On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), a piece of legislation that would open up the possibility for victims of 9/11 to sue the Saudi government for its alleged involvement in the attacks.

The bill must still be voted on by the House before it is enacted, but the development spells disappointment for the Obama administration. The President expressed his disapproval with the bill last month, saying that allowing lawsuits against other countries was against U.S. policy and could open up the U.S. government to similar claims. The debate has also raised questions about how such lawsuits could impact U.S.-Saudi relations, as the country has already threatened to sell billions of dollars in U.S. assets if the bill goes through.

This isn’t the first time that JASTA has made it to this point; the bill was passed last year by the Senate but was not voted on by the House. It was reintroduced this past September and came to the forefront of the public’s attention last month, after a “60 Minutes” episode looked into potential ties between the 9/11 hijackers and the Saudi government. This scrutiny could potentially offer a better chance for the bill to move forward this year.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who sponsored the bill along with Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), expressed satisfaction with the Senate’s vote. Schumer issued a series of tweets commending the vote for helping bring justice to the victims of the 9/11 attacks and their families.

Today, @JohnCornyn & I are proud to announce we’re one step closer to justice for the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) May 17, 2016

In their pursuit of justice, 9/11 families were told American law prevented them from pursuing justice against those who funded the attacks.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) May 17, 2016

These court rulings were backward, illogical, and wrong & now our JASTA bill has passed with unanimous consent from the Senate.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) May 17, 2016

JASTA will help the 9/11 families seek justice & also serve as a deterrent to other nations who’d assist in terror attacks against Americans

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) May 17, 2016

Today is a big step forward, but there is work to be done. I urge the House leadership to put JASTA on the floor for a vote immediately.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) May 17, 2016

Schumer denied criticisms that the bill could force the U.S. to face similar lawsuits, telling the Associated Press, “We’re not busy training people to blow up buildings and kill innocent civilians in other countries.”

Despite Schumer’s reassurances, it’s hard to imagine that there won’t ultimately be some blowback from one of our closest allies if the bill does end up becoming a law. It’s just another test for the already-rocky relationship that is the U.S.-Saudi alliance.

Mariam Jaffery

Mariam was an Executive Assistant at Law Street Media and a native of Northern Virginia. She has a B.A. in International Affairs with a minor in Business Administration from George Washington University. Contact Mariam at mjaffery@lawstreetmedia.com.

The post Senate Approves Bill To Allow People to Sue Saudi Arabia for 9/11 appeared first on Law Street.

A piece of legislation introduced in Congress could allow families of the victims of 9/11 to sue Saudi Arabia for its potential involvement in the 2011 attacks.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, sponsored by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), was passed unanimously by the Senate last year but was not voted on by the House; it was reintroduced into Congress this past September. Suing foreign governments is currently against the law, but this bill would allow for certain provisions to be weakened so that countries could be held responsible for their involvement in terrorist activities. This month, the bill came back into the spotlight after a “60 Minutes” investigation into the classified “28 pages” from the 9/11 Commission Report, which reportedly shed light on official Saudi support for the hijackers responsible for the attacks. The segment featured interviews of Former Senator Bob Graham and various other officials who reiterated support that these documents be declassified.

In an interview with Charlie Rose that aired this week, President Obama stated his opposition to the 9/11 bill, saying that it was against U.S. policy to allow such lawsuits against countries:

This is not just a bi-lateral U.S.-Saudi issue. This is a matter of how generally the United States approaches our interactions with other countries. If we open up the possibility that individuals in the United States can routinely start suing other governments, then we are also opening up the United States to being continually sued by individuals in other countries, and that would be a bad precedent…

The bill also has national security and defense officials concerned that it would open up a can of worms for the prosecution of U.S. officials and diplomats, as well as place blame on the wrong parties for the 9/11 attacks.

Support or opposition for the bill has not fallen along partisan lines: contrary to Obama’s criticism of the bill, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders voiced their support of the bill while campaigning in New York earlier this week. GOP leaders such as Senator Lindsey Graham and Speaker Paul Ryan have been in actual agreement with the President for once, working with the White House to kill the bill.

.@HillaryClinton defends her support of @SenSchumer 9/11 bill “I stand with Senator Schumer on this” pic.twitter.com/NA6AX5nFlj

— Tamara Gitt (@tamaragitt) April 18, 2016

.@SenSchumer bill to let 9/11 families sue Saudi if tied to attacks becoming political football-@BernieSanders take: pic.twitter.com/Zgab4dABlW

— Molly O’Toole (@mollymotoole) April 17, 2016

Meanwhile, the timing of these developments has made for a pretty awkward presidential visit to Saudi Arabia for Obama this week. The Guardian reports that the trip was “noticeably low-key” and hinted at a “mutual distrust” between the two allies. It also appears that the bill remained an elephant in the room during his visit: the White House told the press on Thursday that it never even came up in Obama’s meetings with the Saudi king.

The relationship between the two countries has already been on the tense side lately, but Saudi Arabia hasn’t exactly responded well to the latest round of threats against it. The country’s foreign minister allegedly threatened to sell up to $750 billion in American assets, which would have strong economic repercussions for both states. These current developments will prove to be yet another test for a tumultuous and controversial alliance.

Mariam Jaffery

Mariam was an Executive Assistant at Law Street Media and a native of Northern Virginia. She has a B.A. in International Affairs with a minor in Business Administration from George Washington University. Contact Mariam at mjaffery@lawstreetmedia.com.

The post Obama Doesn’t Want Families To Sue Saudi Arabia Over 9/11 appeared first on Law Street.

I was in an airport in New York City when I first heard that Sean Penn wrote a 10,000 word piece on El Chapo for Rolling Stone, which may have led to El Chapo’s recapture. The place was significant to me because I had spent the last two weeks in the city that never sleeps, where some of the country’s best journalists live and write and report the news. My first thought was, So Sean Penn writes now? Huh.

In reading the article, I had a hard time getting past the line where he says he never learned how to use a laptop and wasn’t sure they were made anymore. The article was cheesy. It was poorly written. It did nothing for me. But it got me thinking about journalism as a whole–that’s when I started to pay attention.

When sensational things like this happen–where a famous person and an infamous person meet in secret for an article in Rolling Stone, for example–I find that it’s more important to pay attention to the aftermath than to the actual event. In the aftermath of this article being released, there were comments from all sides on every single news outlet that I watched. Many began by covering the recapture of El Chapo and the plan to extradite him to the United States so that he can’t escape from prison again (you really need to step up your prison game when you’re holding drug lords, Mexico). Inevitably, though, they always eventually started talking about Sean Penn and playing clips from an interview he did with Charlie Rose on “60 Minutes.” That is when things get interesting.

According to the interview, Sean Penn is sad about the state of journalism. He says, “’Journalists’ [the air quotes are his] who want to say I’m not a journalist, well, I want to see the license that says that they’re a journalist.” (The emphasis is also his.) He doesn’t seem to grasp where he’s sitting and who he’s talking to, and that’s what’s making people–especially other journalists–angry.

First of all, to those who say that Sean Penn has never written anything–he has. His IMDB page shows that he has six writing credits, including two screenplays. He has also used his fame and his political and social beliefs to have editorials published in The Washington Post and The New York Times, along with other publications. He has interviewed controversial world leaders such as Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez. He has never seemed to find his footing, however, amongst the journalistic community.

Second, consider who Sean Penn is talking to on “60 Minutes.” Charlie Rose holds a law degree from Duke University. He has won awards for his journalism, including an Emmy Award for his interview with Charles Manson and a Peabody Award for his interview with Jimmy Carter while he was president. Sean Penn was insulting journalism in front of a successful and revered journalist. He was asking to see Charlie Rose’s “journalism license” as he sat right in front of him.

Charlie Rose, for his part, remained calm and collected about the whole thing, never showing offense to the ridiculous things that Sean Penn said about journalism. The interview, as a whole, did not show Sean Penn in a great light. He seemed selfish, dismissive, and defensive. He said that no one understood him. He tried to make it into everyone else’s fault that his Rolling Stone article “failed.”

This, to me, is what makes it clear that Sean Penn isn’t a journalist, even though he wants to be. Journalism (in most cases) is about reporting facts in a way that makes a story enticing to read or watch. It isn’t about making a point–it’s about revealing something new that people at large are interested in. No, you don’t need a license, but you need generally need a college degree and an understanding of what the end goal is. An interview with El Chapo could have been a very interesting piece of journalism. It had the potential to become something big and important, like interviews with criminals that reveal some of their motivations and tendencies. What Sean Penn did was write an extremely long self-indulgent essay for a magazine that was as much about him as it was about his subject. In addition, he let El Chapo review the piece before it went to press. Sure, he wrote something for a magazine. I guess that makes him a journalist. But what he wrote wasn’t journalism. It was a bizarre memoir. That’s the difference.

Amanda Gernentz Hanson

Amanda Gernentz Hanson is a Minnesota native living in Austin, Texas. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Hope College and a Master’s degree in Technical Communication from Minnesota State University, where her final project discussed intellectual property issues in freelancing and blogging. Amanda is an instructional designer full time, a freelance writer part time, and a nerd always. Contact Amanda at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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It’s been two-and-a-half years since Hurricane Sandy last dominated headlines, but recently the storm has been pulled back into the media. From the 60 Minutes special “The Storm After the Storm,” to this funny yet poignant spot on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” and an article in last week’s edition of The New York Times have all described problems along the road to recovery.

Some residents of the New York/New Jersey area who received the brunt of the hurricane’s wrath are still waiting to receive full compensation for their damaged homes and businesses. Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper created a satirical news package that brought to light the struggles of one Staten Island neighborhood. The spot revealed that victims of Hurricane Sandy are still waiting to receive money to rebuild their destroyed houses. One woman explained that she was frustrated because organizations such as “Build It Back” lose paperwork and do not do enough to help affected communities.

The coverage on “60 Minutes” attributed the delayed or missing compensation to intentionally doctored paperwork, claiming there is evidence that insurance and engineering companies often falsified reports. In one example, a company claimed that the damage caused by the storm was long-term damage that existed before the hurricane rolled into town, even though paperwork from a previous visit to the home determined the damage was due to the storm. The resident maintained that the damage was indeed caused by the events of Hurricane Sandy, producing evidence of the paperwork from the original visit.

How is FEMA reacting to all this hoopla? Well, the organization will be reviewing every flood insurance claim filed by homeowners affected by Hurricane Sandy. FEMA’s message was announced by Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, along with Senators Robert Menendez and Cory Booker, Tweeter Extraordinaire, of New Jersey. (Seriously though, check out Senator Booker’s on-point Twitter account here).

Along with reviewing every flood insurance claim, FEMA will also be launching its own internal inquiry. While all of these reviews and inquiries sound great in theory, there is still not a concrete plan of attack as to when (or how) Sandy victims will be compensated. Steve Mostyn, the lead lawyer representing New York homeowners, remained cautiously optimistic:

We are happy that FEMA now agrees to reopen all Sandy claims. However, that process has not been worked out and the details of that process will determine if it is real or just window dressing.

Hurricane Sandy caused 117 deaths and more than $60 billion worth of damage, second only to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. If America does not improve its process for addressing national disasters, what will happen to homeowners seeking compensation in the future? How many years will they have to wait to rebuild? Is the United States ill-equipped to handle the aftermath of the next deadly tornado in Nebraska, or future large-scale fire in California? Hurricane Sandy might have been an East Coast problem, but fair–and timely–post-storm compensation is a national issue.

Corinne Fitamant

Corinne Fitamant is a graduate of Fordham College at Lincoln Center where she received a Bachelors degree in Communications and a minor in Theatre Arts. When she isn’t pondering issues of social justice and/or celebrity culture, she can be found playing the guitar and eating chocolate. Contact Corinne at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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