Tag: in-the-news

Well before its official release, Joker already had an armlock on our attention. The movie’s trailer made clear that this was not another slick comic-book epic, but rather a grim, R-rated story of homicidal madness set in the bad old New York (well, “Gotham”) of the early 1980s. And it was immediately apparent that the picture’s star, Joaquin Phoenix, was up to something unusually interesting.

Now, at last, the movie is here, and it’s a thing of considerable wonder. Phoenix gives, as expected, a bombshell performance as Arthur Fleck, the tormented protagonist, whose miserable tics and twitches never abate, and whose journey—his horrid mutation into Gotham’s cackling scourge, the Joker—is the picture’s dismal subject.

The movie gets off to a strangely muted start, and even fans of the DC comics in which the demented clown has been giving Batman so much guff for the past 80 years may grow restless. The film takes its time demonstrating Arthur’s many problems (among other things, social-service budget cuts have deprived him of the several medications he must take for his mental instability) and sinking us deep into this dank and rancid world.

There are a lot of laughs along the way, but they all emanate from Fleck, who has a neurological disorder that causes him to break into sudden storms of laughter at the most inappropriate moments. (He carries cards that explain his problem: “I have a condition”). But the movie gives us nothing to laugh about—or even smile about, really—since its only non-basket-case characters are Sophie Drummond (Zazie Beetz), a sweet single mother whom we see bestowing on Fleck the only uncomplicated affection he’s ever experienced, and a kindly dwarf named Gary (Leigh Gill), an employee of the same tacky rent-a-clown operation where Arthur works. (We see Arthur in big floppy boots and a cap of clown hair dancing around on the sidewalk in front of a store, waving a going-out-of-business sign.)

Director Todd Phillips (purveyor of the Hangover movies) and production designer Mark Friedberg have created a hell-pit Manhattan of rats and trash and roiling, rain-lashed streets that beats Arthur down at every turn. He’s stomped in an alley by a pack of feral kids, and on a subway car by a trio of drunken stock-market creeps (employees of a company called Wayne Investments, hold that thought). When a coworker gives Arthur a pistol to defend himself, we know that downward is the only direction in which this already bleak story is likely to go.

Arthur still lives with his loosely wrapped mom, Penny (Frances Conroy), in a dingey apartment where they while away time watching a popular talk show hosted by the smug Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Arthur has long harbored the impossible dream of being a standup comic—now, suddenly, that dream comes true. After trying out his pitiful act at a comedy club open-mike night, a tape of Arthur’s disastrous performance makes its way to Murray, who plays it on the air as an exercise in pointless cruelty. But viewer response is enthusiastic, and Murray is compelled to invite Arthur to come on his show.

This aspect of the story is of course an upside-down reference to Martin Scorsese’s 2002 film, The King of Comedy, in which De Niro played the delusional loner with the unlikely showbiz dream and Jerry Lewis was the frosty talk-show host. In fact, Phillips’s whole movie can be read as a salute to Scorsese and De Niro: the scuzzy exteriors are highly reminiscent of Scorsese’s 1976 Taxi Driver—another tale about a combustible loner—and even the name of De Niro’s character here, Murray Franklin, seems like a nod to a pair of streets in Manhattan’s Tribeca district, where De Niro has long presided over an annual film festival and also runs a number of restaurants, one of them on Franklin Street.

When the movie finally does start to coalesce, we see that it actually is an origin story, although not of the superhero sort to which we’ve become accustomed. There’s an eruption of bloody violence in which some well-to-do people die; a clown is seen fleeing the scene. Suddenly the city is filled with clowns, as a long-delayed popular uprising breaks out and signs begin to blossom in the streets: “We Are All Clowns,” “Kill the Rich.” We meet the financier Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), who is running for mayor on a promise to reverse Gotham’s slide into civil ruin. But Wayne’s candidacy only stokes the popular revolt. (“Those of us who have made something of our lives,” he says, affixing a target to his chest, “will always look at those who haven’t as losers.”)

Arthur comes to believe that he and Wayne have a secret connection. Showing up unannounced at Wayne Manor, he has an uneasy conversation, through a barred gate, with Wayne’s young son Bruce (Dante Pereira-Olson), and then an angry confrontation with butler Alfred Pennyworth (Douglas Hodge). As the movie proceeds toward its climax, there’s a startlingly gruesome assault, and then another one, and soon we realize that some of what we thought was going on earlier in the story was in fact an illusion.

As appropriately dark as the movie is, no one of sound mind is going to be driven to murder or mayhem by it. (I’m not sure I’d want to watch it sitting next to someone seething on the edge of sanity, however.) The movie’s unrelenting darkness is occasionally monotonous, but the picture has some standout supporting performances (Zazie Beetz is virtually a burst of sunshine whenever she shows up) and a mesmerizing score by Icelandic composer and cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir that suggests deep, cold tidal currents. The prospect of unnecessary sequels is always dismaying; but Joaquin Phoenix is so force-of-nature good here, and the movie’s plot structure is so inventively manipulated, that you could find yourself actually wondering what might happen next.

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[This post is co-authored with Seth Barrett Tillman]

In a recent post, we explained that the Congressional Research Service (“CRS”) has shifted its position concerning the Foreign Emoluments Clause. In 2012, CRS stated that “The President and all federal officials are restricted by the” Foreign Emoluments Clause. In 2016, CRS hedged a bit. The office stated that the Foreign Emoluments Clause “might technically apply to the President.” And last month, CRS declined to take a position on this question in light of the “significant academic debate about whether Office of Legal Counsel’s conclusion [in its 2009 memorandum] comports with the original public meaning of the Foreign Emoluments Clause.” This debate largely centers around Tillman’s scholarship on the Constitution’s “office” language―a subject he has written on continuously since 2008.

While CRS has modified its position in response to this “significant academic debate,” the Office of Legal Counsel (“OLC”) has not. In 2009, OLC stated, in a conclusory fashion, that the Foreign Emoluments Clause “surely” applies to the President. And OLC has said nothing since, throughout nearly three years of litigation concerning the Foreign Emoluments Clause. (Of course, this silence may be due to the fact that no “client” in the Executive Branch has asked the OLC to review its prior advice.) Nevertheless, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) Civil Division, which is litigating the Foreign Emoluments Clause cases, has taken a different position. 

We flagged this shift in a February 2018 post: 

DOJ has not affirmatively argued [for the Tillman] position [about the scope of the Foreign Emoluments Clause], but in a letter to the Southern District of New York, DOJ lawyers stated that “[t]he Government has not conceded that the President is subject to the Foreign Emoluments Clause.“ The DOJ’s letter represents a shift from a 2009 Office of Legal Counsel (“OLC“) opinion, which stated, without any analysis or explanation, that the Foreign Emoluments Clause “surely“ applies to the President.

Subsequently, DOJ made similar statements in the U.S. District Courts for the District of Maryland (“We assume for purposes of this Statement that the President is subject to the Foreign Emoluments Clause”) and the District of Columbia (“For purposes of his motion to dismiss, the President has assumed that he is subject to the Foreign Emoluments Clause on the assumption that he holds an ‘Office of Profit or Trust’ within the meaning of the Clause.”).

The government’s position emulates Schrödinger’s Cat: maybe the Foreign Emoluments Clause applies to the President; maybe it doesn’t; don’t ask; we won’t tell. Without question, the government knows how to take a decisive position on similar questions. For example, DOJ argued in a 2018 Supreme Court brief that an Administrative Law Judge must be considered an “officer of the United States” for purposes of the Appointments Clause, even though the historical record and established body of judicial precedent was in conflict. Yet when it comes to the President and the Foreign Emoluments Clause, the Department of Justice proceeds with all deliberate agnosticism.

In an April 30, 2018 filing, the Civil Division cast further doubt on the OLC opinion. The brief described this issue of whether the President is subject to the Foreign Emoluments Clause as a “novel question,” not one—as Plaintiffs insist—that is settled by longstanding Executive Branch precedent. The Civil Division brief also raised a red flag by contending that OLC reached its conclusion “without discussion.” While the 2009 opinion spans thirteen pages in length, the Civil Division now points out the obvious: the memorandum’s analysis about the scope of the Foreign Emoluments Clause and its application to the presidency is only one word long: “surely.” The brief also made a series of “observations” about the “historical evidence” that Tillman has advanced–the very same evidence that CRS has found persuasive. 

The First Congress Used the “Office … Under the United States” Drafting Convention to Include Only Appointed Positions

First, the brief discussed the import of a 1790 statute enacted by the First Congress:

Amici point to the First Congress’s enactment of a statute in 1790 forever barring a person convicted of bribing a federal judge from holding “any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.” ECF No. 40 at 12 (citing Act of Apr. 30, 1790, ch. 9, § 21, 1 Stat. 112, 117 (1790)). According to Amici, the First Congress would not have enacted such a statute if it thought that elected officials hold “offices under the United States” because the First Congress presumably knew that only the Constitution could set the qualifications of elected offices and the Office of the President. See id. Indeed, the Federalist recognized that the qualifications of Members of Congress are “defined and fixed in the Constitution, and are unalterable by the legislature.” The Federalist No. 60 (Alexander Hamilton), at 409 (Jacob Cooke, ed., 1961). The same necessarily would be true of qualifications for the President. That is, the 1790 Act enacted by the First Congress would in fact run afoul of such restrictions if applied to Members of Congress or the President, if such officials hold “offices under the United States.”

We discussed this statute in a September 2017 blog post:

If the plaintiffs are correct, i.e., if elected positions, such as the president, hold an “Office … under the United States,” then this 1790 statute would also be plainly unconstitutional. The better view is that plaintiffs’ intuition is incorrect. Courts should avoid an interpretation of “Office … under the United States” under which the first Congress unconstitutionally added qualifications for the presidency and other elected positions. Rather, the more reasonable interpretation is that members of that body (which included many framers and ratifiers) understood that “Office … under the United States” did not extend to elected positions. The preference for this latter construction, which raises no constitutional doubts and comports with longstanding “Office … under the United States” drafting conventions, is further bolstered by the special solicitude that is afforded to the first Congress.

Here, the Civil Division seems to agree with our logic.

Alexander Hamilton Used the “Office … Under the United States” Drafting Convention to Include Only Appointed Positions

Second, DOJ discussed the relevance of Alexander Hamilton’s 1792 financial statement:

Amici also point to then-Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s compilation of the “salaries, fees, and emoluments, for one year, ending the 1st of October, 1792, of persons holding civil offices or employment under the United States, (except the judges).” Amici assert that the President was not included on that list, citing to the National Archives’ online version of Hamilton’s cover letter to the Senate with a table of contents. See ECF No. 40 at 14 n.51. The editor of the National Archives’ page noted that the actual list consists of 90 pages of manuscript and that “for an abbreviated version of [the manuscript], see [American State Papers], Miscellaneous, I, 57–68.” As Amici recognize, see ECF No. 40 at 15, the “abbreviated version” did include the President. Regardless of the weight to be placed on either version of the list, the important point to be drawn from the Hamilton list of “salaries, fees, and emoluments” is that it did not appear to include any official’s financial gains arising from private business pursuits. As Amici note, see id. at 14 n.49, that is consistent with the President’s interpretation of an “emolument” as a profit derived from a discharge of duties in an office or employment. See MTD at 19.

Here, DOJ does not dispute the relevance of Hamilton’s list to the meaning of the “office . . . under the United States” drafting convention. Rather, the Civil Division focuses on another important element of this document: Hamilton did not understand the phrase “emolument” to include “any official’s financial gains arising from private business pursuits.” DOJ declines to recognize our point, but should be willing to draw a similar inference based on the types of officers Hamilton listed in the actual document his department drafted. Moreover, Hamilton personally signed this document.  The other document which DOJ references is not one that Hamilton’s Treasury Department drafted, and is not one which Hamilton signed. In fact, it now appears that all serious historians acknowledge that this second document was merely an editor’s recreation drafted more than 30 years later. We discuss the history of the Hamilton-signed original document and its subsequent reproduction in our September 2017 blog post. 

Washington Openly Accepted Presents from Foreign Governments Without Seeking Congressional Consent

Third, DOJ discusses the relevance of certain gifts President Washington accepted:

Amici also assert that early Presidents received gifts from foreign officials without seeking congressional consent. Amici cite George Washington’s receipt of a portrait of King Louis XVI from the French ambassador and the key to the Bastille from a French officer, the Marquis de Lafayette. See ECF No. 40 at 18–20. In the absence of any evidence of congressional consent, Washington’s acceptance of these gifts may suggest that he did not believe he was subject to the Clause. On the other hand, it is also possible that he accepted the gifts believing that he was doing so on behalf of the American people. See MTD at 33 (noting that rather than always declining foreign gifts, U.S. officials sometimes accepted foreign presents on behalf of the United States so as not to cause offense); see, e.g., S. Exec. Doc. No. 37-23, at 6–7 (1862) (Abraham Lincoln’s letter to the King of Siam stating that “our laws forbid the President from receiving these rich presents as personal treasures” but that he would accept them on behalf of the American people). As Amici indicate, both of these items “were prominently displayed in the federal capital,” and the key was “showcased in Philadelphia when the seat of government moved there” in 1790, ECF No. 40 at 19. Of course, the fact that the key to the Bastille is now at Mount Vernon, see id., could undermine the view that Washington accepted the key on behalf of the American people. But Washington also might have viewed the key as a personal gift. Lafayette was a former Washington aide during the American Revolutionary War and had described the gift as “a tribute Which I owe as A Son to My Adoptive father, as an aid de Camp to My General, [and] as a Missionary of liberty to its patriarch.”

Here, DOJ is truly wrestling with the evidence. On the one hand, there are indications that this was a diplomatic gift that Washington personally accepted. Such a transaction would, under the Plaintiffs’ theory of the case, violate the Foreign Emoluments Clause. On the other hand, perhaps the gift was personal in nature, or was not in fact a gift from the French government. In that case, Washington’s conduct would not implicate the Foreign Emoluments Clause. 

These objections are reasonable, but ultimately, are rebuttable. We have already submitted evidence into the litigation to show that the gift from Lafayette was not a private gift; this gift was discussed in a contemporaneous diplomatic communication from the French government’s representative in the United States to his superiors in the French ministry of foreign affairs.  Moreover, the DOJ says nothing to undermine the more important of the two gifts, a full-length portrait of Louis XVI, framed with gold leaf. This obvious diplomatic gift―was given by the French ambassador to President Washington. The acceptance of such diplomatic gifts―which were discussed in a contemporaneous diplomatic communication―would implicate the core purpose behind the Foreign Emoluments Clause. 

Jefferson Openly Accepted Presents form Foreign Governments Without Seeking Congressional Consent

Fourth, DOJ discusses the relevance of certain gifts President Jefferson accepted:

Amici further assert that Thomas Jefferson accepted a bust of Czar Alexander I from the Russian government. ECF No. 40 at 20–21. This is a curious episode because Jefferson was aware of the Foreign Emoluments Clause’s prohibition on the acceptance of foreign government presents and had complied with it while President. See H.R. Rep. No. 23-302, at 2 (stating that Jefferson, while President, received horses as presents from a foreign government; he accepted the horses so as not to cause offense but then sold them and deposited the money into the Treasury). On the other hand, in writing to thank the American Consul-General for transmitting the bust, Jefferson did not mention the Foreign Emoluments Clause, noting instead that he had a rule of accepting “no present beyond a book, a pamphlet, or other curiosity of minor value” while in office, but would make an exception because of his particular esteem for the Czar.

There is no indication that Jefferson felt his decision concerning the bust was controlled by the Foreign Emoluments Clause. As with Washington, there is no evidence Jefferson ever sought or received congressional consent to keep the bust. (We do dispute the nature of Jefferson’s horse gifts, but that is a topic for another time.) 

DOJ also failed to mention other diplomatic gifts Jefferson accepted. We wrote about them in our 2017 post:

Jefferson also received presents from Indian tribes, which he considered “diplomatic gifts” from foreign nations. During their great trek, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark exchanged many gifts with the Indian tribes in “diplomatic and social contexts.” Lewis and Clark ultimately delivered many of these gifts to Jefferson. Jefferson did not seek or receive congressional consent to keep the gifts. He put them on public display at Monticello, where they remain on display today. What all these presents from foreign states had in common was that the presidential recipients believed (as best as we can tell) that keeping the presents had no constitutional implications under the Foreign Emoluments Clause.

We suspect that the dismissiveness of the Indian gifts is due, in part, to a dismissiveness of the diplomatic status of these nations. Jefferson’s writings establish that he considered these gifts as coming from foreign nations. We think Jefferson was correct. But correct or not, as a matter of public international law or domestic law, the fact that Jefferson believed these that these gifts came from foreign governments is what is important to our inquiry. If Jefferson believed that these were foreign diplomatic gifts, and where, as here, he chose not to seek congressional consent, that would indicate that he did not think the Foreign Emoluments Clause was controlling. 

Schrödinger’s Briefs

In sum, the Civil Division has expressed an awareness of historical evidence that casts doubt on whether the Foreign Emoluments Clause applies to the President. But it has not yet taken a firm position on this question. The Civil Division’s uncertainty is difficult to square with the Office of Legal Counsel’s 2009 opinion that “the President surely hold[s] an ‘Office of Profit or Trust’ under [the United States]” for purposes of the Foreign Emoluments Clause. If this position was “surely” true, then the DOJ Civil Division would not have filed Schrödinger briefs that do not take a position on an issue central to plaintiffs’ entire case.

We can only speculate on why the Department of Justice has taken such an indecisive position. Imagine the headlines: “President argues in court that the Constitution allows him to accept unlimited gifts from foreign governments.” The far more palatable argument is the technocratic position DOJ has maintained: the political process, and not the courts, should resolve this dispute; and certain business transactions are not “emoluments,” whatever those are.

We don’t expect OLC to do a full about-face, and state unequivocally that the Foreign Emoluments Clause does not apply to the President. Rather, a bit of historical modesty would go a long way: simply acknowledge that there is a robust debate about whether elected officials are subject to this provision, and let the federal courts decide the issue.

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Erica Lagalisse’s Occult Features of Anarchism is a history of secret societies and revolutionary movements, but it isn’t one of those paranoid screeds in which every insurrection is allegedly masterminded by the Illuminati. This is a largely level-headed book by an anthropologist who sympathizes with the left herself. Her chief interest is in the ways mysticism influenced ideologies that we today associate with secular rationalism, and she makes a strong case that anarchism and socialism have longstanding links to hermetic ideas.

Along the way, Lagalisse notes how clandestine groups devoted to revolution mimicked, and sometimes overlapped with, secret societies devoted to esotericism—and how conspiracy theories helped spread the very ideas that the theories attributed to a cabal. When conservative 19th century governments circulated “fearful accounts of the Illuminati,” she explains, it “had the ironic effect of inspiring others.”

Conspiracy theories are not Lagalisse’s chief focus, but she addresses them at the beginning and the end of the book. Her interest in the subject, she explains, began a little more than a decade ago, when she was an activist supporting Mexico’s Zapatista rebels. Several of her comrades were drawn to conspiracy tales, and in one case the story in question was anti-Semitic.

Lagalisse helped talk the man out of the anti-Semitism—and talked herself into exploring the world that she’d stumbled into. She was an anthropologist, after all, and thus understood that even a false story can express “something of the everyday truth lived by its purveyor.”

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Fictitious movies about cults are often a little bit sexy. There’s a hint of appeal embedded in a commune—a place where all belong. But given the ritual suicide that takes place in the first 30 minutes of Ari Aster’s Midsommar, it’s pretty obvious he is not trying to sell you on commune life.

By setting orphaned Dani, her boyfriend, and their friends’ summer escapades in the Swedish commune Harga, Aster flips the association of evil with darkness, letting the film scare viewers in broad daylight.

The movie—received better by critics than by audiences—explores moral relativism and collectivism. In one poignant early scene, an elderly couple is pushed to kill themselves. The initially horrified American visitors soon make their peace by speculating that people from other cultures would be equally disgusted by how we treat our elderly.

As Dani and her boyfriend’s stilted relationship falls apart, the cult replaces their need for both independence and intimacy. Midsommar provides an unusually apt depiction of a mushroom trip, but its themes are not liberatory. It’s an exploration of how cults corrupt people’s senses of morality and individualism.

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In Philadelphia, people in a sanitation truck with a city logo were caught on video dumping demolition debris on a city street. The office of Mayor Jim Kenney, who has made cracking down on illegal dumping a major priority, says it is investigating the matter. Officials say they are trying to find out of the truck was a city truck and who was operating it at the time.

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I have blogged twice before about Ben Penn’s false and misleading article for Bloomberg Law about my colleague, Leif Olson. One month later, the story remains without any retraction. There are several “updates” and “corrections” which make the article incomprehensible. Regrettably, people who Google “Leif Olson” will quickly see this hit job, without knowing the proper context. Penn has not tweeted since his “scoop.” I can only hope he is under investigation, and will face the appropriate discipline.

This post focuses on recent developments in this saga. On September 3, 2019, Penn tweeted:

To Leif Olson’s friends & others who take issue with this reporting, I sent a screenshot of a public FB post to DOL, seeking comment. 4 hours later I received this response: “Today, the Department of Labor accepted the resignation of Leif Olson effective immediately.”

To Leif Olson's friends & others who take issue with this reporting,
I sent a screenshot of a public FB post to DOL, seeking comment. 4 hours later I received this response: “Today, the Department of Labor accepted the resignation of Leif Olson effective immediately.” https://t.co/PZbIScDHqe

— Ben Penn (@benjaminpenn) September 3, 2019

Is that all Penn did? Did he simply send a screenshot and seek a comment. At the time, I was incredulous. My skepticism was warranted.

Now, we know exactly what Penn wrote to DOL. Shortly after the article was posted, Frank Bednarz and Ted Frank of the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute submitted a FOIA request to the Department of Labor. They requested any communications from Ben Penn to the agency.

Here is the message, sent on Friday, August 30, four days before Penn’s article was published.

First, Penn wrote:

“In particular we are focusing on an August 2016 Facebook post in which Mr. Olson made a remark that references two anti-Semitic tropes. Screenshot is attached. These posts remain public at the time this email is being sent.”

This message is extremely misleading: Leif’s remarks “referenced two anti-Semitic tropes” to criticize anti-semitism. Penn’s use of the word “reference” was deliberate. He did not say that Leif made anti-semitic comments, or engaged in anti-semitic acts. This precise use of language suggests Penn knew that his claim of anti-semitism was, at best, tenuous.

Second,  Penn wrote:

“Does the Labor Department find comments that are disparaging to Jews acceptable for a senior appointee?”

Again, nothing Leif wrote was disparaging to Jews. I doubt the people at DOL had the ability to parse through the grainy Facebook screenshots, and figure out their context. Penn’s failure to provide the context is journalistic malpractice.

At bottom, Penn did not simply send the screenshot, and seek comment. His tweet was, at best, misleading. And he concocted alternative facts to cover up his own gross error. Memo to Bloomberg law: if you were looking for an easy justification to punish Penn, here you go. Journalists should not mislead the public on social media to defend their false stories.

Finally, Penn wrote, “Deadline is COB today. Might be flexible on that deadline, depending on when I hear back later today from editors.” This last statement is perhaps the most troubling. I had largely assumed that Penn was acting on his own, and that a single, overworked editor only glanced at the piece. No. Editors (plural!) were closely involved with the publication process, and had four days to digest this record, and still published the article. Who knows how many hours the editors gave Penn to scroll through a decade of Facebook posts?!

This entire incident reflects so poorly on Bloomberg Law. Both Penn, and the editors who approved this story, should face severe consequences. This FOIA’d document provides all the evidence that any journalistic review would require

Finally, Bloomberg should add a clear disclaimer at the top of the article, stating that the organization retracts all claims. There is no reason to stand behind this story. Bloomberg has already assaulted Leif’s character; at least it can rehabilitate his Google footprint.

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The Chinese app Zao can replace a celebrity in a movie scene with anyone holding a smartphone. Stanford researchers have developed an algorithm that can edit talking-head interviews as easily as text, subtracting or adding words that the subject never actually uttered. And the short-lived app DeepNude allowed users to generate a fake (though believable) naked picture of just about anyone.

A recent Pew Poll found that 77 percent of Americans think the government needs to step in and restrict altered or made-up videos or images. The House is considering legislation called the DEEP FAKES Accountability Act, or the Defending Each and Every Person from False Appearances by Keeping Exploitation Subject to Accountability Act, which would make it a crime to post “synthetic media” unless it’s labeled by “irremovable digital watermarks.”  

Some fear that deepfakes could bring an end to generally accepted truth. In this dystopian future, a 4Chan-using basement-dweller could alter the course of international politics.

What these breathless predictions overlook is that deepfakes are just the latest extension of a tradition of manipulation that goes back to the earliest days of captured and recorded media. They not only pose no threat to society—they have many exciting applications that would be stymied by legal restrictions.

To test the effectiveness of today’s cutting-edge software, we challenged people on the Venice Beach boardwalk to spot the deepfake among a series of real video clips featuring Barack Obama.

Hosted and edited by Justin Monticello. Produced by Monticello and Zach Weissmueller. Shot by Monticello, Weissmueller, and John Osterhoudt. Additional graphics by Joshua Swain. Music by Silent Partner, Jingle Punks, RW Smith, and Riot.

“Technology” by Gregoire Lourme is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.

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The city of Chicago says retired grandmother Allie Nelson owes it $6,000 in fines and fees after her car was impounded in 2017, even though the criminal case that led to her car being impounded was dismissed, and even though she wasn’t driving her car, or even in the state, when she violated Chicago’s city code.

Nelson was in fact across the country in Houston, recuperating from cancer treatment, when she got a call from a family member saying her car had been impounded. She had lent her car to her granddaughter while she was out of town. Police pulled over the car one night and found her granddaughter’s boyfriend driving, allegedly along with some marijuana.

“I don’t know what they’ve got going on, but they’re taken people’s cars left and right,” Nelson says. “Now if I’m parked wrong or whatever, okay. But don’t keep my car and slap fines on me that I have nothing to do with. Why me? I ain’t a drug dealer. I’m retired.”

She’s one of tens of thousands of Chicagoans who have lost their cars and been slapped with ruinous fines under the city’s vehicle impound program, which holds owners liable for whatever code violations occur in their cars, whether or not they were aware of them and regardless of whether they can pay the fines.

Nelson is also one of two named plaintiffs added this week to a class-action lawsuit challenging Chicago’s impound program. The lawsuit, filed in April by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm, alleges that Chicago’s practice of holding impounded cars indefinitely until the owners pay up violates residents’ guarantee of due process, as well as protections against excessive fines and unreasonable seizures, under both the Illinois and U.S. constitutions.

The lawsuit follows a Reason investigation last year into Chicago’s impound program that found the city seizes cars for dozens of various municipal code violations, ranging from drug and gun offenses to driving on a suspended license to playing music too loud. The city then soaks vehicle owners in thousands of dollars in fines and storage fees, even when they beat criminal charges or, like Nelson, weren’t even driving their car when the violation occurred. 

The city says it is enforcing quality-of-life laws and cracking down on scofflaws, but civil liberties groups and community activists say the impound program is predatory, burying the guilty and innocent alike in debt.

“Owners find themselves in a labyrinthine impound system that is plagued by serious procedural flaws,” the Institute for Justice lawsuit says. “Even innocent owners get caught up in this system, facing hefty fines and fees when someone else used their car to commit a crime without the car owner’s knowledge.”

Nelson says she lent her car to her granddaughter in October 2017 while she went to Texas for cancer treatment, so her granddaughter could get back and forth to school and work. Nelson also says gave strict instructions not to let her granddaughter’s boyfriend drive it.

But when Chicago police pulled over Nelson’s 2007 Chrysler 300 on an October night, allegedly for a cracked windshield, the boyfriend was driving. A police search of the car turned up marijuana. Nelson’s car was towed on the spot, and she says her granddaughter was left on the sidewalk at night to find a way home.

Chicagos’ quasi-judicial administrative court, which is overseen by contract attorneys rather than judges, ruled in February 2018 that Nelson was still liable for a $2,000 fine for having unlawful drugs in her vehicle, plus $3,925 more in towing and storage fees. 

“They could look at my zip code and tell I don’t have that kind of money,” Nelson says.

Last month, in response to media investigations and growing criticism, the Chicago City Council passed reforms to the city’s punitive ticketing and debt collection policies. However, those changes did not touch the vehicle impound program.

As we reported in our investigation, impound hearings are heavily stacked against defendants. They are civil matters, not criminal, meaning defendants aren’t afforded lawyers. The hearings rely on a low standard of evidence and there is no innocent owner defense, so the city only has to prove it’s more likely than not that a violation occurred in the owner’s car. Finally, they operate independently of the state court system, meaning even defendants who beat a criminal or asset forfeiture case in state court can still have their car held indefinitely by the city. 

Nelson was also told her car could not be released until the criminal case against her granddaughter’s boyfriend concluded. In February 2019, prosecutors dropped the charges against the boyfriend, but when Nelson called to ask about her car, she was told it had already been sold off. According to the lawsuit, she never received a notice that the city intended to dispose of her car.

A WBEZ analysis of Chicago’s gigantic towing operation, of which the vehicle impound program is only a part, found that in 2017 the city towed nearly 94,000 cars. About one in four of those cars were sold to United Road Towing for scrap prices, for a total of $4 million. WBEZ estimated the actual total value of the cars to be $22 million.

However, the sale of Nelson’s car did nothing to draw down her debts to Chicago. There is no statute of limitations for the fines and they can’t be discharged through bankruptcy. The loss of her car created other hardships for Nelson and her granddaughter.

“She couldn’t get back and forth to both work and school,” Nelson says. “She eventually had to give up one of them, and she had to keep a job, so she kind of dropped out.”

Nelson’s claims echo those in other media investigations and lawsuits. The city was hit with a second class-action lawsuit in June alleging that the city fails to notify vehicle owners of the impoundment and impending disposal of their cars.

According to the lawsuit, filed in Illinois state court, Chicago has a policy of “towing without telling,” ignoring a state law passed in 2005 requiring the city to notify vehicle owners that their cars may be disposed of if not claimed. “As a result, thousands of cars are in effect stolen from citizens of Chicago and sold without proper notice and due process,” the lawsuit argues.

The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit is Andrea Santiago, a Chicago woman with multiple sclerosis whose van, which included a $10,000 wheelchair lift, was improperly towed and destroyed last year.

I also profiled the case of Spencer Byrd, a Chicago area carpenter and part-time auto mechanic. Byrd says he was giving a customer a lift when he was pulled over by Chicago police and searched. He was clean, but his passenger had heroin in his pocket.

Byrd’s Cadillac was impounded, and even though he eventually was declared innocent in a state asset forfeiture case against his car, Chicago has refused to release his vehicle to him, claiming he still owes thousands of dollars in fines for a municipal code violation. He is also now a plaintiff in the Institute for Justice’s lawsuit.

“If you do wrong, fine, but I didn’t do nothing wrong,” Byrd told Reason. “I should have had my car released to me with no fines or anything—thank you, sorry for the inconvenience, and I’m on my merry way—instead of trying to get some type of revenue from me. I was proven innocent, and they still didn’t want to act right.”

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Music City can continue its crackdown on home music studios thanks to a new ruling from the Davidson County Chancery Court in Tennessee upholding a Nashville law that prohibits home business owners from serving clients on site.

The law has been a burden on the city’s numerous home studio owners who, thanks to the Nashville Metro government’s ban on client visits, are technically unable to charge musicians to record in their home studios. Most studio owners are able to fly under the radar. Those who are reported to Metro can have their businesses upended overnight.

That would include Lij Shaw, a Grammy Award-winning music producer profiled by Reason in April.

For years, Shaw ran his Toy Box Studio recording business out of his Nashville home without incident. In 2015, he was hit with a cease and desist letter from Metro, which demanded that he stop receiving clients at his home, shut down his promotional YouTube channel, and strip information about his business from his website or else be fined.

In 2017, Shaw and Pat Raynor, whose home salon business also ran afoul of Nashville’s client ban, sued the Nashville Metro government. The two were represented by the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, and the Beacon Center, a Tennessee free market think tank.

Their lawsuit argued that because Nashville couldn’t show any actual harm Shaw or Raynor caused by receiving clients at their home, the city had no legitimate government interest in enforcing its ban on client visits. That ban, their lawsuit argued, was therefore irrational and violated the Tennessee Constitution’s protection of one’s right to earn a living.

In an opinion published Tuesday, however, Chancellor Anne Martin agreed with Nashville’s argument that because one could imagine potential harms coming from allowing home businesses to service clients on-site, the Metro government’s rules were rational, and therefore constitutional.

Shaw and Raynor’s businesses, Martin wrote, “are like any others in that if the public is allowed to come to their residences as customers, it could disturb the residential nature of their neighborhoods, as well as foment a potential host of other problems.”

“The ruling is tantamount to one that concludes that facts cannot override imaginary harms when it comes to economic rights,” says Braden Boucek, an attorney with the Beacon Center. “Under our constitutional structure where the government is one of powers few and enumerated, that’s not how it’s supposed to be.”

“Lij and Pat have a constitutional right to use their homes to earn an honest living,” Institute for Justice attorney Keith Diggs said in a statement. “Today’s ruling ignores Nashville’s admission that Lij and Pat never threatened public health or safety. We will keep fighting for Lij and Pat until this unconstitutional law is overturned.”

The Institute for Justice and the Beacon Center plan on appealing Tuesday’s ruling. Until then, Nashville’s music producers and other home businesses will have to hope and pray that code enforcement doesn’t choose to single them out next.

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It’s clear that the vaping-related respiratory illnesses reported in recent months overwhelmingly involve cannabis products, typically purchased on the black market. But the specific chemical culprits remain uncertain, as demonstrated by a new study of lung tissue samples from 17 patients across the country, 71 percent of whom admitted vaping cannabis extracts.

One theory floated by state and federal researchers is that inhaling vapor from oil-based THC fluids can lead to lipoid pneumonia, a rare condition caused by fat particles in the lungs. In particular, concern has focused on the additive vitamin E acetate, which was detected in most of the cannabis products tested by the Food and Drug Administration and New York’s state lab. But the new study, which was reported in a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine yesterday, found no evidence to support that theory.

Mayo Clinic researchers examined lung tissue from 17 patients, including two who died after developing respiratory symptoms. “Much recent attention has been given to the possibility that vaping-associated lung injury may represent exogenous lipoid pneumonia,” the researchers report. “However, none of our cases showed histologic evidence of exogenous lipoid pneumonia and no radiologic evidence thereof has been found.”

Rather, the injuries were consistent with exposure to toxic chemicals. “While we can’t discount the potential role of lipids,” surgical pathologist Brandon Larsen said in a press release, “we have not seen anything to suggest this is a problem caused by lipid accumulation in the lungs. Instead, it seems to be some kind of direct chemical injury, similar to what one might see with exposures to toxic chemical fumes, poisonous gases, and toxic agents….Based on what we have seen in our study, we suspect that most cases involve chemical contaminants, toxic byproducts, or other noxious agents within vape liquids.”

These 17 patients represent a small sample of the 805 cases of vaping-related lung disease, including 12 deaths, counted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention so far. Lipoid pneumonia may account for some of those patients’ symptoms, while others may be due to toxic additives or contaminants.

“Black market THC products and counterfeit vape cartridges sold over the internet and by street dealers are very susceptible to contamination,” notes Boston University public health professor Michael Siegel. “Unlike legal THC oils, the black market products are not tested, and therefore might contain pesticides, residual solvents, other noxious chemicals, or synthetic cannabinoids, each of which could potentially cause a direct chemical injury to the lung.”

In a report on black-market THC vape cartridges, Leafly describes “a contaminated supply chain that begins in the manufacturing centers of China, runs through the wholesale markets of downtown Los Angeles, disperses to regional pen-filling operations, and finally ends up in the hands of unsuspecting consumers.” Along the way, it says, “each vape cartridge….may pick up lead (the toxic heavy metal), pesticides, unsafe additives like vitamin E oil, and the residual solvent butane.”

Although most of the patients who vaped cannabis extracts used black-market products, two people in Oregon who died after vaping THC reported that they bought cartridges from state-licensed shops. Whatever the agents responsible for these acute reactions, it seems likely that they are relatively new. While people have been vaping THC and CBD for years in states where such products are legal for medical or recreational use, the reports of respiratory illnesses began to emerge only last spring.

“The results of this study add to the growing evidence that contaminated black market THC oils or counterfeit, bootleg vape cartridges are the primary, if not sole, cause of the outbreak,” Siegel writes. “In two cases, legally purchased THC oils from dispensaries in Oregon were implicated. However, there are no cases that have been shown to be associated with the use of store-purchased nicotine e-liquids, and it seems extremely unlikely that these products have any involvement in the outbreak.”

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