Due Process Prevails; Jim Acosta’s Press Pass Reinstated

In a victory for the principle of Due Process, US District Court Judge Timothy Kelly granted injunctive relief to CNN and its White House correspondent Jim Acosta requiring the White House to re-issue Acosta’s press pass immediately. The White House revoked the press pass last week, after a contentious exchange between Acosta and President Trump, where Acosta pressed the President for answers concerning the so-called caravan of migrants, mostly from Honduras, traveling on foot through Mexico to the US border. 

Publicly, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders justified the action, tweeting a video she claimed showed Acosta had assaulted a young intern who was attempting to retrieve a microphone from Acosta. The video itself was a clip originating from Alex Jones’ Infowars organization that many claimed had been doctored. 

Judge Kelly noted that once the White House had opened its grounds to Acosta by issuing the press pass, he had a First Amendment right to access. The White House could not arbitrarily revoke that right without giving Acosta Due Process of Law. Judge Kelly noted that the Department of Justice attorneys arguing the case could even not tell  him who in the White House made the decision to revoke Acosta’s credentials. The Judge also noted that the justification posited by the White House that Acosta had touched an intern inappropriately was likely untrue and that the evidence upon which this claim was based was of questionable accuracy. 

The President responded to the ruling claiming that this was about decorum. He stated that he intended to write rules and regulations over reporter behavior at press conferences. 

Such rules would begin to address the Due Process concerns over arbitrary revocation of press credentials. Due Process requires at a minimum notice of the Government’s reasons for taking away a right, and an opportunity to be heard. Any new procedure should, at the least, include a way to challenge White House action, and appeal it. 

But rules and regulations on press behavior can lead the White House to further issues. Any White House action must be neutral to the viewpoint of the reporter in question. That is, the President cannot revoke a press pass simply because he does not like the questions or leanings of the reporter in question. Whether a reporter is legitimately being rude or lacking in decorum, then, would depend on whether Trump was simply using the argument as pretext to punish a reporter who aggressively questions him on a topic the President wants to avoid. That is, the President could not punish a reporter who used follow up questions to prevent the President from answering in incomplete or misleading answers. The President also cannot define rudeness as failing to emphasize news the President perceives to be beneficial to him. 

Today’s decision, while not a final decision in CNN’s lawsuit against Trump, nonetheless is a victory to those who wish to reign in Trump’s authoritarian tendencies by countering his ability to make arbitrary and capricious decisions without adhering to proper legal processes. It is a victory for limited government. 

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

Jim Acosta Deserves Due Process

Due Process of Law is a bedrock principle of the US Constitution. No one can be deprived of life, liberty or property without Due Process of Law. It is a principle that applies to the Federal Government through the Fifth Amendment, and to the State Governments through the Fourteenth Amendment. 

The concept of Due Process is actually fairly simple at its core. If the Government wants to take away a person’s right, whether it be property or a federal benefit, the Government must give notice of its intent to do so. The notice must sufficiently disclose the Government’s reasons. The person must be given a meaningful opportunity to defending his or her right. The Government must give the person a fair hearing. 

Due Process is messy. It’s inefficient. Due Process causes delay. That is by design. That is because a democracy is not supposed to do the most expedient thing; it is supposed to do the right thing. Thus, while it may be expedient to trample on the rights of a minority class for the benefit of the majority, Due Process prevents that from happening unless the Government has a darn good reason. To put simply, minority rights are protected against pure majority rule. 

And this is what frustrates President Trump time and time again in the manner that he runs the Federal Government. Trump wants things done his way, right away, no questions asked. To tell him he can’t do things his way is a mark of personal disloyalty, not a mark of true patriotism that values the rule of law above all else. 

Coming from the business world, Due Process is not the way Trump operates. He is used to demanding personal loyalty of his employees. He is used to winning negotiations through leverage and strength, not legal virtue. 

It should therefore come as no surprise when Trump expresses disdain for Due Process. We can’t have undocumented aliens come in the country and be given a hearing with the Immigration Courts. That will take too long. We can’t have recounts in the State of Florida. That’s just delay. We should just recognize who the winner is now and move on. 

One of the most egregious examples of Trump’s disdain for Due Process is his treatment of CNN Reporter Jim Acosta. It’s no secret that Acosta’s relentless questioning irritates Trump. He has routinely called Acosta rude and tried to evade Acosta’s questions. Last week, Trump revoked Acosta’s press pass. 

Ostensibly, the White House revoked Acosta’s press pass on the allegation that Acosta assaulted a young woman intern attempting to retrieve the microphone from Acosta. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders even tweeted a video to back up her claim. 

The problem is that the White House acted without giving Acosta notice of its intent to revoke his credentials or an opportunity to defend himself. In short, the White House denied Acosta Due Process. 

The denial of Due Process is particularly egregious in this case. Many claim that the video Huckabee Sanders released, which happened to originate from Alex Jones’ Infowars, was doctored. Governments should never be permitted to take away a person’s right through trumped up evidence. Thus, the evidence must be tested and Acosta must be given an opportunity to attack its reliability. Jim Acosta must be given Due Process. 

Acosta and CNN have filed a lawsuit over Acosta’s press credentials. One of the allegations is the denial of Due Process in violation of the Fifth Amendment. It is a decision that the court must decide properly in order to reign in Trump’s resistance to Due Process and temper his more dangerous authoritarian tendencies. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

Trump’s Bullying of the Press has become Intolerable

Back in 2016, it was not unusual to log in to Facebook, and see that a friend had shared something that looked like a news story, detailing how someone who had a beef with Hillary Clinton had gone missing or committed suicide under suspicious circumstances. If you did a little detective work, like trying to Google the story, you often found that not only was the story false, but that the website that hosted it was somewhere in Bulgaria. 

Fake news. 

But in the last two decades or so, something strange had happened. New cable news channels and news sites on the web proliferated, and tended to pander to one political leaning or the other. Thus it became possible for people to chose a source of news that further supported their pre-existing world view by printing stories and editorials consistent with that view. 

If a story floating around Facebook or Twitter fit into a person’s world view, that person was more likely to believe it without checking the source, and share the story in the hope of convincing others of his or her world view. 

Secretary Clinton was a prime target for this fake news, as conspiracy theories of the so-called Arkansas mafia threatening women who claimed sexual abuse by her husband, Bill Clinton, had proliferated for years. Likewise, the suicide of Secretary Clinton’s colleague, Vince Foster, fueled belief that there was a conspiracy to cover up wrongdoing in the White Water affair. So of course to Clinton detractors news of mysterious disappearances and suicides of Clinton associates made sense.

It was in this way that fake news influenced voters in the 2016 presidential election. 

But as the term “fake news” became more popular, the definition became twisted by those who found themselves the target of unflattering news stories or critical editorial pieces. 

After the election, for example, but before Trump’s inauguration, a news story broke that a former British spy had compiled a dossier that allegedly showed that the Russian Government had compromising information on the President-Elect; the so-called Steele Dossier. Many of the allegations were salacious, and at the time there was no corroboration of many of the allegations. At a press conference after the story broke, Trump refused to take questions from CNN, calling the network “fake news” for publishing accounts of the Steele Dossier. 

Trump then expanded the term to include stories with anonymous sources that were allegedly leaks from the White House staff. Eventually, Trump applied to term to any news story that he disliked, that portrayed him in a negative manner, or that failed to discuss news Trump believed reflected well on him, such as the economy. To Trump, fake news was not just false stories created out of whole cloth. It was any story that he believed reflected poorly on him. 

It became a common term in his war against the press. Fake news became the enemy of the people.  Reporters who did not buy the official White House line, and who insisted on following up with tough questions at press conferences were deemed rude. Women reporters with tough questions were ridiculed. 

As Trump became more belligerent with the press, his sycophantic fans attending his political rallies followed. Members of the press were shouted down at Trump rallies. If a person confronted a Trump fan with news sources showing that their memes and outlandish claims were wrong, the inevitable response was, “Well, you must have got that from CNN.  That’s fake news.” Thus the moniker fake news permitted Trump fans to ignore facts, avoid the cognitive dissonance of seeing that their beliefs were wrong, and attack the purveyors of news stories critical of their President. 

But Trump’s war against the press has taken a startling new twist. In a post mid-term election press conference, White House pool reporter Jim Acosta, as is his routine, asked tough questions of the President and had tough follow-up questions. Trump’s response was to order that the microphone be taken from Acosta. An intern grabbed for the microphone, and Acosta resisted, continuing with his tough line of questions. When Acosta eventually relinquished the microphone, Trump called him rude and said CNN should be ashamed for hiring him. 

For supporters of the free press, this exchange was bad enough. Here was the President avoiding the tough questions could reflect badly on him. He picked a fight with a reporter who had refused to kowtow to his bullying. 

But what happened the next day was utterly shocking. The White House had revoked Acosta’s press credentials. Worse, to justify this action, the White House released video of the press conference claiming it showed that Acosta had assaulted the intern who tried to take away him microphone. Almost immediately, news sources demonstrated how the video had been doctored to speed up the exchange and make it appear as though Acosta had reacted to the intern with a Karate-chop. 

Warring against the free press with harsh rhetoric is one thing. But to exclude a reporter, who has been critical of the President and willing to follow up with tough questions countering the official White House line, based on doctored evidence is intolerable. It is the action of a bully, a man whose autocratic tendencies prohibit him from receiving criticism, a man who believes he is entitled to positive press coverage. 

The American people should not let this stand. They cannot permit Trump to expand the definition of fake news to such an extend that the guarantee of a free press in the First Amendment of the Constitution becomes meaningless. They cannot allow a President to single out for punishment a reporter trying to hold that President accountable. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

Mid-Term House Results Highlight Decline in Republican Voter Base

Desiring to place a positive spin on the outcome of the 2018 mid-term elections, President Trump will most assuredly emphasize Republican gains in the Senate. Despite a pick-up of five seats (as projected at the time I write this) for a 56 seat majority, however, the results of the Senate races do not diminish the fact that the Republican Party is dying. 

The trend in the American electorate is more accurately demonstrated by the results of the elections for the House of Representatives. There, the Democrats, needing to pick up 23 seats to be the majority party, are projected as of the time of the writing of this to win as many as 35 seats. 

The Founding Fathers, fearing mob rule, built safe-guards into the Constitution, insulating the Government from the popular vote. Thus, the President is not directly elected by the people. Instead, the people vote for Electors, who make up the Electoral College and who in turn choose the next President. The number of Electors each state has is the sum of the number of the state’s representatives in the House and the number of the State’s senators. This results in disproportionate power being given to the voters in states with smaller populations, such as Montana and Utah, than to those in states with large populations, such as California and New York. 

Likewise, each state has two senators, regardless of whether the state has a population of 700,000 or 7 million. 

Even if a policy or presidential candidate lacks the support of the most voters nationwide, the structure of the US Constitution means that that policy or candidate can still win the day. 

Indeed, in the history of the United States, there have been five times when the candidate winning the popular vote nonetheless lost the presidency. The two most recent times occurred in 2000 and 2016 when the Republican candidate lost the popular vote but won a majority in the Electoral College. 

It should come as no coincidence that these two most recent examples involve Republican presidents. The fact is that the Republicans have seen their core supporters diminish for quite some time now. In fact, Republican Donald Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by almost 3 million. The reason Democrat Hillary Clinton lost the Electoral College vote was due to the fact that her voters were concentrated in highly populated states where the individual vote has less power. 

Take the 2012 federal elections as an example. That year, the only group that gave Republican Mitt Romney a majority was white males. This caused a lot of soul-searching within the Republican Party, with many Republican leaders seeing a dire need to expand the appeal of the party to other demographic groups. As one effort to attract new voters, Republicans even initially supported a liberal version of immigration reform, which passed the Senate but died when Tea Party members in the House branded the bill as amnesty.  Fearful of the new-found power of the Tea Party, House Republican leaders backed away their support of immigration reform. 

The rise of the Tea Party itself serves as an example of how a group took advantage of political structures meant to counter the popular vote to gain power. When Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in 1994, after over forty years of Democratic majorities in that body, the party concentrated on protecting its power.  Republicans, led by Tom DeLay, focused on state legislature races, the state legislatures being the bodies that created congressional district maps. In a process known as gerrymandering, state legislatures controlled by Republicans drew maps that purposefully created a large number of districts where the population favored the Republicans. That is, the legislatures created safe Republican districts. While gerrymandering has been a part of American politics since the republic was formed, it had never been accomplished on so grand a scale before. The unintended consequences of this round of gerrymandering was that Republican House members now found stronger competition from more conservative candidates in the primaries than from challengers in the general election. Thus, the conservative Tea Party found themselves with power disproportionate to their actual size in the general population. Tea Party members strongly influenced the direction of the Republican Party.

While Republicans count on white makes for their support, the trend in the United States has been for white males to make up less and less of the general population. In order for Republicans to maintain popular support, Republicans needed to appeal to other demographic groups. 

However, Republicans have chosen not to broaden its appeal, but instead to attempt to counter the trend of the growing number of non-white voters. This can most easily be seen in the party’s immigration policy. While Republicans have opposed the ability of undocumented aliens to enter the country, they have also pursued policies to stem legal immigration. The Trump Administration, for example, has imposed harsher requirements on immigrants with at least a college education to qualify for a visa through the H-1B program. The Administration also seeks to impose restrictions on asylum-seekers, and wants to change the law to limit family-based immigration. If successful, the result of such policy positions will be to reduce the growth in non-whites within the US population. 

Applying these trends to the 2018 elections, Republicans picked up Senate seats in states such as North Dakota, Missouri, Florida and Indiana. These were all states that voted for Trump in 2016. Republican wins should therefore not be surprising. Indeed, of the 35 seats up for election in 2018, 26 were Democratically held. That meant going into the election, the Democrats not only had to defend all of their seats, but also pick up three of the remaining nine seats. The task of making gains in the Senate was much more difficult for Democrats. 

Gains in the House, however, are much more reflective of trends in the US population. Despite Trump’s claim to economic success, issues such as health care, the protection of women from sexual assault, harsh immigration enforcement, Russian interference in the 2016 election and the rise of racial bigotry all played a role in the Democratic victories. Indeed, the Democrats made these gains despite the aforementioned disadvantage of Republican gerrymandering. Clinging to gains in the Senate, which themselves will have no effect of the balance of power in Congress due to the fact that the Republicans already had a majority in the Senate, will do little, if anything, to enhance the long-term prospects of the Republicans. 

By contrast, a Democratically controlled House will not only thwart Trump’s agenda, but will give support to the continued investigation into Russian electoral interference headed by Robert Mueller. In sum, the results of the 2017 mid-term elections were a clear disaster for Trump and the Republican Party, and far more reflective of the hurdles Republicans face in future elections. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Remember, the Reason for Kneeling During the National Anthem is to Call Attention to a Lack of Equality

In the United States over the weekend, we spent much of the time debating the merits of kneeling for the National Anthem.  Spurred by a tweet by the President, the debate focused on whether athletes should be permitted to kneel during the National Anthem as a form of protest.  Why President Trump decided to make this the time to disparage athletes who choose to express themselves by kneeling is something of a mystery, since Colin Kaepernick first kneeled for the National Anthem over a year ago and this is the third week of the NFL season. 

Nonetheless, his use of social media once again sparked both outrage and support from the American public.  There was also a large group of people who resented having the public attention focused in such a way, citing what they considered real problems, such as the devastation to Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria or the increasing tensions between the United States and North Korea.

But the problem both with the tone of the debate this weekend, as well as those who bemoaned that we were having this debate at all, is that attention was focused on the whether athletes should be permitted to kneel during the National Anthem, and not on why they were choosing to do so.

Let's face it.  It's not as if Colin Kaepernick woke up one day and thought about what behavior he could do that would anger the most football fans.  Kaepernick took a knee to protest.  In particular, he protested racial inequality in this country; an inequality that was highlighted by the spread of online videos showing police officers engaging in what many thought was unnecessarily violent behavior against African Americans.

This is a debate that makes many white Americans uncomfortable.  It forces Americans to consider that they have been receiving special treatment due to nothing more than the reason that they were born white.  This has been labeled as "white privilege."  And to many Americans, they don't want to think of themselves as privileged.  A good number are hard working, and view their position in life as a result of that hard work and the choice to do things "the right way."

But as I pointed out to my daughter last night, white privilege is alive and well in this country.  Just consider Walmart's state of the art security system: the elderly man at the exit choosing which customers to ask to see their receipt.  Plenty of times, I choose not to bag my purchases at Walmart, mostly because they are big items like cases of water or big bags of dog food.  Still, the fact that I choose not to bag my items should be seen as a security threat.  Yet, I have only once been stopped by the kindly elderly gentleman to see my receipt.  And that was because he stopped an African American family in front of me, who raised a ruckus over why he wasn't stopping me.  The fact is, whenever I have seen that man stopping a customer, it has always been a person of color.

Added to that discomfort is that fact that the National Anthem and the flag serve as powerful symbols of patriotism.  To disrespect the flag is to disrespect the soldiers who died selflessly protecting this nation.

That only raises the question, however, as to why our soldiers have gone to war and died protecting this nation.  Are we simply venerating national symbols because they happen to remind us of the geographic location in which we live?  Or is patriotism something more?

During debates like this, I like to think of my grandfather, who served in the First Army with General Patton, and who fought in the Battle of the Bulge.  Sure, he had a lot of stories about how he cut off Hitler's ear which were entertaining to me as a young boy.  But, as the long-time commander of the local American Legion post, who made speeches at the annual Memorial Day parade, he taught me a lot about patriotism and love for the United States.

When I think of patriotism, I return to a phrase that he repeated often in those speeches.  We took the time to march on Memorial Day because he were honoring those who gave their lives so that we may walk free.  The emphasis I took away was the last part of his phrase, that we may walk free.

What it comes down to is that I am immensely proud to be an American because of our freedom, because of our emphasis on the rule of law; in short because of the principles embodied in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.  Chief among the self-evident truths our founding fathers proclaimed was that all men are created equal.

To me, therefore, the debate over taking a knee during the National Anthem is important because it calls attention to those principles that make our nation great.  We believe in the right of the people to engage in peaceful protest and to call attention to those issues which are important to them.  In this case, the issue is inequality.  To dismiss the reason behind the protests, no matter how uncomfortable we may feel both over the form of the protest, fails to pay respect to the principles which the United States is supposed to embody.

William J. Kovatch, Jr.

President Trump May Have Done DACA Recipients a Favor

It may not look like it now, but by announcing an end to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA, president Trump may actually have done its recipients a favor. 

DACA was a popular program, with many people denouncing the president for announcing his intentions to end it. DACA allowed young people, who were not born in the United States but brought here illegally by their parents, to come out of the shadows and become productive members of society without fear of deportation. 

But relying on the continuation of DACA was bad policy. 

First, DACA was of questionable constitutionality at best. DACA was not created or even authorized by legislation. Instead, President Obama took a small piece of executive authority meant to address situations where the application of immigration law was harsh on an ad hoc basis, and turned it into a huge program. DACA is based on presidential authority to grant deferred action. This is nothing more than a promise not to seek the removal of a person who is otherwise in violation of immigration law. It is not directly authorized by Congress. Rather, it stems from the theory that the person who is enforcing the law has the discretion to choose not to come down with the full force of the law when there is a violation. Think of a police officer who witnesses a minor crime, but chooses not to arrest a person. 

The problem is that by taking this small piece of executive discretion and creating a full program out of it, affecting hundreds of thousands of people, President Obama infringed on the role of the legislative branch. That is, he essentially created law without Congress passing legislation. This can be seen as a violation of separation of powers. 

Several states saw it that way. Citing the extra expenditures the states believed they were incurring on people who were present in the country illegally, these states threatened to sue the federal government to end DACA. These states had been successful in shutting down a similar program that granted deferred action to foreign born parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents by filing suit in the Fifth Circuit. If the states had filed a lawsuit over DACA, there was a real danger that the program could have been ended by the courts and declared unconstitutional. 

Second, DACA was a very weak solution to the problem.  DACA did not grant the young people who applied for it a legal status. That is, the program did not give the recipients a legal right to stay in the United States. It only gave the recipients a promise not to seek their removal. As a creature of executive discretion, this meant that the promise could be broken by the same executive who granted it. DACA did not lead to permanent residency. It did not lead to citizenship. All DACA did was to keep the young people who applied for it in a holding pattern. Going back to the separation of powers, this is because the president does not have the authority to create legal status, only to ignore the consequences when a person has violated the law. 

Third, the continuation of DACA permitted Congress to remain lazy. While DACA was in place, the young people brought to the country illegally but raised as Americans were not going to be deported. They were given legal authority to work and pay taxes. Even if there was no path to citizenship, there was no immediate pressure on Congress. Why, then, should Congress act?  Just pretend that this non-solution was working and let things continue as is.

Ending DACA is now forcing the issue with Congress. If Congress believes these young people are deserving of relief, Congress must now pass real legislation to protect them. Presumably, this legislation will include a true legal status instead of a mere promise not to deport. Perhaps Congress will even create a method for those who merit it to earn true permanent residency and eventual citizenship. Then, these young people who were brought up to be Americans will truly become Americans. 

Finally, DACA has made these young people more sympathetic. It is easy to say enforcement only and illegals deserve to be sent back, when you haven't met a hard working and moral undocumented individual. But DACA allowed these young people to work openly. It allowed them to win the respect of professors, fellow students, bosses and co-workers alike. When you met a person just making an honest living because of DACA, it was hard not to like them. 

And that sympathy will turn into political pressure. People don't want to see their neighbors, co-workers, friends deported. Businesses, including industrial Giants, will not want to see valued employees suddenly unable to work. Congress will be under pressure to create a real legislative fix. 

The termination of DACA may yet result in a better future for young people brought to this country illegally by their parents. If Congress acts, it could result in a more secure legal status and a path to citizenship. If Congress doesn't act, it will give the American public yet one more thing to add to the list of congressional failures and reasons to vote members out of office. 

William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

The End of DACA; Forcing Congress to Act

DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, was a popular program. DACA was meant to help people who were brought to the United States as children, due to no choice of their own, who were raised as Americans, but who lacked legal immigrant status. 

Despite having been raised here, having gone to school here, and identifying the United States as their home, these children could not hold a job legally. Often, their ability to go to college was hampered by the lack of legal status. Despite being raised as Americans, they had to live in the shadows, avoiding government attention and working in the underground economy. 

DACA recipients were sympathetic. They were stuck in their situation due to now fault of their own. Many were highly talented and very intelligent. If allowed to live and work openly, DACA recipients had great potential. 

To address the situation in which these children found themselves, President Obama created DACA. But the program was imperfect as best, and unconstitutional at worst. 

DACA is an exercise of deferred action. Deferred action is not a legal status. It does not give a person the legal right to stay in the United States. It is really nothing more than a promise; a promise not to seek the removal of a person, even though that person is present in the United States illegally. 

If you search the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, you will find that there is no statute that defines deferred action. There is no direct legislative authority for it. All there is in the statute is a reference that those who have received deferred action are eligible to apply for a legal right to work in the United States. 

At best, then, deferred action is indirectly authorized by law. But nothing in the law establishes it parameters. Nothing establishes to whom deferred action may be applied, or under what circumstances. 

Prior to DACA, deferred action was used mostly as an ad hoc fix when immigration law was imperfect. In many cases, deferred action was applied on a case by case basis, for humanitarian purposes when immigration law had harsh results. On occasion, deferred action was applied on a larger scale but on a temporary basis when an immigration program came to an end.  Special protections were granted by law to Liberians in the United States, for example, during the twenty year civil war in their country. When those legal protections expired, President Bush applied deferred action for one year to permit Liberians who had lived in the United States for a long time to adjust to their new situation. 

But before DACA, deferred action had never been used to create a program of immigration relief on such a scale. Indeed, the argument is that President Obama overstepped his constitutional authority as chief executive by creating a program that was legislative in nature. In this case, the president had no direct authority from Congress on creating such a program. No criteria was set by Congress on who would qualify for the program. No parameters were established on how long the program would last. President Obama created DACA whole cloth, establishing his own set of criteria for eligibility and his own judgment with respect to the length of the grant of relief.

To be clear, from the moment President Obama announced the creation of DACA, there were serious questions concerning whether he had violated the separation of powers provisions of the Constitution. The constitutionality of DACA was further called into question when the President created similar programs, one aimed at granting deferred action to undocumented parents of U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and one that was an expansion of DACA, which were defeated in federal courts in the waining years of the Administration. 

Why then, did President Obama use such an imperfect tool to grant such relief?  After all, it was temporary. It granted no legal status. It gave no path to citizenship. It was nothing more than a promise that any succeeding administration could break. It was arguably unconstitutional. 

The answer lie in congressional inaction. Legislation had been pending since 2001 to address the situation of children who had been brought to the United States by their parents illegally. It was called the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or the DREAM Act. Despite originally having Republican support, the DREAM Act died in May of 2011.  When the DREAM Act failed to pass Congress, President Obama forced the issue by creating a program where this who would have received relief through the legislation would be given deferred action. 

President Trump, who publicly expressed support for DACA recipients on numerous occasions, now seems to be on the verge of ending the program. He is doing so despite pleadings by Republican lawmakers, such as Paul Ryan, to give Congress the chance to pass legislation to address the problem. In doing so, he has raised the ire of many in the public who find DACA recipients sympathetic. 

The question now is whether President Trump's actions will finally force Congress to enact a legal solution to the problem, or whether DACA recipients will simply be forced to return to the shadows to hide from being deported from the only home they've known. 

William J. Kovatch, Jr.