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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