America has immigration laws — just not in these courtrooms



If Donald Trump put on a black robe tomorrow and issued an opinion in an intellectual property dispute between two tech companies, no one would treat it as binding law. So why are we expected to treat judicial policymaking on immigration and national security as untouchable — especially when lower courts now openly defy higher courts?

One of the most damaging misconceptions in American government holds that the Supreme Court is “supreme” over the political branches in all things. At most, its supremacy runs within the judicial hierarchy: It can overrule lower federal courts. The same goes for the courts of appeals, which are supposed to bind district courts within their circuits.

If lower courts refuse deference to their judicial bosses, why should the president keep extending deference to either level when the law is on his side?

That system, however, increasingly operates as a one-way ratchet for left-wing political outcomes.

On February 6, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals finally reaffirmed a basic legal principle: Illegal aliens seeking admission are not entitled to enter the country, demand release, and then litigate their way into residency while living freely inside the United States. The court upheld long-standing precedent and the plain text of U.S. immigration law, which requires detention of inadmissible aliens pending disposition of their cases.

Congress enacted that provision in 1996 for an obvious reason: to prevent people from entering illegally, receiving a notice to appear, and then disappearing into the interior.

Unlike American criminals who are entitled to bond hearings, illegal aliens are not being prosecuted for a crime. They can always voluntarily depart and live freely in their home countries. Being detained is a consequence of their initial invasion and their desire to litigate their way into our country.

Then came the district courts.

Just three days after the Fifth Circuit’s ruling, Judge Kathleen Cardone, an El Paso-based George W. Bush appointee, ordered the release of aliens in five cases on the theory that they had “established roots” in the United States. What, then, was the point of the Fifth Circuit ruling? Cardone claimed in one case that it “has no bearing on this Court’s determination of whether [the petitioner] is being detained in violation of his constitutional right to procedural due process.”

Likewise, on February 9, Judge David Briones, an El Paso-based Clinton appointee, reached a similar conclusion. “The Court reiterates its original holding that noncitizens who have ‘established connections’ in the United States by virtue of living in the country for a substantial period acquire a liberty interest in being free from government detention without due process of law,” Briones wrote — about an illegal alien who entered the country in 2024.

Pause there.

The Fifth Circuit had just ruled that detention is mandated by statute even in cases involving aliens who entered long ago (including plaintiffs from 2001 and 2009). Yet a district judge somehow concluded that ruling does not apply to someone who crossed illegally in 2024. Worse, how can a district judge claim the Fifth Circuit did not account for the “constitutional” question when the appeals court’s ruling necessarily presumes ICE’s conduct is constitutional?

RELATED: The Fifth Circuit cracks down on the asylum excuse factory

ozgurdonmaz via iStock/Getty Images

These judges are cherry-picking language from select Supreme Court opinions about aliens with “established ties” while ignoring the far stronger body of law recognizing that illegal entrants have no right to remain in the country against the national will. The idea that someone can break into the country, evade enforcement long enough to create “ties,” and then use that evasion as a legal shield makes a mockery of popular sovereignty and of the Declaration’s first principles.

This also demonstrates, again, why the Trump administration cannot comply its way out of judicial supremacism. Even when it wins in higher courts, lower-court judges can repackage the same result in a new case and keep obstructing enforcement. Why should Trump defer reflexively to congressionally created judges who refuse to defer even to their own superiors within the judiciary?

That point came into focus in Ninth Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke’s dissent from his court’s decision to halt the deportation of a Peruvian family while the appeal proceeds. Referring to the Ninth Circuit as a “wackadoo” court, VanDyke described what he said has become an automatic practice: granting stays of removal even when Supreme Court immigration precedent clearly points the other way.

In effect, he argued, the court uses procedural orders and an ever-expanding shadow docket to nullify precedent without formally issuing rulings that openly defy it.

Because of the circuit’s heavy caseload, VanDyke wrote, judges adopted a “convenient, but unwritten, practice” of granting preliminary relief in the form of administrative stays pending review. Those stays often remain in place until the merits are decided. The result, he said, is a system that “disregard[s] Supreme Court precedent and award[s] automatic, extended stays of removal in utterly meritless immigration appeals.”

Defenders of the Ninth Circuit might say the court is overloaded and must rely on lengthy interim stays. VanDyke’s point, however, is that this indulgence appears uniquely generous in deportation cases. As he put it, the Ninth Circuit’s internal dialogue sounds like “a judicial Oprah Winfrey, confused by her own popularity.”

His satirical version of the court’s approach was devastating:

We are… ("You get a stay!")… sincerely shocked… ("You get a stay!")… by the… ("You get a stay!")… number of… ("You get a stay!")… utterly… ("You get a stay!")… meritless… ("You get a stay!")… immigration petitions… ("You get a stay! And you get a stay! And you get a stay!")… that are filed… ("You get a stay!")… in our court. ("Everyone gets a stay!").

That is the point. When it comes to many liberal judges — who still dominate too many panels — law is often just a vehicle for politics. They will reach the result they want by whatever procedural route is available. You cannot simply “out-appeal” a judiciary willing to ignore controlling law while pretending not to.

RELATED: We escaped King George. Why do we bow to King Judge?

Valerii Evlakhov via iStock/Getty Images

A Politico review of thousands of ICE detention cases found that at least 360 judges rejected ICE’s broader detention policies in more than 3,000 cases, while just 27 judges backed those policies in about 130 cases. The overwhelming pattern is plain: Judges are sidelining the text of the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Supreme Court’s plenary power doctrine, which affirms broad executive authority over the detention and removal of illegal aliens.

No Supreme Court ruling, by itself, will stop judges committed to creative procedural sabotage.

Lawlessness begets lawlessness. It is grimly fitting that in an era when invaders are encouraged to dictate terms to citizens, inferior courts now side with them while dictating terms to superior courts.

If lower courts refuse deference to their judicial bosses, why should the president keep extending deference to either level when the law is on his side?

Striking Down Tariffs, SCOTUS Gives Congress Permission To Be Useless

The judges let Congress off the hook, further incentivizing the legislature’s dereliction while effectively usurping power from the political branches of government.

Trump Avoids Drama To Focus on Foreign Imminent Threats

State of the Union addresses are usually sedate affairs, but the Supreme Court turned this year’s into must-see TV. The 6-3 decision invalidating the Liberation Day tariffs landed like a bomb last Friday. Many expected President Trump to train his ire on Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues on Tuesday night, especially after his post-ruling outbursts.

The post Trump Avoids Drama To Focus on Foreign Imminent Threats appeared first on .

How the Supreme Court’s tariff split gives Trump an opening



On the question of President Trump’s emergency tariffs, the Supreme Court has spoken. In the court’s view, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the president to impose tariffs during a declared emergency, namely, the massive trade deficits that threaten our economic security.

But the court’s decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trumpwas highly fractured. Only three justices — Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — held that the law, under normal principles of statutory construction, does not give the president authority to impose tariffs.

A tariff wears two hats. It can function as a tax, but it can also operate as an instrument of foreign policy.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent, joined by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, quite persuasively demonstrates why that is not the case. As Justice Thomas noted in his separate dissent, the power to “regulate … importation” has throughout American history “been understood to include the authority to impose duties on imports.”

The other three justices who formed the majority — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — resorted to the major questions doctrine. This principle of statutory interpretation holds that Congress must speak with super clarity on issues of “economic and political significance” for the Court to approve a delegation to the executive.

The turn to the major questions doctrine implies that the statute, under normal principles of statutory construction, authorizes the president’s action, a point that Justice Gorsuch explicitly conceded in his concurring opinion.

But here’s the rub. The court has never previously applied the major questions doctrine in the foreign policy arena — and for good reason. Under Article II of the Constitution, the president has the core responsibility for foreign policy. Chief Justice Roberts acknowledged as much, stating in the part of his opinion that garnered only three votes that “as a general matter, the President of course enjoys some ‘independent constitutional power[s]’ over foreign affairs ‘even without congressional authorization.'”

That’s quite an understatement. The failure to recognize the full measure of that fundamentally important piece of constitutional law is the first fatal flaw in the chief justice’s opinion.

The key Supreme Court case on this point is United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp. (1936), which Roberts does not mention. In that case, Justice George Sutherland, writing for a near-unanimous court, articulated the principled distinction between foreign and domestic powers: “In this vast external realm, with its important, complicated, delicate and manifold problems, the President alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation.”

Then, quoting John Marshall’s “great argument of March 7, 1800, in the House of Representatives,” Sutherland added, “The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.”

The main issue in the case was whether Congress could delegate to the president the authority to prohibit the sale of arms to either side in a war between Bolivia and Paraguay. But Sutherland did not rely solely on the act of Congress. He wrote:

It is important to bear in mind that we are here dealing not alone with an authority vested in the President by an exertion of legislative power, but with such an authority plus the very delicate, plenary and exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations — a power which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress.

In other words, President Roosevelt had the power to ban the sale of arms even without the act of Congress at issue.

The same should be true in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump. Thomas’ dissenting opinion convincingly demonstrates why that is the case. While the chief justice claimed that Solicitor General D. John Sauer conceded that “the President enjoys no inherent authority to impose tariffs during peacetime,” that’s not exactly what Sauer said. Rather, he argued that the statute delegated such authority to the president. Under Curtiss-Wright, a claim of inherent authority over foreign policy should still be viable.

In the part of the Curtiss-Wright opinion I elided above, Sutherland noted that the president’s power over foreign affairs, “like every other governmental power, must be exercised in subordination to the applicable provisions of the Constitution.”

For Roberts, the fact that the taxing power is vested exclusively in Congress — and that any bill “for raising revenue” must originate in the House of Representatives — further confirmed that Congress had not delegated to the president any authority to impose tariffs. The point lands a bit oddly, given Roberts’ earlier willingness to treat Obamacare as a tax even though the bill originated in the Senate.

RELATED: ‘Even stronger’: President Trump optimistic even after SCOTUS strikes down tariffs

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

That move exposes the court’s second fatal flaw: a tariff wears two hats. It can function as a tax, but it can also operate as an instrument of foreign policy.

President Trump’s tariffs plainly fell into the latter category, even if they also happened to raise substantial revenue. This dual character is not unique to presidential tariffs; the Constitution itself recognizes it in a related provision. Article I, Section 10, Clause 2 provides that “No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection Laws.”

That clause reflects the same two-hat reality. An impost or duty — akin to a tariff — can be a revenue measure, but it also can serve a regulatory end tied to a state’s police power. Congress’ exclusive authority to impose taxes under Article I, Section 8, does not erase the states’ limited ability to levy duties for a different purpose: enforcing inspection laws to protect health and safety.

So too with tariffs. The fact that duties and imposts fall within Congress’ taxing power does not negate the president’s authority to use tariffs as an instrument of foreign policy — a “plenary and exclusive” power that Curtiss-Wright describes as vested in the president as the nation’s “sole organ” in external affairs.

That distinction drives Thomas’ characteristically insightful dissent. He points, in effect, to a path by which the president may continue using tariffs while negotiating with and responding to foreign nations in his role as the sole organ of American foreign policy. Time will tell whether the court, if the president takes that route, will remain faithful to its landmark Curtiss-Wright precedent. It should.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

'Congressional action not necessary': Trump details new tariff plan after SCOTUS roadblock



In President Donald Trump's first State of the Union speech of his second term in office, his tariff policies were sure to be mentioned. And, as President Trump noted, February has been a significant month for tariffs, with many new developments occurring just days before the anticipated speech.

On Tuesday night, President Trump explained his plan for tariffs in the future and explained his critique of the recent Supreme Court decision striking down a particular use of a particular type of IEEPA tariffs.

'Congressional action will not be necessary; it's already time-tested and approved.'

Trump began by recounting the overall success of his administration's tariff policies since the beginning of his second term, noting that the United States is "making a lot of money": "The big story was how Donald Trump called the economy correctly and 22 Nobel Prize winners and economists didn't. They got it totally wrong. They got it really wrong."

However, these policies faced a challenge from the Supreme Court last week, as Trump lamented in his speech: "And then just four days ago, an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court. It just came down. Very unfortunate ruling."

RELATED: Trump finally gets his answer on legality of tariffs in new SCOTUS decision

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Despite this potential setback, Trump offered his assurances that many companies wish to "keep the deal that they already made ... knowing that the legal power that I, as president, have to make a new deal could be far worse for them, and therefore they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court's unfortunate involvement."

Last Friday, the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump ruled that Trump's tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were not within the president's authority. As a result, Trump's April 2 "Liberation Day" tariffs seemed doomed less than a year after they were announced.

Trump emphasized on Friday that despite his disagreement with the court over the IEEPA tariffs, the ruling had in fact clarified and strengthened the president's authority under other statutes, including the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the Trade Act of 1974, and the Tariff Act of 1930. On Tuesday night, he said:

So despite the disappointing ruling, these powerful, country-saving ... peace-protecting — many of the wars I settled was because of the threat of tariffs ... will remain in place under fully approved and tested alternative legal statutes. And they have been tested for a long time. They're a little more complex, but they're actually probably better, leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before. Congressional action will not be necessary; it's already time-tested and approved.

On top of that, Trump signed a proclamation ordering the initiation of a temporary 10% global tariff, which he announced on Saturday would be raised to 15%. The 10% import surcharge will be effective for 150 days to "address fundamental payments problems."

However, as of Tuesday, the BBC reported that the additional tariff rate was only instated at the previously established 10%, citing a U.S. Customs and Border Protection document published Monday.

RELATED: Watch the State of the Union tonight on BlazeTV's YouTube channel

Concluding his remarks on tariffs, Trump said, "And as time goes by, I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Here’s How Tennessee Can Put The Kibosh On Illegal Aliens Overrunning American Schools

SB 836 and HB 793 would authorize Tennessee public schools to 'refuse to enroll students who are unlawfully present in the United States.'

Obtuse GOP Politicians Are Pretending The Courts Will Save Us

There is no evidence of any kind that Supreme Court rulings will stop government from continuing to get much bigger. This kind of make-believe is fatal. At some point it simply becomes a refusal to see where we are.

Waiting to exhale? Trump’s EPA just made it possible.



The Trump administration has rescinded the Obama administration’s 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding for gases such as carbon dioxide. You may now exhale without worrying that the carbon dioxide in your breath will contribute to global warming.

After all, with 8.3 billion people on the planet exhaling an average of 2.3 pounds of CO2 per person per day, roughly 9.5 million tons of CO2 are respired into the atmosphere daily. That is a lot of hot air — literally.

If you have been holding your breath while waiting for more sensible environmental regulations that focus on both people and the planet, you may now breathe easier.

Fortunately, plants use the air we exhale. It is part of the life cycle that sustains a healthy biosphere. Add the full carbon cycle — in which carbon is sequestered and released throughout the living and nonliving components of the global ecosystem — and a natural balance is generally maintained.

The serious question has been whether human activity, especially the increasing use of fossil fuels since the late 1800s, has tipped that balance.

The major “consensus science” conclusions tied to the endangerment finding include the confident assertion that modern climate change can be attributed to people burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. According to one professional organization, these human-caused changes “are larger and faster than any humanity is known to have endured over the last 10,000 years.” The same view also holds that many harmful impacts already under way will intensify and outweigh any benefits.

Yet another perspective deserves consideration. One of the greatest forces lifting people out of poverty has been the burning of fossil fuels. The progression from coal to oil to natural gas — along with advances in pollution controls — has helped produce dramatically higher living standards in societies that use their energy resources well.

Arguably, the human-caused improvements in comfort, productivity, and longevity made possible by fossil fuels are also “larger and faster than any humanity is known to have [enjoyed] over the last 10,000 years.”

As for harmful impacts, the rhetorical pattern often looks familiar: find an extraordinary weather event and blame it on anthropogenic global warming. Extreme heat? Human activity. Extreme cold — as the United States recently experienced? Human activity again.

At least most scientists acknowledge that positive effects exist. These include substantial increases in global vegetation and the advantages of warmer temperatures over colder ones for human well-being and development.

RELATED: 5 truths the climate cult can’t bury any more

Khanchit Khirisutchalual via iStock/Getty Images

Any honest assessment of climate change and its effects on people, infrastructure, and the natural world should weigh both benefits and harms. Complex systems demand that kind of accounting.

The current retraction of the endangerment finding will be a particular breath of fresh air for the auto industry. In essence, the Environmental Protection Agency concluded that it “lacks statutory authority under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act to prescribe standards for [greenhouse gas] emissions” from “new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines.”

According to the EPA:

As a result of these changes, engine and vehicle manufacturers no longer have any future obligations for the measurement, control, and reporting of [greenhouse gas] emissions for any highway engine and vehicle, including model years manufactured prior to this final rule. This final action is only related to [greenhouse gas] emissions and does not affect regulations on any traditional air pollutants. Rather, this action realigns EPA’s regulatory framework with the best reading of the CAA, which does not authorize EPA to regulate [greenhouse gas] emissions from new motor vehicles.

As the agency notes, traditional health-based air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, ground-level ozone, particulate matter, lead, and carbon monoxide — not CO2 — are unaffected by this EPA action.

So if you have been holding your breath while waiting for more sensible environmental regulations that focus on both people and the planet, you may now breathe easier.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at American Thinker.

SCOTUS Takes Up Oil Companies’ Challenge To Colorado City’s Climate Lawfare

Boulder officials claimed that these oil companies' 'fossil fuel activities contributed to climate change, causing harm to Boulder’s property and residents.'

Supreme Court Tariff Ruling Shows ‘No Guardrails’ Was a Lie, Puts Congress on the Spot

For much of the past year and a half you couldn’t open the New York Times or approach an elite university campus without hearing a panic about how President Donald Trump was becoming a dictator with “no guardrails” to curb him. After today’s 6-3 opinion from the Supreme Court striking down Trump’s tariffs, that complaint looks more foolish than ever. Trump called the opinion “terrible,” “a shame,” "ridiculous," and “totally defective.”

The post Supreme Court Tariff Ruling Shows ‘No Guardrails’ Was a Lie, Puts Congress on the Spot appeared first on .