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- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy❤
No. of Recommendations: 2
Not the House, just the house...
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/13/politics/alien-enem...OK...so the alien enemies act of 1798.
The law is designed to be invoked if the US is at war with another country, or a foreign nation has invaded the US or threatened to do so.We're not at war, and haven't been since 1945. Also, no foreign nation is invading or threatening to invade. You may consider the border-crossers (whether asylum seekers or illegal migrants) an "invasion", but it still is not a foreign nation invading.
Unless I'm missing something about the wording or interpretation, this seems dead before it even gets started. Unless it ends up before Judge Cannon, it almost certainly would thrown out with extreme prejudice. Yes?
No. of Recommendations: 1
Prior to T45's SCOTUS appointments the answer would have been a resounding, YES.
Now I'd say the odds are more like 5-4, NO.
We are living in the land of Gillead in 1984.
No. of Recommendations: 1
Prior to T45's SCOTUS appointments the answer would have been a resounding, YES.
Now I'd say the odds are more like 5-4, NO.
I'm more cautiously optimistic.
Remember, this is a tactic that has more traditionally been used by Democrats than Republicans. As a very general matter, Presidents only have the power to do things if Congress has passed a statute telling them they can. So those who want an expansive federal government have long gone looking through the nooks and crannies of the U.S. Code, trying to find statutory "hooks" upon which they can hang the policies that they want to implement. You find an old statute with language broad enough to possibly support a strained interpretation....and then voila! You've got authority for your rule. That's what the Administration is doing here - dusting off an old statute from the back of the Code book (1798!), giving it a strained interpretation (unauthorized migrants are actually an invasion!), and hoping the courts let it slide.
But some of the recent SCOTUS decisions that Democrats have reviled actually pushed back on this exact practice. When SCOTUS struck down the Biden Administration's efforts on certain COVID workplace requirements and student loan forgiveness, they drew much more stringent lines around the Executive's ability to take old statutory language and use it in novel ways under generous agency interpretations to give the agency more power.
It's not always a winning bet to expect internal consistency from justices when faced with a different fact pattern - but I think that conservative judges genuinely don't like the idea that the Executive can just "find" some old statutory provision and claim a novel power that Congress probably never contemplated, just because the language is broad or vague. So I wouldn't be shocked if some of them don't want to go along with this idea.
No. of Recommendations: 13
but I think that conservative judges genuinely don't like the idea that the Executive can just "find" some old statutory provision and claim a novel power that Congress probably never contemplated
That’s adorable. Clearly several of the supremes’ votes are situational. Alito & Thomas vote straight party line, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch a bit less so but still supremely reliable. That’s a pretty good start for the Right to do most anything they want under cover of legitimacy. They need only get one vote out of either Roberts or Barrett and they’re on their way. As happens most of the time.
No. of Recommendations: 4
That’s adorable. Clearly several of the supremes’ votes are situational.
Perhaps. But they also very much want to establish limits on the power of the Federal government, and to cut down on the agencies' going back and pulling old and vague statutes out of the book to do what they want. Their recent decisions have actually moved power away from the Executive and back to Congress and/or the courts - which limits both the expansion of the regulatory state (which they want) and the ability of this particular President to accomplish certain things (which they might not want).
I wouldn't bet on them ruling against the Administration. But neither would I count out the conservatives using it as a chance to say, "no, we meant it, no more expansion of agency power through weird readings of old statutes."
No. of Recommendations: 4
