By Chris Powell
What exactly was President Trump up to this week when he tried to impose a “temporary suspension” on federal government grant payments? His people said it was to make sure that such payments align with the policies of his new administration.
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Surely many grants are stupid political patronage. Indeed, a few decades ago — back when liberal Democrats could recognize stupidity — a liberal Democratic senator from Wisconsin, William Proxmire, became famous for the “Golden Fleece Awards” he bestowed on stupid federal spending.
But if the grants to be temporarily suspended are authorized by federal appropriations law, it is hard to square their suspension with the president’s constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
Dozens of lawyers, including Connecticut’s attorney general, rushed into court and won an injunction to keep the money flowing. They may prevail if the case is tried. After all, why did the Trump administration have to terrify everyone by suspending everything at once instead of identifying and acting on proper targets, if any, one at a time?
Probably the president wanted to show he’s ready to extort his adversaries and make them beg him for priority clearance of their constituents’ funding.
In any case Trump’s people had been warning that the president’s power is enormous and that it would be costly to cross the new Republican administration.
So here we are. The courts will sort it out.
Maybe the most pathetic thing in all this that the officials denouncing Trump for acting unconstitutionally, for neglecting to see that the laws are faithfully executed, are the same ones who lately have been striving to obstruct enforcement of federal immigration law, where, remarkably, Trump is doing his duty.
Unfortunately this hypocritical group has much representation in Democratic Connecticut, including Governor Lamont, Attorney General William Tong, and New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker. Just a few days earlier the governor had thrown himself into the ranks of the nullifiers and insurrectionists, pointedly telling all immigrants, legal and illegal, well-meaning and evil-intentioned alike, “You’re welcome here.”
That is, Connecticut doesn’t care about observing federal law — or didn’t until Trump tried to suspend the state’s federal grants. Trump’s obstruction of federal law is bad but Connecticut’s is good.
Meanwhile Tong ranted hysterically. Trump, he said, had “stolen” the grants. In fact they remained where there had been, mere digits in Treasury Department computers.
Elicker again pledged to defend all illegal immigrants and said Trump is wrong that there are only two genders. The mayor insisted that there are really many more, at least in New Haven.
Connecticut’s ever-weakening and ever-more politically slanted journalism is complicit in this.
Would the governor have commented so blithely about illegal immigration if he thought that he might be asked a few critical questions?
They weren’t asked. But does the governor really see no difference between legal and illegal immigration and between vetted and unvetted immigrants? Did Connecticut make preparations — in housing, education, health care, and policing — for its more than 100,000 illegal immigrants, or would preparations have called attention to the problems sure to result from the Democratic policy of open borders? Should state government appropriate the additional $250 million being sought for medical insurance for its illegals, or are there more legitimate needs?
This isn’t “whataboutism,” the term used in a radio interview this week by Connecticut U.S. Rep. Jim Himes to dismiss defenses of Trump that cite equally grave misconduct by the president’s adversaries.
No, this about how politics is losing all rationality and moral authority.
Joe Biden refused to enforce immigration law and illegally forgave billions in student loans, so why shouldn’t Trump think he can disregard appropriations law? Pardoning his son and — prospectively — the rest of his crime family, Biden liberated Trump to pardon all of his crime family, the Capitol rioters.
Disgrace on one side now quickly becomes license for the other side. Who in politics still has the right to pound his chest and feign indignation, or even just to criticize? Not many in Connecticut.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 