Day 1 of the newly minted Trump administration began with a flurry of activity. The 47th president of the United States began his second term with the calculated efficiency of a well-weathered CEO, rescinding 78 Biden-era EO’s (themselves largely signed by Biden to rescind or counter orders signed in Trump’s first run as president) and signing 26 more. He finished the day with more executive orders signed than any other president.
These orders ranged from defining two genders as a matter of public record, to curtailing the open border, to opening up the Alaska pipeline again, amidst a host of others. As in his first term, President Donald Trump, has no qualms about using the bully pulpit of the pen to thwart radical leftist agendas and stymie the bureaucratic state, which has become a bloated machine of unelected autocrats unto itself.
As also in his first term, President Trump’s activities are setting off alarm bells, triggering legal actions and challenges by state governors and attorneys general across the nation.
At the center of controversy in Washington state is the order “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship”.
From the moment Trump won his landslide victory over Kamala Harris on November 5, 2024, Governor Bob Ferguson (who also won his election bid that same night), has been preparing his incoming administration for a fight against what he has labeled a threat to Washingtonians based on what he finds reprehensible in the language of Project 2025.
Though Trump has repeatedly distanced himself from Project 2025 for months, it presents a convenient target for state Democrats to try and leverage their position as “defenders of the faith” to protect Washington from what they deem federal overreach.
And that leverage is a tool Ferguson has used repeatedly to establish his countermeasures, especially in relation to illegal aliens. It was part of his agenda as AG of Washington state, especially over the last eight years, and was a primary point in his campaign rhetoric. And now that he resides in the governor’s mansion, Ferguson is directing his administration and the new AG, Nicholas Brown, to be ready to fight anything he deems as an overstep by the president.
At the center of the issue concerning Washington state and new federal immigration policy, is a 2019 law called the Keep Washington Working Act. It is this piece of legislation passed in the halls of the state congress that have given Washington the moniker of being a “sanctuary state” for illegals.
The teeth of the act decided an individual’s immigration status is not a matter of police or school resource officer action. It states someone cannot be detained or questioned based on their citizenship, and that officials can only give federal agents information on the person’s citizenship status if it’s directly related to a criminal offense.
“There are rights reserved to the states. If they want to delegate it to the feds, the president cannot wade into those areas. It would require heavy legislation,” longtime civil rights attorney Jeffry Finer told the Spokesman Review.
Finer’s point is bolstered by one of Ferguson’s primary directives, which limits the involvement of any federal agency, or non-Washington national guard units from acting in the state.
And that opinion, legally, relies heavily upon a progressive reading of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution that was the linchpin of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960’s. An opinion, by the way, that is directly challenged in the opening salvo of President Trump’s executive order.
How this refinement of the interpretation of the 14th Amendment will hold up to legal challenge is yet to be seen, but it’s language would spell the end for DACA (Obama’s “Dreamers”) and would heavily curtail the TSP exemptions for those who claim asylum from danger in their home countries. The latter would be affected by significantly trimming the list of countries from which the US will accept asylum claims.
As of now, until these differing ideals come head-to-head in district or even the US Supreme Court in the coming months or years, Washington’s political apparatus has doubled-down on its defiance.
School districts and hospital systems in Spokane have already issued statements saying that they will continue with business as usual, while local, county and state law enforcement have been intentionally vague and non-committal about any deference they would show to ICE officers or others who would be called up to enforce deportation of illegal aliens.
President Trump, for his part, has sent out a memo to the Justice Department late Tuesday instructing U.S attorneys to investigate officials who resist and obstruct immigration-related demands, according to reporting by the Washington Post.
The topic of illegal immigration has been one that has shifted over the years. Many of the constituents making up “normie America” don’t have the stomach for widespread deportations and strict adherence to the law. The law itself, meanwhile, has become increasingly watered down with vague statutes and broadening definitions of words like “asylum, refugee, and human rights.”
Many in the center-right agree that at least violent criminals, gang members, and felons should be exported yesterday. But is that all?
For Washington citizens, seeking to hold to a more traditional and less progressive view of immigration, the thought of fighting against a state house full of opposing views is daunting. Many who voted for President Trump in this state have long held the view that nothing can change and so they do nothing to enact change. But while Ferguson and his cronies in congress are unlikely to change their views short of a Nineveh-like revival, the voice of Washingtonians does not have to remain silenced.
Pressure needs to be applied to local city councils as well as to county sheriffs – which in several counties are still conservative-led – to back presidential actions and to ignore directives from Olympia that run contrary to Constitutional law. Churches and families must instruct their people to understand the definitions of immigration, asylum, and alien so that they are not pushed around by the waves of leftist propaganda that shame and silence them.
America is fed up.
With reports of tens of millions of illegals crossing into the US during the Biden administration plentiful and with the stories of Laken Riley and more like her – whose lives were cut short at the hands of men who should never have been in this land to begin with – the pressure is mounting for something drastic to take place.
