Virginia
Reform-minded prosecutors in win reelection nominations
LEESBURG, Va. (AP) — Three incumbent prosecutors in northern Virginia who faced tough challenges after being elected four years ago on a progressive reform agenda won their Democratic primaries Tuesday.
In Fairfax County, the state’s most populous jurisdiction, incumbent Steve Descano defeated Ed Nuttall, a former prosecutor and trial attorney who is best known for representing police officers accused of misconduct.
Descano, in a phone interview, said the results in his race and in the other two counties show that “voters have seen that criminal justice reform can work, and quite frankly they want more of it.”
He said that while reform opponents have tried to raise fears about rising crime, Tuesday’s results show that “voters feel safe, they know they’re safe, and they know they can have safety, fairness, justice and equality.”
Buta Biberaj, the commonwealth’s attorney in Loudoun County, won over challenger Elizabeth Lancaster after raising significantly more money. Biberaj faced criticism, including some within her own party, over her day-to-day management of the office and as Loudoun found itself in the national spotlight over issues like school safety. She also faced criticism in her handling of two sex assaults at two different high schools in 2021.
In November, Biberaj will face Republican Bob Anderson, who held the commonwealth attorney’s post in Loudoun more than 20 years ago.
In a phone interview, Biberaj said the general election race “will be about Loudoun County going forward or going backward 20 or 30 years.”
And in Arlington County, incumbent Parisa Dehghani-Tafti defeated challenger Josh Katcher, who had been one of Dehghani-Tafti’s deputies before leaving the office.
Dehghani-Tafti is overwhelmingly favored in heavily Democratic Arlington County in November.
Descano, Biberaj and Dehghani-Tafti were all elected four years ago in the wealthy northern Virginia suburbs outside the nation’s capital on progressive reform agendas, in some cases knocking off incumbents who had been in office for decades. This year, the challengers themselves largely embraced reform efforts and focused their criticism instead on issues of office management.
Political analysts often look to Virginia’s odd-year elections for insights on voter sentiment heading into midterm and presidential years. This year, the prosecutor races in northern Virginia might shed light on whether suburban voters are still committed to criminal justice reform after years of Republican criticism that reformers are soft on crime.
Lancaster, a former public defender, faced skepticism from some Democrats because she currently works for a law firm led by a prominent local Republican. But Lancaster said her career as a public defender highlighted her commitment to reform, particularly her longstanding efforts to revamp the county’s juvenile justice system.
Biberaj said Tuesday night that she believes many of her opponent’s votes came from GOP efforts to support Lancaster in the primary, which is open to all voters since Virginia voters do not register by party affiliation.
In their campaigns, the challengers have questioned the incumbents’ day-to-day management of their offices and to varying degrees endorsed the need for criminal justice reform.
New York
FTC sues Amazon over enrolling consumers into Prime program without consent
NEW YORK (AP) — The Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon on Wednesday for what it called a years-long effort to enroll consumers without consent into its Prime program and making it difficult for them to cancel their subscriptions.
In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, the agency accused Amazon of using deceptive designs, known as “dark patterns,” to deceive consumers into enrolling in the program. It said the option to purchase items on Amazon without subscribing to Prime was more difficult in many cases. It also said that consumers were sometimes presented with a button to complete their transactions — and the button didn’t clearly state it was also enrolling them into Prime.
The regulatory agency, which is led by Big Tech critic Chair Lina Khan, also alleged the company’s leadership slowed or rejected changes that made canceling the subscription easier.
It said those patterns were in violation of the FTC Act and another law called the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act.
Launched in 2005, Prime has more than 200 million members worldwide who pay $139 a year, or $14.99 a month, for faster shipping and other perks, such as free delivery and returns.
In a news release announcing the lawsuit, the FTC said though its complaint is significantly redacted, it contains “a number of allegations” that backs up its accusations against Amazon.
It also accused the company of attempting to hinder the agency’s investigation into Prime, which began in 2021, in several instances.
“Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money,” Khan said in a statement. “These manipulative tactics harm consumers and law-abiding businesses alike.”
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Amazon has faced heighted regulatory scrutiny in recent years as it expands its e-commerce dominance and dips its toes into other markets, including groceries and health care.
In 2021, Amazon had asked unsuccessfully that Khan remove herself from separate antitrust investigations into its business, arguing that her public criticism of the company’s market power before she joined the government makes it impossible for her to be impartial. Khan burst onto the antitrust scene in 2017 with her massive scholarly work as a Yale law student, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.
The lawsuit follows another Amazon-related win by the agency just a few weeks ago. Earlier this month, Amazon agreed to pay a $25 million civil penalty to settle allegations it violated a child privacy law for storing kids’ voice and location data recorded by its popular Alexa voice assistant. It also agreed to pay $5.8 million in customer refunds for alleged privacy violations involving its doorbell camera Ring.
