This Year’s March Madness Is the Biggest Legal Sports Betting Event in American History


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In the two years that have passed since the last college basketball national champion was crowned, more than a dozen additional states have legalized betting on sporting events—which means this year’s March Madness will be the largest legal gambling event in American history.

That’s not just good news for anyone who wants to make the madness a little more interesting, but likely will help ensure that the games themselves are free from the influence of black-market betting.

Roughly 74 million more Americans will be free to wager on the outcome of March Madness this year than in 2019, according to the American Gaming Association, an industry group. Sports betting is now legal in 25 states and Washington, D.C.

After the COVID-19 pandemic canceled last year’s tournament, sportsbooks are betting there will be an unprecedented amount of action in the next few weeks. Dustin Gouker, head of content for PlayUSA, tells MarketWatch that the expansion of legal gambling over the past few years means as much as $1.5 billion could be bet on this year’s National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament. For comparison’s sake, this year’s Super Bowl saw about $500 million in legal sports betting.

The market for legal sports betting has exploded since May 2018 when the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that effectively banned gambling on sporting events outside of Nevada and a few other places that were grandfathered into a 1992 federal ban. That ban, by the way, is likely responsible for the huge popularity of March Madness “bracket pool” games that allow contestants to bet on the outcome of all 63 NCAA tournament games by filling out their own versions of the tournament bracket. Because that doesn’t involve betting on the outcome of one specific game, those wagers weren’t subject to the federal ban.

But now that Americans can bet on games (without taking a special trip to Las Vegas), lots of them are doing it. A Morning Consult poll commissioned by the AGA found that an estimated 30.6 million Americans will place traditional bets on games in this year’s tournament, up from 17.8 million in 2019.

The popularity of sports betting is even forcing the infamously stodgy NCAA to change with the times. As of 2019, the association was still refusing to allow March Madness games to be hosted in states with legal sports betting. This year, the entire tournament is being played in a state, Indiana, where sports betting is legal.

The surge in wagering on the outcome of games does trigger some overblown worries about the potential for corruption. Back when sports betting was more widely illegal, college basketball dealt with a series of scandals involving so-called “point shaving“—usually involving players who were paid to avoid winning by a large enough margin to cover the spread.

Now, bringing sports betting out of the black market means regulators and tournament officials can track betting patterns and more easily identify attempts to influence outcomes. Both the NCAA and Indiana Gaming Commission, ESPN reports, are working with third-party firms to track “irregularities” in the market to prevent corruption.

Legalized sports betting means more freedom and fun for Americans who love March Madness. It means officials can have greater control over the integrity of the games. And it means this might finally be the year you win big—but probably not.

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This Year’s March Madness Is the Biggest Legal Sports Betting Event in American History


iconphotosfive755022

In the two years that have passed since the last college basketball national champion was crowned, more than a dozen additional states have legalized betting on sporting events—which means this year’s March Madness will be the largest legal gambling event in American history.

That’s not just good news for anyone who wants to make the madness a little more interesting, but likely will help ensure that the games themselves are free from the influence of black-market betting.

Roughly 74 million more Americans will be free to wager on the outcome of March Madness this year than in 2019, according to the American Gaming Association, an industry group. Sports betting is now legal in 25 states and Washington, D.C.

After the COVID-19 pandemic canceled last year’s tournament, sportsbooks are betting there will be an unprecedented amount of action in the next few weeks. Dustin Gouker, head of content for PlayUSA, tells MarketWatch that the expansion of legal gambling over the past few years means as much as $1.5 billion could be bet on this year’s National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament. For comparison’s sake, this year’s Super Bowl saw about $500 million in legal sports betting.

The market for legal sports betting has exploded since May 2018 when the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that effectively banned gambling on sporting events outside of Nevada and a few other places that were grandfathered into a 1992 federal ban. That ban, by the way, is likely responsible for the huge popularity of March Madness “bracket pool” games that allow contestants to bet on the outcome of all 63 NCAA tournament games by filling out their own versions of the tournament bracket. Because that doesn’t involve betting on the outcome of one specific game, those wagers weren’t subject to the federal ban.

But now that Americans can bet on games (without taking a special trip to Las Vegas), lots of them are doing it. A Morning Consult poll commissioned by the AGA found that an estimated 30.6 million Americans will place traditional bets on games in this year’s tournament, up from 17.8 million in 2019.

The popularity of sports betting is even forcing the infamously stodgy NCAA to change with the times. As of 2019, the association was still refusing to allow March Madness games to be hosted in states with legal sports betting. This year, the entire tournament is being played in a state, Indiana, where sports betting is legal.

The surge in wagering on the outcome of games does trigger some overblown worries about the potential for corruption. Back when sports betting was more widely illegal, college basketball dealt with a series of scandals involving so-called “point shaving“—usually involving players who were paid to avoid winning by a large enough margin to cover the spread.

Now, bringing sports betting out of the black market means regulators and tournament officials can track betting patterns and more easily identify attempts to influence outcomes. Both the NCAA and Indiana Gaming Commission, ESPN reports, are working with third-party firms to track “irregularities” in the market to prevent corruption.

Legalized sports betting means more freedom and fun for Americans who love March Madness. It means officials can have greater control over the integrity of the games. And it means this might finally be the year you win big—but probably not.

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Short Circuit: A Roundup of Recent Federal Court Decisions

Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature from the Institute for Justice.

Last year, the Supreme Court held that if states provide funding for students attending private schools, then they can’t withhold that funding from students attending religious private schools. But four months later, the First Circuit upheld just such a religious exclusion in Maine on the basis that funding was being restricted not because of the status of a particular school as religious, but because the money could be put to a religious use. Over at The Wall Street Journal, IJ Senior Attorney Michael Bindas explains why SCOTUS should grant cert in Carson v. Makin and put to rest the idea that the blurry distinction between religious “status” and “use” is constitutionally significant.

  • Two former Liberian government officials sue a human-rights organization for defaming them, saying that the group suggested they took bribes when they are, in fact, totally righteous dudes. D.C. Circuit: This lawsuit is barred by the First Amendment. Dissent: Shouldn’t it matter that there’s no evidence anyone was bribed? Also, by the by, New York Times v. Sullivan is “a threat to American Democracy.” Also, the media is biased against Republicans, and Candy Crowley was a bad debate moderator in 2012.
  • What do you get when you mix the super-complicated area of Indian law with the super-complicated area of water rights? Dismissal by the D.C. Circuit because the rancher-plaintiffs lack standing. Ranchers claim Klamath, Ore. tribes’ enforcement of their water rights causes the ranchers an injury and sue the feds who oversee those rights. But even if the feds acted unlawfully, says the court, the tribes would still have the power to enforce those rights, and weren’t made parties to the lawsuit.
  • Pennsylvania wants to sell a juvenile detention center, and an Islamic education group wants to buy it. But several Pennsylvania legislators allegedly scuttle the deal—there are overtones of Islamophobia throughout—and the property goes to another bidder. Third Circuit: Doesn’t matter. You can’t get damages from lawmakers for doing law. The legislators are protected by absolute immunity for their legislative acts and qualified immunity for everything else.
  • The Defense Department is supposed to post certain military discharge records online with personal information redacted. But—whoops—lots of information wasn’t redacted. So in 2019 DoD temporarily yanked all 245,000 records while it figured out how to do the redactions, even though the records are supposed to be public. Fourth Circuit: No suing about that. There’s no such thing as a challenge to general agency mismanagement. (As of March 1, about 189,000 records are back up.)
  • What, precisely, does it mean to be an agent of a foreign government (and thus subject to registration with the Attorney General)? The Fourth Circuit has the deets. The upshot? An executive with Gen. Mike Flynn’s lobbying group really should have disclosed this his campaign to discredit a Turkish dissident was on behalf of the Turkish government. Conviction reinstated.
  • An Indiana minor can get an abortion without parental consent if she gets a court order, but her parents must still be notified before the abortion unless the court determines that notice isn’t in her best interests. Seventh Circuit (2019): The notice requirement is likely unconstitutional, so it’s preliminarily enjoined. SCOTUS (2020): Please reconsider in light of our most recent abortion case. Seventh Circuit (2021): Okay. It’s still likely unconstitutional.
  • Thoughts and prayers for Scott Kennedy, branded eternally in the Federal Reporter as “the tormented boyfriend.” Though in fairness, that description—courtesy of the Seventh Circuit, affirming his erstwhile girlfriend/escort’s conviction for wire fraud—seems not inapt.
  • A school-resource officer at Columbia, Mo. high school escorts a sixteen-year-old student to a room, where two police officers interrogate her about a sexual assault that took place at the house of a different student who happened to share her first name. The student sues, inter alios, the school-resource officer. Who is entitled to qualified immunity, holds an Eighth Circuit panel (speaking through Judge Morris Sheppard Arnold, one of only two judges (fact-check us if we’re wrong) in U.S. history to share a federal court with a sibling. (The other was his brother, Richard.) (Yes, we said “federal court,” not “federal judiciary as a whole.” Don’t come at us with gotcha talk of Charles Breyer.)
  • Does the University of Oregon’s practice of paying “retention bonuses” to keep faculty members from fleeing to other universities violate the Equal Pay Act or Title VII? Ninth Circuit: Very possibly. This female psychology professor has adequately alleged that she was paid less than male colleagues doing the same job. Dissent: Professors aren’t interchangeable. They weren’t doing the same job, and this ruling will put universities in the Ninth Circuit at a competitive disadvantage with universities that continue to pay retention bonuses.
  • Bremerton, Wash. public high school football coach kneels at midfield for a brief prayer at the end of each game. Players begin joining him, and, eventually, this morphs into motivational, religious speeches. Administrators suspend him after he declines their request to stop. Does this violate the coach’s free speech or free exercise rights? Ninth Circuit (2017): No preliminary injunction. Ninth Circuit (2021): No, full stop. Indeed, allowing the prayers to continue might have violated the Establishment Clause. Concurrence: The coach wasn’t required to jump into the nearest broom closet to privately pray, but praying with a crowd like this crossed the line.
  • Ghanaian man comes to the United States on an F-1 visa, which allows him to stay in the country as long as he’s enrolled in an approved educational institution. He’s arrested, charged with first degree rape, and held in jail for 13 months until a jury acquits him. BIA: And for those 13 months he wasn’t enrolled in school, so we’re deporting him. Tenth Circuit: That’s fine.
  • Won’t someone think of the poor Georgia corrections officials who were “entrapped” into helping a confidential informant transport drugs? Eleventh Circuit: We will think about two of the four, who should have been able to present an entrapment defense. The others are hosed, though.
  • Judge Rosenbaum of the Eleventh Circuit has some additional thoughts about a ruling on “consensual” police encounters from last August, urging the Supreme Court to adopt a sort of mini-Miranda for stop-and-talks.

In 2019, residents of Castle Hills, Texas elected Sylvia Gonzalez, a 72-year-old retiree, as the first Hispanic councilwoman in city history. But the mayor and other officials launched a retaliation campaign against Sylvia after she ruffled some feathers by proposing to replace the city manager. The campaign included a pair of criminal investigations and a nonsensical criminal charge that resulted in her arrest (and her mugshot appearing on TV), as well as litigation to strip her of her seat that cost Sylvia tens of thousands of dollars to defend. Last year, Sylvia filed a civil suit against the city and several officials, and this week a federal judge ruled that the suit can proceed. The right to be free of retaliatory arrest in these circumstances is clearly established, so the mayor, police chief, and other officials are not entitled to qualified immunity. Click here to read more.

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Schumer Insists on Keeping Beachfront Bailouts for Wealthy Americans’ Vacation Homes


SandyDamageDreamstime

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is $20.5 billion in the hole, even after Congress canceled $16 billion in debt in 2017. This financial shortfall is largely because the program does not charge nearly enough in premiums to pay for the flood damage on the properties it insures. For decades, taxpayer bailouts of the NFIP have enabled people to live and build in flood-prone areas instead of bearing the risks themselves.

In order to address this problem, the NFIP has been working on its new Risk Rating 2.0 initiative, with the aim of charging premiums that more accurately reflect the unique flooding risks of individual properties. The agency had planned to release its updated rates later this year.

Not so fast, says Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.). The senator’s office recently informed FEMA that adjusted premiums could have a “severe impact” on homeowners, and urged Congress and the Biden administration to work together toward “affordable protection” for flood-prone communities. Schumer raised a similar alarm shortly after the changes were first announced: “How can we ram through a national flood insurance plan that could unfairly put a bull’s-eye on the backs of Long Island and New York homeowners without more consultation?” he asked at an April 2019 press conference. “Halt. Stop. Stop this plan.”

Actually, lots of beachfront dwellers in New York (and elsewhere) have been “unfairly” taking advantage of taxpayers. A recent study by the nonprofit research group First Street Foundation calculates that the average estimated annual loss for each of the 4.3 million properties most at risk of flooding is $4,419, whereas NFIP premiums average $981. In other words, their flood insurance premiums would have to increase 4.5 times over their current rates to fairly cover the flooding risks to these properties.

Forbes reports that for the 1.5 million properties located in FEMA’s Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHA), flood insurance premiums could rise to almost $8,000 per year. Below is a First Street Foundation map showing the average expected loss per property versus the average premiums paid in New York’s counties. In New York state, the expected annual loss for properties in SFHAs is $5,126, while premiums average $1,860 per year. One of the biggest disparities between risks and payments can be found in Northport on Long Island, where the spread is $9,362 in losses versus $685 in premiums netting to a difference of 1,266.5 percent.

 

In a fascinating 2016 Stanford Law Review article, legal scholars Omri Ben-Shahar and Kyle D. Logue argue that insurance can serve “as a form of private regulation of safety—a contractual device controlling and incentivizing behavior prior to the occurrence of losses.” They point out that as a result of “direct government provision of subsidized insurance, private markets no longer generate price signals regarding the cost of living in severe-weather regions.” Suppressing the true cost of insurance encourages “private parties to (rationally) assume excessive risk, and dump the cost of living in the path of storms on others. Indeed, much of the development of storm-stricken coastal areas is due to insurance subsidies, and would likely not have happened at the same magnitude otherwise.”

Living on the beach on Long Island (or anywhere else) is surely lovely, but Schumer should recognize that the rest of us should not be subsidizing his constituents’ choice to dwell in flood-prone zones.

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Short Circuit: A Roundup of Recent Federal Court Decisions

Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature from the Institute for Justice.

Last year, the Supreme Court held that if states provide funding for students attending private schools, then they can’t withhold that funding from students attending religious private schools. But four months later, the First Circuit upheld just such a religious exclusion in Maine on the basis that funding was being restricted not because of the status of a particular school as religious, but because the money could be put to a religious use. Over at The Wall Street Journal, IJ Senior Attorney Michael Bindas explains why SCOTUS should grant cert in Carson v. Makin and put to rest the idea that the blurry distinction between religious “status” and “use” is constitutionally significant.

  • Two former Liberian government officials sue a human-rights organization for defaming them, saying that the group suggested they took bribes when they are, in fact, totally righteous dudes. D.C. Circuit: This lawsuit is barred by the First Amendment. Dissent: Shouldn’t it matter that there’s no evidence anyone was bribed? Also, by the by, New York Times v. Sullivan is “a threat to American Democracy.” Also, the media is biased against Republicans, and Candy Crowley was a bad debate moderator in 2012.
  • What do you get when you mix the super-complicated area of Indian law with the super-complicated area of water rights? Dismissal by the D.C. Circuit because the rancher-plaintiffs lack standing. Ranchers claim Klamath, Ore. tribes’ enforcement of their water rights causes the ranchers an injury and sue the feds who oversee those rights. But even if the feds acted unlawfully, says the court, the tribes would still have the power to enforce those rights, and weren’t made parties to the lawsuit.
  • Pennsylvania wants to sell a juvenile detention center, and an Islamic education group wants to buy it. But several Pennsylvania legislators allegedly scuttle the deal—there are overtones of Islamophobia throughout—and the property goes to another bidder. Third Circuit: Doesn’t matter. You can’t get damages from lawmakers for doing law. The legislators are protected by absolute immunity for their legislative acts and qualified immunity for everything else.
  • The Defense Department is supposed to post certain military discharge records online with personal information redacted. But—whoops—lots of information wasn’t redacted. So in 2019 DoD temporarily yanked all 245,000 records while it figured out how to do the redactions, even though the records are supposed to be public. Fourth Circuit: No suing about that. There’s no such thing as a challenge to general agency mismanagement. (As of March 1, about 189,000 records are back up.)
  • What, precisely, does it mean to be an agent of a foreign government (and thus subject to registration with the Attorney General)? The Fourth Circuit has the deets. The upshot? An executive with Gen. Mike Flynn’s lobbying group really should have disclosed this his campaign to discredit a Turkish dissident was on behalf of the Turkish government. Conviction reinstated.
  • An Indiana minor can get an abortion without parental consent if she gets a court order, but her parents must still be notified before the abortion unless the court determines that notice isn’t in her best interests. Seventh Circuit (2019): The notice requirement is likely unconstitutional, so it’s preliminarily enjoined. SCOTUS (2020): Please reconsider in light of our most recent abortion case. Seventh Circuit (2021): Okay. It’s still likely unconstitutional.
  • Thoughts and prayers for Scott Kennedy, branded eternally in the Federal Reporter as “the tormented boyfriend.” Though in fairness, that description—courtesy of the Seventh Circuit, affirming his erstwhile girlfriend/escort’s conviction for wire fraud—seems not inapt.
  • A school-resource officer at Columbia, Mo. high school escorts a sixteen-year-old student to a room, where two police officers interrogate her about a sexual assault that took place at the house of a different student who happened to share her first name. The student sues, inter alios, the school-resource officer. Who is entitled to qualified immunity, holds an Eighth Circuit panel (speaking through Judge Morris Sheppard Arnold, one of only two judges (fact-check us if we’re wrong) in U.S. history to share a federal court with a sibling. (The other was his brother, Richard.) (Yes, we said “federal court,” not “federal judiciary as a whole.” Don’t come at us with gotcha talk of Charles Breyer.)
  • Does the University of Oregon’s practice of paying “retention bonuses” to keep faculty members from fleeing to other universities violate the Equal Pay Act or Title VII? Ninth Circuit: Very possibly. This female psychology professor has adequately alleged that she was paid less than male colleagues doing the same job. Dissent: Professors aren’t interchangeable. They weren’t doing the same job, and this ruling will put universities in the Ninth Circuit at a competitive disadvantage with universities that continue to pay retention bonuses.
  • Bremerton, Wash. public high school football coach kneels at midfield for a brief prayer at the end of each game. Players begin joining him, and, eventually, this morphs into motivational, religious speeches. Administrators suspend him after he declines their request to stop. Does this violate the coach’s free speech or free exercise rights? Ninth Circuit (2017): No preliminary injunction. Ninth Circuit (2021): No, full stop. Indeed, allowing the prayers to continue might have violated the Establishment Clause. Concurrence: The coach wasn’t required to jump into the nearest broom closet to privately pray, but praying with a crowd like this crossed the line.
  • Ghanaian man comes to the United States on an F-1 visa, which allows him to stay in the country as long as he’s enrolled in an approved educational institution. He’s arrested, charged with first degree rape, and held in jail for 13 months until a jury acquits him. BIA: And for those 13 months he wasn’t enrolled in school, so we’re deporting him. Tenth Circuit: That’s fine.
  • Won’t someone think of the poor Georgia corrections officials who were “entrapped” into helping a confidential informant transport drugs? Eleventh Circuit: We will think about two of the four, who should have been able to present an entrapment defense. The others are hosed, though.
  • Judge Rosenbaum of the Eleventh Circuit has some additional thoughts about a ruling on “consensual” police encounters from last August, urging the Supreme Court to adopt a sort of mini-Miranda for stop-and-talks.

In 2019, residents of Castle Hills, Texas elected Sylvia Gonzalez, a 72-year-old retiree, as the first Hispanic councilwoman in city history. But the mayor and other officials launched a retaliation campaign against Sylvia after she ruffled some feathers by proposing to replace the city manager. The campaign included a pair of criminal investigations and a nonsensical criminal charge that resulted in her arrest (and her mugshot appearing on TV), as well as litigation to strip her of her seat that cost Sylvia tens of thousands of dollars to defend. Last year, Sylvia filed a civil suit against the city and several officials, and this week a federal judge ruled that the suit can proceed. The right to be free of retaliatory arrest in these circumstances is clearly established, so the mayor, police chief, and other officials are not entitled to qualified immunity. Click here to read more.

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via IFTTT

Schumer Insists on Keeping Beachfront Bailouts for Wealthy Americans’ Vacation Homes


SandyDamageDreamstime

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is $20.5 billion in the hole, even after Congress canceled $16 billion in debt in 2017. This financial shortfall is largely because the program does not charge nearly enough in premiums to pay for the flood damage on the properties it insures. For decades, taxpayer bailouts of the NFIP have enabled people to live and build in flood-prone areas instead of bearing the risks themselves.

In order to address this problem, the NFIP has been working on its new Risk Rating 2.0 initiative, with the aim of charging premiums that more accurately reflect the unique flooding risks of individual properties. The agency had planned to release its updated rates later this year.

Not so fast, says Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.). The senator’s office recently informed FEMA that adjusted premiums could have a “severe impact” on homeowners, and urged Congress and the Biden administration to work together toward “affordable protection” for flood-prone communities. Schumer raised a similar alarm shortly after the changes were first announced: “How can we ram through a national flood insurance plan that could unfairly put a bull’s-eye on the backs of Long Island and New York homeowners without more consultation?” he asked at an April 2019 press conference. “Halt. Stop. Stop this plan.”

Actually, lots of beachfront dwellers in New York (and elsewhere) have been “unfairly” taking advantage of taxpayers. A recent study by the nonprofit research group First Street Foundation calculates that the average estimated annual loss for each of the 4.3 million properties most at risk of flooding is $4,419, whereas NFIP premiums average $981. In other words, their flood insurance premiums would have to increase 4.5 times over their current rates to fairly cover the flooding risks to these properties.

Forbes reports that for the 1.5 million properties located in FEMA’s Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHA), flood insurance premiums could rise to almost $8,000 per year. Below is a First Street Foundation map showing the average expected loss per property versus the average premiums paid in New York’s counties. In New York state, the expected annual loss for properties in SFHAs is $5,126, while premiums average $1,860 per year. One of the biggest disparities between risks and payments can be found in Northport on Long Island, where the spread is $9,362 in losses versus $685 in premiums netting to a difference of 1,266.5 percent.

 

In a fascinating 2016 Stanford Law Review article, legal scholars Omri Ben-Shahar and Kyle D. Logue argue that insurance can serve “as a form of private regulation of safety—a contractual device controlling and incentivizing behavior prior to the occurrence of losses.” They point out that as a result of “direct government provision of subsidized insurance, private markets no longer generate price signals regarding the cost of living in severe-weather regions.” Suppressing the true cost of insurance encourages “private parties to (rationally) assume excessive risk, and dump the cost of living in the path of storms on others. Indeed, much of the development of storm-stricken coastal areas is due to insurance subsidies, and would likely not have happened at the same magnitude otherwise.”

Living on the beach on Long Island (or anywhere else) is surely lovely, but Schumer should recognize that the rest of us should not be subsidizing his constituents’ choice to dwell in flood-prone zones.

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HBO Takes a Deep Dive into the Wild Corners of QAnon


Qpics

Q: Into the Storm. HBO. Sunday, March 21, 9 p.m.

“I think QAnon is something that could only happen in our current day,” says an enthusiast of the conspiracy crypto-cult interviewed in HBO’s new documentary Q: Into the Storm.

I suppose the truth of that claim depends a bit on how you define “current day.” But the certainty that international Jewry was plotting to enslave the world and had even boldly transcribed its plan in a book called The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion swept the globe 120 years ago and is, even now, popular in Japan and the Middle East. The manic belief that the murder of John F. Kennedy more than half a century back was the sinister centerpiece of a coup by (take your pick) the CIA, the Mafia, Big Oil, or World Communism is still a planetary obsession. Then there are the 9/11 Truthers, the faked moon landing crowd, and of course the cabal of Freemasons who sank the Titanic. And don’t get me started on the cover-up of Paul McCartney’s death.

So filmmaker Cullen Hoback, who’s been chasing QAnon around for several years now, may feel a bit self-important about the subject of his work. But that’s my only real criticism of his six-hour series. QAnon itself may be simply one more iteration of the populist fever dreams that have set the far reaches of American politics ablaze from time to time and then quietly burn out. But the digital netherworld from which it sprang is fascinating, and Q: Into the Storm is a lively travelogue of that terrain.

QAnon sprang to life in October 2017, when someone calling himself (herself? themselves?) Q Clearance Patriot began a series of posts on the sketchy 4chan internet message board claiming to be a senior aide to Donald Trump. (The name Q referred to his claim to have a Q-level security clearance, which sounds super-spooky-secret unless you know that nearly 1.5 million people have one.)  He asked the board’s readers to help Trump combat a forthcoming coup by the so-called Deep State.

That was the start-up of about 5,000 posts—Q himself, using spy jargon, calls them “drops”—running through the 2020 election. They’re usually cryptic—entire squadrons of “Q-tubers” produce videos seeking to interpret and explain each new one that appears—and their predictions are often wrong: Hillary Clinton was never arrested, John McCain never resigned from the Senate, and the Trump administration never bombed North Korea.

Yet QAnon, Q’s collective followers, remain certain that he’s a prophet, their window into the secret world of the Deep State. Hoback’s camera moves tranquilly among them as they explain their own theories and trace their connections to other lurid digital dramas, most notably Pizzagate (the belief that a collection of senior Democrats was sodomizing and then cannibalizing children in the basement of a Washington D.C. pizza restaurant, taken seriously enough by one Pizzagate believer that he shot the place up with a rifle) and Gamergate (a campaign of harassment against female video-game designers suspected of feminist leanings).

Hoback chats with past and present owners of the wild and wooly message boards—they feature everything from diaper porn to white supremacist manifestos—where Q posts appear. One of them insists that he tolerated QAnon only in the interest of free speech. His own politics were quite different: “My one idea was to round up all of the politicians and then machine-gun them. And then the replacements come in and we round them all up and machine gun them….I’d run for president as Machine Gun Jim.” Proclaims another: “I don’t seek infamy, but I will embrace it.”

Hoback spends a lot of time mounting and then knocking down theories about the true identity of Q—everybody from Trump cronies Michael Flynn and Roger Stone to the owners of some of those message boards. It’s diverting in an Agatha Christie sort of way, but ultimately beside the point. Whoever Q is, he clearly didn’t really have access to secret White House dope. And as the Trump administration fades further into the background, so does the importance of Q’s identity. Paranoia may strike deep, but then it moves on.

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HBO Takes a Deep Dive into the Wild Corners of QAnon


Qpics

Q: Into the Storm. HBO. Sunday, March 21, 9 p.m.

“I think QAnon is something that could only happen in our current day,” says an enthusiast of the conspiracy crypto-cult interviewed in HBO’s new documentary Q: Into the Storm.

I suppose the truth of that claim depends a bit on how you define “current day.” But the certainty that international Jewry was plotting to enslave the world and had even boldly transcribed its plan in a book called The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion swept the globe 120 years ago and is, even now, popular in Japan and the Middle East. The manic belief that the murder of John F. Kennedy more than half a century back was the sinister centerpiece of a coup by (take your pick) the CIA, the Mafia, Big Oil, or World Communism is still a planetary obsession. Then there are the 9/11 Truthers, the faked moon landing crowd, and of course the cabal of Freemasons who sank the Titanic. And don’t get me started on the cover-up of Paul McCartney’s death.

So filmmaker Cullen Hoback, who’s been chasing QAnon around for several years now, may feel a bit self-important about the subject of his work. But that’s my only real criticism of his six-hour series. QAnon itself may be simply one more iteration of the populist fever dreams that have set the far reaches of American politics ablaze from time to time and then quietly burn out. But the digital netherworld from which it sprang is fascinating, and Q: Into the Storm is a lively travelogue of that terrain.

QAnon sprang to life in October 2017, when someone calling himself (herself? themselves?) Q Clearance Patriot began a series of posts on the sketchy 4chan internet message board claiming to be a senior aide to Donald Trump. (The name Q referred to his claim to have a Q-level security clearance, which sounds super-spooky-secret unless you know that nearly 1.5 million people have one.)  He asked the board’s readers to help Trump combat a forthcoming coup by the so-called Deep State.

That was the start-up of about 5,000 posts—Q himself, using spy jargon, calls them “drops”—running through the 2020 election. They’re usually cryptic—entire squadrons of “Q-tubers” produce videos seeking to interpret and explain each new one that appears—and their predictions are often wrong: Hillary Clinton was never arrested, John McCain never resigned from the Senate, and the Trump administration never bombed North Korea.

Yet QAnon, Q’s collective followers, remain certain that he’s a prophet, their window into the secret world of the Deep State. Hoback’s camera moves tranquilly among them as they explain their own theories and trace their connections to other lurid digital dramas, most notably Pizzagate (the belief that a collection of senior Democrats was sodomizing and then cannibalizing children in the basement of a Washington D.C. pizza restaurant, taken seriously enough by one Pizzagate believer that he shot the place up with a rifle) and Gamergate (a campaign of harassment against female video-game designers suspected of feminist leanings).

Hoback chats with past and present owners of the wild and wooly message boards—they feature everything from diaper porn to white supremacist manifestos—where Q posts appear. One of them insists that he tolerated QAnon only in the interest of free speech. His own politics were quite different: “My one idea was to round up all of the politicians and then machine-gun them. And then the replacements come in and we round them all up and machine gun them….I’d run for president as Machine Gun Jim.” Proclaims another: “I don’t seek infamy, but I will embrace it.”

Hoback spends a lot of time mounting and then knocking down theories about the true identity of Q—everybody from Trump cronies Michael Flynn and Roger Stone to the owners of some of those message boards. It’s diverting in an Agatha Christie sort of way, but ultimately beside the point. Whoever Q is, he clearly didn’t really have access to secret White House dope. And as the Trump administration fades further into the background, so does the importance of Q’s identity. Paranoia may strike deep, but then it moves on.

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Everybody Except Teachers Unions Loves the CDC’s Revised School Distancing Guidelines


Randi

As foreshadowed last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Friday morning shortened its recommended distance between K-12 students from six feet to three feet, a change that could hasten full-time schooling for millions of remote and hybrid learners.

“We don’t really have the evidence that 6 feet is required in order to maintain low spread,” CDC Community Interventions and Critical Populations Task Force leader Greta Massetti told the Associated Press.

The funny thing is, they didn’t really have that evidence five weeks ago, either, yet that didn’t prevent the CDC from issuing a global outlier of a school reopening guidance that, if followed to the letter, would have kept most American public schools half-open at best well into the fall.

The negative reaction to that teachers union–influenced February 12 document, not just from outspoken school-opening advocates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis but also scientists, left-leaning media outlets, and some Democratic-run polities, undermined the CDC’s credibility, and led directly to several school districts delaying or even reversing plans to reopen.

The new recommendations include bringing down plastic barriers (“We don’t have a lot of evidence of their effectiveness,” Massetti told the A.P.), maintaining six feet of distance in middle and high schools in high-spread communities, and having everyone wear masks.

The revision brings the CDC closer in line with the epidemiological and pediatric researchers, the global public health community, and the professed opinion last July of its current director, Rochelle Walensky. But one category of “stakeholder,” unsurprisingly, isn’t happy: teachers unions.

“They are compromising the one enduring public health missive that we’ve gotten from the beginning of this pandemic in order to squeeze more kids into schools,” American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten told The Washington Post this week. “I think that is problematic until we have real evidence in these harder-to-open places about what the effect is.”

Weingarten, a frequent guest of the Biden White House, has, like other union leaders, sought to portray herself as a tireless advocate for reopening while practically throwing up one objection after another when full-time schooling gets near.

On one hand, you can understand why the unions are so chippy. Having isolated themselves on the science of school spread, alienated parents with reckless accusations of racism, and leveraged their significant influence on Democratic politicians to help make the United States a world leader in shuttered schools, the guilds are coming under increasing public criticism. Including from leading New York mayoral candidate, Democrat Andrew Yang, who took aim at the city’s United Federation of Teachers (UFT) in a Politico interview this week: “I will confess to being a parent that has been frustrated by how slow our schools have been to open, and I do believe that the UFT has been a significant reason why our schools have been slow to open.”

(Retorted UFT President Michael Mulgrew, lamely: “The UFT was the leading force in New York City public schools opening and opening safely, protecting students and staff. Mr. Yang needs to do his homework.”)

On the other hand, unions just received a no-strings-attached $200 billion gift from the federal government via an American Rescue Plan that spends most of its K-12 component on hiring, even at a time when schools have been closed and students have been exiting public schools.

Mulgrew, and the New York City Department of Education, illustrate how even policies that are labeled as “reopening” end up with a school experience as anything but. My NYC kindergartener, who is podding a few feet away from me as I type, attends a school of more than 800 kids, where—per city policy arduously negotiated by Mulgrew—the whole institution, already operating at half-time capacity because of the six-foot rule, will shut down if there are two concurrent positive cases of COVID-19.

Weingarten has repeatedly touted New York City (as opposed to, say, the state of Florida, where schools have been open five days a week since September) as a national model. Today’s long-overdue CDC revision will hopefully instead make Gotham a stingy outlier in an increasingly vaccinated K-12 world that’s accelerating toward full reopening. As New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait put it this week, “Just Reopen the Schools Now.”

The Department of Education on Wednesday said that a whopping $122 billion from the recently passed American Rescue Plan will be disbursed to public schools by the end of March. An additional $10 billion is being spent by the Department of Health and Human Services on school COVID testing by early April. The unions got their massive payday. Time to go to work.

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Everybody Except Teachers Unions Loves the CDC’s Revised School Distancing Guidelines


Randi

As foreshadowed last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Friday morning shortened its recommended distance between K-12 students from six feet to three feet, a change that could hasten full-time schooling for millions of remote and hybrid learners.

“We don’t really have the evidence that 6 feet is required in order to maintain low spread,” CDC Community Interventions and Critical Populations Task Force leader Greta Massetti told the Associated Press.

The funny thing is, they didn’t really have that evidence five weeks ago, either, yet that didn’t prevent the CDC from issuing a global outlier of a school reopening guidance that, if followed to the letter, would have kept most American public schools half-open at best well into the fall.

The negative reaction to that teachers union–influenced February 12 document, not just from outspoken school-opening advocates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis but also scientists, left-leaning media outlets, and some Democratic-run polities, undermined the CDC’s credibility, and led directly to several school districts delaying or even reversing plans to reopen.

The new recommendations include bringing down plastic barriers (“We don’t have a lot of evidence of their effectiveness,” Massetti told the A.P.), maintaining six feet of distance in middle and high schools in high-spread communities, and having everyone wear masks.

The revision brings the CDC closer in line with the epidemiological and pediatric researchers, the global public health community, and the professed opinion last July of its current director, Rochelle Walensky. But one category of “stakeholder,” unsurprisingly, isn’t happy: teachers unions.

“They are compromising the one enduring public health missive that we’ve gotten from the beginning of this pandemic in order to squeeze more kids into schools,” American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten told The Washington Post this week. “I think that is problematic until we have real evidence in these harder-to-open places about what the effect is.”

Weingarten, a frequent guest of the Biden White House, has, like other union leaders, sought to portray herself as a tireless advocate for reopening while practically throwing up one objection after another when full-time schooling gets near.

On one hand, you can understand why the unions are so chippy. Having isolated themselves on the science of school spread, alienated parents with reckless accusations of racism, and leveraged their significant influence on Democratic politicians to help make the United States a world leader in shuttered schools, the guilds are coming under increasing public criticism. Including from leading New York mayoral candidate, Democrat Andrew Yang, who took aim at the city’s United Federation of Teachers (UFT) in a Politico interview this week: “I will confess to being a parent that has been frustrated by how slow our schools have been to open, and I do believe that the UFT has been a significant reason why our schools have been slow to open.”

(Retorted UFT President Michael Mulgrew, lamely: “The UFT was the leading force in New York City public schools opening and opening safely, protecting students and staff. Mr. Yang needs to do his homework.”)

On the other hand, unions just received a no-strings-attached $200 billion gift from the federal government via an American Rescue Plan that spends most of its K-12 component on hiring, even at a time when schools have been closed and students have been exiting public schools.

Mulgrew, and the New York City Department of Education, illustrate how even policies that are labeled as “reopening” end up with a school experience as anything but. My NYC kindergartener, who is podding a few feet away from me as I type, attends a school of more than 800 kids, where—per city policy arduously negotiated by Mulgrew—the whole institution, already operating at half-time capacity because of the six-foot rule, will shut down if there are two concurrent positive cases of COVID-19.

Weingarten has repeatedly touted New York City (as opposed to, say, the state of Florida, where schools have been open five days a week since September) as a national model. Today’s long-overdue CDC revision will hopefully instead make Gotham a stingy outlier in an increasingly vaccinated K-12 world that’s accelerating toward full reopening. As New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait put it this week, “Just Reopen the Schools Now.”

The Department of Education on Wednesday said that a whopping $122 billion from the recently passed American Rescue Plan will be disbursed to public schools by the end of March. An additional $10 billion is being spent by the Department of Health and Human Services on school COVID testing by early April. The unions got their massive payday. Time to go to work.

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