Introduced on April 29, the International Press Freedom Act is one of at least three press freedom bills that Congress has considered since Saudi authorities killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018. But while other bills have proposed piecemeal protections — such as sanctions on restrictive governments or a government office for threatened journalists — Kaine and Graham’s bill takes a more comprehensive approach. In addition to directing State Department funds toward investigating and prosecuting crimes against journalists abroad, the law would create a new visa category for threatened reporters and open a State Department office with a $30 million annual fund to help journalists report safely or relocate.

Press advocacy groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists have praised Kaine and Graham’s bill, claiming that the legislation would “bolster U.S. foreign diplomacy on global press freedom.” In a statement, Kaine emphasized the U.S.’s responsibility to spread its free speech ethos.

“Enshrined in both our Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, press freedom is a core American value that we must constantly promote around the globe,” he said in a press release. “With this bill, our country will let journalists know that we will protect their right to report and offer safe harbor when they are threatened.”

But that safe harbor doesn’t seem to apply to foreign journalists the U.S. government itself has threatened. For years, the Justice Department has worked to extradite and prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing Army war logs provided by Chelsea Manning in 2010, and increased the pressure following his 2016 publication leaked Democratic Party emails that the Justice Department said were hacked by Russia. And though the government’s extradition efforts are inching closer to fruition amid several U.S. appeals, Kaine and Graham have remained silent.

Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the U.K. but was arrested in 2019 on an extradition warrant under charges related to his 2010 publication of military documents. Assange’s charges — which include one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and 17 counts under the Espionage Act for exposing national defense information — could land him in prison for a maximum of 175 years.

Of Assange’s many critics, Kaine and Graham have been some of the loudest. In the years since the publication of the military war logs and the Democratic National Committee’s emails, the senators have taken to cable news to air their contempt. “[WikiLeaks] released classified information between our government and foreign leaders that embarrassed foreign leaders and our government,” Graham said on CNN in 2017, after former President Donald Trump tweeted support for Assange. “So Mr. Assange is a fugitive from the law hiding in an embassy who has a history of undermining American interests.”

Kaine, whose vice presidential hopes may have been hampered by the 2016 email leak, celebrated Assange’s arrest in 2019. “It’s something that we expected, we knew the day would come, and justice has to be done,” he told CNN anchors in 2019. “The thing that I’m most interested in is, when you get to the bottom of this story, how do we learn enough to protect sensitive information from vandals like Julian Assange?” (Graham, meanwhile, tweeted his approval of the arrest.)

Over a year after Assange’s detainment, England’s High Court held a series of hearings about his case, which culminated in a January 2021 ruling that blocked Assange’s extradition. But in August, the court expanded the grounds on which the U.S. could appeal the decision, flooding the court with a wave of appeals. (The U.K.’s extradition procedure requires British prosecutors to represent the U.S. in court, meaning that U.K. taxpayers are footing the prosecution’s bill.)

“It’s fine to offer visas to persecuted journalists, but … it’s immensely hypocritical for the U.S. to do this at the same time it is seeking to extradite Julian Assange.”

“It’s clear they’re out to get him,” said Chip Gibbons, policy director for Defending Rights & Dissent, who has covered Assange’s case for Jacobin. “It’s fine to offer visas to persecuted journalists, but … it’s immensely hypocritical for the U.S. to do this at the same time it is seeking to extradite Julian Assange.”

Assange isn’t the only publisher or whistleblower the bill sponsors have targeted. Graham, one of loudest critics of government leakers in Congress, championed the imprisonment of Edward Snowden and slammed Obama for commuting Manning’s prison sentence in 2017. Kaine has occasionally taken a softer stance, although he also opposed Manning’s commutation and said that Reality Winner “has got to suffer the consequences” for leaking a classified document pertaining to the 2016 election. Still, the senators bemoaned the number of journalists imprisoned worldwide in the press release for their bill.

A spokesperson for Kaine said that he introduced the International Press Freedom Act because of his “long-standing support for human rights inspired by Kaine’s long-standing support for human rights … and in particular his outrage over the death of Jamal Khashoggi” but did not answer questions about Assange’s extradition. Representatives for Graham and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a co-sponsor of the bill who has also voiced support for Assange’s extradition, did not respond to requests for comment.

And press freedom advocates, while supportive of the press freedom bill, said that the legislation would yield the biggest impact if the U.S. followed its own policies.

“Anytime we, or the U.S. government, or members of Congress are talking about press freedom internationally, it’s, in my mind, a good thing,” said Trevor Timm, co-founder and executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “But for any of that advocacy to be remotely effective, it’s important for the U.S. to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.”

Correction: September 8, 2021, 11:45 a.m. ET

This story previously referred to a maximum prison sentence for Julian Assange of 147 years, not 175 years.

The post Press Freedom Bill Would Protect Journalists Facing Persecution — but Not Julian Assange appeared first on The Intercept.

The researchers went on to find that surprise billing was not only relatively common, but also a tactic that private equity-owned hospital staffing companies had employed to increase revenue. According to their findings, when either of the country’s two largest staffing companies took over a hospital’s emergency department, out-of-network charges soared.

The research was based on data from more than 2 million claims provided by UnitedHealthcare, the largest private health insurance company in the United States, under a data sharing agreement with Yale. As stipulated in contracts between the two entities, United was not named in the study. In the Yale paper and its subsequent media coverage — by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, among others — the data is attributed to an unnamed insurance company.

But internal emails between executives at UnitedHealthcare provided to The Intercept reveal that the insurance giant provided its data while working behind the scenes to influence the paper and a 2017 follow-up — not necessarily their statistical conclusions, but their narrative framing. The latter paper portrays private equity-run hospital staffing companies, which are perpetually at odds with insurers over physician compensation, in a negative light for using surprise billing as a negotiating tool to hike up in-network rates.

TeamHealth, one of the two staffing agencies named in the study, alleges in a civil lawsuit that the insurer and its subsidiaries had lowered out-of-network reimbursement rates for their own benefit, forcing staffing companies to hike their own rates to make up the difference. Arguing that this practice qualifies as racketeering, the staffing company filed a civil suit against United in May 2020 on behalf of three emergency departments, and a Nevada district court compelled United to turn over its executives’ emails with the Yale researchers during discovery. After months of litigation, the court held that the communications could be released to the public. TeamHealth representatives sent them to The Intercept.

The emails do not invalidate the Yale study’s conclusions. Since its publication, other research has replicated its findings using different datasets, and TeamHealth admitted to saddling patients with unexpected bills in 2017. But the emails do show frequent contact between United officials and the researchers over a period of nearly two years. They offer an instructive look into the ways corporations can shape the framing and media coverage of academic research.

“As a researcher, it is ideal to have a data use agreement that has no restriction on what you write or what you find,” said Genevieve Kanter, an assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. But in a field like health care economics, where most of the data belongs to private organizations, a company’s data cache becomes its leverage. Even agreements that give a company the power to veto a study’s publication or sway its media spin aren’t unheard of, Kanter said.

“If this is the only way to get this kind of data, researchers feel they are not in a strong enough bargaining position to push back on these restrictions.”

The 2017 Yale paper was the first major study to pin surprise billing on private equity-owned staffing companies, effectively letting insurers off the hook. The paper’s prestigious marquee and thorough dataset propelled the findings to the national stage, and the onslaught of media coverage soon caught attention on Capitol Hill. In 2020, Congress passed bipartisan legislation to ban surprise billing, citing the Yale study in its effort to investigate the practice. The bill, the No Surprises Act, was universally lauded as a necessary step to protect patients.

“There is no blameless actor in this scenario, except maybe the patient,” said Erin Fuse Brown, the director of the Center for Law, Health & Society at Georgia State College of Law. Like many health care experts, she views surprise billing as one of the many ways patients get caught between two for-profit entities: insurers and physician staffing companies. Insurers say that staffing companies charge unreasonable out-of-network rates that they can’t reimburse, and staffing companies argue that insurers use low out-of-network reimbursement to force providers into their networks. “But more of the blame tends to fall at the feet of these private equity-backed providers.”

The study and the subsequent frenzy were to United’s benefit. The public outrage toward TeamHealth and EmCare pressured the staffing companies to knock down their high out-of-network prices and bring their providers into an insurance company’s network.

In an email UnitedHealthcare executive Ted Prospect wrote to other executives in February 2017, Prospect celebrated the impact of Yale’s first paper in 2016 and asked his colleagues to give their feedback to the second paper’s results.

“As you know, the first round of the release of this research … has had a tremendous impact (media coverage and interest from others in Congress and the FTC),” wrote Prospect. “The results are stunning and likely to generate significant media and other attention when they go public (which is probably not for a couple more months as they are in the peer review process of the results right now. Once this is done, they will draft the article),” Prospect went on. “Please take a look and let me know your thoughts.”

It’s not uncommon for a private company to give researchers nonbinding suggestions to their drafts, as United’s data use agreement with Yale stipulated. It’s also not uncommon for companies to request anonymity, arguing that full transparency could reveal trade secrets to competitors. But the fact that companies are unlikely to hand over their data for projects that portray them unflatteringly or conflict with their business interests creates tension for researchers: They can only examine the data if companies want them to.

“It is not ideal, and research ethics tells us there shouldn’t be these kinds of restrictions on research agreements,” Kanter said.

In one email sent in February 2016, before the study began, United’s actuary sent other top executives his edits to an agreement that described the scope of the project and United’s expected role. The version of the agreement unsealed by the court — an addendum to the data use agreement — explains United’s role in the two Yale papers later published in 2016 and 2017. 

According to the addendum, if the paper did not suit the United executives’ liking, they could oppose its publication.

According to the addendum, if the paper did not suit the United executives’ liking, they could oppose its publication.

United also had the ability to edit and suggest changes to the paper’s drafts, and executives were kept up to date on the researchers’ goals and progress, the emails show. In one internal United email, President Dan Rosenthal suggested an addition to the paper.

“I’d like to see some solutions in addition to the problem – like maybe suggest that hospitals should bundle their hospital based physicians into their contracts with insurers,” Rosenthal wrote to Prospect in an email with the subject “RE: OON–Confidential—DRAFT of Phase 2 Research Results” in February 2017, before the second paper’s publication. “Im also interested in knowing if the pattern in the report exists with other hospital based physicians or with certain types of non-hospital based specialities such as neurosurgery.”

Prospect responded the next day. “Thanks, Dan. Very helpful. They are thinking through possible solutions to recommend (one of the reasons they were looking at the impact of the NY law) and I’m sure they’ll appreciate this feedback.”

Rosenthal’s request was a surprising one; insurers tend to advocate for price regulation rather than bundling. But the suggestion made it into the study. A 2018 version of the paper concluded with a “policy proposal to require hospitals to sell ‘ED packages’ [emergency department packages] to insurers that include both physician and hospital services,” which would compel staffing companies and hospitals to “bundle” their services in their contracts with insurers.

Other emails confirm that United sent the researchers suggestions before supporting the second paper’s publication. In May 2017, United’s general counsel asked Rosenthal if he had reviewed and “approved Phase 2 of the Yale study.” Before approving the paper, Rosenthal sent a list of suggested edits. In one, he asked the researchers to emphasize the size of EmCare and TeamHealth, which the paper referred to at that point as “firm 1” and “firm 2.”

“I wonder if the report could include a table of the largest firms to create a logic flow to why firm 1 & 2 are highlighted in this report. I assume they were because they are the two largest firms in the space, representing at least x% of the market but it is hard to tell from the words on the page.”

The 2017 draft incorporates that suggestion. “There are two leading national outsourcing firms — EmCare and TeamHealth — that collectively capture approximately 30% of the physician outsourcing market,” the introduction reads. 

Not all researchers agree on best practices for data use agreements. At the Brookings Institution think tank, giving the company the power to suggest changes is a step too far, according to Loren Adler, the associate director of the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy. “Suggesting what you should say in the paper, I would say that’s not normal,” Adler said. “You can’t stop the data provider from writing you an email, but generally, in the data use agreement language, we are very careful to put language that the data provider has no say over what the meat of the paper is.”

Meanwhile, United executives were adamant about keeping their participation in the study quiet. In one email communications employee Brenda Perez sent to communications vice president Tyler Mason in May 2016, seven months before the first paper’s publication, Perez warned of the pressure that United’s connection to the study could put on the insurer:

Submitted that, unless how our data is portrayed in the study findings merits revision, the company will be referred to in the piece simply as ‘a large carrier.’ As was the case with the HCCI piece, our support of [Yale researcher] Zack is expected to remain ‘behind-the-scenes.’ With that said, Bob pointed out that this time around, outside of the HCCI context, it will be easier to deduct [sic] that we are behind the study. Since findings will bring up what’s been happening in the clinician world under a less-than-positive light, we’ll have to look into the possibility of further distancing ourselves from the piece and messaging in anticipation of media inquiries.

United’s commitment to anonymity — which was stipulated by its data use agreement with the Yale researchers — remained steadfast as the researchers communicated with New York Times reporters, who had expressed interest in an exclusive on the study and a partnership with their data-and-analysis section, The Upshot.

“The NYTimes will not report on the source of the data any where in the reporting and it will not be named in the paper,” Zack Cooper, a Yale professor and the director of Health Policy at the Yale University Institution for Social and Policy Studies, assured Prospect in 2017. “My strategy will mirror the approach I took last time, which is to discuss the paper for what it is, which is science using good data to study a big problem.”

By “last time,” Cooper was likely referring to the 2016 paper, which had found that surprise billing was a major problem affecting about a fifth of Americans who visited an emergency room in their insurance network. But the earlier paper named no culprits: The notion that surprise billing was the result of a predatory business tactic had yet to emerge, and no specific companies were found responsible.

This time, the Times was interested in an exclusive on the study — but only if the newspaper could name the staffing companies that were supposedly inflating the cost of out-of-network emergency care, Cooper told Prospect. United had originally planned not to name the firms, and an executive characterized their disclosure as “unnecessarily poking the bear.”

“My question is – what benefit is there from specifically identifying them?” Rosenthal asked.

“Public shaming comes to mind,” the company’s general counsel advised. “That said, with costs on the rise, throwing heat and light on them might not be a bad thing. Ultimately, it’s a business decision.”

The Times coverage presented a worthwhile opportunity. United’s adversaries were named in the paper.

Margot Sanger-Katz, a reporter for the New York Times who broke the news of both studies, said she and her co-authors felt confident enough in the data to leave out United’s involvement.

“When we reported our story, we knew that Prof. Cooper had a data use agreement with the insurer that prevented him from disclosing its identity,” she told The Intercept. “The Times was not involved in that arrangement. We felt reassured through our reporting that the dataset was large and representative enough to be useful in answering the questions asked in the paper. No one outside of our newsroom had any input in our story.”

The 2017 Times article on the study and subsequent public outcry blamed EmCare — and, to a lesser degree, TeamHealth — for surprise billing. The staffing companies, however, have argued that they were forced to issue surprise bills because the insurers’ out-of-network reimbursements were unsustainably low. United’s narrative dominated.

The direction of public outrage was to United’s benefit, since it pressured TeamHealth and EmCare to bring down their high out-of-network costs and bring their providers into an insurance company’s network. To amplify the paper’s findings for maximum impact, United executives communicated with the researchers about media opportunities.

“It wasn’t clear during today’s call whether [UnitedHealth senior vice president for policy and strategy] Jeanne de Sa will be assisting with putting Zack in contact with policy circles’ point people, speaking circuits, etc., which she did for last year’s paper,” Perez wrote.

The direction of public outrage was to United’s benefit.

United cited the study frequently in its own press releases, appearing optimistic about its ability to shape national legislation. Prospect told another executive he’d ask Cooper to seek media coverage of a 2016 Florida law banning surprise billing.

“The Congressman from Texas (who was quoted in the NY Times article) reached out to Zack Cooper (Yale professor) asking for his help to propose new legislation on this issue,” Prospect wrote to Rosenthal and Chief Medical Officer Sam Ho. “In summary, we have made tremendous progress in terms of highlighting and bringing credibility to this key issue of surprise out of network emergency room physician charges at in network hospitals. We’re in a great place to build on this momentum by continuing to support more research to help policymakers gain a deeper understanding of the issues, possible fixes, and to introduce broader legislation particularly in problem areas such as Texas.”

In a statement to The Intercept, TeamHealth said the study was part of a United scheme to decrease out-of-network reimbursement. “The study is much more than the ‘academic faux pas’ United called it in court — it’s yet another attempt to gain financially at the expense of patients,” a TeamHealth spokesperson said. EmCare agreed in its own statement, adding that United “apparently convinced a reputable academic institution to justify their predatory behavior with a narrow set of data from the UnitedHealthcare leadership team.”

United said the staffing companies were just trying to deflect blame.

“TeamHealth appears to be trying to downplay their unethical billing practices, in which patients can be stuck with surprise medical bills, by attacking an independent study in which we had no editorial control,” a spokesperson told The Intercept. “UnitedHealth Group routinely makes its data available to clinical, economic, and other academic researchers without editorial control because the truth matters.” 

Cooper declined to comment, but a spokesperson for Yale said the study was free of United’s influence.

“Yale’s researchers have an obligation to do work on important social issues. When that work requires access to large private data sets, Yale negotiates strong data use agreements that explicitly protect its research and researchers from outside influence,” said Yale spokesperson Karen Peart. “Peer review prior to publication adds an additional layer of assurance that the conclusions of Yale researchers are scientifically valid.”

While scientific validity is crucial, it is not the only factor that drives public influence. Corporate interests loom large over academic research, shaping public opinion and informing legislation as they go.

The post UnitedHealthcare Guided Yale’s Groundbreaking Surprise Billing Study appeared first on The Intercept.

As Manhattan’s top prosecutor, Bragg will oversee some of the most consequential criminal cases in the country, including the ongoing investigation into the finances of former President Donald Trump and his organization. On Thursday, the incumbent DA charged the Trump Organization with grand larceny and other offenses related to tax fraud. Bragg will also be the country’s preeminent prosecutor of white-collar crime, given the DA’s jurisdiction over Wall Street, where he will lead investigations into multinational investment schemes, money laundering, and workplace violations.

Weinstein’s loss comes as a win for progressives and some government reform advocates, who argued that the multimillionaire’s close ties to Wall Street presented a conflict of interest. Of the 27 donors who made contributions over $35,000 to Weinstein’s campaign, all but one were Wall Street or business leaders. Weinstein, who worked as a prosecutor in Barack Obama’s Department of Justice and is married to hedge fund executive Boaz Weinstein of Saba Capital Management, also contributed $8.2 million of her own money to her campaign in the final weeks of the race, some of which went toward ads attacking Bragg. 

In total, Weinstein, one of the most moderate candidates in the primary, raised nearly $13 million: more than five times the amount Bragg raised, and more than the amount the seven other candidates raised combined. Her powerful war chest allowed for a digital ad campaign and mailers that helped boost her name recognition. Only two months before the election, two polls showed Weinstein in the lead with twice as many votes as Bragg; she led him 16 percent to 6 percent in a Benson Strategy Group Poll, and 11 percent to 5 percent in an internal poll paid for by the campaign of another candidate, Tahanie Aboushi. (Unlike New York City’s municipal elections, New York state’s district attorney races do not have ranked-choice voting.)

But as the June 22 election drew nearer, the gap in the race narrowed. Buoyed by a New York Times endorsement, Bragg — who ran on a platform to the left of Weinstein’s — gained steam. A poll conducted by Data for Progress two weeks before the race showed Bragg tied with Weinstein, and a poll the following week showed him ahead. 

Bragg, who oversaw cases against film producer Harvey Weinstein and the Trump administration at the state attorney general’s office, focused his campaign on criminal justice reform rather than prosecution. He has vowed to not prosecute most low-level crimes, such as sex work; to offer restorative justice programming for cases involving serious crimes; and to never seek sentences longer than 20 years — though he noted he may find “exceptional circumstances.”

Weinstein, meanwhile, leaned into a narrative peddled by right-wing pundits and law enforcement officials that framed the election as a referendum on public safety. Although rates of many violent crimes have decreased over the past year, factors including the Covid-19 pandemic and increased access to guns have contributed to a rise in gun violence in major cities across the country — making crime a central issue in the DA’s race as well as in municipal elections. But missing from this framing is the fact that before 2020, violent crime in New York City had dropped to its lowest level in decades. The number of murders in New York City last year — between 400 and 500 — is similar to what it was in 2012, when the murder rate was said to have plummeted.

And though Weinstein, who has called herself a “progressive prosecutor,” supported some criminal justice reforms, her platform was more moderate than those of her peers. She pledged to invigorate the office’s wrongful conviction unit, seek only minimum sentences “as a default rule,” and “reduce significantly” the use of convictions for nonviolent offenses. But unlike the race’s left-most candidates, she did not promise to stop prosecuting nonviolent misdemeanors, seek sentences less than 20 years, fully decriminalize sex work, or dramatically change the focus of the DA’s office. While her progressive opponents lauded the state’s 2019 bail reform laws that eliminated cash bail, Weinstein said she believes that judges should be allowed to consider a suspect’s potential threat to public safety before setting bail — a practice currently prohibited under the bail reform legislation.

Bragg’s and Weinstein’s different tones on public safety and criminal justice became a sticking point during the final weeks of the race. In several ads, Weinstein sought to frame Bragg’s stances against incarceration as a threat to women and public safety. In one TV ad, a woman slams Bragg’s opposition to a law that would require police to make an arrest in domestic abuse felony cases, and argues that he “would put women and families at further risk of abuse.” As several of his and Weinstein’s competitors in the race denounced the ads, Bragg, who is Black, described them as part of the “worst tradition of our politics playing on racial overtones.”

Weinstein’s campaign tactics continued to put her on the defensive. During a televised June 17 debate, several of the seven other candidates criticized the former federal prosecutor for her advertisements and for paying almost no federal income taxes in four recent years, as ProPublica reported. Weinstein and her husband maintained that their tax filings are completely legal because their net worth fell after significant losses at Saba Capital Management.

Bragg’s victory marks a major win by progressives, who saw the rare opening for the Manhattan district attorney — a position only three people have been elected to in the last 79 years — as an opportunity to enact progressive reform. Bragg, a Harlem native poised to become the borough’s first Black district attorney, says that reducing mass incarceration will be his top priority. 

“We are one step closer to transforming the District Attorney’s office to deliver safety and justice for all,” Bragg said in a statement. “One that ends racial disparities and mass incarceration. One that delivers justice for sexual assault survivors. One that holds police accountable. One that prosecutes landlords who harass tenants, employers who cheat their workers, and stands up to hate crimes. And one that stops the flow of guns onto our streets.”

The post Wall Street’s Candidate Loses Manhattan District Attorney Primary appeared first on The Intercept.

Singas joins six other justices — including Judge Anthony Cannataro, whom the Senate also confirmed Tuesday — who have all been nominated by Cuomo. In addition to a potential impeachment trial against Cuomo over sexual assault allegations and underreported Covid-19 nursing home deaths, Singas will now have the power to adjudicate some of the most vital criminal justice reform cases in a state with an incarceration rate four times that of Canada and where Black and Latino residents are disproportionately put behind bars.

Some progressives have seen Cuomo’s decision to nominate Singas as a calculated political choice. Along with the Senate, the Court of Appeals would rule in Cuomo’s impeachment trial if the state legislature votes to impeach him, and Singas appears to have a connection to the governor. Singas has called the chief judge of the Court of Appeals, Janet DiFiore, a “friend” and “mentor.” DiFiore, meanwhile, has been an ally to Cuomo for years: The governor appointed DiFiore to two gubernatorial positions before nominating her as chief judge and requested in February that Attorney General Letitia James work with DiFiore to find a lawyer to investigate Cuomo’s sexual assault allegations. (James declined.)

Andrew Cuomo’s office strongly denied the claims that Cuomo nominated Singas for his own political gain. “She came from a list from a judicial screening committee that found her qualified and the merits of her qualifications were vetted and ultimately approved by the state senate,” spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said in an email to The Intercept. “That’s the process and if you want to print dumb conspiracies from ill informed members of the advocacy industrial complex that’s up to you.”

Singas has a history of fighting progressive criminal justice reforms as Nassau County DA, most notably when she led the charge against the state’s 2019 bail and discovery reform laws, some of the most progressive in the country. The sweeping legislation, which went into effect in 2020, eliminated cash bail for most nonviolent offenses and allowed defense attorneys to access and review the prosecution’s evidence without having to submit a written request.

The reforms aimed to level the playing field for defense attorneys and for defendants unable to afford to pay bail. But Singas argued that the changes would allow repeat offenders to commit more crimes.

“I was one of the most vocal opponents against many of these changes,” Singas said in 2019 after the bill’s passage. “We implored legislators to put in standards so that prosecutors could argue to judges about public safety. That was wholeheartedly rejected and now we’re in the situation we’re in.”

Even after Singas lost that battle, her assistant district attorney and general counsel began giving presentations to prosecutors across the state on ways to hold a defendant on bail after they were charged with a non-bailable offense — effectively skirting the new laws, critics argued.

As a member of New York’s highest court, Singas could play a role in shaping the legislation she’s spent two years fighting against. Cases regarding the implementation of the new bail and discovery reforms have swirled in lower-level courts since the legislation went into effect in 2020, and these questions could soon make their way to the Court of Appeals.

“Those are going to get up to the court pretty quickly because they’re the nuts and bolts of litigation,” said Amanda Jack, a public defender who was part of a group of attorneys and activists in opposition to Singas’s nomination. “Every Democrat should be against [Singas’s] nomination because she’s going to undo the landmark legislation they passed.”

Singas will also have a say in an upcoming decision that could have monumental implications for the state’s undocumented immigrant community. On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit referred a question to the New York Court of Appeals over whether “petit larceny,” also known as simple theft or shoplifting, is a crime “involving moral turpitude.” If the court rules in the affirmative, then simple theft and shoplifting could become deportable offenses, threatening hundreds of undocumented immigrants and potentially violating New York City’s “sanctuary city” policies.

In addition to Singas’s stance on bail and discovery reform, progressives have blasted her pro-cop track record as Nassau DA. In 2019, Singas declined to prosecute police officers in Freeport, New York, who beat, tased, and cursed at Akbar Rogers, a 44-year-old Black man, while arresting him. She defended the decision, claiming an “independent expert found the level of force used to be justified by law and policy.” The case drew the attention of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who voiced support for activists’ demands to launch a state investigation, though that never materialized.

Singas’s confirmation arrives amid nationwide calls by progressives to nominate more public defenders as judges, since the overwhelming majority of those serving on the bench previously worked as prosecutors or corporate attorneys. Some of these calls have been heard: President Joe Biden has notably nominated more public defenders to the high courts than his predecessors, Alliance for Justice’s Amber Saddler noted in a blog post in April.

Activists and some lawmakers staged a campaign to oppose Singas, pointing to her punitive approach to criminal justice as a district attorney and her lack of judicial and appellate advocacy experience. The New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which issued recommendations on the seven candidates recommended to the Court of Appeals, did not recommend Singas, arguing that her experience didn’t extend beyond criminal prosecution and thus wasn’t adequate training for the state’s top court.

“She lacks many of the kinds of experiences one would hope for among nominees to the state’s highest court. For example, she has no judicial experience or significant personal experience as an appellate advocate,” said Alan Lewis, the chair of the group’s judicial screening committee.

On Tuesday, five Democratic state senators made a last-ditch effort to encourage their colleagues to vote against her confirmation, releasing a joint statement Tuesday morning that read: “In a moment when our state and country are experiencing an unprecedented and long overdue racial justice reckoning, it is especially harmful to appoint a judge who has shown an active resistance to an equitable criminal legal system.”

“A year after George Floyd was murdered by the police, sparking an unprecedented national and state-wide reckoning with the ways in which the criminal legal system has too often served to sustain systemic racism, it is disappointing that the Governor would nominate D.A. Singas, whose entire career has been as a prosecutor,” said New York Sen. Julia Salazar, who signed Tuesday morning’s statement.

Despite the opposition, more moderate Democrats expressed support for the district attorney. State Sen. Anna Kaplan’s office said: “In regards to those who would draw conclusions about Madeline Singas based solely on the fact that she has had a distinguished career as a prosecutor, Senator Kaplan believes those individuals should get to know Madeline better, examine her accomplishments and record, and not put her in a box based on expectation and assumption.”

A spokesman for the Nassau DA’s office refused to comment on criticisms regarding Singas’ limited experience and pro-carceral track record, and instead directed The Intercept to past comments in support of Singas’ confirmation from Scott Banks, the attorney-in-chief of the Legal Aid Society in Nassau County, and Oscar Michelin, a criminal defense attorney and member of the Long Island Hispanic Bar.

Even though Singas has been confirmed, progressives will have another shot at shaping the court soon, when Justice Eugene Fahey reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70 on December 31. The next opening after Fahey will most likely come in 2025, when Chief Judge Janet DiFiore turns 70.

The post New York Senate Confirms Pro-Cop District Attorney to Highest Court appeared first on The Intercept.

Eighteen consumer advocacy groups and progressive think tanks, including the American Economic Liberties Project and Public Citizen, signed onto a May 27 letter urging the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to implement the new regulation. Known as Section 1033 in reference to a provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the reform seeks not only to ban banks from hoarding customers’ data, but also to introduce competition in a sector that is largely controlled by Wall Street interests. The progressive groups argue that this could bring down costs and improve services for consumers.

“A strong implementation of Section 1033 will be critical to beating back anti-competitive, data-hoarding behavior and putting safeguards in place to protect consumers’ access and control over their data in their financial lives,” reads the letter addressed to Dave Uejio, the acting director of the CFPB. “The massive amount of consumer data that large financial institutions have accumulated gives them a significant built-in advantage over competitors.”

Progressive and antitrust groups may find an ally in the CFPB. The agency’s nominated director, Rohit Chopra, is a noted consumer advocate who critiqued bank consolidation and supported competitive industry practice in his three years as a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission. During the Senate committee hearings for his FTC nomination in 2018, Chopra criticized how credit bureaus aggregate, sort, and sell data that’s inaccessible to the consumers themselves, keeping the agencies unaccountable.

“This is an industry where you cannot vote with your feet,” Chopra said. “When consumers can’t take their business elsewhere, competitive dynamics cannot address certain consumer harms.”

Though Chopra hasn’t formally commented on Section 1033, he underscored his support for competitive practices during his Senate committee hearing in March for his CFPB nomination.

“I don’t want to see a banking system or financial services system where new market entrants cannot get in, cannot compete and win the day,” he said. “Dominant players should not be able to squelch out competition and that’s something we always need to be mindful of.”

Big banks, meanwhile, have pushed back against the new rule. Organizations like the Clearing House, whose members include industry giants like Wells Fargo and JPMorgan, argue that opening up access to financial data makes users more susceptible to security risks. Progressives have acknowledged the potential security risk of making financial data more readily available, but antitrust advocates say that such a risk could be mitigated if the CFPB issued firmer guidelines to regulate data aggregators while allowing consumers to move their information to trustworthy third-party apps without the roadblocks banks typically put in place.

“There’s always a security risk, but that’s not really a reason to not allow portability, not allow people to use the information they have about themselves,” said Linda Jun, senior policy counsel with Americans for Financial Reform.

The general public seems to be on the progressives’ side. In a May survey conducted by Data for Progress of 1,319 likely voters, 75 percent of respondents said they supported a CFPB rule that would make it easier to “switch between banks and other financial institutions.”

The change could vastly reshape the future of banking. By breaking up the monopolized power of big banks and streamlining the process of transferring information to third-party apps or other accounts, the CFPB could empower fintech companies and smaller institutions to take center stage in the financial ecosystem — if the agency doesn’t succumb to pressure from Wall Street interests.

“It is no surprise that large financial institutions, whose bottom lines benefit from reduced competition, as well as trade associations and other organizations that represent them, have cautioned the agency against moving ahead with a formal rulemaking,” said the groups in their letter. “It is crucial that the CFPB refuse to yield to such pressure.”

The post Progressive Groups Push for New Rule That Could Break Up Big Banks appeared first on The Intercept.

Erica Smith, a state senator in North Carolina now running in the 2022 primary for Richard Burr’s soon-to-be-vacant U.S. Senate seat, has raised over $111,000 so far — the second most out of nine Democratic candidates, according to campaign filings. But Smith’s Twitter account continues to lack a blue checkmark. Though Twitter verification isn’t enough to sway an election on its own, the badges establish a candidate’s legitimacy, lending them a sheen of credibility, and helping to expand their reach on social media — crucial steps for candidates running with less institutional and financial support.

“Social media in itself has already been a great tool for non-establishment candidates to break through and meet people where they are on these platforms,” Smith said. “When you’re a non-establishment candidate, you’re already going up against systems and barriers and roadblocks. This is just another one.”

Twitter has not yet laid out an official verification process for the 2021 special elections for U.S. Congress and the 2022 state and federal elections, according to Twitter spokesperson Trenton Kennedy. Kennedy said he did not know when the platform plans to roll out a new policy and that Twitter hasn’t decided whether it will verify primary candidates. Of the 20 candidates in this year’s upcoming special elections who have active Twitter accounts, just six accounts — three Democrats and three Republicans — are verified.

Twitter’s verification policies have varied widely in past elections. Up until December 2019, the company stated it would only verify candidates in general elections (although many well-connected campaigns could get around this policy by speaking to Twitter employees or using other back channels, according to two social media strategists). It wasn’t until The Intercept published an article in October 2019 exposing how being unverified hurt primary challengers that Twitter vowed to verify candidates in 2020 state and federal primaries.

In order to qualify for verification under the 2020 policy, candidates had to meet Ballotpedia’s threshold for official candidacy, which involved registering with a campaign finance agency and appearing on official lists of candidates. Each account also had to identify the candidate clearly with a name, bio, website, and photos.

But in early 2020, almost immediately after Twitter unveiled the new procedure, candidates said the social media giant was falling short of its commitments. In late February, The Verge reported that a congressional challenger in Ohio remained unverified just weeks before his race, and an analysis by The Hill found that 90 gubernatorial and congressional candidates in five states weren’t verified one week before Super Tuesday.

In most cases, Twitter verified official candidates immediately after a request. But now, with no official policy in place, there’s little formal avenue to verification: Three campaigns that spoke with The Intercept say Twitter refused to issue them blue badges, instead asking them to submit a general support ticket.

Smith, who announced her candidacy in January, meets Twitter’s 2020 verification qualifications. She’s already been deemed official by Ballotpedia, she’s registered with a campaign finance agency, and she’s set to appear on the official candidate list once the filing deadline passes. In fact, this wouldn’t be Smith’s first blue check. She earned a verification during her unsuccessful Senate run in 2020 (she lost in the primary to Cal Cunningham), but Twitter stripped her of her check mark when she updated her handle to reflect her new campaign. At the time, a member of Twitter’s Government and Politics team reassured her that it would only take a few weeks to have her verified again, Smith said.

But a few weeks later, the Government and Politics team told Smith that all verification requests were being put on hold until “early 2021,” when the platform said it would roll out a new verification procedure. Then, in an email sent to Smith on April 30, Twitter’s politics team said it wouldn’t verify any primary candidates in the race after all.

“Unfortunately, the general verification program is currently closed while we review our policy,” read the email obtained by The Intercept. “We are waiting to apply blue badge verification to profiles of election candidates until after the state’s primary. Please circle back with us once that process is complete in your state.”

Not being verified could seriously impact Smith’s reach in such a crowded field of Democrats. A frontrunner in the primary, state Sen. Jeff Jackson, raised more than $1 million as of April, and has 81,600 followers on his verified Twitter account, compared to Smith’s 20,600.

“It’s been incredibly frustrating, but my team and I have been working on this for five months,” Smith said. “Every time it seems like we meet the metric, they seem to kick the can down the road a little bit further.”

Verification wouldn’t just boost Smith’s reach, it would also allow her to filter her messages and notifications to show only other verified accounts, which can streamline engagement and help her gain the attention of higher profile users. Many verified users hardly notice tweets from unverified accounts, according to Kasey O’Brien, the social media manager at Middle Seat, a digital consulting firm that helps manage progressive campaigns. “I don’t really interact with, draft copy off of, or quote tweet — from any of the accounts that I’ve managed — anyone who isn’t verified,” she said.

Lucas Kunce, a Senate candidate in Missouri, is also unverified. In mid-March, staffers for the former Marine officer, who supports abolishing corporate PACs and establishing universal health care, reached out to Twitter to ask about verifying Kunce’s Twitter page. A representative from the Government and Elections team said in two different emails reviewed by The Intercept that the “general verification program is currently closed” and that the team is “only submitting requests for elected government officials and agencies.”

“There was once a time when these companies thought they were or said they would be bastions of democracy,” said Kunce. “But, instead, they’ve become enforcers of the status quo. They’ve used their algorithms to divide us so they could make money off of ads.”

Kunce is running against four other Democrats in the 2022 primary to replace outgoing Republican Roy Blunt. Kunce raised $280,990 as of late March — only about $21,000 less than former state Sen. Scott Sifton, who leads the Democrats in fundraising. None of the Democratic candidates in the race are verified, but two out of the five Republicans are. One, Eric Greitens, is a disgraced former governor of Missouri who signed a wide-ranging anti-abortion bill into law in 2017.

In the crowded race, Kunce’s lack of verification doesn’t only lessen his legitimacy in the eyes of constituents, but also deprives Kunce of valuable tools available only to verified accounts, such as impersonation support that identifies and suspends copycat accounts, said Caleb Cavarretta, his campaign manager.

“When you’re verified and you’re a candidate, in the past, you had this political support service where you can much more quickly get in touch with someone before their formal support tickets,” he said.

Twitter isn’t very incentivized to verify primary candidates. Most upstart challengers don’t have a large and passionate group of followers, and without a noisy PR campaign or threat to its bottom line, the company has little reason to act on their demands.

“The problem is that it isn’t tied to their commercial performance. It’s a civic incentive,” said Alex Howard, a digital governance expert and the founder of a public policy initiative called the Digital Democracy Project. “It’s in [Twitter’s] interest to cater to people who have large existing platforms.”

It should really be the government’s responsibility to create rules for social media companies around elections, Howard said. The Federal Election Commission could be the place for such guidelines, since the agency enforces regulations relating to campaign finance. The commission proposed a rule in 2019 clarifying that online political ads must disclose who paid for them just as TV ads do, but the new regulation was never adopted because the agency did not have enough members for most of 2020 to operate. However, in order for these sorts of regulations on social media companies to be implemented, Congress or the White House would have to push for them, Howard said. “There has not been a leading voice out of the White House on this set of issues.”

At least one candidate who didn’t meet Twitter’s 2020 verification requirements recently got a blue check. Dianne Morales, a progressive nonprofit executive running for New York City mayor, was verified on May 3 even though she’s not in a state or federal race.

“They don’t give you any sort of heads up,” said Lauren Vega, Morales’s social media manager. “It just popped up.”

Morales’s team spent months trying to find a contact at Twitter to verify her account but to no avail. Finally, Vega posted a tweet on her personal account asking Twitter to verify Morales. Morales’s large online base — she has more than 40,000 Twitter followers — amplified the request, tweeting “near daily,” according to Vega, in support of Morales’s verification, which may have helped move the needle.

The blue check has already helped boost Morales’s online presence. “Our engagement has increased,” Vega said. “There was definitely a spike the day of, and it’s been consistent.”

Kennedy, the Twitter spokesperson, did not say why Morales was verified.

The post Twitter’s Lackluster Verification Policy Hurts Primary Challengers appeared first on The Intercept.