RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Supreme Court has decided to hear 26 states’ challenge to President Obama’s unpopular and constitutionally dubious plan that amnesties up to 5.5 million illegal aliens and provides incentives for foreigners to have so-called anchor babies in order to gain legal immigrant status here.

After the Obama administration lost twice in lower courts, the high court gave the administration a win Tuesday when it decided to review a November ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upholding Brownsville, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen’s order earlier last year halting implementation of Obama’s executive amnesty.

As attorney Gabriel Malor writes at The Federalist:

“At the most basic level, this case is about stopping yet another President Obama end-run around Congress. In accordance with its constitutional authority, Congress has established an elaborate immigration scheme governing which aliens may enter the United States, how long they may stay, and which aliens must be removed. Obama and the Democrats do not like Congress’ immigration scheme, but they lack the votes to change it.”

The decision to take up the politically explosive issue sets the high court up for high drama in this election year in which illegal immigration, and immigration policies in general, figure prominently. The Supreme Court is expected to render its decision on the merits of the case by June. Led by Donald Trump, most Republican presidential candidates oppose amnesty in varying degrees while all Democrats favor it.

Mayor Dayne Walling, a Democrat, led a cheerful countdown at the Flint water treatment plant to press the button moving the city over to river water. Walling and Darnell Earley, the Democratic emergency manager, even raised glasses in a toast and drank the water to show that it was safe.

“It’s a historic moment for the city of Flint to return to its roots and use our own river as our drinking water supply,” Walling said. “The water quality speaks for itself.”

Flint’s city council had voted in favor of the move 7-1. Despite claims about the power of the emergency manager, the switch could not have gone forward without that vote.

Even once the problem had surfaced, the EPA knew and kept quiet. It was only once the crisis broke, that the Democratic establishment attempted to redirect the blame at Michigan’s efforts to fix broken Democratic cities like Flint using emergency managers. The war against the emergency managers is not about clean water; it’s about protecting the dirty Democratic politics that destroyed these cities.

Flint’s dirty water had its origins in dirty politics. The Democratic Party had badly mismanaged the city.

On four separate occasions, President Obama swore that he would “faithfully execute the Office of President.” Yesterday, the Supreme Court told him to prove it. As expected, the justices voted to review Texas’s challenge to Obama’s executive action on immigration, known as DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans). Critically, the Court ordered the Obama administration to answer a pivotal question: Whether DAPA “violates the Take Care Clause of the Constitution.” In 225 years, the Supreme Court has never had occasion to ask the president whether he has reneged on his oath to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. However, with pens-and-phones replacing checks-and-balances, the Supreme Court is now poised to break new constitutional ground in order to preserve our embattled separation of powers.

On November 20, 2014, President Obama announced DAPA. This executive action purported to rely on “prosecutorial discretion” to defer the deportations of up to 5 million aliens and grant them work authorization. Two weeks later, Texas attorney general Greg Abbott (who had just been elected governor and would take office in January 2015) challenged DAPA in federal court in Brownsville. Two months later — and two days before the Department of Homeland Security would have begun accepting new applicants — Judge Andrew Hanen put DAPA on hold nationwide.

Judge Hanen found fatal the government’s failure to comply with the notice-and-comment requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA). Because Hanen ruled on narrow grounds, the court did not need to address whether the president had failed to comply with the Constitution’s requirement that he “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The case was then appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. In July, a divided court affirmed Judge Hanen’s ruling on administrative-law grounds. It, too, did not reach the constitutional question.