Three sources of government data contradict Friday’s claim by the White House economic adviser, showing instead that the federal budget deficit is actually increasing.
Mr. Kudlow observed the six-month anniversary of President Trump’s tax cuts with an incorrect claim, saying the federal budget deficit is “rapidly” decreasing. Three sources of government data show otherwise.
An April report from the Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal deficit will rise from $665 billion in fiscal year 2017, which ended on Sept. 30., to $804 billion during the 2018 fiscal year.
.. Mr. Kudlow subsequently tried to amend his remarks, telling several news outlets that he was referring to future budget deficits, which he believes will come down as a result of economic growth and investment.
Trump and Kirstjen Nielsen’s embarrassing surrender on separating families at the border
The Trump administration insisted it didn’t have a policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. It said that it was merely following the law. And it said “Congress alone can fix” the mess.]
It just admitted that all that was nonsense — and that it badly overplayed its hand.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who on Sunday and Monday insisted that this wasn’t an actual policy and that the administration’s hands are tied, will now have to untie them as the White House will reverse the supposedly nonexistent policy.
.. It’s at once an admission that the politics of the issue had gotten out of hand and that the administration’s arguments were completely dishonest. Virtually everything it said about the policy is tossed aside with this executive action. It’s the political equivalent of waving the white flag and the legal equivalent of confessing to making false statements. Rather than letting Congress rebuke it, the White House is rebuking itself and trying to save some face.
.. But that’s the opposite of the approach the administration had said was demanded by the situation for the past several days.
Here’s a sampling:
- “Congress and the courts created this problem, and Congress alone can fix it. Until then, we will enforce every law we have on the books to defend the sovereignty and security of the United States.” — Nielsen
- “It’s not a policy. Our policy at DHS is to do what we’re sworn to do, which is to enforce the law.” — Nielsen
- “The only [other] option is to not enforce the law at all.” — Nielsen
- “I don’t want children taken away from parents. And when you prosecute the parents for coming in illegally, which should happen, you have to take the children away. Now we don’t have to prosecute them, but then we’re not prosecuting them for coming in illegally.” — Trump
- “You can’t do it through an executive order.” — Trump
And not only did the administration say it was bound by man’s law to do what it was doing; it said it was also bound by God’s law.
.. And it makes clear that, from Day One, this was a political gambit to force an immigration bill through. It didn’t work.
How Trump Corrupts the Rule of Law
We take it for granted that President Trump says demonstrably false things on any number of topics. That is itself alarming.
But gross factual mischaracterizations have started to trickle down to the lawyers who serve at the president’s pleasure: At oral argument in the Supreme Court, for example, the solicitor general declared that the president had made it crystal clear that he would never follow through on his campaign promise to ban Muslims. In fact, the president never said any such thing.
.. In the case, Ms. L v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the president has made the up-is-down claim that a Democratic law — the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, in conjunction with the Homeland Security Act and statutes criminalizing illegal entry — requires him to separate families to protect the children.
.. The administration’s legal mumbo-jumbo attempts to use laws that are meant to protect vulnerable children as a screen to terrorize them and to deter immigrants from coming to the United States border.
.. The laws that Mr. Trump’s Justice Department cites — which apply to unaccompanied children, not children with parents — require no such thing.
.. Instead, the Homeland Security law, a statute governing the Office of Refugee Resettlement, gives custody of unaccompanied minors to that department, and very clearly not to the Department of Homeland Security, to address the challenges that children without parents face in the immigration system.
.. The statute that addresses child trafficking — part of the Trafficking Victims law — is designed to reduce the risk that children who are alone will fall victim to human trafficking. The administration is arguing that the laws do the opposite — that they make children more vulnerable to human trafficking and place children at greater risk in the immigration system — and so require the D.H.S. to separate families that would otherwise be together.
.. This is a specious use of law: It inverts the laws governing child immigration and uses them to exacerbate the very evil the law was designed to address.
.. Mr. Trump’s Justice Department is thus lying about what the tax bill did, and about Congress’s intent in passing it. And the department, like the president himself, is doing so as part of a transparent effort to rid the country of a law that Mr. Trump and his Republican caucus do not like but could not repeal through normal channels.
.. Lawyers, including at the Department of Justice, sometimes make aggressive arguments. But there is a difference between aggressive and preposterous, and between truths and untruths. The rule of law depends on these distinctions — to hold governments officials to the law, we need to be able to acknowledge what the law says.
.. The administration is simultaneously insisting that it must enforce a law that does not exist, but is refusing to defend a law that actually does exist, and jeopardizing the law in the process.
.. More likely, the administration will not persuade the current Supreme Court with these arguments. But it may be playing a long game that shifts expectations about legal arguments, and what falls within the bounds of reasonable — to make the law seem as manipulable, and therefore as easy to write off, as the facts.
This is a test for the courts. The executive and legislative branches have in too many ways capitulated to the president’s post-factual world. Will the legal system allow a post-legal one as well?
Recidivism Watch: Trump administration again blames others for its own family separation policy
“We have to break up families. The Democrats gave us that law,” Trump said during a roundtable on sanctuary cities in California on May 16. “It’s a horrible thing where you have to break up families. The Democrats gave us that law, and they don’t want to do anything about it.”
.. Reporters at the June 14 briefing fact-checked Sanders on the spot, but she stuck to her guns.“First of all, there is no law that requires families be separated at the border,” one reporter told Sanders. “This was the administration’s choice to move from civil matters on immigration, on to criminal, to criminally prosecute people who come across the border illegally. … So why did the administration find that this was necessary?”
Sanders: “Again, the laws are the ones that have been on the books for over a decade, and the president is enforcing them. We would like to … fix our immigration problem. However, until Democrats are willing to actually fix this problem, it’s going to continue.”
What laws is she talking about? In a separate briefing with reporters May 29, a senior policy adviser to Trump, Stephen Miller, fleshed out the details of the administration’s rationale.
.. A federal judge in California ruled in 2015 that the Flores settlement covered all children in immigration officials’ custody, regardless of whether they were apprehended at the border alone or with family members. The judge’s ruling also covered any accompanying parents. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reversed the latter part of the ruling and said the Flores settlement required only that children, not parents, be released. Therefore, the government is required to keep immigrant children and their parents together only for a limited time... none of these legal developments requires the Trump administration to separate them from their kids. Instead, separations are rising in large part because of a “zero-tolerance” policy implemented by Attorney General Jeff Sessions... In April, Sessions directed prosecutors to charge as many illegal entry offenses as possible. This policy is a choice. Sessions could rescind it as easily as he instituted it... the Department of Health and Human Services said in May that it had 10,773 migrant children in its custody, up from 8,886 on April 29... Laying this on Democrats does not track with reality. The TVPRA was signed by Bush, a Republican, and the Flores settlement is a court-approved agreement. It’s not a law; Congress could overwrite it if it wanted to. The bottom line is that nothing required the Trump administration to separate children from their parents until Sessions’s zero-tolerance policy made it a practical necessity... It’s noteworthy that Sessions himself does not shy away from the effect the zero-tolerance policy has on undocumented immigrant families, and doesn’t attempt to blame Democrats, like Trump does. In fact, Sessions has castigated parents who try to enter the United States with their children in tow, because the journey is often rife with risks... the Bible also says: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33-34). And it says that “each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body” (Ephesians 4:25).
.. The Fact Checker Recidivism Watch tracks politicians who repeat claims that we have previously found to be incorrect or false.