This simple maxim is, in its two separate clauses, the nursery and the gallows of every piece of progressive judicial activism that has ever been forced upon an unwitting populace. Social change that is founded solely upon the whims of judges may be undone by the whims of contrary judges and there is no legitimate reason to gainsay the reaction.

The left loves judicial progressivism because it is a method tailor-made to enforce social engineering from the top down. This is always the primary means of social engineering, but when social engineering is done by things like a monarch’s religious conversion, as was the reason for the adoption of Christianity by tribes wholesale, or legislation, as was the case with things like the Civil Rights Act, there is a sense of legitimacy. There’s a feeling that the wheels of state are turning how they are supposed to. The sovereign is acting in its sovereign capacity and making decisions.

But with judicial activism, you don’t have this veneer of legitimacy because courts are not and never have been sovereign in any society. Power is sovereign. Whether power resides in the popular will or the divine mandate of kings, it doesn’t reside on the bench. United States President Andrew Jackson noted quite correctly when he stated, “[The chief justice] has his decision, now let him enforce it,” that rulings issued must be carried out, and judges don’t take their robes off to see their orders executed. And when one court issues an order, a new court can simply undo it using the exact same powers as the first did to enact it.

With President-Elect Donald Trump’s second victory, he will almost certainly have the opportunity to appoint at least one, but likely more, Supreme Court justices during this next term. Some of the elderly conservative judges will likely retire to make sure there’s no chance of a Democrat appointing their successor, as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg so critically erred in not doing so before her death. There may be some opportune vacancies among the liberal judges, who are no spring chickens, either.

What will be done with these spoils of victory? I think two things that are likely to be dispensed with are Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that enacted nationwide gay marriage, and the assumption that the 14th Amendment provides for birthright citizenship to all persons born upon the US’s magic dirt.

Obliterating Obergefell v. Hodges

Obergefell v. Hodges is an easy one to dismantle. The decision is ludicrous in its reasoning and was meant to be a progressive high-watermark of the Barack Obama administration’s attempts to remake the country. Finding a fundamental right to homosexual marriage in the US constitution is simple wishing. It was not based on the much more procedurally solid grounds of building out full faith and credit requirements to all other states based upon the states that had already enacted homosexual marriage in 2015; it was based on a desire to find a “fundamental right” no one ever knew of before 2015.

That is, there is a requirement already in the constitution that each state give “full faith and credit” to the rulings, licenses, orders etc, of every other state. By 2015, 37 states had already legalized homosexual marriage through their regular lawmaking process. Instead of determining that because of this, all states must give full faith and credit to homosexual marriages enacted in the states that allowed them, and recognize the marriages, the Court got hasty. In its scramble to signal its progressive bonafides, it determined that there was a fundamental right hidden in the constitution that no one had ever noticed before.

How will this be undone? Simple: The second Trump court will get a case challenging Obergefell v. Hodges and the justices now will say, “No, there clearly isn’t a hidden right.” Wash hands, go home, have dinner, done.

Setting the record straight on the 14th Amendment

The presumption that the 14th Amendment provides for birthright citizenship will be tougher because it has more than a decade of inertia behind it. But where there’s the will — and there appears to be — there’s a way. But what is that way? The amendment says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Seems clear, doesn’t it? If you’re born under the jurisdiction of the US, you’re a citizen, end of story.

Except no, of course it isn’t. It wasn’t that way for three-quarters of a century in practice. That pesky subordinate clause, “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” may seem like it just means that if the US can impose its law upon you, you’re qualified.

It didn’t mean that way at the time, however. It didn’t mean that until the executive agencies, that pesky administrative state I’ve opined on at length numerous times, began actually issuing citizenship papers to anchor babies in 1929. What the hell was going on before then? Well, the US was doing exactly what every state had been doing since time immemorial and gatekeeping citizenship to its own people, that’s what.

Senator Lyman Trumbull, one of the key framers of the 14th Amendment, was exceptionally clear that its intention was to give the assurance of citizenship to freed black slaves in the South, and not just anyone who happened by, because “subject to the jurisdiction of” meant owing allegiance to. A freed black slave whose ancestors had been in the US for 300 years owed allegiance in a way that a Mexican illegal immigrant today simply does not.

United States v. Wong Kim Ark, often cited as the case that defined birthright citizenship, was not decided for another 30 years. When it was, its result was decided because Wong, the son of Chinese legal residents, did not owe allegiance to the Empire of China any longer. 

Even this decision did not grant citizenship to the children of Native American tribes, which happened by special legislation in 1924. Why? Because tribes are sovereigns; their members do not first owe loyalty to the US, but to their tribe. This is why the major Native American tribes have also seen fit to issue their own declarations of war when the US has gone to war against, say, Germany in 1918.

So even today, a Native American is not a citizen of the US as well as a citizen of their tribe because of the 14th Amendment or because of United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Rather, they are because of special legislation that allows the children of a subsidiary sovereign, a vassal, to also be a citizen of the country. The 14th Amendment’s supposed provision of birthright citizenship to illegal aliens and foreigners is not nearly as ironclad as popular leftist publications and commenters would have you think.

And why should it be? Even today, it does not apply to the children of foreign ambassadors who happen to be born in the US during their parents’ tenure. Why? Because their parents do not owe this country loyalty and thus are not subject to its jurisdiction. But based on the popular maximalist take on the 14th Amendment, it should.

Birthright citizenship must end

Consider the absurdity that is nested in such a maximalist position. Let’s suppose that an actual invading army lands on US shores and sets up a beachhead base. Within that army’s camp followers, they have intentionally brought 10,000 heavily pregnant women. Once established, they induce labor, causing each woman to give birth. Under the current liberal understanding of the 14th Amendment, that enemy camp now has at least 10,000 US citizens in it. They were born here illegally, yes, but they were still born here regardless. They’re on our soil, and thus are subject to our laws. They’re citizens.

Can we attack that armed camp? Remember, a US citizen cannot be deprived of life, liberty or property by the government without due process of law. Will we refuse to attack the army occupying our soil because it has within it US citizens? Or will we understand that they’re not US citizens, and infants or not, they’re manipulation tactics meant to facilitate the extraction and expropriation of resources from the native populace? Let the reader understand here.

Birthright citizenship will end because it is not the intention of the text. It will end because it must end. In the opposite direction of repealing birthright citizenship is, ultimately, the necessary conclusion: Every person on the planet is a US citizen that simply doesn’t know it yet or simply hasn’t had the correct paperwork done yet. It’s not even that wild of an argument to make.

For the better part of the last century and all of the current one, we’ve been enforcing US laws and interests around the globe. So in a very real way, based on the current liberal understanding, all of the planet is subject to US jurisdiction and thus every person is a US citizen-in-waiting.

Is the US a nation that, like every other nation that has ever existed, is made up of a particular people with a particular culture occupying a particular place? Or is it an economic zone that you just need the right papers and stamps to be legal in, thus giving you the same right to the bounty as those whose ancestors tamed the land and built it? This is a critical question that Trump must answer decisively by heavily curtailing the ability for just anyone to be grafted into this vine. 

I hope he has the constitution for it.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Judicial Fiat and the 14th Amendment appeared first on Fair Observer.

President-Elect Donald Trump’s cabinet and staff picks have been grenades, each tailor-made to signal that they will be tasked with administering their departments and, even better, burning them to the ground. Good, they deserve it. If you’ve read a smidge of my writing here you know what I think of the administrative state, that den of vipers that truly runs the federal bureaucracy and actually purports to rule the country through rules of procedure and forms.

Making Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the secretary of Health and Human Services and Tulsi Gabbard the head of the “Intelligence Community” is a gauntlet thrown down. RFK is openly skeptical of much of the vaccine schedule and fluoridated water. And Tulsi was put on a domestic terrorism watchlist the moment she endorsed Donald. The current administration’s decision to make enemies of the people who will be in charge of them in two months is so boneheaded, you must conclude that they never meaningfully considered they’d ever be out of power again. What dumbos.

And their lack of “credentials” and “experience” is more than half the point. Neither television presenter Pete Hegseth nor attorney Lee Zeldin (nor any of the previous three, either) have gone through the cursus honorum — “course of honors” — the government built to properly neuter any Mr. Smiths on their way to Washington and mold them into effective regime toadies, regardless of party. Their youth and inexperience is the point. Get out the way, Grandpa.

Matt Gaetz’s own withdrawal of his nomination may seem one fly in the ointment, but it just might have been part of a plan all along, given that he tweeted recently about how Special Counsels don’t need Senate confirmation. Time will tell if the pitbull will be released.

Trump and Musk’s plans for an out-of-this-world national birthday blowout

Trump’s picks are meant to convey one thing, and one thing only: The status quo is on its way to the gallows. And we see the beasts in Washington already beginning to bay, with people like Senator Lisa Murkowski stating unequivocally she won’t fall in line with Trump’s agenda. But it likely won’t be up to them for two reasons. First, we already know that billionaire Elon Musk has made very real threats to punish anyone who stands in the way of the trifecta government coalescing; this is not to be taken lightly. I believe that naysayers will be whipped into shape.

Second, the looming specter of recess appointments is always present. Of course, the houses of Congress can always hold pro forma sessions — sessions held regularly — to avoid a recess, but there appear to be enough Trump loyalists in one or the other house to force a disagreement on a recess. Trump can simply recess them himself (allowed by Article II, Section 3 of the US Constitution; click the link, Humperdinck) for as long as he deems necessary. Then he can just recess appoint whoever he wants, or even use the Federal Vacancies Act too. There are options here folks. Yes, their terms will expire at the end of 2026, but so what? Who cares, the plan will be enacted by then.

What plan, you ask? If you’ve watched any of the recent policy videos Trump has put out, you’ve noticed that every one of his sweeping plans to reform the government has a date of completion of July 2026. There are two reasons for this that are readily apparent, one Trump’s and one Elon’s.

Trump’s reason is that the US’s 250th birthday is in July 2026, and he has made it clear he wants to throw a nationwide party for a very long time. Nobody will want to hear about budget line items and this or that deputy accessory vice-under-secretary for whatever-the-hell losing their sinecure job when they’re listening to “The Star-Spangled Banner” played from a gold plated Apache helicopter. Get that crap done now, and everyone will be too busy with how much fun they’re having to care later. Trump can work hard, hard, hard the first half of his term, then take it easy and bask in triumph the second.

Elon’s reason is that the next Mars transit window is in October 2026. Musk wants free, unfettered capacity to take the infrastructure to Mars now so that the human colony can actually be built in the early 2030s. That won’t happen if everyone is still disputing regulations past summer 2026. Musk will get the job done, so he can go back to playing with his toys — that’s the only reason he really supported Trump in the first place. The Human Resources ladies and Bolsheviks-by-any-other-name in Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s governments were going to stop him from getting us to Mars. SpaceX is a defense contractor and cannot hire noncitizens, this didn’t stop the Feds from suing SpaceX for not hiring noncitizens. There’s no good reason for this kind of lawfare other than petty resentment at Musk’s aims and success, a desire to hobble him, and he couldn’t stand that. Good for him — a guy has to have hobbies (other than playing the video game, Diablo IV).

You can’t stop the Trump Train

Why do I think it will happen? I mean, history is littered with things that could have happened easily but didn’t. A good friend pointed out to me that the only reason France isn’t a monarchy right now is that no one could agree on a flag in 1871. There’s always the precedent that everything could fall perfectly into place… and then nothing really comes of it. But I think it will happen, more or less as planned. My rationale is twofold, one part coldly Machiavellian and the other whimsical and mythological — the stuff of nascent, gestalt legend even now.

For one thing, the law has no independent existence from men and willpower. No statute, rule or constitution is a self-executing magic spell; they each and all require men to believe in them and carry them out. My tribe has taken control of the arms of government that write, interpret and execute the laws. That is men and that is willpower. The goals are attainable, and the men who want to meet them have the willpower and support to do it. That alone would be enough. 

But I don’t even think it’s everything, I am not as cynical as Yarvin. I genuinely, truly believe that there is something special, something magical, about Trump: Everything he touches turns to gold and everyone who stands against him confounds themself. You did not watch God personally intervene in the circles of the world on July 13 to save his life, only for things to fizzle out and die in the gutter a couple feet from the finish line. No, we are on the precipice of a US Renaissance. I believe that, and I am here to make it happen, too.

In 2018, I saved a meme of a skeleton with Trump’s iconic blonde hairdo, captioned, “The ride hasn’t even begun,” and it hadn’t. It’s still not over. There are no breaks on the Trump Train, choo-choo!

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Trump’s Appointments Are Fantastic for Making the US Awesome appeared first on Fair Observer.

Let’s say X is an issue slightly more complicated than what to do for dinner. Tempers are high, because tempers are always high when people deliberate how society should be organized. Now, does winning the vote give the 251 justification to ignore the views and wishes of the 249? No, of course not.

Why is that? The smaller number can always defect from the group and try to force the issue violently. Game theory — a model of strategic interactions — can describe this collapse of cooperation. When a smaller party defects from a larger group, it rejects cooperation and seeks to attain its goals at the larger group’s expense.

At their most basic level, all political discussions fall back on force — the primeval means of one person enacting their will, their rights, on other people. Voting is a proxy for force. When two groups vote, they are implicitly peacocking about what force they could use should they defect. Using our example, 251 is not that much greater a number than 249. Should the 249 defect, they might win a contest of brute force due to anything from combat skill to sheer luck. The game is unforecastable enough that it is in the larger group’s best interest to be conciliatory, work with the other party and perhaps tweak Proposition A’s terms to accommodate Proposition B’s proponents. If A doesn’t solve X, the 251 should be willing to try B. Both sides benefit from getting along.

Politics is more than a numbers game

Now, let’s be heretics. Imagine that instead of 500 men voting for A and B, you have a group of 1,000 people: 500 men and 500 women. Imagine 500 women and one man vote for A while 499 men vote for B. One person swayed the vote, but only one man voted for A. In this instance, the calculus of the game is monumentally different. That vote count of 501 may be bigger than 499, but the force that 500 women and one man can exert is lower than the force that 499 men can.

It is scarcely a secret that men are stronger than women on average, but most people don’t really understand how much stonger. The average woman is 67% as strong as a man. The male grip strength is nearly twice as strong as the female, and men retain their strength into much older age than women. Male athletes regularly outcompete female athletes of significantly greater experience. In a contest of bodily force, the 499 men could defect and trounce the 501, if they chose to do so.

You might object that, in the modern age, force has nothing to do with muscle mass since firearms exist. Guns are indeed instant force equalizers — even a legendary strongman like Hafþór Björnsson could be laid low by a bullet. But modern war hasn’t truly evolved past the need for physical strength. The average United States infantryman’s combat weight load is at least 120 lbs of gear, and the average carry load for a squad automatic gunner is an additional 80 lbs. There simply aren’t enough strong women to form all-female combat brigades. Further, mixed brigades underperform all-male brigades in every metric.

We can see how this is playing out in the Russia–Ukraine War. This isn’t a comic book movie — there are no Amazon brigades on either side, no Scarlett Johansson Black Widows kicking dozens of mens’ asses at once. Ukraine’s women have fled the country and its men have been fed into the meat grinder in a demographic collapse that may see the extinction of the Ukrainian people.

Despite our modern toys like planes, drones and missiles, the fundamental mechanics of warfare still have not changed. Physicality remains necessary on the battlefield. Until engineers invent futuristic power armor, war remains the province of men.

This reality offends too many Western liberal sensibilities. People misinterpret the statement that one group is physically weaker as saying that that group is morally inferior. But the former is a question of fact; the latter is a question of evaluation. This is politics, not morals. Politics is the art of the possible, the existential distinction between “friend” and “enemy.”

If you want to accomplish something possible, you want only strong friends; no weakness. You don’t merely want more votes, you want more potential force in your corner so that if someone decides to defect against an intolerable proposition, you have a decent shot of winning. So, for 499 men who oppose Proposition B, defection is not just easy — it’s incentivized by the stakes at play.

In US presidential politics, you play for all the marbles, and the outcome affects every living person on the planet. It’s the biggest, most dangerous and most important game around. And no game lasts very long when one side can defect easily and is incentivized to do so.

A recipe for defection

We see the problem that arises when significant force disparity exists on a scale of only a thousand people. American democracy involves hundreds of millions. Now, consider that American politics would have extremely different outcomes if only men voted. Americans are not divided into groups of roughly equal gender makeup; one political coalition consists of significantly more men than the other. So, one group has a much greater potential to force issues by defecting from the democratic process than the other does.

The force disparity in a contest between these two massive groups is not conducive to the system’s long-term stability. It can only last because one side is either unaware of its strength or unwilling to do what would be required to win kinetically.

Further consider that, in a contest between mere hundreds, the defecting side might be forced to kill friends, neighbors or kin to secure its political aims. In a contest between hundreds of millions across a sprawling continent, the people one would hypothetically need to eliminate would be nameless, faceless crowds hundreds of miles away. In any real conflict scenario, they’d be painted as political enemies or even dehumanized. Violence is easy if you genuinely believe you are pure and your enemy monstrous.

Mass democracy is a suicide cult. It binds ever-greater numbers of people into intractable disputes, where the losing side on each issue has only two options: defection or subjugation. An unshakeable belief that the vote is sacred and dissent sinful can induce the losing side to accept subjugation, but only for so long.

The winners never realize they may actually be weaker than the losers, and so they have no limiting principle — nothing to require them to be gracious, to compromise. The losers know that the only thing keeping them from defecting is the collateral damage. But I believe that, eventually, some major issue will make tempers flare uncontrollably, and someone will defect. In the midst of a major conflagration, things will “reset,” as blogger Curtis Yarvin (under his pseudonym Mencius Moldbug) uses the term: There will be a “non-incremental transition” from one form of government to another.

This fate is unavoidable. Water circling the drain can’t decide to reverse course. You can’t stop the flow; you must get out and wait for the tub to empty.

When the commune starts passing out the Flavor-Aid cups, you need to surreptitiously dump yours and disappear.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar and Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post American Mass Democracy Is Really a Suicide Cult appeared first on Fair Observer.

Stemming from the 1984 Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. National Resources Defense Council, Inc., the Chevron deference doctrine required US courts defer to the administration’s interpretation of ambiguous laws. This means that myriads of closed cases are now open for litigation as individuals and corporations across the country can and likely will seek to challenge old administrative decisions.

How did Chevron deference work?

When Congress makes laws, it cannot possibly predict every set of circumstances to which the law may be applied. This means that, when applying laws, the federal bureaucracy — which ultimately answers to the president — has to use its best judgment to apply the law in ambiguous instances. Agencies like the Department of Labor, the Securities and Exchange Commission and even the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employ not only lawyers but subject matter experts to help them make these decisions. 

In 1981, the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, successfully challenged the validity of the EPA’s interpretation of the Clean Air Act in the District of Columbia circuit court. Chevron Corporation, an oil and gas firm, appealed the ruling. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Chevron and the EPA’s interpretation. The Court reasoned that administrative agencies would be crippled if federal courts constantly questioned their regulations and overturned their decision. So, the Court stipulated that, as long as an agency follows a plausible interpretation of the law, federal courts are not to contradict it.

Originally, conservatives welcomed the decision, because the outcome favored their interests in fossil fuels. The principle on which Chevron was based was not, at the time, a partisan issue, and few observers expected the decision to be very significant. However, in succeeding years Chevron took on a life of its own. Federal courts cited the decision thousands of times.

Conservatives complained that Chevron was making it difficult for private parties to challenge any action of the bureaucracy. They also accused Democrats of deliberately passing ambiguous laws so that their allies in the administration could use “interpretation” to push liberal agendas.

Cases are tailored to attack specific laws

The United States is a common law jurisdiction — a trait which it inherited from England. In the common law tradition, courts cannot simply intervene to reinterpret the law when asked to do so. They must wait for a case to arise in which an injured party requires relief and granting that relief requires reinterpreting the law. Lawyers know this, and over the years they have developed the art of intentionally crafting a case so that the courts will need to reinterpret the law as desired. Loper Bright was one such case; it was designed to run afoul of Chevron.

Loper Bright Enterprises, a herring fishery, was required by law to keep a third-party monitor on every boat to prevent overfishing. The government had been paying the monitors, but the money ran out; the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), a branch of the Commerce Department thus instituted a new rule to shift the sudden burden: the fisheries themselves would have to pay the monitors’ salary. This caused an uproar amongst the herring fishermen. Their own salaries depended on the catch; sometimes, fish were scarce. But the monitors received a flat fee, regardless of the catch. Often, the monitor was the best-paid person on the boat, even including the captain.

Loper Bright sued Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, claiming the NMFS was misinterpreting the law. Naturally, the initial court dismissed the suit, citing Chevron. Loper Bright appealed up to the Supreme Court. Loper Bright found a ready audience in a Court packed with conservative textualists who disliked the idea of bureaucracies loosely applying the law. The court took the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) as requiring courts to use their own interpretation of the law when ruling cases. In a 6-3 decision split along ideological lines, the Court ruled in Loper Bright’s favor, overturning Chevron.

The consequences of overturning Chevron

The Loper Bright decision was not retroactive, which means it did not disestablish the past rulings in favor of the administrative state. However, dissenting justices pointed out that another recent case, Corner Post Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, allows litigants to bypass the six-year statute of limitations for civil suits. This means that all 40 years of Chevron-based decisions may now be thrown into question.

This will have extensive ramifications for the administrative state. There is likely to be a feeding frenzy of lawsuits within the coming years seeking to overturn any number of administrative rules. At present, there is no telling what the outcome will be, which policies will be overturned and how. For now, many are hopeful that this will result in a sharp curtailing of administrative power.

[Cheyenne Torres wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Talks: SCOTUS Creates Tantalizing Opportunities to Overturn 40-Year-Old Rules appeared first on Fair Observer.

I’m unconvinced that he fits the profile. Here’s why. Joe’s favorite son was Beau, who died at the age of 46. Hunter is the classic wayward second son, the playboy prince, whose education was neglected for another. Joe’s favor fell to the darling elder son, whom he believed was destined for greatness. When that golden boy was tragically laid low before his time, the second son, who was never meant for much, had to fill his massive shoes. In a good fairy tale, the younger son rises to the occasion. Hunter, however, has failed to live up to Beau’s intended legacy.

Make no mistake, Hunter is no saint. Hunter’s sexual dalliances are legendary. He raised money for his own ends using an art scheme. He had an affair with his brother’s widow and fathered a child with a stripper — something that Joe denied for years. Hunter is not a good person. But these misdeeds do not make him a supervillain; just an indolent, degenerate rake like any other.

Hunter attracts legal issues like rotten meat attracts flies, but to me, those only prove that he’s guilty of the same corruption that is endemic in our leadership caste. Still, to stay abreast of the headlines, you should understand some of the notable cases.

Hunter’s suspicious business with foreign organizations

Like any apparatchik, Hunter has served on the boards of numerous profitable companies and influential organizations. The two most famous are BHR Partners, a Chinese private equity firm that Hunter co-founded in 2013, and Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company that Hunter administered from 2014 to 2019. BHR has fingers in all sorts of troubling operations, from heavy mining that devastates Australia’s environment to continually stripping the US automotive industry.

If you find it interesting that the son of the current president, who was then the son of a former vice president, had transnational business interests in these two dubious organizations… Well, if you know what’s good for your professional reputation, you should probably stop finding it interesting.

But if you’re willing to risk looking further into it, you might wonder: What did Hunter bring to these board memberships? His academic achievements are a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Georgetown University, a law degree from Yale University and a Curriculum Vitae of “consulting” and “lobbying” at various banks and government-adjacent think tanks. Clearly, he did not provide BHR or Burisma with intricate knowledge of coal drilling or assembly line operation. No; Hunter brought his particular skill of “access” to the table. What is access? His dad, that’s what.

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has proven that Joe interacted with almost every foreign business partner Hunter collaborated with. To quote the report: “President Biden spoke by phone, attended dinners and meetings, and had coffee with his son’s foreign business associates. These individuals include Russian and Kazakhstani oligarchs, a Burisma executive, and Chinese nationals who collectively funneled millions to his son.” It’s shocking how, officially, claims of corruption are “unsubstantiated.” With evidence like this, what more could you possibly need?

The dystopian response to Hunter’s laptop story

You may recall a tiny, little story from 2020 about Hunter’s laptop. In October 2020, Hunter left his laptop at a repair shop and never retrieved it. One can only guess if such shoddy operational security is standard practice in the ruling class, or if this was a special case. Since he failed to reclaim his property, the shop’s owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, had a right to do as he pleased with it. So he did what any American would: He made money off it. After contacting the FBI, he copied the hard drive and attempted to share the disturbing information found within.

As is usually the case, the scandal here isn’t so much the event itself, but the reaction to it. When The New York Post ran an article detailing what the laptop appeared to reveal of shady dealings with Burisma, drug use and sexual escapades, the intelligentsia’s response was swift and terrible. A collection of esteemed intelligence operatives said outright that the laptop was fake, Russian propaganda. Every social media platform agreed to censor and suppress the story.

The regime surely believed the laptop story to be massively damaging. And they would have been right, had the story been allowed to circulate. Everyone involved knew that the laptop was legitimate from the beginning. Hunter recently threatened to sue Fox News over a miniseries involving the laptop story; quite interesting, since one of the elements of defamation is that things said about a person must be false to be defamatory, and it’s now very clear the laptop story was all true from the beginning.

One might conclude that, based on the intensity of the response, the worst may be true. But, so what? That was four years ago. It’s ancient history now — might as well be about the Pharaohs as far as our news cycle and political system are concerned. Who cares that the entire government works together to pressure social media companies into suppressing its unflattering truths? And that these moguls fall in line with little persuasion? Certainly not me. I love the overlords who filter our information for their own ends.

Still, someone who doesn’t love them might ask: What else could get this treatment? What other signals could get the reverse and be boosted for no reason beyond political power?

Hunter’s tax and gun charges

The final legal issue to discuss is the ongoing tax and gun cases that have been plaguing Hunter on and off since 2018. The thing about being a rich idiot is that you waste your money on stupid things while keeping poor track of your spending. Doing this while obtaining your funds from vague sources will inevitably draw the government’s attention, even when Daddy Joe is nominally in charge. If you hide your taxes, the IRS will consign you and your whole family to a pauper’s grave. Last April, Hunter was hit with a few tax-related charges: two misdemeanor counts for failure to file his taxes and one felony count of tax evasion.

Hunter has also caught a gun charge for purchasing a firearm when he was blitzed on cocaine. To buy a gun in the US, one must fill out a federal background check, and the forms require an attestation that the customer is clean of substances. So, sweeping that intoxication under the rug is a federal crime.

Hunter is currently facing trial before a federal court in Wilmington, Delaware. I doubt we will see a conviction come out of it, though. As always, some slippery trick will bail him out. We’ll soon see if I’m right.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Hunter Biden’s Past Makes Him Look Stupid, but Not Unusual appeared first on Fair Observer.

Everything you learned in high school civics class about how the US government operates is wrong. Maybe Schoolhouse Rock!, Scholastic Books and your teacher meant well. Maybe they were already commandeered and didn’t even know it. Or maybe they were maliciously trying to get you to buy into a smokescreen. Whatever the case, they were wrong.

Our government has three branches: executive, legislative and judicial. Technically speaking, the legislative branch is supposed to be supreme. Congress writes all the laws, and the other branches just apply them. The legislature is where the power is supposed to be. But is it? No.

Our government’s power really resides in the hands of the career bureaucrats who administer the application of the law throughout the various agencies of the executive branch. Many otherwise intelligent, powerful people seem not to know that this bureaucracy is part of the executive branch. They seem to believe it is its own branch.

The simple explanation is that power actually resides here because it matters much more who decides how the law is applied than how it is written. Police let speeders off with warnings despite them breaking traffic laws. District attorneys choose whether or not to prosecute depending on political goals instead of what the law explicitly says. It matters who decides how the law is applied and executed.

Unpunishable federal lethargy

Seven years ago, it was our priestly caste’s dogma that the deep state didn’t exist. Four years ago, they acknowledged it to exist but said it was inconsequential. Last month, they heralded it as the greatest thing. This phenomenon is called “celebration parallax.” It is where a phenomenon is first denied, then acknowledged but asserted to be unimportant, then celebrated as an ever-present, beneficial force.

The administrative state reveals itself in how the vast majority of the leaders running our supposedly democratic republic are completely unelected. They are accountable to no one but themselves and have interests diametrically contrary to its people. The 438 departments, agencies and sub-agencies of the executive branch employ roughly 4 million people. Almost none of their jobs are dependent on who won the last election. 

Proponents of the administrative state believe this is ideal. The administration trudges along, processing people’s paperwork all day, every day. However, many federal employees have a “property interest” in their jobs — their very employment is considered to be like property. Property cannot be taken by the government without due process. Since these workers are often unionized, and unions seek to keep their members employed, it is notoriously difficult for even the most despicable federal employee to be fired.

This all contributes to a do-nothing inertia, whereby the worker has every incentive to drag their feet on a task, and faces minimal chance of consequences for incompetence. The bureaucrats’ financial and political interests are different from ours — theirs rely on our continuing to be productive, while they have no incentive to be productive themselves. That’s the mindset of a farmer and his cows.

It’s abhorrent that millions hold these cushy government sinecures. As a competent, accomplished professional with a select set of skills, I’m revolted that my tax dollars pay an entire class of parasites to check a box on a form and then move it to a drawer. It’s maddening that we have to wait for them to sluggishly finish this process before we can achieve our own goals. I personally say the current administrative state — consisting of both the federal bureaucracy and the 50 parallel state ones — is uniquely oppressive compared to every government that has come before it. The Department of Motor Vehicles exercises more control over citizens, and in the most mind-numbing ways, than Nero ever could’ve over the Roman Empire.

How the total state conquered us

Only part of my problem with the administrative state is bloat and graft. This is more of a symptom than a root cause. The administrative state is terrible because it is a total state. The total state cannot tolerate competition — it must “red light, green light” everything within its jurisdiction. It does not grant that any other power has jurisdiction. The 438 executive agencies, departments and sub-departments administrate ever more of our lives. The number of life events that don’t involve the government’s permission or acknowledgment is rapidly shrinking. Family, business, religion, medicine, building, landscaping, hunting, et cetera have been ensnared in red tape. Tragedy of the commons or not, the total state cannot allow any of these parts of human living to go on as usual without administering them in some way.

How did this happen? It started with mere laziness on the part of Congress and the perennial truth that the government ever expands. The constitution tasks the executive branch with enforcing and executing the laws Congress makes. But the document provides precious little guidance about how it’s supposed to do that. The judicial branch helps some, but the “case or controversy” clause severely limits the federal judiciary’s proactivity. The judiciary can tell someone when they have done wrong but cannot warn them when they are about to do wrong. The constitution prohibits Congress from delegating its “essential legislative functions” to anyone else, and as much as it’d like to, it can’t put a hall monitor in everyone’s homes.

This left the executive branch with skeletons of tasks, no knowledge of how it’s supposed to execute them and no way to know it’s succeeded until after the fact. So the executive branch needed to enforce the law without being able to know how to do that, but could not take the authority to make public changes where Congress didn’t foresee how to do things. Their ad-hoc solution: rule-making!

Any time the government realized it needed to perpetuate itself into some new area of banal tyranny, it asked Congress to create a new department or agency. That agency then decided “rules” and interpreted and enforced them with its own agents and administrative law judges. This way, it could announce it was complying with the law.

What is the difference between a law and a rule here? Don’t ask questions.

No court battle can fix the problem

The other parts of the government are inordinately deferential to the administrative agencies thanks to the verdict of Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. NRDC, 467 U.S. 837. This established the doctrine of “Chevron Deference.” In brief, this 1984 Supreme Court ruling deterred the judiciary from prying into an executive agency’s actions unless absolutely necessary. I’m hopeful but unconvinced that the pending case of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo will upend Chevron Deference. Even if it does, it would make little difference; the inertia would remain.

No court case will undo the hackneyed despotism the agencies get up to every day. It could not without those agencies agreeing to kneecap themselves, which will never happen. The judiciary has no men at arms and no ability to enforce its judgments, even when it tells the executive it has gone too far. In the immortal words of Andrew Jackson, “[Justice] John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

Let’s presume that Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch successfully overturns Chevron Deference. An order is eventually issued saying all the sinecures are unconstitutional and hereby disestablished. No one from the Supreme Court will make the clerks and sub-vice-deputy-acting-director of whatever leave their cubicles, as there is no one to enforce it. Unlike previous Chief Justices, Chief Justice John Roberts is not regarded as a brave man who tangles with the other government branches. No, he prefers to guard the Court’s “legitimacy” by angering everyone equally rather than executing a particular vision of jurisprudence. These people won’t clean this mess.

The administrative state’s ludicrous bureaucracy sees the average person committing three unwitting felonies a day. If we are to be freed from this legal nightmare, more direct and assertive action needs to occur. We can look to Argentinian President Javier Milei for inspiration. When he took power in December 2023, he issued pink slips to half of Argentina’s government, collapsed agencies and departments and damned the consequences. This didn’t solve the country’s problems overnight, but sometimes ripping off the proverbial bandage is a critical step. 

The United States’s wound is much larger than Argentina’s. Implementing a radical reform on par with Milei’s would be painful. But it should be done, because the situation will only worsen with time. Government is neither solid nor liquid, but a gas — it expands to fill the available space. The administrative state will expand and administrate more and more available space, creating more absurd agencies and dystopian policies. How would you feel if someday a hypothetical Department of Respiration texted you, claiming you’ve exceeded your allotted breaths for the day and your taxes will reflect the increased carbon credits you’re using?

This farce needs to end. Any pain we suffer now is worthwhile if it helps us avoid that dystopian future. Who will pick up the crown laying in the gutter and gut the administrative state?

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post America Is a Bureaucratic Nightmare. We Need to Break Free. appeared first on Fair Observer.

Let’s be honest. They don’t do anything to sway voters because of how transparent the effort to do so is. Even less likely is Trump seeing the inside a prison cell. The cases are far too weak for that. If anything, the number and flimsiness of the indictments, 91 felony charges last I checked, (enough for their own dedicated Wikipedia page), merely has the chance of making fence-sitters sympathize with an embattled Trump.

There’s a good reason that it’s a tried-and-true phrase in law that “you can indict a ham sandwich.” A motivated DA can indict anyone with any charge, since the DA controls the indictment process. The DA hand-picks the jury to return the indictment they want and shows them only the evidence that favor’s the state’s case, even if it would not admissible at trial. 

The process is non-adversarial. Very rarely, like in the famous case of JonBenét Ramsey, does a grand jury go “rogue” and defy the will of the charging DA. In that case, the DA did not want to prosecute, but the grand jury returned an indictment. All the same, the DA got the outcome he wanted by refusing to proceed to trial despite the indictment. So great is the DA’s discretion that nearly everything until the trial itself begins is a matter of choice. I daresay that if a DA today wanted to, they could get a grand jury to indict the late Queen Elizabeth with the murder of JFK using one of Napoleon’s pistols. It is that one-sided and stacked in favor of the charging DA.

So, the number of charges against Trump is meaningless to me and should be to you, too. Frankly, I’m surprised they stopped at 91. Why not go for 100? Why not 1,000? Bury the man if you want to. After all, if you come for the king, you best not miss. And he’s not called “Teflon Don” for nothing. So, let’s take a look at the highlights. For this article, “whataboutism” is not a dirty word. We live in times where one side is pursuing the other criminally for things they do. Alinsky would be proud of his progeny.

The political agenda: jamming Trump in the election

In New York, authorities indicted Trump on 34 charges related to “falsifying business records,” which allegedly involved payments made to the adult actress Stormy Daniels for services rendered. The former is particularly funny. Democrats have made a lot of hullabaloo over the story of a liaison between Daniels and Trump, all the while ignoring that Hunter Biden fathered a child with one of his favorite strippers. His father Joe Biden hardly acknowledges the existence of the child. The idea that money didn’t, and doesn’t, change hands for adult entertainment in the halls of power is laughable, but Trump is the one getting attacked for it.

On the strength of broad references to his efforts to “overturn the election,” Trump faces indictments relating to the January 6 protests in Georgia and the District of Columbia. I want to point out that Trump has not been indicted for the only crime that would matter here, insurrection, which refers to rebellion, despite the antiquity of the term “insurrection.” He is also facing charges of “fraud” and “racketeering.” (Please try to hear the sarcasm.)

Our country’s priestly caste openly brags about “The Secret Shadow Campaign that ‘Saved’ the 2020 Election,” despite Trump facing indictments for election fraud. They call their efforts “fortification” rather than the word they charge Trump with. “Racketeering” is another legal weasel word. A “pattern of unlawful activity” can really just mean “we’re gonna get you with something.” Prosecutors are charging Trump with things that wouldn’t disqualify him from office. They are fragile charges anyway, because prosecutors know the goal is not to put him away but to jam him up in this election. And let’s not forget that House Democrats have recently threatened not to certify a Trump win. You may want to remind yourself what the protestors wanted to happen on January 6, 2021.

The only indictments that hold any real water are the Florida classified documents case. After leaving office in 2021, Trump took classified documents home. There are genuine questions about the legality of this action. It’s not obvious that the president can simply declassify things on a whim, in the exercise of an executive prerogative, without any paperwork. There may be something genuinely here.

However, the government’s effort is again undermined by hypocrisy. When Hillary Clinton used a private, poorly secured email server for official business, she faced no consequences. When Joe Biden, after leaving his job as vice president in 2017, did the very same thing as Trump and walked home with classified documents, he faced no consequences either. The special prosecutor said in early February that even though Biden did, he can’t be charged with anything because he’s too old and senile for any prosecution to be successful. So, prosecutors will charge Trump forty times for something Democrats have also done but will not be charged for.

The end of political decency has already occurred

If I am beating this horse too much, please stop me. It looks pretty dead. Why does this sort of stuff bother me so much? It both does and doesn’t.

It doesn’t because I think Carl Schmitt was right when he wrote in his book The Concept of the Political that “the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.” I am well aware that those who rule us are our enemies and are not our friends. That is, it doesn’t bother me in the same way it doesn’t bother me when the lion gets the zebra on the nature documentary, that’s just lions being lions.

Still, it does bother me, because we’re not supposed to treat one another like lions and zebras treat each other. Even so, it does always bother me when the lion gets the zebra because horses are my favorite animal. It’s a tightrope of conflicting ideas about how the world does work versus how I think it should work. Maybe this is just my conventional, conservative heritage coming out in some last gasps at relevancy. It feels like we shouldn’t be doing this sort of thing to each other. But we are, and it won’t stop.

If you haven’t already come to the realization that Trump is being unfairly treated because he is Orange Man Bad, then you won’t today. I could write another entire article about why Trump, despite being a 1990’s blue-dog Democrat when it comes to policy, is so unacceptable to the Left. He’s not being treated the way he is because of his qualities as a person; remember that the Clintons were guests of honor at Trump’s wedding to Melania in 2005. He was the same person then as he is now; the leadership caste found him acceptable then and doesn’t now.

I must make a caveat here too. I don’t particularly like Trump as an individual. I find his mannerisms hilarious,and appreciate all he’s done for meme culture, but he is still a morally odious person. He’s uniquely, personally unworthy of the movement that has coalesced around him. But Trump doesn’t hate me as a person. Trump doesn’t despise me for who I am as a white, heterosexual, Christian man. Trump doesn’t want to dilute my political power with an immigrant vote bank. The same cannot be said for the administrative state that stands in opposition to him. You go to war with the army and the general you have, not the one you wished you had. The opposition thinks this way too, just in the direction back at me.

That’s the concept of the political for you.

[Liam Roman edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Ruthless Political Agenda Behind 91 Indictments of Donald Trump appeared first on Fair Observer.

If you haven’t taken the time to watch it, I highly recommend that you do. It’s long, breaking two hours, and it is dense. Putin is a man who says one thing and really means five things, and that doesn’t work well in our modern soundbite-and-headline news culture. Still, I urge you to take the time to listen. Putin is not going to convince you of anything — at least I doubt that he will — but I don’t think the point of the interview was to “convince” anyone. In this article, I want to lay out my thoughts on the interview, my thoughts on the wider Russia–Ukraine war and what it really means.

A narrative is just good strategy when you’re playing the game

The title of this present article refers to Swedish video game developer Paradox Interactive. The company has made a name for itself publishing “grand strategy” games with titles like Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis. These are games where the player assumes control of a historical nation, people or dynasty and crafts the narrative and strategy of that nation, people or dynasty throughout history. I believe that this, in essence, is what Putin is doing now. He’s playing the grand narrative and grand strategy of the Rus’ people, and he’s playing to win.

If you’re aware of the video, you’re almost certainly aware of the various “fact checks” on Putin’s historical claims. Some of the more notable fact-checks on Putin’s historical claims come from reputable historians whom I greatly respect, like Tom Holland.

What I think most fact-checkers miss is that it doesn’t matter whether Putin’s historical claims are historically accurate. Putin is not writing a paper, giving a book report or making a slide deck presentation. He has no judge or teacher who will be giving out a grade. You cannot point out enough inconsistencies or inaccuracies or fabrications that will make Putin say “Drat, I’ve been found out” and order his armies to turn back in shame and go home. That’s not the point of Putin’s historical claims. Putin is establishing a narrative.

What do I mean by “narrative”? Quite simply, and quite directly, I mean that Putin is telling a story to himself, to his country and to us about why he has decided to go to war. A narrative is less about the past than it is about the present — it exists not to explain history but to justify policy. For this reason, a narrative is fundamentally incapable of being fact-checked or falsified.

The US has had its own fair share of narratives, most famously Manifest Destiny. Many other narratives have also gripped US theory and shaped global aims. The Monroe Doctrine was an American narrative about why America should be responsible for half the globe. The “Arsenal of Democracy” was a narrative about justifying American entry into World War II. Much more recently, the “Global War on Terror” was an American narrative about justifying our continual involvement across the planet in pursuit of everyone we decide to label “terrorist.” Domestically, “systemic racism” is a narrative we’ve concocted to justify the complete upending and reimaging of everything from major sporting events to college admissions to who gets promotions in order to accomplish ideologues’ visions of justice.

What do all of these narratives have in common? The characteristic that fact-checking them is as useful as fact-checking Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. Pushing your glasses up your nose and saying, “Actually, sweetie, that didn’t happen,” is both futile and entirely beside the point. You can point out all the historical inaccuracies that went into each of those narratives until the cows come home, but it won’t change a single thing that the people who believed in political narratives actually do. Narratives are supplanted by other narratives, not facts, because only nerds care about dry, disconnected facts — real people like stories.

What is the story Putin is telling?

What is Putin’s narrative — the grand story for his grand strategy?

As near as can be ascertained and summarized, Putin’s narrative is, “We are fighting to unite the long-divided lands of the Rus’.” Rus’ are the the ethnos from which “Rus-sia” derives its name, after all.

I don’t want to recap the entire history of the Rus, you may as well watch the interview for that. I’m sure you’ve seen the memes already about Putin —  “I’ll give you the thirty-second history, one minute at most,” and then he talks and talks and talks. Still, the real thirty-second recap is quite easy to grasp.

The Rus’ state started around the area of Kiev as a unification of various tribes under a Norse aristocracy. The Rus’ then converted to eastern Christianity and ultimately splintered into various realms under the suzerainty of the Golden Horde. Eventually, one of the more easterly splinter states, centered on Moscow, rose to prominence. Moscow agglomerated the lands of the Rus’ back together over long centuries and much war only, for it to all fall apart again in 1917 with the Bolsheviks (who Putin does seem to consider devils) and the USSR. The USSR, so the narrative goes, arbitrarily divided the lands of the Rus into constituent republics under Moscow’s overlordship. This then fell apart again in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. (Despite his loathing of the Bolsheviks, Putin sees this as another disaster.) This brings us to today, with Moscow once again trying to agglomerate the lands of the Rus’ under its overlordship.

Why is it important that Putin considers the divisions of the USSR’s constituent republics “arbitrary”? It’s because part of this narrative is that the Ukrainians are not their own people, but are confused and temporarily embarrassed Russians, even if they don’t know it. More precisely, Putin asserts that the Ukrainians are an artificial union of Russians, Poles, Lithuanians and Hungarians, but he mostly just cares about the Russian ones. Putin does not outright state, but seems to strongly imply, that the Ukrainian people should be shown that they truly are this collection and the sub-ethnicities that make up the Ukraine should return to their ethnic states.

If the Ukrainians are not their own people, but are just confused Russians, then bringing them back into the fold of Russia is a corrective action and not an unjust war. That’s why a compelling narrative is important. 

By this point, I’m sure you’re railing not just at historical inaccuracies but at the violation of liberal democratic sensibilities about how states are supposed to act. “How can he just say that they’re not their own people?” I have seen. “That’s ethnic cleansing!” I have also seen. “We just don’t do that anymore,” I have seen again and again. Well, they’re doing it, part of this narratival struggle is that the old, post-1945 order is being deliberately destroyed.

At the risk of comparing apples to oranges, imagine a similar situation in the United States with subnational identities during a hypothetically similar collapse to Russia in 1991. Are you a New Yorker, a Vermonter, a Texan… or are you an American? Am I an Indianan, by my birth, or an Arizonan, by my most long-standing abode, or am I an American first? Does being a New Yorker, a Vermonter, a Texan or an Arizonan mean that the supraethnic American state is not my legitimate sovereign? No, of course not. That’s the narratival argument that Putin is making; that Russia is the supra-Russian sovereign.

How will this narrative play out in Ukraine?

Russia is building a narrative, and that narrative is to justify assertions of political authority and sovereignty. Sovereignty always comes down to force. As Jean V. Dubois, a character from Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, astutely noted, political authority is force, force is violence, and violence is the supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived. If the narrative exists to serve and justify force, then, what political authority does it seem like Russia really wants to assert with its force? In other words, how does Putin plan to have this war end? 

I think that, ultimately, Ukraine will be completely partitioned. Russia will annex all the lands east of the Dnieper; it already de facto owns approximately half of those lands. As Ukrainian military strength degrades by the minute, it will no longer have the power to keep the Russians at bay behind an artificial boundary. Only the Dniepr, the most prominent natural boundary in Ukraine, will form a plausible barrier to the Russian advance.

After this, the west of the Ukraine will be divided up between Poland, Hungary and Romania. Sound implausible? Ostensibly, of course, the western partitions will not be annexations, and they will likely be done under a fig leaf of humanitarian aid. Still, they will happen all the same. Kiev might retain some authority in a de facto rump state, a sort of West Berlin-esque enclave, but this would be temporary.

I also see Belarusian accession to Russia itself as very likely. You can’t leave one of the lands of the Rus’ disunited after winning a major war over the very question of uniting the lands of the Rus’, now can you? Already, while Belarus is still nominally independent, it is a vassal of Moscow. Few nations, resurging after a collapse like Soviet Russia suffered in the 1990s, would leave such a large portion of their former territory behind. Watch that space.

Looking further ahead, a by no means inevitable, yet plausible outcome for Russia would be a restoration of the tsarist monarchy, under the Romanovs or otherwise. Putin would have all but restored the Russian Empire after a major victory in Ukraine. Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco did it; although he, not the exiled king, held all of the power, he restored the trappings of monarchy to borrow its legitimacy. Now, Franco is gone, yet Spain is still a kingdom. It’s not without precedent, and it is more doable in Russia than a Westerner might assume. Nostalgia for the monarchy remains surprisingly popular in the Russian Orthodox Church and among Russians generally. Russia already utilizes the imperial ensign, colors and aquila in multiple places that a republic would be embarrassed to do so. Watch this space, too.

So, what’s the conclusion? Russian feelings don’t care about your facts. Putin is stirring great Russian patriotic sentiment to correct perceived historical injustices that they’ve long felt slighted by. Enthusiasm for the war was never very unanimous in the US, and it continues to drop. Once US aid goes fully, there will not be much to stop Russia fully doing what it wills. Will the US get directly involved, starting a nuclear war, over who is sovereign on the Pontic Steppe? I think it very unlikely. Do svidanaya.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Putin’s Big Paradox Game in the Tucker Carlson Interview appeared first on Fair Observer.

Let’s back up. In 2012, the state of Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico, lost a case at the Supreme Court (Arizona v. United States). The Court ruled that federal immigration law is supreme over state laws; the states, therefore, cannot enforce immigration law or prevent people from crossing the southern border. Federal supremacy is an established principle of American constitutional law, but the negation of state authority to hinder and deal with illegal immigration was unprecedented. The Supreme Court decided that this was the federal government’s exclusive responsibility. To borrow Douglas Adams’s phrase, this has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move by those on the right. Either way, it is now the law of the land.

Since then, the federal government has largely abdicated its responsibility to enforce the southern border or immigration law.  More illegal immigrants than the total population of 33 states have been allowed into the country within the last four years alone.

Conservatives are outraged. One of the oldest responsibilities of any state is to make sure that that state’s borders are secure. If a state’s borders are not protected, its distinctiveness from other states is non-existent. Quite simply, a country without borders is not a country. For the last 14 years, elements of state governments have tried, and largely failed, to claw back any scrap of authority they can from the federal government in the area of immigration. At times, state law enforcement has interdicted illegal immigration on human trafficking grounds, other times on drug smuggling grounds and still other times on grounds as simple as trespassing. But no matter what, the federal leviathan has asserted itself in the arena, and the states have quailed — until now.

Texas has taken matters into its own hands

The state government of Texas has decided to stop playing around. On September 23, 2023, Governor Greg Abbott called up elements of the Texas State Guard and evicted units of the United States Border Patrol (USBP) from Shelby Park, a vital sector of the southern border abutting the Rio Grande River, where the tide of illegal immigration is often highest. Abbot has also had barriers of concrete, shipping containers and razor wire constructed. The federal government lodged a lawsuit against Texas. The case has made its way to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit with a speed that only such a critical case could have. The circuit court issued an injunction against the federal government, forestalling the federal authorities from removing Texas’s fortifications.

The government appealed that injunction straight to the Supreme Court. The Court vacated the injunction without issuing an opinion. The vacating of the injunction gives the federal authorities the right to remove Texas’s fortifications while the case proceeds. Generally, the Court’s ruling on an injunction serves as a bellwether for its decision on the case itself. Therefore, this ruling would typically indicate that Texas’s efforts will fail on the merits. In simpler, less contentious, times, that is where the drama would have ended. Texas would have decried the decision, vowed to fight the case on its merits and allowed the USBP to remove the fortifications.The conclusion of the case would have been the end of the debate.  

Not this time. Abbott has defied the Court’s order vacating the injunction. The Texas Guard has actively denied the USBP access to the park to remove the fortifications. Moreover, they have added more fortifications to the border after the injunction was vacated, further obstructing the removal process. The Texas Guard and the USBP are still currently in a standoff.

Abbott invokes the compact theory of federalism

On January 24, Abbott issued a statement accusing the federal government of breaking the “compact” between the states. This language borrows directly from the Confederate state of Virginia’s 1861 secession ordinance. Abbott has thus invoked the “compact theory” of American federalism. According to this theory, the US constitution is a treaty between the states. If the states or the federal government violate this treaty, every party is free from its obligations. This theory was the rationale for the Confederate states’ secession from the Union. As early as 1793 (Chisholm v. Georgia), and again after the Civil War in 1869 (Texas v. White), the Supreme Court rejected this theory, insisting that the United States was not a treaty organization but a sovereign republic. By invoking the compact theory, then, Abbott is calling into question the federal government’s claims to sovereignty.

Abbott is not calling for secession yet. Instead, he says that, since the federal government has failed to fulfill the compact, it falls on the states to uphold it. If America is a marriage, this is an accusation of adultery. It does not say “divorce” yet, but it could lay the groundwork for it.

Abbott’s statement lays out the derelictions of duty of which he accuses the Biden administration. President Joe Biden has failed to enforce federal immigration law by refusing to prosecute immigrants for illegal entry. He argues that the federal government has breached Article IV, Section 4 of the constitution: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion.”

Texas must thus invoke its right to self-defense laid out in Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress … engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.” Abbott invokes Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion in Arizona v. United States. In that opinion, Scalia wrote, “The State has the sovereign power to protect its borders more rigorously if it wishes, absent any valid federal prohibition.”

Texas has said it is ready to rumble — whether in defense of the whole or in defense from the whole remains to be seen.

In happier, less contentious times, Abbott’s would have been little more than a fever-dream manifesto. The statement reads like something out of an alternate history novel. But, at the time of writing, up to 25 state governors, all Republicans, have vowed to support Texas in a looming, real showdown with the federal government. Will the federal authorities blink? I don’t know. No one knows. This is a dispute with little precedent. Cooler heads probably will prevail and reach a compromise deal. 

But they might not. The federal government doesn’t like being challenged or having its authority eroded. And make no mistake, no matter what happens, the federal government’s authority will be eroded by this somehow, whether the federal authorities back down, and their authority is eroded, or Texas backs down, and we see the USBP open the border to allow millions more illegal immigrants into the country. That doesn’t even begin to countenance the worst thing that could happen from a major standoff between armed enforcers of state and federal governments. 

Will that happen? I do not know. But I know that, on the morning of April 12, 1861, precious few people woke up thinking they’d be at war by the time they went to bed.

[Anton Schauble and Liam Roman edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Republican Governors’ Revolt Tests Biden’s Willpower Over Illegal Immigration appeared first on Fair Observer.