Supreme Court allows Trump’s immigration rule on public benefits to take effect

A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to put in place a policy connecting the use of public benefits with whether immigrants could become permanent residents.

The new policy can be used to deny green cards to immigrants over their use of public benefits including Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers, as well as other factors.

The justices’ order came by a 5-4 vote and reversed a ruling from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York that had kept in a place a nationwide hold on the policy following lawsuits that have been filed against it.

The court’s four liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, would have prevented the policy from taking effect.

Federal appeals courts in San Francisco and Richmond, Va., had previously overturned trial court rulings against the policy. An injunction in Illinois remains in effect, but applies only to that state.

The lawsuits will continue, but immigrants applying for permanent residency must now show they wouldn’t be public charges, or burdens to the country.

The new policy significantly expands what factors would be considered to make that determination, and if it is decided that immigrants could become public charges at any point in the future, that legal residency could be denied.

Roughly 544,000 people apply for green cards annually. According to the government, 382,000 are in categories that would make them subject to the new review.

Immigrants make up a small portion of those getting public benefits, since many are ineligible to get them because of their immigration status.

In a separate opinion, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch urged his colleagues to confront the “real problem” of so-called nationwide injunctions, orders issued by a single judge that apply everywhere. In this case, even though the administration won rulings in two different appellate courts covering 14 states, its policy could not take effect.

“What in this gamesmanship and chaos can we be proud of?” Gorsuch wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Clarence Thomas

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Leftists Aim to Bar the Federalist Society

Never content to let the flow of modern politics take its natural course, leftists have devised a new way to stymy the progress President Donald Trump has made in appointing strict constructionists to the federal bench. Elections matter.

The Committee on Codes of Conduct of the U.S. Judicial Conference recently released a proposal to prohibit judges from belonging to the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society was founded in 1982 by a group of conservatives and libertarians dedicated to preserving the legal order of the nation by promoting, among other things, an originalist view of the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the concept that the role of judges is to say what the law is, not what some enlightened bench occupant thinks it should be. As you might imagine, leftists absolutely loathe this organization.

In Trump’s three years in office, nearly 200 federal judges have been confirmed, a remarkable achievement that may stand as one of the president’s greatest successes. This work has prevented the Left from populating our court system with judges who legislate from the bench and push a tyrannical agenda.

The Conduct Committee, which performs as the ethical advisory board of the federal judiciary, intends to ban judges from joining the Federalist Society or the American Constitution Society. In its draft proposal, the Conduct Committee states: “Official affiliation with either organization could convey to a reasonable person that the affiliated judge endorses the views and particular ideological perspectives advocated by the organization; call into question the affiliated judge’s impartiality on subjects as to which the organization has taken a position; and generally frustrate the public’s trust in the integrity and independence of the judiciary.”

The American Constitution Society (ACS) was created as the leftist answer to the Federalist Society, and it’s included as part of the Conduct Committee’s plan solely as a means of projecting an appearance of fairness. Don’t be fooled.

The ACS is but one of many organizations that lean left and hold sway in America’s judicial system. And it is hardly the most influential. A vast majority, nearly all, of the nation’s law schools are populated with leftist professors who promote a predictably left-of-center view to their students. Leftists also hold political sway over the American Bar Association. ABA routinely writes amicus briefs in court cases, nearly always on the left side of an argument. It also has a government-affairs office that spent $860,000 on lobbying just last year. These are two activities that the Federalist Society as a rule does not engage in. Yet, ABA doesn’t even show up on the Conduct Committee’s radar, and the Federalist Society is squarely in its crosshairs.

Ed Whalen, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and longtime Federalist Society member, told RealClearPolitics, “In short, the ABA has a consistent and longstanding practice of advocating liberal causes. If a line is to be drawn between the Federalist Society and the ABA, it is the ABA that should be deemed to be on the wrong side of the line.”

The Federalist Society operates in several states and frequently holds meetings to explore and discuss legal issues, frequently soliciting qualified speakers from both sides of an argument. It encourages intellectual honesty and curiosity. It is also the only significant counterbalance to the Left’s attack on Rule of Law. Which, again, is why the Conduct Committee wants the Federalist Society out of the way and is willing to sacrifice ACS in the process.

The Conduct Committee’s proposal, which Whalen had a hand in helping make public, has already provoked a vigorous debate. The proposal remains open during a 120-day comment period that will end May 20. Expect this fight to continue to that date, and possibly beyond.

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The real threat to our republic

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has come out swinging in the past month often appearing with Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) in his bid for the Democratic Party nomination for president.  In fact, it could be argued that Ocasio-Cortez is responsible for bringing life to a moribund campaign and helping the 76-year-old Sanders come back from age questions after he suffered a heart attack during the campaign.

Ocasio-Cortez continues to make headlines that would doom past politicians. Her latest screed at a Martin Luther King, Jr. day event reveals the heart of the CheOC philosophy, “And to be ethical, if you’re a billionaire today, the thing that you need to do is give up control and power. So I don’t want your money as much as we want your power. The people. Not me.”

But let’s be clear, she views herself as the representative of the people, so she really means she wants more power to exercise on behalf of “the people.”

It is time to take the freshman congresswoman from New York seriously.  She is campaigning with the front-running candidate for the Democratic Party nomination who is a close second in Iowa and leads in New Hampshire. If not for some chicanery by the Democratic National Committee in 2016, many people believe that Sanders would have been the party nominee rather than Hillary Clinton.  So Sanders seriously could become President, which means that CheOC would likely be in a position to wield that power.

Ocasio-Cortez’ comments take on new meaning when combined with those of two Sanders field staffers in a pair of Project Veritas videos.  Both field staff leaders independently called  for those who don’t agree with them to go to re-education camps and gulags, with one wanting to compel billionaires to work twelve hours a day breaking rocks. The videos reveal that Bernie operatives view themselves as being in a revolution and if people fight against them, they have no rights and must be crushed.

There is no peaceful transition of power in the Bernie Sanders campaign world, as at least one promised that cities will burn if Bernie is defeated, and there certainly is no giving up power once it is attained.  The collectivist mission to save the planet is too important to be bothered by niceties like voting, and minority rights, which is why they view their fight as a revolution against a system which protects the minority against an avaricious majority.

A revolution where everything bends to their will with no dissent tolerated.

And this isn’t even the scary part.  The scary part is that Bernie Sanders did not fire these staffers.  The scary part is that Democrat candidates for President did not demand that Sanders disavow their views. The scary part is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow travelers have taken over the Democratic Party and no one in that Party or from their conventional and on-line media allies will stand against them. This is particularly  ironic because the Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires along with those who run Comcast (NBC), Disney (ABC) and Viacom (CBS) will be the first to be targeted for takeover as controlling media is the first step for revolutionaries in consolidating control.

The Democrat primary has exposed the divisions of the Party between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, and it is not looking good for those who propose a slower path to achieving the collectivist revolution. If you have any doubts, just search for national Democrat concerns over

So, when you see the next AOC joke, just remember, that the real AOC is not joking and if she and her followers win, they will be coming for your liberties and they won’t let little things like the Senate filibuster rule or the courts stop them.

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Patriot on trial

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — On the witness stand was James E. Mitchell, a psychologist and architect of the Bush-era interrogation program that had inflicted torture on prisoners held in secret C.I.A. prisons after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Defiantly, he described how the program came about and why in his view it was necessary, growing emotional only when recounting how he came to the conclusion that it was his patriotic duty to personally implement the techniques he had devised.

Sitting yards from him in the military courtroom built specifically for their death-penalty trial were the five men accused of helping plot the attacks. All of them had been subject to the methods developed by Dr. Mitchell. Their alleged leader, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 by a team including Dr. Mitchell. They sat impassively as he testified at a pretrial hearing in their case.

It was an extraordinary moment in the slow-moving justice system set up to try foreign prisoners of the war on terror, with American lawyers for defendants who were tortured more than a decade and a half ago flipping the script to question an interrogator from the so-called black sites.

Dr. Mitchell, a former contract psychologist for the C.I.A., expressed no regrets or contrition, tearfully saying he did it for the American people at a time when President George W. Bush’s administration feared a follow-on attack by airplane or nuclear bomb to the Sept. 11 hijackings that killed 2,976 people.

“I’d get up today and do it again,” he said.

“I thought my moral duty,” he said, choking up, “to protect American lives outweighed the feelings of discomfort of terrorists who voluntarily took up arms against us. To me it just seemed like it would be dereliction of my moral responsibilities.

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IN BRIEF

UNFORTUNATELY, THE PALESTINIANS AREN'T INTERESTED IN PEACE: Trump's Middle East peace plan expected to offer Palestinians conditional statehood (The Washington Post)

GOP TRAIN WRECK: Doug Collins to challenge Kelly Loeffler for Georgia Senate seat (Washington Examiner)

FOLLOW THE MONEY: House Democrats to vote to override state right-to-work laws, boosting labor movement (Washington Examiner)

A FINE ONE TO TALK: Authoritarian Hillary Clinton slams "authoritarian" and "Trumpian" Zuckerberg over Facebook's speech stance (National Review)

DEFIANCE: Britain says China's Huawei won't be banned from its 5G network (The New York Times)

CORONAVIRUS: China counts 106 virus deaths (aided by its censorship) as U.S., others move to evacuate (AP)

"WE'VE REACHED AN INFLECTION POINT": Concerned Veterans for America pushes for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan (National Review)

POLICY: The myth that the U.S. leads the world in mass shootings (Foundation for Economic Education)

POLICY: The Medicaid expansion cheat (Mises Institute)

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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