Tangle - A controversial ruling on homelessness.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Starting point is 00:01:00 From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about a controversial ruling in the Ninth Circuit about homelessness. We're going to talk about what the court said, what it means, and some reactions to it, as well as why this case is probably going to end up before the Supreme Court. Before we jump in, a quick heads up.

Starting point is 00:01:47 We just published a new video on our YouTube channel about UFOs. That's right. As many of you know, I'm a big UFO lover. And we got some news. It fell into my lap. A story that perfectly fit into Tangle because it involves a whistleblower and Congress and intelligence agencies and all those things that can justify me doing something about aliens. So we did it. The video is up, Tangle News on YouTube. It's the only place you can see it.

Starting point is 00:02:18 I encourage you to go check it out. All right, with that out of the way, we're going to kick off things today with our quick hits. First up, Iowa's legislature finalized a ban on nearly all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Governor Kim Reynolds, the Republican, is expected to sign the ban on Friday. Number two, President Biden met with NATO leaders in Lithuania. Ukraine's potential membership status is a main topic of discussion. Number three, a federal judge in San Francisco declined to block Microsoft's $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard, a video game company. Number four, former President Trump's legal team asked for an indefinite postponement

Starting point is 00:03:05 of his trial due to the volume of preparation needed in his presidential campaign. Number five, inflation eased to 3% in June, the slowest pace in more than two years as prices continue to moderate. Tonight, the most powerful federal appeals court in the western U.S. says unless cities build to let cities and towns force the homeless from the streets unless communities provide shelter beds for them. Cities large and small across the west have tried and failed to overturn the ruling for years. A decision was handed down just this week and it says a city cannot prosecute people for sleeping on the streets. It stems from a case out of Boise, Idaho. In 2009, six homeless people there sued the city after police ticketed them for sleeping outside, even though shelters had turned them away. This week, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called that cruel and unusual punishment.

Starting point is 00:04:23 The lawyers who represent those six people call the ruling historic. On Thursday, the most powerful federal appeals court in the western United States reaffirmed that cities and towns are not allowed to force homeless people off the streets unless those communities provide adequate alternative shelter for them. The Ninth Circuit is made up of 29 appellate judges whose rulings are binding for nine western states. In Martin v. Boise, a 2018 case, the Ninth Circuit held that cities were prohibited from enforcing anti-encampment laws unless they could prove they had enough shelter beds available to house homeless people in their cities. For several years, cities and towns across the West

Starting point is 00:05:05 have attempted to overturn the high court's position on homelessness, which has limited the ways it can enforce policies on homeless encampments. The latest challenge came from Grants Pass, Oregon. It started in July 2020 when a court in Medford, Oregon decided that Grants Pass's treatment of the homeless was unconstitutional. The court said the city was violating the Eighth Amendment, which says, quote, excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Grants Pass had been levying fines on homeless people and encampments to deter sleeping outside in public places or using things like cardboard boxes to build shelters.

Starting point is 00:05:46 The city appealed the ruling to the Ninth Circuit, which, as it has in the past, upheld the ruling with a three-judge panel. Grants passed and appealed for the full circuit to hear the case. On Thursday, the court declined, leaving the decision in place. Allowing cities and counties unfettered discretion to criminalize their homeless citizens will not reduce the number of people who are forced to live outside, Ed Johnson, the director of litigation at the Oregon Law Center and lead attorney on the case, said. It will increase the number because criminalization destabilizes people who are living outside

Starting point is 00:06:17 and it makes it harder for them to connect with jobs and housing that they need in order to get inside. For years, the Ninth Circuit's decision in Martin v. Boise has been dictating how cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles treat the homeless. For instance, Los Angeles has had to tolerate encampments because the city does not have enough shelters to house those it wants to move off the streets. But after years of President Donald Trump appointing conservative justices to the Ninth Circuit, the traditionally liberal court is now more divided on the issue, and a growing number of judges are writing in dissent. With this decision, our circuit's jurisprudence now effectively guarantees a

Starting point is 00:06:55 personal federal constitutional right for individuals to camp or to sleep on sidewalks and in parks, playgrounds, and other public places in defiance of traditional health, safety, and welfare laws, a dubious holding premised on a fanciful interpretation of the Eighth Amendment, Judge Dymard O'Scanlan wrote in dissent. We are the first and only federal circuit to have divined such a strange and sweeping mandate from the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. The majority framed the decision as narrow, noting it does not mean homeless people have an unrestrained right to sleep anywhere they choose. Instead, the panel's ruling means the government cannot criminalize sleeping with rudimentary protections in public places when a person has nowhere else to sleep. Reactions to the decision were divisive, not just

Starting point is 00:07:41 in Grants Pass, where the community appears torn, but also nationally across the left and right. Grants Pass says it now plans to appeal to the Supreme Court. Today, we're going to explore the range of arguments and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. Many on the left applaud the ruling and criticize the dissent, arguing that criminalizing homelessness will not solve it. Some concede this issue is very complicated, but maintain that the panel's ruling is not a green light for unchecked homelessness encampments. Others say the ruling is almost certain to invite new challenges to encampment laws in West Coast cities like San Diego. In the Los Angeles Times, LZ Granderson said jailing unhoused people for sleeping in public is no solution to homelessness.

Starting point is 00:08:41 This week, a group of conservative judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit spoke out against allowing homeless people to sleep in public spaces after the court's liberal majority decided that those with nowhere else to rest cannot be subject to criminal penalties, Granderson wrote. The court ruled that the government was barred from imprisoning people for not having a place to live, but with the Ninth Circuit more evenly split, the next test case or the next election could upend this ruling very much for the worse. A 2018 ruling from the Ninth Circuit said clearly that city law violates the Eighth Amendment insofar as it imposes criminal sanctions against homeless individuals for sleeping outdoors on public property when no alternative

Starting point is 00:09:21 shelter is available to them. The site of encampments or a homeless person having a mental health episode can be frightening, Granderson said, but the Eighth Amendment was established so that the government would not forget the humanity of the people over whom it has power. Surely, the law must protect individuals whose only crime is having no place to sleep. In the SFist, Jay Barman said Grant's pass had tried to ban homeless people from using cardboard boxes as shelter or sleeping in city parks. Let's start by saying this issue is complicated and often leads to arguments about what to do with homeless people who refuse traditional shelter, either because they prefer the independence of the street. But the fact remains that the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles, among others, do not have nearly the shelter capacity to temporarily house everyone who is unsheltered. And given that fact, the next

Starting point is 00:10:10 question is about how cities treat people who want to lie down or camp on a sidewalk or empty lot, and what the city can do under the Constitution. Key to this case was that grants pass imposed fines and punishment, given that it's unconstitutional to criminally punish involuntary homeless persons. The ruling by the appeals court included caveats, saying that city ordinances prohibiting camping in the public right-of-way and prohibiting camping in certain locations or during certain hours might prove constitutional, Barman said. The court also indicated that homeless people who have the means to pay for shelter or accessible free shelter can be held criminally liable if they opt to stay on the street. So, cities may still enact rules, but they can't unreasonably punish people for breaking them, especially when there is no alternative shelter to offer. The San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board said the

Starting point is 00:11:00 ruling adds questions to the city's homeless crackdown. San Diego's controversial new law bans homeless camps in public areas at all times when shelter beds are available. But it goes even further, forbidding homeless people from sleeping outside in large parts of the city, in particular within two blocks of K-12 schools, existing shelters, transportation hubs, and waterways, even if all shelters are at capacity, the board said. The differences between the grants passed and San Diego laws are many, but the court focused on how controlling cities can be in regulating homelessness. Two of the 29 appellate judges on the Ninth Circuit argued that this was a narrow ruling, but activists and legal bloggers depicted it as further affirmation of the view that cities can't find loopholes to evade honoring the constitutional rights of the unsheltered, the board said. Vigorous challenges

Starting point is 00:11:50 certainly await what can be described as loopholes in San Diego's ordinance designed to allow for the cruel punishment of homeless people, even when there are no beds for them. All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. Many on the right criticize this ruling and encourage a challenge to the Supreme Court. Some argue that the right to vagrancy has been wholly invented. Others suggest the court's ruling is helping to destroy many West Coast cities. The Washington Examiner editorial board called on the Supreme Court to save the West Coast from the Ninth Circuit. Last week's denial by the court for a full court review of the efforts of Grants Pass Oregon to address that city's homelessness crisis creates an opportunity for the Supreme Court to step in and undo the Ninth Circuit's mistake. There is no

Starting point is 00:12:45 Eighth Amendment right to camp in a public park. The Ninth Circuit's invention of such a right is spreading disease and chaos across the West, and the Supreme Court should fix the problem as soon as possible, the board said. Anti-vagrancy laws are older than the Constitution itself, first originating in England and crossing the Atlantic with the first colonists. Not one person suggested there should be a right to camp on city property when the founders adopted the Bill of Rights. The Eighth Amendment was about protecting people from torture and extortion and has since been used to overturn sentences for crimes that were considered disproportionate, including life sentences for juvenile offenders. Never has the Eighth Amendment been used to invalidate a criminal statute entirely. Never, that is, until the Ninth Circuit did exactly that in 2018.

Starting point is 00:13:31 The homeless population was growing before 2018, but since then it has exploded. More than half of all unsheltered homeless people now live in California alone, and Los Angeles has over 70,000 homeless people in encampments today. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called it a judge-made right to vagrancy. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history,

Starting point is 00:14:09 and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases.

Starting point is 00:14:24 What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCcellvax.ca. This case is ripe for Supreme Court appeal, the board said.

Starting point is 00:14:53 Progressive policies have turned cities like San Francisco and Portland into havens for homelessness and disorder. But spare some blame for liberal judges on the Ninth Circuit of Appeals who have now divined in the Constitution a right to public vagrancy. Martin has handcuffed local jurisdictions. For example, a police officer in San Francisco cannot cite a homeless person who has set up a tent and defecated outside the Ninth Circuit's courthouse, even if government workers have offered temporary housing to the individual. As long as the city has fewer shelter beds than homeless people, police can't force vagrants to move off public property. Yet, many of the homeless decline housing and treatment for addiction or mental health issues. The Ninth Circuit's rulings make it harder for local

Starting point is 00:15:35 officials to leverage criminal and civil penalties to force vagrants to accept treatment and housing, the board said. As Ninth Circuit Judge O'Scanlan wrote in dissent, the ban on cruel and unusual punishment was meant for modes of punishment not intended to arrogate authority from the legislature to prohibit acts like the ones considered here. In PJ Media, Victoria Taft mocked the Ninth Circuit ruling as promising more tent cities for everyone. Grant's past sought to have a larger panel of judges to hear its appeal. Leftists on the court said no way, and conservative judges on the court asked, in so many words, the crazy judges if they'd bothered to look out the window lately and see what they'd done. Reagan appointee Judge O'Scanlain issued a dissenting statement calling the original ruling

Starting point is 00:16:18 a dubious holding premised on a fanciful interpretation of the Eighth Amendment, which now effectively guarantees a personal federal constitutional right for individuals to camp or to sleep on sidewalks and in parks, playgrounds, and other public places in defiance of traditional health, safety, and welfare laws. But there's potentially great news, Taft said. The most reversed court in land is likely to be reversed when this case gets to the Supreme Court. The bad news is that those worse-off cities could become Thunderdome before a ruling overturning this insanity is issued. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I have the solution for the homelessness crisis

Starting point is 00:17:09 plaguing many American cities. If I did, I'd be acting on it, not writing this newsletter. But the most compelling piece I've ever read about how to address homelessness was written by Aaron Carr, an actual expert on the issue. Carr lays out in very simple and easy to follow terms that the most important driver of homelessness is not addiction, mental illness, or poverty, it's the cost of housing. I won't try to summarize the piece here, but I will just say it is very convincing and it changed my mind about the issue in several important ways. You can and should go read it when you're done with this podcast. There is a link in today's episode description. From a policy perspective, the implication of Carr's work is that the best way to address homelessness is to find ways to make shelter and housing more affordable for the

Starting point is 00:17:54 homeless. And perhaps more importantly, to find ways to make temporary free housing more readily available for people to transition off the streets. In that regard, the Ninth Circuit's ruling has some appeal to me. It serves as a gigantic incentive for cities and jurisdictions to ramp up efforts to shelter the homeless if they want to move them off the streets. This is good. Forcing people who can't afford to pay for shelter to pay fines for sleeping outside and then potentially throwing them into jail is not going to reduce homelessness. In fact, it will probably do the opposite. This is self-explanatory on the fines. Taking more money from people who have little and hoping it will result in them finding a place to live is nonsensical.

Starting point is 00:18:36 Meanwhile, prison is often a pipeline to long-term homelessness. The Prison Policy Initiative estimates people who have been incarcerated more than once are 13 times more likely to end up homeless. When I think of things I want the local government doing, caring for the most downtrodden people in our communities and keeping our streets clean and safe are two things near the top of the list. Sheltering the homeless seems to touch both of those issues. As for the ruling itself, I think it's more narrow than some of the

Starting point is 00:19:05 conservative coverage of it makes it seem. As judges on the circuit said quite explicitly, naturally our holding does not cover individuals who do have access to adequate temporary shelter, whether because they have the means to pay for it or because it is realistically available to them for free, but who choose not to use it. Nor do we suggest that a jurisdiction with insufficient shelter can never criminalize the act of sleeping outside. This is good too. Hypothetically, a person setting up an encampment in a public place when they can afford housing or to sleep in a shelter with open beds down the street should be subject to getting moved out of that public space and into shelter or housing. I think the legal

Starting point is 00:19:45 outcome there is fine. And yet, I can't shake the feeling that this ruling doesn't look quite right. To get from the Eighth Amendment that excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted, to the idea that a city can't cite a homeless person for sleeping in a public space if it has one fewer bed than total homeless people, does in fact seem like a stretch. On the one hand, determining what constitutes an excessive fine for a person with very little is tough to do, as is determining whether it would be cruel and unusual punishment to force a homeless person into a prison for violating vagrancy laws. But more to the point,

Starting point is 00:20:25 this case is not a policy suggestion. It's a matter of constitutional law. If a city council elected by the people decides that it wants to impose rules about where homeless people can sleep and what the city should do to enforce those rules, they seem well within their rights to do that. Again, I think cities fining or imprisoning the homeless is counterproductive. In fact, I think it is pretty obviously a bad solution to the problem, but I'm also not convinced it should be illegal for them to fine or imprison homeless people as a deterrent for sleeping in certain places if they determine that to be the best policy for their community. There is a world in which the simple threat of fines or prison time actually

Starting point is 00:21:06 moves some homeless people off the street, which is a plausible and positive outcome. This is a very, very challenging case, and I'll be curious to see what happens if it goes to the Supreme Court. For now, though, I think it's fair to note that the combination of this decision and the policies to address homelessness in the cities in question are creating a crisis, one in which too few homeless people are getting the help they need and too many public spaces are turning into campgrounds. Working from that position, these jurisdictions would be better off focusing on creating more affordable housing than spending time figuring out how to move those people from camps to prisons. figuring out how to move those people from camps to prisons. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Jim in Rogers, Arkansas.

Starting point is 00:21:56 Jim said, some news outlets have been reporting on the demise of the Wagner Group and merger with Russian regular army troops. If that is the case, what does the future look like for the Wagner troops operating in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East? Russia can't afford to be seen as the prime manager of those troops, can it? No, I don't think it can. As a refresher, for the past 10 years, the Wagner Group has operated as a private military company in Russia, fighting for the governments of African and Middle Eastern countries like Syria, Libya, Central African Republic, and Mali in their civil wars. It's widely believed that their operations in these countries have allowed Russian-linked companies

Starting point is 00:22:35 to win lucrative resource contracts in these areas, while the Kremlin can maintain plausible deniability of having a regional military presence, especially one credibly accused of routinely committing war crimes. I definitely don't see the Russian military taking up arms in these conflicts directly. Instead, I would actually expect there to be more of the same from Russia and Africa. For the Wagner group troops themselves, I don't think all or even most of them will join the Russian military. I actually find it more convincing that Wagner fighters, who are used to getting paid much more than what they would get in the Russian military, would instead just continue fighting for the countries that still have the Wagner group under contract. Wagner existed before Progozhin, and it will likely continue to exist after him.

Starting point is 00:23:19 And if it doesn't, Russia still has other paramilitary organizations that will probably expand to fill the void left behind. The interesting prospect to me, though, is that there's an opportunity for other countries to fill the void too. When Russia first invaded Ukraine, the UN passed a resolution demanding Russia to stop. The resolution itself wasn't too surprising or interesting, but it was definitely eye-opening to me to see how many African countries voted against it or abstained. In addition to its willingness to deploy paramilitary companies, Russia has been able to claim some moral high ground on the continent by dragging out Europe's

Starting point is 00:23:55 and United States' imperial histories to look good by comparison. China can make the same argument and is already invested very heavily in the continent. It's possible Xi Jinping seizes the moment to run some of Putin's playbook. All right, that is it for our reader question today. As always, if you want to have a question answered in the podcast, you can reply to our newsletter or write directly to me, Isaac, I-S-A-A-C, at readtangle.com. All right, next up is our under the radar section. In a novel campaign fundraising strategy, Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is running a commission-based fundraising program. It appears to be the first fundraising strategy of its kind, in which any person who fundraisers for the campaign will get a 10%

Starting point is 00:24:42 commission on all the money they raise. Ramaswamy framed the idea as a way to democratize the ability to make money on campaigns, calling the traditional structures an oligopoly of the managerial class. Critics of the idea called it a Ponzi scheme, with a similar framework to multi-level marketing schemes. ABC News has the story and there is a link in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The rough estimate of how many Americans experience homelessness in 2022 is 582,000. The rate of Americans who experienced homelessness in 2022 was 18 of 10,000.

Starting point is 00:25:26 The rate of veterans who experienced homelessness in 2022 was 20 of 10,000. The rate of Black Americans who experienced homelessness in 2022 was 48 of 10,000. And the rate of Pacific Islanders who experienced homelessness in 2022 was 121 per 10,000. That's the highest of any group. Finally, the increase in the homeless population for every 10% increase in housing costs is 8%. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. Since 1974, the beaches of Cape Cod and the Gulf of Maine have hosted a strange site, sea turtles. The turtles, Kemp's ridley turtles specifically, like warm water. But with the Atlantic Ocean getting warmer, they have

Starting point is 00:26:11 wandered north from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to Maine, which is a problem for the critically endangered species when the weather starts to get cold. However, the animal care center at the New England Aquarium outside Boston has helped to recuperate these turtles to be healthy enough to travel back home to Texas. The only problem was how to get them there. Enter Turtles Fly 2, a nonprofit that organizes hundreds of pilots who volunteer their time and resources to help get these sea turtles back home and out of the cold. According to Ken Andrews, the nonprofit's director, 90% of the turtles that we've moved to rehab have ended up back in the ocean. CBS News has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. dot com forward slash membership and consider becoming a member. If you are listening to this podcast and you're like, what am I going to do now? The podcast is almost over. You should go to YouTube and then type in Tangle News and then watch our brand new video that just went up this

Starting point is 00:27:15 morning about UFOs and aliens, because obviously it's going to be awesome. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Long. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bukova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle, please go to retangle.com and check out our website. We'll be right back. of Criminal Web is families' buried history andax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older,

Starting point is 00:28:51 and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.

Tangle - A controversial ruling on homelessness.

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