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On a Monday night in August 2016, Tony Timpa, a 32-year-old Dallas resident, called 911 to report that he was “having a lot of anxiety” about a man he feared would harm him. Timpa mentioned that he had received several psychiatric diagnoses—schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorder—but had not taken his medication that day. After police arrived in response to that call and other reports of a man behaving erratically near 1728 West Mockingbird Lane, Timpa yelled, “You’re gonna kill me!” He was right.

Timpa, who had already been handcuffed by a security guard, died while being pinned to the ground face down by several police officers for about 15 minutes, during which time he pleaded with them to stop and cried for help over and over again. The officers, while intermittently showing signs of compassion, joked about Timpa’s predicament and the possibility that they had killed him.

This week, in a decision that vividly illustrates how difficult it is to hold cops accountable for misconduct under a federal statute that authorizes lawsuits against government officials who violate people’s constitutional rights, a federal judge granted qualified immunity to those officers. Whether or not they violated Timpa’s Fourth Amendment rights, U.S. District Judge David Godbey ruled, the law on that point was not “clearly established” on the night he died.

The circumstances of Timpa’s death are broadly similar to what happened when George Floyd was suffocated by Minneapolis officers on May 25, a horrifying incident that provoked nationwide protests and calls for police reform. One of the proposed reforms is the abolition of qualified immunity, a court-invented doctrine that blocks federal civil rights claims when plaintiffs cannot identify sufficiently specific precedents. Godbey’s decision shows how formidable that barrier is.

Timpa’s family argued that the Dallas officers’ use of force was clearly unconstitutional under Gutierrez v. City of San Antonio, a 1998 case involving a man who died while restrained face down in the back of a patrol car. In that case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which includes Texas, allowed an excessive force claim to proceed. In both cases, the lawsuit filed by Timpa’s relatives notes, police knew the detainee was under the influence of cocaine. The 5th Circuit in Gutierrez held that the use of force can be excessive “when a drug-affected person in a state of excited delirium is hog-tied and placed face down in a prone position.”

Godbey noted that Timpa, although restrained on his stomach while his hands and feet were shackled, was not hog-tied, which in his view was enough to make Gutierrez inapplicable. He cited three subsequent cases in which the 5th Circuit had blocked excessive force claims against officers who allegedly used deadly prone restraints against resisting detainees.

Godbey likewise was unimpressed by decisions in which five other federal appeals courts had ruled that prone restraints causing death or severe injury did or could qualify as excessive force. Those rulings, he said, did not amount to “a ‘robust consensus’ of persuasive authority,” because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit reached a different conclusion.

This year the 8th Circuit blocked an excessive force claim against St. Louis police officers who allegedly killed a man arrested for trespassing by pinning him face down on the floor of his jail cell. In that case—which complicates a federal lawsuit over George Floyd’s death because the 8th Circuit includes Minnesota—the appeals court concluded that “the Officers’ actions did not amount to constitutionally excessive force,” because they “held [the arrestee] in the prone position only until he stopped actively fighting against his restraints and the Officers.”

Was Tony Timpa “actively fighting” the officers who killed him? Citing the “custodial death report” filed after the incident, his family notes that he “never threatened” the officers, “never resisted being handcuffed,” “never attempted to hit or fight with” them, “never used a weapon to threaten or assault” them, and “never attempted to flee.” But in Godbey’s view, those facts were not enough to establish that the officers used force against a “non-resisting” detainee, as Timpa’s family argued. “Although Timpa was not struggling for the entire duration of Defendants’ restraint of him,” he writes, “the body cam video and audio shows that he continuously moved and yelled in contravention of the officers’ directives, kicked at [two officers], and was struggling enough that [a paramedic’s] first attempt to take his vitals was unsuccessful.”

Recall that the cops ostensibly were there to help Timpa, who was obviously freaking out and according to his family was “suffering drug-induced psychosis.” The officers clearly recognized that Timpa was intoxicated, since they repeatedly asked him what drug he was on, and he told them he had taken cocaine. Yet they proceeded to restrain him for 15 minutes in a position that made it difficult for him to breathe. Given the circumstances, Timpa’s “resistance,” which the officers repeatedly described as “squirming,” was perfectly understandable. Godbey’s framing suggests that someone who panics because he is being smothered to death thereby justifies the use of force that caused him to fear for his life.

“Will you let me go, please?” Timpa begged. “Please let me go….Help me! Help!…Help me. Help me. Help me….Oh God, please. Oh God, please….Stop, Officer….It hurts! Please take it off.” He repeatedly lifted and turned his head, as if struggling to breathe.

An expert hired by Timpa’s family concluded that he “died due to mechanical asphyxia.” The Dallas County medical examiner concluded that Timpa suffered “sudden cardiac death due to the toxic effects of cocaine and physiological stress associated with physical restraint.” She added that because of “his prone position and physical restraint by an officer, an element of mechanical or positional asphyxia cannot be ruled out.”

Video from the body camera worn by Officer Dustin Dillard, who pinned Timpa to the ground by kneeling on his back, shows Timpa lying with his nose buried in the grass between the sidewalk and the street, unresponsive and apparently unconscious. The officers conclude that he has fallen asleep. “If I was squirming like that, I’d be sleeping too,” says one. “Hey, time for school! Wake up!” says another. The two cops—Cpl. Raymond Dominguez and Officer Danny Vasquez—elaborate on the gag, laughing while portraying Timpa as a child who does not want to go to school and describing the breakfast of “scrambled eggs” and “tutti-frutti waffles” waiting for him.

After the cops lift Timpa onto a gurney and he remains unresponsive, Dillard asks a paramedic, “Is he knocked out? He ain’t dead, is he? He didn’t just die down there, did he?…Is he breathing?” As Timpa is wheeled to the ambulance, Dominguez rubs his chest and, getting no response, turns toward Dillard’s body camera, his face screwed into a comical “yikes” expression. “I hope I didn’t kill him,” Dillard says. His colleagues laugh in response. “What’s all this ‘we’ shit?” Vasquez says, although Dillard did not actually say we. “I love how all this became a ‘we.'” Another officer jests, “We ain’t friends.”

After a paramedic examines Timpa in the ambulance and announces that “he’s not breathing,” Dillard responds, “He’s not breathing? Oh, shit.” Another paramedic says “he’s dead,” at which point Sgt. Kevin Mansell, who is on the phone with Timpa’s mother, exclaims “He’s what?!” and hangs up.

The officer’s nonchalant, jocular demeanor, while striking in its callousness, makes it clear that they did not intend to kill Timpa. But Timpa’s family argues that they recklessly caused his death by using force that was not warranted in the circumstances. Or I should say that they want to make that argument. Godbey’s decision, unless it is overturned by the 5th Circuit, means they will not get a chance to pursue that claim.

“This is exactly why qualified immunity must be abolished or at least modified,” says Geoff Henley, the attorney representing Timpa’s family. “It allows officers to continue to use force that we all see and know to be excessive simply because there is no previous ruling prohibiting precisely the same kind of force. It’s squeezing a football through the eye of a needle.”

The family’s chances of winning an appeal do not look good, even if the 5th Circuit decides that Dillard and the other officers used excessive force. Two years ago, the appeals court concluded that members of the Texas Medical Board had violated a doctor’s Fourth Amendment rights by searching his office and records without a warrant. But the board members still got qualified immunity, because “the unlawfulness of the defendants’ conduct was not clearly established at the time of the search.”

Judge Don Willett, who felt compelled by precedent to concur in that decision, wrote a separate opinion in which he decried the unjust and irrational consequences of qualified immunity. “To some observers,” he noted, “qualified immunity smacks of unqualified impunity, letting public officials duck consequences for bad behavior—no matter how palpably unreasonable—as long as they were the first to behave badly.”

Willett added that the doctrine creates a “Catch-22” because courts frequently grant qualified immunity without even deciding whether the defendants’ conduct was unconstitutional. “Plaintiffs must produce precedent even as fewer courts are producing precedent,” he wrote. “Important constitutional questions go unanswered precisely because those questions are yet unanswered.”

That is exactly what happened with the lawsuit filed by Timpa’s family. Godbey implies that Timpa’s resistance—which to many people who watch the body camera video looks like a man’s desperate struggle to stay alive—could justify the force used against him. But Godbey never squarely addresses that issue. The decision therefore not only lets these defendants off the hook but allows other police officers in the 5th Circuit to do exactly the same thing again, now and forever. As Henley observes, “there will be more unnecessary deaths unless there is real legal change.”

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Earlier today, the Supreme Court issued complex 7-2 decisions in Trump v. Vance and Trump v. Mazars. In the former case, the Court ruled that state courts may subpoena the president’s financial records in a state criminal case and that there is no “heightened standard” for a subpoena in such cases. In Mazars, the Court vacated lower court decisions uphold congressional subpoenas for President Trump’s financial and tax records, but also rejected the president’s claims of near-total immunity for such subpoenas. Instead, the Court remanded the case to the lower courts, which are instructed to apply a complex and often vague four-part balancing test to determine which presidential records Congress is allowed to subpoena. And the test may not even be exhaustive, since the Court cautions that “other considerations” may also be relevant. Here is the test, in all its glory (or lack thereof):

First, courts should carefully assess whether the asserted legislative purpose warrants the significant step of involv­ing the President and his papers…. Congress may not rely on the President’s information if other sources could reasonably provide Congress the information it needs in light of its par­ticular legislative objective. The President’s unique consti­tutional position means that Congress may not look to him as a “case study” for general legislation….

Second, to narrow the scope of possible conflict between the branches, courts should insist on a subpoena no broader than reasonably necessary to support Congress’s legislative objective. The specificity of the subpoena’s request “serves as an important safeguard against unnecessary intrusion into the operation of the Office of the President.” Cheney, 542 U. S., at 387.

Third, courts should be attentive to the nature of the ev­idence offered by Congress to establish that a subpoena ad­vances a valid legislative purpose. The more detailed substantial the evidence of Congress’s legislative purpose, the better…. That is particularly true when Con­gress contemplates legislation that raises sensitive consti­tutional issues, such as legislation concerning the Presi­dency. In such cases, it is “impossible” to conclude that a subpoena is designed to advance a valid legislative purpose unless Congress adequately identifies its aims and explains why the President’s information will advance its considera­tion of the possible legislation….

Fourth, courts should be careful to assess the burdens im­posed on the President by a subpoena. We have held that burdens on the President’s time and attention stemming from judicial process and litigation, without more, generally do not cross constitutional lines. See Vance, ante, at 12–14; Clinton, 520 U. S., at 704–705. But burdens imposed by a congressional subpoena should be carefully scrutinized, for they stem from a rival political branch that has an ongoing relationship with the President and incentives to use sub­poenas for institutional advantage….

Other considerations may be pertinent as well; one case every two centuries does not afford enough experience for an exhaustive list.

I have little to say about Vance, except that I think the majority’s reasoning is strong and compelling. On Mazars, I agree with the majority’s rejection of both Trump’s position and the House of Representatives’ contention that Congress has virtually unlimited subpoena power. But I fear that the four-part test is vague, unwieldy, and unnecessary. Among other things, it is not clear what courts should do if some of the factors cut in favor of Congress while others support the president. Many aspects of the individual factors are also vague. For example, it is not clear what counts as an excessive “burden” under the fourth factor, or how such burdens are to be measured. And, of course, we don’t know what “other considerations” the Court thinks might be relevant.

The test is likely to lead to further prolonged litigation, both in this case, and perhaps other ones in the future. The one thing we can say with some certainty is that trying to make sense of the Court’s standards will provide plenty of work for both congressional and executive branch lawyers! I would have preferred that the majority adopt something like the much simpler limiting principle I outlined here.

I will have more to say about Mazars in a piece on that case scheduled to be published by at the SCOTUSblog website later today, or possibly tomorrow. When it is up, I will update this post with a link.

UPDATE: I should add that I agree with most of what co-blogger Jonathan Adler says about the two cases here, except that I have a considerably less favorable view of the way the Court resolved (or, in key respects, actually failed to resolve) the issues in Mazars.

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Following the police killing of George Floyd and subsequent civil unrest in Minneapolis, some crimes–specifically gun crimes–have increased in that city while other kinds of crimes have not.  A”Ferguson effect” appears to explain this pattern. Minneapolis police have stopped making as many street stops as they made previously.  And given the unique responsiveness of gun crimes to policing activity, the tragic result of that pullback has been an increase in shootings.

This morning, Charles Fain Lehman of the Washington Free Beacon examined recent crime trends in Minneapolis in this very informative article–”Are Minneapolis’s Police Protests Causing a Crime Wave? The specter of the ‘Ferguson effect’ rears its head amid Floyd protests.” As explained in the article, an average of over 50 gunshots per day have plagued Minneapolis since Floyd’s killing, prompting fears that hostility to the police is driving a violent crime wave.

As Lehman notes, police data from Minneapolis show firearm discharges at double 2019 levels.  Here is the data—with shots fired during the first half of 2020 being identified by the red line in the chart below:

Lehman’s chart depicts data from the city’s ShotSpotter gunshot detection systems. While gun crimes invariably increase during summer months, this chart shows an increase that is far different than normal seasonal variation–a substantial increase that immediately follows the George Floyd protests.

But, as Lehman explains, the data from Minneapolis do not show a general increase across all crime categories. Instead, the data show that most index crimes in Minneapolis are simply moving along with pre-existing trends. Lehman notes that “only rates of assault–particularly, second-degree assault, meaning assault with a dangerous weapon–have consistently risen since Floyd’s death.”  Lehman depicts all eight index crimes (arson, assault, auto theft, burglary, larceny, murder, rape, and robbery) and the only crime category with a consistent, post-Floyd-protest increase is assault–although homicides are generally up and robberies are trending upward as well.

Lehman further explains that the increase in shots fired and assaults could support an argument for a “Ferguson effect” in Minneapolis. The “Ferguson effect” was a term first coined by St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson III in late 2014, to account for an increased murder rate in some U.S. cities following unrest due to the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Heather MacDonald (a law school classmate of mine) further popularized the term in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in May 2015.

MacDonald has recently suggested that a “Ferguson Effect 2.0” or “the Minneapolis Effect” is now responsible for recent violent crime increases, in Minneapolis and other large cities across the country.  But, as Lehman notes, in Minneapolis, while the “spike in gun violence definitely supports a renewed Ferguson effect, … the ambiguity suggested by many crimes going unaffected means the case is not conclusive.” Lehman then discusses other research on crime increases following the Ferguson unrest that reaches differing conclusion on whether a Ferguson effect was responsible.

The point that struck me about the recent Minneapolis data is the pattern of crime increases, specifically increases that are concentrated in shootings and assaults, as well as possibly homicides and armed robberies.  A similar pattern of crime increases was present during the 2016 Chicago homicide spike.  A detailed paper on the Chicago spike by my University of Utah colleague Richard Fowles and me explains that in Chicago in 2016 there was a dramatic increase in gun-related crimes, but not other crimes. (See pp. 1600-01 of the study). Specifically, in Chicago in 2016 homicides increased substantially, by 58% year-over-year from 2015 to 2016.  There were also large (more than 20%) increases in robbery and aggravated assault–but not such large increases in other index crimes. Focusing specifically on gun crimes, there was a substantial increase in shootings in Chicago in 2016. Fatal shootings increased by 66% and non-fatal shootings increased by 44%.  (See Table 5).

The 2016 Chicago pattern looks eerily similar to the pattern that now seems to be developing in Minneapolis.  Just as Chicago shootings increased dramatically in 2016, so too in Minneapolis shootings are up significantly.  And just as Chicago’s assault and homicide rates increased significantly in 2016, so too (apparently) in Minneapolis. There were 48 homicides in Minneapolis in all of 2019. A little more than halfway through 2020, there have already been 31 homicides in the city.

Professor Fowles and I explain at length in our paper the reasons for concluding that the 2016 Chicago homicide spike was caused by an “ACLU effect.” Specifically, we discuss an agreement that the Chicago Police Department struck in August 2015 with the ACLU regarding street stops (often referred to as “stop and frisks”). That agreement was implemented in December 2015, and produced about an 80% reduction in the street stops that Chicago police officers conducted during 2016.  Our argument is simple: As a result of the ACLU agreement, police significantly reduced the number of street stops they made, leading to more illegal guns on the streets of Chicago, leading to more shootings and homicides. Our paper estimates that the reduction in street stops in Chicago led to about 245 additional victims killed and about 1,108 additional shootings during 2016.

The current pattern in Minneapolis may similarly reflect a reduction in police activity focused on preventing gun violence. As has been widely discussed in the media, the Minneapolis Council is moving to “defund” its police department–or, more precisely, to remake the police department into a “public safety department” with less focus on licensed police officers.  Amid such discussions, officials in Minneapolis have noted (according to an article by the Star-Tribune) a “reluctance of some Minneapolis officers to take initiative amid intense scrutiny.”

This reluctance to “take initiative” could mean a reduction in street stops and other self-initiated police activity that might produce an increase in gun crimes.  A recent paper by Tanaya Devi and Rolad G. Fryer, Jr., for example, links declines in self-initiated police activities with increases in homicide rates (although the paper believes that federal “pattern-and-practice” investigations are an important causal factor, a point that I disagree with for reasons beyond the scope of this blog post). And, in Minneapolis specifically, there have been recent suggestions from police union leaders that Minneapolis police officers “are not going to put themselves out there to get the proactive stops to get the guns off the street … [b]ecause they don’t feel supported, after the fact,” as Sgt. Anna Hedberg of the Minneapolis Police Federation recently put it.

So what do the data show regarding police stops in Minneapolis recently? Lehman has shared with me data that he has pulled from the Minneapolis Police Department data dashboard.  The data reveal that police stops have declined significantly in Minneapolis since the Floyd protests began.  The following chart depicts the data for suspicious person stops, suspicious vehicle stops, and traffic enforcement stops.  The red line depicts stops before 2020; the green line depicts stops for the first half of this year.  As is clear from the chart, with the exception of a singular spike a couple of days after the protests began, police stops of all types are below those conducted in earlier years, particularly “suspicious person” stops:

And, similarly, data on police stops in which a person or vehicle was searched show a persistently lower level of police activity since the Floyd protests began.  The chart below depicts police stops in which a person or vehicle was searched, with the red line depicting pre-2020 police activity and the green line depicting activity from the first half of this year.

The fact that the timing of the increase in shootings revealed in the ShotSpotter data coincides so exactly with the decline in various stops and stop-leading-to-searches provides a reason for concluding that the reduction in police activity is a triggering mechanism for the increase in shooting crimes in Minneapolis.

Of course, other factors apart from a decline in policing activity may be at play in Minneapolis’s crime increases.  Further analysis is required to reach definitive conclusions. For example, some might argue that reduced trust in law enforcement following Floyd’s killing is responsible. And Minneapolis has been under COVID-19 restrictions for several months, a confounding variable in any analysis of crime trends.  But such general factors would seem to be candidates for explaining increasing or decreasing crime rates across-the-board–not just the unique increase in shooting crimes that Minneapolis is suffering.

Gun crimes are specifically (and quickly) responsive to law enforcement initiatives, a point that Professor Fowles and I explore in our earlier paper (pp. 1605-08). Sadly, hundreds of additional shootings and deaths occurred in Chicago in 2016 (concentrated in the city’s African-American community) as police were redeployed away from street stops that helped to deter shootings. As policing activities that prevent gun violence are now declining in Minneapolis, crime victims in the city may suffer the same tragic consequences.

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A police narcotics unit in Springfield, Massachusetts, regularly uses excessive force on suspects, including punching them in the face, and frequently fails to document the incidents or falsifies reports, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a report released Wednesday night.

The Justice Department report found that officers in the Springfield Police Department’s Narcotic Bureau “regularly punch subjects in the head and neck area without legal justification,” resulting in a “pattern or practice” of unconstitutional excessive force under the Fourth Amendment.

The report also found it was “not uncommon for Narcotics Bureau officers to write false or incomplete narratives that justify their uses of force.” 

Justice Department investigators cited one instance where an injury report of an arrestee only noted “small cuts to the face.” However, pictures of the man “clearly show severe contusions and dark bruising on the right side of his face, a large black eye, a gash on the bridge of his nose, and additional abrasions on the left side of his face and the left side of his nose.”

Because of rampant underreporting of use-of-force incidents, the use of vague language to obscure the extent of injuries, and the outright falsification of police reports, the Justice Department concluded that excessive force incidents were likely more widespread than the many violations captured in its report.

And there was little to no discipline for officers involved in those civil rights violations. Because of poor reporting requirements, lax supervisor oversight, and lazy internal affairs reviews, the report found that there was not a single sustained excessive force finding against a member of the narcotics team over the past six years.

“I’ve said many times that being a police officer is the toughest job in America. We owe these public servants our respect and our support,” Attorney General William Barr said in a press release accompanying the report. “But with this high calling comes a tremendous responsibility to uphold the public trust. The Department of Justice is committed to supporting our law enforcement while holding departments accountable that violate this sacred trust.”

Springfield cops, who patrol the third-largest city in Massachusetts, have made headlines in recent years, and not for good reasons.  

Last year, 14 Springfield officers were charged for a violent off-duty bar brawl and an ensuing cover-up. The city paid out $885,000 to settle a lawsuit by four men injured in the melee. Five of the officers involved were suspended, but have since been reinstated.

Springfield settled two other excessive force lawsuits last year for $450,000 and $250,000.

In a separate incident last year, a jury convicted another Springfield officer on charges of official misconduct and battery for beating a man.

Local news outlet WAMC also reported last year on an investigation by the Hampden District Attorney Office into two incidents where video evidence appeared to contradict written police reports:

In one, a desk officer grabs a man around the throat and wrestles with him in the lobby of police headquarters.  The man says he was disputing a parking ticket and denies doing anything to warrant the violent response.

The prosecutor’s office is also investigating the arrest of a Springfield high school student. Security video shows a school resource officer suddenly grab the male student by the neck as they pass each other in a hallway.

In 2017, a longtime Springfield police detective was charged with stealing $400,000 in cash from the department’s evidence room. He died of an apparent suicide the day he was scheduled to plead guilty.

The Justice Department’s investigation of the Springfield Police Department is notable because it is, so far, the only probe of an entire police department launched by the Justice Department under Trump.

The Obama administration launched a record number of so-called “pattern or practice” investigations into systemic civil rights violations by police departments, including in Baltimore, Chicago, and Ferguson, Missouri. 

However, the Trump Justice Department, especially under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, backed away from the aggressive use of these investigations. Sessions said he never read the Justice Department’s scathing report on civil rights violations by the Chicago Police Department, but he nevertheless said such investigations unfairly maligned whole police departments and improperly used the power of the federal government to coerce municipal governments into court-enforced settlements, called “consent decrees.”

U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Andrew Lelling said in a Justice Department press release that the Springfield Police Department and the city “have fully cooperated with this investigation and have made clear their commitment to genuine reform.”

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The anti-cancel culture letter published in Harper’s and signed by various intellectuals ranging ideologically from Noam Chomsky to Steven Pinker, and the harsh reaction to it from many “progressive” activists, has been covered in detail elsewhere.

But two specific reactions to the relevant controversy really made me feel like we are  living in Crazytown.

First, several Vox employees publicly objection to the fact that their colleague Matt Yglesias signed the letter. In response to the tensions within Vox, senior foreign editor Jennifer Williams tweeted, “The Harper’s letter is revealing a deeper issue: Do we judge opinions/arguments on their merits or on who makes them? Does signing a letter mean you endorse the letter? Yes. Does it mean you also endorse the opinions of those who also choose to sign it? That’s the question here.”

That asking the first and third of these questions seem like a reasonable, moderate position to a senior editor of a major media company is remarkable. (In case this escapes you, the correct answers are (1) on their merits; and (3) No.)

Even weirder was a tweet by New York Times reporter Farnaz Fassihi who tweeted, “‘The Letter’ was shaped/spearheaded from conversations by four privileged white men. Apparently they felt entitled to really weigh in on racism, diversity & inclusion. That says it all.”

The first weird aspect of her tweet is that she links to an article in her own newspaper explaining that the letter was spearheaded by the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, who is African American. This was pointed out to her by numerous correspondents, but the tweet is still up.

The second weird aspect is that she apparently believes that a letter against cancel culture, or, if one prefers, in favor of free speech and open debate, constitutes “weighing in” on “racism, diversity & inclusion.”

The third weird thing is that she thinks that white men have nothing to say worth saying about these issues, which means, in effect, that white men can never usefully express an opinion on anything related to her rather capacious definition of racism, diversity & inclusion, to include opinions on freedom of speech and open debate. (This, btw, includes two of the four “white men” who have Jewish surnames. Apparently, everything from the Pittsburg and Poway shootings to the Holocaust notwithstanding, Jews totally don’t have any experience with racism.)

But what really struck me about her tweet is her implicit claim, unlike the white men in question, to be free of privilege. Fassihi is an Iranian-American, who grew up in Portland and Iran, apparently to a family of some means. She is a relatively fair-skinned Iranian Caucasian, i.e., white in American parlance (and law). Now, she might have a idiosyncratically capacious definition of “non-white,” but why that would encompass Iranians but not Jews is unclear.

She attended two of the best (and most expensive) universities in the world, Harvard and Columbia, which she proudly announces in her Twitter profile. She has a high-profile position at perhaps the most powerful and prestigious media outlet in the world.

And, the kicker… According to Wikipedia, “her great-great grandmother is said to be Taj Saltaneh Qajar, the most notable daughter of Naser al-Din Shah, who ruled over Iran from 1848 to 1896.”

It seems to be that in a sane world, the Ivy-educated, descendant of kleptocratic Iranian royalty employed by an extremely influential media company would not have the chutzpah to announce that other people shouldn’t be expressing their opinions because they are “privileged.” But like I said, we seem to be living in Crazytown.

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