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(The Center Square) Tennessees State Funding Board is scheduled to approve $22.7 million in FastTrack economic incentive grants at its Monday meeting.

The grants include $10.5 million to Life Technologies Corporations Thermo Fisher Scientific for its technology assembly facility in Lebanon, which the company has invested more than $100 million in and is expected to employ 1,400 people.

The Smith & Wesson Company is set to receive a $9 million FastTrack grant as it prepares to move its operations and corporate office to Maryville in Blount County.

IMC Companies is slated to receive $2 million for a facility in Collierville, and a $1.2 million grant will be awarded to a company that isnt named.

FastTrack grants are state grants sent to local governments for specific infrastructure improvements or to companies to help offset the costs of expanding or moving into the state with the goal of increasing the number of full-time jobs and the average wages of jobs available in an area.

Smith & Wesson, a leading firearms manufacturer founded in 1852, announced in late September it would be moving and spending $125 million on a new facility that would create 750 new jobs.

Mark Smith, president and chief Executive Officer ofSmith & Wesson, said proposed legislation in their former home of Massachusetts, if enacted, would prohibit the company from manufacturing many of its products,including a bill that would prohibit manufacturers from making guns with a large capacity feeding or assault weapons.

Smith said Tennessee had several key factors in its favor, including support of the Second Amendment, being business friendly, a low cost of living and high quality of life, access to education and qualified labor.

"These bills would prevent Smith & Wesson from manufacturing firearms that are legal in almost every state in America and that are safely used by tens of millions of law-abiding citizens every day exercising their Constitutional 2nd Amendment rights, protecting themselves and their families, and enjoying the shooting sports, Smith said. While we are hopeful that this arbitrary and damaging legislation will be defeated in this session, these products made up over 60% of our revenue last year, and the unfortunate likelihood that such restrictions would be raised again led to a review of the best path forward for Smith & Wesson."

Thermo Fisher Scientific workers will make bioprocess containers and fluid transfer assemblies for biopharma companies to develop and produce therapeutics and vaccines at the facility.

Original post:
Tennessee readies to approve $22.7M in business incentives - The Center Square

One criticism of S.B. 8 is that this private enforcement regime would allow blue states to prohibit firearm ownership. I've asked gun rights activists what would happen if California banned the sale and possession of handguns through a private cause of action. Their response: "Come and take it." They would engage in active civil disobedience, and resist the law. They would be happy to get sued, and would win in court every time. Of course, gun rights activists know that Heller is secure. Even if the Court will not expand the Second Amendment to conceal carry in Bruen, there is no realistic chance the Court scales back the right to keep a gun in the home.

Abortion, however, stands in a very different position.Roe and Casey are on the chopping block. There is a chance both precedents are overruled this Term. And abortion providers understand this risk all too well. As a result, with few exceptions, abortion providers have strictly complied with S.B. 8. Indeed, during the brief interregnum before the Fifth Circuit stayed Judge Pitman's ruling, Planned Parenthood refused to provide post-cardiac-activity abortions. Why? Under S.B. 8, the providers would be subject to retroactive liability. And those suits could bankrupt Planned Parenthood.

This fear of prospective liability has largely defined the litigation strategy. Planned Parenthood, as well as the United States, have gone on offense to avoid raising their constitutional arguments in a clean, defensive posture. Today, briefs were filed inUnited States v. Texas. The intervenors make this point directly:

The United States also complains that "the theoretical availability of S.B. 8's 'undue burden' defense has not actually prevented the law from achieving near-total deterrence of covered abortions." Mot. to Vacate Stay at 15. But that is because this Court is currently considering whether to limit or overrule Roe and Casey.28 See Tex. Health & Safety Code 171.209(e) ("The affirmative defense under Subsection (b) is not available if the United States Supreme Court overrules Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) or Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992)"). If abortion providers felt confident that this Court would persist in its support for Roe and Casey, then they could violate the statute without fear of liability. The deterrence comes from the uncertainty surrounding the future of Roe, and there is nothing unconstitutional about a statute that threatens to impose retroactive civil liability in response to a Supreme Court ruling.

The Intervenors argue forcefully that the proper channel to review this law would be in a defensive posture. And they draw an analogy to the wedding provider cases:

[T]his Court has no basis in fact or law to presume that the Texas courts would reject valid constitutional defenses asserted in SB 8 litigation. The United States does not even assert otherwise; it just complains that SB 8 deters abortion providers from defying the law and inviting this litigation. But that objection is misguided and immaterial. It is common that the risk of losing a constitutional defense will deter a party from engaging in protected conductthink of the Christian wedding vendors who are facing threats of private lawsuits if they decline to participate in same-sex weddingsbut the deterrence comes from the uncertainty on whether the courts will ultimately accept their constitutional defense. See Arlene's Flowers, Inc. v. Washington, 141 S. Ct. 2884 (2021) (denying certiorari). What is deterring abortion providers here is not the procedural structure of SB 8 or its threatened penalties, but the uncertain status of the right to abortion given the grant of certiorari in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, No. 19-1392. Few if any rational abortion providers will risk violating SB 8 when this Court is considering whether to overrule Roe and Casey. That is what is inducing Texas abortion providers to comply with SB 8.

Baronelle Stutzman and Jack Phillips were placed in this position.

Update: Shortly after I wrote this post, the Firearms Policy Coalition filed an amicus brief in support of DOJ inU.S. v. Texas. The group sees S.B. 8 as the type fo law that could be used to violate gun rights:

FPC is interested in this case because the ap-proach used by Texas to avoid pre-enforcement re-view of its restriction on abortion and its delegation of enforcement to private litigants could just as easily be used by other States to restrict First and Second Amendment rights or, indeed, virtually any settled or debated constitutional right. FPC takes no position on whether abortion should be protected by the Con-stitution but believes that the judicial review of re-strictions on established constitutional rights, espe-cially those protected under this Court's cases, cannot be circumvented in the manner used by Texas.

What do I know?

See the rest here:
Why Aren't Texas Abortion Providers Actively Resisting S.B. 8? - Reason

During a December 5 rally in Georgia last year Donald Trump turned his focus to a local official, showing supporters a video of Richard Barron, the Fulton County elections director.

"So, if you just take the crime of what those Democratic workers were doing," Trump told attendees, "that's ten times more than I need to win the state."

VICE reports it was then that Barron started getting attacked in a deluge of voicemails, many of which "were graphic and specifically called for his death."

"Hey, Rick," one racist and homophobic voicemail said. "Two hundred and thirty four years ago, the founding caucasian fathers of America gave us the Second Amendment. Time's running out, Richard. We're coming after you and every motherfucker that stole this election with our Second Amendment, subpoenas be damned, you're going to be served lead, you fucking enemy enemy communist cocksucker. You will be served lead."

"Hey, Rick," another said. "Watching this video of you on YouTube. I can't believe you can't count votes in Fulton County. It's absolutely incredible. How deceivious? How deceitful you are? You need to get your act together or people like me really may go after people like you."

"If you have a hand in this," another caller said, "you deserve to go to prison, you actually deserve to hang by your goddamn skinny-ass soyboy neck."

Reporting on what it says is a "mass exodus" of elections officials some, like Barron who have decades of irreplaceable experience and expertise VICE says it spoke with over a dozen who were the targets of death threats and other attacks.

"Officials across the United States experienced physical stalking, explicitly violent phone calls, racial slurs, home surveillance, bomb scares, and threats of mass shootings. For some officials in Georgia and Pennsylvania, the threats have continued for nearly a year. And now, many of these officials want to quit," VICE adds.

One local Pennsylvania city commissioner, Al Schmidt, who had been targeted by named by Trump had to leave home and live under police protection after the death threats sent to him and his wife started.

Watch:

Death Threats Are Creating a Mass Exodus of Election Officialswww.youtube.com

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'You actually deserve to hang': Elections chief reveals death threats after Trump targeted him - Raw Story

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Hey, Rick, the voicemail said. Two hundred and thirty four years ago, the founding caucasian fathers of America gave us the Second Amendment. Time's running out, Richard. We're coming after you and every motherfucker that stole this election with our Second Amendment, subpoenas be damned, you're going to be served lead, you fucking enemy enemy communist cocksucker. You will be served lead.

This was just one of the nearly 150 voicemails that were left for Richard Barron, elections director of Georgias Fulton County, an area that includes Atlanta, during the week from Christmas to New Years Day 2021.

On December 5, former President Donald Trump singled Barron out at a rally in Valdosta, Georgia. He showed a video of Barron to the hundreds of attendees, and voiced conspiracies about voter fraud in Georgia. So, if you just take the crime of what those Democratic workers were doing, said Trump, thats ten times more than I need to win the state. When Barron appears on the screen, the audience begins to boo.

Thats when the voicemails started coming. Many of them were graphic and specifically called for his death. Hey, Rick, another said. Watching this video of you on YouTube. I can't believe you can't count votes in Fulton County. It's absolutely incredible. How deceivious? How deceitful you are? You need to get your act together or people like me really may go after people like you.

And again: If you have a hand in this, you deserve to go to prison, you actually deserve to hang by your goddamn skinny-ass soyboy neck.

Barron had been working in elections around the country for more than 20 years, but hed never seen anything like this before. It wasnt just Barronhis entire election staff became a target. We started receiving lots of disturbing phone calls, Barron told VICE News. My staff is almost exclusively African American, and they started receiving calls laced with racial slurs.

Physical threats began as well. We also began to see people just across the street from the warehouse where we are now, Barron added. They started to do surveillance on my staff, taking pictures of all of the individuals that would come in and go in and out of the warehouse, they would take pictures of their license plates.

Months after the election, Barron continued to receive threats. His situation, unfortunately, is not unique.

VICE News spoke with over a dozen election officials who had experienced death threats and felt endangered during the 2020 election period. Officials across the United States experienced physical stalking, explicitly violent phone calls, racial slurs, home surveillance, bomb scares, and threats of mass shootings. For some officials in Georgia and Pennsylvania, the threats have continued for nearly a year. And now, many of these officials want to quit.

They started to do surveillance on my staff, taking pictures of all of the individuals that would come in and go in and out of the warehouse, they would take pictures of their license plates.

The stories of these officials represent a small proportion of the number of threats made in this election cycle, though the total number is unknown because many of the threats went unrecorded and unanswered by law enforcement, Reuters reported. However, in a survey published in June by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, one-third of election workers report feeling unsafe.

In election hotspots like Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, many of these threats came directly after Trump mentioned election workers (like Barron) at events and in tweets.

In Pennsylvania, City Commissioner Al Schmidt was forced to leave his home and lived under 24-hour police protection after a slew of threats targeted his children by name and included photos of his home.

Like Barron, Schmidt had also been called out by President Trump in a tweet that accused Schmidt, a Republican, as being a RINO, or Republican in name only. At that point, votes in Philadelphia were still being counted. Trump also stated that Schmidt refused to look at corruption & dishonesty.

Not long after the former president tweeted at me, I received the first specific threat to my phone, to my personal number on my phone, Schmidt told VICE News. The details included in the voicemail were terrifying: You lied, you're a traitor. Perhaps cuts and bullets will soon arrive. The voicemail named members of his family, gave his address, called him a RINO, and said he stole the election.

Schmidts wife also started receiving threats in her work email, some describing physical harm to their two young kids and including a photo of their home.

The first email that my wife received with the subject line, Albert RINO Schmidt, committed treason, Schmidt said. It continued: Your husband should tell the truth, or your three kids will be fatally shot. The email went on to mention their childrens ages and their address, and said that the cops couldnt help them. The email was also signed Q, in likely reference to QAnon. Then, the email included a link to a picture of their home.

The Schmidt family had 24-hour-a day police protection and were forced to leave their home for several weeks. Months after returning home, the impact of the threats still lingers.

It certainly changed the way I look at this job, said Schmidt. I won't be running for reelection again a couple of years from now. I had made that decision before any of this. But having gone through it, I think it's confirmed that it's the right decision.

Your husband should tell the truth or your three kids will be fatally shot.

Outside of Atlanta and Philadelphia, officials were also receiving threats. An administrator in Scott County, Iowa, received a phone call where the speaker threatened to burn down the elections building. In Paulding County, Georgia, the director of elections received an email that said, We'll make the Boston bombings look like child's play at the poll sites in this county .... Detonations will occur at every polling site set up in this county. No one at these places will be spared.

And its not just physical intimidation. Election workers across the country are facing a new kind of threat: state laws that criminalize election officials if they make a mistake on the job.

In Iowa, Senate File 413, passed in February, limits the autonomy of election officials to run elections in their counties. It also adds new felony punishments for infringement of the new law and imposes a fine of up to $10,000 for technical infractions.

Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Alabama have followed Iowas lead and also passed laws that impose harsh penalties on election workers. In Florida, an election worker can be fined up to $25,000 for failing to monitor a drop box. Republican state legislatures have introduced a similar bill in Michigan, and other states are expected to do the same.

Laws like Iowas can have a chilling effect on election officials. Roxanna Moritz, who has worked as an elections auditor in Scott County, Iowa for 14 years, said the passage of this law pushed her into early retirement.

When I heard about Senate File 413, it was the determining factor that I was going to retire from my position or resign from my position, said Moritz.

You can probably name them the half a dozen or dozen or two dozen people across the country who, if they hadn't done their jobs, this whole thing of ours, this whole system of government could have fallen apart.

I'm capable of taking quite a bit. But 2020 was a little too much for me and my office, she added. And the criminalization of what might be a mistake just really cemented it for me.

Aside from the loss of institutional knowledge, election officials are concerned about who takes their jobs once they leave. A third of Pennsylvanias county elections have left in the last year and a half, the AP reported. In Wisconsin, more than two-dozen clerks have retired since the presidential election and more retirements are expected at the end of this year.

I think we're at a dangerous spot, not only because so many election administrators will likely be leaving after this last presidential election, but who could potentially be filling their places? said Schmidt. You can probably name them, the half a dozen or dozen or two dozen people across the country who, if they hadn't done their jobs, this whole thing of ours, this whole system of government, could have fallen apart.

See original here:
Death Threats Are Creating a Mass Exodus of Election Officials - VICE

New York has received support from an unlikely source in defense of its restrictive public carry laws in the form of an amicus brief filed in NYSRPA v. Bruen, the Supreme Court case that will decide whether the Second Amendment protects a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense. The brief was submitted on behalf of several signatories, but most noteworthy is its headlinerJ. Michael Luttig, the former Fourth Circuit judge who reportedly was on the shortlist for nomination to a Supreme Court seat during the George W. Bush administration. The brief does not live up to the standards one would expect from Judge Luttig.

First and foremost, while claiming to take a "textualist" approach (at 7), the brief fails to confront the Second Amendment's clear statement that the right of "the people" to "bear" arms shall not be infringed. New York absolutely criminalizes the bearing of arms openly and issues licenses to carry arms concealed only to a selected few who the state deems to have "proper cause." Instead of bearing arms being the rule while carving out exceptions (such as for courthouses and legislatures), the brief argues that the right is not infringed because narrow exceptions are made for hunting and target practice (at 6). But that ignores that "self-defense was the central component of the right itself," Heller, 554 U.S. at 599.

The brief's shortcomings are conspicuous in its engagement with history. The brief purports to apply Heller's text, history, and tradition approach, averring that "founding-era statutes" are particularly important (at 1011). Yet the brief cites a grand total of six colonial and early state laws to support its remarkable assertion that the founding era did not understand the right to carry to extend to the public. The brief's authors ignore the extensive evidence refuting their argumentsmuch of it in amicus briefs previously filed in support of the plaintiffs. Nor does the brief address the dismissal by Justice Thomas of such arguments based on the Statute of Northampton and its state analogues articulated in his dissent from the denial of certiorari in Rogers v. Grewal, 140 S. Ct. 1865 (2020), arising out of New Jersey. All of the material historical issues here are covered in my book, The Right to Bear Arms: A Constitutional Right of the People or a Privilege of the Ruling Class? Pay special attention to the Forward by Rene Lettow Lerner, which traces the modern anti-Second Amendment campaign back to 1968.

Embarrassingly, the brief relies (at 12) on a 1792 North Carolina "law" purportedly providing that no person may "go nor ride armed by night or by day, in fairs, markets, nor in the presence of the King's Justices, or other ministers, nor in no parts elsewhere." It should have been obvious that something is amisswhy would a 1792 North Carolina statute refer to the King? The reason is there was no such statutethe cited law "is fake," the source being a compilation of North Carolina laws that later compilers condemned as including many statutes "which never were, and never could have been in force." See my book The Right To Bear Arms at 243 n.778.

While the other five statutes (3 colonial and 2 state) were actually enacted, they do not demonstrate that founding-era legislatures felt themselves free to ban public carry. Four of the statutes plainly are analogues of the 1328 Statute of Northamptona statute with a lengthy history of interpretation with which the brief fails entirely to engage. (See my post on Tuesday.) And by the time of the founding, the historical sources indicate that the Statute and its analogues barred only carrying dangerous and unusual weapons or in a manner otherwise calculated to induce terror. This is apparent from the words of the statutes themselves, which as quoted in the Luttig brief (at 1213) focus on carrying "offensively" (1699 N.H.) and inducing "fear" (1692 and 1795 Mass.) or "terror" (1786 Va.).

That leaves only an obscure 1686 East New Jersey law (the colony was then split into East and West) that prohibited the private carry of "pocket pistols" and provided that "no planter shall ride or go armed with sword, pistol or dagger." The latter part may have only applied to terror-inducing carry, as otherwise the former part would be redundant. We don't know if the law survived the English Declaration of Rights of 1689, which declared the right to have arms, but it was long since forgotten when the Second Amendment was ratified. Indeed, the public carrying of firearms was legal in the State of New Jersey until 1966. See generally The Right to Bear Arms at 123-31. Regardless, Heller refused to "stake [its] interpretation of the Second Amendment upon a single law, in effect in a single city, that contradicts the overwhelming weight of other evidence regarding the right to keep and bear arms for defense of the home." 554 U.S. at 632.

The Luttig brief fails to discuss the wealth of evidence demonstrating that Americans at the founding understood the right to bear arms to extend to public carry. For example, as an amicus brief filed by the Second Amendment Foundation demonstrates, our first six Presidents and other leading Founders were proponents and practitioners of arms bearing. Some were citizens of Virginia or Massachusetts, two states which according to the Luttig brief barred public carry altogether. That would have been a surprise to the likes of Jefferson and Adams, who under the Luttig brief's conception of history would have been serial lawbreakers.

Once history is understood as demonstrating a right to public carry, the Luttig brief becomes self-refuting. With its historical case collapsing, it is left with the sorts of policy arguments that the brief indicates should not be used to determine constitutional rights. And some of those arguments are bizarre. For example, the brief refers to the incursion of protestors into the Capitol on January 6, seeming to argue that such events would become more frequent and deadlier were a right to public carry to be recognized. But D.C. itself already is a right-to-carry jurisdiction, with the D.C. Circuit in Wrenn v. D.C., 864 F.3d 650 (2017), having struck down a may-issue law akin to the current New York law.

The brief ignores the history laid out in the amicus brief of the Independent Institute that demonstrates that there were restrictions at the time of the founding on carrying firearms into courts and legislative bodies. The brief also fails to engage with the literature reviews concluding that based on existing empirical evidence it cannot be said that respecting the right to carry leads to increased crime and violence.

More criticisms of the brief could be made, from misciting then-Judge Barrett's opinion in Kanter v. Barr, 919 F.3d 437, 451 (7thCir. 2019), as concurring rather than dissenting (at 2 & 11) to its amateurish lack of background on the history of the Second Amendment. The Luttig brief is not to be taken seriously as a work of historical scholarship. If it weren't for the identity of its lead sponsor, it is doubtful anyone would give it a second look, and its arguments should play no role in the Supreme Court's decision.

See the article here:
A Surprise Amicus Brief in the Challenge to New York's Gun Carry Ban - Reason