Trump Must Continue Undoing Obama’s Massive Federal Power Grabs

RNLA Executive Director Michael Thielen wrote today in The Daily Caller about how leaders in the Trump Administration are starting to undo the regulatory power grabs of the Obama Administration and being attacked for it by liberals:

For the eight years of the Obama Administration, liberals worked through extra-legal means to achieve the policy goals they desired that did not have enough popular support to be passed by the legislature. Sometimes this took the form of convincing judges to ignore the text of statutes and regulations and decide cases on the basis of policy, over-ruling the will of the people expressed through their representatives. Other times, it took the form of agencies ignoring the rule of law, seizing power, and enacting new policies without regard to their statutory limits and without proper procedures such as rulemaking following notice and comment.

He began with the example of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's proposal to undo the "net neutrality" rules enacted in 2015:

The “telecommunications service” classification was designed for monopoly telephone services and gives the FCC extremely broad authority to regulate. Extending this regulatory authority to Internet service is unquestionably an extension of the FCC’s authority. It was an extension that was authorized not by Congress but by the FCC itself. 

Even worse, this power grab was unclear. . . . Chairman Pai’s proposed plan would return Internet service regulation to the previous regulatory framework—which had been upheld by the Supreme Court—and restore the FCC’s authority to the level granted by Congress. He publicly released it, unlike in 2015 when the details were released only after the FCC had already adopted them.

Mr. Thielen also points to the examples of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) deputy director's desperate bid to maintain control of the CFPB against President Trump's newly appointed acting director, who has announced a regulatory freeze, and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt ending the "sue and settle" practices by which activist outside groups controlled the interpretation and implementation of the EPA's statutes and regulations.  Mr. Thielen concludes by noting:

These are just a few examples of the immense amount of work remaining to be done in the Executive Branch to restore the rule of law. This effort is the opposite of a power grab. It is giving power back to the people through their elected representatives and taking power away from unelected activists inside and outside of government.

We thank these courageous leaders and President Trump for fighting to restore the rule of law to the federal government against the attacks of liberals and obstruction of Obama-holdover and career staff members in federal agencies.

DACA - A Violation of the Separation of Powers

Today, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced plans to phase out DACA, or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA was a policy enacted under former President Obama as a benefit program for children who entered this country illegally and without documentation. In short, DACA is yet another example of the Obama Administration's repeated Executive overreach and interfering with the government's separation of powers.

General Sessions announced his remarks about DACA and its rescission:

This policy was implemented unilaterally to great controversy and legal concern after Congress rejected legislative proposals to extend similar benefits on numerous occasions to this same group of illegal aliens. In other words, the executive branch, through DACA, deliberately sought to achieve what the legislative branch specifically refused to authorize on multiple occasions. Such an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the Executive Branch. . . . 

We inherited from our Founders—and have advanced—an unsurpassed legal heritage, which is the foundation of our freedom, safety, and prosperity. As the Attorney General, it is my duty to ensure that the laws of the United States are enforced and that the Constitutional order is upheld. . . . 

This does not mean they are bad people or that our nation disrespects or demeans them in any way. It means we are properly enforcing our laws as Congress has passed them. . . . Our collective wisdom is that the policy is vulnerable to the same legal and constitutional challenges that the courts recognized with respect to the DAPA program, which was enjoined on a nationwide basis in a decision affirmed by the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit specifically concluded that DACA had not been implemented in a fashion that allowed sufficient discretion, and that DAPA was “foreclosed by Congress’s careful plan.”. . .  

Congress should carefully and thoughtfully pursue the types of reforms that are right for the American people. Our nation is comprised of good and decent people who want their government’s leaders to fulfill their promises and advance an immigration policy that serves the national interest. We are a people of compassion and we are a people of law. But there is nothing compassionate about the failure to enforce immigration laws. . . . The compassionate thing is to end the lawlessness, enforce our laws, and, if Congress chooses to make changes to those laws, to do so through the process set forth by our Founders in a way that advances the interest of the nation. . . .

Generally, it is the role of Congress as the Legislative Branch to create the rules; the duty of the President and the administration, as the Executive Branch, is to enforce the laws and create regulations--not in contradiction of the will of the Legislative Branch. This last part is where Obama's DACA fails, and President Trump and Attorney General Sessions should be applauded for respecting the rule of law and returning this important policy decision to Congress.

Does the Real Election Interference Involve the Democrats?

In May, RNLA Executive Director Michael Thielen recounted the Obama administration’s long held propensities for election tampering, the latest effort being the DHS’s bid under former Secretary Jeh Johnson to infiltrate numerous state election voter databases during the 2016 election cycle.

Johnson testified last week before the Senate Intelligence Committee, however, that, even though he did not believe that “votes were altered or suppressed in some way,” his organization did not report on potential Russian hacking for the sake of non-partisanship.

David Warrington, RNLA Vice President for Election Education, highlights the Democratic Party’s herculean attempt during this hearing to scapegoat anyone else for its own illegal forays into elections:

Leaving aside for a minute that Russia ‘hacking’ the 2016 election is a wildly inaccurate portrayal of Russia's digital meddling — which to date are only allegations, nothing proven — there's likely another reason Johnson wasn't quick to cry foul: some of the known, legitimate attempts to hack into state election databases were perpetrated by Johnson's own organization, the Obama-led DHS.

DHS is not alone.  As we detailed Friday, even Democrats are raising questions of interference with the election regarding Obama Administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch. What does all this mean?  As Warrington concludes the continued fixation on Russia:

They are little more than an attempt to protect the previous administration from being exposed as election meddlers, albeit unsuccessful ones. But Hillary Clinton's leaked emails, which showed the Democratic National Committee colluding with her campaign to ensure she won the nomination over Bernie Sanders, have already proven that meddling in democratic processes is a strategy the left employs to win. 

Partisan politics in the end is driving this Russia hacking myth. And as Michael Thielen put it, “the reality is that there’s more evidence linking a US federal agency under Obama to state election hacking than there is linking Russia to the presidential election.”

Fox News Targeted by FEC Democrats for Allowing Candidates a Forum to Speak on Issues

Democrats in federal agencies continue the assault on the rights of U.S. citizens by forcing partisan policy through executive actions and regulatory overreach in place of actual legislation or the rule of law. The separation of powers has never been more crucial in our history than it is right now because of the recent regulation trends. As a citizen, regardless of your party affiliation, you should be paying extremely close attention to the Obama administration's continued attempts to circumnavigate and regulate the greatest of all of our freedoms: the freedom of speech.

A complaint was filed on August 3, 2015, and since that time there appears to be a little problem between the FEC Democrats and Fox News.

Finally making good on long-harbored anger at conservative media, Democrats on the Federal Election Commission voted in secret to punish Fox News' sponsorship of a Republican presidential debate, using an obscure law to charge the network with helping those on stage.

It is the first time in history that members of the FEC voted to punish a media outlet's debate sponsorship, and it follows several years of Democratic threats against conservative media and websites like the Drudge Report . . .

Thankfully the Republicans disagreed and caused a 3-3 tie, resulting in no fines being levied. Still, it gives reason for pause. Why is encouraging more speech and sharing more information about our candidates a bad thing, on either side? Who truly believes that the government should control press room decisions when there are specifically express exceptions for the press? Most are left scratching their heads attempting to understand what it is the Democrats were hoping to accomplish other than silencing conservative speech, and that is the main point. Republican FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman spoke specifically to that fact in a statement.

Astonishingly, three FEC commissioners (Weintraub, Ravel, Walther) concluded that Fox News violated the Federal Election Campaign Act by making a prohibited corporate contribution to the 7 candidates invited to the debate. That is, by expanding the debate format to a broader group of candidates, Fox News violated the law . . .

Three FEC commissioners (Lee Goodman, Matthew Petersen, Caroline Hunter) blocked this regulatory overreach into newsroom editorial judgments. Commissioners Petersen and Hunter and I voted to free Fox News' editorial judgments from the FEC's regulatory jurisdiction under the Free Press Clause of the Constitution and the Press Exemption in the Federal Election Campaign Act. Congress included in the Act an explicit exemption for the press and we respect Congress' decision.

The Commissioners who blocked the left-leaning fine released a fairly straightforward statement of reasons.

The attempts by the left to silence speech are well documented and continue to proliferate agency by agency. At some point, if all remains constant, the dam will break either through legislation or regulatory overreach. Our rights are being eroded and history shows us that it starts with political speech and ends with complete censorship. Before you know it, the government will be telling us what we can and cannot say about our leaders, levying fines for posting YouTube® videos expressing our thoughts/opinions or sharing our religious beliefs with others on Facebook®. The solution is simple. If you do not agree with a point of view, turn it off, or better yet, simply do not watch it. Political correctness is slowly crippling what is best about our country: the right to disagree and debate varying points of view. Without that right, we cease to be truly free.