The big news last week was the lawsuit filed by California and 15 other states challenging President Trump’s declaration of an emergency related to border security and the building of a physical barrier on the southern border. The reaction was a great deal of political hyperventilating from both sides of the political spectrum.
So, after everyone has taken a breath, what should rational taxpayers think about this lawsuit and the dozens of other lawsuits filed by California against the Trump administration?
Let’s stipulate that there are times when litigation is appropriate between states and the federal government. The United States is a constitutional republic with a political structure based on federalism. Brilliantly, our founding fathers (with some intellectual help from our founding mothers, no doubt) devised a system of divided government. Not only was the federal power divided into three branches, but substantial political power was reserved to the states via the Tenth Amendment.
Controversies between the federal government and the states have been bitter and, when one considers the Civil War, they’ve been violent as well. Fortunately, modern disputes between the federal government and the states involve lawyers, not bullets.
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