Kris W. Kobach - Page 3

Many political scandals acquire the “–gate” appellation simply because they are scandals. They bear little similarity to the circumstances of the actual Watergate scandal itself. But the House Intelligence Committee memorandum on the abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by the Obama FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) sheds light on a scandal that is strikingly similar to Watergate. Only it is far more sinister.

The first month of 2018 has witnessed two major battles that may appear unrelated, but are in fact manifestations of the same surprising development – a significant number of leaders in the Democratic Party no longer see it as their duty to put American citizens first.

On Tuesday, President Trump hosted a rare televised meeting at the White House between Republican and Democratic lawmakers regarding a bill to grant an amnesty for the more than 886,000 illegal aliens covered by President Obama’s illegal DACA (“Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals”) executive action.

On Wednesday, December 27, the party that controls the Virginia House of Delegates will be determined by lot – effectively a coin flip.

On Thursday, a jury in California state court found Jose Ines Garcia Zarate (a.k.a. Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez) not guilty of first and second degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, and assault.

The ACLU just launched the latest campaign in its crusade to undermine American values and patriotism.

Earlier this week, the acting Secretary of Homeland Security, Elaine Duke, made a bad decision — a really bad decision. She refused to end the “temporary protected status” (TPS) of approximately 57,000 Honduran nationals who would otherwise be considered illegal aliens. Instead she extended their permission to continue living in the United States for another six months.

This week, the murder trial of Kate Steinle’s accused killer – Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez – is taking place in San Francisco. The senseless killing of this young woman in 2015 made national headlines when it was revealed that the perpetrator was an illegal alien who had been sheltered by San Francisco’s sanctuary policy.

Last week, the City of San Jose, California, filed a lawsuit against President Trump and his acting secretary of homeland security, in an attempt to stop the Trump Administration from rescinding President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty known as “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (or “DACA”). The case joins four similar lawsuits filed by the Board of Regents of the University of California, by the States of California, Minnesota, and Maine, by Santa Clara County, and by six DACA recipients living in California.

The act of NFL players taking a knee during the National Anthem has gone from being a stunt to a plague that is infecting the whole league. When NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell responded to President Trump’s criticism by defending the players, he showed that he not only has no clue why NFL viewership is in the tank, he also has no clue what the National Anthem is all about.

It’s also possible that New Hampshire’s four electoral college votes were swung to Hillary Clinton through illegal voting by nonresidents. If the presidential contest had been closer and had come down to a margin of three or four electoral college votes, then this voter fraud might have had extraordinary consequences.

An important deadline is approaching for the Trump Administration. By September 5, President Trump must decide whether or not to repeal President Obama’s DACA (“Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals”) executive amnesty for illegal aliens.

For more than eighty years, beginning with FDR’s New Deal, Americans have witnessed a constant increase in the size and scope of the federal government. This expansion has continued unabated during both Democratic and Republican administrations.

On Wednesday in Miami, Attorney General Jeff Sessions praised the recent decision of Miami-Dade County to end its sanctuary policy. At the same time, he criticized Chicago’s sanctuary policy and its filing of a federal lawsuit against the Justice Department in the wake of the Department’s denial of federal law enforcement grants to sanctuary jurisdictions.

On Wednesday, President Trump used the bully pulpit to call on Congress to pass the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy (“RAISE”) Act, sponsored by Senators Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.). The RAISE Act would shift our legal immigration system away from admitting unskilled immigrants toward admitting highly skilled immigrants, end the diversity visa lottery, reduce the total number of green cards from over a million to about 500,000 per year, and require sponsors of immigrants seeking to become U.S. citizens to reimburse the federal government for welfare benefits the immigrants received. All of these reforms are badly needed.

On Tuesday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida denied temporary restraining orders (TROs) sought by the ACLU, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and others. The plaintiffs were attempting to prevent the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity, of which I am Vice-Chair, from having its first meeting on Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

Last Thursday, the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity officially asked each state’s chief election official for a copy of their state’s publicly-available voter information, in order to better investigate voter fraud across the nation. I’m the Vice Chair of that Commission, and the letter went out under my signature.

The left-leaning Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals recently ruled against the Trump Administration’s “travel ban” and kept in place the preliminary injunction that prevents President Trump’s executive order from going into effect. In a classic case of judicial activism, the three Clinton-appointed judges declared that the president’s order “does not offer a sufficient justification” to satisfy them. Never mind that the relevant statute does not require the president to satisfy federal judges (or anyone else, for that matter) that his decision is a good one.