Want to Take Back Our Sovereignty? Start by Breaking up the Ninth Circuit

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The spectacle of the U.S. government having to grovel before the Ninth Circuit to determine whether we are a sovereign nation or not should draw attention to another important initiative: the effort to break up the tyrannical Ninth Circus Court of Appeals.

Believe it or not, the courts did not create themselves. Congress has plenary control over lower courts and the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Congress can abolish the lower courts altogether and reroute their cases to state courts. Every aspect of the court system’s structure — administrative procedures, rules of adjudication, methods of interpretation, and logistics of proceedings — can be regulated by Congress in any way. As such, it goes without saying that Congress can, as it has done in the past, modify the geographical jurisdiction of an existing circuit.

The Ninth Circuit cesspool

The time has come to strip the Ninth Circuit down to size. This court is by far the most anti-constitutional circuit amidst a federal judiciary where the majority of the circuits don’t respect the Constitution as written. Most of the members of the Ninth have literally supplanted the written Constitution for an ever elastic set of ethos that are anchored to nothing more than the political values of these unelected judges at the time they woke up that day. Most importantly, what they have done to the sovereign state of Arizona is outrageous. Congress owes it to the good citizens of the Grand Canyon State to free them of the clutches of judicial tyranny.

To begin with, putting politics aside, the Ninth Circuit — which includes Alaska, Hawaii, California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana — is too big. As of the end of FY 2016, there were 13,334 pending appeals before the Ninth Circuit, more than twice the amount of the second busiest circuit (the Fifth) and more than ten times as much as the adjacent Tenth Circuit. The idea of breaking up the Ninth goes back respected figures like current Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a native Arizonan. Not to mention the fact that the Ninth Circuit is, by far, the most reversed appeals court in the country, making Anthony Kennedy look like James Madison in comparison.

To that end, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. (A, 0%) has followed in the tradition of many non-California residents of the Ninth Circuit’s tentacles and introduced H.R. 250 — the Judicial Administration and Improvement Act. This bill would limit the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit to California, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii. A new “twelfth circuit” would be created to oversee appeals from district courts in Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. Personally, I’d limit the Ninth Circuit to California alone, as was suggested in a bill from a previous Congress, (or better yet, a few square acres in Death Valley), but overall this is a great starting point.

Now is the best time to create a new circuit. With GOP control of the Senate and the filibuster having been eliminated for lower court judges, Trump can flood the zone with originalists (to the extent they exist) and establish the first full circuit that actually follows the law and the Constitution as written. These judges can start fresh, unvarnished from lawless “precedent” of the past.

Cry for Arizona

Arizona is one of the most important states for the judiciary because so many immigration cases emanate from the Grand Canyon State. Words cannot describe how the Ninth Circuit has stolen the sovereignty of Arizona to the detriment of the state’s economy, security, and social cohesion. This officious panel has invalidated every single thing the legislature and the people (through ballot referendum) have done to protect their state. In addition, the Ninth Circuit has forced the state to give driver’s licenses to illegals, offer bail to the most violent criminal aliens, and has blocked the state from requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. The Roberts Supreme Court has not lifted a finger to overturn almost any of the dozen or so decisions from the Ninth Circuit [Scalia and Thomas called them out for it]. With at least 630,000 illegals residing in the state, at a cost of $2.4 billion a year, Arizona is left defiled and helpless in protecting its own residents and even their right to vote in untainted elections.

Indeed, the Trump administration and the GOP Congress owe it to the state to provide them with a new federal appeals court. The Constitution [art. IV, § 4.] requires the federal government to “guarantee to every state in this union, a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion.” Arizona has been invaded in the worst way possible and they have lost all republican representation by having their sovereignty and right to self-determination denuded by the unelected and unaccountable Ninth Circuit.

As I observed in Stolen Sovereignty [page 100]:

One of the indictments against King George listed in the Declaration was: “He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.”

Certainly, when the federal government was created to replace King George as the national authority, they never intended to suppress states from passing laws to protect themselves and their taxpayers, not with a standing army, but at least with their legitimate state law enforcement and power over local issues. In fact, they guaranteed the help of the federal government to protect them from invasion.

In his dissent in Arizona v. United States, Justice Scalia concluded with a rhetorical question: “[W]ould the States conceivably have entered into the Union if the Constitution itself contained the Court’s holding? … if securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State.”

Our founders certainly feared that their experiment might result in the collapse into an executive oligarchy, but they certainly never envisioned powers of King George being wielded by a judicial oligarchy, much less a puny lower court existing at the pleasure of Congress. (For more from the author of “Want to Take Back Our Sovereignty? Start by Breaking up the Ninth Circuit” please click HERE)

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Shapiro: Is Trumpism the New Reagan Revolution?

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Last week, Ethics and Public Policy Center senior fellow Henry Olson released a revisionist look into the legacy of Ronald Reagan. The purpose: to recast Donald Trump in Reagan’s mold. According to Olson, Trump could be the New Reagan Revolution. Why? Because Reagan was not, in fact, “an anti-government ideologue.” Here is Olson’s breakdown of Reaganism:

Reagan’s conservatism was not a more attractive version of Barry Goldwater’s anti-statist ideology. From the moment Reagan started speaking out as a conservative in the late 1950s, he endorsed an active role for government. He believed that government should care for those who could not care for themselves, build public housing for the poor and expand public universities…Reagan’s conservatism even supported the idea of universal health coverage….Reagan did not shrink from endorsing government action when needed as governor or as president. He raised the gas tax in 1983 to fund road construction and repair. He also imposed sanctions on Japanese industries and companies for what he believed were unfair trade practices even as he sought to extend free-trade agreements throughout the world. Even Reagan’s support for immigration was limited by a belief in protecting U.S. workers….That’s not to say Reagan would have agreed with everything Trump says or does. But the overlap in their views on these issues stems from a broader overlap in philosophy.

And just like that – it’s magic! – Trump is the new Reagan.

Unfortunately, this is a dramatic overstatement of Reagan’s position in order to justify Trump’s. It turns Reagan into a big government advocate. He wasn’t. (Read more from “Want to Take Back Our Sovereignty? Start by Breaking up the Ninth Circuit” HERE)

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On Immigration, Winning Cheap Grace

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The great theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote scathingly of “cheap grace,” which is the warm fuzzy feeling we give ourselves, and the praise we win from others, by making little virtue-signals that cost us almost nothing — and might well impose suffering on innocent third parties. Jesus Himself denounced it when He saw it among the Pharisees, but Christians are not immune.

In Bonhoeffer’s time, German pastors won cheap grace by safely denouncing Communist atrocities, while pretending that the same crimes weren’t happening just down the train tracks from their churches, at the hands of their own Nazi government. Catholic philosopher Rene Girard spoke of a similar psychological trick, which he called “victimism,” or the cynical use of weaker people’s suffering to aggrandize yourself and win power.

Speak Soothingly to Power

Cheap grace can always be gained by signing on with the sins that are popular with the powerful, and denouncing some evil that is distant or widely despised. Hence pastors in the segregated South could safely denounce the crimes of Josef Stalin, while ignoring the “strange fruit” that hung in their own towns’ trees after brutal lynchings of black men. How many pastors piled up cheap grace aplenty in the 1980s by fighting apartheid in faraway South Africa, and ignoring the abortion clinics that killed black babies by the thousands right down the street?

Now open borders Christians, such as the media-savvy Fr. James Martin, SJ, are gathering cheap grace in bushel baskets on the subject of immigration. In a shrill, moralistic screed that The Stream already analyzed as contrary to Catholic doctrine, Fr. Martin told Americans that it is simply and blankly un-Christian to secure our country’s borders, enforce its labor laws, or carefully vet refugees to keep out those committed to terrorism or sharia.

That is meant to end the argument, to threaten us with eternal damnation if we don’t accept Fr. Martin’s political program — one which no Christian government has enacted anywhere for almost 2,000 years. As a leader in the movement to really implement Christianity for the first time, ever, on immigration issues, Fr. Martin claims his place as one of the best Christians in history. Or so he would like us to see him.

We Learn, 2,000 Years Late, that Borders are Un-Christian

Does Fr. Martin, or any of the bishops who echo him, really believe that no Christian may vote to secure his country’s borders? Is it sinful for Mexico to police its border with Central America? For Latvia to guard its frontier with Putin’s Russia? For Israel to police the crossing into Jordan? I’ve never read any such statements, and I think I know the reason: It’s perfectly obvious that international borders require the rule of law, that sovereign countries deciding who comes and goes is part of what we must “render unto Caesar.”

It doesn’t harm Fr. Martin, in his cozy Manhattan office, that drug cartels and people smugglers control the U.S.-Mexico border, honeycombing it with tunnels and planting it with “rape trees,” with the clothes ripped off young women. Nor does he find himself exploited in an underground economy, where greedy employers turn away poor American workers with enforceable legal rights, then fill their factories or fields with docile, frightened foreign people whom they can threaten with deportation.

Fr. Martin doesn’t have children whose public school is in chaos, overburdened with the hopeless task of trying to assimilate and educate kids in a dozen different languages. Fr. Martin’s health insurance is covered by the wealthy Jesuit order, so he never needs to worry about what it will cost him to use an emergency ward — at a hospital which treats long lines of undocumented and uninsured workers, and so has to soak its few paying customers to avoid going bankrupt. Fr. Martin will never lose his job at America magazine to a lower-paid foreign priest who came in on an H1-B visa, whom he is forced to train.

The Cheapest Grace in the History of the Church
There is a long list of people, both foreign and American, who pay a heavy price for our blithe acceptance of immigration chaos. Few such people have columns in prestigious magazines, or get hired as faith consultants by Martin Scorcese — which Fr. Martin was, for the movie Silence. (As you’ll read here at The Stream, that movie’s ending was an icy apologia for priests who renounce Jesus, betray the Faith, and make a comfortable living helping pagans to persecute the church.)

Those people exist, from the villages emptied of men in rural Mexico, to the ghettos of America where black and Latino teens cannot find entry-level jobs. But it’s easy to ignore them.

Likewise it’s easy for Fr. Martin and others like him to call for utopian policies, wave Jesus around to silence our reality-based objections, and refuse to examine their real-world impact on the poor and the vulnerable. Better still, they can wield their “high-minded” demands to blunt the force of the growing pro-life movement, by insisting that all of us swallow their Seamless Garment poison pill, before we’re allowed to stop killing a million children each year. That wins them points with their powerful friends like Joseph Biden and Tim Kaine, both Jesuit allies and pro-choice Democrats. So men like Fr. Martin coast through life on a cushion of unearned praise and cultural privilege, while sneering at their weaker fellow citizens as “un-Christian,” cruel, and selfish.

I’ll give this to open borders Christians: They have found the source of the cheapest grace in the history of the church. Simon Magus would be proud. (For more from the author of “On Immigration, Winning Cheap Grace” please click HERE)

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Judge Robart’s Ruling Against Trump’s Immigration Order Is Baseless

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If the law means anything, the Trump administration will succeed in overturning the so-called court ruling against its travel ban.

The nationwide stay of the ban issued by Judge James Robart, a Washington state-based federal district judge, is tissue-thin. It doesn’t bother to engage on the substance, presumably because facts, logic and the law don’t support Robart’s sweeping assertion of judicial authority in an area where judicial power is inherently quite limited.

This doesn’t justify President Donald Trump tweeting that Robart is a “so-called judge.” That slam earned Trump bipartisan blowback and may encourage other judges to tilt against Trump’s ban in response to a perceived threat to the independence of the judiciary. But Robart’s handiwork is shoddy and usurpatory, despite the fact that he is indeed a literal judge.

Even if you assume that the states of Washington and Minnesota have standing to pursue the litigation (Robart asserts implausibly that they “face immediate and irreparable injury” from the executive order, the heart of which is a three-month pause on most travel from seven countries), the stay falls down. It ignores our constitutional scheme and Supreme Court precedent, as the Justice Department brief seeking to reverse it persuasively argues.

First, Judge Robart is trespassing on a core executive responsibility. “The exclusion of aliens is a fundamental act of sovereignty,” the Supreme Court held in the 1950 Knauff case, “inherent in the executive power to control the foreign affairs of the nation.” The courts are not meant to second-guess the executive’s conduct of foreign affairs, or intrude on its plenary power in this area. “It is not within the province of any court,” the court noted in that decision, “unless expressly authorized by law, to review the determination of the political branch of the Government to exclude a given alien.”

Second, it’s hard to get around the relevant federal immigration law, which says, “Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

This is as explicit and wide-ranging as it gets. When the president has such authorization from Congress, the Supreme Court held in the Youngstown Steel case in 1952, his “authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate.”

Finally, aliens residing outside the United States have no right to come here. The Supreme Court held in the 1982 Landon case, “an alien seeking initial admission to the United States requests a privilege and has no constitutional rights regarding his application, for the power to admit or exclude aliens is a sovereign prerogative.”

It’s not clear how Judge Robart expects opponents of the Trump ban to overcome these substantial and well-established obstacles. A more extensive and carefully reasoned decision by a Massachusetts-based district judge reached the opposite conclusion of his.

It is true that the ultimate source of the Trump executive order is his ill-advised call for a Muslim ban during the campaign. But the executive order, focusing on seven war-torn or hostile countries that had already been singled out for special scrutiny during the Obama administration, is manifestly not a Muslim ban.

Judge Robart may not like the Trump policy, but that doesn’t mean that it is illegal or unconstitutional. His ruling is worthy of the generally unhinged opposition to President Trump. If the judge doesn’t deserve the abuse that Trump heaped on him on Twitter, he produced what should rightly be considered so-called jurisprudence. (For more from the author of “Judge Robart’s Ruling Against Trump’s Immigration Order Is Baseless” please click HERE)

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An Appeal to the President and Vice-President to Reconsider Their LGBT Strategy

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Dear Mr. President and Mr. Vice-President,

I write this letter as a supporter and advocate, not a critic or adversary. As someone who voted for you and who regularly calls on millions of Americans to pray for you. I also write this with the understanding that you have been elected to serve the American people as a whole and not just one particular faction of Americans.

The great challenge, however, is one that you must deal with on a daily basis: When you stand up for what you believe is right — be it securing our borders or nominating a solid pro-life justice to the Supreme Court — you will alienate a certain number of Americans who oppose your policies and choices. That is inevitable, although regrettable, but if there is any political leader on the planet who is more concerned with acting on convictions than with pleasing people, it is you.

And this brings me to the heart of this appeal.

While you have consistently positioned yourself as a friend of the LGBT community during your campaigning, having Peter Thiel speak at the Republican National Convention and holding up a “LGBT’s for Trump” flag at one of your rallies, you have never positioned yourself as a champion of the gay and transgender agenda.

Conversely, you have most certainly positioned yourself as a champion of religious freedom, and you know that without the vote of conservative Christians (with whom I identify), you could not have gained the presidency. In that respect, we are a unique and important part of your constituency and some of your strongest supporters.

In your first weeks in office, we have been tremendously heartened by some key choices you have made, and we were encouraged by the forcefulness of your speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. It is clear that our religious liberties are very important to you, and they should be, since they are at the very foundation of our nation.

We were also encouraged to hear that you were considering legislation that would have protected religious groups from the negative effects of one of President Obama’s executive orders, namely, the order that put sexual orientation and gender identity on a par with skin color and ethnicity, as if gay was the new black or as if a man identifying as a woman was the same as him being Asian or Hispanic.

As it turns out, you decided to uphold Mr. Obama’s pro-LGBT activism, meaning, that while standing strongly for religious liberty you are unintentionally undercutting that very same liberty.

Mr. President, I truly believe that you desire to stand with LGBT Americans and you do not want to see them hurt or attacked by others, and I second your sentiments wholeheartedly. At the same time, your actions will potentially punish conservative Christians and others for simply living out their faith. Not only so, but I believe you will soon learn that there is no appeasing LGBT activists and that as long as you demonstrate loyalty to your conservative Christian base, you will be considered their enemy.

To make matters worse — and here I turn my appeal to Mr. Pence — when the vice president recently appeared on ABC News with George Stephanopoulos, discussing this very issue, Mr. Pence responded to a pointed question about this action by stating that “throughout the campaign, President Trump made it clear that discrimination would have no place in our administration.” He added, “I think the generosity of his spirit, recognizing that in the patriot’s heart, there’s no room for prejudice, is part of who this president is.”

Mr. Vice President, I know you are a committed Christian yourself, but may I ask if you are saying that it is prejudiced and discriminatory for someone to believe that it’s best for a child to have a mother and father (rather than two fathers or two mothers)? That it is prejudiced and discriminatory to believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman (and therefore not the union of two men or two women)? That it is prejudiced and discriminatory to believe that a 15-year-old boy who believes he is a girl should not be allowed to play on the girls’ sports teams or share their locker rooms and shower stalls?

Last year in England, a 42-year-old Christian evangelist was handing out gospel pamphlets on the street when a 19-year-old gay teen asked him what his God said about homosexuality. The preacher quoted Genesis to him, explaining that God made Adam and Eve to reproduce and have children.

Subsequently, the preacher was arrested and held in custody overnight and “accused of threatening or abusive behaviour ‘aggravated by prejudice relating to sexual orientation’ — despite not swearing or using any form of offensive language.”

Vice President Pence, with all due honor, I ask you: Do you see how your choice of words reinforces the same mentality that led to the arrest of this Christian evangelist, specifically, that his actions were allegedly “aggravated by prejudice relating to sexual orientation”?

And President Trump, with the utmost respect, I ask you: Do you see how the executive order you upheld is a step in the wrong direction, a direction that ultimately leads to discrimination against Christians?

I’m quite aware, Mr. President, that the case in England is different than the federal legislation that you signed, but having monitored the trajectory of LGBT activism for more than a decade, I can assure you that you will not win the widespread support of the LGBT community until you distance yourself from the evangelical Christians who helped elect you and who gave you wise counsel throughout your campaign. In other words, you will not be viewed as a real friend of the LGBT community until you side with gay activism at the cost of Christian liberties.

May I ask you to give these matters your prayerful consideration, inviting some of your most trusted spiritual advisors for input as well? And may I ask you, at the least, to go ahead and write the executive order we were expecting, namely the one enshrining our religious liberties?

If you put religious liberties first, it will be for the good of the nation as a whole.

If you side against these precious liberties, it will hurt the nation as a whole.

May God Himself give you wisdom. You have my prayerful support. (For more from the author of “An Appeal to the President and Vice-President to Reconsider Their LGBT Strategy” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Lasting, Damaging Legacy: Leftist Judges

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Barack Obama may lose his Obamacare legacy when Congress repeals and replaces it, but he has left the nation a far bigger and more damaging legacy. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) gloated in 2014, “one of the most profound changes this Congress made was filling the bench” with Obama’s appointments of federal judges. He went on: “This will affect America for a generation, long after the internecine battles on legislative issues are forgotten.”

Obama is proud of his record. “I am — not to brag — but I have transformed the federal courts from a diversity standpoint with a record that’s been unmatched,” he said. That is mostly true. A scholar of judicial appointments, Sheldon Goldman, observed that “The majority of Obama’s appointments are women and nonwhite males.” Though only 43 percent of his appointments were women, the former president appointed 11 openly gay judges, more than 10 times as many than any other president. (President Clinton appointed lesbian Deborah Batts as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1994.)

Why does this matter? Everyone focuses on the Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court hears fewer than 100 cases a year. The lower federal courts handle about 135,000 per year. The vast majority of cases decided by the lower courts become law in their respective circuits. A liberal bench there means a huge number of liberal decisions affecting almost every aspect of American life.

Obama’s Liberal Legacy

Obama got 329 federal judges appointed to the circuit and district courts, all lifetime appointments. The Daily Signal characterizes the change in composition of the courts as a revolution that has been “comprehensive, dramatic, and under the radar.” Liberal legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin says Obama’s legal legacy is especially strong in the areas of same-sex marriage and blocking voter identification laws.

When Obama entered office in 2008, only one of the 13 United States Courts of Appeals had more Democratic appointed judges than Republican. 99 circuit court judges had been appointed by Republicans, 65 by Democrats. Now, nine of the appeals courts have more Democratic-appointed judges.

One-third of judges currently serving on the federal bench were appointed by Obama. He got two more judges confirmed than George W. Bush did during his two terms as president. Carrie Severino, chief counsel for Judicial Crisis Network, observed that “Obama was just very aggressive in getting those spots filled.”

Obama appointed left-leaning judges. He stealthily appointed judges who appeared to be non-ideological but then ended up “on the same side as outspoken liberals,” according to conservative legal experts quoted by Politico. The Ethics and Public Policy Center‘s Ed Whelan, for example, noted that between one of Obama’s leftist appointments and his “moderate” appointments, “on a broad range of matters there’s not a dime’s worth of difference.”

But did the Republicans object? Over 200 of Obama’s nominees were confirmed unanimously. Ken Cuccinelli, president of the Senate Conservatives Fund, said Senate Republicans “handed over the keys to the judiciary without a fight.” Republicans successfully filibustered just two nominees.

Not all senators completely caved. Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) has continued to block one of Obama’s nominees for district court, even though the judgeship has been vacant since 2005. Texas senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, both Republicans, objected so strongly to many Obama nominations that many of the vacancies are now considered “judicial emergencies” due to large caseloads.

Changes in the Courts of Appeals

The United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (informally considered the 13th circuit) is considered the second most powerful court in the country, after the Supreme Court. It hears cases involving the federal government.

When Obama assumed office, the court consisted of six judges appointed by Republican presidents, three named by Democrats, and two vacancies. When Senate Republicans objected to three of Obama’s nominees for that court, Democrats invoked the “nuclear option.”

On November 21, 2013, the Democratic majority shut down the ability of Senate Republicans to filibuster Obama’s judicial nominees. The rule requiring 60 votes to bring up a nominee for a confirmation vote was interpreted to only require 51.

Democrats successfully pushed through the three judges, as well as a fourth later on, changing the composition to a 7-4 split in favor of Democratic appointees. How did this affect the court’s decisions? The new court rejected a challenge to Obamacare in Halbig v. Burwell. In another decision, an Obama appointee cast the deciding vote upholding the Federal Communication Commission’s Net Neutrality censorship regulations.

When Obama took office, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit had more Republican-appointed judges. It was known as one of the most conservative circuit courts in the country, encompassing West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Obama’s appointees changed the balance.

Two Obama appointees out-voted a Reagan appointee on a three-judge panel to rule against North Carolina’s voter identification law. They also held that a transgender student (a male identifying as female or vice versa) must be allowed to use the opposite sex’s restrooms and showers. One of the two justices was confirmed by the Senate in a 96-0 vote. Severino says the Fourth Circuit “is now on the cutting edge of liberal activism.”

But He Couldn’t Change the Supreme Court

Obama couldn’t change the composition of the Supreme Court, however. It remains divided between conservative and liberal judges, with Anthony Kennedy in the middle. Obama merely replaced two left-leaning judges with Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice, and Elena Kagan, his former solicitor general.

Republicans in the Senate prevented Obama from replacing the late Antonin Scalia last year. That would have changed the balance. They refused to bring Obama’s nominee Garland Merrick up for a vote. The senators argued that the decision should be left to the next president.

The left had hoped SCOTUS Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer would retire during Obama’s terms so he could replace them with liberal justices. Breyer is 78. Ginsberg is 83 and suffers from health issues. They didn’t, but are thought likely to retire during Trump’s first term, and almost certainly during his second if he has one.

The Pendulum Swings Back

When Republicans took over the Senate in 2015, they stopped the easy approval process, leaving 86 district court and 17 circuit court vacancies for Trump to fill. In contrast, Obama only had 59 total vacancies to fill when he became president. Just 22 appointments were confirmed during the Senate’s 2015-16 session. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell let 25 nominations expire instead of scheduling confirmation votes.

With Republicans in control of the Senate and Donald Trump as president, it should be fairly easy to confirm right-leaning judges. Democrats knew when they implemented the nuclear option that it would eventually be used against them. Trump has said he will encourage McConnell to use it if Democrats filibuster Neil Gorsuch, his pick to replace Justice Scalia. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Lasting, Damaging Legacy: Leftist Judges” please click HERE)

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This Woman’s Minimum Wage Story Shows the Left’s Troubling Mindset

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JoAnn Wise thinks she wasn’t treated well.

In an op-ed published Tuesday by The Washington Post, Wise writes, “I already know what Trump/Puzder economics look like because I’m living it every day. Despite giving everything I had to [labor secretary pick Andy] Puzder’s company for 21 years, I left without a penny of savings, with no health care and no pension.”

Wise worked for 21 years at Hardee’s, which is one of the chains Puzder leads as head of CKE.

“In 1984, I was hired as a cashier at Hardee’s in Columbia, S.C., making $4.25 an hour. By 2005, 21 years later, my pay was only at $8 an hour,” she writes.

“That’s a $3.75 raise for a lifetime of work,” Wise adds. “Adjusted for inflation, it’s only a 2-cent raise.”

Already, the left has jumped on Wise’s story:

But what’s left unaddressed in Wise’s op-ed is: Why didn’t she leave Hardee’s?

Wise says she asked for raises multiple times and was denied. Perhaps she did deserve a raise. Maybe she should have been promoted further. (She mentions being promoted in her first year, but not after.)

But no one forced Wise to stay with Hardee’s for 21 years without a significant raise. She could have switched jobs to somewhere her talents would have been recognized and/or she could have pursued additional training to be a more attractive candidate for jobs that required more skills and paid more.

I don’t know Wise’s full story, and perhaps there were personal circumstances that made switching jobs or acquiring new training difficult to do. Certainly, she sounds like a hardworking individual.

But does that mean she deserved a higher salary?

I worked at Burger King for two summers in high school, which I realize is a far shorter span than Wise’s. Nonetheless, it certainly gave me a new appreciation for the work of fast-food employees.

It was often tough work, and I don’t remember with fondness simultaneously taking orders, filling orders, and making change at the drive-thru, all while a clock monitored how long each transaction took to make sure it didn’t rise above a certain average time.

But was it work that should have given me a salary enough to support myself and a family?

Underlying Wise’s argument is the thesis that any full-time job, regardless of how few skills it requires, should pay enough for an adult to be self-supporting and, with a partner’s salary, raise children. She writes:

… even with my husband’s salary as the head cook at Fort Jackson, we relied on food stamps and Medicaid. We were two full-time-employed adults; we shouldn’t have had to turn to the government, but we had kids to raise, and so we were left with no other choice.

That’s a thesis the left largely seems to have embraced, particularly with the rise of the movement for $15 an hour wages for fast-food employees. In his 2013 State of the Union, President Barack Obama also made the case for that viewpoint, stating, “Even with the tax relief we put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong.”

But it’s a thesis with troubling implications.

For one thing, it’s not clear companies will respond to higher minimum wages by simply hiring the same number of people at the new wage level. There’s already concerns that fast-food restaurants will turn to more and more automation, such as having people order via machines.

In a report issued last year, my former Heritage Foundation colleague James Sherk predicted that a $15 an hour federal minimum wage would eliminate “approximately 7 million full-time-equivalent jobs by 2021.”

In addition, not everyone who is looking for work needs to be able to support themselves and a family.

When I was 15 and working my first summer at Burger King, I knew I needed some money—and I also knew a first (non-babysitting) job would give me valuable skills. In fact, a lot of minimum wage workers are in a similar situation, according to a 2013 Heritage Foundation report:

Many support raising the minimum wage because they want to help low-income Americans get ahead, but minimum-wage earners are not much more likely to live in poverty than are most other Americans: Less than 1 in 4 live in a family with earnings below the poverty line. Two-thirds work part-time, and most are between 16 and 24 years old.

But raising the minimum wage could have the effect of eliminating jobs—which would make it harder for teens and young adults to get that crucial first job, which often helps them get the next better paid job.

Sure, I would have loved to make more than $6.75 an hour at Burger King (minimum wage in California at the time)—but I would also have rather made that than not had the job at all, because it had become automated.

It’s important to have low-skill, first jobs available so young adults can learn skills about teamwork and responsibility—and ultimately move on to jobs that pay enough to support themselves and a family.

There are also other ways to help situations like Wise’s besides hiking the minimum wage. Better schools and overall better educational opportunity for all Americans, via school choice policies, could help ensure most Americans are better equipped to do well in the working world, or advance in higher ed.

Costs that families must bear could be driven down by eliminating certain regulations—for instance, “Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards add $3,800 to the cost of an average new car,” noted The Heritage Foundation’s Salim Furth in a report last year.

There are certainly changes that could help make lives for working families in America easier. But raising the minimum wage is a policy that is more likely in the long run to hurt, rather than help, many working Americans. (For more from the author of “This Woman’s Minimum Wage Story Shows the Left’s Troubling Mindset” please click HERE)

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White House Says Trump Won’t Rush Obamacare Replacement

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President Donald Trump will use his business skills to negotiate lower prices and foster more competition in the health care market—but he doesn’t want to rush things, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday.

Spicer declined to give a specific timeline for seeing Congress repeal and replace the law, saying that Democrats rushed the passing of Obamacare and Republicans should not rush the replacement.

“I think we can have this done legislatively sooner rather than later. But I think the implementation is going to be a little bit longer. It was a big, big bill that the Democrats had,” Spicer told reporters during a press briefing Tuesday. “As you recall, they told us they could read it after they passed it. We are now going through this to make sure we can do this in a very responsible way.”

The Daily Signal asked if the president agreed with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., that the Obamacare law cannot be tinkered with or repaired but must be scrapped for something fundamentally different.

“What we’re focused on is the end solution,” Spicer told The Daily Signal. “We’ve been very clear over and over again that the president is going to repeal and replace [Obamacare], and that what Americans will get at the end of this is a health care solution, as I’ve said before over and over again, is going to give them a lower cost solution with more options.”

Spicer said that Trump’s vision is what was “promised in the first place,” but not delivered by Obamacare.

“The president being able to approach this in the businesslike manner that he’s done so successfully in the past is going to ensure that he negotiates prices and that we look at those businesslike practices, force competition among and other things that will help lower costs,” Spicer continued.

Ryan has previously said Congress can repeal and replace Obamacare in March or April. However, during an interview on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly aired before the Super Bowl, Trump said, “I would like to say, by the end of the year, at least the rudiments, but we should have something within the year and the following year.”

And Ryan on Tuesday talked about repealing the law this year.

Other reporters Tuesday pressed Spicer on the timeline for Congress repealing and replacing the law.

Spicer said the president and Republican congressional leaders are on the same page. But he stressed it would be a mistake to rush a repeal bill, as Democrats did in passing the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

“It’s a mammoth bill what they passed,” Spicer said. “We’ve got to make sure we do this right. We don’t want to end up with the same results the Democrats did. They rushed it through, no one was able to read the bill, premiums have skyrocketed, access and options have gone down. We need to make sure we understand we don’t do this in a way that ends up with the same result.” (For more from the author of “White House Says Trump Won’t Rush Obamacare Replacement” please click HERE)

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Trump Faces Senate Boycotts on Nominees That Bush, Obama Didn’t

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Since the Senate started holding hearings on President Donald Trump’s Cabinet and Cabinet-level nominations, Senate Democrats have employed a variety of tactics to delay the votes needed for Trump to put the government’s leaders in place.

Republicans have called Democrats’ actions “unprecedented,” but are they?

A review by The Daily Signal of committee actions for first-term Cabinet and Cabinet-level nominees dating back to the initial days of President George W. Bush’s administration—the earliest for which electronic congressional records could be found—shows that efforts from the minority party to tie up nominations are rare and a break from Senate tradition.

“In the Senate, there’s a presumption that the president is entitled to pick the Cabinet,” Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College in California, told The Daily Signal.

“Things are different given the general polarization of the Senate and the specific atmosphere that we’re seeing in the early weeks of the Trump administration,” Pitney said.

By the start of the new year, Senate Democrats had mapped out their plan to stall confirmation votes for eight of Trump’s Cabinet nominations and draw out the confirmation process into March.

And since Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, Democrats serving on three Senate committees have stalled votes by boycotting meetings—that is, refusing to show up. For Trump’s two predecessors, some nominees passed out of their respective committees without any objection from either party.

But not only are Democrats stalling votes at the committee level—the first stop for a presidential nominee requiring Senate confirmation—the minority party is expected to employ other tactics to stymie approval of nominees once they advance to the Senate floor.

“President Trump has the fewest Cabinet secretaries confirmed at this point than any other incoming president since George Washington,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday. He called on Democrats to end “the unprecedented delay” holding up confirmation of Trump’s nominees.

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The recent actions of Senate Democrats break from Senate tradition and split from the precedent members of both parties set for past presidents and their agency leads.

In fact, senators in both parties boycotted just two Cabinet-level nominees over the past 17 years, and neither were during a president’s first term.

Trump Administration Nominees

Last month, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee made lengthy speeches to delay a vote on Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, ultimately delayed the committee’s vote on Sessions by one day. The panel then voted along party lines to advance Sessions’ nomination, 11-9.

In more blatant displays of disapproval for Trump’s Cabinet nominees, Democrats on two Senate panels boycotted committee votes on three nominees: for the secretaries of both Health and Human Services and Treasury, and for the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Trump nominated Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Wall Street executive Steve Mnuchin to lead the Department of Treasury, and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to serve as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Finance Committee oversees the Price and Mnuchin nominations, and the Environment and Public Works Committee oversees the Pruitt nomination.

Last month, Democrats on both committees refused to appear at meetings held to vote on the nominees.

For the Finance Committee, Democrats’ boycott represented a first: In modern history, the panel never before boycotted a confirmation vote.

In addition to boycotting the vote by the Environment and Public Works Committee, Democrats tasked with overseeing Pruitt’s nomination submitted 1,078 questions to the Oklahoma attorney general.

Because Democrats refused to show up, they forced Republicans to delay votes on Price, Mnuchin and Pruitt.

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Obama Administration Nominees

In 2013, at the beginning of President Barack Obama’s second term, all eight Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted a committee vote on Gina McCarthy, his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

GOP senators also asked McCarthy to respond to 1,075 written questions about the agency she sought to lead.

After Republicans dropped their boycott, McCarthy, who replaced Lisa Jackson at the EPA, ultimately advanced to the Senate in a 10-8 vote along party lines.

By comparison, Jackson received 157 questions from Senate Republicans after her initial confirmation hearing in 2009.

After Obama tapped agency heads during his first term, Republicans and Democrats took swift action to confirm his nominees.

The Senate unanimously confirmed seven of Obama’s Cabinet and Cabinet-level nominees immediately after his inauguration, and many received bipartisan support at the committee level.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for example, won approval from the Foreign Relations Committee after a 16-1 vote.

Obama’s pick for attorney general, Eric Holder, also received support from both sides of the aisle. Holder advanced to the Senate floor after the Judiciary Committee’s 17-2 vote.

The Senate confirmed six more of Obama’s selections in the week following his inauguration.

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Bush Administration Nominees

More than two year into President George W. Bush’s first term, Senate Democrats mounted opposition to his pick to lead the EPA, Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt.

Bush selected Leavitt in 2003 to replace his first EPA administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, and Democrats sought to tie up Leavitt’s nomination by refusing to attend a committee meeting to advance his nomination.

Senate Democrats later asked Leavitt a total of 305 questions after his confirmation hearing.

Once Democrats allowed his nomination to proceed, the Environment and Public Works Committee approved Leavitt by a bipartisan vote of 16-2.

Like Obama, the Senate confirmed eight of Bush’s nominees on his Inauguration Day.

Bush’s most controversial nominee, John Ashcroft for attorney general, faced opposition from Democrats on the Judiciary Committee. However, Ashcroft advanced to the Senate floor after a 10-8 vote.

Opening the Door

Though the opposition to Trump’s Cabinet nominees is unprecedented, Pitney, of Claremont McKenna, said it’s likely such attempts to stall nominations will continue.

“You’re not going to get away from the polarization any time in the next few years,” he said. “What we’re seeing now is just the latest chapter of a story that’s been unfolding for decades.” (For more from the author of “Trump Faces Senate Boycotts on Nominees That Bush, Obama Didn’t” please click HERE)

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It’s Time to Restore Free Speech to American Churches

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For more than 60 years, the federal government has been sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong, threatening to punish houses of worship and their leaders for what they say.

The Free Speech Fairness Act was introduced in Congress earlier this week and, if enacted, would go a long way toward ending that.

Ever since 1954, when Congress enacted the Johnson Amendment, the IRS has been telling churches that it has the power to monitor their speech.

Under that law, if pastors or other clergy say anything that (in the government’s opinion) is “on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office,” the feds can begin taxing them and potentially bring about their financial ruin.

The history behind that speech-censoring law is not what you might expect.

Most people might assume that it was part of secularists’ relentless efforts to “separate church and state.” But the story that history tells is quite different.

In the 1950s, then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, D-Texas, faced stiff criticism from nonreligious nonprofit organizations. In order to silence their attacks against his future campaigns, he introduced a bill to ban all nonprofit groups from speaking for or against political candidates.

Interestingly enough, churches weren’t even the target of his proposal.

But regardless of Johnson’s intent, houses of worship nevertheless find themselves squarely within that law’s reach. And for well over half a century, they’ve had to continually wonder when their speech on some of the most pressing political issues of the day might trigger IRS scrutiny.

This tramples on the rightful role of churches.

Pastors, priests, and other clergy are called to instruct their congregants in all areas of life. The holy texts of the Abrahamic faiths have implications for everything in life, including politics and how to vote.

As Christian theologian and former Prime Minister of the Netherlands Abraham Kuyper wrote, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’”

The Johnson Amendment, however, carves out portions of this domain and labels them off-limits for churches unwilling to incur steep financial penalties.

The Johnson Amendment’s scope is sometimes misunderstood. It doesn’t just prohibit clergy from telling congregants who to vote for; it reaches beyond that, threatening to punish all houses of worship for saying anything that the IRS might deem to be in favor of, or in opposition to, a political candidate.

That vague guidance makes it impossible for religious leaders to know what crosses the line and what doesn’t.

Consider these scenarios: What if a pastor states in a sermon that a politician is unfit because his or her personal morality is not in line with the Bible’s teachings? Or what if a rabbi remarks that a politician’s immigration proposals do or do not honor the lessons of his faith’s sacred texts?

It’s not clear whether one, neither, or both of these examples cross the line.

But this we do know—churches and other houses of worship shouldn’t have to worry about this.

They should be free to speak on personal morality, immigration policies, and countless other issues as they relate to anything, including political candidates, and they should be free to do so without fear of government punishment.

The Free Speech Fairness Act would put an end to religious leaders’ playing this guessing game.

It would tell the federal government to stop scrutinizing what churches say about political candidates, and it would lift the muzzles that now cover America’s pulpits on the many issues that often cross into the realm of politics.

The often misunderstood idea of “separation of church and state” is a common objection to bills like the Free Speech Fairness Act. But those sorts of arguments have it exactly backwards: The Free Speech Fairness Act would actually restore (rather than undermine) a proper division between the government and the church.

Currently, bureaucrats are empowered to monitor pastors’ sermons. What could be a greater governmental intrusion into a church’s operations than that?

By removing a primary basis upon which the IRS inspects what clergy say, the Free Speech Fairness Act would put the government back in its proper place.

Over six decades ago, Texas politician Lyndon Johnson set off a chain of events that invited federal officials to meddle where they didn’t belong. The Free Speech Fairness Act says it’s high time we sent them packing. (For more from the author of “It’s Time to Restore Free Speech to American Churches” please click HERE)

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