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These Regulations Could Incriminate Your Business Without You Knowing It. How Congress Can Bring Reform.

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It’s nearly 100 days into the presidency of Donald Trump, and so far he has begun to make good on his campaign promise to curtail overregulation.

That should continue for regulations of the harshest variety: arcane rules whose violation is a federal crime.

The president’s efforts began in January, when he issued his first executive order designed to control regulatory costs and stem the seemingly endless flow of regulations being pumped out by federal bureaucrats.

A month later, he signed another executive order to create a regulatory reform task force within each agency.

The president has since taken further targeted actions to lessen the regulatory yoke borne by Americans.

In continuing this effort, the administration should be intentional in eliminating some of the most menacing rules that carry criminal penalties for regulatory infractions where civil fines or administrative remedies would be sufficient to redress harm and deter noncompliance.

Trump has already targeted two such regulations: the Waters of the United States rule (or WOTUS), and the Overtime rule.

WOTUS

The Clean Water Act, originally passed in 1972, has long determined what constitute “navigable waters”—that is, the waters subject to federal regulation.

Under President Barack Obama, the Waters of the United States rule expanded the reach of this act by redefining the scope of “navigable waters.”

According to the rule, “navigable waters” protected under federal law (33 U.S.C. § 1362) are not limited to major lakes and rivers, but include streams, ponds, and even shallow or dry ditches.

The rule represents a fundamental violation of private property rights, and is particularly menacing toward small businesses.

According to the National Federation of Independent Business, the regulation “require[s] small businesses and other property owners to spend tens of thousands of dollars to obtain federal permits before doing things as simple as landscaping or dredging soil if the land (or land near it) collects water for any significant period of time throughout the year.”

For example, after a rancher built a stock pond from a stream on his private land, the Environmental Protection Agency claimed jurisdiction over his backyard oasis and threatened his family with fines totaling $37,500 per day.

The agency also extracted a guilty plea from a building engineer who diverted sewage system overflow at a military retirement home into a storm drain because, unbeknownst to him, it led into a protected creek that eventually flowed into a river.

These penalties are not chump change. Individuals who negligently violate the Clean Water Act are subject to a maximum fine of $25,000 per day that the violation occurs and one year in prison.

The rule’s validity is currently bound up in litigation, enjoining its enforcement. Not content to wait for the courts to opine upon the constitutionality of the rule, Trump has directed the Environmental Protection Agency to review and, if warranted, revise it.

>>> What You Need to Know About Trump’s Executive Order on the Water Rule

Overtime Rule

Second, the Obama Department of Labor’s Overtime rule endeavored to double the maximum salary that an employee must receive to be exempt from overtime pay rules to $47,476 a year.

Ensuring that salaried employees receive additional compensation for working over 40 hours in a week may sound beneficial to workers on its face.

But, as Heritage Foundation scholars have written elsewhere, the rule would turn over 4 million salaried employees into hourly workers, restrict employee flexibility by forcing more workers to punch a timecard, and “cost businesses $6.9 billion in [estimated] compliance costs.”

If there were nothing more to it, this alone could be particularly devastating for small businesses.

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (29 U.SC. § 216), business owners who fail to comply with overtime regulations, willfully or otherwise, face a fine of up to $10,000 and up to six month’s imprisonment.

The market should set wage rates, but civil remedies exist to make an employee whole if an employer undercompensates him in relation to regulatory or contractual requirements.

This rule too is tied up in litigation after a federal judge in Texas halted its implementation last November.

More Action Needed

On Inauguration Day, Trump issued a memorandum freezing the implementation of a host of rules, including the Obama overtime standard before it became effective. The rule is now ripe for review, and ultimately withdrawal, by the Department of Labor.

These actions are a hopeful start to the Trump administration’s regulatory reform agenda, but there is much more work to be done. Many additional rules unnecessarily use the threat of criminal penalties to compel compliance with regulatory objectives, and are in need of modification or repeal.

Take for instance the Food and Drug Administration’s food labeling provisions (79 F.R. 71155). The FDA is responsible for enforcing a myriad of food labeling regulations promulgated under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

New regulations written by the FDA under an Obamacare provision require restaurants with over 20 locations to display calorie counts for all food items sold.

Under the law, anyone who mislabels a commercial food product in violation of FDA regulatory standards could be offering a “misbranded” product, which is a federal crime (21 U.S.C. § 333) punishable by imprisonment up to one year and a fine of up to $1,000.

As executive vice president of Domino’s Pizza, Tim McIntyre, explained: “If people are heavy handed with cheese or pepperoni, and a pizza doesn’t meet standards and is outside of the range of the nutritional labeling, then that could be a store manager liable for a criminal penalty.”

The government has a role in protecting public health and safety, but reliance on criminal law to do so is often misguided. Just stop into your nearest mom and pop or Domino’s pizzeria and ask how regulatory compliance burdens affect their business.

This is just one of the over 300,000 federal regulations that make a federal crime out of acts ranging from selling “pre-war strength” malt liquor to installing a toilet that uses too much water.

It is impossible for any one person to know them all, yet they are looming over all manner of activity in the marketplace.

The Supreme Court long ago, in United States v. Grimaud (1911), provided that Congress may establish criminal penalties “for violations of regulations” made by administrative agencies.

Congress has had a heavy hand in contributing to the problem of overcriminalization by liberally taking advantage of this delegation authority.

Now, Congress can help fix it by working with the Trump administration to rein in administrative rule-making that has run amok for too long. This is the most significant opportunity America has had for meaningful regulatory rollback in years. (For more from the author of “These Regulations Could Incriminate Your Business Without You Knowing It. How Congress Can Bring Reform.” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Promises Kept, and Not yet Kept, in Trump’s First 100 Days

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President Donald Trump has scoffed at the measurement even as the White House heralded the successes of his first 100 days in office.

In the final week before this key presidential marker, Trump made progress on several promises such as unveiling a tax reform proposal and talking with leaders of Canada and Mexico about renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Trump’s budget proposal addressed a slew of the promises from his first 100-day plan.

Trump is also the first president since 1881 to gain a Supreme Court confirmation in the first 100 days, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus boasted during an NBC News interview.

A new president’s first 100 days became a barometer for success beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who aggressively signed numerous bills and executive actions after taking office.

Trump issued more than 30 executive orders, the most in five decades during a president’s first 100 days, according to the White House. Among these orders: authorizing construction of a border wall, requiring that for every new regulation that two others be undone, and imposing a federal hiring freeze.

He also signed executive orders approving the Keystone XL and Dakota oil pipelines and lifting restrictions on energy production, including reversing Obama administration regulations on coal.

“Increasing American energy independence is important to national security and it is something the president has done, with deregulation,” White House spokesman Michael Short told The Daily Signal. “Approving the Keystone and Dakota pipelines will help us toward the goal of getting off Middle East oil.”

Courts have stalled some of Trump’s agenda on immigration reform, regarding “extreme vetting” of certain would-be travelers to America and the administration’s effort to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities.

Though his legislative achievements seem thin on the surface, Trump has signed 28 pieces of legislation into law, technically more than any president since Harry Truman, the White House says.

The bulk of that legislation has come from the use of the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to roll back regulations promulgated by the Obama administration. Under that law, Congress has 60 legislative days to disapprove a rule and get the president’s signature on that joint resolution.

Notably, the administration had a significant legislative setback when conservatives and centrists of Trump’s own party in the House didn’t support the Trump-backed health care bill pushed by the chamber’s Republican leadership to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Trump’s two predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, both managed major legislative accomplishments in their first 100 days.

Bush signed a tax cut bill, while Obama signed a massive economic stimulus bill, said Martha Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project, an organization that provides information to new White House staffers to help streamline the change from one administration to the next.

“In both cases, there were a substantial number of bills these presidents pushed in Congress,” Kumar told The Daily Signal. “In Trump’s case, the 28 bills he signed were mostly reversing what Obama had done.”

Jenny Beth Martin, president of Tea Party Patriots, said she would give Trump an A grade for his first 100 days for keeping most of his promises.

“He has worked to secure the border and has done as much as he can through executive action,” Martin told The Daily Signal. “One of the reasons he hasn’t been able to get as many major legislative items has been Senate Democrats. The Obamacare replacement from House Republican leadership was also disappointing.”

Perhaps the biggest Trump initiatives of the first 100 days weren’t expected.

These came on the national security front: The U.S. struck a Syrian air base used to carry out dictator Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons attack on his own civilians. A week later, the U.S. dropped the so-called “mother of all bombs” on an Islamic State hideout in Afghanistan.

As a candidate, Trump made a series of promises during a campaign speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he laid out his plan for the first 100 days. Here’s a look at promises kept and not kept:

‘Clean Up the Corruption and Special Interest Collusion’

Part of Trump’s plan to “drain the swamp” was taking on both lobbyists and Capitol Hill, and he had a six-point plan.

The first item was to “propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.” As president, Trump hasn’t advocated this yet, nor has he thrown the weight of his office behind an existing term limits proposal in Congress.

He did immediately keep the second promise, however, with a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce the federal workforce through attrition. He exempted military, public safety, and public health employees.

Trump promptly kept his promise to sign an executive order requiring two regulations to be eliminated for every new one created.

He imposed a five-year ban on White House officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service. He put in place a lifetime ban on White House officials’ lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.

However, the president didn’t impose a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections, or on congressional staff from becoming lobbyists—both measures requiring an act of Congress.

‘Protect American Workers’

The first action listed under this category was Trump’s plan to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the trade deal among the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

After reports the Trump White House drafted an order to pull out of NAFTA, Trump talked to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by phone on Wednesday.

“I decided rather than terminating NAFTA, which would be a pretty big, you know, shock to the system, we will renegotiate,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “If I’m unable to make a fair deal for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA. But we’re going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot.”

Trump already acted on his second promise in this category, withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal with 11 countries that the Obama administration signed but Congress never ratified.

Trump the candidate also vowed that he would direct his Treasury secretary to label China a currency manipulator. However, after meeting recently with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump put a hold on this idea because, he said, he believes China will help pressure North Korea to scale back its nuclear ambitions.

Trump also vowed that he would direct the Commerce Department and the U.S. trade representative “to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately.”

In March, he followed through with an executive order directing a country-by-country and product-by-product review. Just last week, Trump announced the administration was launching an investigation into steel dumping.

Dumping is a form of price manipulation in which a manufacturer of a product—in this case, steel—floods a country with the product, pricing it below market value and sometimes below the cost of production to increase market share and harm competition in a foreign market.

Trump rolled out an energy plan almost identical to his campaign proposal to “lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas, and clean coal.”

Trump has moved, both by signing legislation and taking executive actions, to roll back Obama-era energy regulations.

Trump also signed an executive order to remove barriers to the Keystone and Dakota pipelines. The Keystone pipeline was specifically part of the 100-day plan.

The final vow in this category was to “cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure.”

The White House’s fiscal year 2018 budget proposal would “cease payments to the United Nations’ climate change programs.”

‘Restore Security and the Constitutional Rule of Law’

Trump said he would “cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum, and order issued by President Obama.” He has reversed some, but others are still in place, such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which shields children of illegal immigrants from deportation.

The second pledge in this category was to nominate a Supreme Court justice to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last February. The Senate confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court last month in perhaps the biggest victory for Trump so far.

Trump also followed through on his pledge to cancel unspecified federal funding to sanctuary cities. This matter was recently blocked by a court, but the administration will appeal.

With increased enforcement for the border and the interior, the administration has already begun to deport criminal illegal immigrants. Trump pledged to remove 2 million illegal immigrants in his 100-day pledge, which is in progress.

He signed an executive order that prioritized removal of criminal illegal immigrants. Illegal immigration is down 61 percent since Trump came into office, according to the White House, and at a 17-year low.

In perhaps the most controversial move, the Trump administration followed through on a promise to “suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur.”

Trump also called this “extreme vetting.” However, this matter is also stuck in litigation and under a judge’s temporary restraining order. Critics of the policy call it a “Muslim ban.”

Legislative Agenda

Trump announced a tax reform proposal Wednesday, the first legislative item listed on his 100-day plan. Trump’s plan would cut the corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent, and reduce the number of individual tax brackets from seven to three: 10 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent.

Trump’s legislative list also included the “Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act.” This turned out to be the House Republican leadership’s American Health Care Act.

While the initial bill failed, Republicans in Congress are putting forward a new proposal that has the support of most members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus as well as centrist Republicans who balked at the earlier version. A slim chance exists of a vote before the end of the week.

Trump the candidate promoted a “School Choice and Education Opportunity Act.” His budget addressed the issue by advocating a $1.4 billion boost to cover charter schools, permitting public dollars to follow children to other public schools, and a federal voucher system for parents to pay for private schools.

However, the administration hasn’t directly addressed other legislative proposals that were part of the 100-day plan, such as a major infrastructure initiative, tariffs, new ethics laws, and a child and elder care tax credit.

Candidate Trump promoted an “End Illegal Immigration Act,” which included funding construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. An initial payment for the wall of $1.5 billion was part of the Trump budget proposal.

However, the administration reportedly isn’t willing to risk a government shutdown over the issue, which Senate Democrats have threatened to do, to achieve the funding in a short-term spending bill to keep the government operating through Sept. 30.

Trump did establish a law enforcement task force to help local police combat violent crime and determine how federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors can dismantle criminal gangs. However, he did this through an executive order rather than through the proposed “Restoring Community Safety Act.”

The 100-day plan also included proposing a “Restoring National Security Act.” The provisions have been spread across several proposals and presidential actions.

Trump’s budget proposal would increase the military budget by $54 billion to $603 billion, offset by cuts to foreign aid.

This same campaign proposal would provide veterans more choices of private health care providers paid for by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Last week, Trump signed a bill extending the health care voucher system for veterans.

The measure improves on a 2014 system that was about to expire, which was put in place as a response to the veterans’ waiting list scandal exposed in 2013. (For more from the author of “Promises Kept, and Not yet Kept, in Trump’s First 100 Days” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Promise Not Kept: Trump’s Illegal Executive Amnesty

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It takes some time for a successor to clean up the mess of his predecessor. But when a new president continues a patently illegal immigration program from his predecessor, at some point he must own that unconstitutional policy. For Obama’s illegal executive amnesty, Trump is rapidly approaching that moment.

Yesterday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer used all of the typical straw-man arguments to explain why the president has decided to keep Obama’s executive amnesty in place:

I think he’s been consistent about two things. One, that he has a heart. He wants to make sure that he does what’s in the interest of children in particular. But secondly, I think the President’s priorities since he took office have been very clear that the focus would be on folks who presented a danger to public safety. And that’s what it’s been, and that’s where it continues to be. And I think he is someone who understands the issue and the priorities that need to get laid out by this country. And so everything that he has done has been consistent with what he said from the get-go.

What about the legality – the fact that it is illegal to issue work permits and Social Security cards contrary to the most foundational sovereignty statutes?

I think that his comments that he made last week, that he understands that in a lot of cases this involves families and small children who have been here, and he has a heart…

And how does that address the legality, again?

Besides, it is wholly inconsistent with the policies and the talking points Trump harnessed during the campaign.

When Trump was campaigning in Phoenix last August, he spoke with true moral clarity on the issue of immigration in a way that shows “heart” first and foremost to the American people and, by extension, to those who make the dangerous trek across the southern border:

We will immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties in which he defied federal law and the Constitution to give amnesty to approximately five million illegal immigrants, five million.

The president actually revealed what was in his “heart” when he said in the speech that Arizona held a special place in his heart. Arizona has been beleaguered by these very myopic policies that place the emotional arguments of foreign nationals in a vacuum ahead of the broad needs and concerns of Americans. Trump lambasted the media and Hillary at the time for focusing on “one thing and only one thing, the needs of people living here illegally.” He then spoke with moral clarity of how “the central issue is not the needs of the 11 million illegal immigrants” and that “anyone who tells you that the core issue is the needs of those living here illegally has simply spent too much time in Washington…. There is only one core issue in the immigration debate, and that issue is the well-being of the American people.”

As I’ve noted before, and demonstrated from the Rockville rape case, it is this very promise of amnesty for “families with children” that is solely responsible for the recent surge in migration from Central America that has cost taxpayers untold sums of funding, burdened schools, crushed hospitals, and, yes, has resulted in violent crime against Americans. And as we saw with a slew of violent incidents perpetrated by young illegal aliens, they usually have clean records … until they offend. The “vetting” of the Obama administration was a joke, because 96 percent of applicants were granted legal status.

Yet the Trump administration is likely issuing roughly 760 illegal cards to illegal aliens every day. Even Marco Rubio said he’d only honor those cards already handed out. For this administration to renew a flagrantly illegal policy demonstrates that the campaign rhetoric of the entire Republican Party when in opposition is an utter joke. It’s one thing to show recalcitrance to ending a legal, albeit odious, policy. But to continue an illegal policy, especially when illegal aliens are the sole beneficiaries of that policy, is a mockery of the rule of law. Trump could end this tomorrow with a simple display of inaction – refusing to renew any work permits.

As a man who always likes to project power and the image of a winner, there is a further need for Trump to eliminate Obama’s executive amnesty in light of the courts nullifying his own immigration orders. For this administration to sit idly as Trump’s completely legal immigration order is struck down (while refusing to negotiate it as part of the budget bill) and at the same time continue the illegal immigration order of an ex-president is the ultimate humiliation of the The Donald. Moreover, courts are treating Obama’s order as a legitimate “law” through which to force states to issue driver’s licenses for illegals.

Trump is clearly a man who desires to check off his list of promises. Getting rid of Obama’s executive amnesty must make its way back onto that list. (For more from the author of “Promise Not Kept: Trump’s Illegal Executive Amnesty” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

What Trump Has Done on Immigration in First 100 Days

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President Donald Trump’s dedication to enforcing immigration law is one of his significant accomplishments as he nears his 100th day in office Saturday, experts and lawmakers say.

Trump is “taking the handcuffs off of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the Border Patrol because the immigration enforcement officers were prohibited from doing their job to a significant degree under [President Barack] Obama,” Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Signal in an interview.

The Trump administration highlighted its dedication to enforcing immigration law in a list, initially obtained by CNN, which specifies victories during the president’s first 100 days in office.

Included are executive orders issued by Trump on Jan. 25 that detail border security and immigration enforcement directives. These include instructions for a border wall, an order to withhold funding from sanctuary cities that are noncompliant with U.S. immigration law, and the hiring of “10,000 additional immigration officers.”

The list also includes an April 11 announcement from Attorney General Jeff Sessions where he instructed federal prosecutors to prioritize criminal immigration enforcement.

Trump also signed a revised executive order in March which placed temporary travel restrictions on residents of six countries the Obama administration and Congress had designated as posing risks of terrorism.

The original executive order issued in January was nullified by a federal judge in Seattle in a ruling upheld by a U.S. appeals court. The revised executive order was blocked by a federal judge in Hawaii.

Enforcing the Law

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, who is vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime, terrorism, and homeland security, said he agrees with these measures.

“Just having a president who says, ‘We’re going to enforce the border’ has had a profound effect on the number of people that are coming into the country illegally,” Gohmert told The Daily Signal in an interview. “It [has] already dramatically been cut back and so I think this is moving along quite well.”

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an interview that there is a stark difference between the Obama administration and the Trump administration.

“What has changed so radically is that the Department of Homeland Security and all our border patrol agents are now finally able to do their jobs,” von Spakovsky said. “The handcuffs have been taken off.”

The number of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in March, under 12,500, is the lowest total in 17 years, he said.

Trump’s approach to illegal immigration is vastly different from Obama’s, said Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates stricter enforcement of immigration laws.

“Under Obama … if the Border Patrol caught somebody who said he had been in the United States before January of 2014, they had to let him go, even if they knew he was illegal,” Krikorian said. “In other words, Obama essentially had a kind of informal amnesty for anyone sneaking across the border who would say that he had been in the country before January of 2014.”

This practice, reinstated in 2016, came from Obama’s “priorities” program, which instructed agents to pick up criminals, individuals threatening national security, and illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. after Jan. 1, 2014.

When Obama was in office, Krikorian said, Border Patrol agents would see individuals who were “still wet from wading across the Rio Grande.”

However, if the Border Patrol agents “hadn’t actually seen them with their own eyes in the river, they had to let them go” if they claimed to have arrived before 2014, he said.

Working Toward Building the Wall

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., said Trump’s promise of building a border wall is already decreasing illegal immigration.

“One thing that the Trump administration has done very well is broadcast loud and clear that they are going to keep their promise of [building] the border wall,” Biggs, who comes from a border state, told The Daily Signal in an interview. “And that has resulted in a reduction in crossings.”

Last month, Trump sent a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., which detailed border wall funding with a request for $1.38 trillion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to be available through September 2021. It would cover “procurement, construction, and improvements required for the operational control of United States borders, including design and construction of a wall and other physical barriers on the southern border of the United States.”

Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate, however, have said they prefer to put off a fight with Democrats over beginning to pay for the wall until the fall, rather than as part of funding the government for the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

“Full border wall funding can’t be there at this point,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., a supporter of the wall, said in a recent interview with The Daily Signal. “It’s not designed, prototypes have not been created.”

Trump said Tuesday that funding for the wall likely will not be included in the spending bill that Congress must pass by midnight Friday to avoid a partial government shutdown, The New York Times reported.

Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank on immigration, told The Daily Signal in an email that “the net result of his first 100 days is that a combination of action and rhetoric appear to be significantly reshaping the current immigration reality in the U.S.”

Taking a Stand Against Sanctuary Cities

Trump issued an executive order Jan. 25 denying unspecified federal funding to sanctuary cities.

“I’ve been particularly encouraged by the administration’s support for denying federal funds to sanctuary cities, in line with legislation I’ve backed,” Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal.

During the Obama presidency, Blunt called on Senate colleagues to “limit federal funding” to sanctuary cities that did not cooperate with enforcing federal immigration laws.

“The previous administration set a dangerous precedent by cherry-picking the laws it chose to enforce, and I’m glad we now have a partner in the White House who is holding sanctuary cities accountable,” Blunt said.

Trump’s order is facing opposition in the courts, however.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in San Francisco placed a national hold on Trump’s executive order regarding sanctuary cities until the issue can work its way through the courts.

Federal funding for entitlement programs such as Medicaid in sanctuary cities, however, would not be affected by the president’s order, von Spakovsky said in a new commentary.

The Department of Justice says it is working to implement Trump’s executive order to urge sanctuary cities to provide documentation of compliance with the department. The department also is hiring more immigration judges who will serve at detention centers along the border, Sessions announced this month.

Room to Improve

An area of immigration policy that Trump could improve on, Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies said, is addressing a program implemented by the Obama administration in 2012 called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

This program has provided deportation protection and work permits to over 750,000 immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

“The fact that [Trump] has basically adopted the DACA, the illegal DACA amnesty, as his own is the one big black mark with regard to immigration,” Krikorian said. “Does it cancel everything else out? No, but it clearly is a problem.”

Donald M. Kerwin, executive director of the Center for Migration Studies, a pro-immigration think tank, said he disagrees with Trump’s approach.

Kerwin specifically criticized what he called Trump’s commitment “to decreasing refugee admissions by more than 15 percent at a time when you know there’s a global refugee crisis that exceeds in size the crisis after World War II.”

Kerwin also criticized Trump’s heightened border security measures and dedication to building a border wall.

“The language, the rhetoric has been brutal,” Kerwin told The Daily Signal in an interview, adding:

It’s been unwelcoming. The proposals have been extraordinarily extremist and harsh, and they show no concern at all, no recognition at all for the benefits that immigrants contribute to the United States.

Going forward, Biggs said, Trump should remain focused on the border wall and the need to secure funding for it.

Blunt appeared to like what he sees.

“President Trump is putting the safety of the American people first by taking action to enforce our immigration laws, strengthen border security, and prevent terrorists from entering the country,” he said. (For more from the author of “What Trump Has Done on Immigration in First 100 Days” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Federal Land Grabs Have Gotten out of Control. Why Trump’s Executive Order Is a Positive Sign.

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Draining the swamp doesn’t just mean shrinking the size of federal bureaucracies. It means reducing the role of government throughout our society—including its ability to seize land.

A good place to start is President Donald Trump’s executive order, which calls for a review of national monument designations—a tool long used by presidents to unilaterally restrict land use.

The tradition of presidents designating national monuments began in 1906 when President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act.

That law was intended to prevent the looting of archaeological and Native American structures and objects, and it gave the federal government an expeditious path to do so.

Unsurprisingly, its use has evolved into a federal power tool for making land grabs that cater to special interests, rather than welcoming input from local affected parties, such as the outdoor tourist industry, Native American tribes, or simply the people living in the community.

Such land grabs date way back before President Barack Obama. Before his last-minute monument designations, 16 presidents designated more than 140 monuments covering over 285 million acres of land and marine areas.

Like every other environmental decision ordered by a new administration, the left responded to Trump’s executive order by predicting that it will reduce America the Beautiful to a dumpster fire.

As one publication put it, the order is a “sop to right-wing radicals who are hostile to public lands—and really hate Obama.” (They forgot to mention the hatred for puppies and rainbows, too).

Contrary to the media spin, the issue at hand is not about environmental stewardship, but taking decisions away from states, private citizens, and local interests.

For more than a century, the president of the United States has had the power to unilaterally designate land as a national monument, without input from Congress or the affected states.

Such action from the president either prohibits or restricts economic opportunity in the area, and often does more environmental harm than good.

Reading The Washington Post article on Trump’s order, one could easily assume that there is no local opposition to the controversial 1.35 million acre monument designation at Bears Ears declared by Obama in the final days of his presidency—one of the presumed targets of Trump’s executive order.

The Post gives the false impression that only elected Republican members of Congress opposed Obama’s designation.

The article highlights that a coalition of tribes, environmentalists, archaeologists, and outdoor industry groups all lobbied Obama for the protection at Bears Ears. Yet the author conveniently fails to include opposition from, you know, the local tribes and people that actually live in San Juan County.

For instance, members of the Navajo of San Juan County tribe—the county where Bears Ears resides—rescinded their support for the monument designation. Chester Johnson, of the Aneth Navajo chapter said,

At that time when they switched to national monument they didn’t share it back with the community what their intent was. Aneth is the only one chapter that had the backbone to stand up and say, ‘Look central government, you don’t do that. You share it with us what the intent is for our region, the land that we use for centuries.’

Another Aneth chapter member, Susie Philemon, fought back tears as she urged opposition to the designation, underscoring the fact that they have strong incentives, both economic and spiritual, to protect and preserve the land.

She stressed that “[t]here are people that still graze there, they reside there, and they make that place their livelihood and you cannot just take that away.”

San Juan County leaders staunchly opposed Obama’s designation.

Native American Rebecca Benally, the first woman elected to the San Juan County Commission, voiced opposition to the centralized decision, saying, “My constituents do not want a national monument in San Juan County because it’s just another federal overreach with empty promises.”

As loudly as the local community, the Navajo of San Juan County tribe, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, and members of Congress and state officials voiced their concerns, they all fell on deaf ears.

The problem of unilateral land designation dates much further back than Obama and Bears Ears.

Although Obama designated the contentious Bears Ears monument in Utah as he walked out the White House door, the use of the Antiquities Act is a bipartisan problem. Presidents from both parties have abused the power to restrict land use.

A review of the use of the Antiquities Act designations is a welcome and necessary first step, but ultimately Congress needs to intervene.

Congress should recognize that states, local governments, and private citizens are the best arbiters of how to manage land and should repeal the Antiquities Act or limit the president’s power by requiring congressional, state, and local approval for any national monument designation.

Whether the issue is logging, recreation, conservation, or energy extraction, such decisions are most effectively made at the state and local levels. An antiquated law more than 110 years old shouldn’t ruin the lives of communities. (For more from the author of “Federal Land Grabs Have Gotten out of Control. Why Trump’s Executive Order Is a Positive Sign.” please click HERE)

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How Trump’s Tax Plan Would Affect High-Tax States Like California, New York

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High-income earners in high-tax states would see a federal tax rate cut, but may pay more in the end if they’re unable to deduct state and local taxes under President Donald Trump’s tax reform proposal announced Wednesday.

The White House released the contours of his tax reform proposal that would lower tax rates and reduce the number of tax brackets. However, the plan would also reduce the number of tax deductions.

When a reporter asked if deducting taxes on state and local income taxes would also be eliminated, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin answered, “Yes.”

“We are going to eliminate on the personal side all tax deductions other than mortgage interests and charitable deductions,” Mnuchin said at a White House press conference Wednesday.

House Republicans were already reportedly considering eliminating the deduction on state and local taxes, which could disproportionately affect wealthy people in high-tax blue states such as New York and California.

This federal deduction basically encouraged states to hike taxes, said Jonathan Williams, the chief economist for the American Legislative Exchange Commission, a state-centric public policy organization.

“The current policy subsidizes high-tax states,” Williams told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Using that revenue to pay for cutting rates across the board is a step in the right direction.”

The Trump tax plan would reduce the number of tax brackets from seven to three brackets of 10 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent. The plan would not tax the first $24,000 in income for a couple, which is double the current standard deduction.

The Trump plan would repeal the alternative minimum tax, phaseout the death tax, and repeal the 3.8 percent surtax on investment income used to fund Obamacare.

On the business side, the corporate tax rate will be cut to 15 percent, from 35 percent. Also, the government would only tax a business’s income from inside the United States, not income from abroad. This is common in other countries and is known as a “territorial tax system.”

Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council and Trump’s chief economic adviser, told reporters tax reform is a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something really big.”

The last sweeping reform came in 1986.

“This isn’t going to be easy. Doing big things never is. We’ll be attacked from the left. We’ll be attacked from the right,” Cohn said. “But one thing is certain. I would never, ever bet against this president.”

Cohn added:

In 2017, we are still stuck with a 1988 corporate tax system. That’s why we are one of the least competitive countries in the developed world when it comes to taxes. So tax reform is long overdue.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the plan is the “same trickle-down economics that undermined the middle class,” and said the president should work on a fiscally responsible bipartisan plan with Democrats.

“Instead of focusing on hardworking families as he promised, President Trump’s tax outline is a wish list for billionaires,” Pelosi said in a public statement. “What few details are here overwhelmingly cut taxes for the richest and do little for middle-class Americans and those trying to get there. Besides which, nowhere does President Trump indicate how his deficit-exploding tax plan will actually be paid for.”

Adam Michel, a tax policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation, said he believes the proposal shows Trump is serious about reform:

For too long, America’s out-of-date and overbearing tax system has put a damper on economic growth while punishing savings and investment. The president’s plan is a great starting point. Now, the president and Congress must work together to finally update our broken tax system. True reform should apply the most efficient and least economically destructive forms of taxation, have low rates on a broad base, and be as transparent, predictable, and simple as possible.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, praised Trump’s proposal.

“President Trump has re-energized the drive for fundamental tax reform that creates growth and jobs,” Norquist said in a public statement. “The plan cuts taxes for businesses and individuals and simplifies the code so Americans can file on a postcard. Reducing taxes on all businesses down to 15 percent will turbocharge the economy.”

Mnuchin called the current 35 percent corporate rate “perhaps the most complicated and uncompetitive business rate in the world.”

He said he anticipates the proposal would return the U.S. to greater than 3 percent growth without an adverse impact on the debt or revenue. Throughout most of the Obama administration, economic growth didn’t surpass 3 percent in a single year.

“This plan will lower the ratio of debt to [gross domestic product]. The economic plan under Trump would grow the economy, will create massive amounts of revenues,” Mnuchin said.

The plan is a net tax reduction, Williams said, and fundamental reform takes cronyism out of the tax code, which could help Trump keep another promise.

“Draining the tax code swamp is a good way to go about getting rid of all those special interest loopholes,” Williams said. (For more from the author of “How Trump’s Tax Plan Would Affect High-Tax States Like California, New York” please click HERE)

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Trump Restricts Immigration Program That Took This American’s Job

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After years in private business, Kurt Ho had finally found a rewarding information technology job, working for a public hospital in Southern California, ensuring vital systems—such as fetal health monitors—were functioning properly.

In October, Ho learned his job at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center was being outsourced to a company in India, called HCL Technologies.

Ho was told he could stay on the job, get paid for four more months, and earn a bonus if he trained his replacement. Ho’s dream job lasted less than three years.

“I was very surprised because this is a hospital—we are not talking about something you can easily outsource,” Ho, 58, told The Daily Signal in an interview, just a few weeks after his last day of work, Feb. 28. “This is very important work. You are talking about patients’ lives here. So I absolutely want my replacement to do well for the patients and their families, for the doctors—who depend on the service. That’s what we wish for.”

Ho, along with about 80 of his IT co-workers, lost his job as a result of loopholes in a high-skilled visa program—known as H-1B—that allows U.S. companies to fire Americans and replace them with cheaper, temporary workers.

For Ho, that unfortunate designation is not the worst part. Ho is in the prime of his career—competent and able, he says. Facing his 12-year-old daughter is another matter.

“I am trying to get her to go into the STEM program at school, to pursue science and technology like I did,” said Ho, a U.S. citizen who immigrated here from Malaysia in 1989. “But she looks at me and says, ‘They shipped your job to India.’ I am setting a bad example for her. She is discouraged. She says she is thinking about dancing now.”

According to CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which recently profiled another University of California, San Francisco Medical Center employee who lost his job, outsourcing the IT work could save $30 million for taxpayers over the next five years. The state-run university has a $5.9 billion annual budget.

Becoming a ‘Cheap Labor Program’

Experts say most companies use H-1B visas properly—to employ highly-skilled foreign guest workers in sectors Americans cannot fully serve. But stories of abuse, such as Ho’s, have inspired a bipartisan coalition in Congress, and the president, to push for reform.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that he said would make it harder for technology companies to replace American workers with cheap foreign labor.

“Right now, widespread abuse in our immigration system is allowing American workers of all backgrounds to be replaced by workers brought in from other countries to fill the same job for sometimes less pay,” Trump said during an appearance in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he announced the new order. “This will stop.”

His executive order calls for an adjustment in how H-1B visas are distributed, but stops short of mandating specific policy changes. Trump directs government agencies to suggest changes “as soon as practicable” that would ensure the visas are awarded to “the most skilled and the highest-paid” applicants.

Currently, the H-1B program is capped at 85,000 visas distributed annually—with 65,000 general visas and 20,000 reserved for workers with a master’s degree or higher—but demand regularly exceeds supply. On Monday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it received 199,000 petitions this year for visas, which are distributed at random through a lottery. The visas last for three years, and can be renewed for three more years.

“The H-1B program is filling a need—there are critical skills we can get abroad that aren’t always available in the U.S.,” said David Kreutzer, a senior research fellow focused on labor and trade at The Heritage Foundation. “But we want the employers that have the greatest need for the rarest skill sets to be the ones to get these visas. The current lottery mechanism, where visas are allocated by random chance, does not do that.”

In another reform announced earlier this month, the Trump administration announced that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will closely investigate employers with a high ratio of H-1B workers compared to American employees, and businesses that send visa holders to work off-site.

Experts interpret Trump’s measures against the H-1B program as explicitly targeting outsourcing companies that have come under the most scrutiny, and taken advantage of a loophole in the law that allows them to pay foreigners a minimum of $60,000.

Research compiled by Howard University associate professor Ron Hira shows that in 2014—the last year for which information is publicly available—all of the top 10 and 15 of the top 20 H-1B employers used the program principally to facilitate offshoring of jobs.

The top 13 outsourcing firms accounted for a third of all granted visas in 2014.

Indian outsourcing companies such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, and Wipro receive most of the visas through the lottery system because they submit tens of thousands of applications to better their odds, Hira says.

“The intent of the program is a good one—to bring in the best and brightest to fill skills gaps, but the rules are so loosely written and loosely enforced that it’s basically gone off the rails, and it almost invites firms to come in and favor H-1B visa holders instead of the U.S. worker,” Hira, who studies the H-1B program, told The Daily Signal in an interview. “It’s highly profitable to replace a U.S. worker for a H-1B visa holder. It was never intended as a cheap labor program, but it’s become that.”

India’s leading technology trade group, the National Association of Software and Services Companies, says Indian companies are being unfairly targeted.

“We believe that the current campaign to discredit our sector is driven by persistent myths, such as the ideas that H-1B visa holders are ‘cheap labor’ and ‘train their replacements,’ neither of which is accurate,” the group said in a statement after Trump announced his executive order.

How H-1B Came to Be

The H-1B visa program came to life as part of an immigration reform package signed into law in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush. The law’s sponsors viewed it as a vehicle to attract top talent to America for “specialty occupations” such as science, technology, engineering, and math that face a shortage of capable U.S. workers.

Supporters of the program note that nearly every major high-tech company, including Apple, Google, and Facebook, rely on H-1B visas, and pay higher wages.

“Most companies use the H-1B very situationally,” said William Stock, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “They use it often because they don’t have another choice.”

The law, as it was originally written, was supposed to protect American workers.

It requires employers to pay foreign workers the area’s prevailing wage for the position, and to demonstrate that hiring foreigners would not “adversely affect” the working conditions of current employees in similar jobs.

An amended version of the law, enacted in 1998, included stronger protections, ordering companies that rely heavily on H-1B workers (more than 15 percent of their workforce) to promise not to replace American employees.

Yet, the amended law included a loophole. It allows H-1B reliant companies to be exempted from the requirements about protecting American jobs if they pay the foreign workers at least $60,000 a year, or hire a foreign worker with a master’s degree.

“The wage floor is way too low—the average IT worker in the U.S. makes way more than $60,000 per year,” said Hal Salzman, a labor force expert at Rutgers University, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “One simple reform to the program would be to take these tech companies at their word that there is a strong demand for high-skilled, world-class talent. Everyone would agree that the wage level for those jobs is at least $100,000, so you make that the salary floor, and for all practical purposes, the problem is solved.”

Stock contends that many companies who use the H-1B program are already paying above market wages, and requiring them to spend more could cause them to offshore more work permanently.

“Businesses want to make sure the wage test doesn’t become so onerous that it’s unrealistic,” Stock said. “Limitations on H-1Bs will drive more workers overseas. Sure, there is abuse within the program. That happens. We live in a fallen world. We have always said robust enforcement of labor standards that are already in place is the solution to those abuses.”

‘The Program at Its Best’

Bipartisan pressure to reform the H-1B visa program remains.

Experts say that Trump’s executive order will have limited practical impact, unless Congress steps in.

For example, changes in the number of visas awarded annually would need congressional approval.

Multiple bills have been introduced in Congress that would fundamentally change how visas are distributed, and who benefits from foreign work.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., an Indian-American who represents Silicon Valley, has a personal stake in fixing the H-1B program.

Khanna, a freshman lawmaker, is one of the sponsors of a bill, called the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act, that would eliminate the lottery system that rewards visas and replaces it with a “preference system.”

Under the legislation, which is also sponsored by Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, foreign students educated in the U.S. would get priority for visas. It would give special preference to those holding advanced degrees who would be paid a high wage and have valuable skills.

In addition, the proposal would not allow companies with more than 50 employees to hire more H-1B workers if 50 percent of their employees are already on H-1B and L-1s—another type of specialized work visa. Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have introduced an identical bill.

“My sense is most Americans appreciate the contribution immigrants make to the workforce, they just don’t want the system gamed,” Khanna told The Daily Signal in an interview. “But under the H-1B program today, the beneficiaries are corporate interests. A lot of the H-1B workers are facing exploitation. The empathy is as much for them as the American workers who are getting the raw deal. The program at its best is for truly exceptional people to innovate and not as a way of underpaying foreign workers.”

Ho, the American who lost his job to a contracted Indian worker, said he too does not blame the H-1B visa holder.

“I am an immigrant myself; I would be the last person to bash immigrants,” Ho said. “The person who replaced me is taking advantage of an opportunity a broken system provides him.”

Last week, Ho landed another job, working for Robert Half International, a California-based information technology company.

“I have the skills, so getting work wasn’t an issue for me,” Ho said. “This is about taking a stand, not just for myself, but for my daughters, for my family, and for all Americans.” (For more from the author of “Trump Restricts Immigration Program That Took This American’s Job” please click HERE)

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11 Ways Trump Has Rolled Back Government Regulations in His First 100 Days

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As President Donald Trump reaches his 100th day in the White House on April 29, he will have worked with Congress to rescind more regulations using the Congressional Review Act than any other president.

“We’re excited about what we’re doing so far. We’ve done more than that’s ever been done in the history of Congress with the CRA,” Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., told The Daily Signal in an interview, referring to the law called the Congressional Review Act.

The Congressional Review Act, the tool Trump and lawmakers are using, allows Congress to repeal executive branch regulations. Once the House and Senate pass a joint resolution disapproving of a particular regulation, the president signs the measure.

Passed in 1996 in concert with the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act and then-Speaker Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America reform agenda, the Congressional Review Act is what the Congressional Research Service calls “an oversight tool that Congress may use to overturn a rule issued by a federal agency.”

The law also prevents agencies from creating similar rules with similar language.

Until this year, the law had been used successfully only once—in 2001, when Congress and President George W. Bush rescinded a regulation regarding workplace injuries promulgated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during the Clinton administration.

Here’s a look at the 11 regulatory rollbacks Congress has passed and Trump has signed:

1. Regulations governing the coal mining industry (H.J. Res 41).

Mandated by President Barack Obama and finalized in 2016, these regulations “threatened to put domestic extraction companies and their employees at an unfair disadvantage,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said.

The resolution, signed by Trump in February, repealed the rule and “could save American businesses as much as $600 million annually,” Spicer said.

2. Regulations defining streams in the coal industry (H.J. Res 38).

“Complying with the regulation would have put an unsustainable financial burden on small mines,” Spicer said.

The so-called Stream Protection Rule included “vague definitions of what classifies as a stream,” Nick Loris, a fellow in energy and environmental policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email, and undoing it does away with ambiguities:

For many regulations promulgated by the Obama administration, they fundamentally disregarded the nature of the federal-state relationship when it comes to energy production and environmental protection.

The Stream Protection Rule … removed flexibility from mining steps and simply ignored that states have regulations in place to protect water quality. State and local environmental agencies’ specific knowledge of their region enables them to tailor regulations to promote economic activity while protecting the habitat and environment.

3. Regulations restricting firearms for disabled citizens (H.J. Res 40).

This rule, finalized during Obama’s last weeks in office, sought to “prevent some Americans with disabilities from purchasing or possessing firearms based on their decision to seek Social Security benefits,” Spicer said.

The repeal protects the Second Amendment rights of the disabled, Senate Judiciary Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said.

“Those rights will no longer be able to be revoked without a hearing and without due process. It will take more than the personal opinion of a bureaucrat,” Grassley said on the Senate floor.

But Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., said the regulation didn’t cover “just people having a bad day,” adding:

These are not people simply suffering from depression or anxiety. These are people with a severe mental illness who can’t hold any kind of job or make any decisions about their affairs. So the law says very clearly they shouldn’t have a firearm.

4. A rule governing the government contracting process (H.J. Res. 37).

Undoing the regulation will cut costs to businesses and free federal contractors from “unnecessary and burdensome processes that would result in delays, and decreased competition for federal government contracts,” Spicer said.

5. A rule covering public lands (H.J. Res. 44).

The rule gave the federal government too much power “to administer public lands,” in the words of the official website of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, told The Daily Signal in an interview that the Bureau of Land Management’s rule restricted the control that states and their citizens had, especially in the West.

“The Obama administration wanted to shift land policy from local governments with specific expertise to the federal government, basically shifting even more of the land management policy away from those affected by it,” Lee said.

“Repealing this harmful rule will go a long way toward empowering local stakeholders and ensuring that Arizona’s cattlemen, miners, and rural land users have a voice in the planning process,” Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said in prepared remarks.

6. Reporting requirements regarding college teachers (H.J. Res. 58).

The rule mandated annual reporting by states “to measure the performance and quality of teacher preparation programs and tie them to program eligibility for participation in the Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education grant program,” Spicer said.

Anne Ryland, a research assistant in education policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email that the rule “gave the federal Department of Education power to evaluate teacher preparation programs at universities, and to link college students’ access to federal financial aid in the form of TEACH grants to the rating of the programs.”

“University programs,” Ryland added, “would be rated based on the effectiveness of their teaching graduates, with effectiveness determined by elementary and secondary students’ test scores and achievement gains.”

7. Regulations on state education programs (H.J. Res. 57).

Congress and Trump rescinded federal rules that “require states to have an accountability system based on multiple measures, including school quality or student success, to ensure that states and districts focus on improving outcomes and measuring student progress,” Spicer said.

The repeal is the first step in “a reconceptualization of Washington’s role in education,” Ryland said.

“These regulations were prime examples of federal micromanagement,” she said. “They were highly prescriptive and highly complex, serving only to put more power in the hands of bureaucrats and to distract schools and teachers from the work of educating students.”

8. Drug-testing requirements (H.J. Res 42).

Spicer said the regulation mandates an “arbitrarily narrow definition of occupations and constrains a state’s ability to conduct a drug-testing program in its unemployment insurance system.”

Four Republican governors—Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Greg Abbott of Texas, Gary Herbert of Utah, and Phil Bryant of Mississippi—wrote Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, to ask that states be allowed to implement their own policies.

“We believe this rule should be replaced with a new rule that allows increased flexibility for states to implement … drug testing that best fits the needs of each state,” the governors said in the February letter.

9. Hunting regulations for wildlife preserves in Alaska (H.J. Res 69).

These regulations restricted Alaska’s ability “to manage hunting of predators on national wildlife refuges in Alaska,” Spicer said.

In a formal statement, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, called the rule “another example of the federal government’s determination these past eight years to destroy a state’s ability to manage their wildlife.”

10. Internet privacy rule (S.J.Res. 34).

Published during the final months of Obama’s presidency, the rule sought to force “new privacy standards on internet service providers, allowing bureaucrats in Washington to pick winners and losers in the industry,” Spicer said.

Flake, who sponsored the resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, said repeal helps keep consumers in charge of how they share their electronic information.

“My resolution is the first step toward restoring the [Federal Trade Commission’s] light-touch, consumer-friendly approach,” Flake said. “It will not change or lessen existing consumer privacy protections. It empowers consumers to make informed choices on if and how their data can be shared.”

11. Rule for logging workplace injuries (H.J. 83).

This rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration sought to squelch a more lenient one from the Labor Department. Spicer said the rule “disapproved” of a Labor regulation “extending the statute of limitation for claims against employers failing to maintain records of employee injuries.”

“This OSHA power grab was completely unlawful,” said Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., chairman of the House workforce protections subcommittee. “It would have done nothing to improve workplace safety while creating significant regulatory confusion for small businesses.”

Through extensive use of the Congressional Review Act, Collins said, Trump is establishing a “legacy” of deregulation.

“I think there’s really a legacy really to be had here,” the Republican congressman from Georgia said.

Congress, with backing from Trump, is making good on promises and saying, “We’re not going to allow our jurisdiction and our constitutional authority to be overrun by the executive branch,” Collins said.

Past administrations from both parties, he said, have not been so devoted to deregulation.

“There was a definite disconnect between the previous administration, and even previous Republican administrations, on doing things on their own and not going through the proper legislative process,” Collins said. (For more from the author of “11 Ways Trump Has Rolled Back Government Regulations in His First 100 Days” please click HERE)

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Trump, Sessions Target MS-13 Gang in Push Against Illegal Immigration

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President Donald Trump’s administration has initiated an effort to target MS-13, an international criminal gang with El Salvador roots and a presence in many U.S. cities.

Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly have all recently mentioned the gang by highlighting its dangers and explaining how they will combat the group.

In a Tuesday tweet, Trump blamed the Obama administration’s “weak illegal immigration policies” for MS-13’s increase in size and strength. He also noted that he plans to remove members of the gang “fast.”

In a Fox News interview with host Tucker Carlson this week, Sessions echoed Trump’s point by casting blame on MS-13’s growth on the previous administration, saying, “It’s no doubt that [the Obama administration] had an impact because so many of these [gang members] are illegally here without proper authority, and with a good, lawful border, they would not be here.”

He also said the gang has grown to 10,000 members in America.

Sessions said before a meeting with the Organized Crime Council—a coalition of 13 federal agencies:

Because of an open border and years of lax immigration enforcement, MS-13 has been sending both recruiters and members to regenerate gangs that previously had been decimated, and smuggling members across the border as unaccompanied minors … They are not content to simply ruin the lives of adults—MS-13 recruits in our high schools, our middle schools, and even our elementary schools.

To counter the illegal immigration problem, Sessions said the government will build a border wall and recruit more border agents.

“We can devastate this gang. We’re going after them. We are not going to allow them to take over a block, a corner of our communities and terrorize people with this violence,” Sessions said.

“[MS-13 gang members] are not geniuses … they are involved in the kind of activities that can be identified and they can be prosecuted,” he added.

Sessions also praised “Trump’s leadership,” to which he said contributed to this year’s 17-year low in illegal immigration, and claimed that the president is focused on putting a stop to “this lawlessness.”

Additionally, Sessions made a comment to those who wish to enter America legally: “What we want to say to the world is: Please come lawfully. Wait your turn, make your application, and it will be evaluated. And if you’re accepted, come. But don’t come illegally.”

“That’s what the American people have a right to expect their government to do. And in the process we can protect them from some of the violent criminals and terrorists that are coming in,” he said.

Kelly also came out to publicly condemn the gang, calling MS-13 a group “utterly without laws, conscience, or respect for human life.”

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow for the Institute for Constitutional Government at The Heritage Foundation, said he views the Trump administration’s targeting of MS-13 as a focus on law and order that voters desire.

“This is the type of vigorous law enforcement the American people clearly voted for in November,” von Spakovsky said.

“Since most MS-13 gang members are illegal aliens, the administration’s reinvigoration of immigration enforcement will also help alleviate and destroy this problem that is endangering neighborhoods all over America,” he added. (For more from the author of “Trump, Sessions Target MS-13 Gang in Push Against Illegal Immigration” please click HERE)

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Trump Sees No Role for U.S. In Stabilizing Libya

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President Donald Trump said Thursday that he does not see the U.S. playing a role in helping to stabilize Libya, because the U.S. has enough roles right now.

“I do not see a role in Libya. I think the United States has right now enough roles. We’re in a role everywhere, so I do not see that,” Trump said when asked if he sees a role for his administration in helping to stabilize Libya and if stabilizing Libya means combating terrorism and ISIS.

“I do see a role in getting rid of ISIS. We’re being very effective in that regard. We are doing a job, with respect to ISIS, that has not been done anywhere near the numbers that we’re producing right now. It’s a very effective force we have. We have no choice. It’s a horrible thing to say, but we have no choice,” the president said in a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni at the White House.

Trump said he considers getting rid of ISIS the United States’ primary role.

“And we are effectively ridding the world of ISIS. I see that as a primary role, and that’s what we’re going to do, whether it’s in Iraq or in Libya or anywhere else, and that role will come to an end at a certain point, and we’ll be able to go back home and rebuild our country, which is what I want to do,” he said. (Read more from “Trump Sees No Role for U.S. In Stabilizing Libya” HERE)

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