Tag: hit&run

Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez Join Push for Over-the-Counter Birth Control

Over-the-counter pill proposals gain ground. It’s a rare policy that brings together the likes of staunch conservatives like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and socialist stars like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—especially when the policy is undeniably libertarian. But anything goes in 2019, and for a change it’s working out in a way that favors freedom.

Cruz and Ocasio-Cortez want to make birth control pills available over-the-counter (OTC)—i.e., without requiring users to get annual prescriptions from a doctor or pharmacy.

Ocasio-Cortez tweeted last Friday: “Psst! Birth control should be over-the-counter, pass it on.” (She followed up with “It should be free, too”—but, hey, baby steps…)

I was glad to see some folks respond to her tweet with links to a Reason piece I wrote in January, which details how it used to be Republicans who opposed deregulating the pill and Democrats who supported it recently it’s been “liberals, not conservatives, who are holding the pill hostage for political gain.”

In April, Sens. Joni Ernst (R–Iowa) and Cory Gardner (R–Colo.) introduced the “Allowing Greater Access to Safe and Effective Contraception Act,” an attempt to help speed up the over-the-counter approval process for hormonal contraceptives (a process that must originate in an application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration).

Ocasio-Cortez is among the few congressional Democrats this decade—maybe the only one—to come out in support of OTC birth control.

Yesterday, Cruz responded to her tweet, saying “I agree. Perhaps, in addition to the legislation we are already working on together to ban Members of Congress from becoming lobbyists, we can team up here as well. A simple, clean bill making birth control available over the counter. Interested?”

FREE MINDS

The Arizona Daily Star deleted an op-ed critical of county prosecutors after one of them complained. The piece, from public defender Joel Feinman, chastised state authorities for failing to follow through on criminal justice system reforms, citing pressure from state prosecutors as a major impediment.

Feinman’s piece has been preserved here by the Phoenix New Times, which also reports:

According to Feinman, Polk called him, then the Daily Star’s opinion editor Sarah Gassen to complain about the piece. Polk allegedly said that Feinman had not been truthful about her efforts to lobby against one of the bills, SB 1334, and demanded he retract the piece.

When Feinman refused, the county attorney called the Daily Star to complain—and the Daily Star deleted the entire op-ed from its website, without issuing a correction or calling Feinman’s sources, who confirmed to Phoenix New Times that Polk had indeed lobbied against the bill. Though Polk eventually signed onto the sentencing reform bill as neutral, emails shared with New Times show Polk had explicitly asked lawmakers to oppose the bill.

“The Daily Star immediately chose to believe a very powerful person who didn’t like a story because it cast them in a negative light,” Feinman told New Times.

More here.

FREE MARKETS

Socialists are using libertarian framing to pitch bigger government.

Over at The Atlantic, Yascha Mounk asks some important questions about what kind of world self-described U.S. socialists want. Mounk writes that “the great differences among the movements and countries that have historically called themselves” make him “skeptical about leftists who think that embracing this label is enough to explain what kind of future they want. Some members of the Democratic Socialists of America, for example, simply want to emulate the rich democracies that provide their citizens with a generous welfare state. But others seek to ‘abolish capitalism’ or sing the praises of the Venezuelan dictatorship.”

QUICK HITS

  • Juul under attack: “In a little noticed letter, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) demanded extensive internal records from the vaping company,” reports The Daily Beast.
  • Jordan Peterson is reportedly launching a social media site:

  • And some wisdom on that front from Reason‘s editor-in-chief, Katherine Mangu-Ward…

…plus a caveat:

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These People Are Risking Prison To Help Philadelphia’s Drug Users

Addiction advocates in Philadelphia are gearing up for a fight with federal law enforcement over a so-called supervised injection site, where drug use can take place in the presence of medical professionals.

Fatal overdoses from opioids in the United States have increased by about 250 percent since 2007. The problem is particularly acute in a handful of states, including Pennsylvania, which has the nation’s third highest overdose death rate.

In the city of Philadelphia, overdose deaths are concentrated in the neighborhood of Kensington, where a supervised injection site known as Safehouse is slated to open.

At Safehouse, drug users will be invited to drop in and inject themselves with drugs like heroin. If they overdose, supervising staff will administer the overdose reversal drug Naloxone, often known by the brand name Narcan. The facility will also provide clean needles and a sanitary environment.

But Safehouse is technically in violation of the so-called “crack house” statute, which was part of the federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. In early 2019, the DOJ preemptively sued Safe House and its executive director, Jeanette Bowles, a move that will make it easier to begin making arrests if the project moves forward.

“We don’t supply anybody with drugs, we don’t touch drugs, [and] none of our personnel do,” says former Pennsylvania Governor and former Mayor of Philadelphia Ed Rendell. “If you’re an addict and you want to use the safe house, you have to bring whatever drug it is you’re using to the site.”

Rendell sits on the board of the nonprofit that’s behind Safehouse, and he’s been instrumental in building support for the project.

“The senators and congressmen who developed the crack house statute never in a million years thought about volunteer medical personnel standing by while someone injecting themselves ready to… reverse the effects of the overdose,” says Rendell. “Do you think they thought for a minute that that activity should be criminal?”

Safehouse would be the first supervised injection site in the U.S. operating out in the open. In 2014, a social service agency opened a covert facility in an undisclosed urban neighborhood in the U.S.

According to a 2017 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, over two years, 2,574 injections were performed at the site, 90 percent of which would have otherwise occurred in a “public restroom, street, park, or parking lot,” according to participants. Two overdoses were treated immediately with Narcan.

There are over 120 supervised injection sites across the globe. Safehouse is modeled after Insite, a supervised injection site in Vancouver Canada.

“We’re asking the federal government to use their prosecutorial discretion and not make an arrest for violation of a statute that never meant to cover this type of activity,” Rendell told Reason. “We’ll go ahead with it and maybe…[we’ll] wind up in federal prison.”

It’s not the first time Rendell has squared off with authorities for policies intended to help addicts. In 1992, when he was mayor of Philly, a group of activists opened a needle exchange called Prevention Point to combat the AIDs epidemic.

When Rendell signed an order allowing it to proceed, he received a call from the state health commissioner, who said he would be arresting anyone involved with the program.

“I said ‘Mr. Secretary, come to 212 City Hall, that’s my office, and arrest me first because I’m the one who sent those people out and told them they would be left alone,'” says Rendell.

Rendell issued an executive order directing the city attorneys not to prosecute the activists involved in Prevention Point.

“Prevention point went on to be a great success, accepted universally, and, in Philadelphia, our model was used in 30 other American cities,” he says.

Rendell sees Safe House as a continuation of that mission.

“I don’t think the government should be wasting resources arresting doctors and nurses who are volunteering their time. I don’t think they should do that,” says Rendell. “And all we want to do is save some young people from dying needlessly. That’s all we want to do.”

Produced, edited, and narrated by Mark McDaniel.

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Did Craig Hicks Murder His Neighbors Because They Were Muslims? Should It Matter Legally?

Yesterday Craig Hicks pleaded guilty in state court to murdering three of his neighbors, all Muslim college students, at an apartment complex in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, four years ago. Hicks says he shot his victims—19-year-old Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha; her 21-year-old sister, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha; and Yusor’s 23-year-old husband, Deah Shaddy Barakat—because of a parking dispute. Their families believe he shot the students because he hates Muslims. The dispute illustrates the fuzziness of hate crime laws and the degree to which their enforcement hinges on speech that would otherwise be constitutionally protected.

North Carolina has several statutes aimed at crimes motivated by bigotry, but none of them applies to murder cases. That hardly seems to matter, since Hicks received three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. If he had been convicted of federal hate crimes, he might have received the death penalty. (Or he might not have.) But the argument about how to describe his crimes seems to be about the message his prosecution sends rather than the penalty he receives.

During a hearing last week, Hicks’ lawyers tried to block expert testimony about “implicit bias.” The New York Times reports that Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry “responded that Mr. Hicks was trying to avoid punishment for what she repeatedly called his ‘white supremacist’ worldview.” That’s a telling way of putting it, since people’s opinions, no matter how ugly, are not supposed to be punishable by law in the United States.

If Hicks had been charged with federal hate crimes, prosecutors would have had to prove that he shot his victims “because of” their religion. According to a federal appeals court ruling that the Justice Department cited in explaining its decision not to take on the case, that would have required showing that Hicks would not have murdered his neighbors “but for” their religion, which would have been hard to do.

Prior to his crimes, Hicks was an outspoken atheist and critic of organized religion, a subject he discussed on social media. But the evidence of a specific anti-Muslim bias is less clear. “I’ve defended Muslims,” he told the Times in a jailhouse interview. “I know Muslims. I take pity on them, the way society treats them like they are lesser people.” He denied even knowing that his neighbors were Muslims, although the women wore headscarves and he contradicted himself by criticizing them for not properly observing Ramadan.

At the same time, Hicks was known to confront and quarrel with people of various backgrounds, especially over parking. This would hardly be the first case of murderous violence inspired by trivial issues.

Ripley Rand, then the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina, met with the victims’ relatives in 2015 but declined to prosecute Hicks. He told the Times (in the newspaper’s paraphrase) that “the federal government was meant to intervene if local authorities could not or would not do their jobs,” which “did not seem to be the case” here, since Hicks “seemed destined to spend the rest of his life in prison.”

That is demonstrably not the Justice Department’s general policy, since defendants such as Charleston mass murderer Dylann Roof, Charlottesville killer James Fields, and Pittsburgh shooter Robert Bowers have been prosecuted for federal hate crimes even though state courts were clearly willing and able to handle the cases. Given such precedents, it is not hard to understand the frustration expressed by Mohammad Abu-Salha, father of the women Hicks killed.

“If a Muslim man knocked on a door and executed a Christian family in their home with no provocation, that would be called terrorism,” Abu-Salha told the Times. “But we Muslims are soft targets.”

Contrary to the implication, the crucial difference in this case seems to be the absence of evidence documenting the defendant’s bigotry. Roof published a racist manifesto. Fields used “multiple social media accounts” to “express his beliefs regarding race, national origin, religion and other topics.” Bowers posted anti-Semitic comments and said things “evincing an animus towards people of the Jewish faith.” If Hicks had left a similar trail of hateful statements, it seems likely that the Justice Department would have intervened, notwithstanding North Carolina’s undoubted willingness to prosecute and punish him.

The decision to charge someone with federal hate crimes exposes him to dual prosecutions for the same conduct, so he can be tried again if he is initially acquitted (or even if he is convicted). Federal prosecution also may increase the penalty he faces, changing a life sentence to execution or a short prison term to a long one. When the Justice Department makes that decision based on the views people have expressed, it is effectively targeting defendants for extra jeopardy and extra punishment because of their opinions. Instead of questioning such belief-based inequality, Americans have learned to demand it.

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No Product Liability for Risk Assessment Tool Used in Deciding Whether to Release Arrestees Before Trial

From Judge Joseph Rodriguez, writing in Rodgers v. Laura & John Arnold Found. (D.N.J. June 11, 2019):

New Jersey’s Criminal Justice Reform Act … moved pretrial release decisions away from a resource-based model heavily reliant on monetary bail to a risk-based model. Consistent with [a] constitutional amendment [passed by the voters], the statute expressly requires courts, when making pretrial release decisions, to impose pretrial conditions that will reasonably assure: (1) the defendant’s appearance in court when required, (2) the protection of the safety of any person or community, and (3) that the defendant will not obstruct or attempt to obstruct the criminal justice process. The CJRA provides a hierarchy of pretrial release conditions and requires courts to utilize the least restrictive options necessary to achieve the three goals noted above. The major difference between the new system and the old system is that judges must first consider the use of non-monetary pretrial release conditions, which has resulted in a significant reduction in the use of monetary bail.

In order to assess risk, the CJRA utilizes a Public Safety Assessment (“PSA”). In particular, the State adopted a PSA developed by Defendant the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The PSA is a data-based method that helps courts assess the risk that the criminal defendant will fail to appear for future court appearances or commit additional crimes and/or violent crimes if released pending trial. After scores are assessed, a decision-making framework proposes pretrial conditions to manage the risk. Although the trial judge must consider the PSA scores and pretrial conditions recommendations, the court makes the ultimate decision on conditions of release or detention after considering a variety of factors besides the PSA.

The Complaint alleges that in the first six months of 2017, New Jersey courts granted 3,307 motions for pretrial detention and approximately 18,000 individuals were released on non-monetary conditions…. Plaintiff claims that on April 5, 2017, Jules Black was arrested by the New Jersey State Police and charged for being a felon in possession of a firearm. Plaintiff alleges that Black was released on non-monetary conditions the following day because he had a low PSA score. Three days later, Black allegedly murdered Christian Rodgers. At the time of his death, Rodgers was 26 years old and is survived by his mother, Plaintiff June Rodgers, who brings this lawsuit both individually and on behalf of her son….

The New Jersey Products Liability Act (PLA) requires plaintiffs suing under the PLA to prove “by a preponderance of the evidence that the product causing the harm was not reasonably fit, suitable or safe for its intended purpose because it[:]

“a. deviated from the design specifications, formulae, or performance standards of the manufacturer or from otherwise identical units manufactured to the same manufacturing specifications or formulae, or

“b. failed to contain adequate warnings or instructions, or

“c. was designed in a defective manner.”

The Restatement (Third) of Torts includes in the definition of product non-tangible items such as “other items”:

“For purposes of this Restatement: (a) A product is tangible personal property distributed commercially for use or consumption. Other items, such as real property and electricity, are products when the context of their distribution and use is sufficiently analogous to the distribution and use of tangible personal property that it is appropriate to apply the rules stated in this Restatement. (b) Services, even when provided commercially, are not products. (c) Human blood and human tissue, even when provided commercially, are not subject to the rules of this Restatement.”

The Court finds that the PSA is not a product as defined by the PLA. It is neither a tangible product or a non-tangible “other item” as contemplated by section 19 of the Restatement of Torts and it is not distributed commercially. The Court has considered Plaintiff’s argument that the PSA, as a matter of policy, should be considered a product analogous to approaches of the First and Fifth United States Court of Appeals, which are “moving toward liability of technological systems.” Plaintiff’s arguments are misplaced, however. Plaintiff cites Lone Star Nat. Bank, N.A. v. Heartland Payment Systems, Inc., 729 F.3d 421 (5th Cir. 2013) (whether economic loss doctrine barred negligence claims against a bank that had its security software breached by computer hackers), and Patco Constr. Co. v. People’s United Bank, 684 F.3d 197 (1st Cir. 2012) (whether a bank’s security procedure was commercially reasonable under the UCC), neither of which are products liability cases.

Rather, the PSA constitutes information, guidance, ideas, and recommendations as to how to consider the risk a given criminal defendant presents. The PSA essentially is a nine-factor rubric that uses “information gathered from [an eligible defendant’s] electronic court records” to “measure the risk [he or she] will fail to appear in court and the risk he or she will engage in new criminal activity while on release,” in an effort to provide New Jersey judges with objective and relevant information that they can use as one factor—among several—in making decisions about pretrial-release conditions. As such, the PSA does not “thwart” the role of judges and prosecutors, as Plaintiff contends.

Under the First Amendment, information and guidance such as that reflected in the PSA are not subject to tort liability because they are properly treated as speech, rather than product. See Restatement (Third) of Torts § 19 cmt. d (noting that courts “express[ ] concern that imposing strict liability for the dissemination of … information would significantly impinge on free speech”). Accordingly, Plaintiff’s claims of products liability fail at the outset.

While the Court need go no further, Plaintiff also has failed to plausibly allege proximate causation required for products liability claims. Importantly, the discretionary decision of a judge on whether or not to detain an accused individual, in every case, creates an obstacle for finding proximate cause. By New Jersey statute, the judge is required to consider many different pieces of information in addition to the PSA score; the judge then has complete discretion to reject the recommendation to which the PSA contributes. That is, the PSA does not supplant judicial decision making but merely informs a judge’s decision of whether to release or detain a defendant pending trial. This obviates Plaintiff’s argument that the PSA was defective in that it omitted risk indicators of firearm possession and sex-crimes….

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Union Battles Inmates Who Want To Work as Firefighters

Each summer, when wildfires sweep through parts of the state, thousands of inmates from the California Department of Corrections are deployed to work alongside the professional firefighters to battle the blazes. The professionals earn an average of $74,000 annually in the Golden State, while the inmates settle for $3 per day—and that’s not even the worst inequality in the system. When they get out of prison, those same men and women are barred from pursuing careers as a firefighter or emergency medical technician, thanks to a California law that prohibits anyone with a criminal record from working in those professions.

It’s an arrangement the professionals are pushing to maintain. After last year’s devastating wildfires in many parts of the state, California lawmakers took a serious look at lifting the ban on letting formerly incarcerated individuals work as firefighters, but opposition from firefighters unions killed the effort.

“Good for them that they can work to repay their debt to society in this fashion, but that’s not the same thing as a firefighter,” Carroll Willis, communications director for the California Professional Firefighters Association, told a local TV station in Sacramento. “Firefighters are sworn officers. They take an oath and can and should be held to the highest possible standard.”

That’s as callous as it is misleading. In Willis’ view, an inmate can be trusted to fight fires—but the same person, once released from prison, cannot?

Most crimes should not come with a lifetime sentence, but too many of them do. According to the American Bar Association, there are more than 12,000 state licensing laws that limit career choices for the roughly 70 million Americans with a criminal record.

In some cases, those limitations might make sense. California’s inmate firefighter program, for example, is not open to prisoners who have been convicted of arson, sexual assault, kidnapping, or a gang-related offense. That same policy, with some tweaking, could work on the outside. Yet there’s no obvious reason a 19-year-old who had consensual sex with a 17-year-old, say, should be barred from fighting fires, and no reason a former gang member looking for a fresh start shouldn’t have the chance to put his life on the line for people who need saving.

What’s more, being able to use in-demand skills helps former prisoners transition to life as law-abiding citizens, while a blanket employment ban reduces the supply of trained firefighters in a state where wildfires are a serious concern.

That doesn’t help anyone—except, of course, the professional firefighters who can demand inflated wages by keeping labor competition to a minimum.

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Brickbat: Missing in Action

U.S. Army veteran Everett Palmer Jr., 41, died in police custody at the York County, Pennsylvania, jail in April 2018, and his family says they still don’t know what happened. The autopsy lists his cause of death as undetermined, but an initial report says he became agitated because of “methamphetamine toxicity” and hit his head against his cell door. However, his family says his booking report contains no indication he was under the influence and mentions no drug paraphernalia. They says they are also concerned that when his body was returned to them his throat, heart and brain were missing. The coroner says they were retained for further testing.

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Trump’s Tariffs Hurt American Freedom and Prosperity

The air always swirls with popular myths that, when repeated constantly, are taken by some to be indisputably true. One such myth today is that President Donald Trump is unique among presidents in standing up firmly to the Chinese and other foreigners to stop them from harming us economically with their import restrictions, export subsidies, and illegal immigration. According to that theory, the tariffs he uses to counter these foreign practices are to our benefit. As such, we should purportedly welcome them with gratitude.

Trump is indeed unique among modern presidents in his eagerness to use tariffs. But his vaunted “toughness” in using them is nothing for us Americans to applaud: We should instead condemn their use. Trump’s so-called standing up to foreigners is more like stomping on Americans’ freedom and prosperity.

The fundamental reality most people forget is that when foreign governments artificially make their exports to the United States more abundant and less expensive, we’re the winners. We Americans reap the gains. Foreign consumers and taxpayers are the poor souls who predominantly suffer the burden. While some U.S. producers admittedly suffer from this competition, the truth is that when Trump bargains hard to stop other governments from subsidizing their exports, he inflicts more harm on his fellow Americans overall, in the form of higher prices and reduced supplies. If successful, his bargaining may actually help foreign consumers and American taxpayers. Unfortunately, it’s more likely that foreign governments won’t cave and may instead retaliate. Then we’ll all end up with higher tariffs.

Each tariff Trump imposes is a tax on Americans. This is true regardless of why he claims he does it. It’s true when he wants to protect his friends in the steel industry against foreign competition. It’s true when he does it in the name of telling the Chinese government how to rule China or not to steal our intellectual property. It’s true when he uses tariffs to force the Mexican government to stop immigrants from entering Mexico through its southern border—something he fails to do for the United States. And it’s true when he uses tariffs as leverage to get a “better” trade deal with Canada and Mexico or with the Europeans.

Leaving aside for now the fact that this has failed repeatedly as a strategy to force countries into making concessions they weren’t willing to make in the first place, we must face the truth that these tariffs are a penalty Trump forces on those of us who choose to buy imports. This is obvious to anyone who reads through the comments submitted to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on proposed new duties on Americans who import from China. You’ll read heartbreaking stories like this: “We are concerned that this tariff could single handedly reverse over half a century struggling through the journey to support our large family and our many loyal employees.” Or this: “Margins in our sector are already very thin, and the proposed incremental duty would result in us shutting down the business.”

These duties that our self-proclaimed “Tariff Man” president is so proud of will have long-lasting consequences—none of which are good. American natural gas companies selling in China, for instance, have not only seen their market diminish steadily since the beginning of the trade war, but it’s now at risk of disappearing completely if trade negotiations collapse.

Farmers, obviously, have taken a serious hit thanks to multi-front trade wars—a hit that the president attempts to soften with billions of dollars in subsidies paid for through higher taxes on other Americans.

Automakers have operated in a state of uncertainty, not knowing when the next large tax hikes on auto parts or automobiles will materialize. They also live with the uncertainty of whether and when they may be subjected to stricter and counterproductive rules of origin through the new NAFTA.

On the other hand, if you define “standing up” for Americans as imposing a massive tax increase on us, then, yes, the president is indeed standing up for us. According to Bryan Riley at the National Taxpayers Union, the potential 2019 inflation-adjusted tax burden of the Trump tariffs at our current import level is the biggest tax increase Americans have been subjected to since World War II.

Maybe it’s time for the president to take a seat.

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Senators Rand Paul and Ron Wyden Pitch New Limitations on Presidential Emergency Powers

The United States is currently in a state of emergency. Thirty-two of them, actually.

The two most recent ones have received most of the attention. President Donald Trump declared one earlier this year in order to justify building a wall at the southern border, and he declared the other to block Huawei, a Chinese telecom company, from doing business in the United States. But the longest-running national emergency dates back to 1979, declared by President Jimmy Carter in response to the Iranian hostage crisis. The hostages were released in 1981, but the “national emergency” continues.

These days, the National Emergency Act of 1976 mostly serves as a way to bulk up executive power in order to accomplish such goals as banning trade with Sudan—a national emergency declared under President Bill Clinton in 1997 that’s still ongoing—or as a way to get around Congress when it won’t approve billions of dollars in spending. It’s a convenient tool for ticked off executives, in other words, not the last resort for addressing acute national crises.

Congress can respond to presidential emergency declarations by disapproving of them after the fact, which Congress did earlier this year in response to Trump’s border wall emergency. But the president only has to veto those resolutions of disapproval, as Trump did, to keep the emergency in place.

Sens. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) say that should change. Under a bill the two introduced Wednesday, all presidential emergency declarations would expire after 72 hours unless Congress voted to allow them to continue. In the event of a true national emergency, a president would still be empowered to respond quickly, but passage of the Reforming Emergency Powers to Uphold the Balances and Limitations Inherit in the Constitution (REPUBLIC) Act would transfer ultimately authority back to Congress, the senators say.

“Congress fails its responsibilities to the American people and the constitution when it leaves the executive virtually unchecked to unlock and exercise emergency powers in perpetuity,” Paul said in a statement.

In addition to the automatic 72-hour sunset on emergency declarations, the bill would also set an automatic 90 day limit on congressionally approved national emergencies, thus forcing lawmakers to continually renew declarations and allowing older, no-longer-relevant declarations to expire. Paul’s and Wyden’s bill would also establish an expedited process for Congress to approve presidential emergency declarations and would repeal statutory authority empowering a president to unilaterally control communication technology in the event of an emergency without congressional approval.

Importantly, the bill would not affect presidential powers under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which Trump threatened to use recently to unilaterally impose tariffs on Mexican imports. That law is meant to allow presidents to respond to foreign adversaries with economic sanctions—legally, it is unclear whether tariffs could be part of that response—in the event of a national emergency, and the REPUBLIC Act specifically exempts it from congressional oversight.

Still, Paul and Wyden’s proposal would be a step towards reversing the decades-long trend of handing congressional powers over to the executive branch. It’s a welcome signal that at least some members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, are interested in restoring a semblance of balance to the federal government’s distribution of powers.

“Presidents have run roughshod over the constitution for far too long because Congress keeps shirking its obligations,” Wyden said in a statement about the bill’s introduction. “Checks and balances are more than pretty words on a page; they’re a bedrock principle of our democracy.”

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Asset Forfeiture Funding Has Little Impact on Solving Crimes, Says New Study

Law enforcement groups have long argued that civil asset forfeiture, a practice that allows police to seize property suspected of being connected to criminal activity, is a vital tool for stopping drug trafficking, but a new study found that the nation’s largest forfeiture program had little effect on crime fighting.

The Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm that has challenged asset forfeiture laws in several states, released the study today. It examined a decade’s worth of asset forfeiture data from the Justice Department’s equitable sharing program, which distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in forfeiture revenues to state and local police agencies, and found that more forfeiture proceeds did not result in more solved crimes or less drug use.

The study also found that asset forfeiture activity increased in times of local economic stress. For example, the study reported that a 1 percent increase in local unemployment “was associated with a statistically significant 9 percentage point increase in seizures of property for forfeiture.”

The study’s author, Dr. Brian Kelly, an associate professor of economics at Seattle University, says the results undercut law enforcement’s claim that asset forfeiture funding helps drive down crime.

“These results add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that forfeiture’s value in crime fighting is exaggerated and that police do use forfeiture to raise revenue,” Kelly said in a press release. “Given this evidence and the serious civil liberties concerns raised by forfeiture, forfeiture proponents should bear the burden of proof when opposing reforms that would keep police focused on fighting crime, not raising revenue.”

Specifically, by comparing crime clearance rates to asset forfeiture revenue, Kelly found that the impact of forfeiture funds on crime-fighting was, at worst, insignificant and at best wildly overstated. For example, the study reported that a $1,000 increase in forfeiture funding per officer “would mean solving just 2.4 more crimes per 1,000 reported offenses.”

Civil asset forfeiture allows police to seize property—cars, cash, and even houses—suspected of being connected to criminal activity. The owner does not have to be charged with a crime or convicted for law enforcement to forfeit the property, the proceeds of which are usually split between police departments and prosecutor offices. The practice, once obscure and relatively rare, exploded in the 1980s as federal and state governments ramped up the war on drugs.

Law enforcement groups, from local sheriffs to the U.S. Attorney General, have fought against tighter restrictions on how police can seize property, saying it will cripple their ability to fight major drug crimes. However, civil liberties groups and advocacy organizations across the political spectrum say it has too few protections for innocent property owners and too many perverse profit incentives for police.

While police indeed use civil forfeiture to interdict huge stashes of drugs and cash moving along U.S. highways, numerous news investigations and studies have found that it is just as often, if not more frequently, used to seize petty amounts of cash from everyday people, not cartel lords.

A recent survey of 560 civil asset forfeiture cases in four Texas counties conducted by the Texas Tribune found that half of the cash seizures were for less than $3,000, and 20 percent of the cases were not accompanied by criminal charges. Another investigation earlier this year by several South Carolina news outlets reported that more than 55 percent of the time when South Carolina police seized cash, they took less than $1,000. A Reason analysis of more than 23,000 asset forfeiture cases in Chicago between 2012 and 2017 found the median value was $1,049. Nearly 1,500 of those seizures were for amounts under $100.

Studies and news investigations have also consistently found that asset forfeiture is used disproportionately against minorities and low-income neighborhoods.

Reason has reported for years on how civil asset forfeiture has been used to destroy individuals suspected of minor drug crimes—cases like Greg and Theresa Almond, an Alabama couple who had their savings seized and livelihood ruined over a misdemeanor marijuana charge that was later dismissed. Or Paul and Maricel Fullerton, a California couple who fought for two years to get back more than $53,000 that was seized during a drug raid that ultimately ended in a misdemeanor marijuana conviction.

Over the past decade, more than half of all states have passed some form of asset forfeiture reform, usually by wide bipartisan margins, in response to the issues raised by these reports.

However, local police departments are able to sidestep these tighter rules by partnering with federal law enforcement, who “adopt” the forfeiture case. The local police department keeps 80 percent of the forfeiture revenue, while the rest goes into the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Fund. In turn, the federal government funnels hundreds of millions of dollars from the Equitable Sharing Fund every year to state and local law enforcement. For example, North Carolina law enforcement agencies get more than $11 million per year through their participation in the federal equitable sharing program, even though the state banned civil asset forfeiture and redirects all forfeiture proceeds into a fund for public schools.

“Simply put, increased forfeiture funds had no meaningful effect on crime fighting,” the study concluded. “However, forfeiture was strongly linked to worsening economic conditions. These results suggest law enforcement agencies pursue forfeiture less to fight crime than to raise revenue.”

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Trump’s Deep Misunderstanding of Trade Policy Is Threatening the American Economy

In one of the stranger incidents to occur under the current administration—which is saying something—President Trump yesterday took a piece of paper out of his pocket, flashed it at reporters, and claimed it was some sort of secret immigration deal with Mexico.

Trump wouldn’t show it to reporters, saying that he couldn’t, because if he did, it would be analyzed—as if examining the details of any such agreement would somehow render it useless.

But a picture snapped by a Washington Post photographer appears to show some sort of agreement between the U.S. and its southern neighbor, though it remains unclear exactly what it entails. Trump claims the deal was a result of his tariff threat: “Without the tariffs, we would have had nothing,” he said.

Given the lack of details, and the president’s history of, let’s say, over-claiming when it comes to trade and immigration deals, it’s hard to know what, if anything, he actually has. The Mexican government, meanwhile, continues to insist that there is no secret component to any agreement with the United States. Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said today that the public may never see the secret deal.

Is this real secrecy, intentional obfuscation, or simple confusion? Most likely, it’s some combination of all of the above. In any case, it is yet another sign of a bizarre and counterproductive obsession with tariffs, a warning about the ways in which Trump’s deep misconceptions about trade continue to threaten the country’s economic health.   

News of Trump’s supposed secret deal comes on the heels of an impromptu call-in interview with CNBC on Monday, in which the president griped about the Chamber of Commerce’s opposition to the tariffs his administration has imposed.

The interview consists mostly of Trump ranting wildly and inaccurately about how cross-border trade works. At times it is flat-out incoherent. It nevertheless serves as a revealing look at how Trump conceives of tariffs and their role in international relations.

“Without tariffs, we would be captive to every country,” Trump said during the call, “and we have been for years.” He went on to complain about the size of America’s trade deficit, saying, “We lose a fortune with virtually every country. They take advantage of us in every way possible, and the U.S. Chamber is right there with them.”

He portrayed tariffs not only as a way to bring other countries in line, but as a tool for economic growth at the expense of foreign rivals. “We’ve picked up trillions of worth since I’ve been elected. China has lost many, many trillions of dollars. They’re way behind. They were going to catch us,” he said. And he essentially refused to accept that tariffs function as a tax on American consumers, because of the control that China’s government exercises over its economy.  

This, too, was cause for grumbling. “I’m winning. But I’m not winning on a level table,” Trump said, complaining that the Federal Reserve isn’t supporting his policies. Notice the first-person: Trump has personalized the nation’s trade arrangements, viewing them as zero-sum games—wins or losses for himself. Trump’s trade war is not just a series of disastrous real-world policy choices; it is a virtual construct inside his mind.

What these two incidents underscore is that when it comes to trade—which, along with immigration, is one of this administration’s defining issues—Trump is living in a fantasy world, and forcing Americans to accept the consequences of his inability to deal with reality. 

He imagines that tariffs make him a more powerful dealmaker who is able to dominate foreign rivals; in reality, Trump’s tariff threats and trade deals have won him little, if anything. The USMCA, his replacement for NAFTA, which he once called “perhaps the worst trade deal ever made,” mostly tweaked the original deal around the margins; the deal with Mexico that Trump said last week was brought on by his tariff threats consisted “largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States over the past several months,” officials from both countries told The New York Times.

Trump believes trade deficits are a sign of weakness; in fact, exports help keep the economy—which Trump often brags about—strong. An estimated 11 million American jobs depend on exports. Trump’s trade war is putting those jobs at risk.

He believes that tariffs improve the American economy, yet the economy has shown signs of weakness as his trade war has dragged on, and the tariffs threaten to cost most Americans more than they have gained from Trump’s tax cuts. Even in cases where the tariffs have either not gone into effect or been eliminated, the lingering uncertainty stemming from the president’s erratic behavior has rattled bond markets and left the economy shaken. The trade war has been so tough on farmers that Trump has put together a $16 billion subsidy package to bail out those harmed by his policies. When he made the announcement, he falsely claimed that China, not Americans, would pay it.

Trump’s approach to trade is delusional and deranged—a war inside his head that bears little relationship to the destructive reality he is forcing Americans to endure. And it is cracking the foundations of the American economy.

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