American Airlines Slated To Drop Dozens Of Flights To Smaller Cities As Government Aid Dries Up Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/14/2020 – 20:20
With the government set to stop subsidizing the industry, airlines are <gasp> actually going to have to make operational changes to effectively deal with the lack of demand. Oh, the horror of free market forces actually forcing companies to make business changes!
This starts with American Airlines, who is reportedly preparing to drop two dozen small and medium city flights as federal coronavirus aid is set to end. The aid had previously mandated that airlines were not allowed to cut service approaches.
Carriers were previously required to maintain minimum levels of service through September 30 as part of a $25 billion aid package, according to CNBC. They were also prohibited from making layoffs. Under the aid package, American Airlines received $5.8 billion.
The purpose of the deal was to provide both payroll assistance and continued air service around the country despite the fact that planes didn’t have any passengers.
American’s forthcoming cancellations could start showing up in fall schedules that are set to begin next week, the report said. Changes still have not been finalized and the list of cities that could be cut has not been released. Both airlines and their respective unions have continued to push Congress for another $25 billion in support to keep paying workers through the end of next March, when hopefully demand can recover.
Both the Democrats and Republicans seemed to be in favor of such a deal weeks ago, but negotiations have stalled in Congress for the time being. As a result, the Department of Transportation had informed American Airlines that a planned extension of the benefits was not going to happen for the time being.
A DOT spokesperson commented: “The Department did not propose to extend the obligations, but will use the authority in the CARES Act to monitor ongoing access by the traveling public to the national air transportation system. The Department is also prepared to implement any new provisions of law in this area if enacted by Congress.”
United and Delta have not announced changes to their schedule yet. However, one source told CNBC, the “situation is fluid”.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2PW3VOW Tyler Durden
The iconic memorial display in NYC that features two beams of light to honor the victims of 9/11 has been canceled over coronavirus concerns just weeks after Mayor Bill de Blasio allowed a Black Lives Matter mural to be painted outside Trump Tower.
The “Tribute in Light beam won’t shine for the first time in 18 years because health risks posed to the large crew required to oversee it “were far too great,” according to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.
The same concerns were completely absent when a similarly large crew was on hand to paint the giant Black Lives Matter mural, a process which De Blasio himself took part in for a photo-op.
The mural was also painted without permission from the city, with de Blasio allowing activists to skip the permit process.
As we previously highlighted, at a time when NYC is experiencing soaring shootings and violent crimes (partly thanks to de Blasio emptying the prisons), the BLM mural also required 27 cops working in shifts to protect it.
The 9/11 Memorial and Museum also scrapped the in-person reading of 9/11 victims’ names at the annual Ground Zero ceremony over coronavirus concerns.
Similar concerns were not expressed when tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters repeatedly marched through New York City in close proximity.
Twitter respondents expressed their disgust at the double standard.
“This is a slap in the face to America,” said one.
“No permit but yet arrest people for “vandalizing” what they vandalized in the first place!” added another.
“Remember you can’t get corona at a #BLM event but you can at a light show,” said another.
“Could we just call it the George Floyd Lightshow or something? There’s gotta be a way around this,” joked another.
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Nearly A Third Of Americans Had Unpaid Housing Bills In August Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/14/2020 – 19:40
Nearly a third of Americans for the fourth consecutive month failed to pay rent or mortgage payments in full. Personal finances of millions of folks have quickly deteriorated through summer. Unpaid housing bills are mounting as the virus-induced downturn continues to unleash the worst employment crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
A new survey via Apartment List, an online rental platform, found 32% of renters (and homeowners) entered August with unpaid housing bills. At least 20% of respondents owed more than $1,000. Among renters with back rent due, 49% have renegotiated lease agreements with their landlords or are doing so.
Here’s the percentage of renters and homeowners with unpaid housing bills.
Renters and landlords are renegotiating lease agreements over unpaid rent obligations.
“As the pandemic rages on, missed housing payments are continuing to pile up. For the fourth straight month, we found that roughly one-in-three Americans failed to make their full rent or mortgage payment in the first week of the month,” Apartment List said.
The website added, “many of the protections and benefits put in place at the outset of the pandemic are now expiring, and the prospects for another round of stimulus remain uncertain. As unpaid housing debt builds, concerns around eviction and foreclosure are mounting. Although landlords and lenders are showing a willingness to negotiate, housing security is currently in jeopardy for an unprecedented number of Americans.”
The survey (of about 4,000 people) sheds more light on the finances of the average American has rapidly deteriorated over the summer with deep economic scarring realized as depressionary unemployment levels risks derailing the economic recovery.
Even before the virus-induced recession, the bottom 90% of Americans had insurmountable debts and limited savings. As soon as the mass layoffs hit in late March, tens of millions of folks saw their incomes quickly evaporate, unable to service bills, buy food, or like we’re focusing on this piece, pay rent, or mortgage payments.
The Trump administration quickly responded to this distress by handing out $600 per week stimulus checks, imposing an eviction moratorium, and allowing homeowners to defer mortgage payments in a forbearance program.
At the moment, a quarter of all household income is derived from the government.
So when stimulus checks stopped on July 31, and the eviction moratorium expired a couple of weeks ago, this means millions of Americans are greatly suffering in August.
With no timeline on the next round of stimulus, and or even if the rent eviction moratorium will be reimposed, the poor financial health of Americans doesn’t lend credibility a V-shaped recovery will be seen this year.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3atcKsE Tyler Durden
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 panel decision, today upheld a lower court’s shutting down of California’s ban on gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, so-called “large capacity magazines” (LCMs).
Because of this lawsuit, initially filed just before the newest iteration of the LCM ban went into effect, the state has been legally enjoined from actually enforcing it. Now the 9th Circuit says it should never be able to. The law, if applied, would have demanded confiscation or destruction of all the tremendous number of previously legal LCMs in Californians’ hands.
The District Court had decided there was “no genuine dispute of material fact that section 32310 violates the Second and Fifth Amendments of the United States Constitution, and ordered summary judgment for the [LCM] Owners” who were suing the state. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today agrees with that conclusion.
Judge Kenneth K. Lee wrote today’s 9th Circuit panel decision, in which he was joined by Judge Consuelo Callahan. The judges concluded that barring citizens from owning and using more than half of the magazines for sale in the United States, ones that come along with a wide variety of commonly purchased handguns, strikes to the core of the Second Amendment right to own arms for self-defense, since the LCM ban barred possession of a self-defense tool commonly used for lawful purposes.
For some perspective, Judge Lee notes that “from 1990 to 2015, civilians possessed about 115 million LCMs out of a total of 230 million magazines in circulation….Today, LCMs may be lawfully possessed in 41 states and under federal law.”
In buttressing the significance of the self-defense right the Second Amendment enshrines, Judge Lee discusses
Perhaps the most poignant and persuasive reminder of the fundamental right to self-defense…the denial of that right to Black Americans during tragic chapters of our country’s history….Post-Civil War state legislation and the Black Codes in the South deprived newly freed slaves of their Second Amendment rights…Meanwhile, armed bands of ex-Confederates roamed the countryside forcibly disarming and terrorizing African Americans….Our country’s history has shown that communities of color have a particularly compelling interest in exercising their Second Amendment rights. The Second Amendment provides one last line of defense for people of color when the state cannot — or will not — step in to protect them.
Women and “members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities” are also singled out in the decision as often needing a vigorously defended right to bear arms. “The Second Amendment is not a relic relevant only during the era of Publius and parchments,” Judge Lee declares. “It is a right that is exercised hundreds of times on any given day.”
Our current strife-torn nation might make this point of Judge Lee’s especially resonant: “Law-abiding citizens trapped in high-crime areas where
the law enforcement is overtaxed may defend themselves in their homes with a handgun outfitted with LCMs. And in incidents of mass chaos and unrest, law enforcement simply may be unable to protect the people, leaving them solely
responsible for their own safety in a seemingly Hobbesian world.”
Relying on language and reasoning in the Supreme Court’s dominant Second Amendment decision, 2008’s Heller case, the judges found no reason to consider LCMs to be unusual, or to conclude the magazine ban is the sort of longstanding regulation on arms that should be granted deference as presumptively lawful. Some such laws would include, Judge Lee writes, those that bar “possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill” and “prohibitions on carriage in sensitive locations, and conditions or qualifications on the commercial sale of firearms.”
The judges granted the state interest the law supposedly furthered qualified as compelling. Still, the LCM ban was not appropriately “narrowly tailored” toward achieving that interest, since the magazine ban was not “the least restrictive means” toward that goal.
Despite not being guns, the panel finds that magazines are an essential element of a gun serving its self-defense function. “Firearms or magazines holding more than ten rounds have been in existence — and owned by American citizens — for centuries. Firearms with greater than ten round capacities existed even before our nation’s founding, and the common use of LCMs for self-defense is apparent in our shared national history,” Judge Lee writes, and the decision provides many pages of historical examples to prove this point.
The 9th Circuit’s panel decision also explored the tricky and complicated question of what level of scutiny to apply to the law’s impingement on Second Amendment rights, concluding that “strict” scrutiny was appropriate. As Judge Lee wrote, “If a challenged law does not strike at the core Second Amendment right or substantially burden that right, then intermediate scrutiny applies….Only where both questions are answered in the affirmative will strict scrutiny apply.” And as above, they did find the LCM ban both strikes at the core of the right, and substantially burdens it.
Even if the 9th Circuit panel had been less restrictive in their scrutiny standard, Judge Lee said the law would have failed even “intermediate scrutiny” since “while the interests expressed by the state qualified as ‘important,’ the means chosen to advance those interests were not substantially related to their service.” Judge Lee points out the state’s attempts to defend the idea that the LCM law would in fact prevent important public harms were poorly argued and provided little hard evidence that any past actual harms would have been prevented by application of the law.
Judge Lee insists that “Our decision today is in keeping with Ninth Circuit
precedent. While we have not articulated a precise standard for what constitutes a substantial burden on core Second Amendment rights, we have consistently stated that a law that bans possession of a commonly used arm for self-defense — with no meaningful exception for law-abiding citizens — likely imposes a substantial burden on the Second Amendment.” Judge Lee notes the 9th Circuit has seen fit to apply merely intermediate scrutiny to laws that merely barred localized sales of certain arms, or those that imposed waiting periods on purchases. But full-on possession bans with no grandfather clauses, Judge Lee thinks, should not stand in his Circuit.
The dissent from Judge Barbara Lynn insists, among other things, that other federal circuit courts considering similar issues upheld the laws, though Lee in his opinion mostly insists those other cases involved LCM restrictions short of total ban and confiscation.
Judge Lynn also relies on an earlier 9th Circuit case, Fyock v. Sunnyvale, upholding a District Court that did not overturn a California city’s LCM ban and seemed to ratify the use of intermediate scrutiny in such cases. Judge Lee believes that in Fyock “We held only that the district court did not abuse its discretion by choosing intermediate scrutiny based on the limited record before it on a preliminary injunction appeal,” a distinct issue from whether intemediate scrutiny is actually appropriate or justified.
While the specifics of some of the other LCM restriction cases Judge Lynn discusses are not the same in all respects as those in Duncan v. Becerra, her listing of them does indicate enough tumult among federal circuits to make it perhaps ripe for the Supreme Court to weigh in in the future on an appropriate case on the general question of LCM restrictions.
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Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.
NASA to rename insensitive cosmic objects
You may think NASA’s mission is to take humanity to Mars and beyond.
But remember, we no longer live in a society which prioritizes actual advancement.
Far more important is making sure no one is offended.
So we may not make it to Mars, but at least the Innuit people will not be offended.
NASA announced that it will rename the “Eskimo Nebula” as well as the “Siamese Twins Galaxy” because they include racially insensitive terms, apparently rooted in colonialism.
But what about the constellation Orion– named after a Greek mythological hunter god who is alleged to have raped the Princess Merope.
Or the constellation Gemini– named after Green twins Castor and Pollus, who were part of that Argonaut band of capitalist swine who terrorized ancient civilizations in search of the Golden Fleece. . .
And isn’t the name Mars also offensive– because it celebrates the patriarchal, heteronormative violent God of War?
What about Jupiter– a notorious rapist who slept with his children?
In fact, every planet named after a Roman god should be considered offensive– Rome was the biggest colonizer of its day and routinely enslaved captives and lower class Romans.
Luckily the Visogoths held a ‘peaceful protest’ in Rome in the year 410 which resulted in much more equality– everyone was equally impoverished and defeated.
The rich continue to flee the state in droves. Companies like Tesla are out. Moving companies are overwhelmed.
And what does the state legislature do? Raise taxes on the rich. Retroactively.
A bill passed the Assembly that proposes increasing tax rates on high income Californians by up to 3.5%.
And if the bill passes, it will be effective retroactively to January 1, 2020.
California already had the highest income tax rate of any state in the US by far. But this tax hike will bring the top rate for those earning more than $5.9 million to 16.8%.
On top of that, yesterday several state lawmakers introduced a wealth tax– which would take a slice of someone’s net worth, instead of just their annual income.
Most of the people who are subject to paying these taxes are already working from home and incredibly mobile. They can easily leave the state, which will result in a tax LOSS for California. Another victory for socialism!
Kindergarteners in Thailand sealed in plexiglass cubicles
Thai kindergarteners’ days are so structured now because of Covid, that any semblance of free play and exploration is gone.
Take a look at the pictures from one elementary school, and you will think you’re looking into a dystopian future– maybe that’s where we are.
Children are separated by plexiglass barriers at desks, and isolated in plastic cubicles to play. They stand where they’re told and wear masks and face shields all day long.
This is not an education– it is indoctrination.
But in Thailand, just like in the US, homeschooling is legal– no one has to put up with this.
Especially when the psychological factors may be worse than the disease.
Cop can’t fit handcuffs on 8 year old arrested in school
Body camera footage has been released from an incident in December 2018 where a police officer arrested, fingerprinted, mugshotted, and charged an 8 year old boy with battery.
It took nine months in court before it reached a rational adult– a judge who dismissed the case.
But the similarity in every case is that no one stepped in to say, “hey maybe we shouldn’t be arresting children for basic childhood misbehavior.”
In this case, the boy wasn’t sitting properly at lunch, whatever that means.
A teacher thought it was appropriate to intervene physically, upon which the boy yelled, “don’t put your hands on me!” and punched the teacher in the chest.
She wasn’t injured because this is a tiny eight year old we are talking about.
Still, that was enough for police to respond, and attempt to handcuff the boy– but the boy’s wrists were too small.
Then the officer pats down the crying boy, putting his hands all over him, and escorts him to a police car. Meanwhile the cop seems to delight in telling the boy that “this is very serious” and “you’re going to jail.”
Apparently there was no sane adult to be found anywhere in this school or police department.
We thought the 1990 Schwarzenegger movie Kindergarten Cop would be cancelled at some point for insensitivity to non-conforming-gender identity.
At one point in the film, as Schwartzenegger teaches, a boy exclaims, “boys have a penis, girls have vaginas.”
But no, that’s not why Kindergarten Cop is being cancelled.
A planned 30th anniversary drive-in showing of the film was cancelled because it apparently glorifies police officers.
The sentence was passed, you guessed it, in a Tweet from an angry local author:
“What’s so funny about School-to-Prison pipeline . . . in which African American, Latinx and other kids of color are criminalized rather than educated. Five- and 6-year-olds are handcuffed and hauled off to jail routinely in this country.”
As the last story shows, we also recognize the problem with overzealous cops in schools. (Not that it should matter, but the boy from the last story was White.)
We’re just not sure censoring a playful Schwarzenegger film is going to deliver the revolutionary change required to tackle the problem.
First it was a PhD student studying mathematics who Tweeted that 2+2=4 is “because of western imperialism/colonization. . .” (we wrote about this last month.)
But this idea is catching on.
Math professors and PhD candidates from various academic institutions eagerly agreed on Twitter–
One professor who teaches math education at Brooklyn College said: “um, ya’ll must know that the idea that math is objective or neutral IS A MYTH.”
The professor also claimed that math “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy. . .” (nevermind that many early advances in arithmetic were from Persian, Arabic, Indian, and Chinese mathematicians.)
This was met with agreement from a professor of Sociopolitical Perspectives on Mathematics and Science Education at the University of Illinois; a Harvard University PhD student; and others.
In line with everything we have been saying this week, the actual objective reality that 2+2=4 takes a back seat to the “woke” belief that math is yet another racist tool of oppression.
Hillary Clinton Willing To Serve In Biden Administration Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/14/2020 – 19:00
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is ‘ready to help’ the Biden administration ‘in any way I can.’
Speaking from ‘The 19th Represents Summit,’ on Thursday, Clinton told Biden: “I think this will be a moment where every American — I don’t care what party you are, I don’t care what age, race, gender, I don’t care — every American should want to fix our country … So if you’re asked to serve, you should certainly consider that,” said the twice-failed presidential candidate who enabled her husband’s sexual addiction and allegedly worked to intimidate and discredit his accusers.
Just don’t put her in charge of rapid response when American consulates are under attack.
Earlier in the week, Clinton offered her support for Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris.
“I’m thrilled to welcome @KamalaHarris to a historic Democratic ticket. She’s already proven herself to be an incredible public servant and leader. And I know she’ll be a strong partner to @JoeBiden. Please join me in having her back and getting her elected.”
I’m thrilled to welcome @KamalaHarris to a historic Democratic ticket. She’s already proven herself to be an incredible public servant and leader. And I know she’ll be a strong partner to @JoeBiden. Please join me in having her back and getting her elected. pic.twitter.com/cmtOO8Gqqv
Hillary previously served alongside Joe Biden in the Obama administration – drawing sharp criticism over he handling of the 2012 terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, as well as her private email server – from which she deleted over 30,000 emails which were the subject of a subpoena.
“I want to add my voice to the many who have endorsed you to be our president,” Clinton said of Biden earlier this year, adding “Just think of what a difference it would make right now if we had a president who not only listened to the science, put fact over fiction, but brought us together, showed the kind of compassion and caring that we need from our president and which Joe Biden has been exemplifying throughout his entire life.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/31VEC4P Tyler Durden
The total value of outstanding Ethereum futures contracts reached a new high of $1.5 billion.
This was spurred by ETH’s price finally breaking above $400.
The value of open Ethereum futures grew twice as fast as Bitcoin’s since February.
The total value of outstanding Ethereum (ETH) futures contracts has reached an all-time high of $1.5 billion today, according to crypto analytics platform Skew.
Also known as open interest, this figure reflects the current total value of Ethereum futures that have not been settled yet. Futures are a form of financial derivatives where parties agree to sell/buy an asset at a specific price on a set date. Unlike options contracts, where buyers might choose to not purchase the asset, futures are contractually binding and must be settled on the expiration date.
The overall growth of the futures volume combined with the rising price of ETH, which is currently up roughly 9% on the day and trading at around $428, signifies a strong market amid an upward trend, said Bobby Ong, a co-founder of crypto metrics platform CoinGecko.
“Ether finally broke past the $400 resistance level today. It has been trying to break past the $400 level unsuccessfully since the start of August. The successful breakout led traders using technical indicators to view this as a bullish indicator and traders started leveraging long on the futures market leading to it reaching its all-time high of $1.5 billion today,” Ong told Decrypt.
Nicholas Pelecanos, the head of trading at NEM Venture Fund, also cited the break above $400 as the main catalyst for the latest Ethereum futures all-time high.
“Since [2017] the $400 range has acted as a key level in ETH’s price history. The break of this level technically is very bullish and is likely the cause of the large volume on ETH futures,” Pelecanos told Decrypt.
Yet, he also noted that there is currently friction within the Ethereum community caused by continuing debates about supply and transaction fees. Researchers at Santiment wrote:
“On Tuesday, #Ethereum fees reached all-time high values in both $USD and $ETH. Since this record breaking statistic was hit, the #2 ranked market cap #crypto asset has risen +13% and sentiment has remained positive. This is an indication that although traders obviously prefer fees to be lower, the ramifications on people’s willingness to transact via an asset they believe in (at least in the short-term) are fairly minimal.”
Pelecanos added that such disconnects “between the hype around the technology and what it can do can lead to bubbles,” but also simultaneously could result in an even more bullish market if these issues to be resolved.
Outpacing Bitcoin
In the last six months, the ratio of Ethereum to Bitcoin has increased significantly (to its highest since January 2019).
Additionally, the open interest of Ethereum futures grew twice as fast compared to Bitcoin (BTC), noted Larry Cermak, director of research at The Block.
“Bitcoin’s futures OI was 8 times higher than ETH’s in February. Only 6 months later, it’s now about 4 times higher. OI of ETH grew relatively twice faster than BTC,” Cermak tweeted.
This somewhat mirrors the two currencies’ increase in prices since February. Six months ago, BTC was trading at roughly $10,233 while ETH’s price hovered around $268. Since then, Bitcoin and Ethereum have gained roughly 15% and 45%, respectively, with the latter outperforming BTC by around 200%.
“Ethereum has been on fire lately. The industry of tokenization and new-wave finance seems to be in a sort of consolidation around this network and continue to build a vast majority of new crypto-fanlged projects on the Ethereum blockchain,” summarized Mati Greenspan, a popular analyst and the founder of Quantum Economics, speaking to Decrypt.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/31ROaOp Tyler Durden
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 panel decision, today upheld a lower court’s shutting down of California’s ban on gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, so-called “large capacity magazines” (LCMs).
Because of this lawsuit, initially filed just before the newest iteration of the LCM ban went into effect, the state has been legally enjoined from actually enforcing it. Now the 9th Circuit says it should never be able to. The law, if applied, would have demanded confiscation or destruction of all the tremendous number of previously legal LCMs in Californians’ hands.
The District Court had decided there was “no genuine dispute of material fact that section 32310 violates the Second and Fifth Amendments of the United States Constitution, and ordered summary judgment for the [LCM] Owners” who were suing the state. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today agrees with that conclusion.
Judge Kenneth K. Lee wrote today’s 9th Circuit panel decision, in which he was joined by Judge Consuelo Callahan. The judges concluded that barring citizens from owning and using more than half of the magazines for sale in the United States, ones that come along with a wide variety of commonly purchased handguns, strikes to the core of the Second Amendment right to own arms for self-defense, since the LCM ban barred possession of a self-defense tool commonly used for lawful purposes.
For some perspective, Judge Lee notes that “from 1990 to 2015, civilians possessed about 115 million LCMs out of a total of 230 million magazines in circulation….Today, LCMs may be lawfully possessed in 41 states and under federal law.”
In buttressing the significance of the self-defense right the Second Amendment enshrines, Judge Lee discusses
Perhaps the most poignant and persuasive reminder of the fundamental right to self-defense…the denial of that right to Black Americans during tragic chapters of our country’s history….Post-Civil War state legislation and the Black Codes in the South deprived newly freed slaves of their Second Amendment rights…Meanwhile, armed bands of ex-Confederates roamed the countryside forcibly disarming and terrorizing African Americans….Our country’s history has shown that communities of color have a particularly compelling interest in exercising their Second Amendment rights. The Second Amendment provides one last line of defense for people of color when the state cannot — or will not — step in to protect them.
Women and “members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities” are also singled out in the decision as often needing a vigorously defended right to bear arms. “The Second Amendment is not a relic relevant only during the era of Publius and parchments,” Judge Lee declares. “It is a right that is exercised hundreds of times on any given day.”
Our current strife-torn nation might make this point of Judge Lee’s especially resonant: “Law-abiding citizens trapped in high-crime areas where
the law enforcement is overtaxed may defend themselves in their homes with a handgun outfitted with LCMs. And in incidents of mass chaos and unrest, law enforcement simply may be unable to protect the people, leaving them solely
responsible for their own safety in a seemingly Hobbesian world.”
Relying on language and reasoning in the Supreme Court’s dominant Second Amendment decision, 2008’s Heller case, the judges found no reason to consider LCMs to be unusual, or to conclude the magazine ban is the sort of longstanding regulation on arms that should be granted deference as presumptively lawful. Some such laws would include, Judge Lee writes, those that bar “possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill” and “prohibitions on carriage in sensitive locations, and conditions or qualifications on the commercial sale of firearms.”
The judges granted the state interest the law supposedly furthered qualified as compelling. Still, the LCM ban was not appropriately “narrowly tailored” toward achieving that interest, since the magazine ban was not “the least restrictive means” toward that goal.
Despite not being guns, the panel finds that magazines are an essential element of a gun serving its self-defense function. “Firearms or magazines holding more than ten rounds have been in existence — and owned by American citizens — for centuries. Firearms with greater than ten round capacities existed even before our nation’s founding, and the common use of LCMs for self-defense is apparent in our shared national history,” Judge Lee writes, and the decision provides many pages of historical examples to prove this point.
The 9th Circuit’s panel decision also explored the tricky and complicated question of what level of scutiny to apply to the law’s impingement on Second Amendment rights, concluding that “strict” scrutiny was appropriate. As Judge Lee wrote, “If a challenged law does not strike at the core Second Amendment right or substantially burden that right, then intermediate scrutiny applies….Only where both questions are answered in the affirmative will strict scrutiny apply.” And as above, they did find the LCM ban both strikes at the core of the right, and substantially burdens it.
Even if the 9th Circuit panel had been less restrictive in their scrutiny standard, Judge Lee said the law would have failed even “intermediate scrutiny” since “while the interests expressed by the state qualified as ‘important,’ the means chosen to advance those interests were not substantially related to their service.” Judge Lee points out the state’s attempts to defend the idea that the LCM law would in fact prevent important public harms were poorly argued and provided little hard evidence that any past actual harms would have been prevented by application of the law.
Judge Lee insists that “Our decision today is in keeping with Ninth Circuit
precedent. While we have not articulated a precise standard for what constitutes a substantial burden on core Second Amendment rights, we have consistently stated that a law that bans possession of a commonly used arm for self-defense — with no meaningful exception for law-abiding citizens — likely imposes a substantial burden on the Second Amendment.” Judge Lee notes the 9th Circuit has seen fit to apply merely intermediate scrutiny to laws that merely barred localized sales of certain arms, or those that imposed waiting periods on purchases. But full-on possession bans with no grandfather clauses, Judge Lee thinks, should not stand in his Circuit.
The dissent from Judge Barbara Lynn insists, among other things, that other federal circuit courts considering similar issues upheld the laws, though Lee in his opinion mostly insists those other cases involved LCM restrictions short of total ban and confiscation.
Judge Lynn also relies on an earlier 9th Circuit case, Fyock v. Sunnyvale, upholding a District Court that did not overturn a California city’s LCM ban and seemed to ratify the use of intermediate scrutiny in such cases. Judge Lee believes that in Fyock “We held only that the district court did not abuse its discretion by choosing intermediate scrutiny based on the limited record before it on a preliminary injunction appeal,” a distinct issue from whether intemediate scrutiny is actually appropriate or justified.
While the specifics of some of the other LCM restriction cases Judge Lynn discusses are not the same in all respects as those in Duncan v. Becerra, her listing of them does indicate enough tumult among federal circuits to make it perhaps ripe for the Supreme Court to weigh in in the future on an appropriate case on the general question of LCM restrictions.
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Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a writ of mandamus to prevent a court-ordered deposition concerning her infamous private email server. Cheryl Mills, her former Chief of Staff at the State Department, was not so lucky.
This decision is the latest development in Judicial Watch’s ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation concerning the Obama Administration’s response to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. In March, the district court ordered Secretary Clinton and Ms. Mills to sit for depositions concerning Clinton’s reasons for using a private e-mail server, her knowledge of applicable State Department records-management practices, and communications related to the Benghazi attack. This prompted Clinton and Mills to seek a writ of mandamus blocking their depositions.
In an opinion today, the D.C. Circuit granted the writ with respect to Secretary Clinton, but not with regard to Mills. From Judge Wilkins’ opinion for the court:
The common-law writ of mandamus, codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a), is one of “the most potent weapons in the judicial arsenal,” see Will v. United States, 389 U.S. 90, 107
(1967), and mandamus against a lower court is a “drastic” remedy reserved for “extraordinary causes,” Ex parte Fahey, 332 U.S. 258, 259-60 (1947). Mandamus lies only where the familiar tripartite standard is met: (1) the petitioner has “no other adequate means to attain the relief”; (2) the petitioner has demonstrated a “clear and indisputable” right to issuance of the writ; and (3) the Court finds, “in the exercise of its discretion,” that issuance of the writ is “appropriate under the circumstances.” Cheney, 542 U.S. at 380-81. Although these hurdles are demanding, they are “not insuperable,” id. at 381, and a “clear abuse of discretion” by a lower court can
certainly justify mandamus, Bankers Life & Cas. Co. v. Holland, 346 U.S. 379, 383 (1953).
Applying this standard, we find the petition as to Secretary Clinton satisfies all three prongs, while the petition as to Ms. Mills fails to satisfy the first. Since the “three threshold requirements are jurisdictional,” regardless of Ms. Mills’ petition’s merit on the other two inquiries, we are bound to deny the writ and dismiss her petition for lack of jurisdiction. Am. Hosp. Ass’n v. Burwell, 812 F.3d 183, 189 (D.C. Cir. 2016).
One alternative means to obtain relief in cases likes this is to refuse to comply with the court-ordered deposition, and then challenge any resulting finding of contempt. As Judge Wilkins notes, this is understood as an adequate alternative means to obtain a remedy for a nonparty respondent, such as Ms. Mills, but not for a party-litigant, such as Secretary Clinton.
As for the other prongs, the court was none too impressed with Judicial Watch’s need to depose Secretary Clinton.
The circumstances under which this particular discovery order arises only buttress our finding of the appropriateness of mandamus. Judicial Watch does not in fact want for the information it purports to seek and has already been afforded extensive discovery related to the proposed deposition topics. In this FOIA case alone, it has taken eighteen depositions and propounded more than four times the presumptive maximum number of interrogatories. . . . In its parallel FOIA case before Judge Sullivan, Judicial Watch received sworn interrogatories from Secretary Clinton herself as well as a lengthy deposition of Ms. Mills and seven other witnesses, traversing the proposed deposition topics and resulting in the identification of no additional records responsive to the instant FOIA request. . . . As discovery progressed, Judge Sullivan invited Judicial Watch to seek leave to serve even more interrogatories if there were “follow up questions” it had been “unable to anticipate,” . . . an avenue Judicial Watch did not pursue.
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The Secret Service asked Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for a Black Hawk helicopter and surveillance aircraft in response to protests outside the White House, according to documents obtained by American Oversight, a government watchdog group.
Kimberly Cheatle, assistant director for the Secret Service’s Office of Protective Operations, wrote to CBP acting commissioner Mark Morgan asking for assistance in a June 5 letter, obtained by American Oversight and first reported by The Washington Post. Cheatle requested surveillance aircraft to monitor protesters outside the White House and a Black Hawk helicopter that could be used to rapidly deploy a “fast rope” tactical team if needed.
The request came a week after violent clashes between large crowds of Black Lives Matter protesters and federal and local law enforcement near the White House, which led the Secret Service to rush President Donald Trump to an underground bunker.
“Due to the significant and unprecedented events occurring in the National Capital Region, the U.S. Secret Service is requesting the support from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations,” Cheatle wrote. “CBP’s participation in the operational security plan is vital.”
The Post reported that the Secret Service later decided that the helicopter wouldn’t be needed, but CBP did provide the agency with live footage from a surveillance plane monitoring protests in D.C.
The letter further documents the federal response to widespread protests and unrest throughout the country following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. Multiple federal agencies deployed surveillance aircraft to monitor protests and riots. CBP deployed a surveillance drone over Minneapolis. The FBI flew aircraft equipped with infrared and electro-optical cameras—and possibly equipment known as ‘dirtboxes,’ which can collect cell phone location data—over Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas.
Reason‘s Elizabeth Nolan Brown was on the ground when a National Guard helicopter hovered dangerously low over protesters in D.C. as a “show of force.” The D.C. National Guard is now investigating the incident.
Austin Evers, American Oversight’s executive director, told the Post that the letter is “further evidence that the Trump administration sees First Amendment activities as a siege and our fellow citizens as combatants.”
The Secret Service has suffered several embarrassing White House breaches over the past decade, and it was caught off guard by the intensity of the protests. However, the Trump administration’s response to the George Floyd protests—using anonymous federal law enforcement officers, snatching protesters off the street in unmarked vans, and using spy planes—has also showed the militarization and mission creep at the Department of Homeland Security, and why there were legitimate concerns over creating DHS in the first place.
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