King Obama’s Last Grasp

There is just one year left in the Obama presidency, but don’t get too comfortable. That’s still plenty of time for our leader to put the finishing touches on his proposed “transformation of America.”

The past six months have already seen President Obama stage repeated power grabs, using executive actions to implement policy that significantly affects the lives of Americans.

Here’s a look at some more unilateral action Obama can try to take — and likely will — while ignoring Article I of the Constitution. That’s the article, first by design not by accident, that created Congress.

Immigration
New immigration enforcement directives issued by the Obama administration over the summer protect from deportation up to 87 percent of illegal aliens, according to a report published in July by the Migration Policy Institute. Thankfully, these have been halted, at least for now, by the courts.

Unfortunately, there are more executive actions the president could take to further his radical immigration agenda. Obama could “extend deferred action or, more likely, parole in place,” according to Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

“Parole in place” allows family members of illegal immigrants who are in the armed forces to stay in the United States and even receive benefits.

In an extreme but unlikely scenario, Krikorian said, Obama could even make use of his statutory authority to issue Temporary Protective Status — a provision designed originally for illegal immigrants whose home countries are devastated by war or natural disaster.

TPS comes complete with a driver’s license, Social Security number, and — despite its name — is effectively permanent, as the designation is in practice renewed every 18 months. To date, no one with TPS status has ever been deported, according to Krikorian.

Environment
Obama will continue to rely on executive action to pursue his environmental agenda as well. The president’s Clean Power Plan, should it survive a legal challenge filed by almost half the states in the union, will result in skyrocketing energy prices and could cost thousands of jobs in coal country. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates the CPP will cost the taxpayer a total $51 billion.

Equally as devastating economically is Obama’s proposed Stream Protection Rule, “a rule that will affect coal production nationwide” and is seen by many in the coal industry as “a graver threat than the CPP,” according to Luke Popovich, vice president of external communications for the National Mining Association. The rule would implement environmental regulations that would effectively prevent the coal industry from continuing to operate in its current form.

Gitmo
Obama also could take executive action regarding Guantanamo Bay. Despite signing the National Defense Authorization Act last week, which included a provision to prevent the transfer of prisoners held at Guantanamo to the United States mainland, the president’s signing statement criticized that provision as possibly unconstitutional, employing language seemingly designed to give him leeway to ignore the transfer restrictions in the coming year.

Issuing an executive order in direct contravention of the duly enacted NDAA would certainly be risky, but as Obama has no need to worry about winning another election, it’s not impossible that the president might use executive action to finally achieve one of his major campaign promises.

Guns
Obama could also bypass Congress regarding gun control. Thankfully, the strength of the Second Amendment means it is “unlikely Obama would issue an executive order directly restricting (things like) magazine capacity,” said Second Amendment expert Nicholas Johnson, a professor of law at Fordham University’s School of Law. Although Obama has threatened such action in the past, “it’s more likely he’s using that bluster as a bully pulpit to pressure Congress into passing universal background checks.”

However, one action the Obama administration will likely take to further his anti-Second Amendment agenda is to “define people as mentally defective,” said John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, in reference to the Social Security Administration’s proposed plan to apply Veterans Affairs restrictions on mentally defective veterans owning guns to Social Security recipients.

“These restrictions would define anyone who doesn’t handle their own finances as a mental defective” and would “deprive 4.5 million Americans of their Second Amendment rights,” according to Lott.

The Courts
This is arguably the vehicle through which Obama can have the biggest impact on all of his ideological pet projects in his final year. There are currently 66 vacancies in the federal judiciary — 33 for which no one has yet been nominated.

“If the president is able to stack the bench with more anti-constitutionalist judges, it would be a real impediment to any attempt by the incoming administration to restore constitutional limits on federal power,” cautions John C. Eastman, founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.