3. During the great solar eclipse, our president ...
Summer is gone. We move on toward chilly weather, falling leaves and ... wow, Donald Trump is still president. What ever happened to change when you really need it?
But you’ve been paying attention anyway, right? Good concerned citizen. Take this quiz to see how much you remember.
1. On Labor Day Trump sent out a tweet vowing, “We are building our future with American hands, American labor, American iron, aluminum and steel.” It also included a picture of the president and the first lady, who was wearing ...
A. American iron, aluminum, steel. B. A dress from Italy. C. The very same outfit she wore on her first date.
2. At a recent rally, Trump told the audience, “I always hear about the elite,” and he added ...
A. “Until recently, I just thought it was a modeling agency.”
B. “Our best and brightest come from every race and ethnicity.”
C. “They’re elite? I went to better schools than they did. I was a better student than they were. I live in
A. Stared into the sun without protective glasses.
B. Gave a lesson to third graders about the rotation of the planets.
C. Told a group of visiting ambassadors it was an American invention.
4. According to a transcript of the call, Trump told the president of Mexico that he won the New Hampshire primary because ...
A. “They thought Tom Brady was my cousin.”
B. “New Hampshire is a drug-infested den.”
C. “I pretended to like their damned town halls.”
5. The president said he wants his wall on the Mexican border to be transparent because ...
A. “Transparency is what this administration is all about.”
B. Americans need to be able to avoid being hit on the head by 60-pound bags of drugs.
C. “Good neighbors should be able to wave hello to one another.”
6. A report estimated that if the Department of Homeland Security wanted to meet Trump’s target for new Border Patrol hires, it would have to ...
A. Employ a lot of Dreamers. B. Advertise heavily. C. Screen 750,000 applicants.
7. At a press conference after the tragedy in Charlottesville, Trump asked reporters ...
A. “Have we ever had a more urgent need for national unity?”
B. “How could anyone imagine something this terrible happening?”
C. “Does anyone know I own a house in Charlottesville?”
8. During “Made in America Week,” Trump’s resort at Mar-aLago ...
A. Offered free drinks to anyone employed at an automobile factory.
B. Announced it would be making chocolate cake with homegrown cocoa.
C. Applied for visas to hire 70 foreign workers.
9. Asked about Vladimir Putin’s decision to expel 755 workers from the American Embassy, Trump responded ...
A. “I want to thank him, because we’re trying to cut down on payroll.”
B. “Every one of those people is going to be re-employed constructing a big, beautiful, enormous Trump Moscow hotel that will, um, never mind.”
C. “Who did what?”
Earlier this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that in six months, the Department of Justice will begin the long process for deportation proceedings against 800,000 young people who came to America as babies and young children in the care of their parents and others because those entries into this country were and remain unlawful.
When President Barack Obama signed numerous executive orders attempting to set forth the conditions under which illegally immigrated adults whose children were born here could lawfully remain here, he was challenged in federal court and lost. Sessions believes the government would lose again if it declined to deport those who came here illegally as babies and young children. Here is the back story. Shortly after President Obama formalized two programs, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), in a series of executive orders, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled DAPA — orders protecting undocumented immigrants who are parents of children born here — was unconstitutional.
Before signing his executive orders, Obama tried to persuade Congress to amend federal immigration laws. After Congress declined to vote on the Obama proposals, he authored his now-famous DACA and DAPA executive orders.
But Obama’s executive orders were not novel; they merely formalized what every president since Ronald Reagan has effectively done. Each has declined to deport undocumented immigrants who bore children here or who were brought here as young children.
Numerous states challenged Obama’s DAPA orders in federal court. The states argued the president alone was effectively compelling these states to spend state tax dollars against the will of elected state officials. The states also argued DAPA amounted to the president’s rewriting immigration law and thereby usurping the constitutional powers of Congress.
A federal district judge agreed with the states, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit affirmed that ruling.
It also ruled that by enforcing his executive orders instead of the laws as Congress wrote them, the president was failing to take care that all federal laws be enforced. The Supreme Court declined to intervene by a 4-4 vote.
Sessions said this week he is confident DACA is unconstitutional for the same reasons the courts found DAPA unconstitutional. Yet there are moral, constitutional, legal and economic arguments on this that will be an obstacle to cancellation of this long-standing program.
Morally, most beneficiaries of DACA are fully Americanized young adults who know no other life. Constitutionally, DACA has effectively been in place since 1986. Legally, once a benefit has been given by the government and relied upon, courts are reluctant to rescind it.
Economically, the summary removal of more than three-quarters of a million people from the workforce would have serious negative consequences for employers and the government, as well, as each claimed hardship case — each person whose deportation is ordered — is entitled to a hearing at the government’s expense.
Now many Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Congress want to make a close version of DACA. Were this to happen, the tables would be turned on Trump. He would be confronted with the constitutional duty of enforcing a federal law he has condemned.
Would he live up to his oath of office?