A Letter to Governor Newsom
I applaud your recent stand against ICE and President Trump’s playground of unlawful, bully immigration policies.
I strongly urge you to step up your resistance: The word “immigration” does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. Accordingly, the power to regulate immigration belongs to the states.
ICE is operating in our state without lawful authorization—interfering with your prerogative as governor to determine immigration policy. Therefore, I implore that you shut down ICE in California.
President Trump has threatened you with the loss of federal subsidies. Call his bluff. You have noted that our state sends $83 billion more to the federal government than we receive back. Do not waste resources fighting a losing cause in the federal courts. Rather, cut off President Trump’s gravy train: Tell the residents of our great state to stop paying the federal income tax (the 16th Amendment was properly ratified by only Indiana and Utah).
The power to tax income properly belongs to the states. As a Libertarian, I oppose both the warfare and welfare states. But as a constitutionalist, I would much rather pay lawful state income taxes for your welfare state than pay unlawful federal income taxes for Trump’s warfare/police state.
Thomas A. Caldwell Jr.
Fresno
Driving While Brown
With the Supreme Court’s recent decision concerning Hispanics driving while Brown, standing in front of a Walmart while Brown or speaking Spanish or looking phenotypically Brown, you can now be stopped and questioned by ICE.
This is Jim Crow 2.0. This is Broken Windows 2.0.
This is not the multicultural and multiethnic America as envisioned by the Abolitionists and the Abolitionist Constitution, which was ratified on Jan. 31, 1865.
We are now returning to the vision of the Slave Constitution, which was ratified on June 22, 1788.
This is not the America of “equal justice for all!”
We are in the fall of America.
Winter in America is just around the corner.
“That decision is yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was joined in dissent by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
Homer Gee Greene Jr.
Fresno
