By a 3-to-1 margin, the American public holds a negative view of the American Health Care Act, legislation that House Republicans passed last month and that President Donald Trump supports.

Just 16 percent of adults believe that House health care bill is a good idea, versus 48 percent who say it’s a bad idea.


In May’s NBC/WSJ poll, it was 23 percent good idea, 48 percent bad idea.

Imagine trying to navigate life in the United States without having some kind of identification. Without an ID, it’s near impossible to obtain lawful employment, register your children for school, and apply for housing, health care, or other forms of government assistance. It may seem hard to believe that people who are born in this country wouldn’t have access to a driver’s license or some other state-issued identification to establish their identity. But for many people who are homeless or low-income, it is an unfortunate reality.

As of 2006, according to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, up to 11 percent of U.S. adults had no government-provided photo ID. Since then, federal requirements for IDs have grown tougher, contributing to a loop that can help keep people trapped in poverty. For poor Americans, IDs are a lifeline — a key to unlocking services and opportunities, from housing to jobs to education. And in states with strict voter ID laws, the lack of an ID can hinder voting. “This is a huge issue for people who are homeless and poor in general,” says Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. “Without an ID, basically you don’t exist.”
There are a number of reasons why some folks don’t have photo identification. It can be time-intensive and costly to fight with government agencies to locate copies of birth certificates, social security cards, and duplicate IDs. People may not have access to reliable transportation which would get them to these sites in the first place. Once they get there, they often don’t have the necessary documentation to prove they are who they say.

“We can all only speculate what would happen if the president tried to do it,” said Brian Kalt, professor of law at Michigan State University and author of the book “Constitutional Cliffhangers.” “We’re all just predicting what the court would do if it happened, but no one can be sure.”

The constitutional language governing pardons reads, “The President … shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” That vagueness is part of the reason the boundaries of the authority would need to be interpreted by the courts in unusual cases, like the one at hand.

That said, Kalt’s got an opinion about what the Supreme Court would do if Trump (or any president) tried to give himself a pardon: They’d throw it out.

Kalt’s reasons are similarly rooted in interpretations of the language of the Constitution and the intent of its authors.

For example, a pardon is “inherently something that you get from someone else,” he argued. That’s not explicit in the constitutional language, but, then, other boundaries we understand for pardons aren’t either, such as our understanding that there need not be a criminal charge before a pardon. (The most famous example of this kind of pardon was offered by President Gerald Ford to his predecessor, Richard Nixon.)

P.S. Ruckman, professor of political science at Northern Illinois University and author of the blog Pardon Power agreed with this idea in an email. “Supreme Court jurisprudence has always assumed a dichotomy — the granter and the recipient,” he said — the implication being that one person can’t play both roles.

What’s more, “presidents are supposed to be limited,” Kalt said. “The president has all of this power, but he has a limited term. If he was able to pardon himself, that would project his power well past his term.”

From today’s opinion by Justice Samuel Alito (for four justices) in Matal v. Tam, the “Slants” case:

[The idea that the government may restrict] speech expressing ideas that offend … strikes at the heart of the First Amendment. Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express “the thought that we hate.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote separately, also for four justices, but on this point the opinions agreed:

A law found to discriminate based on viewpoint is an “egregious form of content discrimination,” which is “presumptively unconstitutional.” … A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all. The First Amendment does not entrust that power to the government’s benevolence. Instead, our reliance must be on the substantial safeguards of free and open discussion in a democratic society.

And the justices made clear that speech that some view as racially offensive is protected not just against outright prohibition but also against lesser restrictions. In Matal, the government refused to register “The Slants” as a band’s trademark, on the ground that the name might be seen as demeaning to Asian Americans. The government wasn’t trying to forbid the band from using the mark; it was just denying it certain protections that trademarks get against unauthorized use by third parties. But even in this sort of program, the court held, viewpoint discrimination — including against allegedly racially offensive viewpoints — is unconstitutional. And this no-viewpoint-discrimination principle has long bee

Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller is investigating the finances and business dealings of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, as part of the probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, according to officials familiar with the matter.

FBI agents and federal prosecutors have also been examining the financial dealings of other Trump associates, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Carter Page, who was listed as a foreign policy adviser for the campaign.

The Washington Post had earlier reported that investigators were scrutinizing separate meetings that Kushner held with Russians in December — first with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and then with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a state-owned Russian development bank. At the time of that report it was not clear that the FBI was investigating Kushner’s business dealings.

The officials who described the financial focus of the investigation spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

NBC’s Pete Williams reported, “This is a ruling basically saying the President violated the law in this executive order.”
This ruling is different, because the judges ruled that Trump failed to meet the essential standard for using his power, “In suspending the entry of more than 180 million nationals from six countries, suspending the entry of all refugees, and reducing the cap on the admission of refugees from 110,000 to 50,000 for the 2017 fiscal year. The President did not meet the essential precondition to exercising his delegated authority: The President must make a sufficient finding that the entry of these classes of people would be ‘detrimental to the interests of the United States.’”

In other words, the ruling went beyond the legality of the ban, and discussed the legality of the President’s actions, and found that he broke the law. Trump did not demonstrate that the refugees were detrimental to the interests of the United States.

The Trump White House conception of unlimited executive power was dealt a huge blow in this ruling. The President does not have unlimited power. He can’t dash off an executive order and ban Muslims to fulfill a campaign promise.

There are checks and balances, and once again, our Judicial Branch as limited the power of Executive who demands no limits.

Opponents of State Rep. Matt Rinaldi – who stirred up controversy during “sanctuary cities” protests inside the state Capitol on the final day of the Texas legislative session – plan to demonstrate against the Irving Republican in Austin and four other Texas cities on Wednesday.

The Austin protest will take place at 111 Congress Ave. at 1 p.m., in front of the Dykema Gossett law firm, which employs Rinaldi at its Dallas office.

Rinaldi was at the center of a tense encounter in the Capitol, which included protests, death threats and the calling of immigration services.

May 29 was to be a day of congratulatory speeches, but all that was halted when protesters in the House Gallery were removed after chanting against Senate Bill 4, a measure that became a law banning so-called sanctuary cities in Texas.