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Lenny Pozner doesnt understand why people are surprised to learn he used to be a regular listener of Alex Jones show.

Pozners 6-year-old son, Noah, was one of the 26 children and adults who were killed during the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Soon after the tragedy, Jones began using his Austin-based media juggernaut to spread bogus claims that the shooting was a staged government conspiracy made up of crisis actors and fake personas.

Still, for Pozner one of the Sandy Hook parents involved in a series of defamation lawsuits that have turned into a fierce legal reckoning for Jones the fact that he used to tune into the right-wing conspiracists broadcasts during long car drives is less a twist of fate and more a reflection of something obvious and unremarkable: Jones has reach.

People repeat that as if it's a big deal. But what I've noticed is that a lot of people pretend they don't know who Alex Jones is, he said. That's bullshit. Everybody knows who Alex Jones is.

At the height of his influence in 2018, Jones boasted an audience of about 1.4 million daily visits to his websites and social media accounts, according to The New York Times. And from 2015-18, Jones Infowars store raked in more than $50 million annually, HuffPost reported.

But while Jones built his brand and fortune on a keen and brazen use of misinformation, he has been unable to distance himself from his Sandy Hook falsehoods and his role in a rally that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Jones recently sought immunity from federal prosecutors investigating the Capitol riot and has been subpoenaed by the U.S. House committee investigating the attack.

In the past year, Jones has lost all the defamation lawsuits filed by 10 families of Sandy Hook victims, including Pozners. Juries in the cases still have to decide how much Jones must pay the victims, but on April 17, three of Jones companies Infowars, Prison Planet TV and IW Health filed for bankruptcy. The next day, Jones told his listeners he was totally maxed out financially.

While the Chapter 11 filings may be part of Jones legal strategy to obstruct court proceedings he used them to delay his Austin jury trial, and Sandy Hook parents pushed to dismiss them last week theyre also the latest development in Jones downswing from his spot at the top of far-right media. Along with a sweeping ban on social media, the loss of a fawning president and looming legal penalties, Jones troubles have weakened his once massive reach and influence. Close observers of his operations say the fate of the states most infamous misinformation peddler is more uncertain than ever.

Neither Jones nor his company Infowars responded to multiple requests for comment for this story.

The Walter Cronkite of misinformation

Jones has used Infowars his primary media company that airs shows he claims are syndicated on radio stations across the U.S. to share his conspiracy theories with his millions of followers. According to Jones, the U.S. government has meddled with water supplies and the weather, the COVID-19 pandemic was planned, and Bill Gates is a master eugenicist working to control world populations.

During the pandemic, Jones sold products like Nano Silver toothpaste and Superblue Silver Immune Gargle via his Infowars store, claiming they would fight COVID-19. He also sells doomsday prepper materials and dietary supplements, which he presents as antidotes to the false threats he drums up on his show.

His show usually features loud, energetic rants and appeals to save the country.

Alex Jones is unique; hes entertaining, Pozner said. A lot of people mistrust their government. People want a fresh perspective outside of the corporate media's version of news.

Jones got his start advancing bogus theories on Austin Community Access Television and local radio in the early 1990s. From those pulpits, he spread falsehoods like claiming that the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco was a government conspiracy, that government authorities carried out the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and that authorities in Austin used black helicopters to surveil the public.

A graduate of Austins Anderson High School and an Austin Community College dropout, Jones was removed from his local talk radio spot in 1999 after executives said his fringe views were unsavory for advertisers.

That year, Jones founded Infowars.com. In the early years of the platform, Jones claimed the 9/11 attacks were an inside job and helped produce a feature-length film purporting to expose the tragedy as a government plot.

About a decade and a half later, Jones had attracted millions of viewers, was grossing millions in annual revenue and had captured Donald Trumps attention.

Rachel Moran, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public who studies how disinformation and misinformation spread, said conspiracy theorists like Jones are able to build wide audiences in part because they provide their followers with a sense of community.

Jones is very good at building a community of people who think the same things as him and providing them with what they want, she said. I think it's easy for us when we don't like a figure to demonize them and pretend they are not good at what they do. Actually, Alex Jones is very good at what he does.

Moran said Jones is masterful when it comes to harnessing skepticism and deftly toes the line between information and misinformation. He often frames his bogus theories in a way that makes his viewers believe hes engaging in healthy questioning.

One of the things that I always hear from people who work in my field is they lament the lack of trusted news figures, Moran said. They always say, I wish we had Walter Cronkite during these times, and then people would trust the information. It's not that we don't have trusted figures. It's that in the internet age, we have trusted figures like Alex Jones.

From Sandy Hook to Trump

Trump received support from Jones during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Former Trump adviser and Republican strategist Roger Stone was a paid Infowars host in 2015, and Stone connected Jones with Trump for an Infowars interview in December that year in which the soon-to-be president lauded Jones.

Your reputation is amazing, Trump told Jones on his show.

Jones likely played an outsized role in Trumps election, according to Elizabeth Williamson, author of Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth. The book investigates how the shooting warped into an attack on the truth from Jones and online conspiracy theorists.

Williamson said Jones was able to foresee how disaffected individuals who were also highly distrustful of the government could propel Trump to a primary victory.

He became something of a kingmaker in the race, and with that came a really high profile that he didn't understand completely, Williamson said. I think he's reaping the results of that.

All the while, Jones continued to advance conspiracy theories and misinformation to a growing audience.

Since the day of the Sandy Hook shooting, Jones has spread bogus claims about the massacre. Like many of his other conspiracy theories, Jones falsely claimed that the government was behind the shooting. But this time the lies were different.

In one 2015 show, Jones told his listeners, Sandy Hook is synthetic, completely fake, with actors, in my view, manufactured. In other episodes, he mocked Sandy Hook parents weeping over the deaths of their children. Jones even shared addresses, maps and personal information associated with the families of Sandy Hook victims, including revealing information about Pozner.

Only weeks after the 2012 shooting, Pozner remembers reaching out to Infowars by email to ask the outlet to stop labeling the shooting as a government hoax to take away Americans guns.

I called them out on it very early on, and I was very polite about it, Pozner said. I asked them to be more responsible with this particular tragedy that affects me personally. And of course, they responded and replied and said, No, no, were not denying the tragedy, and totally lied, and continued to do their thing.

Jones' Sandy Hook lies circulated online on platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, and soon after, Infowars followers began harassing Pozner and other victims parents.

Pozner said he has had to move about a dozen times since the shooting to evade Jones' followers. In 2017, Infowars listener and Sandy Hook conspiracist Lucy Richards was sentenced to five months in prison for sending death threats to Pozner. Today, Pozner lives in hiding and goes to multiple post office boxes to receive his mail. Despite his efforts, individuals occasionally call and file false police reports on Pozner in attempts to get him in trouble with local law enforcement.

Courtesy: of Lenny Pozner

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Jones' previous falsehoods are not harmless theories, but they did not single out individual vulnerable people the way he did with Sandy Hook. That was really crossing a rubicon, Williamson said.

In April 2018, after facing years of harassment from Jones fans, Pozner; Noahs mother, Veronique De La Rosa; and Neil Heslin, the father of 6-year-old victim Jesse Lewis, filed defamation lawsuits against Jones in Austin. A lawsuit from eight other families soon followed.

Legal troubles

Jones has attempted to slow or obstruct legal proceedings in the Sandy Hook defamation suits by refusing to follow court orders to turn over documents, filing late settlement offers and, in one instance, claiming that a medical problem that included vertigo prevented him from appearing in court. On April 15, Jones and his companies were ordered to pay more than $1 million in fines for his refusal to hand over pretrial information.

In September, a Travis County judge found Jones liable for defamation in lawsuits filed by two families of Sandy Hook victims. About one month later, Jones again lost in separate suits filed by the families of eight other victims. In both instances, the court found Jones liable by default for his unwillingness to cooperate with court orders.

Jones' legal troubles also include a federal investigation into his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Jones has suggested that inquiry could damage him more than the Sandy Hook defamation suits.

Jones, who has denied without evidence President Joe Bidens victory in the 2020 elections, helped obtain at least $650,000 from Julie Fancelli, an heiress to the Publix grocery chain and Infowars fan, to pay for a pro-Trump rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol. Of that money, $200,000 was deposited into one of Jones' business accounts, according to the U.S. Houses committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack.

On his Infowars broadcast that day, Jones told his supporters, This is the most important call to action on domestic soil since Paul Revere and his ride in 1776. And at the Capitol, Jones used a bullhorn to excite crowds by chanting, Stop the steal!

He also has strong ties to individuals arrested in the attack on the Capitol, including Joe Biggs, a former Infowars staffer and a leader of the far-right group Proud Boys.

In late January this year, Jones told Infowars listeners he was questioned in front of the House committee and said he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent almost 100 times.

Booted by social media

Williamson said the way Jones falsehoods propagate and turn into harassment in the real world speaks to his reach and influence.

He is a salesman, Williamson said. And when you have millions of people watching, it only takes a small fraction of those individuals to turn it into something that really travels and disrupts people's lives.

In 2014, Pozner founded the HONR Network, an organization that works to defend victims of tragedy from online harassment.

The group has lobbied for the removal of hundreds of thousands of pieces of harmful content on social media. It also played a role in removing Jones from many online platforms.

In July 2018, Pozner and De La Rosa wrote an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling on him to protect victims of tragedies online.

We are unable to properly grieve for our baby or move on with our lives because you, arguably the most powerful man on the planet, have deemed that the attacks on us are immaterial, that providing assistance in removing threats is too cumbersome, and that our lives are less important than providing a safe haven for hate, Noahs parents wrote.

A month later, Jones' content was removed from Facebook, Apple, YouTube and Spotify.

Jones Infowars.com saw a drop in web traffic after the bans, though the number of visitors he receives is back to early 2020 levels, an analysis for The Texas Tribune performed by digital intelligence platform SimilarWeb shows.

Pozner said his organization has also seen a significant decrease in the harassment of victims online after social media companies changed their policies to include victims of tragedies as a protected group. The platforms now seek to prevent online harassment of victims of mass casualty events and limit the use of their names and likenesses, Pozner said.

But appealing to technology companies may not do much to stop conspiracy theories from spreading, Moran said.

While social media companies have changed policies and banned harmful content like Jones to address the spread of misinformation, the platforms profit model fundamentally relies on user engagement and conspiracy theories, Moran said, are uniquely engaging.

You would go into a rabbit hole just reading about them because they're interesting, and that's the bread and butter of social media, she said.

Instead of targeting social media companies, the use of legal remedies to show how misinformation actually harms people's lives may be the best bet for holding those like Jones accountable, Moran said.

A lot of our conversation around the spread of misinformation has been on the platform side: What can and should Facebook and Instagram and Twitter be doing? she said. Actually, there's a lot more legal frameworks that we have in place that haven't necessarily been tested as avenues to remedy misinformation when it has actively harmed people in real life.

Jordan Vondehaar

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The Texas Tribune

An audience still dedicated

How much damage the Sandy Hook lawsuits could do to Jones remains to be seen. Hes up against plaintiffs with a highly sympathetic story who are determined to hamstring his ability to spread misinformation. The lawsuits have drawn comparisons to the case that brought down Gawker Media, in which billionaire Peter Thiel funded Hulk Hogans lawsuit for invasion of privacy, earning Hogan $140 million in damages and essentially forcing the company to shut down.

But while Jones may be facing more difficulties today than at any point in his career, he has been known to use his lowest moments to rake in more money from supporters.

After his ban from social media, Jones presented himself as a martyr silenced by slanted technology companies for telling the truth. As the Sandy Hook defamation lawsuits have developed, Jones has directed fans to donate to a legal defense fund. And after filing for bankruptcy earlier this month, Jones hosted an Emergency Blowout Sale on his website.

Despite his diminished reach and prolonged legal battles, Jones' audience remains loyal, Williamson said.

The SimilarWeb analysis shows that since 2019, monthly web traffic to Jones Infowarsstore.com has soared from about 427,000 visitors in 2019 to nearly 834,000 in March. During the height of the pandemic, the store attracted even more viewers, with over 1 million visits in November 2020.

He has a dedicated audience, and they support him not only by buying Infowars merchandise, but by actually donating to him, Williamson said.

Pozner wonders if he would have been spared from the years of relentless harassment that followed Noahs murder if Jones had never amassed such a following, if social media didnt exist or if the two had not experienced a simultaneous surge in popularity.

We would have had more private lives, Pozner said. It was an intersection of a terrible tragedy and the expansion of the internet.

Disclosure: Apple, Facebook and The New York Times have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a completelist of them here.

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How Sandy Hook lies and the Jan. 6 inquiry threaten to undo Alex Jones - KERA News

FLINT, MI -- The jury in a civil Flint water crisis trial is expected to hear from a former emergency manager for the city on Tuesday, April 19, but wont know until then whether that testimony will be given in-person or through a videotaped deposition he gave nearly two years ago.

Gerald Ambrose, who worked as Flints last emergency manager in 2015, is expected to be questioned outside the presence of a 10-person jury on Tuesday to determine whether he intends to invoke his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination, according to an order issued Monday, April 18, by U.S. District Court Judge Judith E. Levy.

Ambrose and four other potential witnesses, including former Gov. Rick Snyder, are facing criminal charges tied to the water crisis and have asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to hear their request for a review of an earlier ruling by Levy that required them to testify.

In the ruling, Levy rejected a request from Ambrose, Snyder and the other witnesses to quash their subpoenas in the civil trial and to allow them to invoke their 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination to all questions they are asked.

The Court of Appeals has not announced whether it will hear those appeals and on Monday, Levy issued an order saying attorneys for four Flint children can proceed in their case by calling Ambrose as a witness.

The children have filed negligence claims against two companies -- Veolia North Amercia and Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam -- that advised the city during the water crisis.

Levys Monday order says that if Ambrose refuses to answer questions on Tuesday, he can be declared an unavailable witness and attorneys for the children can use his videotaped deposition as testimony.

Court filings say Ambrose gave his deposition in June 2020, more than six months before he was indicted by a grand jury on four felony counts of misconduct in office.

Depending on the Courts of Appeals decision, Ambrose could be required to return to the stand to answer additional questions and could risk contempt of court charges if he maintains his silence.

Attorneys for Ambrose have previously told Levy of his intent to invoke his right against self-incrimination.

Whether his testimony on Tuesday is in-person or his video-taped, Ambrose is likely to be questioned about his involvement in particular with Veolia, which worked on problems with discoloration and elevated levels of chlorine byproducts in Flint water in 2015.

Veolia witnesses have testified that Ambrose and other city officials told them that re-connecting Flint to the Detroit water system was not an option despite evidence that city water, drawn from the Flint River in parts of 2014 and 2015, could be corroding transmission pipes and home plumbing.

The children who are suing Veolia and LAN claim the companies were negligent in advising the city about its water system and claim they were damaged by elevated levels of lead in their water.

The companies have questioned the extent of the childrens injuries and deny they are responsible for any injuries they suffered.

Attorneys for the children had previously asked Levy to allow them to present Ambroses video deposition to the jury, which she declined.

But in her order Monday, the judge said she will allow the attorneys to call witnesses in their preferred order.

If the Sixth Circuit denies the motions by Snyder, Ambrose and others, Veolia and LAN will be permitted to recall Ambrose to the stand in person, Levys order says. The former emergency manager can then either assert his Fifth Amendment rights or answer questions within the scope the Court will set forth.

Levys Monday order also says that if the Court of Appeals grants permission for leave to appeal and affirms her order, Veolia and LAN will be permitted to recall Ambrose to the stand in person and ask questions within the scope set forth by the court.

If the Sixth Circuit reverses Levys order, the companies will also be permitted to recall Ambrose to the stand in person so that the jury can hear his intention to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

In any event, Defendants will not be deprived of having Mr. Ambrose testify or assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in front of the jury, the order says.

Read more at The Flint Journal:

Snyder asks for speedy 5th Amendment decision as delay causes issues in childrens Flint water trial

Five charged with Flint water crimes still plan to not testify in civil trial

3 charged with Flint water crimes have 5th Amendment concerns about testifying

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Former Flint EM expected to take the stand Tuesday but may refuse to answer questions - MLive.com

Special Counsel John Durham continues to drop bombshells in filings in the prosecution of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. Just last week, Durham defeated an effort by Sussmann to dismiss the charges. He is now moving to give immunity to a key witness while revealing that the claims made by the Clinton campaign were viewed by the CIA as not technically plausible and user created. He also revealed that at least five of the former Clinton campaign contractors/researchers have invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to cooperate in fear that they might incriminate themselves in criminal conduct. Finally, Durham offers further details on the involvement of Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias and former British spy Christopher Steele in the alleged false claims.

The only witness currently immunized by the government, Researcher-2, was conferred with that status on July 28, 2021 over a month prior to the defendants Indictment in this matter. And the Government immunized Researcher-2 because, among other reasons, at least five other witnesses who conducted work relating to the Russian Bank-1 allegations invoked (or indicated their intent to invoke) their right against self-incrimination. The Government therefore pursued Researcher-2s immunity in order to uncover otherwise-unavailable facts underlying the opposition research project that Tech Executive-1 and others carried out in advance of the defendants meeting with the FBI.

Durham also detailed how the false Russian collusion claims related to Alfa Bank involved Clinton General Counsel Marc Elias and Christopher Steele. Indeed, the new requested immunized testimony would come from a Tech executive who allegedly can share information on meetings with Elias and Steele.

Durham notes that both the CIA and FBI were sent on an effective wild goose chase by the Clinton campaign. He notes that the government found the allegations to be manufactured and not even technically possible. He refers to the CIA in the following passage:

Agency-2 concluded in early 2017 that the Russian Bank-1 data and Russian Phone Provider-1 data was not technically plausible, did not withstand technical scrutiny, contained gaps, conflicted with [itself], and was user created and not machine/tool generated.

This dovetails with the statements of the Clinton associates themselves who were worried about the lack of support for the Russian collusion claims. Researcher 1 features prominently in those exchanges.

According to Durham, the Alfa Bank allegation fell apart even before Sussmann delivered it to the FBI. The indictment details how an unnamed tech executive allegedly used his authority at multiple internet companies to help develop the ridiculous claim. (The executive reportedly later claimed that he was promised a top cyber security job in the Clinton administration). Notably, there were many who expressed misgivings not only within the companies working on the secret project but also among unnamed university researchers who repeatedly said the argument was bogus.

The researchers were told they should not be looking for proof but just enough to give the base of a very useful narrative. The researchers argued, according to the indictment, that anyone familiar with analyzing internet traffic would poke several holes in that narrative, noting that what they saw likely was not a secret communications channel with Russian Bank-1, but a red herring, according to the indictment.

Researcher-1 repeated these doubts, the indictment says, and asked, How do we plan to defend against the criticism that this is not spoofed traffic we are observing? There is no answer to that. Lets assume again that they are not smart enough to refute our best case scenario. You do realize that we will have to expose every trick we have in our bag to even make a very weak association.

Researcher-1 allegedly further warned, We cannot technically make any claims that would fly public scrutiny. The only thing that drives us at this point is that we just do not like [Trump]. This will not fly in eyes of public scrutiny. Folks, I am afraid we have tunnel vision. Time to regroup?

It appears that the time to regroup has passed with the issuance of immunity deals to compel testimony.

Here is the filing:

US-v-Sussmann-04162022-US-Filing

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Durham: Five Witnesses Connected to the Clinton Campaigns False Russian Claims Have Refused to Cooperate - Jonathan Turley

With heartbreaking videos of mass graves filled with Ukrainian victims of Russian genocide, civilians mowed down by sadistic Russian soldiers and apartment buildings pulverized by Russian missiles, there hasnt been much occasion for mirth. But you can count on Trump World to provide some comic relief.

Turns out North Carolina election officials removed former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows from the states voter rolls after it emerged that Meadows had voted absentee from a North Carolina residence where he had never resided. He not only listed a false address on his absentee ballot application, but his civic-mindedness in exercising his franchise was so fervent that he had registered to vote in two states at the same time.

It was Meadows who teamed up with his former boss to try to pressure Georgias Secretary of State to nullify Georgias 2020 election results and induce him to fraudulently proclaim that a state that Joe Biden had won had been won by Donald Trump. Meadows is among the esteemed band of Trump aides who, subpoenaed to testify about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, either refused to honor the subpoena or invoked their Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. Hes been referred to the Justice Department for criminal charges for contempt of Congress. But the nation owes Meadows a real debt of gratitude for reminding us that the only apparent voter fraud in the 2020 election was committed by Donald Trumps chief of staff.

Witlessness isnt a crime, but it does seem plain that Meadows is no Einstein. Fumbling to come up with something, anything, that would provide a molecule of support for Trumps fraudulent claim of election fraud, Meadows had this exchange with CNNs Jake Tapper at one point: Do you realize how inaccurate the voter rolls are? he asked the host without any sheepishness on account of his own voter fraud. When Tapper replied that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, Meadows was ready. Theres no evidence that theres not, either, he said. Thats the definition of fraud, Jake.

With Trump and many of his closest advisers either under criminal investigation, indicted, referred to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution or already convicted, the prospect of a return to power by the former president and the party that swears fealty to him should concentrate Americans minds in a most serious way. It is a real prospect. The thanks accorded Biden for steering America through the national COVID disaster bequeathed him by Trump, record economic growth, an unemployment rate of 3.6% and a historic response to Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine is a 39% approval rating. Fifty-five percent of Americans say they disapprove of Bidens job performance.

Just what we need right about now is a Putin loyalist in the White House.

Things dont look promising for democracy either here or abroad if the party of Trump regains power. I think NATO is obsolete, pronounced Trump about the alliance of European democracies that holds a nuclear Russia at bay and is enabling Ukraine to defend itself. Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton believes Trump would have withdrawn from NATO in a second term. And I think Putin was waiting for that, Bolton said.

More than 60 Congressional Republicans recently voted against a resolution expressing support for NATO. Trump is seeking to bolster the bloc of Republicans happy to sell Ukraine down the river. Last weekend he endorsed Ohio Republican J.D. Vance for the Senate, not long after Vance bragged to former chief Trump strategist and twice-indicted podcast host Steve Bannon I gotta be honest with you, I dont really care what happens to Ukraine.

In this season of holidays, as we emerge from pandemic-induced hibernation, its painful to consider that democracy is on the edge. The next months may determine whether and where it survives.

Jeff Robbins is a Boston lawyer and former U.S. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

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Robbins: Here and abroad, democracy hanging in the balance - Boston Herald

The Supreme Court this month will hear its last oral arguments in a term that has been overshadowed by disputes over abortion and the Second Amendment and the confirmation of the nations first Black female justice.

As the country awaits decisions in those potentially landmark cases, three cases stand out as highlights among the remaining disputes to be argued before the justices.

They involve a Trump-era immigration policy, a dispute over a high school football coachs religious practice on school grounds and the Miranda warning that suspects are given by law enforcement.

Its the last set of arguments that will include Justice Stephen Breyer, who will retire this summer. He will be replaced by the newly confirmed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Trump-era remain in Mexico policy

One of the most high-profile fights on the courts docket is a dispute over the Biden administrations effort to end a controversial Trump-era immigration measure that requires asylum-seekers at the southern border to stay in Mexico while their applications are processed.

Arguments will center on whether the Biden administration must continue the policy despite the Department of Homeland Securitys (DHS) conclusion that the measure is not in the United States national interest.

Former President Trumps remain in Mexico policy, implemented in 2019, blocked migrants at the Mexican border from entering the U.S. to apply for asylum, leaving tens of thousands of people awaiting their fates in Mexico and subjecting them to potential persecution and abuse.

More than 60,000 asylum-seekers were returned to Mexico under the policy, formally called the Migrant Protection Protocols, a departure from a previous practice of allowing those fleeing violence to cross the border and apply for asylum within the U.S.

The Biden administrations two efforts to rescind the program were blocked after a lawsuit by the attorneys general of Texas and Missouri. Lower courts found the legal basis for ending the policy lacking, prompting the administrations appeal to the Supreme Court.

DHS has thus been forced to reinstate and continue implementing indefinitely a controversial policy that the Secretary has twice determined is not in the interests of the United States, the administration told the justices in court papers.

The court will hear arguments in the case in the second week of the two-week period during which it is hearing new arguments.

Miranda rights

The justices this week will hear a procedural dispute that stems from a police officers failure to issue a Miranda warning in a case with potentially weighty criminal justice implications.

The case arose after Terence Tekoh, a Los Angeles hospital worker, was accused of sexually assaulting a patient. In the course of investigating, Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Carlos Vega brought Tekoh to a private room to talk but did not advise Tekoh of his Miranda rights, which include a notice of the right against self-incrimination while in police custody.

At the conclusion of their meeting, Tekoh had produced a written confession. The partys claims about what transpired in their meeting are at stark odds, with Tekoh claiming Vega coerced him into confessing by threatening to deport Tekoh and his family to their native Cameroon. Vega, by contrast, depicted Tekoh as contrite and remorseful and having confessed voluntarily.

Prosecutors used Tekohs confession as evidence in his criminal trial, but the jury found Tekoh not guilty. Following his acquittal, Tekoh filed a civil lawsuit against Vega for violating his constitutional rights.

Tekoh asked the court to instruct the jury that the prosecutions use of Tekohs confession which arose after he was provided no Miranda warning amounted to an automatic violation of his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The trial court denied Tekohs request, and the jury sided with Vega.

On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with Tekoh. The appeals court determined that a Miranda violation alone can be the basis for finding an officer liable if the confession is later used at a criminal trial. Vega appealed to the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments in the case on April 20. The Biden administration has asked the justices to side with the officer.

Prayer in school athletics

A third upcoming case pits a high school football coach against school administrators who reprimanded the coach over his practice of holding a brief prayer on the fields 50-yard line following games.

A devout Christian, coach Joseph Kennedys custom of kneeling on field and conducting prayer while surrounded by many of his players drew reproach from officials at his Seattle-area public school. Administrators told Kennedy his conduct violated a school policy that prohibited staff from encouraging students to engage in prayer or other devotional activity.

Amid widespread publicity, Kennedy sued the school district, alleging that his First Amendment speech and religious rights were violated. A federal district court in Washington ruled against him, reasoning that Kennedys conduct was not constitutionally protected because it was done in his capacity as a public employee.

Kennedy appealed, but a unanimous three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based federal appeals court last year affirmed the lower courts decision. The panel concluded that Bremerton School District (BSD) would have violated the Constitutions prohibition on government endorsement of religion by allowing Kennedy to pray at the conclusion of football games, in the center of the field, with students who felt pressured to join him.

Kennedys attempts to draw nationwide attention to his challenge to BSD compels the conclusion that he was not engaging in private prayer, but was instead engaging in public speech of an overtly religious nature while performing his job duties, the appeals court wrote.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in Kennedys appeal on April 25.

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Three cases to watch as Supreme Court readies for final oral arguments of term - The Hill