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A License for Outrageous Police Conduct

When a police officer illegally arrests a photographer for taking pictures, can she be sued for violating the Fourth Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures”? Yes, a federal appeals court ruled last week.

When police officers steal cash and property worth more than $225,000 while executing a search warrant, can they be sued for violating the owners’ Fourth Amendment rights? No, a different federal appeals court ruled earlier this month.

Welcome to the weird world of qualified immunity, which protects government officials from liability for outrageous conduct if a court determines that the rights they allegedly violated were not “clearly established” at the time. Exactly what that means is fuzzy, but it’s undeniable that qualified immunity lets cops off the hook for actions that would land ordinary people in jail.

In the false arrest case, Stephanie Branch, a police officer who works for Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), charged freelance photographer Avi Adelman with trespassing at a train station, even though DART policy allowed him to take pictures there. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that “no reasonable officer under these circumstances would conclude that she had authority to eject a person complying with DART policies from public property—and then arrest that person for criminal trespass when he failed to depart.”

In the case of the purloined property, suspects in an illegal gambling investigation alleged that Fresno, California, police officers seized $151,380 in cash and $125,000 in rare coins but reported only $50,000 of it, pocketing the rest. “Although the City Officers ought to have recognized that the alleged theft of Appellants’ money and rare coins was morally wrong,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled, “they did not have clear notice that it violated the Fourth Amendment.”

Courts in other cases have approved qualified immunity for cops who allegedly shot people without cause, sicced a dog on a man who was surrendering, tased a driver who was stopped for failing to buckle his seat belt, and ordered a 17-year-old boy to disrobe and masturbate so they could take pictures of his erect penis. Fifth Circuit Judge Don Willett, who was part of the panel that ruled against Officer Branch, observes that “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.”

Worse, Willett noted in a 2018 case, courts often rule that a right allegedly violated by police was not “clearly established” without deciding whether their actions were unconstitutional. That approach creates a “Catch-22,” he said, because “plaintiffs must produce precedent even as fewer courts are producing precedent,” and “important constitutional questions go unanswered precisely because those questions are yet unanswered.”

University of Chicago law professor William Baude argues that qualified immunity, which the Supreme Court invented in 1982, is “unlawful,” with “shoddy foundations” in common law. Baude notes that the Court seems keen to accept cases involving qualified immunity and almost always rules in favor of police officers, encouraging lower courts to shield cops from liability under a federal law that allows people to sue them for constitutional violations.

The Court’s application of qualified immunity, Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed in a 2018 dissent joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “tells officers that they can shoot first and think later.” Justice Clarence Thomas, who does not agree with Sotomayor and Ginsburg about much else, also has urged his colleagues to reconsider the Court’s approach to qualified immunity.

Based on an analysis of nearly 1,200 federal civil rights cases and a survey of about 100 lawyers practicing in this area, UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz concludes that abolishing qualified immunity would make litigation less costly, complicated, and time-consuming for both sides. Most important, she says, it would stop courts from sending “the troubling message to government officials that they can violate the law with impunity.”

© Copyright 2019 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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A License for Outrageous Police Conduct

When a police officer illegally arrests a photographer for taking pictures, can she be sued for violating the Fourth Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures”? Yes, a federal appeals court ruled last week.

When police officers steal cash and property worth more than $225,000 while executing a search warrant, can they be sued for violating the owners’ Fourth Amendment rights? No, a different federal appeals court ruled earlier this month.

Welcome to the weird world of qualified immunity, which protects government officials from liability for outrageous conduct if a court determines that the rights they allegedly violated were not “clearly established” at the time. Exactly what that means is fuzzy, but it’s undeniable that qualified immunity lets cops off the hook for actions that would land ordinary people in jail.

In the false arrest case, Stephanie Branch, a police officer who works for Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), charged freelance photographer Avi Adelman with trespassing at a train station, even though DART policy allowed him to take pictures there. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that “no reasonable officer under these circumstances would conclude that she had authority to eject a person complying with DART policies from public property—and then arrest that person for criminal trespass when he failed to depart.”

In the case of the purloined property, suspects in an illegal gambling investigation alleged that Fresno, California, police officers seized $151,380 in cash and $125,000 in rare coins but reported only $50,000 of it, pocketing the rest. “Although the City Officers ought to have recognized that the alleged theft of Appellants’ money and rare coins was morally wrong,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled, “they did not have clear notice that it violated the Fourth Amendment.”

Courts in other cases have approved qualified immunity for cops who allegedly shot people without cause, sicced a dog on a man who was surrendering, tased a driver who was stopped for failing to buckle his seat belt, and ordered a 17-year-old boy to disrobe and masturbate so they could take pictures of his erect penis. Fifth Circuit Judge Don Willett, who was part of the panel that ruled against Officer Branch, observes that “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.”

Worse, Willett noted in a 2018 case, courts often rule that a right allegedly violated by police was not “clearly established” without deciding whether their actions were unconstitutional. That approach creates a “Catch-22,” he said, because “plaintiffs must produce precedent even as fewer courts are producing precedent,” and “important constitutional questions go unanswered precisely because those questions are yet unanswered.”

University of Chicago law professor William Baude argues that qualified immunity, which the Supreme Court invented in 1982, is “unlawful,” with “shoddy foundations” in common law. Baude notes that the Court seems keen to accept cases involving qualified immunity and almost always rules in favor of police officers, encouraging lower courts to shield cops from liability under a federal law that allows people to sue them for constitutional violations.

The Court’s application of qualified immunity, Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed in a 2018 dissent joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “tells officers that they can shoot first and think later.” Justice Clarence Thomas, who does not agree with Sotomayor and Ginsburg about much else, also has urged his colleagues to reconsider the Court’s approach to qualified immunity.

Based on an analysis of nearly 1,200 federal civil rights cases and a survey of about 100 lawyers practicing in this area, UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz concludes that abolishing qualified immunity would make litigation less costly, complicated, and time-consuming for both sides. Most important, she says, it would stop courts from sending “the troubling message to government officials that they can violate the law with impunity.”

© Copyright 2019 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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Trump, Ukraine, and Congress’s Power of the Purse

President Donald Trump.

Many are advocating impeachment in response to President Donald Trump’s apparent attempt to use withholding of $400 million in aid funds as leverage to pressure Ukraine into investigating possible malfeasance by Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. Meanwhile, critics fear that investigation and impeachment could unduly undermine confidentiality of the president’s conversations with foreign leaders and his control over foreign policy more generally. Largely overlooked in the debate so far is the fact that, if Trump did indeed try to use the aid funds as leverage, he not only engaged in improper self-dealing but also usurped Congress’ power of the purse. That’s an important constitutional issue that goes beyond Trump’s many personal flaws.

If there is one thing that constitutional law scholars agree on, it is that the spending power is supposed to be controlled by Congress, not the president. Even most of those who otherwise favor very broad presidential power concur. For example, few if any experts have a broader conception of presidential power over foreign affairs than John Yoo, who has argued—among other things—that the president can go so far as to start wars without congressional authorization. But Yoo nonetheless recognizes that Congress has the power to control spending on foreign and defense policy. He even contends (wrongly, in my view) that this power is enough to prevent presidential abuses of the extremely broad war powers he believes the executive is entitled to.

If Trump tried to use aid money allocated by Congress to pressure the Ukrainian government into investigating one of his major political rivals, that would be a blatant effort to use federal funds for purposes that were never authorized by Congress. The legislative branch does often give the executive the power to withhold foreign aid money until various conditions are met—such as assisting US foreign policy goals, combating corruption, or promoting development. There is a longstanding debate over how much discretion the Constitution allows Congress to delegate to the president on such matters. But, in this case, Congress never even came close to authorizing the president to use the aid money as leverage to force a foreign government to try to dig up dirt on the president’s own political opponents and their family members.

Even if you believe there is good reason to investigate Joe Biden and his son’s dealings in Ukraine (which is not clear), the proper way to do so is to use law enforcement funds properly allocated for such purposes, not use foreign aid money as leverage to get a foreign government to do it for you. You cannot investigate the possible corruption of others by engaging in corrupt self-dealing yourself.

In a recent New York Times op ed criticizing calls for impeachment over the Ukraine issue, John Yoo argues that it would undermine presidential control over foreign policy, and also reassures us  with the suggestoin that Congress could eventually get at the truth by using its spending power to  cut “intelligence, military and diplomatic funding” if the administration refuses to disclose relevant evidence.

This overlooks the fact that a potential usurpation of Congress’ spending power is precisely the point at issue. As Yoo recognizes in other contexts, Congress is entitled to control over the power of the purse, even when it comes to spending on foreign policy. And the threat to use spending cuts to incentivize  executive cooperation is only likely to be credible if the president knows that efforts to divert federal funds away from their authorized purposes will be properly investigated and punished. Otherwise, he can circumvent future spending cuts he opposes by reallocating funds Congress intended to be used for other purposes.

Given the importance of the power of the purse, Congress has every reason to review what happened here. That includes both considering the transcript of Trump’s call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky (which Trump says he will release tomorrow), and the internal whistleblower report that first attracted public attention to this issue. In a rare show of bipartisan agreement, the Senate has unanimously demanded the report’s release; Trump should comply. If there is anything that Congress has the power to investigate, it is whether the funds it allocates are actually being spent for their authorized purposes.

And if it turns out that Trump did indeed try to use these funds as leverage to dig up dirt against a political opponent, that sort of unconstitutional diversion of federal funds for personal gain is exactly the kind of abuse of power that the Founders believed impeachment should be used to curb. It is not merely a form of personal corruption, but a dangerous undermining of the constitutional separation of powers. There is obvious reason to avoid giving any one man or woman the power to use the federal treasury as a piggy bank for their own personal agendas.

It is also worth recalling the Trump administration has an extensive prior history of attempting to usurp Congress’ powers over spending. That is evident in the many cases in which both Republican and Democratic-appointed judges have struck down the president’s attempts to impose conditions on federal grants to states and localities, that were never authorized by Congress—all for the purpose of coercing them into helping enforce the administration’s immigration policies. The same pattern recurs in the litigation over Trump’s attempts to divert funds to build his border wall, despite Congress’ repeated refusal to allocate funding for that purpose. And there are plenty more examples of Trump playing fast and loose with the spending power.

Trump is not the first president to try to undermine Congress’ control over spending. Barack Obama, for example, illegally diverted funds to pay for Obamacare subsidies that were not authorized by Congress. But Trump is unusual for doing it so brazenly and so often. If he manages to get away with it, we will have created a dangerous precedent. Republicans who may support him now are unlikely to be happy when future Democratic presidents use similar tactics.

 

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Trump, Ukraine, and Congress’s Power of the Purse

President Donald Trump.

Many are advocating impeachment in response to President Donald Trump’s apparent attempt to use withholding of $400 million in aid funds as leverage to pressure Ukraine into investigating possible malfeasance by Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. Meanwhile, critics fear that investigation and impeachment could unduly undermine confidentiality of the president’s conversations with foreign leaders and his control over foreign policy more generally. Largely overlooked in the debate so far is the fact that, if Trump did indeed try to use the aid funds as leverage, he not only engaged in improper self-dealing but also usurped Congress’ power of the purse. That’s an important constitutional issue that goes beyond Trump’s many personal flaws.

If there is one thing that constitutional law scholars agree on, it is that the spending power is supposed to be controlled by Congress, not the president. Even most of those who otherwise favor very broad presidential power concur. For example, few if any experts have a broader conception of presidential power over foreign affairs than John Yoo, who has argued—among other things—that the president can go so far as to start wars without congressional authorization. But Yoo nonetheless recognizes that Congress has the power to control spending on foreign and defense policy. He even contends (wrongly, in my view) that this power is enough to prevent presidential abuses of the extremely broad war powers he believes the executive is entitled to.

If Trump tried to use aid money allocated by Congress to pressure the Ukrainian government into investigating one of his major political rivals, that would be a blatant effort to use federal funds for purposes that were never authorized by Congress. The legislative branch does often give the executive the power to withhold foreign aid money until various conditions are met—such as assisting US foreign policy goals, combating corruption, or promoting development. There is a longstanding debate over how much discretion the Constitution allows Congress to delegate to the president on such matters. But, in this case, Congress never even came close to authorizing the president to use the aid money as leverage to force a foreign government to try to dig up dirt on the president’s own political opponents and their family members.

Even if you believe there is good reason to investigate Joe Biden and his son’s dealings in Ukraine (which is not clear), the proper way to do so is to use law enforcement funds properly allocated for such purposes, not use foreign aid money as leverage to get a foreign government to do it for you. You cannot investigate the possible corruption of others by engaging in corrupt self-dealing yourself.

In a recent New York Times op ed criticizing calls for impeachment over the Ukraine issue, John Yoo argues that it would undermine presidential control over foreign policy, and also reassures us  with the suggestoin that Congress could eventually get at the truth by using its spending power to  cut “intelligence, military and diplomatic funding” if the administration refuses to disclose relevant evidence.

This overlooks the fact that a potential usurpation of Congress’ spending power is precisely the point at issue. As Yoo recognizes in other contexts, Congress is entitled to control over the power of the purse, even when it comes to spending on foreign policy. And the threat to use spending cuts to incentivize  executive cooperation is only likely to be credible if the president knows that efforts to divert federal funds away from their authorized purposes will be properly investigated and punished. Otherwise, he can circumvent future spending cuts he opposes by reallocating funds Congress intended to be used for other purposes.

Given the importance of the power of the purse, Congress has every reason to review what happened here. That includes both considering the transcript of Trump’s call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky (which Trump says he will release tomorrow), and the internal whistleblower report that first attracted public attention to this issue. In a rare show of bipartisan agreement, the Senate has unanimously demanded the report’s release; Trump should comply. If there is anything that Congress has the power to investigate, it is whether the funds it allocates are actually being spent for their authorized purposes.

And if it turns out that Trump did indeed try to use these funds as leverage to dig up dirt against a political opponent, that sort of unconstitutional diversion of federal funds for personal gain is exactly the kind of abuse of power that the Founders believed impeachment should be used to curb. It is not merely a form of personal corruption, but a dangerous undermining of the constitutional separation of powers. There is obvious reason to avoid giving any one man or woman the power to use the federal treasury as a piggy bank for their own personal agendas.

It is also worth recalling the Trump administration has an extensive prior history of attempting to usurp Congress’ powers over spending. That is evident in the many cases in which both Republican and Democratic-appointed judges have struck down the president’s attempts to impose conditions on federal grants to states and localities, that were never authorized by Congress—all for the purpose of coercing them into helping enforce the administration’s immigration policies. The same pattern recurs in the litigation over Trump’s attempts to divert funds to build his border wall, despite Congress’ repeated refusal to allocate funding for that purpose. And there are plenty more examples of Trump playing fast and loose with the spending power.

Trump is not the first president to try to undermine Congress’ control over spending. Barack Obama, for example, illegally diverted funds to pay for Obamacare subsidies that were not authorized by Congress. But Trump is unusual for doing it so brazenly and so often. If he manages to get away with it, we will have created a dangerous precedent. Republicans who may support him now are unlikely to be happy when future Democratic presidents use similar tactics.

 

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Bernie Sanders Thinks Every Billionaire Is a Policy Failure

On Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) rolled out his plan for a wealth tax on families whose net worth exceeds $32 million. The purpose of the tax is two-fold: raise revenue for the senator’s high-spending domestic agenda, and eliminate supposedly unjust concentrations of private wealth.

That would include anyone worth more than $1 billion, according to Sanders, who tweeted out The New York Times coverage of his proposal with the caption “billionaires should not exist.”

Sanders’ wealth tax ranges from a 1 percent yearly tax on net wealth above $32 million held by a married couple ($16 million for a single person) to an 8 percent tax on a married couple’s wealth that exceeds $10 billion ($5 billion for a single person).

This would supposedly raise $4.5 trillion over 10 years, which would then be spent on Sanders’ $2.5 trillion housing proposal, universal childcare, and a portion of his $32 trillion Medicare For All plan.

His plan is similar to a wealth tax proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) earlier this year, which would tax fortunes that exceed $50 million.

Despite the ambitious aims of Sanders’ wealth tax proposal, there are good reasons to doubt that it will bring in nearly as much revenue as he is projecting, let alone that it will abolish billionaires.

For starters, the difficulty in valuing the wealth held by the rich on a year-to-year basis would make a wealth tax hard and expensive to administer compared to other forms of taxation.

“The uber wealthy tend to have very hard-to-value assets. They own more than publicly-traded stock, such as real estate holdings, trusts, and business ownership interests,” wrote Nicole Kaeding and Kyle Pomerleau for the Tax Foundation in January, when evaluating Warren’s wealth tax proposal. “It is difficult to value these assets on an ongoing basis. Imagine a large privately-held company—its value could change almost daily. How would the tax handle these fluctuations?”

The current estate tax, a one-time wealth tax on inheritance, is already a headache for the Internal Revenue Service to administer, Kaeding and Pomerleau point out. The administration of a yearly wealth tax would be even more difficult.

Politically expedient or economically necessary carve-outs and loopholes will also reduce the revenue one can expect a wealth tax to generate, says Chris Edwards, a tax policy scholar with the Cato Institute.

“If they were passed into law there would be all kinds of exemptions and exceptions like farmland. Rich people would move their wealth to those exempted areas and the government wouldn’t raise that much money,” he says.

This, adds Edwards, is exactly what happened in the 12 European countries that adopted wealth taxes. Revenue was disappointing, raking in on average about .2 percent of GDP. In the U.S. context that would work out to be a little under $40 billion a year, or about 10 percent of what Sanders is claiming his wealth tax will generate.

All but three of the European countries that adopted a wealth tax have since repealed it, citing low revenues, high administration costs, burdensome effects on entrepreneurship, and capital flight.

Sanders has a few ideas on how to make administration easier and prevent the rich from evading his wealth tax, including a “national wealth registry,” a 100 percent audit rate for billionaires, and a 40-60 percent tax on wealthy emigrants.

Fewer exemptions, however, means a wealth tax will have harsher economic effects, says Edwards.

“The left-wingers have this idea that most wealth is gold bars underneath the mattresses of rich people,” Edwards observes. “Most wealth is actually active business assets. It’s the value of the assets that are actively producing and employing people in production.”

Taxing these business assets would, in turn, mean less capital investment, argues Edwards, and therefore fewer jobs or lower wages for the workers who would have otherwise been made more productive by that capital investment.

The innumerate problems with a wealth tax, coupled with the fact that much easier means exist for the government to shake down the wealthy, suggests that Sanders’ proposal is less about policy and more about signaling.

That is something Reason‘s Peter Suderman argued in a recent video, observing that “the wealth tax is best understood, not as a revenue raiser, but as a symbolic declaration of opposition to the existence of outsized wealth, regardless of how it was obtained.”

 

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Bernie Sanders Thinks Every Billionaire Is a Policy Failure

On Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) rolled out his plan for a wealth tax on families whose net worth exceeds $32 million. The purpose of the tax is two-fold: raise revenue for the senator’s high-spending domestic agenda, and eliminate supposedly unjust concentrations of private wealth.

That would include anyone worth more than $1 billion, according to Sanders, who tweeted out The New York Times coverage of his proposal with the caption “billionaires should not exist.”

Sanders’ wealth tax ranges from a 1 percent yearly tax on net wealth above $32 million held by a married couple ($16 million for a single person) to an 8 percent tax on a married couple’s wealth that exceeds $10 billion ($5 billion for a single person).

This would supposedly raise $4.5 trillion over 10 years, which would then be spent on Sanders’ $2.5 trillion housing proposal, universal childcare, and a portion of his $32 trillion Medicare For All plan.

His plan is similar to a wealth tax proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) earlier this year, which would tax fortunes that exceed $50 million.

Despite the ambitious aims of Sanders’ wealth tax proposal, there are good reasons to doubt that it will bring in nearly as much revenue as he is projecting, let alone that it will abolish billionaires.

For starters, the difficulty in valuing the wealth held by the rich on a year-to-year basis would make a wealth tax hard and expensive to administer compared to other forms of taxation.

“The uber wealthy tend to have very hard-to-value assets. They own more than publicly-traded stock, such as real estate holdings, trusts, and business ownership interests,” wrote Nicole Kaeding and Kyle Pomerleau for the Tax Foundation in January, when evaluating Warren’s wealth tax proposal. “It is difficult to value these assets on an ongoing basis. Imagine a large privately-held company—its value could change almost daily. How would the tax handle these fluctuations?”

The current estate tax, a one-time wealth tax on inheritance, is already a headache for the Internal Revenue Service to administer, Kaeding and Pomerleau point out. The administration of a yearly wealth tax would be even more difficult.

Politically expedient or economically necessary carve-outs and loopholes will also reduce the revenue one can expect a wealth tax to generate, says Chris Edwards, a tax policy scholar with the Cato Institute.

“If they were passed into law there would be all kinds of exemptions and exceptions like farmland. Rich people would move their wealth to those exempted areas and the government wouldn’t raise that much money,” he says.

This, adds Edwards, is exactly what happened in the 12 European countries that adopted wealth taxes. Revenue was disappointing, raking in on average about .2 percent of GDP. In the U.S. context that would work out to be a little under $40 billion a year, or about 10 percent of what Sanders is claiming his wealth tax will generate.

All but three of the European countries that adopted a wealth tax have since repealed it, citing low revenues, high administration costs, burdensome effects on entrepreneurship, and capital flight.

Sanders has a few ideas on how to make administration easier and prevent the rich from evading his wealth tax, including a “national wealth registry,” a 100 percent audit rate for billionaires, and a 40-60 percent tax on wealthy emigrants.

Fewer exemptions, however, means a wealth tax will have harsher economic effects, says Edwards.

“The left-wingers have this idea that most wealth is gold bars underneath the mattresses of rich people,” Edwards observes. “Most wealth is actually active business assets. It’s the value of the assets that are actively producing and employing people in production.”

Taxing these business assets would, in turn, mean less capital investment, argues Edwards, and therefore fewer jobs or lower wages for the workers who would have otherwise been made more productive by that capital investment.

The innumerate problems with a wealth tax, coupled with the fact that much easier means exist for the government to shake down the wealthy, suggests that Sanders’ proposal is less about policy and more about signaling.

That is something Reason‘s Peter Suderman argued in a recent video, observing that “the wealth tax is best understood, not as a revenue raiser, but as a symbolic declaration of opposition to the existence of outsized wealth, regardless of how it was obtained.”

 

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Nancy Pelosi Announces Trump Impeachment Inquiry Over Ukraine Scandal

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) has announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, after accusations swelled that Trump leveraged his political power to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden—the current Democratic frontrunner in the 2020 presidential election.

“The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution,” she said.

As Reason‘s Peter Suderman has pointed out, while the allegations have yet to be fully substantiated, the mounting evidence appears to be unfavorable to the president. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, flip-flopped on national television, initially denying, but then admitting to urging Zelensky to carry out the opposition research on Biden and his family. What’s more, Trump brought up the request eight times on a July call with the Ukranian president. And just days prior to that conversation, Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney reportedly withheld $400 million in military aid from the Ukraine at Trump’s behest.

The president has no lawful power to refuse funds that Congress has allocated. Yet it seems that Trump may have moved to cut off support for Ukraine—illegally—in hopes that he could prompt that country to conduct political opposition research.

Trump said Monday that he withheld the funds because of “corruption” in the country. He contradicted that messaging on Tuesday, telling the United Nations that he kept the money over frustrations with Europe’s lack of monetary support.

Pelosi’s about-face on impeachment represents a major shift for the congresswoman, who up until this point has maintained that such proceedings would have disastrous political consequences for Democrats. And she isn’t the only one to have a change of heart. Many liberal lawmakers who once opposed the idea have reversed course in light of the new information, with those legislators now topping 150 out of 235. The House Speaker will move to create a special committee to investigate the matter.

Trump has leveled similar accusations against Biden. He alleges that the former vice president refused to give Ukraine funding in order to help his son, Hunter, although it’s worth noting that Trump has not yet been able to furnish proof to support that claim. In 2016, Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid if a prosecutor—who had been accused of corruption by multiple international agencies—was not removed from office. Some in Trump’s circle allege that the former vice president did so in order to shield his son from investigations pertaining to his role on the board of a Ukrainian gas company that was mired in scandal.

At a press conference today, Biden criticized the president and accused him of abusing his office for personal gain. “We have a president who believes there is no limit to his power,” Biden said. “We have a president who believes he can do anything and get away with it. We have a president who believes he is above the law.”

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Nancy Pelosi Announces Trump Impeachment Inquiry Over Ukraine Scandal

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) has announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, after accusations swelled that Trump leveraged his political power to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden—the current Democratic frontrunner in the 2020 presidential election.

“The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution,” she said.

As Reason‘s Peter Suderman has pointed out, while the allegations have yet to be fully substantiated, the mounting evidence appears to be unfavorable to the president. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, flip-flopped on national television, initially denying, but then admitting to urging Zelensky to carry out the opposition research on Biden and his family. What’s more, Trump brought up the request eight times on a July call with the Ukranian president. And just days prior to that conversation, Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney reportedly withheld $400 million in military aid from the Ukraine at Trump’s behest.

The president has no lawful power to refuse funds that Congress has allocated. Yet it seems that Trump may have moved to cut off support for Ukraine—illegally—in hopes that he could prompt that country to conduct political opposition research.

Trump said Monday that he withheld the funds because of “corruption” in the country. He contradicted that messaging on Tuesday, telling the United Nations that he kept the money over frustrations with Europe’s lack of monetary support.

Pelosi’s about-face on impeachment represents a major shift for the congresswoman, who up until this point has maintained that such proceedings would have disastrous political consequences for Democrats. And she isn’t the only one to have a change of heart. Many liberal lawmakers who once opposed the idea have reversed course in light of the new information, with those legislators now topping 150 out of 235. The House Speaker will move to create a special committee to investigate the matter.

Trump has leveled similar accusations against Biden. He alleges that the former vice president refused to give Ukraine funding in order to help his son, Hunter, although it’s worth noting that Trump has not yet been able to furnish proof to support that claim. In 2016, Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid if a prosecutor—who had been accused of corruption by multiple international agencies—was not removed from office. Some in Trump’s circle allege that the former vice president did so in order to shield his son from investigations pertaining to his role on the board of a Ukrainian gas company that was mired in scandal.

At a press conference today, Biden criticized the president and accused him of abusing his office for personal gain. “We have a president who believes there is no limit to his power,” Biden said. “We have a president who believes he can do anything and get away with it. We have a president who believes he is above the law.”

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Why Is the CDC Still Fostering Potentially Deadly Confusion About Vaping and Lung Disease?

Media outlets, following the lead of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), continue to blame recent cases of severe respiratory illnesses among vapers on “vaping” and “e-cigarettes” in general, falsely implying a link to legal nicotine products. This misinformation is fostering public confusion that may lead to more disease and death, both from smoking and from the black-market products that have been implicated in the lung disease cases.

Based on the available information, the overwhelming majority of patients with respiratory illnesses had used black-market cannabis products. While a small percentage of patients say they vaped only nicotine, they may be reluctant to admit illegal drug use, and they may not know what they actually vaped if they purchased cartridges on the black market. If nicotine products are involved in any of these cases, it is almost certainly because of additives or contaminants in counterfeit cartridges or e-fluid, since legal e-cigarettes have been in wide use for years without reports like these.

That’s what we know. But it is not, by and large, what we are hearing from the media. Yesterday I was invited to discuss vaping on AirTalk, the long-running show produced by KPCC, the NPR station in Pasadena, California. To his credit, the host, Larry Mantle, noted the concerns that banning e-cigarettes in general, or flavored e-cigarettes in particular, will drive vapers back to smoking or encourage people to use “adulterated vape solutions” that “might be more dangerous” than commercially available e-cigarettes such as Juul. But the way he framed the segment illustrates the misleading and dangerous conflation of black-market products with the legal vaping industry:

We begin this hour with a conversation on vaping and e-cigarettes. The news from the Centers for Disease Control is that there are nearly 400 [530, according to the CDC’s latest count] confirmed and probable cases of lung disease associated with e-cigarette product use or vaping….Additionally, there have been six [now seven, per the CDC] deaths that have been confirmed….In the wake of those deaths and the CDC recommendation that Americans stop using vape products, that they stop vaping until more is understood about the causes of the lung illness and the deaths associated [with it], we have seen states consider bans on flavored vaping products.

Contrary to the implication, the official justification for those state bans, as well as the nationwide ban on flavored e-cigarettes that the FDA plans to impose, is the increase in underage vaping, not the lung disease scare. During the radio show I emphasized that the respiratory illnesses are actually associated with black-market products, and black-market THC vapes in particular. But that did not stop the other guest, San Francisco surgeon John Maa, from claiming that “e-cigarettes could be more dangerous than traditional cigarettes if you develop one of these fatal lung illnesses.”

Even when news outlets focus on the hazards of black-market vapes, they are weirdly reluctant to forthrightly state what we know about their prevalence in the lung disease cases. The Washington Post, in a story headlined “Potential Culprits in Mystery Lung Illnesses: Black-Market Vaping Products,” reports that “many sick patients said they bought vape products containing THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana, on the black market.” Not until the 22nd paragraph do readers learn that “most people used e-cigarette products containing THC, many of them illicit products” (emphasis added).

Even “most people” is an understatement. In states where the products used have been reported, the share of patients who admitted vaping THC ranges from 83 percent to 100 percent. And while “some people reported using only nicotine products,” the Post says, “Jennifer Layden, Illinois’s state epidemiologist, noted…that there is often ‘hesitancy about sharing information’ if patients used illicit products.”

Notwithstanding that evidence, a recent Morning Consult poll found that 58 percent of respondents, based on what they had “seen, read, or heard on the news lately,” believed people had “died from lung disease” caused by “ecigs, such as Juul,” compared to 34 percent who said the cases involved “marijuana or THC e-cigs.” The CDC is fostering such confusion by continuing to issue vague warnings.

“Until we know more,” the CDC says, “if you are concerned about these specific health risks, CDC recommends that you consider refraining from using e-cigarette or vaping products.” It adds that “anyone who uses an e-cigarette or vaping product should not buy these products (e.g., e-cigarette or vaping products with THC or CBD oils) off the street, and should not modify or add any substances to these products that are not intended by the manufacturer.” But the main thrust of the CDC’s message is that vaping, no matter the product, is potentially deadly.

The impact of that message was illustrated by “Arthur in Pasadena,” a KPCC caller who had switched from smoking to vaping. “Hearing everything in the news around these mysterious deaths is not a little bit concerning,” he said. To assuage his anxiety, Arthur said, he’d like to see “more comprehensive studies with definitive findings” regarding “the black-market products that allegedly are making people die” and “the commercially available and seemingly safe products” that might “make you die in a few years.”

The relevant question for Arthur is whether e-cigarettes are a less hazardous alternative to conventional cigarettes. And on that point, as much as vaping opponents like John Maa might try to muddy the truth, there is no serious scientific dispute: Vaping, because it delivers nicotine without tobacco or combustion, is much less dangerous than smoking.

David Abrams, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at New York University, estimates that if every smoker in the United States switched to vaping, it would prevent as many as 7 million smoking-related deaths. No wonder Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration, described e-cigarettes as “a tremendous public health opportunity.” By portraying e-cigarettes as public health hazard, the CDC is doing a serious disservice to former smokers like Arthur and current smokers who might otherwise follow his example.

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Why Is the CDC Still Fostering Potentially Deadly Confusion About Vaping and Lung Disease?

Media outlets, following the lead of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), continue to blame recent cases of severe respiratory illnesses among vapers on “vaping” and “e-cigarettes” in general, falsely implying a link to legal nicotine products. This misinformation is fostering public confusion that may lead to more disease and death, both from smoking and from the black-market products that have been implicated in the lung disease cases.

Based on the available information, the overwhelming majority of patients with respiratory illnesses had used black-market cannabis products. While a small percentage of patients say they vaped only nicotine, they may be reluctant to admit illegal drug use, and they may not know what they actually vaped if they purchased cartridges on the black market. If nicotine products are involved in any of these cases, it is almost certainly because of additives or contaminants in counterfeit cartridges or e-fluid, since legal e-cigarettes have been in wide use for years without reports like these.

That’s what we know. But it is not, by and large, what we are hearing from the media. Yesterday I was invited to discuss vaping on AirTalk, the long-running show produced by KPCC, the NPR station in Pasadena, California. To his credit, the host, Larry Mantle, noted the concerns that banning e-cigarettes in general, or flavored e-cigarettes in particular, will drive vapers back to smoking or encourage people to use “adulterated vape solutions” that “might be more dangerous” than commercially available e-cigarettes such as Juul. But the way he framed the segment illustrates the misleading and dangerous conflation of black-market products with the legal vaping industry:

We begin this hour with a conversation on vaping and e-cigarettes. The news from the Centers for Disease Control is that there are nearly 400 [530, according to the CDC’s latest count] confirmed and probable cases of lung disease associated with e-cigarette product use or vaping….Additionally, there have been six [now seven, per the CDC] deaths that have been confirmed….In the wake of those deaths and the CDC recommendation that Americans stop using vape products, that they stop vaping until more is understood about the causes of the lung illness and the deaths associated [with it], we have seen states consider bans on flavored vaping products.

Contrary to the implication, the official justification for those state bans, as well as the nationwide ban on flavored e-cigarettes that the FDA plans to impose, is the increase in underage vaping, not the lung disease scare. During the radio show I emphasized that the respiratory illnesses are actually associated with black-market products, and black-market THC vapes in particular. But that did not stop the other guest, San Francisco surgeon John Maa, from claiming that “e-cigarettes could be more dangerous than traditional cigarettes if you develop one of these fatal lung illnesses.”

Even when news outlets focus on the hazards of black-market vapes, they are weirdly reluctant to forthrightly state what we know about their prevalence in the lung disease cases. The Washington Post, in a story headlined “Potential Culprits in Mystery Lung Illnesses: Black-Market Vaping Products,” reports that “many sick patients said they bought vape products containing THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana, on the black market.” Not until the 22nd paragraph do readers learn that “most people used e-cigarette products containing THC, many of them illicit products” (emphasis added).

Even “most people” is an understatement. In states where the products used have been reported, the share of patients who admitted vaping THC ranges from 83 percent to 100 percent. And while “some people reported using only nicotine products,” the Post says, “Jennifer Layden, Illinois’s state epidemiologist, noted…that there is often ‘hesitancy about sharing information’ if patients used illicit products.”

Notwithstanding that evidence, a recent Morning Consult poll found that 58 percent of respondents, based on what they had “seen, read, or heard on the news lately,” believed people had “died from lung disease” caused by “ecigs, such as Juul,” compared to 34 percent who said the cases involved “marijuana or THC e-cigs.” The CDC is fostering such confusion by continuing to issue vague warnings.

“Until we know more,” the CDC says, “if you are concerned about these specific health risks, CDC recommends that you consider refraining from using e-cigarette or vaping products.” It adds that “anyone who uses an e-cigarette or vaping product should not buy these products (e.g., e-cigarette or vaping products with THC or CBD oils) off the street, and should not modify or add any substances to these products that are not intended by the manufacturer.” But the main thrust of the CDC’s message is that vaping, no matter the product, is potentially deadly.

The impact of that message was illustrated by “Arthur in Pasadena,” a KPCC caller who had switched from smoking to vaping. “Hearing everything in the news around these mysterious deaths is not a little bit concerning,” he said. To assuage his anxiety, Arthur said, he’d like to see “more comprehensive studies with definitive findings” regarding “the black-market products that allegedly are making people die” and “the commercially available and seemingly safe products” that might “make you die in a few years.”

The relevant question for Arthur is whether e-cigarettes are a less hazardous alternative to conventional cigarettes. And on that point, as much as vaping opponents like John Maa might try to muddy the truth, there is no serious scientific dispute: Vaping, because it delivers nicotine without tobacco or combustion, is much less dangerous than smoking.

David Abrams, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at New York University, estimates that if every smoker in the United States switched to vaping, it would prevent as many as 7 million smoking-related deaths. No wonder Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration, described e-cigarettes as “a tremendous public health opportunity.” By portraying e-cigarettes as public health hazard, the CDC is doing a serious disservice to former smokers like Arthur and current smokers who might otherwise follow his example.

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