October 29, 2024: Washington Post Loses Subscribers After Non-Endorsement, Let's Think About That. PLUS Elon Musk Sued Over $1M Giveaway, Virginia Ordered to Restore Voter's Eligibility, and More.
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Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is Tuesday, October 29th, and this is your daily news rundown. As far as today's episode goes, nothing crazy. We'll cover a handful of stories, which includes a few lawsuits, some quick hitters, and then we'll finish with critical thinking. I do want to make a quick note before we get into the episode, and that is this.

I get tons of questions every day, whether it be on social media or by email, asking whether I've covered X, Y, or Z topic. Unfortunately, I can't respond to every person that reaches out, which means that some people will never know if I've covered what they're looking for. And maybe you've been in that position at some point.

So please, if you're ever wondering whether I've covered something, go directly to my website, jordanismylawyer.com, click episodes in the menu, and there will be a search box at the very top of the page where you can type in any keyword relevant to what you're looking for, and the results will pop up. So let's say you're wanting the candidate's policies. Just type in Trump-Harris policies or Trump policies, Harris policies, whatever, and you'll

You may have to do a little digging depending on how many times I've covered something, but it's a really helpful tool and I have it there for a reason. So please, please, please utilize that. And now without further ado, let's get into today's stories.

Delta and CrowdStrike are in a bit of a legal battle with one another following the CrowdStrike outage in July. Maybe you remember, maybe you don't, but back in July, CrowdStrike, which is a cybersecurity company, issued a problematic app update and lots of people and companies were affected across the entire globe. Banks, airlines, hospitals, pharmacies, emergency services, you name it.

Ultimately, CrowdStrike did identify the issue. They issued a fix, but lots of things were affected and not in a good way. This included many, many, many flights. Delta of all of the airlines took the most amount of time to bounce back.

So at the end of last week, Delta filed a lawsuit against CrowdStrike, calling the software update catastrophic and accusing CrowdStrike of gross negligence by, quote, forcing untested and faulty updates to its customers. The lawsuit continues and says, quote, if CrowdStrike had tested the faulty update on even one computer before deployment, the computer would have crashed. Because the faulty update could not be removed remotely, CrowdStrike protested.

crippled Delta's business and created immense delays for Delta customers. End quote. Delta says it was forced to cancel 7,000 flights impacting 1.3 million passengers over five days. It also says CrowdStrike is liable for more than $500 million in out-of-pocket losses, plus an unspecified amount in lost profits and expenditures.

But now CrowdStrike is hitting back at Delta with its own lawsuit. A CrowdStrike spokesperson said it sued Delta to make clear that CrowdStrike did not cause the harm Delta claims and that Delta repeatedly refused assistance from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft. CrowdStrike says that it was Delta's own response and technology which caused delays in its ability to resume normal operations.

And moving on to another lawsuit, this one in a totally different arena, Elon Musk and his political action committee, America PAC, are facing their first lawsuit following the announcement of their $1 million a day giveaway. Now, I covered this giveaway, I want to say, last week. We even did a critical thinking exercise about the legality of it all. But let's give a little bit of a background here, and then we'll talk about what this new lawsuit says.

Earlier this month, Musk and his pack announced this new giveaway where registered voters in certain battleground states can sign a petition to protect the First and Second Amendments. And by signing, they are automatically eligible for a random $1 million a day giveaway. Musk and his pack pick one random winner per day from the list of signers and write them a check for $1 million. All

On top of that, the PAC is also offering to pay registered voters $47 each for each registered voter they refer to sign the petition. Almost immediately, legal experts were weighing in on the legality of this. Some experts were saying it was completely legal, others saying it was completely illegal.

On a federal level, the law that legal experts were talking or were taking into account was a law that essentially says it's illegal to pay someone to vote or pay someone to register to vote. Now, obviously, these people that were signing this petition weren't actually being paid to vote or paid to register to vote. So on one side, you had people saying, no, this giveaway is not illegal. There's no direct payment to vote or register. But on the other side, legal experts were saying, well,

If people go out and register specifically to sign this petition and then refer other people and get paid for it, then indirectly these giveaway rules may violate the law because these people wouldn't have registered to vote but for the opportunity to get paid. So those were the arguments on the federal level.

This new lawsuit, though, was filed by the district attorney of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which means it's state law that's at issue. And the argument from the district attorney in Philadelphia is that Pennsylvania law unambiguously states that

that all lotteries in Pennsylvania must be regulated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. And because Musk's lottery, as the lawsuit calls it, is not, it's an unlawful lottery per state law. Now, here's the thing. We're going to do a little legal analysis here because it's true that Pennsylvania law says it's up to the Bureau of State Lotteries to administer and supervise the operation of state

the lottery, and that the Commonwealth's lottery law establishes a lottery to be administered and operated by the state. But those two laws use the phrases the lottery and a lottery. Neither laws say all lotteries. And I wasn't able to find a law that says Pennsylvania is only allowed to have one lottery operating in the state and that that one lottery must be operated by the state.

This leads me to believe that Pennsylvania law doesn't prohibit nor regulate all lotteries, and therefore there's room for other lotteries to exist in the state. In fact, there's another law cited too in the DA's complaint, which is part of the state's criminal code.

And it says that all lotteries not specifically authorized by law are unlawful. So I feel that's even further proof that other lotteries are allowed in the state of Pennsylvania outside of the state-operated lottery. It's just that any lottery operating in this state has to be one authorized by law, which would mean so long as Musk's giveaway plan is authorized by law, legally speaking, it could be played in Pennsylvania.

But that's up to the courts to interpret and decide. And in addition to the unlawful lottery allegation, the DA also says that Musk and his PAC are violating state consumer protection laws by, quote, "...deploying deceptive, vague, or misleading statements that create a likelihood of confusion or misunderstanding."

The lawsuit continues and says, quote,

End quote. The DA also writes, quote, to be clear, this is not a case about whether defendants have violated state or federal laws prohibiting vote buying. Instead, this case is very simple because America PAC and Musk are indisputably violating Pennsylvania's statutory prohibitions against illegal lotteries and deceiving customers. End quote. So that's the latest there. And I will keep you updated as that lawsuit plays out. We're going to move on to a different lawsuit.

The Virginia election officials asked the Supreme Court yesterday to allow the state to implement a program to remove suspected non-citizens from voter rolls. A little bit of background here. In August, Virginia's governor signed an executive order which required election officials to take additional steps to match residents who self-identified as non-citizens at the DMV or other agencies against the state's voter rolls and to

purge those who matched the voter rolls.

State officials said they removed about 1,600 people from the voter rolls who they themselves said weren't citizens. Following this, the Biden administration and voting rights groups challenged these actions by the state in court, arguing that the state violated a 1993 law called the National Voter Registration Act. The National Voter Registration Act prohibits states from making any changes to its voter rolls within 90 days of the election or a federal election.

The district court in Virginia found that the database used by Virginia flagged and canceled the registration of at least some eligible citizens and that those voters were unaware of the fact that they were no longer allowed to vote.

Consequently, the district court blocked Virginia from implementing the program and ordered the state to restore the registration of the more than 1,600 people that had been taken off the voter rolls. Notably, the judge did leave open the possibility that the state could still remove some voters on a case-by-case basis, for example, those with criminal convictions, those who had died, but not non-citizens. And it's also worth noting that we don't know for a fact

how many of the 1,600 plus people were citizens and how many were non-citizens. From the district court, the state went to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, asking the Fourth Circuit to put the lower court's order on hold. However, the three-judge panel at the Fourth Circuit denied the state's request, saying that it was, quote-unquote, unpersuaded that the state's program complied with the National Voter Registration Act.

So from there, the state went to the Supreme Court and is asking the Supreme Court to vacate the district court ruling due to a couple of reasons. One, because as the state argues, the 90-day quiet period provided for in the National Voter Registration Act doesn't prohibit the removal of non-citizens who are never eligible to vote in the first place. Two, even if the 90-day quiet period did prohibit a quote-unquote systematic program,

program that removed non-citizens, the program still wouldn't violate the law because the program is based on an individualized process that quote, begins with a personal attestation of citizenship and ends in the removal of that person from the voter rolls only when he is sent two individualized letters offering opportunities to correct any mistakes about citizenship status.

The third argument from the state is based on a legal principle known as the Purcell principle. So the Purcell principle stems from a 2006 Supreme Court decision which vacated a lower court's ruling, not on the facts of the case, but instead because of the impending election.

The court wrote in that ruling, quote, End quote.

So the Virginia election officials are asking the justices to use that same rationale and vacate the decision of the district court given the short amount of time until the election. One issue the state may have, though, is that the Purcell principle has so far been understood to apply to challenges involving state laws, not necessarily executive orders, as is the case here.

Plus, in the case here, there's also a federal law at issue two, right? That National Voter Registration Act. So we'll see what the justices decide to do with this one. The opposition is supposed to file their brief by the end of day today. So we'll see what they argue and perhaps we'll have a decision from the court as early as tonight or tomorrow.

Moving on to quick hitters, the city of New York has issued a letter to migrants being housed in the hotels within the city of Albany, New York, which says that asylum services will no longer be available after December 31st and that an exit planning team will be on site to assist them in their next step.

The letter reads in part, quote,

They can talk to you about connections to family, friends, or other networks, and if applicable, provide a free transportation to a permanent destination. End quote. The details of that free transportation and permanent destination are not clear, but the letter continues and reads, quote, If you do not have an exit plan by December, the only sheltering option the city of New York can offer will be a temporary placement in New York City. It is important to note that shelter stays in New York City are time-limited.

30 or 60 days and you may not qualify for additional time in shelter, end quote. In some other news, Steve Bannon, Trump's former aide, was released from jail today. Bannon was serving a four-month jail sentence for contempt of Congress after he ignored a subpoena in the congressional investigation into January 6th. He was released just a few days early as he was originally supposed to be released on November 1st.

And less than a week after I reported a fire at a USPS mailbox in Arizona containing election ballots, two ballot boxes have been set on fire in the Pacific Northwest. One in Vancouver, Washington, the other in Portland, Oregon.

The fire in Vancouver was much more serious with hundreds of ballots being destroyed. Luckily, the ballot boxes in Portland have fire suppressant installed, so more than 400 ballots inside were protected. Only three of those ballots were damaged.

Officials in Vancouver are asking anyone who may have placed a ballot in the box after 11 a.m. on Saturday to contact them and check the status of their ballot. Police have identified a suspect vehicle connected to both fires, which is a black or dark colored 2001 to 2004 Volvo S60 sedan.

The DOJ and Bureau of Prisons reportedly launched an interagency operation yesterday at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. This is the same housing facility P. Diddy and former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried are housed at. The agencies did not give details as to what led to this operation, and federal authorities say the exact nature of the operation won't be revealed until it's complete, but that there is no active threat.

We do know this particular facility has faced criticism for jail conditions, widespread violence, multiple deaths, and drug and contraband smuggling, which is allegedly sometimes organized by facility employees, but it's unclear whether the operation is related to those reports.

And now, finally, let's do a little critical thinking. For today's critical thinking segment, I want to talk about this whole Washington Post non-endorsement situation. For those that don't know the story here, this is what happened. At the end of last week, William Lewis, the CEO of the Washington Post, published an opinion piece to the outlet's website, and he wrote in part, quote,

Lewis then cited the election of 1960 when the editorial board made a similar decision.

And the editorial board wrote in 1960, quote,

We nevertheless adhere to our tradition of non-endorsement in this presidential election. End quote. Now, the Washington Post changed that practice in 1976 when it endorsed Jimmy Carter. And since 1976, the Post has always endorsed Democrats, never a Republican presidential candidate. Lewis's opinion piece that was published on Friday continues on and says, quote, but we had it right before that, meaning before 1976.

And this is what we are going back to. We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate or as a condemnation of another or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable.

We don't see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values the Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader. Character, courage, and service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects. We also see it as a statement in support of our readers' ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions, whom to vote for as the next president.

president. End quote. In the wake of this announcement, the Washington Post has so far, today is Tuesday, this announcement was made on Friday, has so far lost more than 200,000 digital subscribers, which is about 8% of the paper's paid circulation. At least two columnists have resigned and multiple writers have stepped down from the editorial board. Now, I have so many thoughts on this, but as you know, my job isn't to share my thoughts, it's to let you think for yourself. So

Couple of questions. First, what are your immediate thoughts? What's your immediate reaction to this story? Maybe you're on the post side. Maybe you're on. Maybe you're one of those unsubscribers. Fine. But I want you to think about this more. What potential effects does a newspaper's endorsement have on the outcome of any given election?

And really think about that. Even if your immediate answer is nothing, that the media's endorsement of candidate has no effect at all, try to come up with one because there are some effect, maybe tiny, right? But like I said, try to come up with one. It can be a tiny effect. It could be a huge effect. Just try to come up with one. And finally, should the media be involving themselves in the election, regardless of what effects its involvement might or might not have and why or why not?

And would your answer change if the media was more balanced? To no one's surprise, there are many more left-leaning outlets than right-leaning. That's just a fact. It's not up for debate. So would your opinion change if the media landscape was more balanced?

Those were your critical thinking questions of the day, and that is what I have for you today. Tomorrow, I'll be covering an election-related lawsuit out of Pennsylvania that was just dismissed this afternoon, actually. I received quite a few requests to talk about it even before it was dismissed this afternoon, so I do have it on the topic list for tomorrow just as a heads up. Have a great night, and I will talk to you tomorrow.