President Donald Trump suggested on a Fox News Sunday interview that he planned to act beyond his legal authority to implement radical changes in immigration and healthcare policies based on an interpretation of a recent Supreme Court ruling that gives him “powers that no one believed the president had.”
Axios reported that the legally precarious strategy, which removes Congress from the legislative process, is based on a theory of the executive branch presented in June by John Yoo, the attorney for the George W. Bush administration who drafted the memorandum justifying the use of torture as a technical interrogation.
The first of the controversial orders will cover immigration, according to Axios. Trump told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that he would also invoke the authority to create “a complete and comprehensive health care plan.”
You heard me yesterday. We are signing a health care plan within two weeks, a complete and comprehensive health care plan that the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave me the right to make. So we are going to solve: we are going to sign an immigration plan, a health care plan and various other plans. And no one will have done what I’m doing in the next four weeks.
The Supreme Court gave the President of the United States powers that no one thought the President had by approving, by doing what he did, his decision on DACA. And DACA will also be attended. But we are getting rid of it, because we are going to replace it with something much better. What we’ve already gotten rid of, which was most of Obamacare: the individual mandate. And I’ve already earned that. And we also won in the Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court decision on DACA allows me to do things about immigration, health care, and other things that we have never done before. And you will find that it will be a very exciting two weeks.
Yoo argued in a National Review article that a recent Supreme Court decision confirming the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program empowered the president to avoid Congress through procedural discretion. : Choose not to enforce federal laws.
While the orders may be illegal, Trump could probably run out of time in court until election day, according to Yoo. It would also create inherited headaches for any successor, who would have to enforce the laws unless and until the courts overturn them, Yoo said.
“Suppose President Donald Trump decides to create a national right to bear arms openly,” wrote Yoo. “It could declare that it would not enforce federal firearm laws and that a new ‘Trump permit’ would free any holder of state and local gun control restrictions.”
“Even if Trump knew that his scheme lacked legal authority, he could get away with it during the presidency,” he added. “And furthermore, even if the courts declared the permit illegal, his successor would have to continue to apply the program for another year or two.”
“According to Chief Justice Roberts, the Constitution makes it easier for presidents to break the law, but reversing those violations is difficult, especially for their successors,” he concluded.
Yoo is famous for what is known as the “torture memorandum,” which justified the use of the submarine by the Bush administration through a constitutional reading called “unitary executive theory.”
According to the theory, in times of war a president can exercise virtually unlimited authority, which can only be verified by the purchasing power of Congress. Because the “war on terror” may not have a definitive end, the president would have quasi-dictatorial power in this area for the foreseeable future, including the deployment of federal troops for police action and the suspension of the Fourth ban. Registration amendment and unreasonable seizures.
Axios reported that Yoo’s article was seen on Trump’s desk and that the president mentioned it in meetings with attendees. Yoo told the outlet that he had discussed the theory with White House aides in recent virtual meetings.
When Trump first mentioned the plan, in a recent Telemundo interview, he fired shots from inside the Republican store. The order would not only include DACA, which the administration has just spent years struggling to repeal, but Trump claimed it would also create a path to citizenship.
“I’m going to make DACA a part of that,” said the president. “We are going to have a path to citizenship.”
The White House immediately withdrew that claim, which risks alienating Republican immigration hawks, as well as the anti-immigrant base that led Trump to the 2016 primary and general elections.
“This does not include amnesty,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.
Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas quickly tweeted that “it would be a HUGE mistake if Trump tries to illegally expand the amnesty.”
“There is ZERO constitutional authority for a President to create a ‘path to citizenship’ by executive mandate,” he wrote.
At the same time, Trump said he would switch to a merit-based immigration system, rather than one based on family connections, something that intransigent anti-immigrants like White House chief adviser Stephen Miller has wanted for years.
Under Trump’s previous “merit-based” proposal, immigrants would be selected through a point-based system, which gains “extraordinary talent, professional and specialized vocations and an exceptional academic record.” However, the Republican-led Senate was not on board.
In 2018, Trump offered a path to citizenship as a concession for Congress to authorize $ 25 billion for his wall along the Mexican border, but lawmakers declined. In 2019, the Democratic-led House passed a bill that would allow Dreamers to apply for citizenship, but the Senate has yet to vote on it. The White House said at the time that Trump would veto that bill.
It was not immediately clear how Trump would draft an executive order to create a health care plan. He made Obamacare’s “repeal and replacement” a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign, but all efforts to secure enough Republican votes in Congress failed.
