To the National Constitution centers interactive constitution. A panel of academics on President Trumps use of executive power hosted by the Heritage Foundation. This is an hour. Good evening, everyone. Thank you very much for coming to the hosted event with the Heritage Foundation. We are just a year into the frum trump presidency. At the oneyear mark, you would think people professionally analyze politics and would have conducted competent evaluation of how the president has executed his constitutional goodies. Since the President Shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, there is much to discuss. Given that President Trump has taken away from the paths of his predecessors and given the boldness of many policies. Beside controversial boldness, in many ways, President Trump has also been a rather conventional republican president , rolling down regulation, dealing with the minister of state and appointing justices and trying work with congress on legislation. If you are looking for such a legislation, you would be lost in the hysteria surrounding trump, the man, what he may have implied. Here are three editorial titles that nicely incap sue late the tone of the Public Square today. Everyone in trump world knows he is an idiot. Odds are russia owns trump. Is it time to call trump mentally ill . This isnt interest the onion. Its from the new york times. The press, in encouraging or inciting fanatical hatred does disservice to the public. The president s aim was to bolster public reason and enlightenment. What seems like moral righteousness may be hatred on the challenge to their dominance over Public Opinion. Their freedom to abuse the public mind causes their pride to go and distorts their judgment further. We would like to take a step way from trump, the man, the twe tweeter, the gossip. We want to look at trump, the executive. At the oneyear mark, what has the president done in terms of executing his constitutional duties . We have assembled a topnotch panel to try and tackle this. Ryan williams, the president of the Claremont Institute, will be our moderator and he will field questions. Speaking first on Law Enforcement and immigration is john fon tte, senior fellow and director and author of the book called sovereignty or submission, will americans rule themselves or be ruled by others. Speaking next will be adam white, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and director of the center of the study of Administrative State at george mason university. We have professor Charles Kesler that will speak on the president s use of the bully bully pulpit. He is a distinguished professor of government at Claremont Mckenna college and author of i am the change, barack obama and the crisis. John, take it away. Thank you. Im going to talk about President Trump and immigration policy. We could view immigration policy three ways, through the lens of a citizen, the lens of a client, or the lens of a consumer. There was a small r republican view of immigration through the lens of citizenship. Progressives view immigration through the lens of identity politics. B what matters most is ones race, ethnicity and gender. In this framework, there are xlints a clients and service providers. Third, for some libertarians, what matters is not whether one is a citizen or a client but the consumer. For them, the transnational consumer in the global marketplace is superior to the right of a free people to rule themselves by determining, for example, their own immigration policy. Immigration enforcement by the Trump Administration is an example of republican government, small r, based on the principle of sovereignty of the people. Those Core Principles of sovereignty and dissent are directly challenged by progressives and some libertarians. On the executive left, nancy pelosi makes a clear case for open borders. Quote, she says, we are all americans, north and south in this hemisphere. This is a community with a border running through it. So much for citizenship. Libertarian of the Cato Institute declares, americas founding principle is the enlightenment theory of national rights. Freedom of movement is indispensable to the full use of those rights. To respigtrict an immigrants ability not only infringes upon his natural rights but americans that want to hire him. Tom west in the political theory the american founding explains that the approach vetoes the theory. There is no right to immigrate unless there is consent on both sides, unquote. Illegal immigrants are here without the consent of the people. Lets just jump into the weeds on immigration. What we see is a unitary executive in action with dhs secretary neilson, acting director of i. C. E. , tom holeman, attorney general Jeff Sessions, xheef chief of staff john kelly, and the president all on the same page as immigration. I. C. E. Is going into sanctuary jurisdictions. The acting director of i. C. E. , tom holman said, if he, jerry brown, thinks i. C. E. Is going away . We are not. We are going to increase our enforcement presence in california. In december and january, i. C. E. Conducted raids in california, new york city, chicago, new jersey. In new jersey, 80 of them had prior felony convictions. Some argue that sanctuary policies are needed so that immigrants will not be afraid and come forward and report crimes and so on. This myth has no basis in reality. The 2009 analysis by university of virginia found no decline of crime after the implim tatiemen of tough programs. Consider prince county. It has been a sanctuary city since 2014. Because of ms14, people live in control. Gang control over local businesses is enforced through ex portion a extortion and intimidation. The rebirth of ms13 was fueled by recruits through massive wave of unaccompanied minors from south american. The Obama Administration gave silence to boys 16, 17, and older and placed them many times with illegal immigrant relatives where they were often recruited by ms13. The Trump Administration has cracked down on ms13. I. C. E. Has conducted raids from september to november, 2017, and arrested hundreds of ms13 gang members in cessationist i mean includes murders, drugs, trafficking and blackmail. The Justice Department under Jeff Sessions has demanded documents for 23 sanctuary jurisdictions under the 1996 immigration law. Justice has threatened to recoup fund previously given out and cut off future grant money to 23 jurisdictions which include chicago, cook county, new york city, denver, los angeles, san francisco, louisville, kentucky, jackson, mississippi, and the three states of california, illinois and oregon. The department of justice is reexamining the policy of administrative closure, which many considered back door amnesty by the Obama Administration. There are 350,000 closed cases, illegal aliens that could be deported. The cases are just closed. Backlogs it turns out have increased. There are 658,000 bag log cases, over 1 Million People with immigration violations. Attorney general sessions is now reviewing to see what categories might be reopened. In addition, he is hiring additional Immigration Judges that work for the Justice Department in the bureau of immigration appeal. Lets go into the weeds and look at one example of vetting. Vetting people coming into this country. Lets take the k1 fiancee fee visa. Remember the woman involved in the mass murder attack in san bernardino, california, was admitted under the k1 visa. There are two steps. The first step is a petition by an american citizen for his alien fiancee to immigration service. This is supposed to include face to face interviews. This process of face to face interviews was often skipped during the Obama Administration. They approved 90. 5 of this first step. That was in the last year of obama. First year of trump, it is down from 90 to 66. 2 . There was a lot of fraud in the program and they started having actual interviews with people. Thats the first step. The second step, the alien fiancee is interviewed at a u. S. State Department Councilor office. Under obama, 99 approval. Under trump, an increase of denials of 20 . A lot of fraud and poor vetting on this program. Thats being cleaned up. Another program and office created by executive order of the president called voice, victims of immigration crime engagement. It is created to assist victims of illegal immigrant crime. Some conservatives at National View wrote that voice would serve no good purpose, unquote. Actually, the office served several good purposes. It is a challenge to the sanctuary jurisdictions that protect criminal aliens and release them to the general population. Kate steinles murder, for example, in san francisco, had illegally entered the United States over six times, deported five times and served over a year in various prisons on the west coast for numerous felony convictions. We need to delegitimate the entire sanctuary city movement. This is the occupation of the moral high ground. The grand narrative that explains the immigration story to the public. The creation of voice is one instrument and should be used to seize the offensive. Fighting for immigration policy that serves first and foremost, the american people. In conclusion, i want to say that almost all of President Trumps Immigration Enforcement measures have been fought tooth and nail by progressives, some libertarians and elements of the Administrative State. Never doubt on this issue, progressives and many libertarians are allies and major ad vversaries of immigratn Law Enforcement and a democratic society. Thank you. [ applause ]. Thank you very much to the Claremont Institute and the Heritage Foundation for inviting me today. It is a special privilege to be on this stage. Heritage is so much a part of us on Regulatory Reform. Some folks in the audience today who do important things, it is a real honor and privilege to share moment to offer a few thoughts on the Administrative State and President Trumps attempts to reform it. So the second year of a president ial administration is an important Inflection Point for forming regulations an reigning in the Administrative State. At the claremont event i feel safe quoting winston churchill, the start of year two, is, quote, not the end, its not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning. And at this point i think we can safely say the Trump Administration is off to a great start on many of the major reforms of administrative regulatory excess that defined the Obama Administration. At this point i think we can also ascertain a danger in President Trumps own excess, a danger both in principle and in practice by which i mean if President Trump wants to succeed in reforming the Administrative State for the long return, then i hope he will significantly change his own use of the bully pulpit to help further that aim. So lets start with the administrations good start. Recently the office of information and Regulatory Affairs reported that the administration has already either stopped or delayed nearly 1,600 proposed pending regulatory actions. Thats on top of the 15 major regulations that the administration has already rolled back perhaps permanently through use of the Congressional Review Act and in addition to that all of the myriad Reform Efforts being undertaken by the agencies, the individual agency level through the notice and comment process. Its an amazing start. Now, in the aftermath of president Obamas Administration perhaps any Republican Administration would have undertaken at least some Regulatory Reforms, but President Trump and this white house an unprecedented emphasis on the use of executive orders as a tool for energizing and steering the reform process. Of all the things i could focus on in terms of success so far in this administration, i think thats the point that really merits the most attention, that use of executive orders as a tool for executive energy. Instead of waiting for agencies to identify and pursue the right priorities, President Trump issued executive orders setting the agencies agendas from the top. Now, to be clear already limits on what a president can obtain lawfully through executive orders. He cant order agencies to ignore lawful statutes, but when statutes afford agencies broad discretion as they almost always do, then the president can use executive orders to further direct and channel the agencies use of that discretion. And that is precisely what President Trump did in at least two important ways. First, he issued executive order 13777 requiring agencies to repeal two old rules for every new one and capping the total costs that agencies can impose on society. President s dating back to reagan have used across the board executive orders to oversee and channel the agency process, but this executive order and these particular tools were new and i think an important and welcome innovation in redoubling the white house efforts to oversee, manage and limit the regulatory process across all executive agencies. Because its a new approach, especially at the federal government, it will take some ironing out in practice, but its an innovative and important development. Second, in addition to that across the board executive order, President Trump issued many executive orders targeting specific agencies or policies for reform. In executive order 13772 he announced new Core Principles for financial reform, for financial regulators to vindicate, an executive order 13783 he announced new policies for Energy Independence and Economic Growth to be pursued first and foremost by the epas reform of obamas unlawful and excessive clean power plan. These are two of several examples i could offer of executive orders that ex emp phi the administrations approach to Regulatory Reform. Energetic is the keyword because i think these executive orders ex emp phi lengths dear hamiltons view of good government. As he described in federalist 70, energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. While we usually recall hamiltons appeal in terms of national security, hamilton stressed domestic governance as well. President trumps executive orders so far are a good and important example of a president energetically leading the executive branch, the administrative apparatus and conveying energy to an agency leadership. Furthermore, these orders promote transparency and accountability. After all, theyre signed by the president , the president is expressly endorsing and directing these policies so accountability flows all the way up to the top and not just getting trapped in the bureaucratic apparatus. These policies are connected to the president himself and in our constitutional system thats a good thing. His agencies will need that energy in the days and years to come when his administrations Regulatory Reforms will face immense challenges in the courts, in the court of Public Opinion and even within the agencies themselves thanks to the socalled selfstyled resistance movement. Frankly as we enter this stage of the process i think President Trumps own rhetoric will make the work of reform harder not easier to complete. Consider this, last year federal agencies began myriad notice and common proceedings to undo obama agency regulations. This year the notice and comment process in lots of those cases will end. The agencies will complete their process and the matter will turn to court where parties will challenge those policies for skeptical judges. Judges are supposed to be fairly deferential to the agencies conclusions, but that traditional deferential approach presumes a fair amount of expertise and reasonableness on the part of the executive branch. How deferential will judges be to trumps agencies, at least on significant or controversial policies . I think last years Immigration Reform lawsuits which john just referred to a moment ago may be a forbearer of whats to come in terms of the judges