Citizen Cartwright

Valentines to Danielle Sassoon, others pursuing impartial justice

It’s good-news Friday, but our friends at Australia’s Fix the News will be happy for us to focus on this instead:

 

Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon, was followed by five high-ranking Justice Department officials in resigning on Thursday after she refused an order to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

 

“The serial resignations represent the most high-profile public opposition so far to President Trump’s tightening control over the Justice Department,” says The New York Times.

 

They’re “a stunning escalation in a dayslong standoff over the Trump administration prioritizing political aims over criminal culpability,” says The Associated Press.

 

Sassoon, a Republican who was interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, accused the department of acceding to a “quid pro quo” — dropping the case to ensure Adams’ help with Trump’s immigration agenda — and said she was “confident” the Democratic mayor committed the crimes detailed in his indictment, and even more.

 

Sassoon had “shot like a laser through the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, with stints fighting violent crime and securities fraud as well as handling appeals before she was elevated, at age 38, to be its interim head,” says a separate Times article.

 

“Before the Adams case vaulted her into the spotlight, Ms. Sassoon’s life had been characterized by achievement that was noteworthy even in environments where achievement is the norm,” the Times says.

 

After graduating from Harvard magna cum laude and Yale Law school, Sassoon served in consecutive clerkships for conservative judges, including Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. 

 

Until now, Sassoon was best-known for her “withering” cross-examination of Sam Bankman-Fried, the former cryptocurrency executive who took the stand to testify in his own defense against charges he stole $8 billion from his customers, says Reuters. Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison. 

 

Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law professor and former federal prosecutor, says about Sassoon:

 
“That the resignation should be by someone with sterling Federalist Society credentials only highlights the difference between the Trump administration and serious conservatives with integrity and respect for the criminal process.”

 

Here are the letters exchanged by Sassoon and Justice Department officials, from Lawfare.

Increased secrecy in local governments? Uncle Bob would have a few things to say

When some friends and I traveled to the memorial service of my beloved, never-bereft-of-a-comment Uncle Bob, we stayed at a bed and breakfast in Volant, Pa., population 126.

 

Imagine my surprise to find tiny Volant the lead example in an Associated Press article on a trend toward secrecy among local governments across the United States.

 

The Volant council, without discussion at public meetings, raised property taxes 57 percent. The unexpected hike could be a burden for the community, where half the population is over 65 and the median salary is below the state median, notes AP. Uncle Bob would not be pleased by the process or the price tag.

 

From school districts to townships and county boards, public access to records and meetings in many states is worsening, according to open government advocates and experts.

 

“It’s been going on for decades, really, but it’s accelerated the past 10 years,” says David Cuillier, director of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida.

 

Elected officials are discussing significant public business in closed sessions. And local agencies generally lack sufficient staff and infrastructure to efficiently process records requests. Then there's the decline of local media, which have limited resources for costly legal battles over access to meetings and records.

Compounding the issue is the increased polarization of communities nationwide, says AP. Election offices across the country have been flooded with records requests from activists motivated by election falsehoods. And school boards have become political battlegrounds over coronavirus policies and curriculum, prompting records requests, accusations of public meeting violations and intense scrutiny. 

 

This article makes me want to walk on over with Uncle Bob for a confab at Volant’s Knockin Noggin Cidery and Winery (named for Isaac Newton’s experience sitting under the apple tree). 

Good news on ocean plastic, water conservation, re-use

This week’s issue of Future Crunch includes several positive developments on water resources.

 

At the global level, plastic in the oceans is far less than was thought, according to Dutch researchers. They say their calculations — using more than 20,000 reliable measurements worldwide — show that ocean plastic amounts to about 3.2 million tons, not the estimated 50 million tons to 300 million tons.

 

At the national level, Spain is reviving its network of irrigation canals created by the Moors 1,000 years ago, as a low-cost and effective way to bring water to remote areas.

 

At the local level, San Francisco is implementing a 2015 law requiring all new city buildings of more than 100,000 square feet to have on-site water recycling systems.

Disaster-proof homes

Geodesic domes and other resilient home designs are getting new attention from more climate-conscious home buyers and the architects and builders who cater to them, says The New York Times.

 

Homes made of steel and concrete can be more resilient to heat, wildfire and storms. And even traditional wood-framed houses can be built in ways that greatly reduce the odds of severe damage from hurricanes or flooding, says the Times.

Homes with added resiliency can cost about 10 percent more than conventional construction, though that often pays for itself through reduced repair costs after a disaster, the Times says.

 

But most house purchasers don’t know enough about construction to demand tougher standards, the Times says. Builders, in turn, are reluctant to add resilience, out of concern that consumers won’t be willing to pay extra for features they don’t understand.

One way to bridge that gap would be for states and localities to tighten building codes. But most places don’t use the latest code, if they have mandatory building standards at all, says the Times.

 

Electric vehicles as backup power

Energy and auto experts expect people to increasingly use the batteries in their electric vehicles as a source of backup power for their homes, as auto and energy companies make it easier for people and businesses to tap the energy in electric cars for more than driving, says a separate Times article.

 

The battery in a Ford F-150 Lightning or the electric Chevrolet Silverado pickup, which is expected to go on sale this year, can store much more energy than home batteries that are sometimes installed with rooftop solar panels, says the Times. Pair an electric truck with a home solar system, the thinking goes, and a family could keep the lights on for days or weeks. 

The use of electric vehicles as a source of power has intrigued electric utility executives, including Pedro Pizarro, chairman of the board of the Edison Electric Institute, the industry’s main trade organization, and chief executive of Edison International, which provides power to millions of homes and businesses in Southern California.

Pizarro’s company and other utilities are testing whether it's practical and safe to send power from electric vehicles to the grid.

 

By soaking up power when it’s abundant and releasing it when it's scarce, electric vehicles could be “a bigger rubber band to absorb the shocks and manage them day to day and week to week.”

 

Greater use of electric vehicles in this way should also allow utilities and homeowners to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by relying more on renewable sources of energy like solar and wind that provide power intermittently, says the Times.

On Bike to Work Day, celebrating personal, eco health

Friday is Bike to Work Day, a part of National Bike Month promoting the benefits of cycling for our personal health and the global environment.

 

The Associated Press is highlighting what cities are doing to promote cycling.

 

In Washington, D.C., for example, in 2001, cyclists had three miles of (unprotected) bicycle lanes. By 2019, the network exceeded 100 miles, and cycling as a share of all travel in the city increased fivefold. In 2020 and 2021, the city built nearly 20 miles of protected lanes to be safer than merely marked lanes on streets shared with cars.

 

A study of 20 cities that expanded cycling infrastructure in the Americas, Europe and Australia in recent decades shows that ridership surged while cyclist fatalities and serious injuries dropped.

 

In D.C., cycling increased 435 percent between 2000 and 2017, and cyclists’ fatalities and serious injuries dropped 54 percent, according to global urban planning researchers Ralph Buehler of Virginia Tech and John Bucher of Rutgers University.

Biden says he won't veto GOP-led legislation blocking D.C. crime law

"I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule — but I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s objections — such as lowering penalties for carjackings,” the president tweeted on Thursday.

 

Biden’s reversal of his previous position came after Republicans seized on the law as a way to put Democrats on the spot about crime, says long-time New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse. It's an issue the GOP has been working to turn into a major liability for Biden and his party, portraying them as lax on enforcement.

 

Biden’s shift eases pressure on Senate Democrats, sparing them a vote defying a veto threat and potentially a decision on whether to override him.

 

Crime long has been a complicated political issue for Biden, who helped write a 1994 tough-on-crime bill. Then he had to backtrack on it during his 2020 presidential race, when deadly police assaults on people of color, mass incarceration and violations of civil rights by law enforcement were top issues for Democrats, particularly the party’s progressive base, says the Times.

 

Now, with public worries about crime increasing, Biden is pivoting again with his decision to allow the District code to be overturned.

Biden’s decision is a blow to D.C. home rule, and the issue is likely not the last time Republicans will challenge local laws in the heavily Democratic capital city, the Times says.

 

The district lacks the rights that states have to make and amend laws, explains The Associated Press. While Congress has allowed the city’s residents some powers of home rule, it's retained veto powers over district government actions. District residents also don't have voting members of Congress.

 

If the legislation is signed into law, it would be the first time in three decades that Congress has overturned a District law.

 

Republicans are joining Biden in citing the decision by Mayor Muriel Bowser to veto the law as a persuasive factor. She later was overridden by the D.C. Council.

“First rule of politics,” says Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “Don’t get to the left of D.C.’s mayor.”

 

Here is the local reaction to Biden’s switch, from The Washington Post.

 

And here, from DCist/WAMU.

What investment firms' home purchases can mean for individual buyers

"Across the Sun Belt, investment firms are extracting wealth where families normally build it: the single-family home,” says an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation.

 

Since the Great Recession, large investors — private equity firms and publicly traded companies — have bought up more than 65,000 homes in metropolitan Atlanta and converted them to rentals, the AJC says. And the Wall Street cash is pushing homeownership out of reach for many middle-class families.

 

Investors are buying in all but the wealthiest neighborhoods, but their homes disproportionately are in African American communities, the AJC says.

 

Priced out of buying, families that end up renting from these same firms "can face deplorable conditions, exorbitant fees and frequent eviction filings by out-of-state landlords driven to maximize shareholder profits," says the AJC.

 

David Howard, CEO of the National Rental Home Council, told the AJC that housing market dynamics are too complicated “to come to a consensus” over whether investors are affecting homeownership. Collectively, NRHC member firms own 450,000 single-family rental homes across the country, the AJC says.

Voting guides for the 2022 midterm elections

This morning, ProPublica is welcoming us to its User’s Guide to Democracy, which I gotta say is a very clear primer on the 2022 midterms.

 

And Vox has come out with its “what to expect this Election Day.”

 

With new laws restricting voting in 18 states, "knowing how and where to vote, and what to expect — including your rights on Election Day — has never been more important,” Vox says.

What’s expected as hearings start for Supreme Court nominee Jackson

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday begins four days of confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who would be the first African American woman on the Supreme Court.

 

It’s unclear how aggressively Republicans will go after Jackson, given that her confirmation wouldn't change the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, says The Associated Press.

 

Some Republicans have signaled that they may use Jackson’s nomination to try to brand Democrats as soft on crime, an emerging theme in GOP midterm election campaigns. Jackson was a public defender and served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency created by Congress to reduce disparity in federal prison sentences.

 

Here are some notable Jackson opinions, from AP.

 

Here is an AP fact check of some GOP statements about Jackson’s record.

 

Here is a viewer’s guide, from AP.

Biden administration issues new 60-day eviction moratorium

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Tuesday the new order barring people from being evicted in many parts of the country, saying “the evictions of tenants for failure to make rent or housing payments could be detrimental to public health control measures” aimed at slowing the coronavirus.

 

The order will expire on Oct. 3, the CDC says, and applies to areas of the country “experiencing substantial and high levels of community transmission” of the virus.

 

President Biden said in remarks before the order was issued that the moratorium is expected to reach 90 percent of renters.

 

But he still seemed hesitant about whether the new moratorium could withstand lawsuits about its constitutionality (see my item yesterday), saying he sought the opinions of experts as to whether the Supreme Court would approve the measure.

“The bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster,” he said. “But there are several key scholars who think that it may and it’s worth the effort.”

Biden added that the moratorium — even if it's challenged in court — “will probably give some additional time” for states and cities to release billions of dollars in federal relief to renters.

 

“Today is a day of extraordinary relief,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement. “Thanks to the leadership of President Biden, the imminent fear of eviction and being put out on the street has been lifted for countless families across America."