WJI's Daily Reads for Aug. 9, 2022

Don't forget to vote! It's primary election day. For info on the candidates for Milwaukee County sheriff and clerk of circuit court, see the videos of our candidate forums HERE (sheriff candidates) and HERE (clerk of court candidates).

Associated Press: Hate-crime life sentences for two men who killed Ahmaud Arbery.

U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood handed down the sentences against Travis McMichael, 36, and his father, Greg McMichael, 66, reiterating the gravity of the February 2020 killing that shattered their Brunswick community. William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, who recorded cellphone video of the slaying, was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

“A young man is dead. Ahmaud Arbery will be forever 25. And what happened, a jury found, happened because he’s Black,” Wood said.

Reuters: Biden administration moving to end "remain in Mexico" policy.

Several thousand migrants forced to wait in Mexico under a Trump-era program gradually will be allowed to enter the United States to pursue their asylum claims in coming weeks and months, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Monday.

NBC: FBI search Donald Trump's home for classified documents.

“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said in a lengthy email statement issued by his Save America political committee.

Washington Monthly: Why is the U.S. Department of Justice still siding with fossil fuel companies in litigation?

The DOJ under Trump put the government on record opposing the plaintiffs. But the department could change course. That would require Garland, who critics say is hampered by timidity and adherence to old norms, to do an about-face.

The Biden administration’s silence in these cases is exasperating for the plaintiffs, given Biden’s explicit pledge to support such suits.

Slate: Did the verdict against Alex Jones have meaning if he continues to broadcast?

Of course, any expectation that any given legal proceeding—such as the Mueller probe, Trumps two impeachments, and even the very effective Jan. 6 committee hearings—might lift us out of the misinformation quagmire in which we find ourselves has proven again and again to be too fanciful.

But unlike those other proceedings, the Alex Jones trial offered one important thing: It forced Jones to inhabit the same space as his victims, to at least pretend to listen to them and to feign respect for a judge. It showed us all what a genuine encounter with the “other side”—a side that couldn’t be dismissed, threatened, and insulted with impunity, at least just this once—actually looks like. Thin gruel in the grand scheme of post truth, maybe, but still instructive and illuminating in the extreme.

Marijuana Moment: DOJ argues in gun rights case that medical marijuana users are too dangerous to trust with guns.