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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Pair of studies confirm there is water on the moon (Washington Post) There is water on the moon’s surface, and ice may be widespread in its many shadows, according to a pair of studies published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. The research confirms long-standing theories about the existence of lunar water that could someday enable astronauts to live there for extended periods. One scientific team found the telltale sign of water molecules, perhaps bound up in glass, in a sunlit region. Another group estimated the widespread prevalence of tiny shadowed pockmarks on the lunar landscape, possible shelter for water ice over an area of 15,000 square miles. Moon water has been eyed as a potential resource by NASA, which created a program named Artemis in 2019 to send American astronauts back to the moon this decade. Launching water to space costs thousands of dollars per gallon.

Colleges Slash Budgets in the Pandemic, With ‘Nothing Off-Limits’ (NYT) Ohio Wesleyan University is eliminating 18 majors. The University of Florida’s trustees this month took the first steps toward letting the school furlough faculty. The University of California, Berkeley, has paused admissions to its Ph.D. programs in anthropology, sociology and art history. As it resurges across the country, the coronavirus is forcing universities large and small to make deep and possibly lasting cuts to close widening budget shortfalls. By one estimate, the pandemic has cost colleges at least $120 billion, with even Harvard University, despite its $41.9 billion endowment, reporting a $10 million deficit that has prompted belt tightening. Though many colleges imposed stopgap measures such as hiring freezes and early retirements to save money in the spring, the persistence of the economic downturn is taking a devastating financial toll, pushing many to lay off or furlough employees, delay graduate admissions and even cut or consolidate core programs like liberal arts departments. “We haven’t seen a budget crisis like this in a generation,” said Robert Kelchen, a Seton Hall University associate professor of higher education who has been tracking the administrative response to the pandemic. “There’s nothing off-limits at this point.”

Thousands Forced to Evacuate From California Fires (NYT) Two firefighters were gravely injured and tens of thousands of Californians were forced to flee their homes on Monday as two new fires ripped through Orange County. About 90,800 residents in Irvine were put under mandatory evacuation orders because of the Silverado Fire and the smaller Blue Ridge Fire, said Shane Sherwood, a division chief for the Orange County Fire Authority. High winds and low humidity fueled the fires’ rapid growth. About 4,000 firefighters were fighting 22 wildfires across the state on Monday, according to Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency. As evening approached, the Silverado Fire had burned about 7,200 acres and the Blue Ridge Fire 3,000 acres. Later Monday night, the Orange County Fire Authority said that the Blue Ridge Fire had grown to 6,600 acres

Why N.Y.C.’s Economic Recovery May Lag the Rest of the Country’s (NYT) New York, whose diversified economy had fueled unparalleled job growth in recent years, is now facing a bigger challenge in recovering from the pandemic than almost any other major city in the country. More than one million residents are out of work, and the unemployment rate is nearly double the national average. The city had tried to insulate itself from major downturns by shifting from tying its fortunes to the rise and fall of Wall Street. A thriving tech sector, a booming real estate industry and waves of international tourists had helped Broadway, hotels and restaurants prosper. But now, as the virus surges again in the region, tourists are still staying away and any hope that workers would refill the city’s office towers and support its businesses before the end of the year is fading. As a result, New York’s recovery is very likely to be slow and protracted, economists said. “This is an event that struck right at the heart of New York’s comparative advantages,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, a Wall Street research firm. “Being globally oriented, being stacked up in skyscrapers and packed together in stadiums: The very thing that made New York New York was undermined by the pandemic, was upended by it.”

Asylum-Seekers Face Violent ICE Coercion (Foreign Policy) U.S. immigration officers have threatened, pepper-sprayed, beaten, and choked asylum-seekers from Cameroon to coerce them to sign their own deportation orders, the Guardian reports. A coalition of advocacy groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a complaint earlier this month describing a “pattern of coercion” by ICE agents at a Mississippi detention center that it called “tantamount to torture.” According to multiple accounts in the complaint, immigration officials used the coercive tactics to compel detainees to sign documents that would waive their rights to further immigration hearings. At least one individual was hospitalized as a result. One man, identified by the initials C.A., described how officers broke his fingers as they sought to force his fingerprint onto a document. “Officers grabbed me, forced me on the ground, and pepper-sprayed my eyes. … I was crying, ‘I can’t breathe,’ because they were forcefully on top of me pressing their body weight on top of me. My eyes were so hot. They dragged me outside by both hands,” said the individual, who was prevented from speaking to his lawyer before signing the document. C.A. was placed on a deportation flight on Oct. 13 but was one of two Cameroonians pulled off the plane moments before takeoff, as an investigation had begun into the allegations of abuse. At least 100 asylum-seekers, including many from Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, were deported on the same flight. For two consecutive years, the Norwegian Refugee Council has deemed Cameroon the world’s most neglected displacement crisis due to an insurgency in the north and a brutal government crackdown on two English-speaking separatist regions. Since 2016, the two conflicts have killed over 3,000 people and displaced more than 700,000.

Belgium’s former King meets estranged daughter for first time (Reuters) Belgium’s former King Albert has met his daughter Delphine for the first time, after she won a seven-year legal battle to prove that he is her father, earning recognition as a princess. The two met Albert’s wife, Queen Paola, last Sunday at their royal residence, the Belvedere castle, in the Brussels suburb of Laeken, the royal household said on Tuesday. “This Sunday October 25, a new chapter has opened, filled with emotions, calm, understanding and also hope,” the king, the queen and Delphine said in a statement. “Our meeting took place at the Belvedere Castle, a meeting during which each of us was able to express, calmly and with empathy, our feelings and our experiences.” “After the turmoil, the wounds and the suffering, comes the time for forgiveness, healing and reconciliation. This is the path, patient and at times difficult, that we have decided to take resolutely together.” Delphine Boel, 52, a Belgian artist, fought a seven-year legal battle to prove that the former king is her father. After a DNA test confirmed that, a court granted her the title of princess earlier this month. Albert, 86, who abdicated six years ago in favour of his son Philippe, had long contested Boel’s claim.

Germany cautions Thai king (Foreign Policy) Pro-democracy protesters in Thailand marched on the German Embassy in Bangkok to deliver a letter asking German authorities to investigate whether King Maha Vajiralongkorn “has conducted Thai politics using his royal prerogative from German soil or not.” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, speaking from Berlin, said the German government was “examining” the issue “and if there are things we feel to be unlawful, then that will have immediate consequences.”

Belarus Opposition Calls General Strike, as Protesters Gird for Long Fight (NYT) When Belarusians took to the streets in the hundreds of thousands in August, after Mr. Lukashenko claimed a re-election victory that was widely seen as fraudulent, many predicted that it was only a matter of days or weeks until the longtime authoritarian leader stepped down. Instead, Mr. Lukashenko and the large swath of the public that is arrayed against him have settled into a drawn-out test of wills, with their country’s future on the line. Protesters continue to turn out in the tens of thousands every Sunday, chanting “Go away!” and waving the white-red-white flag of the opposition. Mr. Lukashenko responds with waves of crackdowns by the police and, backed by Russia, appears determined to wait the protests out. “In such a tense situation, absolutely anything could turn out to be the trigger that topples the system,” said Artyom Shraibman, a Minsk-based nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “It could end in the course of a week, or it might not die for a year. No revolution has ever gone according to plan.” The authorities’ use of violence to try to put down the protests appears to be escalating, further feeding the anger in Belarusian society. It was a bout of severe police violence early in the uprising that supercharged the protests.

World’s largest IPO shows power of mobile payments in China (Washington Post) Go to a store, hop in a taxi, or even stop by a street peddler’s cart in China, and you will see QR codes strung up on colorful laminated squares. These mobile payment codes are the default way money changes hands in China these days, and the reason Ant Group’s initial public offering is set to be the world’s largest. China’s Ant Group—the Alibaba spinoff behind the ubiquitous blue QR payment codes across the world’s second-largest economy—announced plans on Monday to raise more than $34 billion in a joint listing across Shanghai and Hong Kong. This would trounce last year’s listing of oil titan Saudi Aramco, the reigning IPO champion. Mobile payments have replaced cash and credit cards in China as the preferred payment method, thanks to easy-to-use apps made by Ant Group and its closest rival Tencent. Ant Group’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay are similar in spirit to wildly popular U.S. stock trading app Robinhood, in that they are user-friendly enough that anyone with a smartphone and bank account can make complicated financial transactions with a click or swipe.

China sanctions U.S. weapons manufacturers (Foreign Policy) China will impose sanctions on three U.S.-based weapons manufacturers after the U.S. State Department approved the sale of $1.8 billion worth of weapons and equipment to Taiwan last Wednesday. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the sanctions were necessary “in order to uphold national interests.” It’s not yet clear what form the sanctions will take. More sanctions could soon be on the way, as the State Department approved a further $2.37 billion in weapons sales to Taiwan on Monday.

Vietnam evacuating low-lying areas as strong typhoon nears (AP) Vietnam scrambled Tuesday to evacuate more than a million people in its central lowlands as a strong typhoon approached while some regions are still dealing with the aftermath of recent killer floods, state media said. Typhoon Molave is forecast to slam into Vietnam’s south central coast with sustained winds of up to 135 kilometers (84 miles) per hour on Wednesday morning, according to the official Vietnam News Agency. The typhoon left at least 3 people dead and 13 missing and displaced more than 120,000 villagers in the Philippines before blowing toward Vietnam. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc ordered provincial authorities late Monday to prepare to evacuate about 1.3 million people in regions lying on the typhoon’s path. Phuc expressed fears that Molave, the latest disturbance to threaten Vietnam this month, could be as deadly as Typhoon Damrey, which battered the country’s central region in 2017 and left more than a hundred people dead.

Vaccines, not spy planes: U.S. misfires in Southeast Asia For months, by Zoom calls and then by jet, Indonesian ministers and officials scoured the world for access to a vaccine for the coronavirus that Southeast Asia’s biggest country is struggling to control. This month, their campaign paid off. Three Chinese companies committed 250 million doses of vaccines to the archipelago of 270 million people. A letter of intent was signed with a UK-based company for another 100 million. Absent from these pledges: the United States. Not only was it not promising any vaccine, but months earlier the United States shocked Indonesian officials by asking to land and refuel its spy planes in the territory, four senior Indonesian officials told Reuters. This would reverse a decades-long policy of strategic neutrality in the country. Washington’s campaign to buttress its influence in the region—part of its escalating global rivalry with China—has been misfiring, say government officials and analysts.

Bomb at seminary in Pakistan kills 8 students, wounds 136 (AP) A powerful bomb blast ripped through an Islamic seminary on the outskirts of the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar on Tuesday morning, killing at least eight students and wounding 136 others, police and a hospital spokesman said. The bombing happened as a prominent religious scholar during a special class was delivering a lecture about the teachings of Islam at the main hall of the Jamia Zubairia madrassa, said police officer Waqar Azim. The attack comes days after Pakistani intelligence alerted that militants could target public places and important buildings, including seminaries and mosques across Pakistan, including Peshawar.

Hopes for peace in Libya (Foreign Policy) The two main factions in Libya’s civil war agreed to a nationwide cease-fire at U.N.-backed talks in Geneva on Friday. Previous attempts to broker an end to the yearslong conflict have failed, but the new agreement has cautiously raised hopes that it will lay the groundwork for a peace deal. The cease-fire, signed by the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord and Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army, calls for all front-line forces to return to their bases and all mercenaries and foreign troops to withdraw within three months. The Libyan conflict has drawn in a multitude of international players, including Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. Their actions in the coming months could make or break the cease-fire.

#headlines #news

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frankinlaw-blog · 4 years ago

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greyssir · 2 years ago

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rijallaw · 2 years ago

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unpaidwagesca · 3 years ago

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shawnsedaghatirvine · 1 year ago

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madisonlawblog · 7 years ago

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lisabelkin-yahoonews · 8 years ago

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Civil servant? Worried about illegal orders? These lawyers want to defend you.

yahoo

The tweet was simple, but promised a very complicated future:

“Any government official who refuses to execute Trump’s orders on grounds of illegality will receive free representation from me. & I’m good!” it read.

Good is not an idle boast. The author, Ian Samuel, 33, has clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, worked for the Obama Justice Department, handled cybersecurity cases for a large corporate law firm and currently hosts the FirstMondays podcast about the Supreme Court while also teaching at Harvard Law School.

Frustrated by what he saw as a “clearly unconstitutional” executive order, he typed out his tweet on Friday night, plus a second one asking his 8000-plus followers to “please retweet this. My own audience is rather small but I need lots of people to know this offer exists.”

Then he went out to dinner. By the time he checked next, he’d been retweeted nearly 7000 times. By the end of the weekend, he’d compiled a list of nearly 100 other lawyers, law students and “people with no legal skills who want to help anyway, like one former secretary who offered to do any filing or stapling we needed.”

Ian Samuel, Harvard Law School lecturer who is offering to defend any government employees who refuse to carry out what they see as illegal executive orders . (Photo credit: Shannon McHugh)

He had also heard from some civil servants who might need to take him up on his offer.

Perhaps it was his own time spent in government, he said in an interview with Yahoo News, but when he read of the new immigration ban he immediately thought of the workers who would be needed to implement it.

“No government policy is self-executing,” he said in an interview, describing his thinking before posting his tweet. “The White House can command whatever they want, but it requires tremendous cooperation from the workers.”

And those workers, he says “aren’t under any obligation to break the law.” And, he contends, the policy announced Friday night to bar entry to citizens of seven largely Muslim nations, “is not only unwise, it also clearly breaks the law.”

Not all of the response to his tweet was positive. Several people angrily accused him of acting illegally himself. “They said next time I am up at Harvard, I’m going to have the police arrest you,” one said. “You are encouraging civil disobedience and anarchy.”

Fellow law professors who volunteered to help with the growing project stress that the group is not advocating anarchy, or encouraging civil servants not to do their jobs.

“We are not asking people to do things as much as we are saying ‘if you do this out of conscience we will defend you,” says Dan Epps, an associate professor of law at the Washington University School of Law and a co-host of the FirstMondays podcast, who met Samuel when he too clerked at the Supreme Court (Epps worked for Justice Kennedy.)

And there is more to defend them from than just threat of punishment from above, notes Leah Litman, assistant professor of law at the University of California at Irvine, who also clerked for Justice Kennedy. “Simply being asked to carry out an unlawful order puts government employees in jeopardy. If they do so, then they are open to lawsuits down the road by those who their actions have hurt.”

President Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office. (Photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Their hope, Samuel says, is that few employees will actually have to make the choice to enforce rules they think are illegal. “The ideal situation in my view is that no one ever needs the help we’re offering, because if you have a substantial number of, say, Customs and Border Patrol agents who say ‘we’re not going to do this’ the government would back off,” he says.

But they agree it is more likely that instead there will be more orders, affecting more employees, from more parts of government.

“It won’t just be the travel ban,” Litman says. “There may be other illegal orders related to other things coming out of this administration.”

They stress that they cannot promise to win the cases they take. While the Merit Systems Protections Board rules specifically protect the jobs of civil servants who refuse to enforce illegal acts, there is not a lot of case law on the details, because it hasn’t come up often in recent decades. “No one knows what any particular judge will do in a particular case,” Litman says.

But they do promise to take the case, pro bono.

“We are not saying ‘go do this’” Epps says. “We are saying ‘if you do this, we will fight for you.’”

Agreed Samuel: “What it means is we will put our money where our mouth is. There are so many of us out there ready to do something. A lot of legal energy waiting to be unleashed and unlocked.”

#_uuid:5d98cd33-1dde-3a60-95ec-76ab21dc4d0b #_author:Lisa Belkin #Donald Trump #_revsp:Yahoo! News #_lmsid:a077000000CFoGyAAL

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nothingman · 8 years ago

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The first week of President Donald Trump’s new administration started with a lawsuit claiming he’s already violated the Constitution.

The lawsuit, filed by a collection of high-powered ethics experts and legal scholars, argues that because Trump has refused to give up ownership of his hotels and other businesses, he’s violating a clause of the Constitution that prohibits government officials from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments.

This provision, known as the emoluments clause, is crucial to the debate about Trump’s conflicts of interest, because it’s one of the few available tools that might actually be able to force the president to give up his businesses or to hold him accountable if he doesn’t.

Some legal experts argue the lawsuit rests on shaky ground because it will be hard for the nonprofit that filed it, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, to prove that Trump’s actions have directly harmed them. But even if it fails, the lawsuit is important: It’s the first, and likely not the last, effort by an alliance of ethics experts and well-funded liberal groups to challenge Trump on constitutional grounds. A victory in court isn’t the only way these lawsuits can have an effect.

The case that Trump is violating the Constitution

Presidents aren’t legally required to give up their businesses and investments that could be a conflict of interest while they’re in office. But since Richard Nixon, all presidents have, both to try to ensure trust in government and to provide an example for their subordinates, who are legally required to eliminate conflicts of interest.

Trump is the exception. He’s claimed that he will put his two adult sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., in charge of his businesses while he’s in office. But he made clear that he’ll eventually be returning to them: “I hope at the end of eight years, I’ll come back and say, oh, you did a good job,” he said in January.

More important, Trump hasn’t given up ownership of the businesses. So if anybody wants to put some money in the president’s pocket, all they have to do is book a stay at the new Trump International hotel in downtown Washington, DC. The hotel, which has a sales position dedicated to diplomats, has successfully attracted foreign governments to book events and rooms: Azerbaijan celebrated Hanukkah and Bahrain marked its national day at the hotel in December, and Kuwait is scheduled to hold its own celebration there in February.

This is where the Constitution comes in. A section known as the emoluments clause prohibits any officeholder in the United States from accepting any “emolument, title, or office” from a foreign government. An “emolument” is usually defined as money or other benefits you get from a job or office you hold.

Until Trump was elected, the clause, originally a response to Benjamin Franklin accepting a snuffbox from the king of France, was pretty obscure. But the prospect of Trump making money off foreign governments’ bookings at his hotels or through his other businesses has made it a major issue at the start of his presidency.

Trump will continue to profit from his businesses while he’s in office. And many prominent scholars on the issue argue that as soon as that money starts coming in, he’ll violate the Constitution. The lawsuit provides a long list of potential emoluments clause violations, including bookings by diplomats at Trump hotels and leases in Trump Tower, global royalties from The Apprentice, which is shown on state-owned television networks in some countries, and permits issued by foreign governments for Trump-owned or -affiliated businesses in those countries.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare that Trump is in violation of the emoluments clause. Even if he is, though, it would be up to Congress to decide whether that merits impeaching him and removing him from office — and Republicans in Congress so far have been reluctant to look into Trump’s break with tradition on ethical issues.

Trump’s official position is that the emoluments clause does not apply to him. Sheri Dillon, a partner at the Washington law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius, laid this argument out at a January 11 press conference: “Paying for a hotel room is not a gift or a present, and it has nothing to do with an office. It’s not an emolument.”

Trump planned to avoid the issue, Dillon went on to say, by donating profits he made from foreign stays at his hotels to the federal government. But even if Trump follows through on this promise, it won’t alleviate concerns from former chief White House ethics lawyers and the head of the federal Office of Government Ethics, who maintain that the only ethical solution is for Trump to sell his businesses and let an outsider manage the proceeds.

The big question: Can CREW sue Trump at all?

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Zephyr Teachout, who challenged Andrew Cuomo in the 2014 New York gubernatorial primary, is one of the lawyers for the suit.

The lawsuit alleging that Trump violated the emoluments clause was filed by some of the nation’s foremost experts on constitutional law, corruption, and government ethics, including Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor of constitutional law who has also argued 35 cases before the Supreme Court; Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham University professor who studies corruption (and who has run for office twice in New York); and Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California Irvine school of law.

Still, it has a high bar to clear in court. It’s not just a question of proving Trump violated the Constitution. The lawyers must prove their client, the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, has been directly injured by what they argue are Trump’s unconstitutional actions.

To win a lawsuit, you first have to prove that you have “standing” — that whatever you’re suing about harmed you directly in a way that a court can remedy. If a judge decides you don’t have standing, your case will be dismissed. Historically, this has been a high hurdle for lawsuits against the president to clear, but not an impossible one.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the plaintiff in the case, argues that it has standing because Trump’s conflicts of interest and his possible violation of the emoluments clause have been very time-consuming for their organization. The lawsuit describes CREW as besieged by questions from the media about Trump’s business interests.

Answering those questions, according to the lawsuit, took time and resources away from the organization’s other work, including tracking potential violations of campaign finance law, filing comments on proposed regulations, and analyzing nonprofits’ tax forms.

The Supreme Court accepted this reasoning as standing enough to sue in a fair housing case in 1982, but some legal experts are skeptical. Jonathan Adler, a professor of law at Case Western Reserve University, explained his doubts on Twitter on Monday:

Standing claim in #CREWvTrump is quite a stretch. If CREW has standing here, Lujan would have come out the other way.

— Jonathan H. Adler (@jadler1969) January 23, 2017

Other law professors, many of them who, like Adler, tend to be conservative, concurred. But lawsuits where the argument for standing was initially perceived as questionable at best have succeeded in the past.

When the House of Representatives sued President Obama over a provision in Obamacare in 2014, arguing that Obama broke the law by giving money to insurers that hadn’t been authorized by Congress, many legal experts gave it little chance of succeeding because they believed Speaker of the House John Boehner did not have standing to sue. But the US District Court for the District of Columbia disagreed and allowed the suit to proceed in 2015, and later ruled in Boehner’s favor. (The case is under appeal.)

When Texas sued over Obama’s executive action on immigration that would have protected the parents of US-born children from deportation, some legal observers, including two American University law professors and former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse, argued that the state had no standing to sue. But Texas was allowed to proceed with its case, which it won in appellate courts. (The Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 in 2016, upholding the appellate court victory.)

Even if CREW isn’t found to have standing, though, the mere fact that it’s filing the lawsuit is significant.

The emoluments clause lawsuit could win without winning

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, proved that winning in court isn’t the only way efforts like CREW’s can triumph.

CREW has already challenged the president on at least three fronts. Besides the emoluments clause lawsuit, the group sent a letter to the General Services Administration about the lease on Trump’s DC hotel, which bars elected officials from benefiting from the property. On Friday, the group sued the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for more information on the Trump transition team’s request for the names of scientists working on climate change.

And that’s just in the first three days of Trump’s presidency.

This isn’t a surprise. The chair and vice chair of CREW’s board have been two of the most outspoken critics of Trump’s conflicts of interest: Norm Eisen, who founded CREW in 2003, is the chair, and Richard Painter, George W. Bush’s former ethics lawyer, is the vice chair. Since the campaign, they’ve become a crusading odd couple of sorts, setting aside other political differences (Painter is a lifelong Republican, although he voted for Hillary Clinton) to forcefully and repeatedly decry Trump’s refusal to divest himself of his business interests.

But there are also good political reasons for nonprofits that oppose Trump to sue him. Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, has filed dozens of lawsuits against the Clintons since President Bill Clinton was in office. In 2015, the group filed more than 20 lawsuits over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and also obtained emails from the State Department featuring exchanges between the Clinton Foundation and government officials. Both of those controversies turned out to be pivotal in the 2016 election.

In the aftermath of Election Day, when some Democrats argued that liberals needed their own version of Judicial Watch, CREW was suggested as one group that could step into the role, according to Politico’s Josh Gerstein. CREW was founded with a nonpartisan mission, but David Brock, a Clinton ally and Democratic donor, served as its chair for two years.

Brock spent inauguration weekend at a summit of Democratic donors in Florida and, according to Politico, described CREW as a group that’s likely to be particularly active as the Trump administration gets underway.

Even if CREW’s cases aren’t all winners in court, the legal process could force the Trump administration to divulge information it would rather keep secret. Eisen hopes the emoluments clause suit will force Trump to release his tax returns, which he’s refused to make public. A win in court isn’t the only way for the suit to score points.

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newstechreviews · 4 years ago

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(SAN FRANCISCO) — Dr. Michael Drake was chosen Tuesday to be president of the University of California, the first Black leader in the system’s 150-year history.

Drake, a seasoned university administrator, replaces Janet Napolitano in overseeing a sprawling, 280,000-student system dealing with issues of accessibility for Blacks and other minorities, along with slashed budgets and upended campus life because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Drake is a UC-trained physician who served as chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, and also led The Ohio State University before retiring from that job last month.

The UC Board of Regents unanimously approved Drake’s appointment.

“I’m excited and ready to go,” Drake told the board, noting the challenging times amid the pandemic, the threat of climate change, and “the yawning wounds of social injustice that we see in so many ways that really tears at the fabric of our lives.”

He noted that the UC system is “best equipped worldwide” to be “fully engaged in finding solutions.”

Napolitano, whose seven years as president end Aug. 1, said Drake’s appointment is “one more step in our university’s ongoing effort to ensure that the university reflects the rich diversity of our state. It follows other recent decisions by this board to address issues of inequity and systemic racism in our society.”

Napolitano and Drake’s references to systemic racism and social injustice echo the topics of mass protests worldwide following the death of George Floyd, a black man, who died in Minnesota after a white officer pressed a knee to his neck.

The first woman to serve as UC president, Napolitano added that: “I recognize the significance of these firsts and while I hope that this kind of leadership diversity at our nation’s universities will soon become commonplace, I am humbled and grateful to have been part of this chapter in UC’s history.”

Drake was UC Irvine’s chancellor from 2005 to 2014, when the university increased the number of applicants for undergraduate admission by more than 90% and added programs in law, public health, pharmaceutical sciences and nursing science.

Drake went on to become president at The Ohio State University. In that position, he worked to increase the numbers of minority and underrepresented students. The university boosted financial aid, and introduced changes to the tuition model.

“I’m a firm believer in inclusion. It takes all of us to do our best work,” Drake said at an afternoon teleconference, adding that it will be “a critical part of our moving forward.”

Drake said that during his Ohio tenure, the school reversed a 20-year trend of decreasing African American enrollment, with the number of Blacks admitted to the university doubling between 2014 and 2020. The school also “dramatically” increased retention and graduation rates for all students, Drake said.

He also worked to create minority representation during his years in the UC system. Prior to UC Irvine, he served as vice chancellor for health affairs for the UC system. He earned his medical degree in ophthalmology at UC San Francisco.

“Michael is a wise and thoughtful leader, never afraid to do the right thing at the right time,” said Kim A. Wilcox, UC Riverside’s chancellor, who served with Drake on the board of the University Innovation Alliance, a group of 11 public universities working to improve college access for low-income students, first-generation students, and students of color.

Drake takes the helm as the state budget cuts more than $470 million from the UC system, and many campuses have already announced plans for mostly online instruction in the fall.

“I am confident that Dr. Drake is the leader we need to guide our world-class higher education system through this time of unprecedented challenge,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said.

The announcement also comes as the California State University system is searching for a new leader. President Timothy White announced he would retire in June, but delayed his departure until the fall because of the pandemic.

Napolitano oversaw historic expansions at the 10-campus system and championed immigrant students. When she took the post in 2013, Napolitano seemed an unconventional choice to lead the prestigious public university system. She had no ties to UC and no experience in academic leadership in her career.

Napolitano has been governor of Arizona, secretary of U.S. Homeland Security, a federal prosecutor and a partner in a prominent Phoenix law firm.

During her tenure at UC, Napolitano won praise for helping to boost enrollment to historic numbers and reforming sexual misconduct policies.

However a state audit in 2016 found that Napolitano’s office not only amassed millions of dollars in reserve funds that weren’t disclosed but that top aides also sought to suppress criticism of her office in surveys that were supposed to be confidential and sent directly to the state auditor.

State Auditor Elaine Howle’s report said there was “insufficient evidence” to conclude Napolitano knew or approved of any interference. But the investigation and subsequent oversight prompted a rare public rebuke by the UC’s governing Board of Regents, and the university adopted measures to improve transparency.

Napolitano has battled a recurrence of breast cancer, but when she announced her resignation last September she said her health was good. She plans to resume teaching at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy in the fall of 2021.

_____

Watson reported from San Diego and Robert Jablon in Los Angeles contributed.

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marymosley · 4 years ago

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Highest Paid Lawyer Types: Which Field Is Best?

If you want a lucrative, satisfying career, but you’re not cut out for being a doctor, computer scientist, or engineer, you probably decided to obtain a law degree. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the average lawyer’s salary is $144,230. But where your job is, where you went to school, how long you’ve been practicing, and what type of law you specialize in are all important factors in determining your salary.

First, we’ll look at factors that impact your salary, and then we’ll look at five specific specializations that offer the most bang for your law-school buck. Here, then, are considerations that affect your salary:

Where you go to school

The top United States law schools are hard to get into. If you can get into a top-25 school and want to maximize your earning potential, opt for one of those tops law schools.

While the cost of law school will be substantial at a top 25 school (likely in excess of $55,000 per year for tuition), there’s a clear link between the law school you attend and your income potential during your legal career. If you’re particularly interested in breaking into Biglaw, most recruiting is done at the schools which are ranked highly by US News & World Report, so your best bet is to be on those campus when the firms come looking for candidates.

Bigger firms equal bigger paychecks

The size of your law firm will be one of your main salary determinants. So if you’re looking to become one of the highest paid lawyers, you may want to set your sights on a Biglaw job.

There’s no standard definition of Biglaw, but it includes the group of private US firms that employ the most lawyers (500 or so), smaller firms that adopt the Biglaw salary scale, and medium-sized firms with substantial international presence. As you’d probably expect, you’ll find Biglaw jobs in big cities.

About 20% of lawyers working for private firms are considered to be working in Biglaw. There’s cutthroat competition for these financially rewarding jobs.

Biglaw lawyers are usually paid on the Cravath scale—an associate compensation system based on the number of years as a practicing attorney and paid to New York lawyers working at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. Cravath has historically set associate salary trends, but the use of the “Cravath scale” term is now more honorary than factual. In recent years, firms such as Milbank and Simpson Thacher have been the first movers on first-year associate salaries.

The Cravath scale continues because firms compete for the top students from the best law schools. If one firm offers a higher salary, other firms tend to follow suit shortly afterward.

Outside of Biglaw, the average starting lawyer salary is $73,000. Inside Biglaw, though, beginning compensation jumps to $190,000—2.6 times the average outside of Biglaw and nearly $10,000 per month more! Of course, Biglaw lawyers don’t enjoy the greatest quality of life, but that’s one reason why they get paid so handsomely.

Where you practice

These factors are somewhat intertwined—for instance, Biglaw jobs are in major cities—but there are also distinct differences between states and even cities. Here’s a handy chart that shows you what lawyers make in different states.

One key takeaway from the chart is that there’s a tremendous variation in pay based simply upon the state where the job’s located. Here are the states with the highest salaries for attorneys:

1. District of Columbia — $192,530

2. California — $171,550

3. New York — $167,110

4. Massachusetts — $165,610

5. Connecticut — $153,640

But pay differs not only between states but between cities as well. For example, within the high-paying states of California, here are different salaries offered in three of the larger metro areas:

1. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA —$198,100

2. San Francisco-Redwood City-South San Francisco, CA Metropolitan Division — $189,660

3. Anaheim-Santa Ana-Irvine, CA Metropolitan Division — $189,150

Number of years in practice

With law schools increasing enrollment at a faster pace than employment, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to land a job as a lawyer, let alone one of the plum Biglaw jobs. However, once you’ve landed a job, your pay increases at a healthy clip.

Which type of law you specialize in

The type of law you practice will tremendously impact your salary. As you can see on this PayScale list of median attorney salaries (including bonuses, profit-sharing, and commissions), some types of attorneys make a lot more than others:

Patent attorney: $180,000

Intellectual property (IP) attorney: $162,000

Trial lawyer: $134,000 (remember, this is average; trial lawyers especially can be sink-or-swim)

Tax attorney: $122,000

Corporate lawyer: $115,000

Employment lawyer: $87,000

Real Estate attorney: $86,000

Divorce attorney: $84,000

Immigration attorney: $84,000

Estate attorney: $83,000

Public Defender: $63,000

Over time, this list may change. Estate attorneys used to rank higher on the list while compensation for IP attorneys has surged in recent years due to high demand.

Different sources, however, list other figures for various specializations. Some of the discrepancies may be due to factors previously discussed. Terminology can also be problematic. For instance, the term “patent attorney” and “IP attorney” are considered interchangeable in many contexts.

Finally, there’s a difference between “median” and “average” salaries. The national median salary for lawyers is $144,230 while the average is $120,910. The median represents the middle number in a given sequence of numbers when it’s ordered by rank. For instance, when quiz scores are listed from lowest to highest—30, 56, 65, 70, 84, 90, 90, 91, 92—the median, or middle, score is 84.

PayScale lists median attorney salaries, which are $20,000-plus higher than average salaries, but you can discern highest-salary trends using either measure. Money magazine came up with similar conclusions using average salary data. Here are highlights from Money magazine’s list of highest-paid lawyer specializations:

Medical Lawyers – $150,881 per year

If you can’t or don’t want to be a doctor, you can still make a good living in the medical field as a medical lawyer. These attorneys advise their clients on medical law and offer related services. When you think of medical lawyers, malpractice immediately springs to mind, but these attorneys also deal with other areas of health care law and personal injury.

IP Attorneys – $140,972 per year

Since Intellectual Property (IP) lawyers’ services are in great demand, they’re accordingly well-compensated. These types of lawyers need to keep on top of three distinct properties of intellectual property law: patents, trademarks, and copyrights.

One of the reasons IP lawyers make so much is due to the fact that it can be difficult to sort out IP facts and prove the case evidentially. These lawyers also often possess specialized knowledge and training in scientific or technical fields.

IP lawyers usually deal with patents that protect inventors’ rights and keep copycat competitors at bay during the time period the patent is valid. The stringent patent application process can be challenging even for experienced IP attorneys, so competition for the best, most experienced IP lawyers is high.

Trial Attorneys – $101,086 per year

Compensation for trial attorneys covers a broad range. Some are barely surviving while others are swimming in cash. However, there’s no doubt that a lawyer with a penchant for the courtroom can earn a decent living.

Successful trial attorneys should have a strong, wide-ranging knowledge of the law, but they also need to pay attention to tiny details that might tip the outcome of their cases. They need to stay current with new, potentially precedent-setting cases. Their verbal, writing, and memory skills should also be top-notch.

Personality also plays a huge role in trial attorneys’ compensation. The best trial attorneys are confident, persuasive courtroom performers who are nimble on their feet. Concocting strategies on the fly as new evidence surfaces, these attorneys understand how to work within established laws and use precedents to influence the outcome of their cases.

Tax Attorneys – $99,690 per year

Tax attorneys make $80,000 on the low side and $105,000 on the high scale, with most practitioners making nearly $100K. This type of attorney represents a company that deals with federal, state, or even local taxing bodies.

Tax attorneys prepare legal documents and help devise tax-saving strategies. Of course, they need to keep abreast of changes in the ever-fluid tax arena and implement those changes in a timely fashion.

Corporate Lawyer – $98,822 per year

Like trial lawyers, there’s a broad range of income potential within this category. At the low end of the salary scales, some corporate lawyers make less than some schoolteachers–$66,000. The more successful corporate lawyers can earn well into six figures, though.

A corporate lawyer counsels clients on business transactions as they relate to the law, including the sale of businesses, acquisitions, and mergers. This type of lawyer prepares a flurry of contracts and reads through offers to ensure that the legalese is in the best interests of their clients, which are usually corporations and businesses. They also help create new companies, source venture capital, and facilitate the selling and buying of ownership interests.

Law can be a satisfying, rewarding profession, but some specialties are more lucrative than others. If you’ve always imagined being a public defender and righting wrongs, that’s commendable, but realize you’re signing up for a modest lifestyle. Do your homework before you dive into law school, and begin with the end in mind.

Originally posted on Highest Paid Lawyer Types: Which Field Is Best?

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neptunecreek · 5 years ago

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The Foilies 2020

Recognizing the year’s worst in government transparency

“The Ringer,” the first track on Eminem’s 2018 album, Kamikaze, includes a line that piqued Buzzfeed reporter Jason Leopold’s curiosity: the rapper claimed the Secret Service visited him due to some controversial lyrics about Ivanka Trump. To find out if it was true, Leopold filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the federal law that allows anyone to demand access to government records.

After a year of delays, the Secret Service provided Leopold 40 pages about the interview with the real Slim Shady, including a note that he was “exhibiting inappropriate behavior.”

This wasn’t the first time government transparency has intersected with hip-hop. Type “Freedom of Information” into Genius.com (the site formerly known as Rap Genius) and you’ll turn up tracks by Sage Francis and Scroobius Pip using FOIA as lyrical inspiration. The hip-hop duo Emanon sampled Joanna Newsom for “Shine Your Light,” in which they declare that due to redactions of FOIA documents, we’re “never gonna see the true history of this nation.” Even George Clinton, whom many rappers cite as inspiration, chanted about “getting funky” with the freedom of information on the track “Maximumisness.”

There’s nothing quite like an envelope of freshly photocopied documents to make a journalist or open-government advocate break into song. But there’s also nothing that brings the melody to a record-scratching halt than the government withholding information without due cause.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international nonprofit based in San Francisco that fights to uphold civil liberties in the digital age —work that includes filing hundreds of public records requests each year with a variety of government agencies. In collaboration with the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, we also compile “The Foilies,” a list of anti-awards that name-and-shame government officials and corporations that stymie the public’s right to know.

Now in its sixth year, The Foilies are part of the annual Sunshine Week festivities, when news and advocacy organizations celebrate and bring attention to state and federal open-records laws that allow us to hold the powerful to account.

And the winners are….

The Twitter-Assist Award: President Donald Trump

The Space Opera Award: New Mexico Spaceport Authority

The Catalog Is Out of the Bag Award: Special Services Group

The Smokescreen Award: Texas Elementary Schools

The Uncontrolled Burn Award: Federal Aviation Administration

The Queen of all FOIA Denials: Egyptian Museum of Berlin

The Busiest Government Office Award: U.S. Department of Justice

The Pointless Redaction Award: Mueller Report

The Repeat Winner Award: Atlanta Mayor’s Office

The Unnecessary Fee Award: Horry County, South Carolina

The Surveillance for You, Privacy for Us Award: Ring Inc.

The About Face on Face Recognition Award: Immigration and Customs Enforcement

The Hardest Department to FOIA Award: Chicago Police Department

The Choose-Your-Own Exemption Award: Immigration and Customs Enforcement

The Anything Can Be Confidential Award: U.S. Supreme Court

The Resigned to Secrecy Award: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown

The Enemy of the Press Award: California Attorney General Xavier Becerra

The Stupid, Dumb, F**king Idiot Award for Political Interference: U.S. Department of the Interior

The Twitter-Assist Award: President Donald Trump

It’s not often that prying documents out of the CIA comes with a little bit of help from the commander in chief. But Buzzfeed reporter Jason Leopold (yeah, he turns up a lot in The Foilies) stumbled into just that kind of luck when Trump tweeted an acknowledgement that he had ended “massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments to Syrian rebels fighting Assad.”

Leopold requested information on the payments from the CIA. Despite the president’s confirmation that these payments existed, the CIA still refused to confirm or deny the records existed, a move known in the legal world as a “Glomar response.” Leopold went to court and a judge found that because Trump had acknowledged the payments publicly, the CIA had to stop playing secrecy games and hand over the documents.

The Space Opera Award: New Mexico Spaceport Authority

In space, no one can hear you scream about thwarted public records requests, but down on Earth, you can take the government to court and make them listen.

That’s what Heath Haussamen, editor and publisher of NMPolitics.net, did after the New Mexico Spaceport Authority in 2017 refused to hand over basic public records related to the private companies that lease real estate at Spaceport America, the much-publicized commercial launchpad just outside Truth or Consequences, N.M.

With a New Mexico Attorney General’s Office opinion in hand that determined the Spaceport Authority had violated the state’s open records law, Haussamen filed a lawsuit. After following the wormhole of the justice system, Haussamen finally received the records in 2019, along with a $60,000 settlement for his trouble—but not before the New Mexico Legislature stepped in and passed a new law granting the Spaceport even more secrecy over its operations.

The Catalog Is Out of the Bag Award: Special Services Group

In response to a California Public Records Act request for information about surveillance technology, the Irvine Police Department in California provided researchers at MuckRock and Open the Government with a catalog called the “Black Book” from a secretive company called Special Services Group. The catalog advertised a range of spy devices that would make Q drool, including cameras that can be concealed in gravestones, vacuum cleaners and baby car seats.

But, as Vice’s Motherboard prepared to publish a story on the documents, Special Services Group stepped out of the shadows to issue sweeping legal threats, arguing that by publishing the documents, researchers were violating everything from federal copyright law to arms control regulations. Vice, MuckRock and Open the Government rightfully resisted the censorship threat, since that’s not how it works. Special Services should have taken its beef to the city's law firm, which reviewed and then released the documents.

The Smokescreen Award: Texas Elementary Schools

Across the country, parents, educators and lawmakers are fuming about nicotine “vaping” among underage students. Considering that this is branded as a public health crisis, one would assume schools would be forthcoming with data about vaping incidents on campuses to help inform policymakers.

That’s not what Sarah Rafique, a reporter with ABC 13 Investigates in Houston, found when she filed records requests with more than 1,000 schools across Texas. About 10% of agencies missed the 10-day deadline to respond. One school demanded an (illegal) flat fee of $150 for all requests, while another agency demanded to know the reason for the request before they’d hand over the documents. “It was weird, too, that some districts said they didn't have any data/information but when I explained I was reaching out to 1,000 districts (and they wouldn't be singled out, per se) all of a sudden they had numbers to share,” Rafique said in a Twitter thread outlining the most troubling responses to her requests.

The Uncontrolled Burn Award: Federal Aviation Administration

Courtesy of Mike Katz-Lacabe

Someone at the Federal Aviation Administration has an unhealthy relationship with their CD burner.

Last year, Mike Katz-Lacabe of the Center for Human Rights and Privacy filed a FOIA request with the FAA to get records about helicopters and airplanes operated by 19 different police agencies in California. The FAA turned up 120 MB of files. They could have put them on a single CD-ROM, which can hold about 700 MB of information. Instead, the FOIA officer burned the records to 19 separate discs and sent them to Katz-Lacabe in the mail.

The Queen of all FOIA Denials: Egyptian Museum of Berlin

For three years, Cosmo Wenman battled with the German-government-funded Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection (aka, the Egyption Museum of Berlin) over a freedom of information campaign to release the 3D scan of a bust of Queen Nefertiti. The museum denied the request for the high-quality scan of the over 3,000-year-old statue, arguing that it would threaten its commercial interests—namely by creating competition in the sale of images or reproductions.

“The organization was treating its scan of Nefertiti like a state secret,” Wenman wrote in Reason.

After a prolonged battle, and temporary access to a very slow computer containing the scan, Wenman was finally given a USB drive with the full 3D image. No word on whether museum visits have declined precipitously.

The Busiest Government Office Award: U.S. Department of Justice

In response to yet another FOIA request from Buzzfeed reporter Jason Leopold, this time for documents relating to the Mueller investigation, the Justice Department claimed it has as many as 19-billion responsive documents. This would mean the investigation had generated or collected more than 28-million documents each day, weekends included.

Although Mueller’s investigation lasted 22 months, the DOJ told Leopold it would take 2,300 years for it to review and produce the requested records for public disclosure. Leopold tweeted that he is exploring cryogenics as a way to review the records in the 4320s.

The Pointless Redaction Award: Mueller Report

Courtesy of the National Security Archive

Among the many blacked-out sections of the Mueller Report, a few redactions particularly stood out. The National Security Archive reported that the Justice Department redacted sections of public news stories that the Mueller Report quotes or cites. For example, the report cites a CNN headline as: “[Redacted] Says He Won’t Agree to Plea Deal”—but the CNN story is freely available online, and a quick Google search shows that the redacted words are “Roger Stone Associate.”

The Repeat Winner Award: Atlanta Mayor’s Office

Back in 2018, then-Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed earned a Foilie when he responded to a corruption probe by releasing 1.476 million documents, which he displayed in a six-foot wall of boxes at a press conference, even though it turned out that many of the documents were entirely blank or fully redacted.

Mayor Reed is no longer in office, but his legacy lives on in Atlanta, where his former press secretary, Jenna Garland, was convicted this year for violating Georgia’s Open Records Act. The New York Times reported that she sought to frustrate journalists’ requests for records by directing city spokespeople to be “as unhelpful as possible,” “drag this out as long as possible” and “provide information in the most confusing format available.”

This is the first time that a public official has been charged or convicted under Georgia’s open records laws—and if recent history is a guide, it may not be the last.

The Unnecessary Fee Award: Horry County, South Carolina

Horry County, South Carolina, is the home of Myrtle Beach and its many dedicated beach-goers—and home to this year’s most unnecessary FOIA fee. The Myrtle Beach Sun News sent out requests to a number of local towns and public entities inquiring about payments made on behalf of public agencies to settle lawsuits in the last five years. Many of the towns in Horry County emailed the responsive documents back for free; some charged less than $50, but the county itself asked for $75,500.

When asked why the records cost so much, the county was unable to provide an exact accounting. Although its $75,500 demand is not the most outrageous total to grace the Foilies, Horry County’s response is award-worthy in light of how disproportionate it was compared to other agencies.

The Surveillance for You, Privacy for Us Award: Ring Inc.

EFF has written a lot about Amazon Ring surveillance doorbells, mostly aided by a torrent of great investigative reporting done by journalists using public records requests. The doorbells may be capturing the movements and conversations of neighbors and pedestrians in neighborhoods all across the United States, but Ring employees really value their privacy.

One researcher, Shreyas Gandlur, turned up an email from Ring to the Joliet City Police Department, asking them to redact the names and email addresses of any Ring employees that may show up in emails released through FOIA. “Ring employees have strong personal privacy interests,” wrote one Ring employee (whose name was redacted).

The About Face on Face Recognition Award: Immigration and Customs Enforcement

How hard is it to unmask records on face recognition? The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) discovered the many faces of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when it filed a request for information on the agency’s acquisition and use of face recognition technology.

ICE initially said it had only three redacted records—while failing to search one of its largest directorates, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). After POGO successfully appealed, ICE responded that a query of ERO had been conducted and was being reviewed. Two months later, ICE said the request had been closed. After POGO reached out to the agency, ICE then contradicted itself, stating that the appeal was assigned and ERO would be queried. A follow-up request seeking updated information was met with silence. Accordingly, POGO has decided to face off with ICE in a different venue—the courtroom—after filing a lawsuit for the records.

The Hardest Department to FOIA Award: Chicago Police Department

In 2019, the Chicago Police Department was in the news multiple times for its inability to respond to even the most straightforward public records requests.

After members of CPD raided the wrong home and traumatized a family, the family sought to get the body camera footage of the raid. The family believed that, in addition to showing the mistaken raid, it would also show police misconduct. Unfortunately, the CPD refused to turn over the footage.

In July, the CPD was forced to turn over documents after 14 months of stalling over a FOIA request for files on officers. After a legal opinion from the Illinois Attorney General, the CPD turned over a spreadsheet with more than 33,000 names dating back to the 1940s.

Does the Chicago Police Department use search warrants? Of course it does, but you wouldn’t know it by its FOIA responses. Also in July, the CPD told Lucy Parsons Labs that it did not have any responsive documents for a request for all executed search warrants. After several months of fighting, the department finally released records about 11,000 search warrants issued over a five-year period.

The Choose-Your-Own Exemption Award: Immigration and Customs Enforcement

What’s an agency to do when it can’t identify a FOIA exemption to justify withholding records? In ICE’s case, it created its own.

As is common practice in immigration court, where there is no discovery process, attorney Jennifer Smith sought the immigration file of a client by filing a FOIA request with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). USCIS told Smith that it had identified 18 records, but instead of producing those records, it mysteriously instructed Smith to request them from ICE.

Two years later, ICE finally responded that it was withholding the records to “deny fugitive alien FOIA requesters access to the FOIA process when the records could assist the alien in continuing to evade immigration enforcement efforts.” While admittedly creative, there is no “fugitive disentitlement” exemption under FOIA. Moreover, this fake exemption countered exactly what immigration attorneys are trying to do: ensure that their clients won’t be considered fugitives.

The ACLU of Colorado sued on Smith’s behalf, and in 2019, won the case.

The Anything Can Be Confidential Award: U.S. Supreme Court

With the rise of outsourcing, no-bid contracts and elected officials seeking to reduce government spending, private businesses and government have never been more intertwined. Whether it be facial recognition technology or algorithms used to determine whether people receive public-assistance benefits, private companies and the technology they build are embedded in government’s daily work.

Yet in June, the U.S. Supreme Court made it much harder for the public to access records that involve private companies. In the case Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader, the court interpreted a FOIA exemption broadly to allow the government to withhold records that a company considers confidential. Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision, private information could not be withheld from a FOIA requester unless the government or the business could show that making the information public would harm the business. But under the court’s June decision, the government can withhold any information a business deems private.

Confidential business information under FOIA is thus in the eye of the beholder, a result that will frustrate the public’s ability to understand how the government uses private companies’ products and technologies as part of its duties.

The Resigned to Secrecy Award: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown came into office with a stated goal of restoring trust after public records showed that her predecessor had ordered officials to delete thousands of his emails from state servers. One concrete step Brown took to improve transparency: creating a state public records advocate to push for more openness.

The abrupt resignation of Oregon’s newly minted public records advocate, Ginger McCall, in September significantly undercut Brown’s stated commitment to transparency. In her resignation letter to Brown, McCall said that she received “meaningful pressure” from Brown’s office to advocate for the governor’s interest, rather than the public’s interest in having a transparent state government. Brown’s office at first denied McCall’s characterization and later chalked it up to a difference in views on McCall’s position.

McCall released notes of her meetings with Brown’s staffers that reflected an effort to make McCall’s position report directly to the governor’s staff, rather than being an independent advocate for the public. If there is any doubt, we believe McCall. She has long been a conscientious and honest advocate for the public’s right to know.

The Enemy of the Press Award: California Attorney General Xavier Becerra

Obtaining data about police misconduct under California’s public records law can be a crime, according to California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. That was the upshot of legal threats Becerra’s office made to two investigative reporters in March after they received data on police officer arrests and convictions in the past 10 years in response to a public records request filed with the Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training.

According to a letter from Becerra’s office, the spreadsheet, which detailed officers’ criminal histories, was off-limits to the public and its mere possession by the reporters was a misdemeanor. The reporters didn’t back down and instead “formed an unprecedented collaboration to investigate the list, involving three dozen news outlets across the state.”

Becerra’s legal threats backfired spectacularly, leading to statewide comprehensive reporting about criminal investigations into police officers, including a searchable database. But Becerra should never have threatened the journalists in the first place, an authoritarian move that conflicts with his efforts these past years to position himself as the counterweight to President Donald Trump.

The Stupid, Dumb, F**king Idiot Award for Political Interference: U.S. Department of the Interior

In 2019, reporters at Roll Call broke the news that the Interior Department had been allowing political officials to intervene in the processing of FOIA requests, either by stalling or potentially blocking the agency from fulfilling the request.

The reporting on this so-called “awareness review process” was based on FOIA documents obtained by Aaron Weiss of the Center for Western Priorities, an environmental organization based in Colorado. Among the scores of examples Weiss obtained was a stalled FOIA request from Buzzfeed’s Jason Leopold for all emails in which Interior press secretary Heather Swift used the terms “fucking," "idiot," "stupid" and "dumb.” (Swift had already been caught calling CNN’s René Marsh a “fucking idiot” in an email.)

“If political appointees get to decide what the public gets to see, it completely undermines the letter and spirit of FOIA,” Weiss says.

Want to read more FOIA horror stories? Check out The Foilies archives.

from Deeplinks https://ift.tt/2WlYOfn

#Deeplinks

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socialjusticeartshare · 5 years ago

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U.S. Must Provide Mental Health Services to Families Separated at Border

Under a “state-created danger” legal doctrine, a judge ordered the government to provide counseling and other services to compensate for trauma.

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge has ruled that the government must provide mental health services to thousands of migrant parents and children who experienced psychological harm as a result of the Trump administration’s practice of separating families.

The decision, issued late Tuesday, marks a rare instance of the government being held legally accountable for mental trauma brought about by its policies — in this case, border security measures that locked thousands of migrant parents in detention while their children were placed in government shelters or foster homes.

“This is truly groundbreaking,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, said of the decision. “The court is recognizing that when a government creates a danger that inflicts trauma, the government is responsible for providing a solution. It is not something I have seen a court do before.”

Judge John A. Kronstadt of the United States District Court in Los Angeles ordered the federal government to immediately make available mental health screenings and treatment to thousands of families forcibly separated under the policy, which was primarily carried out in 2017 and 2018 — though hundreds of similar separations still occur.

In his ruling, Judge Kronstadt referred to previous federal cases that found that governments can be held liable when with “deliberate indifference” they place people in dangerous situations. In the past, the “state-created danger” doctrine has been applied when a police officer ejected a person from a bar late at night in very cold weather, or when a public employer failed to address toxic mold that caused workers to fall ill.

In this case, the judge said, the Trump administration could be held accountable for the enduring psychological harm brought about by forcibly taking children from their parents at the border with no guarantee of when or how they would be reunited.

Thousands of parents spent months in often agonizing limbo, plaintiffs in the case argued, unable to communicate with their children and in many cases not knowing even where the children were being held.

The judge’s preliminary injunction will require the government to arrange mental health screenings along with psychological counseling and other services, perhaps long term. The process could be cumbersome and expensive because thousands of migrants who were affected by the policy are spread across the country and are in various stages of immigration court proceedings. Many already have been deported and would presumably not be eligible for any mental health care.

Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond, who specializes in federal courts, called the decision “pathbreaking.”

“The question is,” he said, “what happens from here and can it be enforced? I assume the government will appeal and get the order stayed because it’s brand new. They’ll say the judge got it wrong.”

The family separations were a key part of the Trump administration’s effort to deter migrant families at the southwestern border, where they have been arriving in large numbers, most of them fleeing violence and deep poverty in Central America.

Under the zero-tolerance policy, those who crossed the border illegally were criminally prosecuted and jailed, a process that the government said could not be carried out without removing their children.

The federal government had reported that nearly 3,000 children were forcibly removed from their parents under the policy. An additional 1,556 migrant families were separated between July 2017 and June 2018, the government said last month.

President Trump suspended the policy in June 2018 amid a public outcry, and a federal judge in San Diego ordered the government to reunify the families.

But Judge Kronstadt found that the government had taken “affirmative steps to implement the zero-tolerance policy,” and that its implementation had caused “severe mental trauma to parents and their children.”

Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer with Public Counsel, which brought the case along with the law firm Sidley Austin, said the judge had found that the separation policy violated the families’ constitutional rights.

“You cannot have a policy of deliberately trying to injure a family bond,” he said. “Cruelty cannot be part of an enforcement policy, and here it was the cornerstone of the policy.”

Government lawyers had argued that it could not be held liable for mental health problems that might occur in the future, and that there had been no proof of existing irreparable harm to any of those subjected to the policy.

Further, they said that any harm that might have occurred was quickly abated when families were reunited.

The government declined to comment on the court’s ruling.

The lead plaintiff in the case, a Guatemalan migrant identified as J.P., was separated from her teenage daughter at the border on May 21, 2018. For more than a month, the mother said, she had no idea of her child’s whereabouts. They spoke for the first time after they had been apart for 40 days, and only because a lawyer encountered J.P. during a visit to the detention center in Irvine, Calif., where she was being held.

Until then, no one had explained to her in a language she could understand — she speaks a Mayan language — what had happened to her daughter, according to her lawyer, Judy London, who is with Public Counsel. Her daughter, 16, had been sent to a shelter in Phoenix.

“Despite her obvious terror and inability to comprehend what was happening around her, no one made sure she had understood information about how she could contact her daughter,” Ms. London said in a declaration filed with the court.

“To the contrary, the guards insisted she needed no help and could on her own use phones to reach her daughter,” she said.

Their reunion two months later, when her daughter arrived on a flight to Hollywood Burbank Airport near Los Angeles, was witnessed by The New York Times.

The woman, dressed in the black jacket and trousers she had worn during her journey over land to the United States, waited for her daughter’s plane to land. When the girl emerged, J.P. hugged her, cradled her in her arms and stroked her hair as the child wept on her shoulder.

They are living in Florida as their asylum case winds through the immigration courts.

Miriam Jordan is a national immigration correspondent. She reports from a grassroots perspective on the impact of immigration policy. She has been a reporter in Mexico, Israel, Hong Kong, India and Brazil. @mirjordan

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#families separated at the border #mental health services #US. must provide

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davidoespailla · 6 years ago

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Americans Spent $100 Million on Tropical Real Estate. They Were Scammed, FTC Says

Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images

The U.S. government’s shutdown of what it called a $100 million real-estate investment scam in Belize highlights a growing concern: the targeting of Americans retiring abroad.

The developers were selling lots in a remote jungle area that they said would become a luxurious resort community. Instead, they pocketed the investors’ money and built little, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission alleged.

The FTC filed suit last month against the developers and Belize’s Atlantic International Bank, alleging it facilitated the alleged fraud. The incident marked the first time the FTC sued a foreign bank. Through a court order, the FTC froze $10 million of the bank’s assets. Additionally, in a rare move for a civil matter, a federal court in Maryland froze the passports and assets of four defendants who live in California.

The law firm Barrow & Williams, which for years has represented the developers, is owned in part by the prime minister of Belize, Dean Barrow.

Mr. Barrow said he was never informed of any complaints about the real-estate development. The firm’s work for the developers “had nothing to do with being complicit in any other things that are being alleged to constitute a scam,” he said.

AIB Chief Executive Ricardo Pelayo said in a statement: “The bank did not play any part in any alleged fraud involving Sanctuary Belize.”

The project, marketed under various names including “Sanctuary Belize,” spanned 13 years and involved more than 1,000 investors, said Jonathan Cohen, the FTC’s lead attorney on the case. In its filings, the FTC collectively refers to seven individuals and 17 companies named as defendants as “Sanctuary Belize Enterprises.”

The case has come to light as more Americans are retiring overseas in countries whose laws may offer them less financial protection. The number of retirees collecting Social Security while living abroad rose to more than 413,000 in 2017, up nearly 40% from a decade prior, according to Social Security Administration data, and Central American countries have become a draw.

About 120,000 Americans live in Costa Rica, up from about 20,000 in 2006, according to estimates published on the State Department’s website. Panama and Nicaragua have also taken steps to make it easier for retirees to immigrate, looking to attract more Americans whose dollars help stimulate the local economy.

Belize, a country of 375,000 along the Caribbean, has experienced sharp growth in tourism, dominated by Americans, and second-home markets, Mr. Barrow said. It boasts a warm climate, barrier reefs and an English-speaking population.

In a filing with the Maryland court, the FTC said that investor concerns with the Sanctuary Belize project prompted multiple lawsuits filed in Belize, but that those suits brought no action and “were resolved under questionable circumstances.”

In 2016, a group of investors sued the developers in Belize. Their Belizean attorney, Michael Young, was “fatally shot in his home during the pretrial proceedings, although local authorities claimed it was a suicide,” the filings say. The developers then sued some of the investors for defamation and prevailed before the investors’ lawsuit went to trial. Both the defamation case and the lawsuit were settled by one of the investors, who received payments from the developers, the FTC filings said.

Regarding Mr. Young, “the matter was investigated and the police concluded that it was suicide,” said Audrey Wallace, chief executive officer in the office of the prime minister. “Any suggestion otherwise is regrettable.”

Trisha Nelson, a 47-year-old in Ontario, Canada, said she was a victim of the alleged scam. In early 2014, she and her then-husband put down $500,000 in cash toward two townhouses slated for construction a few months later.

Two years later, ground hadn’t broken for her townhouses and she couldn’t get a refund, she said. She gathered other disgruntled investors to fire off complaints to officials in Canada, the U.S. and Belize, including Mr. Barrow, she said.

In August and September 2017, two FTC agents posing as potential buyers recorded conversations with Sanctuary Belize Enterprises salespeople and received marketing material about the project. The FTC’s complaint said that potential investors were told that lots were a “low risk investment” and that the project would be finished quickly. In fact, the FTC’s filing alleges, “the development is nowhere close to finished and is unlikely to ever be finished.”

The complaint alleges that the project was directed by Andris Pukke, a two-time felon from the U.S. well known to the FTC. Mr. Pukke pleaded guilty in 1996 to a felony charge of mail fraud; he was sentenced to probation. The FTC sued him for deceptive practices in 2003, when he ran debt-counseling firms AmeriDebt and DebtWorks. In 2010, he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in the FTC case and in a personal bankruptcy proceeding. Mr. Pukke served 15 months of an 18-month sentence in federal prison in 2011 and 2012.

The Belize property was also familiar to the agency: In 2006, a federal-district court in Maryland entered a judgment against Mr. Pukke for $172 million in the FTC’s case, of which $137 million would be suspended if Mr. Pukke cooperated. “He absolutely did not cooperate,” said Mr. Cohen. The court appointed a receiver, Robb Evans & Associates, to recover funds, including Mr. Pukke’s property in Belize. Robb Evans tried and failed to wrest control of the Belize property from Mr. Pukke and his partners, who used Barrow & Williams to fight the receiver, the FTC filings say.

The Wall Street Journal attempted to reach Mr. Pukke through a lawyer who previously responded on his behalf; neither the lawyer nor Mr. Pukke responded to requests for an interview for this article. Last year, through the attorney, Kristin McGough, Mr. Pukke declined to speak to the Journal. Ms. McGough said Mr. Pukke had nothing to do with the Sanctuary project other than to provide occasional marketing consulting.

On Nov. 7, FTC attorneys made an unannounced visit to Sanctuary Belize Enterprise offices in Irvine, Calif., where temporary restraining orders and a preliminary injunction were served, halting sales, freezing assets and allowing the government’s team to collect evidence. The FTC is currently seeking a permanent injunction, said Mr. Cohen.

The post Americans Spent $100 Million on Tropical Real Estate. They Were Scammed, FTC Says appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

Americans Spent $100 Million on Tropical Real Estate. They Were Scammed, FTC Says

#TRUSTED LOCAL REALTOR #Americans Spent $100 Million on Tropical Real Estate. They Were Scammed #FTC

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