Tag: in-the-news

Reidsville, Georgia, Police Chief Stacey Wilds wants to fire officer Anderson Deliford Jr. In a letter to city officials, Wilds said that Deliford, who was hired last year after getting fired by another police department, has already compiled a lengthy record of issues in Reidsville, including chasing a car without activating his lights, ignoring calls, making invalid traffic stops, and writing the wrong charges on some citations. But Mayor Curtis Colwell is not allowing Deliford to be fired. In fact, Colwell required Wilds to give Deliford back pay for a recent suspension he was given. The mayor declined to comment on the issue when contacted by a local TV station.

The post Brickbat: I've Got a List appeared first on Reason.com.

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GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham recently proposed a federal law banning most abortions more than 15 weeks into a pregnancy. The idea flies in the face of many years of Republican rhetoric to the effect that overruling Roe v. Wade would return the issue of abortion to the states. If enacted, it would also be an unconstitutional extension of federal power. But it might nonetheless be upheld under the Supreme Court’s overbroad interpretation of federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

Graham’s proposed bill cites two possible sources of federal authority to restrict abortion: the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Commerce Clause. In a Washington Post op ed, prominent conservative legal scholar John Yoo argues that neither holds up. Yoo is absolutely right about the very weak Fourteenth Amendment theory. See also the more detailed analysis of this rationale for a federal abortion ban by co-blogger Jonathan Adler.

I also agree with Yoo that the Commerce Clause theory is wrong. But I fear he underrates the possibility that it could fly under the Supreme Court’s current extremely broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause. I explained why in a previous post:

Under cases such as Gonzales v. Raich (2005), the Supreme Court has held that Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce includes the authority to restrict almost any “economic activity,” so long as it has a “substantial effect” on interstate trade. And [in Raich] “economic activity” is defined very broadly to include anything that involves the “production, distribution, and consumption of commodities.” That definition allowed the Court to use the Commerce Clause to uphold a federal ban on the possession of marijuana that had never crossed state lines or been sold in any market (even an intrastate one). Nearly all abortions involve the “consumption” and “distribution” of commodities, such as medical supplies. In addition, most abortions qualify as “economic” transactions because doctors, nurses, and others are paid to perform them.

One could argue that a federal law banning or severely restricting abortions isn’t “really” aimed at regulating interstate commerce. The true motive would be to restrict abortion regardless of whether it involved interstate transactions or not. But much the same can be said for the marijuana ban upheld in Raich, and other federal laws enforcing the War on Drugs. They go far beyond targeting actual interstate trade in drugs, and instead forbid even in-state distribution and possession of illegal narcotics.

If, as is likely, the interstate abortion market expands in the wake of a Supreme Court decision overruling Roe, Congress could claim that suppression of intrastate abortions is necessary in order to enforce restrictions on those that involve crossing state lines. If abortion is banned in State A, but legal in neighboring State B, that creates an incentive for residents of A to cross into B in order to get abortions – even if the feds enact a ban on such crossing. That ban might be more effectively enforced if abortion were illegal in B as well as A…..

The Commerce Clause rationale for abortion restrictions might not apply to abortions that are performed on a noncommercial basis by staff who provide their services for free. But such cases are only a small percentage of the total. Moreover, in Raich, the Court upheld the ban on Angel Raich’s possession of marijuana even though the producers had in fact provided it to her for free. The theory was that even such completely noncommercial production and distribution of an illegal drug could impact the interstate market.

These kinds of Commerce Clause arguments may strike some readers as the kind of sophistry that gives lawyers a bad name. I sympathize with that reaction! I hate these arguments myself, and have long argued that Raich is a terrible decision that should be overruled. But this is exactly the sort of reasoning that prevailed in Raich, and provides a constitutional rationale for much of the federal War on Drugs.

It is true, as Yoo points out, that the Supreme Court has limited the commerce power in several cases since 1995:

A 1995 ruling struck down a law that had prohibited guns in school zones, and in 2000 the court barred a federal statute making illegal gender-motivated violence that crossed state lines. In both cases, the court found that the federal government could not use the commerce clause to intrude into the states’ prerogatives over criminal law. Graham’s bill would represent another unconstitutional invasion of the state authority to regulate crime or the professions.

But the Court decided these cases the way it did because the activity regulated by the laws in question (gun possession in school zones and gender-based violence) did not qualify as “economic activity” even under a fairly expansive definition of that concept. For reasons outlined above, most, if not all, abortions probably are “economic activities” in the Court’s sense of that term.

We can’t be certain that courts would uphold Graham’s bill based on Raich and other similar precedents. The relevant precedent is fuzzy enough that perhaps clever lawyers and judges will find a way to distinguish abortion from marijuana possession. But there is at least a strong likelihood that they won’t.

However, as also explained in my previous posts on this subject (see here and here), the Supreme Court could potentially narrow or overrule Raich and thereby open the door to striking down federal abortion bans – thanks, in large part to that unlikely champion of abortion rights, Clarence Thomas:

In Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), the Supreme Court upheld a federal restriction on late-term “partial birth” against individual rights challenges. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion emphasizing the possibility that the law in question exceeds the scope of congressional power under the Commerce Clause. Thomas previously wrote a forceful dissent in Gonzales v. Raich. [In 2021], he reiterated key elements of his critique of that decision, and urged the Supreme Court to reconsider and limit it.

Back in 2018, I explained why Thomas’ position could well lead him to vote to strike down federal abortion restrictions. I built on an earlier post on this subject by Cornell Law Professor Michael Dorf. It’s possible that one or more other conservative justices could join Thomas’s reasoning.

One can then envision federal abortion restrictions getting invalidated by a coalition of conservative justices who believe they are beyond the power of the federal government, and liberal justices who object on individual-rights grounds. It is also possible (though less likely) that some liberal jurists could endorse the federalism argument against these restrictions. Liberal thinking on constitutional federalism shifted a good deal in recent years, and some of that shift may go beyond “fair weather federalism” brought on by opposition to Trump’s policies. It’s also possible that either liberal or conservative judges will think of clever ways to limit the scope of Raich, even if it doesn’t get overruled completely.

All of the above applies to Democratic proposals for federal laws preempting state abortion restrictions, no less than to federal legislation banning various types of abortions, like the Graham proposal. They too almost certainly won’t fly under the Fourteenth Amendment (at least so long as the Supreme Court stands by its reversal of Roe v. Wade), but might squeeze through under the Court’s current Commerce Clause precedent.

For the moment, this issue remains primarily theoretical. Graham’s proposal is highly unlikely to get enacted anytime soon. The Republicans do not have a majority in either house of Congress, and may well not control both even after the November election. President Biden would surely veto this law if it did get enacted at a time when he is still in office. In addition, some Republican senators are clearly unenthusiastic about the idea, in part because they fear it would be a political liability.

But the Graham bill – like Democratic proposals for federal laws protecting abortion against state restrictions – is a reminder that key elements of both parties’ bases would be happy to enact a federal takeover of abortion law, if given the chance. If either party manages to get strong majorities in both houses plus control of the presidency, it could potentially happen.

At that point, the courts would have to consider whether the Constitution really gives Washington such sweeping authority. The reasoning needed to uphold a federal abortion law would also allow Congress to forbid virtually any other medical procedure, and a vast range of other activities, as well.

The post Lindsey Graham's Proposed Federal Abortion Ban is an Unconstitutional Assault on Federalism – But it Might Fly Under Current Supreme Court Precedent appeared first on Reason.com.

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The NY Post today makes a troubling claim, attributed to FBI whistleblowers — that without probable cause Facebook has given the FBI the posts of conservatives upset about the 2020 election, triggering numerous investigations.

The Post article offers some compelling details. My favorite is the agents’ complaint that the project produced a very large volume of data about people who weren’t really threats, thus wasting investigative resources. If you want to inspire FBI agents to discover their inner civil libertarian and blow the whistle on a surveillance program, nothing does the job better than giving them lots of intrusive but unproductive make-work.

But as the story is written, it has one big problem. The conduct it describes would violate the law in a way that neither the FBI nor Facebook would likely be comfortable doing. Federal law mostly prohibits electronic service providers from voluntarily supplying customer data to the government.

What’s more, Facebook has issued a denial. A very careful denial. It says that “the suggestion we seek out peoples’ private messages for anti-government language or questions about the validity of past elections and then proactively supply those to the FBI is plainly inaccurate and there is zero evidence to support it.”

A compound denial like that often means that portions or slight variations of the statement are true. Thus, if Facebook is screening for something just a bit more alarming than “anti-government language or questions about the validity of past elections,” the denial is inoperative.

The Post tries to square the denial with its story by suggesting that the FBI has recruited a Facebook employee as a confidential human source (CHS). I doubt that. Being a CHS doesn’t mean you can do things with your employer’s data that your employer can’t do. And I doubt the FBI would feel free to evade a limit on its investigative power by using a CHS this way.

But there is a provision of federal law that allows electronic service providers to volunteer information to law enforcement. To do so, they need to believe “in good faith … that an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires disclosure without delay of communications relating to the emergency.” 18 USC 2702(c).

So, Facebook and other Silicon Valley companies could have developed an AI engine to search for strings of words that its legal department has precleared — in good faith — as evidence of an emergency involving a danger of death or serious injury. (And after the fact, the injuries that occurred in the January 6 riot could be used to predict such a danger from a lot of antigovernment and “rigged election” talk.)

These passages could be excerpted by social media platforms, along with identifying information, and sent to Justice, under the “danger of death or injury” exception. Justice could then use them to subpoena all of the less inflammatory posts by the same people and then farm out the results to local FBI offices for investigation across the country.

Important caveat: I have no way of knowing whether any of this is happening. I’m just trying to find a legal way in which the troubling facts in the Post story could be true. The program I’ve sketched above would better fit the facts in the story, including the Facebook denial and the improbability that FBI and Justice are flouting the law.

But just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Any mass effort to find “bad” speech on a big social media platform is bound to make a lot of mistakes, as all students of content moderation know.

And, as with content moderation, no one would be surprised if mass Silicon Valley criminal referrals were biased against conservatives. (That bias would be built in if Justice is using an existing grand jury tied to January 6 to generate the subpoenas.)

So, assuming I’m right, it’s fair to ask how any such effort was designed, how aggressively conservative complaints were turned into emergency threats to life and limb, who’s overseeing the process to prevent overbroad seizures of legitimate speech, and whether the same thing could be done to Black Lives Matter, environmental groups, animal rights campaigners, and any other movement whose more extreme followers have sometimes lapsed into violence.

The post Is Silicon Valley Spying on Conservatives for the FBI? appeared first on Reason.com.

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According to a new report, an average of 25 people are sitting in Mississippi jails each day waiting for a bed at a mental health hospital. These individuals have not been charged with any crime. Rather, they are incarcerated as part of a common nationwide practice in which mentally ill individuals, particularly in rural areas, are sent to jail in what is sometimes called a “mental health hold” while authorities wait for a hospital bed to become available. While the practice is explicitly allowed only in five states and banned in Colorado, it is still common in states without specific laws.

The report was conducted as part of increased federal oversight of Mississippi’s mental hospitals, following a Justice Department lawsuit against the state. The lawsuit, filed in 2016, alleged that the state had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act by “failing to provide adults with mental illness with necessary integrated, community-based mental health services.” In 2019, a judge for the District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi ruled against the state and required independent oversight of Mississippi’s mental health system. This most recent report is part of a biannual series of inspections to track the state’s compliance with judgment in the case.

In the report, one woman interviewed alleged that her husband, who suffers from bipolar disorder, “was held in jail where he was not given his medication and deteriorated further awaiting a State Hospital bed. In a later episode he was taken to crisis center, where staff called police who once again took him to jail.” She told monitors that her husband was “subjected to treatment that should not happen in a civilized society.”

However, this problem is not confined to Mississippi. A 2017 Marshall Project investigation notes that temporary jailing of the mentally ill occurs nationwide. In a particularly galling case from a South Dakota hospital, “one 16-year-old girl came to the emergency room after overdosing on Motrin and was escorted to jail less than an hour after her arrival, without a psychiatric evaluation. Hospital staff waited until the morning to notify her parents.” According to The Marshall Project, reports from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services indicate that from 2011 to 2017, at least 22 hospitals in 16 states were cited by the agency for sending mentally ill patients into law enforcement custody without first attempting to stabilize them.

The continued practice of sending someone to jail, rather than giving them urgently needed mental health care reflects the callousness with which the mentally ill are treated by law enforcement and hospitals alike. Not only does the unnecessary incarceration of the mentally ill indicate that many more beds are needed at inpatient psychiatric facilities, but it also shows what can happen when law enforcement is utilized as solutions to noncriminal problems and jail is treated as a holding pen for some of society’s most vulnerable individuals. 

The post In Mississippi, Dozens of Mentally Ill People Are Held in Jails While Awaiting Inpatient Treatment appeared first on Reason.com.

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Many Republicans were dismayed by the federal abortion ban that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) unveiled this week, viewing it as politically unwise and constitutionally suspect. But yesterday Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.), who is running for reelection this year, announced that he is co-sponsoring Graham’s bill, which would prohibit abortion at 15 weeks of gestation or later. Rubio’s support for the bill blatantly contradicts the position he was taking just a few weeks ago, when he said abortion regulation should be left to the states, and his avowed support for federalism more generally.

During an interview with CBS Miami’s Jim DeFede in late August, Rubio explained the significance of the Supreme Court’s June 24 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. “All the Supreme Court has said is that now that debate is not going to happen in Washington, where it wasn’t happening at all because of Roe v. Wade,” Rubio said. “Now that decision has to be made at the state level. And the state legislature will weigh in. Florida has an abortion law; it cuts it off at 15 weeks. Every state will have its own law.”

When DeFede specifically asked Rubio whether he would “support a federal ban on abortion,” the senator reiterated his support for a state-by-state resolution of the issue, although he hedged a bit. “I think that right now, this issue is appropriately before the states,” he said. “That’s where it always should have been, that’s where it is now, and I think that’s where it will be for the foreseeable future. We don’t have the votes now or anytime in the near future for that, and frankly, I think this issue is better decided at the state level at this point, because as I see it playing out, every state will now—people will have more influence over their state legislature than they do over Congress and certainly over the Supreme Court.”

Although Rubio’s reference to the lack of congressional support for an abortion ban suggested that his devotion to federalism might be politically contingent, he made it clear that he did not favor such legislation “at this point” or “anytime in the near future.” That was less than three weeks ago.

What changed? Not the Constitution, which does not give Congress the authority to regulate abortion or any other medical procedure. Not the Commerce Clause, which Graham cites as a justification for his bill based on an interpretation broad enough to obliterate the constitutional distinction between state and federal powers. Not even the prospects of winning Senate approval for an abortion ban, which are just as dim now as they were when Rubio sat down for that interview. The only thing that has changed is Rubio’s calculation of whether backing a federal abortion ban will, on balance, make him more or less attractive to voters in November.

Democrats think that issue will help them by reminding moderates of “extreme MAGA Republicans’ intent to criminalize women’s health freedom in all 50 states and arrest doctors for providing basic care,” as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) puts it. But Rubio thinks he can make Democrats—and in particular, his Senate opponent, Rep. Val Demings (D–Fla.)—look extreme by showing that they oppose even relatively modest restrictions like a 15-week ban, which would cover a small share of abortions (less than 8 percent, judging from federal data).

“I’ve always been pro-life,” Rubio told reporters when he was asked about Graham’s bill. “You need to be asking Democrats what restrictions they support…Democrats won’t vote for any restriction of any kind on abortion.”

While Rubio may be consistent in his opposition to abortion, he is utterly unreliable as a defender of constitutional principles that he claims to care about. “The majority of Americans believe that the federal government shouldn’t be involved in everything,” he said during a 2020 discussion sponsored by American Compass. While “there are some important things the federal government has to do, like protect us from foreign countries that seek to do us harm,” he explained, “the core of conservatism for a long time” has been “limited government and federalism, the notion that it’s at your local and state level, where to the extent government needs to be involved, it should be involved and be more effective.”

Desperate to remain in power, Rubio has blithely jettisoned that “core of conservatism.” He has gone from saying “that decision has to be made at the state level” and “every state will have its own law” to arguing that the decision should be made at the federal level, overriding the choices that states have made. Rubio is betraying his avowed principles not to protect “unborn children” (since Graham’s bill has zero chance of passing) but simply to enhance his electoral prospects.

That is completely in character for Rubio, whose scruples are no match for his blind ambition. While running for the 2016 Republican nomination, Rubio said Donald Trump’s “reckless and dangerous” rhetoric was reminiscent of “third-world strongmen.” He castigated Trump for using “language that basically justifies physically assaulting people who disagree with you.” He condemned Trump as a “con artist” and “the most vulgar person ever to aspire to the presidency,” warning that his nomination would “shatter and fracture the Republican Party and the conservative movement.”

That evaluation did not stop Rubio from endorsing Trump as the Republican nominee in 2016, when the senator suddenly decided that the “con artist” could be trusted to “curb spending” and “get our national debt under control.” This year, after Trump endorsed Rubio’s reelection, the senator had only nice things to say about the former president, notwithstanding his increasingly erratic and alarming behavior while in office, culminating in his refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, which led to a violent assault on Rubio’s workplace. “He’s brought a lot of people and energy into the Republican Party,” Rubio told CNN.

Back in 2016, Rubio warned that “we’re on the verge of having someone take over the conservative movement who is a con artist.” In other words, Trump’s embrace of conservative principles was cynical and untrustworthy, based on political calculation rather than sincere belief. While Rubio was dismayed that voters did not see through that sort of pretense, he is counting on them to ignore it this fall.

The post Marco Rubio, Who Last Month Said Abortion Regulation Should Be Left to the States, Endorses a Federal Ban appeared first on Reason.com.

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A new episode of The Academic Freedom Podcast from the Academic Freedom Alliance is now available. Subscribe through your favorite platform so you don’t miss an episode.

In this episode, I talk with Mitch Daniels about the state of campus free speech, some initiatives at Purdue University, and the growing Republican hostility to universities. Daniels is the outgoing president of Purdue University. He previously served as a Republican governor of Indiana and the director of the Office of Management of Budget in the second Bush administration. Given Daniels serious experience in both university leadership and Republican Party politics, I was particularly happy to get his views on higher education as a target in the culture wars.

Purdue has an impressive record on free speech. The university clocked in at number three in the latest FIRE rankings. During Daniels’ presidency, Purdue launched a free speech component as part of its orientation for first-year students. Purdue was an early adopter of the University of Chicago statement on free expression.

In our conversation, Daniels talks not only about his efforts on this issue at Purdue, but also about the value of tenure for university faculty, the problem with legislative efforts to restrict the discussion of controversial ideas on college campuses, the risks of activists boards of trustees intervening in faculty hiring and promotion decisions, and the political problem created by the lack of ideological diversity on university faculties.

Listen to the whole thing here.

The post The Academic Freedom Podcast #16 with Mitch Daniels appeared first on Reason.com.

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Prosecutors in Texas are no longer seeking the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer who was breaking into his home in a no-knock SWAT raid looking for proof he was dealing drugs.

Marvin Guy, 57, of Killeen has been in jail since May 2014 awaiting trial after police attempted to serve a warrant to search his home by sending a SWAT team, unannounced, through a window. Guy reportedly mistook the police for intruders. He opened fire and shot four of them. One of them, Det. Charles “Chuck” Dinwiddie, subsequently died of his injuries.

Guy was arrested and charged with three counts of attempted capital murder and then eventually capital murder for Dinwiddie’s death. Despite the complicated circumstances and the police’s own responsibility for what happened, prosecutors said in 2014 they’d be seeking the death penalty against Guy.

And he’s been sitting in prison ever since, awaiting trial, held on bonds totaling $4 million. This week the Killeen Daily Herald reported that the Bell County District Attorney’s Office has finally agreed to waive the death penalty so that the case can move forward. Guy still faces life in prison if convicted.

Guy has not actually been charged with any drug-related crimes, even though the police raided his home in the first place for evidence of narcotics. All of the charges are a result of the no-knock raid going bad.

Guy’s arrest and the circumstances behind it received brief national coverage in 2014 and then quickly faded. But the dangers of no-knock police raids continued to manifest across the country, and then took center stage in 2020 when Breonna Taylor was killed in Louisville, Kentucky, by police in another drug raid gone bad.

Some municipalities have decided to ban or severely restrict the use of no-knock raids. Killeen finally banned the practice in 2021, but that was two years too late for James Scott Reed, who was shot and killed by Killeen police in another no-knock raid searching for narcotics. One officer involved later resigned and then pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence in an attempt to conceal that he had fired shots at Reed.

A trial date for Guy has still not been set. Now that capital punishment is off the table, prosecutors are hoping to bring it before a jury by next February, though Guy’s defense team is asking for more time to line up expert witnesses.

The post Marvin Guy No Longer Faces Death Penalty for Allegedly Shooting, Killing Cop in Botched No-Knock Raid appeared first on Reason.com.

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Two-thirds of European Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II in a systematic, relentless process that still exceeds our ability to comprehend its origins and consequences. The Final Solution, which was the Nazi plan to exterminate all European Jews, wasn’t implemented until 1942, but Hitler’s government had begun openly dehumanizing, harassing, and attacking Jews upon taking power nine years earlier.

Even when the Nazi death machine kicked into high gear, America kept its doors mostly closed to Jews, as filmmakers Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein recount in The U.S. and the Holocaust, a new three-part documentary series on PBS. 

Some lobbied to open the country to refugees in the run-up to war, but anti-immigration legislation, the economic devastation of the Depression, incredulity toward a press that had trafficked in false atrocity accounts during World War I, and deep-seated antisemitism, especially in Franklin Roosevelt’s State Department, combined to thwart those efforts.

Reason talked with Burns and Novick about why a nation of immigrants remains so deeply ambivalent about newcomers and the lessons that 21st-century America should draw from our country’s response in the lead-up to the Holocaust.

The post How Closed Borders Helped Facilitate the Holocaust appeared first on Reason.com.

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When people throw around the phrase welfare fraud, it usually refers to individuals bilking the system by falsely claiming to be in need. A lawsuit in Mississippi alleges that it also includes funding for a college volleyball facility and cash payouts to a Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback.

Phil Bryant, a Republican, served as Mississippi’s governor from 2012–2020. During that time, the state’s poverty rate hovered between 20–25 percent. Today, it has the highest rate of any state in the country, with more than 19 percent of residents living under the poverty line.

The Mississippi Department of Human Services (MDHS) administers Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a welfare program funded by a federal block grant. It spent over $77 million in 2020, just over half of what it spent two years earlier.

But during that time, the MDHS was rocked by scandal: In February 2020, the Office of the State Auditor arrested six people on charges including fraud and embezzlement, including John Davis, former MDHS director, and Nancy New, director of the nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center. New and her son Zach have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with prosecutors.

In all, the state alleged that nearly $100 million was diverted from anti-poverty programs, to the benefit of local officials and well-connected individuals. One of those individuals was allegedly Brett Favre, a native Mississippian and one of the most decorated quarterbacks in the history of the NFL.

In January 2020, Favre bragged that “it’s hard to get people to donate for volleyball. But we’ll be opening an $8 million facility that will be as good as any in the country” at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), his alma mater and the school where his daughter played volleyball. But as Mississippi Today reported at the time, at least $5 million of that total came from New’s nonprofit, which according to the state auditor acted as a funnel through which MDHS officials illicitly laundered state funds. Between 2016 and 2019, the nonprofit received more than $60 million in funding from the state’s welfare programs, while raising less than $1.6 million from any other sources. In all, the auditor alleges that New misused at least $77 million, the same amount the state spent on welfare funding in 2020.

According to the state auditor, Favre was also paid more than $1.1 million in speaking fees for appearances he never made, paid by the nonprofit with money from state welfare funds. The state auditor claimed that Favre was unaware of the money’s origin, and Favre agreed to pay the money back (though he has struggled to do so in a timely manner).

But a state civil lawsuit reveals that Favre was intimately aware of the misuse of state funds, and even enlisted Bryant’s help.

The MDHS agreed in 2017 to help Favre fund the volleyball facility, even structuring the deal to circumvent regulations that prevent TANF funds from being used toward construction. But the MDHS funds were not enough: In July 2019, Bryant texted New, “Just left Brett Favre…Can we help him with his project.” Favre’s $1.1 million payment for speaking fees was actually intended to finance the project as well, in exchange for ads for the state welfare agency. In a text to New, Favre offered, “I could record a few radio spots…and whatever compensation could go to USM.” He also worried, “If you were to pay me is there anyway the media can find out where it came from and how much?”

This is not even the first whiff of scandal. In April, Mississippi Today reported that Bryant had set up a meeting in December 2018 between Favre and MDHS officials in order to secure $1.7 million for Favre to invest in a pharmaceutical startup, Prevacus. Just days before the meeting, the former football star texted Bryant, “It’s 3rd and long and we need you to make it happen!!” That money was laundered through New’s organization as well. After Bryant left office in 2020, he agreed to a “company package” including Prevacus shares in exchange for introducing the company to investors.

Neither Favre nor Bryant has been charged, though Favre has apparently been questioned by the FBI.

The entire saga, in which a legendary professional athlete uses state funds in a purely personal endeavor that eventually draws the attention of law enforcement, is reminiscent of Curt Schilling’s foray into video game development. After helping the Boston Red Sox clinch their first World Series win in 86 years, Schilling founded video game company 38 Studios, which he established in Rhode Island after the state offered him a $75 million loan. The company ultimately defaulted on the loan, leaving the state on the hook for over $100 million.

But Favre’s deal is considerably worse: For all of the faults in Schilling’s deal, it was overwhelmingly approved by the state legislature. Meanwhile, Favre took part in a series of backroom deals meant to benefit a few well-connected players from the largesse of the state’s coffers.

The post Brett Favre Goes on Welfare appeared first on Reason.com.

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Upon taking control of the Libertarian Party (L.P.) this May, leaders from the internal bloc known as the Mises Caucus quickly adopted “national divorce” as one of the retooled party’s core rallying cries on Twitter. New national Chair Angela McArdle proudly tweeted that she was “organizing the LP like an insurgency and preparing for counter insurgency operations.”

Over the past three weeks, minus the bloody violence part, the state Libertarian affiliates in New Mexico and Virginia have indeed divorced themselves from the party’s national leadership. But the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) is not letting them go peacefully without a fight.

On August 25, the Libertarian Party of New Mexico (LPNM), which achieved major-party ballot-access status in 2018 thanks to the 9 percent presidential showing in 2016 by former two-term Gov. Gary Johnson, announced that it was disaffiliating from the LNC.

“You have conspired, with a faction inimical to the principles of libertarianism, to impose upon us officers and governing documents foreign to our rules, unchosen by our members, and unacknowledged by the laws of our state,” state Chairman Chris Luchini wrote, in a long bill of particulars. “You have adopted messaging and communications hostile to the principles for which the Libertarian Party was founded, serving no purpose other than to antagonize and embarrass.”

At issue was an August 9 LNC letter declaring the New Mexico state party’s July 12 Constitutional Convention to be “null and void” due to “multiple” procedural violations, involving the proper advance notice and the manner of the convention (electronic). In a phone interview last week, Luchini theorized that the LNC’s real objection was to a bylaw change the LPNM made at that convention limiting the number of annual executive committee personnel changes to not more than two, thereby preventing the Mises Caucus (or any other bloc) from winning complete control of the state party in a single convention.

While Luchini granted procedural errors over advance notice, he said the LNC’s response was unduly and unreasonably punitive and harassing. “Violate a procedural rule, God forbid, commit heresy against Robert’s Rules of Order, they think us making a mistake justified any action on their part.” Rather than submit to national discipline, the LPNM chose secession.

No, we break up with you, the LNC responded in a meeting this past Sunday night. The National Committee refused to recognize the LPNM’s right to exit, and instead voted 14–1 (with two abstentions) to disaffiliate itself from the New Mexicans. But this divorce will come with a likely custody battle—over the name.

“If state parties choose to disaffiliate and operate completely independent of the national LP,” McArdle wrote to me this week, “they will need to come up with a new name.”

Luchini, for one, finds it ironic that the LNC is threatening to sue—use state force—to protect its trademark over the word Libertarian in a political-party context, especially considering that the LPNM had been in operation for decades before the LNC got around to trademarking the term in 2000.

The LNC anticipates that a new group of New Mexico Libertarians—the national party bylaws require just 10—will arise to form a new state-level L.P. in New Mexico that the LNC will then recognize as an official affiliate. According to a special rule of order passed at that same LNC meeting Sunday night, “The petitioners [for such a new party must have] held a public meeting which was open to all current national Party members and immediately previous affiliate Party members,” with reasonable notice.

That same day, the Virginia Libertarian Party’s state central committee (SCC) announced that it had dissolved itself after a 7–5 vote (with one abstention), complaining that “the national image of the party” was now “functionally indistinct from other alt-right parties and movements.” The party’s website and Facebook page disappeared; its email addresses stopped working.

The move was illegal, LNC Secretary Caryn Ann Harlos says, though the Virginia State Corporation Commission issued a letter Tuesday stating that the dissolution complies “with the requirements of law.” A parliamentarian consulted by the LNC countered that the dissolution required a vote of full party membership, while now-former Virginia L.P. chair Holly Ward believes that the SCC itself is the only relevant “members” who needed to approve. McArdle also said in a post to the LNC’s business listserv that “corporate dissolution papers do not make or break an affiliate and lots of affiliates don’t have corporate status.” Technically, in Virginia another legal step known as “termination” must also occur, after the Virginia party’s assets have been properly distributed.

Ward charged in a phone interview that the LNC has become a “fraud,” neither properly backing Libertarian candidates nor Libertarian messaging, in a state whose party achieved a remarkable 6.5 percent running Robert Sarvis for governor in 2013 (and another exceptional-for-Libertarians 2.4 percent running Sarvis for Senate in 2014). The national party has made the Libertarian banner toxic to potential candidates, Ward claimed, which she thinks helps explain why there are no L.P. candidates on Virginia ballots this year. In doing candidate outreach, Ward says, she found “interested parties declined to run based on the current image and narrative of the national party.”

Several local and regional Libertarian organizations in Virginia objected to the SCC’s abrupt self-destruction, and the conflict is ongoing: Disgruntled Virginia L.P. members are being asked to write letters of complaint to the state government (a move Ward considers a potential use of state force to achieve a political goal, and thus a Libertarian no-no) and the Libertarian Party of Northern Virginia has been decrying the move and vowing to “continue to work with affiliates across the Commonwealth to conduct the business of the party,” state party dissolution or not. There are various means for members to call for a new special convention and elect new officers who don’t want to dissolve, Harlos says, working on the presumption that the dissolution motion should be considered illegitimate.

“While the LNC has had to referee some internal party disputes recently,” McArdle wrote in her email, “we’re still focused on advancing the message of liberty, supporting candidates, and moving the needle in the direction of freedom. I appreciate how level-headed and calm the remaining LPVA officers have been and anticipate they will get their affiliate back in order quickly.”

Virginia and New Mexico are not the only states experiencing Libertarian turmoil. Massachusetts now has two functioning parties using the name Libertarian, only one of which is recognized by the LNC.

The Bay State fight emanated from a Mises-associated bloc of members from the state party calling for a (bylaw-legal) special convention in December 2021, that the old guard attempted to quash by in January 2022 expelling from the party all who called for it. Competing conventions were then held in April and the newer, Mises-oriented bloc is the one the LNC now recognizes as an affiliate.

Still, all the Libertarian candidates on the Massachusetts ballot this year are the ones put forward by the older body, now re-christened as the “Libertarian Association of Massachusetts.” Andrew Cordio, chair of the officially recognized “Libertarian Party of Massachusetts,” said in a phone interview this week that he’s currently more focused on membership and volunteer growth and outreach than candidates and ballot access.

In 2021, the Mises Caucus faction, then influential but not dominant on the LNC, was on the opposite side of a state-disaffiliation case, successfully blocking a move to break ties with a New Hampshire L.P. that was seen by the old guard as being too “toxic” for the national brand. (Roughly, some accuse the Mises side of hypocrisy, seeing the current New Mexico situation as analogous, except now the Mises crowd are for disaffiliating a state party that displeased them.) The attempted purge of LPNH, a party that has since attracted national attention for various inflammatory tweets, led directly in June 2021 to the resignation of then–national Chair Joseph Bishop-Henchman.

Harlos, consistently the LNC’s most meticulous stickler for proper parliamentary procedure, explains that the national party is duty-bound to protect the rights of members, sometimes over the actions of their governing bodies. If the LNC seems to be interfering with a state party, she says, it’s because “we have to determine who [the legitimate state affiliate] actually is,” which has to include “if they conducted themselves within their own bylaws.”

The LNC may be exerting a heavy hand of late in publicity and state affiliate management, but on the issues core to the functions of a political party—ballot access and candidates—the national party is largely irrelevant; the state parties do all the heavy lifting and have the legal relationships to their state’s electoral officials. The national party’s role is to occasionally offer financial, legal, promotional, and organizational support to either ballot access drives or (more rarely) candidates or candidate training.

The national party does pick a presidential ticket by majority delegate vote at its biannual convention in presidential election years, but every state affiliate has the legal power to ignore that choice and place its own preferred candidate. It almost never happens with any state party in happy affiliation with the LNC, but a rogue Arizona L.P. in 2000 did place science fiction writer L. Neil Smith on the presidential ballot in that state over national choice Harry Browne.

It seems overwhelmingly likely that whoever the Libertarian presidential nominee selected by the national convention delegates is in 2024, he or she will not be on the ballot in all 50 states, a threshold that the L.P. has achieved the past two presidential elections, and six times total in its 50-year history.

Despite these state conflicts, including assertions that current national policies are hurting the brand, according to its August financial report the national party’s number of active donors did begin rising after the May convention turnover in management, though as of August that number is lower than in any month in 2021 under the leadership displaced in Reno; August revenue is lower than the vast majority of months of the past year after a huge May rise that beat all but one month of the past year.

Luchini in an email this week said that there are plans to launch a new national organization of state Libertarian parties that do not wish to be affiliated with the current Mises-dominated LNC. While Luchini would not name any states specifically, he says he is confident from backchannel discussions that while New Mexico was “the first” to disaffiliate while still being recognized by the LNC, it certainly “won’t be the last.”

The post Libertarian Party Faces State Rebellions appeared first on Reason.com.

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