William Montanez is used to getting stopped by the police in Tampa, Florida, for small-time traffic and marijuana violations; it’s happened more than a dozen times. When they pulled him over last June, he didn’t try to hide his pot, telling officers, “Yeah, I smoke it, there’s a joint in the center console, you gonna arrest me for that?”
They did arrest him, not only for the marijuana but also for two small bottles they believed contained THC oil — a felony — and for having a firearm while committing that felony (they found a handgun in the glove box).
Then things got testy.
As they confiscated his two iPhones, a text message popped up on the locked screen of one of them: “OMG, did they find it?”
The officers demanded his passcodes, warning him they’d get warrants to search the cellphones. Montanez suspected that police were trying to fish for evidence of illegal activity. He also didn’t want them seeing more personal things, including intimate pictures of his girlfriend.
So he refused, and was locked up on the drug and firearms charges.
William MontanezCourtesy of William Montanez
Five days later, after Montanez was bailed out of jail, a deputy from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office tracked him down, handed him the warrants and demanded the phone passcodes. Again, Montanez refused. Prosecutors went to a judge, who ordered him locked up again for contempt of court.
“I felt like they were violating me. They can’t do that,” Montanez, 25, recalled recently. “F— y’all. I ain’t done nothing wrong. They wanted to get in the phone for what?”
He paid a steep price, spending 44 days behind bars before the THC and gun charges were dropped, the contempt order got tossed and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor pot charge. And yet he regrets nothing, because he now sees his defiance as taking a stand against the abuse of his rights.
“The world should know that what they’re doing out here is crazy,” Montanez said. The police never got into his phones.
While few would choose jail, Montanez’s decision reflects a growing resistance to law enforcement’s power to peer into Americans’ digital lives. The main portals into that activity are cellphones, which are protected from prying eyes by encryption, with passcodes the only way in.
As police now routinely seek access to people’s cellphones, privacy advocates see a dangerous erosion of Americans’ rights, with courts scrambling to keep up.
“It’s becoming harder to escape the reach of police using technology that didn’t exist before,” said Riana Pfefferkorn, the associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. “And now we are in the position of trying to walk that back and stem the tide.”
While courts have determined that police need a warrant to search a cellphone, the question of whether police can force someone to share a passcode is far from settled, with no laws on the books and a confusing patchwork of differing judicial decisions. Last month, the Indiana Supreme Court heard arguments on the issue. The state supreme courts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are considering similar cases.
As this legal battle unfolds, police keep pursuing new ways of breaking into cellphones if the owners don’t cooperate — or are enlisting help from technology firms that can do it for them. This has put them at odds with cellphone makers, all of whom continually update their products to make them harder for hackers or anyone else to break into.
But the hacking techniques are imperfect and expensive, and not all law enforcement agencies have them. That is why officials say compelling suspects to unlock their cellphones is essential to police work. Making the tactic more difficult, they say, would tilt justice in favor of criminals.
“It would have an extreme chilling effect on our ability to thoroughly investigate and bring many, many cases, including violent offenses,” said Hillar Moore, the district attorney in East Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who got the FBI’s help in breaking into a cellphone belonging to a suspect in a deadly Louisiana State University fraternity hazing ritual. “It would basically shut the door.”
Clashes over passcodes
In the part of Florida where Montanez lives, authorities are guided by a case involving an upskirt photo.
A young mother shopping at a Target store in Sarasota in July 2014 noticed a man taking a picture of her with his phone while crouching on the floor. She confronted him. He fled. Two days later, police arrested Aaron Stahl and charged him with video voyeurism.
Authorities got a search warrant for Stahl’s iPhone, but he wouldn’t give them the passcode, citing his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. A trial judge ruled in his favor, but a state appellate court reversed the decision in December 2016, saying Stahl had to provide the code. Facing the possibility of getting convicted at trial and sentenced to prison, Stahl agreed to plead no contest in exchange for probation.
While Stahl did not provide the passcode in the end, prosecutors still rely on the precedent established by the appellate ruling to compel others to turn over their passcodes under the threat of jail.
“Up until that point you could be a pedophile or a child pornogropher and carry around the fruits of your crime in front of law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges and taunt them with fact that they couldn’t get the passcode,” said Cynthia Meiners, who prosecuted Stahl at the 12th Judicial Circuit State’s Attorney’s Office. “You could say, ‘I’m a child pornographer and it’s on my phone but I’m not giving you my passcode because I would be incriminating myself.’”
But that ruling only holds in a few counties of Florida. Elsewhere in the country, skirmishes remain unresolved.
In Indiana, police officials are trying to force a woman to share her passcode as they investigate her for harassment, saying she was making it impossible for them to obtain key evidence. The woman’s lawyer says authorities haven’t said what evidence they think is in the phone, raising concerns about a limitless search.
Her appeals reached the state Supreme Court, whose ruling could influence similar cases around the country. Attorneys general in eight other states filed a brief in support of the police, warning against a ruling that “drastically alters the balance of power between investigators and criminals.”
The stakes are similar in New Jersey, where a sheriff’s deputy accused of tipping off drug dealers to police activities has refused to hand over passcodes to his iPhones. The state Supreme Court agreed in May to hear the case.
These clashes aren’t limited to the use of passcodes. Police have also tried to force people to open phones through biometrics, such as thumbprints or facial recognition. Legal experts see the Fifth Amendment argument against self-incrimination as more of a stretch in those cases. The law has generally been interpreted as protecting data that someone possesses — including the contents of their mind, such as passcodes — but not necessarily their physical traits, such as thumbprints. Still, some judges have refused to sign warrants seeking permission to force someone to unlock their phone using their face or finger.
“Depending on where you are in the country, there is different case law on what police can do,” said Andrew Crocker, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties nonprofit.
In some states, there is no authoritative court ruling, leaving law enforcement authorities to decide for themselves. Virginia falls into that category. Bryan Porter, the prosecutor in the city of Alexandria, said he has told local police it’s OK to try to force someone under the threat of jail to open a cellphone by thumbprint or face. But demanding a password seems to go too far, he said.
Criminals shouldn’t be able to inoculate themselves from investigations, Porter said. “But it kind of rubs me the wrong way to present a piece of paper to someone and say, ‘Give us your passcode.’”
‘What they were doing to me was illegal’
In Tampa, Florida, where Montanez was arrested last year, judges still rely on the 2016 ruling against Stahl by the Second District Court of Appeals. That is what prosecutors cited when they tried to force Montanez to give up his passcodes.
But Montanez’s lawyer, Patrick Leduc, argued that, unlike Stahl’s case, police had no reason to search the phone, because it had no connection to the offenses he was charged with. The “OMG, did they find it?” text message — which turned out to be from Montanez’s mother, who owned the car and the gun in the glove box — was meaningless, Leduc said. He warned of a police “fishing expedition” in which authorities could search for anything potentially incriminating on his phone.
While sitting in lockup for contempt, Montanez’s resolve not to give up his passcodes hardened. “What they were doing to me was illegal and I wasn’t going to give them their business like that,” he said.
“They told me I got the key to my freedom,” he added. “But I was like, ‘F— that.’”
But the experience shook him. “I ain’t the toughest guy in the world, but I can protect myself. But it was crazy,” he said. “Bad food, fights here and there, people trying to take your food.”
At the same time, the drugs and gun case against Montanez was crumbling. Laboratory tests on the suspected THC oil came back negative, voiding that felony charge and the gun charge related to it. That left prosecutors with only minor pot charges. But he remained in jail on the contempt charge while his lawyer and prosecutors negotiated a plea deal.
In August 2018, after Montanez had spent more than five weeks in jail for refusing to provide the passcode, an appellate court dismissed the contempt case on a technicality. The court invited prosecutors to try again, but by then the passcode’s value had diminished. Instead, prosecutors allowed Montanez to plead no contest to misdemeanor drug charges and he was freed.
When he was released, Montanez carried a notoriety that made him feel unwelcome in his own neighborhood. He noticed people looking at him differently. He was banned from his favorite bar.
The police keep pulling him over, and he now fears them, he said. He finally left Tampa and lives in Pasco County, about an hour away.
“Yeah, I took a stand against them,” he said. “But I lost all that time. I gotta deal with that, going to jail for no reason.”
The panel weighs in on an email uncovered by Judicial Watch that suggests Fusion GPS employee Nellie Ohr and her husband DOJ official Bruce Ohr attempted to cover-up a plot against Trump.
Bruce Ohr, the Justice Department official whose connection to the opposition research firm responsible for the anti-Trump “dossier” led to his eventual demotion, was awarded a $28,000 performance bonus while the Russia probe was ongoing, according to newly released DOJ documents.
The records do not indicate why Ohr was given the bonus in November 2016, though they show he also received a $14,520 bonus a year earlier, totaling $42,520 over a two-year period.
A Justice Department spokesman on Friday did not immediately return an inquiry from Fox News about the bonuses.
The conservative group Judicial Watch, known for suing for public records, released the documents related to Ohr’s salary Friday, saying they obtained them from the Justice Department through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Steele to be interviewed about dossier by U.S. investigators; panel reaction and analysis on ‘Hannity.’
Ohr’s actions during that time have been of interest to investigators, as it’s believed Ohr was the back channel between Trump dossier author Christopher Steele and the FBI. It was also revealed that his wife, Nellie Ohr, conducted opposition research on Trump for the firm Fusion GPS – the same company that commissioned the dossier – raising conflict of interest questions.
Judicial Watch is questioning why Ohr, who was later demoted at DOJ, was given a bonus.
“These documents will raise questions as to whether the conflicted Bruce Ohr, who the FBI used to launder information from Christopher Steele was rewarded for his role in the illicit targeting of President Trump,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.
Even though Ohr was removed from his position as Associate Deputy Attorney General in 2017, he later received a $2,600 pay increase in 2018, the records indicate, showing Ohr earned $189,000 that year.
Leading U.S. automakers are making an 11th-hour push to stop the Trump administration from dramatically weakening Obama-era fuel efficiency standards, warning doing so would bring “untenable” uncertainty and lead to drawn-out litigation.
In a letter to President Trump, 17 companies including Ford, General Motors, Toyota, and Volvo, asked him to return to the negotiating table with California, which, with more than a dozen other states, is poised to sue the administration in order to enforce stricter auto pollution rules to limit carbon emissions from transportation, the highest-emitting economic sector. The companies also sent a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, requesting the same thing.
The Trump administration has proposed revoking a Clean Air Act waiver that California has, and more than a dozen other states follow, allowing it to set vehicle emission standards tougher than federal rules.
“Automakers share the environmental idealism of California and the economic pragmatism of the administration in Washington,” Gloria Bergquist, a vice president at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing major automakers, told the Washington Examiner. “Choosing one or the other is neither necessary nor prudent. It’s a false choice. Somewhere between the two is a workable compromise that appropriately balances both of these crucial obligations.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler previously told the Washington Examiner the Trump administration won’t compromise on its final proposal to be introduced this summer, and will move to revoke the waiver granted to California and other states to set tougher fuel efficiency rules.
The EPA, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, last August proposed freezing Obama-era fuel efficiency rules for cars and light trucks, instead of raising them each year, between model years 2020 and 2026.
The Trump administration argued the tougher Obama rules would make newer cars unaffordable, forcing drivers to use older, less safe, and environmentally unfriendly vehicles.
But the administration and California still sought to reach a compromise before the rule was finalized.
The White House, however, broke off negotiations with California on Feb. 21, and has since tried to convince skeptical automakers to back its plan.
Automakers, who prefer flexibility in the Obama rules, not an outright rejection, consider the Trump plan too extreme. Auto groups have said they hope to maintain a common set of rules with year-over-year increases in efficiency that California would agree to follow, allowing automakers to sell the same models in every state, and avoiding the uncertainty of prolonged litigation.
Raw video: U.S. Navy says the USS Chancellorsville warship was forced to maneuver to avoid a collision with a Russian destroyer in the Philippine Sea.
The U.S. Navy has released footage of the dramatic moment one of its warships almost collided with a Russian destroyer in the Philippine Sea.
The USS Chancellorsville, a guided-missile cruiser, nearly struck the Udaloy I DD 572 when it made an “unsafe maneuver”, coming within 50 to 100 feet, according to the Navy’s 7th Fleet in a statement.
“This unsafe action forced Chancellorsville to execute all engines back full and to maneuver to avoid collision,” said the Navy’s 7th Fleet in a statement.
The Navy subsequently released video and a satellite image showing the two vessels sailing perilously close to one another.
A still image of the incident released by the Department of Defense shows both ships clearly side by side (Department of Defense)
The incident happened at 11:45 am Friday in the Philippine Sea, according to the statement.
Russian state media had claimed that the U.S. cruiser had “hindered the passage” of the Admiral Vinogradov anti-submarine destroyer about 160 feet in front of it, forcing them to perform a dangerous maneuver in the southeastern part of the East China Sea. But the U.S. dismissed their version of events as “propaganda”
It’s the second time in three days the U.S. Navy has accused Russian forces of dangerous maneuvers after a Russian fighter jet flew dangerously close to a Navy reconnaissance aircraft in the eastern Mediterranean.
The USS Chancellorsville, a guided-missile cruiser, nearly collided with the Udaloy I DD 572 when it made an “unsafe maneuver”, coming within 50 feet, according to the Navy’s 7th Fleet in a statement<br data-cke-eol=”1″> (AFP/Getty)
The near collision between American and Russian warships comes days after Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted his Chinese counterpart at the Kremlin.
“We consider Russia’s actions during this interaction as unsafe and unprofessional and not in accordance with the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS), ‘Rules of the Road,’ and internationally recognized maritime customs,” the 7th Fleet said.
President Trump’s acting defense secretary said Friday the U.S. government would lodge a formal protest over the incident with the Russian Navy.
“We’ll have military to military conversations with the Russians, and of course we’ll demarche them. To me, it’s safety that is most important. It will not deter us when conducting our operations,” Patrick Shanahan told reporters on the Pentagon steps ahead of a meeting with his Greek counterpart.
The latest incident comes just days after the Navy accused a Russian fighter jet of buzzing a U.S. reconnaissance plane over the Mediterranean Sea three times.
The U.S. P-8A Poseidon aircraft was flying in international airspace at the time of the intercepts Tuesday, Navy officials added.
The developments come as the U.S. Navy is set to kick off a series of war games in the Baltic Sea with other NATO nations.
The Pentagon had mulled over pulling thousands of Marines from the exercise – known as BALTOPS – to send to the Middle East in a warning to Iran, but in the end, top officials thought the American forces were needed to send a message to Russia.
Fox News’ Chris Irvine contributed to this report.
As President Donald Trump heads home from his European trip today, White House officials are readying for Trump’s plan to impose a 5% tariff on Mexican imports next week.
On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence said discussions with Mexican officials to reach an agreement on the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border were “encouraging,” but the Trump administration would “continue to stand strong” on its demands.
Republican lawmakers meanwhile are hoping the president doesn’t follow through with the tariffs, ABC News’ Trish Turner tells “Start Here” today, “Congress is standing by to terminate whatever it is that President Trump tries to do and that includes Senate Republicans, some of his top allies on the Hill.”
2. Hyde and Biden
Former Vice President Joe Biden has reversed his stance on the Hyde Amendment, telling Democratic voters at an event in Atlanta, “I can no longer support” the measure that prevents federal funds from being used for abortions.
“I can’t justify leaving millions of women without access to the care they need and the ability to exercise their constitutionally protected right,” he said at the DNC “IWillVote” Gala in Atlanta on Thursday night.
Biden came under pressure this week from women’s rights groups and other Democratic presidential candidates after he reaffirmed his support for the abortion measure. He said his reversal was due to recently passed abortion bans challenging Roe v. Wade.
Was this political strategy for a centrist candidate moving to the left, or a stumble? ABC News Deputy Political Director MaryAlice Parks says, “Maybe this could have been kind of a smart savvy political position to be different from other Democrats, but it just wasn’t presented like that.”
Scott Eisen/Getty Images
Former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden holds a campaign event at the IBEW Local 490, June 4, 2019, in Concord, New Hampshire.
3. Robocall battle
The Federal Communications Commission has voted to allow telecom providers to block illegal robocalls before they reach consumers.
It’s a positive step towards targeting the illegal and unwanted calls, but there’s still a long battle ahead in completely eliminating robocalls, explains Jessica Rosenworcel, a member of the FCC.
“This is actually legal permission for [phone companies] to deploy this type of technology, but it doesn’t require them to do so,” she says. “The next thing that the FCC need to do is to require something called call authentication technology, and that’s a cryptic logical solution that will help us identify trusted and untrusted calls.”
4. U-S-A! U-S-A!
The Women’s World Cup kicks off today in Paris, where the hosts and the reigning champs, the U.S. women’s national soccer team, are seen as the favorites, according to ESPN’s Julie Foudy, a former American soccer midfielder.
“This will be by far the most competitive women’s world cup we’ve ever seen,” she says on “Start Here.”
The U.S. women’s team is aiming for their fourth World Cup and will face Thailand for their opening match on Tuesday.
Elsa/Getty Images, FILE
Carli Lloyd #10 of the United States takes the ball in the second half against Mexico at Red Bull Arena, May 26, 2019, in Harrison, New Jersey.
‘Unacceptable, weak and counterproductive’: A police sergeant, the second-highest paid city employee in 2018, was arrested for assault after he allegedly tackled a man.
‘He had no reason to touch me’: The Golden State Warriors have banned minority owner Mark Stevens for a year and fined him half a million dollars for shoving Raptors guard Kyle Lowry during Game 3.
From our friends at FiveThirtyEight:
Bernie Sanders Has The Highest Floor — And It’s Pretty Damn Low: Everybody in the race has a pretty low floor, Nate Silver writes.
Doff your cap:
To all of the ladies in the Women’s World Cup.
Even if you’re not a soccer fan, everyone can get behind their home country as the World Cup opens today. (Well, maybe except Ada Hederberg.)
We talk a bit more about the U.S. team on the podcast, but how about Scotland, Chile, South Africa and Jamaica — all four countries are making their debuts in the tournament.
“The current generation are making it impossible for people to ignore women’s football,” U.S. legend Mia Hamm said at a FIFA press conference Friday morning.
After two days of talks between U.S. officials and Mexico, there is no agreement between the two sides to stave off 5 percent tariffs that are expected to begin Monday. (June 6) AP, AP
WASHINGTON – The biggest flashpoint in the U.S.-Mexico negotiations over tariffs and immigration revolves around asylum – specifically which country should be responsible for absorbing the desperate migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Central America.
The Trump administration wants Mexico to agree to take almost every asylum seeker that crosses into Mexico – pushing the Mexican government to sign an agreement that would essentially bar Central American migrants from trying to gain asylum in the United States.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has resisted that step so far, although there were signs Thursday that Mexican negotiators might relent.
If that happens, the U.S. and Mexico could sign a little-known treaty – called a safe third-country agreement – that would carry huge implications for immigration in both countries.
“That’s probably the most important demand that we have of Mexico,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors stronger limits on immigration.
Migrants generally must seek asylum in the first country they reach after fleeing their homeland – but only if that country is considered safe. If it’s not safe, migrants can pass through – as they’re doing in Mexico right now – and apply in the next country they reach, in this case the United States.
If Mexico agrees to be designated as a safe third-party country, the U.S. could deny the asylum claims of virtually all the Central American migrants now seeking refuge in the U.S.
American immigration authorities could “turn them around and send them back” to Mexico, Krikorian said. He has accused Mexico of being an “asylum free rider” by enacting liberal asylum laws but steering most refugees to the U.S. border.
Designating Mexico as a safe asylum country “would really take away most of the incentive” for migrants to trek across Mexico to the U.S. border, Krikorian said.
But immigration advocates say Mexico’s asylum system is already overwhelmed, and the country is not safe – particularly for vulnerable migrants. Trump’s own State Department has advised Americans not to travel to five Mexican states, citing rampant and often violent crime.
“Robberies, extortion, kidnapping … these are common situations,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a policy analyst with the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group devoted to stronger protections for immigrants.
The council recently conducted a survey of migrant mothers detained in Mexico, and 90% said they did not feel safe. Nearly half of the 500 women said that they or their child had been robbed, sexually assaulted, threatened or subject to other harm.
“The Mexican police and state agencies charged with providing security are often the very actors robbing migrants, charging them fees in order to pass, or handing them over to criminal groups who tax or victimize migrants,” Stephanie Leutert, director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the University of Texas, wrote in a 2018 analysis of the issue.
She and others note that Mexico has already moved to take in more refugees. Asylum requests have increased each of the past five years, with the nation on track to reach nearly 60,000 in 2019, nearly double the number from the year before, according to data from the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance.
Leutert said Mexico’s government institutions are too weak to absorb more migrants than they’re already taking in.
“I think the U.S. should be working with Mexico more on these issues and not pushing all this enforcement onto a country that doesn’t” have the resources to handle it, she said in an interview.
Krikorian says the U.S. might need to offer Mexico financial assistance in exchange for an asylum agreement.
“I think we should combine carrots along with the sticks,” he said, referring to President Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on all Mexican imports if the Obrador government does not stop the flow of migrants.
Indeed, Obrador has called for the U.S. to help Mexico address the root causes of the migrant crisis – urging the Trump administration to help foot the bill for economic development and other initiatives aimed at relieving the crippling poverty and corruption in Guatemala, Honduras and other Central American countries.
“The U.S. stance is centered on immigration control measures, while our focus is on development,” Roberto Velasco, a spokesman for the Mexican Foreign Ministry, tweeted on Thursday evening. “We have not yet reached an agreement but continue to negotiate.”
Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard declined to comment Thursday on the prospect of a safe third-country agreement. And the White House did not respond to questions about the Trump administration’s demands for that.
But Krikorian said a fat financial aid package could go a long way in persuading Mexico to accede to Trump’s demand.
“We can make it worth Mexico’s while, in combination with a stick that if they don’t take our more money that they’re going to suffer some consequences,” he said.
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President Donald J. Trump awards Sergeant John A. Chapman the posthumous Medal of Honor on August 22, 2018 in the East Room at the White House for his actions on March 4, 2002, on Takur Ghar mountain in Afghanistan. Chapman’s aircraft was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, ejecting one teammate rom the aircraft, and crippling the helicopter after it crashed in the valley below. Chapman and the remaining joint special operations team members voluntarily returned to the snow-capped mountain, into known enemy stronghold, in an attempt to rescue their stranded teammate. Sergeant Chapman’s spouse, Valerie Nessel, and family joined the President at the White House to commemorate his example of selfless service and sacrifice on Aug 22, 2018. Camille Fine, USA TODAY
The only revolving door more insufferable than that between Congress and K Street is between Media Matters and left-wing activism parading as “journalism.” And that national problem is best exemplified by Vox’s Carlos Maza, who was once described by the Columbia Journalism Review as “Brian Stelter meets NowThis,” and his histrionic war against independent content creators on YouTube.
Taking cues from Maza’s online meltdown over conservative comedian Steven Crowder, the tech giant hasn’t just demonetized one guy. Mob rule dictates both dangerous and ineffective guidelines for censorship, and YouTube’s attempts to silence Crowder are the ones generating most of the headlines. But even worse than the video platform’s submission to Maza’s specific demand is its expansion of censorship by algorithm.
Sure, Crowder makes off color, unfunny, and, at times offensive jokes. But YouTube also purged multiple accounts that do absolutely nothing objectionable yesterday. YouTube banned “Mr Allsop History Clips,” a since-restored and purely educational channel that shared videos about historical events. It also started pulling down videos from Ford Fischer, an objective news journalist who covers white supremacists. Rational Disconnect also had a video debunking far-right propaganda pulled from the site.
Maza’s meltdown posited two grave errors: one strategic and one moral. First, the only way YouTube could cave to his categorical demands and de-platform those he disagrees with was to do so by algorithm. A channel as innocuous — if not comically adorable — as “Mr Allsop History Clips” isn’t pulled down because of human error. It’s pulled down because algorithms are bad at discriminating between content. They often target the wrong accounts while the ones that actually violate terms of service learn how to game them. How bad are YouTube’s algorithms? They currently promote content for pedophiles without intending to.
More importantly, censorship is more than just impractical. It’s also a bad way of combating social ills in general.
Sunlight has and always will be the best disinfectant. Truly virulent racists and bigots will always have homes at 8chan and the Daily Stormer. But push non-bigoted dissenters off all the mainstream platforms, and they’ll join the actual bigots. From Owen Benjamin to James Allsup, we’ve seen time and time again fairly mainline but intentionally provocative conservatives get radicalized as they get pushed out of mainstream discourse by the censorious Carlos Mazas of the world. If Maza really wants to fight bigotry, he ought to be putting it in the spotlight instead of forcing it into the shadows.
Meanwhile, when Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., finally join forces to nationalize Big Tech, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
A boat moved by Hurricane Michael rests near a canal in May in Mexico Beach, Fla. Seven months after the hurricane made landfall, the town is still littered with heavily damaged or destroyed homes and businesses.
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A boat moved by Hurricane Michael rests near a canal in May in Mexico Beach, Fla. Seven months after the hurricane made landfall, the town is still littered with heavily damaged or destroyed homes and businesses.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
As another hurricane season begins, emergency managers and other officials throughout the Southeast and along the Gulf Coast are applying lessons they learned last year during Hurricane Michael. Those lessons include how they conduct evacuations.
Michael was a Category 5 storm that ripped through Florida’s Panhandle with 160 mph winds. The night before it made landfall, Lynn Haven, Fla., Mayor Margo Anderson was in the city’s administrative building preparing to ride out the storm. The National Hurricane Center warned that Michael was strengthening and was now likely to come ashore as a Category 4 storm with winds over 150 mph. She went on Facebook Live with a message for the town’s 20,000 residents: “If you are in a house that you don’t think will take sustained winds of 100 miles per hour for several hours tomorrow,” she warned, “you still have time to go to a shelter.”
As it turned out, Anderson and other officials in the city’s administrative building should have followed that advice. A temporary pavilion now occupies the ground where the administrative building stood. Showing a picture on her cellphone, Anderson points out “the hallway where myself and the 40 members of the police department … ended up at the end of the storm.”
The roof of the building where they sought shelter is gone. Debris is everywhere. Insulation and wires hang from the ceiling. A concrete building, she says, and Hurricane Michael “ripped it away around us. We survived in the last standing hallway.” The brick-and-concrete building, built in 1928, was reduced mostly to rubble. Nearly every building in Lynn Haven suffered severe damage. More than 250 homes were completely destroyed.
Now, eight months later, Anderson says with better information and a bit more time, she would have done things differently. “Had we known it was going to be a Category 4 before we did, then everyone would have left,” she says. “If I had known that it would strengthen and we had that kind of forecast before it came ashore, I would have had my police and fire [departments] evacuate as well.”
For emergency managers in charge of evacuations, there’s a well-worn adage: hide from wind; run from water. That’s because the vast majority of deaths in hurricanes are people who drown in flooding, including storm surge. Because of that, as Hurricane Michael approached the Panama City area, Joby Smith, the chief of emergency management in Bay County, says evacuations were ordered mostly for areas near the water. “Storm surge is what most evacuation models are based on,” he says. “And we also take into consideration though within our walls here, what do the winds look like?”
Because of last-minute warnings that Hurricane Michael might intensify, Bay County increased the areas under mandatory evacuation. A traffic assessment done after the storm suggested just one-fifth of the county residents ordered to evacuate actually did so.
In Mexico Beach, Fla., the community where Hurricane Michael made landfall, the percentage of those who evacuated was much higher. Only 50 people were known to have been there at landfall. “Police went door to door in Mexico Beach,” says Jay Baker, a researcher and retired Florida State University professor who studies hurricane evacuations. “Now it’s a small community. But that is by far the most effective way to disseminate evacuation notices.”
Unfortunately, three of those who remained in Mexico Beach died in the storm surge. Elsewhere, several people died after being hit by falling trees or debris. Baker says that’s one of Michael’s reminders: high winds also kill. “I do think that there are a lot of people … reassessing whether or not it’s advisable to stay behind if you’re going to have winds like this,” Baker says. “A lot of the damage that was done wasn’t to wind just blowing houses away. It was blowing big trees down onto houses.”
Two people died during the storm in Jackson County, a rural area more than 40 miles from the coast with just 50,000 residents. Mandatory evacuation was ordered for people who live in mobile homes, which is almost a third of the county. But Rodney Andreasen, the director of emergency management in Jackson County, says even those who lived in permanent wood or stone structures weren’t safe. “We saw a lot of the older buildings, brick buildings in town that collapsed and were destroyed,” Andreasen says. “Some others were heavily damaged just from the wind, collapsing. The building next to us, it just came apart.”
Andreasen says buildings on Florida’s Panhandle simply aren’t designed for winds like those seen in Hurricane Michael. “I think it woke up a lot of people to that fact,” he says. “And we’re going to start seeing a lot of things change because of that.”
Among those likely changes: how people prepare for storms, how many evacuate and how strong new construction on Florida’s Panhandle will need to be to survive hurricanes like Michael.
WASHINGTON/ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The United States has decided to stop accepting any more Turkish pilots who had planned to train in the United States on F-35 fighter jets, three U.S. officials said, in a sign of an escalating dispute over Ankara’s plans to purchase Russian air defenses. The two NATO allies have sparred publicly for months over Turkey’s order for Russia’s S-400 air defense system, which Washington says poses a threat to the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 stealthy fighters, which Turkey also plans to buy.
The United States says Turkey cannot have both, but had avoided taking steps to curtail or halt planned training of Turkish pilots in the program, a reprisal that could be seen as an embarrassment in Turkey.
The three U.S. officials, who spoke to Reuters this week on condition of anonymity, left open the possibility the decision could be reversed, perhaps if Turkey altered its plans. They said the decision so far only applied to upcoming rounds of Turkish pilots and maintenance crews who would have normally trained in the United States.
Reuters was first to report the U.S. decision on pilots, which traders said pressured the Turkish lira on Friday.
A spokesman for Turkey’s Defense Ministry declined comment on Friday.
The Pentagon declined comment on whether it would accept new Turkish pilots. But it has stressed discussions are taking place with Ankara on potentially selling Turkey Patriot missile defenses, which are made by Raytheon Co.
The United States also has threatened to halt training of Turkish pilots and maintenance crews already in the United States, two of the officials said. Reuters reported last week that the step was being seriously considered.
One official said the pilots in the United States could be removed by the end of July.
Four Turkish pilots are currently training at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. Two additional Turkish pilots are there working as instructors. Beyond those six Turkish officers, there are an additional 20 Turkish aircraft maintainers at the base undergoing training as well, the U.S. military says.
Turkey has expressed an interest in buying 100 of the fighters, which would have a total value of $9 billion at current prices.
STRAINED RELATIONSHIP
If Turkey were removed from the F-35 program, it would be one of the most significant ruptures in recent history in the relationship between the two allies, experts said.
Strains in their ties already extend beyond the F-35 to include conflicting strategy in Syria, Iran sanctions and the detention of U.S. consular staff in Turkey.
The disclosure of the decision on the pilots follows signs that Turkey is moving ahead with the S-400 purchase. Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on May 22 that Turkish military personnel were receiving training in Russia to use the S-400, and that Russian personnel may go to Turkey.
President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday it was “out of the question” for Turkey to back away from its deal with Moscow.
Erdogan said the United States had not “given us an offer as good as the S-400s.”
The Turkish lira declined as much as 1.5% on Friday before recovering some losses. The currency has shed nearly 10% of its value against the dollar this year in part on fraying diplomatic ties and the risk of U.S. sanctions if Turkey accepts delivery of the S-400s.
Kathryn Wheelbarger, one of the Pentagon’s most senior policy officials, said last week that Turkey’s completion of the transaction with Russia would be “devastating,” dealing heavy blows to the F-35 program and to Turkish interoperability within the NATO alliance.
“The S-400 is a Russian system designed to shoot down an aircraft like the F-35,” said Wheelbarger, an acting assistant secretary of defense. “And it is inconceivable to imagine Russia not taking advantage of that (intelligence) collection opportunity.”
Reporting by Phil Stewart and Humeyra Pamuk; Additional reporting by Dominic Evans, Mike Stone and Ece Toksabay; Editing by Mary Milliken, Peter Cooney and Howard Goller
At one time, the Democratic Party took a seemingly moderate stance on abortion. Many of their politicians, including Hillary Clinton, even endorsed “safe, legal, and rare” as the best approach to what they considered a complicated subject. Those days are long gone. Now, abortion is a sacrament to the Left that is grotesquely celebrated and seen, rather ironically, as a basic human right.
Since the start of his term, President Trump has appointed two right-leaning jurists to the Supreme Court. Both Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh inspire fear among abortion advocates who believe the shift in the court is certain to put Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in danger. As a result, a wave of legislation has rippled through the country. Some states, like New York, have loosened restrictions and now allow the life-ending procedure of abortion at any time. Others, like Alabama, have extended early protections to unborn life by way of a heartbeat bill.
It’s safe to say that abortion is high on the list of topics for the 2020 campaign season.
This week, former Vice President Joe Biden announced support for the Hyde Amendment, much to the chagrin of his fellow candidates who believe that federal funds should be allowed to pay for abortions. Though his moderate stance on this matter closely aligns with his fellow Americans, pro-choice politicians and abortion providers alike were quick to share their disappointment.
But Planned Parenthood’s consistent, enraged objection to the Hyde Amendment is quite telling.
Routinely, the abortion giant claims that abortions are only 3% of whey they do. With that assertion, they insist a whopping 97% of their mission is devoted to non-abortive care. How utterly convenient. However, this claim has been challenged by many, including the Washington Post fact-checker who called it “misleading.” Elsewhere, Rich Lowry has explained the deceit:
“The 3 percent figure is an artifice and a dodge, but even taking it on its own terms, it’s not much of a defense…”
“The 3 percent figure is derived by counting abortion as just another service like much less consequential services.”
“So abortion is considered a service no different than a pregnancy test (1.1 million), even though a box with two pregnancy tests can be procured from the local drugstore for less than $10.”
“By Planned Parenthood’s math, a woman who gets an abortion but also a pregnancy test, an STD test and some contraceptives has received four services, and only 25 percent of them are abortion. This is a little like performing an abortion and giving a woman an aspirin, and saying only half of what you do is abortion.”
We know that Planned Parenthood’s 3% claim is a lie, but they still attempt to pass it off a truth. All along, they know how deceptive this sermon is.
If abortions are truly a minuscule factor in their daily operations, then why the push to repeal an amendment that barely touches their bottom line? Why the online campaign to #BeBoldEndHyde if 97% of their daily activity is focused on other services?
Because they know that ending unborn life is their main objective.
In the last year alone, a total of 332,757 abortions were performed in their clinics nationwide. They dominate the business of destruction.
Right now, the Hyde Amendment keeps clinics from using government funds for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother. Since those three reasons combined account for less than 13.5% of abortions, I’d say that Planned Parenthood is in desperate need of more dollars to fund their barbarism.
By demanding more money off the backs of taxpayers, Planned Parenthood tacitly admits what we’ve always known: Abortion is their biggest business.
Kimberly Ross (@SouthernKeeks) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and a columnist at Arc Digital.
Pete Buttigieg said on Thursday that Stacey Abrams was robbed of the governorship of Georgia, blaming voter suppression for her narrow loss last year.
“Stacey Abrams ought to be the governor of Georgia,” Buttigieg said to applause at the Democratic National Committee’s African American Leadership Summit in Atlanta.
Story Continued Below
“When racially motivated voter suppression is permitted, when districts are drawn so that politicians get to choose their voters instead of the other way around, when money is allowed to outvote people in this country, we cannot truly say we live in a democracy,” he continued.
Abrams, who lost to Republican Brian Kemp, was edged out by fewer than 55,000 votes, but still made history as the first African American woman to secure the Democratic nomination for governor.
She has since maintained a high public profile, delivering the Democratic response to the State of the Union address in February and openly flirting with a 2020 presidential run.
She has also been courted by the current Democratic White House contenders. Both Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke were expected to meet privately with Abrams on the sidelines of the leadership summit this week.
Buttigieg’s appearance at the summit is part of an effort to boost his standing with black voters. In a recent poll, the South Bend mayor only won 2 percent of the support of black voters, a key part of the Democratic base. He has publicly acknowledged that he needs to do more to win over African Americans, and he’s pledged to build a campaign team that reflects the country’s diversity.
Sara Fitzgerald and Michael Martin, both with the group One Virginia, protest gerrymandering in front of the Supreme Court in March 2018.
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Sara Fitzgerald and Michael Martin, both with the group One Virginia, protest gerrymandering in front of the Supreme Court in March 2018.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
The way Thomas Hofeller talked about redistricting — the drawing of political boundaries and the sifting of voters into buckets — you could be forgiven if you assumed he was speaking about a loved one or a favorite holiday.
“Redistricting is like an election in reverse! It’s a great event,” he said with a smile at a National Conference of State Legislatures event in 2000. “Usually the voters get to pick the politicians. In redistricting, the politicians get to pick the voters!”
A mapmaker and Republican strategist, he saw holes in the democratic system that could be exploited by technology and guile. Hofeller, who died in August 2018, saw a way to turn small vote margins into supermajorities for GOP legislators.
Now a trove of his data has been uncovered that could undo some of the work he spent decades perfecting.
The strategy
In North Carolina, after Republican successes in the 2010 election, Hofeller helped draw new maps that netted the party 10 of the state’s 13 congressional seats, despite the popular vote in that state being nearly even.
Hofeller also knew the key to success in this niche field was protecting against lawsuits. He spent 10 PowerPoint slides in a presentation he gave about redistricting in 2011 just on legal issues and privacy.
“Treat every statement and document as if it was going to appear on the FRONT PAGE of your local newspaper,” he implored on one slide. “Emails are the tool of the devil.”
He knew the practice was unseemly, and if politicians were going to partake, Hofeller warned, they needed good lawyers. And a way to keep secrets.
“Loose lips sink ships,” he said, at the same NCSL event in 2000. “Remember, a journey to legal hell starts with but a single misstatement.”
All the more surprising, then, that his own files have prompted legal action.
After Hofeller’s death, his daughter found hard drives and thumb drives holding close to 100,000 files, according to The New York Times. She turned them over to Common Cause, a voting-rights nonprofit.
The first hint at what they could contain came in a court filing last week.
Census case offers a sliver
An unpublished 2015 report, authored by Hofeller, concluded that adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census would produce data that would help redraw political maps “advantageous to Republican and Non-Hispanic Whites.”
Plaintiffs in one of the New York-based lawsuits over the question also say that Hofeller later ghostwrote an early draft of the Trump administration’s request for the question. A Justice Department spokesperson called that accusation “false.”
The Trump administration has said it wants to add the question to help minority representation, even though Census Bureau research disputes that.
Ohio State law professor Daniel Tokaji says the Hofeller discovery is just another example of how the administration’s justification doesn’t hold up.
“It was not really, as they claimed, to get better enforcement of the Voting Rights Act so that Latinos could be fairly represented,” said Tokaji. “In fact, there was a deliberate plan, and that plan includes the dilution of Latino votes and the enhancement of Republican voting strength.”
The question now is, what else is in the newly uncovered files?
Attorneys for Common Cause said in court filings made public Thursday the Hofeller files reveal that Republicans in North Carolina made false statements to a federal court to avoid special elections in 2017.
Legislators repeatedly said districts that had been ruled unconstitutional couldn’t be quickly thrown out because work on new ones had not yet begun. The newfound files, however, show that Hofeller had almost completely finished new maps at the time those statements were made.
Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director for Common Cause, wouldn’t discuss what else is in the files because of ongoing litigation, but she spoke generally about the dangers of politicians drawing district lines that favor their own party.
“This is an American democracy, and we don’t want a situation where, perhaps the best analogy is like Russia, where you have fake choices on the ballot,” Feng said. “Where there is no such thing as true democracy, where your vote doesn’t matter.”
The public’s view on “vote-stealing”
Public opinion about partisan gerrymandering is consistently negative. Last fall, voters in four states voted to reduce the role of elected officials in the redistricting process.
A Campaign Legal Center poll from earlier this year found that about two-thirds of likely 2020 voters view gerrymandering unfavorably.
Tokaji says the public getting a closer look at the unsavory details of Hofeller’s work will only fuel those feelings.
“I think it’s a little bit like the Wizard of Oz,” he said. “It allows those of us who have not been in the backroom to see behind the curtain, and see the real partisan agenda behind some of these decisions.”
The more the public knows and understands about the practice, the less brazen politicians may be when lines are redrawn in 2021.
For much of Hofeller’s career, redistricting was considered a wonky practice that operated in the shadows of the political process.
“Redistricting is a very complex field, but I think it’s a field which affects Americans a lot more than they understand,” Hofeller said in 1991. “I define redistricting as the only legalized form of vote-stealing left in the United States today.”
What remains an open question is exactly how much of his work will be undone by the data that have now come to light.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., shed some light on her newly formed alliance with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in hopes of tackling anti-lobbying legislation, calling their partnership “super-bizarre” but also expressing optimism.
Last week, the lawmakers made waves on social media after finding common ground on banning former Congress members from becoming lobbyists, with Cruz extending a legislative olive branch.
Ocasio-Cortez and Cruz managed to expand their alliance, recruiting Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas in their efforts.
Speaking with The Young Turks, the New York congresswoman confirmed that her office is in communication with Cruz’s office.
“Our legislative teams are meeting,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “So we’re going to see how far we can push this.”
The freshman lawmaker explained that she is trying to crack down on “dark money loopholes,” pointing to how only 2 of the 60 percent of former members of the 115th Congress who went on to lobby are “registered lobbyists.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing where and how far they’d be willing to move on that, but I’m encouraged,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I think there’s some wiggle room here. It’s super-bizarre, really weird. Never thought in my life that one of my first pushes would be alongside Ted Cruz.”
“I think it really shows what the true spirit of not being partisan is,” she continued. “And that bipartisanship doesn’t mean let’s come together to go to war and lower taxes on the rich. But bipartisanship means, OK, I will swallow all of my distaste in this situation. Because we have found a common interest.”
One of the largest murder cases in Ohio history, involving a doctor accused of killing 25 patients, will hinge on his colleagues’ cooperation and what they can offer up at trial, legal experts say.
And what those former co-workers reveal may help shed light on something that has so far eluded investigators: a motive.
A six-month review into William Husel, an intensive care doctor at Mount Carmel Health System in Columbus from 2015 to 2018, culminated Wednesday with his indictment. Franklin County prosecutors allege that Husel, 43, ordered excessive doses of opioids for those patients in intensive care, which either caused or hastened their deaths.
Many of those patients were in failing health and not alert when they came under Husel’s care, so “there would be no legitimate medical reason to administer” powerful painkillers, Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien said Wednesday.
William HuselFranklin County Sheriff’s Office
Husel has previously asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to the State Medical Board of Ohio, and if he decides not to testify in the criminal case, many of the holes will have to be filled in by those nurses and in-house pharmacists who took his orders.
“Those pharmacists and nurses will give you a trail of his conduct,” said Michael Benza, a professor and senior instructor in law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. “What prosecutors are going to need is for these other people to testify to show his connection, what his conduct was.”
In the fallout of an internal investigation, 30 employees, including nurses and pharmacists, were placed on leave, while 18 others with ties to the case no longer work there — with many of them having already left in prior years, hospital officials said.
O’Brien said Wednesday that he did not expect others to be criminally charged in the case, and that there was a clear chain of command in which the doctor “issues an order, a nurse takes medicine from a machine, and either that nurse or another administers” the drug on the doctor’s behalf.
Knowing the reason behind why someone committed a crime is helpful for juries to gain a fuller picture into what happened, but there’s no requirement for prosecutors to show a motive, said Steve Nolder, a defense attorney in Columbus.
A murder charge does require prosecutors to demonstrate the defendant’s actions were intentional — rising to a higher level than incompetence or medical negligence that isn’t necessarily criminal.
Nurses and pharmacists who can avoid prosecution would almost certainly be willing to talk, Benza said. While some may have failed to follow correct hospital or medical protocol by providing and administering the potentially fatal doses, Benza added, their actions also indicate that they were simply following a doctor’s orders — not knowingly taking part in a “purposeful killing.”
He likened their situation to how postal drivers might know there’s always a chance that some of the packages they’re delivering could contain narcotics.
“That doesn’t make them drug dealers,” Benza added.
Husel’s state of mind could also come into play at trial. But O’Brien on Wednesday made clear that he would not seek the death penalty against the disgraced doctor, which would require prosecutors to prove aggravated murder and that he preplanned the deaths and essentially worked out how he wanted to kill each patient.
O’Brien said it appears Husel was taking advantage of his position.
“I likened it to the burning down of a candle,” he said. “That candle, while there may just be a half an inch of wax left, if I blow that candle out, I’m causing that flame to go out sooner than it would naturally.”
Husel, whose medical license was suspended in late January, faces 15 years to life in prison for each charge, if convicted. He pleaded not guilty Wednesday, and was being held on a $1 million bond.
Richard Blake, his defense attorney, said Wednesday that the case is not murder and denied that Husel was attempting to euthanize patients. Physician-assisted suicide is illegal in Ohio.
Blake could not immediately be reached for further comment Thursday.
Husel, meanwhile, is entangled in at least 19 wrongful-death lawsuits stemming from the deaths at Mount Carmel.
Attorney Gerry Leeseberg, who is representing family members in 15 of the suits, said it’s possible some of them could be called to testify as part of the criminal case since they allege Husel misrepresented to them how close to death their loved ones were.
Also named in the various suits are the Mount Carmel Health System and some pharmacists and nurses. Mount Carmel officials said Wednesday the hospital continues to be cooperative with investigators and has implemented “meaningful changes throughout our system to ensure events like these never happen again.”
Leeseberg said he expects to begin taking depositions in the civil cases within a month.
Meanwhile, Husel’s civil attorney has requested a delay in the civil proceedings because of the on-going criminal investigation, and warned that Husel would have to invoke his Fifth Amendment right. The issue of whether to allow for a stay of proceedings is scheduled to be addressed in court later this month.
Leeseberg said he’s pleased that a criminal investigation has led to murder charges, but questioned how Husel’s actions weren’t calculated in some way given that an investigation showed how he was increasing fentanyl doses for patients little by little over time — until it finally caught supervisors’ attention.
Last November, in a case that prompted the hospital’s investigation into Husel, an 82-year-old woman with stomach pain was ordered 2,000 micrograms of fentanyl about five minutes before she died, according to a lawsuit. Such an amount of the synthetic opioid would be 20 times higher than what would be appropriate for a patient, depending on their size and circumstance, medical experts say.
Leeseberg said that Husel may have been persuasive enough to get his medication orders filled, and colleagues working late nights with him may not have felt they could overrule him.
Ultimately, Benza said, what may have motivated Husel to allegedly order such large amounts that would end his patients’ lives may remain a mystery — which would only deepen the unanswered questions in an already befuddling case.
“There may never be a why,” he added.
Editor’s Note: This report has been updated to include a generic image of fentanyl. No drug maker has been implicated in this case.
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden told an audience in Atlanta Thursday that he no longer supports the Hyde Amendment, which bans most federal funding from paying for abortions.
John Bazemore/AP
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Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden told an audience in Atlanta Thursday that he no longer supports the Hyde Amendment, which bans most federal funding from paying for abortions.
John Bazemore/AP
Former Vice President Joseph Biden said in Atlanta on Thursday that he now opposes the Hyde Amendment, which bans most federal funding for abortions through programs like Medicaid.
He attributed his change in stance to Republican legislators’ passing bills to limit access to abortions and efforts to topple the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized the procedure.
“If I believe heath care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone’s zip code,” Biden said at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Georgia, among the states that have have recently passed laws restricting abortions.
Biden, who has been consistently leading in the polls for the Democratic primary, has been a longtime supporter of the Hyde Amendment, just as it has been challenged by some in his own party. Many of the 2020 Democratic contenders are united in wanting the amendment to be repealed.
The Hyde Amendment is a 43-year-old law that prohibits taxpayer-supported health care programs from utilizing federal funds for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or to save a woman’s life.
Just earlier in the week, Biden’s campaign affirmed the candidate’s support for the ban, setting off criticism from abortion rights supporters, who called on Biden to reverse his long-held position.
Biden, 76, a Roman Catholic, told the crowd that he voted for the Hyde Amendment as a senator because he thought women could still have access to abortions even if federally-backed programs did not provide funding for the procedure.
“There was sufficient monies and circumstances where women were able to exercise that right, women of color, poor women,” Biden said. “It was not under attack,” he said. “As it is now.”
Now, Biden says, there are too many legal obstacles to seeking an abortion, which has prompted a turnaround on his position.
“I can’t justify leaving millions of women without access to the care they need and the ability to exercise their constitutionally protected right,” Biden said.
Leana Wen, president of Planned Parenthood, applauded Biden changing his mind on the issue, but she noted that his thinking on it has been lagging behind the women’s rights movement.
“Happy to see Joe Biden embrace what we have long known to be true: Hyde blocks people—particularly women of color and women with low incomes—from accessing safe, legal abortion care,” Wen said.
Former Vice President Joe Biden holds an 11-point lead over the rest of the Democratic presidential primary field as he continues to outpace his opponents, according to a new survey released Thursday.
Roughly 27 percent of those surveyed who say they will vote in their states Democratic presidential primary or caucus said Biden is their first choice, according to the Economist–YouGov poll.
Biden emerged as the top choice among male and female Democratic primary and caucus voters, as well as those who identified as white, black and Hispanic. He topped his competition among older voters above the age of 45, though he was beaten by Sanders among younger voters aged 18-44 as the Vermont senator continues to energize the party’s young progressive flank.
Biden holds a 12-point lead over the rest of the field when the voters are asked which contenders they would consider supporting and were allowed to pick more than one candidate.
Biden and Sanders had consistently finished first and second in national and state polls prior to Thursday’s survey.
The polling comes as the former vice president faces a string of recent criticisms from some Democrats.
Biden drew the ire of several of his 2020 opponents and abortion rights groups after his campaign confirmed his support for the Hyde amendment, which prevents government health care programs like Medicaid from paying for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman.
Biden was also criticized after it was revealed his camp lifted passages from other sources for his education and climate platforms.
The Economist–YouGov poll surveyed 1195 registered voters from June 2-4 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
This report was updated to clarify who voters first choice in the survey.
Take, for instance, the 1974 investigation of President Richard Nixon, when the House gave the president the opportunity to refute the charges against him either personally or through counsel and with additional fact witnesses. (Nixon chose to appear only through his attorney, James St. Clair.) After its impeachment proceedings, the House Judiciary Committee drafted particularized findings less in the nature of accusations to be assessed by the Senate – which of course never weighed in, given Nixon’s resignation – than in the nature of determinations of fact and law and verdicts of guilt to be delivered by the House itself, expressly stating that the president was indeed guilty as charged.
Mr. Newsom said he is not interested in a “midway” deal requiring California to loosen its rules. “A rollback of auto emissions standards is bad for the climate and bad for the economy,” he wrote in an email. “I applaud the automakers for saying as much in their letter today to the President. We should keep working towards one national standard — one that doesn’t backtrack on the progress states like California have made.”
The letters are the latest twist in Mr. Trump’s effort to roll back regulations on auto manufacturing, an industry he has vowed to support. Some industry chief executives and lobbyists have been privately telling the White House for months that the president’s efforts may do more harm than good, but Thursday’s action represents a particularly strong pushback.
“Our thinking is, the rule is still being finalized, there is still time to develop a final rule that is good for consumers, policymakers and automakers,” said Gloria Bergquist, a vice president at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.
Criticizing the president’s plan comes with risk for the automakers. The White House has courted their support for his moves, and, privately, some officials have said that they fear industry criticism could lead the president to retaliate by imposing tariffs on auto imports. That, too, could be painful, because many cars and components are now made or partly assembled across the border in Mexico or Canada.
But they also fear the costs of the uncertainty and regulatory headaches that potentially await them should Mr. Trump’s rollback go through as planned.
For example, automakers would have to demonstrate that the average mileage of all the cars they sell in California is much higher than in states like Utah, where the new Trump standard of about 37 miles per gallon would be in effect.
But because Americans increasingly prefer SUVs over thriftier vehicles, manufacturers might have to significantly cut prices on electric vehicles in the high-mileage states, a potentially money-losing proposition, while raising the prices of gas guzzlers. At the same time, auto lots in low-mileage states might hold a completely different mix of vehicles at different prices.
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