Woke Politics: The Democrats’ Plan for a Permanent Majority
With the 2020 election in the rear-view mirror, it is timely to focus on election politics for 2022 and beyond. The first step is pattern recognition: The Democrats are pursuing a multi-prong strategy to cement a permanent majority. To accomplish the goal requires upending the constitutional design. Until the scope of this effort is seen in its entirety, it can proceed in the shadows.
It has six astonishing elements:
- Enable Congress to determine who can run for President,
- Eliminate the Electoral College without amending the Constitution,
- Override the states' constitutionally mandated authority to determine presidential election rules,
- Grant statehood to the District of Columbia by statute,
- Rewrite the First Amendment to limit political speech, and
- Enable open border immigration through executive agreement instead of Congressional action. Taken together, the program represents a comprehensive challenge to representative democracy. It deserves to be understood and debated front and center.
Who Can Run for President?
So long as you are thirty-five, a natural-born citizen and a 14-year resident, it is the birthright of every American to aspire to the nation’s highest elective office. The right extends even to one-term presidents. Notwithstanding the recent acquittal, Democrats claim as a principle that the President, former or sitting, can be disqualified from seeking the presidency if convicted upon impeachment or barred from office under the 14th Amendment for inciting insurrection.
This is dangerous overreach. For impeachment, disqualification by Congress extends only to “any office of honor, trust or profit,” which limits disqualification to offices created or regulated pursuant to federal statute, and hence does not include the President.
Likewise, under the 14th Amendment, the bar from office in relevant part applies to “an officer of the United States,” i.e., appointed officers, as explained by Chief Justice Roberts in a 2010 decision: "The people do not vote for the 'Officers of the United States.'" Rather, ‘officers of the United States’ are appointed exclusively pursuant to Article II, Section 2 procedures. It follows that the President, who is an elected official, is not an ‘officer of the United States.’
Absent an amendment, the Constitution ensures that the people, not Congress, solely determine whom to elect as President. It is a principle that applies to both parties and is a bedrock right in this country. Or used to be.
Can States End Run the Electoral College?
The Electoral College system is this nation’s protection that the President is elected pursuant to representative democracy, not a popular vote. That choice is enshrined in the Constitution and can be changed only through the amendment process. In practice, it prevents a handful of cities, in a small number of states, from effectively determining the outcome of the presidential election.
While little noticed among the general public, sixteen states to date have signed onto the so-called National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (“NPVC”). Under the agreement, signatory states obligate themselves to appoint their electors based on whomever wins the national popular vote, regardless of the results in their own state. The agreement comes into force when the signatory states represent 270 electoral votes, or one more than 50% of the total 538 total votes, thus assuring that a minority of states will determine the future winner of presidential elections. The current sixteen states represent 196 electoral votes. The compact is thus only 74 votes short of taking effect.
If upheld, the NPVC will bypass the Electoral College and forever change the presidential election process. In many conceivable scenarios, it will alter the winner and party that holds the presidency. In plain terms, the NPVC is designed to give Democrats a stranglehold on the presidency, due to overwhelming majorities in large cities.
The Constitution forbids states to “enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State,” without the consent of Congress. The danger here is that Democrats control Congress at the time the NPVC becomes effective. Substantively, the Compact Clause protects non-compacting states from any actions that infringe upon their sovereignty. Would this undermine the NPVC? There are powerful arguments that non-compacting states are denied their constitutionally mandated representative share of electoral votes. The counterargument is that non-compacting states retain the power to self-determine their electoral vote process.
There also will be challenges to NPVC based on a state’s plenary, but not limitless, power to determine rules for elections, potential equal protection challenges and theories that the NPVC in requiring congressional consent conflicts with state sovereignty with respect to presidential elections.
What can be said with certainty is that the NPVC, in sidestepping the Electoral College system without constitutional amendment, kicks the nation’s political future to a game of judicial chance. It underscores yet again why any court packing scheme would be so dangerous.
Can Congress Set Presidential Voting Requirements?
The Democrats identify their top legislative priority as H.R. 1, unsatirically titled “For the People Act of 2021.” It is a 600-page compendium wish list of voting legislation that will, among much else, cement the 2020 election process into federal law. And this barely scratches the scope of the bill that additionally seeks to regulate campaign finance, redistricting and campaign ethics.
With respect to voting, the bill subtitles convey the scope of the enterprise: promoting internet registration, automatic voter registration, same day voter registration, providing voter registration information to secondary school students, voter registration of minors, prohibiting states from restricting curbside voting, and the mother of all demands, institutionalized, mandated voting by mail.
It is the application of H.R. 1 that calls for attention. It covers “federal elections,” not specifically congressional elections, which intentionally elides whether the legislation would reach to presidential elections. Congress indeed has broad, plenary authority to regulate the “times, places and manner” of Senate and House elections. But with regard to the presidential election, it is the states that have this exclusive power. Congressional power is limited to rules on electors, unless a specific independent right is implicated, such as equal protection.
Join sweeping voting mandates to “federal elections” and it is a certainty the provisions, in practice, will be applied in force to presidential elections. State legislators beware. This is where the action will be in the coming years. The Constitution assigns to the states the duty to protect the integrity of presidential elections. This is not partisan. Prior to 2020, all parties warned against the high potential for fraud inherent in vote by mail.
District of Columbia Statehood
H.R. 1 includes an unconstitutional push for D.C. statehood by federal legislation, joining explicit prior statehood legislation. As is the theme throughout, the District is the constitutionally created “Seat of Government,” not subject to resizing by Congress, known as retrocession, and not a state pursuant to the so-called Composition Clause of the Constitution.
Conversion to statehood can only be achieved by constitutional amendment. But not according to H.R. 1, which flatly declares in its “findings” that “[t]here are no constitutional, historical, fiscal, or economic reasons why Americans who live in the District of Columbia should not be granted statehood.” As a little remembered Congressman Phil Hare once put it on a different matter, “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this, to be honest.”
The First Amendment and Political Speech
The Democrats will not rest until they overturn Citizens United, which protects the First Amendment right to air political speech, in that case the documentary film “Hillary: The Movie,” 90 days leading up to an election. It constitutes the evergreen staple of Democratic fundraising and merited the public outing of the Supreme Court in a presidential State of the Union address.
Under H.R. 1 or its progeny, airing criticism of Hillary Clinton, or a future candidate, can be censored and in the window when most citizens pay close attention. Far from protecting free speech, Democrats see Citizens United as “empower[ing] large corporations, extremely wealthy individuals, and special interests to dominate election spending, corrupt our politics, and degrade our democracy through tidal waves of unlimited and anonymous spending.” Remember that a documentary is at issue here, not, as an expert in psychological projection might suggest, Mark Zuckerberg and Big Tech. Their money and influence are just fine.
Immigration and Voting
It was President Obama who famously acknowledged, before he didn’t, that it is for Congress and Congress alone to change immigration law. But now that Joe Biden is President, it is crickets from the media on executive action that plainly usurps congressional authority. If anyone doubts the politics at play here, simply imagine it were the case that illegal aliens voted Republican. The Democrats and the media would howl at the unconstitutional usurpation by executive action. And they would be right. For the abuse of office, they might even demand impeachment, that little used constitutional remedy.
So, there is the plan in plain sight. It is an astonishing challenge to our future and to the constitutional protections at the core of the American experiment in representative democracy.
Photo credit: public domain
William Levin is a graduate of Yale Law School and a former special assistant in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice.
Joe Biden Recommits to Amnesty for Illegal Aliens as 17M Americans Are Jobless
President Joe Biden recommitted on Tuesday that he wants to pass an amnesty for 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States even as more than 17 million Americans remain jobless.
During a CNN town hall event with Anderson Cooper in Wisconsin, Biden said it is “essential” that any piece of legislation regarding immigration must include an amnesty for nearly all illegal aliens in the U.S.
The exchange went as follows:
COOPER: Just to be clear though … you do want a pathway to citizenship for roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants and that would be essential in any bill for you?
BIDEN: Well, yes. But, by the way, if you came along and said to me, “In the meantime we can work out a system whereby we’re going to” … for example, we used to allow refugees, 125,000 refugees into the United States on a yearly basis. It was as high as 250,000. Trump cut it 5,000.
Come with me … into Sierra Leone. Come with me into parts of Lebanon. Come with me around the world and see people piled up in camps, kids dying, no way out, refugees fleeing from persecution. We, the United States, used to do our part. We were part of that … “send me your huddled masses.”
If you had a refugee bill by itself, I’m not suggesting that, but … there are things I would deal by itself but not at the expense of saying I’m never going to do the other. There is a reasonable path to citizenship.
This week, Biden is expected to roll out his amnesty plan with elected Democrats. Simultaneously, as a result of economic lockdowns spurred by the Chinese coronavirus crisis, about 17.1 million Americans are out of work but all of whom want full-time jobs.
In his previously proposed amnesty plan, out late last month, Biden seeks to immediately provide green cards to millions of illegal aliens considered farmworkers, enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) beneficiaries.
The amnesty would provide all other illegal aliens with a fast-track to green cards and citizenship while driving up legal immigration by providing more visas to programs like the Diversity Visa Lottery and exempting family members of certain visa holders from current caps.
Already, the U.S. provides green cards to 1.2 million legal immigrants and 1.4 million temporary visas to foreign nationals every year. These arrivals are in addition to the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who turn up at the U.S.-Mexico border and are either released into the interior of the country or successfully cross without being detected by federal immigration officials.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Tom Cotton, Mitt Romney Plan Will Boost U.S. Wages, Mandate E-Verify
Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Mitt Romney (R-UT) are teaming up to introduce legislation that will boost Americans’ wages while punishing employers for illegal hiring.
Cotton and Romney announced on Tuesday that their legislation will raise the federal minimum wage gradually, over time, by having it increase with inflation. The minimum wage has not been raised in any way since 2009, when the cost of living was 20 percent lower.
Simultaneously, the Cotton-Romney plan would drastically increase protections for the United States labor market by requiring all employers to use the E-Verify system that protects American jobs for Americans and legal immigrants — barring the employment of illegal aliens whom working class Americans are often forced to compete against.
“We have an obligation to protect our workers and fellow citizens,” Cotton wrote in a statement online. “This common-sense proposal will give millions of Americans the raise they deserve.”
Today, Americans have to compete against millions of illegal immigrants who take illegally low wages under the table.
We can fix this by requiring employers to verify the legal status of every worker so they can’t undercut Americans on the black market.
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) February 16, 2021
Our proposal gradually raises the minimum wage without costing jobs and then sets it to increase automatically with inflation.
This minimum-wage increase will go into effect after the pandemic has ended and include protections for small businesses.
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) February 16, 2021
Romney, who has been a proponent of mandatory E-Verify, said the legislation is about protecting the nation’s workforce from unfair foreign competition and an increased cost of living.
Congress hasn’t raised the minimum wage in more than a decade, leaving many Americans behind. Our proposal gradually raises the minimum wage without costing jobs, setting it to increase automatically with inflation, and requires employers to verify the legal status of workers.
— Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) February 16, 2021
For years, a wide majority of Americans have supported both gradual increases to the minimum wage and mandatory E-Verify to punish businesses for illegal hiring practices. In Florida, which voted twice for former President Trump, more than 60 percent of voters supported increasing the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by September 2026.
Mandatory E-Verify, likewise, has remained one of the most popular policy initiatives across racial, class, and party lines. Its biggest opponents have been the politically-connected donor class.
A weekly survey conducted by Rasmussen Reports shows that more than 7-in-10 likely voters agree that mandatory E-Verify should become law to protect the U.S. workforce. This includes 74 percent of Hispanic likely voters. Less than 20 percent of likely voters oppose mandatory E-Verify.
Additionally, 65 percent of likely voters say it is better for employers to raise wages and try harder to recruit the 17.1 million Americans who are out of work rather than importing cheaper foreign workers. Another 61 percent of likely voters say the U.S. already has enough skilled talent in the domestic labor pool for employers to recruit from.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Biden Ends ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy, Allows Asylum Seekers Into US
The Biden administration announced Thursday it will roll back former president Donald Trump's "remain in Mexico" policy, allowing about 25,000 asylum seekers in Mexico to enter the United States for their immigration hearings.
The Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of a virtual registration program for asylum seekers that will begin next week. Registered asylum seekers will be advised to travel to a location on the U.S.-Mexico border where they will be tested for coronavirus before entering the United States.
Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called the move a step toward reforming the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.
"This latest action is another step in our commitment to reform immigration policies that do not align with our nation’s values," Mayorkas said. "Especially at the border, however, where capacity constraints remain serious, changes will take time. Individuals who are not eligible under this initial phase should wait for further instructions and not travel to the border."
Under the Trump administration's Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), asylum seekers were made to remain in Mexico during their immigration proceedings. The policy has applied to more than 70,000 prospective migrants since it was established in 2018, including thousands of asylum seekers who crossed the border illegally.
Rep. Greg Steube (R., Fla.), a member of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, slammed the change in policy, saying it undermines national security and public health.
"This is the latest in a long string of open border policies from the Biden administration," Steube told the Washington Free Beacon. "While his administration lifts travel bans to allow terrorists into the United States and puts out this new MPP order to overwhelm the southern border, his administration has also talked about a domestic travel ban for Florida. His policies put America last by threatening our national security, jeopardizing public health, and attacking our own."
The Biden administration also removed an emergency designation used to secure funding for the border wall on Thursday, after Rep. John Katko (R., N.Y.) and other Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee sent a letter to the president calling for action to address the "mounting crisis" at the border.
"Your recent sweeping border security and immigration enforcement policy rollbacks are causing a new crisis at our southwest border, undercutting the rule of law, and damaging the integrity of our territorial borders," the letter reads. "If you are, indeed, serious about finding common ground on homeland security issues important to the lives of Americans, let us return to a time—not too long ago—when Democrats joined Republicans in supporting increased funding to secure our border, including physical barriers and other commonsense security and enforcement measures."
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