The sun rises, the water is wet, and just like guns, Democrats hate nullification until they love it. Dems love guns as long as they control whoever controls the guns. The same can be said for nullification, the idea that states have veto power over federal demands. And we agree. States have rights, and lots of them. They occur in every gray area not covered by the Constitution to which their ancestors agreed.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
That’s a lot of rights that Democrats don’t want states to have, but progressives don’t think past what they want or need. Maine, for example, has announced that it could care less what Donald Trump thinks about boys playing in girls’ sports. It has no intention of ending the practice, and it is their opinion that it is none of his business.
They happen to be correct. There is nothing in the US Constitution about sex, gender, sports, or what any political subdivision can decide as it relates to any or all of that. It also doesn’t say anything about almost every federal agency, employee, or task that has been undertaken with or without the approval of the US Congress. But it does say that Congress can pass laws and that the Executive Branch has the job of enforcing those.
My point is that if Maine refuses to do something it doesn’t have to do, it must accept the cost. The federal government must ensure that no one else has to pay for its priorities. Maine has the right to give up federal funding for the thing and make its taxpayers pay.
Unfortunately for Maine, the general government has passed laws regarding taxation that Gov. Mills presumably loved when it meant laundering money through DC into her state.
And while Maine can refuse to keep boys out of girls’ sports, it cannot stop the IRS from exercising federal tax law. I wish it could, and I’d love to see it. A Democrat AG in a state with a Democrat governor protecting Democrat taxpayers who refuse to pay federal taxes. Especially after years of Dem administrations and their tax and spend water-carrying zombie army croaking about how patriotic it is to pay taxes.
More popcorn, please. And does that mean Mills supports ending the IRS? Probably not.
The other delicious irony is that these same Democrats, when their party controls Congress or the office of the President, are adamant about everyone everywhere following rules they like while ignoring laws they do not. The Bidenista’s reimaging of Title IX was extremely popular with the soy latte crowd, but Trump’s rule change back to the original is less popular with the Left (despite previous decades of defending and funding it) than those Covington kids after a March for Life in DC.
Legal challenges are percolating already, and if Maine hasn’t signed on, it will or will sue on its own. They want the federal education dollars without any strings, a demand they’d never tolerate if they held the purse strings.
Mr. Trump, in other words, is playing their game hard and fast, which puts Dems in the awkward position of having to demand something to which they are not entitled if they insist on their right to ignore the conditions from an agency – the Federal Department of Education – that Team Trump wants to get rid of in parts or altogether (anyway).
And the end of the Dept of Ed would give Maine exactly what it wants and what Mr. Trump wants. State’s to take control of education and the cost – borne by the taxpayers responsible for the education of its children, and not anyone else.
Just the way the founders imagined it.
