This is made blatantly, nakedly clear by New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio. In his State of the City speech last week, he laid bare the premier goal of the Progressive-Democratic Party, even above doing away with ICE and with our borders generally. He said—and he meant every word of it:
Here’s the truth. Brothers and sisters, there’s plenty of money in the world. There’s plenty of money in this city. It’s just in the wrong hands.
Recall that the United Teachers Los Angeles union threatened to strike this week if they didn’t get their way. Now they’ve gone ahead and done it, putting the education (such as it is in this district’s public—NTLA-manned—schools) of 500,000 children at risk. For instance, at the Third Street Elementary School
[a] notice plastered on the school gate said that students will be gathered in the auditorium and the outdoor lunch pavilion area, instead of classrooms, during the strike, and overseen by administrators and teacher assistants.
No education allowed here, per the NTLA.
In a Wall Street Journal piece Sunday about the length of the current partial government shutdown—they’re touting is (as are most of the NLMSM) as the longest on record as though a partial closure is somehow comparable to a complete closure—Kristina Peterson, Michael Bender, and Rebecca Ballhaus closed with a description of a bill being developed by Senators Rob Portman (R, OH) and Jerry Moran (R, KS) that would pair DACA recipient legal status with funding for border security, which would include a wall.
However.
The Trump administration had expanded rules allowing employers to opt out of being required to provide birth control coverage to their employees at no cost to the employees, so long as the opting out was convincingly based on religious or moral grounds. Federal District Judge Haywood Gilliam of the Northern District of California has issued an injunction blocking enforcement of the expansion while an underlying lawsuit against the expansion is underway.
Ordinarily, blocking an enforcement while the underlying case proceeds is no big deal, but this one is just plain wrong. Gilliam based his ruling in significant part on the premise that
Some Progressive-Democrats in the House are beginning to wonder about their Party’s strategy for dealing with the border wall funding question, immigration reform generally, and, proximately, the current partial government shutdown. For instance, here’s Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin (D, MI):
There’s a number of us on the Democratic side who are quite concerned that we’re not working on negotiated positions and taking the bull by the horns and trying to think about what it would look like[.]
Some are just irrational, like Harley Rouda (D, CA):
Next he’ll want a moat with alligators[.]
‘Way last December, now-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) revealed the depth of Progressive-Democrats’ opposition to anything Trump or Republican.
[Then-]House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi…rejected the idea of partially funding President Donald Trump’s border wall in exchange for amnesty for “Dreamers….”
Recall that in President Donald Trump’s 2018 State of the Union address, he laid out his four pillars of immigration policy:
Teach civics in high school as well as in junior high?
A state senator in Indiana has proposed a bill that would require students to pass a 100-question citizenship test in order to graduate from public high schools in the state.
Indiana State Senator Dennis Kruse (R) thinks it’s appropriate that high school graduates demonstrate that they know as much about our nation as we require immigrants to know as a prerequisite to gaining citizenship.
What a concept. It should be a requirement in all States.
That’s what some Progressive-Democrats in the House claim they want to do. After the partial government shutdown is ended. Congressmen Eric Swalwell (D, CA) and John Garamendi (D, CA) have made such commitments.
However.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) has told President Donald Trump she will not negotiate on a border wall, demanding no funding whatsoever, even after the partial shutdown is ended.
Some questions arise.
Was Pelosi lying when she said that to Trump?
Was Pelosi lying to her caucus when they elected her Speaker on the basis of her promise to a significant fraction of her Party that she always and forever would oppose border wall funding?
In addition to the Progressive-Democrats’ disdain for national borders and their desire to abolish ICE, there’s this from Jennifer Wexton (D, VA), with 60,000 civilian veterans and thousands more active duty vets in her district. The Congresswoman
removed the POW/MIA flag in front of her office….
Apparently, only some of the Party’s constituents are to be represented.
President Donald Trump is giving very serious consideration to declaring a national emergency so he can reallocate certain funding toward building the border wall that’s so necessary in various places and that the Progressive-Democrats are so dead set against funding, even though they’ve voted, within the last decade, an order of magnitude more money for a wall than Trump is requesting.
Trump clearly has the legal authority to declare such an emergency and to carry out the funds reallocation.
Trump, though, has another way to force the Progressive-Democrats’ hand. Here’s what Article II, Section 3 says, in pertinent part: