NY’s Sue-Crazy AG
President Trump better not have any allergies, because New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and his band of headlinehungry, progressive state AGs are sure to sue if the prez so much as sneezes.
Their latest: a court challenge to Trump’s delay of an Obama-planned hike in penalties for carmakers who don’t meet fuel standards.
The hit was to start in July, but Trump’s folks fear the “economic consequences” and want time to reconsider. They may even roll back the standards.
That’s prudent. Trump was elected, in part, to boost the economy; he’d be cheating voters if his team failed to even consider the economic fallout from tougher fuel rules. Plus: Why shouldn’t Americans be able to buy less-fuel-efficient (but also less expensive and/or larger) cars?
Yet the real question isn’t whether the Trump delay is wise — but whether his team has a right to oversee federal rules and pursue its own agenda as it sees fit. Under the Constitution, it clearly does.
Alas, Schneiderman & Co. apparently don’t care — not when their lawsuits can get headlines and win points with the left. That’s what motivated the New York AG to probe ExxonMobil over his hokey climate-change “concerns.”
Consider some of the other issues Schneider- man & Co. are suing the president over:
Trump’s plan to end the illegal “Dreamers” program (even though the AGs never sued President Barack Obama for failing to get Congress to OK it). The president’s travel ban. EPA climate-change rules. Schneiderman also vowed to sue if ObamaCare is repealed.
The AG clearly wants a leadership role in the anti-Trump #Resistance. And he’s open about that: The morning after Trump’s 2016 win, New York Magazine reported, “He told his staff to . . . begin thinking about how [his office could] play a rearguard role.”
Schneiderman told the mag he can claim “jurisdiction over everything because . . . every check clears in New York.” And that Trump’s victory has “set up an unprecedented set of battle lines.”
Memo to the AG: Americans elect members of Congress to pass laws and presidents to carry them out. Trump’s electoral win gives him the right to pursue his agenda. If you don’t like it, get folks to vote against him — but don’t run to the courts in the hope of tying up his every move.
Sure, that may win you headlines and burnish your national rep on left. But it’s a real snub to voters — and to US democracy.