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Friday, 17 January 2025

Justin Baldoni Sues Blake Lively & Ryan Reynolds, Streisanding All Of This Into A Mega-Story [Techdirt] (10:39 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

I suppose this was probably inevitable, but boy do I wonder if it’s smart. We were just talking about the celebrity drama du jour between Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, and Justin Baldoni. The very short version of this is that Lively and Baldoni starred in a movie together, Lively sued Baldoni and made a series of accusations about gross behavior Baldoni allegedly participated in, including a scheme in which Baldoni and associates were going to try to “ruin” Lively for making those accusations, whereas Baldoni denies all of it and instead accuses Lively and Reynolds of a coordinated scheme to take over the movie they were in and to ruin Baldoni’s career. Mixed in there as well is a lawsuit Baldoni filed against the New York Times for reporting on the accusations and a litigation hold letter Baldoni sent to Marvel and Disney in order to preserve any evidence about the character Nicepool in the latest Deadpool movie, because of the speculation that the character is made in such a way so as to make fun of, or defame as Baldoni will likely claim, Baldoni.

Again, that’s the short version. What you may have noticed is missing in all of that is a countersuit against Lively by Baldoni. We even called this out in our previous post, noting that attacking the coverage but not the accuser was “telling.”

Well, it’s telling no more, as Baldoni has in fact countersued both Lively and Reynolds.

The 179-page complaint — in which Baldoni is seeking $400 million and demanding a jury trial — was filed in the Southern District of New York on behalf of Baldoni, his company Wayfarer Studios, as well as his producing partner, Jamey Heath, his crisis manager, Melissa Nathan, his publicist Jennifer Abel and the It Ends With Us LLC. The defendants are accused of civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy.

“Lively stole Wayfarer’s movie, hijacked Wayfarer’s premiere, destroyed Plaintiffs’ personal and professional reputations and livelihood, and aimed to drive Plaintiffs out of business entirely,” the lawsuit states.

The suit of course states a whole lot more than that. The whole thing is below if you want to read it. It’s every bit as catty and gossipy as you’d expect out of this sort of thing, with accusations of doctoring text messages, claims that Reynolds and Lively attempted to coerce Baldoni and the studio to take the blame for the bad press Lively was getting, and so on. Again, for the purposes of our reporting on all of this, the veracity or not of anyone’s claims is not the point.

But it does play a role in our analysis of all of this. On the one hand, if Baldoni’s claims are true and he really is the victim of an organized campaign headed by Lively and Reynolds, well, then a countersuit probably makes all the sense in the world. One of the reasons the initial context of him not suing Lively was supposedly telling is that you typically get people threatening to sue but failing to do so because they are absolutely terrified about the discovery phase of the trial. That’s when all the dirt comes out and eventually gets made public. But if you’re not afraid of discovery because the facts are all on your side, then a countersuit makes sense.

But, man, if that isn’t the case, then we’re going to have to come up with an altered term for the kind of Streisand Effect that this will be. A public trial of this kind, between these levels of celebrities, is going to be like the Depp/Heard fiasco all over again. Everyone is probably going to come out looking real, real shitty. And, again, whatever minor anonymity Baldoni may have had previously is just gone. He and the accusations against him are in the spotlight now. He potentially could have settled all of this out of court and made it go away somewhat quietly. Not any more.

And from the initial responses to the lawsuit, it appears Lively intends for this to indeed be a fight.

Lively’s legal team told CNN in a statement Thursday that Baldoni’s suit “is another chapter in the abuser playbook. This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim.”

“They are trying to shift the narrative to Ms. Lively by falsely claiming that she seized creative control and alienated the cast from Mr. Baldoni. The evidence will show that the cast and others had their own negative experiences with Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer. The evidence will also show that Sony asked Ms. Lively to oversee Sony’s cut of the film, which they then selected for distribution and was a resounding success,” the statement also said.

So buckle up, because this is likely to be one hell of a ride. In no small part, I contend, because Baldoni’s actions have skyrocketed the press interest in all of this.

In Upholding The TikTok Ban, SCOTUS Compromises, And With It The First Amendment [Techdirt] (08:01 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

As the we wrote in our amicus brief (which it appears the justices did not read – guess they didn’t have time…), if the TikTok ban is blessed, it provides a roadmap for how to avoid the Constitution’s prohibition to “make no law” abridging free expression. All the government needs to do is declare that what it is doing it is doing for national security purposes, or perhaps to address some other similar exigency, and to seal the deal include such an accelerated time for enforcement that it will be impossible for the courts to appropriately review what the government is doing. (In fact, simply either claiming a provocative reason, or rushing enforcement, might be enough alone to help the government get away with an unconstitutional attack on speech).

We need not determine the proper standard for mixed-justification cases or decide whether the Government’s foreign adversary control justification is content neutral. Even assuming that rationale turns on content, petitioners’ argument fails under the counterfactual analysis they propose: The record before us adequately supports the conclusion that Congress would have passed the challenged provisions based on the data collection justification alone.

Finding that the law effectively banning TikTok is somehow constitutional is a bad decision with all sorts of bad consequences, not the least of which being that it tells the world that we’re not really all that serious about protecting speech when the chips are down, and so maybe other governments need not care about it so much either. The consequence this post is focused on, however, is to what degree the First Amendment’s protection of speech has been undermined altogether here in America. In short: it’s been undermined, although possibly not as badly as it could have been.

But that there might be a glimmer of modest hope does not exonerate this otherwise inexcusable decision. This case should not have been hard: speech interests were affected by this law, whose terms failed to even address the most reasonable justification underpinning the law. (As TikTok pointed out, if data protection was the motivating concern, why were no other platforms targeted? Or even just other Chinese-owned platforms, like Temu?) Because speech interests were affected – those of the platform, as well as those of its users – strict scrutiny should have been applied to the law, at which point the Court should have seen that the lack of narrow tailoring (the law took out a whole platform!) put the law beyond anything that the Constitution would permit.

Yet the Supreme Court still somehow found otherwise.

The question now is whether the decision is indeed as narrow as the Court claims it is, and something that is truly exceptional that leaves untouched other, stronger First Amendment precedent. And there do seem to be a few bright spots. For instance, it basically leaves untouched a few important notions that it looks like the Court is accepting, namely that platforms do have First Amendment rights, and that algorithms implicate this protected editorial discretion. It is also good, perversely, that in finding that only intermediate scrutiny applied, it left untouched the stronger strict scrutiny standard. One concern with the decision at the DC Circuit was that if the TikTok law could survive strict scrutiny, then any unconstitutional action probably could. We would no longer have any robustly meaningful test to use to protect us against incursions on speech rights, or even any rights. So, at least, in the wake of this decision, strict scrutiny remains intact and useful.

On the other hand, what’s the point of it remaining a useful test if the Court can so easily find a basis not to use it. The fundamental problem with this decision is that it takes a law with huge impacts on speech interests and declares it to be a law that is not speech related. Technically it hinges on being “content neutral,” but the upshot is that the Court basically says, “La la la we can’t hear you,” to any speech concerns raised by TikTok or its users.

The challenged provisions are facially content neutral. They impose TikTok-specific prohibitions due to a foreign adversary’s control over the platform and make divestiture a prerequisite for the platform’s continued operation in the United States. They do not target particular speech based upon its content, contrast, e.g., Carey v. Brown, 447 U. S. 455, 465 (1980) (statute prohibiting all residential picketing except “peaceful labor picketing”), or regulate speech based on its function or purpose, contrast, e.g., Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U. S. 1, 7, 27 (2010) (law prohibiting providing material support to terrorists). Nor do they impose a “restriction, penalty, or burden” by reason of content on TikTok—a conclusion confirmed by the fact that petitioners “cannot avoid or mitigate” the effects of the Act by altering their speech. Turner I, 512 U. S., at 644. As to petitioners, the Act thus does not facially regulate “particular speech because of the topic discussed or the idea or message expressed.” Reed, 576 U. S., at 163.
[From page 10]

Instead, by ignoring those speech interests, and the more heightened scrutiny that should have applied as a result, the Court applied what essentially was little more than rational basis review, even though they called it intermediary scrutiny. In short, according to the Court, because the government had good reason to be concerned with how TikTok slurped up user data and shared it, the government was free to do whatever it wanted in response, no matter how unduly destructive to speech interests (and ineffective in support of its own intended ends) its actions were.

The problem here is that not only was this decision an avoidance of the normal constitutional rule that should have better protected the affected speech interests, but there’s little to keep this particular sort of cop-out limited to this particular case. It will be very easy for other government actions that impact speech to be forgiven in the future, just as this one was, because there’s nothing that actually justifies this one. The same flimsy reasoning could easily be applied in another case, despite the Court’s insistence to the contrary. We’ve seen it happen before*, when the court tries to take a baby step to walk back the First Amendment but ends up with a decision that gets stuck on the books as a giant leap backwards, leaving everyone much less protected than they were before.

* Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, another case dealing with foreign pressure on First Amendment rights, comes to mind. There was language in that decision explaining how its reasoning curtailing those rights was allowable in that case’s context, and just that context. (“We conclude that the material-support statute is constitutional as applied to the particular activities plaintiffs have told us they wish to pursue. We do not, however, address the resolution of more difficult cases that may arise under the statute in the future.”) Yet that decision nevertheless reverberates in other contexts, including this case, as the Court rested part of its analysis regarding the TikTok ban on that earlier exception that it had somehow found itself Constitutionally able to make.

The TikTok decision is a bad decision, and the per curiam nature of the decision hints that even the Court knows it. It reads like a compromise decision – an attempt to sacrifice TikTok without sacrificing everything – in a situation where, in an extremely tight timeline, the Court needed at least five votes to do something, and there wasn’t enough agreement as to what that something should be. At oral argument, and later during the Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton argument earlier this week, it became clear that several justices were uncomfortable issuing a stay or an injunction to buy more time to adjudicate this case and the important issues implicated more carefully. And it seems there weren’t five votes to say the law was unconstitutional – probably, as oral argument also revealed, because some justices were extremely spooked by the national security implications related to data collection practices.

So if TikTok was going to lose – and it would have effectively lost even if the Court did nothing, given that the deadline for divestment was rapidly approaching – the compromise may have been to try to make it lose in a way that undermined protective First Amendment precedent in the least damaging way. As it was, both Justices Gorsuch and Sotomayor could, correctly, see that the law implicated speech interests, and that ability to recognize it will be important in the future when we need the Court to see them again. But as their concurring opinions made clear, they still would have found the law constitutional, despite its utter lack of narrow tailoring, which strict scrutiny requires. They would have left us with a decision no better than the DC Circuit had issued, where strict scrutiny would become all but useless to protect speech interests.

Under the circumstances, then, this decision may have been the least damaging one the Court could come up with, at least in the available time. But the hope that it wasn’t damaging at all seems naïve. The best we can hope for is that this decision somehow turns out to be the government’s one free bite at the apple, because if it happens again, where the government adopts this roadmap to act unconstitutionally against speech interests, even this Court might start to notice the constitutional problem with such laws and finally decide to do something about them.

FTC Bans GM From Selling Driver Location Data For 5 Years [Techdirt] (06:27 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Last year, Kashmir Hill at the New York Times published a major story confirming that automakers collect all sorts of driver behavior data then sell it to a long list of companies — without making that clear to car owners or getting consent. That includes insurance companies, which are now jacking up insurance rates if they see behavior in the dataset they don’t like.

Not surprisingly, GM was subsequently sued. Several times. Forcing it to spend much of last year going on an apology tour, which included pinky swearing that they will stop spying on their customers and selling data to data brokers and insurance companies.

Fast forward to this week, and the FTC has announced a new settlement with GM and OnStar, banning the companies from collecting and selling sensitive user location data for five years.

“G.M. monitored and sold people’s precise geolocation data and driver behavior information, sometimes as often as every three seconds,” outgoing FTC boss Lina Khan said of the settlement. “With this action, the F.T.C. is safeguarding Americans’ privacy and protecting people from unchecked surveillance.”

A report last year by Mozilla highlighted how the auto industry was the absolute worst industry that the organization tracks on privacy practices, routinely over-collecting and failing to adequately protect or encrypt broad swaths of data. Not just data from the vehicle; but troves of data collected from your phone every time you sync it with your car’s infotainment and navigation systems.

This data is then sold to a massive array of dodgy and barely regulated data brokers, who aren’t particularly discerning when it comes to selling that data to all manner of equally dodgy folks, whether that’s foreign and domestic governments, stalkers, right wing anti-abortion activists, or people pretending to be law enforcement. You can see how this could prove problematic under authoritarian rule.

In the case of most automakers, they bury what passes for “informed consumer consent” deep in the bowels of some overlong privacy policy for their free initial roadside assistance services, which most users never notice. This GM settlement bars GM and OnStar from collecting this data, and requires that they allow users to request copies and the deletion of any existing data.

On one hand, this is a nice example of the positive outcomes that can happen when journalism, consumer groups (Mozilla, Consumer Reports), and regulators work together to protect consumers.

On the other hand, piecemeal temporary settlements aren’t quite as effective as passing a meaningful and consistently enforced federal privacy law, which the U.S. Congress is too corrupt to do. And after billionaires whined endlessly about Lina Khan being too mean, a key component of Trump 2.0 will be defanging regulatory independence and consumer protection, so whether this settlement even sees enforcement by the Trump FTC is an open question I’m pretty sure I know the answer to.

“Secretly collecting and sharing driver location data is a terrible practice that can cause real harm to unsuspecting consumers,” Consumer Reports Tech Policy DirectorJustin Brookman said of the settlement. “We are encouraged that the FTC is taking action under existing consumer protection law to put a stop to it. But because of ambiguity in the law, the best way to avoid these types of abuses in the future is a strong and clear comprehensive privacy law that restricts unwanted data sharing by default.”

Italian Legislators Rekindle Decade-Long Grudge Match Against Tripadvisor And Its Reviewers [Techdirt] (04:16 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Italy remains pretty fucking weird when it comes to all things Italian. From top prosecutors taking aim at vendors who “debase” respected Italian art by, say, offering products featuring Michelangelo’s “David” (mainly the naked bits, which is all of it) or fining government entities (even those engaged in promoting tourism) for using any other language but Italian for official communications.

And, for some reason, the government entity in charge of promoting tourism (with or without the use of languages tourists would be more familiar with), has been going after Tripadvisor and its users since late 2014. Regulators, who perhaps didn’t realize none of this matters to an American company with Section 230 protections, decided they could fine Tripadvisor over $600,000 for “failing” to remove “fake” reviews fast enough to soothe the eternally perturbed souls of a country that still hasn’t managed to shed all the fascism it obtained during the World War II years.

Fortunately, the country’s courts aren’t quite as performative as the rest of the government. An Italian court overturned the fine six months later, pointing out (logically) that the harm to consumers was, at best, negligible. If local businesses felt some reviews were “fake,” they could still approach TripAdvisor to have them removed. And they still retained the opportunities afforded to all businesses everywhere: they could respond in kind on any number of services offered worldwide by dozens of tech companies.

For no apparent reason, what seemed to have been cooled off permanently nearly a decade ago is now back in play. As CNN reports, legislators are proposing a new law that would force Tripadvisor to “verify” reviews of Italian touristy stuff in order to root out the alleged fraudulent reviews politicians are once again claiming plague this one particular review site.

The proposed law, supported by Italy’s tourism minister, Daniela Santanchè, will put the onus on travel review sites like Tripadvisor to verify that anyone leaving a review has actually visited the establishment they are reviewing and is not getting paid to write positive appraisals.

Any reviews will have to be verified with a valid ID and the reviewer will have to prove that they were at the establishment within two weeks of writing a review.

The skew is in play here. The real reason for this law is to discourage people from leaving negative reviews of Italian establishments. The side effect is also the chilling effect: the collection and retention of identifying info from all Tripadvisor users, because simply filtering for “reviews+Italy” probably isn’t going to catch all the people these legislators feel should be named, retained, and (if need be) shamed.

According to the bill’s supporters, this isn’t about discouraging negative reviews of Italian tourism businesses. Instead, they claim this will prevent “unfair” competition, expose pay-to-play reviewers, and “root out fraud.”

I can guarantee this bill, if passed, will accomplish none of these things. But it will discourage honest users from criticizing (or even praising) places they visited in Italy. Lots of people like writing reviews. And the more reviews an entity gets, the better others can appraise it before spending their own money on it. Forcing them to cough up identifying info is a non-starter, especially when people will be made aware by TripAdvisor that it’s the Italian government demanding this, rather than the site itself.

Given the history of Italy’s governance, informed travelers will just refuse to leave reviews lest they become the new targets of the government’s bizarre ire. And that will just leave other travelers with less informed going forward.

If you don’t believe me, just ask tourism industry reps what they think about this proposal:

Confescercenti Nazionale, an association that represents small tourism entities, said the proposed law doesn’t go far enough.

“We expected a lot and we find very little,” the group said in a statement after the bill was introduced Tuesday. “It is certainly insufficient to effectively enhance the system of Italian micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.”

Anyone can read between these lines. The tourism industry isn’t happy because the law doesn’t mandate only positive reviews or target Tripadvisor (the entity with the biggest pockets) for hosting negative reviews that tourism entities (and the legislators that love them) always insist are “fake.”

What’s not immediately clear is how demanding proof of identity and receipts is going to deter fake positive reviews. What seems immediately clear is how this information can be leveraged by the government to seek further action against negative reviews of Italian businesses and apply even more pressure to Tripadvisor and others to discourage users from reviewing these businesses altogether.

It appears the government would prefer silence to the occasional negative review. And just a heads up to those looking at visiting this country: the industry you’re patronizing thinks people who leave reviews it doesn’t like aren’t being treated harshly enough.

SCOTUS: TikTok’s China Connection Is So Scary & Urgent, We Can Ban An Entire App. Biden Admin: Just Kidding, We Won’t Enforce It [Techdirt] (02:24 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

It seemed pretty obvious from the way the Supreme Court’s oral arguments went regarding the TikTok ban that this would be the outcome: a 9-0 per curiam decision saying “eh, it’s fine to ban TikTok.”

There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community. But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary. For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.

The ruling is fundamentally problematic on a number of different levels, but it’s the new reality. This decision sets a dangerous precedent that could enable further government overreach and censorship, under the guise of national security concerns. We’ll have another post exploring the amount of absolute censorial fuckery that this ruling will create, if not in practice, at least among the eager-to-censor political class who will view this as an instruction manual.

But, the key thing to me is that (as was suggested earlier this week), the Biden admin responded to this ruling, on a law that he fought for, signed excitedly, and had his solicitor general strongly defend in front of the Supreme Court, by saying “eh, never mind.”

This whiplash-inducing reversal from the Biden administration, after championing the TikTok ban, underscores the arbitrary and politically motivated nature of this decision. It raises questions about whether there was ever a genuine national security justification, or if it was merely a convenient excuse for censorship.

To summarize: this was a grave national security threat because China could get access to all sorts of secret data (which they already have access to because we don’t have any comprehensive data privacy law) or maybe it was because they could manipulate the minds of children (which every other form of media also can legally do) or because “THIS IS DIFFERENT IT’S CHINA YOU DUM DUM” as people on social media keep trying to tell me. The lack of a clear, consistent justification for singling out TikTok, while other apps and platforms engage in similar data collection practices, reveals the arbitrary and capricious nature of this ban.

Indeed, it was such a grave threat that the Supreme Court felt they had to rush the briefing way out of line with normal briefing schedules, because it was just so so important to block this app that the kids like.

And then… when the Supreme Court blesses it, the Biden admin is just… not interested anymore.

President Joe Biden won’t enforce a ban on the social media app TikTok that is set to take effect a day before he leaves office on Monday, a U.S. official said Thursday, leaving its fate in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump has also suggested he won’t enforce the ban because he wants to “negotiate” some sort of agreement to take credit for everything, even though he was the first to try to ban the app after getting angry that kids on the app made him look foolish. Trump’s desire to “negotiate” and take credit, rather than address any actual concerns, suggests (once again) that political grandstanding, not national security, is the true motivation.

Incredibly, TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew (who is Singaporean, not Chinese) is expected to have “a prime seating location on the dais” at Trump’s inauguration on Monday, which seems like an odd thing if Congress, and now the Supreme Court, has made it clear that he’s the guy running a dastardly spying/manipulation app for our (apparently) biggest adversary.

This jarring juxtaposition—condemning TikTok as a national security threat one moment, then honoring its CEO the next—lays bare the incoherence and hypocrisy at the heart of the government’s stance.

All of this is just painfully stupid, which the kids on TikTok all seem to recognize with their satirical mocking of the ban by saying farewell to “my Chinese spy” and embracing the even more “connected-to-the-CCP” app RedNote.

As for the decision itself, it effectively ends what little moral high ground the US had left on internet openness and freedom. For the past two decades, across multiple administrations, the State Department had taken a fairly strong position that foreign countries banning apps (which they all claim they do for “national security purposes”) was a dangerous attack on internet openness and freedoms.

And now the US can no longer claim that with a straight face. This decision is a gift to authoritarian regimes around the world. It provides cover and legitimacy for censorship and digital protectionism, weakening America’s ability to advocate for internet freedom on the global stage.

I guarantee that Chinese officials will actually use this blundering mess against the US. They will claim that it is a vindication of the approach that they take with the Great Firewall of China, saying that they “protect national security through banning apps” and that the US has chosen to follow their lead in doing the same.

We’ve now said it’s okay to create a Great Firewall of America, further splintering the internet and effectively ending the global internet experience. There will be a price paid for that, though we’ll only learn more about it with time. This Balkanization of the internet into national silos is a tragic reversal of the promise of a borderless digital world that fosters free expression and connection.

As for the ruling itself, the fact that the entire process was rushed shows through very clearly. The reasoning is muddled, and big questions are punted. It basically says “well, if Congress strongly believes there’s a national security threat, then the First Amendment concerns probably aren’t that big a deal.” That seems pretty problematic, because Congress has a pretty long list of censorial ideas that they can pass with strong majorities.

The Court’s deference to Congress on matters of national security, at the expense of First Amendment scrutiny, is a troubling abdication of its constitutional role. It opens the door for the legislative branch to run roughshod over civil liberties, using national security as a convenient excuse.

The Supreme Court is supposed to protect against that kind of thing, but here is suddenly willing to give Congress great deference.

To start, the House Report focuses overwhelmingly on the Government’s data collection concerns, noting the “breadth” of TikTok’s data collection, “the difficulty in assessing precisely which categories of data” the platform collects, the “tight interlinkages” between TikTok and the Chinese Government, and the Chinese Government’s ability to “coerc[e]” companies in China to “provid[e] data.” H. R. Rep., at 3; see id., at 5–12 (recounting a five-year record of Government actions raising and attempting to address those very concerns). Indeed, it does not appear that any legislator disputed the national security risks associated with TikTok’s data collection practices, and nothing in the legislative record suggests that data collection was anything but an overriding congressional concern. We are especially wary of parsing Congress’s motives on this record with regard to an Act passed with striking bipartisan support.

If data privacy is truly the concern, then a comprehensive data protection law, rather than a piecemeal ban on a single platform, would be a more effective and less constitutionally problematic solution. By focusing on TikTok alone, Congress and the Court have enabled arbitrary censorship rather than addressing the underlying issue.

Furthermore, not parsing Congress’ motives seems especially problematic, given that many members of Congress directly cited impermissible (under the First Amendment) reasons for why they wanted this ban. Like, Mitt Romney directly said the ban was a good idea because kids on TikTok were too strongly pro-Palestine. The Court’s failure to grapple with the censorial motives animating the TikTok ban — as exemplified by Sen. Romney’s comments about suppressing pro-Palestinian views — is a dereliction of its duty to safeguard free expression against viewpoint discrimination.

It can’t just be that as long as Congress attaches a non-content censorship reason to a bill that many want for censorial purposes, it magically makes it okay. But that is what the Supreme Court is saying here.

About the only attempt by the Supreme Court to recognize the havoc they are wreaking is a weak “hey, we’re ruling narrowly, don’t read too much into this precedential ruling we are putting out”:

While we find that differential treatment was justified here, however, we emphasize the inherent narrowness of our holding. Data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age. But TikTok’s scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, justify differential treatment to address the Government’s national security concerns. A law targeting any other speaker would by necessity entail a distinct inquiry and separate considerations.

The Court’s attempt to cabin the reach of its decision is unconvincing. By opening the door to First Amendment exceptions based on “striking bipartisan support,” the Court has invited further challenges to free expression. Censorial politicians will surely seize upon this language to test the boundaries of what speech they can suppress in the name of national security.

This is a messy, rushed decision that the US is going to regret. Hell, Biden’s reaction to it suggests he already regrets it. But it’s going to live on and create future problems for a country that once at least tried to appear to hold the moral high ground on an open and free internet.

The TikTok ban, and the Court’s acquiescence to it, represent a low point for digital civil liberties in America. It’s a self-inflicted wound that will haunt us for years to come, as we grapple with the fallout of a fragmented internet and emboldened censors, both at home and abroad.

Daily Deal: Fuse Vint Vintage Retro Radio [Techdirt] (02:19 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

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Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Good Look Taken [Tedium] (01:26 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

As you probably know, we have an affinity for two things over at Tedium: Old stuff that’s fallen through the cracks and people that, like me, are named Ernie, which is an excellent name.

Which is why I’m happy to tell you about something that hits both of those niches pretty effectively: A long-unseen episode of an Ernie Kovacs show is about to hit the internet for the first time.

A thought-to-be-lost episode of the Kovacs game show Take a Good Look, dating to 1961, recently resurfaced, and will make its world premiere next week on YouTube.

Kovacs Football — (all photos courtesy Ediad Productions)

Kovacs, for folks who aren’t aware, is believed to be one of the first auteurs of the television medium, often using his comedic skills in highly inventive, visual ways that proved inspiring to later generations of comedians. He also represents a cautionary tale of what can happen when the entertainment industry fails to protect its classic material. Kovacs died in 1962, at the relatively young age of 42, and the companies that aired his material would tape over it, or worse, ditch it entirely. (One oft-repeated tale has Kovacs’ old Dumont Network recordings getting dumped in the Hudson River.)

Kovacs’ widow, Edie Adams, did her best to protect her husband’s legacy and what was left of his work, given these challenging circumstances. Adams, a regular Take a Good Look panelist and frequent collaborator with her husband, had saved most of the episodes of that show, though some had slipped through the cracks. While maintaining an entertainment career of her own, Adams gained a reputation as an innovator in the archival of entertainment content—which paid off decades later thanks to the rise of the VHS and DVD.

Adams’ son, Josh Mills, carried the archival torch through the modern day after his mother’s 2008 passing, maintaining the estates of Kovacs, his mother, and his father Martin Mills.

“She was doing this before anyone, so I feel like it’s sort of a duty, because my mom paid bills, literal storage bills, for 45 years for all of this material,” Mills said of his mother. “So not only did she put her money where her mouth was—she talked about it—but she paid it.”

Found Links

It is absolutely brutal, just brutal, that we lost David Lynch and Bob Uecker on the same day. Uecker is probably the first TV dad I remember liking, and Lynch … he speaks for himself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk3EgDPZD0w

It’s been a tough couple of weeks, and it’s likely to get more complicated in the weeks to come. You might feel like you’re losing hope in your fellow human being. If you’re lacking that, consider watching this clip of Ving Rhames giving his Golden Globe to legendary actor Jack Lemmon, just because he wanted to. In its own way, it’s life-affirming.

In a follow-up to our Best Feature Article winner for 2024, General Motors has literally been banned from selling driver data for the next five years. Talk about results.

Find this one an interesting read? Share it with a pal! And thanks to Josh for the time in chatting with me. Cool archives deserve to be celebrated!

Subcommittee tables Garrett bill on local land-use decisions [Cardinal News] (12:52 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Solar farms around Climax in Pittsylvania County. Photo by Dwayne Yancey.

Read more about the bills mentioned in this story — or any other legislation in the 2025 General Assembly session — at https://lis.virginia.gov/.

A House subcommittee on Friday tabled a bill that said land-use decisions around solar, wind, energy storage and data center projects should “belong solely to the locality and shall not be ceded to any state agency or state-sanctioned body.”

Del. Tom Garrett, R-Buckingham County, said his HB 2068 was necessary to ensure that local governments can continue to extract proffers from developers of such projects.

Proffers are money or other concessions that a developer makes to a locality in exchange for project approval, and they help fund the salaries of local teachers, firefighters and law enforcement, Garrett said.

“This is about helping our kids get an education and our public safety officials to provide that public safety,” Garrett told a subcommittee of the House of Delegates’ Counties Cities and Towns committee.

He referenced recent efforts to give the state more authority over approving renewable energy projects, including a proposal from the last General Assembly that could have allowed state regulators to override local government decisions on such projects.

“If you take from these localities the ability to make these decisions, then there is no reason on earth that the solar developer, for example, would proffer $2 million to Buckingham County. They wouldn’t need to. They’d come grease palms in Richmond and that’s not going to help our families,” Garrett said.

The state-versus-local tension over who should have the authority to approve or deny renewable energy projects comes as Virginia faces rapidly rising electricity demand, driven largely by the growth of data centers, as well as legislatively mandated clean energy goals.

Most proposed renewable energy projects have been solar, and some local governments are increasingly resisting them, whether by denying individual proposals or by enacting restrictive regulations.

Proponents of solar tout its carbon-free electricity generation and the revenue that solar projects can bring to landowners and localities, but opponents have cited concerns about solar farms’ impact on rural viewsheds, property values and the environment.

Earlier this month, a state commission focused on electric utility regulation recommended legislation to create a new board that would allow the state more sway over such projects and would require localities to adopt solar ordinances consistent with a statewide model. Del. Rip Sullivan Jr., D-Fairfax County, is carrying that bill in the House as HB 2126, while Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, is sponsoring it in the Senate as SB 1190.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin said during his State of the Commonwealth address this month that he believes land-use decisions about solar power and data centers should rest with localities.

Garrett’s bill initially applied to all land-use decisions. He proposed an amendment during Friday’s subcommittee meeting that narrowed the scope, saying at first it was “very broad.”

“Essentially, the bill said, ‘Land use decisions are local.’ People who are smarter than me came to me and said, ‘Tom, you’re going to kill your own bill because there are some land-use decisions that aren’t local,” such as where an off-ramp for an interstate highway is built, he said.

Del. Katrina Callsen, D-Charlottesville, said that while she appreciated the amendment to narrow the bill’s scope, she didn’t think the bill was necessary because local governments currently have zoning authority to regulate such projects.

“I’m not sure what the purpose of this bill is other than a value statement for you that’s not required under the current code section,” Callsen said.

The Democratic-majority subcommittee voted 5-3 along party lines to table the bill, effectively killing it.

The post Subcommittee tables Garrett bill on local land-use decisions appeared first on Cardinal News.

Subcommittee tables Garrett bill on local land-use decisions [Cardinal News] (12:52 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Read more about the bills mentioned in this story — or any other legislation in the 2025 General Assembly session — at https://lis.virginia.gov/.

Del. Tom Garrett, R-Buckingham County, said his HB 2068 was necessary to ensure that local governments can continue to extract proffers from developers of such projects.

Most proposed renewable energy projects have been solar, and some local governments are increasingly resisting them, whether by denying individual proposals or by enacting restrictive regulations.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin said during his State of the Commonwealth address this month that he believes land-use decisions about solar power and data centers should rest with localities.

Garrett’s bill initially applied to all land-use decisions. He proposed an amendment during Friday’s subcommittee meeting that narrowed the scope, saying at first it was “very broad.”

“Essentially, the bill said, ‘Land use decisions are local.’ People who are smarter than me came to me and said, ‘Tom, you’re going to kill your own bill because there are some land-use decisions that aren’t local,’” such as where an off-ramp for an interstate highway is built, he said.

“I’m not sure what the purpose of this bill is other than a value statement for you that’s not required under the current code section,” Callsen said.

The Democratic-majority subcommittee voted 5-3 along party lines to table the bill, effectively killing it.

The post Subcommittee tables Garrett bill on local land-use decisions appeared first on Cardinal News.

Subcommittee tables Garrett bill on local land-use decisions [Cardinal News] (12:52 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Read more about the bills mentioned in this story — or any other legislation in the 2025 General Assembly session — at https://lis.virginia.gov/.

Del. Tom Garrett, R-Buckingham County, said his HB 2068 was necessary to ensure that local governments can continue to extract proffers from developers of such projects.

Proffers are money or other concessions that a developer makes to a locality in exchange for project approval, and Garrett said they help fund the salaries of local teachers, firefighters and law enforcement.

Most proposed renewable energy projects have been solar, and some local governments are increasingly resisting them, whether by denying individual proposals or by enacting restrictive regulations.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin said during his State of the Commonwealth address this month that he believes land-use decisions about solar power and data centers should rest with localities.

Garrett’s bill initially applied to all land-use decisions. He proposed an amendment during Friday’s subcommittee meeting that narrowed the scope, saying at first it was “very broad.”

“Essentially, the bill said, ‘Land use decisions are local.’ People who are smarter than me came to me and said, ‘Tom, you’re going to kill your own bill because there are some land-use decisions that aren’t local,’” such as where an off-ramp for an interstate highway is built, he said.

“I’m not sure what the purpose of this bill is other than a value statement for you that’s not required under the current code section,” Callsen said.

The Democratic-majority subcommittee voted 5-3 along party lines to table the bill, effectively killing it.

The post Subcommittee tables Garrett bill on local land-use decisions appeared first on Cardinal News.

As Zuckerberg Goes Around Whining About Biden, He Made Sure To First Get His New Approach Approved By Trump [Techdirt] (12:23 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Remember how Zuckerberg was “done with politics”? Remember how he promised that he was going to stop doing what politicians demanded he do?

Now it turns out that he not only did his big set of moderation changes to please Trump, but did so only after he was told by the incoming administration to act. Even worse, he reportedly made sure to share his plans with top Trump aides to get their approval first.

That’s a key takeaway from a new New York Times piece that is ostensibly a profile of the relentlessly awful Stephen Miller. However, it also has a few revealing details about the whole Zuckerberg saga buried within. First, Miller reportedly demanded that Zuckerberg make changes at Facebook “on Trump’s terms.”

Mr. Miller told Mr. Zuckerberg that he had an opportunity to help reform America, but it would be on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s terms. He made clear that Mr. Trump would crack down on immigration and go to war against the diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I., culture that had been embraced by Meta and much of corporate America in recent years.

Mr. Zuckerberg was amenable. He signaled to Mr. Miller and his colleagues, including other senior Trump advisers, that he would do nothing to obstruct the Trump agenda, according to three people with knowledge of the meeting, who asked for anonymity to discuss a private conversation. Mr. Zuckerberg said he would instead focus solely on building tech products.

Even if you argue that this was more about DEI programs at Meta rather than about content moderation, it’s still the incoming administration reportedly making actual demands of Zuckerberg, and Zuckerberg not just saying “fine” but actually previewing the details to Miller to make sure they got Trump’s blessing.

Earlier this month, Mr. Zuckerberg’s political lieutenants previewed the changes to Mr. Miller in a private briefing. And on Jan. 10, Mr. Zuckerberg made them official….

This is especially galling given that it was just days ago when Zuckerberg was whining about how unfair it was that Biden officials were demanding stuff from him (even though he had no trouble saying no to them) and it was big news! The headlines made a huge deal of how unfair Biden was to Zuckerberg. Here’s just a sampling.

Notably absent from this breathless coverage was any mention that Trump was the one who actually threatened to imprison Zuckerberg for life. Or that his incoming FCC chair threatened to remove Section 230 if Meta didn’t stop fact-checking.

Also conveniently omitted was the fact that the Supreme Court found no evidence of the Biden administration going over the line in its conversations with Meta. Indeed, a Supreme Court Justice noted that conversations like those that the Biden admin had with Meta happened “thousands of times a day,” and weren’t problematic because there was no inherent threat or direct coordination.

Yet, here, we have reports of both threats and now evidence of direct coordination, including Zuckerberg asking for and getting direct approval from a top Trump official before rolling out the policy.

And where is this bombshell revelation? It’s buried in a random profile piece puffing up Stephen Miller.

It’s almost as if everyone now takes it for granted that any made-up story about Biden will be treated as fact, and everyone just takes it as expected when Trump actually does the thing that Biden gets falsely accused of.

With this new story, don’t hold your breath waiting for the same outlets to give this anywhere near the same level of coverage and outrage they directed at the Biden administration.

It’s almost as if there’s a massive double standard here: everything is okay if Trump does it, but we can blame the Biden admin for things we only pretend they did.

I’m used to hypocrisy in the political world, but this is beyond ridiculous. It’s now being made clear that the Trump admin is actually doing the exact thing that people were (falsely, misleadingly) blaming Biden for.

And it’s just a random aside in a story, and no one seems to be calling it out. Other than us here at Techdirt.

Bypassing disk encryption on systems with automatic TPM2 unlock [inks] (11:26 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Have you setup automatic disk unlocking with TPM2 and systemd-cryptenroll or clevis? Then chances are high that your disk can be decrypted by an attacker who just has brief physical access to your machine - with some preparation, 10 minutes will suffice. In this article we will explore how TPM2 based disk decryption works, and understand why many setups are vulnerable to a kind of filesystem confusion attack. We will follow along by exploiting two different real systems (Fedora + clevis, NixOS + systemd-cryptenroll).

Physically Based Rendering:From Theory To Implementation [inks] (11:21 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Physically Based Rendering describes both the mathematical theory behind a modern photorealistic rendering system and its practical implementation. A method known as literate programming combines human-readable documentation and source code into a single reference that is specifically designed to aid comprehension. The book’s leading-edge algorithms, software, and ideas—including new material on GPU ray tracing—equip the reader to design and employ a full-featured rendering system capable of creating stunning imagery.

new year new rules new lines [flak] (11:11 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

We have a new edition of POSIX, which means new rules, new regulations, new red tape. But not new lines. Which is to say, posix at long last banishes new lines in file names.

Implementation seems straighforward, but like my mechanic says, it’s $1 knowing what to check and $99 knowing where to check.

POSIX doesn’t officially make a distinction about library functions or system calls, as far as I know. I think the closest hints would be thread cancellation points. We still have a variety of system calls to fix up, beyond the obvious open. Like openat, which is a distinct system call, but not creat which is just a libc wrapper. But in addition to rename and some others I’m probably forgetting, there’s connect with unix sockets.

So obviously don’t want to handle this at every entry point. Peaking at a system call like like sys_open redirects through vn_open, but a few others like sys_mkfifo reveal that all file name resolution in the kernel flows through namei in vfs_lookup.c. This is an ancient function from the days when inodes were the only thing you’d want to convert a name to. Some of its logic now lives in vfs_lookup which bears the comment “This is a very central and rather complicated routine.” So that’s how we know we’re looking in the right place.

It’s not so easy to summarize this function, which seems to consist of nothing but handling for special cases. There’s a lot of digging around with slashes and dots, but eventually we seem to find ourselves looking at the last component. And here we can start making changes. We only want to ban the creation of new forbidden names, not accessing existing files, so we have to allow directory lookups to work, and only fail create operations.

If my mechanic hasn’t lied to me, something like this.

        /*
         * We do special processing on the last component, whether or not it's
         * a directory.  Cache all intervening lookups, but not the final one.
         */
        if (*cp == '\0') {
                if (cnp->cn_nameiop == CREATE) {
                        for (const char *nl = cnp->cn_nameptr; *nl; nl++) {
                                if (*nl == '\n') {
                                        error = EILSEQ;
                                        goto bad;
                                }
                        }
                }

I don’t really care too much about this change itself. There are still other characters awaiting misinterpretation. Is new line so much more dangerous than space? But I wanted to poke around to see where a check might go. Even knowing well of course it goes in namei leaves the question of where exactly.

A Film Grain Comparison [35mmc] (11:00 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Comparison of film grain.

The post A Film Grain Comparison appeared first on 35mmc.

Friday Debrief: Bungee Club, Bikepacking Tasmania, Ultimate Tarp Setup, and More [BIKEPACKING.com] (10:06 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

This week’s short and sweet Debrief features new carbon bars from PNW, a bikepacking adventure across Tasmania, fresh Bassi Hog's Back colors, the ultimate bikepacking tarp setup, Wolf Tooth's updated tire pressure calculator, and more. Find it all here…

The post Friday Debrief: Bungee Club, Bikepacking Tasmania, Ultimate Tarp Setup, and More appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com.

Introducing the Bearclaw Bruno: Fat Bikes Aren’t Dead! [BIKEPACKING.com] (09:34 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

The second fat bike in Bearclaw Bicycle Co.'s range of titanium bicycles is called Bruno, a modern fat bike designed to handle all terrain types with its clearance for massive 26 x 5", 27.5 x 4.5", or 29 x 3.0" tires. Learn more about the Bearclaw Bruno here...

The post Introducing the Bearclaw Bruno: Fat Bikes Aren’t Dead! appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com.

Reader’s Rig: Mads’ Hulsroy Boat Anchor Prototype [BIKEPACKING.com] (09:11 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

This week's Reader's Rig comes from Danish framebuilder Mads Hulsroy of Hulsroy Cycles, who shares the prototype TIG-welded Boat Anchor he built for riding trails in 2019 and has since converted to his dad bike, complete with a customized, painted-to-match BOB trailer. Check it out here...

The post Reader’s Rig: Mads’ Hulsroy Boat Anchor Prototype appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com.

Rackhackers Cannier DIY Panniers Review: Repurposed with Purpose [BIKEPACKING.com] (09:00 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

There are innumerable ways to haul stuff on a bike, but that didn't stop Rackhackers from taking it a step further with their DIY pannier kit, which repurposes readily available hardware and discarded plastic containers for a surprisingly solid setup. We jumped on the opportunity to experiment with the Romanian brand's kit in multiple configurations. Find our Rackhackers Cannier DIY Panniers review here…

The post Rackhackers Cannier DIY Panniers Review: Repurposed with Purpose appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com.

FTC Finally Sues John Deere Over Years Of ‘Right To Repair’ Abuses [Techdirt] (08:26 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

A few years ago agricultural equipment giant John Deere found itself on the receiving end of an antitrust lawsuit for its efforts to monopolize tractor repair. The lawsuits noted that the company consistently purchased competing repair centers in order to consolidate the sector and force customers into using the company’s own repair facilities, driving up costs and logistical hurdles dramatically for farmers.

John Deere executives have repeatedly promised to do better, then just ignored those promises.

Now the company is on the receiving end of a belated FTC lawsuit over its effort to monopolize repair, something outgoing FTC boss Lina Khan says made operations much more difficult and expensive for farmers the world over:

“Illegal repair restrictions can be devastating for farmers, who rely on affordable and timely repairs to harvest their crops and earn their income,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The FTC’s action today seeks to ensure that farmers across America are free to repair their own equipment or use repair shops of their choice—lowering costs, preventing ruinous delays, and promoting fair competition for independent repair shops.”

The FTC lawsuit was filed in conjunction with the states of Illinois and Minnesota.

In addition to intentionally acquiring repair alternatives to monopolize repair and drive up consumer costs, John Deere also routinely makes repair difficult and costly through the act of software locks, obnoxious DRM restrictions, and “parts pairing” — which involves only allowing the installation of company-certified replacement parts — or mandatory collections of company-blessed components.

More recently, the company has been striking meaningless “memorandums of understanding” with key trade groups, pinky swearing to stop their bad behavior if the groups agree to not support state or federal right to repair legislation. Several such groups backed off their criticism, only to have John Deere continue its monopolistic behavior, the FTC’s complaint notes.

Several class action antitrust suits and ample warning from the FTC wasn’t enough to deter John Deere. The FTC’s suit comes as Lina Khan heads out the door, and it’s more than possible that Trump 2.0 — keen on taking a hatchet to what’s left of U,S, corporate oversight and consumer protection — either kills or undermines FTC legal efforts to finally hold John Deere accountable. You know, for “populism.”

2025 Fat Pursuit: Across a Winter Wonderland [BIKEPACKING.com] (07:25 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Nearly 150 cyclists, runners, and skiers started the new year by participating in the 12th annual Fat Pursuit event in Idaho, taking on a 60- or 200-kilometer route through enchanting wintry conditions. Photographer Eddie Clark was in the thick of it, and he put together a stunning gallery of photos and a recap of how the event played out...

The post 2025 Fat Pursuit: Across a Winter Wonderland appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com.

2025 Fat Pursuit: Across a Winter Wonderland [BIKEPACKING.com] (07:25 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

The post 2025 Fat Pursuit: Across a Winter Wonderland appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com.

Wollensak 5″ f/3.5 Projector Lens Adapting Journey (and Failure) [35mmc] (05:00 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

I ran into this lens during a trip to bop around the local thrift store with friends one afternoon. I picked it up off of a Revere 553 Projector, of which I have, surprisingly, run into several copies of since then. I was really excited when I first picked it up, and I was excited...

The post Wollensak 5″ f/3.5 Projector Lens Adapting Journey (and Failure) appeared first on 35mmc.

Virginia’s emergency response has been hampered by a lack of resources for years. Advocates and lawmakers hope 2025 is the year that will change. [Cardinal News] (04:45 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Water begins to overrun a bridge at Konnarock along the Washington-Smyth county line on Friday, Sept. 26, as inland effects of Hurricane Helene begin to be felt in Virginia. Courtesy of Virginia State Police.

Tim Duffer was a firefighter when Tropical Storm Michael hit Danville in 2018 and caused widespread flooding that led to the deaths of five people across Virginia’s Southside.

Rescue personnel attend to a stranded vehicle in Oct 10, 2018, flooding resulting from Tropical Storm Michael. Courtesy of Danville Life Saving and First Aid Crew, Inc.

“I don’t want to ever see citizens die because they drove into water,” he said. “A part of that’s education, being able to have the resources and the time to go out there and educate people on, ‘Hey, don’t drive into this water.’ People don’t know that — they think they can do it.”

Shortly after Michael hit, Duffer became the deputy fire chief and the city’s emergency management director, two roles with high demands in keeping citizens safe. Emergency managers do everything from disaster preparation and mitigation, to community outreach and education, to grant writing, to coordinating disaster response and recovery. That role, though it may sound like it is enough for a dedicated employee, is tackled by many who already have jobs in localities across the commonwealth.

Among 42 localities across the Southwest and Southside regions, about 14 have full-time emergency managers, according to data provided by the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. Many of the remaining 28 localities have emergency managers who, like Duffer, split their time between that role and another full-time job.

In the aftermath of Tropical Storm Michael, which caused more than $10 million in damage to the city, working as both the deputy fire chief and the city’s emergency manager was like “drinking water from a firehose,” said Duffer, who was in Richmond on Thursday on behalf of the Virginia Emergency Management Agency to support legislative efforts to bring more resources to emergency management across the state.

Years ago, Danville had a full-time, dedicated emergency manager, but a number of positions were consolidated into one in departments across the city during the 2008 recession.

“The city had to make hard choices,” Duffer said.

Those cuts led to a lack of staffing, he said, and emergency management became more reactive rather than proactive, in areas across the state that lack full-time, dedicated emergency managers.

“We need to be meeting, we need to be planning. I tell people, I don’t like to meet people on the scene of a crisis, I want to meet them before,” Duffer said. “Let’s have a blue sky day to meet.”

Hurricane Helene drove home a need for emergency management resources

Roanoke-based storm chaser Chris White captured this low-hanging funnel cloud with strong rotation near Climax in Pittsylvania County on Friday, Sept. 26, as the remnant circulation of Hurricane Helene was moving just west and south of our region. Courtesy of Chris White.

Danville didn’t see as much widespread flooding during Hurricane Helene as other localities in Southwest Virginia, but the storm did spin off tornadoes around the area. Those tornadoes damaged parts of Pittsylvania County and infrastructure for utilities administered by Danville in the county, Duffer said.

As Southwest Virginia continues to recover from Helene, four months later, lawmakers from the region have shifted their focus to Richmond and what they can do during the 2025 General Assembly session to offer support and resources to support emergency management ahead of the next disaster.

Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, and Del. Alex Askew, D-Virginia Beach, have introduced companion legislation in the state Senate and House of Delegates that would create a state fund and grant program to support emergency management programs and personnel across the state.

The Virginia Department of Emergency Management, or VDEM, had also submitted a request to include $15.68 million in the budget amendments to be considered during the 2025 session. That money would go toward hiring of dedicated, full-time emergency management personnel in localities that are lacking, or toward other mitigation efforts to prepare for future disasters. The money was not included in Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s budget amendment request. Youngkin did include about $127 million in his budget amendment proposal for Helene-related damage and to establish a standing fund to support recovery after future disasters.

The state agency relies on non-disaster federal grants to fund 65% of its core functions but that federal funding has not kept up with inflation and a 10% reduction in that funding occurred in fiscal year 2024, said Brian Misner, legislative co-chair for the Virginia Emergency Management Association.

“This is not the first time there have been similar asks from the agency,” Misner said during a presentation to a House appropriations subcommittee meeting on Wednesday. VEMA is made up of more than 900 emergency management employees who work across all levels of government, health care, education, the military and other industries.

Misner noted that the funding request, if granted, would allow for VDEM to funnel money down to localities through grants for full-time emergency management positions, the purchase of shelters, if necessary, to aid in disaster response and other preparation and response expenses.

“It really would help us with that local focus of making sure each community had a baseline capability to be able to work with each other in the region,” he said.

About 25% of the localities across the commonwealth have a full-time emergency manager, with enough staff to maintain essential program functions, Misner told the House subcommittee. Many localities don’t have full-time, dedicated emergency management personnel.

“We are concerned that this is not a sustainable approach,” Misner said.

He noted that many disasters start and end at the local level and many fail to reach the threshold necessary to trigger post-disaster assistance from federal agencies.

Nationally, he said, insurance companies are canceling homeowners and renters policies in high-risk areas and the cost of flood insurance can be prohibitively high for many.

“It hasn’t quite crept up to Virginia yet, but it’s starting to,” he said.

What full-time emergency management could look like

Floodwaters from the New River at a level not seen since 1940 inundate athletic fields at Radford University the day after the remnants of Hurricane Helene passed across the region. Drone photo courtesy of Brian Lusk.

Peter McCann, director of the Office of Emergency Management at Radford University, works full time as an emergency manager.

Radford University was flooded when the New River surged, following Hurricane Helene. Parking lots and athletic fields were underwater after the river rose significantly higher than anticipated. Electrical equipment that had been installed on or near the ground in those facilities had been affected by the flooding.

McCann said his office altered plans in real time and pulled together a damage assessment for repairs and rebuilds after the floodwaters receded. “We’re still not completely, fully back and operational in all aspects,” he said, nearly four months after the disaster hit. “We’re still in the recovery process.”

McCann’s office put in resource requests to the state to prepare for flooding. They filled and placed sandbags around facilities and braced for the worst.

“For us, now, it’s looking like, alright, this happened once, it could happen again, what do we need to do to mitigate against those circumstances?” said McCann, who also was in Richmond on Thursday on behalf of VEMA to support the bill.

McCann said he tries to help surrounding localities that don’t have a dedicated emergency manager as much as possible to prepare for when disaster could strike. That help looks like assistance in coordinating response and recovery following a disaster.

“If you have someone dedicated to it, you’re looking at mitigation ahead of time, a lot of preparedness, getting plans in place,” he said.

That mitigation can look like considering all outcomes of a potential disaster, preparing for those outcomes, educating the community, and coordinating efforts with surrounding localities to make disaster-related losses as small as possible.

The post Virginia’s emergency response has been hampered by a lack of resources for years. Advocates and lawmakers hope 2025 is the year that will change. appeared first on Cardinal News.

Virginia’s emergency response has been hampered by a lack of resources for years. Advocates and lawmakers hope 2025 is the year that will change. [Cardinal News] (04:45 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Tim Duffer was a firefighter when Tropical Storm Michael hit Danville in 2018 and caused widespread flooding that led to the deaths of five people across Virginia’s Southside.

Years ago, Danville had a full-time, dedicated emergency manager, but a number of positions were consolidated into one in departments across the city during the 2008 recession.

“The city had to make hard choices,” Duffer said.

Those cuts led to a lack of staffing, he said, and emergency management became more reactive rather than proactive, in areas across the state that lack full-time, dedicated emergency managers.

Hurricane Helene drove home a need for emergency management resources

“It really would help us with that local focus of making sure each community had a baseline capability to be able to work with each other in the region,” he said.

“We are concerned that this is not a sustainable approach,” Misner said.

He noted that many disasters start and end at the local level and many fail to reach the threshold necessary to trigger post-disaster assistance from federal agencies.

Nationally, he said, insurance companies are canceling homeowners and renters policies in high-risk areas and the cost of flood insurance can be prohibitively high for many.

“It hasn’t quite crept up to Virginia yet, but it’s starting to,” he said.

What full-time emergency management could look like

Peter McCann, director of the Office of Emergency Management at Radford University, works full time as an emergency manager.

McCann’s office put in resource requests to the state to prepare for flooding. They filled and placed sandbags around facilities and braced for the worst.

“If you have someone dedicated to it, you’re looking at mitigation ahead of time, a lot of preparedness, getting plans in place,” he said.

The post Virginia’s emergency response has been hampered by a lack of resources for years. Advocates and lawmakers hope 2025 is the year that will change. appeared first on Cardinal News.

Virginia’s emergency response has been hampered by a lack of resources for years. Advocates and lawmakers hope 2025 is the year that will change. [Cardinal News] (04:45 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Tim Duffer was a firefighter when Tropical Storm Michael hit Danville in 2018 and caused widespread flooding that led to the deaths of five people across Virginia’s Southside.

Years ago, Danville had a full-time, dedicated emergency manager, but a number of positions were consolidated into one in departments across the city during the 2008 recession.

“The city had to make hard choices,” Duffer said.

Those cuts led to a lack of staffing, he said, and emergency management became more reactive rather than proactive, in areas across the state that lack full-time, dedicated emergency managers.

Hurricane Helene drove home a need for emergency management resources

“It really would help us with that local focus of making sure each community had a baseline capability to be able to work with each other in the region,” he said.

“We are concerned that this is not a sustainable approach,” Misner said.

He noted that many disasters start and end at the local level and many fail to reach the threshold necessary to trigger post-disaster assistance from federal agencies.

Nationally, he said, insurance companies are canceling homeowners and renters policies in high-risk areas and the cost of flood insurance can be prohibitively high for many.

“It hasn’t quite crept up to Virginia yet, but it’s starting to,” he said.

What full-time emergency management could look like

Peter McCann, director of the Office of Emergency Management at Radford University, works full time as an emergency manager.

McCann’s office put in resource requests to the state to prepare for flooding. They filled and placed sandbags around facilities and braced for the worst.

“If you have someone dedicated to it, you’re looking at mitigation ahead of time, a lot of preparedness, getting plans in place,” he said.

The post Virginia’s emergency response has been hampered by a lack of resources for years. Advocates and lawmakers hope 2025 is the year that will change. appeared first on Cardinal News.

4 things Trump (or any president) can’t do much about [Cardinal News] (04:15 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Donald Trump is set to become president again, amid great hopes from some and great fears from others.

The president of the United States, whoever that may be, is often called the most powerful person in the world, and anyone who is in charge of 5,000 or more nuclear warheads certainly qualifies. However, now is a useful time to remind everyone of certain trends that are reshaping our society where a president’s powers are limited to nonexistent.

Let’s take a look at some of them — and how they relate specifically to Virginia.

1. Will birth rates continue to decline?

A Congressional Budget Office report projects that in 2033, deaths will start to outnumber births. After that date, any population growth will have to come from immigration. Source: CBO.

Birth rates have been falling around much of the world, a combination of social and economic factors. In the post-war era, the birth rate in the United States topped out at 3.582 children per woman, fell beneath the so-called “replacement rate” of 2.1 in 1973 and has never gotten higher. The birth rate bottomed out at 1.772 in 1978, rose slightly above 2.0 (but not above the replacement rate) for much of the 1990s and early 2000s, but then fell again after the Great Recession of 2008 and never recovered. Last year, it was 1.786, a figure that’s stayed essentially flat through Trump’s first term and Joe Biden’s term.

Focusing on the rate, though, masks the actual number of babies being born. Keep in mind there are multiple trends taking place here — the population is aging (reducing the number of women in their child-bearing years), but immigration is also boosting the population (and immigrants tend to be younger). The result: In 2007, the United States saw a record 4.32 million births. Since then, though, that number has fallen almost every year. In 2020, it hit a low of 3.61 million. In 2023, the U.S. saw 3.6 million babies born; preliminary figures suggest the 2024 figure may be as low as 3.31 million.

The number to pay attention to here is the gap between that 2007 high and all the years that follow. In plain language, 2023 saw 700,000 fewer babies born than 2007; 2024 may have seen 1 million fewer babies born.

This has ramifications we haven’t fully grasped yet. Colleges sure have: This is the so-called “enrollment cliff,” a precipitous drop-off in the number of traditional college-age students, which is why we see Roanoke College adding football and Randolph College adding certain sports. They’re all scrambling to make sure they keep their enrollment numbers up. Beyond that, we’re looking at workforce shortages in the future that will dwarf the ones we have now. These numbers also jeopardize many government programs that depend on younger generations paying for older ones ahead of them — Social Security, for instance.

At some point, the federal government will have to deal with the consequences of these declining birth rates but seems poorly placed to change them.

Some governments around the world have tried various policies to boost the number of births but haven’t had much luck. These are very personal decisions that politicians can’t do much about (although subsidizing more child care would help some). Governments can, though, move these numbers through immigration. That’s what Canada has tried to do with high immigration; it has similar gaps and wants to close them. However, Trump’s goal to deport undocumented immigrants would widen them. Meanwhile, a Congressional Budget Office report this week projected that, due to an aging population and declining birth rates, deaths will outnumber births in 2033 — which means that the United States would lose population for the first time ever. The only way to overcome that is through immigration. A recent study by Old Dominion University found that, without immigration, Virginia would now be losing population. There are legitimate concerns about having too much population growth, but population decline is invariably linked to economic decline. That is definitely not a way to make any country great again.

2. Will we continue to see more migration to rural areas?

This map shows which localities have seen more people move in than move out — or vice versa. Note that a county might see more people moving in but still lose population because deaths outnumber births — and the net in-migration. Courtesy of Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, University of Virginia.

The pandemic has triggered an unexpected trend: More people are now moving into rural areas. In Virginia, most rural areas are now seeing more people move in than move out, a reversal of what has been happening.

This hasn’t been enough to cause many of these counties to gain population, yet. With an aging population in many of those places, the moving vans coming in are still outnumbered by hearses going out. Still, this is a welcome trend for those who worried their communities were withering away. One of the drivers behind this migration (although by no means the only one) has been the popularity of remote work. We are now seeing some employers calling workers back into the office; Trump wants the federal government to be one of those. However, the long-term number (outlined above) suggests that if there’s a worker shortage, the power will be with the workers — so don’t look for remote work to go away.

The question is whether the migration we’ve seen so far represents the start of a trend or the entire trend.

3. Will growth in manufacturing continue to be sluggish?

Manufacturing jobs in the United States, 1939-2024. Source: Federal Reserve of St. Louis.

Here’s an area where Trump would like to have influence but history suggests he can’t. One of the biggest changes over the past few decades has been the collapse of manufacturing in many places. We have lots of places across Southwest and Southside that have seen this firsthand. Manufacturing jobs in the U.S. peaked in June 1979 at 19.55 million. They declined through the ’80s and ’90s and were at about 17 million in early 2001. Then came the big collapse — Danville and Martinsville and other places can tell you about how their major employers were virtually wiped out. Or sometimes actually wiped out. The nation’s manufacturing workforce hit bottom in February 2010 at 11.45 million. By the time Trump took office in January 2017 the nation had 12.37 million manufacturing jobs, and just before the pandemic hit the number had edged up to 12.78 million. Under Biden, those numbers have come back and most recently stood at 12.87 million. Both Trump and Biden tried, in their own way, to boost American manufacturing. Trump had a little more success than Biden but, in the context of history, neither president’s policies changed things very much. The free market has its own ideas, and a declining labor pool is likely to force manufacturers to turn more to robotics.

4. How will the nation’s energy mix change?

How the nation's energy mix has changed. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration. — How the nation’s energy mix has changed. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Both Trump and Biden had clear ideas on what fuels we should be using; neither has really gotten his way because the marketplace has been a stronger force than any presidential policy. Trump came into office declaring he would “bring back King Coal.” He did not. U.S. coal production rose slightly his first year in office, but then declined and, even before the pandemic hit, was lower than when he took office. Coal’s role in domestic energy production also declined during his term, from 29.8% to 23.3% before the pandemic hit (I’m not counting 2020 because that skews things). More coal-fired plants were retired under Trump than under Barack Obama’s second term, according to E&E News. Many coal plants were aging, and utilities had little interest in investing in new ones.

Biden, by contrast, wanted to promote renewables, but while it seems we have a lot more — just look at the solar farms across Southside — the national statistics say otherwise. Renewables do now constitute the second-biggest source of electricity in the country, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, but that’s primarily because coal has declined even more. The actual share of electricity production that comes from renewables hasn’t changed that much — from 17.6% in 2019 under Trump to 18.7% under Biden in 2023. The big fuel source under both presidents has been natural gas.

Trump says he wants no more wind energy built, but that seems unlikely to happen, not when the states most dependent on wind are solidly Republican-voting ones. South Dakota now gets 60% of its energy from wind, Iowa 54.7%.

In Virginia, in December, the General Assembly’s research arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, released an eye-opening report that projected energy demands in the state could triple by 2040 unless the growth of data centers slows down. Given those demands, market pressure is likely to overwhelm much of whatever any president wants. Presidents look at four-year election cycles; utilities look at 40-year investment cycles.

There are plenty of things Trump can change, if he chooses. He can deport people. He can lay on tariffs that disrupt trade patterns. He could invade Greenland, for that matter. I certainly don’t mean to diminish the magnitude of the choices that Americans were offered in November. However, it’s also wise to remember that many of the forces reshaping our society are impervious to politics.

Are you ready for some football?

Virginia Tech (in white) plays Boston College in 2007. Courtesy of User B.

In this week’s West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter, I’ll tell you about a bill pending before the General Assembly that would change the football schedule at some of Virginia’s colleges. West of the Capital goes out on Friday afternoons. You can sign up for this or any of our newsletters below:

The post 4 things Trump (or any president) can’t do much about appeared first on Cardinal News.

4 things Trump (or any president) can’t do much about [Cardinal News] (04:15 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Donald Trump is set to become president again, amid great hopes from some and great fears from others.

Let’s take a look at some of them — and how they relate specifically to Virginia.

1. Will birth rates continue to decline?

At some point, the federal government will have to deal with the consequences of these declining birth rates but seems poorly placed to change them.

2. Will we continue to see more migration to rural areas?

The question is whether the migration we’ve seen so far represents the start of a trend or the entire trend.

3. Will growth in manufacturing continue to be sluggish?

4. How will the nation’s energy mix change?

Are you ready for some football?

The post 4 things Trump (or any president) can’t do much about appeared first on Cardinal News.

4 things Trump (or any president) can’t do much about [Cardinal News] (04:15 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Donald Trump is set to become president again, amid great hopes from some and great fears from others.

Let’s take a look at some of them — and how they relate specifically to Virginia.

1. Will birth rates continue to decline?

At some point, the federal government will have to deal with the consequences of these declining birth rates but seems poorly placed to change them.

2. Will we continue to see more migration to rural areas?

The question is whether the migration we’ve seen so far represents the start of a trend or the entire trend.

3. Will growth in manufacturing continue to be sluggish?

4. How will the nation’s energy mix change?

Are you ready for some football?

The post 4 things Trump (or any president) can’t do much about appeared first on Cardinal News.

4 things Trump (or any president) can’t do much about [Cardinal News] (04:15 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

Donald Trump is set to become president again, amid great hopes from some and great fears from others.

Let’s take a look at some of them — and how they relate specifically to Virginia.

1. Will birth rates continue to decline?

At some point, the federal government will have to deal with the consequences of these declining birth rates but seems poorly placed to change them.

2. Will we continue to see more migration to rural areas?

The question is whether the migration we’ve seen so far represents the start of a trend or the entire trend.

3. Will growth in manufacturing continue to be sluggish?

4. How will the nation’s energy mix change?

Are you ready for some football?

The post 4 things Trump (or any president) can’t do much about appeared first on Cardinal News.

Bill would create grants for large-animal veterinarians [Cardinal News] (04:10 , Friday, 17 January 2025)

A bill to provide incentive grants to large-animal veterinarians cleared a state Senate subcommittee Thursday with unanimous support.

Sen. Travis Hackworth, R-Tazewell County, sponsored SB 921. It would create a program by July 1, 2026, to give grants to up to four large-animal veterinarians each year in parts of Virginia identified by Virginia’s state veterinarian as having a shortage of such professionals.

Sen. Travis Hackworth, R-Tazewell County. Photo by Bob Brown.

A large-animal veterinarian works with cattle, sheep, goats and other livestock, while a companion-animal veterinarian works with dogs, cats and other pets.

Hackworth cited figures showing that in 2023 the U.S. had 68,400 companion-animal veterinarians but only slightly more than 8,100 veterinarians working in large-animal practice or mixed practice.

A large-animal veterinarian’s starting annual salary is typically $30,000 to $50,000 lower than that of a companion-animal veterinarian, he said.

“We need more animal vets, large-animal vets,” Hackworth told a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources.

Hackworth said Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Fairfax County, is backing a $450,000 state budget amendment to support the program. If that amendment doesn’t go through, the bill still would establish the program.

The bill would also require Virginia’s state veterinarian to submit a report to the General Assembly by July 1, 2030, describing the effectiveness of the incentive grants.

Martha Moore of the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation told the subcommittee that the program could help veterinarians with student loans and other expenses.

“This is a nationwide problem, and 22 other states have these similar type incentive programs,” Moore said.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nearly 240 regions across the country, including some in Central and Southwest Virginia, have a shortage of food-animal veterinarians.

Sen. Angelia Williams Graves, D-Norfolk, said healthy livestock are necessary for the food supply.

She noted that the distance between a farmer and an available veterinarian could mean the difference between life and death for an animal in need of care.

“Thank you so much for bringing this, and as someone who eats beef, I hope we get this passed,” she said.

With the subcommittee’s 5-0 favorable vote, the bill heads to the full agriculture committee for consideration.

The post Bill would create grants for large-animal veterinarians appeared first on Cardinal News.