Month: November 2018

President Trump offered up some analysis on the gains and losses in Congress following Tuesday’s midterm elections. While Republicans maintained control of the Senate, Democrats picked up a majority in the House. On Wednesday, Trump opined that congressional Republicans who lost their bids for reelection did so because they did not fully embrace him.

During a Wednesday afternoon press conference, Trump identified by name Republicans who lost their races, including Utah Rep. Mia Love. Though Love’s race against Democratic challenger Ben McAdams has not yet been called, Trump accused her and others of not giving him any “love.”

“Too bad, Mike…Sorry about that, Mia.”

Pres. Trump calls out GOP candidates who distanced themselves from him and “did very poorly.” https://t.co/K9o86hoOoH pic.twitter.com/MVahLFqs61

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) November 7, 2018

Trump previously tweeted similar sentiments on election night, saying that those who embraced “certain policies” did well.

Those that worked with me in this incredible Midterm Election, embracing certain policies and principles, did very well. Those that did not, say goodbye! Yesterday was such a very Big Win, and all under the pressure of a Nasty and Hostile Media!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2018

Were he capable of it, Trump would benefit from re-examining that theory. Among the major losses on Tuesday night was that of Trump ally Dave Brat. Brat, who is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, enjoyed an endorsement from the president in October and has frequently voted in support of the president’s “MAGA” agenda. Despite standing with Trump, and his stunning defeat of Eric Cantor in 2014, Brat still lost his Virginia seat.

Other Republican candidates who aligned themselves with the president found that a hardline immigration stance either cost them their elections, or, in the case of Iowa Rep. Steve King, made races closer than they’d ever been. In fact, several Republican victors noticeably won their races by slim margins, even in areas where they historically performed well. In Florida, for example, Republicans have won the governorship for the past 20 years. But Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis, who made a point to build a literal wall with his children and read them bedtime stories about Trump, won by a mere 0.7 points. Similarly, Sen. Ted Cruz (R) beat progressive Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D) in the Texas Senate race by a mere 1.5 points.

Trump should celebrate his win. After all, if he is presented with another opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court Justice, he’ll need only the Senate. But he may wish to reevaluate what the midterms meant for his agenda as a whole.

The full press conference can be viewed below.

Californians walked back from a ledge Tuesday by roundly rejecting a ballot initiative that would have opened the door to more rent control. Some 61 percent of Golden State voters rejected Prop. 10 last night. The initiative would have repealed Costa-Hawkins, a state law limiting the ability of cities to impose rent control on new construction and single-family homes.

The result is not a huge surprise. Polling from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), a non-partisan think tank, showed some two-thirds of voters opposed the measure.

Prop 10’s thumping at the polls is good news for Californians. The consensus opinion among economists, on both the left and right, is that rent control reduces the supply of housing and fuels gentrification by deterring new construction and incentivizing landlords to convert their rental properties into pricier for-sale units.

Still, chalking up Prop. 10’s defeat to voters’ embrace of sensible economics would probably be a mistake.

That same PPIC poll showing widespread disapproval of Prop. 10 also found that rent control in general was quite popular, with 52 percent of likely voters agreeing with the statement “rent control is a good thing.” That included 69 percent of Democrats, 45 percent of independents, and 34 percent of Republicans. Similarly, a USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll from September found that 28 percent of respondents (a plurality in that particular poll) blamed California’s high housing costs on a lack of rent control. Only 13 percent of respondents attributed costs to a lack of housing construction, fewer than the percentage of people blaming things like the influence of the tech sector or foreign buyers.

So why did Prop 10 fail?

Part of the explanation might be the slightly confusing nature of the ballot initiative itself, which would not have actually imposed rent control, but would instead have repealed an obscure law most voters have likely never heard of.

It didn’t help matters that the ballot language for Prop 10 mentions the potential for a “net reduction in state and local revenues of tens of millions of dollars per year in the long term” thanks to a likely fall in property values, and thus property taxes, that would come with any expansion of rent control.

The Yes on Prop 10 folks themselves are blaming the huge amount of money spent by the No campaign.

Real estate interests and developers raised some $75 million for the No on Prop 10 campaign, compared to the $25 million collected by Prop 10 proponents. That gave the No’s a big edge in the information game.

Michael Weinstein, CEO of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation—which has recently gotten into the affordable housing development arena, and contributed some $23 million to the Yes side—pinned the loss on “corporate billionaires” in a post-election conversation with The Los Angeles Times.

Weinstein himself is a controversial figure. The New York Times called him the “the Koch brothers of public health” because of his deep pockets, ideological purity, and history of zealously pursing policies opposed by many would-be allies in the AIDS activism world. Weinstein’s own idiosyncrasies and his willingness to go it alone on Prop 10 reportedly angered many in the pro-rent control camp, dampening their enthusiasm for the measure. Here’s how Joe Eskenazi, a reporter for San Francisco publication Mission Local, wrote about the fissures in the Yes campaign back in October:

“Organizers here have all fallen behind Weinstein’s lead. But, on background, some questioned if this was the right year to for a statewide battle; perhaps a few more years of successes on the local level would have galvanized a movement. Northern California organizers also expressed some frustrations at, essentially, taking marching orders from an ‘egotistical billionaire’ from L.A. writing all the checks.”

It didn’t help matters that Gavin Newsom, the Democrat who won California’s gubernatorial race Tuesday, opposed Prop 10 while also dangling the possibility of legislative action on rent control in the new year. That may have lowered the stakes in the election.

At the end of the day, these factors were enough to see Prop 10 lose in a landslide.

Free marketers who worry about the consequences of expanded rent control should wait to break out the champagne, however. Given broad popular support for rent control, as well as a stated willingness among the incoming governor’s administration to work on compromise legislation in the future, it is likely the specter of rent control will continue to haunt California housing policy for years to come.

Voters in three states—Colorado, Michigan, and Missouri—approved ballot measures Tuesday that will transfer some redistricting authority away from state lawmakers by creating independent commissions for the purpose of redrawing congressional and state legislative district lines after the next census.

The three measures approved Tuesday vary slightly from state to state, but the general consensus across all three states, where the initiatives got more than 60 percent approval, seems to be that voters are interested in trying a new approach to one of the most important and most political aspects of American democracy. (In Utah, a similar ballot initiative to create a redistricting commission remained too close to call on Wednesday afternoon. With 74 percent of precincts across the state reporting, “Yes” had a narrow 4,000-vote lead.)

Colorado’s initiative would create a 12-member commission for the purpose of redrawing congressional districts. Half of the members would be selected by a panel of state Supreme Court justices, and half would be selected by the majority and minority leaders of the state legislature. Speaking of: Rocky Mountain voters also approved a separate ballot question to create a different 12-member commission to redraw state legislative districts. Under the ballot initiatives, the commissions would each include four registered Republicans, four registered Democrats, and four people who “will not be affiliated with any political party.”

That wording seems to exclude members of third parties, something that has rankled the state’s Libertarian and Green parties, as Reason has previously reported.

Michigan’s redistricting initiative would create a similar scheme. The new, 13-member redistricting commission would have to include four Democrats, four Republicans, and five independents or members of third parties. Passing a new redistricting plan will require the approval of at least seven members, including at least two Democrats, two Republicans, and two of the other members.

Missouri’s redistricting reforms were included in an omnibus ballot question that also included changes to the state’s lobbying laws and imposed campaign finance restrictions for state legislative candidates. The measure creates a new, nonpartisan position known as the state demographer, who will be appointed by a consensus of the state auditor and Senate leaders from both parties. The state demographer will provide a series of redistricting options for state lawmakers to choose between—rather than allowing legislators to draw their own.

Limiting redistricting is a worthwhile project that could produce more competitive House elections and help nudge American politics away from the fringes. When so many districts are carved to give one party or the other a clear advantage, it makes low-turnout primary elections more important and encourages politicians on both sides to pander more to their own parties’ outer flanks than to the ideological middle, where most voters reside.

That said, handing redistricting power to a so-called independent commission is not a foolproof strategy for fixing gerrymandering.

The same political pressures that cause state lawmakers to draw districts that favor one major party or the other are still present, and some redistricting commissions have actually done a worse job of drawing competitive districts that the state legislatures they replaced. Who ends up being appointed to those commissions, how they are picked, and what oversight (from courts, for example) exists are probably more important than the simple fact that a commission has been created.

Several other states—most notably California, Arizona, and Iowa—experimented with redistricting commissions in 2010, and legal challenges to legislative-drawn maps in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina reached the Supreme Court last year, further raising the profile of redistricting battles.

It also won’t put an end to partisan complaints—primarily from Democrats—about the makeup of House districts. It’s true that gerrymandering played an important role in giving the GOP an advantage in House races since 2012, but other geographic factors—like the fact that Democratic voters tend to be concentrated in cities—would give Republicans an advantage even if all districts were more compactly drawn.

That’s not an argument against mechanisms that result in more compact districts, of course, but merely a function of the fact that the two major parties have essentially divided along urban/rural lines.

Still, it probably makes sense to remove that power from the direct control of state legislatures, particularly in places where they have wielded it irresponsibly. Doing so may, in some small way, increase the level of trust the public has in the redistricting process.

Last night’s midterm election results may have been hyped up a great deal, but there actually weren’t a whole lot of surprises. Democrats took back control of the House, as most pundits thought they would, while Republicans—again, as predicted—kept the Senate.

Reason‘s Peter Suderman explained how the “biggest shock” was that things “went more or less as expected,” while Eric Boehm argued that “the return of divided government” is actually a good thing. President Donald Trump may have boasted of a “very Big Win,” but in reality, neither Republicans nor Democrats can claim total victory.

That said, one of the biggest losers from Election Day could be Trump’s proposed Space Force. In case you’re not familiar with the idea, Trump announced in June the creation of a Space Force as a co-equal sixth branch of the military meant to project U.S. dominance into, well, space.

In July, I reported on how the Pentagon was moving forward with the idea, even though Congress had yet to approve it. Fast-forward almost four months, and Congress still hasn’t authorized a Space Force, though the Defense Department is supposed to send Congress a plan in February for how the new branch would work.

But with Democrats about to hold a majority in the House of Representatives, the Space Force might be put on hold.

“Space Force is the victim of having been an idea advanced by President Trump, so I don’t even know that it will get a real hearing on the merits in the House,” Thomas Spoehr, the director of the Center for National Defense at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner.

As Military.com notes, Rep. Adam Smith (D–Wash.) is likely to take over chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee from Rep. Mac Thornberry (R–Texas). Thornberry hasn’t publicly supported or opposed the Space Force (he wants more information first). Smith, however has been a vocal opponent of the idea.

“I am concerned that [Trump’s] proposal would create additional costly military bureaucracy at a time when we have limited resources for defense and critical domestic priorities, and I do not believe it is the best way to advance U.S. national security,” Smith said in September. “We must do a better job of dealing with space as a national security priority. I will continue to work toward a smarter, more effective approach.”

Smith does support the creation of a Space Corps that’s part of the Air Force—a kind of compromise solution that Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, thinks Democratic control of the House could mean more of. “We are going to see that more and more when it comes to defense issues with Dem control,” Harrison told Investor’s Business Daily. “How do you pay for these things, looking at a fiscally constrained budget?”

A separate Space Force, meanwhile, would indeed come at a high price. A September Pentagon memo estimated that it would cost roughly $13 billion its first five years. Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan said it would employ about 20,000 people, including military and civilian workers.

That high cost that could doom the Space Force, at least for the time being. “Even a lot of the people who are advocates for doing a Space Force are concerned that the way the department goes about creating another service could kind of ‘gold-plate’ the idea and lead to something that is too costly and beyond what is needed,” Hunter told the Examiner.

That’s probably a good thing. Reason‘s Christian Britschgi has pointed out that some of Trump’s own defense advisers—like Defense Secretary James Mattis and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson—have previously opposed the idea.

And rightly so. The U.S. military already has plenty of entities that deal with space, including the Air Force Space Command, which employs about 36,000 people. Is there really a need to make the Space Command larger, or to add to the alphabet soup of government agencies?

Plus, even without the Space Force, the Pentagon wastes about $125 billion a year on administrative inefficiencies. That number will likely just go up with the addition of a sixth branch of the military.

That’s not all. As Britschgi wrote:

A huge new military bureaucracy dedicated to space would inevitably have to draw from the same talent pools that our burgeoning private space industry does. Every engineer, scientist, or pilot recruited into the Space Force means one fewer civilian figuring out how to send tourists to low earth orbit, to create research bases on Mars, or to set up strip mines on the moon.

There are a host of reasons why the Space Force is a bad idea. If yesterday’s election results doom the plan or even just put it on hold, then that’s probably for the best.

Yesterday’s election results show that pot prohibition is continuing to crumble across the country. The number of states that have legalized recreational marijuana rose from nine to 10, and the number allowing medical use rose from 31 to 33. The former group now includes Michigan, the first state in the Midwest to allow recreational use, and the latter group now includes Missouri and Utah. Counting Oklahoma, where voters approved medical marijuana in June, three red states have taken that step this year.

These races were not close. Legalization won in Michigan by nearly 12 points, while the medical marijuana measures won by 14 points in Oklahoma, by more than six points in Utah, and by 31 points in Missouri.

The healthy margins are not surprising given the general popularity of these policies. According to the latest Gallup poll, two-thirds of Americans think marijuana should be legal for recreational use. Support for medical marijuana is considerably higher: A Quinnipiac University poll conducted last April put it at 93 percent. “At this point,” Marijuana Policy Project Executive Director Steve Hawkins noted last night, “medical marijuana may enjoy more public support—and more bipartisan support—than virtually any other policy issue still up for debate.”

The only defeat for marijuana reform last night came in North Dakota, where voters just two years ago approved medical use by a whopping 28-point margin. They clearly were not ready to take the next step, although two-fifths of them said yes to a sweeping ballot initiative that aimed to legalize all peaceful marijuana-related activities (except for sales to minors) and create a system of automatic expungement for people convicted of such offenses.

Michigan is the third most populous jurisdiction (after California and Canada) to legalize recreational use so far:

Nearly one-quarter of Americans currently live in a jurisdiction that has legalized recreational use.

This map from Governing magazine shows what marijuana policy looks like in the United States as of today:

Of the 20 states where voters have the power to pass legislation by initiative, 16 have already legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use. The four that have not are Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Seven other states have legalized medical but not recreational marijuana: Arizona (where a legalization intiative failed in 2016), Arkansas, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota (where a legalization initiative failed yesterday), Ohio (where a legalization iniative failed in 2015), and Oklahoma.

While there is still considerable room for liberalizing marijuana policy by initiative, the focus increasingly will shift to legislatures in states such as New Jersey, New Hampshire, and New Mexico. So far Vermont is the only state that has legalized recreational use (but not commercial production and distribution) by that route.

At some point, Congress will have to officially recognize what’s going on by reconciling federal law, which still prohibits marijuana in any form for any purpose, with state laws that tolerate medical or recreational use. The most straightforward approach I’ve seen is the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act, a one-sentence bill sponsored by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) that makes the federal marijuana ban inapplicable to anyone acting in compliance with state law. I was on a drug policy panel with Rohrabacher last week at Reason‘s 50th anniversary celebration, and he seemed confident that President Trump, who has repeatedly said states should be free to set their own marijuana policies, is prepared to sign that bill or something similar.

The chances that such a bill will get through the House have improved since yesterday. “This was the first election in our lifetimes where the federal results were more important than the state results, from the perspective of marijuana policy nationally,” Marijuana Policy Project co-founder Rob Kampia writes. “The Democratic takeover of the U.S. House was the most important outcome, because the House speaker, committee chairs, and subcommittee chairs will all be Democrats for the first time since 2010, with a majority of Democrats populating literally all House committees and subcommittees. While members of Congress in both major parties have become increasingly supportive of good marijuana legislation, approximately 90% of Democrats—and only 25% of Republicans—support such legislation generally.”

Emblematic of this shift was the defeat of House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas), an unreconstructed drug warrior whom Kampia calls “the sphincter who has constipated all marijuana bills and amendments in the House in recent years.” Sessions was defeated by Democrat Colin Allred, a medical marijuana supporter who has criticized Sessions’ anti-pot prejudices.