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New York City is seeing a spike in shootings and homicides, and New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea blames bail reforms and COVID-19-related releases of inmates for the increase. But the New York Post looked over the New York Police Department’s own data and found there’s no relationship between this new wave of violence and the release of people from New York’s jails.

When New York reformed its bail laws to make it easier for people charged with low-level crimes to get out of jail without having to put up money first, law enforcement representatives insisted it would lead to more crime.

Similar reforms in adjacent New Jersey had shown no such problems, but once New York state implemented reforms at the start of 2020, police trumpeted the case of any person who was released without having to pay bail and subsequently broke the law and as proof that bail reform puts people in danger.

To an extent, this strategy worked. New York scaled back its bail reforms in April, giving judges greater authority to demand cash bail, especially if somebody was arrested again after being released from pretrial detention.

This apparently still isn’t enough for the NYPD, and Shea is attempting to argue that bail reforms have led to gun violence. But the data shows that’s just not true.

The New York Post looked over the city’s data of 528 shooting incidents from the start of the year through the end of June. Only one person who had been released on bail under these bail reforms has been charged with a shooting, according to the NYPD’s own data. Less than 1 percent of the 11,000 people who have been released from Rikers Island this year have a connection to a shooting in the city, and more than half of those people are connected as a witness or a victim, not as a suspect.

Among the 275 people released from Rikers to attempt to reduce the spread of COVID-19, only nine were subsequently linked to shootings, and of those, three were witnesses and three were victims.

Everybody has their own theories about why gun violence is increasing, not just in New York City, but in other major urban centers like Chicago and Minneapolis. Shootings often go up in the summer, and homicides do tend to increase during periods of political and social unrest. The summer of 2020 hits all three marks.

It’s also worth noting that New York City is not seeing a massive increase in all major crimes. Homicides, burglaries, and auto thefts are seeing big spikes—burglary reports have doubled over last year—but other major crimes are on the decline. Overall, New York City actually saw a 5.5 percent decline in major crimes when compared to the first six months of 2019.

That, of course, doesn’t mean that residents of the Big Apple should shrug off a major spike in gun violence and homicide. But the data simply doesn’t support the NYPD’s claim that bail reforms and COVID-19 releases are to blame.

Kudos to the New York Post for holding the police accountable, particularly since the Post has historically been the media outlet most likely to uncritically advance the tough-on-crime argument that criminal justice reforms lead to more crime.

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A man and a woman who attempted to paint over a city-approved Black Lives Matter mural in Martinez, California, on Saturday are both facing hate crime charges.

The Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office charged Nicole Anderson and David Nelson with three misdemeanors: violation of civil rights, vandalism under $400, and possession of tools to commit vandalism or graffiti. If convicted, they each face up to a year in county jail.

In a viral video captured Saturday, Anderson is seen spattering black paint and using a roller to cover up a yellow Black Lives Matter sign that had been painted on the road facing the Martinez courthouse after the city issued a permit for the project. Nelson filmed.

“We’re sick of this narrative, that’s what’s wrong,” he says in the clip. “The narrative of police brutality, the narrative of oppression, the narrative of racism, it’s a lie.”

Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton justified her decision to bring charges against the pair in a statement released this week. “We must address the root and byproduct of systemic racism in our country. The Black Lives Matter movement is an important civil rights cause that deserves all of our attention. The mural completed last weekend was a peaceful and powerful way to communicate the importance of Black lives in Contra Costa County and the country. We must continue to elevate discussions and actually listen to one another in an effort to heal our community and country.”

But central to the Black Lives Matter movement, according to their official statement of purpose, is the notion that many of the injustices they seek to rectify are especially egregious when they come from the state. The death of George Floyd has elevated the police reform debate, though that conversation has primarily centered around how difficult it is to hold rogue cops accountable. More, still, should be devoted to bad laws and regulations and the excessive penalties that are tied up in breaking those rules.

A cause that surrounds dismantling the carceral state—the U.S. government locks up its people at the highest rate by far—can not apply that ideology discriminately. Putting the vandals in a cage for a year over a nonviolent attempt to spread some paint won’t change their hearts and minds. And though it might change the police reform movement, it won’t be for the better.

Also of note is the district attorney’s decision to pursue hate crime charges for the paint-related incident, which carry enhanced penalties. That charge—violation of civil rights under California’s penal code 422—says that no person “shall knowingly deface, damage, or destroy the real or personal property of any other person” on the basis of protected class, including disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, and/or the association with a person who has one or more of those characteristics. Of note is that the property defaced here is not personal but is owned by the government—an important caveat when considering the road did not belong to the mural’s artists.

But at a broader level, there are plenty of reasons to take issue with pursuing hate crime charges. It sometimes means that people are charged twice for the same crimes. More important to this particular discussion is that it gives the government power to arbitrarily draw distinctions between hate-based infringements and those of a more agnostic variety, which chips away at the equality we’re all supposedly entitled to under law, the same equality BLM says it’s fighting for.

When considering the anti-carceral motivations behind the Black Lives Matter movement, the contradictions here are on full display. Seeking maximal state-imposed retribution for a nonviolent offense does nothing to help black people who no longer want to be the victims of maximal state-imposed retribution for nonviolent offenses.

The mural has since been repainted.

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For most of the Democratic primary elections, the race resembled a battle between Sens. Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden—or, at the very least, the ideas and ideals they represented. The geriatric duo made almost perfect foils for each other, one the amiable, moderate party fixture, respected (if not always loved) by Democratic elders, the other its constant, cantankerous left-wing critic and the choice of its young insurgents. They were avatars of the party’s self-satisfied insider class and its disgruntled agitators, the odd couple of Democratic politics, and the spectrum between them encapsulated the entirety of the party’s internal debate.  

The contest between the two was real, as was at least some of the animosity between their two camps. But the party’s internal tug-of-war, sometimes sees as a struggle in which one view of Democratic politics would definitively prevail at the expense of the other, obscured the ways in which the two were actually working toward a synthesis, in which Biden’s moderate-seeming likability politics would serve as a vehicle for a policy agenda that was—if not exactly #FullBernie—far more progressive than ever before. 

That was true during the race, in which Biden ran notably to the left of the party’s 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton, on a host of issues. And it has proven even more true since Sanders dropped out and Biden became the presumptive nominee, especially when it comes to major domestic policy issues. 

For the last several months, representatives from the two camps have been negotiating a far-reaching set of policy recommendations jointly backed by the two camps. While Sanders wouldn’t get everything he proposed during the campaign—no Medicare for All, no Green New Deal—it would, inevitably, mean that Biden, who had already won the primary, would be moving left.  

The mere fact that the two sides had come together was a sign of Biden’s leftward momentum, and, given Biden’s stature, a symbol of the party’s leftward drift. But yesterday, the working group released its proposals, in the form of the “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force Recommendations,” 110 pages covering a multitude of issues, including climate, health care, criminal justice, education, and more.  

On nearly every issue, the document would move Biden toward Sanders, with what The New York Times describes as “broader and costlier plans than he has championed so far in his campaign,” and more aggressive plans to mandate reductions in carbon emissions. 

Among other things, the new document proposes creating a new zero-deductible Obamacare plan that would automatically enroll low-income people who otherwise lack coverage, expanding Medicare eligibility to people aged 60 and up, boosting Social Security benefits, creating an environmental justice fund, canceling up to $50,000 in student debt for people working in education, and adopting more restrictive trade policies closer to what Sanders supported during the campaign.

These are not just friendly overtures to a primary opponent. They are real policy concessions from a politician who was already running on the most progressive platform of any Democratic nominee in recent memory. It’s far from a full-fledged victory for the Sanders wing of the party, but it suggests significant movement in their direction, as Sanders indicated in a statement. “Though the end result is not what I or my supporters would have written alone, the task forces have created a good policy blueprint that will move this country in a much-needed progressive direction,” he said. And its very existence hints at more of the same should Biden win the presidency in November.  

Historically, successful nominees have tended to play to their party’s base during the primary, then tack toward the center as the general election nears. But Biden has done almost exactly the opposite, claiming the moderate label during the primary, and then moving leftward, towards Sanders, after winning.

Not only that, he’s doing so from a position of relative political strength—riding high in the polls against Trump, and increasingly likely to flip the Senate to Democratic control if he wins. Democrats, polls show, are already broadly unified behind him. That Biden’s leftward trajectory has become more pronounced even as his ultimate victory looks more likely suggests that Biden, as president, may be most responsive to pressure from the left flank of his own party. 

Biden has always styled himself as a centrist politician whose goal was to find the most universally agreeable path by negotiating and compromising with his political opponents. Over the last year, this approach has landed him in some trouble with those on the left who believe that negotiating with Republicans is a fool’s errand.

But as it turns out, in 2020, he isn’t negotiating with the GOP. Instead, he’s bargaining with the Democratic left, trying to find the center of his own party rather than the country at large. The real Biden is not a reflexive moderate so much as a finder of consensus, and it’s clearer than ever that the consensus he’s looking for now is one that exists almost entirely to his left. 

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On Monday, the Decriminalize Nature D.C. campaign, which seeks to decriminalize “natural entheogenic substances” in the District, reached a major milestone after submitting over 35,000 signatures for their ballot measure to the D.C. Board of Elections.

If at least 25,000 signatures are verified, D.C. voters will decide in November on whether to decriminalize these substances across the district.

Initiative 81, also dubbed the Entheogenic Plant and Fungus Policy Act of 2020, would “make investigation and arrest of adults for…engaging in practices with entheogenic plants and fungi among the lowest law enforcement priorities for the District of Columbia,” according to the proposal.

Initiative 81 would not reduce any fines or penalties for using or possessing psychedelics already on the books, but it would direct law enforcement to focus on other, more pressing issues. The proposal includes a non-binding call for both the D.C. Attorney General and the federal U.S. Attorney for D.C. to drop prosecutions of people for “non-commercial planting, non-commercial cultivating, purchasing, transporting, distributing” or possessing these “entheogenic” plants and fungi.

The initiative would decriminalize only naturally-occurring psychedelics, such as DMT, mescaline (found in peyote), and psilocybin (found in certain mushrooms and truffles). “We thought it was really important to focus on what grows in nature,” campaign organizer Melissa Lavasani says. 

Psychedelics have gained ground in recent years due to promising medical research conducted by the Johns Hopkins’ Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, King’s College London, and other researchers around the globe.

U.S. laws have not caught up with the breadth of research on psychedelics. Psilocybin and mescaline are prohibited under schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the category for drugs that are prone to abuse, dangerous, and have no therapeutic applications. 

This miscategorization is a major focus of D.C.’s decriminalization campaigners. 

“Somebody’s suffering and they’ve tried everything else and plant medicines are the only thing that works for them. They’re having an amazing experience finding healing with plant medicines,” Lavasani says. “Why should they live in fear of losing their job, losing their life, losing their children for something that’s been so beneficial for them?”

COVID-19 stay-at-home orders threatened to derail the required signature gathering, prompting the campaign to send voters information packets and petitions by mail. Lavasani says the campaign gathered around 10,000 signatures this way.

Once the city began reopening, the campaign tabled outside grocery stores, parks, and polling places to obtain the remaining signatures.

If the measure is passed in November, Washington, D.C., would join a small but growing group of cities that have decriminalized some psychedelics for personal use. 

Denver became the first city to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms in May 2019, followed by Oakland, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz. There are now hundreds of similar efforts in cities across the country, many organized by local Decriminalize Nature chapters.

Right now, the odds of success at the voting booth look promising. Campaign polling in April found that a narrow majority—51 percent—of D.C. voters would likely back the measure. Among voters who received additional information about the proposal, support jumped to 60 percent. If the signatures are approved, the campaign’s focus will shift towards educating the public about these “natural medicines” ahead of November’s election.

Lavasani is optimistic about the future of decriminalization: “We have just hit the tip of the iceberg with research…This is just the beginning for D.C. and the rest of the country. We’re really excited.”

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The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a pair of eagerly awaited decisions today in cases arising from efforts by the Manhattan district attorney and by members of Congress to subpoena the financial records of President Donald Trump and several of his business entities. The cases are Trump v. Vance and Trump v. Mazars USA.

Trump lost big in Trump v. Vance. At issue was a subpoena filed by the New York County District Attorney’s Office seeking financial records from Mazars USA, LLP, the longtime accounting firm of both Trump and various businesses tied to him. Trump’s lawyers told the Supreme Court that the president should enjoy “absolute immunity” from such state legal actions while in office. As the Court put it, Trump “argues that the Supremacy Clause gives a sitting President absolute immunity from state criminal subpoenas because compliance with those subpoenas would categorically impair a President’s performance of his Article II functions.”

The Supreme Court resoundingly rejected that position. “Two hundred years ago, a great jurist of our Court established that no citizen, not even the President, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” declared the majority opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts. “We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the President is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need.” In other words, the Manhattan district attorney may ultimately obtain Trump’s financial records.

Roberts’ opinion was joined in full by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, concurred in the judgment only. They too rejected Trump’s sweeping claim of absolute immunity from state criminal subpoenas. But Kavanaugh and Gorsuch also stressed that Trump “may raise [other] constitutional and legal objections to the state grand jury subpoena as appropriate” as the case proceeds in the lower courts.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito voted in dissent.

Trump fared a little better in today’s second subpoena case. At issue in Trump v. Mazars was an effort by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform to obtain eight years of Trump’s financial records from his accounting firm. The key question was whether the congressional committee had a “legitimate legislative purpose” in seeking those documents. Trump’s lawyers insisted that if the House prevailed, future congressional committees would be empowered to go on endless fishing expeditions into the private records of future presidents. “A congressional committee merely needs to say that it is considering legislation requiring presidents to disclose [financial] information of this type,” Trump’s legal team argued. “Given the temptation to investigate the personal lives of political rivals, legislative subpoenas targeting the private affairs of presidents will become routine in times of divided government.”

That argument seemed to resonate with the Court. “Far from accounting for separation of powers concerns, the House’s approach aggravates them by leaving essentially no limits on the congressional power to subpoena the President’s personal records,” said Chief Justice Roberts, whose opinion was joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. “Without limits on its subpoena powers, Congress could ‘exert an imperious controul’ over the Executive Branch and aggrandize itself at the President’s expense, just as the Framers feared.”

But the majority stopped short of actually ruling in Trump’s favor. In fact, the justices essentially punted the case back down to the lower courts.

“In assessing whether a subpoena directed at the President’s personal information is ‘related to, and in furtherance of, a legitimate task of the Congress,'” Roberts wrote, “courts must perform a careful analysis that takes adequate account of the separation of powers principles at stake, including both the significant legislative interests of Congress and the ‘unique position’ of the President.” Roberts then instructed the lower courts to perform that “careful analysis” by remanding Trump v. Mazars “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

The upshot of today’s two decisions is that the Supreme Court thoroughly rebuffed Trump’s most sweeping assertion of executive power while also casting doubt on the House Oversight Committee’s broad claim of congressional power.

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