Trump Is Deluding Himself on North Korea and Iran: New at Reason

Take a tough Republican president, a Chinese government committed to help us, and a North Korean government faced with demands for denuclearization, and what do you get? It sounds like breaking news. But the scene comes from 2007, when the Bush administration thought it had achieved a historic breakthrough with North Korea. It was mistaken.

So, it appears, is Donald Trump. In June, he emerged from a summit with Kim Jong Un and tweeted that “everybody can now feel much safer” because there is “no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” He could have been accused of putting the cart before the horse, writes Steve Chapman, if there were a cart, or a horse.

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Brickbat: Less Diverse

University of IowaA federal judge ordered the University of Iowa to reinstate a Christian group that had sued after the school deregistered it for blocking an openly gay member from becoming a leader. The group claimed the university singled it out for its views, noting other student organizations also limit membership and leadership to students with similar beliefs or cultural background. The school has now deregistered another 38 groups whose charters don’t explicitly say they will not discriminate. At least 22 of the groups are organized around religion, culture or ideas, including a group limited to Shia Muslims.

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Defense Distributed Sues New Jersey, Los Angeles Over Legal Threats

Defense Distributed, founded by Cody Wilson, provides the means for people to make weapons at home via software and 3D-printing and milling machines. Today that company, along with the Second Amendment Foundation, has sued the attorney general of New Jersey and the city attorney of Los Angeles.

Gurbir S. Grewal, the attorney general of New Jersey, sent a threatening letter to Defense Distributed last week that claimed the company’s “plans to allow anyone with a 3D printer to download a code and create a fully operational gun directly threatens the public safety of New Jersey’s residents….Posting this material online is no different than driving to New Jersey and handing out hard-copy files on any street corner.”

Grewal ordered the company “to cease and desist from publishing printable-gun computer files for use by New Jersey residents….Should you fail to comply with this letter, my Office will initiate legal action barring you from publishing these files before August 1, 2018.”

Defense Distributed’s legal right to post its information was won by the company via settlement this month after a long legal battle with the federal government. Before that settlement, the feds essentially wanted to treat the act of hosting or distributing such files as illegal arms exporting.

Defense Distributed informed Grewal on Friday that “all actions contemplated by Defense Distributed are fully protected by the First Amendment, and [Grewal’s] attempts to prevent such actions constitute an unconstitutional prior restraint and otherwise violate the United States Constitution and the New Jersey Constitution.”

It reinforced that argument with today’s suit against Grewal and Michael Feuer, city attorney of Los Angeles, who issued a similar threat against Wilson’s company last week. The lawsuit calls the officials’ efforts “an ideologically-fueled program of intimidation and harassment.”

The suit asserts that the threats from New Jersey and Los Angeles

violate the First Amendment speech rights of Defense Distributed and its audience, including [the Second Amendment Foundation’s] members; run afoul of the Dormant Commerce Clause; infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of those who would make use of the knowledge disseminated by Defense Distributed; constitute a tortious interference with Defense Distributed’s business; and are in any event, federally pre-empted by Congress’s export control laws as well as Defense Distributed’s export license, by which the State Department has explicitly authorized the speech that the Defendants are seeking to silence. Plaintiffs are entitled to declaratory and injunctive relief, damages, and attorney fees.

Josh Blackman, one of Defense Distributed’s lawyers, adds via email that “States do not have the power to censor speech or commerce in other states, especially when that commerce is licensed by the federal government.”

Cody Wilson announced via twitter today that his Defcad website is currently not accessible in New Jersey. This is at this point his own choice, given the legal threat he faces, a threat he hopes to eliminate with this lawsuit.

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The Democracy Theorist in the Age of Trump: New at Reason

There is a time in the lives of academics, the fortunate ones at least, when the topic of their research aligns with events taking place on the mean streets beyond the ivory tower. Such has been the lucky lot of democracy theorists in the age of Donald Trump, writes Rafia Zakaria in his review of The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger & How to Save It, by Yascha Mounk.

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State Legislatures and City Governments Are Going to Battle Over Food Taxes: New at Reason

The battle over local food and beverage taxes is heating up again.

Last week, Pennsylvania’s highest court upheld the legality of Philadelphia’s soda tax after a court challenge. Some believe the win by Philadelphia could embolden other cities in the state and around the country to pass new taxes.

But hold on, writes Baylen Linnekin.

Last month, California (California!) became the latest state to prohibit local governments from imposing new food or beverage taxes. While the law allows existing municipal taxes to stand, including a handful of soda taxes, the terms of the law mean that no city may adopt new food or beverage taxes until at least 2031. Arizona adopted a similar law earlier this year. Michigan did the same last year.

The push to eliminate local food and drink taxes are bubbling up thanks to consumers, the beverage industry, grocers, unions, and small businesses that are most impacted by these local taxes.

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A Second Chance for People With Criminal Records: New at Reason

For many of the roughly 600,000 Americans to be released from prison this year, the best predictor of whether they become law-abiding citizens is their ability to land a job. Unfortunately, state licensing laws often shut the formerly incarcerated out of work. While there is wide variance in licensing requirements across the states, more than 10,000 individual regulations prohibit people with criminal records from working in dozens of professions.

Some of the restrictions make sense. A lot don’t, writes Reason‘s Eric Boehm.

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You Have a Right to Repair and Replace: New at Reason

Recently I began to search for a used GMC Yukon SUV. My goal was to bolt on an aftermarket supercharger. It wasn’t necessarily a sensible plan, but it did seem like a pretty cool idea. Thanks to a whopping 6.2-liter V8 engine, a Whipple supercharger would make that vehicle churn out nearly 600 horsepower of good ol’ American tire-shredding glory.

I already knew about California’s draconian emissions regulations, which view the prospect of modifying an internal combustion engine with such hostility that they must have been drafted by electric car impressario Elon Musk himself. And I was prepared to dodge and weave around those requirements. But first I needed to figure out whether that much aftermarket fury would violate General Motors’ factory warranty, writes Declan McCullagh.

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Gary Johnson Contemplating Libertarian Run for Senate in New Mexico

Gary Johnson was a very popular two-term governor of New Mexico as a Republican from 1995-2003, and got a startlingly good, for a Libertarian, 9.3 percent of its presidential vote in 2016.

While he said in 2016 his politician days are over, the Associated Press reported Friday on rumors that had been swirling in Libertarian circles for weeks, though not yet fully confirmed from Johnson, that he plans to step into the Libertarian Party’s nomination for Senate this year from New Mexico.

That could happen if, as speculated, current holder of the slot Aubrey Dunn (a former Republican who is currently commissioner of public lands in the state) steps down.

Ron Nielson, Johnson’s longtime campaign manager, described Johnson to A.P. as “strongly considering” running if Dunn indeed drops out, but that Johnson “doesn’t want to get into a race he can’t win.”

Democratic incumbent Sen. Martin Heinrich is currently considered an easy front-runner over Republican Mick Rich for the Senate seat. Hillary Clinton won the state in 2016.

Here is a video from earlier this month with Nielson and Johnson teasing the idea of a return to politics for Gary, in which Johnson says that what Libertarians need is actual success at the ballot box, that there’s a “need to get someone elected.” Johnson believes “if you had a true independent Libertarian in office that was successful, that would become the template” for further L.P. success.

He admits he’s said no to future runs, but now he’s “not ruling anything out because we need a success story. Maybe in that context I might play a role.”

Further news and analysis on this developing story to come.

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Gun Control Groups Fail to Scuttle Settlement of Lawsuit Over Gun-Making Computer Files

As reported earlier this month, the Justice Department wanted to settle a lawsuit with Defense Distributed and the Second Amendment Foundation over the government’s many years of legally barring the former from hosting and distributing certain computer files that can help instruct devices to manufacture weapons at home. Defense Distributed believed, among other things, that their First Amendment rights were implicated by being legally prohibited from spreading the speech within those files. The government’s official announcement that it was lifting its prohibition of the distribution of such files (the government originally argued spreading the files constituted illegal munitions export, essentially) was supposed to happen today.

Panicked, a trio of gun-control interests (Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety, and GiffordsPAC) tried to muscle in on the lawsuit at the very last minute and prevent the settlement from going into effect. Friday, after a hearing before Judge Robert Pitman in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, their attempt failed, the settlement went into effect, the lawsuit is over, and the files are being freely distributed.

Cody Wilson, the founder of Defense Distributed and maker of the first usable 3D printed plastic gun, explained in a phone interview Friday evening how his opponents tried their legal maneuver in the middle of the night while everyone’s asleep on Wednesday, a clearly “vexatious” attempt to interfere between the two relevant parties that had no legal basis. Given the meaning of his victory for their gun control cause (Wilson thinks the technologies of home gun making via computer instruction will be the death knell of meaningful gun control), “I don’t even blame them.”

The Brady Center and their partners, Wilson thinks, were just hoping to stall resolution of the settlement and “kill us with paperwork and keep us in court” for possibly years longer. “The Judge saw through everything, is the long and short of it” Wilson says. The executive branch, Wilson says, “gets to decide on national security prerogatives” and in a sense Wilson says his side was being forced to defend the arguments of his ostensible legal opponents in the federal government, “which is that the courts can’t review” the decision to let the files be distributed.

“The files are being published,” Wilson says.

While the years of legal fights between him and the federal government are over, Wilson says the state of New Jersey threatened him this week with a lawsuit over his distribution of gun-making files. New Jersey’s Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal sent Wilson a letter which read in part that “Defense Distributed’s plans to allow anyone with a 3D printer to download a code and create a fully operational gun directly threatens the public safety of New Jersey’s residents.”

Then, making one of Defense Distributed’s core legal points in this whole lawsuit for them, Grewal complained that “Posting this material online is no different than driving to New Jersey and handing out hard-copy files on any street corner.” Indeed, as Wilson has long argued, the information he wanted to distribute should be protected under the First Amendment, just as if he were printing it, as indeed books or instructional pamphlets about gunsmithing already are.

Josh Blackman, a lawyer on Defense Distributed’s side who helped argue this case before Judge Pitman on Friday, says that the attempted intervenors very last minute attempt to throw a spanner in the works required the Defense Distributed team to write over 60 pages of briefs in less than 24 hours. The motions from the three gun control groups were filed very late in the evening on Wednesday, seeking a temporary restraining order on the government to stop them from settling with Defense Distributed.

A hearing was swiftly set up in Austin, Texas, Friday and “after an hour the judge announced from the bench that he’d denied the motion to intervene.” Thus, the settlement went into effect “and the case is closed.” The gun control groups did not bother trying to appeal the judge’s decision and “now there is nothing left to intervene in. They were intervening to prevent the settlement” but the settlement has now gone into effect.

“The important thing to understand is that Brady has no interest here,” Blackman says. “If the government wants to issue a license and thinks its consistent with national security, they can do that.” The gun control groups “suggested Trump is abdicating his role and capitulating on an important issue of national security, and it’s rubbish.” In general when it comes to the Second Amendment, Blackman says, “Trump is taking the same position Obama took.” The change here has nothing to do with the Second Amendment, and is just a matter of shifting policies and responsibilities over ITAR, as explained further below.

As explained in the memorandums of opposition Blackman and his team were forced to produce at such great speed, under existing precedent Brady and the other groups would have to prove the government’s choice to settle “significantly and ‘perceptibly impaired’ the organization’s ability to provide its ‘activities.'” which they failed to do. (Their claim, roughly, was that if the gun-making files were more readily legally available, they’d have to spend more money on their gun control activities.) The suing gun control groups “cannot state a…claim as a means to enjoin an action that hasn’t even happened yet, and in which…they have not yet diverted any resources. There is no injury in fact.”

Further, Blackman and his team (which also included Matt Goldstein and Second Amendment superlawyer Alan Gura) explain in their briefs, the alleged injury Brady and the others imagined from legal ability to distribute those files cannot reasonably be placed on any action of Defense Distributed; their “parade of horribles is premised on a false perception of reality: so long as the government builds a virtual wall around the Plaintiffs [Defense Distributed], criminals and terrorists will be unable to 3D-print firearms. Nonsense.” It points out that such files were, despite the government’s threats to Wilson and his team, as available as could be.

Further, the specifics of the export control laws under which Wilson was being restrained are such that “there is no judicial review of the decision to grant, or not grant a license. The Groups injury cannot be remedied in this Court…The Groups have failed to explain, or perhaps failed to recognize, that the decision to grant the Plaintiffs a license is immune from judicial review. Their purported injury cannot be redressed by an injunction.”

One of the points Brady and the other groups try to make would, if taken seriously, have breathtaking implications, the brief points out:

they state, without equivocation, that the settlement will result in a “direct[] threat.” The claim is breathtaking. Federal courts cannot allow individuals to challenge the Executive’s diplomatic and foreign policy decisions on grounds that such decisions harm their personal security. One can predict an avalanche of citizen lawsuits targeting every foreign arms sale, the “nuclear deals” with Iran and North Korea, decisions to impose or lift embargos, decisions to meet or not meet with foreign leaders or participate or abstain from international organizations, and so on. These concerns may all be legitimate, but they are not a ticket to federal court.

The briefs also touch on the problems associated with Brady et al’s last minute attempt to intervene:

The Plaintiffs have been silenced for nearly six years. Litigation-by-ambush will not force us to consent to an additional moment of silence. Instead, counsel for Plaintiffs stayed up all night preparing these urgent pleadings, and traveled on short notice to attend the hearing…nothing bars them from filing their (meritless) lawsuit against the Government. Indeed, the Plaintiffs are not even named as parties in the groups’ proposed complaint…. to the extent the groups claim that only their intervention could stop the files’ publication, that proverbial ship has long ago sailed out the previously open barn doors with the published files, which just about everyone on the Internet continues to be free to publish without any governmental interference—everyone, that is, except the Plaintiffs.

The brief concludes addressing theories that this settlement was reached because of some sort of sinister pro-gun agenda on the part of the Trump administration while explaining the legal changes overtaking export control law enforcement that were in play:

While this case was being litigated, the Obama and Trump Administrations have engaged in a sophisticated and detailed plan to transition the regulation of certain technical data from the jurisdiction of the State Department to the jurisdiction of the Commerce Department. And, in May 2018, the State Department announced its plan to amend ITAR to that effect. That shift placed the Department of Justice in an odd position: the Plaintiffs, and the Plaintiffs alone, would still be litigating against a soon-to-be-repealed State Department regime….Reasonably, the Plaintiffs and Defendants reached a settlement agreement. It’s that simple. In today’s rancorous culture, it is unfortunate that friends of the court have charged the federal government with bad faith, based on wild speculation.

As a separate filing regarding Friday’s hearing elaborated, the above jurisdictional move regarding ITAR means “Department of Commerce Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”)….will require licenses for exports of firearms, [but] the EAR does not impose a prior restraint on so-called “technical data”—that is, public speech.”

That the files Wilson wanted to distribute, and was uniquely prohibited from doing, constitute speech and not munitions export was the core of his long legal fight, a fight that’s now over.

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Seattle Mariners Want Taxpayers to Fork Over $180 Million, Or Else

The Seattle Mariners say they won’t sign a long-term lease to remain at Safeco Field unless they receive $180 million in taxpayer funds.

The ballpark is a public facility owned by the Washington State Major League Baseball Stadium Public Facilities District (PFD). The Mariners rent it from the PFD, but their current lease is up at the end of the year, and negotiations for a new long-term agreement have hit a snag.

The team said on May 23 that it had agreed to terms on a new 25-year lease. The same day, King County, Washington—which encompasses the Seattle metropolitan area—proposed setting aside $180 million of taxpayer funds for “Safeco Field upkeep and capital improvements,” according to Seattle Weekly. Now, the Mariners are saying they won’t sign the lease unless the money is approved. Seattle Weekly reports:

According to emails between representatives from both the PFD and the Mariners obtained by Seattle Weekly through a public-records request, the team was explicit about its position that receiving the $180 million from taxpayers was part of the deal even though it was not specifically spelled out in the language of the lease’s contract. “As confirmed and set forth in prior communications with the PFD’s lease negotiation team, final lease agreement is conditioned on King County’s approval of an allocation of a portion of the county’s lodging tax revenues,” wrote Fred Rivera, Seattle Mariners executive vice president and general counsel, in an early June email to PFD board member Virginia Anderson.

The $180 million wouldn’t come out of nowhere. The county currently uses revenue collected from a lodging tax to pay off other publicly owned stadiums, including CenturyLink Field, home of the Seahawks. Once those debts are paid in 2020, state law allows for up to 25 percent of the lodging tax income to be used for tourism promotion. And according to King County Executive Dow Constantine, Safeco Field is a big draw for tourists.

The Mariners are justifying their demand by arguing that since King County owns the stadium, it should help pay for the upkeep. “This [stadium] is owned by the county, and the question is how much should the county pay for its building?” Rivera said to Seattle Weekly. “The discussion [between the Mariners and the PFD] was ‘What’s a fair amount for the club and for the PFD to contribute to make sure that those nuts-and-bolts items are appropriately taken care of over the next 25 years?’ and that’s what resulted in this financing plan.”

The King County Council will officially hear the proposal on Monday, with a vote possible by the end of August. If they don’t get the money, the Mariners aren’t planning to leave the city. Instead, Rivera says the team will likely sign a short-term lease and then try to negotiate a better long-term agreement later.

Of course, it’s ridiculous to fork over $180 million in taxpayer money to a team worth at least $1.4 billion. But this wouldn’t be an issue had the Mariners paid for their own stadium in the first place. There are a lot of reasons not to hand out massive government subsidies to sports teams, and King County is finding that out the hard way.

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