California AG may sue Trump administration over “Sanctuary City” issues
A look at Xavier Becerra, a top-ranking officer in the #Resist army.
California’s single state civil war with the Trump administration continues.
Now, the state’s Attorney General may sue the Trump administration after the Department of Justice took steps this week to pull funds from “sanctuary cities.”
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra — in conjunction with other California city and county attorneys — is considering charging the Justice Department with violating the Constitution by threatening to take crime-fighting funds away from cities and states that do not fully cooperate with federal immigration agents, according to those sources.
“The cities and states affected by these provisions have strong arguments to make in court that these conditions are illegal,” said a former Justice Department official familiar with California officials’ thinking. “If Congress wanted these requirements to be part of the grant funding decision, they would have written it into the law.”
Becerra plans to argue that Congress, not the executive branch, has power to set conditions on the grant money.
Here is some background on Becerra, who was touted as being the nemesis of President Trump prior to being tapped to fill the position vacated by Kamala Harris (who has become the type of US Senator I suspected she would be).
…Becerra, who didn’t even know where Stanford was, made it into the elite university, starting the son of immigrants on a path that led to 24 years in Congress and now nomination as California’s attorney general – at a time when Donald Trump’s election to the presidency means uncertainty for the state’s embrace of immigrants, the Affordable Care Act and environmental protections.
…He graduated from Stanford Law School, worked for a state senator from Los Angeles and as a deputy in the state attorney general’s office before being recruited to run for a state Assembly seat from L.A. Two years later, in 1992, he ran for an open U.S. House seat when Ed Roybal retired. Becerra has never faced a close re-election since, winning this year with 77 percent of the vote.
…Becerra, a longtime member of the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, also played a role in crafting the Affordable Care Act. He worked on issues including reimbursement for doctors serving poor areas. “It makes a big difference if you live in a district like mine, where you have a lot of very low-income folks who haven’t had insurance,” he aid.
Becerra, who was once rumored to be considered for Hillary Clinton’s Vice President, even had a 100 percent rating in 2015 from the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action.
Clearly, our state Attorney General is considered a top-ranking officer in the #Resist army.
Gil Duran, a Democratic strategist in California, said now is the time for officials to demonstrate “bold leadership and stand up for their highest values.”
“As a Californian, as a Latino and as the attorney general of the most populous state in the country, it is well within his scope of duty to do this,” said Duran, who has worked for some of the state’s top politicians, including Gov. Jerry Brown and U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris of California.
“Becerra is a guy who spent years in Washington and knows the law and he would be a very formidable opponent to Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions,” Duran said.
I am a Californian who wishes to remain American. Political stunts like this make it hard to argue when others beg my home state to be jettisoned from the union.
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Comments
You know we have entered the Twilight Zone when states and cities are demanding the courts let them break the law.
the bad thing is when the courts back them up.
On the contrary, you are the one insisting that the courts let the president break the law, by unilaterally imposing conditions on funding that Congress has appropriated.
No sanctuary city is breaking any law. They have the constitutional right to refuse to work for the federal government by enforcing federal law, and it is unconstitutional even for Congress to punish them for this. What Congress (but only Congress) can do is condition new funding on cooperation, provided that it’s directly related to the issue at hand, and that the difference in funding is low enough to be merely an incentive and not coercion.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/968146/download
According to the DOJ’s press release, they are just exercising the broad discretion that had already been delegated to the DOJ. As agencies commonly do. Or is it just liberal governments who get to exercise discretion?
The question is how much discretion Congress has given the DOJ in the distribution of these funds. The press release says “This certification requirement will apply to any existing grant administered by the Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services that expressly contains this certification condition and to future grants for which the Department is statutorily authorized to impose such a condition.” If the statute covering a grant does authorize the Department to impose such a condition, well and good.
But this particular program that Becerra wants to sue over, the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, is authorized by 42 U.S.C. §3751(a), and I don’t see anything there giving the Department such authority. It refers to the formula in 42 U.S.C. §3755, which lists factors like crime reporting, but doesn’t say anything about cooperation with ICE.
You can’t point to a modern case that so holds, I take it.
The non-commandeering doctrine has been regularly enforced by courts from the beginning of the republic till today. The last decision I can remember citing it was the 0bamacare decision that said the feds couldn’t make the states expand medicare, and couldn’t cut their funding if they refused. The doctrine has never been questioned, so it only ever comes up when the government tries to argue that something it wants to do doesn’t violate it. And it routinely gets slapped down.
Your anti-commandeering analysis is exceedingly elementary.
Sessions’ memo makes its case very well.
It doesn’t make a case at all. It simply says it’ll cut off funding from those programs where Congress has given DOJ that discretion. Becerra is asking where Congress gave that discretion over this program. It’s a good question, because there’s no mention of it in the authorizing statute.
I say start arresting these politicians for breaking the law… give them something to think about besides votes.
Breaking what law? There isn’t and can’t be a law requiring them to work for the federal government. The tenth amendment guarantees their right to refuse to do so.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/968146/download
8 USC 1373(a) provides in part that state and local jurisdictions “may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from,[federal immigration officers] information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”
The law doesn’t require states or cities to work for the federal government. It just forbids states and cities from restraining others from cooperating with the federal government if the others choose to do so.
Not when those “others” are the state’s own officers and employees. Forcing a state to allow its employees to work for the feds is commandeering state resources. The Supreme Court established all the way back in 1842 that state officials may voluntarily enforce federal law “unless prohibited by state legislation”. It is a breach of the tenth amendment for Congress to prohibit states from so legislating.
Stanford Law School has been cranking out leftists since the late 1960s. This thug Becerra and the 9th circuit wizard Michelle Freidland will be around for a long time, dealing their radical destruction every chance they get.
at least this illegal alien Xavier Becerra will be unable to run for PotUS..
WTF are you talking about? He is a natural born US citizen and is just as eligible to run as Trump was.
Correct. Becerra was born in California – and has been working ever since to destroy it.
But we should verify this by seeing his birth certificate. (It’s probably being photoshopped as we speak by the same hack that conjured up obama’s fake birth certificate.)
On March 28, 2017, Becerra brought 14 felony charges (which were discarded by the San Francisco Superior Court) against The Center for Medical Progress activists for recording 14 forensically-authenticated videos (see Planned Parenthood 2015 undercover videos controversy), and 1 felony charge for conspiring to invade privacy. Similar charges against the activists in Texas had been dropped in 2016.[39]
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/us/planned-parenthood-video-charges.html
To free people, Becerra is a dangerous guy.
Yes, he is a dangerous guy. I fully agree. But that does not make him an alien, let alone an illegal one, as matthewsjw claims.
This guy is about as kompetent as krazy kamala harris was. Now krazy kamala is a senator.
Kalifornia doubles down on krazy.
As a born and raised San Diegan it’s sad to see what this State has become. Cut the funds. It only frees up other funds for Dem oppression
If the DOJ is cutting programs that Congress didn’t link to cooperation with ICE, then Becerra is right to sue.
Hey! Haven’t they heard that
“You can’t fight City Hall?”