On Tuesday evening, U.S. District Judge John Bates ruled that President Trump could not legally end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, arguing that Trump would have to begin reissuing temporary visas again. He called the decision to end DACA “arbitrary and capricious because the Department failed adequately to explain its conclusion that the program was unlawful.”
So, in other words, if a president takes an executive action, then the subsequent president cannot undo that executive action — even if that original executive action has been declared unconstitutional, at least in part.
This is insanity — or, as Michael Brendan Dougherty of National Review put it, it’s “Calvinball,” the inane game created by cartoon character Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes, who arbitrarily changed the rules of the game when convenient. Here’s how leftist courts have now ruled: an action that is obviously unconstitutional is no longer unconstitutional when performed by President Obama; undoing that unconstitutional action is unconstitutional if performed by President Trump. Hence the bewilderment of the Department of Justice, whose spokesperson answered, “Today’s order doesn’t change the Department of Justice’s position on the facts: DACA was implemented unilaterally after Congress declined to extend benefits to this same group of illegal aliens.”
Whether you oppose or support DACA is irrelevant here. What is far more relevant is whether the courts are performing their actual function — legitimate interpretation of the law — or whether they’re simply rubber-stamping policy with which they agree.