Arizona Democrat Wants to Get Rid of ‘In God We Trust’ License Plates

State politician claims 'extremist hate group' is benefiting

An Arizona state lawmaker is trying to get rid of “In God We Trust” specialty license plates because he says an “extremist hate group” is benefiting from each purchase.

The non-profit says it is the victim of a “misinformation campaign.”

Democratic state Sen. Juan Mendez introduced a bill seeking to bar the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) from selling the plate with the national motto because proceeds go to the Scottsdale-based religious freedom law firm, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

Arizona allows non-profit organizations, like ADF and the University of Arizona, to create specialty plates.

A portion of the purchase — no tax dollars — goes to the group.

The Secular Coalition for Arizona, a group that opposes religion in government, directed Mendez to find out where the money from the plates was going, AZ Central reported.

“Hopefully in the future, we can put in place some commonsense guidelines that would bar hate groups from earning money through Arizona license plates,” Mendez said in a statement. “State dollars should not be funding an organization that works to strip residents of our state of their human rights and human dignity.”

ADF, which has won several religious liberty cases at the Supreme Court, has been labeled a “hate group” by the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center.

ADF was involved in a Phoenix case challenging the city’s gay anti-discrimination ordinance and the Hobby Lobby case regarding the right of a business not to provide contraceptive coverage to their employees for religious purposes.

On ADOT’s website, the “In God We Trust” plates state that profits go to promote “the motto, First Amendment rights, ‘and the heritage of this state and nation.'”

ADF said it should have every right to benefit from the plates it created, just like every other group in the state that designed a specialty plate to express its viewpoint.

There are about 60 different specialty plates offered for purchase in the state.

“It’s disappointing to see elected officials become uncritical pawns in these ugly propaganda campaigns,” Kristen Waggoner, ADF senior vice president of U.S. legal division, said in a statement.

“The SPLC did good work years ago, but they’ve been widely discredited for decades by investigative journalists, charity watchdogs, and commentators as activist, partisan, and unreliable.”

Mendez put forth two bills, one which change the disclosure requirements of the specialty plate program, but the other would repeal the “In God We Trust” plates that have been in place since 2008.

The latter bill is opposed by ADF.

“Rather than shutting down speech, they should add to the conversation with their own perspective,” Waggoner said. “That’s how free speech works in this country.”

https://www.lifezette.com/2019/02/arizona-democrat-wants-to-get-rid-of-in-god-we-trust-license-plates/

Law Professor Jonathan Turley Explains Difference Between Obamacare Case And Trump’s National Emergency

Law professor Jonathan Turley explained the difference between President Donald Trump’s upcoming national emergency case and the funding of Obamacare on “Fox & Friends” Friday.

“They’re using the case where I represented the House of Representatives against Obamacare and we won, but this is not the same case,” Turley, who teaches at George Washington University Law School, said. “What President Obama did was order the treasury essentially to be opened up and to pay insurance companies. That’s a different type of funding.”

“What Trump is going to do is he’s going to use money that was appropriated by Congress. It just doesn’t have these tight conditions on them. That’s Congress’s decision to make. They can appropriate money and not put many conditions on, so it’s going to be a different fight,” he continued.

Turley predicted Trump’s national emergency will face court challenges, but said Democrats will lose on the merits because Congress has already bestowed this power on the president.

“So there’s two issues here for the court. The authority, the source of the authority to declare the emergency and the source of the funds. On the source of authority, they will lose in a spectacular fashion because they gave this authority to the president [in 1976],” he said.

“He and other presidents have virtually unfettered authority to declare an emergency. On the funds, this is not our case from the Obamacare fight. They will have a much more difficult time in challenging all of these funds. Remember, the president can start construction with the money Congress just gave him. And even if they knock out one or two of these sources, he still has plenty to go, pretty far down that road.”

https://dailycaller.com/2019/02/15/turley-obamacare-trump-emergency/