President Donald Trump is dropping his quixotic effort to ask Americans about their immigration status during next year’s census, but his administration’s efforts to identify illegal immigrants will continue.
In place of the census question, Trump says he will issue an executive order instructing government agencies to sift through existing databases and documents to determine residents’ immigration status. “We will leave no stone unturned,” Trump said during a press conference in the White House’s rose garden on Thursday evening. “I am here to say we are not backing down on our effort to determine the citizenship status of the United States population.”
But the administration is backing down from an 18-months-long legal battle to include that question on census forms—a fight that even many conservatives have suggested was an error from the outset. The Supreme Court ruled last month that the justification for adding the citizenship question to the census—Trump administration lawyers claimed it was needed to obtain data so the Voting Rights Act could be appropriately enforced—was “contrived” and “pretextual.”
That kicked off a chaotic two weeks. Justice Department lawyers agreed on July 2nd to drop the matter. Trump tweeted on July 3rd that he told the Justice Department to keep fighting. A judge hauled those lawyers into a bizarre conference call where it was suggested they could not accurately represent their client, the president (the lawyers claimed they did not know Trump was going to contradict them via tweet, which is probably accurate). Those same lawyers were substituted for others who backed the president. The substitution was blocked by a different judge. Trump fumed on Twitter. Trump said he would issue an executive order putting the citizenship question on the census anyway. And, finally, Trump stood outside the White House admitting defeat.
What does it all mean? Perhaps most importantly, it means the census will be more accurate than it likely would have been if the citizenship question was included. One does not need to play 17-dimensional chess to realize that many illegal immigrants would be unlikely to answer the decennial survey honestly—or, for that matter, at all—if that meant giving their home address and other personal information to a hostile administration. An inaccurate census would have numerous unintended consequences, from altering how congressional seats are apportioned to determining how federal funds are allocated.
It’s also another indication of how Trump’s rhetoric and his administration’s bumbling of basic policy has undermined the president’s goals. As Reason‘s Jacob Sullum has explained on several occasions, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is largely to blame for Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision to sink the citizenship question by siding with the Supreme Court’s four liberal justices. And Ross was tasked with creating a legal rationale for the citizenship question because a Republican gerrymandering expert thought deliberately undercounting immigrant households would help the GOP win future elections. Not that the administration could say that in court, of course.
The president will follow the rule of law and allow the census to happen without a citizenship question. That’s good news. It’s also good news to see, yet again, the institutional checks and balances of government prevent Trump from carrying out a plot to turn the census into a political event.
And all it took was a year-and-a-half-long circus.
“Count it as a win for reality,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan group that had opposed the inclusion of the citizenship question on the census. “The Trump administration should focus on its real job: ensuring a full, fair, and accurate count of everyone in the nation.”
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Following a handful of news stories about tourist deaths in the Dominican Republic, the number of flight bookings to the Caribbean country dropped 84 percent during June, according to ForwardKeys, a business intelligence firm that tracks commercial air flights. While the country’s tourism industry appears to be bouncing back, new data analysis suggests there was never a good reason for Americans to fear traveling to the country.
While a number of unexplained deaths did occur at resorts in the Dominican Republic during the first half of 2019, there’s little to indicate that those incidents were out of the ordinary, or that more of deaths occurred than we should reasonably expect given that people die, even on vacation.
Using studies of Finnish, Scottish, and Australian tourist mortality, Daniel Engber of Slatearguesthat we should expect .0015 percent of tourists going to the Dominican Republic to die on their trip, with 73 percent of those deaths being from natural causes. Given that 2.7 million Americans go to the Dominican Republic, we should expect roughly 405 American tourist deaths a year, with 295 of them coming from natural causes—mostly heart attacks.
As of June 27th, nine Americans had gotten sick and died in 2019 in the Dominican Republic under supposedly “suspicious circumstances.” There’s no clear definition of what that means: many of the deaths seemed sudden, and the FBI is still conducting toxicology tests. Several of these deaths were ruled heart attacks until some family members questioned the official story. The Dominican Republic government’s response didn’t do much to tamp down the hysteria, with the Ministry of Public Health spokesman Carlos Suero dismissing reports of mysterious deaths as “fake news.” Despite his hamfisted handling of the media, he might be right.
For comparison, between the beginning of 2017 and the end of 2018, 30 Americans died in the Dominican Republic of non-natural causes, such as accidents, drownings, homicides, and suicides. The nine deaths that have occurred thus far in 2019 are tragic for the people who died and for their families, but they are not out of the ordinary, especially considering how many Americans visit the D.R. each year. Even if all nine of these suspicious deaths turned out to be from non-natural causes, that wouldn’t be a big divergence from previous non-natural death rates.
American politicians nevertheless added to the panic. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) said the “recent spate of sicknesses and several deaths” deserved a federal response. Rep. Frank Pallone (D–N.J.) called for the State Department to consider increasing its travel advisory for the Dominican Republic from “increased caution,” the second-least severe warning the department offers. Schumer called for an in-depth investigation that would feature the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms assisting the FBI and local law enforcement. The supposed pattern of incidents became the story itself, with pieces about fearamong tourists and advice for potential travelers.
As the fever increased, even non-mysterious deaths became part of the trend. The New York Post published a story in late June about a man who died of a heart attack in the Dominican Republic in 2017. Another report from Fox News brought up a death from 2016.
The entire story arc is a useful example of how media panics begin, escalate, and then subside, leaving a trail of economic pain in their wake. While ticket sales have begun to rebound, June’s dropoff will hurt in a country where tourism spending is directly or indirectly responsible for 22 percent of the economy.
Fortunately, it seems that Americans have moved past the sensationalism—until the inevitable next panic over nothing.
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“A true New Yorker,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio declared at a rally this February, “stands up against hate.” Unless, apparently, that hate is directed at people who successfully educate poor kids without unionized teachers.
At a Democratic cattle call last Friday in front of the National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor union in the country, de Blasio exceeded the contempt of even Bernie Sanders for public schools operated by non-governmental entities.
“I’m going to be blunt with you,” the fourth-tier Democratic presidential aspirant barked, loping around the stage and jabbing his finger for emphasis. “I am angry about the state of public education in America. I am angry about the fact that you are disrespected on a regular basis in this country, despite doing such important work. I am angry about the privatizers! I am sick and tired of these efforts to privatize a precious thing we need, public education. I know we’re not supposed to be saying ‘hate,’ our teachers taught us not to. I hate the privatizers, and I want to stop them.”
The mayor, whose school system of 1.1 million currently includes 123,000 kids attending charters, made it clear that it’s not just the comparatively narrow category of for-profit entities that he’s against, but the entire concept.
“We need a federal government that finally takes responsibility for funding education in the way it needs to be done in this country,” de Blasio said. “That’s what I want to focus on. Get away from high-stakes testing, get away from charter schools. No federal funding for charter schools. By the way, too many Republicans, but also too many Democrats, have been cozy with the charter schools. Let’s be blunt about it: We need to hold our own party accountable, too. And no one should ask for your support, or no one should be the Democratic nominee unless they’re willing to stand up to Wall Street and the rich people behind the charter school movement once and for all.”
Befitting a candidate hated nationally (and almost locally) even more than President Donald Trump, de Blasio came in for some hot fire from his hometown media. The New York Post editorialized against “De Blasio’s charter school lies.” The Daily News, not normally in political agreement with its tabloid rival, came at Hizzoner with receipts. “His anger isn’t aimed at the man in the mirror, who spent $800 million in taxpayer money promising and miserably failing to deliver ‘fast and intense improvement’ in struggling traditional public schools,” the paper snarled, before really getting personal:
Let the record show that a man wealthy enough to afford to buy a home in Park Slope, who was therefore able to send his son and daughter to fine public elementary and middle schools and then onto selective public high schools, now wants to deny alternatives to poorer families whose neighborhoods are often plagued with underperforming schools.
Quality educational options for me, not for thee. We know we’re not supposed to be saying “hate,” but we hate supposedly progressive hypocrites.
The open prejudice that New York progressives—especially white New York progressives—have against charters has already started to take its toll. The November 2018 election brought to Albany a bloc of anti-charter Democrats, some of whom campaigned “to get rid of” non-unionized public education. Sure enough, the legislature last month elected not to lift the cap on the number of charters allowed in New York City, despite clearly demonstrated demand from parents and a willingness to supply among operators. In 2018, nearly 53,000 students ended up on charter waitlists, unable to obtain the 27,000 available seats.
“Charters routinely outperform other public schools and have proven to be a lifeline for working-class black and Latino parents looking for a sound education,” wrote locally beloved NY1 News Political Anchor Errol Louis in a fiery Daily News piece. “In the 2017-18 school year, according to the New York City Charter School Center, an astounding 58.6% of black students in city charters scored at or above state achievement levels in math, compared with only 25.4% in regular district schools. For Latino students, 56.9% hit the mark in math at charter schools compared with 30% in district schools.”
Just last week, one of those charters, Success Academy Bronx 2, saw all 53 of its eighth-graders earn a five out of five on the state algebra exam, despite being situated in the nation’s poorest congressional district and having 90 percent of its population qualify for free or reduced student lunch. Half of the public school kids in the same district failed the test.
De Blasio was confronted about these glaring disparities Tuesday by Errol Louis:
Louis: … 53 percent of the charters kids are African American, 38 percent are Latino, 81 percent are low-income free and reduced lunch, and they’re outscoring the traditional public schools in every measurable dimension.
De Blasio: We know that.
Louis: I understand where there are problems, like, you know, there are 53,000 people on this waiting list and so forth, but there’s nothing you can learn from them?
De Blasio: We—again, I say we partner with the ones that share those values of inclusion. We work with them—best practices are shared both ways. I think there are some charter schools that do good work, I think there’s some charter schools that are test-prep factories, I think there are some charter schools that are exclusionary, and that goes against everything I believe in.
It’s bad enough that de Blasio’s policies are harming kids in New York. But the anti-charter prejudice he’s tapping into is rapidly becoming a core Democratic Party value. The other presidential candidates at the NEA forum—former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), former congressman Beto O’Rourke, Julián Castro, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.), Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, and Rep. Tim Ryan (D–Ohio)—mostly piled on the charter movement. Only O’Rourke, who used to be a full-throated supporter of charters, dared to suggest that “there is a place for public, nonprofit charter schools,” but he quickly got to the “but”: “But private charter schools and voucher programs, not a single dime in my administration will go to them.”
What used to be a fairly mainstream Democratic idea, championed by the likes of Barack Obama, Biden, and pre-presidential-campaign Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.), has now become something candidates feel like they need to furiously backpedal from. This Chalkbeatsurvey of 2020 educational policy positions makes it clear the mildly reformist tendencies of Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan are not likely to be seen again from a Democrat any time soon.
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An amended class-action lawsuit filed by a former student against Michigan State University (MSU) could pave the way for more class actions against universities and colleges that violate the due process rights of students accused of sexual misconduct.
Filed by former MSU student “John Doe,” the lawsuit claims Doe was “denied equal protection under the law as well as the most fundamental guarantees of due process,” when MSU suspended him for two years without giving him a hearing or the opportunity to cross-examine the female student who accused him of sexual assault.
Doe seeks to prove that MSU denied him his rights in order to placate the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which threatened to withhold funding from the university due to its handling of sexual assault cases, and in order to defuse criticism over “a widely publicized report alleging extraordinarily high levels of unredressed sexual assaults against female undergraduates at Michigan State.” The suit also says MSU denied Doe his rights in part to due to criticism of the university’s employment of Dr. Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics physician accused of molesting 250 female children.
Doe filed suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan, which is in the Sixth Circuit. A 2018 decision by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit stated that if a student is accused of misconduct, the university must hold a hearing before taking disciplinary action. If the university’s decision is based on the credibility of the accuser or witnesses, the defendant must also be allowed to cross-examine the witnesses and the accuser. “Not only does cross-examination allow the accused to identify inconsistencies in the other side’s story, but it also gives the fact-finder an opportunity to assess a witness’ demeanor and determine who can be trusted,” the court said.
Andrew Miltenberg, the lawyer representing Doe who specializes in Title IX cases, said that they are not seeking money, “but to vacate and expunge disciplinary records for anyone that was put on probation, expelled, or any other type of suspension at Michigan State under the same policy of not being able to question the accuser.” Miltenberg suggested there could potentially be 200 affected students who might benefit from Doe’s case.
The class-action aspect of this case differentiates it from similar cases. Miltenberg says that no one has seen a class action for cases like this because they are generally reserved for consumer issues. “It’s not so easy to do a class action because traditionally consumer issues lend themselves to a class action, like breast implant litigation and tobacco litigation.” He said if this case is successful, it could open the door for other students in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee to sue, as those states are in the jurisdiction of the Sixth Circuit.
“Practically any university in those four states would be subject to the Doe v. Baumruling. If their policy didn’t allow for a live hearing and the ability to confront a witness, you could go to any school and raise this same issue,” Miltenberg says. “The hope is that other circuits take note of this and say ‘Hey this makes sense, this is right.’ I think in that case, it would spread to those other jurisdictions.”
Miltenberg explained that the next step in the case is for MSU to respond to Doe’s lawsuit, which it has 14 days to do. There is a court conference in September to get the case certified as a class action—although Miltenberg says ideally it would get certified sooner.
“What I hope, more than money or financial damages, is that we stop any erosion of due process,” Miltenberg says. “Because it is a very slippery slope.”
The Detroit Free Pressreports that Miltenberg and his team are looking into cases dating back to 2011, “when the then-Obama administration sent a ‘Dear Colleague’ letter to universities upping the pressure to run sex assault investigations and spelling out what needed to be done.”
As Robby Soave notes, the letter “lowered the burden of proof to a ‘preponderance of the evidence’ standard, which meant that accused students could be found responsible for sexual misconduct if administrators were only 51 percent convinced of the charges,” and “it discouraged allowing the accused and accuser to cross-examine each other.”
In 2017 Education Secretary Betsy DeVos withdrew the “Dear Colleague” letter policy saying that “these documents have led to the deprivation of rights for many students—both accused students denied fair process and victims denied an adequate resolution of their complaints.”
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An Arizona cop acquitted of murder in 2017 for killing a man crawling on his knees, begging for his life, in a hotel hallway, was temporarily rehired by the city he worked for so that he could claim a disability pension and file for a medical retirement that will pay him more than $2,500 a month for the rest of his life.
Former Mesa Police Officer Philip Mitchell Brailsford drew national attention and outrage in December 2017 when a jury found him not guilty of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Daniel Shaver. Brailsford shot Shaver in a confrontation in a hotel hallway in 2016 after police were called there by somebody who had seen Shaver holding a gun in his room.
The gun turned out to be a pellet gun, but police apparently didn’t know that. During the response, police ordered Shaver, who was unarmed, out into the hallway on his knees and ordered him to crawl in their direction while keeping his hands up, and they continued to bark confusing orders at him. As Shaver, clearly terrified, attempted to comply, at one point he gestured behind himself, possibly to pull up his pants, and Brailsford immediately opened fire, killing him.
The shooting was captured on police body camera footage, but it wasn’t released to the public until after the jury acquitted Brailsford. (You can watch the footage here.)
A jury might have decided not to convict Brailsford, but the Mesa Police Department fired him after the shooting for violations of department policy. That turned out not to be the end of Brailsford’s career in Mesa. ABC15 in Arizona reports that Brailsford appealed his termination and arranged for a special deal with the city to be rehired temporarily so that he could apply for a disability pension and retire for medical reasons.
Here’s the kicker: The justification for Brailsford’s medical disability and retirement is a claim that he has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from shooting and killing Shaver and the resulting prosecution, one of Brailsford’s lawyers told ABC15. This medical condition qualifies him for a monthly pension check of $2,569.21 for the rest of his life, which the taxpayers of Mesa are on the hook for. Brailsford is currently 28 years old. Furthermore, the City of Mesa agreed to spend up to $3 million to help Brailsford defend himself and pay lawsuit settlements.
The city has also agreed to give Brailsford a “neutral recommendation” for future employment references. Thank heavens for Google searches, right?
Read more about the shooting here. I predicted back in 2017 that Brailsford would try to get his job back. But I neglected to consider that he’d use the shooting to arrange for medical retirement.
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During a hearing that observers and participants called “historic,” a House subcommittee yesterday considered how to resolve the conflict between federal marijuana prohibition and state laws that allow medical or recreational use of the drug. Although there was broad agreement about the need for reform, the hearing before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security highlighted differences over strategy and rhetoric.
“Marijuana decriminalization may be one of the very few issues upon which bipartisan agreement can still be reached in this session,” said Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.). “It ought to be crystal clear to everyone that our laws have not accomplished their goals.”
But Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a co-sponsor of the reform bill known as the Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States (STATES) Act, questioned the wisdom of tying federal marijuana reform to the broader issue of “racial justice,” as reflected in the title of the hearing (“Marijuana Laws in America: Racial Justice and the Need for Reform”), especially if it involves fiscal provisions aimed at compensating for the racially disproportionate impact of the war on weed. The Marijuana Justice Act that Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) introduced in 2017, for instance, includes financial penalties for states that disproportionately arrest members of minority groups for marijuana offenses and a “Community Reinvestment Fund” that would spend $500 million a year.
“My deep concern is that concerns over how far to go on some of the restorative elements in our policy could divide our movement,” Gaetz said. “If we further divide out the movement, then I fear that we’ll continue to fall victim to that which has plagued other Congresses, where we don’t get anything done.”
One of the witnesses, Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, argued that “the restorative elements” are essential. “We need to reinvest in those individuals and those communities that have been disproportionately impacted,” Mosby told the committee. “The STATES Act does not do that, and that’s one of the reasons why I’m opposed to it.”
While the roots of pot prohibition were indisputably racist and the burdens of that policy clearly fall more heavily on people with dark skin, I tend to agree that portraying marijuana reform as a “racial justice” issue, while it may appeal to left-leaning members of Congress, will tend to alienate potential Republican allies. Playing up the federalism angle, as the STATES Act conspicuously does, is more likely to attract the Republican support that Democrats will need to get legislation approved by both houses of Congress.
Another omission from the STATES Act is more troubling: It does not actually repeal the federal ban on marijuana. Instead of removing marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act—a category that is supposedly reserved for drugs with high abuse potential and no recognized medical applications that cannot be used safely even under a doctor’s supervision—the bill says the CSA’s marijuana provisions “shall not apply to any person acting in compliance with State law relating to the manufacture, production, possession, distribution, dispensation, administration, or delivery of marihuana.”
Keeping marijuana in Schedule I while allowing exceptions for state-legal conduct leaves unresolved major problems created by the federal ban, including barriers to medical research and the highly burdensome tax provision that requires state-licensed cannabis suppliers to count business expenses as part of their income. It also might not fully address the reluctance of banks to serve businesses that sell a Schedule I drug.
“I’ve been working on this issue for 40 years, and it’s just crazy that we don’t just get it all done,” said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.). “I appreciate Mr. Gaetz’s work on the issue—and I understand incremental[ism]—but after 40 years, it’s time to just zap straight up, get it all done, Schedule I gone.”
Disagreements aside, the bipartisan consensus about the failure of prohibition was striking. “I’ve long believed that the criminalization of marijuana has been a mistake, and the racially disparate enforcement of marijuana laws has only compounded this mistake,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) “Applying criminal penalties with their attendant collateral consequences for marijuana offenses is unjust and harmful to our society. The use of marijuana should be viewed instead as an issue of personal choice and public health.”
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President Donald Trump called together cabinet members on Monday to help him cheerlead his administration’s record on environmental issues. During his rambling remarks in the White House East Room about his administration’s “environmental leadership,” the president asserted, “We’re working hard, maybe harder than all previous administrations, maybe almost all of them.”
The president’s claims received considerable pushback from environmental activists and academics. Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune declared in astatement, “No amount of speeches, lies, or stunts will ever change the fact that Donald Trump has the worst record on the environment and climate of any president in American history.” David G. Victor, the director of theLaboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of California, San Diego, described the president’s speech to theNew York Times as “a true ‘1984’ moment,” a reference to George Orwell’s classic novel of totalitarian dystopiaNineteen-Eighty Four, which observed, “If all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.”
Given the president’s penchant for “truthful hyperbole,” it’s worth taking a look at a few of the claims made during his environmental show-and-tell to see if they were as bad as those “rectified” by Orwell’sMinistry of Truth.
“Since 2000, our nation’s energy-related carbon emissions have declined more than any other country on Earth,” Trump said. This is a rather odd example of the president’s “environmental leadership” since he remainshighly skeptical that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are causing significant climate change.
The New York Times accurately characterized this claim as “boast[ing] that carbon dioxide emissions in the United States have gone down over the past decade, ‘more than any other country on earth.'” Actually, the president’s baseline was the year 2000, not the past decade. The Times goes on to report that “while it is true that carbon emissions have declined by over 10 percent in that time, over a dozen other countries—including most of the European Union—have seen declines of more than twice that.”
Let’s untangle these claims and counterclaims a bit. In absolute terms, the president is right. While noting a 3.1 percent uptick in emissions in 2018, the International Energy Agency’s 2018 report observes, that “emissions in the United States remain around their 1990 levels, 14 percent and 800 megatons of carbon dioxide below their peak in 2000. This is the largest absolute decline among all countries since 2000.”
But what is going on with the percentage reductions in emissions between countries on which the Times chooses to focus? The Energy Information Administration (EIA)reports that by 2017 (latest figures), energy-related U.S. carbon dioxide emissions had declined 12.4 percent since 2000. The president could have “boasted” a greater overall 14.2 percent reduction if he had instead chosen 2005 as his baseline. In January 2019, the EIA reported that U.S. carbon dioxide emissionsbumped up during 2018, making the overall decline since 2005 about 13 percent. The agency projects that emissions will fall slightly during 2019 and 2020.
So, in percentage terms, are U.S. reductions larger than those of any other country on earth? Not according to data compiled the European Commission’sEmissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research(EDGAR). For example, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels (similar to the notion of “energy-related”) from the 28 countries of the European Union (EU-28) have fallen by 14 percent since 2000. Using 2005 as the baseline, EU-28 emissions have declined by about 16.5 percent. The EDGAR database also reports that U.S. emissions have declined from 2000 and 2005 by 14.1 and 14.5 percent respectively. In other words, the EU-28 countries have done slightly better than the U.S. at cutting carbon dioxide emissions between 2005 and 2017.
What about the Times‘ report that a dozen countries have seen declines of more than twice those in the U.S.? Using 2005 as the baseline, a spot check of the EDGAR database finds that the United Kingdom’s carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 32.5 percent; Spain’s by 23.5 percent; Italy’s by 27.6 percent, Denmark’s by 34.8 percent, and France’s by 17.2 percent.
So the president’s claim that “every single one of the signatories to the Paris Climate Accord lags behind America in overall emissions reductions” is, if one is counting absolute emissions reductions, true, but misleading. But since the U.K. and France emit in total about 400 and 340 megatons of carbon dioxide respectively, it would be impossible for those countries to match the absolute U.S. reduction of 800 megatons of carbon.
Still, it is the case that many Paris Agreement signatories are so far failing to meet the obligations they made in theirnationally determined contributions. It is also worth noting that since 2005, emissions from China surged by 174 percent while those of Japan and Russia rose 3.6 and 1.8 percent respectively.
Let’s parse a couple more of the president’s claims to “environmental leadership.” During his speech, Trump said, “From day one my administration has made it a top priority to ensure that America is among the very cleanest air and cleanest water on the planet.” As evidence, he asserted that the U.S. is “ranked number one in the world for access to clean drinking water” and that air pollution in the form of “particulate matter—is six times lower here than the global average.”
One go-to resource for tracking global environmental trends is the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), created by Yale and Columbia Universities. Based on 2016 data, the EPI does place the United States in the number 1 spot, along with nine other countries. While certainly better than Switzerland—languishing at number 11—being number 1 does not particularly distinguish the U.S. from other top scorers including Canada, Finland, the United Kingdom, and Spain. And as some critics have noted, President Trump did not take office until January 20, 2017.
Interestingly, earlier declarations by the president that the U.S. has the cleanest air provoked critics to cite EPI data showing that our country actually ranks 88th in the world with respect to particulate matter air (PM 2.5, or atmospheric particulate matter with diameters of less than 2.5 micrometers) pollution. That is true as far is it goes, but critics failed to point out that 86 of the countries ranked ahead of the U.S. on this measure of air pollution are ranked as number 1. Among the countries improbably ranking number 1 are Algeria, Cuba, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Morocco, the Philippines, Sudan, and Venezuela.
In any case, World Bank data on PM 2.5 particulates show that the mean global average annual exposure is 45.5 micrograms per cubic meter of air, whereas the comparable U.S. figure is 7 micrograms per cubic meter. In other words, the president is right that average U.S. exposure is six times lower here than the global average.
At the White House event, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler cited some heartening data concerning long term air pollution trends in the U.S.
Wheeler pointed out that “from 1970 to 2018, the combined emissions of the six criteria air pollutants dropped by 74 percent, while the U.S. economy grew by 275 percent.
Note an uptick in some pollutants during the last year or so.
In his remarks, the president claimed that the Green New Deal (GND) proposal that is being co-sponsored by 94 Democratic members of the House of Representatives and 12 Democratic senators would cost $100 trillion to implement. The president most likely derived this figure by rounding up the results of a spitball study done by the American Action Forum back in February. It is worth noting that the Forum found that the vast majority of costs associated with the Green New Deal have nothing to do with fixing the climate but instead arise from enacting vast new progressive social and economic programs, including a jobs guarantee and universal health care.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) recently estimated her Green New Deal proposal would only cost $10 trillion to implement by 2030. (My own spitball estimate is that achieving the GND’s deep decarbonization goals—no progressive social policy overlays—would cost between $7 and $13 trillion by 2030.)
The Times is likely right that the event was mostly motivated by the politics of the 2020 presidential campaign. According to the most recent Gallup poll, 59 percent of Americans think Trump is doing a poor job of protecting the nation’s environment.
Ultimately, the East Room exercise consisted of citing some cobbled together good news statistics for which the president questionably claimed the credit. They are not so much wrong, as contextless.
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San Francisco’s homelessness problem has gone from bad to worse.
Last Friday, the city published an updated report on its homeless population, finding that the number of people without permanent housing had risen to 9,784. That’s a 30 percent increase from the count taken in 2017, and nearly double the 17 percent increase the city first reported in May.
The difference can be chalked up to dueling federal and city definitions of who counts as homeless.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) definition of homelessness includes only those people living on the streets, in vehicles, or in temporary shelters. San Francisco has traditionally used a more expansive categorization that also counts people without a permanent address who are in jail, in the hospital, or in rehabilitation facilities.
The numbers released by the city in May relied on HUD’s definition and found that the city’s homeless population had risen from 6,858 to 8,011 people (a 17 percent increase). The data released last Friday—which relies on the city’s own definition of homelessness—showed a jump from 7,499 to 9,784, adding up to that 30 percent increase.
The city says it initially reported the HUD numbers to allow for a more apples-to-apples comparison between San Francisco and other cities.
“We’re looking at the HUD numbers because it helps us work in collaboration with other places like Los Angeles or our neighboring counties,” city spokesperson Jeff Cretan told the Los Angeles Times.
Homeless advocates were less than impressed with this explanation.
Regardless of which definition of homelessness is used, the numbers are grim and speak to a worsening problem compounded by the city’s dire housing affordability crisis.
The number of homeless people is derived from the city’s point-in-time survey, which sees teams of volunteers canvass the city to literally count those sleeping on streets and in shelters. These volunteers also conduct surveys of these people, providing a window into who is experiencing homelessness and how they ended up in that situation.
This count found that half the city’s homeless population, some 5,180 people, were unsheltered, 2,381 were in emergency shelters or transitional housing, and another 1,773 were in jails, hospitals, or rehab facilities.
Some 63 percent of survey respondents said that an inability to afford rent was an obstacle for finding permanent housing, compared to 56 percent of respondents in 2017 and 48 percent of respondents in 2015. Another 37 percent reported the lack of a job or income. Nineteen percent reported a lack of money for moving expenses as an obstacle for finding permanent housing.
When asked what was the primary event that led to someone becoming homeless, 26 percent reported the loss of a job. Another 18 percent listed a drug or alcohol problem as the primary factor. Thirteen percent said an eviction led them to become homeless, while another 12 percent said an argument with family or roommates who asked them to leave was the cause. Only 5 percent blamed a straight rent increase for pushing them into homelessness.
The different instigators of homelessness suggest there’s no silver bullet for ending the problem.
Allowing more housing construction in the city—which can only be made possible by stripping away San Francisco’s many, many restrictions on residential development—would bring housing costs down, and help those who listed high rent as an obstacle.
More importantly, lifting restrictions on development would make it easier for middle-class and working poor San Franciscans to find housing on the private market without government subsidies. That would free up more public dollars to help those who are truly destitute.
For instance, nearly a third of the 645 affordable housing units constructed in San Francisco in 2018 were targeted at people making up to 120 percent of area median income, or $99,500. Another 401 of those units were reserved for people making no more than 80 percent of area median income, or $66,300, which technically counts as low-income in the city.
Some $77 million of the city’s last $310 million affordable housing bond, passed in 2015, was spent subsidizing middle-income housing. Similarly, a new $600 million affordable housing bond that will go before voters in November would, if passed, spend much of its money subsidizing new units for people earning up to $68,000 a year.
In a functioning housing market, which San Francisco certainly doesn’t have, these folks would be able to rely on private providers for their housing needs. What city taxpayers currently spend subsidizing them could then be redirected to helping the homeless, for whom housing affordability is only one problem among many.
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Today’s opinion in Elster v. City of Seattle upholds the “Democracy Voucher Program,” under which a new property tax assessment (at a rate of two cents per $1000 of assessed value) “provides vouchers to registered municipal voters and qualifying residents,” which they “can give … to qualified municipal candidates, who then may redeem them for campaign purposes.” (“To be eligible to receive vouchers from municipal residents, municipal candidates must obtain a required number of signatures and contributions from qualified municipal residents.”)
The Court rejected a Janus compelled speech/funding argument, holding that the government may impose a fee that it then distributes in a viewpoint-neutral way to support private speech. I think that’s quite right, both under Board of Regents v. Southworth (2000), which upheld a public university’s system for funding student groups out of mandatory student fees, and by analogy to lots of other programs for government funding of private speech out of tax funds: As the court points out, for instance, the government prints at taxpayer expense ballot pamphlets with statements by ballot measure supporters and opponents.
Indeed, government programs that let students spend tax money for tuition at private schools (whether K-12 schools or colleges, as with the GI Bill and similar programs) are very similar: There too tax funds are used to support private speech that some taxpayers may disapprove of. But there’s no constitutional problem with that, and likewise there’s no problem with this.
A Florida sheriff’s deputy was arrested Wednesday for planting drugs and falsely arresting at least 10 people, including one case where Reason obtained body camera footage showing him lying about the results of roadside field test.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) announced yesterday that, following a months-long investigation, former Jackson County sheriff’s deputy Zach Wester had been arrested and charged with 52 felony crimes, including racketeering, false imprisonment, fabricating evidence, and drug possession.
In a stunning 30-page affidavit, the FDLE laid out how Wester kept unmarked bags of marijuana and methamphetamines in the trunk of his patrol car, manipulated his body cam footage, planted drugs in people’s cars, and falsified arrest reports to railroad innocent people under the color of law. His victims, many of whom had prior records or were working to stay sober, had their lives upended. One man lost custody of his daughter.
“There is no question that Wester’s crimes were deliberate and that his actions put innocent people in jail,” Chris Williams, the FDLE’s assistant special agent in charge, said in a press release.
The Jackson County sheriff suspended Wester last August; it fired him after body camera footage, first reported by the Tallahassee Democrat, appeared to show him planting a baggie of methamphetamines in the car of Teresa Odom. After Wester’s credibility was destroyed, the local state attorney’s office dismissed more than 100 criminal cases where he was the primary or sole officer, and a judge vacated eight more criminal convictions.
Reason then filed a public records request for body camera video from those dismissed cases. We uncovered footage of Wester falsely arresting another person, Florida resident Steve Vann.
Wester pulled over Vann on April 17, 2018, for allegedly crossing over the center line. Although the body camera footage mysteriously starts in the middle of the traffic stop, it shows Wester rummaging through Vann’s car before appearing to find a small plastic bag.
“Honesty is going to go a long way with me,” Wester tells Vann, holding up the baggie. “Have you ever seen this before?”
“No, no what is that?” Vann says. “Where’d you get that?”
“The center console,” Wester says as he walks back to his patrol car to perform a roadside test of the baggie for methamphetamines.
“There ain’t no way, man,” a distraught Vann says. “Oh my God, you gotta be fucking kidding me.”
The field test that Wester used is supposed to turn bright blue almost immediately to indicate a positive result for methamphetamines or MDMA, but it instead turned a muddled red, despite Wester continuing to shake it for several moments.
Nevertheless, Vann can be heard saying “blue” on the video as he stares at it. He then walks back to inform Vann, who by then is in tears, that the test came back presumptive positive for methamphetamine.
Vann was subsequently charged with possession of methamphetamines and paraphernalia, but state prosecutors later dropped those charges as part of a review of more than 250 cases that Wester was involved with.
Wester, on the other hand, now faces charges of false imprisonment, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of methamphetamine, fabricating evidence, perjury, and official misconduct.
Things turned out worse for some of Wester’s other victims, such as Benjamin Bowling. In October 2017, Bowling and a woman were driving to a store to buy diapers when Wester pulled them over for allegedly having inoperable tag lights and swerving over the center line. Wester said he smelled marijuana, and the woman gave him permission to search the car.
As in other cases, Wester reported that he discovered three small baggies that tested positive for methamphetamines. Although he reported that his body camera was active during the stop, investigators found no footage of it. The FDLE describes what happened next:
At the time, the Department of Children and Families had awarded Bowling custody of his daughter, and he consistently submitted to drug testing. Bowling was adamant he had been clean since was released from prison for a DUI conviction. Furthermore, Bowling voluntarily took a drug test after he was arrested and it was negative. Bowling contacted the Sheriff’s Office and requested that the drugs were tested for DNA and fingerprints. Bowling also requested the body camera video but never received it. Bowling lost custody of his daughter because of the arrest.
After Wester was suspended, internal affairs investigators searched Wester’s patrol car and found two plastic containers hidden in his black tactical gloves. One contained an unused test kit with methamphetamines already in it. The other contained a small plastic baggie that also tested positive for meth. Investigators also found unlabeled evidence bags with marijuana and meth in the trunk, as well as dozens of pieces of drug paraphernalia.
Before joining the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office in 2016, Wester was fired from his previous job at the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office for inappropriate relations with women, the Tallahassee Democratrevealed.
In addition to criminal charges, there are also several federal civil rights lawsuits pending against Wester and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.
The prosecutor who first flagged some of Wester’s suspicious cases has since quit the state attorney’s office and filed a whistleblower retaliation complaint against her former employer, saying she was “ostracized and ignored” after bringing Wester’s misconduct to light.
One question that has yet to be answered is why Wester framed people.
“You’re never certain of the ways of the heart of man,” State Attorney William Eddins of the 1st Judicial Circuit said in a news conference Wednesday. “We have some ideas and some theories, and we’ve talked about that a lot. But I do not feel that it would be appropriate to go into it in any detail at this time.”
The FDLE’s investigation into Wester is still ongoing.
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The field test that Wester used is supposed to turn bright blue almost immediately to indicate a positive result for methamphetamines or MDMA, but it instead turned a muddled red, despite Wester continuing to shake it for several moments.