It seems like a lot of people are really only interested in limiting the feds when the “other guys” are in power. When their people get elected, they’re just fine with all kinds of overreach in the name of “getting stuff done. I call these people “foul weather tenthers.”
I raised the ire of these folks when I pointed out that the recent federal court injunction on Trump’s executive order on sanctuary cities wasn’t really an act of “liberal judicial activism,” but was a win for the Constitution. (I also talked about it on my most recent podcast.) Then the Tenth Amendment Center posted an article about a bill in Colorado that would prohibit state and local police from helping enforce federal laws that violate any right protected by the state constitution. It is primarily aimed at stopping state and local police from assisting the feds in enforcing marijuana laws since weed is legal in the state. But it could conceivably authorize sanctuary cities.
One person on the Tenth Amendment Center Facebook page said, “ If you don’t think the states should help with illegal immigration you are the one with insane beliefs. The sh** that happened to Lavoy Finicum is different. The state should have stopped that.“
A lot of people don’t seem to understand that whether the state “should” help with immigration enforcement isn’t really relative – they don’t have to! The separation of powers inherent in the Tenth Amendment means the federal government cannot direct states as to how to use their own personnel and resources. If they want to use them to assist with immigration enforcement, they can. Texas is about to pass a bill that will require all cities and counties to do so. But the feds can’t make them. As TAC executive director Michael Boldin said in a recent post, a given policy is good or bad for the state is up to that state – not Washington D.C.
But is seems like a lot of Republicans and so-called conservatives don’t really care about the Constitution or the Tenth Amendment, or separation of powers. They want their preferred policy enforced no matter what.
What we’re seeing is a bunch of foul weather Tenthers. When Obama was in the White House, they didn’t want the states to enforce any of his actions. But, by-gawd, the states have to do what the feds want now because ‘our guy’ is in charge. Everything is great in D.C., so we don’t need to worry about constitutional limits any more.
At the TAC, we’ll never buy into the red team/blue team political game people want to play. If the Constitution really matters, it has to matter regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. Follow the Constitution every issue, every time, no exceptions, no excuses!