“Border crossings by Cuban migrants have reached an all-time high: Over 220,000 Cubans attempted to cross the southern border illegally from December 2021 to December 2022, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Migrants are also making their way to the U.S. by sea. Since October, the Coast Guard has intercepted 3,700 Cubans at sea, already more than half than were intercepted in the previous 11 months.
For over six years, Cubans on the island could not apply for asylum or exit visas at the U.S. embassy in Havana after the Trump administration closed the embassy’s visa operations. This forced Cubans to travel to Guyana, one of the few countries Cubans are allowed to visit, to apply for asylum, an expensive and inaccessible process for many on the island. Cubans would no longer be automatically allowed to stay and pursue residency if they reached U.S. territory, as was the case before the Obama administration ended the “Wet-Foot, Dry-Foot” policy in 2017. So the suspension of visa services in Havana drove many to risk the voyage across the Straits of Florida or through Central America to the southern border, usually with the help of smugglers.
An increased number of Haitians have also fled their country, attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border amid ongoing gang violence, disease outbreaks, and political instability that has worsened in recent months. The limited opportunities for requesting asylum beyond the border and new restrictions on Haitian immigration in countries like Brazil and Chile have prompted many to take the risks as well.”
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“In response to this recent increase in migrant arrivals, Biden announced..that Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans would no longer be exempted from expulsion under Title 42. Up to 30,000 unauthorized migrants from these countries will be sent back to Mexico every month once the policy takes effect. Asylum claims at the southern border will also be limited.
The administration also announced new pathways for asylum, allowing Cuban, Haitian, and Nicaraguan migrants to apply for asylum if they promise to work for two years and have a U.S.-based sponsor who can support them during that period, claiming it will provide for “orderly migration” for migrants seeking to come to the United States. The State Department has reopened visa services in Havana to help facilitate this new asylum process.”
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“Regardless of the changes and the dangers that accompany the treacherous journey, many of the migrants remain undeterred in their mission to reach the United States.
“I would prefer to die to reach my dream and help my family,” Jeiler del Toro Diaz, a Cuban migrant who came ashore in Key Largo on Tuesday, told The Miami Herald. “The situation in Cuba is not very good.””
“Previously, all drugs in development were required to undergo animal studies before being tested in human trials. Now, drug companies will still have the option to start testing experimental drugs on animals, but they won’t have to.
This doesn’t mean that drug companies will start going straight to testing drug toxicity on humans, but that they may rely on alternative methods to animal testing. Language in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act now states that tests may “include animal tests, or non-animal or human biology-based tests methods, such as cell-based assays, micro physiological systems, or bioprinted or computer models.”
These days, “there are a slew of other methods that drugmakers employ to assess new medications and treatments, such as computer modeling and ‘organs on a chip,’ thumb-sized microchips that can mimic how organs’ function are affected by pharmaceuticals,” notes NPR.”
“”If Section 230 does not apply to how YouTube organizes third-party videos, petitioners and the government have no coherent theory that would save search recommendations and other basic software tools that organize an otherwise unnavigable flood of websites, videos, comments, messages, product
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“The U.S. Sentencing Commission released proposed amendments to federal sentencing guidelines last week that would, among other things, limit judges’ ability to enhance defendants’ sentences based on conduct they were acquitted of by a jury.
It may sound bizarre and antithetical to what everyone is taught about the U.S. justice system, but defendants can be punished for crimes even when a jury finds them not guilty of the charges. At the sentencing phase of a trial, federal judges can enhance defendants’ sentences for conduct they were acquitted of if the judge decides it’s more likely than not—a lower standard of evidence than “beyond a reasonable doubt”—that the defendant committed those offenses. What this does in practice is raise defendants’ scores under the federal sentencing guidelines, leading to significantly longer prison sentences.”
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“The Sentencing Commission’s proposal would amend the federal sentencing guidelines to limit judges from considering acquitted conduct at sentencing unless the conduct was either admitted by the defendant during a guilty plea or found beyond a reasonable doubt. The sentencing guidelines are not binding, but federal judges are required to at least consider them and explain their reasoning if they deviate from them.”
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“For the past several years, bipartisan bills have been introduced in Congress to ban the use of acquitted conduct at sentencing in federal trials, but none have passed.”
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“A petition is also currently pending before the Supreme Court in another case involving acquitted conduct”
“”We agree that the government can seize the property to collect a debt,” says Christina M. Martin, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation who has represented both women. “What it can’t do is take more than it’s owed.””
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“At the core of home equity theft cases is the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “Nor shall private property be taken for public use,” it reads, “without just compensation.” It would seem fairly straightforward.
It has not been.”
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“according to the 8th Circuit, Tyler—and the many people also in her shoes—simply have no recourse when the government profits off of their poverty. “In every other debt collection context, the debt collector is only allowed to take what is owed, plus the cost of collecting the debt. But here, the government gets to tack on penalties, interests, fees, and then they get to take everything that’s left over after that?” asks Martin. “That can’t be right.””
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“”We’re not asking for anything unusual here,” says Martin, who will be arguing the case in front of the high court. “We’re asking that the government not [receive] self-dealing, preferential treatment that allows them to just take a massive windfall, usually at the expense of the most vulnerable people.””
“The FEC said it has now closed its file on the issue.
“The Commission’s bipartisan decision to dismiss this complaint reaffirms that Gmail does not filter emails for political purposes,” Google spokesman José Castañeda said. “We’ll continue to invest in our Gmail industry-leading spam filters because, as the FEC notes, they’re important to protecting people’s inboxes from receiving unwanted, unsolicited, or dangerous messages.””
“Among other provisions, FOSTA created the new federal crime of owning, managing, or operating an “interactive computer service” with “the intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person.”
In court last week, U.S. attorneys still clung to the argument that FOSTA merely targets illegal conduct, not protected speech.
The government has “essentially made a single argument, which is that FOSTA is essentially just an aiding and abetting statute, despite the language that it uses—it doesn’t use the terms and abetting—and as a result of that, it’s constitutional,” explains Greene. And last week in court, “they got a lot of pushback against that from at least two of the judges,” he says.
“In my mind, it’s not an aiding-and-abetting law. We know how to write ’em when we want to,” Harry Edwards, one of the three judges on the panel, said during the hearing. “This doesn’t look like anything that I understand to be an aiding-and-abetting law.”
“That immediately tells me the government’s got great concern that the statute, as actually written, has problems—so let’s make it something that it’s not,” Edwards continued. He characterized U.S. attorneys’ reasoning as “let’s call it aiding and abetting, and maybe we can cause the court to believe that the reach of the statute is limited because we’ve called it something that it’s not.””
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“Greene and his team argue that FOSTA violates the First Amendment “because it’s overbroad [and] can apply to a substantial amount of protected speech,” he explains. “And that’s principally because the language that it uses includes not just things that are in themselves the commission of illegal acts of sex trafficking or prostitution.” Rather, “it uses language like ‘promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person’ without being clear on what that means.”
The language of FOSTA “can be reasonably read to include protected [speech]—and not just protected speech, but speech that’s really highly important, like providing harm reduction, health and safety information to sex workers, to advocating on particular sex workers’ behalf, to advocating for decriminalization, and things like that,” Greene says.
During last week’s hearing, Judge Patricia Millett pushed back on the government’s claims that FOSTA didn’t criminalize advocating for legal prostitution.
“If someone actively promotes on their website the legalization of prostitution … how is that not [promoting prostitution]?” she asked.”