Dear Dejected Hillary Supporters, Stop Trying to Make the Electoral College About Slavery!

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Adding to the ever-growing list of scapegoats for Hillary Clinton’s presidential election loss to Donald Trump, mainstream and leftist voices have now turned their harangues and calumnies toward the Electoral College.

Now that the mewls of “Hillary won the popular vote” have been exhausted, her apologists are going after the institution of the Electoral College (and, by association, the Constitution), with more and more tying its historic heritage to slavery. These attacks on the function of the college are not only inaccurate, they ignore the complexity, nuance, and statesmanship necessary to even have a constitution in the first place.

In the days following Clinton’s loss, Vox was one of the first notable outlets to scapegoat the Electoral College, due to the fact that slavery existed during the birth of the U.S. Constitution. In an interview with Professor Akhil Reed Amar of Yale, they hammer the point that the college simply existed to protect the institution of slavery.

PBS Newshour cites another professor at a Canadian university, who says most would be “disgusted” at the true origins and relationship between the Electoral College and the institution of slavery. All the while, he cites a speech that James Madison gave at the Constitutional Convention in which Madison called the disparity of suffrage between states a “serious problem.” (It is also worth noting that an editor’s note indicates that the article’s author initially got the winner of the 1800 election wrong.)

Elsewhere, Slate — in typical fashion — simply asserts that the institution is an “instrument of white supremacy” akin to “mass incarceration.”

Finally, news broke Tuesday that Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. (F, 4%) has introduced a bill to abolish the Electoral College, calling the process “an outdated, undemocratic system,” that unfairly robbed Hillary Clinton of the presidency.

This is a shocking response to the fact that the Electoral College does and did exactly what it was supposed to do. As CR’s Rob Eno recently explained, the electoral vote guards against the tyranny of the dense population centers over the rest of the country (as it did Nov. 8). When numbers from Boxer’s home state of California alone are removed from the total tallies, Trump not only wins the Electoral College, but a sizeable chunk of the popular vote as well. Put simply, we live in a federal republic, not Mob-rule-istan.

In a recent column at The Wall Street Journal, Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry Arnn explains flawlessly:

The Constitution is paradoxical most of all about power, which it grants and withholds, bestows and limits, aggregates and divides, liberates and restrains. Elections are staggered, so as to distribute them across time. The founding document also divides power across space; the people grant a share of their natural authority to the federal government, but another share to the states where they live.

…

We forget that it is a historical rarity to have an executive strong enough to do the job but still responsible to the people he governs. The laws in the U.S. have worked that miracle for longer than anywhere else. Remember that the Electoral College helps establish the ground upon which the American people must talk with each other, while ensuring that they are not ruled as colonies from a bunch of blue capitals, nor from a bunch of red ones.

But this is only half the problem with progressives’ recent detractions from the document. The rest lies with trying to slander the Electoral College because of an historical relationship with slavery.

Probably the best explanation of this complexity came from a professor who told me that the founders and the framers were incapable of freeing the slaves at that time because they were barely capable of freeing themselves.

Yes, thanks to the complex nature of slavery and the early republic and the impossibility of creating a document that would be unanimously ratified in Virginia, South Carolina, New York Massachusetts, and Maine, (for a better understanding of these, I recommend a viewing of the movie “1776”; it takes just under 2.5 hours and there’s singing. Easy day.) it is impossible to say that it is not connected. But to slander the college on this connection alone is fallacious and reductionist, ignoring the manifold concerns that were addressed in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

Simply because the college coexisted in a document with slavery does not mean that it was specifically designed to preserve and protect the institution. What about the concerns of smaller, non-slaveholding states like Connecticut and others — which also feared that large town centers would eventually overshadow their representation in the Union? What of the urban/rural divides that decided the election this cycle?

In other words, if you’re going to slander and throw out the Electoral College simply because of its proximity to those compromises, you may as well dismantle our entire federal order and bulldoze every monument to every person present at the Constitutional Convention. History, especially in these contexts, is far more complex than you want it be.

Slavery was indeed our country’s original sin — one in atonement for which we fought a long and bloody Civil War that nearly destroyed our Union. Its relationship to our founding documents is as shameful as it is complex. But rather than throwing babies out with the bathwater, it would do us well as a people to recognize these complexities rather than reducing them to the fallacy of the day.

In other words, those upset by 2016’s results would do better to just admit that they want to change the game that their candidate lost, rather than reaching for justifications to slander the rulebook. (For more from the author of “Dear Dejected Hillary Supporters, Stop Trying to Make the Electoral College About Slavery!” please click HERE)

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Protecting President Trump Won’t Be Easy. A Former Secret Service Agent Explains Why

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The most difficult task I ever grappled with was learning how to effectively secure the life of the president of the United States as a Secret Service agent in the Presidential Protective Division.

Mastering presidential security is a herculean task which requires seasoned, presidential lead advance agents to master logistics, security, diplomacy, and constantly evolving technology. It takes a typical Secret Service agent approximately seven to ten years of investigative field work before they are even eligible for consideration for appointment to the Presidential Protective Division, and very few agents are selected. In many children’s sport leagues, and on many of our college campuses, everyone gets a trophy for participating. But, not in the Secret Service, where only the best of the best are selected to protect the president. A Secret Service agent friend of mine once described the journey from an agent’s hiring to the Presidential Protective Division as “the world’s longest job interview,” and he was correct.

With the inauguration right around the corner, President-elect Trump’s Secret Service detail will have to grapple with the following obstacles:

1. The inauguration

I was one of the advance agents from the Presidential Protective Division tasked with designing and implementing the security planning for Barack Obama’s January, 2009 inauguration. I was also assigned to the 2005 inauguration of George W. Bush in a support capacity. Sadly, both the 2001 and 2005 Bush inaugurals were marred by protests, egg throwing, arrests, and a number of attempts to disrupt the inaugural motorcade route. And, although these protestors clearly had the right to protest, they did not have the right to throw objects and disrupt the security plan. It’s not a partisan talking-point but a harsh reality that many on the far-left have embraced the politics of destruction and violence as a strategic political weapon. The Barack Obama 2009 inauguration saw almost none of this type of activity with only isolated misconduct incidents and infamous logistics failures such as the “Purple Tunnel of Doom” disaster. I derive absolutely no pleasure in telling you that the far-left presents more challenges to the security planners at a Republican event than the Right does at a Democrat event but, history doesn’t tell tall tales.

Protesting is, thankfully, a constitutionally protected activity, but it does suck up security assets like a manpower vacuum because the threat of any protest turning violent requires that the protests be monitored and, as recent history has unquestionably shown us, many Trump protestors are only a hair trigger away from turning violent at a rally. The Secret Service is going to have to deal with this reality and build their security plan around what will assuredlybe significant protest activity on Inauguration Day.

2. Social media threats

President-elect Trump wasn’t the first political candidate to use social media as a force multiplier, but he was the first to do so by adding a personal touch to such an enormous and attentive social media audience. The media made Donald Trump’s tweets the focus of legions of news stories and drew a corresponding amount of attention to Trump’s account, amplifying his audience and, paradoxically, enabling him to use those social media platforms to get his message out and bypass traditional media gatekeepers. I don’t know what President-elect Trump’s future plans are with regard to social media but I would be surprised if he abandoned his signature communication vehicle.

If he continues to tweet, albeit with the understanding that the tweets now carry the weight of presidential communications, they will likely elicit some furious feedback from his political enemies. Unfortunately, many of the responses to his social media posts will be threats. All of these threats will have to be “run out” (investigated) as we used to say in the Secret Service. This is going to cause an unprecedented drain on the Secret Service’s very limited protective intelligence assets (the agents who investigate threats to Secret Service protectees). Although I am now, and will always be, a vocal supporter of limited government, there is simply no way to squeeze twenty pounds of presidential threat investigations into a five pound investigative bag. The agents needed to investigate this potential tidal wave of threats will have to be taken away from criminal investigative assignments. It may be a good time to have a bigger conversation about scrapping some of the Secret Service’s current tasks and re-prioritizing protection, major events, and protective intelligence.

3. Technology and weapons

The Secret Service culture is heavily resistant to change, especially regarding new technology. Another former agent friend of mine summed it up with the quip “the Secret Service: Yesterday’s technology-tomorrow.” The Secret Service is still using decades-old manpower hour management programs and it still requires its agents to waste hours of precious time each month on unnecessary paperwork and bureaucratic hoop-jumping. Applying an outsider’s business perspective, in the model of a President-elect Trump, to this process could clean this mess up quickly and free up Secret Service agents to do their jobs, not making multiple photocopies of a time and attendance report.

Secondly, the Secret Service MUST update its weapons capabilities to reflect the evolving threat of a small arms tactical assault from a terror group. Rank-and-file agents have been complaining about the Secret Service’s insufficient weapons capabilities for years, and the transition to 5.56 from the 9mm sub-machinegun took way too long. Every Secret Service agent assigned to a protective mission — from those temporarily assigned as post-standers, to the agents permanently assigned to the president — should be equipped with the necessary weapons and training to be able to defend themselves and the president from this evolving terror threat. And while the Secret Service’s main mission is to evacuate the president, not to engage in wild-west-type gun fights, they must have the ability to stave off a prolonged tactical assault by a small group of well-armed and suicidal terrorists who will only be stopped by applying an equal amount of force.

Donald Trump ran a different kind of campaign, with a different kind of political strategy. This is going to require a different kind of approach to keeping him safe. God bless those involved in the effort. (For more from the author of “Protecting President Trump Won’t Be Easy. A Former Secret Service Agent Explains Why” please click HERE)

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What Happened on Hillary’s Plane Right Before She Lost Election Revealed, It Speaks Volumes…

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Hillary Clinton on Saturday cast blame for her surprise election loss on the announcement by the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, days before the election that he had revived the inquiry into her use of a private email server.

In her most extensive remarks since she conceded the race to Donald J. Trump early Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton told donors on a 30-minute conference call that Mr. Comey’s decision to send a letter to Congress about the inquiry 11 days before Election Day had thrust the controversy back into the news and had prevented her from ending the campaign with an optimistic closing argument.

“There are lots of reasons why an election like this is not successful,” Mrs. Clinton said, according to a donor who relayed the remarks. But, she added, “our analysis is that Comey’s letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum.”

Mrs. Clinton said a second letter from Mr. Comey, clearing her once again, which came two days before Election Day, had been even more damaging. In that letter, Mr. Comey said an examination of a new trove of emails, which had been found on the computer of Anthony D. Weiner, the estranged husband of one of her top aides, had not caused him to change his earlier conclusion that Mrs. Clinton should face no charges over her handling of classified information.

Her campaign said the seemingly positive outcome had only hurt it with voters who did not trust Mrs. Clinton and were receptive to Mr. Trump’s claims of a “rigged system.” In particular, white suburban women who had been on the fence were reminded of the email imbroglio and broke decidedly in Mr. Trump’s favor, aides said.

…

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign was so confident in her victory that her aides popped open Champagne on the campaign plane early Tuesday. But that conviction, aides would later learn, was based largely on erroneous data showing that young, black and Latino voters and suburban women who had been turned off by Mr. Trump’s comments but viewed Mrs. Clinton unfavorably would turn out for her in higher numbers than they ultimately did. (For more from the author of “Hillary Clinton Blames F.B.I. Director for Election Loss” please click HERE)

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This One State Proves Why the Electoral College Exists

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The 2016 presidential election is a textbook example of why the Founders, in their infinite wisdom, chose the Electoral College method of electing the president. Their elegant compromise ensures that states with small population still have a say in who is elected president. The results from Election Day 2016 highlight this exquisitely. If you remove anyone of a handful of large population states from the popular vote count, Trump won the rest of the country convincingly.

Six days after the election, the race has been called in 48 states and the District of Columbia. Donald Trump has a 290 to 228 Electoral College vote lead. Trump is leading by approximately 12,000 votes in Michigan, and trails by a smaller margin in New Hampshire. If those two states finished where the vote is now, Trump will have 306 Electoral College votes to Hillary Clinton’s 232.

However, Trump is trailing slightly in the popular vote at the same time. Here is where the national popular vote count stands six days after the election.

Clinton: 61,039,676

Trump: 60,371,193

That is a 668,483 vote difference, or less than 0.6 percent of all the votes cast for president.

The Electoral College was created as a check on large population states. If there was a true popular vote, a handful of states, or even just one, could perpetually pick the president. Today, that state would most probably be California. Here is where the California popular vote stands six days after the election.

Clinton: 5,589,936

Trump: 3,021,095

That is a difference of 2,568,841 votes. This means that Donald Trump won the rest of the country by about 1.9 million votes. If you look at similar numbers in 2012, Mitt Romney would have lost the popular vote in the 49 states other than California plus the District of Columbia.

In 2016, the Electoral College is acting exactly as designed. In our federalist system of government, the people in vast swaths of this land did not have their voice drowned out by the interests of one state.

It is just that simple. (For more from the author of “This One State Proves Why the Electoral College Exists” please click HERE)

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Michael Moore Says Trump Supporters ‘Not Racist’

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Liberal political activist Michael Moore defended white Trump supporters Friday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, saying, “they’re not racist.”

“They twice voted for a man whose middle name is Hussein,” Moore said referring to Trump supporters. “That’s the America you live in.”

Moore’s comments were in response to Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton, after Glaude asserted that “at the heart of this country is some deep racial animus that animates the very communities that we’re trying to lift up.”

Moore continued:

Even though this country is only 12 percent black, the vast majority of this country, especially its young people — if you remember, it was really the only white demographic he won in ‘08 was 18 to 35-year-olds — they poured out in record numbers, they made that happen. But if you put people through another eight years where there’s no middle class jobs, they’re struggling to get by, the basic things like you said — the price of a box of cereal doubles. These are the things that are important to people because they are trying to get by, they’re living from paycheck to paycheck.

Though Moore has defended Trump supporters, and predicted that the Republican candidate would win, he has made it clear that he is not a fan. Yesterday he called Donald Trump an “illegitimate president” while touring Trump Tower in New York City, saying “the majority of people voted for Hillary Clinton.” He was referring to the fact that Trump won a majority of the Electoral College, which is what determines presidential elections, rather than the popular vote.

Moore also joined in on a social media trend comparing November 9, the day after the election, to September 11. The filmmaker tweeted “Fahrenheit 11/9,” a reference to his 2004 film Fahrenheit 9/11. (For more from the author of “Michael Moore Says Trump Supporters ‘Not Racist'” please click HERE)

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How Left-Wing Billionaire George Soros Manipulated the 2016 Election

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He’s “the puppet master,” Glenn Beck says. He creates what The Washington Times calls an “echo chamber” in the mainstream media. The studies and messages he manufactured were “used verbatim hundreds of times in sources ranging from The New York Times to the Philadelphia Inquirer.”

While left-wing billionaire George Soros wasn’t able to tip the presidential election to Hillary Clinton, he made a significant difference in other ways this election season.

Soros Exposed — Through Hacks

In August, the site DCLeaks released over 2,500 hacked internal documents from Soros’s organizations, primarily his Open Society Foundations. Although the mainstream media has virtually ignored the documents, a handful of conservative sites have been picking through them. J. Christian Adams of PJ Media has put together the biggest exposé.

The leaked documents revealed not just run-of-the-mill leftwing donations, but the type of activism worthy of the title “puppet master.” For instance:

Soros tried to influence European elections in 2014, and is seeking to influence Malaysia’s elections in 2018.

He sought to influence Supreme Court justices on illegal immigration in the case U.S. v. Texas, “primarily via a sophisticated amicus briefs and media strategy.”

The Open Society Foundations funded opposition research on critics of radical Islam.

The Open Society Justice Initiative calls for international regulation of the internet, to determine “what information is taken off the Internet and what may remain.”

He provided $33 million to radical groups like Black Lives Matter to foment unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, and around the country.

Manipulates Media Coverage

Soros has built up a conglomerate of political and media organizations, which he uses to influence public policy and the mainstream media. The leaked documents, Adams observes, “reveal deliberate and successful efforts to manipulate media coverage of election issues in mainstream media outlets like The New York Times.”

For example, he funds organizations like the Brennan Center for Justice that claim there is no voter fraud. The idea of the “voter fraud myth” is then pushed out into the media through his own media operations, including “New America Media,” which caters to ethnic groups, and a “Media Consortium.”

In contrast, Adams notes, “Conservatives and Republicans have no opposing effort or source of funds that represents even a small fraction in opposition to level of the Soros-led manipulation contained in the leaked documents.”

Soros’s organizations include MoveOn.org, ACORN, and numerous pro-amnesty organizations. He has repeatedly referred to himself as a “god,” and wrote in his 1987 book, The Alchemy of Finance, “I admit that I have always harbored an exaggerated view of self-importance — to put it bluntly, I fancied myself as some kind of god or an economic reformer like Keynes or, even better, a scientist like Einstein.”

He amassed his fortune through risky currency trades. He was convicted in 2002 of insider trading by a French appeals court. The Malaysian Prime Minister said in 1997 that Soros’s risky trading was partially responsible for the collapse of several Asian currencies.

Poured Over $25 Million Into the 2016 Election

Soros contributed $8 million to the super PAC associated with Hillary Clinton this past year, and $2 million to American Bridge 21st Century, a PAC that targeted Trump. He donated $3 million to a PAC called Immigrant Voters Win, which seeks to get out Hispanic voters in key swing states. During the primary, he even contributed $488,375 to a PAC supporting Republican presidential candidate John Kasich, in the hopes it would prevent Trump from winning the GOP nomination.

He paid organizations to cause chaos at the Republican National Convention. He gave the left-wing activist race-related organization Color of Change $500,000 to collect signatures for a petition demanding that Coke and other sponsors withdraw their support from the convention. It worked, scaring off several corporate sponsors, and Coke only contributed $65,000, far less than the $660,000 it gave in 2012. Color of Change seeks to defund law enforcement agencies that don’t “defend black lives.”

Soros paid $500,000 to Brave New Films to create a fake petition requesting open carry at the GOP convention. He gave the ACLU $1.7 million for lawsuits that successfully gave protesters more access to Trump events.

As part of his effort to overhaul the U.S. justice system, Soros poured money into several law enforcement races around the country. He contributed a total of $9.6 million to defeat white Republican male DAs in particular, and replace them with minorities who favor a radical transformation of the justice system. He also injected money into Democratic primaries, to ensure the most radical Democrat won. He won all but two of the elections he funded.

He targeted Arizona county Sheriff Joe Arpaio due to Arpaio’s tough approach to combating illegal immigration, contributing a stunning $2.3 million to defeat him. This enabled unknown Democrat challenger Paul Penzone to win, even though he has a history of domestic violence involving his ex-wife. It is extremely rare for a Democrat to get elected to a countywide office in Maricopa County, and would almost certainly not have happened in 2016 but for Soros’ intervention.

Racism, Voting Fraud and Other Meddling

Soros funds organizations that hype up cries of racism, like Black Lives Matter, and others that claim Republicans want to disenfranchise minorities. The fear-mongering seeks to radicalize minorities, and incentivize them to work registering voters and supporting far left candidates.

Soros is the largest contributor to Democratic efforts to block election integrity laws. He committed $5 million to Voting Rights Trust, an organization which fights election integrity laws.

This election cycle, he bankrolled lawsuits challenging these laws in the swing states of Ohio, Wisconsin and North Carolina. The North Carolina law had a “strict photo-ID requirement, shaved a week off of early voting, and cut same-day registration, preregistration and out-of-precinct voting.” He successfully got it put on hold during the election. In Wisconsin, his efforts got a photo ID law reduced in scope.

Soros grants led to Oregon and California moving toward mandatory voter registration, where everyone who is on a government database is automatically put on the list of eligible voters.

At least George Soros is an equal-opportunity manipulator. The U.S. isn’t the only country he wants to change. Russia was so concerned about his influence that it banned the Soros Foundation as a “threat to national security and constitutional order.” (For more from the author of “How Left-Wing Billionaire George Soros Manipulated the 2016 Election” please click HERE)

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The Coddled Generation That Wasn’t Taught to Grow Up

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There are millions of fine young people across America today, people of character, people of principle, people of discipline, people of maturity. But there are millions of others who have been coddled all their lives, almost never taught to lose or be put in their place or take full responsibility for their actions. It is some of those young people who are protesting on the streets and being comforted by their professors as they cry on college campuses in the aftermath of the elections.

Just consider this scene from our campuses on the day after the elections, as reported by the Wall Street Journal: “At Tufts University, arts and crafts were on offer. And the University of Kansas reminded students via social media of the therapy dogs available for comfort every other Wednesday.”

Arts and crafts to comfort grieving college students? Therapy dogs?

And then this, from the University of Michigan: “There was a steady flow of students entering Ms. Boynton’s office Wednesday. They spent the day sprawled around the center, playing with Play-Doh and coloring in coloring books, as they sought comfort and distraction.”

Need I add the standard caveat: “I am not making this up!”?

To be sure, there were many things said and done by candidate (and now president-elect) Donald Trump that have caused concern, and I do understand why some Muslim or Mexican young people (or others) would be alarmed, fearing the worst. “Am I going to be deported? Will my family be kicked out of the country? Am I really welcome here?”

Again, I understand why they would be concerned, especially the way the media has portrayed Mr. Trump’s remarks, to the point of working people into a hysteria.

But it is the nature of the reaction to Trump’s shocking election that I’m focused on, along with the way these students are being treated.

Really now, even though millions of conservative Christians would have been terribly upset had Hillary won, do you think that students on Christian campuses would be sitting with therapy dogs and coloring books to comfort them in their grief?

But this should not surprise us in terms of the anti-Trump reaction on at these colleges and universities. These are the same campuses with “safe zones” and with guidelines against “microagressions.” And these are the same young people whose number one rule sometimes appears to be, “You shall not offend me or hurt my feelings!”

In her book Generation Me, author Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D., painted a picture of many of today’s young people using the description of a woman named Linda, who was born in the 50s, and whose “youngest child, Jessica, was born years after Whitney Houston’s No. 1 hit song “Greatest Love of All” declared that loving yourself was the greatest love.”

Prof. Twenge writes, “Jessica’s elementary school teachers believed that they should help Jessica feel good about herself. Jessica scribbled in a coloring book called We Are All Special, got a sticker on her worksheet just for filling it out, and did a sixth-grade project called ‘All About Me.’ . . . She dreams of being a model or a singer, takes numerous ‘selfies’ a day, and recently reached her personal goal of acquiring 5,000 followers on Instagram. She does not expect to marry until she is in her late 20s, and neither she nor her older sisters have any children yet. ‘You have to love yourself before you can love someone else,’ she says.”

Again, to repeat, there are many, fine young people today, and they are committed to helping others and making a positive difference in their world. Some of them put their elders to shame.

But the picture painted by Prof. Twenge is all too common, which is why there are elementary schools and middle schools across America that do not keep score in the children’s sports events, since everyone has to win (or, conversely, because no one can lose).

How does this prepare them for the realities of life, where every day, some people win and some people lose, where every day, there is disappointment and pain, where every day, some things go our way and some don’t, where every day, life is not always fair?

A friend of mine in the business world told me that it’s common now for college and university grads to have trouble on their jobs, but not because they lack intelligence or the necessary academic training. Instead, it’s because they can’t take correction, having been shielded from it during much of their upbringing and education. “You may be my boss, but you’re making me feel bad, which makes you a bad person, since I’m a good person and therefore a good employee.”

I may be exaggerating the sentiments, but not by much.

In the end, the problem is not with an age group as much as it is with a mindset, and it is a mindset that simply doesn’t work in real life — unless you want to be playing with Play-Doh to ease your pain when you’re married with kids and grandkids. (For more from the author of “The Coddled Generation That Wasn’t Taught to Grow Up” please click HERE)

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Is the Wall Possible? What Trump Can Do on Immigration

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When Donald Trump is inaugurated as president in January, he has the authority to dramatically reshape immigration policy by himself.

While Trump would need Congress to appropriate money to fund his biggest campaign promise — building a wall across the southern border — he can act alone in other areas, just like President Barack Obama has, in deciding how to enforce immigration law.

“The president does have a lot of executive authority and discretion to enforce the law as he wishes,” said David Leopold, an immigration attorney and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “There is a lot of immigration enforcement discretion.”

How Trump Can Act Alone

In interviews with The Daily Signal, Leopold and other experts described how Trump could act on the many promises he made to overhaul U.S. immigration policy.

Trump can take immediate actions by himself, starting with canceling Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which has provided deportation protection and work permits to about 800,000 immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

The program grants protection for two years, after which beneficiaries can apply again. New applicants can still request DACA protection through the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

“One of questions is whether he would cut [DACA] off immediately or let the program sunset so that when people’s protection expires, he does not allow for renewals,” said Faye Hipsman, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “USCIS is still receiving first-time DACA applications, so that would occur in a pretty staged and staggered manner.”

Trump could also permanently cancel a broader Obama program that made more people eligible for DACA protection and extended legal status to include the parents of U.S. citizens or legal residents. The Supreme Court has blocked that program.

In addition, Trump, if he wishes, can change the priorities of the Department of Homeland Security on who it seeks to deport.

The Obama administration asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency that handles most deportations, to focus its resources on those who are considered threats to public safety, or are have been convicted of crimes, usually a felony.

Other priorities for deportation include individuals who have been convicted of multiple misdemeanors, and recent arrivals who came here illegally after Jan. 1, 2014.

“Right now, the way the Obama administration is treating it, is unless you are a priority, we won’t actively go after you. Trump can flip that,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, the director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, and a former policy advisor at the Department of Homeland Security.

After calling for mass deportations early on in his campaign, Trump has walked that back to say he would focus enforcement on illegal immigrants with criminal records.

“Right away, border security is one of the top five things he will try to address right out of the starting gate,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies. “That includes taking the handcuffs off the immigration agencies and letting them get back to doing their job according to the law. I don’t want to say there will be immediate drastic change. But there are many things the Trump administration can do on their own right away to restore control to immigration policy.”

Seeking Help From Congress

Trump would need Congress’ cooperation on his signature proposal — finishing the construction of a wall across the southern border.

The border security mechanism that Congress would support would likely not come in the form of a brick-and-mortar wall described by Trump, but as extended fencing.

Immigration experts say the U.S. has spent billions in recent years fencing about one-third of the border.

The next president has the template to finish the job.

In 2006, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Secure Fence Act, which authorized 700 miles of additional fencing along the border with Mexico. President George W. Bush signed the law. However, his administration later pushed for an amendment to the bill to give the government the discretion to determine what type of fencing was appropriate in the various areas of the border, depending on environmental and land-use restrictions.

As a result of that amendment, the majority of the fencing erected as a result of the law has been vehicle barriers — designed to stop vehicles rather than people, and single-layer pedestrian fencing. The original law called for double-layered fencing. Subsequent Republican attempts to require double fencing have failed.

“Depending on what type of infrastructure he wants, [Trump] probably already has the authorization to do it,” Brown said. “He just needs Congress to appropriate money.”

Similarly, Congress would have to approve the funding for another major Trump proposal: tripling the number of ICE agents who focus on deporting immigrants living in the country illegally.

Brown says personnel costs already make up about 80 to 90 percent of the budgets of ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency that protects the border.

The border patrol, meanwhile, has faced challenges fulfilling hiring goals mandated by Congress.

Republicans in Congress who share Trump’s hardline positions on immigration say they welcome his plans, even though they will certainly cost a lot of money.

“It seems to me the Republican conference sees we just had a seismic, historic election so there is a new mandate to get things right with immigration,” said Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., in an interview with The Daily Signal. “It was one of [Trump’s] big issues, and one of my big issues that I ran on. So yes, it is worth the money. Look at France and Germany. If you don’t secure borders, you lose the entire country.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who met with Trump on Thursday, was asked by Fox News’ Bret Baier if he supports building a wall but committed only to “physical barriers.”

“I’m in favor of securing the border,” Ryan said. “And I do believe you need to have physical barriers on the border. I will defer to the experts on the border as to what is the right way to actually secure the border.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is less committal on whether he’d support paying for a border wall.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, McConnell did not directly answer questions about if he supports Trump’s wall proposal.

“I’m not going to go back and relitigate events of the past,” he said. “We have a new president. I would like to see him get off on a positive start. I think we should look forward and not backward and kind of rehash and relitigate the various debates we had internally and with the Democrats over the past year.”

Pressed again, McConnell added: “Border security is important. I think even our Democratic friends realize we haven’t done a very good job of that. Achieving border security is something that I think ought to be high on the list.”

But despite Republican control of the House and Senate, Trump’s border security plans needing congressional approval will likely be opposed by Democrats. In the Senate, Democrats still have the power of the filibuster to block legislation.

“If enforcement is his primary push, Democrats will be opposed to that unless legalization is part of the conversation,” Brown said. “That has been the quid pro quo on immigration for years.”

More Trump Proposals

Along with his more prominent proposals, Trump has also called for punishing so-called sanctuary cities that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Trump could withhold federal funding from those cities, but would need support from Congress to do so.

The president-elect has not limited his plans to illegal immigration.

He said he would reduce legal immigration levels, a step requiring the approval of Congress.

And Trump said he would suspend immigration from countries that are “compromised by terrorism,” although he has not clarified what countries he’d consider. (For more from the author of “Is the Wall Possible? What Trump Can Do on Immigration” please click HERE)

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WHEN A PICTURE IS WORTH A MILLION WORDS: Faces of White House Staffers Priceless as President Trump Arrives

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So sad:

On Wednesday, however, the White House staff, along with the rest of America, listened as Obama discussed the election results in a televised address… And their faces said it all.

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After President Trump’s inauguration, I would like to ask that any former member of Valerie Jarrett’s Secret Service detail (why she warranted such a force is worthy of its own investigation) contact me. I have a case of beer I would like to send each and every one of you. (For more from the author of “WHEN A PICTURE IS WORTH A MILLION WORDS: Faces of White House Staffers Priceless as President Trump Arrives” please click HERE)

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Why Is the LGBTQ Community Freaking out About the Most Pro-Gay Republican President-Elect in History?

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President-elect Donald Trump has been reality for fewer than 48 hours now, and media outlets are already running stories about the LGBT fallout from the results. This is a special kind of absurd.

Two stories in the LGBT-centered Advocate highlight negative Trump reactions from gay voters online and in a gay bar in Columbus, Ohio.

“I hope that Canada will start taking refugees,” one person says in the latter. “They might have to build a wall themselves.”

Writing at Complex.com, deputy style editor Steve Dool, full of doom and gloom writes:

LGBTQIA+ rights were not anyone’s actual focus in this election. No marginalized group’s rights really were, if we’re being honest. The 2016 election cycle was more about emails and fear-mongering and walls and Russia and Billy Motherfucking Bush. And in the cold, hard light of Nov. 9, that’s embarrassing and hurtful. And there’s literally nothing we can do about that now. It’s done. We lost before a single ballot was cast.

Both The News Journal in Delaware and the Chicago Tribune ran stories highlighting supposed LGBT anxieties following Election Day results.

According to the Tribune story, a Naperville, Ill. LGBT activist is quaking in her boots at the prospect of a Trump administration, fearing that that it somehow signals “open season on the LGBT community,” that “paints an even bigger target on the back of our heads.”

Am I missing something here? Because this doesn’t really make sense. The Left has tried to cast Trump as all sorts of terrible “-ophobes” based on his rhetoric or proposed policies, but they don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to LGBT issues. It’s not like Trump is pushing for a constitutional amendment going around Obergefell. It’s not like any of his immediate circle doesn’t buy into the supremacy of the Obergefell v. Hodges decision as “the law of the land.”

Sure, VP-elect Mike Pence has a long career as a solid social conservative (the 2015 Indiana RFRA “compromise” notwithstanding), but the tone of the campaign was nothing but friendly to gay voters.

Donald Trump went as far as to wave the rainbow flag at a rally in Colorado before the election. And not only invited the first openly gay man to speak at the Republican National Convention (on the main stage during primetime, no less), but addressed gay voters directly during his RNC nomination acceptance speech, as he had since the tragedy at the Pulse nightclub a month before. Hell, Trump was first invited to CPAC by a gay conservatives group in 2011.

His team may not be in favor of using the anti-conscience steamroller that Hillary Clinton wanted to get through Congress, but it’s not like anyone is pushing a natural marriage-affirming amendment to the Constitution. If anyone in this equation should have any concern about the Trump administration’s LGBT stance and rhetoric, it should be the social conservatives who helped him get elected, hoping that everything mentioned above doesn’t signal a shift in the vital conscience protections they’re hoping for (See: First Amendment Defense Act, repealing Obamacare transgender mandate, etc).

I get that Hillary promised LGBT voters the moon (she pretty much had to in order to get around her marriage flip flop), but again: Trump’s nothing to be afraid of on this front. The reaction from the Left has ranged from schadenfreude-inducing histrionics, to disgusting levels of hypocrisy (undermining peaceful transition of power, much?). But to get bent out of shape about Donald Trump’s presumed agenda on gay issues is nothing short of perplexing. (For more from the author of “Why Is the LGBTQ Community Freaking out About the Most Pro-Gay Republican President-Elect in History?” please click HERE)

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