The three Branches of Government are so wrapped up in confusion, it's amazing, if and when they may do something right.

 

Dozens of sanctuary bills introduced, few advance in Congress

California Rep. Tom McClintock said the House would soon take up one of his bills on the subject.

By Morgan Sweeney | The Center Square justthenews.com 9-7-26

Congressional Republicans have introduced dozens of bills since January 2025 challenging sanctuary policies. Most have been referred to committees and seen no further action, despite Republican control of Congress and GOP-led committees holding at least nine hearings on the issue over the same period.

While most Republican sanctuary policy legislation has yet to advance, California Rep. Tom McClintock said the House would soon take up one of his bills on the subject.

“We can stop this madness with the Shut Down Sanctuary Policies Act that passed out of this committee in March, and will be heard in the coming weeks by the House,” McClintock said at a hearing on sanctuary policies Tuesday.

The bill has several provisions. It would preempt state and local laws that restrict law enforcement cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and it would redirect federal law enforcement grants from sanctuary jurisdictions to jurisdictions that cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. McClintock also said the bill would protect officers who cooperate with federal immigration authorities from legal retaliation and offer legal recourse to victims of crimes committed by migrants.

“Perhaps most important for families like that of Carissa Aspnes and Dalilah Coleman, it would allow victims to sue the jurisdictions for the damages caused by criminals that these officials deliberately released back into their communities,” he said.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., however, said there was a reason the legislation won’t have seen the House floor for about half a year.

“[Republicans] passed a bill to force underfunded state and local jurisdictions to use more of their funds and resources to do the bloated federal government’s job of immigration enforcement,” Raskin said of McClintock’s bill. “That means cities and localities would have fewer officers, less money, and fewer resources to protect their communities from violent crime, guns, drugs, and drunk driving.”

“What’s worse,” Raskin continued, “our colleagues have proposed defunding police departments across America in any jurisdiction that decides that state and local governments and not ICE should get to decide how state and local police departments are governed and run.”

Raskin said that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and other Republicans realized the bill and others like it are “terrible policy” and that’s why Johnson has kept it from being presented to the full chamber.

“Their policies are so divisive, so toxic, so purely symbolic and off-point that even Speaker Johnson won't put them on the floor,” Raskin said.

The Shut Down Sanctuary Policies Act is one of a few pieces of sanctuary legislation that have made it out of committee during President Donald Trump’s second term. At least two others – one concerning sanctuary cities and small business and the other, the End Sanctuary Cities Act of 2026 from the late South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham – have passed out of committees. The former actually passed the House largely along party lines but was immediately sent to a Senate committee for review, where it has stayed since June 2025. Graham’s bill was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar in February, putting it among the measures the full Senate could take up but not guaranteeing it time on the Senate floor. It has seen no further action since.

Besides Raskin’s argument, there is also Supreme Court precedent that some say can complicate efforts to craft federal legislation targeting sanctuary policies.

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution says that any powers it does not expressly grant to the federal government or prohibit to the states remain with the states. The Supreme Court later developed what has been called the anti-commandeering doctrine based on that amendment, in a 1997 court case.

“The federal government may neither issue directives requiring the states to address particular problems, nor command the states’ officers . . . to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program,” wrote the late Justice Antonin Scalia in Printz v. United States.

In other words, states cannot be mandated to act as an agent of the federal government or be forced to carry out federal programs.

The Cato Institute’s Director of Immigration Studies David Bier thinks that passing a federal law that compels state and local law enforcement to aid federal authorities in immigration enforcement would set a dangerous precedent.

“Once you say the federal government can mandate and coerce the states to do what the federal government wants – the end of that principle is, whoever's in power gets to decide what all 50 states do,” Bier told The Center Square. “And then you're, you're really ending, you know, the 50 laboratories of democracy and the whole idea of federalism. Ultimately, it erodes liberty and will lead to a much more powerful government.”

Another way Republicans have tried to come at the issue of sanctuary policies, sometimes rather than restricting the state and local laws themselves, is through funding, which McClintock’s bill also does. In 2025 and 2026, Republicans have introduced bills curtailing certain federal funds to jurisdictions with sanctuary policies like the No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act, the No Community Development Block Grants for Sanctuary Cities Act, the No Congressional Funds for Sanctuary Cities Act or the No DOT Funds for Sanctuary Cities Act, among others.

But Bier said this strategy also faces some potential problems.

“Could they condition funds that are related to law enforcement on helping federal government in their law enforcement efforts? Maybe? There’s not really any clear guidance on it,” he said.

The Supreme Court has ruled in the past that Congress can use its Spending Clause power to encourage states to do something it might not be able to require them to do directly. In 1987, for example, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law that withheld some federal highway funding from states that didn’t adopt a minimum drinking age of 21.

However, the Supreme Court has refuted other attempts at controlling state policy through federal funding because it determined those attempts had crossed the line from encouraging adoption of federal policy to coercing it.

In 2012, for example, the Supreme Court rejected a part of the Affordable Care Act that required states to expand their Medicaid programs as part of the Obamacare rollout or risk losing all of their federal Medicaid funding, finding that the threatened loss of existing Medicaid funds was so substantial that it amounted to unconstitutional coercion.

Whatever constitutional challenges Republican proposals may face, Democrats do not appear to have introduced their own legislation either restricting sanctuary policies directly or restricting funding to sanctuary jurisdictions, though some have occasionally supported Republican measures that have come before them for a vote.

 

The fallacy and illegal actions by 'sanctuary cities and states' has caused so much human suffering; it is un-believable!

 

DHS secretary blasts Biden-appointed judge for releasing MS-13 gang member convicted of murder

"This radical activist judge has put American lives at risk by releasing a wanted murderer," Mullin says

By Nicholas Ballasy justthenews.com 9-6-26

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin blasted a judge appointed by former President Biden for ordering the release of an MS-13 gang member convicted of murder.

U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta ordered the release of David Antonio Aviles Perez, 35, after discovering that he was held for five months without a bond hearing. 

U.S. immigration officials reportedly did not formally determine whether he was a flight risk or a danger to the community.

"This radical activist judge has put American lives at risk by releasing a wanted murderer," Mullin said in a statement released on Saturday.

"This is now the SECOND time this dangerous illegal has been released back onto the streets in California," he added. "Because sanctuary politicians want to play politics from the bench, innocent Americans are in danger."

He was convicted in December 2025 in El Salvador for aggravated murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Police arrested him in Monterey, California, back in 2023, after he allegedly swung a machete at a homeless man at Laguna Grande Park.

 

Finally, a positive post about one of our Nation's pressing problems!

 

A Young Immigrant’s Poem to America

In the late 1960s, a boy left Havana in the middle of the night, and days later, he was standing on Merritt Island, Florida.

Luis Gonzalez | September 7, 2026 www.americanthinker.com

In the late 1960s, a boy left Havana in the middle of the night, and days later, he was standing on Merritt Island, Florida.

I was that boy.

I didn’t know anything about American exceptionalism, about the great argument over liberty and government.  I knew I had come to America, and almost immediately America began showing me things I had never seen: a new bicycle, chewing gum, Superman comics newer than 1960, ordinary pleasures that felt like evidence of a larger freedom.

And there were rockets.  They rose almost every night.  I didn’t understand the science.  I only knew something extraordinary was happening, and that the future had been waiting for my arrival before roaring across Merritt Island on columns of fire.

For thousands of years, the world was an old place.  Human beings walked, rode animals, sailed with the wind, cooked with fire, and lit the darkness with candles.  Civilizations rose and fell, but the basic human experience remained stubbornly familiar.

Then, in 1776, the world roared.

America was where the Age of Discovery, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment became a living experiment.  And with America came a question that changed the human condition: What if?

What if the old limits were not limits at all?  What if a human being were free to wonder, experiment, invent, fail, and try again?  What if a person could look at the world as it was and imagine it as it could be?

America didn’t invent curiosity.  It created a place where curiosity could run.  A thought became an experiment, an experiment became an invention, an invention became an industry that transformed the lives of millions.  Someone looked at darkness and asked, What if we could make our own light?  Someone looked at distance and asked, What if a message could travel faster than a horse?  Someone looked at the sky and asked, What if human beings could fly?  And someone looked at the Moon and asked the question waiting for humanity since the beginning: What if we could go there?

America kept answering with action.

Yes, let’s find out.

Let’s try.

Let’s build it.

And when we fail, let’s try again.

That is how a nation changes the world — not by declaring itself exceptional, but by doing exceptional things.  America earned her exceptionalism in laboratories and machine shops, on farms and factory floors, in universities and garages, through inventors, engineers, and dreamers who refused to accept that yesterday had the final word.

She earned it with immigrants, too.  People who came carrying little more than hope, talent, and a willingness to work.  They did not diminish America by coming here.  They became part of the engine.

I landed on Merritt Island at the exact moment America was doing something no civilization had ever done: leaving the planet.  A boy arrives from the Caribbean, and within sight of where he is living, Americans are building machines to carry human beings into space.  He doesn’t understand what he’s seeing.  How could he?  He’s a kid.  But a child feels something before he has the words for it.

That instinct didn’t begin with the space program.  America had been asking What if? since its founding.  What if ordinary people could govern themselves?  What if a person could own the fruits of his labor?  What if an immigrant could become an American?  What if a child born without wealth could rise by talent and determination alone?

Those questions built a culture that produced results, and fast.  Two hundred years, that’s all, from a fragile declaration by thirteen colonies to human beings standing on the Moon; from a world powered by muscle, wind, and fire to one powered by electricity, engines, and information.  The human race had waited thousands of years for that acceleration, and America stepped on the gas.

Perhaps that is why the shining city on a hill resonates so deeply.  Not because America was perfect, but because it was visible: a place where a human being could arrive with nothing and still possess a chance.  A place where the son of a Cuban exile could stand on Merritt Island and watch his new country reach for the Moon, thinking, “I can do that, too.”

That is what I see when I look back at the country I entered as a boy: not perfection, but possibility; not a flawless record, but one that kept getting back up.  Generations built what they were never simply handed.

The older I get, the more I understand what a gift that was.  That is why I keep coming back to those two words.  What if we can?  What if we try?  What if the next great discovery is still waiting, and somewhere tonight a child is looking upward, wondering whether human beings can someday go farther than the Moon?

Maybe she will.  Maybe the next great inventor is already sitting in a classroom, already taking something apart just to see how it works, already staring at the stars.

That is America: not finished, not satisfied, still reaching for something further out.  And God, I hope we never stop.

I know something now I could never have known then.  That boy did not simply arrive in America.  America arrived in him: the freedom, the possibility, the audacity to believe tomorrow could be better than today.

So yes, I believe that America is exceptional.  Not because someone told me to, but because I can look at the evidence: where humanity began, what Americans built, the Moon, and the boy who came from Havana to stand beneath those rockets.  We did this.  We earned it.  And I am damn proud to have become an American.

But I am not that boy anymore.  The rockets stopped rising over my childhood decades ago, and I never did make it to the Moon myself.  I became something more ordinary: a man who grew old on the soil his parents fled toward, who watched the country keep its promise even when it was inconvenient, even when the headlines said otherwise.

And now the ledger runs the other way.  My children were born on this soil.  Their children, and their children’s children, will be born on it, too.  The generation that gave up everything so the rest of us could be free is buried in it.  That is not a small inheritance.  That is the whole point.

So I have told my sons, more times than either of them cares to count, that the American Dream is not a myth handed down at graduation ceremonies.  It is still there, waiting to be seized, provided a man is willing to work for it.

Maybe, I tell them, you could go to the Moon.

 

"Importing labor to cover for Americans not having babies is not a good or permanent solution".

 

Deportations Shrink the Labor Force, But...

President Trump is fixing an epic crisis of illegal immigration. That doesn’t mean there aren’t economic trade-offs for doing so.

Nate Jackson patriotpost.us Sep 4, 2026

 “Dangerous” is the keyword in today’s Washington Post headline about the labor force under President Donald Trump. Stuart Anderson and Mark Regets, both of the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), authored an op-ed to dissect some numbers on immigration and the job market ahead of Labor Day, and they issue a stern warning to the president.

Donald Trump is on track to become the first president in a century to oversee a U.S. labor force that will be smaller when he leaves office than when he entered. Since the start of his second term, the number of people in the United States who are either employed or looking for a job has dropped by 1.6 million — and it’s largely because of Trump’s immigration restrictions. Unless those policies change, a shrinking workforce will cause slower economic growth and lead to more expensive public debt.

Anderson and Regets aren’t left-wingers. Anderson formerly worked for the libertarian Cato Institute and served under President George W. Bush as policy director at the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Both are pro-immigration and anti-illegal immigration — a long-standing Republican stance.

But let’s back up a minute.

President Joe Biden and his inept border czar Kamala Harris allowed at least 10 million illegals to cross the border and stay in the country during their four-year term. The migrant flood created a humanitarian crisis at the border, added to a crime wave Democrats fomented over George Floyd, and triggered an immense backlash among voters disinclined to see our nation overrun by lawlessness. Trump promised that, if reelected, he would cut off the flow and begin deportations.

The NFAP duo notes, “The Bureau of Labor Statistics household survey for July recorded a decline of 1.8 million foreign-born workers since January 2025.” Overall, there are three million fewer immigrants in the U.S. since Trump took office.

Yes, Trump is doing what he promised.

That said, Anderson and Regets are correct that there are trade-offs. Historically, the labor force has grown at a generally steady rate. It suddenly shrinking will have real economic consequences. “Immigrants are not only workers,” they observe, “but also consumers.” Fewer consumers means lower demand, which means slower business growth.

Despite warnings from the likes of Paul Ehrlich about an overpopulation crisis, people are resources, and we need an increasing population. (I try to remind myself of this while sitting in rush hour traffic.)

Still, there are some important caveats. The pair mention demographics only in passing, and only regarding data from 20 years ago: “Falling birth rates slowed the expansion of the U.S.-born labor force after the early 2000s, but thanks to immigration the number of total workers still rose by 1.6 million during Barack Obama’s first term and by 3.9 million during his second.”

Importing labor to cover for Americans not having babies is not a good or permanent solution. But the birth rate has been falling for decades now, with no sign of changing course anytime soon. You can thank any number of factors for that, but it seems the culture has produced more Gloria Steinems and Lindsay Clancy defenders than babies. Until militant feminism recedes and married men and women start producing more children, the demographic spiral will continue.

Another factor is the number of unemployed or underemployed American men. Our Samantha Koch delved into this underreported crisis earlier this week, as did our Weekly Verdict podcast team. Koch said, “Roughly 44 million working-age men are now outside the labor force — about nine million more than in 2012 — while male labor-force participation has fallen to just 66.8%.”

In other words, the size of the labor force is not necessarily an immigration problem. And men leaving the workforce is both the result and the cause of a whole host of other problems, including the demographic spiral.

There is, however, good news on the economic front. The economy created 162,000 jobs in August, the best showing since April. The headline unemployment rate remained at 4.1%.

Next up is a manufacturing boom. Political analyst Gary Bauer sums it up in a bulleted list:

• New factory orders rose 0.9% in July, nearly double the “experts’” predictions.

• Durable-goods orders are up 7.6%.

• Machinery orders are up 12.3%.

• Computer and electronics orders are up 14.3%.

• Primary metals orders are up 14.4%.

• Industrial machinery and communications equipment orders are up nearly 40%.

• Manufacturing job openings rose to 580,000 in July, up 35% from one year ago.

There are reasons to dislike President Trump’s tariffs, but it certainly seems that they’re spurring at least some of this growth.

In any case, the most important policies for economic expansion are low taxes, limited regulations, and a secure border with sane immigration numbers. For good measure, let’s throw in growing families.

Happy Labor Day.