Oregon Governor Pardons 45,000 People Convicted on Marijuana Charges

Outgoing Oregon Governor Kate Brown on Monday pardoned 45,000 state residents with minimum marijuana offenses.

The pardon applies to convictions for possession of an ounce or less of marijuana in cases before 2016 where the person involved was 21 or older. The measure applies to 47,000 state convictions and will forgive about $14,000 total in fines and fees linked to prior offenses.

“Oregonians should never face housing insecurity, employment barriers, and educational obstacles as a result of doing something that is now completely legal, and has been for years,” Brown said in a statement. Oregon legalized recreational weed use in July 2015.

She acknowledged that while state residents “use marijuana at similar rates, Black and Latina/o/x people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates.”

Brown’s decision comes about a month and a half after President Joe Biden pardoned more than 6,500 U.S. citizens federally convicted of simple marijuana possession, as well as those charged in Washington, D.C. He called on governors nationwide at the time to follow in his footsteps. He also instructed Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Attorney General Merrick Garland to review how marijuana is classified under federal drug laws.

Recreational marijuana use is legal in 21 states and D.C. Maryland and Missouri are the two latest states to legalize weed, with state residents voting to pass amendments in favor of the move during the midterm elections.

Arrests for marijuana possession account for between 40 to 50 percent of all annual drug arrests nationwide, according to the ACLU, but “Black people are still more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people in every state, including those that have legalized marijuana.”

On November 17, the Department of Labor announced that Krispy Kreme would be paying nearly $1.2 million in back wages and damages to 516 workers “to resolve overtime violations in multiple locations.” In other words, there was massive wage theft at the doughnut company and now it has to pay up.

The department first began its investigation at a Louisville, Kentucky-based Krispy Kreme, but it soon found violations to be “widespread and systemic” and expanded its probe to all 242 locations across the country.

The department determined that the $2.5 billion company had failed to include monthly bonuses in some employees’ regular pay rates, consequently paying workers less overtime.

“Overtime and minimum wage violations are common violations found in food service industry investigations,” said Principal Deputy Wage and Hour Administrator Jessica Looman in the Labor Department’s directive.

Because of that, actions like this directive would ideally serve both as consequence for malpractice and also as a warning to other companies that there indeed are accountability mechanisms for stealing from workers.

Meanwhile, Krispy Kreme denies it did anything wrong at all. “We do not agree with the department’s findings and the basis for them,” Krispy Kreme said to USA Today. “However, we have agreed to settle this matter with no admission of wrong-doing in the best interests of our business and our team members.”

While the amount owed back to each worker varies, the math averages out to about $2,300 per worker. According to court documents obtained by the Winston-Salem Journal, some workers are due upward of $13,000.

In the aftermath of the hate-fueled shooting at a Colorado Springs gay nightclub that left five people dead and at least 25 injured, many right-wing pundits are grotesquely doubling down on the kind of rhetoric that helped lead to such violence in the first place.

Figures like Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, and Ben Shapiro apparently didn’t have time to denounce the shooter or the hate crime. Instead, they focused on what they see as the real violence: some imagined progressive agenda to violate children. That actual people died, and why they did, was of less interest to them.

These posts not only show little actual concern for those harmed in the shooting, but they also come from individuals who have been on the forefront of fomenting brain-melting, blood-pressure-rising conspiracy about LGBTQ people.

Just last week, Shapiro warned that any Republican who voted to codify same-sex marriage “should not be in the Republican party.”

Walsh, alongside reactionary Twitter account ‘Libs of Tiktok’ (run by Chaya Raichik), was a leading voice claiming that bomb threats against Boston Children’s Hospital were hoaxes—until a woman was arrested and charged in September for making one of these threats. Walsh and Raichik have spread conspiracies about, and incited harassment towards, hospitals like Boston Children’s Hospital that provide gender-affirming care. Boston’s Children Hospital has faced numerous threats since then.

Even after the shooting, Libs of TikTok posted a tweet Sunday singling out a Colorado drag organization.

Walsh, Owens, Shapiro, and company dismiss those who rightly identify them as contributors to violent discontent, calling them pawns of the Democratic agenda, or the liberal media, or leftists, or some other amorphous bucket to slander. The shtick works to a point, but there are more than enough people—politically-engaged or not, LGBTQ or not—who plainly see how monstrous it is to demonize people for simply wanting to be who they are and love who they love.

All three of Colorado’s Republican representatives neglected to mention that LGBTQ people were targeted in the Colorado Springs mass shooting over the weekend when making statements about the tragedy.

Five people were killed and at least 25 wounded when a gunman entered the queer Club Q and opened fire Saturday night. The shooter has since been charged with murder and hate crimes.

On Sunday, Lauren Boebert, Ken Buck, and Doug Lamborn shared bland, anodyne statements expressing their condolences and, of course, their prayers. Not a single one of them mentioned that the LGBTQ community was specifically attacked.

Their comments were quickly flooded with people calling out their complicity in creating an atmosphere that led to the attack. All three have a history of homophobia and opposition to gun control.

Conspiracy theorist and election denier Boebert, in particular, has a long track record of horrific bigotry towards the LGBTQ community. She has repeatedly accused queer people of grooming children and spewed vitriol at drag shows.

Coincidentally, the last event advertised on Club Q’s Facebook page before the shooting was a drag brunch.

Boebert also appeared on a livestream hosted by a far-right activist who has supported the death penalty for gay people.

And she is staunchly pro-gun. She appeared in a Zoom congressional hearing with a bookshelf full of guns in the background; she and her three children posed with automatic rifles in front of their Christmas tree; and prior to being in Congress, she owned a gun-themed restaurant called Shooters Grill.

Since the Club Q shooting, her website continues to sell a mug, a hat, and stickers mocking trans and non-binary people that say, “Non-Bidenary,” and a baseball cap that says her name, with the L replaced by the outline of a handgun.

Elon Musk says he won’t let conspiracy theorist Alex Jones back on Twitter, but there’s no guarantee he’ll stick to that.

His announcement came less than a day after he reinstated former President Donald Trump’s account on the platform, despite earlier assurances that he would not make such unilateral decisions.

When asked Sunday night if he would let the InfoWars host back on Twitter, Musk paraphrased a Bible quote to explain why he won’t.

He then said he has “no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”

Jones has been court-ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages to the families of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, who sued him for saying the shooting was staged. He admitted he understands the attack was real.

But Musk’s promise about Jones came a day after the Tesla founder reinstated Trump’s Twitter account. Musk has previously said he planned to form a “content moderation council” to review major decisions such as reinstating banned accounts. Instead, it seems that content moderation council has been reduced to a Twitter poll, influenced by the voting of bots. 

It should come as no surprise that Musk seems to be doing just whatever he wants with Twitter. Since acquiring the platform in a $44-billion court-ordered deal, he has fired the top executives, the board of directors, and about half of the employees. The rest are leaving in droves.

Advertisers have similarly dropped Twitter like a hot potato over concerns about Musk’s content moderation policies, or lack thereof.