Executive order on Susman Godfrey

It's been a hectic week for me. Even though there's been a lot happening and there's a lot of things to post about (like the EU pausing their retaliatory tariffs), I found this story the most interesting today.

He certainly hit the ground running!

President Trump purportedly had 100 or 200 executive orders to sign on Day 1. He didn't get there but it has been a crazy busy first couple of days. Nevertheless, he has clearly hit the ground running:

FCC reacts to Trump social media order

A couple of years back president trump talked about free speech and the social media platforms.  A new executive order does something about it.

You cannot be a platform and a publisher at the same time.  This means you Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Trump getting snookered on illegal immigrant children detention

Forget the fact that these detentions predate president Trump.  Forget the fact that Republican lawmakers didn't act on the president's wall when they had the opportunity.  Forget the fact that Democrats manufactured this sudden 'crisis'. The president is being played and he's getting snookered and by signing an executive order he's choosing a bad path.  He's snookered because by not signing an executive order on the issues was also a bad path.

The fact that the president is facing a real crisis in public relations on the issue means the president has to sign an executive order to mollify the critics.  Not signing it meant a lot of political fallout come the November midterm elections.  It means a potential re-emergence of a blue wave election.  It probably wouldn't have happened but it was a possible outcome.  The White House did not effectively communicate that the problem predates him, and that Congress needs to change the law.  Having been more effective the president would not be facing this crisis. But not doing something about children of illegal immigrants being separated from their parents is no longer feasible at this point.

On the other hand, signing it allows a rule deviation that the president's supporters would rather not have seen.  That's political fallout.  Furthermore, it creates a logistical problem for housing these families together - how are they going to shelter these people?  And if it is able to do so, it's taking away from Americans in need of shelters, which has its own bad optics.

But maybe the president still gets the Trump card on this.  If groups like the ACLU sue to block the president's executive order, then they look like they are the anti-humanitarian politically driven ones in this case.  And maybe this ramps up Republicans to do something about the law, and sooner rather than later.

If you think shelving Obamacare is lost, check this out

Today Politico is reporting there's discord among Republicans looking to repeal Obamacare and it's repeal is in doubt.  That's not actually right. While president Trump will likely have to draw a line in the sand or possibly demand a specific approach, it's still going to happen.

President Trump meanwhile is not standing still and his Executive Order is already going to make a difference at the grassroots level.  Via Reason;

Following President Donald Trump's executive order instructing agencies to provide relief from the health law, the Internal Revenue Service appears to be taking a more lax approach to the coverage requirement.

The health law's individual mandate requires everyone to either maintain qualifying health coverage or pay a tax penalty, known as a "shared responsibility payment." The IRS was set to require filers to indicate whether they had maintained coverage in 2016 or paid the penalty by filling out line 61 on their form 1040s. Alternatively, they could claim exemption from the mandate by filing a form 8965.

For most filers, filling out line 61 would be mandatory. The IRS would not accept 1040s unless the coverage box was checked, or the shared responsibility payment noted, or the exemption form included. Otherwise they would be labeled "silent returns" and rejected.

Instead, however, filling out that line will be optional.

That is truly not a small thing, if word about that gets out. You do not have to declare on your tax return. That effectively renders the mandate dead. And that in turn cripples Obamacare. So tell your friends. If Congress isn't working on it fast enough, with tax season just around the corner, you can make a difference almost immediately.

Sally Yates, you're fired.

Sally Yates, (former) acting Attorney General and president Obama appointee refused to enforce president Trump's immigration ban order.  And for that, she was, rightly, fired.

As the editors of National Review (themselves no fans of Donald Trump) noted;

Our Constitution vests all executive power — not some of it, all of it — in the president of the United States. Executive-branch officials do not have their own power. They are delegated by the president to execute his power. If they object to the president’s policies, their choice is clear: salute and enforce the president’s directives, or honorably resign. There is no third way. No one knows this better than high-ranking officials of the Department of Justice. That is why President Trump was right to fire Acting Attorney General Sally Yates.

It's that simple. Instead, knowing her days were numbered she decided deliberately to turn herself into a martyr in the face of a hyped-up outrage against the ban. The very outrage by the way, that will help convince Trump supporters they were right to support him and will help galvanize their support of what they see as a return to common sense from a president who wouldn't even say the words "extremist Islamic terrorism" to a president who wants to do his job and put Americans' safety first. 

Getting back to Yates, her actions were poorly conceived.  Not only did she get herself fired but she's not going to be made a martyr.  No one outside of her immediate family and circle of friends cares about Sally Yates. Liberals will use her as the flavor of the week cause celebre until Trump's next move which as it turns out, is happening tonight.  And once Trump's ban on former government employees working for lobbyists kicks in, perhaps prior to her next role, she'll potentially be challenged in finding her next obvious role.  perhaps she'll take a speaking-engagement tour or go out touting her eventual book about how she was treated so unfairly by president Trump just because she stood up for her (politically driven) principles.  I'm sure she'll draw huge crowds at Snowflake University.

But her problems don't end there.  Her actions were those of insubordination. 

To make an analogy, there are many federal judges who oppose abortion. They apply Roe v. Wade even though they disagree with it intensely, because their duty is to obey superior courts. As every official in the Justice Department knows, if one disagrees with the law one is called upon to apply, or the policy one is bound to enforce, one is free to resign. Staying on while undermining government policy is not an act of courage. It is an act of sabotage.

Is it indictable? Maybe.

Furthermore, the very thing Ms. Yates turned up her legal nose at -- a president placing restrictions on immigration from terror-infused countries -- was done in 2011 by Barack Obama, the man responsible for her appointment.

That Trump fired her only minutes after she opened her mouth was predictable and necessary -- and not just to provoke the inevitable jokes about his television show. The president was acting within the law. She wasn't.

...She deserves to be indicted and have her license to practice law yanked. But no, she shouldn't go to jail. She should get a job and do something useful -- far from the law. On the weekends, she can go protest all she wants.

To use a military analogy it's a court marshallable offense. To view it as an act of heroism is to ignore the reality of how the government or any business works - like it or not you do as your boss says or you find another job. Do otherwise and you're fired.

Executive overkill

Everyone knows to take anything that Joe Biden says with a large dose of salt.  He talks out of his posterior more often than not.  But there's no reason to believe that he pulled this number out of the ether and decided to run with it.

The White House has identified 19 executive actions for President Barack Obama to move unilaterally on gun control, Vice President Joe Biden told a group of House Democrats on Monday, the administration’s first definitive statements about its response to last month’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

19 executive orders on gun control.  Regardless of the constitutionality of the move, regardless of the lack of sensibility of the move, the telling thing is that number.  One executive order would't do? Executive overkill is expected from this batch of liberal miscreants. 2700 pages of health care bill has ballooned into tens of thousands of pages of bureaucratic overlay.  Why produce something simple when something convoluted, unnecessarily complicated and susceptible to easy manipulation and fraud is possible?

We should expect no less than 19 executive orders on guns from this president and his cabal of social engineers.

Obama:Politics before leadership (part 7)

Yet more of the same, putting politics ahead of leadership because it suits his agenda, and his narrative.