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In this April 18, 2020, file photo, people wait for a distribution of masks and food from the Rev. Al Sharpton in the Harlem neighborhood of New York. A new poll from the The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that Black and Latino Americans are more likely than white Americans to have experienced job and other income losses due to the coronavirus pandemic. | Bebeto Matthews / AP

NEW YORK (AP)A year ago, Elvia Banuelos life was looking up. The 39-year-old mother of two young children said she felt confident about a new management-level job with the U.S. Census Bureaushe would earn money to supplement the child support she receives to keep her children healthy, happy, and in daycare.

But when the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic last March, forcing hundreds of millions of people into strict lockdown, Banuelos outlook changed. The new job fell through, the child support payments stopped because of a job loss, and she became a stay-at-home mom when daycares shuttered.

The only thing I could do was make my rent, so everything else was difficult, said Banuelos, of Orland, California.

Millions of Americans have experienced a devastating toll during the yearlongcoronavirus pandemic, from lost loved ones to lost jobs. More than530,000 people have diedin the United States. Those losses havent hit all Americans equally, with communities of color hit especially hard by both the virus and the economic fallout.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that compared with white Americans, Black and Latino Americans are more likely to have experienced job and other income losses during the pandemic, and those who have lost income are more likely to have found themselves in deep financial holes.

Thats on top of Black and brown Americans being more likely than white Americans to say they are close to someone who has died from COVID-19 andless likely to have received a vaccination. The pandemic has killed Black and Latino Americans at rates disproportionate to their population in the U.S., according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Banuelos, who identifies as Latina, said the disparity in pandemic experiences between the upper class and people who are in a tighter situation became glaringly clear to her early on in the pandemic. Even after two rounds of federal direct stimulus checks, she felt she was further behind than well-off Americans.

The relief didnt last that long, Banuelos said.

Overall, 62% of Latinos and 54% of Black Americans have lost some form of household income during the pandemic, including job losses, pay cuts, cuts in hours, and unpaid leave, compared with 45% of white Americans.

For other racial and ethnic groups, including Asian Americans and Native Americans, sample sizes are too small to analyze in the AP-NORC poll.

Jeremy Shouse, a restaurant manager from North Carolina, saw his hours greatly reduced during the early months of the pandemic when the small business was forced to shut down. Shouse, a 33-year-old Black man, said the restaurant has since reopened but went from making more than $5,000 in-house per day prior to the pandemic to only $200 on some days.

One year later and things still arent the same, Shouse said, adding his wages have dropped 20%.

About 6 in 10 Latinos and about half of Black Americans say their households are still facing the impacts of income loss from the pandemic, compared with about 4 in 10 white Americans. Black and Hispanic Americans are also especially likely to say that impact has been a major one.

We find that systemic racism plays a huge role in this process, said Rashawn Ray, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institute who co-authored a recent report on racial disparities and the pandemic in Detroit. I think what were going to see once the dust settles is that the racial wealth gap has actually increased.

There have long been racial disparities in how Americans experience economic downturns and recessions. However, following a recovery from the Great Recession and well into the Trump administration, the unemployment gap between Black and white Americans narrowed amid strong job growth and economic activity. But a recent analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found a gap that had declined to as little as 3 percentage points rose to 5.4 percentage points last August, erasing some of the gains made during the recovery.

The AP-NORC poll also finds Latinos are especially likely to think it will take a long time to dig their way out of the financial hole. About half say that they are still feeling the effects of income loss and that it will take at least six months to recover financially. About a third of Black Americans say the same, compared with about a quarter of white Americans.

Forty-one percent of Latinos say their current household income is lower than it was at the start of the pandemic, compared with 29% of Black Americans and 25% of white Americans.

And about 4 in 10 Black and Latino Americans have been unable to pay a bill in the last month, compared with about 2 in 10 white Americans.

For people of color, the trauma experienced due to economic turmoil has been compounded by immense personal losses. About 30% of Black and Latino Americans say they have a close friend or relative who has died from the coronavirus since last March, compared with 15% of white Americans.

Debra Fraser-Howze, founder of Choose Healthy Life, an initiative working to address public health disparities through the Black church, said she is confident in the Black communitys ability to recover economically and medically.

The emergency economic situation of the community is dismal, Fraser-Howze said, and its going to be worse for a long time. But we are a community of survivorswe came through slavery and Jim Crow. We figured out how to stay alive. I do believe and have faith that our community will come back.

AP writer Emily Swanson also contributed to this article.

See original here:
Data confirms what we already knew: Pandemic hit people of color harder - People's World

The view outside the Nevada Legislature on Sunday, Aug. 2, 2020.

Assemblywoman Lisa Krasner, R-Reno, joined by public defenders across the state, called on lawmakers to pass legislation designed to make sure juveniles younger than 18 dont waive their Fifth Amendment rights without first talking to a parent, guardian or an attorney.Kendra Bertschy of the Washoe County Public Defenders Office said more than 40 percent of juveniles waive those rights without understanding the consequences. AB251 would require police with a juvenile in custody get them in contact with a parent, guardian or attorney before asking any questions.But Chuck Callaway, representing the sheriffs and police, said if officers cant question juveniles, officers will just arrest everyone. The Nevada DAs Association also came out against AB251 as did several juvenile officers.Bertschy responded saying she was disappointed that law enforcement thinks their only option is arresting everyone.Krasner said the bill would also seal a juveniles arrest record at age 18 to give them a clean slate as they become adults under the law. She said a series of misdemeanors on juveniles records can impact their ability to get a job, go to college and other things.Serious crimes in a juvenile record, including sex offenses, would not be sealed.Alex Ortiz of Clark Countys financial office said he has no problem with the policy in the legislation but is concerned about its potential cost. He said the county would have to open, staff and run another juvenile housing unit at a cost of $2 million a year.The committee took no action on the bill with Krasner saying she would work with stakeholders to resolve some of their issues while still trying to protect juvenile suspects from themselves when taken into custody.

See the rest here:
Bill would protect juveniles' Fifth Amendment rights | Serving Carson City for over 150 years - Nevada Appeal

In civil disputes including bankruptcy litigation it is not uncommon for questions to arise about a clients potential exposure to criminal liability, whether the client is a party or a witness. Civil litigators must therefore understand the role of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in the civil context.

Lets say our client is a target or witness in a civil investigation or embroiled in litigation with business partners who have alleged criminal wrongdoing or made threats to contact law enforcement. At some point, the client may need to provide testimony, submit a sworn declaration, or participate in an interview. How do you mitigate the risk that the client will say something self-incriminating, and what are the effects of a client taking the Fifth in a civil lawsuit?

This article which is based on research that we conducted for a client discusses four questions relating to the intersection of the Fifth Amendment and civil litigation. In later articles, we will discuss the risk assessment process civil practitioners should undertake when a client is faced with allegations of criminal wrongdoing.

In the criminal context, no adverse inference is permitted from a witnesss refusal to testify based on the Fifth Amendment. In federal civil litigation, however, an adverse inference may be drawn when independent evidence exists of the fact to which the party refuses to answer meaning that an adverse inference can be drawn when silence is countered by independent evidence of the fact being questioned, but that same inference cannot be drawn when, for example, silence is the answer to an allegation contained in a complaint. Doe ex rel. Rudy-Glanzer v. Glanzer, 232 F.3d 1258, 1264 (9th Cir. 2000) (internal citations omitted).

Once a witness in a civil suit has invoked his or her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, the trier of fact is entitled to draw an adverse inference from the witnesss refusal to testify. Chaffee v. Keller Rohrback LLP, 200 Wash.App. 66, 83-84 (2017) (citing King v. Olympic Pipeline Co., 104 Wash.App. 338, 355-56 (2000) and Ikeda v. Curtis, 43 Wash.2d 449, 261 P.2d 684 (1953)).

In a civil proceeding such an [adverse] inference is permissible, where appropriate, not as a sanction or remedy for any unfairness created by exercise of the privilege but simply because the inference is relevant and outside the scope of the privilege. Diaz v. Washington State Migrant Council, 156 Wash.App. 59, 85-86 (2011). Fifth Amendment invocations by corporate employees or principals may also result in an adverse inference drawn against the corporation. Id. (collecting cases). Moreover, invocation of the Fifth Amendment privilege may supply an avenue for investigation by prosecutors. Chaffee, 200 Wash.App. at 84.

In Olympic Pipeline, decided in 2000, the court noted that Washington courts have not addressed whether the trial court has discretion to limit the adverse inference that follows from invocation of the privilege. 104 Wash.App. at 356. The Olympic Pipeline court declined to resolve this question (which appears to remain open) but observed that ER 403 permits the court to exclude relevant evidence where unduly prejudicial, and that controlling precedent does not [a]s a logical matter prohibit the usual analysis under the rules of evidence. Id.

Although Olympic Pipeline suggests that a trial court might have discretion to exclude under ER 403 evidence that a witness took the Fifth, Washington does not appear to have adopted the federal independent evidence requirement, meaning the risk of an adverse inference may be greater in Washington state court.

Oregon prohibits an adverse inference from the invocation of the Fifth Amendment privilege, even in civil cases. Under Oregon Rule of Evidence 513 (O.R.S. 40.290(1)), [n]o inference may be drawn from a claim of privilege.

In John Deere Co. v. Epstein, 307 Or. 348 (1989), the Oregon Supreme Court considered whether Rule of Evidence 513 permits an adverse inference in a civil proceeding based on a witnesss invocation of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The Courts analysis in John Deere turned on whether invoking this right qualifies as a claim of privilege under Rule 513.

The Court found that an adverse inference is barred, even in civil cases, because claim of privilege includes federal constitutional privileges not just privileges under state authority or listed in the Oregon code. Thus, although such an adverse inference is allowed under the U.S. Constitution, it is inconsistent with Rule 513.

John Deere is over 30 years old but has only been cited in a handful of subsequent cases, none of which appears to address the adverse inference question as applied to civil cases. It has not been reversed or limited, and the current language of Rule 513 is materially identical to the language in effect in 1989 ([n]o inference may be drawn from a claim of privilege). John Deere thus appears to be good law.

As illustrated by the differences between federal court and the state courts of Washington and Oregon, the rule regarding an adverse inference in civil cases varies by jurisdiction. In the case that prompted this research, our client was deposed by a receiver in Washington, but the subject of the clients deposition was also at issue in a civil suit by the Washington Division of Financial Regulation, an SEC investigation, and a federal criminal investigation in Oregon. Because it is hard to predict where a client may be sued, it is safest to assume an adverse inference may be allowed.

Can a witness testify as to certain transactions or events but assert the Fifth as to others? Answering this question is difficult and highly fact-dependent.

When a party testifies voluntarily, and therefore controls the extent of disclosure, [t]he privilege is waived for the matters to which the witness testifies. OSRecovery, Inc. v. One Groupe Int'l, Inc., 262 F.Supp.2d 302, 30708 (S.D.N.Y. 2003) (quoting Brown v. United States, 356 U.S. 148, 15455 (1958)).

Thus, the privilege has already been waived if a party testifies to certain transactions and then refuses to testify further because the disclosure of a fact waives the privilege as to its details. In re Enron Corp. Securities, Derivative & ERISA Litig., 762 F.Supp.2d 942, 961 (S.D. Tx. 2010) (citing cases); State v. Huizenga, 198 Wash.App. 1031 (2017) (unpublished). The breadth of such a waiver is determined by the scope of relevant cross-examination. Brown, 356 U.S. at 154-55; see also McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 215 (1971) ([a] defendant who takes the stand in his own behalf cannot then claim the privilege against cross-examination on matters reasonably related to the subject matter of his direct examination).

As suggested above, this standard is inherently vague, and it is difficult to predict in advance where a court might draw the line. It is generally safest to assume the court will construe any waiver broadly.

It is settled that a waiver of the Fifth Amendment privilege is limited to the particular proceeding in which the waiver occurs. U.S. v. Licavoli, 604 F.2d 613, 623 (9th Cir. 1979) (emphasis added) (citations omitted) (voluntary testimony before grand jury does not waive privilege at trial); see also U.S. v. TrejoZambrano, 582 F.2d 460, 464 (9th Cir. 1978) ([a] waiver of the Fifth Amendment privilege at one stage of a proceeding is not a waiver for other stages); 8 J. Wigmore, Evidence 2276, at 470-72 (a witnesss voluntary testimony [in a] preliminary and separate proceeding, e.g. in bankruptcy, is not a waiver for the main trial, and [n]or is his testimony at a first trial a waiver for a later trial).

For these purposes, the term proceeding is defined narrowly. Even if they arise from the same events, a civil action and criminal case would certainly be separate proceedings. The Washington Supreme Court has also held that a witnesss waiver in testifying at an inquest did not extend to a subsequent wrongful death lawsuit, which the Court described as [an] unrelated legal proceeding[ ]. Stone v. State, 85 Wash.2d 342, 344 (1975). Indeed, in Mitchell v. U.S., 526 U.S. 314, 325 (1999), the Supreme Court held that a guilty plea and statements made during a plea colloquy did not function as waiver at sentencing.

To be clear, however, this does not mean that a witness can invoke the Fifth Amendment to bar the admission of self-incriminating sworn statements made during an earlier proceeding. The witnesss waiver of the privilege is limited to a single proceeding, but the government can introduce in a criminal trial a transcript of the defendants prior testimony in a civil deposition in which he had waived the privilege. See, e.g., KST Data, Inc. v. DXC Technology Co., 344 F.Supp.3d 1132, 1134-35 (C.D. Cal. 2018) (citing Licavoli, 604 F.2d at 623).

Conclusion

The issues addressed in this brief article are just some of those to consider when advising a client on whether to assert the Fifth Amendment privilege in the civil context.

See original here:
Taking the Fifth in a Civil Context - Lexology

Democrats on Wednesday passed their $1.9 trillion spending and welfare bill that would have been unimaginable even in the Obama years, and the big news is how easily they did it. The party is united behind the most left-wing agenda in decades, while Republicans are divided and in intellectual disarray. This is only the beginning of the progressive steamroller, and its worth understanding why.

One lesson from the Covid non-fight is that there are no Democratic moderates in Congress. The party base has moved so sharply left that even swing-state Members are more liberal than many liberals in the Clinton years. Democrats lost not a single vote in the Senate and only one in the House. The fear of primary challenges from the left, which took out House war horses in 2018 and 2020, has concentrated incumbent minds.

A second lesson is that President Biden is no moderating political force. Democrats in the House and Senate are setting the agenda, and Mr. Biden is along for the ride. Hes the ideal political front-man for this agenda with his talk of unity and anti-Trump persona, but he isnt shaping legislation. He is signing on to whatever chief of staff Ron Klain tells him he needs to support.

For now at least, there also isnt much of an opposition. With a few exceptions, the media are marching in lockstep support of whatever Democrats want. The substance of the Covid bill was barely covered outside of these pages. Opposition to H.R.1, the federal takeover of state election law, is literally reported as a revival of Jim Crow racism.

The business community has also been co-opted, as it often is at the beginning of a Democratic Presidency. Industries are trying to protect their specific iron rice bowls, but one price is their accommodation with the larger progressive agenda. Small business opposes the $15 minimum wage, but bigger businesses dont mind saddling smaller competitors with higher costs. Big Oil doesnt mind selling out independent frackers on climate rules.

Read this article:
Opinion: The Progressive Democratic Steamroller - The Wall Street Journal

The Lake Research survey produced an unexpected result: Latinos were more sympathetic than either white or Black voters to Republican dog whistle messages.

The dog whistle messages tested by Lake Research included:

Taking a second look at illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs, is just common sense. And so is fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.

And

We need to make sure we take care of our own people first, especially the people who politicians have cast aside for too long to cater to whatever special interest groups yell the loudest or riot in the street.

The receptivity of Hispanics to such messages led Haney-Lpez to conclude that those Latinos most likely to vote Republican do so for racial reasons.

What matters most, Haney-Lpez continued, is susceptibility to Republican dog whistle racial frames that trumpet the threat from illegal aliens, rapists, rioters and terrorists.

Julie Wronski, a political scientist at the University of Mississippi, offered a distinct but similar explanation for the increased Hispanic support for Republicans.

What may be changing is how certain ethnic and nationality groups within Hispanics perceive themselves with regards to their racial and ideological identities, she wrote by email:

If Latinos perceive themselves more as white than as a person of color, then they will react to messages about racial injustice and defunding the police as whites do by using their ideological identity rather than racial identity to shape support.

Wronski reports that

there is also a burgeoning line of research on the role of skin tone among non-Whites. Nonwhites who perceive themselves as having lighter skin tone feel closer to whites and tend to be more conservative than their darker-skinned peers.

Wronski made the case that conservative Hispanics who voted Republican in 2020 are not permanently lost to the Democratic Party:

Identifying as a conservative and supporting conservative policy positions are not the same thing. This is especially true for economic issues, such as unemployment benefits and minimum wage. If you know that a group of Latinos tend to be symbolically conservative and economically liberal, then you can make appeals to them on the shared economic liberalism basis and avoid pointing out diverging views on social issues.

Marc Farinella, a former Democratic consultant who helped run many statewide campaigns in the Midwest and is now at the University of Chicagos Harris School of Public Policy, wrote in response to my inquiry that the fraying of Hispanic support is emblematic of a larger problem confronting Democrats:

American politics in recent decades has become increasingly democratized. Historically-marginalized groups have been brought into the political process, and this, of course, improves representation. But democratization has also, for better or for worse, been highly disruptive to our two-party system.

Traditionally, party leaders tend to support centrist polices and candidates; they are, after all, in the business of winning general elections, he continued:

However, the ability of party leaders to set the partys priorities and define its values has been eroded. They must now compete with activist factions that have been empowered by digital technologies that have greatly amplified their messaging.

As a result, Farinella wrote,

Its now less clear to general election voters precisely what are the Democratic Partys values and priorities. Last year, Republicans succeeded in exploiting this ambiguity by insisting that the messaging of certain leftist activist factions was an accurate reflection of the Partys policy positions and, by and large, the policy positions of most Democratic candidates. As far left activists compete with Democratic Party leaders to define party values and messaging, the centrist voters needed to achieve a durable majority will remain wary about Democratic desires for dominance.

On the other hand, according to Farinella, the lunacy currently underway within the Republican Party could prove to be the Democratic Partys ace in the hole:

A party that demands fealty to a single demagogic politician, condones or even embraces loopy conspiracy theories, recklessly undermines crucial democratic norms and institutions, and believes the best way to improve its electoral prospects is by making it more difficult to vote is not a party destined for long-term success. If the Republican Party continues on its current path, center-right voters might decide that their only real options are to vote Democratic or stay home.

Farinella acknowledged that this might just be wishful thinking.

Ryan Enos, a professor of government at Harvard, is concerned that liberal elites may threaten the vulnerable Democratic coalition:

The question for parties is whether members of their coalition are a liability because they repel other voters from the coalition. For Democrats, this may increasingly be the case with college-educated whites. They are increasingly concentrated into large cities, which mitigates their electoral impact, and they dominate certain institutions, such as universities and the media. The views emanating from these cities and institutions are out of step with a large portion of the electorate.

Many of these well-educated urban whites dont seem to appreciate the urgency of the struggles of middle and low-income Americans, Enos continued:

Most of them support, in theory, economically progressive agendas like minimum wage increases and affordable housing, but they dont approach these issues with any urgency even Covid relief and environmental protection take a back seat to a progressive agenda focused on social issues.

Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, whose firm, North Star Opinion Research, has studied Hispanic partisan allegiance, wrote in an email that Latinos are far more flexible in their voting than African-Americans:

As a general rule, about 50 percent of Hispanics vote fairly consistently for Democrats, 25 percent vote for Republicans and the remaining 25 percent are up for grabs.

In the Latino electorate, Ayres said, many are sensitive to charges of socialism because of their country of origin. Many are sensitive to law-and-order issues. And many are cultural conservatives, as Reagan argued years ago.

As a result, Ayres continued,

When white liberal Democrats start talking about defunding the police, the Green New Deal and promoting policies that can be described as socialistic, they repel a lot of Hispanic voters. In other words, most Hispanics, like most African-Americans, are not ideological liberals.

The current level of concern has been sharply elevated by a series of widely publicized interviews with David Shor, a 29-year-old Democratic data scientist whose analyses have captured the attention of Democratic elites.

Excerpt from:
Opinion | Democrats Are Anxious About 2022 and 2024 - The New York Times