http://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2025/05/13/alexthechick-over-criminalization-thread-n2412719
While everyone was focused on the Qatari Air Force One and President Donald Trump's prescription drug executive order, this rather important and impactful EO flew under the radar.
Until AlextheChick found it, and posted a thread.
So let's dive in:
alexandriabrown (@alexthechick) ~ 🧵 I went looking for the actual text of the EO on prescription drug prices since no one is actually linking that and I have to do everything around here and I found this that was issued on Friday and I missed it.
I cannot stress how important this is.
http://whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/fighting-overcriminalization-in-federal-regulations/
alexandriabrown (@alexthechick) ~ [i]What does this do? The most important part is that every agency has 365 days to list out all the regulations that have a criminal penalty and then that report has to be made public. Right now, there is literally no one on this planet that knows this information. No one.
What's that adage? That we all commit three felonies a day and we're unaware of it, because there are SO MANY criminal penalties and laws?
Yeah, that.
alexandriabrown (@alexthechick) ~ That report must be made public and must be updated annually.
alexandriabrown (@alexthechick) ~ All future regs have to state criminal offenses clearly. Mens rea is back on the menu! The default will be to require mens rea. What that means in English is that you have to know you are committing a crime, strict liability is highly disfavored.
alexandriabrown (@alexthechick) ~ Each agency has 45 days to publish guidance on how criminally liable regulatory offenses will be handled. Then clarification that this doesn't apply to immigration regs and generic catch all language.
It will also expose just how many criminally liable regulatory offenses there are, and hopefully public outcry will get that number reduced. Dramatically.
alexandriabrown (@alexthechick) ~ This is everything I have ever wanted on this topic. Everything. I never ever ever, not in the history of ever, thought that there would be a requirement for a report from each agency mandating that the regs with criminal liability be listed, let alone that it would be public.
alexandriabrown (@alexthechick) ~ The shift to pursue civil over criminal first is, obviously, significant. See re: the issue of people fighting over property lines with the US government who all of a sudden were being charged with major Federal felonies.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/ranching-family-fights-off-biden-era-charges-trump-admins-help-land-battle.amp
Yeah, read the story at the link. It's insane.
It also reminds this writer of the documentary she just watched, 'Dinosaur 13,' about the archaeologists who discovered Sue, the T-Rex on display at Chicago's Natural History Museum. The government swooped in and ended up charging two of the archaeologists with federal crimes for which they faced 353 years in prison.
It was insane.
And then there's the mens rea requirements. Mens rea means guilty mind. It is the doctrine that you have to have criminal intent to be charged with a crime. Let's say you grab a coat off a rack. If you thought it was your coat, that's not theft, that's a mistake.
alexandriabrown (@alexthechick) ~ Strict liability means if you take the coat, you're guilty no matter what. Substantial portions of regs with criminal penalties attached are strict liability. Did you do the action? You are criminally liable, even if you did not know the reg existed and you had no criminal intent.
alexandriabrown (@alexthechick) ~ This EO is tremendously important and will have direct, and hopefully immediate, effect on more or less everyone in America. And did you hear anything about it? Anything at all?
We did not.
alexandriabrown (@alexthechick) ~ This is one of my areas of keen interest and I missed this. This should be being shouted from the mountain tops as to how it is restoring the rights of Americans to know when they will be criminally charged, for what, and that you can't be held criminally liable for a mistake.
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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