justices raising the bar for establishing when a statement is a “true threat” not protected by the 1st Amendment.

Holding: To establish that a statement is a “true threat” unprotected by the First Amendment, the state must prove that the defendant had some subjective understanding of the statements’ threatening nature, based on a showing no more demanding than recklessness.

Judgment: Vacated and remanded, 7-2, in an opinion by Justice Kagan on June 27, 2023. Justice Sotomayor filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which Justice Gorsuch joined as to Parts I, II, III-A, and III-B. Justice Thomas filed a dissenting opinion. Justice Barrett filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Thomas joined.

Washington — The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with a Colorado man who was convicted of a crime after sending numerous threatening messages to a woman on Facebook, with the justices raising the bar for establishing when a statement is a “true threat” not protected by the First Amendment.

The high court divided 7-2 in the case of Counterman v. Colorado, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett in dissent. The court wiped away a Colorado Court of Appeals’ ruling that upheld the conviction of Billy Counterman and sent the case back for further proceedings consistent with its opinion.

Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan said prosecutors must demonstrate that a defendant who made a threat acted recklessly — that is, with the knowledge that others could regard their statement as threatening violence — to establish that the speech is a “true threat” and thus no longer covered by the First Amendment.

“The question presented is whether the First Amendment still requires proof that the defendant had some substantive understanding of the threatening nature of his statements,” she wrote. “We hold that it does, but that a mental state of recklessness is sufficient. The state must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence.”

Counterman was prosecuted under a standard requiring the state to show only that a “reasonable person” would understand the messages as threats. The majority found that violated the First Amendment.

“[The state] did not have to show any awareness on his part that the statements could be understood that way. For the reasons stated, that is a violation of the First Amendment,” Kagan wrote.

In a dissenting opinion written by Barrett, which Thomas joined, the justice said the majority’s decision “unjustifiably grants true threat preferential treatment.”

“A delusional speaker may lack awareness of the threatening nature of her speech; a devious speaker may strategically disclaim such awareness; and a lucky speaker may leave behind no evidence of mental state for the government to use against her,” Barrett wrote.

Counterman, she concluded, “communicated true threats” and caused the recipient of the messages, a singer-songwriter named Coles Whalen, to fear for her life.

“Nonetheless, the court concludes that Counterman can prevail on a First Amendment defense,” Barrett said. “Nothing in the Constitution compels this result.”

The case arose from hundreds of Facebook messages Counterman sent to Whalen between 2014 and 2016. Some of the messages were innocuous, while others were more troubling. Whalen tried to block Counterman, but he created multiple accounts to continue sending them. 

In one, Counterman wrote, “F**k off permanently,” while in another, he wrote, “I’ve tapped phone lines before. What do you fear?” According to court filings, a third read, “You’re not being good for human relations. Die. Don’t need you.”

Whalen believed Counterman’s messages were threatening her life and she was worried she would get hurt. She had issues sleeping, suffered from anxiety, stopped walking alone and even turned down performances out of fear that Counterman was following her.

She eventually turned to the authorities and obtained a protective order, after which Colorado law enforcement arrested Counterman and charged him with stalking under a Colorado law that prohibits “repeatedly making any form of communication with another person” in a manner that would “cause a reasonable person to suffer serious emotional distress and does cause that person … to suffer serious emotional distress.”

Conviction under the law requires proof that the speaker “knowingly” made repeated communications, and does not require the person to be aware that the acts would cause “a reasonable person to suffer serious emotional distress.”

Before his trial, Counterman sought to dismiss the charge, arguing that his messages were not “true threats” and therefore protected speech under the First Amendment. But the state trial court found that his messages reached the level of a true threat, and the First Amendment did not preclude his prosecution. A jury then found Counterman guilty, and he was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison.

Counterman appealed, arguing the trial court erred when it applied an objective standard for determining whether his messages constituted true threats. He said the court should instead adopt a “subjective intent” requirement, which required the state to show he was aware of the threatening nature of his communications.

But the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld his conviction and agreed with the trial court’s finding that Counterman’s Facebook messages were “true threats” and not protected by the First Amendment. The state supreme court declined to review the case.

The ACLU, which filed a brief in support of Counterman, cheered the decision, saying in a statement that the high court affirmed that “inadvertently threatening speech cannot be criminalized.”

“In a world rife with misunderstandings and miscommunications, people would be chilled from speaking altogether if they could be jailed for failing to predict how their words would be received,” said Brian Hauss, senior staff attorney with the organization’s Speech, Privacy, & Technology Project. “The First Amendment provides essential breathing room for public debate by requiring the government to demonstrate that the defendant acted intentionally or recklessly.”

ACLU Commends Supreme Court Decision to Protect Free Speech in Case Defining True Threats

In Counterman v. Colorado, the court ruled that the First Amendment requires the government to show recklessness in true threats prosecutions.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled today in Counterman v. Colorado that in true threats cases the First Amendment requires the government to prove that the defendant acted with a culpable mental state, and not merely that his words were objectively threatening.

Colorado law allowed individuals to be convicted if a reasonable person would perceive their words as threatening, regardless of the speaker’s intent. Today’s decision rules that the First Amendment requires the government to show at a minimum that the defendant recklessly disregarded a substantial risk that his words could be perceived as threatening. The court holds that a recklessness standard strikes the right balance between free expression and safety, “offering ‘enough “breathing space” for protected speech,’ without sacrificing too many of the benefits of enforcing laws against true threats.”

“We’re glad the Supreme Court affirmed today that inadvertently threatening speech cannot be criminalized,” said Brian Hauss, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, & Technology Project. “In a world rife with misunderstandings and miscommunications, people would be chilled from speaking altogether if they could be jailed for failing to predict how their words would be received. The First Amendment provides essential breathing room for public debate by requiring the government to demonstrate that the defendant acted intentionally or recklessly.”

This case involved a series of disturbing messages that the petitioner, Billy Raymond Counterman, sent to C.W., a professional musician in Colorado, over a two-year period. Counterman was prosecuted and convicted under Colorado’s anti-stalking statute. On appeal, Counterman — who has been diagnosed with a mental illness — argued that his conviction was unconstitutional because the jury was not required to find that he intended to threaten C.W.

The ACLU and its partners filed an amicus brief in the case arguing that a great deal of speech — including political speech, satire, and artistic speech — contains overt or implicit references to violence that could be interpreted as threatening. Without requiring some element of intentional wrongdoing, the ACLU argued, there exists a significant risk that people will be convicted of serious felonies because they failed to adequately anticipate how their words would be perceived.

Counterman v. Colorado is a part of the ACLU’s Joan and Irwin Jacobs Supreme Court Docket. The amicus brief was filed with the ACLU of Colorado, the Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the National Coalition Against Censorship.

Supreme Court Decides Counterman v. Colorado

On June 27, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Counterman v. Colorado, No. 22-138, holding that a criminal prosecution based on a true threat of violence requires proof that the defendant subjectively understood the threatening character of the statement such that making the statement was at least reckless.

Between 2014 and 2016, Billy Counterman persistently sent hundreds of unwelcome messages through Facebook to a local musician, creating new accounts to circumvent her attempts to block them. The musician interpreted many of the messages as indicators that Counterman was surveilling her and intended to harm her. Colorado state prosecutors criminally charged Counterman for his behavior, and the Facebook messages themselves were the only evidence presented at trial. Counterman claimed his messages fell within the protections of the First Amendment because they could not be “true threats” if he did not have a subjective understanding that the messages were threatening. The Colorado trial and appellate courts rejected his argument and ruled that “true threats” were subject only to an objective reasonableness standard.

The Supreme Court reversed. While the Court agreed that “true threats of violence” are not protected speech under the First Amendment, the Court held that a court must apply a subjective test to determine if a statement is in fact a true threat of violence. The Court held that this subjective standard is required to avoid a chilling effect on otherwise protected speech. The Court noted that the “ordinary citizen’s predictable tendency” is to steer very wide of speech that may be considered unlawful. The Court held that a subjective standard was necessary to balance the public interest in avoiding unnecessary chilling of lawful speech and the ability of prosecutors to criminally charge defendants for unlawful speech.

The Court then analyzed what level of subjective knowledge is sufficient to accomplish that balance. The Court compared the law governing other non-protected classes of speech, including defamation, and determined that a reckless state of mind is sufficient—i.e., a defendant who consciously disregards a substantial risk that statements would be understood as a true threat may be prosecuted. The Court also concluded that any mens rea requirement higher than recklessness—like purpose or knowledge—would make prosecution too difficult, and “with diminishing returns for protected expression.” To balance the risk of chilling public speech and the need to be able to prosecute true threats of violence, the Court ruled that prosecutors must prove that defendants recklessly made threatening statements.

Justice Kagan authored the opinion of the Court. Justice Sotomayor authored a concurrence in which Justice Gorsuch joined in part. Justice Thomas authored a dissent. Justice Barrett authored a dissent in which Justice Thomas joined.

This Report summarizes an opinion issued on January 23 (Part I); and cases granted review on December 27, 2022, and January 13, 2023 (Part II).

Opinion: Counterman v. Colorado, 22-138

Counterman v. Colorado, 22-138. The Court will clarify the standard for determining whether a statement is a true threat unprotected by the First Amendment. Most federal courts of appeals apply an objective test that asks whether a reasonable person would interpret the statement as a threat of violence. By contrast, the Ninth and Tenth Circuits employ a subjective test that asks whether the speaker intended the recipient to feel threatened. State courts are similarly divided, with some applying a hybrid test that considers both the speaker’s subjective intent and whether a reasonable person would view the statement as a threat. This is the second time that the Court has agreed to address this split. The issue was presented in Elonis v. United States, 575 U.S. 723 (2015), but the Court ultimately resolved that case on a different basis.

The issue here arises in the context of a criminal prosecution for stalking. Over the course of two years, petitioner Billy Raymond Counterman directly messaged a local musician on Facebook without invitation or response. Some of the messages suggested that he was physically surveilling her, while others told her to “Die” and “Fuck off permanently.” Counterman’s messages caused the victim to fear for her safety, so she told her family and police. Relying on 17 messages, Colorado charged him with stalking. Under Colorado law, prosecutors did not need to prove that Counterman intended his statements to be threatening or that he was aware that they could be interpreted that way. Counterman moved to dismiss the charge on First Amendment grounds, arguing that his messages were not true threats and thus were protected speech. The trial court denied the motion and a jury found Counterman guilty of stalking. The Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed Counterman’s conviction. 497 P.3d 1039. In holding that Counterman’s statements were true threats subject to criminal prosecution, the Colorado Court of Appeals applied the objective test that asks whether a reasonable person would view the statements as threatening. The court of appeals rejected Counterman’s argument that a speaker’s subjective intent to threaten is necessary for a statement to constitute a true threat, noting that the Colorado Supreme Court recently rejected that rule absent further guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court. The Colorado Supreme Court later denied Counterman’s petition for review.

Relying on history, tradition, and U.S. Supreme Court precedent, Counterman argues in his petition that “heightened scienter is necessary to true threats.” He notes that, generally, consciousness of wrongdoing is required for a criminal conviction. A scienter requirement is especially important for a statute that regulates speech, Counterman contends, because convicting “a person for negligently misjudging how others would construe the speaker’s words would erode the breathing space that safeguards the free exchange of ideas.” Counterman submits that a purely objective test for true threats conflicts with the Court’s true threats jurisprudence, including Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 (2003). There, the Court stated that true threats “encompass those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.” (Emphasis added.) Counterman relies on this language to argue that the Court has already imposed a heightened scienter requirement for true threats. He also points out that in incitement cases, the Court has required proof that the speaker intended to produce imminent disorder. See Hess v. Indiana, 414 U.S. 105, 109 (1973) (per curiam).

Colorado argues that its objective test for true threats is consistent with the Court’s free speech jurisprudence. It compares its “context-driven objective standard” to the Court’s analysis in Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705 (1969). There, in holding that the speaker’s comments at a rally were not true threats subject to criminal prosecution, the Court focused on the plain language of the statements, the context in which they were made, and the listeners’ reaction. Colorado’s test similarly examines “the contested expression’s context, including the listeners’ reaction.” In Colorado’s view, the Court in Black did not subsequently adopt a subjective-intent requirement for true threats. It reads Black as simply identifying one circumstance where a speaker makes a true threat, namely when he communicates with the intent to threaten the recipient. Colorado maintains that Black did not “state that true threats were limited to such statements.” Colorado also contends that an objective test is especially important to protect victims of stalking because stalkers may be delusional, thereby making it difficult for prosecutors to prove a subjective intent to threaten. And because its objective test considers the context in which the statements were made, Colorado submits that speakers will be protected from unfair punishment.

US Supreme Court makes decision on Counterman v. Colorado

WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday to make it more difficult to convict a person of making a violent threat, including against the president or other elected officials.

The Biden administration had warned that the internet and social media have expanded the number and kinds of threats in recent years, including online harassment, intimidation and stalking. And they warned the case could affect the ability to prosecute threats against public officials, which have increased in recent years.

The high court was ruling in a case that involves a man who was sentenced to more than four years in prison in Colorado for sending threatening Facebook messages. The man’s lawyers had argued that he suffers from mental illness and never intended his messages to be threatening.

The question for the court was whether prosecutors must show that a person being prosecuted for making a threat knew their behavior was threatening or whether prosecutors just have to prove that a reasonable person would see it as threatening.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote for a majority of the court that prosecutors have to show that “the defendant had some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements.”

“The State must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence,” she said.

Seven justices agreed with the outcome. Two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett, dissented.

The Biden administration had been among those arguing for the lower “reasonable person” standard.

“Threats of violence against public officials in particular have proliferated in recent years, including threats against Members of Congress, judges, local officials, and election workers,” the Biden administration had noted, saying the case could affect prosecutions in those cases.

Speech of all kinds is generally protected by the free speech clause in the Constitution’s First Amendment, but so-called “true threats” are an exception.

The specific case before the justices involved Billy Counterman. He contacted a musician through Facebook in 2010 to ask her whether she would perform in a benefit concert he said he was organizing. The woman, Coles Whalen, responded but nothing ever came of it.

Whalen forgot about the exchange, but four years later, Counterman began sending her Facebook messages again. He ultimately sent hundreds of messages, including ones that were rambling and delusional and others that were quotes and memes. Whalen never responded and blocked Counterman several times, but he would just create a new account and continue sending messages.

Counterman believed Whalen was responding through other websites and Facebook pages. Whalen became concerned after Counterman’s messages — including “You’re not being good for human relations. Die. Don’t need you.” and “Was that you in the white Jeep?” — suggested he was following her in person. Eventually, the messages were reported to law enforcement and Counterman was arrested. He was convicted and lost an appeal.

The justices’ ruling is a victory for Counterman and sends his case back to lower courts for another look. In a statement, his attorney John Elwood said that they are “gratified that the Supreme Court agreed with Billy Counterman that the First Amendment requires proof of mental state before it can imprison a person for statements that are perceived as threatening.”

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, whose office prosecuted Counterman, said in a statement that the decision will make it “more difficult to stop stalkers from tormenting their victims.”

“In today’s ruling, the Court creates a loophole for delusional and devious stalkers and misapprehends the very nature of threats faced by stalking victims,” Weiser said. “In short, this decision will make it more likely that victims of threats— mostly women — will live in fear and will be discouraged from speaking out against their stalkers, believing there is little they can do to hold those stalkers accountable.”

The case is Counterman v. Colorado, 22-138.

Opinion of the Court Counterman v. Colorado

source 1  source 2  source 3  source 4 source 5 source 6 source 7

An announcement was made on his official Twitter account late Friday night confirming that Jimmy had passed away that night surrounded by his loved ones.

The statement read: ‘Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs.

‘He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many’.

“Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” a statement posted to Buffett’s official website and social media pages said late Friday. “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.”

The statement did not say where Buffett died or give a cause of death.

The two-time Grammy nominee who is best known for his song Margaritaville had revealed in May that he had been hospitalized ‘to address some issues that needed immediate attention’.

So sad: An announcement was made on his official Twitter account late Friday night confirming that Jimmy had passed away that night surrounded by his loved ones (pictured in 2019)

Buffett leaves behind his wife, Jane Slagsvol, whom he’s been married to since 1977, and three children: Savannah, Sarah, and Cameron.

Following the heartbreaking Twitter announcement of his death, tributes began pouring in for Jimmy from fans and showbiz pals who expressed their sorrow over his passing.

One person wrote: ‘I’m absolutely gutted and crying right now over your death. Rest In Peace, Paradise and Love. Jimmy Buffet you are a legend to admire.’

While another shared: ‘Enjoy your cheeseburger in paradise my friend, see you in margaritiville RIP.’

‘Nooooooo. Truly heartbreaking. RIP to a legend like no other’ tweeted a third.

‘His memory will be a blessing to the millions who loved him’, commented a fourth fan.

With another adding: ‘May your soul rest in peace, Jimmy. Thank you for the many years of music that you have blessed this world with. May your memory live on forever.’

Heartbreaking: The statement read: ‘Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs’

Music legend: ‘He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many’ (pictured in March 2019)

His love: Buffett leaves behind his wife, Jane Slagsvol, whom he’s been married to since 1977, and three children: Savannah, Sarah, and Cameron (pictured with Jane in March)

Back in May, Jimmy was forced to cancel his Second Wind Tour stop in Charleston, South Carolina following a health scare that landed him in the hospital.

Buffett later reported he would be returning home the following day and recuperating with friends before scheduling more shows.

‘Thank you for the outpouring of support and well wishes. I head home tomorrow for a while, and then will go for a fishing trip with old friends, along with paddling and sailing and get myself back in good shape,’ he said in a statement posted to his Facebook page.

‘Looking forward to announcing a new date for Charleston as well as some new shows! Fins up!’

Buffett revealed previously that he had to be hospitalized following a routine check-up in Boston, prompting the cancellation of his band’s stop in Charleston, South Carolina.

‘I had a sudden change of plans this week that affected us all. Two days ago, I was just back from a trip to the Bahamas, thawing out from the California “winter tour”, and chomping at the bit to get to Charleston. I had to stop in Boston for a check-up but wound up back in the hospital to address some issues that needed immediate attention,’ he said in a statement.

‘Growing old is not for sissies, I promise you. I also will promise you, that when I am well enough to perform, that is what I’ll be doing in the land of She-Crab soup.

‘You all make my life more meaningful and fulfilled than I would have ever imagined as a toe headed little boy sitting on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. Thank you for your prayers and thoughts, your amazing years of loyalty, and just remember, “NOT YET!” Love to all!’

Tributes: Following the heartbreaking Twitter announcement of his death, tributes began pouring in for Jimmy from fans and showbiz pals who expressed their sorrow over his passing

Music legend: ‘He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many’ (pictured in March 2019)

His love: Buffett leaves behind his wife, Jane Slagsvol, whom he’s been married to since 1977, and three children: Savannah, Sarah, and Cameron (pictured with Jane in March)

Back in May, Jimmy was forced to cancel his Second Wind Tour stop in Charleston, South Carolina following a health scare that landed him in the hospital.

Buffett later reported he would be returning home the following day and recuperating with friends before scheduling more shows.

‘Thank you for the outpouring of support and well wishes. I head home tomorrow for a while, and then will go for a fishing trip with old friends, along with paddling and sailing and get myself back in good shape,’ he said in a statement posted to his Facebook page.

‘Looking forward to announcing a new date for Charleston as well as some new shows! Fins up!’

Buffett revealed previously that he had to be hospitalized following a routine check-up in Boston, prompting the cancellation of his band’s stop in Charleston, South Carolina.

‘I had a sudden change of plans this week that affected us all. Two days ago, I was just back from a trip to the Bahamas, thawing out from the California “winter tour”, and chomping at the bit to get to Charleston. I had to stop in Boston for a check-up but wound up back in the hospital to address some issues that needed immediate attention,’ he said in a statement.

‘Growing old is not for sissies, I promise you. I also will promise you, that when I am well enough to perform, that is what I’ll be doing in the land of She-Crab soup.

‘You all make my life more meaningful and fulfilled than I would have ever imagined as a toe headed little boy sitting on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. Thank you for your prayers and thoughts, your amazing years of loyalty, and just remember, “NOT YET!” Love to all!’

 

Tributes: Following the heartbreaking Twitter announcement of his death, tributes began pouring in for Jimmy from fans and showbiz pals who expressed their sorrow over his passing

source

‘Margaritaville’ singer Jimmy Buffett, who turned beach-bum life into an empire, dies at 76

Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who popularized beach bum soft rock with the escapist Caribbean-flavored song “Margaritaville” and turned that celebration of loafing into an empire of restaurants, resorts and frozen concoctions, has died. He was 76.

The statement did not say where Buffett died or give a cause of death. Illness had forced him to reschedule concerts in May and Buffett acknowledged in social media posts that he had been hospitalized, but provided no specifics.

“Margaritaville,” released on Feb. 14, 1977, quickly took on a life of its own, becoming a state of mind for those ”wastin’ away,” an excuse for a life of low-key fun and escapism for those “growing older, but not up.”

The song is the unhurried portrait of a loafer on his front porch, watching tourists sunbathe while a pot of shrimp is beginning to boil. The signer has a new tattoo, a likely hangover and regrets over a lost love. Somewhere there is a misplaced salt shaker.

“What seems like a simple ditty about getting blotto and mending a broken heart turns out to be a profound meditation on the often painful inertia of beach dwelling,” Spin magazine wrote in 2021. “The tourists come and go, one group indistinguishable from the other. Waves crest and break whether somebody is there to witness it or not. Everything that means anything has already happened and you’re not even sure when.”

The song — from the album “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” — spent 22 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and peaked at No. 8. The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2016 for its cultural and historic significance, became a karaoke standard and helped brand Key West, Florida, as a distinct sound of music and a destination known the world over.

“There was no such place as Margaritaville,” Buffett told the Arizona Republic in 2021. “It was a made-up place in my mind, basically made up about my experiences in Key West and having to leave Key West and go on the road to work and then come back and spend time by the beach.”

The song soon inspired restaurants and resorts, turning Buffett’s alleged desire for the simplicity of island life into a multimillion brand. He landed at No. 13 in Forbes’ America’s Richest Celebrities in 2016 with a net worth of $550 million.

Music critics were never very kind to Buffett or his catalogue, including the sandy beach-side snack bar songs like “Fins,” “Come Monday” and “Cheeseburgers in Paradise.” But his legions of fans, called “Parrotheads,” regularly turned up for his concerts wearing toy parrots, cheeseburgers, sharks and flamingos on their heads, leis around their necks and loud Hawaiian shirts.

“It’s pure escapism is all it is,” he told the Republic. “I’m not the first one to do it, nor shall I probably be the last. But I think it’s really a part of the human condition that you’ve got to have some fun. You’ve got to get away from whatever you do to make a living or other parts of life that stress you out. I try to make it at least 50/50 fun to work and so far it’s worked out.”

His special Gulf Coast mix of country, pop, folk and rock added instruments and tonalities more commonly found in the Caribbean, like steel drums. It was a stew of steelpans, trombones and pedal steel guitar. Buffett’s incredible ear for hooks and light grooves were often overshadowed by his lyrics about fish tacos and sunsets.

Rolling Stone, in a review of Buffett’s 2020 album “Life on the Flip Side,” gave grudging props. “He continues mapping out his surfy, sandy corner of pop music utopia with the chill, friendly warmth of a multi-millionaire you wouldn’t mind sharing a tropically-themed 3 p.m. IPA with, especially if his gold card was on the bar when the last round came.”

Buffett’s evolving brand began in 1985 with the opening of a string of Margaritaville-themed stores and restaurants in Key West, followed in 1987 with the first Margaritaville Café nearby. Over the course of the next two decades, several more of each opened throughout Florida, New Orleans and California.

The brand has since expanded to dozens of categories, including resorts, apparel and footwear for men and women, a radio station, a beer brand, ice tea, tequila and rum, home décor, food items like salad dressing, Margaritaville Crunchy Pimento Cheese & Shrimp Bites and Margaritaville Cantina Style Medium Chunky Salsa, the Margaritaville at Sea cruise line and restaurants, including Margaritaville Restaurant, JWB Prime Steak and Seafood, 5 o’Clock Somewhere Bar & Grill and LandShark Bar & Grill.

There also was a Broadway-bound jukebox musical, “Escape to Margaritaville,” a romantic comedy in which a singer-bartender called Sully falls for the far more career-minded Rachel, who is vacationing with friends and hanging out at Margaritaville, the hotel bar where Sully works.

James William Buffett was born on Christmas day 1946 in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and raised in the port town of Mobile, Alabama. He graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and went from busking the streets of New Orleans to playing six nights a week at Bourbon Street clubs.

He released his first record, “Down To Earth,” in 1970 and issued seven more on a regular yearly clip, with his 1974 song “Come Monday” from his fourth studio album “Living and Dying in ¾ Time,” peaking at No. 30. Then came “Margaritaville.”

He performed on more than 50 studio and live albums, often accompanied by his Coral Reefer Band, and was constantly on tour. He earned two Grammy Award nominations, two Academy of Country Music Awards and a Country Music Association Award.

Buffett was actually in Austin, Texas, when the inspiration struck for “Margaritaville.” He and a friend had stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant before she dropped him at the airport for a flight home to Key West, so they got to drinking margaritas.

“And I kind of came up with that idea of this is just like Margarita-ville,” Buffett told the Republic. “She kind of laughed at that and put me on the plane. And I started working on it.”

He wrote some on the plane and finished it while driving down the Keys. “There was a wreck on the bridge,” he said. “And we got stopped for about an hour so I finished the song on the Seven Mile Bridge, which I thought was apropos.”

Buffett also was the author of numerous books including “Where Is Joe Merchant?” and “A Pirate Looks At Fifty” and added movies to his resume as co-producer and co-star of an adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s novel “Hoot.”

Buffett is survived by his wife, Jane; daughters, Savannah and Sarah; and son, Cameron. source

Jimmy Buffett, legendary ‘Margaritaville’ singer, dies at 76

‘Margaritaville’ singer Jimmy Buffett dies at 76

Jimmy Buffett, the singer-songwriter best-known for breezy, tropical-themed hits like “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” has died at 76.

“Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” read the announcement on his website and social media. “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.”

Born in Pascagoula, Mississippi on Christmas Day in 1946, James William Buffett didn’t pick up a guitar until his freshman year of college, where he earned a degree in history. He recorded his first album, 1970’s “Down to Earth,” in Nashville, Tennessee while working for “Billboard” magazine as a correspondent. Five other albums followed, each of which enjoyed modest sales and radio airplay. The exception was the 1974 “Billboard” Hot 100 top-40 single “Come Monday,” from Buffett’s third album, “Living and Dying in 3/4 Time.”

But it was Buffett’s breakthrough seventh album, 1977’s “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” that made him a star, on the strength of the album’s hit single, “Margaritaville.” Sung from the perspective of a man “wasting away” the summer season at a beach resort while questioning his life and romantic choices, “Margaritaville” was a top-10 “Billboard” hit and became Buffett’s signature song.

“Margaritaville’s” enduring popularity was affirmed in 2023 when the song was inducted into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry, selected for inclusion for its “cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage.”

“You’re lucky enough at some point to put your thumb on the pulse of something that people can connect with,” Buffett told the Registry at the time. “It’s an amazing and lucky thing to happen to you, and that happened with ‘Margaritaville.’”

In addition to “Margaritaville” and “Come Monday,” Buffett’s hits – all displaying the signature musical style he early on described as “drunken Caribbean rock and roll” – included playful favorites like “Cheeseburger in Paradise” and “Fins,” as well as introspective ruminations like “A Pirate Looks at 40,” “He Went to Paris” and “Son of a Son of a Sailor.”

Buffett’s 1985 greatest hits album, “Songs You Know by Heart: Jimmy Buffett’s Greatest Hit(s),” remains his most commercially successful release, selling more than 5.6 million copies. The parenthetical ‘s’ at the end of “Hit” in the title is a winking acknowledgement that for some, “Margaritaville” is the only song for which they know him.

Over a performing career that spanned five decades, Buffett released more than 30 records, 17 of which were RIAA-certified gold or platinum for sales of 500,000 units or more. He was known for his near-constant touring schedule with his Coral Reefer Band, drawing a devoted fan base affectionately known as Parrotheads.

An avid sailor and private pilot, Buffett lived the lifestyle about which he sang and wrote. But he also was a savvy businessman, parlaying his persona and musical success into Margaritaville Holdings, a business empire formed in 1985 that encompassed music, lifestyle brands and more, including restaurants, resorts, clothing, home décor, foods, beer, tequila, and even a retirement community. “Forbes” estimated Buffett’s net worth at $1 billion as of June 2023.

Jimmy Buffett is survived by his wife, Jane, two daughters and a son. source

With songs like “Margaritaville” and “Fins,” he became a folk hero to fans known as Parrot Heads. He also became a millionaire hundreds of times over.

Jimmy Buffett, the singer, songwriter, author, sailor and entrepreneur whose roguish brand of island escapism on hits like “Margaritaville” and “Fins” made him something of a latter-day folk hero, especially among his devoted following of so-called Parrot Heads, died Saturday at 76.

“Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” a statement on Mr. Buffett’s website and social media said. “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.”

Peopled with pirates, smugglers, beach bums and barflies, Mr. Buffett’s genial, self-deprecating songs conjured a world of sun, saltwater and nonstop parties animated by the calypso country-rock of his limber Coral Reefer Band. His live shows abounded with singalong anthems and festive tropical iconography, making him a perennial draw on the summer concert circuit, where he built an ardent fan base akin to the Grateful Dead’s Dead HeadsMr. Buffett found success primarily with albums. He enjoyed only a few years on the pop singles chart, with “Margaritaville,” his 1977 breakthrough hit and only single to reach the pop Top 10.

“I blew out my flip-flop/Stepped on a pop-top/Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home,” he sang woozily to the song’s lilting Caribbean rhythms. “But there’s booze in the blender/And soon it will render/That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.”

Mr. Buffett’s music was often described as “Gulf and western,” a nod to his fusion of laid-back twang and island-themed lyrics, as well as a play on the conglomerate name Gulf and Western, the former parent of Paramount Pictures, among other companies.

His songs tended to be of two main types: wistful ballads like “Come Monday” and “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” and clever up-tempo numbers like “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” Some were both, like “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” a 1978 homage to Mr. Buffett’s seafaring grandfather, written with the producer Norbert Putnam.

“I’m just a son of a son, son of a son/
Son of a son of a sailor,” he sang. “The sea’s in my veins, my tradition remains/I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer.”

The Caribbean and the Gulf Coast were Mr. Buffett’s muses, and nowhere more so than Key West in Florida. He first visited the island at the urging of Jerry Jeff Walker, his sometime songwriting and drinking partner, after a gig fell through in Miami in the early ’70s.

“When I found Key West and the Caribbean, I wasn’t really successful yet,” Mr. Buffett said in a 1989 interview with The Washington Post. “But I found a lifestyle, and I knew that whatever I did would have to work around my lifestyle.”

 

The locales provided Mr. Buffett with more than just a breezy, sailing life and grist for his songwriting. They were also the impetus for the creation of a tropical-themed business empire that included a restaurant franchise, a hotel chain and boutique tequila, T-shirt and footwear lines, all of which made him a millionaire hundreds of times over.

“I’ve done a bit of smugglin’, and I’ve run my share of grass,” Mr. Buffett sang of his early days trafficking marijuana in the Florida Keys in “A Pirate Looks at Forty.”

“I made enough money to buy Miami,” he went on, alluding to his subsequent entrepreneurial pursuits. “But I pissed it away so fast/Never meant to last/Never meant to last.”

His claim to squandering his wealth notwithstanding, Mr. Buffett proved to be a shrewd manager of his considerable fortune; in 2023, Forbes estimated his net worth at $1 billion.

“If Mr. Buffett is a pirate, to borrow one of his favorite images, it is hardly because of his days palling around with dope smugglers in the Caribbean,” the critic Anthony DeCurtis wrote in a 1999 essay for The New York Times. “He is a pirate in the way that Bill Gates and Donald Trump have styled themselves, as plundering rebels, visionary artists of the deal, not bound by the societal restrictions meant for smaller, more careful men.”

(The comparison to Mr. Trump here is strictly economic; Mr. Buffett was a Democrat.)

Mr. Buffett was also an accomplished author, one of only six writers, along with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and William Styron, to top both The Times’s fiction and nonfiction best-seller lists. By the time he wrote “Tales from Margaritaville” (1989), the first of his three No. 1 best sellers, he had abandoned the hedonistic lifestyle he had previously embraced.

“I could wind up like a lot of my friends did, burned out or dead, or redirect the energy,” he told The Washington Post in 1989. “I’m not old, but I’m getting older. That period of my life is over. It was fun — all that hard drinking, hard drugging. No apologies.”

“I still have a very happy life,” he went on. “I just don’t do the things I used to do.”

James William Buffett was born on Dec. 25, 1946, in Pascagoula, Miss., one of three children of Mary Loraine (Peets) and James Delaney Buffett Jr. Both of his parents were longtime employees of the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company. His father was a manager of government contracts, and his mother, known simply as Peets, was an assistant director of industrial relations.

Jimmy was raised Roman Catholic in Mobile, Ala., where he took up the trombone in elementary school, at St. Ignatius Catholic School. He went to high school at another Catholic institution in Mobile, the McGill Institute.

In 1964 he enrolled in classes at Auburn University. He flunked out and later attended the University of Southern Mississippi in Biloxi, where he began performing in clubs. He graduated with a degree in history in 1969, before moving to the French Quarter and playing in a cover band on Bourbon Street.

In 1970 he moved to Nashville, hoping to make it as a country singer while working as a journalist for Billboard. (Mr. Buffett was credited with having broken the story about the disbanding of the pioneering bluegrass duo Flatt and Scruggs.) “Down to Earth,” his debut album, was released on Andy Williams’s Barnaby label that year. It sold 324 copies.

Mr. Buffett’s second album for Barnaby, “High Cumberland Jubilee,” went unreleased until 1976, long after he had signed with ABC-Dunhill and recorded “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean,” released in 1973 and featuring the debauched party anthem “Why Don’t We Get Drunk.”

Mr. Buffett had a fondness for puns, as witnessed by “A White Sport Coat,” an album title inspired by the song “A White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation),” a 1957 pop-crossover hit for the country singer Marty Robbins. Another album was called “Last Mango in Paris.”

The “Margaritaville” restaurant and hotel chains are part of the tropical-themed business empire that Mr. Buffett built.Credit…Scott McIntyre for The New York Times

Mr. Buffett’s 1974 release “Living and Dying in ¾ Time” included a version of the comedian Lord Buckley’s “God’s Own Drunk.” “Come Monday,” a lovelorn track from the record, became his first Top 40 hit.

“A1A” (also from 1974) was named for the oceanfront highway that runs along Florida’s Atlantic coastline. The album was Mr. Buffett’s first to contain references to Key West and maritime life, but it was 1977’s platinum-selling “Changes in Attitudes, Changes in Latitudes,” with the blockbuster hit “Margaritaville,” that finally catapulted him to stardom. “Fins,” another major single, was released in 1979.

 

A series of popular releases followed, culminating in 1985 with “Songs You Know By Heart,” a compilation of Mr. Buffett’s most beloved songs to date. The record became the best-selling album of his career.

Mr. Buffett also opened the first of his many “Margaritaville” stores in 1985. That was the year that the former Eagles bassist Timothy B. Schmit, then a member of the Coral Reefer Band, coined the term Parrot Heads to describe Mr. Buffett’s staunch legion of fans, the bulk of whom were baby boomers.

A supporter of conservationist causes, Mr. Buffett moved away from the Keys in the late ’70s because of the area’s increasing commercialization. He initially relocated to Aspen, Colo., before making his home on St. Barts in the Caribbean. He also had houses in Palm Beach, Fla., and Sag Harbor, on eastern Long Island.

In addition to touring and recording, activities he pursued into the 2020s, Mr. Buffett wrote music for movies like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Urban Cowboy.” He also appeared in movies and television shows, including “Rancho Deluxe,” “Jurassic World” and the “Hawaii Five-O” revival in the 2010s, where he starred as the helicopter pilot Frank Bama, a character from his best-selling 1992 novel, “Where Is Joe Merchant?”

An avid pilot, Mr. Buffett owned several aircraft and often flew himself to his shows. In 1994 he crashed one of his airplanes in waters near Nantucket, Mass., while taking off. He survived the accident, after swimming to safety, with only minor injuries.

In 1996 another of Mr. Buffett’s planes, Hemisphere Dancer, was shot at by the Jamaican police, who suspected the craft was being used to smuggle marijuana. On board the airplane, which sustained little damage, were U2’s Bono; Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records; and Mr. Buffett’s wife and two daughters. The Jamaican authorities later admitted the incident was a case of mistaken identity, inspiring Mr. Buffett to write “Jamaica Mistaica,” a droll sendup of the affair.

Mr. Buffett is survived by his wife, Jane (Slagsvol) Buffett, two daughters, Savanah Jane Buffett and Sarah “Delaney” Buffett; a son, Cameron Marley Buffett; and two grandsons. Two sisters, Lucy “Lulu” Buffett and Laurie Buffett, also survive him.

In a 1979 interview with Rolling Stone, Mr. Buffett was asked about a previous remark in which he somewhat incongruously cited the wholesome choral director Mitch Miller and the marauding Gulf Coast pirate Jean Lafitte as two of his greatest inspirations.

“Mitch Miller, for sure,” Mr. Buffett said, doubtless in acknowledgment of the way his own fans sang along with him at concerts. “In the old days: “Sing Along with Mitch?” Who didn’t?”

“But Jean Lafitte was my hero as a romantic character,” he continued. “I’m not sure he was a musical influence. His lifestyle influenced me, most definitely, ’cause I’m the very opposite of Mitch Miller.” source

Legendary musician Jimmy Buffett dead at 76: ‘Lived his life like a song til the very last breath’

Jimmy Buffett leaves behind his wife Jane Slagsvol and his three children: Savannah, Sarah and Cameron

Legendary singer and songwriter Jimmy Buffett died on Friday at the age of 76 after struggling with an undisclosed health issue since 2022.

The “Margaritaville” icon died peacefully Friday surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs, according to a statement posted to his website and social media accounts.

“He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many,” the statement read. Buffett’s cause and place of death were not provided.

Buffett leaves behind his wife Jane Slagsvol and his three children: Savannah, Sarah and Cameron.

Singer Jimmy Buffett performs on NBC’s “Today” show in New York, August 15, 2013. (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)

The musician began struggling with a health issue starting last year, when he was hospitalized and forced to cancel several shows, according to USA Today. In May and June 2023, he canceled additional concerts after disclosing that he returned to the hospital to address medical issues that required “immediate attention.”

In addition to the 1977 hit “Margaritaville,” Buffett released several pop culture staples in the 1970s and 1980s, including “Come Monday,” “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” “A Pirate Looks at Forty” and “Pencil Thin Mustache.”

Buffett was born on Christmas Day 1946 in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and grew up in Mobile, Alabama. He began playing guitar during his first year at Auburn University before continuing his college years at Pearl River Community College and the University of Southern Mississippi, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1969.

Jimmy Buffett of Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band performs during the 2022 New Orleans & Jazz festival at Fair Grounds Race Course on May 08, 2022 in New Orleans, Louisiana. ((Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage))

The entertainer then moved to Nashville and released his first country album in 1970 called “Down to Earth.” But in a 1971 trip to Key West with fellow country music singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker, Buffett’s musical focus changed from outlaw country to Calypso folk-pop.

On top of his musical pursuits, Buffett was involved in business as well, opening his first Margaritaville store in Key West in 1985. Two years later, he opened a Margaritaville Café nearby.

Legendary singer and songwriter Jimmy Buffett died on Friday at the age of 76. (REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton)

Buffett’s business empire built eventually featured apparel, resorts, restaurants, beer, casinos, a radio station and retirement communities. Forbes estimated in 2017 that the Margaritaville global lifestyle brand had more than $4.8 billion in the development pipeline and $1.5 billion in annual sales. Buffett’s net worth was listed at $1 billion in June 2023.

The musician has 30 albums, launched Margaritaville Records in the early 1990s, wrote several fiction books and was involved in film and TV through musical contributions and cameos. source

Today, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that Hawaii’s ban on butterfly knives violates the Second Amendment. Knife Rights filed an important amicus (friend of the court) brief in support of the appellants in the case of Teter v. Lopez.

In its decision, the Court reversed the district court’s judgment in favor of Hawaii and remanded the case back to the district court “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.” The Court also denied the appellees’ request to remand the case for further factual or historical development in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, determining that only “legislative facts” were relevant and further development of the facts was unnecessary since the case presented only a legal question. Click to read the full opinion.

As Knife Rights has argued in its recently filed Second Amendment lawsuits against the State of California’s ban on switchblades (also in the Ninth Circuit), the City of Philadelphia (recently settled in our favor) and the Federal Switchblade Act, enforced by the federal government, the Court held that possession of butterfly knives is conduct covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment and that bladed weapons are “arms” within the meaning of the Second Amendment. It also held that at the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment, the term “arms” was understood to include bladed weapons and concluded that the Constitution guarantees keeping and bearing of bladed arms for lawful purposes including self-defense.

Knife Rights’ attorney John Dillon said, “We applaud the Ninth Circuit decision in Teter v. Lopez. Butterfly knives, like any other variation of folding pocket knives, are protected arms under the Second Amendment. This decision supports our recent challenges to city, state and Federal knife bans. Whether they like it or not, governments throughout America will be forced to understand that they cannot ban common arms.”

While this decision is a huge victory, before balisong enthusiasts in Hawaii rush out to buy one, it must be noted that the district court still has to take action and there’s also the possibility of a rehearing en banc or other legal activity. Stay tuned!

Congratulations to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Alan Beck and Stephen Stamboulieh, on this important victory.

Litigation Highlight: Ninth Circuit Hears Oral Argument in Challenge to Hawaii’s Butterfly Knife Ban

First principles of federalism suggest that state-to-state variety is a feature, not a bug, of the American system. Each state can generally determine for itself how to exercise its police power and provide for public safety. However, recent litigation following the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision suggests that differentiation among state weapons regulations may raise constitutional concerns. Outlier states are now on the defensive when it comes to their sui generis weapons regulations. In Hawaii, a unique approach to knife control faces a Second Amendment challenge.

On February 14, the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments in Andrew Teter v. Anne E. Lopez[1]. The case involves a challenge to a Hawaii state law banning butterfly knives. The statute, which Hawaii originally passed in 1999, makes it a misdemeanor to knowingly manufacture, sell, transfer, possess, or transport butterfly knives within the state. The state described butterfly knives, also known as balisong knives, in its original briefing as having blades enclosed in a split handle, just as switchblades do. Unlike switchblades, however, the blade in a butterfly knife is produced by manually pulling apart the split handle and turning the knife around rather than by using a spring-action or gravity release mechanism.

The provision banning butterfly knives sits within a larger portion of the Hawaii Revised Statutes that regulates “firearms, ammunition, and dangerous weapons.” The prior sub-sections of the code ban dirks, daggers, blackjacks, slug shots, billy clubs, metal knuckles, pistols, and other deadly or dangerous weapons, along with switchblades.

The parties filed original briefing in the Court of Appeals nearly three years ago, after the District Court for the District of Hawaii granted the state’s motion for summary judgment. However, the Ninth Circuit panel heard arguments only this month, following an extended abeyance and supplemental briefing after the Bruen decision. The panel included Judges Carlos Bea, Daniel Collins, and Kenneth Lee.

In their 31-page supplemental brief filed following Bruen, the plaintiff-appellants argued that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear butterfly knives as weapons of self-defense. The brief argued that Hawaii’s outright ban of butterfly knives—residents can neither carry them nor possess them at home—violates that right. Under Bruen’s text, history, and tradition test, appellants said, there are no historical analogues from the Founding that are comparably justified and comparably burdensome to the present-day butterfly knife ban, despite the fact that butterfly knives existed in that period.  Appellants further argued that these knives fall squarely within the definition of bearable arms “because they can be held by a person to attack another person in confrontations.”

Appellants asserted that the history books contain no analogues to Hawaii’s butterfly knife ban that might support the state’s decision to ban a weapon that is otherwise presumptively protected under the Second Amendment. During oral argument, appellants pointed out that Hawaii is an outlier in its criminalization of butterfly knives as a matter of both historical and present law. Only one other state — New Mexico — bans butterfly knives outright.

In response, the state’s supplemental brief contended that Hawaii’s butterfly knife ban passes constitutional muster even in a post-Bruen world. The state, which under Bruen bears the burden of producing a relevant historical analogue, appended over 200 pages of evidence from the historical record to its brief. That record, the state suggested, reveals a long historical tradition of knife regulations throughout Hawaiian and U.S. history, dating to the period of the Founding, that supports the present-day ban. Hawaii argued that its ban on butterfly knives and the related switchblade “is part of a tradition of banning weapons that are closely associated with criminals and criminal activity.”

In isolating historical analogues, Hawaii focused on laws from the Founding Era that banned knives (and weapons, generally) associated primarily with criminal activity. The state relied heavily on evidence of Bowie knife regulation. The state argued that the butterfly knife ban is analogous to those laws because it similarly targets weapons used disproportionately by criminals. The state further relied on footnote 9 in the Bruen opinion—which carved out shall-issue handgun licensing—to argue that courts should uphold state regulations when “they do not necessarily prevent law-abiding, responsible citizens from exercising their Second Amendment right[s].”

During oral argument, the panel of judges pushed back on many of the state’s arguments. Notably, Judge Bea pressed the deputy solicitor general of Hawaii on his request for remand to further develop the factual record of historical analogues to Hawaii’s butterfly knife ban. Judge Bea seemed unconvinced that developing the historical record was a factual inquiry worthy of remand. Instead, he suggested that remand would be inappropriate because the state had already enjoyed an adequate opportunity to collect historical statutes and because the history of legislation is question of law, not fact. Notably, the factual record in this case does not include statistics or information regarding the number of butterfly knives in private possession or how frequently they are used in crimes.

Similarly, Judge Bea seemed skeptical of Hawaii’s argument that the relevant category of historical analogues was bans on weapons commonly associated with criminal behavior. The panel expressed doubt that “weapons associated with criminals” constituted a firm enough category to support a legislative ban given the historical record. Instead, Judge Collins and Judge Lee asked for evidence that butterfly knives fell in the category of “dangerous and unusual weapons,” which do not have Second Amendment protection. The Hawaii first deputy solicitor general argued that weapons associated with criminals are generally “dangerous and unusual weapons” that do not benefit from Second Amendment protection.

Notably, counsel for the appellants appeared to suggest that “dangerous and unusual weapons” lack Second Amendment coverage only in “carry” contexts (as opposed to ownership)—this argument wasn’t made explicitly, but counsel stated he would like to preserve it. Appellants’ counsel made this point in response to a question from Judge Lee about whether the “dangerous and unusual weapons” rule should be a freestanding threshold inquiry or, instead, part of the Bruen historical analysis. If courts were to read the “dangerous and unusual weapons” carveout as applying only to laws regulating carriage of such arms, laws banning possession of weapons such as grenade launchers might violate the Second Amendment.

Judge Collins further suggested that, despite Hawaii’s argument to the contrary, Bruen’s endorsement of laws (like shall-issue licensing) that do not restrict law-abiding citizens from exercising Second Amendment rights do not control in analyzing the butterfly-knife law because it is a total ban and not a regulation on carry or use. Bruen footnote 9, Judge Collins implied, should only come into play when a law seeks to regulate the use of weapons by non-law-abiding citizens. The state argued that the narrowness of the law — its application only to butterfly knives — makes footnote 9 analytically relevant.

The Ninth Circuit panel also questioned the Hawaii legislature’s motive for banning butterfly knives (moving beyond Bruen’s history-centric test). The judges expressed some doubt about the state’s argument that the legislative history demonstrated that butterfly knives are disproportionately used by criminals.

Several features of this case stand out, even as the parties await an official ruling from the Ninth Circuit. First, counsel for the appellants argued for an extremely strict historical approach in cases involving weapons that existed at the Founding. Appellants’ counsel claimed that Bruen requires a finding of unconstitutionality whenever a state regulates a weapon that existed at the Founding in a manner that goes beyond the regulations on the books close in time to 1791. This would mean the existence of analogous regulations can only be used to support the constitutionality of legislation regulating arms that did not exist at the Founding. For arms that did exist at the Founding, the government would have to point to legislation that is identical—not merely analogous. If circuit courts are amenable to the application of this sort of strict historical rule, many other non-firearm weapons regulations may be in constitutional danger.

Second, the Ninth Circuit panel is still working out how Bruen alters, or clarifies, preexisting Supreme Court precedent. Judge Lee asked appellants’ counsel whether the “dangerous and unusual weapons” rule from Heller was part of Bruen’s historical-analogue analysis. Appellants’ counsel responded that the rule should be subsumed into the historical-analogue analysis. That approach may result in a significantly narrower “dangerous and unusual weapons” exception to Second Amendment rights than had existed pre-Bruen. Similarly, courts may focus on Justice Alito’s emphasis, in his concurrence in Caetano, that a weapon must be both dangerous and unusual in order for regulation of that weapon to fall outside of the Amendment’s scope.

Third, many questions remain about what a trial court needs to do when considering Second Amendment challenges. What are the “facts” that are relevant to the Bruen inquiry? Do records of historical laws that serve (or fail to serve) as relevant analogues constitute facts that belong in the realm of trial courts, as the state of Hawaii believes, or can they be “found” in the first instance by an appellate court? Are statistics about the prevalence of particular weapons at the Founding, or about current uses of particular weapons, necessary to decide Second Amendment cases? These questions must be answered if the lower courts are to handle Second Amendment cases effectively without the constant specter of a possible remand.

Finally, this case illustrates what much post-Bruen litigation has shown: determining a relevant historical analogue can be tricky. The panel of judges spent little to no time during oral argument asking counsel on either side about the plethora of historical statutes produced by the state that regulated the use of knives. America’s long history of Bowie knife bans, it seems, is not necessarily a substantial enough historical analogue in a Second Amendment case challenging a butterfly knife ban—although the questioning suggested the judges might agree that this tradition would support a ban on the public carry of butterfly knives (rather than a broader ban on possession like Hawaii’s law).

[1] The case caption was originally Andrew Teter v. Holly T. Shikada, but has since been updated to reflect to the fact that Anne Lopez is now the attorney general of Hawaii.

Happy Father’s Day 2023 Date: It is believed that the day was started by an American woman who was raised by her father after she lost her mother.

Happy Father’s Day 2019: Fathers play an important role in a child’s life – they stand by them though thick and thin and help them achieve the best in life. To celebrate this special bond between children and their father, Father’s Day is celebrated every year in the third week of June. This year, it will be celebrated on June 16 (Sunday) in India.

History of Father’s Day

It is believed that the day was started by an American woman who was raised by a widower. Sonora Smart Dodd was born in Sebastian County, Arkansas in 1982, and her mother died when she was only 16. It was Dodd’s father, William Smart, who raised her and five brothers after their mother died.

Dodd was bothered that there was no day to honour her father who raised the children alone wanted the celebration to be held on June 5, her father’s birthday. But it was later pushed to Sunday, June 19, 1910.

Europeans countries celebrate Father’s Day on St Joseph’s Day to recognise the special role of the male parent in a child’s life. source

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Father’s Day: 5 things you didn’t know you didn’t know about the holiday

Father’s Day is upon us once again this Sunday, June 17, and while you’ve hopefully already bought dear old Dad a cool gadget or witty card to mark the occasion (and if you haven’t, stop reading this and go get one!), you may have some questions about the holiday. Do we have Hallmark to thank (or curse) for it? Which came first, Father’s Day or Mother’s Day? Read on for answers to those questions and more.

There are two stories about the origins of Father’s Day

The lore goes that the holiday is the brainchild of two women. The first, Grace Golden Clayton of West Virginia, suggested to her pastor in 1908 that the church honor fathers, an idealikely inspired by a mining disaster in nearby Monongah the year before that killed 362 men and left 1,000 widows and children.

The other woman, more widely recognized as the creator of Father’s Day, was Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Washington. Dodd and her five siblings were raised by a single father in a time when that was largely uncommon, and in 1910 she started a petition to recognize the holiday.

The first piece of legislation regarding the day was a 1913 bill by Congress specifying that “[t]he third Sunday in June is Father’s Day.” While its popularity waxed and waned over the years due to — no joke — tie manufacturers, it slowly gained popularity from the 1930s to the ’60s. (Read my colleague Phil Edwards’s piece “How the necktie industry saved Father’s Day” to get the whole fascinating story.)

In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation to mark the celebration of Father’s Day, and in 1972, President Richard Nixon finally signed it into law.

Father’s Day is now celebrated in many other countries, including Russia, Thailand, and Australia, though not always on the same day as in America and not always in the same fashion. For instance, the Telegraph notes that in Germany, “[in] certain regions it is traditional for groups of men to go into the woods with a wagon of beer, wines and meats. Heavy drinking is common and, according to official statistics, traffic-related accidents spike on this day.”

Wait, is it spelled Father’s Day or Fathers’ Day?

It’s definitely Father’s Day, with the apostrophe before the S. If you want to dig into the grammar of it, Dictionary.com offers this rather touching explanation:

With the apostrophe before the s, Father’s Day “belongs” to each individual father. If the apostrophe fell after the s, the meaning slightly changes. That would be a holiday “belonging” to all fathers as a collective.

In other words, Father’s Day is a time to celebrate the greatness of your own dad, and to hell with the rest of them. (More broadly, if you’re confused by apostrophes in general, Vox’s German Lopez has a great explainer.)

If you don’t care about grammar in the slightest, here’s the simplest explanation: Though founder Dodd spelled the name Fathers’ Day on her original petition to recognize the holiday, the 1913 congressional bill spelled it Father’s Day. And thus it has remained.

Father’s Day in pop culture

There are at least two (very different) movies about the holiday. The Father’s Day of 1997 stars Robin Williams and Billy Crystal as two strangers who go on a quest to find a boy after their mutual informs them both, separately, that the kid is their son. Roger Ebert was not a fan, calling it “a brainless feature-length sitcom with too much sit and no com.”

The Father’s Day of 2011 is an “American-Canadian action-horror comedy” about a quest for revenge against a serial father killer, which has a surprisingly high 71 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

But if you’re looking for something more family-friendly, perhaps featuring Julia Roberts, we assume it’s only a matter of time until someone takes a cue from the late “holiday-themed supervillain” Garry Marshall and unleashes a hellish vision of Father’s Day upon the world.

Mother’s Day still trumps Father’s Day — in retail terms, at least

Motherhood may have certain detrimental effects on women’s earnings potential, but when it comes to commercial holidays, the moms have a clear lead. Though greeting card companies and sporting goods stores now rake in profits every third Sunday in June, there are a few pieces of evidence for Father’s Day being the smaller of the two parent-focused holidays.

One is that Mother’s Day has just been around longer — as Edwards explains, the mother of Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis, created the holiday in 1908, and President Woodrow Wilson made it a national holiday six years later. Father’s Day, meanwhile, didn’t become an official holiday until 1972, courtesy of Nixon.

It could also reflect a difference in home life structure. According to the Census Bureau, there were 1.9 million single fathers with kids under 18 in 2015, versus 9.9 million single mothers. And in two-parent families where one parent stays home with the kids, there’s a big discrepancy in who it is: The census found that among married couples, there were 5.2 million stay-at-home moms in 2015, versus just 199,000 stay-at-home dads.

The sales data bears this out: The National Retail Federation estimates that Mother’s Day this year resulted in $23.1 billion in spending, while Father’s Day–related sales are expected to be around $15.3 billion — not exactly chump change, but a significantly smaller sum nonetheless.

What should I get my dad for Father’s Day?

Here’s how Father’s Day gift-giving breaks down, according to National Retail Federation data:

National Retail Federation

If you’re under 10, congrats — not only do you have excellent reading skills and taste but you’re one of the lucky few who can get away with presenting a novelty neckwear item of some sort (Tabasco ties were my go-to). Otherwise, you could take your dad to the movies; per CNN, Father’s Day weekend was the fourth-highest-grossing box office weekend in 2015. You could send him a card (like 74 million people do each year, according to Hallmark), though if you haven’t already put one in the mail, an e-card might be more realistic this year.

Regardless of what you get him (or don’t get him), your dad probably just wants your love, so spend time with him if you can or give him a call if you can’t. Unless, of course, he’s one of the 14 percent of dads Zagat surveyed who just want to be left completely alone on Father’s Day. source

Father’s Day in the United States is on the third Sunday of June. It celebrates the contribution that fathers and father figures make for their children’s lives.

Its origins may lie in a memorial service held for a large group of men, many of them fathers, who were killed in a mining accident in Monongah, West Virginia in 1907.

Is Father’s Day a Public Holiday?

Father’s Day is not a federal holiday. Organizations, businesses and stores are open or closed, just as they are on any other Sunday in the year. Public transit systems run to their normal Sunday schedules. Restaurants may be busier than usual, as some people take their fathers out for a treat.

Legally, Father’s Day is a state holiday in Arizona. However, because it always falls on a Sunday, most state government offices and employees observe their Sunday schedule on the day.

What Do People Do?

Father’s Day is an occasion to mark and celebrate the contribution that your own father has made to your life. Many people send or give cards or gifts to their fathers. Common Father’s Day gifts include sports items or clothing, electronic gadgets, outdoor cooking supplies and tools for household maintenance.

Father’s Day is a relatively modern holiday so different families have a range of traditions. These can range from a simple phone call or greetings card to large parties honoring all of the ‘father’ figures in a particular extended family. Father figures can include fathers, step-fathers, fathers-in-law, grandfathers and great-grandfathers and even other male relatives. In the days and weeks before Father’s Day, many schools and Sunday schools help their pupils to prepare a handmade card or small gift for their fathers.

Background and symbols

There are a range of events, which may have inspired the idea of Father’s Day. One of these was the start of the Mother’s Day tradition in the first decade of the 20th century. Another was a memorial service held in 1908 for a large group of men, many of them fathers, who were killed in a mining accident in Monongah, West Virginia in December 1907.

A woman called Sonora Smart Dodd was an influential figure in the establishment of Father’s Day. Her father raised six children by himself after the death of their mother. This was uncommon at that time, as many widowers placed their children in the care of others or quickly married again.

Sonora was inspired by the work of Anna Jarvis, who had pushed for Mother’s Day celebrations. Sonora felt that her father deserved recognition for what he had done. The first time Father’s Day was held in June was in 1910. Father’s Day was officially recognized as a holiday in 1972 by President Nixon.

About Father’s Day in Other Countries

Read more about Father’s Day.

While we diligently research and update our holiday dates, some of the information in the table above may be preliminary. If you find an error, please let us know.

source

Six people are dead and dozens more injured after a massive pileup Monday in Illinois caused by a sudden dust storm, officials said.

Illinois State Police Maj. Ryan Starrick said during an afternoon press conference that six people had died and more than 30 people were transported to the hospital, including multiple people with life-threatening injuries. Victims range in age from 2 to 80 years old, Starrick said.

The crash took place at about 11 a.m. local time on Interstate 55 in Montgomery County, officials said. Car accidents were reported on both north and southbound lanes of I-55 for a 2-mile stretch.

Forty to 60 passenger vehicles and at least 30 commercial vehicles were involved in the crash, including two semi-trucks that caught fire, police said.

Jerry Springer was a journalist, actor and talk show host

April 27, 2023, Chicago, IL

Talk show host Jerry Springer has died at the age of 79.

Springer’s publicist Linda Shafran confirmed his passing to Fox News Digital on Thursday morning. The TV personality died from pancreatic cancer, according to Springer’s spiritual leader and friend Rabbi Sandford Kopnick.

“Jerry’s ability to connect with people was at the heart of his success in everything he tried whether that was politics, broadcasting or just joking with people on the street who wanted a photo or a word,” said Jene Galvin, a family spokesperson and friend of Springer’s since 1970, in a statement. “He’s irreplaceable and his loss hurts immensely, but memories of his intellect, heart and humor will live on.”Springer died peacefully at home in suburban Chicago after a brief illness, the statement said. He was surrounded by his family.

Jerry Springer has died, his publicist confirmed to Fox News Digital. He was 79. (Getty Images)

Geraldo Rivera paid tribute to Springer shortly after the news was announced.

“Shocked & saddened by passing at age of 79 of my old colleague & talk show rival Jerry Springer,” he wrote. “Jerry was a Renaissance Man. Formerly mayor of Cincinnati, he moved effortlessly from politics & the local news business, into hosting his flamboyant fun-filled talk show. RIP buddy.”

WATCH: GERALDO RIVERA REMEMBERS JERRY SPRINGER

“The Jerry Springer Show” launched in 1991 and ran for multiple decades.

At its peak, “The Jerry Springer Show” was a ratings powerhouse and a U.S. cultural pariah, synonymous with lurid drama. Known for chair-throwing and bleep-filled arguments, the daytime talk show was a favorite American guilty pleasure over its 27-year run, at one point topping Oprah Winfrey’s show.

“The Jerry Springer Show” premiered in 1991. (Getty Images)

After more than 4,000 episodes, the show ended in 2018, never straying from its core salaciousness: Some of its last episodes had such titles as “Stripper Sex Turned Me Straight,” “Stop Pimpin’ My Twin Sister” and “Hooking Up With My Therapist.”

Before his TV career, Springer earned a political science degree from Tulane University. He completed his education with a law degree from Northwestern.

“The Jerry Springer Show” ended in 2018. (Getty Images)

Springer also had a career in politics. (Getty Images)

The TV personality entered politics as a political campaign adviser to Robert F. Kennedy, and would later immerse himself in the local political arena of Cincinnati.

Springer served five terms on the city council before running for mayor at the age of 33. He also ran for governor of Ohio in 1982.

Springer then launched his journalism career by becoming the anchor and managing editor of a local Cincinnati news station in 1983. He earned eight local Emmy Awards for his work.

In 2019, Springer launched the show “Judge Jerry.” (Getty Images)

After gaining nationwide fame with “The Jerry Springer Show,” he began acting and appeared in numerous TV shows and movies. He’s most known for his roles in “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” “Ringmaster,” “The Defender” and “Domino.”

In 2019, Springer launched the show “Judge Jerry.” The small-claims court show ran for three seasons and featured Springer hearing actual court cases in front of a live studio audience.

Funeral services for Springer, along with a memorial gathering, are currently being developed, the family’s statement said.

“To remember Jerry, the family asks that in lieu of flowers you consider following his spirit and make a donation or commit to an act of kindness to someone in need or a worthy advocacy organization. As he always said, ‘Take care of yourself, and each other.'”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

By Danielle Wallace , Lauryn Overhultz | Fox News

Jerry Springer’s cause of death revealed

CHICAGO – Jerry Springer, a longtime television host and former mayor of Cincinnati, died from pancreatic cancer, his representative confirmed to FOX Television Stations Friday.

Springer, who died peacefully at his home in suburban Chicago Thursday, was 79.

A family spokesperson said in a statement on April 27 that Springer died after a “brief illness.”

At its peak, “The Jerry Springer Show” was a ratings powerhouse and a U.S. cultural pariah, synonymous with lurid drama. Known for chair-throwing and bleep-filled arguments, the daytime talk show was a favorite American guilty pleasure over its 27-year run, at one point topping Oprah Winfrey’s show.

“Jerry’s ability to connect with people was at the heart of his success in everything he tried whether that was politics, broadcasting or just joking with people on the street who wanted a photo or a word,” Jene Galvin, a family spokesperson and friend of Springer’s since 1970, said in a statement. “He’s irreplaceable and his loss hurts immensely, but memories of his intellect, heart and humor will live on.”

RELATED: Jerry Springer, iconic talk show host, dead at 79

Funeral services and a memorial gathering are currently being developed. To remember Jerry, the family asks that in lieu of flowers, people consider following his spirit and make a donation or commit to an act of kindness to someone in need or a worthy advocacy organization.

RELATED: Pancreatic cancer: What you should know about the disease that led to Jerry Springer’s death

According to the Mayo Clinic, pancreatic cancer grows in the tissues of a person’s pancreas, an organ that is located behind the lower part of a person’s stomach, and cancer, according to the Cleveland Clinic’s website, occurs when cells within a person mutate and multiply out of control.

There are two types of pancreatic cancer, according to the Cleveland Clinic, with exocrine tumors, or pancreatic cancer that begins in the cells that line the pancreas, making up 90% of all cases. Meanwhile, less than 10% of pancreatic tumors are neuroendocrine tumors, or tumors that originate from specialized cells that link up a person’s hormone management system to the nervous system.

This story was reported from Los Angeles. The Associated Press, Kenneth Wong contributed.

Updated April 28th source

During March 2023, two large banks in the United States with significant exposure to the technology sector or to cryptocurrency failed, while another entered liquidation under financial distress.^[1][2]

The first bank, cryptocurrency-focused Silvergate Bank, announced it would wind down on March 8 due to losses suffered in its loan portfolio. Two days later, upon announcement of an attempt to raise capital, a bank run occurred at Silicon Valley Bank, causing it to collapse and be seized by regulators that day. Signature Bank, a bank that frequently did business with cryptocurrency firms, was closed by regulators two days later on March 12, with regulators citing systemic risks. The collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were the second- and third-largest bank failures in the history of the United States, smaller only than the 2008 collapse of Washington Mutual during the then-ongoing financial crisis.

In response to banking failures, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the United States Department of the Treasury announced in a joint communiqué that extraordinary measures would be taken to ensure that all deposits at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank would be honored, with the Federal Reserve separately announcing the creation of the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), a program that would offer loans of up to one year in length to banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other eligible depository institutions pledging U.S. Treasuries, agency debt and mortgage-backed securities, and other qualifying assets as collateral.

Silvergate Bank

Silvergate Bank is a California-based bank that began operations in 1988 as a savings and loan association. In the 2010s, the bank began to provide banking services to players within the cryptocurrency market. The bank sought regulatory approval in the summer of 2014 to do business with cryptocurrency firms. The bank expanded the assets on its balance sheet significantly—doubling its assets in its 2017 fiscal year to $1.9 billion—by servicing cryptocurrency exchanges and other companies who were involved in the cryptocurrency business that could not secure financing from larger, more conservative banks. Despite its rapid growth, the company maintained a small physical footprint; in 2018, the bank had only three branches, all located in Southern California.[10] By the fourth quarter of 2022, 90% of the bank’s deposits had become cryptocurrency-related, with over $1 billion in deposits being tied to Sam Bankman-Fried.

In addition to providing traditional banking services to its cryptocurrency clients, the bank operated as a clearinghouse for its banking clients; it involved itself in the business of resolving and settling transactions in real-time through its proprietary Silvergate Exchange Network. The network allowed a client to send payments in U.S. dollars from its accounts with Silvergate to those of another client of the bank without requiring an interbank wire transfer. Due to the relative quickness of the transaction settling achieved on Silvergate’s network, a large number of cryptocurrency companies set up accounts with the bank to take advantage of Silvergate’s quick transaction settling times.

Silicon Valley Bank

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was a commercial bank founded in 1983 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Until its collapse, SVB was the 16th largest bank in the United States and was heavily skewed toward serving companies and individuals from the technology industry. Nearly half of U.S. venture capital-backed healthcare and technology companies were financed by SVB. Companies such as Airbnb, Cisco, Fitbit, Pinterest, and Block, Inc. have been clients of the bank. In addition to financing venture-backed companies, SVB was well known as a source of private banking, personal credit lines, and mortgages to tech entrepreneurs. According to the FDIC, it had $209 billion in assets at the end of 2022.

Signature Bank

Signature Bank was a New York City-based bank founded in 2001 The bank began as a subsidiary of Bank Hapoalim that took on clients with assets of around $250,000, lending to small businesses based in New York City and in the surrounding metropolitan area. The bank provided financing within the multifamily residential rental housing market in the New York metropolitan area beginning in 2007, though it began to reduce its exposure to the market during the 2010s. By 2019, just over four-tenths of the value of the bank’s loans were made to multifamily homeowners in the New York metropolitan area, comprising $15.8 billion of the bank’s then-$38.9 billion in net loans.

Beginning in 2018, Signature Bank began to court customers in the cryptocurrency industry, securing hires that were experienced in the area with the goal of moving away from its dependence on real estate lending. The quantity of deposits held at the bank expanded significantly, with deposits increasing from about $36.3 billion at the end of the 2018 fiscal year to $104 billion by August 2022; that month, over one-quarter of the bank’s deposits held were those of cryptocurrency companies.Its cryptocurrency-sector clients included large cryptocurrency exchange operators, such as Celsius Network and Binance. By early 2023, Signature Bank had become the second largest provider of banking services to the cryptocurrency industry—second only to Silvergate Bank.

In addition to providing traditional banking services to cryptocurrency clients, Signature Bank opened a proprietary payment network for use among its cryptocurrency clients. The payment network, Signet, had opened in 2019 for approved clients, and allowed the real-time gross settlement of fund transfers through the blockchain without third parties or transaction fees. By the conclusion of 2020, Signature Bank had 740 clients using Signet. The network continued to expand during the in the following years; both Coinbase and the TrueUSD dollar-pegged stablecoin had become integrated with Signet in 2022 and 2021, respectively.

Bank collapses

Silvergate Bank

Main article: Silvergate Bank § Liquidation

Despite conducting the majority of its business with cryptocurrency companies, Silvergate’s investment portfolio was fairly conservative; the company took large positions in mortgage-backed securities as well as U.S. bonds. These sorts of assets, while reliable to be paid-in-full through their maturity date, carry risks associated with changes in interest rates; there is an inverse relationship between the mark-to-market value of a bond and the bond’s yield. As interest rates shot up during the 2021–2023 inflation surge, the mark-to-market price of these securities decreased significantly. When these losses are unrealized, this does not typically cause the bank to cease operating, as the bank will receive payment-in-full under the original terms of the bond. However, if forced to sell these securities at a lower mark-to-market price, the losses on these types of assets become realized, posing significant risks to the bank’s ability to continue to operate.

Silvergate was hit with a bank run in the wake of the bankruptcy of FTX; deposits from cryptocurrency-related firms dropped by 68% at the bank, with the bank facing requests from its clients to withdraw upwards of $8 billion in deposits. As Silvergate did not have enough cash-on-hand to satisfy the deposit withdrawals, the bank began to sell its assets at a steep loss; the company realized a loss of $718 million on withdrawal-related asset sales in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2022 alone. The bank, in a public statement, said that it was solvent at the end of Q4 2022, with an asset sheet containing assets of $4.6 billion in cash and $5.6 billion in liquid debt securities, with $3.8 billion in deposit obligations. Silvergate faced tight financial constraints in the coming months, selling assets at a loss and borrowing $3.6 billion from the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco to maintain its liquidity. Silvergate wrote in a regulatory filing on March 1 that the bank risked losing its status as a well-capitalized bank and that the bank faced risks relating to its ability to continue operating.

Facing continued losses from sales of securities at mark-to-market price, Silvergate released a public notice on March 8, 2023, saying that it would undergo voluntary liquidation and would return all deposited funds to their respective owners.

Silicon Valley Bank

Main article: Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank

Silicon Valley Bank recorded an increase of its deposit holdings during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the tech sector experienced a period of growth. In 2021, it purchased long-term Treasury bonds to capitalize on the increased deposits. However, the current market value of these bonds decreased as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to curb the 2021–2023 inflation surge.[33] Higher interest rates also raised borrowing costs throughout the economy and some Silicon Valley Bank clients started pulling money out to meet their liquidity needs. To raise cash to pay withdrawals by its depositors, SVB announced on March 8 that it had sold over US$21 billion worth of securities, borrowed US$15 billion, and would hold an emergency sale of some of its treasury stock to raise US$2.25 billion. The announcement, coupled with warnings from prominent Silicon Valley investors, caused a bank run as customers withdrew funds totaling US$42 billion by the following day.

On March 10, 2023, as a result of the bank run, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) seized SVB and placed it under the receivership of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC established a deposit insurance national bank, the Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara, to service insured deposits and announced that it would start paying dividends for uninsured deposits the following week; the dividends were funded by proceeds from the sale of SVB assets. Some 89 percent of the bank’s US$172 billion in deposit liabilities exceeded the maximum insured by the FDIC. Two days after the failure, the FDIC received exceptional authority from the Treasury and announced jointly with other agencies that all depositors would have full access to their funds the next morning. An initial auction of Silicon Valley Bank assets on the same day attracted a single bid after PNC Financial Services and RBC Bank backed away from making offers. The FDIC rejected this offer and plans to hold a second auction to attract bids from major banks, now that the bank’s systemic risk designation allows the FDIC to insure all deposits. The bank was later reopened as a newly organized bridge bank, Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, N. A.

Signature Bank

Main article: Signature Bank § Collapse

Reporters field questions to Signature Bank customers exiting a New York location.

As cryptocurrency prices dropped significantly in 2022, particularly so after the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, depositors in Signature Bank began to withdraw deposits in the tune of billions of dollars; by the end of 2022, deposits in the bank totaled around $88.6 billion, down from $106.1 billion in deposits held at the beginning of the year—a time when over one-quarter of deposits were held by digital asset-related entities. Towards the end of 2022, Signature Bank cut business ties with cryptocurrency exchange Binance, seeking to reduce the bank’s exposure to risk associated with the cryptocurrency market. According to Signature Bank board member Barney Frank, Signature Bank was hit with a multi-billion dollar bank run on Friday, March 10, with depositors expressing concern about cryptocurrency-related risks affecting the bank. Investor confidence in the bank was also badly shaken, and the bank’s stock declined by 23% on that Friday—the day on which Silicon Valley bank collapsed—marking the then-largest single-day decline of the Signature Bank’s value in its 22-year history.

On 12 March 2023, two days after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank was closed by regulators from the New York State Department of Financial Services in what is the third-biggest banking collapse in U.S. history. The bank proved unable to close a sale or otherwise bolster its finances before markets opened on Monday morning in order to protect its assets after customers began withdrawing their deposits in favor of bigger institutions, and shareholders of the bank lost all invested funds. The bank was placed under receivership by the FDIC, which immediately established Signature Bridge Bank, N.A. to operate its marketed assets to bidders.

Signature Bank had been under multiple federal investigations that were ongoing at the time of the bank’s collapse regarding the rigor of its anti-money laundering measures. The U.S. Department of Justice had opened a criminal probe into whether the firm was performing due diligence when opening up new accounts and whether it was doing enough to detect and report potential criminal activity by its clients. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had opened a separate, related civil probe.

Federal response

Bank Term Funding Program

In response to the bank failures of March, the U.S. Federal Government took extraordinary measures to mitigate fallout across the banking sector. On March 12, Federal Reserve created the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), an emergency lending program providing loans of up to one year in length to banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other eligible depository institutions that pledge U.S. Treasuries, agency debt and mortgage-backed securities, and other qualifying assets as collateral. The program is designed to provide liquidity to financial institutions, following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and other bank failures, and to reduce the risks associated with current unrealized losses in the U.S. banking system that totaled over $600 billion at the time of the program’s launch. Funded through the Deposit Insurance Fund,[50] the program offers loans of up to one yearto eligible borrowers who pledge as collateral certain types of securities including U.S. Treasuries, agency debt, and mortgage-backed securities.[51] The collateral will be valued at par instead of open-market value, so a bank can borrow on asset values that have not been impaired by a series of interest rate hikes since 2022. The Federal Reserve also eased conditions at its discount window. The Department of the Treasury will make available up to $25 billion from its Exchange Stabilization Fund as a backstop for the program.

In addition to working with their counterparts at the FDIC and U.S. Treasury to provide liquidity to banks through the BTFP, the Federal Reserve has begun to internally discuss implementing stricter capital reserve and liquidity requirements for banks with between $100 billion and $250 billion in assets on their balance sheets. A review of regulations affecting regional banks has been ongoing since 2022, as Federal Reserve vice chairman Michael Barr and other officials in the Biden Administration had become increasingly concerned about the risk posed to the financial system by the rapidly increasing size of regional banks.

Investigations

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank itself has also spurred federal investigations from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the United States Department of Justice. Within the scope of both probes is the sales of stock made by senior officers of Silicon Valley Bank shortly before the bank failed, while the SEC’s investigation also includes a review of past financial- and other risk-related disclosures made by Silicon Valley Bank to evaluate their accuracy and completeness.

Broader impact

Silvergate’s public collapse soon spurred a bank run affecting banks that, like Silvergate, took deposits that were largely uninsured. Intense scrutiny and pressure was applied to these banks, like Signature Bank (which failed on Sunday, March 12) and First Republic Bank.[56] Depositors began to move money en masse from smaller banks to larger banks. On Monday, March 13, shares of regional banks fell. Shares of First Republic Bank fell by 67%, and on 16 March, it received a $30 billion lifeline in form of deposits from a number of major US banks on top of a $70 billion financing facility provided by JP Morgan. Western Alliance Bancorporation share price fell 82% and PacWest Bancorp was down 52% before their trading was halted. Moody’s downgraded its outlook on the U.S. banking system to negative, citing what it described as “rapid deterioration” of the sector’s financial footing. It also downgraded the credit ratings of several regional banks, including Western Alliance, First Republic, Intrust Bank, Comerica, UMB Financial Corporation, and Zions Bancorporation.

U.S. President Joe Biden made a statement about the bank failures on March 13, and asserted that government intervention was not a bailout and that the banking system was stable.

The bank failures have led to speculation that the Federal Reserve will pause or halt rate hikes. Beginning on March 13, traders began modifying their strategies in the expectation that fewer hikes than previously expected will occur. Some financial experts suggested that the BTFP, combined with a recent practice of finding buyers who would cover all deposits, may have effectively removed the FDIC’s $250,000 deposit insurance limit. However, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen clarified that any guarantee beyond that limit would need the approval of the Biden administration and federal regulators.

The bank failures and resulting pressures on other regional banks are expected to reduce available financing in the commercial real estate market and further slow commercial property development.

There were multiple banks that also ran into liquidity issues but did not fail, such as First Republic Bank and Credit Suisse. Unlike the first three banks, these banks faced trouble despite not primarily dealing in the technology or cryptocurrency sectors.

President Biden delivered his 2023 State of the Union address Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET before a Joint Session of Congress to fulfill his duty under the Constitution to report on the state of the union.

FAST FACTS

Newly-elected Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders delivered the GOP rebuttal to President Biden’s second State of the Union address Tuesday, calling for a “new generation of Republican leadership” and describing the choice between Democrats and Republicans as a choice “between normal or crazy.”

“Being a mom to three young children taught me not to believe every story I hear. So forgive me for not believing much of anything I heard tonight from President Biden. From out-of-control inflation and violent crime to the dangerous border crisis and threat from China, Biden and the Democrats have failed you,” Sanders said.

“It’s time for a change. Tonight, let us reaffirm our commitment to a timeless American idea: that government exists not to rule the people, but to serve the people. Democrats want to rule us with more government control, but that is not who we are,” she added.

Sanders noted that she and Biden didn’t have a lot in common because she is “for freedom” and he’s “for government control,” and went on to note the four decades difference in their ages.

Sarah Sanders delivers Republican rebuttal to President Biden’s SOTU address

“At 40, I’m the youngest governor in the country. At 80, he’s the oldest president in American history.  I’m the first woman to lead my state. He’s the first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is,” she said.

“In the radical left’s America, Washington taxes you and lights your hard-earned money on fire, but you get crushed with high gas prices, empty grocery shelves, and our children are taught to hate one another on account of their race, but not to love one another or our great country,” she added.

She described the Biden administration as “completely hijacked by the radical left,” and said that America’s “dividing line” was no longer a separation between right and left.

“The choice is between normal or crazy,” she said. “It is time for a new generation of Republican leadership.”

She went on to tout her efforts in Arkansas to combat indoctrination and other Democratic policies like critical race theory and shutdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic. She said that Americans wanted common sense from their leaders, but that Biden was busy “doubling down on crazy.”

Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy applaud during President Biden’s State of the Union address. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“President Biden inherited the fastest economic recovery on record. The most secure border in history. Cheap abundant, home-grown energy. Fast-rising wages. A rebuilt military. And a world that was stable and at peace. But over the last two years, Democrats destroyed it all,” Sanders said.

“Despite Democrats’ trillions in reckless spending and mountains of debt, we now have the worst border crisis in American history,” she added.

Sanders expressed the need to secure the border and stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States, a drug responsible thousands of deaths every month, railed against Democratic calls to defund the police, and blasted Biden’s “weakness” on foreign policy, especially China.

“Make no mistake: Republicans will not surrender this fight. We will lead with courage and do what’s right, not what’s politically correct or convenient,” she said.

“Republicans believe in an America where strong families thrive in safe communities. Where jobs are abundant, and paychecks are rising. Where the freedom our veterans shed their blood to defend is the birthright of every man, woman, and child,” she said.

President Joe Biden shakes hands with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Sanders vowed that under the leadership of Senate Republicans and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republicans would hold the Biden administration accountable.

“America is great because we are free. But today, our freedom is under attack, and the America we love is in danger. President Biden and the Democrats have failed you. It’s time for a change. A New Generation of Republican leaders is stepping up… not to be caretakers of the status quo, but to be change makers for the American people,” she said.

“We know not what the future holds, but we know who holds the future in His hands. And with God as our witness, we will show the world that America is still the place where freedom reigns and liberty will never die,” she added.

Sanders, who served as White House press secretary under former President Donald Trump, never held elected office prior to being elected as Arkansas’ governor. She is also the daughter of the state’s former Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Biden expresses support for securing the border, but called for the same in last SOTU speech

 

President Joe Biden walks with U.S. Border Patrol agents along a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023. (Andrew Harnik)

 

President Biden called for Congress to act on securing the southern border during his Tuesday State of the Union address, one year after calling for the same thing.

“American border problems won’t be fixed until Congress acts. If we don’t pass my comprehensive immigration reform, at least pass my plan to provide the equipment and officers to secure the border,” Biden told Congress.

He didn’t mention the record number of migrant encounters at the southern border since he took office, and his comments echoed what he called for in his 2022 State of the Union.

“Folks, if we are to advance liberty and justice, we need to secure our border and fix the immigration system,” Biden said last year.

Republicans have repeatedly criticized Biden’s handling of the border crisis, including for dismantling former President Donald Trump’s policies and for halting construction of a border wall.

Some have also sponsored a bill to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Marjorie Taylor Greene shouts ‘liar’ as Biden claims GOP wants to cut Medicare, Social Security

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., gives a thumbs down during President Biden’s State of the Union address Tuesday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., screamed “liar” after President Biden claimed during his State of the Union address Tuesday that some Republicans aimed to cut Medicare and Social Security programs.

“Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years,” Biden remarked. “That means if Congress doesn’t vote to keep them, those programs will go away.”

Biden continued: “I won’t let that happen. Social Security and Medicare are a lifeline for millions of seniors.”

Biden references shooting down of Chinese surveillance flight

President Biden reference the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down by the U.S. Air Force last week, about an hour into his second State of the Union address.

“But make no mistake about it: as we made clear last week, if China’s threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did,” said Biden.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Tuesday that Republicans “may” introduce legislation that would condemn the Biden administration’s handling of the Chinese spy balloon, which was carrying sensors and surveillance equipment.

Biden again calls for ‘assault weapons’ ban

President Biden once again called on Congress to ban “assault weapons” in his State of the Union speech Tuesday.

“Ban assault weapons now. Ban them now once and for all,” Biden told Congress after introducing a guest that he said wrestled an active shooter to the ground at a business he worked at.

“I led the fight to do that in 1994. For ten years that ban was law, mass shootings went down. After we let it expire in a Republican administration mass shooting tripled. Let’s finish the job and ban these assault weapons,” he added, referencing the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban that expired in 2004.

Biden did not elaborate on what type of firearm fell under the classification of an “assault weapon.”

He most recently renewed his push for such a ban in December, while speaking at the 10th Annual National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence.

McCarthy, Harris spotted laughing in friendly exchange before Biden State of the Union

 

 

 

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Vice President Kamala Harris were spotted chatting and laughing in a friendly exchange before President Biden gave the second State of the Union address of his presidency Tuesday evening.

Biden began his speech by touting the progress made under his administration in his speech, specifically with regard to the economy.

Four Supreme Court justices absent from Biden’s State of the Union

Four Supreme Court justices opted against attending President Biden’s State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday evening.

Biden greeted five of the high court’s nine justices — John Roberts, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson — shortly before he began his speech, according to video footage of the event. The four justices absent were Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch.

The president spent a brief moment, in particular, with Jackson, the newest Supreme Court Justice and the first Black woman to hold a seat on the court. Jackson is the only justice Biden selected for the Supreme Court.

Jill Biden, Doug Emhoff share kiss ahead of Biden State of the Union

 

 

First lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff shared a kiss ahead of President Biden’s second State of the Union address Tuesday evening at the national Capitol.

President Biden opens speech with gaffe calling Schumer ‘minority leader’

 

President Joe Biden

 

President Biden opened his State of the Union address with a gaffe, incorrectly calling Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer the “minority leader.”

“And congratulations, Chuck Schumer, another you know, another term as Senate minority leader,” said Biden.

“You know, I think, you know, this time you have a slightly bigger majority, Mr. Leader. You know, majority leader, but that much bigger,” he clarified after.

Designated survivor for tonight’s SOTU is Labor Secretary Marty Walsh

 

Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh tours Levitt Pavilion Steelstacks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on June 2, 2021. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

 

The member of President Biden’s cabinet missing from tonight’s State of the Union (SOTU) address is Labor Secretary Marty Walsh.

The designated survivor is a traditional role given to a member of the president’s cabinet during every SOTU address, who is not in the Capitol for the speech, and would take over the government should an attack on the U.S. takes place and incapacitates those attending the address.

Walsh is the former mayor of Boston, serving in the role from 2014 to 2021. He previously served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

It was reported earlier Tuesday that Walsh will likely leave his job as labor secretary to head up the NHL Players’ Association, Fox News confirmed.

A source close to Walsh said the deal is not final, and talks are still in the contract stage. Biden did not push for Walsh’s departure and Walsh did not seek out the job, but he’s a “huge hockey fan” and excited.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema stuns with bright yellow dress at SOTU

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., turned heads with her wardrobe choice for President Biden’s State of the Union address Tuesday.

The former Democrat appeared in a bright yellow dress against a sea of largely blue and grey suits, drawing attention from viewers who took to Twitter to give their opinions.

“Kyrsten Sinema got confused and thought this was the Grammys,” wrote one user, while another claimed she was “seeking attention.”

Another described the dress as “highlighter yellow,” and a number of others made the comparison to cartoon characters Big Bird and Tweety Bird, who are both yellow.

Sinema has often received criticism for her eccentric style, most recently for wearing a large sheep-like sweater while appearing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, angering liberals.

President Biden begins State of the Union address

President Biden began his State of the Union address at approximately 9:09 p.m. ET Tuesday.

President Biden is expected to tout the progress made under his administration in his State of the Union address, specifically with regard to the economy and COVID.

“The story of America is a story of progress and resilience…We are the only country that has emerged from every crisis stronger than when we entered it. That is what we are doing again,” Biden is expected to say, according to prepared remarks.

 

 

 

 

 

Covered by: Chris Pandolfo, Haley Chi-Sing, Timothy H.J. Nerozzi, Brandon Gillespie, Kelly Laco, Brooke Singman, Patrick Hauf and Lawrence Richard
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Biden booed during State of the Union for claiming GOP wants to cut Social Security, Medicare

Biden faced swift backlash from Republicans over the false claim they want to gut entitlements

President Biden was scolded by a wide swath of Republican lawmakers for dubiously claiming they want to cut Social Security and Medicare.

During his second State of the Union address Tuesday night, Biden face strong resistance from the GOP, who he accused of wanting to take the economy “hostage.”

“Some of my Republican friends want to take the economy hostage, which I get it, unless I agree with their economic plans.” Biden said. “All of you know should know what those plans are.”

“Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security sunset,” Biden said before clarifying, “I’m not saying it’s a majority.”

That was met with resounding boos with lawmakers waving their hands and shaking their heads.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., was seen shouting, “Liar!” at the president.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., gives a thumbs down during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address during a joint meeting of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on February 07, 2023 in Washington, DC. The speech marks Biden’s first address to the new Republican-controlled House.  (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

“Well I’m glad – I’ll tell ya, I enjoy conversion,” Biden joked. “It means if Congress doesn’t keep the programs the way they are, they’d go away. Other Republicans say – I’m not saying it’s a majority of you… but it’s being proposed by an individual.”

“I’m politely not naming them, but it is being proposed by somebody,” Biden added.

Biden was likely referring to an agenda proposal introduced last year by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., who suggested “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.”

Scott’s proposal, which was widely rejected even by Republicans, was made in his failed bid to challenge Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Even the liberal Washington Post declared the Democrats’ claim that Republicans want to end Social Security and Medicare as “false.”

US President Joe Biden speaks during a State of the Union address with US Vice President Kamala Harris, left, and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, right, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023.  (Photographer: Jacquelyn Martin/AP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

 

Before that, the first boos at the State of the Union came as Biden mentioned the amount of debt added by the Trump administration.

“Nearly 25% of the entire national debt that took over 200 years to accumulate was added by just one administration alone – the last one,” Biden said as Republicans grumbled. “They’re the facts. Check it out. Check it out.”

Republicans attending President Biden’s State of the Union address react with boos over claims former President Trump added 25% of the entire national debt and Republicans want to sunset Medicare and Social Security.

By Joseph A. Wulfsohn | Fox News

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Four Supreme Court justices absent from Biden’s State of the Union

Justices Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch didn’t attend the address

Four Supreme Court justices opted against attending President Biden’s State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday evening.

Biden greeted five of the high court’s nine justices — John Roberts, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson — shortly before he began his speech, according to video footage of the event. The four justices absent were Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch.

President Biden greets Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as he arrives to deliver the State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.  (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

The president spent a brief moment, in particular, with Jackson, the newest Supreme Court Justice and the first Black woman to hold a seat on the court. Jackson is the only justice Biden selected for the Supreme Court.

“The story of America is a story of progress and resilience,” Biden began his address. “Of always moving forward. Of never giving up. A story that is unique among all nations. We are the only country that has emerged from every crisis stronger than when we entered it. That is what we are doing again.”

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The speech marks the second State of the Union that Biden has delivered since taking office in January 2021. It is the first such speech that he has given since Republicans won back majority control of the House.

 

By Thomas Catenacci | Fox News

 

By John LoefflerMichelle Rae Uy

Intel Core i9-13900K

The best processor overall

SPECIFICATIONS

• Cores: 16
• Threads: 32
• Base clock: 4.5GHz
• Boost clock: 5.7GHz
• L3 cache: 80MB
• TDP: 170W

REASONS TO BUY

• Dominates both single- and multi-core workload
• Same pricing as the Core i9-12900K
• Top-tier gaming performance
• Surprisingly low power consumption on average

REASONS TO AVOID

• Runs hot and hungry at maximum load
• Lacks AMD’s 3D V-cache for gaming
• Basically overkill for most users

The Intel Core i9-13900K already had a very high bar to clear given the outstanding performance of the Intel Core i9-12900K, but when AMD released its Zen 4 processors in September 2022 to wide acclaim, Intel’s big.LITTLE follow-up had to essentially do everything right.

Incredibly, Team Blue manages just that with this chip. Whether it’s multithreaded workloads or single-threaded ones like gaming, the Core i9-13900K simply blows away the competition here, which is all the more impressive given the phenomenal performance of the rival AMD Ryzen 9 7950X processor.

What’s more, Intel was able to do so without raising the price of the chip over the previous generation, an incredible feat given the inflationary pressures on the semiconductor industry from still-wonky supply chains and the rising costs of raw materials and other production factors.

While still a pricey chip, the money spent is well worth the cost given the amount of performance you’re getting for that money. This is a chip that will serve you very well for the long-haul.

It must really hurt to be AMD, sometimes. Team Red has been the underdog since its inception in the late 1960s, formed by employees leaving the then-titanic Fairchild Semiconductor firm – just one year after Intel was established in the exact same way.

 

Intel had the drop on AMD, and for decades the company in the red corner was beholden to Intel’s will – as a second-source manufacturer, it spent less time making its own components and more time producing patented products for Team Blue. It wasn’t really until the turn of the century that AMD was able to properly kick out, finally managing to secure a chunk of the dedicated CPU market and expanding from there with the product lines we know and love today: Athlon, Bulldozer, and later Ryzen.

The recent launch of AMD’s new ‘Zen 4’ CPUs looked like it could be a turning point for the dark horse of the microprocessor market. We gave five-star reviews to both the Ryzen 9 7950X and the incredible mainstream Ryzen 7 7700X – generational performance was through the roof, blowing Intel’s current 12th-generation chips out of the water.Unfortunately, Intel is here to ruin the party. Only for AMD, though, to be clear; for us consumers, this party is going to rage all night long. The Intel Core i9-13900K is here, and it’s going to blow your socks off.

Yes, Intel’s 13th-gen ‘Raptor Lake’ CPUs have arrived, and now that we’ve tested them we can firmly say that the flagship chip is an absolute demon in almost every department. It’s not as big of a generational leap in performance when compared to the i9-12900K – unsurprising, given that it’s built on the same architecture while Ryzen 7000 used an entirely new 5nm process – but it’s enough to smack AMD’s best chips into next week.

Expect to see the i9-13900K shoot straight to the top of our most powerful processors list, is basically what we’re saying. This CPU dominates in everything from gaming to number-crunching, delivering best-in-class performance in single- and multi-core workloads.

We run an awful lot of tests when reviewing a new CPU: games, synthetic benchmarks, rendering tests, power, and thermal monitoring. We’re not going to show you our horrible, enormous spreadsheets filled with test results, but we will say this. Out of twenty-four averaged test results, the i9-13900K beat the Ryzen 9 7950X in all but six of them.

Oh, and like one final nail in AMD’s coffin, it’s more than a hundred bucks cheaper. We won’t mince words: this is the best consumer desktop CPU ever made, putting the championship belt squarely back on Intel’s muscular waist. Good job, Team Blue; better luck next time, Team Red.

The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X is finally here, and it’s hard to argue that this isn’t the best consumer processor ever made.

This is a big claim, and with Intel Raptor Lake quickly approaching, we’ll know soon enough if Team Blue is going to be able to counter a very resurgent AMD, but we are not going to sugar coat it: AMD has set the bar very high with the Ryzen 9 7950X, and Intel is going to be hard pressed to even keep pace with what this processor brings to the game.

To start, AMD used TSMC’s 5nm node to produce the new Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 series chips, and the Ryzen 9 7950X is a 16-core, 32-thread beast with 80MB cache memory and a boost clock within sight of 6.0GHz. What’s more, unlike Intel’s turn to big.LITTLE architecture, all 16 of the Ryzen 9 7950X’s cores are full performance cores, so while Intel might be using the Arm-pioneered performance core-efficiency core pairing, the Ryzen 9 7950X simply runs roughshod through tasks, beating out just about every other competing chip out there, across every category.

In particular, the Ryzen 9 7950X is easily the most significant gen-on-gen performance leap in as long as we can remember. Intel Alder Lake impressed us as much as it did because it was coming after the rather ‘Meh’ 11th-gen Rocket Lake chips, which were barely enough of an improvement to warrant the refresh in the first place.

The AMD Ryzen 5000-series processors were some of the best processors ever produced, top to bottom, and the Ryzen 9 7950X feels like as big a jump as Intel Alder Lake was, but it is instead making the leap from a mountain top rather than the boggy plateau of Rocket Lake and so it lands significantly farther out. It’s honestly like AMD skipped the release of an entire processor generation and we’re getting this chip after the one we didn’t even realize that we didn’t get was skipped.

It may be too soon to tell if AMD has finally caught up to Intel post-Alder Lake, but the Ryzen 9 7950X, along with the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, is one hell of an opening salvo to kick off the next generation of processors.

• How much does it cost? MSRP $699 (about £600 / AU$1,000)
• When is it available? September 27, 2022
• Where can you get it? Available in the US (UK and Australia dates forthcoming)

The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X is available from September 27, 2022, with a US MSRP of $699 (about £600 / AU$1,000). AMD has not listed UK or Australian retail pricing, and we’ve reached out to AMD for clarification on when the new Ryzen 7000 processors will go on sale in those regions.

The Ryzen 9 7950X’s price is $100 less than the Ryzen 9 5950X’s, which is fantastic, especially with recent concerns about inflation. This also mildly offset’s the cost of the upgrade to the new Ryzen 7000’s. This is also $110 more expensive than the Intel Core i9-12900K, which has a US MSRP of $589 (about £500, AU$850). Is the Ryzen 9 7950X worth the premium price over the Core i9-12900K? We definitely think it is, but there’s no getting around the fact that this is still an enthusiast chip, and it is priced accordingly.

In a lot of ways, other than your graphics card, you really are talking about a substantial investment to upgrade to the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X. You might be better off buying one of the best gaming PCs preloaded with a Ryzen 9 7950X, depending on how much you end up needing to replace in your rig.

Still, this isn’t unexpected or unreasonable, considering the age of the AM4 socket and how Intel has similarly shifted to the LGA 1700 socket for its Intel Alder Lake chips. On the plus side, if you had an AM4 cooling solution, you can still use it with the Ryzen 9 7950X.

All that said, expect to spend a good deal more than $699 for this upgrade. Given the performance improvements with the Ryzen 9 7950X, we definitely think you are getting way more value for your money than you would with the Ryzen 9 5950X it replaces.

The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X might not be as good a “value” proposition as the Ryzen 7 7700X, but it is without a doubt a much more compelling processor than its predecessor. It comes in slightly behind the Core i9-12900K on price, but with rumors swirling about the increased prices of the Intel Raptor Lake processors due out soon, it’s more likely than not that the Ryzen 9 7950X will only look like a better value as time goes on.

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