Here I was all ready to with what I wanted to write about, only to have the judicial system throw me a curve. Yesterday, it looked like the Supreme Court was finally giving Texas the green light to deport illegal aliens.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted its freeze of a Texas immigration law which allows state and local law enforcement to arrest illegal immigrants and empowers state judges to deport them.
The Court’s six conservative justices dismissed the Biden administration’s emergency appeal, allowing the law to remain in effect while the issue is adjudicated by lower courts. The majority did not explain its reasoning, as is typical, but Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, issued a concurring opinion explaining that Texas should be allowed to enforce its law until a lower court definitively strikes it down.
“If a decision does not issue soon,” Barrett wrote, “the applicants may return to this court.”
On X Tuesday, Texas Governor Abbott acknowledged that litigation over the law will continue in lower courts.
“BREAKING: In a 6-3 decision SCOTUS allows Texas to begin enforcing SB4 that allows the arrest of illegal immigrants,” he wrote. “We still have to have hearings in the 5th circuit federal court of appeals. But this is clearly a positive development.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the ruling on X.
“HUGE WIN: Texas has defeated the Biden Administration’s and ACLU’s emergency motions at the Supreme Court,” he said. “Our immigration law, SB 4, is now in effect. As always, it’s my honor to defend Texas and its sovereignty, and to lead us to victory in court.”
In court papers, Paxton said the Texas law does not undermine federal law but complements it regarding immigration enforcement, which the federal government is supposed to be fulfilling. The Biden administration for many months has been flouting federal immigration law by paroling illegal immigrants into the U.S. instead of detaining them.
The Constitution “recognizes that Texas has the sovereign right to defend itself from violent transnational cartels that flood the state with fentanyl, weapons, and all manner of brutality,” Paxton said in filings, according to NBC News.
Texas is “the nation’s first-line defense against transnational violence and has been forced to deal with the deadly consequences of the federal government’s inability or unwillingness to protect the border,” he added.
Chalk one up for controlling the borders and the rule of law, right?
Fifth circuit: Not so fast!
A procedural victory for Texas allowing the state to enforce its new border security law while the Biden administration’s battle against the measure continues to work its way through the courts was short-lived.
While the U.S. Supreme Court moved to allow the law to go into effect on Tuesday afternoon, hours later the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals put the law on hold yet again.
Senate Bill 4, which was set to go into effect earlier this month, creates a state crime for entering the country illegally, paving the way for state law enforcement to arrest illegal aliens.
After the federal government challenged the measure in a lawsuit, U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra blocked the law from going into effect. It has since been sent to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In the meantime, a procedural fight had taken place over whether the state could enforce the law awaiting final judgment in the case.
In a 6-3 decision on Tuesday, the Supreme Court denied the Biden administration’s request to halt enforcement of the law, allowing Texas to begin enforcement immediately.
At the time, Attorney General Ken Paxton called the decision a “huge win” for Texas.
“Texas has defeated the Biden Administration’s and ACLU’s emergency motions at the Supreme Court. Our immigration law, SB 4, is now in effect. As always, it’s my honor to defend Texas and its sovereignty, and to lead us to victory in court,” said Paxton.
That victory was short-lived, as late Tuesday night the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals placed another stay on the law from being enforced.
Frustrating, but it underscores the difficulty the Supreme Court faces, namely: How do you reign in an executive branch hellbent on ignoring clear laws on securing the border against illegal aliens that instead actual aids and abets illegal aliens breaking those same laws?
What mechanisms can the Supreme Court use to reign in a rogue executive without causing a constitutional crisis?
The Fifth Circuit had a hearing scheduled this morning on the issue but evidently haven’t issued a ruling. I’ll try to update this if it does…
Tags: Border Controls, Brandon Waltens, Democrats, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas
At this point, to answer your question?
“What mechanisms can the Supreme Court use to reign in a rogue executive without causing a constitutional crisis?”
I don’t know, but they’d better figure something out quickly, or the Supreme Court will be nothing more than a footnote in some future historian’s “The Rise and Fall of the American Republic”.
This crap can’t go on. The Democrats have, with establishment Republican assent, gone all in on breaking the existing consensus on what is permissible. No other president has been gone after the way they have Trump, and for what? I still don’t see what the hell they’re afraid of; the man is virtually a political clone of JFK, when you get down to it… So, why the fear? Why the reaction they’ve given him?
Nothing about any of this makes any sense, but like the way the Senate went after Caesar, none of it has to. It’s simply that they’re so used to power that they can’t give it up, I suspect, and they fear what happens to them when they no longer have it.
“What mechanisms can the Supreme Court use to reign in a rogue executive without causing a constitutional crisis?”
Well, maybe it’s time that we had a constitutional crisis to get this all sorted out…
BTW, apologies for the off-topic, but you might find this interesting:
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/29778
The Ukies have figured out (quickly) that the big Western tanks aren’t very effective in the drone-swarm era.
The rule of law and $3.95 will get you a latte at Starbucks. Whatever the question is, the rule of law doesn’t count if leftists don’t want it to.
I hate to be that guy, but…
“Rein”.
“Reign” is what President John Gill’s handlers want to do, we want to “rein in” that tendency.
I know, curse you autocorrect!
Northern Redneck said:
“The Ukies have figured out (quickly) that the big Western tanks aren’t very effective in the drone-swarm era.”
Yeah, see… Here’s the thing: At the moment, not much is really effective against well-operated drone swarms. Operative word, there, that I didn’t use? “Yet”.
Counter-measures will be found, and implemented. Not least of which would be ELINT against the drones, and really nasty HARM strikes on the operators, which will in turn require counter-counter-measures, ad infinitum.
If the US military is smart, Ukraine is currently working out “best practices” for dealing with this, that they’ll copy. Alternatively? They’ll do like they usually do, and ignore the implications until they’re halfway into the next war, followed by panicked solution-seeking and the expenditure of a shed-load of money.
This period is analogous to the era when Saggers were supposedly signaling the death-knell of the tank back in 1973. Then, as now, solutions were sought, solutions were found, and the tank went on for a few more decades. Same-same here.
My bet is that the whole thing will shake itself out in another couple of years, and then they’ll go back to complacency until the next ratchet-effect event.
This is how these things work, in the ever-ongoing contest between offense and defense. The Russians are extremely unfortunate at the moment because they’re not a very dynamic or adaptable force, while going up against some very dynamic and adaptable people who’ve no institutional drag on them.
I predicted this for years and years, just not that it’d be Ukraine and Russia doing it. I always figured either Taiwan or Singapore up against it, forced to adapt swiftly with what they had on hand. My mistake.
Anyone seeing the very first toy drones on the Christmas shelves the year they came out should have easily been able to foresee their eventual weaponization. I know I did, along with more than a few people I talked to about it, at the time.
So,
I’m not a lawyer but if Texas can eventually enforce this law, can it also start arresting people for rendering assistance to illegals and seizing assets of organizations involved?
I’m waiting for the law that says we can go after the legislators for making obviously unconstitutional laws… Although, the fiction of “qualified immunity” will no doubt be brought into play.
Where the real problem lies? We’ve become complacent, as citizens, having forgotten that these people in government work for us. They’re not our “lords and masters”, they’re not higher forms of life, they’re not beyond our power or criticism.
Unfortunately, the sad fact is that consequence does not come to any of these cretins. They just go on and on and on, never called to accountability. We need to have forensic accountants go over every one of their financial lives before they take office, while they’re in office, and after; if there’s a dime of illicit money? Up against the nearest goddamn wall with them and their entire criminal clans…
It’s not just the Biden Krime Krewe, but all the rest of his fellow “Congressionals”. How’d Nancy Pelosi make all that money? Where did these “lifelong public servants” get all this money from, along with their families? Anyone bought a product from a Biden-related firm? Anyone seen a Biden-related industrial plant being built? Where’s all this “generational wealth” coming from, pray tell?
If you’ve half a brain, you know: Selling the rest of us out. You wonder where your job went? Why inflation is so high? Hmmm? Where’s all the money Biden has spent gone? How many of his cronies are wealthy, now? It’s just like with Adams in New York; he’s selected some no-name banking firm to do all the debit cards for the illegals, $10,000.00 a pop. D’ya suppose some of that money might just stick to his hands, or his friends hands?
That’s how these assclowns operate… Just like Ukraine: How many children of the oligarchy had do-nothing jobs like Hunter Biden did, and got paychecks that were actually kickbacks on our foreign aid dollars? It’s not just the Democrats, either; how else do you suppose they shut the Republican establishment types up?
We’ve all been conned. Wake the fuck up, people.
“What mechanisms can the Supreme Court use to reign in a rogue executive without causing a constitutional crisis?”
Attack Presidental power indirectly. Overturn Wickard v. Filburn. It will largely gut federal control over interstate commerce and significantly reduce the fedgov’s control over the states.
[quote] What mechanisms can the Supreme Court use to reign in a rogue executive without causing a constitutional crisis? [/quote]
An apocryphal quote attributed to Joseph Stalin was his reply to an advisor who informed him that the Pope was opposed to some of Stalin’s edicts:
“How many diviosions does the Pope have?” quipped Stalin.
Neither the Judicial nor the Legislative branch can enforce law. Only the
Executive branch can do that . . . and if the Executive Branch is as ideologically driven as it appears to be, we’re all screwed but good.