Tuesday, May 6, 2025

Part I

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Upholding the Constitution, Due Process, and Illegal Immigration: President Trump’s Recent Comments Show This Issue Just Isn’t Going Away

Over the last couple of days, headlines have been dominated by controversy that emerged out of a long format interview President Donald Trump gave to NBC’s news program, Meet the Press, and this took place on Sunday. Host Kristen Welker was pressing a series of questions having to do with the rights of those who are in the country illegally when it comes to the constitutional guarantee of due process of law. And so even as Kristen Welker was pressing these questions, the president responded in just about every case by saying, “I don’t know.” When he was asked about due process rights and whether or not they applied to those in the country illegally, he said, “I don’t know.” But the most interesting, and frankly the most crucial part of the interview was when Kristen Welker asked the President, “Don’t you need to uphold the constitution of the United States as President?” And President Trump responded with the words, once again, “I don’t know.”

He said, “I don’t know.” He went on to say, “I have to respond by saying again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.” Now, there’s not a lot of new material here, but there is new controversy. And in this case, the controversy is mostly explosive out of President Trump’s one response to that singular question, “Do you need to uphold the constitution of the United States as president?” And frankly, President Trump responded with three words no president of the United States should ever use in such a circumstance. The question again, “Do you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?” The President’s response, “I don’t know.” Then he went on to say again that he has brilliant lawyers and that his administration will follow what the Supreme Court says. Now, the explosive part is the President saying, “I don’t know” after being asked, “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States?”

And this is just Civics 101, the President of the United States taking the oath of office pledges to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. And so that is basically the most important responsibility a president has. So when any president, anytime under any circumstance is asked, “Do you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States?” The answer is yes. Now, I don’t know what the White House is thinking in putting the president into this interview context. In any administration, this would be a pretty hot question. When you’re looking at Meet the Press, it’s prime real estate more important in the past than in the present frankly. But nonetheless, it’s still a very important platform. But as many have observed, it’s not that so many people were watching the program, it is that the links of short clips from the program went viral in social media.

So there’s another interesting twist on the political calculation of the present. It’s not just the program you’re on, but what clips of that program may go viral on social media? And I’ll say also that some of those clips were not fair in representing the president’s position. But I also want to be clear, the president really did not answer that question in the right way. It is fundamentally wrong for a president to say, when asked if he has the responsibility of upholding the Constitution of the United States saying, “I don’t know.” Those are the three worst words you can use as an answer. And we also at the same time, had to put this in the larger context. The president was being asked a series of questions about due process of law and about how it applies. And then Kristen Welker was pointing out that the argument she was making is that due process of law is grounded in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

And of course there’s a real argument to be had there. And the general consensus in the United States is that after the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, due process of law applies in some form to all those within the legal jurisdiction of the United States of America. And there can be arguments made about exactly how that is to be applied. But again, the most important thing is that there is no argument about whether or not the president has the responsibility to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. 

But we really are under some very interesting ground here and there really is a developing clash coming between the Trump Administration and well, maybe the courts, at least some federal courts when it comes to the issue of due process of law. And I’ve discussed it already on The Briefing because it’s already been in the headlines, but now it’s in the headlines again in a really big way.

Let’s just remind ourselves of at least a part of what’s going on here. The president’s argument is this, due process of law can’t be used to basically bring the United States of America into extinction. That basically makes no sense. And if due process of law means that everyone in this country can demand exactly the same rights for exactly the same legal process, which in the hands of the Left never ever, it seems, comes to an end, then that’s just a way of saying we have no immigration laws and that means we have no body of law binding here in the United States. And it means that effectively, what the left wants to signal and has for a long time is this, if you get to the United States, you’re probably going to get to stay.

Now, I want to be clear, I think that argument is nonsense and I don’t think that is what was contemplated at all when you look at the Fifth Amendment, which is obviously foundational to our constitutional order, it’s in the Bill of Rights. And then the Fourteenth Amendment, which 1866, came after the national trauma of the Civil War, it is clear that no one was then thinking about millions of non-citizens being present here in the United States by process of illegal immigration that just wasn’t even imaginable.

And thus when the President responded by saying that his lawyers are looking into this because as he said, if you’re going to take every one of these cases and every one of them is going to go through a normal process of at least what some would claim is the due process of law, this would mean, well, he said a million, 2 million, 3 million trials. His point is that’s never going to happen. That is a legal impossibility. It’s a structural impossibility. And this is where, for instance, in Europe, the very same argument is occurring in parallel form as we’re going to see the due process of law is not the same terminology in the European or even in the British context, but the same issues are in play.

The same issues are playing out in such a way that you have those on the Left who are arguing in essence that if you’re here, no court’s ever going to be finished in such a way that you can be deported or at least any large number can be deported. And conservatives are looking at this and saying, “That’s untenable.” It’s just not imaginable that due process of law in this case in the context of the constitutional guarantee means that anyone within the territory and legal jurisdiction of the United States has the right to years and years of legal process. And when it comes to some of the most, let’s just say controversial cases, that have been very much a part of the news in just recent days and weeks, some of these already are court processes that have gone on for a matter of a decade or two and more.

And it’s just a reminder of the fact that there is a considerable contingent in the United States, particularly on the cultural and political Left, who wants it that way. The way I put it in The Briefing before is that when you look at the constitutional guarantee of due process of law, the left believes in process, endless process. And that is just a way of shutting down the immigration system and any enforcement of borders, any enforcement of legal status in the United States. And as conservatives would argue eventually, that’s a subversion of the very notion of citizenship.

Part II

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President Trump’s Signal: The President’s Comments on Due Process is a Signal that SCOTUS Will Have to Take Up the Issue

So I’ll go back to the beginning. The president should have said, “Yes, of course, I’m going to uphold the Constitution of the United States, but we’re going to have to consider and determine what it means to apply due process in situations where you have millions of illegal immigrants in the United States, of that, in all rationality, cannot be exactly the same legal system.”

But here’s where we need to understand that over the course of the last several decades, the idea of the due process of law has taken on a significance and a meaning that quite honestly I think would baffle the founders of the United States, the framers of the Constitution, and even those who worked hard to adopt the Fourteenth Amendment in the 1860s. And one of the reasons here is that when it says “persons,” in the Fourteenth Amendment, “persons.” One of the questions is, well, does that all persons, does that mean that citizens and non-citizens are to be treated exactly the same? Well, there have been court decisions such as one in particular in 1953, the Shaughnessy decision in which the court appears to say, “Yes, a person is a person and thus everyone has the same due process rights or the same right to the due process of law.”

And I’ll just say that’s going to be one of those issues that will have to be determined eventually by the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court under this circumstance with the issue of illegal immigration as such a big issue, with so many millions of persons, yes, eventually the Supreme Court is going to have to decide this case in terms of defining due process of law and how it applies in these situations. But it’s also just important to recognize that due process of law is basically determined by courts, and it is often determined in such a way that different courts at different times have a different understanding of due process of law as it’s debated in especially liberal law schools, due process of law once again is all process. It’s hard to imagine how there’s ever a conclusion, and you see this playing out in all kinds of different ways.

But you also need to understand that when the idea of due process first came along, it was tied to something as long-standing as the Magna Carta. Clause 39 of the Magna Carta, adopted in the year 1215, let’s just say a long time ago, 1215, King John had to promise “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned or stripped of his rights or possessions or outlawed or exiled or deprived from his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him or sent others to do so except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.” And that’s how the Magna Carta became law. It became part of the law of the land and the due process of law was a term that was used in the 18th century on both sides of the Atlantic. The Americans, as we became a nation, used the term due process of law, and the same was true in the British context.

But over a period of time, the shift in the British context towards parliamentary supremacy meant that the phrase due process of law basically drops out. And the parliamentary supremacy, at least in the British tradition, has largely meant that there is no claim of a separation of powers such as we have here in the United States between the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. Parliamentary supremacy means that parliament is supreme over all and thus, due process basically falls out not a part of the contemporary British conversation. In the European and in the British context, you have references more to something like natural justice or the body of law. And so you really do have a divergence here. And as a matter of fact, many authorities point out the due process of law is basically dropped out of the British conversation.

Here in the United States, it’s very much a part of the conversation, headline news out of Sunday’s weekend news programs and in particular, the President on Meet the Press. This is a big worldview issue. It reveals so much about one’s worldview and basic presuppositions. I think all of us just based upon a common human understanding, based upon a scriptural worldview, we believe that all persons are due certain rights and recognitions. All persons should be handled and treated as human beings. And we would base that in the fact that every single human being is made in the image of God. We also understand that nations have jurisdictions and nations have citizens, and when it comes to the citizens of those nations, clearly they should possess the rights that are definitive of the nation and whatever is its constitutional order. That’s the American affirmation. And then you have the addition, okay, now you have persons in this legal designation in the jurisdiction, and the question is what rights are they due?

And I don’t think it’s going to be tenable over time to say that non-citizens have exactly the same rights as citizens in situations such as illegal immigration. Now if you have two persons and they both are arrested for armed robbery, one a citizen and one not a citizen, it is conceivable that in that context, there would be basically the same adjudication about responsibility for armed robbery. But that doesn’t remove the fact that there is also the legal reality of citizenship and of someone being here legally or illegally. And so when you have due process of law, even in terms of how it’s applied right now, quite honestly, you don’t have a uniform application everywhere in all times in all courts as to the same result. So the bottom line in all of this is that this is going to be a very hot conversation, and I think it’s important in an historical perspective to say this.

There are so many things that make headline news and they really don’t matter. They make a news for a headline and then they pass, they’re a social media phenomenon and then they pass. The due process of law issue, this is not a controversy that’s going to pass and it’s going to have to be dealt with because of two things. And I’ll just say the two things are the courts and the President of the United States. The President of the United States made very clear on Sunday, and he knows he has the vast majority of Americans behind him on this, that he intends to deal with the problem of illegal immigration. He intends to deal with it. He said repeatedly, “The voters elected me to deal with this.” And if anything, he’s looking at about an 80-20 issue in terms of public opinion. So he knows that the public opinion is with him, but on the other hand, it is the President’s responsibility to uphold the Constitution. And that’s fundamental.

And the argument’s going to be coming from the White House that the right constitutional interpretation of these things will allow the White House and the administration to deal with the problem of having so many millions of persons here illegally. And by the way, there are other entailments of this no one really wants to deal with. So it’s not just a matter of say, moving illegal immigrants from this jurisdiction to another jurisdiction. It is also about the entire umbrella of federal rules and regulations and for that matter, federal programs including social welfare programs. In other words, this is a big issue and it’s high time that it was adjudicated and dealt with. And we will know honestly where we stand. It will likely take a matter of time before this issue arrives at the Supreme Court of the United States. But you know President Trump was absolutely right in that interview after he wasn’t so strong in answering about upholding the Constitution, he got to the fact that his administration will honor the decision made by the Supreme Court of the United States.

And you could say, “Well, that’s very good news” and it is. Here’s the other big thing there, and that is the President was basically signaling to the Supreme Court, “This is coming at you. You’re going to have to deal with it. Let’s see what you do.” Oh, and by the way, just in leaving this, let me point out that when the president said that his administration will listen to the Supreme Court of the United States, you need to hear what he said and what he didn’t say. What he didn’t say is we are not going to take very seriously rulings by Federal District court judges who claim to have some kind of national reach with their decision making and their jurisdiction. It was a way of signaling this is going to have to go to the Supreme Court of the United States, and let’s just say that when the White House says, when the President says this is going to have to get to the Supreme Court of the United States, the White House has mechanisms to make it so.

Part III

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Disarray Among the Democrats: A Battle to Define the Party Is Underway — And What is ‘Dark Woke?’

Well, now as we’re thinking about big worldview issues, I want to turn to another one, and this is one that isn’t making as many headlines, but it really should be, and this is the current state of the Democratic Party and what’s going on in the Democratic Party. 

When a party loses the White House and then it loses say what the Democrats lost, which was a Senate majority. And when it finds itself on the defensive, and right now the Democrats don’t have the White House, they don’t have the House, they don’t have the Senate, they’re looking of course with a lot of participation in the midterm elections in 2026. But the conversation going on right now in the Democratic Party is really interesting. It’s fascinating, and you have such things emerging such as Frank Bruni who had been a liberal opinion writer, still is an occasional opinion writer for The New York Times, who wrote a piece with the headline, “Swearing and Spatting Won’t Save Democrats.”

One of the things he’s pointing out is that you’ve got all these Democrats who are deciding to be cool by appearing in social media in short videos, using the worst language imaginable, as if they’re all of a sudden going to be seen as people of the people. You also have some very interesting things going on. We’ve talked about the fact that California governor Gavin Newsom, who’s term limited, can’t run again for the governorship of our largest state. Everyone knows he is running for president. I mean, that’s the least disguised ambition in the United States. He started this podcast. He’s been talking to people on the Right. There are people on the Left in the Democratic Party who say that that’s a sellout right there. If you’re going to talk to people on the far right, you’re offering legitimacy to conservative arguments, and they’re saying that shouldn’t happen.

On the other side, you’ve got this tour that has been undertaken by Senator Bernie Sanders, who by the way, remind yourself isn’t a Democrat. He’s a registered independent, but nonetheless, he is obviously the left wing, the Democratic Party, one of those things. Go figure. And on the House side you’ve got Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC. And so Bernie and AOC have been on a road tour and they’ve been holding events, and as Bernie Sanders pointed out in a recent interview, they’ve been having large crowds up to say 36,000. But the point is that the left wing of the Democratic Party can always produce a crowd. What it generally cannot produce is an electoral victory. And this is especially true when you look at the United States right now, how in the world the Democratic Party could have much of a future if it plays to its own party left.

That’s hard to imagine. But as I’ve often pointed out, the Democratic Party’s energy is all to the left. So it’s hard to imagine how the left wing doesn’t eventually win, but you know all the conversation and the controversy and the party right now, it’s interesting to see all the posturing. For one thing, you’ve got a generational struggle. You’ve got the old versus the young. Now you look at Bernie Sanders and AOC and you say, “Well, there you have two generations.” Yeah, the left has got two generations. The big interesting generational fight in the Democratic side is between older figures in the Democratic Party who consider themselves somewhat centrist, and the younger who overwhelmingly consider themselves, well, not centrist at all. And so there’s a spat going on in the party right now between Jim Carville, James Carville, who was a famously political strategist for Bill Clinton. And speaking of cursing and speaking your mind, he’s certainly got the brand for that.

But James Carville is arguing that if the Democratic Party is going to have a future, it’s got to be a future somewhere in the center. And of course, that kind of political centrism by their definition is what won the White House twice for Bill Clinton. And of course the younger folks are saying, “Yeah, but that was back in the 1990s. We weren’t even born yet. And guess what? That political equation doesn’t work anymore.” And so for instance, there is a battle in the Democratic Party. Some are calling it a civil war between James Carville and David Hogg, who’s the current Vice Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. David Hogg has been an activist going back to the fact that he was one of the students there at the high school in Parkland, Florida when the mass shooting took place. And he’s been an activist basically for some leftist causes, most importantly, first of all, for gun control.

But as the Weekly Examiner pointed out, he also holds to a good number of left-wing beliefs. And I quote, “Hogg also believes in legalizing all drugs and a 100% tax on anyone who exceeds $1 billion in earnings. On top of that, he also supports government-run universal healthcare and free college. Hogg also has stated he prefers to own a Portuguese water dog, [which the writer says isn’t elitist or anything over having any children.[ Hogg is quoted as saying ‘long-term, it’s cheaper, better for the environment and will never tell you that it hates you or ask you to pay for college.’” So go for the Portuguese dog, not for the baby. You look at an argument like that, and quite honestly, it’s hard to imagine anyone thinks that can be the future of the Democratic Party, but David Hogg is now an activist in the Democratic Party for even primarying democratic candidates who aren’t sufficiently to the left.

And that’s exactly why James Carville was saying, that’s idiocy. David Hogg, who is after all Vice Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is saying to people like Carville, “Just get out of the way. You got to let the youth take over.” And when it comes to both parties in one sense, but in particular in the Democratic Party, an awful lot of its leadership is old, indeed, very old. By the way, there’s also a new term that the Democrats are using, at least those on the left wing are using for themselves and their new vibe. Get ready for this. It’s “dark woke.” So yeah, you heard that right. They’re declaring themselves to be woke, but not just woke, but “dark woke,” which is Matt Lewis of the Los Angeles Times says, is an attempt at relevance. It’s “a fancy term for progressive politics dressed up in an edgy, confrontational style.”

The current chairman of the Democratic National Committee isn’t pleased with the vice chair taking this position, which he sees as divisive at the very time the Democrats need unity. But if you’re going dark woke, it’s hard to imagine just how much unity you’re going to be able to pull off. By the way, you have to love some comments such as this one in the New York Times political consultant, Bhavik Lathia said, “Republicans have essentially put Democrats in a respectability prison. There’s an extreme imbalance in strategy that allows Republicans to say stuff that really grabs voters attention while we’re stuck saying boring pablum. I see this as a strategic shift within Democratic messaging. I’m a big fan of dark woke.” Well, let me just say, I don’t think you’re probably going to have much traction with grassroots Americans if you say the problem is that Republicans have put Democrats in a respectability prison. That won’t compute.

But then you also see the posturing in the party where there’s some people who are trying to move up to be next in line to be the Democratic nominee for President. One of them just might be able to pull it off, not because of charisma, but because of money. That is Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who is the governor of Illinois and is not term limited from running for another term in office, and he might do that, but everyone knows he is running for President of the United States. He made a recent appearance in New Hampshire. There is a little bell that should go off. You can’t appear in New Hampshire in this kind of context and say, “Run for president. Who? Me?” Democratic Governors of Illinois don’t just turn up in New Hampshire for some kind of summer vacation. The headline in the New York Times about Pritzker’s appearance in New Hampshire is this “Pritzker thunders against do nothing Democrats stoking 2028 talk.”

Okay, why might someone like JB Pritzker who is after all, way off on the left. He’s made the state of Illinois basically an abortion mecca. On so many issues, he’s not only on the left, he’s on the far left, and he is so pro-abortion by the way that he has put his own family fortune behind access to abortion. Unapologetically, he’s a man in this case of the progressive left and who has been elected twice. And as I say, the big question is whether he is going to run for a third term that might complicate running for president. But on the other hand, it would give him a considerable platform. And he has a considerable platform, and in particular, the money. He is one of the heirs to the Hyatt Hotel Fortune, and at least some estimate that he is currently the second-wealthiest man in major American politics that would put Donald Trump at number one. JB Pritzker at number two, and let’s just say they do not like each other.

But for Christians, the big take home in all of this is that politics is always about ideas, the politics that will matter, always about ideas, and those ideas are grounded in truth claims and in assumptions and in principles. And eventually what’s going to happen in the United States in the next presidential election is as in the last presidential election, yes, you’re going to have two personalities face off, but you’re also going to have two different understandings of reality. We now have a divide in the United States where just to say the words girl and boy reminds us that we have differing understandings of reality. And so the Democrats right now are trying to figure out their own reality, and they’re experimenting with using bad language and going dark woke.

From time to time, you can look at the stuff going on in the Republican Party and say, “That looks pretty messy.” Yeah, it does. But just look across the political divide. Wow, there are many of you who are already quite concerned about woke. This’ll keep you up late at night. The new thing is dark woke.