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struggle4progress

(118,039 posts)
Fri Feb 24, 2017, 07:06 AM Feb 2017

Santa Clara County calls sanctuary order extortion

By Jenna Lyons, San Francisco Chronicle
Updated 4:32 pm, Thursday, February 23, 2017

Santa Clara County officials asked a federal judge Thursday to impose a nationwide preliminary injunction against President Trump’s executive order threatening to withhold federal funds from sanctuary jurisdictions, calling the move “extortion” by the White House.

The motion was filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco as part of the county’s Feb. 3 suit challenging the constitutionality of Trump’s Jan. 25 order. In the order, the president calls for federal defunding of sanctuary jurisdictions that “willfully violate Federal law in an attempt to shield aliens from removal from the United States.”

The request for a nationwide injunction went a step further than a federal lawsuit filed by San Francisco on Jan. 31. San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera alleged the executive order targeting sanctuary cities violated the 10th Amendment, which limits the reach of the federal government in state matters ...


http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Santa-Clara-County-calls-Trump-s-sanctuary-10955184.php

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Santa Clara County calls sanctuary order extortion (Original Post) struggle4progress Feb 2017 OP
I'm torn on this- the use of Federal Funds as a carrot for behaviors by local governments Lee-Lee Feb 2017 #1
I think it could be all right in this case, murielm99 Feb 2017 #2
 

Lee-Lee

(6,324 posts)
1. I'm torn on this- the use of Federal Funds as a carrot for behaviors by local governments
Fri Feb 24, 2017, 07:30 AM
Feb 2017

is a very long used tactic that has been used to ensure a whole lot of positive changes happen. From highway funding being used to make sure states have .08 BAC and a reasonable drinking age to Federal education funding being used to ensure schools and universities meet Federal guidelines for nondiscrimination and other topics to money being used to ensure environmental goals are met.

Title IX would lose most of the teeth in its enforcement if the ability for the Federal Government to withhold funds was not there.

"Comply with what we want or lose the funding" has a long, long history of being a tool that Congress and the Executive Branch have used to more or less drag non progressive states into at least a partial level of civility.

I don't like how Trump and his goon squad are threatening to use basically the same power now, bug looking at the bigger picture I can see a real danger if a case like those were to go forward and there be a precedent and case law set that the Federal Government cannot put strings on money it sends to states of localities, because if that whole power is gone once we are back in control we will have far, far less ability for a Blue DC to reach into red states and force them to change behaviors or policies.

We need to look at the long game here. If they win it will be a small victory but a huge erosion of the one big power that the Federal Government had to influence how state and local governments behaved and their policies, and that in the long term would be a huge defeat.

murielm99

(30,656 posts)
2. I think it could be all right in this case,
Fri Feb 24, 2017, 07:38 AM
Feb 2017

because it points to the constitutionality of withholding the funds. If the injunction is drawn narrowly enough, it would not be precedent for withholding funds in other cases.

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