The office of a congressman in Wisconsin was targeted in an arson attack sparked by a 19-year-old man upset over the “recent talks of a TikTok ban,” according to police.

Rep. Glenn Grothman, a Republican, had voted in April 2024 in favor of the bill that mandated TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, cease U.S. operations by Sunday, Jan. 19, with the move being upheld by a Supreme Court ruling last week.

The Fond du Lac Police Department reported in a press release Sunday that Grothman’s office, which is located in a strip mall in Fond du Lac, was targeted overnight by a man who police have not publicly named yet. The individual was allegedly livid over the prospect of a TikTok ban, which went into effect Sunday — temporarily, it turned out — before being lifted by the social media giant just 14 hours later.

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Ethics

Lawyer censured after calling governor ‘tyrant’ and lawmakers ‘spineless tools’ in COVID-19 litigation

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 6, 2024, 3:55 pm CST

A New Mexico lawyer has received a public censure partly for “inflammatory and misleading statements” in litigation opposing COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, including a claimed right to disqualify judges who had received COVID-19 vaccines.

The New Mexico Supreme Court censured lawyer Nancy Ana Garner of New Mexico on Jan. 29 after imposing a deferred one-year suspension, subject to unsupervised probation.

The Legal Profession Blog noted the censure, while the New Mexico Political Report has coverage.

Garner did not contest that that her conduct violated ethics rules.

Garner’s statements stemmed from her representation of the Backstreet Grill, which operated despite revocation of its food permit. She also approved a cease-and-desist letter sent to managers at Sandia National Laboratories that directed them to stop COVID-19 mitigation measures, even though they were represented by counsel.

In the Backstreet Grill litigation, Garner agreed to accept service for the business, according to the censure order. She filed an acceptance-of-service pleading asserting a “right to disqualify any judge who allowed themselves to be injected with an experimental gene therapy.”

Her acceptance of service also made statements that:

  • Referred to Democratic New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham as “a tyrant.”

  • Stated that: “Our Supreme Court justices are blind” or practicing medicine in the courts, “which is what their latest COVID-crap to come out of them is.”

  • Stated that: “A restaurant refused to make its employees wear a face-diaper (because after all, you are breathing in your own s- – -), nor be the Nazi brownshirt enforcing any of the tyrant’s latest rules.”

  • Said the governor “seized power with the glee of an adrenochrome addict,” which may be a reference to a conspiracy theory involving blood harvesting for the supposed youth-enhancing chemical.

  • Called lawmakers “spineless tools.”

  • Said the opposing counsel was an “unethical opponent.”

  • Accused the opposing counsel of misleading the court “to imply, without exactly saying, nothing about the constitutionality of what began its attack on a citizen exercising constitution rights and duty to abolish or correct a government that has gone despotic.”

After a district court ordered Garner to withdraw her inflammatory statements, she apologized for “any offense taken.” She also filed a pleading titled, “Notice of Suggestion of Death of Another New Mexico Business.” The pleading said the Backstreet Grill had been “crushed out of existence by an overreaching government.”

The New Mexico Supreme Court said Garner “placed her personal interest in the subject matter of the litigation above her client’s interests,” which impaired her representation. Her “inflammatory and misleading statements made in court filings harmed her clients, opposing counsel, the public and various members of the judicial and the executive branches.”

Her statements were republished in news outlets, which “undoubtedly harmed the public’s perception of the legal profession” while “casting a negative light on New Mexico lawyers,” the state supreme court said.

Garner was licensed to practice law in 1981. She has no prior disciplinary history and expressed remorse for her conduct.

Garner did not immediately respond to the ABA Journal’s voicemail and email requests for comment.

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3. Lawyers viewed as more ethical than car salespeople…

Careers

Lawyers viewed as more ethical than car salespeople and US lawmakers

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 30, 2024, 3:40 pm CST

Only 16% of Americans rate lawyers’ honesty and ethical standards as “high” or “very high,” according to a Gallup poll taken in December.

The percentage has decreased since 2022, when 21% of Americans said lawyers had high or very high honesty and ethical standards, and since 2019, when the percentage was 22%, according to a Jan. 22 press release with results of Gallup’s 2023 Honesty and Ethics poll.

Lawyers did better than business executives, insurance salespeople and stockbrokers. Twelve percent of Americans viewed those occupations as having high or very high ethics and honesty. The percentage decreased to 8% for advertising practitioners, car salespeople and senators, and 6% for members of Congress.

Party differences affect the ratings. Twenty percent of Democrats or those who lean Democratic viewed lawyers as having very high or high honesty and ethical standards, compared to 14% of Republicans and people who lean Republican.

On the positive side, the honesty and ethics rating for lawyers was not at its all-time low, as it was for pharmacists, clergy, journalists and senators.

The most trusted profession was nursing, with 78% of Americans thinking that nurses have high or very high honesty and ethical standards. MedPage Today noted that finding.