The judicial branch at both the state and federal level continues to overstep their authority by meddling in the affairs of the legislative and executive branches. And the audacity of judges appears to be increasing.

Just two weeks ago the Chicago Tribune reported this:

A judge has ordered Illinois officials to add intractable pain as a qualifying condition for medical marijuana, a ruling that could greatly expand access to the drug.

The Illinois Department of Public Health had rejected intractable pain — defined as pain that’s resistant to treatment — but Cook County Judge Raymond Mitchell ordered the agency to add the condition.

A health department spokeswoman said Tuesday the agency will appeal the ruling. The change is expected to be put on hold while the appeal is pursued.

If Cook County Judge Raymond Mitchell wants to set policy, he should run for governor or for a seat in the General Assembly.

At the federal level, several judges seem to have joined the #Resistance movement to block President Donald Trump’s Constitutionally lawful actions.

Whether it is concerning sanctuary cities and states, Trump’s actions on limiting immigration, DACA, or transgenders in the military, courts are getting into the act by pretending to hold executive or legislative power.

Those federal judges who choose to ignore the U.S. Constitution and statutes should be impeached. Those aren’t my words, but Tom Trinko’s over at American Thinker:

[J]udges who issue insane edicts must be impeached. It’s time for the people to voice the truth that judges are not some “super” agents who override the authority of the people’s representatives.

Trinko blasts the courts’ “Judicial Rebellion”:

We are witnessing a treasonous rebellion by leftist judges who are declaring the last election null and void.

At the core of these traitors’ arguments is the belief that the people do not have the right to express their views through the electoral process.

Essentially, these courts are declaring that President Trump doesn’t have the same authority as his predecessor and that the powers of the executive branch are constrained by what the judiciary thinks is good policy.

As hot as that rhetoric might sound, what Trinko writes next shows that it isn’t:

These judges assert that President Trump can’t overrule the executive orders of his predecessor with his own executive orders. If that were the case, elections would be meaningless, since one president could effectively prevent the people from rejecting his position by voting for a candidate who disagreed with him.

Writing at National Review, Josh Blackman penned a piece titled, “A Ludicrous Ruling That Trump Can’t End DACA.” In it he sarcastically writes:

On January 20, 2017, the executive power peacefully transitioned from President Obama to President Trump. At least one judge in San Francisco didn’t get the memo.

Later in the article, Blackman writes:

I am unable to think of any decision where a court has ordered a president to exercise discretionary authority he has deemed unconstitutional.

Concerning one court’s excursion into military policy, American Thinker’s Joe Herring wrote:

A federal judge has ventured far beyond mere judicial activism in declaring that the president cannot alter the policy of his predecessor regarding men who consider themselves women, and vice versa, serving in the military.

In effect, this judge has deemed President Trump to no longer be commander-in-chief.

. . .

This is a gross usurpation of power that, if permitted, establishes a precedent for any federal judge to stay the hand of the president in the conduct of war. This egregious overreach must be resisted and punished.

Resistance and punishment, however, require courage on the part of the other two branches. Congress can strip jurisdiction from the courts, and the President can ignore court “orders” that are clearly out of bounds.

Short of that, Herring writes, “one federal judge can illegally stop the president from exercising his constitutional power for months or years.”

The medical and recreational marijuana debate is not an issue for the courts, but for the people through their elected representatives in the legislative and executive branches. Courts that seek to amend legislation or limit or direct constitutionally or legislatively granted executive powers should be, at a minimum, ignored.

If the citizens of the United States are to have a constitutional government, the legislative and executive branches must push back at the judicial branch’s overreach. Not only would that action begin to deter bad behavior by judges, it would be a learning moment for the part of the country that never received a proper education concerning our state and federal Constitutions.

Subscribe to the IFI YouTube channel
and never miss a video report or special program!

A coalition of Christian leaders, including the Illinois Family Institute’s Dave Smith, has sent a letter to President Donald Trump calling on him to move forward with his plans to revoke President Barack Obama’s policies regarding “transgenders” in the military. An article at The Center for Military Readiness (CMR) explains why the letter is necessary:

In recent weeks, two federal district judges exceeded their authority by ordering the Trump Administration to continue enforcing President Barack Obama’s policies regarding transgenders in the military. They did this even though President Donald J. Trump has initiated formal procedures to review and revoke those policies.

The administration can and should defend presidential prerogatives and sound policies to strengthen our military, but the problem requires immediate attention at the administration’s highest levels.  It would be dangerous to sacrifice the President’s constitutional military powers, and to disregard Supreme Court precedents while allowing judges to make military policy.

The Illinois Family Institute reached out to an attorney specializing in constitutional law to explain why federal district judges think they have the authority to make military policy. The attorney’s response was simple: Those judges are merely giving us another demonstration of lawlessness that we have been witnessing at high levels in our government.

Since it is an obvious overreach by those judges, the Trump Administration should just ignore the rulings. Instead, the administration has appealed the rulings to the D.C. Circuit Court.

In its article titled “‘Supreme Judicial Commanders'” Should Not Run Our Military,” CMR expands further:

President Trump has the right, and the responsibility, to resist these activist court rulings and more that may be handed down in the coming months.

The Commander-in-Chief also has the right, and the responsibility, to restore sound Defense Department policies that were in place long before President Obama took office.

The U.S. Constitution does not grant to any federal judge powers to make policy for the military. (See Article 1, Section 8, and Article II, Section 2.)  The judges’ bizarre rulings favoring transgender plaintiffs were issued without any constitutional authorization, and they are a direct affront to the authority of the Commander-in-Chief.

If the Trump administration fails to act, the result would “shift control of our military to unaccountable, activist judges.” This would, in turn, do the following:

…convey the devastating message that the administration does not have the political will to do what President Trump promised the voters he would do — end political correctness in the military.

The coalition letter explains why President Trump should resist the courts:

At a time when there is widespread concern over the decline of military readiness in the U.S. armed forces, our military has become involved in an extravagant and novel social program involving individuals who will be unable to serve effectively for extended periods of time due to their need for medical and psychological care.

There is no evidence to suggest that the DOD adequately addressed the impact President Obama’s policy experiment would have on military readiness given the costs and physical effects of gender transition. Additionally, no consideration was given to the conscience and religious rights of military personnel who may be required to share close quarters, including showers, with individuals of the opposite sex. Nor were the conscience and religious rights of military personnel addressed for those who may have objections to providing transgender health services, such as hormone therapy, gender reassignment surgery, or counseling.

The letter goes on to say, “The focus of military training should be combat effectiveness, not social engineering…. This will ensure our military focuses on its mission of fighting and winning wars, not experimenting with our troops’ social lives” (emphasis added).

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to President Donald Trump to encourage him to continue to focus on military readiness and the well-being of our military by reversing President Obama’s harmful transgender policy.

You can also call the White House comment line at (202) 456-1111 to leave a voice message for the administration.

Click here to read the coalition letter. Click here to read the article by the Center for Military Readiness. Click here and here for more information about the Constitutional role of the federal courts.

End-of-Year Challenge

As you may know, IFI has a year-end matching challenge to raise $160,000. That’s right, a great group of IFI supporters are colluding with us to provide an $80,000 matching challenge to help support IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.

Please consider helping us reach this goal!  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2018!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 876
Tinley Park, Illinois 60477

Last time we heard from Illinoisans John Westberg and Steve Rauschenberger, two knowledgeable voices when it comes to the topic of manufacturing in the United States.

An article earlier this year by American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson titled, “Free Trade, Fair Trade, and Reality,” lays out his perspective on the free v. fair debate: President Donald Trump “has repeatedly stated that he wants ‘free trade’ that is also ‘fair trade,’” Lifson writes, “I am all for free trade, but it’s got to be fair.”

Academic and political critics are quick to point out the oxymoronic nature of this statement. Free trade means no government interference with private entities making the deals they see as beneficial. “Fair” trade means that someone else’s idea of fairness is imposed on deals that the parties find satisfactory to themselves.

Lifson cites examples of how corporations and governments engage in a “give and take” all the time. Governments force companies “to offer concessions for the privilege of doing business unhindered by limitations and harassment.”

President Trump is the first postwar president to acknowledge this reality, and to promise to play the game as well as it is being played against the US. When he blasts the negotiators who have inked trade deals, he is really criticizing the policy of the US playing by the rules while others play hardball, with pressures both formal and informal being used to extort value from American companies and ultimately from the American economy. Those [research & development] jobs overseas won’t generate nearly as many American jobs as they would if located in a US facility.

President Trump is really writing the obituary for the era in which the US kept everyone else happy by conceding to others the ability to play economic blackmail while self-righteously refusing to play that game to protect our own interests. He is a realist, and it is refreshing.

In another article at American Thinker, Steve Feinstein, in a piece titled “Manufacturing a Crisis,” writes:

If there is one thing that Democrats and Republicans always seem to agree on, it’s this: Manufacturing jobs are the key to economic success in this country. We’ve got to “revitalize” the manufacturing sector if the economy is to generate strong job growth and economic expansion.

That’s just such total hogwash, because it’s not true and it’s not reflective of reality.

Cheaper foreign goods, Feinstein writes, enables “American consumers to spread their money around in more areas and it frees up American workers to pursue other — better-paying and more sophisticated — things.”

Have those “better-paying and more sophisticated” “‘things”(!) been keeping pace with the number of jobs lost in the manufacturing sector? A lot of the people in Rust Belt states, whose standard of living has stagnated or fallen over the past 20 years, said “no they haven’t kept pace” when they voted for Trump.

According to some “economic troglodytes,” Feinstein writes, “we’re only in the economic sweet spot if we’re manufacturing cheap Bic pens and Keds.”

Actually, the value of our manufacturing sector’s output is at record levels, even if the absolute number of workers employed in manufacturing is less than the peak. It’s directly analogous to our agricultural output being the highest ever, even though none of you farm.

Take that you economic troglodytes!

Next time you hear an ill-informed politician talk about how we need to “bring our manufacturing jobs back,” you’ll know better. We manufacture exactly what we should in this country. There’s always a plus/minus to how much we make here depending on the specific conditions of the moment, but you should hope you never see a U.S.-made Bic pen again.

There is also an interesting bunch of articles at American Thinker written by Howard, Raymond, and Jesse Richman (here is their personal website). They are big on the topic of “balanced trade,” and they regularly promote their idea of using a “scaled tariff.”

They also remind everyone that the word “trade” is used in the U.S. Constitution. I’ve linked to a few of their articles below.

And if you think economists are mild mannered group, note this opening from one of their articles last year:

In one of National Review’s hit pieces against Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump (“What Trump Doesn’t Understand — It’s a lot about our Trade with China”), correspondent Kevin D. Williamson called Trump a “dangerous buffoon” because he would threaten tariffs upon China’s products and thus risk a trade war with China. But it’s not Trump who is the buffoon on trade; it is National Review!

Trump plans to take on the huge U.S. trade deficit with the world, and especially with China. He threatens to place upon Chinese products a tariff like the 45% tariff that China recently placed upon some U.S. cars. Such a threat could lead to negotiations between the U.S. and China about balancing trade, and Trump wrote the book on negotiations.

When an article tears into a candidate for having his facts wrong, the magazine that prints it probably should check to make sure that the candidate is actually wrong. But, National Review failed to fact-check this piece.

They go on in the article to compare the NR’s “facts” with their own.

Next up, more on the debate about manufacturing jobs and trade.

Three articles by Raymond Richman, Howard Richman and Jesse Richman:

Free Trade vs. Balanced Trade

The People are Right: It’s Time to Balance Trade

How to Restore America’s Manufacturing Innovation

Download the IFI App!

We now have an IFI mobile app that enables us to deliver great content based on the “Tracks” you choose, including timely legislative alerts, cultural commentaries, upcoming event notifications, links to our podcasts, video reports, and even daily Bible verses to encourage you. This great app is available for Android and iPhones.

Key Features:

• It’s FREE!
• Specific content for serious Christians
• Performs a spiritual assessment
• Sends you daily Scriptures to encourage and equip you
• You determine when and how much content you get