Wot? Are you an anarchist?
Actually, no he couldn’t. As with funding, that’s another power reserved specifically and solely to the Legislative branch.
If a President has the power to enforce federal law and cutting funding is necessary, so be it. That’s written just prior to the Article giving the President the power to prevent the States from splitting from the U.S. and leaving behind the benefits of membership.
Oh good, another neo-Confederate looneytarian who wants to turn every thread into a hey, there’s totally a right to secede and Lincoln was a tyrant thread. Sorry, uninterested. Do a search. We wrote virtual books on the subject.
Sorry. I misspoke. He could declare the localities to be in a state of rebellion and send troops to quell that rebellion. I guess you take the position that the United States was last at war in WW2.
This is why Trump has been a pretty decent President so far: he is making Executive lovers question the President. That’s a good thing. I expect the next President to be even better.
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I guess that depends on where you draw the “anarchist” line. I don’t think one man, or one group of men, in D.C. should be making decisions for everyone.
(There isn’t a thumbs down button and I still wanted to show my displeasure with that comment without taking the time to respond in detail.) 
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Agreed. The problem being Congress conceding it’s power to the executive. It’s nice to see people starting to give a shit about how Congress is supposed to utilize its power. That being said, where was this judge, or any judge, during the Obama administration? It’s convenient that the President has the power to piss away money on immigration orders but not the power to rescind it. It would have been nice to see someone reel in executive power before we got to this point.
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Maybe we can compromise here: If a power is not clearly and explicitly given the Federal Government, that power belongs to each state individually, or to its citizens.
Kind of like a 10th Amendment: Take 2.
Edit: Just thought of a good(maybe?) addition…
If the Constitution is unclear enough on a topic to need Supreme Court Justice clarification, that portion of the Constitution shall immediately be declared null and void, and any powers contained therein shall reside in the States until that portion of the Constitution can be clarified and replaced.
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Similar to the roadblock I referenced in Sanctuary City thread about TX governor didn’t seem to realize he couldn’t just stamp his foot and make Travis County comply with ICE.
The problem with these ‘common sense’ politicians are that they don’t seem to realize procedures are set so every politician’s whim can’t be exercised sans review. I agree to this fully, even when I want the ‘common sense’ item in place.
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Judges can’t just show up and start striking down laws and executive orders - someone has to sue in their court first. And we didn’t see a lot of appetite for Republicans to challenge executive authority because, well, they’re big, big fans of executive authority and had no interest in setting precedents on restricting that authority. That said, they drew the line in places - most notably in the lawsuit challenging Obama’s executive misuse of risk corridors (which is still pending, I believe).
Secondly, Obama actually had a good number of losses in the courts on executive overreach, but they didn’t make splashy news because they were on technical stuff and never made it to SCOTUS.
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There are other ways the Feds can hurt a city without any legislation or interrupting the flow of cash.
Simply give all the federal agencies that operate in that city a mandatory paid month off. No SS, HUD, WIC, DEA, EPA, FBI, Marshalls, Federal courts etc… Then the constituents can decide if protecting felons is worth losing every service they get from the Feds.
The Feds have their hands in way too much and they are way too powerful. These cities and their constituents are fine with that with a D in the White House. That sword cuts both ways.
Wouldn’t work, for the same reasons mentioned above. In fact, it’d be far worse. Deny access to federal law enforcement on non-immigration issues? Deny people basic access to federal courts?
It’d be lawless presidential blackmail. He has no power to do any of things you listed because a city serves as a sanctuary.
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Obama used executive power to violate the “Take Care Clause” and non enforce whatever laws he didn’t want to. Example: Holder Memorandum, stopping deportation. The Obama admin argued that the Take Care Clause was open ended and left room for discretion (below).
In other words there is no case law where a President has a duty to allocate resources to enforcing a particular law. In fact any administration would love to argue in court that they don’t have the resources to enforce every law all the time (they’d be correct in that argument). So in effect Presidents can pick and choose enforcement priorities legally.
Obama admin argument on immigration non-enforcement:
The open-ended nature of the inquiry under the Take Care Clause – whether a particular exercise of discretion is ‘faithful’ to the law enacted by Congress – does not lend itself easily to the application of set formulas or bright-line rules….Neither the Supreme Court nor the lower federal courts have squarely addressed [the] constitutional bounds… of the exercise of enforcement discretion generally.”
Holder Memorandum:
One such use of executive power was an August 2013 Memorandum from Attorney General Eric Holder instructing Assistant United States Attorneys (“AUSAs”) across the country to decline to impose criminal charges that would trigger mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent, low-level drug offenders (hereinafter referred to as the “Holder Memorandum”).[2] This article argues that this directive was an abuse of prosecutorial discretion because the categorical nonenforcement of a duly enacted law violates the Take Care Clause of the Constitution, effectively constituting an impermissible second veto by the President. Further, categorical nonenforcement of laws creates systemic problems within the government, leading to policy bargaining with the president rather than among members of Congress, and an eventual erosion of legislative power in favor of the Executive.
Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
Yes, there is - in fact the Fifth Circuit addressed selective non-enforcement with Obama’s immigration order.[quote=“Basement_Gainz, post:6978, topic:223365”]
So in effect Presidents can pick and choose enforcement priorities legally.
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No, they can’t, because that would be tantamount to nullifying duly passed law. The President has no authority to, say, instruct the IRS to collect no taxes for a year.
But, even if you feel this way, if the President has the authority to simply ignore laws he doesn’t want to enforce, what’s stopping anyone else from doing the same? Congress? Agencies? States? Cities? If the President isn’t bound by the law, why is anyone else?
No, we don’t elect leaders who are above the law.
No offense, but I never, ever thought of hear these arguments out of conservatives/libertarians. This is how anti-constitutional strongman get elected.
Or liberals, for that matter. Liberals use to care greatly about dangerous concentrations of power.
We have taken the Crazy Train to Hell.
Why was it okay for Obama to do? His admin was in contempt of court several times and nothing happened. Nobody held Woodrow Wilson or Abraham Lincoln accountable when they ran afoul of courts either.
That’s kind of my point. The separate co-equal branches are not.
FYI I am trolling a bit. Not you necessarily, just this farce of a judiciary we have. Executive power is nearly boundless at this point, and that’s very bad.
I don’t think Trump would use these strongarm tactics anyway. They would be counter-productive. All he has to do is enforce against businesses who employ illegals. When they stop hiring illegals, the illegals self deport. Businesses are much easier to track down than migrant workers (especially farms, restaurants etc… they can’t move).
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It wasn’t. And it isn’t okay for Trump.[quote=“Basement_Gainz, post:6981, topic:223365”]
Executive power is nearly boundless at this point, and that’s very bad.
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Problem is, enforcement of rulings belongs with the executive. The judiciary doesn’t have an inherent way of restricting the executive.
I share your frustration, but courts are naturally limited on how much they can do.
The primary reasons executive power is so boundless are (1) Congress turned too partisan, which made our government function like a parliament (when parties are more diverse ideologically, the members are more independent, and more inclined to give the president the middle finger and buck him, and Congress protects its turf more as a result), and (2) voters, especially highly partisan ones, who won’t punish candidates (who want overreach) at the ballot box (because they’ve convinced themselves overreach and other institutional sins are only bad when the other party does it).
I disagree - he’s already trying.
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