Update: Plot twist. 

The White House won’t immediately appeal this ruling. 

Josh Blackman has an interesting post explaining the possible paths going forward for the Trump administration. 

The temporary restraining order against President Trump’s executive order is still in effect, as you probably know. Josh Blackman has a good analysis of the ruling on his website, which I would recommend reading. There are a number of fascinating and disturbing elements of this decision, including the imposition of a “no evidence” standard upon the Trump administration. Although some are attempting to put the best face on what is a sweeping, unprecedented ruling, the truth is that we are entering uncharted waters. We have the largest circuit court in the federal system essentially erasing the plenary power doctrine as it relates to immigration matters.

The fact that the administration was intentionally hamstrung in its appeal is irrelevant in the larger context, i.e. we are dealing with a federal judiciary that’s unwilling to recognize Congressional and presidential authority to execute immigration law. What’s more, the reasoning, such as it is, behind this decision is so shoddy that it would be laughable if the consequences weren’t so dire. The idea that universities and colleges have a vested interest, i.e. continuing the flow of tuition dollars from the coffers of foreign students, which supersedes the national security concerns of the President and his cabinet would be an absurdity in any other era. Keep in mind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the defiant architect of the 9/11 massacres, was brought to the United States along with other Muslim students from abroad in order to pad the enrollment and keep afloat a struggling North Carolina college.

Even if the statutory and Constitutional rationales for enjoining the President’s executive order are incredibly weak-which they are-that doesn’t make the path forward any easier. Whether the administration decides to rewrite this EO from scratch, as some have suggested, or simply appeals to the Supreme Court, those of us who believe that American interests outweigh those of foreign nationals and international organizations have already been dealt a grievous blow by a judiciary which no longer recognizes itself as a co-equal branch of government.

How long before this quasi-ironic tweet becomes a reality? I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.

It seems like the Truck of Peace has struck yet again, adding to the nearly 21,000 lives extinguished by this most quiescent, moderate of religions. The ISIS-inspired murderer is on the loose, naturally, although the BBC will be relieved to know that the offending lorry has been taken into custody. As the Alternative for Democracy has stated, these dead can be laid at the feet of Angela Merkel, a woman responsible for more European deaths than the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Ayman al-Zawahiri combined.  She celebrates the cultural enrichment brought by migrants-presumably including the over 100,000 crimes they’ve committed-even as German police buckle under the relentless pressure of Arab-Muslim street gangs.

She has the gall to lament the impact this Muslim-committed atrocity might have on refugees, i.e. potential jihadists, even as Berlin is still soaked in the blood of those who’ve been killed by one of her wayward children. Yet this stupidity hasn’t prevented the same host of global opinion-makers from tut-tutting the potential blowback from the German public. It’s infuriating to those of us who’ve been watching the War on Christmas unfold across Europe and North America over the past 2 decades. We’re being asked to sacrifice our lives-and the lives of our children, grandchildren, sisters, and brothers-upon the alter of multiculturalism and our culture’s demented fealty to political correctness.

Merkel needs to pay the ultimate political price for her actions, which actually are treasonous, i.e. a profound betrayal of her country. She is her nation’s Cromwell-times a hundred-and is accomplishing something even Adolf Hitler couldn’t, i.e. the destruction of Germany. Forgive me if it seems like I’m invoking Godwin’s Law with that comparison, but there’s no more appropriate analogy at this point. We are dealing with a woman who is consciously leading her nation along the path of destruction and eagerly embracing the extermination of her people.

Merkel is finished. She must be, because if she is not, then Germany certainly is. There are limits to ethno-masochism, even in Europe. Merkelism is collective suicide, and it’s time that Germans stood up and said they’re not willing to forfeit their lives on behalf of wretched specimens like Angela Merkel.

Kudos to Judge Andrew Hanen, bête noire of the treason lobby, for being the first person to put a halt-albeit, temporarily-to Barack Obama’s most recent lawless executive action. We recommend reading Legal Insurrection’s analysis of Judge Hanen’s Temporary Injunctive Order, which includes generous excerpts, as well as a pdf file of the judge’s complete decision. Our friend Hans Von Spakovsky has an in-depth analysis of Hanen’s injunction over at The Daily Signal which deserves your perusal as well. Whether this ruling strengthens the spine of the heretofore invertebrate class within Congress remains to be seen. However, what can’t be disputed is that this ruling is a victory-however delayed-for the American people.

Update: Roy Beck’s statement regarding the results in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District is now available online. 

The only question that remains is whether the heretofore tone deaf GOP leadership in the House of Representatives is listening.

We, like many patriotic Americans of every partisan affiliation, are celebrating the defeat of soon to be ex-Majority Leader Eric Cantor in yesterday’s Republican Party primary. The reaction of the open borders elites seeking to downplay the magnitude of this historic event has been all-too-predictable. Cantor’s corporate benefactors are already trying to orchestrate their next move in an ongoing attempt to flood this nation with millions of unskilled workers, while the drive-by media is doing its best to obfuscate the actual issues which animated Dave Brat’s successful campaign.

As Rush Limbaugh explained on his radio broadcast today, this victory-although sweet-is no excuse for letting down our guard. Just as we were assured that Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts doomed Obamacare, now we are told that congressional support for immigration reform, i.e. amnesty, has evaporated. Don’t buy into the hype! The campaign to force amnesty down the throats of the American public will only accelerate now that Luis Gutierrez’s companero has been removed from his comfy perch in Congress.

This isn’t the time for a victory lap, but for continued vigilance in the face of an open borders behemoth which will seek to extract revenge-primarily upon the American public-for this ignominious defeat.

We’ve documented extensively on this site the dysfunctional nature of our nation’s immigration courts. They face endemic problems that are made much worse by this administration’s willful disregard of the law and penchant to rule by executive edict, making any appointments to the immigration bureaucracy-however competent-all but irrelevant. The latest amnesty bill only exacerbates a problem that is already debilitating to our system of immigration enforcement by investing unlimited discretionary power in the hands of Janet Napolitano, who will have the ability to effectively nullify any application of this law that she feels to be too punitive.

The potential consequences of this bill are catastrophic, and we have a dwindling amount of time to prevent it from being enacted into law. We hate to sound like a broken record, but we feel compelled to remind you to call your senators! This is the decisive week before Congress adjourns for its summer break, and it is imperative that you make your voice heard among the elected officials who continue to obstinately ignore the will of their constituents.

Last week’s election results undoubtedly left many readers deeply disappointed, if not disaffected, including those of you who couldn’t bring yourselves to cast your ballot for Mitt Romney for any number of well documented reasons. The prospect of a president unencumbered by electoral consequences, whose administration has already shown itself to be flagrantly indifferent to-if not contemptuous of-the rule of law and quaint Constitutional notions like the separation of powers, seems daunting to ordinary, patriotic citizens.

What’s more, the same malleable, anemic species of Republican which has represented GOP voters for the past two years, and whose leadership has led not only to political defeat but unprecedented encroachments upon personal autonomy, has been returned to Congress. Not to stand up for the principles of the men and women who elected them, but with the intent of compromising with the  President and cementing his agenda into law, including the completion through congressional action of the vast amnesty Barack Obama has begun to implement through executive action.

Make no mistake, President Obama will attempt to fulfill his promise to repay the support he received from Latino voters this election cycle. The implementation of DACA and promulgation of administrative amnesty over the past two years was merely the down payment of a much larger loan floated by the Democratic Party’s most prized constituency. Repaid, of course, with citizenship for the 11-20 million illegal aliens currently living in this country.

I doubt that either Barack Obama or John Boehner will wait for the next session of Congress to begin; certainly it doesn’t appear that members of Congress are hesitant to begin strip-mining what remains of American citizenship. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s rumblings about neutering the filibuster-which was the only legislative tool that prevented the DREAM Act from being enacted in the last lame duck session of Congress-don’t augur well for those of us who want to prevent this from happening. This upcoming session will see a reprise of the last lame duck session, only with fewer opportunities to obstruct whatever stalking horse for  amnesty is presented before Congress.

The fact that every credible exit poll, like every other measurable barometer of public opinion, demonstrated overwhelming voter opposition to amnesty will mean nothing to the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, much less the man who owes his office to individuals, unions, and corporations who will be the chief beneficiaries of any future negations of federal immigration law. The American people serve as an impediment which needs to be removed in a nation where too many old, white men exist, according to the despicable Al Cardenas, the current head of the curiously named American Conservative Union.

This meta-narrative, fostered by the usual suspects in the mainstream media and elsewhere among open borders dogmatists, will be emphasized in the weeks and months ahead. And just as in previous years with equally catastrophic amnesty proposals, this theme will be regurgitated by cretinous political apparatchiks, putative conservatives-such as Charles Krauthammer-and Republican Party lackies like Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity.

What makes this upcoming battle even more difficult is the seeming justification open borders enthusiasts have in pursuing their agenda by virtue of the latest electoral outcome. Almost to a man, they are touting the defeat of Mitt “Green Card Stapler” Romney-a man who endorsed the codification of DACA into federal law-as vindication of their mantra that the Republican Party needs to abandon any pretense  of  respect for our national borders, our language or our unique heritage as Americans.

While it’s easy to grasp why Democrats would want to enact legislation ensuring a spigot of reliable, straight ticket voters in future elections, it’s more difficult to discern why the Republican Party would want to legalize-and ultimately, enfranchise-millions upon millions of voters who will ultimately deprive its officeholders and political candidates of any decision-making authority. As poorly as Mitt Romney fared in capturing the Hispanic vote in aggregate terms, he performed even worse with specific sub-demographics within the Latino electorate. As the Pew Hispanic Center points out, Romney’s share of Hispanic voters who identified themselves as non-college graduates was thirteen points less than that among those who had graduated from college.

What better solution to the Republican Party’s demographic bind than to naturalize and enfranchise millions of future voters who have not only failed to attend college, but have not even progressed beyond high school? Makes perfect sense to me. Why even bother compromising your principles if Texas is going to become a blue state in a mere four years, as Jeb Bush-a potential presidential nominee to some of our country’s more sun-addled inhabitants-believes?

Furthermore, the notion that Hispanic voters-particularly, first and second generation immigrants-support the Democrats because of their support for unfettered immigration, or conversely, oppose Republicans due to their perceived opposition to such a policy, is empirically false. As Heather Mac Donald has pointed out repeatedly-including in the immediate aftermath of Mitt Romney’s loss-what binds this community to the Democratic Party, like past waves of immigrants who aligned with that party’s standard bearers, is support for and dependency upon a vast network of welfare programs, as well as wealth transfers which take the form of  confiscatory taxes levied upon high income earners.

That is why the Democratic Party-including Barack Obama and Harry Reid, among others-is so eager to legalize millions of illegal aliens, over sixty percent of whom come from Mexico. It sees these individuals as part of its immutable political base and a gateway to power, just as leaders of public sector and service employees’ unions see them as potential dues-paying members, i.e. a gateway to the accumulation of wealth, most of it extracted at the expense of American taxpayers.

Unfortunately, unlike past waves of immigrants, there are very few incentives for these newcomers to assimilate our language, much less adopt the free market ethos that open borders fetishists at places like the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Cato Institute ostensibly venerate. Add to this the reality that there is no time for these newcomers to assimilate-even if they had the inclination to do so-as successive waves of immigration further dilute their attenuated connection to this country, and we are left stranded at the current impasse where our nation, along with much of Europe, is functionally bankrupt.

There is no sugarcoating the challenge we face in the days ahead, but face it we must. Amnesty is not the answer.

The  Southern Poverty Law Center, as most of you already know, is one of the most heavily-cited media resources and noxious influences upon the body politic, especially as it pertains to  public debates over subjects such as immigration and the relationship between individual and state. When not inventing chimerical neo-Nazis and Klansman, defaming pro-Constitution critics of Islamic extremism,  waxing hysteric over patriotic sustainable immigration organizations and/or critics of feminism, engaging in blatant hypocrisy, or merely beclowning itself, it is busy making a mockery of its tax-exempt status as an ostensibly nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization. Like many other left wing institutions, it uses its reservoir of dollars to bankroll political assaults against its ideological adversaries.

The Capital Research Center, an invaluable resource in exposing left wing philanthropy-which abounds in American society-has a fantastic analysis of the SPLC’s various grifting schemes and attempts to project a public image at complete variance with what it is, i.e. a well-funded organ of doctrinaire leftist thinking and crypto-socialist lies, which functions mostly as a cash trough for its founders and executive officers. It should be noted that despite its rhetoric advocating open borders and multiculturalism, the SPLC Board of Directors is conspicuously monochrome.

The irony of the SPLC is that it would probably fail its own litmus test for hate groups. A fact that I’m sure Morris Dees doesn’t dwell upon when luxuriating in his poverty palace.

One of the central points of focus for the illegal immigration debate recently has been the use by employers of the federal government’s E-Verify system for checking the immigration status of potential or existing employees. Now Lamar Smith, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced a bill, H.R. 2164, which purports to mandate E-Verify use for all American employers.

The merits of this legislation are pretty obvious, and have been cited by immigration enforcement and reform groups like FAIR in support of Smith’s bill. Getting  corporations and businesses that have resisted the implementation of E-Verify for years to embrace a bill that compels employers to adopt it is an historic accomplishment. Forcing businesses to verify the eligibility of potential employees in the future is the precondition for stopping the influx of people coming here illegally in order to work in the United States.

However, the fact that the Chamber of Commerce is supporting this bill should set off alarm bells among anyone who’s concerned about immigration enforcement. This is the same organization that fought Arizona’s E-Verify law all the way to the Supreme Court. And as it turns out, one of the reasons the COC has decided to support this bill is because it preempts laws like the one in Arizona from being enacted in the future, as the outline of H.R. 2164 describes on Rep. Lamar Smith’s website. It also gives a wink and a nod to those agribusinesses employing illegal aliens right now, allowing those returning workers whose status hasn’t been verified to be exempt from the new law. These are just some of the reasons Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has spoken out against it, most eloquently in a New York Post op-ed.

Even so, the benefits of this legislation might outweigh the demerits if I believed it would actually be implemented as envisioned by Rep. Lamar Smith and Rep. Elton Gallegly. As Mark Krikorian describes in an extremely detailed article for National Review, the Legal Workforce Act would represent in some ways the most important jobs bill to come before Congress this year. In an economy mired in recession, opening up potentially thousands of jobs for American citizens and legal residents would be a welcome development. Yet I don’t think this admittedly flawed bill will remain in its current state, or be improved if and/or when it makes its way through the United States Senate, let alone a House-Senate conference committee. By the time corporate interests and advocates for illegal aliens are done lobbying Congress I doubt that the chief rationale for enacting this bill will remain intact.

You can analogize this to the 1986 Immigration Control and Reform Act, which in addition to granting amnesty to over 3 million illegal aliens also had several ostensibly tough enforcement provisions, including clauses that:

• required employers to attest to their employees’ immigration status
• made it illegal to knowingly hire or recruit unauthorized immigrants.

Remarkably, neither of these were ever enforced by the federal government, and even though I would like to think that times have changed in this regard, I’m not optimistic. The only difference between this quasi-amnesty and Simpson-Mazzoli is that now states would be prevented from taking auxiliary measures to deter illegal aliens. Yes, there are some great provisions in this bill, but I think its supporters are investing too much faith in the federal government’s ability to live up to its word, which on the issue of immigration-like many others-it has failed to do repeatedly in the past.