(I knew it! Pelosi’s “You have to pass it before you can read it!” With Affordable Care Act)

McConnell Wants Me To Pass His $106B Bill Without Reading It? Hell No

Mike Lee. Feb. 2, 2024

Yesterday, a reporter standing outside the Senate chamber told me that after four months of secrecy, The Firm™️ plans to release the text of the $106 billion supplemental aid/border-security package — possibly as soon as today.

Wasting no time, she then asked, “If you get the bill by tomorrow, will you be ready to vote on it by Tuesday?”

The words “hell no” escaped my mouth before I could stop them. Those are strong words where I come from. (Sorry, Mom.)

The reporter immediately understood that my frustration was not directed at her. Rather, it was directed at theLaw Firm of Schumer & McConnell(The Firm™️), which isperpetually trying to normalize a corrupt approach to legislating=, in which The Firm™️:

Spends months drafting legislation in complete secrecy

Aggressively markets that legislation based not on its details and practical implications (good and bad), but only on its broadest, least-controversial objectives

Lets members see bill text for the first time only a few days•= (sometimes a few hours) before an arbitrary deadline== imposed by The Firm™️ itself, always with a contrived sense of urgency

Forces a voteon the legislation on or before that deadline, denying senators any real opportunity to read, digest, and debate the measure on its merits, much less introduce, consider, and vote on amendments to fix any perceived problems with the bill or otherwise improve it.

Whenever The Firm™️ engages in this practice,it largely excludes nearly every senator from the constitutionally prescribed processin which all senators are supposed to participate. By so doing, The Firm™️ effectively disenfranchises hundreds of millions of Americans — at least for purposes relevant to the legislation at hand — and that’s tragic. It’s also un-American, uncivil, uncollegial, and really uncool.

So why does The Firm™️ do it?

Every time The Firm™️ utilizes this approach and the bill passes — and it nearly always does —The Firm™️ becomes more powerful.

The high success rate is largely attributable to the fact that The Firm™️ has become very adept at (a)enlisting the help of the (freakishly cooperative) corporate media, (b) exerting peer pressure in a way that makes what you experienced in middle school look mild by comparison, and (c) rewarding those who consistently vote with The Firm™️ with various privileges that The Firm™️ is uniquely capable of offering, such as committee assignments, help with campaign fundraising, and a whole host of other widely coveted things that The Firm™️ is free to distribute in any manner it pleases.

It’s through this process that The Firm™️ passesmost major spending legislation. And it’s through this process that The Firm™️ likely intends to pass the still-secret, $106 billion supplemental aid/border-security package, which The Firm™️ has spent four months negotiating with the luxury of obsessing over every sentence, word, period, and comma.

I still don’t know exactly what’s in this bill, although I have serious concerns with it based on the few details The Firm™️ has been willing to share.But under no circumstances should this bill— which would fund military operations in three distant parts of the world and make massive, permanent changes to immigration law —be passed next week.

Nor should it be passed until we have had adequate time to read the bill, discuss it with constituents, debate it, offer amendments, and vote on those amendments.

There’s no universe in which those things will happen by next week.

Depending on how long it is and the complexity of its provisions, theminimum period of timewe should devote to this bill after it’s releasedshould be measured in weeks or months, not days or hours.

https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/02/schumer-and-mcconnell-want-senators-to-pass-their-106b-border-bill-without-reading-it-hell-no/

Biden's Treading On Texas’ Sovereignty, Not The Other Way Around. 1/3

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND FEBRUARY 01, 2024

Democrat accomplice media have been misrepresenting nearly everything about Texas’ efforts to secure the border. But it’s time to separate fact from fiction.

For starters:No, Texas isn’t flouting the Supreme Court. Last week, the court vacated a lower court injunction that prohibited the federal government from removing razor-wire fencing that Texas had erected on the border. Coverage of both the decision and Texas’ response was replete with errors.

For instance, Vox inaccurately headlined its article on the high court’s decision, “The Supreme Court Says No, Texas Can’t Use Razor Wire to Restrain Federal Agents.” And soon after the court released its order and Texas vowed to continue using razor wire, the media began peddling the false narrative that the Lonestar State was ignoring the Supreme Court’s decision.

However, both assessments are wrong: The Supreme Court did not hold (or even imply) that Texas could not erect razor wire, and thestate did not flout the court’s decisionbecausethe court didn’t order Texas to do anything.

Rather, the Supreme Court’s order merely removed the injunction a lower court had entered against the Biden administration, meaning the federal government could continue to remove Texas’ fencing — and Texas could keep installing it.

Supremacy Clause Doesn’t Dissolve State Sovereignty

The media have also inaccurately presented the import of the supremacy clause. Members of the legacy press, politicians, and academics areframing the supremacy clauseas bestowing on theBiden administration an automatic winin every disagreement with Texas. But theclause does no such thing.

Thesupremacy clause, which is found in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, provides that theConstitution and all federal laws are “the supreme law of the land.” The clause thus provides that federal law trumps state law, but which state laws are trumped and when is a complex question. Thus merely invoking the supremacy clause says little to nothing regarding the propriety of Texas’ efforts to secure the border.

Further, those proclaiming that Texas’ every action is an attack on our constitutional system are also ignoring that our Constitution’s view of federalism recognizes thatboth the federal and state governments are sovereignsthat the other must abide, however complex that line of state sovereignty might be.

Sovereignty, Supremacy, and the Standoff

Coverage of theEagle Pass standoffprovides an apt illustration of theinaccurate reportingsurrounding the supremacy clause and the disregard for Texas’ sovereignty.

Eagle Pass is the border town in Texas where, earlier this month, Gov. Greg Abbott declared an emergency and seized control of Shelby Park. Under the governor’s directive, the Texas National Guard then limited access to the park, including by federal Border Patrol agents…

https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/01/the-biden-administration-is-treading-on-texas-sovereignty-not-the-other-way-around/

>>20345491

2/3

In response, the Department of Homeland Security, which had been using Shelby Park as a staging area for illegal aliens, sent two letters to the state demanding unlimited access to the park. Thoselettersand Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s responsesexpose the fallacyof many of the legal arguments critics make to condemn Abbott’s efforts.

DHS’s first letter to Texas, dated Jan. 14, 2024, demanded that “Texas cease and desist its efforts to block Border Patrol’s access in and around the Shelby Park area and remove all barriers to access in the Shelby Park area.” DHS based that demand on itsclaims that “the State of Texas [has] impeded operationsof the Border Patrol,” further arguing Texas’ conduct “conflict[s] with the authority and duties of Border Patrol underfederal law and are preemptedunder the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.”

“Texas’s actions also improperly seek to regulate the federal government,” DHS added. “[T]he entire area to which Border Patrol has been denied access is well within 25 miles of the international border and thus within the zone to which Border Patrol has an express statutory right of access without a warrant.”

Border Patrol no doubthas both authority and duties related to immigration enforcement**. And given the federal government’s use of Shelby Park to “stage” the aliens, Texas’ decision to block access likely did interfere with DHS’s operations.But the supremacy clause does not allow DHS simply to commandeer private propertyor the property of another sovereign by just demanding it. (Cases of emergency raise other issues, but Texas maintains that Border Patrol may access any part of the park in the event of an emergency.)

DHS knows this, which is why in its initial letter to Texas, it referenced two different theories purporting to justify the Border Patrol’s access to the park. First, the letter claimed that a Memorandum of Agreement entered between DHS and Eagle Pass in December 2015 granted DHS the right to “continuous and uninterrupted access to all gate locations.”

Whether that Memorandum of Agreement gave DHS a property right in Eagle Pass is unclear. Texas argues that under the state Constitution, Eagle Passcould not grant Border Patrol a property right without the state’s approval. A court may eventually have to decide whether the Memorandum of Agreement gives DHS unimpeded access to Eagle Park, but that dispute hasnothing to do with the supremacy clause.

Second, DHS claimed that Border Patrol has an express statutory right of access because the Shelby Park area “is well within 25 miles of the international border.” But as Paxton stressed in his response letter to DHS, the federal statute that authorizes “U.S. Border Patrol warrantless access to land within 25 miles of the border,” expressly provides that suchaccessis “for the purpose of patrolling the border to prevent the illegal entry of alien into the United States.”

On the contrary,DHSis seeking tofacilitate illegal entry and use the property to process the migrants. Thus, that statute does not grant DHS the access it demands.

In response to Paxton’s letter rejecting DHS’s demands, DHS sent a second missive. In it, the federal agency madeno reference to the supremacy clauseor a statutory right to access the property — a tacit admission that its initial arguments were bunk. Instead,DHS claimedthe federal governmentactually owned the propertyin and around Eagle Pass, having obtained title by condemnation.

To support that assertion, DHS referenced a final judgment entered in 2016. The docket from that case does indeed show that the George W. Bush administration obtained ownership of various plots of land in and around Eagle Pass. And if the federal government does, in fact, own the property under dispute, Texas said it “would of course remove any obstructions to federal land.”

(**this note is where TX is going to argue the Fed Governmentis not enforcing, immigration and enforcement, the Biden Admin is actually flaunting the Law. They are aiding and abetting illegal immigrants flooding in. So if either party is disobeying the “Supremacy Clause”, it the Federal Government doing it)

https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/01/the-biden-administration-is-treading-on-texas-sovereignty-not-the-other-way-around/

>>20345492

3/3

Texas, however, suggested it had “serious reasons to question bothof your new claims of federal property rights.” DHS’s own map, Paxton wrote, “shows most of the tracts you reference fall outside the perimeter area secured by Texas at Shelby Park.” And for those parcels identified as in the vicinity of the park, “publicly availablerecords suggest the United States does not even purport to ownwhat your latest letter claims.” Paxton ended his letter by asking DHS to provide it with official plat maps and deeds identifying the property the United States owns, as well as an explanation of how exactly Texas is preventing federal agents from accessing those parcels.

DHS has yet to reply, but this last exchangeconfirms it is the Biden administration treading on Texas’ sovereignty, not the other way around.

If the Biden administration actually owns the property at issue, it could have said that long ago and proven it,but it didn’t. Instead, DHS merely invoked the supremacy clause, even though neither the Constitution nor federal law provided Border Patrol with the right to compel access to Shelby Park. (Again, emergencies are a different situation.) The Biden administration took this tack even thoughit could haveinstead expeditiously obtained access to the propertyby filing a condemnation proceeding.

The Constitution authorizes condemnation proceedings, and Congress provided the U.S. government authority to obtain ownership over real property when needed ==to control and guard U.S. borders, with the property owner receiving the fair value of the land. In fact, the federal government obtains rights in the property upon filing the condemnation petition, ensuring timely access.

Texas might not like the Biden administration taking bycondemnation ownershipof Shelby Park, butthat’s where the supremacy clause comes in.Federal law is the supreme law of the land, and Texas’ sovereignty is now secondary.

That the Biden administration hasn’t yet used the power to condemn Shelby Park suggests the president knows most Americans wouldn’t be too happy if the federal government ripped a park away to provide an encampment for those illegally entering our country.

DHS can avoid that spectacle, though, if it can establish that an earlier administration already obtained title to the disputed property. But even then, theBiden administration’s fight with Texas over border security is just beginning.

https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/01/the-biden-administration-is-treading-on-texas-sovereignty-not-the-other-way-around/

>>20345505

We have extremely incompetent leaders with serious mental disorders