#federal ban on private prisons

[ausetkmt]

What the DOJ’s decision to end private prisons means for Florida - The New Tropic

the Department of Justice announced that it would stop contracting with private prison companies because it found that they were significantly lacking in resources, less safe, and less cost effective than their government-run counterparts

When a prison is privately contracted, it’s completely operated by a private company — that means everything from staffing to services like daily meals and medical care is taken care of by that company. Private prisons get paid per inmate, so the more prisoners, and the more beds in their building, the more money they make.

The private prison industry really took off in the 1980s, when the government was seeking cheaper solutions for managing the country’s packed prisons.

In the Justice Department’s memo about ending the use of private prisons, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote that the federal prison population had increased by 800 percent from 1980 to 2013. “Private prisons served an important role during a difficult period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities,” the memo reads.

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This was a pretty big deal, nationally. But it doesn’t mean much for Florida, which has the 10th highest rate of incarcerations nationwide.

Of the 103 federal prisons controlled by the Department of Justice, 13 are run by private companies. None of them are in Florida, though. The federal prisons in Florida are already publicly run and all the rest, whether public or private, are run by the state.

In sum: The US has federal prisons and state prisons. The DOJ decision only applies to federal prisons, so it won’t bring any changes to Florida. But it could start to change the conversation on the value and effectiveness of private prisons around the country.

At the federal level:

There are 211,000 inmates in US federal prisons, 22,104 of them in private prisons. These are the ones affected by the DOJ announcement.

Lots of people are putting pressure on the Department of Homeland Security to stop using private prisons for immigration detention facilities, too. There are 33,000 inmates in Immigration Detention Facilities, with nine of the 10 largest operated by private companies.

Two of the largest private prison companies, Florida-based GEO Group (who donates a bunch of cash to Sen. Marco Rubio) and the Corrections Corporation of America, get a big portion of their business.

Florida has nine immigrant detention centers, including the the Krome Detention Center in Miami-Dade.  (In Florida, Krome is operated by Akal Security. The Broward Transitional Center is operated by GEO Group. These will continue to be privately operated.)

At the state level:

In Florida, the Department of Corrections oversees adult prisons. The Department of Juvenile Justice oversees prisons for inmates under the age of 18.

There are 56 state prisons, and seven are private. There are roughly 100,873 inmates, and more than 11,000 in private facilities. We’re not going to see anything change there because of this announcement.

All of 21 of Florida’s Juvenile Detention Centers are privately run. There are 1,306 beds in total. In FY 2009-10, 25,008 inmates went through the 21 centers. These also aren’t changing.

(There are also 67 county jails, which house inmates while they’re on trial or incarcerated a short amount of time aka less than one year.)

What decides whether you get put in a federal prison or a state prison?

Federal prisons house inmates who violate federal laws. State prisons house inmates who violate state laws.

If you commit a crime in one state, it’s a state crime. If you commit a crime across different states, it’s a federal crime. For example, a drug deal only in Florida is a state crime but multiple drug deals across Florida, Georgia, and New York is a federal crime. Also crimes that are against federal institutions are federal crimes — like IRS violations or mail fraud.

The Department of Justice will start phasing out their contracts with private prisons, hoping to cut the number of inmates in private prisons in half by May 2017. But state prisons and immigration detention centers are still business as usual.

“The DOJ announcement doesn’t have any direct effect in Florida, but it sends a powerful message that decision makers in Florida should pay attention to,” according to Adam Tebrugge, Staff Attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

[zvaigzdelasas]

The ȘOR Party [...] was a populist political party in Moldova.[13] Known from its foundation in 1998 until October 2016 as the Socio-Political Movement "Equality"[...],[14][15] the party held Eurosceptic and Russophilic stances.[16]

The party was closed down in 2023 having been declared unconstitutional.

The party was founded in 1998 by Moldovan politician Valerii Klimenco as the "Socio-Political Movement "Equality".[17][...]

In 2015, the party decided to nominate Ilan Shor for Mayor of the town of Orhei. [...] In October 2016, Shor was elected president of the party, which was renamed Șor Party. In June 2017, the party President, Ilan Shor was sentenced to 7.5 years in jail for fraud. He broke house arrest and fled the country in 2019 whilst appealing the sentence.[20] On 1 December 2018, the party joined the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe.[21][...]

The party organized a Victory Day parade in Chișinău on 9 May 2019.[27][...]

The Șor Party was the main instigator of the 2022–2023 Moldovan protests.[28][...]

On 8 November 2022, the Moldovan government requested the constitutional court to initiate proceedings for the outlawing of the party in Moldova, due to it allegedly promoting the interests of a foreign state (Russia) and harming the independence and sovereignty of the country.[29][30]

On 13 April 2023, the appeal court doubled the sentence of party President Ilan Shor in a case linked to the theft of $1 billion in bank assets as well as money laundering, breach of trust, and fraud to 15 years in prison in absentia and froze his assets. Shor was living in Israel at the time of the court ruling after having fled Moldova in 2019.[31][...]

On 19 June 2023, the Șor Party was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Moldova.[35][36][37] [...]

On 31 July, the Moldovan parliament voted in favour of banning the leaders of the dissolved Șor Party – including Ilan Shor – from standing in elections for a period of five years.[41] In October the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled that Article 16 of the Electoral Code is unconstitutional and that former members of the Șor Party can stand for elections.[42][...]

The Party's 2019 programme introduced the following points:[46]

○ Free universal health care.

○ Free education including higher education. Increasing the size and scope of disability benefits, maternity benefits and retirement pensions.

○ The creation of modernised collective farms to work alongside the private sector. Active state intervention in the spheres of infrastructure, transport, energy, communications, housing, pharmaceuticals, etc.

○ The nationalization of foreign-owned energy companies.

○ A commitment to law and order including both reinstating the death penalty for particularly dangerous criminals and addressing the underlying socioeconomic issues that may cause crime.

○ A commitment to Moldovan independence and military neutrality.

The opening paragraphs of the party's 2008 election programme stated that it viewed the average person's quality of life as superior under the Soviet Union when compared to modern times. It further stated that it viewed Moldova's alleged socio-economic problems as relating to Moldova's negative relationship with the Russian Federation.[47]

[mariacallous]

A wave of proposed legislation pushed by Republicans across the US at the state level is aimed at outlawing aspects of sexuality that could have a huge impact on Americans’ private lives and businesses.

Opponents to the laws before legislatures in various states say the planned new legislation could spawn prosecution of breast-pump companies in Texas for nipples on advertising, or a bookstore might be banned from selling romance novels in West Virginia, or South Carolina could imprison standup comics if a risque joke is heard by a young person.

The bills are part of a post-Roe nationwide strategy by the religious wing of the Republican party, now that federal abortion rights have fallen. They range from banning all businesses that sell sex-related goods to anti-drag queen bills. Tyler Dees, an Arkansas state senator who wrote an anti-porn bill said: “I would love to outlaw it all,” referring to porn.

The most prevalent bills relate to age verification of sex-related websites. Seventeen states drafted porn age-verification bills, many inspired by Louisiana’s law that went into effect in January. Louisiana’s law requires websites featuring 33.33% or more pornographic content to check government-issued ID to verify users are 18 and older. Websites that don’t comply face civil penalties. Parents can sue the site if kids access it.

In Texas, a new bill requiring age verification on websites with pornographic content defines images of the female breast “below the top of the areola” as porn, potentially hitting at business advertisements. In West Virginia, a bill outlawing all sexually oriented businesses is on the docket, with a definition that includes art studios with nude models and wrestling arenas. In South Carolina a bill would criminalize using “profane language” related to “sexual or excretory organs or activities” in front of minors during performances. The punishment? Up to a decade in prison.

Some bills define porn so broadly that anatomy textbooks or sex education websites would meet them.

“I don’t think such laws for the internet are constitutional,” said Eugene Volokh, a professor of Law at UCLA.

Laurie Schlegel, a Republican state senator who drafted the Louisiana law, is a sex-addiction therapist educated at Baptist seminary, who opposed transgender students from being on sports teams that align with their gender. Schlegel’s anti-LGBTQ+ views fit with the broader goal of the laws, according to Carolyn Bronstein, a professor of media studies at DePaul University.

“These laws are really not about controlling minors’ access to violent pornography … In the conservative world view, pornography is information about LGBTQ identity, abortion, gay marriage,” said Bronstein.

Eight states have justified their actions by saying that porn is “creating a public health crisis”. Louisiana’s bill claims that pornography “may lead to low self-esteem, body image disorders, an increase in problematic sexual activity at younger ages … impact brain development … shape deviant sexual arousal, and lead to difficulty in forming or maintaining positive, intimate relationships, as well as promoting problematic or harmful sexual behaviors and addiction.”

Historian Whitney Strub, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University, doesn’t think these ideas are well-founded. “Framing pornography as a public health crisis is not driven by serious engagement with the social scientific literature,” he said. “They’ve even got fake peer-reviewed journals that give the imprimatur of scholarship … It’s been a very smart rebranding of evangelical Christian conservatism.”

Why are all these bills being proposed now? Strub thinks it’s partly because of the overturning of Roe v Wade. “Abortion gave a certain coherence to conservative politics in the United States. And it certainly still does … but they’re in the position of Ahab if he slayed the white whale … I mean, there’s no more Moby-Dick.”

There is hypocrisy on display also.

In many of the states where the anti-porn bills are being put forth, minors can legally have sex and get married. “In Louisiana, you can have sex when you’re 17 with a person in their 30s, but you can’t watch porn,” said Jason Kelley, associate director of digital strategy for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana, the age of consent is 16. With parental permission, Mississippi allows 15-year-olds to marry, Louisiana 16-year-olds, Arkansas 17-year-olds, and West Virginia kids of any age.

Dees, who wrote Arkansas’s age verification bill, a copycat of Louisiana’s, said porn causes depression and anxiety, divorce and “permissive sexual attitudes” and infidelity. “When I think about the children … I want to protect their innocence,” Dees said.

Strub said this is an old trope: “The political figure of the innocent and imperiled child just has a never-ending purchase on American politics … [it] essentially shuts down debate because it immediately creates a binary in which anybody who disagrees with you is [a] perverted groomer.”

Dees is also the co-author of anti-drag queen legislation in Arkansas, that classifies drag performances as the same category as pornography. “It’s not really a meaningful distinction to [conservatives]. They’re both sexual degeneracy in its different guises,” Strub said.

Dees claimed that his porn verification law “doesn’t have anything to do with any political messaging. It has to do with exposure to material that is harmful, period … There’s a clear enemy in the smut-peddling garbage that’s online.”

But measures already exist to prevent children accessing porn. “There’s a really easy way to keep kids from accessing adult content. And that’s a device-level filter” on mobile phones that block adult websites that are registered as Restricted to Adults, said Mike Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition, which advocates for the rights of sex workers.

These laws, according to Stabile, aren’t going to stop kids from looking at porn. “Even if they were to block all sites, you’re still going to have adult content on Twitter and Reddit … kids will get VPNs,” he said.

Stabile thinks we’ll see up to two dozen age-verification bills introduced by the end of the year.

Dees hopes he is right and has eyes beyond the state level eventually. “My prayer is that enough states continue to push for this measure, and that we send a loud enough message where federal law can be put into place,” he said.

[sarasa-cat]

A wave of proposed legislation pushed by Republicans across the US at the state level is aimed at outlawing aspects of sexuality that could have a huge impact on Americans’ private lives and businesses.

Opponents to the laws before legislatures in various states say the planned new legislation could spawn prosecution of breast-pump companies in Texas for nipples on advertising, or a bookstore might be banned from selling romance novels in West Virginia, or South Carolina could imprison standup comics if a risque joke is heard by a young person.

The bills are part of a post-Roe nationwide strategy by the religious wing of the Republican party, now that federal abortion rights have fallen. They range from banning all businesses that sell sex-related goods to anti-drag queen bills. Tyler Dees, an Arkansas state senator who wrote an anti-porn bill said: “I would love to outlaw it all,” referring to porn.

The most prevalent bills relate to age verification of sex-related websites. Seventeen states drafted porn age-verification bills, many inspired by Louisiana’s law that went into effect in January. Louisiana’s law requires websites featuring 33.33% or more pornographic content to check government-issued ID to verify users are 18 and older. Websites that don’t comply face civil penalties. Parents can sue the site if kids access it.

In Texas, a new bill requiring age verification on websites with pornographic content defines images of the female breast “below the top of the areola” as porn, potentially hitting at business advertisements. In West Virginia, a bill outlawing all sexually oriented businesses is on the docket, with a definition that includes art studios with nude models and wrestling arenas. In South Carolina a bill would criminalize using “profane language” related to “sexual or excretory organs or activities” in front of minors during performances. The punishment? Up to a decade in prison.

Some bills define porn so broadly that anatomy textbooks or sex education websites would meet them.

[otterbot-mkii]

!!! TRIGGER WARNING: Heavy topics/strong language !!! Bill S. 686 – RESTRICT Act, AKA: The TikTok Ban Link: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686/text?s=1&r=15  The purpose of this Bill is to allow the US government to invade US citizen’s privacy, censor, and control content available or to or already owned by US citizens on the internet, by restricting access to data owned by “foreign adversaries”. The Bill does not even mention TikTok in any capacity and at best, TikTok would fall under the “foreign adversaries” category. However, due to the ambiguous nature of the term “foreign adversaries”, this could imply that any apps, not just TikTok would become banned if they came from one of the listed “foreign adversaries”, which are listed below. 1) The People’s Republic of China, including the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Region 2) The Republic of Cuba 3) The Islamic Republic of Iran 4) The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 5) The Russian Federation 6) The Bolivian Republic of Venezuela under the regime of Nicolás Moros The above list is also subject to change. If passed, the following can and likely will occur as there is little to no information within the bill that states what the probable cause for the following actions may be as the appointed government individuals do *not* have to provide any sort of proof, transcripts, or information as to why they came to the conclusions they came to warranting the following: - Surveillance and invasions of privacy using existing technologies owned by US citizens including but not limited to modems, routers, smart devices (this includes security cameras), and more. - Invasions of privacy in the form of accessing citizen’s private messages and data on any platform, regardless of device, as well as the modification of private messages and data. - Censoring of the internet to US citizens at the US government’s discretion, notably the censorship of access to data owned by “foreign adversaries”. - Dissolvement of online gathering places in which information being shared is considered unsafe, unsavory, undesirable, or inappropriate. Circumvention of any of the restrictions on data that this Bill puts into effect such as using a VPN, will be considered illegal and will result in up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to 1 million USD. This Bill also has retroactive effects in that should you be caught in possession of any pirated material that was obtained in the past no matter how far in the past the material was obtained, or caught with any evidence of possession of pirated material, you can receive legal ramifications as well. This includes present and potential future attempts, meaning that you can be caught talking about pirating content and you will become a suspect, and the government will then proceed to surveil you without your knowledge. These are just some of the more notable actions this Bill allows the government to take, all of which are unconstitutional and hypocritical in that the US is attempting to ban TikTok for it's data harvesting practices which are nowhere near as bad as Facebook's an Amazon's practices.

I implore all of you whom are US citizens to fight for your right to freedom as you should because not fighting for your freedom is simply giving it up and frankly, if you aren’t willing to fight for your freedom to live and exist as a human just as any other human should be entitled to regardless of skin color, orientation, religion, etc, then you don’t deserve your freedoms.

Please, contact your representatives via email or phone and politely tell them the following:

Dear [Representative Title Here] [Representative Name Here],

I hope you are doing well. I am contacting you to inform you that should you support Bill S. 686 or the TikTok Ban, I will actively vote and campaign for your opponent in your next primary

Thank you,

[Your Name Here]

To find and contact your representatives and members of congress, click this link: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

You may be prompted for a zip code plus four extra digits to get your representatives and members of congress, precisely. If you don’t know those four extra digits, click this link to look up your exact zip code from USPS: https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.htm?byaddress

When your representatives/members of congress are displayed to you, simply email them using the above template and you’re done. It’s not as long an arduous as it seems and I’ve given you the tools and resources to make it even simpler.

[sataniccapitalist]

Eric King ‘assaulted by guards, assaulted by Nazis’

Eric King is an antifascist, antiracist, anarchist activist who is currently serving a 10-year federal prison sentence for throwing Molotov cocktails into an empty government office in Kansas City, Missouri, in solidarity with the 2014 uprisings after Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown. From the beginning of his imprisonment, King and his advocates say he has been targeted and “tortured” by the state, including assaults from prison guards and white supremacist gangs, solitary confinement, communication bans, and unexplained transports to different private and federal prison facilities. Now, even though he does not qualify for maximum security designation, King has been transferred to USP Lee, a maximum security prison in Virginia where his life has been threatened, and advocacy groups, including Amnesty International, are sounding the alarm. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, Mansa Musa speaks with Josh Davidson, a member of Eric King’s support crew, about King’s case, his treatment while serving out his sentence, and what is known about his current condition.

[cannabistraininguniversity]

Amsterdam Weed Prices

Smoking weed in an Amsterdam coffeeshop is on every stoner’s bucket list. If you're planning a trip to the Netherlands and want to stay on the right side of the law and have a good time, here are the Amsterdam weed prices and rules you can expect. 

Is it Legal to Smoke Weed in Amsterdam?

You’ve probably heard stories and seen movies depicting carefree cannabis use in Amsterdam, but did you know that marijuana is illegal in the Netherlands? However, there is an exception if you buy weed (5 grams or less; twice a day maximum) from a licensed coffeeshop. Medical marijuana is distributed by pharmacies. Smoking in public is not allowed. Be sure to research the cannabis laws in Amsterdam before visiting the city. If you are caught with more than the decriminalized amount of soft drugs, you may get fined and face a prison sentence. If caught with under 5 grams of weed, the police may confiscate the drugs. Growing cannabis at home is not legal. However, growing less than five plants of cannabis at home is decriminalized. If you are caught with under 5 plants, the authorities may confiscate the plants.

How to Buy Weed in Amsterdam

Are you looking to buy cannabis from an Amsterdam coffeeshop? Here’s how simple it is: 1. Find a Coffeeshop It's not hard to find a coffeeshop in Amsterdam. All you have to do is look for the locations that have the coffeeshop sign. Licensed coffeeshops are required to have a green and white flag sticker on their window that says “coffeeshop.” Amsterdam has 160 different coffeeshop locations, many of which can be found in the city’s center If you're a tourist, you will only be able to go inside an Amsterdam coffeeshop. In other areas of the Netherlands, they have banned non-locals from buying weed. In 2012, a federal Dutch policy only permitted Dutch residents over 18 from visiting coffeeshops. The Amsterdam Mayor is also looking to ban tourists from the city’s coffeeshops. 2. Look at the Cannabis Menu Menus are usually near the register, or you can ask the person working the register for product recommendations based on your tolerance and desired experience. Do you want a light potency edible? Looking for a high-potency hash? Popular products offered at coffeeshops include cannabis flower, pre-rolled joints, edibles, and hash. Check out our guide on how to buy the best hash in Amsterdam. 3. Order Cannabis at the Counter Most coffeeshop employees speak English, so you will be able to easily order in your native language. You will have to present your ID to ensure you are 18 years or older. In some establishments, you may need to be 21 years or older to enter.  4. Pay for Your Weed Once you’ve chosen your weed products and all the necessary accessories (lighter, filter, rolling papers, etc.), you’ll have to pay with the coffeeshop’s preferred payment method. Some coffeeshops only accept cash, while others only accept cards. Be sure to look this up beforehand. 5. Smoke Your Bud After buying weed at the counter, you can find a nice spot indoors or on the terrace to enjoy your cannabis products. Most coffeeshops sell beverages and some bar snacks and provide entertainment such as tv or music to create a relaxed and fun atmosphere. Serving alcohol and smoking cigarettes are not permitted. Don’t want to stick around? No problem. You can take your bud with you to a private location. Just make sure that you can legally and are permitted to smoke in the location of your choice. You may not be able to smoke weed at hotels or Airbnb's. Smoking in public is not allowed.

Amsterdam Weed Prices for 2023?

Amsterdam weed prices vary based on various factors, including strain genetics, potency, product type, and coffeeshop location. Here is how much you can expect to pay for weed in Amsterdam: - 1 gram of cannabis - €7-€20 - Pre-rolled joint - €5-€12 - Cannabis edible (brownie, cookie, etc.) - €5-€15 - Hash - €5-€35 Generally, the weed cost goes up higher the closer you get to the center of Amsterdam. If possible, avoid coffee shops in touristy areas to save some money. 

Best Amsterdam Coffeeshops

What is the best coffee shop in Amsterdam? There are so many good ones to choose from. Here are just a few. - Coffeeshop Sloterdijk - Boerejongens West - Abraxas - De Tweede Kamer - Coffeeshop Amsterdam - Grey Area - The Stud - Voyagers - Easy Times - Barney’s Coffeeshop - Het Ballonnetje - The Spirit - The Point Coffeeshop - The Original Dampkring - Coffeeshop Relax - Coffeeshop Get Down To It - Coffeeshop Pacific - Katsu Coffeeshop & Gallerie - The Bulldog - Coffeeshop Papillion - Paradox

Buying Cannabis in Amsterdam

If you visit Amsterdam, stop at one of their legendary Dutch coffeeshops. Amsterdam weed prices tend to be higher in the city’s center but can also be more convenient when exploring the city’s landmarks.  Are Amsterdam coffeeshops open to tourists now?It is currently illegal for tourists to buy cannabis in Amsterdam coffeeshops. This ban was just put into place in 2023. How much is a joint in an Amsterdam coffeeshop?The price of a joint of cannabis in an Amsterdam coffee shop ranges from €4 to €35 per gram. Is there an Amsterdam cannabis college that is accredited?Cannabis Training University is accredited by IACET and has all the latest cannabis laws for Amsterdam included in its online courses. Do coffee shops accept credit cards for weed in Amsterdam?Yes, some coffeeshops accept credit cards for cannabis in Amsterdam, while some others still only accept cash. Are there cannabis jobs in Amsterdam?Yes, there are coffee shop jobs in Amsterdam where cannabis is sold. To improve your odds greatly of getting a cannabis job in Amsterdam make sure to first complete online cannabis training programs from Cannabis Training University. Read the full article

[myangelgarden]

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POLITICS

Does TikTok Ban Allow for 20 Year Prison Sentence?

BY KATHERINE FUNG ON 3/28/23 AT 3:04 PM EDT

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POLITICS TIKTOK BAN BILLS BIPARTISANSHIP

Asweeping bill introduced by a group of bipartisan senators earlier this month has caught national attention as Americans await to see whether TikTok has a future in the U.S. and what that might look like for everyday social media users.

Congress appears to be moving unanimously towards the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, or RESTRICT Act, which would give broad regulative power to the secretary of commerce over tech produced in China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela—countries that all have adversarial relations with the U.S.

Last week, TikTok CEO Shou Chew testified in front of lawmakers that TikTok had never received a request from the Chinese government to hand over data on American users and that the company would never comply with one. But Washington remains on alert about the national security threats that the Chinese-owned app poses.

While the RESTRICT Act doesn't cite TikTok or its owner, ByteDance, by name, the senators who introduced the bill have repeatedly pointed to the surveillance fears that the app raises and the legislation has already been referred to as a so-called TikTok ban.

The ban's criminal penalties, which include a fine up to a million dollar and/or imprisonment of up to 20 years, has caused some alarm among the bill's observers, who have questioned whether some TikTok fanatics might face jail time for using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to get around the ban and access the app.

But a spokesperson for Senator Mark Warner, the bill's sponsor, told Newsweek that it would not apply to individual users.

A prisoner's hands inside a punishment cell wing at Angola prison on October 14, 2013. Inset: In this photo illustration, the download page for the TikTok app is displayed on an Apple iPhone on August 7, 2020 in Washington, DC.

GILES CLARK/DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

"Under the terms of the bill, someone must be engaged in 'sabotage or subversion' of communications technology in the U.S., causing 'catastrophic effects' on U.S. critical infrastructure, or 'interfering in, or altering the result' of a federal election in order for criminal penalties to apply," Warner's communications director, Rachel Cohen, said.

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"The bill is squarely aimed at companies like Kaspersky, Huawei and TikTok that create systemic risks to the United States' national security, not individual users," she clarified.

While the RESTRICT Act seems widely supported across party lines, there is a small group of progressive critics in Congress, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who made her first TikTok to address her opposition.

"If we want to make a decision as significant as banning TikTok, and we believe, or someone believes, that there is really important information that the public deserves to know about why such a decision would be justified, that information should be shared," the congresswoman said in the video.

READ MORE

TikTok ban seems likely for this surprising reason

TikTok CEO draws rare bipartisan fire

Who is Shou Chew? TikTok CEO who doesn't let his kids use app

The legislation, which has been proposed but not voted on yet, could also potentially thwart another bill introduced by Senator Josh Hawley.

In January, the Republican senator introduced the No TikTok on United States Devices Act, which specifically names TikTok and ByteDance, which would implement a nationwide TikTok ban. It also follows his No TikTok on Government Devices Act, which unanimously passed the Senate and became law on December 29.

But because the RESTRICT Act is being backed by a number of GOP senators, it could put them at odds against Hawley, who was hoping to see unanimous consent again. Among the Republican names listed as co-sponsors of the RESTRICT Act are Senators John Thune, Deb Fischer, Jerry Moran, Dan Sullivan, Susan Collins and Mitt Romney.

The sponsors of the RESTRICT Act have also argued that a more "comprehensive" approach needs to be taken in respect to foreign technology, whereas Hawley's bill targets TikTok in particular.

"We need a comprehensive, risk-based approach that proactively tackles sources of potentially dangerous technology before they gain a foothold in America, so we aren't playing Whac-A-Mole and scrambling to catch up once they're already ubiquitous," Warner said in a statement.

"Congress needs to stop taking a piecemeal approach when it comes to technology from adversarial nations that pose national security risks," Thune added. "Our country needs a process in place to address these risks, which is why I'm pleased to work with Senator Warner to establish a holistic, methodical approach to address the threats posed by technology platforms—like TikTok—from foreign adversaries."

Nonetheless, Hawley plans to bring his bill to the Senate floor this week in hopes of getting it passed unanimously, Punchbowl News reported on Tuesday.

Do you have a tip on a world news story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about China? Let us know via worldnews@newsweek.com.

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[don-lichterman]

Federal court panel declares California ban on private prisons unconstitutional | California

Federal court panel declares California ban on private prisons unconstitutional | California

(The Center Square) – State officials are weighing options after the Ninth Circuit Appellate Court affirmed California’s ban on private, for-profit prisons and immigration detention facilities is unconstitutional, finding that the law would “override the federal government’s decision” to utilize private contractors to run immigration detention facilities. The en banc court declared that Assembly…

[mariacallous]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A proposal aimed at removing the last remnant of slavery from California law failed to pass the state Senate on Thursday after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration warned it could cost taxpayers billions of dollars by forcing the state to pay prisoners a $15-per-hour minimum wage.

The U.S. Constitution bans slavery but says it’s OK for the government to force people to work — known as “involuntary servitude” — as punishment for a crime. Many state constitutions say the same thing, including California’s.

Some state lawmakers wanted to change California’s Constitution to ban all forms of involuntary servitude. They wrote an amendment and planned to put it on the ballot this fall for voters to approve. But Thursday, the California Senate rejected the amendment over concerns of how it would impact the state prison system, which requires inmates to work and often pays them less than $1 per hour.

Lawmakers could try again next week. But if the amendment doesn’t pass by June 30, it won’t be on the ballot this year.

“The CA State Senate just reaffirmed its commitment to keeping slavery and involuntary servitude in the state’s constitution. Way to go, Confederates,” tweeted Democratic state Sen. Sydney Kamlager, who supported the amendment and said she will bring it up for another vote next week.

The Newsom administration has warned that the amendment could require the state to pay inmates a minimum wage, which in California is $15 per hour. That would cost taxpayers about $1.5 billion per year, according to Aaron Edwards, an analyst with the California Department of Finance.

In 2018, Colorado was the first state to ban involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. Since then, inmates have filed lawsuits seeking to be paid a minimum wage and alleging they were pressured into working despite health concerns. It’s unclear if those lawsuit have been resolved.

An American Civil Liberties Union report this month called for “far-reaching reforms to ensure prison labor is truly voluntary and that incarcerated workers are paid fairly, properly trained, and able to gain transferable skills.” Two-thirds of state and federal prisoners nationwide are required to work, the report said, most without adequate protections against labor exploitation.

Local governments could also be impacted. If the courts interpret the constitutional change to bar community service in lieu of incarceration, those individuals might go to jail instead, at a much higher cost, Edwards said.

Democratic state Sen. Steve Glazer said slavery “was an evil that will forever be a stain on the history of our great nation.” But he said the proposed amendment was not about slavery, but whether California “should require felons in state prison to work.”

“Banning the work requirement in our prisons would undermine our rehabilitation programs,” Glazer said. “Inmates will sue claiming their wages are too low, their hours are too high or that it is unconstitutional to link goodtime credit and early release to their willingness to work.”

Glazer said the state should change the amendment to make it clear that involuntary servitude does not include any rehabilitative activity required of people in prison. But it appeared Kamlager would not support that.

“I don’t want to negotiate what involuntary servitude means,” she said, adding: “I believe even if we are incarcerated, we still should have dignity.”

For decades, California used that involuntary servitude exception to make money from its prison population by leasing inmates — mostly Black men — to private companies for work.

That “convict lease” system doesn’t exist anymore. But California prison inmates are required to either work or participate in education or rehabilitative programs. Inmate jobs — which include things like clerks, painters and carpenters — pay salaries as low of 8 cents per hour.

Samual Brown spent 24 years in prison on an attempted murder conviction. He was released in December. While in prison, he said he worked a number of jobs, including porter, dishwasher and hospital janitor — the latter of which paid 75 cents per hour.

He said 55% of his salary went to pay for administrative costs, restitution and court fees. When he was released from prison, despite working for decades, he said he barely made a dent in his court-ordered restitution.

“This is really nothing more than slavery just reconditioned and remixed,” he said. “They had an opportunity to stand on the right side of history ... and they took the coward’s way out.”

The bill failed in a 21-6 vote with 13 "no votes of record" as in 20 yes, 6 no, and 13 "no votes of record".

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“IN 1933, state prison administrators worried what the next year would bring. At the time, profits were high—so much so that the Board of Administration, which oversaw state penal camps and prisons, reported revenue from all prison industries. In other words, the prison system not only cost taxpayers nothing but was producing profit. And yet, the Hawes-Cooper Act, passed in 1929 and set to become effective in 1934, threatened the revenue generated by women incarcerated at Wetumpka in Elmore County and other penal industries scattered throughout southern Alabama. The legislation, which banned the interstate sale of prison-made goods in states with laws against it, meant that the garments produced at Wetumpka could no longer be sold by the Lite Wear Manufacturing Company that contracted with the prison. For a time, officials and contractors resisted the incursion on their profits. Indeed, the Supreme Court case that would eventually confirm the law’s constitutionality by 1936 originated from the illegal sale of Wetumpka-made shirts in Ohio. Even after the court’s decision, however, state officials continued to run the factories to some extent, producing clothing for the nearly five thousand people incarcerated across the state.

Following the state ban on convict leasing, which took full effect by the end of the 1920s, Alabama’s Board of Administration reconfigured and centralized penal labor. Under the purview of the state, incarcerated people in Alabama labored at mills, in factories, in coal mines, on state farms, on highways, in laundries, in the prison’s tuberculosis hospital, and in guards’ and wardens’ private homes. While Black women were forced to do farm and domestic work during their incarcerations, they were also increasingly assigned to the factory at Wetumpka. Because of the various modes of profitable labor and private contracts that circumvented the ban on convict leasing, the Board of Administration urgently organized in opposition to the Hawes-Cooper Act. In the early 1930s, officials drafted a questionnaire that they circulated to other state prison administrators in hopes of galvanizing resistance to the federal policy. Other state officials similarly described their alarm at the loss of revenue. South Carolina’s superintendent, for example, reported that the enactment of the law would be “a very serious blow,” shutting down their manufacturing enterprises. West Virginia’s penitentiary warden summed up his concerns in two words: “very disastrous.” Like Alabama, South Carolina and West Virginia—among other southern states like Virginia and Tennessee—forced incarcerated Black women to work as machine operators, inspectors, cutters, loopers, sewers, and general manufacturers in prison factories.

In Alabama, the factory had been a central component of modern carceral infrastructure for at least a decade. In 1922, when Wetumpka State Penitentiary reopened as a place of reformed punishment for women, Frank Willis Barnett, a local journalist, remarked on the so-called improvements, fondly recalling the decaying prison before the “old cells [were] torn out to convert that part of the prison into a factory.” White visitors fawned over the three acres of land enclosed in twenty-five-foot walls; notably, the forced industriousness of incarcerated women enticed observers as much as the “new pickets and lattice fences, all painted snow white.” This Frankenstein marriage of bucolic and industrial fantasies coalesced into a brutal site of discipline and punishment. Factory work was grueling: it included repetitive, arthritis-inducing tasks; long hours; and the ever-present threat of the whip or solitary confinement for failing to produce a specific number of garments. Women filed into the factory at six o’clock in the morning and worked twelve hours except for an hour break at noon; some were on an all-night shift.

Although the newly reopened Wetumpka incarcerated both Black and white women—and by the 1930s men as well—more Black women were sent to the penitentiary (see Table 2). And unlike in any other state prison or penal camp, Black women outnumbered white and Black men, in large part because Wetumpka was the central prison where women were sent whereas only disabled and aged men were transferred there. Black women’s labor assignments, much like their cells, upheld racial segregation. Most Black women worked in the factory, while most white women were assigned to smaller-scale work in the tailor shop. But the fact that both white and Black women worked in fear of the whip and the guards’ barks meant that they lived in a strange new world.

These joint (albeit divergent) experiences of discipline and punishment occasionally branched into moments of interracial cooperation. In December 1923, for example, thirty-six women—twenty-five Black and three white (and eight whose names are now unreadable)—wrote to Governor William Brandon demanding that they be allowed to stay at Wetumpka rather than be transferred back to Speigner, another prison where they had faced relentless attacks from guards: “When we were in the cotton mill at Speigner there was some one cut near to death almost every day—both white and colored.” Wetumpka was not a perfect refuge from guards’ ire, but given a choice, the women vehemently opposed being sent back to the cotton mill. The letter suggested that grassroots organizing may have occurred clandestinely during work hours: the youngest Black women to sign it, some of whom were only between the ages of sixteen and nineteen, had never been to Speigner. Perhaps older Black women, like fortyseven-year-old Sarah Barnet, used their decades’ worth of experience in the prison system to convince newcomers to risk punishment and sign their names in support of collective attempts to garner more protection.

However, cooperation between Black and white women was often fleeting. Incarcerated Black women still understood that white women carried power within the prison, but Black women took opportunities to mock them. In 1929, maybe even well before it, white women complained that Black women began calling them girls, whores, and bitches. These were names that white women prized in their lexicon: daggers they could pull out as condemnations or preludes to violence against Black women whom they perceived as uppity. Girls, bitches, and whores took on a political valence—one that spoke to an alternative sociality in the prison driven by the fact that Black women were far more numerous than white women and did not work for the white women incarcerated alongside them. They could insult incarcerated white women without fear of economic retribution. But it was risky, particularly when a coalition of incarcerated white women reported what was happening to Governor Bibb Graves, calling for retribution and querulously instructing Graves to “respect [his] own race—and see that sompthin [sic] is done.”

Black women also attempted to reclaim their time from industrial sewing lines in the factory. In October 1928, for example, Bertha Lee Golden refused to work; the next day, Baby Doll Hearn did “bad work,” maybe failing to finish her quota or haphazardly stitching underwear together on purpose. In the middle of the month, Bertha Lee Golden was defiant again: if she had to sit there and work, she was going to cut up the garments so that the state could not sell them. In December, Golden came up short on the number of garments she had to make. The same day, Wellie May Gree did the same. At the turn of the new year, Ruth Brown and Mary Bawes failed to reach their quotas. Throughout 1929, 1930, and 1931, Black women refused work, messing up the clothes they were supposed to produce—some even using the factory scissors to cut up the garments. These were small-scale mutinies, hardly impinging on state-generated income. Yet it was no small feat to cut up “state property” or stand up and refuse to sew one more line in front of prison overseers. Black women’s rebelliousness was a constant protest of penal labor conditions—dissent often curtailed by the constant pressure of surveillance and violence. Brutality kept them at the cusp of open, collective rebellion.

But riots were never far off even if beatings forestalled them. In January 1931, a fire consumed the factory and several other buildings in the prison compound. Fire alarms pounded in people’s ears as guards shouted at them to march out and drove them into groups in the yard. The incarcerated men and women moved further away from the flames as the heat intensified. There was “a great clamor” as people screamed and demanded to exit the enclosure. Nearby, “a group began trying to batter a hole through a brick wall fifteen feet high.” As the fire lapped at the walls, people frantically cried for their lives. The “demeanor” among the men and women crowding outside felt “so threatening” to the guards that they “hesitated to go into the yard.” This was a riot against dying at the hands of a factory gone up in flames. 

There was precedence for garment factory disasters: the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911 killed over a hundred women and girls in Manhattan. But unlike that moment in which collective grieving and reckoning followed disaster, there was no union to mobilize nor dirge to sing. Instead, the fire at Wetumpka was a moment like so many others in prison: a collective wrought in violence and then caustically dispersed. But even so, for minutes or maybe an hour, incarcerated women and men battered the walls with no guards in sight. Sometime after that, Hamp Draper, a career prison bureaucrat, showed up and commanded attention, buying enough time for extra guards from twenty miles away to arrive and reimpose order and discipline. If Black women held out hope that the factory and all its bedeviling coercion was destroyed, they soon learned how quickly the state would rebuild its infrastructure to serve its own ends. If one of the women had set the fire, the relief that they hoped for in its destruction did not last very long. 

By the fall of 1931, less than a year later, Black women were back to working in the garment factory. Through sabotage and truancy, they continued to steal their time away from sewing. In October 1931, Willie Jackson tore up one of the machines. In the spring of 1932, Helen Scott left her work station. The same month, Lenora Hines stole one of the clocks from the factory. Maybe she wanted her own clock, to see if the guards were lying about the time; or perhaps she thought if she could take away the clock, overseers might not be able to count their work to the very minute.

But even when they did not destroy physical parts of the factory, Black women were irreverent in their penal work. In 1934, for instance, the warden of Wetumpka wrote to the State Board of Administration that Clara Jackson had been causing “considerable trouble . . . for sometime [sic].” In 1928, she tried to escape with Annie Davis, another Black woman who worked in the prison kitchens alongside her. After being recaptured, she had gotten into fights in the factory and had cursed and threatened guards. Despite her lengthy record of antipathy toward prison officials, a state bureaucrat at some point promoted Jackson to Class A—the state’s highest behavior classification that restored previously withheld rights, like receiving mail, to incarcerated people. Around the same time, the warden made her a “cell tender”: someone who walked the cells at night watching others. But if the administration thought that this position would somehow subdue her, they were wrong. 

Just three months before the prison-wide strike, Jackson ambled up and down the cells cursing “the warden and doctor in particular.” The night guard yelled at her until she stopped around ten o’clock. But in the morning, she began again, cursing the man who ordered their whippings and the doctor who stood by and watched. When the warden found out, he took away her job, and recorded that he “put [her] in stripes and sent [her] to the field” to work. She screamed. They were violent with her.24 Yet Jackson was determined. After being forced toward one of the roads that cut across state prison lands, she refused to walk further. Her voice testified to a pain so deep that it could not be culled nor extirpated: not by the striped uniform, not by the farmwork, not by fourteen days that they left her with only bread and water in solitary confinement. The warden later noted how she stood out on the highway, “cursing, crying, and yelling.” She screamed at a white woman whose husband was an overseer in the factory and she yelled in front of a bus full of white school children on the road. She did not need their witness but she implicated them in her pain. It was, in historian Marisa Fuentes’s words, “a different form of agency—one that [did] not expect resolution or revolution in outcome,” but was a “will to survive” and a lasting cry of refusal.”

- Micah Khater, “Riot and Reclamation: Black Women, Prison Labor, and Resistive Desires,” Southern Cultures, Volume 27, Number 3, Fall 2021, p. 54-57.

[briefnewschannel]

California Ban on Private Prisons for Undocumented Ruled Unconstitutional

By TCR Staff | 20 hours ago Judge Jacqueline H. Nguyen of the en banc Ninth Circuit has issued an opinion stating that California’s ban on all private prisons in the state impermissibly inserts the state into immigration regulation, which is the domain of the federal government, reports Bernie Pazanowski for Bloomberg News. Judge Nguyen said Immigration and Customs Enforcement oversees the…

[denverworksheet]

Federal court says California ban on private ICE detention facilities is unconstitutional

A California law banning private prisons and immigrant detention facilities in the state violates the U.S. constitution, a federal court ruled Monday.

from California https://ift.tt/mbEY0a1

[michiganprelawland]

The Fight for Abortion Continues

By Shayna Friedrich, Michigan State University Class of 2023

August 7, 2022

The U.S. Justice Department filed a suit on August 2 against Idaho’s restrictive abortion law. [1] Attorney General Merrick Garland stated that the filing of this suit is the first major action challenging a state trigger law since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Garland alleges [2] that Idaho’s law violates the Constitution and is preempted by federal law, as it is in conflict with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). The EMTALA is a federal law that demands that hospitals receiving federal funds must provide emergency medical care. Idaho’s law would criminalize and strip doctors of their medical license for performing an emergency abortion. Therefore, the Justice Department is trying to block the law and prevent it from going into effect on August 25. [4] The lawsuit also alleges that Idaho’s law interferes with federal healthcare programs for seniors, like Medicaid. [4] In March Idaho became the first state to enact a six-week abortion ban modeled on a Texas law that empowers private citizens to sue abortion providers. Furthermore, the restrictive law works to ban abortion before some women even know that they are pregnant. [5] "Today, the Justice Department's message is clear... if a patient comes into the emergency room with a medical emergency jeopardizing the patient's life or health, the hospital must provide the treatment necessary to stabilize that patient," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference in Washington announcing the filing.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, which means that it is no longer a constitutional right for women to get an abortion, but it is up to the states to decide. Idaho’s law [3] criminalizes most abortions (except in limited circumstances) and states that anyone attempting to perform an abortion is subject to felony charges, punishable by between two and five years in prison. However, if an individual is charged, they can defend themselves through report of incest or rape, and/or prove that the pregnancy would be life threatening for the mother. The law was enacted in 2020 and set to take effect August 25. [6] The Justice Department’s suit asks a judge to issue a declaratory judgment that Idaho’s law violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and is preempted by EMTLA. Garland stated that the prohibition [2] "will threaten the health of women who come into the emergency room in a really dire medical situation." Nevertheless, despite the states having control over abortion laws in their jurisdiction, they cannot impede on a women’s right to an emergency abortion. With proof of a police report or medical issue within the pregnancy, it is protected under federal guidelines.

[3] Idaho, like many Republican-led states, has several anti-abortion laws on the books, creating a legal quagmire now that the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade. The lawsuit continues to cite many medical conditions that would require a doctor to perform an emergency abortion procedure. [7] “We will use every tool at our disposal to ensure that pregnant women get the emergency medical treatment to which they are entitled to under federal law,” Garland said at a news conference. President Joe Biden agreed as he signed an executive order last month to ensure safeguard protections for reproductive rights. Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade, democrats in power are fighting to maintain the right that was stripped from women. The ruling on Idaho’s law will set standards for states enacting anti- abortion laws. Thus, continuing the fight for the right to choose. My body, my choice.

______________________________________________________________

[1] Press, Associated. “U.S. Sues Idaho over Abortion Law, CITES Medical Treatment.” POLITICO, 24 Aug. 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/02/us-sues-idaho-over-abortion-law-00049302.

[2] Quinn, Melissa, and Robert Legare. “Justice Department Sues Idaho Over Abortion Law in First Legal Challenge since Roe's Reversal.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 2 Aug. 2022, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/justice-department-sues-idaho-abortion-law/.

[3] Press, The Associated. “An Idaho Abortion Law Draws a Justice Department Lawsuit.” NPR, NPR, 2 Aug. 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/08/02/1115272504/idaho-abortion-law-justice-department-lawsuit-emergency-medical-treatment.

[4] Reuters. “US Sues Idaho over Abortion Law.” VOA, US Sues Idaho Over Abortion Law, 2 Aug. 2022, https://www.voanews.com/a/us-sues-idaho-over-abortion-law/6684185.html.

[5] Chiacu, Doina, and Sarah N. Lynch. “Abortion Ban in Idaho Faces First U.S. Legal Challenge since Roe.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 3 Aug. 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-sues-idaho-over-state-law-that-imposes-near-absolute-ban-abortion-court-2022-08-02/.

[6] Mangan, Dan. “DOJ Sues to Block New Idaho Abortion Law, First Challenge to a State after Dobbs Ruling by Supreme Court.” CNBC, CNBC, 2 Aug. 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/02/watch-live-us-attorney-general-merrick-garland-briefs-press-on-doj-lawsuit-challenging-idaho-abortion-law.html.

[7] Stein, Perry, and Devlin Barrett. “Justice Dept. Sues Idaho over near-Total Abortion Ban Coming Aug. 25.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 2 Aug. 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/02/idaho-abortion-justice-lawsuit-garland/.