Daily Archives: December 13, 2021

The tomatoes at the forefront of a food revolution – BBC News

Posted: December 13, 2021 at 2:46 am

One 2021 study looked at the genome of Solanum sitiens a wild tomato species which grows in the extremely harsh environment of the Atacama Desert in Chile, and can be found at altitudes as high as 3,300m (10,826ft). The study identified several genes related to drought-resistance in Solanum sitiens, including one aptly named YUCCA7 (yucca are draught-resistant shrubs and trees popular as houseplants).

They are far from the only genes that could be used to give the humble tomato a boost. In 2020 Chinese and American scientists performed a genome-wide association study of 369tomato cultivars, breeding lines and landraces, and pinpointed a gene called SlHAK20 as crucial for salt tolerance.

Once the climate-smart genes such as these are identified, they can be targeted using Crispr to delete certain unwanted genes, to tune others or insert new ones. This has recently been done with salt tolerance, resistance to various tomato pathogens, and even to create dwarf plants which could withstand strong winds (another side effect of climate change). However, scientists such as Cermak go even further and start at the roots they are using Crispr to domesticate wild plant species from scratch, "de novo" in science speak. Not only can they achieve in a single generation what previously took thousands of years, but also with a much greater precision.

De novo domestication of Solanum pimpinellifolium was how Cermak and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota arrived at their 2018 plant. They targeted five genes in the wild species to obtain a tomato that would be still resistant to various stresses, yet more adapted to modern commercial farming more compact for easier mechanical harvesting, for example. The new plant also had larger fruits than the wild original.

"The size and weight was about double," Cermak says. Yet this still wasn't the ideal tomato he strives to obtain for that more work needs to be done. "By adding additional genes, we could make the fruit even bigger and more abundant, increase the amount of sugar to improve taste, and the concentration of antioxidants, vitamin C and other nutrients," he says. And, of course, resistance to various forms of stress, from heat and pests to draught and salinity.

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Electrical and Behavioral Signals in OCD Could Guide Adaptive Therapy – Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

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In an effort to improve treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), researchers headed by teams at Brown University, and Baylor College of Medicine, have for the first time recorded electrical signals in the human brain that are associated with ebbs and flows in OCD symptoms, over an extended period, while individuals went about daily living in their homes. The research could be an important step in making an emerging therapy called deep brain stimulation (DBS) responsive to everyday changes in OCD symptoms.

In addition to advancing DBS therapy for cases of severe and treatment resistant OCD, this study has the potential for improving our understanding of the underlying neurocircuitry of the disorder, said Wayne Goodman, PhD, at Baylor College of Medicine. This deepened understanding may allow us to identify new anatomic targets for treatment that may be amenable to novel interventions that are less invasive than DBS. Goodman is co-author of the researchers published paper in Nature Medicine, which is titled, Long-term ecological assessment of intracranial electrophysiology synchronized to behavioural markers in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

OCD causes recurring unwanted thoughts and repetitive behaviors, and is a leading cause of disability. The condition, which is often debilitating, may affect perhaps 2-3% of the worlds population, the authors noted. Up to 20-40% of cases dont respond to traditional drug or behavioral treatments. Approximately 10% of individuals fail to achieve benefit from any intervention.

Deep brain stimulation, a technique that involves delivering mild electrical pulses via small electrodes precisely placed in the brain, can be effective in treating more than 50% of patients for whom other therapies failed. Over half of patients with treatment-resistant OCD are responders to DBS targeted to the ventral capsule/ventral striatum (VC/VS) region, the researchers further noted. To date, however, the number of patients who have received DBS for OCD is still in the hundreds.

One limitation of DBS is that it is unable to adjust to moment-to-moment changes in OCD symptoms, which are impacted by the physical and social environment. But adaptive DBS which can adjust the intensity of stimulation in response to real-time signals recorded in the braincould be more effective than traditional DBS and reduce unwanted side effects.

OCD is a disorder in which symptom severity is highly variable over time and can be elicited by triggers in the environment, said David Borton, PhD, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Brown University, a biomedical engineer at the US Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology and a senior author of the new research. A DBS system that can adjust stimulation intensity in response to symptoms may provide more relief and fewer side effects for patients. But in order to enable that technology, we must first identify the biomarkers in the brain associated with OCD symptoms, and that is what we are working to do in this study. As the authors noted, An electrophysiological biomarker of symptom state would enable aDBS for OCD and other psychiatric disorders, which may provide a better approach for treating fluctuations in symptom intensity.

The research, led by Nicole Provenza, a recent Brown biomedical engineering PhD graduate from Bortons laboratory, was a collaboration between Bortons research group, affiliated with Browns Carney Institute for Brain Science and School of Engineering; the research groups of Wayne Goodman PhD, and Sameer Sheth MD, PhD, at Baylor College of Medicine; and Jeff Cohn, PhD, from the University of Pittsburghs Department of Psychology and Intelligent Systems Program and Carnegie Mellon University.

For their study, Goodmans team recruited five participants with severe OCD who were eligible for DBS treatment. Sheth, lead neurosurgeon, implanted in each participant an investigational DBS device from Medtronic, which is capable of both delivering stimulation and recording native electrical brain signals. Using the sensing capabilities of the hardware, the team gathered brain-signal data from participants in both clinical settings and at home as they went about daily activities. The DBS implants used in our study allow for real-time frequency-domain analysis of electrophysiological activity recorded simultaneously during stimulation delivery from the implanted electrodes, they wrote.

Along with the brain signal data, the team also collected a suite of behavioral biomarkers. In the clinical setting, these included facial expression (automatic facial affect recognition; AFAR) and body movement. Using computer vision and machine learning, they discovered that the behavioral features were associated with changes in internal brain states. At the participants homes, the team measured self-reports of OCD symptom intensity as well as biometric dataheart rate and general activity levelsrecorded by a smart watch and paired smartphone application, provided by Rune Labs. All of those behavioral measures were then time-synched to the brain-sensing data, enabling the researchers to look for correlations between the two.

Here, we acquired electrophysiological data with behavioral readouts over both short and long timescales, the team commented. In the clinic, we examined changes in affect (AFAR) during DBS parameter changes over short timescales (seconds to minutes). At home during participant-controlled recordings, we captured behavioral changes (self-reported OCD symptoms) over longer timescales (days to weeks to months) in natural settings, collected continuous data during natural and planned exposures, and developed methods to synchronize behavioral metrics to intracranial electrophysiology.

This is the first time brain signals from participants with neuropsychiatric illness have been recorded chronically at home alongside relevant behavioral measures, Provenza said. Using these brain signals, we may be able to differentiate between when someone is experiencing OCD symptoms, and when they are not, and this technique made it possible to record this diversity of behavior and brain activity.

Provenzas analysis of the data showed that the strategy did pick out brain-signal patterns potentially linked to OCD symptom fluctuation. While more work needs to be done across a larger cohort, this initial study shows that this technique is a promising way forward in confirming candidate biomarkers of OCD. we demonstrated the utility of at-home data collection for biomarker identification by observing correlations between spectral power and self-reported OCD symptom intensity.

We were able to collect a far richer dataset than has been collected before, and we found some tantalizing trends that wed like to explore in a larger cohort of patients, Borton said. Now we know that we have the toolset to nail down control signals that could be used to adjust stimulation level according to peoples symptoms.

Once those biomarkers are positively identified, they could then be used in an adaptive DBS system. Currently, DBS systems employ a constant level of stimulation, which can be adjusted by a clinician at clinical visits. Adaptive DBS systems, in contrast, would stimulate and record brain activity and behavior continuously without the need to attend clinic. When the system detects signals associated with an increase in symptom severity, it could ramp up stimulation to potentially provide additional relief. Likewise, stimulation could be toned down when symptoms abate. Such a system could potentially improve DBS therapy while reducing side effects.

Work on this line of research is ongoing. Because OCD is a complex disorder than manifests itself in highly variable ways across patients, the team hopes to expand the number of participants to capture more of that variability. They seek to identify a fuller set of OCD biomarkers that could be used to guide adaptive DBS systems. Once those biomarkers are in place, the team hopes to work with device makers to implement their DBS devices.

Our goal is to understand what those brain recordings are telling us and to train the device to recognize certain patterns associated with specific symptoms, Sheth said. The better we understand the neural signatures of health and disease, the greater our chances of using DBS to successfully treat challenging brain disorders like OCD. As the authors concluded, This work demonstrates the feasibility and utility of capturing chronic intracranial electrophysiology during daily symptom fluctuations to enable neural biomarker identification, a prerequisite for future development of adaptive DBS for OCD and other psychiatric disorders, the author concluded. The platform presented here lays the groundwork for future transformational studies reliant on ecological neural and behavioral monitoring and assessment of neuropsychiatric illness.

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Capsida Biotherapeutics Poised to Capitalize on Industry-leading Gene Therapy Technology With New CEO, CSO, and CTO – PRNewswire

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Gene therapy is still in its infancy and has yet to achieve its full potential. First-generation gene therapies have been challenged by safety issues due to their inability to target cells and organs without also penetrating non-targeted cells and organs, especially the liver. Capsida's proprietary, targeted, non-invasive gene therapy technology allows more selective targeting of specific tissues and cells, overcoming many of the problems associated with first-generation gene therapies, specifically off-target cell and organ activity. In addition, it allows the gene therapy to be delivered non-invasively through intravenous (IV) administration. The company's already strong leadership team is poised to actualize the promise of gene therapy with the addition of Mr. Anastasiou and the promotions of Drs. Flytzanis and Goeden.

"I can't imagine a more exciting time to join this organization," said Mr. Anastasiou. "Capsida is enabling gene therapy to become what the industry, physicians, and patients have been dreaming it will be. Our patent-protected technology allows the targeting of cells and organs while limiting the negative impact on non-targeted areas, and can be applied across multiple therapeutic areas. Another important benefit of our technology is that we are able to deliver the gene therapy non-invasively through IV administration. I'm honored to lead this talented team to achieve Capsida's potential and to improve and even save patients' lives."

Mr. Anastasiou joins Capsida from Lundbeck, where he was an executive vice president and a member of the executive committee, reporting to the CEO. As the president of Lundbeck's U.S. and Canadian business operations, Mr. Anastasiou has built organizations from the ground up. He brings significant leadership experience managing diverse organizations and bringing them together to achieve common goals. He led as many as 1,200 employees and achieved net revenues of $1.5 billion. During his 12-year tenure at Lundbeck, Mr. Anastasiou held several progressive leadership positions, playing a pivotal role in developing and launching multiple products and building the company's cross-functional capabilities. Mr. Anastasiou serves on the Board of PhRMA and the global advisory board for the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association. Mr. Anastasiou begins his new role with Capsida on January 3, 2022.

"We're thrilled to welcome Peter as Capsida's new CEO," said Beth Seidenberg, M.D., founding managing director at Westlake Village BioPartners, one of the company's lead investors, and Capsida board member. "Peter has deep industry expertise, a broad network, and significant public company experience, which will be valuable as Capsida grows. In addition, his strong track record of success demonstrates he is a visionary leader who will be able to deliver on the promise of targeted non-invasive gene therapy to help underserved patients and achieve business success."

"During his tenure at Lundbeck, Peter has created significant shareholder value, creating and leading organizations and successful blockbuster product launches," said Clare Ozawa, Ph.D., managing director at Versant Ventures, one of Capsida's lead investors, and Capsida board member."Under Peter's leadership, we will continue to build Capsida as the industry's leading targeted, non-invasive gene therapy company with the ability to transform the lives of patients with life-threatening genetic disorders."

Prior to Lundbeck, Mr. Anastasiou held management roles at Neuronetics, Inc., Bristol-Meyers Squibb Company, and Eli Lilly and Company. He holds an MBA from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, and a B.A. in economics and management from Albion College.

Capsida co-founders Nicholas Flytzanis, Ph.D., promoted to CSO and Nick Goeden, Ph.D., promoted to CTO

In addition to Mr. Anastasiou's appointment, Capsida announced that Dr. Flytzanis has been promoted toCSO and Dr. Goeden has been promoted to CTO.

"The promotions of Drs. Flytzanis and Goeden are in recognition of the significant contributions they have made since co-foundingCapsida in 2019," said Mr. Anastasiou. "Their steadfast commitment to delivering on the promise of Capsida's differentiated, non-invasive gene therapy platform has been a key driver behind many of the company's early achievements."

"Drs. Flytzanis' and Goeden's strong scientific and technical expertise and know-how have already delivered results in the startup of Capsida based on Caltech'sbasic research on targeted non-invasive gene delivery to the brain," said Capsida co-founder Viviana Gradinaru, Ph.D. "Their promotions are timely as Capsida enters the phase of delivering from the lab and for the patients."

Prior to co-founding Capsida, Dr. Flytzanis served as scientific director of the CLOVER research center at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), leading an interdisciplinary team to develop and disseminate emerging technologies focused on the cross-section of neurological research and gene therapy. His research spans the fields of tissue clearing and imaging, optogenetics and rodent behavior, and adeno-associated virus (AAV) engineering and gene therapy, with collaborations across multiple institutions. During his Ph.D., Dr. Flytzanis applied protein engineering and directed evolution across biological modalities, with a focus on developing AAVs as therapeutic tools for neurological disease.

Dr. Flytzanis holds a Ph.D. in biology from Caltech and a B.S. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Prior to co-founding Capsida, Dr. Goeden led a team developing the novel adeno-associated virus (AAV) engineering technology underlying Capsida's biologically driven gene therapy platform. During his tenure as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Gradinaru's lab at Caltech, he developed high-throughput methods for screening combinatorial libraries to explore the AAV fitness landscape and engineered novel AAVs with high efficiency and specificity for the rodent and primate brain. During his Ph.D., Dr. Goeden developed a novel organ bioreactor to study real-time metabolomics in diseased states, exploring the relationship between gene expression and the pathophysiology of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Dr. Goeden holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from The University of Southern California and a B.S. in biology from Caltech.

About Capsida Biotherapeutics

Capsida Biotherapeutics Inc. is an industry-leading gene therapy platform company creating a new class of targeted, non-invasive gene therapies for patients with debilitating and life-threatening genetic disorders. Capsida's technology allows for the targeted penetration of cells and organs, while limiting collateral impact on non-targeted cells and organs, especially the liver. This technology allows for the delivery of the gene therapy in a non-invasive way through intravenous administration. Capsida's technology is protected by a growing intellectual property portfolio which includes more than 30 patent applications and one issued U.S. patent 11,149,256. The company is exploring using the technology across a broad range of life-threatening genetic disorders. Its initial pipeline consists of multiple neurologic disease programs. The company has strategic collaborations with AbbVie and CRISPR, which provide independent validation of Capsida's technology and capabilities. Capsida is a multi-functional and fully integrated biotechnology company with proprietary adeno-associated virus (AAV) engineering, multi-modality cargo development and optimization, translational biology, process development and state-of-the-art manufacturing, and broad clinical development experience. Capsida's biologically driven, high-throughput AAV engineering and cargo optimization platform originated from groundbreaking research in the laboratory of Viviana Gradinaru, Ph.D., a neuroscience professor at the California Institute of Technology. Visit us at http://www.capsida.com to learn more.

SOURCE Capsida Biotherapeutics

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Capsida Biotherapeutics Poised to Capitalize on Industry-leading Gene Therapy Technology With New CEO, CSO, and CTO - PRNewswire

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Metagenomi to Present Preclinical In Vivo and Ex Vivo Gene-Editing Data at the 63rd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting – Business…

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EMERYVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Metagenomi, a genetic medicines company with a versatile portfolio of next-generation gene editing tools, today announced that the company will share data related to their novel, compact, and hypo-immune gene editing systems at the 63rd Annual Meeting and Exposition of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), which is taking place in Atlanta, GA and virtually, December 1114.

The development of CAR T therapies and other genetically engineered cell therapies in recent years has resulted in significant benefits for patients, yet there remains a large unmet need for gene editing systems that can be used to develop novel immunotherapy approaches to treat blood cancers, said Brian C. Thomas, PhD, CEO and Co-Founder of Metagenomi. At ASH, we are presenting data on our novel nucleases that display highly efficient and specific gene editing both in vivo and ex vivo and hold significant potential to drive the development of new and efficacious therapies for patients.

In a poster titled A Novel Type V CRISPR System with Potential for Genome Editing in the Liver, it is shown that Metagenomis novel Type V CRISPR-associated nuclease was highly active in the liver of mice when systemically administered via lipid nanoparticles (LNP). The nuclease was derived from a unique natural environment and is phylogenetically distinct from previously identified Type V systems. Moreover, no antibodies to the nuclease were detected in serum from 50 healthy human donors, while between one third and half of the same serum samples contained antibodies that bind to spCas9, which is derived from a Streptococcus bacteria that commonly infects humans. In summary, this novel Type V CRISPR-associated nuclease is a promising new gene editing system for in vivo editing of the liver.

In a separate poster titled Novel CRISPR-Associated Gene Editing Systems Discovered in Metagenomic Samples Enable Efficient and Specific Genomic Engineering for Cell Therapy Development, three novel gene editing systems were used to make reproducible and efficient edits to human immune cells, demonstrating utility for the next generation of cell therapy development for blood cancers. Metagenomis novel gene editing systems were used to disrupt the T cell receptor alpha-chain constant region and the T cell receptor beta-chain constant region in approximately 90 percent of cells. Beta-2 microglobulin was edited in 95 percent of T cells. A chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) construct was also shown to be integrated in up to 60 percent of T cells. Novel gene editing systems were deployed in NK cells to disrupt CD38 a cell surface immune modulator that can be targeted in the development of cancer immunotherapy and to integrate a CAR construct that led to robust CAR-directed cellular cytotoxicity. B cell editing occurred in approximately 80% of target cells with successful transgene integration. Whats more, as these gene editing systems are taken from environmental samples as opposed to human pathogens, pre-existing immunity is expected to be rare. In summary, these novel systems were shown to result in highly efficient and specific gene edits in human immune cells and display the potential for use in cell therapy development.

Details of the presentations are below:

Presentation Title: A Novel Type V CRISPR System with Potential for Genome Editing in the LiverSession Title: 801. Gene Therapies: Poster IPresenting Author: Morayma Temoche-Diaz, PhDPublication Number: 1862 Session Time: Saturday, December 11, 5:30 p.m. ET

Presentation Title: Novel CRISPR-Associated Gene-Editing Systems Discovered in Metagenomic Samples Enable Efficient and Specific Genome Engineering for Cell Therapy DevelopmentSession Title: 801. Gene Therapies: Poster IIIPresenting Author: Gregory Cost, PhD, Vice President of Biology, MetagenomiPublication Number: 3984 Session Time: Monday, December 13, 6:00 8:00 p.m. ET

About Metagenomi

Metagenomi is a gene editing company committed to developing potentially curative therapeutics by leveraging a proprietary toolbox of next-generation gene editing systems to accurately edit DNA where current technologies cannot. Our metagenomics-powered discovery platform and analytical expertise reveal novel cellular machinery sourced from otherwise unknown organisms. We adapt and forge these naturally evolved systems into powerful gene editing systems that are ultra-small, extremely efficient, highly specific and have a decreased risk of immune response. These systems fuel our pipeline of novel medicines and can be leveraged by partners. Our goal is to revolutionize gene editing for the benefit of patients around the world. For more information, please visit https://metagenomi.co/.

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Metagenomi to Present Preclinical In Vivo and Ex Vivo Gene-Editing Data at the 63rd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting - Business...

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An Engineers Perspective on Autoimmunity – The Scientist

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Erika Moore studies lupus using a unique biomaterial that she developed.

Erika Moore, PhD

Long before she took the helm of her engineering lab as an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Florida, Erika Moore was fascinated by the careful dance between immune cells and biomaterials engineered to interact with living systems. Now, her curiosity has led her to design biomaterials to help diverse lupus patients receive personalized care.

How did you first realize that biomaterials could be useful for studying the immune system?

I had to start wearing contacts when I was 11 years old, and as I put something into my eye every day that was foreign to my body, it really piqued my interest in understanding biomaterials. While doing my undergraduate degree at Johns Hopkins University, I started to realize that immune cells are probably going to be an important part of how our bodies respond to biomaterials.

My area of expertise is at the meeting point of immunology, biomaterials science, and translational medicine. I was classically trained as a biomedical engineer, so the combination of engineering and medicine is just ingrained into me. Then I was drawn to creating new materials and using those materials to study immunology, but I'm not a classically trained immunologist. Biomedical engineers have been designing materials and putting them into rodents to validate them, but we haven't always considered how the immune system responds to these materials. During my PhD studies at Duke University, I focused on macrophages and understanding their contribution to biomaterials.

How did you connect this to studying autoimmunity and lupus specifically?

My personal connection to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), the autoimmune disease that I study, is that I identify as a woman of color, as a Black woman. SLE is a hugely sex-differential disease. About 90% of the people with SLE are women. If you break down that 90%, about 70% of that 90% are women of color. I actually have many friends with lupus; there are women in my life who have died from lupus, and I never realized how much of a health inequity and health disparity it was. When I realized that there was this autoimmune disease that disproportionately affects communities that I identify with, I wanted to use my privilege and education to try to improve outcomes for that disease.

Erika Moore developed a jello-like tissue system to study how immune cells stimulate tissues and blood vessel growth.

Erika Moore, PhD

That brings us back to the science. If we want to study something in the clinic, we have to enroll patients. But that takes a lot of time, effort, and energy. So, during graduate school, I wanted to create a tissue model outside the body that would recreate or mimic some of the interactions that occur in the body. The 3-D model system that I created then is a little bit squishylike jellomimicking some soft tissues in the body. You can take images of it, destroy it, and create it again. I used this system in graduate school to understand how macrophages help us build new tissues and blood vessels.

If we introduce other variables, we can study tissue responses in specific human contexts. For example, women with lupus usually have super inflammatory immune cells, including a lot of macrophage activation. If we take immune cells from healthy controls or patients with lupus and study them in our biomaterial models, what differences do we observe in those cells? And what does that tell us about what might be happening clinically?

The promise of our model system is that we can have personalized medicine approaches in our mini-jello tissues that we create in the lab. Maybe in the future, we can take some patient cells, put them in our system, and then introduce a drug to see how they respond. Does it get better? Does it get worse? That's better than just putting volunteers on a drug without any prior knowledge or background.

How do you consider the variation in lupus between populations?

I want to understand the contribution of ancestry to disease pathology and disease progression. We use markers of genetic ancestry to understand how different patients respond. We also use socio-cultural, educational, and financial markers because we understand that ancestry doesn't always capture lived experience. We know that environment and geneticsnature and nurturecombine to inform biology and cell function. We can declare those variables and use them to determine which groups we encapsulate into our jello biomaterial tissue models, and then understand how their cells respond differently. For example, does the number of discrimination events you have seen inform how your cells respond?

What are the challenges for this kind of interdisciplinary work?

The hardest part so far has been knowledge. I am personally driven to study this autoimmune disease because of its disproportionate impact, so I really want to learn, and I'm still learning. Because my work is interdisciplinary, I have to master multiple fields. I'm really grateful for my collaborators who have been helpful in educating me to ask the right questions, because not all questions are worth answering immediately. You have to prioritize. I know a lot of people with lupus, and I ask, what's helpful? What's not working? It's a shared community effort. I am really sharing the voices of many people, not just myself.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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An Engineers Perspective on Autoimmunity - The Scientist

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Money & the Law: Dogs, drugs and the right to privacy – Colorado Springs Gazette

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Dogs are not always mans best friend, especially if youre engaged in illegal drug activity. Then a dog might take you down a path to prison.

Police and other law enforcement agencies have been using dogs trained to detect illegal drugs (and explosives) for many years. However, Colorados passage of Amendment 64 in 2012, which made possession of a small amount of marijuana for personal use legal, greatly complicated the life of a drug-sniffing dog.

Dogs cant tell the difference between a small, and therefore legal, amount of marijuana and a larger, and therefore illegal, amount. Also, a drug-sniffing dog will decline, when asked, to tell its handler whether what is being sniffed is marijuana or some other illegal drug.

So, if youre a police officer and you make a traffic stop and your drug-sniffing companion tells you there is something in the vehicle the dog has been trained to detect, can you search the vehicle? The answer, at least in Colorado, is no unless you have probable cause coming from something other than the dog to believe the vehicle contains illegal drugs.

If you do a search based on nothing more than the dogs response and you find contraband, it cant be used as evidence in a criminal trial. The search was illegal in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the defendant is entitled to have the evidence suppressed. (Under the Fourth Amendment, a search is illegal if it intrudes on a persons reasonable expectation of privacy in lawful activity.)

The latest case to reach a Colorado appellate court addressing this issue is People v. Restrepo, decided by the Court of Appeals last month. In this case, Colorado Springs police followed Anthony Restrepos vehicle for some two hours because they suspected, without firm evidence, that he might be involved with methamphetamines.

Finally Restrepo, up to this point a model driver, rolled through a stop sign and the police pulled him over. A drug-sniffing dog was on the scene and indicated it had detected something it was trained to look for. The police then searched the vehicle and found methamphetamines and drug paraphernalia in a backpack. Restrepo was charged with various drug-related crimes and convicted by an El Paso County jury.

During the trial, Restrepo asked the judge to suppress the evidence coming from the vehicle search. However, that request was denied because, at the time of the request, the law had a less restrictive standard concerning vehicle searches resulting from dog sniffs.

But then along came a Colorado Supreme Court decision tightening the standard and, based on that decision, Restrepo asked the trial court judge to set aside his conviction. The judge denied the request. Restrepo thereupon took his argument to the Court of Appeals, and that court agreed with him that the evidence leading to his conviction should not have been admitted and his conviction was overturned.

Prosecutors could ask the Colorado Supreme Court to review the Court of Appeals decision, but until dogs go back to school and learn how to distinguish a legal quantity of marijuana from illegal contraband, it seems likely the court will conclude it has had enough of dog-sniff law and decline to hear the case.

Jim Flynn is with the Colorado Springs firm of Flynn & Wright LLC. You can contact him at moneylaw@jtflynn.com.

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Money & the Law: Dogs, drugs and the right to privacy - Colorado Springs Gazette

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We Hear You: Parents Must Fight to Save Public Schools – Daily Signal

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Editors note: The Daily Signals audience sounds like its had enough with parents being marginalized or criminalized as the left seeks to transform public schools. Heres a sampling from the mailbag at [emailprotected]Ken McIntyre

Dear Daily Signal: It was appropriate for conservative congressmen such as Rep. Jim Jordan to grill Attorney General Merrick Garland during a House hearing, as reported by Mary Margaret Olohan (3 Takeaways From AG Garlands House Panel Testimony on Virginia School Rape Case, Conflict of Interest).

But now that conservatives have shown the attorney general to be so irresponsible as to encourage his agencies of law enforcement to go after parents over school board disputes, based solely on a partisan National School Boards Association letter, among other serious issues (such as his willful ignorance about the school rape case in Loudon County, Virginia), wheres the follow-up?

The GOP caucus should be filing forand loudly and unceasingly demandingGarlands impeachment. Of course, the effort would likely fail. But what better tool to focus national attention on the Justice Departments weaponizing of legitimate protest?Joel Brind, Ph.D., Wappingers Falls, N.Y.

Dear Daily Signal: Where to start with Fred Lucas report on the attorney generals testimony to a Senate committee (6 Takeaways From Merrick Garlands Senate Testimony on Activist Parents and Other Issues)?

First, why is a threat, if any, against a local school board member a federal offense that requires involvement of Attorney General Merrick Garlands Justice Department and FBI? That seems to me to be a matter that can and should be investigated by state or local law enforcement.

I would argue that Garland is badly abusing his authority by getting involved in this issue. There is a disturbing trend, to elevate every dispute at local levels to a federal issue. Its not the responsibility of the federal government.

Riots, looting, and other violence in various areas of the country were ignored by the feds last year, and federal involvement was condemned for those serious crimes. Yet this is a federal issue? I think not.

Second, I understand from Lucas report that Garland and his Justice Department approved a settlement with former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe because it was less expensive. The attorney general excuses rewarding a lawbreaker at taxpayer expense for expedience?

I would think the Justice Department attorneys involved in such a case are on the government payroll whether litigating against McCabe or working on some other issue. So the taxpayer expense for those lawyers is exactly the same regardless of the case at hand.

McCabe successfully got away with the serious crime of repeatedly lying under oath. That seems to me to be a precedent that future criminals might employ; it is a dereliction of duty on Garlands watch and perhaps by Garland himself.

I could go on, but Garland is a disgrace to our nation as a partisan attorney general. I echo Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.: that Thank God that Garland is not on the Supreme Court.Wayne Peterkin, Evangeline, La.

***

The Justice Department can move at glacial speed on most things, but interestingly, as your Problematic Women podcast points out, the agency hopped on this issue like a scalded jackrabbit (National School Boards Association Issues Weak Apology for Letter Likening Parents Actions to Domestic Terrorism).

The damage done by this hasty overreaction was immediate. The National School Boards Association never will recover the trust of parents in the institution of education. They dug their own grave.

Unfortunately, its future generations of young people who will suffer the most in this.Emily Smith, Mississippi

Dear Daily Signal: Thank you for Mary Clare Amselems well-written commentary article (Virginia Parents Standing Up to Loudoun County School Board Should Inspire Parents Everywhere). She touched on many of the key points that concerned parents are standing up to discuss regarding their childrens education.

Amselem does an excellent job of reminding us that the concern is not limited to critical race theory or woke ideology in schools, but also the push to accept any and all forms of transgender opinions, pornographic materials, and so on.

She correctly uses examples in a noninflammatory manner to remind us all that our children, their education, upbringing, and welfare belong to us and not the state.In a frightening but true observation, she writes that the left has come to embrace the troubling perspective that children are partially owned by the state.

It is important for parents (and school boards) to remember the key point in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Supreme Court case she cites from 1925: The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize him and prepare him for additional obligations.Chuck Williams, Littleton, Colo.

***

Name one company in which the executive who authorizes employees paychecks is not allowed to tell employees what he/she expects from them. Yet school boards are telling parents they have no right to say what they want from their childrens education.

School boards do not pay teachers salaries. That money comes from citizen taxpayers.

Im one of those taxpayers. Im retired, but Ive taught in public schools. I have a masters degree in education. In the first parents night visit, I always outlined my teaching goals and I invited parents to be involved in what they wanted their children to learn.

At the time, I was a member of the National Education Association. That was back when the NEA was concerned about improving the quality of education, a goal that no longer exists for that teachers union.

I grieve over what has become of our nation, especially the government. I applaud parents who insist on being involved in their childrens schools and education.D. Michael Douglas, Mesa, Ariz.

Dear Daily Signal: I have never responded to one of your articles, but read them diligently.I am appalled by Mary Margaret Olohans report on the behavior of the school board in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and its inclusion director, Charmie Curry (Lawsuit Targets Massachusetts Public School System for Racial Segregation, Censoring Students).

Honestly, that officials title seems to apply only to certain groups.I was also surprised that the language associated with being white was so demeaning. If I were to use this type of language to describe another group, I would be characterized as bigoted, racist, and insensitive. I would agree with that assessment.

However, it seems that these educators and inclusion personnel are not held to the same standard.I do not feel particularly angry, fearful, or guilty.So far today, I have managed to not cry once.

What I am, however, is distrusting.If an individual such as Curry behaves in such an egregious manner, I find that I avoid them. In all aspects of my life.

It is disappointing that during the last decade, the racial divide in our country has continued to expand.I am unsure of the solution, as it is a complicated issue. However, negative labeling and insulting terms are not going to provide any opportunity for compromise and healing.Mac Irwin, Bedford, Texas

Dear Daily Signal: About Mary Margaret Olohans report on the rape in a girls restroom at a high school in Loudoun County, Virginia: I was very naive to believe that the #MeToo movement truly cared about victims of sexual abuse and assault (#MeToo Groups Silent Over Boy Allegedly Raping Girl in Loudoun School Girls Bathroom).

If these organizers truly cared, they would be outraged that transgender individuals or those who claimed to be transgender to gain access to vulnerable women and girls were attacking girls and women.Nancy Mclellan

***

The #MeToo movement has done much damage to many men, who have lost jobs with even a hint of some infraction.

Then to hear of the lack of outrage when two young girls are sexually assaulted by a gender-fluid male is unbelievable. Add insult to injury that the Virginia father of one of the girls is arrested and charged when the Loudoun County Board of Educationwould not listen to him.

What father would not be distraught that his daughter had been raped?

Biological males have no place in female bathrooms, locker rooms, or prisons. Furthermore, they do not belong in womens sports. When is common sense and real science going to reassert itself?Victor Watson

Dear Daily Signal: Amy Swearers article on the Supreme Courts New York state gun case was excellent (Supreme Court Arguments in New York Gun Case Signal Uphill Battle to Defend Overly Restrictive Laws).

One thing I always wondered about is why, in analyses,the Second Amendment isnt also tied to and further strengthened bythe Fourth Amendment (on being secure in ones person), the Ninth (on rightsretained by the people), and the 10th (on rights retained by the people).

Isnt self-defense, with or without a militia, a fundamental right retained by each person? Why, even animals have it.

The Second Amendment also is supported by documents such as the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1777), also incorporated in the Virginia Constitution, including: That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

In Samuel Johnsons Dictionary, first published in 1755, his first definition for man includes both men and women. Its as if at that time they knew the truth even though society practiced male-led government.

Keep up the good work. Hopefully, the Supreme Courtincluding some or all liberal justiceswill join on this to defeat New Yorks taking of constitutional rights.Mark Doehnert, Falls Church, Va.

***

When the Second Amendment is challenged, the defense always advances the argument that the police are all that is necessary to protect the population.

Why is it so hard to get people to understand that the mission of the police is not to keep crimes from happening, but to bring criminals to justice after the crime has been committed? Only potential victims have the ability to stop a crime from being committed.Ronald Everett, Erlanger, Ky.

Dear Daily Signal: Melanie Israels commentary article on the abortion case before the Supreme Court pointed out that the most important aspect is that the Constitution provides for the people to deal with issues such as abortion through their elected representatives (A Major Abortion Case Goes Before the Supreme Court. Heres What You Need to Know.)

Americans do so in their own state legislatures, and it isnt constitutional for the Supreme Court to usurp their authority under states rights to do so.

I think the American public needs to be reminded of that often. Then the public could keep reminding the Supreme Court justices, and perhaps others in government, who either are ignorant of that fact or intent on ignoring it.Barry Click, California

Douglas Blair contributed to this edition of We Hear You. The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

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How Chula Vista became one of the most surveilled cities in the country – KPBS

Posted: at 2:45 am

Chula Vista has earned an unwelcome distinction.

On a per capita basis, they're probably the most or one of the most surveilled cities in the country, said Brian Hofer, executive director of the Oakland-based privacy advocacy group Secure Justice. Pretty much the minute you walk outside your front door and move about your daily life, you're going to be tagged and tracked by some law enforcement agency, even though you've likely never been suspected of any wrongdoing.

RELATED: Chula Vista Is Building A Real-Time Crime Center

Some of that surveillance is no different than what people in most American cities encounter everyday.

Your cell phones are constantly pinging towers as you move around the city, revealing your location, your travel patterns and association, Hofer said. You could have facial recognition on all of the very many cameras you pass along the street and buildings.

RELATED: Chula Vista Police Drones Can Now Cover 100% Of City For Emergency Calls

Chula Vistas location adds federal surveillance to the mix. The city is just seven miles from the Mexico border, which opens it up to a network of monitoring by the nations largest law enforcement agency the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The agencys high-tech cache includes powerful drones, automated license plate scanners (ALPRs), facial recognition technology and surveillance towers with cameras, radars and infrared sensors, and surveillance blimps, according to the General Accounting Office and the nonprofit digital rights organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Border residents may never know that their information is being collected, but essentially, the government is able to put together a map of people's movements, either through incident times in which they're crossing the border itself, but also traveling through border communities, said Shaw Drake, who serves as policy counsel for the ACLUs Border Rights Center. And so really, towns like Chula Vista, across the border, are subjected to more surveillance technology than anywhere else in the country.

And theres the Chula Vista Police Departments own technological capacity, which has unsettled some locals.

They worry the agencys signature drone program and automated license plate readers indiscriminately collect data on the innocent, disproportionately affect people of color and breach core American values. They want more scrutiny and oversight.

We should have an expectation of privacy, said Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committees U.S.-Mexico Border Program. We should have an expectation that the police arent surveilling us with this type of enforcement technology when there isn't a reason to do so.

Chula Vista city officials blame some of the criticism on a small group of overly woke residents and reiterate they themselves are well aware of the perils of embracing technology for technologys sake.

We don't just buy a shiny object to have it, said Chula Vista Mayor Mary Salas. Everything that we adopt is for a purpose. And it's been thoroughly vetted.

Salas said the technology is meant to serve residents, not spy on them. And she is promising more oversight in the new year.

Drones as first responders

The Chula Vista Police Department deploys nine drones as first responders at a cost of about $1 million a year. Police live stream the drones scans for hazards at scenes for all kinds of 911 calls murders, assaults, traffic accidents, missing people, trespassers, fires and natural disasters before officers arrive. Police contend drones reduce response times, offer crucial details, help them make better decisions and diffuse tense situations.

From a de-escalation perspective, there is no better tool in my mind, said Chula Vista Police Capt. Eric Thunberg. That to me is invaluable and I wish we had it years ago.

The departments website says police collect video and photos from drone flights to the scene and on the way back which are generally accessible to police investigators for official use only. The footage is stored for one year unless its connected to an ongoing investigation.

Roland Lizarondo / KPBS

The department also has another handful of drones that it uses for executing search warrants or finding missing people in hard-to-get to places. Those drones are automated and have the capacity to follow people in and out of buildings, Thunberg said.

We use them in more tactical environments, he said. They keep our officers out of danger.

The Chula Vista Police Department is one of more than 1,500 state and local public safety agencies in the country with drones, according to 2020 data collected by Bard College researchers.

The department claims it was the first in the country to win FAA approval to fly all over the 52-square-mile city.

Thunberg said department officials met with the ACLU and residents to address concerns before the drones took off from the departments roof for their maiden flight in 2018. The goal was to assure people that the department would use the technology responsibly.

Were not going to do things that are not good for our community, Thunberg said.

But civil libertarians still believe police drones can violate the privacy rights of the innocent.

They can reach places that are actually very difficult for people to access without a warrant, said ACLU attorney Mitra Ebodolahi. A drone may be able to look in on a backyard that's otherwise not publicly visible, where someone may have a reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment. A lot of really important questions about our privacy rights and the Constitution remain unanswered.

Mitra Ebodolahi, ACLU attorney

Privacy advocates argue equally troubling is that people have no way of knowing if drones have gathered footage on them or their property.

Thunberg argues these concerns have been addressed.

Those drones, when theyre flying from A to B, that camera lens is horizontal, its not vertical, he said.

But once on the scene and the cameras tilt downward, the drones can still capture details of nearby private property that are not part of the 911 call.

License plate readers and broken trust

Back in 2020 at the Chula Vista Police Department, Capt. Don Redmond made clear that the effective use of police technology relied on residents faith in the department.

The community allows us to protect them because they trust us, Redmond said. As soon as we break that trust, they become issues.

Late last year it was revealed that Chula Vista police shared data collected from its license plate readers with immigration officials. This technology, commonly referred to as ALPRs (Automated License Plate Readers), takes photos of license plates and includes the time the picture was captured and the location of the vehicle.

Rios, of the American Friends Service Committee, said sharing that data with federal officials belies Chula Vistas designation as a Welcoming City for immigrants as well as state law known as SB 54, which prohibits local and state resources from aiding in federal immigration enforcement.

The bigger question there for me is not only about the impact that it might have on our migrant community members and neighbors, but also the slippery slope around our civil liberties, said Rios, who also lives in Chula Vista.

Chula Vista police have since said they stopped sharing the data with ICE and Border Patrol in April of this year.

Police Chief Roxana Kennedy has been contrite. In retrospect, we regret not looking at this more thoroughly, Kennedy said at a Chula Vista City Council meeting in April.

The Chula Vista Police Department still shares ALPR data for specific investigations only with other California law enforcement agencies, bound by state law from helping immigration officials. Thunberg said there are safeguards and laws, both for personnel and agencies that misuse or abuse their authority when it comes to data sharing.

There are no absolutes, he said. People do the wrong thing sometimes. Sometimes those people are police officers. I cant speak to other agencies, but we work hard to ensure our personnel understand the law, our mission and culture and always strive to do right.

Roland Lizarondo / KPBS

Advocates contend that license plate readers treat everyone as suspects and want the department to stop using them.

A new study by the nonpartisan public policy group The Independent Institute in Oakland, found that 16 years of data from the Piedmont Police Department revealed no evidence that ALPRs give law enforcement investigative leads, deter vehicle theft or help recover stolen vehicles.

Rios cites the Chula Vista Police Departments own statistics showing a hit rate of less than 1% with vehicles tied to suspected crimes, mostly in western Chula Vista, where many of the citys poor and people of color live.

It makes me wonder when police are checking out the vehicle that contains the ALPR technology if they are purposefully using it only in one community of the city of Chula Vista, Rios said.

To that, Thunberg told KPBS that the police department is committed to partnering with the community and serving with professionalism.

We deploy our resources based on the demand for our services, Thunberg said.

He also suggested that the low number of hits from its license plate readers might partly be due to the fact that the city only has four of the devices. He added that hits are just one feature of ALPRs.

The ALPR system is an investigative tool, Thunberg said. It allows our investigators the opportunity to see if a vehicle of interest was at or near the scene of a crime. With the lowest staffed department in the county and one of the lowest in the state, we can better serve victims of crime in our city by using ALPRs to solve crimes.

And Chief Kennedy has said that the double digit rise in murders, assaults and robbery in the city this year underscores the need for the technology.

There have been countless success stories where the ALPR program has played a pivotal role in solving crimes and in keeping our community safe, she said earlier this year.

New operations center

In spite of public concern, Chula Vista police officials are moving ahead on plans to integrate the data the department gathers. The agency is building a real-time operations center. It will sew together different surveillance networks and information, like jail records, to keep watch over whats happening in the city, gather intelligence and solve crimes.

This results in decision-quality data reaching the officers on scene and can lead to quicker and safer incident resolutions. Thunberg said.

The brightly lit center sits on the first floor of the agencys headquarters in downtown Chula Vista. One wall is plastered with a bank of 12 screens that livestream drone footage, display 911 calls and show the whereabouts of on-duty officers. The center also has access to ALPR data and shows the latest social media reports of illegal activity in the city.

It allows us to have everything at our fingertips at one place, Thunberg said.

But privacy advocates say police departments intentionally downplay the cutting edge technology at these centers by claiming they are only compiling existing resources in a central location.

Its intentionally obfuscating the reality of how this is quite different from mere piecemeal data collection, ACLU lawyer Mitra Ebadolahi said.

She said one piece of data obtained on an individual in isolation is likely innocuous. But when data is mined from disparate sources, assembled and analyzed, profiles develop. Some of these may be of innocent people.

Eric Thunberg, Chula Vista Police captain

And so someone who has not committed any kind of wrongdoing is nonetheless a part of the information that is seeding a real time crime center, Ebadolahi said. There's no individualized suspicion that justifies that kind of attention on that individual. And there's also no way of knowing the extent to which that individual's information is in the system and how often it's queried and whether or not there are adverse consequences for that person as a result.

Advocates like Ebadolahi and Rios have also raised concerns about crime centers enabling predictive policing which uses data to forecast crime. Recent reports show the bias in some of these predictive policing technologies.

They disproportionately target Black people and people of color, said Ebadolahi. They disproportionately predict criminality in people of color.

Motorola Solutions, which has built the operations center for the Chula Vista Police Department, asserts in documents that the facility has the capacity to do analytics, facial recognition and AI. Thunberg said the department does not intend to activate those features.

The department has expressed a desire to incorporate predictive policing in its five year strategic plan. But Thunberg emphasized that the departments operations center will not add additional data mining capacity or predictive policing without public discussion.

Thats not something that were just going to flip a switch and turn on, Thunberg said. If we have it down the road, it will be because we vetted it with the community.

Calls for more oversight

Civil rights activists in Chula Vista have pushed for more scrutiny of police surveillance tools.

There needs to be an independent body overseeing the police departments use of technology, said Ricardo Medina, a member of Chula Vistas Human Relations Commission. It needs to have people who understand technology, its privacy consequences, its effectiveness and how to measure it, not through anecdotes, but through hard evidence.

Chula Vista city officials say they are working on creating an oversight commission on police technology use. The hope is that the new body will draft a privacy policy on law enforcement surveillance tools.

Thunberg said he looks forward to receiving input from the panel.

We value that because thats how we get better, said Thunberg, adding the department will be involved. Well be a part of that and be a player.

As a private citizen, Thunberg said he is untroubled by new police technology

Im not doing anything wrong, he said. Im not worried about being watched or followed. I dont have anything to hide.

Hofer argued thats precisely the wrong way to look at the issue.

Its not that we have nothing to hide but that we all have something to protect, Hofer said.

How Chula Vista became one of the most surveilled cities in the country Part 2

ACLU lawyer Ebadolahi said its a message that should resonate with private citizens.

If you arent already, this is the time to take privacy seriously because we are witnessing a rapid proliferation of these technologies, Ebadolahi said. These technologies just keep building on each other and we end up with a massively surveilled community which is just inconsistent with living in a free society. You start to look like a police state.

But Mayor Salas said she is confident that ultimately Chula Vista residents will be satisfied that the citys policing technology are tools to solve crimes, not watch people for no reason.

I love my police, and I know that they're doing the right thing, and they come from the right attitude, she said.

A combination of federal, municipal and private tracking systems has turned the border city of Chula Vista into one of the most surveilled cities in the country, according to privacy advocates. Now a new high tech operations center for the local police department will work to integrate all the data coming in from police activities.

Border artist Michelle Guerrero struggled with addiction for years, but a surprise pregnancy helped her straighten out her life. Eventually, she taught herself how to paint large-scale murals, in part, by painting murals on the actual border fence. These days, she goes by Mr B Baby, and she travels the West Coast and Mexico, painting huge Mexican-inspired murals in a style that is her own.

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How Chula Vista became one of the most surveilled cities in the country - KPBS

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Inside the Beltway: The Chris Wallace press tour – Washington Times

Posted: at 2:45 am

NEWS AND OPINION:

Easy come, easy go? Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace has announced he has left Fox News the nations leading cable news provider to become a fixture at CNN+ the networks new streaming service. Mr. Wallace, CNN and Fox News issued fairly cordial statements and that was that.

Follow-up press coverage in the hours that followed his announcement, however, was politicized very quickly.

Some headlines centered on former President Donald Trump, or the Make America Great Again fans who follow him.

Chris Wallace quits Fox News for CNN after years of Trump attacks, challenging the GOP, said Newsweek. The Daily Beast cited six times that Mr. Wallace feuded with his right-wing colleagues.

Then there was this stark headline from Breitbart News: Wallace quits Fox News. Welcome home! MAGA hater to CNN.

There was a little drama too. Politics, media worlds react to Wallace News, declared The Hill.

Those particular worlds reacted with shock to the news, the news organization said, quoting tweets from Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mitt Romney of Utah, among other public figures who expressed surprise and support or sent congratulations.

As a news item, though, Mr. Wallaces sudden announcement has already given way to the traditional media parlor game: Who will replace the outgoing host, who spent 18 years at Fox News?

A source said that Bret Baier, John Roberts, Shannon Bream, Martha MacCallum, Neil Cavuto and Bill Hemmer would be among the names expected to fill in as Fox News Sunday hosts in the interim, reported Deadline.com, an industry insider source.

As was once said in the broadcast business: Stay tuned.

WHOS WATCHING YOU?

Those who fret over the constant presence of webcams and security cameras might want to peek in on the 2021 Cato Surveillance Conference a live online event which takes place Tuesday.

Academics, technologists, policymakers, and privacy advocates will be on hand to parse out the pressing topic in privacy and digital civil liberties, among other things.

The organizer here is the Cato Institute a libertarian public policy think tank which advances solutions based on the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.

Americans in the age of COVID-19 are relying more than ever on digital networks to work, socialize, and learn which makes safeguarding the privacy and security of those networks even more essential, the organization notes in a guide to the event.

Well demonstrate just how vulnerable the ubiquitous Internet of Things makes us with a live hacking demonstration, the guide said.Topics include the surveillanceindustrial complex, virtual classrooms and the potential of schools to use spyware to monitor students, issues related to the Fourth Amendment, and the links between anonymity and freedom.

The event runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern time; viewers are invited to submit questions on Twitter using the hashtag #CatoSpyCon. Find information on the conference at CATO.org/events.

MORE TEPID NEWS FOR DEMOCRATS

From our Uh-oh Desk comes news that only 22% of U.S. voters want President Biden to run for reelection in 2024. That includes 8% of Republicans, 8% of independents and 37% of Democrats, So says an Issues & Answers poll of 1,013 registered U.S. voters conducted Dec. 1-4.

The news however, was not very promising for other possible Democratic contenders as well.

A White House run by Vice President Kamala Harris drew 12% support, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warranted 4% support. Another dozen senators and representatives plus several governors won between 1%-3% support. That list included Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

Another 6% of the respondents were looking for some other candidates while 31% were not sure about the matter.

Among other things, the data suggest that at just under 11 months into his term as president, Bidens political support, never strong to begin with, is collapsing, noted an analysis by Issues & Insights editor Terry Jones.

ONE FOR MARK LEVIN

It is interesting to note that Mark Levins book American Marxism currently tops the Amazon Best Sellers of 2021 (So Far) a popularity list which includes hardcover and Kindle eBooks, CDs and vinyl records, video games and other offerings.

Mr. Levins book published July 23 is currently the most popular product of the year according to sales and public interest.

Levin explains how the core elements of Marxist ideology are now pervasive in American society and culture from our schools, the press, and corporations, to Hollywood, the Democratic Party, and the Biden presidency and how it is often cloaked in deceptive labels like progressivism, democratic socialism, social activism, and more, notes Threshold Editions, the conservative imprint of publishing giant Simon & Schuster.

The author writes in his opening paragraph that the counter-revolution to the American Revolution is in full force. And it can no longer be dismissed or ignored for it is devouring our society and culture, swirling around our everyday lives, and ubiquitous in our politics, schools, media, and entertainment.

Mr. Levin is a Fox News host, nationally syndicated talk-radio host, and host of LevinTV, an online broadcast. This is his seventh book.

POLL DU JOUR

45% of U.S. adults say the national news media is overreacting in their descriptions of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

74% of Republicans, 48% of independents and 20% of Democrats agree.

41% say the media descriptions are about right.

19% of Republicans, 38% of independents and 63% of Democrats agree.

14% say the media is not taking the variant seriously enough.

6% of Republicans, 14% of independents and 17% of Democrats agree.

SOURCE: A CBS News poll of 1,731 U.S. adults conducted Dec. 7-9.

Helpful information to jharper@washingtontimes.com.

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Inside the Beltway: The Chris Wallace press tour - Washington Times

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Why Democrats Can’t Win the Culture Wars – The Atlantic

Posted: at 2:44 am

Maybe Bill Clinton got a few things right after all.

For years, Democrats have rarely cited Clinton and the centrist New Democrat movement he led through the 90s except to renounce his third way approach to welfare, crime, and other issues as a violation of the partys principles. Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and even Bill Clinton himself have distanced themselves from key components of his record as president.

But now a loose constellation of internal party critics is reprising the Clintonites core arguments to make the case that progressives are steering Democrats toward unsustainable and unelectable positions, particularly on cultural and social questions.

Just like the centrists who clustered around Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council that he led decades ago, todays dissenters argue that Democrats risk a sustained exodus from power unless they can recapture more of the culturally conservative voters without a college education who are drifting away from the party. (That group, these dissenters argue, now includes not only white Americans but also working-class Hispanics and even some Black Americans.) And just as then, these arguments face fierce pushback from other Democrats who believe that the centrists would sacrifice the partys commitment to racial equity in a futile attempt to regain right-leaning voters irretrievably lost to conservative Republican messages.

Todays Democratic conflict is not yet as sustained or as institutionalized as the earlier battles. Although dozens of elected officials joined the DLC, the loudest internal critics of progressivism now are mostly political consultants, election analysts, and writersa list that includes the data scientist David Shor and a coterie of prominent left-of-center journalists (such as Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, and Jonathan Chait) who have popularized his work; the longtime demographic and election analyst Ruy Teixeira and like-minded writers clustered around the website The Liberal Patriot; and the pollster Stanley B. Greenberg and the political strategist James Carville, two of the key figures in Clintons 1992 campaign. Compared with the early 90s, the pragmatic wing of the party is more fractured and leaderless, says Will Marshall, the president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist think tank that was initially founded by the DLC but that has long outlived its parent organization (which closed its doors in 2011).

For now, these dissenters from the partys progressive consensus are mostly shouting from the bleachers. On virtually every major cultural and economic issue, the Democrats baseline position today is well to the left of their consensus in the Clinton years (and the country itself has also moved left on some previously polarizing cultural issues, such as marriage equality). As president, Biden has not embraced all of the vanguard liberal positions that critics such as Shor and Teixeira consider damaging, but neither has he publicly confronted and separated himself from the most leftist elements of his partythe way Clinton most famously did during the 1992 campaign when he accused the hip-hop artist Sister Souljah of promoting hatred against white people. Only a handful of elected officialsmost prominently, incoming New York City Mayor Eric Adamsseem willing to take a more confrontational approach toward cultural liberals, as analysts such as Teixeira are urging. But if next years midterm elections go badly for the party, its possible, even likely, that more Democrats will join the push for a more Clintonite approach. And that could restart a whole range of battles over policy and political strategy that seemed to have been long settled.

The Democratic Leadership Council was launched in February 1985, a few months after Ronald Reagan won 49 states and almost 60 percent of the popular vote while routing the Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale. From the start, Al From, a congressional aide who was the driving force behind the group, combatively defined the DLC as an attempt to steer the party toward the center and reduce the influence of liberal constituency groups, including organized labor and feminists.

The organization quickly attracted support from moderate Democratic officeholders, mostly in the South and West and also mostly white and male (critics derided the group alternately as the white male caucus or Democrats for the Leisure Class). After moving cautiously in its first years, the DLC shifted to a more aggressive approach and found a larger audience following Michael Dukakiss loss to George H. W. Bush in 1988. Losing to a generational political talent like Reagan amid a booming economic recovery was one thing, but when the gaffe-prone Bush beat Dukakis, who had moved to the center on economics, by portraying him as weak on crime and foreign policy, more Democrats responded to the DLCs call for change. Thats when it clicked in brains that we just dont have an offer [to voters] that can sustain majority support around the country, Marshall, who worked for the DLC since its founding, told me.

Read: Who was Bill Clinton, anyway?

The DLC responded to its larger audience by releasing what would become the enduring mission statement of the New Democrat movement. In September 1989, the Progressive Policy Institute, the think tank the DLC had formed a few months earlier, published a lengthy paper called The Politics of Evasion.

The papers authors, William Galston and Elaine Kamarck, were two Democratic activists with a scholarly bent, but on this occasion they wrote with a blowtorch. In the paper, they dismantled the common excuses for the partys decline: bad tactics, unusually charismatic opponents, and the failure to mobilize enough nonvoters. Dukakiss defeat meant that Democrats had lost five of the six previous presidential elections, averaging only 43 percent of the popular vote, and the party, Galston and Kamarck argued, needed to face the dire implications of that record. Too many Americans, they wrote, have come to see the party as inattentive to their economic interests, indifferent if not hostile to their moral sentiments and ineffective in defense of their national security.

The party had veered off course, they argued, because it had become dominated by minority groups and white elitesa coalition viewed by the middle class as unsympathetic to its interests and its values. Unless Democrats could reverse the perception among those middle-class voters that they too were profligate in spending and too permissive on social issues such as crime and welfare, the party was unlikely to win them back, even if a Republican president mismanaged the economy or Democrats convincingly tarred Republicans as favoring the wealthy. All too often the American people do not respond to a progressive economic message, even when Democrats try to offer it, because the partys presidential candidates fail to win their confidence in other key areas such as defense, foreign policy, and social values, Galston and Kamarck wrote. Credibility on these issues is the ticket that will get Democratic candidates in the door to make their affirmative economic case.

The only way to prove to these disaffected middle-class voters that the party had changed, the pair suggested, was for centrists to publicly pick a fight with liberals. Only conflict and controversy over basic economic, social, and defense issues are likely to attract the attention needed to convince the public that the party still has something to offer, they declared.

Bill Clinton, who took over as DLC chairman a few months after The Politics of Evasion was published, devoured these analyses of the Democrats difficulties as if they were so many French fries, as Dan Balz and I wrote in our 1996 book, Storming the Gates. Clinton sanded down some of the sharpest edges of these ideas and adapted them into the folksy, populist style he had developed while repeatedly winning office in Arkansas, a state dominated by culturally conservative, mostly non-college-educated white Americans. But the basic prescription of the Democratic dilemma that Galston and Kamarck had identified remained a compass for him throughout his 1992 presidential campaign and eventually his presidency.

After a quarter century of futility, Clintons reformulation of the traditional Democratic message restored the partys ability to compete for the White House. But after he left office, more Democrats came to view his approach as an unprincipled concession to white conservatives, particularly on issues such as crime and welfare. Compared with Clinton, Barack Obama generally pursued a much more liberal course, especially on social issues and especially as his presidency proceeded. Hillary Clinton, in her 2016 primary campaign, felt compelled to renounce decisions from her husbands presidency on trade, LGBTQ rights, and crime (though not welfare reform). Similarly, in the 2020 primary race, Biden distanced himself from both the 1994 crime bill (which he had steered through the Senate) and welfare reform, without fully repudiating either. Even Bill Clinton, in a 2015 appearance before the NAACP, apologized for elements of the crime bill, which he acknowledged had contributed to the era of mass incarceration. With the DLC having folded a decade earlier, the PPI enduring only as a shadow of its earlier size and prominence, and other centrist organizations raising relatively fewer objections to the Democratic Partys course, the rejection of Clintonism and the ascent of progressivism appeared complete as Biden took office.

Eleven tumultuous months later, the neoNew Democrats have emerged as arguably the loudest cluster of opposition to the partys direction since the DLCs heyday. But so far, the new critics of liberalism have not produced a critique of the partys failures or a blueprint for its future as comprehensive as The Politics of Evasion. David Shor, a young data analyst and pollster who personally identifies as a democratic socialist, has promoted his ideas primarily through interviews with sympathetic journalists (taking criticism along the way for failing to document some of his assertions about polling results). Ruy Teixeira and his allies have advanced similar ideas in greater depth through essays primarily in their Substack project, The Liberal Patriot. Stan Greenberg, the pollster, summarized his approach in an extensive recent polling report on how to improve the partys performance with working-class voters that he conducted along with firms that specialize in Hispanic (Equis Labs) and Black (HIT Strategies) voters.

These analysts dont always agree with one another. But they do overlap on key points that echo central conclusions from The Politics of Evasion. Like Galston and Kamarck a generation ago, Shor, Teixeira, and Greenberg all argue that economic assistance alone wont recapture voters who consider Democrats out of touch with their values on social and cultural issues. (Todays critics dont worry as much as the DLC did about the party appearing weak on national security.) The more working class voters see their values as being at variance with the Democratic party brand, Teixeira wrote recently in a direct echo of Evasion, the less likely it is that Democrats will see due credit for even their measures that do provide benefits to working class voters.

Also like Galston and Kamarck, Shor and Teixeira in particular argue that Democrats have steered off track on cultural issues because the party is unduly influenced by the preferences of well-educated white liberals. Like the pugnacious DLC founder Al From during the 1980s, Teixeira believes that Democrats cant convince swing voters that the party is changing unless they publicly denounce activists advocating for positions such as defunding the police and loosening immigration enforcement at the border. Several Never Trump Republicans fearful that Bidens faltering poll numbers will allow a Donald Trump revival have offered similar advice. (Shor also believes that Democrats must move to the center on cultural issues but hes suggested that the answer is less to pick fights within the party than to simply downplay those issues in favor of economics, where the partys agenda usually has more public support, an approach that has been described as popularism. On the social issues, you want to take the median position, he told me, but really the game is that our positions are so unpopular, we have to do everything we can to keep them out of the conversation. Period.)

Derek Thompson: Democrats are getting crushed in the vibes war

In all this, the critics are excavating arguments from the Clinton/DLC era that had been either repudiated or simply forgotten in recent years. Teixeira sees a family resemblance between his views and the case that Galston and Kamarck developed. Shor has more explicitly linked his critique to those years. When I first started working on the Obama campaign in 2012, I hated all the last remnants of the Clinton era, Shor told one interviewer. There was an old conventional wisdom to politics in the 90s and 2000s that we all forget Weve told ourselves very ideologically convenient stories about how those lessons werent relevant and it turned out that wasnt true. I see what Im doing as rediscovering the ancient political wisdom of the past.

When I spoke with him this week, Shor argued that his generation had incorrectly discarded lessons about holding the center of the electorate understood by Democrats of Clintons era, and even through the early stages of Obamas presidency. The electorate today, he said, is less conservative than in Clintons day but more conservative than most Democrats want to admit. It took me a long time to accept this, because it was very ideologically against what I wanted to be true, but the reality is, the way to win elections is to go against your party and to seem moderate, Shor said. I like to tell people that symbolic and ideological moderation are not just helpful but actually are the only things that matter to a big degree.

As Teixeira told me, most of todays critics reject the Clinton/DLC economic approach, which stressed deficit reduction, free trade, and deregulation in some areas, such as financial markets. Even the most conservative congressional Democrats, such as Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have signaled that they will accept far more spending in Bidens Build Back Better agenda than Clinton ever might have contemplated. Shor remains concerned that Democrats could spark a backlash by moving too far to the left on spending, but overall, most in the party would agree with Teixeira when he says, You dont see that kind of ideological divide between tax-and-spend Democrats and the self-styled apostles of the market like you had back in those days.

On social issues, too, the range of Democratic opinion has also moved substantially to the left since the Clinton years. No Democrat today is calling for resurrecting the harsh sentencing policies, particularly for drug offenses, that many in the party supported as crime surged in the late 80s and 90s. All but two House Democrats voted for sweeping police-reform legislation this year. Similarly, Biden and congressional Democrats have unified around a provision that would permanently provide an expanded child tax credit to parents without any earnings, even though some Republicans, such as Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, claim that that would violate the principle of requiring work in the welfare-reform legislation that Clinton signed in 1996. The Democratic consensus has also moved decisively to the left on other social issues that bitterly divided the party in the Clinton years, including gun control, LGBTQ rights, and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

All of these changes are rooted in the reconfiguration of the Democratic coalition and the broader electorate since the Clinton years. Compared with that era, Democrats today need fewer culturally conservative voters to win power. Roughly since the mid-90s, white Americans without a college degreethe principal audience for the centrist criticshave fallen from about three-fifths of all voters to about two-fifths (give or take a percentage point or two, depending on the source). Over that same period, voters of color have nearly doubled, to about 30 percent of the total vote, and white voters with a college degree have ticked up to just above that level (again with slight variations depending on the source).

The change in the Democratic coalition has been even more profound. As recently as Clintons 1996 reelection, those non-college-educated white voters constituted nearly three-fifths of all Democrats, according to data from the Pew Research Center, with the remainder of the party divided about equally between college-educated white voters and minority voters. By 2020, the Democratic targeting firm Catalist, in its well-respected analysis of the election results, concluded that non-college-educated white Americans contributed only about one-third of Bidens votes, far less than in 1996, only slightly more than white Americans with a college degree, and considerably less than people of color (who provided about two-fifths of Bidens support). This ongoing realignmentin which Democrats have replaced blue-collar white voters who have shifted toward the GOP (particularly in small towns and rural areas) with minority voters and well-educated white voters clustered in the urban centers and inner suburbs of the nations largest metropolitan areashas allowed the party to coalesce around a more uniformly liberal cultural agenda.

Shor, Teixeira, Greenberg, and like-minded critics now argue that this process has gone too far and that analysts (including me) who have highlighted the impact of demographic change on the electoral balance have underestimated the risks the Democratic Party faces from its erosion in white, non-college-educated support, especially in the Trump era. Although Democrats have demonstrated that they can reliably win the presidential popular vote with this new alignmentwhat Ive called their coalition of transformationthe critics argue that the overrepresentation of blue-collar white voters across the Rust Belt, Great Plains, and Mountain West states means that Democrats will struggle to amass majorities in either the Electoral College or the Senate unless they improve their performance with those voters. Weakness with non-college-educated white voters outside the major metros also leaves Democrats with only narrow paths to a House majority, they argue. Shor has been the starkest in saying that these imbalances in the electoral system threaten years of Republican dominance if Democrats dont regain some of the ground they have lost with working-class voters since Clintons time.

Ron Brownstein: What Democrats need to realize before 2022

These arguments probably would not have attracted as much notice if they were focused solely on those non-college-educated white Americans who have voted predominantly for Republicans since the 80s and whose numbers are consistently shrinking as a share of the electorate (both nationally and even in the key Rust Belt swing states) by two or three percentage points every four years. What really elevated attention to these critiques was Trumps unexpectedly improved performance in 2020 among Hispanics and, to a lesser extent, Black Americans. The neoNew Democrats have taken that as evidence that aggressive social liberalismsuch as calls for defunding the policeis alienating not only white voters but now nonwhite working-class voters.

If it lasts, such a shift among working-class voters of color could largely negate the advantage that Democrats have already received, and expect moving forward, from the electorates growing diversity. You wont benefit that much from the changing ethnic demographic mix of the country if these overwhelmingly noncollege, nonwhite [voters] start moving in the Republican direction, and that concentrates the mind, Teixeira told me.

As in the DLC era, almost every aspect of the neoNew Democrats critique is sharply contested.

One line of dispute is about how much social liberalism contributed to Trumps gains last year with Hispanic and Black voters. Polls, such as the latest American Values survey, by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, leave no question that a substantial share of Black and especially Hispanic voters express culturally conservative views. Greenberg says in his recent study that non-college-educated Hispanics and Black Americans, as well as blue-collar white voters, all responded to a tough populist economic message aimed at the rich and big corporations, but only after Democrats explicitly rejected defunding the police. You just didnt get there [with those voters] unless you were for funding and respecting, but reforming, the police as part of your message, Greenberg told me. The same way that in his era and time welfare reform unlocked a lot of things for Bill Clinton, it may be that addressing defunding the police unlocks things in a way that is similar.

Yet some other Democratic analysts are skeptical that socially liberal positions on either policing or immigration were the driving force of Trumps gains with minority voters (apart, perhaps, from a localized role for immigration in Hispanic South Texas counties near the border). Stephanie Valencia, the president of the polling firm Equis Labs, told me earlier this year that Biden might have performed better with Hispanics if the campaign debate had focused more on immigration; she believes that Trump benefited because the dialogue instead centered so much on the economy, which gave conservative Hispanics who were worried about a continued shutdown [due] to COVID a permission structure to support him. Terrance Woodbury, the CEO of the polling and messaging firm HIT Strategies, similarly says that although Black voters largely reject messaging about defunding the police, they remain intently focused on addressing racial inequity in policing and other arenasand that a lack of perceived progress on those priorities might be the greatest threat to Black Democratic turnout in 2022.

Other political observers remain dubious that Democrats can regain much ground with working-class white voters through the strategies that the neoNew Democrats are offering, especially when the Trump-era GOP is appealing to their racial and cultural anxieties so explicitly. Even if Democrats follow the critics advice and either downplay or explicitly renounce cutting-edge liberal ideas on policing and cancel culture, the party is still irrevocably committed to gun control, LGBTQ rights (including same-sex marriage), legalization for millions of undocumented immigrants, greater accountability for police, and legal abortion. With so many obstacles separating Democrats from blue-collar white voters, theres not a lot of room for Democrats to improve their standing with those voters, says Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist who has extensively studied blue-collar attitudes.

Rather than chasing the working-class white voters attracted to Trumps messages by shifting right on crime and immigration, groups focused on mobilizing the growing number of nonwhite voters, such as Way to Win, argue that Democrats should respond with what they call the class-race narrative. That approach directly accuses Republicans of using racial division to distract from policies that benefit the rich, a message these groups say can both motivate nonwhite intermittent voters and convince some blue-collar white voters. Were much better off calling [Republicans] outscorning them for trying to use race to divide us so that the entrenched can keep their privilegesand laying out a bold populist reform agenda that actually impacts people across lines of race, says Robert Borosage, a longtime progressive strategist who served as a senior adviser to Jesse Jackson when he regularly sparred with the DLC during his presidential campaigns and after.

For their part, first-generation New Democrats such as Galston and Marshall believe that the current round of critics is unrealistic to assume that neutralizing cultural issues would give the party a free pass to expand government spending far more than Clinton considered politically feasible. Too many Democrats think its about the things government can do for you, but lots of working people of all races want opportunity They want a way to get ahead of their own effort, Marshall told me. Shor, unlike some of the other contemporary critics of progressivism, largely seconds that assessment. There are things that people trust Republicans on and you have to neutralize those disadvantages by moving to the center on them, and that includes the size of government, that includes the deficit, he said. You have to make it seem that you care a lot about inflation, that you care a lot about the deficit, that you care about all of those things.

Read: Liberals are losing the culture wars

Though Biden hasnt directly engaged with these internal debates, in practice hes landed pretty close to the critics formula. The president has overwhelmingly focused his time on trying to unify Democrats around the sweeping kitchen-table economic agenda embodied in his infrastructure and Build Back Better plans. Hes talked much less about social issues whether hes agreeing with the left (as on many, though not all, of his approaches to the border) or dissenting from it (in his repeated insistence that he supports more funding, coupled with reform, for the police.) I dont know where his heart is on this stuff, but I think hes a creature of the party and what he thinks is the party consensus, Teixeira told me. He doesnt want to pick a fight.

Yet despite Bidens characteristic instinct to calm the waters, the debate seems destined to intensify around him. Galston, now a senior governance fellow at the Brookings Institution, has recently discussed with Kamarck writing an updated version of their manifesto. Is there a basis for the kind of reflection and rethinking that was set in motion at the end of the 1980s? I think yes, Galston told me. Meanwhile, organizations such as Way to Win are arguing that Democrats should worry less about recapturing voters drawn to Trump than mobilizing the estimated 91 million individuals who turned out to vote for the party in at least one of the 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections.

The one point on which both the neoNew Democrats and their critics most agree is that with so many Republicans joining Trumps assault on the pillars of small-d democracy, the stakes in Democrats finding a winning formula are even greater today than they were when Clinton ran. Theres a greater sense of urgency, I would say. Because if we had gotten it wrong in 1992, the countrys reward would have been George H. W. Bush, which wasnt terrible at the time and in retrospect looks better, Galston said. This time if we get it wrong, the results of failure will be Donald Trump.

Originally posted here:

Why Democrats Can't Win the Culture Wars - The Atlantic

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