A Simpler Solution

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As Conservatives grow increasingly concerned over activist Federal district judges overstep their authorities, even seemingly overruling Supreme Court decisions regarding nation-wide injunctions, many are proposing corrective action.

One proposed solution lies within the judiciary itself. Under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act, the Judicial Conference of the United States may refer a judge to Congress if it determines that the judge’s conduct could warrant impeachment.

And

Another avenue for reform lies with Congress, which has clear constitutional authority to define the jurisdiction and powers of lower federal courts. Lawmakers could, for example, require cases with national implications to be heard by three-judge panels, or mandate expedited Supreme Court review of injunctions blocking federal laws or regulations.

I’m loathe to see JCUS get more active in referring to Congress for impeachment. That’s a slippery slope. What happens via an (over)active JCUS when the Progressives get activist Justices appointed to the Court?

The Supreme Court’s involvement here should begin as follows. If a district judge oversteps his bounds in the form of issuing a ruling not in conformance with a Supreme Court ruling a second time, the Court in overruling that judge’s second overstep should also rule that all future opinions which that judge issues are automatically stayed pending appellate court review.

The solution to judge-shopping is more straightforward than many think, as is the business of district judge issued national injunctions, if they might be politically difficult. Congress needs to pass and the President sign (or have his veto overridden) a law with two paragraphs. One paragraph would clarify and state explicitly that all cases, including civil, must be brought in the Federal district in which the first instance of the beef arose. If the other side of the litigation can demonstrate that the beef to which the plaintiff’s case refers actually had its first instance arise in a different district, then the plaintiff’s case would be dismissed.

The other paragraph would explicitly limit a district judge’s reach to the limits of his district boundary. District judges would be explicitly barred from issuing nationwide injunctions or any other injunction reaching beyond his district boundary. There’s no need for a three-judge panel here, nor is there any need for “expedited” review.

State Problem, not Federal

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Amid the moves related to canceling, or not, $160 million in Federal funding if California misses its 5 January deadline for canceling some 17,000 Commercial Driver Licenses illegally issued to illegal aliens, comes this Federal lawsuit objection by the Asian Law Caucus and the Sikh Coalition, along with the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP:

the cancellations would “result in mass work stoppages” immediately upon the deadline.

Say that’s true, and it likely is. Their beef is with California’s State government for its decision to act illegally and so broadly so, not with the Federal government for enforcing the law. Suing the Feds to stop their enforcement of law should be a nonstarter.

A Thought on “Firsts”

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Too many pundits, too many others, insist on commenting loudly (or quietly) on the first black man to do this, the first woman to do that, the first homosexual person to do the other. The loud current example is New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He is, according to these Wonders, the first Muslim, the first Asian American, the youngest to become the city’s mayor.

So what? What he is is an American citizen. All the rest is decidedly irrelevant to the point of meaninglessness.

Unfortunately, as long as pundits, and too many others, insist on pointing that someone is the first this to achieve something or the first that to achieve something else, as long as those pundits, et al., insist on these manufactured firsts, they continue to keep us divided from each other by claiming special accolades for their approved groups.

That divisive decision very closely approaches bigotry. At the very least, it’s insulting to those groups as the pundits insist that the groups cannot succeed on their own; they must be singled out for their immutable characteristics rather than applauded or decried for the material things they’ve done or not done.

It Isn’t Just That

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Roger Severino, writing for the Heritage Foundation in a letter to The Wall Street Journal‘s New Year Day Letters section, demurred from the WSJ house editorial regarding the putative blowup at/of Heritage. He claimed a mistake[ of] a change in tactics for a change in principles.

The disagreement between the two centers on a Tucker Carlson podcast interview of Nick Fuentes and the Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ defense of Carlson and of the interview in the ensuing hooraw over the interview and Fuentes.

Kevin Roberts, the head of the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank, defended Carlson after the episode, saying Carlson “remains and, as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.”

It’s entirely appropriate—consistent, even, with Conservative thought on free speech—to defend the interview in its existence and to defend Carlson for doing the interview. However, for an allegedly conservative organization to defend the existence of an interview between a conspiracy theory mongerer and a racist bigot without comment is badly wrong.

Such an interview should be accompanied, with or in its immediate aftermath, commentary on the immorality of the bigotry and on the foolishness of conspiracy mongering. That the Heritage Foundation chose to defend the interview and interviewer without comment belies Severino’s pious claims of continued Conservatism.

An Activist Judge Gets It Wrong

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DC District Senior Judge Amy Berman Jackson has ruled that

the Trump administration is legally required to secure funding for the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and that failing to do so would violate a prior court order barring the government from dismantling or shutting down the agency[.]

However.

Leave aside the fact that the question of the Trump administration funding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the question of the Trump administration dismantling or shutting down the agency are distinctly separate questions.

The fact of interest here is Jackson’s mistaken ruling that Trump must fund the CFPB. He cannot. By the statute that created the CFPB, that agency is funded solely by the penalties it exacts via its enforcement actions (pay no attention to the conflict of interest behind the curtain) and from the Federal Reserve Bank, the latter which the CFPB draws from according to CFPB-determined needs (pay no attention to the doings behind this curtain, either).

The Trump administration has no control over and no capacity to produce CFPB funding. This is the sort of shenanigan in which activist judges engage, causing increased cost and delay in cleaning up prior messes.