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New York Mayor’s Race in Chaos After Elections Board Pulls Again Outcomes

New York Mayor’s Race in Chaos After Elections Board Pulls Back Results

The New York City mayor’s race plunged into chaos on Tuesday night when the city Board of Elections released a new tally of votes in the Democratic mayoral primary, and then removed the tabulations from its website after citing a “discrepancy.”

The results released earlier in the day had suggested that the race between Eric Adams and his two closest rivals had tightened significantly.

But just a few hours after releasing the preliminary results, the elections board issued a cryptic tweet revealing a “discrepancy” in the report, saying that it was working with its “technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred.”

By Tuesday evening, the tabulations had been taken down, replaced by a new advisory that the ranked-choice results would be available “starting on June 30.”

Then, around 10:30 p.m., the board finally released a statement, explaining that it had failed to remove sample ballot images used to test its ranked-choice voting software. When the board ran the program, it counted “both test and election night results, producing approximately 135,000 additional records,” the statement said. The ranked-choice numbers, it said, would be tabulated again.

The extraordinary sequence of events seeded further confusion about the outcome, and threw the closely watched contest into a new period of uncertainty at a consequential moment for the city.

For the Board of Elections, which has long been plagued by dysfunction and nepotism, this was its first try at implementing ranked-choice voting on a citywide scale. Skeptics had expressed doubts about the board’s ability to pull off the process, though it is used successfully in other cities.

Under ranked-choice voting, voters can list up to five candidates on their ballots in preferential order. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes in the first round, the winner is decided by a process of elimination: As the lower-polling candidates are eliminated, their votes are reallocated to whichever candidate those voters ranked next, and the process continues until there is a winner.

The Board of Elections released preliminary, unofficial ranked-choice tabulations on Tuesday afternoon, showing that Mr. Adams — who had held a significant advantage on primary night — was narrowly ahead of Kathryn Garcia in the ballots cast in person during early voting or on Primary Day. Maya D. Wiley, who came in second place in the initial vote count, was close behind in third place. The board then took down the results and disclosed the discrepancy.

The results may well be scrambled again: Even after the Board of Elections sorts through the preliminary tally, it must count around 124,000 Democratic absentee ballots. Once they are tabulated, the board will take the new total that includes them and run a new set of ranked-choice elimination rounds, with a final result not expected until mid-July.

Some Democrats, bracing for an acrimonious new chapter in the race, are concerned that the incremental release of results by the Board of Elections — and the discovery of an error — may stir distrust of ranked-choice voting and of the city’s electoral system more broadly.

In a statement late Tuesday night, Ms. Wiley laced into the Board of Elections, calling the error “the result of generations of failures that have gone unaddressed,” and adding: “Sadly it is impossible to be surprised.”

“Today, we have once again seen the mismanagement that has resulted in a lack of confidence in results, not because there is a flaw in our election laws, but because those who implement it have failed too many times,” she said. “The B.O.E. must now count the remainder of the votes transparently and ensure the integrity of the process moving forward.”

Ms. Garcia said the release of the inaccurate tally was “deeply troubling and requires a much more transparent and complete explanation.”

“Every ranked choice and absentee vote must be counted accurately so that all New Yorkers have faith in our democracy and our government,” she said. “I am confident that every candidate will accept the final results and support whomever the voters have elected.”

And Mr. Adams noted the “unfortunate” error by the Board of Elections and emphasized the importance of handling election results correctly.

“It is critical that New Yorkers are confident in their electoral system, especially as we rank votes in a citywide election for the first time,” he said in a statement released on Tuesday night. “We appreciate the board’s transparency and acknowledgment of their error. We look forward to the release of an accurate, updated simulation, and the timely conclusion of this critical process.”

If elected, Mr. Adams would be the city’s second Black mayor, after David N. Dinkins. Some of Mr. Adams’s supporters have already cast the ranked-choice process as an attempt to disenfranchise voters of color, an argument that intensified among some backers on Tuesday afternoon as the race had appeared to tighten, and is virtually certain to escalate should he lose his primary night lead to Ms. Garcia, who is white.

Surrogates for Mr. Adams have suggested without evidence that an apparent ranked-choice alliance between Ms. Garcia and another rival, Andrew Yang, could amount to an attempt to suppress the votes of Black and Latino New Yorkers; Mr. Adams himself claimed that the alliance was aimed at preventing a Black or Latino candidate from winning the race.

In the final days of the race, Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang campaigned together across the city, especially in neighborhoods that are home to sizable Asian American communities, and appeared together on campaign literature.

To advocates of ranked-choice voting, the round-by-round shuffling of outcomes is part of the process of electing a candidate with broad appeal. But if Ms. Garcia or Ms. Wiley were to prevail, the process — which was approved by voters in a 2019 ballot measure — would likely attract fresh scrutiny, with some of Mr. Adams’s backers and others already urging a new referendum on it.

By Tuesday night, though, it was the Board of Elections that was attracting ire from seemingly all corners.

Betsy Gotbaum, the city’s former public advocate who now runs Citizens Union, a good-government group, warned that “the entire country is watching” the Board of Elections. “New Yorkers deserve elections, and election administrators, that they can have the utmost faith in,” Ms. Gotbaum added.

A comparison between first-place vote totals released on primary night and those released on Tuesday offered some insight into how the 135,000 erroneous votes were distributed. The bottom four candidates received a total of 42,000 new votes, roughly four times their actual vote total; the number of write-in ballots also skyrocketed to 17,516 from 1,336. Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang received the highest number of new votes.

It was not known, however, how the test votes were reallocated during the ranked-choice tabulations, making it impossible to determine how they affected the preliminary results that were released and then retracted.

When accurate vote counts are in place, it is difficult, but not unheard-of for a trailing candidate in a ranked-choice election to eventually win the race through later rounds of voting — that happened in Oakland, Calif., in 2010, and nearly occurred in San Francisco in 2018.

The winner of New York’s Democratic primary, who is almost certain to become the city’s next mayor, will face Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, who won the Republican primary.

According to the now-withdrawn tabulation released Tuesday, Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, nearly made it to the final round. She finished closely behind Ms. Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, before being eliminated in the penultimate round of the preliminary exercise.

After the count of in-person ballots last week, Ms. Garcia had trailed Ms. Wiley by about 2.8 percentage points. Asked if she had been in touch with Ms. Wiley’s team, Ms. Garcia suggested there had been staff-level conversations.

“The campaigns have been speaking to each other,” Ms. Garcia said in a phone call on Tuesday afternoon, saying the two candidates had not yet spoken directly. “Hopefully we don’t have to step in with attorneys. But it is about really ensuring that New York City’s voices are heard.”

Ms. Wiley ran well to the left of Ms. Garcia on a number of vital policy matters, including around policing and on some education questions. Either candidate would be the first woman elected mayor of New York, and Ms. Wiley would be the city’s first Black female mayor.

Mr. Adams, a former police captain and a relative moderate on several key issues, was a non-starter for many progressive voters who may have preferred Ms. Garcia and her focus on competence over any especially ideological message.

But early results suggested that Mr. Adams had significant strength among working-class voters of color, and some traction among white voters with moderate views.

City Councilman I. Daneek Miller, an Adams supporter who is pressing for a new referendum on ranked-choice voting, suggested in a text message on Tuesday that the system had opened the door to “an attempt to eliminate the candidate of moderate working people and traditionally marginalized communities,” as he implicitly criticized the Yang-Garcia alliance.

“It is incumbent on us now to address the issue of ranked voting and how it is being weaponized against a wide portion of the public,” said Mr. Miller, the co-chair of the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus on the City Council.

Other close observers of the election separately expressed discomfort with the decision to release a ranked-choice tally without accounting for absentee ballots.

“There is real danger that voters will come to believe a set of facts about the race that will be disproven when all votes are in,” said Ben Greenfield, a senior survey data analyst at Change Research, which conducted polling for a pro-Garcia PAC. “The risk is that this could take a system that’s already new and confusing and increase people’s sense of mistrust.”

Dana Rubinstein, Jeffery C. Mays, Anne Barnard, Andy Newman and Mihir Zaveri contributed reporting.

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Black Lives Matter leaders met with Biden White Home officers on police reform

Black Lives Matter leaders met with Biden White House officials on police reform

Protesters gather near the White House before a group attempted to tear down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square on June 22, 2020 in Washington, DC.

Drew Angerer | Getty Images

Black Lives Matter leaders met with members of President Joe Biden’s team as the White House and lawmakers negotiated the details of a possible police reform deal.

In a statement first broadcast to CNBC, Black Lives Matter said the leaders recently met with White House officials to discuss their agenda. The activist group is not satisfied with what has happened since the discussion, namely with proposals to give police departments more money.

“Black Lives Matter executives met with White House officials earlier this year to discuss our policy agenda, and while we appreciate the opportunity to speak with them, we are surprised by their lack of progress on issues that are black-minded People, the same communities, matter. ” who supported Biden-Harris so much in last year’s election, “the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation told CNBC in an email on Tuesday.

It is unclear when the meeting took place or which officials from both sides attended the meeting. Politico reported in May that the BLM had yet to meet with the Biden White House. The Washington Post reported late last year that Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, wrote a letter to Biden and Kamala Harris about a possible meeting.

Black Lives Matter press representatives responded to requests for additional comments. The White House has not responded to requests for comment.

Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., One of the lawmakers working on police reform, told NBC News that the negotiations had encountered some obstacles due to power struggles between law enforcement groups.

“I worry that it might prevent us from coming to an agreement. And you know what a really sad statement I think about the profession that they would actually prevent reforms and refuse to modernize,” she said.

The meeting and its aftermath suggest that Black Lives Matter and the Biden team are heading for a stalemate. It’s also a sign that Black Lives Matter may not have as much impact at the Biden White House as the group hoped.

Black Lives Matter, created after George Zimmerman was acquitted in 2013 in the murder of the unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin, is calling for a reduction in police spending. For years the group has inspired and organized large protests against brutality against blacks.

Last year, Black Lives Matter’s group and motto gained popularity and relevance after police murdered George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other black Americans as protests erupted across the country.

Biden won the 2020 election with the overwhelming support of black voters.

The president recently said that states could raise $ 350 billion in stimulus funds to bolster police forces. Biden has also announced a series of measures his government is taking to curb the rise in crime and gun violence.

This didn’t go well with Black Lives Matter or activists calling for the defunding of police departments.

“And now we see the president arguing for increased spending on the police force instead of investing in housing, education, climate protection and health care,” Black Lives Matter said in a statement to CNBC. “This is no time to go back to the dangerous scare days of the 1990s when more police officers were deployed in our neighborhoods rather than services that improve lives and keep black communities safe.”

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Biden Heads to Wisconsin to Promote His Infrastructure Deal

Biden Heads to Wisconsin to Sell His Infrastructure Deal

President Biden began a national tour in Wisconsin Tuesday to educate voters about the bipartisan infrastructure deal announced by the President and Middle Senators last week.

Mr Biden used his speech in La Crosse, Wisconsin, to highlight several aspects of the deal – which would increase federal spending on physical infrastructure by $ 579 billion, the largest such increase in decades. He portrayed the deal as a deal that would improve the quality of life for Wisconsin residents, including by increasing the use of broadband internet in rural areas, where about 35 percent of families lack reliable internet, according to the White House.

“This bipartisan breakthrough is a big deal for the American people,” Biden said, predicting the deal would create jobs that did not require a college degree. “This is a blueprint for rebuilding America.”

Mr Biden pledged to replace the nearly 80,000 lead water pipes in Milwaukee, and cited spending on road and bridge repairs to reduce traffic for drivers across the country, the equivalent of an annual loss of $ 1,000 for the average American because of lost time.

The president and his staff have argued aggressively over the past few days that the deal would be a huge step forward for the nation in key infrastructure areas, as part of a delicate effort to sell Democrats in the House and Senate for the merits of a deal fell well short of Mr. Biden’s initial $ 2.3 trillion US employment plan. The deal leaves out entire categories of spending on climate change and investing in home nursing for the elderly and disabled.

The president called the deal the largest federal infrastructure move since President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the law to create the interstate highway system 65 years ago. “This is a generational investment – a generational investment – to modernize our infrastructure,” he said, “to create millions of well-paid jobs.”

The tour is also designed to reassure Republicans that Mr Biden is committed to the agreement. Mr Biden told reporters Thursday that he would not sign the bipartisan agreement unless it was accompanied by a second, partisan bill that includes much of Mr Biden’s remaining $ 4 trillion economic agenda, which is a hectic weekend for the White House sparked some Republicans questioning whether the deal could survive.

On Sunday, Mr Biden released a statement saying he did not mean to imply that he would veto the bipartisan agreement and pledged to campaign aggressively to get it passed. This worried the progressives, who are counting on the second passage of the party law.

Alluding to the intricate politics of the two economic laws, Mr. Biden also used the Wisconsin speech to highlight much of the second half of his agenda that was excluded from the deal, including investments in housing, childcare, tax loans for parents, child poverty aim to combat, and invest heavily in public education.

“I will continue to point out that critical investments are still needed,” he said.

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Kamala Harris’ chief of employees limits entry to vp

Kamala Harris' chief of staff limits access to vice president

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris waits to speak during an event on high-speed internet access in the South Court Auditorium at the White House complex on June 3, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Drew Angerer | Getty Images

Kamala Harris’ chief of staff has effectively shut out several longtime of the vice president’s political and business world allies as the Biden administration contends with several challenges, including battles over voting rights and the border, according to people familiar with the matter.

Harris has not been returning phone calls to people who have considered themselves members of her inner circle, including donors and people who supported her Senate and White House runs, according to some of the people with knowledge of the situation. 

Under chief of staff Tina Flournoy’s watch, Harris speaks regularly to President Joe Biden, her family members, a tight group of friends, and her strategists, these people said. The people declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Yet as Flournoy, who built a tough reputation while working for former President Bill Clinton, exerts her power as a gatekeeper to the vice president, several of Harris’ allies outside the federal government are struggling to get their calls returned after years of regularly being in touch with her, some of these people said.

A person familiar with Flournoy’s handling of incoming communication with these associates says she sometimes starts a conversation asking, “What is it that you want from the vice president?” If the person wants to just say hello and have a brief conversation, Flournoy says that time will come at future private events.

If a person wants to speak to Harris about where she stands on policy, Flournoy will, at times, say they can’t speak to the vice president about policy and will make an introduction to one of her policy advisors.

Some of these same advisors and donors are trying other routes, including by attempting to speak with Douglas Emhoff, the vice president’s husband. Many of those calls have yet to be returned, these people said.

Chiefs of staff, especially those in the highest echelons of government, are expected to run a tight ship for their bosses, including by limiting who gets in the door for meetings or who reaches them on the phone. In the vice president’s world, some allies can get in – but they guard their status so they don’t run afoul of Flournoy. 

For instance, an influential Democratic donor who raised money for Harris’ failed bid for president recently tried to reach out to the vice president, and had yet to receive a call back. Then this person decided to contact Flournoy. 

That didn’t work. The donor reached out to a fellow Democratic financier for Flournoy’s contact information. But the fellow financier declined to share Flournoy’s email address for fear of losing access themselves.

Another Harris supporter said she hasn’t heard from the vice president since a call with supporters during the transition period.

While Flournoy has made it tougher to get in touch with Harris, some of the vice president’s supporters accept it as a consequence of Harris building out her portfolio. Harris recently made her first visit as vice president to the U.S.-Mexico border, she touted President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, and is expected to have a role working on criminal justice reform, among other items.

One person close to Harris said they appreciated what Flournoy is doing and has accepted that it’s simply going to be harder to get in touch with Harris now that she is vice president and begins working on big-ticket initiatives.

“There’s no question she [Flournoy] is a strong chief of staff and there’s no question that she is very focused on making sure that the VP is able to be focusing on the coronavirus pandemic and getting people vaccinated, the border, voting rights,” said another Harris ally who has spoken to Flournoy. 

“So by making sure that she is able to focus on what she’s being charged with, there could be people who are not necessarily getting access because the chief of staff is prioritizing those tasks for the VP over political outreach,” this person explained.

A spokeswoman for Harris did not return a request for comment.

In this May 31, 2008 file photo, Tina Flournoy, then Democratic National Committee Rules and Bylaws committee member, during a hearing in Washington.

Susan Walsh | AP

Flournoy’s background

Flournoy has deep roots in Washington, D.C., and is a veteran of the mainstream Democratic establishment.

In the latter half of the 1980s, she worked as a law clerk for Julia Cooper Mack,  a judge on the D.C. Court of Appeals, before jumping into politics, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

CRP also says she later had stints as a counsel for the Democratic National Convention, as a leader on Clinton’s transition team after he was elected in 1992, and then as counsel for the former president’s office of presidential personnel.

Flournoy is listed as general counsel for cigarette maker Phillip Morris in a 1995 White House press advisory naming Kennedy Center advisory committee members. Later, she served as traveling chief of staff for Sen. Joe Lieberman during the 2000 presidential campaign, when he was Al Gore’s running mate.

After working on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign for president, she became assistant to the president for public policy at the American Federation of Teachers, an influential union. Flournoy was originally connected to Harris by Minyon Moore, who was an assistant to Clinton when he was president. Moore, who didn’t return a request for comment, was once named as one of the 100 most powerful women in Washington.

Before she became Harris’ chief of staff, Flournoy led the staff working for former President Bill Clinton starting in 2013. At that post, Flournoy oversaw a staff of approximately 10 people who worked directly with Clinton, and had regular engagement with the Clinton Foundation, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

While Flournoy was chief of staff, Clinton held an infamous tarmac meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch while his wife ran for president in the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server was being investigated at the time by the FBI, which is part of the Justice Department.

Flournoy’s style working for Harris is familiar to people who knew her while she worked for Clinton. She took over managing access to Clinton after the departure of his longtime right-hand man, Doug Band. Band, who co-founded corporate consulting firm Teneo, is known for helping create Clinton’s post-presidential life, including assisting in launching the foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative.

According to a report by Vanity Fair, Clinton and Band interacted with some controversial celebrities and executives, including the late Jeffrey Epstein, who later died by suicide in prison after being arrested for child sex trafficking.

“If you look at Doug’s tenure, it ranges from Epstein to others,” a person with direct knowledge of Flournoy’s work told CNBC.

“If you look from 2013 through about a year a half ago when Tina was here, you can’t point to any single one of them being here [Clinton’s orbit]. I call some of those people who were once around ‘the unsavory humans,'” this person added.

Clinton praised the hiring of Flournoy in a tweet after Harris made the official announcement. A spokesman for Clinton did not return a request for comment.

Band did not comment.

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The Struggle on Historical past Is a Struggle on Democracy

The War on History Is a War on Democracy

In March 1932, the cover of Fortune magazine featured a painting of Diego Rivera’s Red Square. A multitude of faceless men marched with red banners and encircled a locomotive with a hammer and sickle. This was the image of communist modernization that the Soviets wanted to convey during Stalin’s first five-year plan: the achievement was impersonal, technical, undeniable. The Soviet Union transformed itself from an agricultural hinterland into an industrial power through a mere disciplined understanding of the objective realities of history. Its citizens celebrated the revolution, as Rivera’s painting suggested, while shaping them into a new breed of people.

But by March 1932 hundreds of thousands were starving to death in Soviet Ukraine, the country’s breadbasket. Rapid industrialization was financed by the destruction of traditional agricultural life. The five-year plan had brought about “deculakization”, the deportation of peasants who were considered more affluent than others, and “collectivization”, the appropriation of agricultural land by the state. The result was a mass hunger attack: first in Kazakhstan, then in southern Russia and above all in Soviet Ukraine. The Soviet leaders were aware of this in 1932, but still insisted on requisitions in Ukraine. Grain that humans needed to survive was forcibly confiscated and exported. Writer Arthur Koestler, who was living in Soviet Ukraine at the time, recalled propaganda depicting the starving as provocateurs who preferred to see their own bellies puff out rather than accept Soviet gains.

After Russia, Ukraine was the most important Soviet republic, and Stalin saw it as headstrong and disloyal. When the collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine did not produce the yields Stalin expected, he blamed local party authorities, the Ukrainian people and foreign spies. Since food was mined during the famine, Ukrainians in particular suffered and died – around 3.9 million people in the republic, according to best estimates, well over 10 percent of the total population. In communicating with trusted comrades, Stalin did not hide the fact that he was pursuing a specific policy against Ukraine. Residents of the republic were forbidden to leave it; Farmers were prevented from going into the cities to beg; Communities that failed to meet grain targets were cut off from the rest of the economy; Families were robbed of their cattle. In particular, grain from Ukraine was ruthlessly confiscated, far beyond common sense. Even the seeds were confiscated.

The Soviet Union took drastic measures to ensure that these events went unnoticed. Foreign journalists were banned from Ukraine. The only person reporting the famine in English under his own byline, Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, was later murdered. Moscow correspondent for the New York Times, Walter Duranty, declared famine to be the price of progress away. Tens of thousands of hunger refugees made it across the border to Poland, but the Polish authorities refrained from making their plight public: a treaty with the USSR is being negotiated. In Moscow, the disaster was portrayed at the 1934 party congress as a triumphant second revolution. The deaths have been rearranged from “hunger” to “exhaustion”. When the next census counted millions fewer people than expected, the statisticians were executed. Residents of other republics, mostly Russians, moved into the abandoned houses of the Ukrainians. As beneficiaries of the calamity, they were not interested in its sources.

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Supreme Court docket Justice Clarence Thomas says federal marijuana legal guidelines could also be outdated

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says federal marijuana laws may be outdated

Clarence Thomas, Assistant Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, listens during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, the United States, on Monday, October 26, 2020.

Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Monday that federal laws against the sale and cultivation of marijuana are inconsistent, making a national ban unnecessary.

“A ban on the interstate use or cultivation of marijuana may no longer be necessary or appropriate to support the federal government’s piecemeal approach,” wrote Thomas, one of the court’s most conservative judges, in a statement.

The court’s decision not to hear a new case related to tax deductions alleged by a medical marijuana dispensary in Colorado prompted Thomas to issue a statement relating more broadly to federal marijuana laws.

Thomas stated that a 2005 judgment in the Gonzales v. Raich, which stated that the federal government could enforce the ban on marijuana possession, may be out of date.

“Federal policy over the past 16 years has severely undermined its rationale,” added Thomas. “The federal government’s current approach is a half-in, half-out regime that both tolerates and prohibits the local use of marijuana.”

Thomas referred to several guidelines that contradict the 2005 ruling. These include Justice Department memoranda from 2009 and 2013 stating that the government would not interfere with state marijuana legalization programs or prosecute individuals for marijuana activities if it was in accordance with state law.

He added that since 2015, Congress has repeatedly banned the Justice Department from using federal funds to meddle in the implementation of state medical marijuana laws.

“Given all these developments, one can understand why a normal person might think that the federal government has withdrawn from its once absolute ban on marijuana,” he wrote.

With 36 states allowing medical marijuana use and 18 recreational use, Thomas claimed marijuana companies do not experience “equal treatment” under the law.

The problem is a provision in tax law that prohibits companies that deal in marijuana and other controlled substances from deducting their business expenses. The IRS is cracking down on marijuana companies like the Colorado medical marijuana dispenser by conducting investigations into their tax deductions.

“Under this rule, a company that is still in the red after paying its workers and leaving the lights on could still owe a sizable federal income tax,” wrote Thomas.

The judiciary also found a consequence of the federal marijuana ban, stating that most marijuana companies operate entirely in cash due to restrictions preventing state financial institutions from providing banking services to these companies. This makes these companies more vulnerable to break-ins and robberies, according to Thomas.

All of these questions regarding federal marijuana laws threaten, Thomas argues, the principles of federalism.

“If the government is now satisfied with allowing states to ‘act as laboratories, then it may no longer have authority to enter the[t]The central police powers of the states. . . Define criminal law and protect the health, safety and wellbeing of its citizens, “said Thomas.

Legal experts like Joseph Bondy, a cannabis law expert on the board of directors of the National Organization for the Reform of Marihuana Laws, agreed with the judiciary’s testimony, predicting that arguments about the injustice of federal marijuana laws would continue. Law & Crime reported on Monday.

While Bondy noted that Thomas’ testimony may not have actual legal implications, he told Law & Crime that it was still “sending out a message that may temper the views of some people in Congress,” including “one of our Republican senators.” “

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Home Passes Payments to Bolster Scientific Analysis, Breaking With Senate

House Passes Bills to Bolster Scientific Research, Breaking With Senate

WASHINGTON — The House on Monday passed two bipartisan bills aimed at bolstering research and development programs in the United States, setting up a battle with the Senate over how best to invest in scientific innovation to strengthen American competitiveness.

The bills are the House’s answer to the sprawling Endless Frontier Act that the Senate overwhelmingly passed this month, which would sink unprecedented federal investments into a slew of emerging technologies in a bid to compete with China. But lawmakers who drafted the House measures took a different approach, calling for a doubling of funding over the next five years for traditional research initiatives at the National Science Foundation and a 7 percent increase for the Energy Department’s Office of Science.

The contrast reflected concerns among House lawmakers that the Senate bill placed an outsize and overly prescriptive focus on developing nascent technologies and on replicating Beijing’s aggressive moves to gain industrial dominance. Instead, the lawmakers argued, the United States should pour more resources into its own proven research and development abilities.

“If we are to remain the world leader in science and technology, we need to act now,” said Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Democrat of Texas and the chairwoman of the Science Committee. “But we shouldn’t act rashly. Instead of trying to copy the efforts of our emerging competitors, we should be doubling down on the proven innovation engines we have at the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.”

Lawmakers and their aides must try to reconcile the Senate-passed legislation with the two bills passed on Monday, prompting a major debate on Capitol Hill about industrial policy and how to strengthen American competitiveness, a goal with broad bipartisan support.

The two bills passed 345-67 and 351-68.

“One of the core disagreements or tensions between the House and the Senate version is that the Senate version is really focused on China,” said Robert D. Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Ms. Johnson’s bills, he added, prioritize “more social policy issues,” including science, technology, engineering and mathematics education and climate change.

The House bills omit a number of provisions that are centerpieces of the Senate legislation, including $52 billion in emergency subsidies for semiconductor makers and a slew of trade provisions. Instead of creating regional technology hubs across the country, as the Senate measure would do, one of the House bills would establish a designated directorate for “science and engineering solutions” in the National Science Foundation.

While singling out several emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and advanced computing, lawmakers on the House Science Committee have mostly focused on research and funding a holistic approach to scientific innovation.

“History teaches that problem-solving can itself drive the innovation that in turn spawns new industries and achieves competitive advantage,” Ms. Johnson wrote.

William A. Reinsch, the Scholl chair in international business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said with sections on public health challenges and the STEM work force, the House had taken “a broader definition of how to get our innovation capabilities up and running.”

The Senate legislation, passed by a vote of 68-32, was steered through the chamber by Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, a longtime China hawk who has been eager to enact what would be the most significant government intervention in industrial policy in decades. It was powered in large part by bipartisan concern about China’s chokehold on global supply chains, which has grown particularly acute amid shortages brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. President Biden applauded its passage and said that he hoped to sign it into law “as soon as possible.”

It would allocate hundreds of billions more into scientific research and development pipelines in the United States, create grants, and foster agreements between private companies and research universities to encourage breakthroughs in new technology.

As the legislation moved through the chamber, echoing similar concerns from lawmakers on the House Science Committee, senators shifted much of the $100 billion that had been slated for a research and development hub for emerging technologies at the National Science Foundation to basic research, as well as laboratories run by the Energy Department. The amount for cutting-edge research was reduced to $29 billion, with the rest of the original funds funneled toward research and labs.

Those changes may assuage House lawmakers as they seek to reconcile the two bills in the coming months.

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McConnell criticizes Pelosi, Schumer over bipartisan plan

McConnell criticizes Pelosi, Schumer over bipartisan plan

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on the steps of the US Capitol.

Drew Angerer | Getty Images

A bipartisan infrastructure proposal by President Joe Biden and a group of senators has regained a foothold.

Even so, the Democrats’ plan to get it through Congress, along with a broader package to expand the social safety net and fight climate change, faces a well-known threat: Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.

Biden’s proposal last week to veto the bipartisan framework unless lawmakers adopt other democratic priorities briefly threatened the deal. The president reassured some Republicans by making it clear that if passed alone, he would sign the bill. But McConnell insisted Monday that the Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill must also separate the two laws, increasing the risk that the deal could fail.

“The president has appropriately separated a potential bipartisan infrastructure bill from the massive, independent tax and spending plans that the Democrats want to pursue on a partisan basis,” the Kentucky Republican said in a statement. “Now I urge President Biden to engage Leader Schumer and Spokesman Pelosi and ensure that they follow his example.”

Biden’s statement “would be a hollow gesture” unless Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, make the same commitment to the bipartisan plan without it Pass Democratic law, McConnell said.

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The statement by McConnell, who vowed to fight Biden’s economic agenda, underscores the dangers Democrats face in trying to enforce their priorities. Pressure from McConnell could undo the party’s delicate strategy of keeping its liberal and centrist members on board for both bills.

Representatives from Schumer, Pelosi and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a tweet on Monday, Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy offered his opinion on McConnell’s testimony, saying that “the all-consuming motivation of the GOP leader is to keep everything from happening when the Democrats are in control” .

Some progressives have threatened to oppose the bipartisan plan because it is not doing enough to combat climate change. A handful of middle-class Democrats have expressed doubts that without the Republicans they could be passing trillions of dollars in new spending.

To make sure neither of the two plans fail, Pelosi said she would not accept either of the proposals in the House of Representatives until they both reach the Senate. Schumer plans to start voting on both measures next month.

It is unclear whether Schumer and Pelosi will stick to the strategy if it means they could lose GOP votes for the bipartisan plan. In the Senate split 50:50 according to parties, an infrastructure law needs at least 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.

On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden had contacted Schumer and Pelosi about how to proceed.

The move would take 10 Republicans to back it, if all Democrats support it, and one more GOP vote for every Democratic defection. Eleven Republicans backed the bipartisan framework, and some of those lawmakers signaled they were still on board after Biden clarified his position.

“I was very happy to see the president clarify his remarks because it didn’t match everything we were told along the way,” Senator Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told ABC News on Sunday.

Biden will try to further show his commitment to the plan this week. He will travel to Wisconsin on Tuesday to discuss the potential benefits of the Infrastructure Bill.

The framework includes $ 579 billion in new spending on roads, bridges, railways, public transportation, electric vehicle systems, electricity, broadband and water.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect Senator Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., is the Senate Majority Leader.

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Politics

Prisoners Despatched Dwelling Due to Covid Could Must Go Again

Prisoners Sent Home Because of Covid May Have to Go Back

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Ever since she was moved to a sober residential facility as part of a mass release of prisoners of conscience six months ago to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Wendy Hechtman has tried to do the right things.

She makes up for lost time with her children, one of whom was only 6 years old when Ms. Hechtman was jailed about three years ago. She goes to weekly drug counseling sessions. She even got a part-time job helping former inmates reintegrate into society.

But now, Ms. Hechtman is among the roughly 4,000 federal offenders who could soon go back to prison – not because they violated the terms of their domestic detention, but because the United States appears to be through the worst of the pandemic.

In the final days of the Trump administration, the Justice Department issued a memo stating that detainees whose sentences exceeded the “pandemic emergency period” should be returned to prison. But some lawmakers and criminal justice advocates are calling on President Biden to repeal the rule of using his executive powers to keep them in domestic detention or to commute their sentences entirely, arguing that the pandemic may provide insight into a different type of penal system in America offers that is far less based on incarceration.

“If I go to jail all the time I have left, I won’t have any boys. They will be men, ”said Ms. Hechtman, who is serving a 15-year prison sentence for conspiracy to distribute some form of fentanyl. “I have so much to lose. And to win. “

Mr Biden has vowed to make overhauling the criminal justice system a crucial part of his presidency, saying his administration could cut prison inmates by more than half and expand programs that offer alternatives to incarceration.

While the White House has yet to announce a decision on house arrest, the government appears to be following the instructions in the Trump-era memo.

Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Mr. Biden, said in a statement the president’s “duty to reduce incarceration and help people reintegrate” but cited questions about the future of those in domestic detention the Ministry of Justice.

Kristie Breshears, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, part of the Justice Department, said the office would have “discretion” to allow inmates near the end of their sentences to remain in domestic custody after the national emergency remain declaration has been repealed.

“For the more difficult cases where inmates still have years, this won’t be an issue until after the pandemic ends,” she said. “The president recently extended the national emergency, and the Department of Health and Social Affairs has said the public health crisis is likely to persist for the remainder of the year.”

The White House reviews the emergency declaration every three months, leaving the former prisoners in constant limbo. The next appointment is in July.

Stacie Demers, who has served nearly half of a ten-year prison sentence for conspiracy to spread marijuana, said she felt like she was “stuck between the beginning and the end, so to speak.” She is currently at her aunt’s home in Albany, NY. “I always have one thing in the back of my mind: Do I have to go back? Will I not see my family again? “

The United States is recognized as the world leader in incarceration, spending $ 80 billion annually to keep more than two million people behind bars.

For non-violent offenders in particular, residential care can be a more humane – and cheaper – alternative to already overcrowded prisons, proponents of the criminal justice system argue.

The United States spent an average of $ 37,500 in fiscal 2018 holding a federal prisoner like Ms. Hechtman. In contrast, home placement costs around $ 13,000 a year, according to a 2017 report by the Government Accountability Office, with the cost of monitoring devices and paying private contractors to do the monitoring.

Those pushing for a revision of the prison system say the statistics are on their side. The vast majority of the 24,000 federal prisoners released into house arrest because of the coronavirus crisis stuck to the rules. Most of them had only weeks or months left in their sentences and completed them without incident.

Three people had committed new crimes, one of which was violent, Bureau of Prisons director Michael Carvajal told lawmakers during a Senate hearing in April. About 150 people were returned to prison for other violations, including about two dozen for leaving their homes without a permit.

Kevin Ring, the president of the criminal advocacy group FAMM, formerly known as Families Against Mandatory Minimums, questioned the wisdom of cases where individuals were charged with technical violations such as online gambling, transferring money to other inmates in jail, or in the case of a 76- year old woman in Baltimore attending a computer training course. “That doesn’t make anyone safer,” he said.

The prison system change is one of the few areas where a bipartisan agreement has been reached in Washington. Iowa Republican Senator Charles E. Grassley shared with the Democrats in criticizing the Department of Justice memo released in January.

Updated

June 25, 2021, 7:09 p.m. ET

“Obviously, if they can stay where they are, taxpayers will save a lot of money,” Grassley said at the hearing. “It will also help people who are not prone to relapse and enable inmates to successfully return to society as productive citizens.”

Inmates are typically allowed to serve the last six months or 10 percent of their sentence in domestic custody. The legal memo issued by the Trump administration argued that the roughly 4,000 inmates whose sentences would almost certainly outlast the pandemic would have to return to prison because they did not meet normal home-care eligibility requirements.

Larry Cosme, the national president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, which represents probation officers, warned against changing these requirements without proper review.

“It is good to have adequate prison reform and to move with the times, but it has to be carried out sensibly and with a reasonable amount of staff,” said Mr. Cosme. “Make sure the system works and don’t make anyone fail.”

He also said the releases put a strain on those responsible for monitoring inmates.

Mr. Carvajal, the director of the prison office, said that while the office was helping to reintegrate inmates, other issues were at play.

“The whole point is that at some point they will return to society,” said Carvajal. “But we also respect the fact that these judgments were handed down by the criminal justice system in court.”

Inimai Chettiar, the federal director of the Justice Action Network, which has consulted with the Biden campaign on criminal justice, said the prison system had been in need of overhaul for years. She said Mr. Biden should not only keep the memo, but also use his executive powers to grant pardon to inmates.

“I fear that your commitment to ensuring the independence of the DOJ stands in the way of your commitment to racial and criminal justice,” Ms. Chettiar said of Biden’s government. “It’s relatively easy. This means that no bipartisan police law will be passed. It is not a massive new action by the executive. It’s just someone who taps something on a piece of paper. “

For some inmates, being released from home detention meant gaining access to life-saving resources and support systems that they say were scarce within the prison walls.

Jorge Maldonado, 53, who has kidney disease, was released in October because his poor health made him particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus. He has served five years of a seven-year prison sentence for fraud and theft, much of it in a federal prison in North Carolina that was badly hit by the virus.

Mr. Maldonado, a veteran of Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s, is now being dialysis with a catheter through his abdomen for 10 hours a day while waiting for a new kidney, which would be his third kidney transplant.

Because he was at home in Oviedo, Florida, outside of Orlando, he had received the medical care he needed through the Department of Veterans Affairs health system.

But Mr Maldonado has 18 months left on his sentence.

“They are not going to take care of my health like the VA does,” he said of the Bureau of Prisons, which has been criticized for the quality of its medical care.

Mr Maldonado also asked why he could possibly be forced to return to prison with only one and a half years in prison.

“If someone is doing what they should be doing and has proven that they are not really a threat to this community, to society, what is the problem?” He asked.

Ms. Hechtman has nine years in prison after she was caught making a chemical analogue of fentanyl in 2017.

“I see,” she said when expressing remorse for selling to others in Omaha where she was arrested. “This is not a prison release card, it is an opportunity card.”

At the sober dorm in New Haven, Ms. Hechtman said she didn’t have to worry about exposure to the opioids that she often saw peddling in prison. She starts her day by logging onto her computer in her 3 by 3 meter room and working with former inmates in her part-time job.

To take a walk in the park or even walk 20 meters to take out the trash, she has to file an application with a contractor who works for the government.

When she leaves home, she wears a black monitor on her right ankle and activates an app on her phone that government officials can use to track her.

Ms. Hechtman said she hasn’t missed any of her weekly counseling sessions. She recalled often having to wait weeks at the Minimum Safety Facility in Danbury, Connecticut to be approved for addiction counseling.

“She has hope now, and she didn’t have it,” said Kathryn Pérusse, the 22-year-old daughter of Ms. Hechtman, who lives in Montreal. “She needed a support system and that’s another thing she couldn’t have.”

Ms. Hechtman often points out that being released into domestic detention does not mean absolute freedom. She has still not seen Ms. Pérusse or her three other children, including the 9-year-old son with whom she chats regularly via video chat.

She is not authorized to visit them in Canada. She said her relatives had not yet visited her because of the troublesome quarantine regulations due to the pandemic.

Ms. Hechtman said she hoped to see her outside a prison visiting room for the first time in more than three years before she was sent back.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported from New Haven and Maura Turcotte from Chicago. Hailey Fuchs contributed the reporting from Washington.

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Politics

Loss of life toll rises in Florida apartment tower collapse

Death toll rises in Florida condo tower collapse

This aerial view, shows search and rescue personnel working on site after the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, north of Miami Beach, on June 24, 2021.

Chandan Khanna | AFP | Getty Images

The death toll has risen to nine people after a 12-story condominium building collapsed in Florida, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a press conference Sunday morning.

“We’ve identified four of the victims and notified the next of kin…We are making every effort to identify those others who have been recovered and additionally contacting their family members as soon as we are able,” Levine Cava said.

Champlain Towers South collapsed suddenly early Thursday morning in Surfside, Florida, just north of Miami Beach.

Search and rescue teams created a 125-feet-long trench at the rescue site on Saturday, which allowed authorities to recover additional bodies and human remains, Levine Cava said.

Miami-Dade police on Saturday night identified four of the deceased as Stacie Dawn Fang, 54; Antonio Lozano, 83; Gladys Lozano, 79; and Manuel LaFont, 54.

Authorities said 156 people remained missing as of Saturday.

Levine Cava and Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett told press on Sunday morning that searchers contained fire in the rescue site on Saturday and are continuing rescue operations. Teams from Mexico and Israel are aiding rescue efforts, according to Levine Cava and Burkett.

“We don’t have a resource problem. We’ve had a luck problem. We just need to start to get a little more lucky right now,” Burkett said on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday morning.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at the press conference Sunday that debris will be moved from the rescue site to a separate location for forensic analysis.

Authorities are still investigating the cause of Thursday’s collapse. An engineer in a 2018 report warned of “major structural damage” in the condo building that collapsed. The report identified issues with waterproofing below the pool deck and “abundant cracking” in the underground parking garage.

Levine Cava on Saturday ordered a 30-day audit of all residential properties, five stories or higher, that are 40 years or older and fall under the county’s jurisdiction. The mayor encouraged cities to do their own building reviews as well.

Surfside has authorized a voluntary evacuation of residents of Champlain Towers North, the sister property of the collapsed building built. The town’s building inspector did not find any immediate causes of concern in the sister property, Levine Cava told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning.