Jeff Sessions Is Suing California, and I Feel Fine
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions was named after two Confederates, so it was peculiar to hear him talk as if secession was a bad thing. On Tuesday morning, the Attorney General continued his war with California's leadership, this time admonishing it for refusing to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents collect undocumented immigrants for deportation. Alarmist and hyperbolic rhetoric about immigration has always been this administration's thing. In that respect, Sessions delivered a tour de force.
"There is no nullification. There is no secession," he said in Sacramento one day after announcing a lawsuit seeking to block three relatively new "sanctuary" laws that limit state and local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement efforts. "Federal law is the supreme law of the land. I would invite any doubters to go to Gettysburg, or to the tombstones of John C. Calhoun and Abraham Lincoln. This matter has been settled."
A man who was called out by the late Coretta Scott King for his efforts to suppress black votes during his time as Alabama's attorney general probably shouldn't be using Lincoln as a moral shield. As Senator Kamala Harris said, "I think that Jeff Sessions in particular should understand that when he starts evoking Civil War comparisons it's going to be interpreted as highly offensive, and if I were him, I'd avoid making Civil War comparisons." But I'd argue that the one reason why Sessions has resisted the urge to resign despite Trump's constant antagonism is that he has lived his entire life waiting for the opportunity to do exactly this. Huffington Post reported Thursday on a draft version of the Department of Justice's five-year enforcement plan, which both prioritizes crackdowns on the undocumented and conveniently omits mentions of civil rights enforcement. Sessions is attempting some radical social engineering, using a lot of law enforcement power – and little to no legal justification – to keep white people in the majority for just a little bit longer.
That is one reason why, as a California resident, I'm glad that Sessions is suing our state.
For one, he'll lose. The challenge to the three "sanctuary" laws is flimsy because nothing in them keeps ICE from doing its job. Yet there we were on Tuesday, with Sessions invoking "secession" and making similarly terrible comparisons. "Just imagine if a state passed a law forbidding employers from cooperating with OSHA in ensuring workplace safety. Or the EPA, looking for a polluter," he said. "That would obviously be absurd. But it would be no different in principle from this new law enacted by California." That, obviously, misstates the facts. The three laws he seeks to impede don't forbid anything, really. One limits information sharing between state, local and federal authorities about nonviolent suspects, but allows for such information to be freely submitted in the case of serious crimes. Another restricts employers from assisting ICE – but only without a subpoena or court order. The third merely helps California operate more humane detention centers for undocumented immigrants in custody, something no one with any sense should oppose.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/jamil-smith-jeff-sessions-suing-california-over-immigration-policies-w517651?utm_source=rsnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=030918_12
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