April 27, 2017

Base to Trump: Break a Reg!

Moving into the White House is the easy part. Moving out the old administration’s policies is something else altogether. President Trump is finding that out the hard way, as his team tackles mess after mess left behind by Barack Obama. With eight years to dig America into a social, economic, and military hole, climbing out of the pit takes time. With plenty of jobs still unfilled, the Trump administration has the unenviable job of combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of rules and policies to clean up and, in most cases, reverse the damage done by Obama’s team.

Moving into the White House is the easy part. Moving out the old administration’s policies is something else altogether. President Trump is finding that out the hard way, as his team tackles mess after mess left behind by Barack Obama. With eight years to dig America into a social, economic, and military hole, climbing out of the pit takes time. With plenty of jobs still unfilled, the Trump administration has the unenviable job of combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of rules and policies to clean up and, in most cases, reverse the damage done by Obama’s team.

If you think that’s easy, think again. In 2016 alone, President Obama issued more than 97,110 pages of regulations — shattering the record of every administration in history. And buried in those reams of federal paper are a whopping 3,853 policies dictating everything from environmental policy to gun control. If you can’t legislate, regulate! That seemed to be the motto of the 44th president, who spent almost a decade stuffing the rulebooks at government agencies to get his way on agendas Congress would never pass — or, in most cases, give Obama the chance to rewrite laws it already did! To put the situation in perspective, Congress passed 115 laws in 2015. That means the Obama administration — with its 4,000 regulations — has a major advantage in setting public policy.

And these aren’t insignificant changes either. They affect everything from your furnace to your family. So as much as President Trump has to do, he has just as much to undo. Of course, conservatives were hoping that one of his first targets would be the Obamacare mandate, the faith-crushing order that forces businesses, organizations, and even faith-based groups to cover pills and procedures that violate their pro-life conscience — or face massive government fines. Spoiled by Trump’s quick action on things like reinstating the Mexico City policy or giving states the final say on school bathrooms, some voters seem antsy that the White House isn’t moving fast enough on the HHS mandate. Will he follow through, people are asking?

So far, he’s given them no reason to believe otherwise. The Left can accuse the president of a lot of things — but ignoring his campaign promises is not one of them. In the year and a half leading up to last November, Trump was clear. “I will make absolutely certain religious orders like The Little Sisters of the Poor are not bullied by the federal government because of their religious beliefs,” he wrote in a letter to the Catholic Leadership Conference. This week, the media planted doubts to that effect, pointing out that the Department of Justice hadn’t dropped its defense of the mandate in court. The DOJ, which is led by staunch pro-life Attorney General Jeff Sessions, fired back to the criticism, claiming “it needs more time to litigate the case because numerous Cabinet and subcabinet positions in several federal agencies remain unfilled.”

In its filing at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the government’s attorneys explain, “The new administration has been in place for only a few months.” The mandate, on the other hand, has been in place for years. And, as conservatives argue, it’s time for the policy to go. The Trump team doesn’t disagree, insisting that the president “continues to support religious liberty, and this issue is an absolute priority for his administration.”

One way for the White House can solve this attack on religious freedom is by issuing an executive order on religious liberty. Congressional, conservative, church, and community leaders have all asked for one in this era of unprecedented anti-faith hostility. As I told The Wall Street Journal, our First Freedom is not negotiable. And, as the administration knows, this religious constituency is critical to accomplishing his full agenda. There aren’t many parts of his coalition that are as whole-hog for him as social conservatives. Accommodating conservatives with these common-sense protections will be a key piece of Trump’s progress moving forward.

(Originally published here.)

Sanctuary Cities Strike Out in the Ninth

Most Americans expect absurd rulings from the Ninth Circuit Court — and Tuesday, Judge William Orrick delivered! The longtime Obama supporter delivered a setback to the Trump administration, ruling that the president can’t stop the flow of federal funds from cities that are harboring illegal immigrants. That’s interesting, the Trump team fired back, since presidents (including Obama) have historically used the power of the purse to force states to comply with the law.

As National Review pointed out when a California woman was murdered by an illegal immigrant (who had been deported five times!), the federal government may not be able to compel states to follow the law, but “it is permitted to use financial rewards or incentives to encourage states to comply. This precedent was established in the 1992 Supreme Court case New York v. United States and has been upheld and strengthened since, and thus the Justice Department’s guidance in this instance clearly falls under constitutional precedent.” No wonder the Trump administration is upset. Not only is the judge a shameless political activist (who bundled more than $200,000 for Barack Obama’s campaigns), but he’s turning his back on clear legal precedent.

Unfortunately, Orrick is no stranger to judicial activism. This same man also unleashed his radical personal agenda on David Daleiden, the pro-lifer behind the videos exposing Planned Parenthood. In 2015, Fox News reminds everyone, he’s the reason there was a restraining order against the Center for Medical Progress head. Now, he’s directing his liberal bias at the administration for refusing to go along with Obama’s legacy of lawlessness. In his refreshingly non-capitulating style, President Trump isn’t backing down. “See you in the Supreme Court,” he tweeted.

Senior advisor Reince Preibus agreed, telling the press, “The idea that an agency can’t put in some reasonable restriction on how some of these moneys are spent is something that will be overturned eventually, and we will win at the Supreme Court level at some point.” It wouldn’t be the first time the Ninth Circuit has been overruled. As the president himself pointed out, the court has a “terrible record of being overturned (close to 80 percent).” In the meantime, the administration had strong words for Orrick’s ruling — reminding voters of the importance of judicial restraint.

Once again, a single district judge — this time in San Francisco — has ignored federal immigration law to set a new immigration policy for the entire country… San Francisco, and cities like it, are putting the well-being of criminal aliens before the safety of our citizens, and those city officials who authored these policies have the blood of dead Americans on their hands. Today’s ruling undermines faith in our legal system…

In the meantime, we will pursue all legal remedies to the sanctuary city threat that imperils our citizens, and continue our efforts to ramp up enforcement to remove the criminal and gang element from our country. Ultimately, this is a fight between sovereignty and open borders, between the rule of law and lawlessness, and between hardworking Americans and those who would undermine their safety and freedom.

(Originally published here.)

Why Did the Doctors Cross the Road?

Liberals are happy to “March for Science” — and use it as a weapon — when it serves their interests. But when it conflicts with their ideology, especially on human sexuality, then science is quickly dumped. The American College of Pediatricians (ACP) — a professional organization that is more scientifically (but not as politically) correct as the larger American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) — exposed this tendency with a brilliant press release Tuesday. It noted the publication of a recent study, out of the University of Iowa, which found, according to one report, “Crossing a busy street requires calculations too complex for kids younger than 14,” because “children lack the perceptual judgment and physical skills needed to consistently get across safely.” Specifically, children had difficulty calculating an adequate gap between cars and initiating movement across the street at the optimal time. As Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the ACP, put it, “Children are not miniature adults. Everyone knows this.”

Yet at the same time, the AAP and other prominent groups promote “the claim that children this age or younger are cognitively capable of deciding that they are the wrong sex.” In fact, the AAP has partnered with the openly ideological and political group the Human Rights Campaign in publishing a 24-page pamphlet focused on “transgender children” — those in “the elementary school years, ages 5 to 10.” It promotes a “gender-affirming” approach, “focusing on what the child says … and allowing them to determine which forms of gender expression feel comfortable and authentic.” Even worse, they condone the use of hormones to block a child’s normal development in puberty, as a precursor to full cross-sex hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgery later. Even some adult transgender people have begun to question whether this approach may be “doing more harm than good” to children. We owe our gratitude to the American College of Pediatricians for putting children’s long-term health and well-being above radical sexual ideology.

(Originally published here.)


This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC. Reprinted by permission.

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