Month: January 2022

A defeat for Democratic voting rights legislation could lead to meaningful progress on electoral integrity.

On Wednesday, a Senate effort to amend filibuster rules in a way that would allow Democrats to pass voting rights legislation with fewer than 60 votes was defeated, despite President Joe Biden voicing support for that course of action earlier this month. And without the rule change, the voting bill itself is doomed as well, as Republicans stand fully in opposition.

In a speech in Atlanta, Biden seemed to imply that anybody who did not support his party’s bill, the Freedom to Vote Act, was “on the side of” historical segregationists like George Wallace and Bull Connor. He issued a direct warning to lawmakers: “History has never been kind to those who have sided with voter suppression over voters’ rights. And it will be even less kind for those who side with election subversion. So, I ask every elected official in America: How do you want to be remembered?”

Under that argument, a failure to pass the bill would seem to be devastating to the cause of voting rights. But in the wake of the bill’s defeat, there is a new and potentially more promising development.

Lawmakers in both the House and the Senate are considering modifications to the Electoral Count Act, an 1887 law that details when and how Congress counts and certifies the votes cast by presidential electors. The act dictates that the president of the Senate (the U.S. vice president) reads out the votes from each state, which Congress then counts before certifying the winner. While the vice president’s role seems largely ceremonial, with no ability to alter an election’s outcome, the act does not say so explicitly. Former President Donald Trump and his acolytes seized upon this vagueness when they tried to pressure then–Vice President Mike Pence to either decline to certify the results, or else simply pick a different slate of electors in enough swing states to tip the election to Trump.

Now, lawmakers from both parties are considering reforms to the Electoral Count Act in both the Senate and the House. CNN reports that six Republican senators are planning talks on the law “with the aim of clarifying the process for counting electoral votes.” Sen. Joe Manchin (D–W.Va.), a moderate whose opposition helped sink the filibuster reform, told CNN that reforms to the Electoral Count Act could help reduce the type of confusion that ultimately led, in part, to the false hopes that prompted hundreds of Trump supporters to violently storm the Capitol on the day of the election certification vote.

Meanwhile, the Committee on House Administration released a report detailing potential alterations to the act. The report includes suggestions such as a higher threshold for senators or representatives to register objections to vote counts, and giving states more time to adjudicate disputes before certifying their electoral votes. The Cato Institute’s Andy Craig has previously made many of the suggestions that lawmakers featured in their report and has written extensively on Electoral Count Act reform, which he says is “urgently needed to avoid future constitutional crises.”

Despite Democrats’ urgent messaging about the need for voting rights legislation, their proposed bills are unlikely to achieve meaningful reform. They do not attempt to solve the issues that led rioters to try to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election. The most direct way to confront those issues is to address the actual law that was used to attempt to undermine the transfer of power. Hopefully, Republicans and Democrats can at least agree on that much.

The post The Democrats' Voting Bill Is Dead, but Electoral Reform Isn't appeared first on Reason.com.

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Washington, D.C., played host to a political rally this weekend, and one you might not have heard much about in the media. If you did hear something, it was probably negative. I speak, of course, about the anti–vaccine mandate rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

Some who attended spread incorrect information about the vaccine, wrongly warning that it was dangerous or had resulted in widespread death. Robert Kennedy Jr., who is perhaps the leading anti-vaccine figure in American political life, spoke at the event. Robert Malone, an immunologist who pioneered mRNA vaccines and recently gained notoriety after appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast, spoke as well.

Malone is an accomplished man, but he’s wrong to suggest that the COVID-19 vaccines don’t work and cause serious harm. Even today, even with the omicron variant, it remains the case that the overwhelming majority of people who die from COVID-19 are unvaccinated. Moreover, the vaccines are not dangerous—they are certainly not more dangerous than the disease itself.

To the extent that this was a rally against vaccination, it was misguided.

But some of the people who showed up on Sunday were making a narrower point, and one that’s clearly correct: The government should not have the power to force you to make a private medical decision that has little effect on anyone else. Your vaccination status is, by and large, your business. The vaccines are not substantially blocking the spread of COVID-19: We all know countless vaccinated people who’ve caught the disease. This is particularly true of the omicron wave: It’s great to be vaccinated, but the vaccine is not preventing you or your close contacts from contracting COVID-19. The vaccine is a personal health decision. It protects the person who gets it, and thus it’s not really the government’s business.

Yet countless municipalities, including our nation’s capital—the site of this weekend’s protest—are broadly mandating vaccination. In D.C., if you want to enter a restaurant, you have to show not just your vaccine card, but also a photo ID—like a driver’s license—in order to prove that the card is really yours.

Note that D.C.’s COVID-19 mitigation policies have been, at all times, foolish. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser reimposed a mask mandate to deal with delta, even though the mayor herself had been partying maskless the night before. The district’s vaccine mandate took effect last week, ostensibly to deal with omicron, but guess what? Omicron is largely over in D.C. Cases are plummeting.

DC covid cases absolutely cratering, you love to see it. https://t.co/rxGJkhezp6 pic.twitter.com/uxgVGMFyqF

— Justin Logan (@JustinTLogan) January 22, 2022

We will never stop cases no matter how desperately we mandate vaccines, masks, and everything else. The only thing we can control is deaths, but the government shouldn’t force this choice on people. You shouldn’t have to show identification to participate in social life—to leave your home. Isn’t that something Democrats used to believe—or still pretend to believe? Certainly, in some cases, it is:

Republicans ???????????????? to scream & shout about "small government" until it comes to your reproductive freedom. pic.twitter.com/48PPfvuRVQ

— DCCC (@dccc) January 21, 2022

That’s an advertisement from the committee to elect Democrats to the House of Representatives. The thrust of the ad is that nefarious, moralizing Republicans are coming between you and your private medical decisions. Is that wrong? Of course. But the Democratic Party, vis-a-vis its leaders at the local level, and its national leader President Joe Biden, is wholly committed to the idea that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency of unelected bureaucrats, gets to interfere in your private medical decisions. You can’t go anywhere without its permission. That’s currently the Democratic Party’s central policy commitment: Anthony Fauci knows best. Democratic leaders will make you provide a vaccine card and ID to participate in social life, civil liberties be damned.

It’s funny, because in other circumstances, this would be the sort of thing that progressive civil liberties organizations opposed. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has waged war on the concept of voter ID laws—the idea that you should have to provide a photo ID in order to vote.

“Voter ID laws deprive many voters of their right to vote, reduce participation, and stand in direct opposition to our country’s trend of including more Americans in the democratic process,” writes the ACLU. “Many Americans do not have one of the forms of identification states acceptable for voting. These voters are disproportionately low-income, racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, and people with disabilities.  Such voters more frequently have difficulty obtaining ID, because they cannot afford or cannot obtain the underlying documents that are a prerequisite to obtaining government-issued photo ID card.”

But when it comes to vaccine passports—a roughly equivalent restriction on people’s civil liberties—the ACLU has not denounced them. On the contrary, it wholeheartedly supports them.

“We see no civil liberties problem with requiring COVID-19 vaccines in most circumstances,” writes the ACLU. “In fact, far from compromising civil liberties, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties.”

If we lived in a world where progressive defenders of civil liberties were actually doing the right thing and fighting back against vaccine mandates, it would be easier to completely ignore and write off Malone and the anti-vaccine cranks who gathered in Washington, D.C., this weekend. But we live in a world where many of the supposed defenders of civil liberties have sided with the state. COVID-19 mitigation policies grow more unreasonable and oppressive—and more disconnected from reality—with each passing day. What is the ACLU doing about it? Nothing.

The post Broad Vaccine Mandates Are a Serious Violation of Civil Liberties appeared first on Reason.com.

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Perhaps more than any other state, Virginia is the cradle of American history. Four of the first five presidents hailed from Virginia, and its countryside is dotted with famous Founding Father estates, pivotal Civil War battlefields, and Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Authority liquor stores. These government-run booze stores are a direct descendant of Virginia’s deep prohibition heritage.

After Prohibition, Virginia maintained a powerful temperance mindset, which let government-operated stores have complete control over the sale of distilled liquors. But what may have started as an understandable offshoot of a bygone era is now a woefully antiquated relic. Almost 90 years since the end of Prohibition, Virginia may finally upgrade its alcohol laws for the 21st century.

Virginia is one of 13 states that has government-run retail stores for liquor. Because distilled spirits can only be sold in government stores, every distillery that offers spirits on-site must become an ABC “agency store.” Distilleries are forced to invite ABC into their businesses, which gives the state influence, albeit subtle. Distilleries must honor state-mandated markups on each bottle sold, which erodes the profits of the state’s entrepreneurial craft distillers. The state also layers on additional excise taxes, giving Virginia the third-highest taxes on distilled spirits in America.

The ABC system, which exercises near-universal control over alcohol sales in the state, has proven notoriously resistant to change over the years. Not only does Virginia ABC employ close to 5,000 people, but it pads the state’s general fund with hundreds of millions of dollars.

Few politicians can turn down the double-allure of government-backed jobs and built-in revenue streams, creating decades-long resistance to overhaul the state’s booze business. Some politicians have resorted to invoking the language of the temperance movement, growling about the potential horrors of “saloons” overtaking every street corner.

Before COVID-19, Virginia ABC’s idea of modernizing its system primarily consisted of trying to have a hip Twitter account—an experiment that predictably ended in disaster. But at the onset of the pandemic, Virginians started clamoring for real change. As more and more states began to green light things like to-go cocktails and home delivery from distilleries and breweries, Virginia followed suit via emergency orders.

These temporary authorizations will eventually expire. But between the recently elected Gov. Glenn Youngkin—who has repeatedly emphasized that Virginia is now “open for business“—and a new political makeup in the state legislature, Virginia has the chance to finally update incoherent alcohol laws. And numerous bills are already swirling around Richmond.

An easy win would be to extend the ability for Virginia restaurants and bars to sell to-go and delivery cocktails through 2024. Virginia declined to enshrine to-go cocktails in state law permanently—like many other states have done—because some legislators were timid about ignoring Virginia ABC’s recommendation.

Virginia ABC is also attempting to join the modern-day delivery economy. A few state stores started pilot programs to ship spirits directly to customers, and some Richmond-based stores started offering same-day delivery. The state legislature may have even more good news for the distilling community this week after hearing a bill that would allow all distillers to ship their products directly to customers.

Delegate Nick Freitas filed a bill to privatize the Virginia ABC system entirely. Abolishing Virginia ABC does not have enough political support right now, but as national supply chain issues persist and cause more alcohol shortages in state stores, more groups may come to their senses. Politicians and consumers are starting to question the legitimacy of giving the government a monopoly over the sale of private goods like liquor.

COVID-19 upended alcohol markets across America and ushered in a wave of previously unobtainable changes in the regulation of alcohol. The American Prohibition experiment is not a part of history worth preserving. Nine decades later, Virginia may finally loosen its reins on the sale of alcohol.

The post Virginia's Awful Alcohol Laws Could Finally Get Fixed, Thanks to COVID and Gov. Youngkin appeared first on Reason.com.

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WASHINGTON, D.C.—Thousands of demonstrators gathered on the National Mall for a “Defeat the Mandates” rally this past Sunday to make their case against both private and public vaccination requirements—though that case more often than not rested on the alleged dangers and ineffectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines themselves.

Through speeches and songs, a diverse roster of musicians, doctors, and professional anti-vaccine activists argued that the government, abetted by the media and medical establishment, has been waging a war on alternative COVID-19 treatments in order to boost the profits of Big Pharma. The victims have been freedom of religion, free expression, and liberty generally, they argue.

“Mandates and freedom don’t mix,” said J.P. Sears, a YouTuber and comedian who emceed the rally, from a podium on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. “[They say] mandates are in place so freedom comes back. I don’t think we’re dumb enough to believe that.”

His words, amplified by batteries of speakers and displayed on massive Jumbotron screens, easily resonated with the roughly 10,000 people assembled in the January cold, many of whom had traveled long distances to be there.

Organizers billed their event as one that would unify people regardless of their party affiliation, race, religion, or vaccination status. The rally nevertheless attracted an overwhelmingly right-wing crowd.

One could hardly swing an unvaccinated cat without hitting a “let’s go Brandon” sign or a “Trump 2024” flag. Chants of “fuck Joe Biden” and “lock him up” (typically sparked by onstage mentions of Bill Gates or White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci) regularly broke out.

There was still a lot of diversity on display. Demonstrators were predominately, but hardly exclusively, white. There were far more families with children in attendance than there were masked men in Proud Boys shirts. Christian-themed signs warning of the government’s war on religion were complemented by a few seemingly Eastern-inspired placards about following your inner instincts when it comes to vaccination.

The abiding concern from people in the crowd wasn’t so much partisanship as skepticism of the vaccines themselves.

“It’s not a vaccine. It’s genetic modification. There’s no long-term studies. To do this to our kids is just wrong,” one man from Connecticut told Reason.

“I’ve done my research. I research anything that I put into my body, even though I was just trying to sell you weed,” said another man who’d traveled from Philadelphia (and who started our conversation by offering me pre-rolled joints for $10 a pop). “I believe what’s going on is medical tyranny. I believe in early treatment. Even today, there’s treatments that are being effective that aren’t being delivered.”

These views got generous support from the official speakers at the event.

The first hour of remarks was delivered by a series of heterodox physicians who generally argued that the COVID-19 vaccines were far more dangerous and far less effective than various preexisting drugs that could be repurposed for treating the disease (whether that was ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, or vitamin D).

The most prominent speaker of this group is Robert Malone, a doctor who authored some of the earliest research on mRNA vaccines. Malone has since become a prominent skeptic of the technology—which was used to develop the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

“Regarding the genetic COVID vaccines, the science is settled. They’re not working. They’re not completely safe,” said Malone to rallygoers. “These genetic vaccines can damage your children.”

(Read Reason‘s Ron Bailey on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines at keeping people out of the hospital and/or the morgue.)

Mentions of the dangers of the vaccines were contrasted with discussions of the coercion being employed to enforce them on the public. That in turn led to some cringe, and occasionally tasteless, historical parallels.

More than a few speakers compared Sunday’s rally to the famous 1963 civil rights rally at the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Keynote speaker Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rounded out his remarks about the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines and the technological surveillance being used to push them on people with a now-viral reference to Nazi Germany.

“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland, you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank,” he said, which he contrasted to today, when the installation of 5G internet will be used to “harvest our data and control our behavior.”

These comparisons were echoed on signs and chants from many in attendance, which described vaccines as “Tuskegee 2.0” and “Nuremberg 2.0.”

Some of Sunday’s attendees were more measured in their criticisms of the various vaccine mandates being put in place. That includes one D.C. resident who was wearing a shirt with Austrian economist Murray Rothbard on it. He told me that while he was vaccinated, he still viewed mandates as worrisome government overreach.

“I think it’s ridiculous. I mean, I have friends who are not fully vaccinated. It does appear to be a stratified, two-tiered society,” he said of D.C.’s own requirement that people visiting most indoor venues, including bars, restaurants, cafes, and gyms, show proof of vaccination. “I’m not going to call it segregation. I don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to say, but it is an objectively caste-based system.”

This view didn’t get much of an airing among the speakers at the rally. That is probably to demonstrators’ detriment.

All the radicalism and kookiness on display at Sunday’s rally served mostly to obscure the fact that the vast majority of the country has not adopted vaccine passport systems. Federal courts, meanwhile, have been busy ruling against most of the vaccine mandates being issued by the White House.

That’s probably not because a majority of Americans, or the majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices, have been playing Malone’s Joe Rogan appearance on repeat.

Rather, it would seem that most of the country has settled on the idea that vaccines are a useful (and maybe even vital) personal protection against COVID-19, but that a government requirement that people show their vaccine card to grab a beer or a cup of coffee is government overreach.

That’s an attitude that might even resonate with many residents of large, liberal cities where vaccine passport systems have been implemented. Here in D.C., about a quarter of residents 12 and older are not fully vaccinated, and will therefore be unable to sit down in a restaurant or go to the gym come February 15 thanks to Mayor Muriel Bowser’s vaccine mandate. (Currently, you only need to show proof of one shot to be in compliance with Bowser’s order.)

So, Kennedy has a point when he says that under these passport systems “every right you have is transformed into a privilege contingent on arbitrary government dictates.” Malone, likewise, isn’t wrong when he notes that COVID-19 vaccines do come with some risks, and that “if there is risk, there must be choice.” Speeches from people who had suffered severe adverse reactions to vaccines helped underscore this idea.

Yet these kernels of reason are buried by broadsides against the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines generally and comparisons to Nazi Germany.

It also obscures the reality of these vaccine passport systems as ineffective security theater that many businesses are half-heartedly complying with at best, at least here in D.C.

For instance, after leaving Sunday’s rally, I ducked into a Starbucks to charge my phone. As I sat down at a table to drink my coffee, I had a staff member approach me and ask to see my proof of vaccination.

When I explained that it was on my dead phone, she shrugged and walked away. Someone more committed to following D.C.’s vaccine mandate should have asked me to leave, but she obviously didn’t think it was worth the effort.

Despite this less-than-perfect enforcement, new COVID-19 cases reported in D.C.—which were already falling prior to the city’s mandate going into effect—continue to collapse. The brief uptick in COVID-19 deaths in the District is also subsiding.

Reasonable people could look at this reality and conclude that vaccine mandates are a restriction on people’s liberty that comes with little benefit to public health, and thus should be abandoned. You don’t need to worry about the totalitarian potential of 5G internet to believe that.

Speakers at Sunday’s rally often gave the impression that you do.

The post D.C.'s Anti-Mandate Rally Devolves Into an Anti-Vaccine Rally appeared first on Reason.com.

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