Dem Governors Get Strategy for National Guard Deployment, Executive Orders to Resist Trump; How Trump Carved a Pathway for His Mass Deportations Through Executive Orders

Dem Governors Get Strategy for National Guard Deployment, Executive Orders to Resist Trump:

Democrat governors have a “resistance” playbook created for them that includes draft executive orders to defy the administration’s immigration policies as well as instructions on deploying the National Guard.

The Governors Action Alliance, a Democrat organization that founded the group Governors Safeguarding Democracy, provided such guidance to the staffs of Democrat governors across the country after the election of President Donald Trump.

The 126 pages of the playbook—including emails, talking points, and a “Firewalling for Freedom – Template Gubernatorial Executive Order”—were obtained in a public records request from the office of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro by the private nonprofit watchdog group Government Accountability and Oversight and shared with The Daily Signal.

The documents offer a potential glimpse for what’s ahead as Democrat-run states prepare to clash with the federal government. The organization laying out the strategy is run by a host of former staffers for Democrat governors and liberal organizations, including NARAL Pro-Choice America, Demos, and Common Cause.

The “Firewall for Freedom – Template Gubernatorial Executive Order” directs that “no state agency, employee, or agent may comply with a request for information or assistance if they have reason to believe the request is in furtherance of any investigation, arrest, prosecution, or other sanction of conduct initiated by federal authorities or out-of-state authorities.”

This includes no assistance to federal officials regarding “health care services … lawful under state law”; and no assistance to the federal government to “identify or apprehend a person in order to subject them to civil immigration detention, removal, or deportation proceedings,” or “to prosecute a person or persons for offenses related to immigration status.”

While the descriptions for “health care services” aren’t explicit, elsewhere in the documents, the group references abortion and “gender affirming care,” a phrase used to describe surgical sex operations.

“What leaps out is not just the sheer number of consultants being provided by donors for governors willing to serve the donors’ resistance agenda, but the functions they are serving: drafting executive orders, talking points, and white papers to assist in resistance advocacy … up to and including deploying the National Guard,” Chris Horner, a lawyer for Government Accountability and Oversight, told The Daily Signal.

In a Dec. 12 email to the staffs of governors’ offices, Emma Clough, special assistant to Governors Action Alliance CEO Julia Spiegel, wrote: “Please join for a briefing on executive actions governors can take to protect sensitive data and prepare for potential National Guard deployments.”

The model executive order on the National Guard says, “No assistance to deployments over objection of the office of the governor.” The draft order says state employees “shall provide no time, money, facilities, property, equipment, personnel, or other resources for purposes of: assistance to any National Guard unit of another state that is deployed to this state, if the Office of the Governor of [this state] has objected to such deployment.” —>READ MORE HERE

How Trump carved a pathway for his mass deportations through executive orders:

Among the flurry of executive orders President Donald Trump signed on the first day he returned to the White House are five that lay out the use of military forces within the U.S. borders and extend other executive powers to speed up the president’s immigration crackdown.

The administration has engendered huge controversy in recent days by employing the orders and a presidential proclamation to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan migrants. Administration officials described the Venezuelans as gang members, put them on flights and sent them to a huge prison in El Salvador.

The wartime Alien Enemies Act, used only three times before, allows the president to detain and deport anyone 14 and older who is a national from a country the United States deems an enemy.

Together, the interlocking executive orders and proclamation could provide the resources and legal footing needed for the Trump administration’s plans to deploy the military to deport and detain millions of people who are living in the United States without permanent legal status.

National security and military experts interviewed by States Newsroom raised concerns about this domestic deployment of armed forces that could result in violations of civil liberties, as well as the detainment and deportation of immigrants without due process.

Additionally, the broad actions by the executive branch would test the courts on what guardrails, if any, could be placed on the president. Trump earlier this week in a social media post called for the impeachment of the judge who questioned his use of the Alien Enemies Act in the case of the Venezuelans, bringing a stunning rebuke by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Besides the Alien Enemies Act, a second archaic law Trump is gearing up to invoke is the Insurrection Act of 1807. It gives the president the power to call on the military during an emergency to curb civilian unrest or enforce federal law in a crisis.

The Insurrection Act is also a statutory exception in the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which generally bars the use of the military for domestic law enforcement purposes.

Trump vowed to use both the Insurrection Act and the Alien Enemies Act while he campaigned for a second term.

“Invoking the Insurrection Act for immigration enforcement … would be unprecedented,” said Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “It would be an abuse, both because it’s not necessary, under the circumstances, and also because this is not what the Insurrection Act is for.”

Nonetheless, one Trump executive order directs the heads of the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense to issue a report by April 20 to the president with recommendations on whether or not to use the Insurrection Act to aid in mass deportations.

The administration eyes its next moves while apprehensions at the southern border have plummeted to their lowest level in 25 years, with 8,347 encounters for February, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

The last time the Border Patrol averaged roughly 8,000 apprehensions per month in a fiscal year was in 1968, according to historical data obtained by the Texas Tribune. —>READ MORE HERE

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