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Marc Joffe

The City and County of San Francisco are fighting a court injunction against the removal of tent encampments from city streets. Instead of battling the injunction in court, officials should consider meeting the judge’s criteria for restarting these removals by providing space and shelter beds for the local homeless.

A Ninth Circuit judge ordered the city to stop dismantling homeless camps in response to a suit from an advocacy group, the Coalition on Homelessness (case 4:22-cv-05502). The court concluded that because the city lacks available shelter beds, forcing homeless individuals off the street violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

Government officials expressed frustration with the injunction as they face public criticism over street conditions and hope to make a favorable impression on visitors attending November’s Asia‐​Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leader’s Summit. Mayor London Breed participated in an unusual demonstration in front of the courthouse on Aug. 23 where the case is being heard. She told protestors:

We are compassionate, we are supportive, we continue to help people. But this is not the way. It is not humane to let people live on our streets in tents, use drugs. We have found dead bodies, we found a dead body in these tents. We have seen people in really awful conditions and we are not standing for it anymore. The goal here is to make sure that the court of appeals understands we want a reversal of this injunction that makes it impossible for us to do our jobs.

California Governor Gavin Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle that the court order was “preposterous” and “inhumane.”

But rather than fight the injunction, the government could simply provide an adequate number of shelter beds and thereby meet the court’s main condition for removing encampments. There is a lot of unused and underused space around the city that could be pressed into service.

As I pointed out in a previous post, there are 400,000 square feet of available space in two subterranean levels of the Salesforce Transit Center. These levels were built to accommodate future train service, but the required rail extension has yet to be funded and would take years of construction once funding is secured. So, this space could be used as shelter for an extended period.

When I previously suggested this idea readers expressed concern that it would concentrate too many homeless people in one place and that the facility lacked natural light. But there are alternatives.

The city has a large volume of vacant office and retail space that could serve as temporary shelter. CBRE, a commercial real estate firm, recently estimated San Francisco’s office vacancy rate at 31.6%, a record high. This translates into more than 27 million square feet of available space. Many of the empty offices are in older, less desirable buildings that will likely be vacant for many years, even if the local office market rebounds. The city should be able to rent many of these older offices for use as shelter.

While converting offices to permanent housing is costly, the same should not be the case for temporary shelter. Repurposing offices as apartments requires substantial construction and demolition but temporary shelter occupants do not need all the costly improvements, like private bathrooms, included in permanent apartments. Shelter dwellers do need showers, and offices typically lack them, but portable showers can be installed at a reasonable cost.

In nearby San Rafael, CA, a private social services organization converted a floor of an older office building to a shelter for up to 45 people in 2020. The group, Homeward Bound of Marin, outfitted the office floor “with beds, lockers and storage for residents as well as a dining and sitting area”. San Francisco should be able to adopt and scale up this approach.

The city also has hundreds of vacant storefronts that could each house a smaller number of individuals. City College of San Francisco suffered a catastrophic enrollment drop before and during the pandemic, so it could also make space available for shelter purposes.

Although plenty of space is available in San Francisco, it remains a densely populated, high‐​cost area. For this reason, the city government might consider working with the state and nearby counties to implement a regional solution to sheltering the city’s homeless. But implementing that idea would require flexibility from the plaintiff and the judge in San Francisco’s case.

Unfortunately, homeless advocates like those who filed suit often have a fixed idea about what a “right to housing” should look like: permanent, supportive apartment units in the city proper. But as Los Angeles and other California cities have found, building this type of housing is both time‐​consuming and expensive.

San Francisco, other California cities, and the state government have collectively spent billions of dollars on homelessness, but tens‐​of‐​thousands are still living on city streets creating unsafe and unsanitary conditions. Rather than continuing to overspend without solving the problem, California governments should implement more cost‐​effective albethey less idealistic approaches, either on their own or with private organizations more accustomed at focusing on the bottom line.

Walter Olson

Election reform does not appear among the 25 planks in Vivek Ramaswamy’s published policy plan. This makes it all the more surprising to learn that the GOP presidential candidate has a four‐​point plan to reform elections in the United States, absent the enactment of which he does not think former president Donald Trump should have been required to acknowledge defeat and leave office.

To make matters even worse, if that’s possible, the four‐​point plan is both unimpressive and heedless of the states’ historic role in elections.

For those coming in late to this controversy, on Meet the Press, Aug. 27, the biotech‐​entrepreneur‐​turned‐​presidential‐​candidate gave an astounding response to a question about Vice President Mike Pence’s options on Jan. 6. He said that, as Pence, he would have certified the election results only if Congress agreed to enact a package of national election reforms, including single‐​day voting, paper ballots, and the verification of voter identity through government ID. (Later clarification, with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, didn’t help.)

Ramaswamy, whose ideas on the franchise include a role for the passage of civics tests, apparently thinks the vice president can coerce Congress into passing laws on threat of “otherwise we get to stay in power, see?” Confusion about the veep’s powers aside, it is the fantasy of a would‐​be caudillo to suspend the constitutional transition of power following an election held under the actually existing rules, in favor of a notional do‐​over held under other electoral rules imposed by threat of autocoup.

And all for what? What are the reforms so crucial that an election result obtained without them can be dismissed as illegitimate and not the lawful basis for a change in administrations?

To the three conditions for allowing democratic elections to proceed he recited on Meet the Press — paper ballots, voter ID, and same‐​day voting — Ramaswamy added a fourth in a tweet later Sunday, the designation of Election Day as a national holiday.

Let’s take the four one at a time.

* There are legitimate, well‐​taken security objections to the use of paperless ballot systems. Does Ramaswamy realize that the pro‐​security side won this debate some years back, and that only a few states, none of them swing, have yet to phase out the old paperless technology? Andy Craig points out (source) that the great majority of states have already stopped using the old systems, if they ever did, and that includes every presidential swing state and every state contested by Trump.

* Strict voter ID verification may be a good idea for other reasons such as administrative convenience, and progressive commentators have unfairly attacked its use. But as Cato readers know, a study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that“strict ID requirements have no effect on fraud, actual or perceived.” There is no evidence that toughening voter ID procedures in 2020 would have altered the outcome in any state.

* Ramaswamy soon retreated from his talk of abolishing all absentee and mail voting, since deployed military and the like need *some* way to vote. Note that he also demands the abolition of in‐​person early voting, which even paranoiacs don’t tend to view as a threat to election integrity. As a practical matter, most voters, including GOP‐​leaning retirees, value having some of the new options, which is one reason states have expanded them aside from the incentives created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

* Although unions and liberal elected officials often favor making Election Day a national holiday, many election administrators quietly oppose the idea, suspecting its effects on both turnout and smooth operation of the process will be other than advertised.

To sum up: Among Ramaswamy’s four election reform planks, one is years behind the times; one doesn’t have the advertised effect; one would take away convenience valued by the public; and one is a dubious wish list item of unions and liberal pols. All four, by imposing a uniform national standard, would override states’ discretion to adopt policies reflecting local preferences and circumstances, even though Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution is careful to reserve almost entirely to the states the key steps in electing the president. There is no evidence that any of the four measures, or all four together, would have changed the result in the 2020 presidential election, or in any one state.

Let’s be frank about the politics here. Ramaswamy is obliged to humor the #StopTheSteal delusion because that’s where a large mass of GOP primary votes are. To the extent there are legitimate conservative reform ideas in the mix, they are sure to get lost in the shuffle.

As states and their governors have shown, there are definitely some legitimate conservative ideas about election reform in circulation, on topics from ballot privacy to speedy tabulation. I spoke with Caleb Brown in 2021 at the Cato podcast about how to disentangle these ideas from the stolen election nonsense. It has gotten no easier since then.

Anastasia P. Boden

The Constitution literally made an appearance at the first Republican presidential debate last Wednesday. When Doug Burnham was asked whether he supported a federal abortion ban, the pro‐​life governor whipped out his pocket Constitution and waved it around in the air, noting that whatever his policy preferences, he believes enacting a federal ban is beyond Congress’s enumerated powers. This was the first of nearly two dozen times the candidates mentioned the Constitution.

But for all of their claims of fidelity to the Constitution, the candidates sure got a lot wrong about it. Vivek Ramaswamy, for instance, said in his closing remarks that the Constitution (ratified in 1788), is “what won us the American Revolution” (which ended 5 years earlier, in 1783). A slip of memory, perhaps, but it was notable given his suggestion that the voting age be raised to 25 for 18‐​to 24‐​year‐​olds that can’t pass a civics test. It’s also notable that such a voting requirement would violate the 26th Amendment.

For his part, Ron DeSantis emphasized Florida’s dedication to teaching constitutional history in schools, but many of his own measures have lost against constitutional challenges. The governor has garnered a reputation for reining in “wokeness,” but in furtherance of that goal some of his actions have sacrificed private businesses’ and individuals’ constitutional freedom to make their own choices. Courts have enjoined his ban on vaccination requirements as applied to private cruise lines, his ban on private social media companies’ ability to moderate user content, and provisions of the STOP WOKE Act that prohibit discussion of Critical Race Theory in universities and private businesses.

The most glaring misapprehension the candidates had about the Constitution was its limits on their own power should they become president. Take their remarks on the administrative state. Many candidates supported scaling back the myriad agencies that govern everything “from gas stoves to Greek yogurt” largely free of congressional (and sometimes even executive) oversight. Ramaswamy, for example, said “[t]he only war that I will declare as US President will be the war on the federal administrative state that is the source of those toxic regulations acting like a wet blanket on the economy.” Asa Hutchinson used similarly war‐​laden language, pledging “to reduce … 10 percent our federal nondefense workforce. That’s a specific pledge … that attacks the administrative state.”

Reducing the administrative state is a pro‐​Constitution sentiment. Federal agencies often unconstitutionally wield the powers of all three branches, making rules and regulations, enforcing them against violators, and adjudicating guilt before in‐​house judges. And when individuals go to court to challenge the agencies’ power, deference doctrines require judges to defer to the agencies’ interpretations of statutes and regulations—even if there’s an objectively better interpretation. In short, administrative agencies now act as judge, jury, and executioner, in violation of the Constitution’s promise of separation of powers.

But what can the president do about any of this? A few of the candidates seem to think they can simply get rid of entire departments with a snap of their fingers. Ramaswamy, DeSantis, Burgum, and Pence all vowed to abolish the Department of Education. But even assuming the DOE or other agencies are unconstitutional or a bad idea, there are limits on the president’s ability to scale them back. A president could refuse to make appointments, get rid of executive department‐​created boards, spend less than Congress has appropriated (through a process called “rescission”), or eradicate specific abusive practices, but they’ve historically sought authority to make more sweeping changes to agencies and departments via reorganization legislation.

In other words, eliminating DOE is going to require support from Congress. Maybe what the candidates mean is that they’d seek congressional authority to eliminate various departments. But form matters.

The candidates also seemed to misunderstand the scope of presidential power when they suggested they’d invade Mexico as a response to rising opioid abuse, which they blame on Mexican cartels. DeSantis said he’d “send troops” into Mexico to take out fentanyl labs and drug cartel operations. Pence referred to “partner[ing] with the Mexican military” to “hunt down and destroy the cartels.” And Ramaswamy, Hutchison, and Tim Scott all alluded to using military resources to stop the flow of fentanyl at the border.

The president can’t just invade other countries. Congress, not the president, has the power to make or declare war. As James Madison wrote, “In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department.” This allocation of powers prevents the “temptation” that would arise for one person to make such a weighty decision. “War,” he concluded, is “the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.”

The president does, however, have the power to repel attacks. Perhaps that’s why some of the candidates used language suggesting that the flow of fentanyl constitutes an “invasion” of the United States. Ramaswamy alluded to “the invasion of our own southern border,” DeSantis said he would declare the situation a “national emergency,” and Chris Christie said China was engaging in “an act of war” by sending chemicals to Mexico to be used in creating fentanyl. This is the same rhetoric the state of Texas is using to justify putting buoy‐​barriers in the Rio Grande, potentially in violation of federal law and Mexican‐​American treaties. But as law professor (and Cato’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair) Ilya Somin argues, neither immigration nor drug smuggling are an “invasion” in the constitutional sense.

As Justice Robert Jackson famously said, emergency powers “tend to kindle emergencies.” If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that we should take care before calling something a crisis that requires executive intervention. Since COVID, we’ve seen politicians suggest there’s a student loan crisis, a climate crisis, a gun violence crisis, a border crisis, and a drug crisis. The president, say the candidates, can save us from all of these problems.

This is just the demagoguery our Founders were worried about and it’s why they imagined an office that would resist the “transient impulse[s] of the people,” not one that would egg those impulses on by calling everything an emergency.

The candidates aren’t the only ones with an exaggerated sense of the president’s importance in our constitutional structure. One of the debate’s moderators asked each candidate how they’d “inspire us.” But as Federalist 69 notes, compared to English monarchs, American presidents have “no particle of spiritual jurisdiction.” That is, Americans don’t need a spiritual leader. We need a president who will respect the Constitution and the modest role it creates for the federal government—including the executive.

Jeffrey A. Singer

Bloomberg News is reporting that U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine has sent a letter to Drug Enforcement Administrator Anne Milgram asking her agency to reclassify marijuana (cannabis) as a Schedule III drug. The DEA defines Schedule III drugs as “drugs with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.” The agency currently classifies marijuana as Schedule I: a drug “with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” Of course, that definition begs the question, “Currently accepted by whom?” But an even more important question is, “Why should a plant people have been growing and using recreationally for millennia be scheduled as a drug when alcohol is not?”

When Congress authorized the law enforcement agency to judge the clinical applications, efficacy, and potential dangers of drugs, it authorized cops to practice medicine. And they have been engaging in malpractice. For example, no serious person would argue that marijuana has “no currently accepted medical use.” As far back as 1916, Sir William Osler, the so‐​called “father of modern medicine,” recommended cannabis as the “drug of choice” for treating migraines. But cannabis’s history of “accepted medical use” dates back to at least 2800 B.C.

The DEA also schedules diamorphine (brand‐​named “heroin” by Bayer, its manufacturer in the 19th century) Schedule I even though it is legally used in the U.K. and much of the developed world to treat pain and is employed for medication‐​assisted treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD) in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, the U.K, Denmark, and Spain.

And even though a bipartisan consensus is emerging that psychedelics may be extremely helpful in treating post‐​traumatic stress disorder, depression, addiction, and compulsive disorders, and in end‐​of‐​life care, the DEA placed them on Schedule I, depriving researchers, clinicians, and patients of these tools for 50 years.

In her letter to the DEA, Assistant Secretary Levine wrote that her request was based upon the Food and Drug Administration’s review of marijuana’s classification. If the law enforcement agency reschedules marijuana as Schedule III, it will undoubtedly make it easier for clinical researchers to conduct high‐​quality studies on the plant’s clinical uses and effectiveness. But it still means that the millions of people who use marijuana recreationally rather than medicinally are committing a federal crime. It also ensures that a black market in the prohibited plant will continue to thrive.

Instead of deferring to administrative agencies to reschedule marijuana, Congress can and should de‐​schedule it.

Chris Edwards

Did the debt‐​ceiling deal passed in May reflect a new congressional focus on spending restraint? Or was it a fluke win by House conservatives that will unravel as Congress addresses spending this fall?

One test will be the upcoming farm bill, which will reauthorize both farm subsidies and food stamps. Without reforms, the bill will cost $1.5 trillion or more over the coming decade. Expensive farm bills usually pass because of a giant logroll—rural members favor farm welfare and urban members favor the food stamp program, also called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

But the government is running massive deficits. Downsizing is needed. Farm subsidies and food stamps should be cut. Republicans often say that welfare, such as food stamps, should be only temporary, and that people should strive to stand on their own two feet. The same should be true of farmers.

Read more in my new op‐​ed at The Hill.

Kevin Dowd and Nicholas Anthony

Advocates of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) often claim that CBDCs will help increase financial inclusion, by which they typically mean that CBDCs will help to “bank the unbanked.” To give some typical examples:

Too many Americans don’t have access to easy payments systems and banking accounts, and I think this is something that a digital dollar, a central bank digital currency, could help with. – Janet Yellen (2021)

A well‐​designed CBDC is uniquely positioned to address barriers to inclusion, including by offering the unbanked alternative pathways to open transactional accounts and participate in the digital economy … – Henry Fingerhut et al. (2022)

CBDC could strengthen the usability, resilience, and efficiency of payment systems and increase financial inclusion. – Bo Li (2023)

However, such claims are weak.

CBDCs and Financial Inclusion in the United States

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) regularly conducts a survey of the American people to get a better understanding of how and why many people operate “outside” of the banking system. According to the latest survey, the proportion of American households that do not have access to a bank account (i.e., “unbanked Americans”) was 4.5 percent (Figure 1). While relatively small, that number accounted for roughly 5.9 million households.

Deeper within the survey, the FDIC asked these Americans why they do not have a bank account. “Don’t have enough money to meet minimum balance requirements” was the most cited main reason. “Don’t trust banks,” “Avoiding a bank gives more privacy,” and “Bank account fees are too high” were the second, third, and fourth most cited main reasons, respectively.

Introducing a CBDC would do little to address any of these concerns.

Whether it is because someone lacks the money to meet minimum balance requirements or to cover fees, a CBDC is not really a solution because the payment method itself does nothing to increase someone’s income. Sure, it’s possible that governments might subsidize accounts to eliminate those costs on the front end, but if such subsidies are to occur, they could be done using any consumer payment method. There is nothing inherently unique about a CBDC that is needed to make that happen.

Access to a CBDC (or a “digital dollar”) is not the same as having access to a bank account. Where a bank account opens the door for receiving loans, lines of credit, and other financial services, a CBDC does little more than offer access to digital payments. In fact, a CBDC is much more akin to a prepaid card than a bank account. Although there are advocates that have called for it, governments getting into the business of commercial banking is a much bigger issue than creating a CBDC alone.

Still, what about privacy and trust? For people who currently choose not to have a bank account because they don’t trust banks or prefer to maintain their financial privacy, a CBDC is far from a solution. People might not trust banks, but trust in the government has been at historic lows. Furthermore, unless a CBDC operates without the same anti‐​money laundering (AML) and know‐​your‐​customer (KYC) requirements that the government forces banks to comply with, many unbanked Americans would likely avoid a CBDC.

To make matters worse, CBDC proponents seem to overlook that the private sector has much more expertise and experience in customer‐​facing activities. In fact, it’s likely largely due to the private sector that the number of unbanked households has fallen from 8.2 percent to just 4.5 percent over the last ten years (Figure 1). The proliferation of mobile banking, basic bank accounts, and the like have made banking more accessible than ever before.

Still Much to Do

If policymakers want to promote financial inclusion, there are more direct options on the table.

Rather than expand the government with the creation of a CBDC and everything that entails, policymakers should focus on removing legislative barriers to competition. Opening the door to new entrants could make it so that the number of unbanked households continues to decrease and the quality of financial services available at the lower end of the spectrum continues to increase.

There is no shortage of options for policymakers looking for legislative barriers to remove in order to improve financial inclusion. To start, the Bank Secrecy Act is what legally requires banks to collect and report the personal information of customers to the government. Altogether it cost financial institutions an estimated $45.9 billion in 2022—those are costs that are passed on to consumers.

Elsewhere, the Durbin Amendment (Section 1075 of the 2010 Dodd‐​Frank Act) established price controls that made it more difficult for banks to offer low‐​cost accounts. Even from the perspective of merchants, one study found that the Durbin Amendment “had limited and unequal impact on reducing merchants’ costs… and it has produced unintended consequences for some merchants in terms of raising costs.”

These examples are only the tip of the iceberg, but the point is simple. Rather than launching another new government intervention that is unlikely to address the problems faced by the unbanked, removing legislative barriers to a more competitive financial sector has the power to open doors for those outside the financial system. It’s time to drop the illusion of CBDC inclusion and focus on reforms that can create substantive change today.

Vanessa Brown Calder

Late last year, Congress passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) as part of the sprawling 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act. The PWFA requires that employers provide pregnant workers with “accommodations” or “changes to the work environment or the way things are done at work” but leaves the specifics of what that might entail open‐​ended.

This month, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) proposed a rule that fills in many of the blanks produced by the initial legislation. However, the rule also broadens the scope of PWFA by expanding the eligible population, accommodation duration, and the types of accommodation required for pregnant workers beyond that described in the Act.

The rule states that workers with a modest, minor impediment or issue or an “uncomplicated pregnancy” are eligible for accommodation under the Act and indicates that a limitation does not need to rise to a certain severity threshold to qualify. Under the rule, pregnancy need not have caused the worker’s health issue; rather, the issue could simply be “related to” or “affected by” pregnancy. Moreover, the proposed rule restarts the 40‐​week accommodation clock following childbirth, elongating the accommodation period by two times.

One of the significant questions left open by the original legislation was what types of changes and adjustments at work would qualify as reasonable accommodations. The proposed rule clarifies this and provides examples of possible accommodations for pregnant workers, including everything from part‐​time or modified work schedules to allowing telework, frequent breaks, light duty work, or suspending essential job functions. The EEOC points out that their list of examples is not exhaustive, and workers may also seek other accommodations outside of those listed.

Moreover, the EEOC determines that certain accommodations “in virtually all cases, …do not impose an undue hardship” on the employer. Thus, the accommodations are nearly always ones the PWFA compels the employer to provide. This “default reasonable” list of accommodations includes allowing an employee whose work requires standing to sit and vice versa.

Although certain employers will easily absorb certain EEOC accommodations, the vast diversity of roles and industries in the U.S. economy ensures that various accommodations will be problematic. For instance, sitting, rather than standing, will be difficult to accommodate in roles or industries where walking and standing are essential to job duties, including many healthcare, food service, manufacturing, construction, and retail jobs. Moreover, suspending “essential” job functions will be challenging for nearly all employers, given that the employer considers those functions fundamental by definition.

Why does any of this matter? By expanding the eligible population, the accommodation period, and the types of accommodations required for pregnant workers beyond what legislators detailed in the Act, the proposed rule makes the regulation substantially more costly. Unfortunately, this could further discourage employers from hiring employees who are pregnant or could become pregnant (including women of childbearing age) when employers cannot easily absorb the cost of the new regulation.

Most employers—understandably—do not budget for workers who cannot perform the essential function(s) of their job for up to 1.5 years across the regulation’s pre‐ and post‐​partum accommodation periods. Employers who understand that they could be required to provide accommodations for lengthy periods may decide that employing pregnant workers (or workers who could become pregnant) poses a significant financial risk.

The EEOC maintains that the new regulation will protect pregnant workers. Unfortunately, by broadening the scope and raising the cost of the regulation, the EEOC’s proposed rule could create new disadvantages for women and pregnant workers that are difficult to overcome.

Mustafa Akyol

Tension is growing in Sweden and Denmark, and in much of the Muslim world, because of recent public burnings of the Qur’an in those two European nations. The burnings sparked furious protests in Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and other Middle East countries. Sweden and Denmark denounced the burnings as reprehensible but stressed that such actions are protected by free speech laws.

Four days ago, however, the Danish government announced plans for what can be called an anti‐​blasphemy law. Improper treatment of the Qur’an or Bible, Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard said, would constitute a criminal offense punishable by a fine and a jail sentence of up to two years.

Many Muslims may welcome this as good news, thinking that the Danish government is finally showing proper respect to the Qur’an. But as a Muslim who also deeply respects the Qur’an, I think differently.

My first reason is about the very notion of blasphemy and the right way to counter it. I have no doubt that burning a scripture is a deeply offensive act that deserves moral condemnation. I also think it only reveals the crudeness of the blasphemer: if he had a real argument against that scripture—or any book—he could put it in words. Burning books, instead of criticizing them, is what barbarians do.

However, condemning blasphemy is one thing; banning it is another. And as I have argued elsewhere, the Qur’an itself does not call for banning; it tells Muslims to respond to mockery of their religion by simply showing patience (3:186) and staying away (4:140). (Post-Qur’anic “Islamic law” does impose the death penalty on blasphemers, but this can be seen as a medieval vestige that Muslims can disavow, as I and some other Muslim scholars have argued.)

Second, Muslims should think about what they really achieve when blasphemy against Islam is banned, whether in Denmark or elsewhere. Does this make people in those countries respect Islam? I don’t think so, for the people who hate Islam (“Islamophobes”) will believe what they believe, and such bans will probably make them only more agitated.

Many other people will roll their eyes over a religion that they see as too thin‐​skinned. Meanwhile, governments that ban anti‐​Islam expressions will do this grudgingly, just to reduce the threats against the safety of their citizens, as the Danish justice minister explicitly noted.

Some Muslims may still see a victory in that, but I don’t. I don’t see any value in “respect for Islam” that is imposed with threats. Instead, respect for Islam, or any religion, should be cultivated through ethical behavior. And the latter includes dignity, instead of fury, in the face of offense.

Third, these blasphemy incidents in Europe—from cartoons of Prophet Muhammad to Qur’an burnings — seem to have made many Muslims averse to the very notion of freedom of speech. This freedom, they seem to think, only works for those who want to insult their religion. So, it better be curbed.

Yet that is not the case at all because freedom of speech not only allows offenses against a religion. It also allows the defense and the proclamation of that religion, which Muslims have been freely practicing in Western liberal democracies by opening mosques, publishing books, and gaining converts.

For example, just after the Qur’an burning incidents in Sweden, the Kuwaiti government announced it would distribute 100,000 copies of the Qur’an in Swedish — freely, and thanks to free speech. This would be unthinkable in authoritarian regimes with little free speech, such as China or North Korea.

A new anti‐​blasphemy law in Denmark, coupled with a global shrinking of freedom of expression, is a real concern that Muslims cannot ignore. This contraction of free speech includes the ridiculous French bans on Muslim dress codes, which are getting worse and worse.

It also includes a new ruling by the Brazilian Supreme Court that criminalizes “homophobic slurs,” a vague definition that could target people with traditional beliefs about human sexuality, which includes most Muslims.

If freedom of speech shrinks further in Europe, Muslims will find their own religious expressions banned, as the Islamophobes who want to ban the Qur’an—saying that it includes “hate speech”—seriously advocate.

In other words, freedom of speech is a crucial right that everybody — from the most secular to the most religious — retains, the right to express themselves without fear. Therefore, I do not see more restrictions on speech as good news, even for ostensibly protecting the Qur’an.

David J. Bier

The employment‐​based green card backlog reached a new record of 1.8 million cases this year. The backlog consists of immigrants who are waiting to receive green cards, primarily the result of low green card caps for employer‐​sponsored immigrants and investors. Because no country may receive more than 7 percent of the green cards (the country caps) unless they would otherwise go unused, the 1.1 million cases from Indians in the backlog bear most of the burden of the broken system. New applicants from India will face a lifetime wait, and more than 400,000 will die before they receive a green card.

Figure 1 shows the employment‐​based green card backlog by processing stage. The process starts when an employer files a petition for a worker. If no green card is available under the caps, the petition is wait‐​listed until a spot opens. Finally, a worker may file to adjust status to permanent residence (the green card application) when a green card cap spot is available to them. There’s a similar staged process for investors and employment‐​based “special immigrants” who include Afghan interpreters as well as, strangely, abandoned immigrant children.

In March 2023, 80,324 employment‐​based petitions were pending (I‑140, I‑360, and I‑526), representing about 171,635 people with spouses and minor children of the workers included. Another 1.3 million were waitlisted, and 289,000 were pending adjustment of status applications. There were also some employment‐​based immigrants waiting for immigrant visa adjudications at consulates abroad, but the State Department provides no information about the number of these cases. There are also some petitions in the backlog filed on behalf of the same person, leading to some double counting. There is also a backlog of 123,234 permanent labor certification applications, which is the start of the employment‐​based green card queue.

Over half of the backlog is in the EB‑2 category for employees of U.S. businesses with advanced degrees. Another 19 percent are in the EB‑3 category for employees with at least bachelor’s degrees. The EB‑4 category for “special immigrants” (Afghan and Iraqi interpreters, others with various U.S. government affiliations, and abandoned children) is about 13 percent. Another 6 percent are for EB‑5 major investors. The remaining 3 percent are EB-3O “other workers” with jobs not requiring a college degree. About 1.1 million of the 1.8 million cases in the backlog are from India (63 percent). Another nearly 250,000 are from China (14 percent). The Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala come in at nearly 10 percent (mainly in the EB‑4 special immigrant category).

Table 1 shows the backlog by country and category and lists the number of green cards that each country‐​category combination is likely to receive starting in fiscal year 2023. For new applicants from India, the backlog for the EB‑2 and EB‑3 categories (which are combined because applicants can move between them) is effectively a life sentence: 134 years. About 424,000 employment‐​based applicants will die waiting, and over 90 percent of them will be Indians. Given that Indians are currently half of all new employer‐​sponsored applicants, roughly half of all newly sponsored immigrants will die before they receive a green card.

Chinese in those categories face an astounding 17‐​year wait. The wait times for Salvadorans, Hondurans, and Guatemalans in the EB‑4 category are similarly long waits. The Biden administration recently changed how it implements the country limits for the EB‑4 category such that the Northern Triangle countries and Mexico will likely see a significant increase in green cards at the expense of the number for “other” countries. However, even if these countries receive all the green cards going forward, they would still face multi‐​decade waits.

The employment‐​based backlog comes on top of the 8.3 million case backlog for the family‐​sponsored system. These astounding backlogs and massive waits underscore that legal immigration to the United States is nearly impossible. Even to get to the point of entering the backlog takes an enormous amount of good fortune, and the lucky few that make it through the labyrinth face the daunting prospect of never actually receiving green cards in decades or even their lifetimes.

Jordan Cohen and Jonathan Ellis Allen

President Joe Biden wants to sign a security agreement with Saudi Arabia despite its history of human rights abuses and, in recent actions, its reported shooting and killing of Ethiopian migrants.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report this month that documented Saudi security forces firing explosive projectiles at Ethiopian migrants and shooting them at close range, killing hundreds or even thousands between June 2022 and April 2023. According to an August 26 New York Times article, the White House knew about the atrocities that HRW has declared “may amount to a crime against humanity” but did nothing to stop them. If anything, the Biden administration increased support for the Saudi leadership, despite their extensive human rights abuses.

Human Rights Watch says they have been tracking this issue at the Saudi‐​Yemen border since 2014, but that the killings noted in their report “appear to be a deliberate escalation in both the number and manner of targeted killings.”

Since Washington became aware of this massacre against refugees, it has allowed Saudi Arabia to contract with U.S. companies for $319.5 million. The deals include the design and construction of port facilities, over $65 million for anti‐​aircraft missiles, over $31 million for maintenance support services for its aviation industry, $28 million for an Airborne Warning and Control System, $27.5 million for flight training and logistics support, nearly $12 million for an intelligence analysis system, and $1.2 million for upgrades to anti‐​air missiles.

Unfortunately, it has become a bit of a pattern for Saudi Arabia to send U.S.-trained Saudi troops using American‐​made weapons to commit human rights abuses, including multiple instances this year alone. The Oxfam charity reported in January that the Saudi‐​led coalition fighting in Yemen used U.S. weapons to kill Yemeni civilians and other non‐​participants already suffering from the war.

To deflect from their crimes, the Saudi government has used “sportswashing,” including merging with the PGA earlier this year and purchasing soccer teams. Meanwhile, the White House is apparently more than happy to turn the other cheek, offering presidential fist bumps and allowing Saudi Arabia to agree to production agreements with U.S. companies rather than invoking legislation that would allow the State Department to pause and evaluate these human rights abuses before completing arms transfers.

This lack of concern over human rights is partly due to a lack of concern with the risks of U.S. weapons being used in scenarios that are not in U.S. interests. For example, U.S. weapons sales to the Saudis have led to greater American involvement in the war in Yemen because Saudi involvement in the conflict created a scenario in which the Houthis became a threat to U.S. troops stationed in Riyadh.

The Cato Institute’s Arms Sales Risk Index analyzes these risks for all U.S. arms recipients. This year’s report found that arms sales give Washington no leverage over its clients’ foreign policies. And Saudi Arabia, which regularly ranks in the top quarter of riskiest arms recipients and commits human rights atrocities nearly constantly, confirms the U.S. has no leverage.

While there is no way to get confirmation, it is likely that the Saudis used U.S. weapons—given the volume they purchase every year—to commit these heinous crimes against the Ethiopian migrants. These weapons are killing and mutilating those who have already fled human rights abuses and endured horrors at the hands of smugglers and traffickers—those seeking asylum for a better life.

Human Rights Watch has said, “Concerned governments should publicly call for Saudi Arabia to end any such policy and press for accountability. In the interim, concerned governments should impose sanctions on Saudi and Houthi officials credibly implicated in ongoing violations at the border.” Selling billions of dollars’ worth of advanced weaponry to and signing a security agreement with the Saudis does not show much concern.

There is no greater proof that the Biden administration is ignoring risk than having a war criminal committing crimes against humanity as not only a top client but also a potential ally.