Cesar Chavez Accused of Sexual Abuse

Plus: Mullin vs. Paul, the metaverse lives, the Pentagon wants $200 for the war in Iran, and more...

Union activist allegations. Cesar Chavez has been accused of sexual abuse.

Since his passing in 1993, the civil rights activist and labor leader who cofounded United Farm Workers (UFW), has been treated as a hero, with proposed road renamings and an official Cesar Chavez Day celebrated every year. This year's celebration was supposed to have occurred this week, but the UFW canceled the celebrations in light of new allegations accusing him of a years-long pattern of sexual abuse. 

The abuse is alleged to have started when Chavez was in his 40s. Two women, both now in their 60s, say that he began molesting them when they were still underage. Their allegations feature prominently in an extensive New York Times investigation published Wednesday. The women say that Chavez sexually abused them on dozens of occasions throughout the 1970s. Much of the abuse is said to have happened in his office. 

The Times investigation boasts of "extensive evidence" in support of their accusations. The story also says that "the abuse allegations appear to be part of a larger pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Chavez, much of which has never been publicly revealed." The larger pattern includes a new accusation of sexual assault from a third woman, Dolores Huerta, who the Times calls "his most prominent female ally in the movement." 

A statement from UFW calls the allegations "deeply troubling" and "incompatible" with the organization's values. 

Political oppression, however, was a core part of the Chavez-UFW playbook from its early days. As Reason reported all the way back in 1983, the state of California used an agricultural labor law to promote the union, "often at the expense of farm workers." 

There's been a lot of discussion about California's untenable tax and regulatory burdens recently, but deference to powerful unions has long been a problem for the state. The new round of allegations against one of the state's labor heroes suggests he was awful in private as well as in public. 

Mullin vs. Paul. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R–Okla.), President Donald Trump's pick to run the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after Kristi Noem's ouster, appears to have a beef with his fellow Republican, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.). At a gathering in February, Mullin called Paul a "freakin snake" and, referring to a 2017 assault in which Paul was attacked by a neighbor, leaving him with a broken rib, Mullin said, "I understand completely why his neighbor did what he did." 

That beef came to a head yesterday at a Senate confirmation hearing in which Paul demanded that Mullin explain himself. "You have never had the courage to look me in the eye and tell me the assault was justified," Paul said, according to an Axios report. "And while you're at it, explain to the American public why they should trust a man with anger issues." 

Rather than apologize or try to defuse the situation, Mullin responded: "Seems like you fight Republicans more than you work with us." Mullin also issued what might be interpreted as a threat, telling Paul, "I don't think anybody should be hit by surprise. I don't like that. But if I do have something to say, everybody in this room knows I'll come straight to you." This is who Trump wants to run the DHS. 

Not surprisingly, Paul said he would not be voting in favor of Mullin's confirmation. 

Meta's big shutdown: Several years ago, while in the midst of hyping the virtual reality (V.R.) concept of the Metaverse, Facebook renamed itself Meta. After spending $80 billion to bring that science fiction idea into existence, it's shutting down its own virtual world. The company announced yesterday that it would soon close its primary V.R. platform, Horizon Worlds, so the company can refocus on artificial intelligence. 

Horizon Worlds was supposed to be a sort of all-purpose online gathering place, loosely based on ideas from Neal Stephenson's incredibly influential novel Snow Crash. But it was never a hit. Despite the company's massive investment, and Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg's stated hope that the metaverse would eventually hit 1 billion users, it never reached more than a few hundred thousand people in any given month. The shutdown is obviously a huge failure. 

But I think people who are implying that this is somehow the end of the metaverse are overstating the case. As the person who wrote the 2022 Reason cover story "The Metaverse Is Already Here," I have always understood the metaverse as a broader idea about either bringing the digital world into physical space, or bringing versions of our physical selves into virtual space. 

To some degree, both are happening, thanks to devices like Meta's AI Ray-Bans and to video games that allow users to inhabit digital worlds in the form of various avatars. And in some ways, the metaverse is just the conceptual form the internet already takes. The internet—the whole, sprawling, unwieldy thing—is a third space, a virtual landscape in which to hang out and work in. Just not in Horizon Worlds, specifically. 

When the internet bubble burst around the turn of the century, there was a lot of crowing from internet skeptics. They said it showed that the technology was useless, that the investment was useless. The infamous shutdown of Pets.com showed how little real-world value there was in the internet. Who would ever buy dog food online? 

Today, I have two large dogs—and a subscription to dog food delivery, managed entirely through a large online platform. 

Meta's specific vision of the metaverse as represented in Horizon Worlds is dead for now. But I remain long-term bullish on virtual reality and related technologies, like augmented or mixed reality, to reshape and reimagine our world. 

Perhaps the metaverse isn't dead, but rather just ahead of its time. 

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Scenes from Washington, D.C. Trump has boasted about bringing crime down in D.C. and making the streets safe, and local leaders have also touted reductions in violent crime. Most statistics do show a significant drop in violent crime from the pandemic peak. But that doesn't necessarily equate to completely safe. Over the weekend, there was apparently a shootout on Capitol Hill, barely more than a mile from the U.S. Capitol building, in which nearly 100 shots were fired. 

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QUICK HITS

• The Pentagon's initial estimate of the cost of the first six days of the Iran war was over $11 billion. Now it wants a $200 billion supplemental spending bill to fund operations. 
• In The Spectator, Christopher Caldwell says the war in Iran will mark the end of Trump and MAGA. 
• As I wrote yesterday, the war in Iran is driving up gas and fuel prices. Vice President J.D. Vance says this is just a "temporary blip." 
• Is Iran beating the United States in the AI slop arms race? The country has blocked internet use for most residents. 
• The Federal Reserve will leave rates unchanged. 
• In The Detroit News, new allegations that a Michigan Republican who blocked transparency legislation might have faked a transparency award. 
• There's a new trailer for the next live-action Spider-Man movie, Brand New Day.