“If the U.S. Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), a number of American states will immediately criminalize abortion. Some of those states may also attempt to ban women from traveling out of state for the purpose of obtaining a lawful abortion elsewhere. But any such anti-abortion interstate travel ban would be constitutionally defective for multiple reasons.
First, the Constitution protects the right to travel, which necessarily includes the right to interstate travel. This is a fundamental constitutional right that has been repeatedly recognized by the courts. During the debates over the ratification of the 14th Amendment, the right to travel was invoked as one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship that the amendment was designed to protect from state infringement. For a state to prohibit (or even penalize) the act of leaving that state and doing something perfectly lawful in another state would violate this constitutional safeguard.
Second, an anti-abortion interstate travel ban would run afoul of the Dormant Commerce Clause, a legal doctrine which holds that the Commerce Clause, in addition to authorizing congressional regulation of economic activity that occurs between the states, also forbids the states from enacting their own interstate economic barriers.”
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“Finally, there is relevant case law which cuts against the lawfulness of any anti-abortion interstate travel ban. In Planned Parenthood of Kansas v. Nixon (2007), the Missouri Supreme Court reviewed a state law which created a civil cause of action against any person who helped a minor obtain an abortion without parental consent either inside the state or in another state. “Of course, it is beyond Missouri’s authority to regulate conduct that occurs wholly outside of Missouri,” the Missouri Supreme Court observed, and the law at issue “cannot constitutionally be read to apply to such wholly out-of-state conduct. Missouri simply does not have the authority to make lawful out-of-state conduct actionable here, for its laws do not have extraterritorial effect.””
“Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), chair of the Transportation Committee, blasted the idea in a statement: “Suspending the federal gas tax will not provide meaningful relief at the pump for American families, but it will blow a multi-billion-dollar hole in the highway trust fund, putting funding for future infrastructure projects at risk.”
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Democrats argue any help for families dealing with high gas prices could be worth it, but suspending the federal gas tax may not make much of an impact. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated savings would be an average of between $16 to $47 total per capita under a ten-month suspension. Others argue there’s no guarantee the oil companies would pass along all the savings to consumers. And all that to potentially hamstring the fund responsible for funding infrastructure projects.”
“Cornyn hoped to get as many as 20 Republican votes for his legislation, which would enact new enhanced background checks on people younger than 21, grant states money for red flag laws and crisis intervention and close a loophole on domestic abusers’ firearm access. On Monday the vast majority of the conference voted against advancing the legislation, with 14 Republicans voting to advance the legislation and supportive Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) absent.”
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“Faced with a chorus of boos and a rebuke from the Texas GOP over the weekend, Cornyn got a taste of what the reaction could be on the right for Republicans who vote for the Senate’s bill designed to curb mass shootings in America. What’s more, on Monday evening the NRA announced opposition to the package crafted by a quartet of senators that includes Cornyn, whose A+ rating from the gun group is probably about to take a downgrade.”
“When California passed a massive boost in its minimum wage six years ago so that it would eventually reach $15 an hour, the law included a component that tied the minimum to inflation levels. If inflation starts getting too high, the law forces a mandatory increase in the minimum wage.
This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget director, Keely Martin Bosler, announced that the massive inflation America is seeing is going to force the minimum wage in the state to automatically increase to $15.50 next January. The law requires this automatic adjustment if the inflation rate grows past 7 percent. The Los Angeles Times reports that it’s possible that the minimum wage might rise by another 50 cents if inflation continues.
Bosler, of course, sees only the positive here, saying it will help poor families pay for the higher food prices we’re all enduring: “They have a huge impact to those families that are living off of those lower wages and their ability to cover the cost of goods.””
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“ising wages during this time frame is natural, but it’s also worth noting that California’s unemployment rate continues to be higher than the national average, sitting at 4.9 percent. Just four states and Washington, D.C., have a higher unemployment rate. According to data from California’s Employment Development Department, almost every county in California has higher unemployment rates than the average, and some are running more than twice the national average. Two counties—Colusa and Imperial—have double-digit unemployment rates.
At the same time, businesses have also been hit hard by inflation, and those that operate on tight margins (retail stores, restaurants, and pretty much every small business) are going to have new struggles. Combined, inflation and a higher minimum wage will make it difficult for these businesses to take on new employees and keep the ones they already have.”
“Amid the news that the U.S. had reached 1 million deaths from COVID-19, this week saw another grim milestone. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that the U.S. recorded more than 107,000 deaths from drug overdoses last year, a record high. This is a 15 percent increase from 2020, which held the previous record of around 93,000 deaths. While there has been plenty of talk about how many COVID deaths were preventable, it’s also worth considering how many overdose deaths were the result of needlessly draconian government policies.
According to The New York Times, an increasing share of the number of total overdose deaths came from users of synthetic opioids and methamphetamine. The number of deaths from synthetic opioids increased from 58,000 to 71,000; most of these involved fentanyl, which is considerably stronger than morphine or heroin, and its analogs, which are even more potent. It is often mixed with heroin or stamped into counterfeit prescription drugs. Deaths associated with meth also rose from 25,000 to 33,000.
Each increase follows a longer-term trend: A decade ago, meth-related deaths numbered fewer than 2,000, but by 2017, the number had risen to 10,000. Similarly, deaths from fentanyl numbered around 1,600 in 2011 but increased more than tenfold by 2016.
Obviously, there are a number of reasons why people may abuse drugs. But the role of drug prohibition in exacerbating the crisis cannot be overstated.
During the same years that fentanyl use increased, the prescription rates of opioids like OxyContin plummeted. This was no accident: In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions bragged about how successful the government’s efforts had been at lowering the rates at which doctors prescribed opioids for pain. And yet, the overdose rate continued to climb, as both addicts and chronic pain patients alike were forced to seek out black-market alternatives.
A few years earlier, in an attempt to combat the spread of meth, Congress restricted the availability of the decongestant Sudafed, while the Drug Enforcement Administration cracked down on homegrown meth labs that used it as an ingredient. As a result, cheap, low-quality meth from Mexico with suspect ingredients filled the gap in supply.
Each case provides a perfect example of what Dr. Jeffrey Singer, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, refers to as “like playing a game of ‘Whack-a-Mole,'” in which the government cracks down on a drug, only for its users to seek alternatives, typically in a more dangerous form. Prescription opioids, in particular, certainly do have the potential for abuse, though not to the extent often portrayed in popular media. But for those who genuinely need pain relief and who are suddenly unable to get it, the alternatives are much worse.”
“The Office of the New York City Comptroller was created in 1801 to be the chief auditor of local government and all its various financial activities. The comptroller’s top responsibilities, as bullet-pointed on the office’s website, are “conducting performance and financial audits of all City agencies,” “serving as a fiduciary to the City’s five public pension funds,” “providing comprehensive oversight of the City’s budget and fiscal condition,” “reviewing City contracts for integrity, accountability and fiscal compliance,” and “resolving claims both on behalf of and against the City.”
Or, you know, pressuring private companies to do race and gender checks.
On Thursday, New York Comptroller Brad Lander proudly announced that the city’s pension funds, with their estimated $263 billion under management, had successfully pressured four huge Wall Street firms (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and BlackRock), plus Ford Motor Company, to publicly disclose a “Board Matrix” containing the “self-identified gender, race and/or ethnicity of individual directors.””
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“What Lander and the pension funds are explicitly saying is that not knowing the racial and gender self-identification of a company’s board candidate hinders the decision-making process on how to vote. All things else being equal, if Terry Smith self-identifies as a white male instead of a Latinx female, the diversity-valuing city of New York is assumed to be more likely to vote “no” on his candidacy. (One can only imagine where voters’ preferences would lie if the nominee refused to self-identify with either a gender or a race.)
There is something both farcical and creepy about this obsession with tracking other people’s (mostly) immutable characteristics and using the power of government to compel disclosure thereof. “Race and/or ethnicity” is a tautologically unscientific classification, not improved upon by the city’s suggested “best practices” categories of African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, white/Caucasian, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American. What box should Tiger Woods check? Why are we asking individuals to join a group? What on earth does any of this have to do with providing an auditing function on a city government with a $100 billion budget and the highest taxes in the country?
Gotham is hardly alone in conducting race/gender checks on big business. Illinois since last year has required publicly traded companies based in the state to not only provide a board diversity report, but also a “description of the corporation’s policies and practices for promoting diversity, equity and inclusion among its board of directors and executive officers,” and “whether and how demographic diversity is considered” in senior hiring. A newer law imposes further diversity reporting requirements on any private company with more than 100 employees.
Maryland in 2019 passed a Gender Diversity in the Board Room law requiring publicly traded companies with sales higher than $5 million and nonprofits with budgets higher than $5 million to submit the gender information of their boards.
And just last month, a Superior Court judge struck down as unconstitutional a 2020 California law requiring publicly traded companies in the state to have on their boards at least one member who self-identifies as “Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian or Alaska Native, or…as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.”
The Nasdaq, meanwhile, has imposed board-composition requirements of its own (approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission) that could get noncompliant companies delisted as soon as 2023.”
“Three years ago, President Donald Trump bragged that “we are making progress” in reducing drug-related deaths, citing a 4 percent drop between 2017 and 2018. That progress, a dubious accomplishment even then, proved fleeting. The upward trend in drug-related deaths, which began decades ago, resumed that very year, and 2020 saw both the largest increase and the largest number ever. That record was broken last year, according to preliminary data that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published this week.
The CDC projects that the total for 2021 will be nearly 108,000 when the numbers are finalized, up 15 percent from 2020, when the number of deaths jumped by 30 percent. Two-thirds of last year’s cases involved “synthetic opioids other than methadone,” the category that includes fentanyl and its analogs. Those drugs showed up in nearly three-quarters of the cases involving opioids.
Illicit fentanyl, which has become increasingly common as a heroin booster or substitute during the last decade, is now showing up in cocaine, methamphetamine, and counterfeit pills passed off as prescription analgesics or anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax. That phenomenon vividly illustrates the hazards of the black market created by the war on drugs that Trump thought the government was finally winning.
Joe Biden, a supposedly reformed drug warrior, is still keen on “going after drug trafficking and illicit drug profits,” a strategy that has failed for a century but, he figures, might just work this time around. At the same time, Biden talks a lot about drug treatment and other forms of “harm reduction,” including “key tools like naloxone and syringe services programs.” He proudly proclaims that his drug control plan is “the first-ever to champion harm reduction to meet people where they are and engage them in care and services.””
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“If we focus on substance rather than words, the real breakthrough will come when politicians understand and acknowledge the nature of the harm that needs to be reduced. It is not just the harm caused by drug abuse but also the harm caused by misguided and counterproductive efforts to address that problem. Prohibition itself is the most obvious example.
Consider one of the harm reduction measures that the Times mentions: the distribution of test strips that can alert drug users to the presence of fentanyl in a substance sold as something else. Those test strips don’t tell you how much fentanyl a bag of powder or a pill contains; they just tell you whether there is a detectable amount. But even that much knowledge is an improvement in a black market where people routinely buy drugs of unknown provenance, composition, and potency.
The danger that fentanyl poses to drug users is not inherent in the drug itself, which can be used safely when you know the dose, as demonstrated by its various medical applications. I was recently given fentanyl, along with midazolam, as a sedative during dental surgery, and I was not at all worried that it would kill me. Patients who receive fentanyl injections in the hospital or use fentanyl patches, lozenges, or nasal spray to relieve severe chronic pain likewise are not dropping dead left and right.
In the black market, by contrast, drug users may not even realize they are buying fentanyl; hence the test strips. Even if they do realize that, they still don’t know the concentration. That potentially lethal ignorance is entirely a product of prohibition. While the proliferation of illicit fentanyl has made drug use more dangerous by increasing variability and uncertainty, those problems are not new. They are inevitable when the government tries to prevent the use of psychoactive substances by banning them.”
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“Biden thinks that “going after drug trafficking” will help prevent drug-related deaths. But the pressure from enforcement drives drug traffickers toward more-potent products, which facilitate smuggling by allowing them to pack more doses into the same volume. Alcohol prohibition shifted consumption from beer and wine toward distilled spirits. Drug prohibition gave us heroin instead of opium, fentanyl instead of heroin, and sometimes even-more-potent fentanyl analogs instead of fentanyl.
Given the economics of the black market, interdiction has always been a hopeless proposition. That should be clearer than ever today as the government vainly tries to intercept little packages of fentanyl, each of which contains thousands of doses. But while “going after drug traffickers” has never been a cost-effective way to reduce drug consumption, that does not mean it has not accomplished anything. It has been remarkably effective at making drug use deadlier.”
“When Californians voted to legalize recreational marijuana cultivation and sales back in 2016, the industry ended up saddled with state and local taxes that make it inordinately costly to attempt to sell or buy cannabis legally. As a result, the black market for marijuana still dominates sales in a state where it’s legal to buy it. Industry analysts estimate about $8 billion in black market marijuana sales annually in California—double the amount of marijuana purchased through licensed dispensaries.
The cultivation tax has been consistently eyed by industry analysts as a problem. This particular tax is unique among agricultural products in California, and due to the legislation passed in 2017 to establish tax authorities, it’s regularly adjusted for inflation. As a result, cultivation tax rates actually increased at the start of 2022 despite this big black market problem.
The high cost of attempting to cultivate marijuana has both given cannabis farmers second thoughts and has fostered a whole new drug war as state and local law enforcement officers raid illegal grow operations out in the rural and uninhabited parts of the state. Legislators even passed a new law adding more potential criminal penalties for those arrested for “aiding and abetting” any unlicensed dealers.”
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“It’s good news that Newsom is proposing eliminating the cultivation tax. He may be doing it in the hopes that the state will make more money, but California residents will also benefit from cheaper legal options. And if this makes it easier for people to grow cannabis legally, there will hopefully be fewer raids and enforcement operations in the future.”
“The move reinstates the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program, which from 2007 to 2016 allowed up to 20,000 Cubans per year to come and stay in the U.S. while applying for permanent legal resident status. It also removes the $1,000-per-quarter restriction on how much money Americans can send to family, friends, and private entities across the Florida Straits.”
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“Lifting government prohibitions on the movement and trade of Americans is a good policy in and of itself, regardless of impact on captive peoples abroad. But is the impact of increased travel and remittances on balance good or bad for Cubans?
Menendez argues that “nothing changed” as a result of Barack Obama’s decision to ease restrictions. By the unreasonable standard of regime change or even significant liberalization, the senator is correct. But by the standard of measurable differences in living conditions and relationship with the government, things indeed changed. As I wrote after visiting the island in 2016 for the first time in 18 years:
“A noticeable segment of the population has gained at least some financial and experiential independence from the police state. They are not, in my observation, spending that extra money on flower arrangements for the Revolution. As Sen. Jeff Flake (R–Arizona) told us during our visit, “You have about 25 percent of Cubans who work fully in the private sector….The big change is the number of Cubans being able to not have to rely on government and therefore can hold their government more accountable.”””
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“Menendez’s statement nods toward the potential universality of his foreign policy vision: “Today is another reminder that we must ground our policy in that reality, reaffirm our nation’s indiscriminate commitment to fight for democracy from Kyiv to Havana, and make clear we will measure our success in freedom and human rights and not money and commerce.”
That logic, applied evenly, suggests at minimum the dismantling of the World Trade Organization and the imposition of travel restrictions on Americans seeking to visit not just Havana but the more than 60 countries categorized by Freedom House as “not free.” Menendez would never openly advocate such an approach, because that approach would be both politically suicidal and logically insane.
Cuba has long been the crystallization of America’s worst foreign policy instincts. Good on the Biden administration for easing that somewhat.”