A Union MFWIC Brags about Disrupting Americans’ Holiday

The lede laid it out.

Holiday travelers heading to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) faced severe disruptions as hundreds of protesters blocked the road outside during one of the busiest travel periods of the year, according to reports.

These were perpetrated by the United Services Workers West, a union that represents security officers and that is disputing with Flying Food Group, one of LAX’s largest airline catering contractors and by the Unite Here Local 11 which has 32,000 hotel workers across Southern California and Arizona.

The disruptions included blocking access to LAX’ main airport building, blocking a major street into the airport, blocking access to the airport’s main pickup and drop-off zones, and interfering with passenger flow in one of the airport’s other terminals.

There’s this from Susan Minato, Co-President of Unite Here Local 11:

[She] defended the timing, arguing that demonstrations during peak travel periods are necessary to draw attention.
“It is a busy time of the year, no question,” she said. “But that’s also how you get some attention.”

You have gained my attention, Madam. I’m calling for the decertification of your union and of the USWW and the termination from employment of those members who participated in these disruptions. Neither your union nor the USWW were picketing this employer or attempting to block its receipt of supplies. You were deliberately interfering with wholly unrelated Americans who were trying to go about their own business instead of yours.

That’s unacceptable.

Clemency

President Donald Trump (R) has said he’ll cancel all of the Executive Orders and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden that Biden instead signed with an autopen. Potentially, Trump could go farther.

Trump could potentially revoke Biden’s legislation or the dozens of pardons he issued, including to family members. Biden also gave thousands of commutations at the end of his presidency. Still, legal scholars say there is no mechanism to undo clemency after it is granted.

The prior question, regarding clemency, though, is whether it was granted in the first place. That would hinge on, among other things, whether the autopen was used illegally by others—viz., he didn’t authorize its use—to grant those clemencies. That will be hard to prove.

There’s also the question of the legislation signed into law by autopen. Even were it shown that the legislation signed by autopen was illegally signed, canceling that legislation would be a dicey matter legally—the laws have been in effect for some years—and practically: canceling that legislation would reopen, even more explosively than at the time, the arguments and conflicts that accompanied those legislations during their development and passage. Especially since all of the legislation would have to be canceled if one of them is. Trump won’t be able to pick and choose which to cancel.

Back to clemency: Trump would be able, functionally, to pick and choose which clemency act to cancel or to retain; he can simply reissue clemency for specific cases.

He cannot simply reissue specific legislative acts.

Any of that autopen-related withdrawal, though, will come at very considerable political capital expenditure. As a lame duck President, Trump doesn’t have much of that. But with three-plus years left in his term, is this clemency question the place to spend that capital?

Maybe not. Almost certainly not on the matter of legislation.