 100-day moratorium on deportations:

Here, the January 20 Memorandum not only fails to consider potential policies more limited in scope and time, but it also fails to provide any concrete, reasonable justification for a 100-day pause on deportations. The January 20 Memorandum states that the 100-day pause is required to assess immigration policies because of the “unique circumstances” present with respect to immigration, including “significant operational challenges at the southwest border as [the United States] is confronting the most serious global public health crisis in a century.” (Dkt. No. 2-2 at 2). DHS specifically cites to its apparent (1) need for a comprehensive review of enforcement policies, (2) need for interim civil enforcement guidelines, and (3) “limited resources” that would necessitate a pause in executing removal orders. (Id. at 2–5). Additionally, the January 20 Memorandum states that the 100-day pause in deportations is necessary to “(1) provide sufficient staff and resources to enhance border security and conduct immigration and asylum processing at the southwest border fairly and efficiently; and (2) comply with COVID-19 protocols to protect the health and safety of DHS personnel and those members of the public with whom DHS personnel interact.” (Id. at 3). The January 20 Memorandum also provides that DHS “must ensure that [the agency’s] removal resources are directed to the Department’s highest enforcement priorities.” (Id.). DHS, however, never explains how the pause in removals helps accomplish these goals. It remains unknown why a 100-day pause is needed given the allegedly “unique circumstances” to which the January 20 Memorandum alludes. Indeed, despite such unique circumstances, DHS did not state or explain why 100 days specifically is needed to accomplish these goals. The silence of the January 20 Memorandum on these questions indicates that the terms provided for in the Memorandum were not a result of “reasoned decision-making.” Allentown Mack Sales, 522 U.S. at 374, 118 S.Ct. at 826. 

Regents may have been a pyrrhic victory for progressives.

Will John Roberts stay true to his 2020 posture in 2021? We’ll see when the Acting Solicitor General files her first stay application in the next few days. (I am presuming the 5th Circuit denies mandamus). The government will have to move quickly, as this TRO expires in 14 days.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/36hN3L3
via IFTTT

Congressional Democrats Push $15 Minimum Wage on Struggling Businesses

31326059165_b4630b1263_k

House and Senate Democrats on Tuesday reintroduced a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, more than doubling the current $7.25 hourly rate.

The House reportedly plans to include the measure in its upcoming COVID-19 relief legislation. The main problem: That would provide the polar opposite of relief to businesses buckling under the weight of COVID-19 and the associated government lockdowns.

As has been the case over the past year, the congressional aid package is, in part, supposed to resuscitate livelihoods decimated by state-required closures and restrictions. It’s richly ironic that a heightened minimum wage would be yet another mandate that business-owners might need help counteracting. Relief from the relief.

As of September 2020, 100,000 businesses that initially shuttered temporarily were declared dead, a number that has surely expanded through the COVID-19 winter surge. Many other establishments are on their deathbeds. The life support—named the Raise the Wage Act of 2021—could very well do them in, akin to replacing a diabetic’s insulin with a sugary drink and hoping for the best.

The debate around the minimum wage has been muddled by polarized voices on both the left and the right, who struggle to admit that the issue doesn’t fit neatly into a binary. Indeed, studies over the past several years come to entirely different conclusions about the minimum wage’s impact, allowing readers to manipulate the data as they search for the conclusions of their choice.

It was with that mindset that the National Bureau of Economic Research surveyed the existing literature in search of a more concrete understanding. Its main conclusions: There is “a clear preponderance of negative estimates” related to the minimum wage and those effects are “stronger for teens and young adults as well as the less-educated.”

In other words, of course some workers will make more under a higher federal minimum wage. Others, too, will break even or make less as they see their hours reduced, and some still will lose their jobs entirely. The latter group is made up of the lowest-skilled workers—the most vulnerable, and the targets of most Democratic pieces of legislation.

Effects on individual workers and effects on small businesses themselves are, to some extent, mutually inclusive. A stratospheric minimum-wage hike would put yet another financial strain on those businesses, whose owners would have to shoulder a massive increase in labor costs during a time when many entrepreneurs are just hoping they can keep their doors open another day. It might be nice to see a bump in pay, though that benefit evaporates if your employer’s operation no longer exists.

President Joe Biden disagrees. During the final presidential debate, he posited that increasing the minimum wage by more than 100 percent would help small businesses, though he did not explain the particulars. One glaring question: Rural America isn’t operating with the same resources as those in New York City, and states and localities can set their own minimum wages. Why the machete instead of the scalpel?

The bill would also do away with the tipped minimum wage—a lower hourly sum, augmented with gratuity, used in restaurants and other limited service industries. Washington, D.C., attempted to eradicate its tipped minimum in the summer of 2018, though lawmakers overturned that after an outcry from tipped workers themselves, many of whom noted they make far more in tips than they ever would with a minimum wage.

Such a move is particularly inconvenient for this moment, with restaurant patronage hit particularly hard by the pandemic. Danny Meyer, who famously led the way in blitzing gratuities at his New York restaurants, announced in July that he would reintroduce them.

The Democrats’ measure is unlikely to pass in conventional fashion, as it would require the votes of at least 10 Senate Republican to overcome the filibuster. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) said instead that they will pursue a backroad and seek to make it law via budget reconciliation, though the restrictions on that process make success there unlikely as well.

Sanders is undeterred. “Let’s be clear. The $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage is a starvation wage,” he said in a statement. “No person in America can make it on $8, $10, or $12 an hour.” There are a few problems there. The foremost: It’s even harder to make it on $0 an hour.

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‘They’re Wasting Our Time’: Rand Paul Shreds ‘Unconstitutional’ Trump Impeachment, Lists Examples Of ‘Democrat Incitement’

‘They’re Wasting Our Time’: Rand Paul Shreds ‘Unconstitutional’ Trump Impeachment, Lists Examples Of ‘Democrat Incitement’

Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul shredded Congressional Democrats over the second impeachment of former President Trump, arguing in a floor speech in a procedural motion to ‘table or kill’ the proceedings that “Democrats are about to drag our great country down into the gutter of rancor and vitriol the likes of which has never been seen in our nation’s history,” adding “It’s almost as if they have no ability to exist except in opposition to Donald Trump”

Paul then argued that Democrats are guilty of the exact ‘incitement’ they’ve accused Trump of – suggesting that “No Democrat will honestly ask whether Bernie Sanders incited the shooter that nearly killed Steve Scalise,” and “No Democrat will ask whether Maxine Waters incited violence when she literally told her supporters” to confront Trump officials in public.”

More: 

Ultimately, 45 GOP Senators voted to kill the impeachment – meaning they agree that it’s unconstitutional, while five GOP Senators voted to table it and proceed with the impeachment; Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse and Pat Toomey.

It would require another 12 GOP Senators to convict and impeach Trump – now a private citizen.

Earlier in the week, Paul wrote that the impeachment trial was a “farce and should be dismissed before it is even allowed to begin,” adding that the Senate doesn’t have the authority to hold an impeachment trial for a former president.

“It shows they don’t have the votes and we’re basically wasting our time,” said Paul, who believes the Senate roll call would show that over a third of the chamber thinks the proceeding is unconstitutional.

Republican senators have criticized the president for his actions on Jan. 6, but many have signaled opposition to voting to convict the president. At least 30 Senate Republicans have said they are opposed to or leaning against convicting Mr. Trump, according to a Wall Street Journal survey of senators and their public comments, leaving few open to potentially casting a guilty vote.

“I doubt there are seven, quite honestly. I’m certain there aren’t 17, at least not today,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R., N.D.). He cited concerns over the legality of trying a former president, as well as whether Mr. Trump’s actions, while wrong, constituted incitement. –WSJ

Democrats, meanwhile, say the trial is warranted and that Congressional Republicans are focusing on the constitutional question to avoid having to weigh the impeachment on its merits – much like most of the judges who tossed out election challenges based on technical factors.

“They don’t want to be held accountable on that vote, so they’re going to try to make it another argument that [it’s] all about the Constitution,” said Democratic Senator Dick Durbin.

This will be the first ever impeachment trial for a former president. It’s scheduled to begin in earnest the week of Feb. 8, approximately one month after the US Capitol riot which left five people dead and temporarily disrupted the counting of the electoral votes.

Watch Paul’s entire speech below:

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/26/2021 – 16:45

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MsZDQk Tyler Durden

Biden Orders Justice Department to Phase Out Use of Private Prisons

bidensigning_1161x653

President Joe Biden issued an executive order today to phase out the Justice Department’s use of private prisons.

As part of what the White House dubbed “equity day,” Biden signed an order directing the Justice Department not to renew contracts with private prisons, which have long been a target of criminal justice reform advocates.

“Mass incarceration imposes significant costs on our society and communities, while private prisons profiteer off of federal prisoners in less safe conditions for prisoners and correctional officers alike,” the White House said in a fact sheet, according to Reuters.

Civil liberties and criminal justice groups applauded the order, although it was far from their most significant demands of the new administration, which include ending the federal death penalty and ending solitary confinement.

“Today’s executive order validates something we’ve been saying for years: No one should profit from the human misery that is caused by mass incarceration,” David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national prison project, said in a press release. “Prison privatization increases the potential for mistreatment and abuse of incarcerated people, and this move by the Biden administration will start curtailing this insidious practice.”

In the grand scheme of the U.S. criminal justice system, the order will not have a significant impact. State prison systems hold the majority of the roughly 2.3 million incarcerated people in the country. And of the federal prison population, only 15 percent are held in private prisons.

Fathi noted that Biden’s order will not touch the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the immigration detention system, nor the private contractors the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) uses for other services, such as medical care. Fathi said that while today’s order is a good first step, “President Biden has an obligation to do more, especially given his history and promises.”

Nor are private prisons the source of the most pressing problems within the federal prison system. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the BOP was under severe stress due to chronic understaffing, which led to nurses and cooks being pressed into guard duty. There were also persistent problems with corruption, sexual assault, medical neglect, and low staff morale, not to mention the embarrassing death of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in a Manhattan jail.

Reason reported last year on a string of deaths due to alleged medical neglect at FCI Aliceville, a federal women’s prison in Alabama.

The pandemic put all of these problems into even sharper relief, as the federal prison system struggled, and failed, to adequately protect incarcerated people and staff. 

CNN also reported that Biden will sign an executive order reinstating Obama-era limits on the transfer of military equipment to local and state law enforcement. The Pentagon’s 1033 program distributes surplus military equipment to police. Most of those items are mundane things like cold-weather gloves and filing cabinets.

Amid national outrage over images of militarized police in Ferguson, Missouri, the Obama administration limited the program in 2015, prohibiting the transfer of such items as camouflage, .50-caliber ammunition, tracked armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and bayonets. Police departments in possession of these items were asked to return them.

President Donald Trump, who portrayed himself as a staunch ally of the police, rescinded the Obama memo, including tighter reporting requirements, in 2017.

A Brown University study published last year found that the Department of Defense’s (DOD) 1033 program has transferred at least $1.6 billion worth of equipment to police departments across the country since 9/11, compared to just $27 million before the terrorist attack. That equipment includes mine-resistant, armored-protective vehicles, or MRAPs, which are hulking, armored personnel carriers designed to survive bomb blasts on the roads of Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks to the 1033 program, 1,114 MRAPs are currently in the possession of American police departments. 

The 1033 program is not the most significant federal source of police militarization, though. The program is dwarfed by Department of Homeland Security anti-terrorism grants to local police, as well as shared revenue from property seizures and forfeitures.

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via IFTTT

Biden Orders Justice Department to Phase Out Use of Private Prisons

bidensigning_1161x653

President Joe Biden issued an executive order today to phase out the Justice Department’s use of private prisons.

As part of what the White House dubbed “equity day,” Biden signed an order directing the Justice Department not to renew contracts with private prisons, which have long been a target of criminal justice reform advocates.

“Mass incarceration imposes significant costs on our society and communities, while private prisons profiteer off of federal prisoners in less safe conditions for prisoners and correctional officers alike,” the White House said in a fact sheet, according to Reuters.

Civil liberties and criminal justice groups applauded the order, although it was far from their most significant demands of the new administration, which include ending the federal death penalty and ending solitary confinement.

“Today’s executive order validates something we’ve been saying for years: No one should profit from the human misery that is caused by mass incarceration,” David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national prison project, said in a press release. “Prison privatization increases the potential for mistreatment and abuse of incarcerated people, and this move by the Biden administration will start curtailing this insidious practice.”

In the grand scheme of the U.S. criminal justice system, the order will not have a significant impact. State prison systems hold the majority of the roughly 2.3 million incarcerated people in the country. And of the federal prison population, only 15 percent are held in private prisons.

Fathi noted that Biden’s order will not touch the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the immigration detention system, nor the private contractors the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) uses for other services, such as medical care. Fathi said that while today’s order is a good first step, “President Biden has an obligation to do more, especially given his history and promises.”

Nor are private prisons the source of the most pressing problems within the federal prison system. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the BOP was under severe stress due to chronic understaffing, which led to nurses and cooks being pressed into guard duty. There were also persistent problems with corruption, sexual assault, medical neglect, and low staff morale, not to mention the embarrassing death of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in a Manhattan jail.

Reason reported last year on a string of deaths due to alleged medical neglect at FCI Aliceville, a federal women’s prison in Alabama.

The pandemic put all of these problems into even sharper relief, as the federal prison system struggled, and failed, to adequately protect incarcerated people and staff. 

CNN also reported that Biden will sign an executive order reinstating Obama-era limits on the transfer of military equipment to local and state law enforcement. The Pentagon’s 1033 program distributes surplus military equipment to police. Most of those items are mundane things like cold-weather gloves and filing cabinets.

Amid national outrage over images of militarized police in Ferguson, Missouri, the Obama administration limited the program in 2015, prohibiting the transfer of such items as camouflage, .50-caliber ammunition, tracked armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and bayonets. Police departments in possession of these items were asked to return them.

President Donald Trump, who portrayed himself as a staunch ally of the police, rescinded the Obama memo, including tighter reporting requirements, in 2017.

A Brown University study published last year found that the Department of Defense’s (DOD) 1033 program has transferred at least $1.6 billion worth of equipment to police departments across the country since 9/11, compared to just $27 million before the terrorist attack. That equipment includes mine-resistant, armored-protective vehicles, or MRAPs, which are hulking, armored personnel carriers designed to survive bomb blasts on the roads of Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks to the 1033 program, 1,114 MRAPs are currently in the possession of American police departments. 

The 1033 program is not the most significant federal source of police militarization, though. The program is dwarfed by Department of Homeland Security anti-terrorism grants to local police, as well as shared revenue from property seizures and forfeitures.

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WTI Erases Losses After Bigger-Than-Expected Crude Draw

WTI Erases Losses After Bigger-Than-Expected Crude Draw

Oil prices slipped today, despite a lower dollar, as growing concerns over the COVID variants trumped any vaccine-hyped return-to-normal hope.  Critically,  In China, a coronavirus flare-up is threatening fuel demand during the Lunar New Year period, with the government encouraging millions not to travel.

“There’s a lot of demand destruction-type events in the market, and it’s weighing on crude,” said Bob Yawger, head of the futures division at Mizuho Securities.

The market is “giving the impression we’re running out of momentum here.”

Once again all eyes back on stocks to see just how the supply/demand picture is shifting, despite the constant propaganda on both sides..

API

  • Crude -5.272mm (-1.7mm exp)

  • Cushing -3.575mm

  • Gasoline +3.058mm (+1.2mm exp)

  • Distillates +1.39mm

Another big draw in Cushing stocks and a surprisingly large crude draw surprised traders, and was enough to offset the product builds…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI hovered around $52.50 ahead of the data and popped back into the green for the day on the print…

“The fundamental oil picture is firmer for mid-year, but it’s not really that tight” compared to other years, said Rick Joswick, head of oil pricing analytics at S&P Global Platts. The risk that shale producers may eventually increase production also “puts a cap on the back-end of the forward price curve.”

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/26/2021 – 16:36

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YfPsBB Tyler Durden

Biden Orders Justice Department to Phase Out Use of Private Prisons

bidensigning_1161x653

President Joe Biden issued an executive order today to phase out the Justice Department’s use of private prisons.

As part of what the White House dubbed “equity day,” Biden signed an order directing the Justice Department not to renew contracts with private prisons, which have long been a target of criminal justice reform advocates.

“Mass incarceration imposes significant costs on our society and communities, while private prisons profiteer off of federal prisoners in less safe conditions for prisoners and correctional officers alike,” the White House said in a fact sheet, according to Reuters.

Civil liberties and criminal justice groups applauded the order, although it was far from their most significant demands of the new administration, which include ending the federal death penalty and ending solitary confinement.

“Today’s executive order validates something we’ve been saying for years: No one should profit from the human misery that is caused by mass incarceration,” David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national prison project, said in a press release. “Prison privatization increases the potential for mistreatment and abuse of incarcerated people, and this move by the Biden administration will start curtailing this insidious practice.”

In the grand scheme of the U.S. criminal justice system, the order will not have a significant impact. State prison systems hold the majority of the roughly 2.3 million incarcerated people in the country. And of the federal prison population, only 15 percent are held in private prisons.

Fathi noted that Biden’s order will not touch the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the immigration detention system, nor the private contractors the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) uses for other services, such as medical care. Fathi said that while today’s order is a good first step, “President Biden has an obligation to do more, especially given his history and promises.”

Nor are private prisons the source of the most pressing problems within the federal prison system. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the BOP was under severe stress due to chronic understaffing, which led to nurses and cooks being pressed into guard duty. There were also persistent problems with corruption, sexual assault, medical neglect, and low staff morale, not to mention the embarrassing death of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in a Manhattan jail.

Reason reported last year on a string of deaths due to alleged medical neglect at FCI Aliceville, a federal women’s prison in Alabama.

The pandemic put all of these problems into even sharper relief, as the federal prison system struggled, and failed, to adequately protect incarcerated people and staff. 

CNN also reported that Biden will sign an executive order reinstating Obama-era limits on the transfer of military equipment to local and state law enforcement. The Pentagon’s 1033 program distributes surplus military equipment to police. Most of those items are mundane things like cold-weather gloves and filing cabinets.

Amid national outrage over images of militarized police in Ferguson, Missouri, the Obama administration limited the program in 2015, prohibiting the transfer of such items as camouflage, .50-caliber ammunition, tracked armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and bayonets. Police departments in possession of these items were asked to return them.

President Donald Trump, who portrayed himself as a staunch ally of the police, rescinded the Obama memo, including tighter reporting requirements, in 2017.

A Brown University study published last year found that the Department of Defense’s (DOD) 1033 program has transferred at least $1.6 billion worth of equipment to police departments across the country since 9/11, compared to just $27 million before the terrorist attack. That equipment includes mine-resistant, armored-protective vehicles, or MRAPs, which are hulking, armored personnel carriers designed to survive bomb blasts on the roads of Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks to the 1033 program, 1,114 MRAPs are currently in the possession of American police departments. 

The 1033 program is not the most significant federal source of police militarization, though. The program is dwarfed by Department of Homeland Security anti-terrorism grants to local police, as well as shared revenue from property seizures and forfeitures.

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Biden Confronts Putin On Navalny & SolarWinds Hack In 1st Phone Call

Biden Confronts Putin On Navalny & SolarWinds Hack In 1st Phone Call

During the first phone call between President Joe Biden with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Biden raised the sensitive issue of jailed anti-Kremlin politician Alexei Navalny.

According to the White House press read-out of the Tuesday call, “Biden raised… the poisoning of Alexei Navalny” while the president further made clear “that the United States will act firmly in defense of its national interests in response to actions by Russia that harm us or our allies.”

Via Reuters amo

Just before the call which Moscow had initially requested last week, Biden spoke to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to underscore the US commitment to maintaining a strong NATO military alliance.

As far as Navalny, who Germany and other European allies say was poisoned with nerve agent last August by a Russian hit squad in a botched assassination, he’s now become a Western media symbol for ‘resistance’ to Putin, despite his being not being very well-known or influential prior to the saga which saw him life-flighted to Berlin. 

Meanwhile some prior embarrassing videos featuring Navalny have come to light and are circulating among critics on social media:

Putin had previously brushed him aside as “not important enough” to be targeted in such a high level Russian intelligence plot.

But apparently Navalny is already seen as “leverage” to be used by the Biden administration. This also after widespread protests across reportedly dozens of Russian cities Saturday which demanded his immediate release (he’s serving a 30-day sentence for skipping probation related to 2014 criminal case).

Other issues raised by Biden during the Putin call included the following:

  • nuclear and arms reduction treaties
  • firm support for Ukraine’s sovereignty
  • the SolarWinds hack, which US intelligence had blamed on Russia
  • the “Russian bounties” story, in which it was alleged that Russian military intelligence paid Afghan insurgents to take out American troops
  • …and of course: Russian ‘interference’ in US elections

Biden had told reporters the night before the Putin call, “I find that we can both operate in the mutual self-interest of our countries, as a new START agreement, and make it clear to Russia that we are very concerned about their behavior, whether it’s Navalny, whether it’s the Solar Winds or whether it’s reports of bounties on the heads of Americans in Afghanistan.”

He said further according to CNN, “I have asked the agencies in question to do a thorough read for me on every one of those issues, to update me precisely where they are, and I will not hesitate to raise those issues with the Russians,” he said.

Perhaps the only bright spot in terms of agreement and suggestive of a potential thaw between Washington and Moscow was Biden’s broaching the timely issue of New START with Putin. The landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty signed by the two superpowers in 1991 and which took effect in 1994 is set to expire next month.

Talks between Russia and US negotiators are said to be underway, with both preliminarily agreeing to a 5-year no preconditions extension. This after the Trump administration appeared ready to let it expire, after previously dropping US participation in both the INF and Open Skies treaties.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/26/2021 – 16:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3j0zQeR Tyler Durden