Ian Eppler, Shane Hebel  //  4/24/17  //  Daily Update

Attorney General Sessions sends letters to nine so-called "sanctuary cities" requesting proof that they are communicating with federal authorites on immigration issues. The House Oversight Committee requests documents related to the Trump Organization's treatment of certain payments from foreign governments. The President signs an executive order requiring the Treasury Department to review certain regulations associated with Dodd-Frank. And Saturday's March For Science provokes commentary about climate change and other issues.

IMMIGRATION

Trump’s motives for the travel ban matter under existing law, argues Richard Primus (Take Care).

Joshua Matz (Take Care) critiques Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ comment that he was “amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power.”

The Trump Administration plans to prosecute immigrant parents for paying to have their children smuggled into the United States, reports Ryan Devereau (Intercept).

Attorney General Sessions asked nine jurisdictions to prove that they are communicating with federal authorities about undocumented immigrants, and if they are not, they could lose funding, reports Matt Zapotosky (WaPo; ABA Journal).

• See the press release here.
• See the letters sent to the jurisdictions here.
• California Senate Leader Kevin de León stated that these policies are based on “principles of white supremacy,” reports Patrick McGreevy (LA Times).
• At Constitutional Law Prof Blog, Steven Schwinn discusses the implications of these letters for a future constitutional challenge to an effort to withhold federal funding from these cities.

The Supreme Court needs to expand doctrine in order to strike down 8 USC § 1373, which is at the center of current debates about sanctuary cities, argues Josh Blackman at his blog.

President Trump stated that DREAMers should “rest easy,” in an interview with the Associated Press.

• Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have both made similar statements, reports Noah Weiland (NY Times).

Federalism doctrine as it applies to immigration policy should apply regardless of political ideology, argues Vikram David Amar (Verdict).

The ABA has filed an amicus brief supporting the Hawaii injunction against the travel ban, reports Lorelei Laird (ABA Journal).

• See the amicus brief here.

CIVIL RIGHTS

President Trump’s nominee for Army Secretary has a strong anti-LGBTQ track record, argues Sheri Swokowski (WaPo).

DEMOCRACY

Howard Dean was mistaken in saying there is a hate speech exception to the First Amendment, argues Eugene Volokh (WaPo). Volokh also responded to Howard Dean’s rebuttal to “read Chaplinksy v. New Hampshire."

A conservative activists’ letter to Attorney General Sessions has parallels to Perez v. Abbott, which held that Texas’s redistricting choices violated the Voting Rights Act, points out Leah Litman (Take Care).

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

President Trump frequently consults with outside advisors who are not part of the White House staff, write Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush in the New York Times.

Former Trump campaign staffers are seeking out foreign lobbying contracts, notes Maya Gold at CREW.

The Treasury Department has declined to grant ExxonMobil a waiver from sanctions on Russia that prohibit the company from drilling for oil in the Black Sea. The proposal had raised concerns about conflicts of interest given Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s former role as CEO of ExxonMobil, and had been criticized by members of Congress from both parties (The Hill).

The Trump administration’s decision to stop disclosing White House visitor logs is a “giant leap in the wrong direction," writes Liz Hempowicz of the Project on Government Oversight.

The House Oversight Committee requested documents regarding the Trump Organization’s treatment of payments from foreign governments.

Congressional Democrats are raising concerns about deputy White House Counsel Stefan Passarino’s potential conflicts of interest (House Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform).

Analysis of the disclosed records of contributions to President Trump’s inaugural committee continues.

• A hotel executive who withdrew from a fundraiser for President Trump’s campaign after protests donated over $1 million to the inaugural committee through four companies (The Intercept).
• The inaugural committee falsely claimed a $25,000 donation from Katherine Johnson, the former NASA mathematician featured in the recent movie “Hidden Figures” (The Intercept).

REGULATION

On Saturday, the March for Science took place in cities around the world. Many speakers and attendees criticized the Trump administration’s approach to science, particularly with respect to climate change (The Hill, NYT).

• The Intercept profiles several March for Science participants.
• At the Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin discusses to what extent voters should defer to scientists’ views on policy issues.
• Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL), who has a Ph.D. in physics, explains why he participated in the March for Science at The Hill.
• In a Saturday tweet, President Trump claimed that his administration is committed to environmental protection and scientific research (The Hill).
• But on Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt discussed his plans for reduced regulation of the coal industry during a visit to a coal power plant (The Washington Examiner).

On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order requiring the Treasury Department to review certain regulations associated with Dodd-Frank. He also promised a “big announcement” on tax reform on Wednesday (CNN Money, NYT).

• At Vox, Matt Yglesias argues that these executive orders are “the nail in the coffin of Trump’s economic populism.”
• At Cato@Liberty, Chris Edwards evaluates Canada’s experience with a reduced corporate tax rate.
• Mark Allen argues in The Hill that Congress and the Trump administration should consider effective tax rates when evaluating tax reform proposals.

President Trump’s goals of creating jobs and reducing healthcare costs may be incompatible because of the increasing prevalence of health care jobs, argues Chad Terhune in the New York Times.

An index of financial regulations indicates that, in the first months of the Trump administration, the pace of regulatory changes and enforcement actions is down significantly from the Obama administration (The Hill).

President Trump will name Phillip Miscimarra as chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (The Hill).

President Trump’s proposed steel tariffs will harm American exporters who use imported steel, argues Ryan Bourne in Cato@Liberty.

Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) criticized President Trump’s proposed cuts to the budget for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in The Hill.

On Friday, the Trump administration requested the resignation of Dr. Vivek Murthy, who was appointed Surgeon General by President Obama (NYT).

RULE OF LAW

The Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security has opened an investigation after U.S. Customs and Border Protection sent a summons to Twitter seeking to identify the person behind an anti-Trump Twitter account purportedly run by an employee of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (The Intercept).

At Balkinzation, Michael Klarman discusses (part 1, part 2) how the election of President Trump supports the Framers’ concern that democracy would ultimately lead to the election of a demagogue.

RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE

According to the New York Times, FBI Director James Comey struggled to balance the nascent investigation into Russian interference with the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

At The Hill, Morgan Chalfant raises five questions for Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), who took over the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian interference after Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) recused himself.

The House Intelligence Committee asked several Obama administration officials, including former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, to testify publicly regarding the investigation into Russian interference (The Hill).

Intelligence officials are concerned about potential Russian interference into upcoming European elections (The Hill).

And that's our update today!  Thanks for reading.  We cover a lot of ground, so our updates are inevitably a partial selection of relevant legal commentary.  

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