Colorado's State Bivens Law

Colorado's General Assembly has enacted a state law authorizing suits for money damages against federal, state, and local officials violating federal constitutional rights in connection with civil immigration enforcement, because the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to extend Bivens (a U.S. Supreme Court case which created a federal common law remedy in the form of a private civil action for damages for certain violations of federal constitutional rights by federal officials) to do so. The bill has not yet been signed by the Governor, but he has not publicly threatened to veto the bill either.

Ideally, it wouldn't have been limited to civil immigration enforcement, which may be the provision of the law which makes it most vulnerable to being held unconstitutional, as immigration law is a purely federal function, but it isn't at all clear that narrowing this law beyond its maximum constitutional scope invalidates it, and there is quite a bit of law (outlined in Section 1 of the bill) which supports the conclusion that this mostly unused check on misconduct by federal official is constitutional.

The limitation of the law to civil immigration enforcement, however, does limit room to complain that the waiver of various immunities would do serious mischief to the ordinary actions of law enforcement in the state at the state and local level.

The bill's full and final text is below:

Senate Bill 26-05:

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Colorado: 

SECTION 1.  Legislative declaration. 

(1)  The general assembly finds and declares that: 

(a)  Since the earliest days of the nation, the United States supreme court has held, in cases such as Little v. Barreme, 6 U.S. 170 (1804), and Murray v. The Charming Betsey, 6 U.S. 64 (1804), that federal officials may be liable in damages for violations of federal laws; 

(b)  In later 19th century cases as well, the United States supreme court held that federal officials could be liable for damages even for reasons relating to but beyond the lawful scope of federal duties, Mitchell v. Harmony, 54 U.S. 115 (1851), and in particular that state courts possessed jurisdiction to consider such damages claims, Teal v. Felton, 53 U.S. 284 (1852); 

(c)  The United States supreme court has long held that federal employees are not inherently beyond the reach of state laws simply because they are federal employees. For example, in Johnson v. Maryland, 254 U.S. 51 (1920), the court noted, "[A]n employee of the United States does not secure a general immunity from state law while acting in the course of his employment", and in Colorado v. Symes, 286 U.S. 510 (1932), the court stated, "Federal officers and employees are not, merely because they are such, granted immunity from prosecution in state courts for crimes against state law". 

(d)  Decades later, the United States supreme court continued to recognize the role of state law in holding federal officials accountable for legal violations, noting in Wheeldin v. Wheeler, 373 U.S. 647 (1963), "[w]hen it comes to suits for damages for abuse of power, federal officials are usually governed by local law"; 

(e)  When the United States supreme court recognized a federal law cause of action for violation of certain constitutional rights in Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), that cause of action was in addition to, rather than instead of, traditional state law remedies. Even one of the dissenting justices in Bivens noted the ongoing role of state courts, writing, "The task of evaluating the pros and cons of creating judicial remedies for particular wrongs is a matter for Congress and the legislatures of the States". 

(f)  More recently, congress has made federal statutory law the exclusive remedy for certain claims sounding in tort, but this exclusivity specifically "does not extend or apply to a civil action against an employee of the Government [. . .] which is brought for a violation of the Constitution of the United States", 28 U.S.C. sec. 2679. The prime sponsor of legislation amending the federal "Tort Claims Act" to provide for limited exclusivity took pains to clarify, "We make special provisions here to make clear that the more controversial issue of constitutional torts is not covered by this bill. If you are accused of having violated someone's constitutional rights, this bill does not affect it", 134 Cong. Rec. 15963 (1988). 

(g)  In 2022, in declining to extend the scope of the Bivens action in Egbert v. Boule, 596 U.S. 482 (2022), the United States supreme court observed that legislatures, not courts, are the better branches of government to fashion damages remedies; 

(h)  In its most recently completed term, the United States supreme court declined, in Martin v. United States, 145 S. Ct. 1689 (2025), to extend the doctrine of supremacy clause immunity beyond its traditional criminal law context; 

(i)  Violating the federal constitutional rights of residents of the United States has never been and can never be "necessary and proper" to the execution of the laws and powers of the United States within the meaning of article I, section 8, clause 18 of the United States constitution; and 

(j)  In enacting this act, the Colorado general assembly affirms its longstanding and rightful role as a sovereign state in providing forum in its courts for adjudication of claims of federal constitutional violations. 

SECTION 2.  In Colorado Revised Statutes add 13-20-1302 as follows: 

13-20-1302.  Civil action for violation of constitutional rights during immigration enforcement - relief - attorney fees - time limit to commence action - definition. 

(1)  A PERSON WHO HAS THEIR RIGHTS THAT ARE GUARANTEED BY THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION VIOLATED BY ANOTHER PERSON WHO, ACTING UNDER COLOR OF ANY FEDERAL, STATE, OR LOCAL LAW, IS PARTICIPATING IN CIVIL IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT, MAY BRING A CIVIL ACTION AGAINST ANOTHER PERSON WHOSE CONDUCT WAS THE PROXIMATE CAUSE OF THE VIOLATION. A PERSON FOUND TO HAVE VIOLATED THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION WHILE PARTICIPATING IN CIVIL  IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT IS LIABLE TO THE PERSON WHOSE RIGHTS ARE VIOLATED FOR LEGAL OR EQUITABLE RELIEF OR ANY OTHER APPROPRIATE RELIEF. 

(2) (a)  IN AN ACTION BROUGHT PURSUANT TO THIS SECTION, A COURT SHALL AWARD REASONABLE ATTORNEY FEES AND COSTS TO A PREVAILING PLAINTIFF. IN ACTIONS FOR INJUNCTIVE RELIEF, A COURT SHALL DEEM A PLAINTIFF TO HAVE PREVAILED IF THE PLAINTIFF'S SUIT WAS A SUBSTANTIAL FACTOR OR SIGNIFICANT CATALYST IN OBTAINING THE RESULTS SOUGHT BY THE LITIGATION. 

(b)  WHEN A JUDGMENT IS ENTERED IN FAVOR OF A DEFENDANT, THE COURT MAY AWARD REASONABLE COSTS AND ATTORNEY FEES TO THE DEFENDANT FOR DEFENDING ANY CLAIMS THE COURT FINDS FRIVOLOUS. 

(3)  TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMISSIBLE UNDER THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION AND 42 U.S.C. SEC. 1983, A GRANT OF IMMUNITY TO A DEFENDANT, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY; OFFICIAL IMMUNITY; INTERGOVERNMENTAL IMMUNITY; QUALIFIED IMMUNITY; SUPREMACY CLAUSE IMMUNITY; STATUTORY IMMUNITY, INCLUDING THE "COLORADO GOVERNMENTAL IMMUNITY ACT", ARTICLE 10 OF TITLE 24; OR COMMON LAW IMMUNITY, DOES NOT APPLY IN AN ACTION BROUGHT PURSUANT TO THIS SECTION. 

(4)  AS USED IN THIS SECTION, UNLESS THE CONTEXT OTHERWISE REQUIRES, "CIVIL IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT" MEANS AN ACTION TO INVESTIGATE, QUESTION, DETAIN, TRANSFER, OR ARREST A PERSON FOR THE PURPOSE OF ENFORCING FEDERAL CIVIL IMMIGRATION LAW. "CIVIL IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT" DOES NOT INCLUDE AN ACTION COMMITTED BY A PEACE OFFICER WHO IS ACTING WITHIN THE SCOPE OF THE PEACE OFFICER'S DUTIES CONSISTENT WITH STATE LAW. 

(5)  PURSUANT TO SECTION 13-80-102, A CIVIL ACTION DESCRIBED IN THIS SECTION MUST BE COMMENCED WITHIN TWO YEARS AFTER THE CAUSE OF ACTION ACCRUES. 

SECTION 3.  In Colorado Revised Statutes, 13-80-102, amend (1)(k); and add (1)(l) as follows: 13-80-102.  General limitation of actions - two years.  The following civil actions, regardless of the theory upon which suit is brought, or against whom suit is brought, must be commenced within two years after the cause of action accrues, and not thereafter: 

(k)  All actions brought under AND PURSUANT TO section 13-21-109(2) [ed. the bad check statute]; 

(l)  AN ACTION ALLEGING A VIOLATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS DURING CIVIL IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT BROUGHT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13-20-1302. 

SECTION 4.  Severability. If any provision of this act or the application of this act to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the invalidity does not affect other provisions or applications of the act that can be given effect without the invalid provision or application, and to this end the provisions of this act are declared to be severable. 

SECTION 5.  Appropriation. (1)  For the 2026-27 state fiscal year, $125,604 is appropriated to the department of law. This appropriation is from the legal services cash fund created in section 24-31-108 (4), C.R.S., from revenue received from the department of personnel that is continuously appropriated to the department of personnel from the risk management fund created in section 24-30-1510 (1)(a), C.R.S. The appropriation to the department of law is based on an assumption that the department of law will require an additional 0.5 FTE. To implement this act, the department of law may use this appropriation to provide legal services for the department of personnel.

SECTION 6. Safety clause. The general assembly finds, determines, and declares that this act is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety or for appropriations for the support and maintenance of the departments of the state and state institutions.

Affordability

What are the easiest policies to make life more affordable?

* Unilaterally end tariffs.

* Legalize car imports from China and reduce trade barriers to importing smaller cars from Europe. This would greatly increase choices and competition for basic cars.

* Support the infrastructure to shift to electric vehicles making us less vulnerable to global petroleum prices and less incentivized to go to war over oil.

* Eliminate fares for high volume transit routes.

* Encourage renewable energy sources like solar and wind which are now cheaper than coal and are not subject to natural gas price fluctuations.

* Remove barriers to building affordable housing, especially zoning that restricts density and rules out multi-family housing, parking mandates, lot size limitations, and aesthetic building code requirements. Encourage high quality manufacturing of homes and large components of homes in lieu of stick building everything on site.

* Encourage the Fed to take a more gradual approach to increasing interest rates when economic conditions call for it to do so, so that housing markets have time to adjust to higher mortgage rates which decrease affordability until housing prices transition to adjust to the ability to pay.

* Tax unoccupied housing more heavily to discourage hoarding of empty housing that reduces housing supply and drives up housing prices.

* Enact policies that financially penalize profitable companies for the burden that they impose on government when a significant share of their workers need welfare to make ends meet, in part, by increasing the minimum wage.

* Shift revenue sources for ECE (early childhood education)-12 education from property taxes to income taxes. This makes the taxes more progressive. It increases funding equity between places with large property tax bases per student (like rich suburbs and resorts) and places with small property tax bases per student (like low income municipalities and rural areas). This also reduces housing costs.

* Make free meals for all part of the standard ECE-12 education package.

* Make access to ECE and kindergarten and afterschool programs universal.

* Encourage international students at colleges and universities who basically subsidize domestic students by paying full tuition.

* Publicly fund higher education, without significant student loans, with all students with a reasonable chance of completing their degrees, while limiting admissions for students who have a high probability of failing. This makes access to higher education possible for working class and middle class kids increasing their future incomes and class mobility while making the economy more productive, and reduces the squeeze on families at the low end of upper middle class who don't easily qualify for need based grant financial aid, but still pay higher shares of their income than others.

* Reinvigorate vocational programs at high schools and community colleges for students for whom a traditional liberal arts college curriculum or four year degree isn't a good fit.

* Establish new medical school and medical professional school capacity to increase the supply of doctors and other medical professionals.

* Welcome foreign medical professionals, thus increasing the supply of medical professionals whose compensation is driven up by a limited supply, especially in rural areas where domestic medical professionals are least likely to prefer.

* Medicare for all or similar universal health care financing, that cuts out health care billing and insurance company administration costs and profits, ends barriers to health care for the self-employed and unemployed and those with jobs providing only second rate health insurance with high deductibles, funds health care in proportion to ability to pay, ends medical debt and bankruptcies, takes pressure off high cost ER care, and improves the bargaining power over drug costs and other provider costs. Health care expenses of employers also reduce wages more or less dollar for dollar.

* Broaden access to long term care, including home health care and assisted living, on a basis similar to universal healthcare, and finance it with estate taxes.

Trump's Many Wars

Trump has declared wars on small boats in international waters in the Caribbean and the Pacific, claiming that they are drug boats, without proof, claiming a right to kill the people on them, contrary to international law.

Trump invaded Venezuela and seized its leader.

Trump has involved U.S. military forces in striking a Mexican cartel chief, leading to a bloodbath there.

Trump has unilaterally made strikes on Iran.

Trump has now deployed the U.S. military in Ecuador.

Trump is trying to impose an oil embargo on Cuba.

Trump deployed the National Guard to peaceful American cities.

Trump has deployed ICE as his private secret police to lawlessly terrorize American cities with scant regard to what they are actually legally authorized to do.

Trump has deployed U.S. forces to interdict Russia's shadow fleet of oil tankers trying to evade sanctions arising out of the Ukraine War. The Ukraine war itself is ongoing and Trump and blown hot and cold on it, prolonging the war by giving Putin hope.

Trump has threatened, but not yet struck, Greenland, Canada, and Panama.

And, while only metaphorical, Trump has declared trade wars on the entire world.

In most of these cases, Trump hasn't had even a whisper of Congressional authorization or legal authorization to act. The uses of force (and the tariffs) have violated domestic and international law. 

In The Resistance We Drive Minivans

The left is resilient. We have strong communities. We care for our neighbors. We are the grown ups in the room and we prove it with our actions. Trump and the Republicans are doing immense damage to our nation, but at the grass roots, we are doing what we can to mitigate the harm.

In the resistance we drive minivans, we take ’em low and slow down Nicollet Avenue, our trunks stuffed with hockey skates and scuffed Frisbees and cardboard Costco flats. We drive Odysseys and Siennas, we drive Voyagers and Pacificas, we like it when the back end goes ka-thunk over speed bumps, shaking loose the Goldfish dust. One of our kids wrote “wash me” on the van’s exterior, etched it into the gray scurf of frozen Minneapolis slush. Our floor mats smell like mildew from the snowmelt.

In the resistance we play Idles loud, we prefer British punk, turn the volume up, “Danny Nedelko,” please and thank you — we cast that song like a protective spell across our minivans: Let us be bulletproof, let us be invisible. . . .

Everyone is doing his part here, each to his ability. This is easier to accomplish, it seems, when joy and love are the engines. Outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, where detainees, some of them American citizens and legal residents, are being held without beds or real blankets, the grannies of the Twin Cities are serving hot chocolate to college kids in active confrontation with ICE. I know of an off-grid network of doctors offering care to immigrants, a sub rosa collective of restaurateurs organizing miniature food banks in their basements. A friend of mine is a pastor who went with around 100 local clergy members to the airport in protest. Another friend is an immigration lawyer who spends his days endlessly filing habeas petitions, has gotten 30 people released from detention over the last few weeks. He recently offered a training session on how to file habeas petitions and 300 lawyers showed up, eager to do the work pro bono. . . .

Here’s what you need to remember: There is no reward that comes later. No righteous justice will be dispensed, not soon and not ever. Renee Good and Alex Pretti don’t come back to life. The lives of their loved ones are not made whole again. Thousands of people will remain disappeared, relatives scattered, families broken. This story does not have a happy ending, and I can assure you the villains do not get punished in the end. If that is your motivation, try again, start over.

But you also need to understand — and this is equally important — that we’ve already won. The reward is right now, this minute, this moment. The reward is watching your city — whether it’s Chicago or Los Angeles or Charlotte or the cities still to come — organize in hyperlocal networks of compassion, in acephalous fashion, not because someone told you to, but because tens of thousands of people across a metro region simultaneously and instinctively felt the urge to help their neighbors get by." . . .

you slow down to the speed limit, you turn Idles a little louder, you play “Danny Nedelko” again. That song comes from an album called “Joy as an Act of Resistance.”

Today I’m driving a girl who never speaks other than to say thank you. She’s out of the car now and trying to clamber ungracefully over a dirty ice bank that walls off the roadway from her house. There is no entry point — she’d have to walk down to the corner to gain access — and I’m cursing myself for where I’ve dropped her off. The skies are an unsympathetic oatmeal. It is very cold, the dark dead of winter.

Out on the stoop of her building, the girl’s mom and little sister are waiting. The mother looks on nervously, wishing to minimize this vulnerable transition point between car and home. The little sister is probably 3 years old. She is in pigtails and wearing footie pajamas and she is radiant, leaping up and down, clapping, ecstatic to see her big sister come home. The quiet girl is stone-faced and stumbling, and eventually she makes it across the wall of gray ice to her stoop, where her little sister grabs her by the leg. 

I’ll admit: This was the only time I cried, throughout this whole disgusting affair, as I sat in my car watching the girl in the footie pajamas clapping for big sister’s safe return[.]

An excerpt from this New York Times Op-Ed essay.

Cheese Is Good, Teens Are Tame, Crime Is Down, Lot Of Americans Are Immigrants

* A study linked eating cheese to lower dementia risk.

* Teen alcohol, nicotine, and drug use in the U.S. is at record lows, and cocaine and heroin use, while not at record lows, it much lower than it was a few decades ago.

Teen use of alcohol, nicotine and marijuana remains at record lows, according to national survey results released Wednesday. . . .

Two-thirds of 12th graders this year said they hadn’t used alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes or electronic cigarettes in the previous 30 days. Thirty years ago — before the advent of e-cigarettes — the figure was closer to about one-third.

Among 10th graders, 82% said they hadn’t used any of those substances recently. Among eighth graders, 91% didn’t use any of them. Both are records for those ages in the annual survey. . . .

The new results come from the federally funded Monitoring the Future survey, run by the University of Michigan. The annual survey has been operating since 1975 and has long been considered a top source of national data on teen substance abuse. This year’s findings are based on responses from about 24,000 students in grades 8, 10 and 12 in schools across the country. It was conducted from February to June this year.

Teen drug use has been gradually declining for decades, and fell dramatically at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when students across the country were told not to go to schools and to avoid parties or other gatherings. Experts expected at least a bit of a rebound as pandemic restrictions eased, but that hasn’t happened.

The 2025 results show no increases in teens’ use of alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes or nicotine vapes in any of the three grade levels. In 2024, researchers had noted an uptick in the use of nicotine pouches, but that too held steady this year, the survey found.

Energy drinks are as popular as ever, with daily consumption reported by 23% of 12th graders, 20% of 10th graders and 18% of eighth graders.

The survey also found a striking increase in heroin use. Use by 12th graders in the previous 12 months rose to 0.9% in 2025, from 0.2% the year before. Use by 10th graders hit 0.5%, up from 0.1%. And use by eighth graders also rose to 0.5%, up from 0.2%.

Cocaine use held steady for 10th graders, but rose for eighth graders — to 0.6% — and 12th graders — to 1.4%.

Teen heroin and cocaine use are “leagues below what they were decades ago,” but the increases warrant close monitoring, said Richard Miech, survey team lead at the University of Michigan.

The teen heroin and cocaine figures are small enough that they could just be mostly a statistical random sampling variation.

* Teens in the U.S. are having sex less (from an AP news story of May 13, 2023):

[A]ccording to a recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . . . 30% of teens in 2021 said they had ever had sex, down from 38% in 2019 and a huge drop from three decades ago, when more than half of teens reported having sex.

Teen pregnancies and the teen birthrate are also at record lows for all of history and prehistory in North America.

* As noted in the previous post, property crime rates are at record lows. And, violent crime rates are also very low.

* Meanwhile, prior to Trump taking office, the percentage of Americans that were foreign born was at an all time high.

Quick Hits

* Property crime rates in 2024 were the lowest that they've been since 1976.

Pretty sure that the labeling of this lines is wrong.

* Immensely increased H1-B visa fees will devastate the supply of physicians in the U.S., especially in rural areas, that are already being pummeled by immense cuts to Medicaid funding and ACA health insurance subsidies used mostly by self-employed people like farmers.

* Large office properties in metropolitan Denver are selling at immense discounts. Some of them are being converted to apartments or condos.

* In a broken clock's right twice a day moment, Trump's push for American automakers to start make microcars in the Kei car and Smart car sizes wouldn't be a bad thing, although his opposition to electric vehicles is horrible policy.

Catholic Opposition To Trump 2.0

 

In and of itself, this is a relatively minor incident in the overall sweep of Trump 2.0 politics. But Catholics are the largest voting block in the U.S. and if the Catholic church is seen as in opposition to the Trump administration, the electoral impact could be great.

Moving Space Force HQ From Colorado To Alabama Is Stupid

Trump is about to renew his efforts to move the headquarters of the Space Force, a fifth military service that he created, from Colorado (where the headquarters of the part of the Air Force bureaucracy that was transferred to the separate Space Force service was located before he created the Space Force), to Alabama. He tried to do so during his first term, but the moved got bogged down in Department of Defense red tape, and the Department of Defense reversed that decision during the Biden Administration. 

UPDATE:

President Trump said one of the main considerations for moving Space Command out of Colorado Springs is because Colorado voters largely vote by mail. 

“I will say I want to thank Colorado,” Trump said. “The problem I have with Colorado… they do mail-in voting, they went to all mail-in voting, so they have automatically crooked elections." 

Trump has long criticized voting by mail, and has cited the practice as a major reason he lost the 2020 election to Biden though he has not provided evidence of fraud emanating from mail-in ballots." . . . 

The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce estimates that Space Command supports nearly 1,400 jobs and has a $1 billion impact on the Colorado Springs economy. Colorado has a significant Space Force presence, hosting half the bases with its major operations, including Peterson as well as Schriever Space Force Base in the Colorado Springs area and Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora. Nationally, the branch has more than 14,000 military and civilian members, who are called Guardians. 

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on Tuesday said his office was prepared to challenge in court Trump’s decision to move the command, though he did not elaborate the legal rationale for a lawsuit. . . . 

Huntsville, nicknamed Rocket City, has long been home to Redstone and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command is also located in Huntsville, which drew its nickname because of its role in building the first rockets for the U.S. space program.

This is almost certainly not a legitimate reason for executive branch action under the Administrative Procedure Act. It is also an outrageously false claim.

Colorado Pols has more details.

END UPDATE

This is very on brand for Trump. He is making a call that places partisan politics above what is best for national security and wastes federal dollars.

Alabama is less attractive than Colorado to the civilian employees and contractors (who have a choice unlike active duty service members), so it won't attract the same quality work force. And, if one was going to move it away from Colorado one could have justified an HQ in Florida or Texas, which are also GOP strongholds, but like Colorado and Washington State, actually have a space industry (but see the material in the update above about Huntsville). Charitably, the best that can be said for it is that it provides economic development assistance to an underdeveloped part of the U.S.A. that supports him politically. Less charitably, it can be seen as a political payoff to Senator Tommy Tuberville who was getting in the way of Trump's Defense Department agenda. Less charitably still, it is a way for Trump to try to take action solely attributable to him that will become part of a military service's legacy once the bad decisions that went into that choice are long forgotten.

Tearing down old infrastructure to move it somewhere else is also just wasteful, while providing no benefits to national security. It is will probably require a billion or so dollars of unnecessary defense spending.

Of course, creating the "Space Force" was a bone headed idea in the first place. It undermines interservice cooperation, and honestly, it would have been better to be truly conservative and roll the Air Force back into the Army, rather than further dividing the Air Force. There might be a time when a Space Force makes sense, but that time is far in future.

Space Force's military role remains ill-defined and it remains a work in progress that is currently creating more confusion rather than a stronger U.S. military. Do we really need a new Space Force academy? Do we really need Space Force reserves? How is it doing anything that the Air Force did better? How many people are even in the Space Force? According to Google AI it apparently has 9,400 active duty "guardians" and about 4,600 civilians, making it far smaller than even the Coast Guard.

Trump's other wasteful symbolic military acts

Trump's other symbolic military initiatives are similarly dubious. His military birthday parade in the District of Columbia on June 14, that the Army aptly converted to a boring historical display from the third-world dictatorship show of force that he wanted in an act of malicious compliance, it was a wasteful and expensive flop.

The idea he has floated to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War (as it was called during and before World War II), were also wastes of money, but at least are basically harmless. Indeed, the calling it the Department of War is also more honest.

Trump's intent to reassign Confederate names to U.S. military bases is fundamentally endorsing treason and insurrection and is patently un-American.

Trump's inappropriate domestic uses of the military

Trump's deployment of military force, mostly but not entirely, national guard troops, on the other hand, in addition to being a waste of money, are grossly improper, manufactured crises that threaten democracy, undermine federalism, are inappropriate for immigration enforcement, and are illegal.

The Courts rejected his efforts to criminalize illegal immigration by calling a large swath of the border a military base, and have rejected his characterization of illegal immigration as an "invasion" of the United States for constitutional purposes. Courts have also held that deportation flights he had the military make in violation of court orders were illegal.

Courts have shut down his military deployments to Los Angeles. As the New York Times explains:

A federal judge in California said President Trump broke the law by deploying roughly 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June in response to immigration protests. The judge said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Defense Department had violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits using the military to enforce domestic law. The judge barred them from using the troops for any law-enforcement purpose, but put the order on hold for 10 days. The administration is expected to appeal. . . . 

The ruling was the latest in a series of judicial battles over claims of expansive unilateral powers by the administration. Mr. Trump and administration officials have deported people without due process, imposed widespread and unpopular tariffs and rolled back energy regulations, citing wartime and emergency powers that have been disputed in federal court. 

The president also declared crime in Washington, D.C., to be an emergency in order to send federal troops there in August, although crime rates in the nation’s capital have actually been falling and local officials said the deployment was not needed. Since then, Mr. Trump has publicly mused about sending the National Guard into other Democratic-led cities. Federal law gives the White House more latitude to conduct local law enforcement in the District of Columbia than in the states. . . .

The ruling places strict limits on the what the troops can do and applies only in California, although the judge noted that Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth “have stated their intention” to use Guard troops as a “national police force with the president as its chief.” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California praised the decision, saying Mr. Trump’s efforts were “illegal, authoritarian, and must be stopped in every courtroom across this country.”

Other bad defense department decisions.

These aren't the only bad defense department decisions he's made. He's banned books at the military academies (eventually rescinding all but a few of those bans). 

He wiped all mention of women and minorities who contributed to the U.S. military on government websites (another decision he has mostly backed down from in the face of court action and bad P.R.). 

He's systemically fired or removed from command women and minorities whom he has called "DEI hires" while putting in place less qualified individuals chosen for political loyalty. 

He's baselessly fired transgender troops contrary to their civil rights and denied them their legitimate benefits for being laid off and having served with distinction.

He's purged the ranks of generals and admirals and national intelligence officials to replace them with political loyalists. Trump's major appointments in the defense and national intelligence sectors have involved woefully unqualified people who have made major public blunders.

His openly revenge oriented revocations of security clearances and security details for various officials has been disgraceful.

The mixed bag of Trump's military deployments and threats abroad.

Trump's deployment of U.S. forces have been a mixed bag at best.

Trump wasn't wrong to continue Biden's policy of militarily engaging the Iranian backed Houthi rebels in Yemen who have been using advanced anti-ship missiles from Iran to interrupt maritime commerce in acts of piracy that they claim are in support of Gaza but really have nothing to do with it. But then, he just lost interest and ended U.S. involvement.

Trump wasn't wrong to provide some extra military support to Israel's raids on Iran to thwart its nuclear capabilities, although the B-2 bomber strikes he made were less effective than might have been hoped. And, of course, this is a problem of his own making created when he pulled the U.S. out of President Obama's deal with Iran to end its nuclear weapons program.

Trump, in his first term, set up Biden for failure, and the Afghan government installed by the U.S. and its allies for collapse, by negotiating with the Taliban for a U.S. withdrawal that left the Afghan government out of the loop and left Biden holding the bag when he took office, just a month or so before the scheduled pull out date. And, in his second term, Trump has broken faith with Afghan citizens who served U.S. forces in Afghanistan at great risk to their own lives by trying to revoke the immigration protections that the Biden Administration and his own administration in his first term provided to them.

Trump has been indecisive, has wrecked our alliances, has taken absurd and counterfactual positions, and has played into Russia's hand with respect to the Ukraine War, even though with immense bipartisan political pressure from Congress and from the Defense Department, he hasn't entirely abandoned it.

Trump's utter abandonment of Africa, ending U.S. Aid in a way that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and will kill millions, planning to close all U.S. embassies there, and imposing tariffs upon it, has basically ceded the entire continent to China.

Trump has been less firm than he might have been in the Philippines-China clashes in the South China Sea caused by Chinese Coast Guard harassment of Filipino military and civilian shipping in places that international law has declared to be international waters.

Trump's response to the situation in Israel with Gaza has ranged from rudderless to absurd with his call to vacate Gaza and turn it into a Trump owned beach resort. By floating the proposal without even consulting his advisors, he has undermined U.S. credibility on the issue.

Trump's deployment of naval forces towards Venezuela seems to be an attempt to manufacture a war. His early threats to invade Greenland and Panama and Mexico, contrary to the sovereignty of a NATO member, to treaty obligations, and to international law, and to annex Canada, have likewise been toddler level moves that have undermined U.S. credibility in foreign affairs and turned us into a global menace.

The mixed bag of Trump's procurement decisions

Trump's military procurement decisions have also been a mixed bag.

The cancelation of the M10 Booker light tank (that the Army refused to call a tank) was a good move. Cancelling the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle for the Army (one of the best procurement decisions that the Army and Marine Corps have made for ages), while keeping the Army's buy of the obviously bad Infantry Squad Vehicle that ignores all of the lessons the Army learned in Iraq and Afghanistan was a very bad move.

Cancelling the Army's successor to the M113 was mostly a good move, but leaves the Army without a next generation medical transport and field hospital vehicle, even though other parts of that buy were unwise. Progress on an Osprey-like tilt wing successor to the Blackhawk helicopter in the Army is positive. Upgrading Army small arms makes sense.

The decision to boost purchases of the B-21 Raider and the F-47 Air Force fighter (to replace the F-35A) aren't horrible decisions, nor is the decision to continue the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (a.k.a. Loyal Wingman drone) program. Looking at ways to use cargo aircraft as bombers or missile launching platforms also makes sense. This administration's continued failure to recognize the need to have a close air support aircraft (shared with past administrations), however, even if the A-10 is just too old, wasn't wise. Trump's absurd attempt to play aerospace engineer and claim that the F-47 really needs twin engines, however, is more toddler level governance.

A focus on improving U.S. air defenses in a program known as the Golden Dome (playing on Israel's Iron Dome), on ramping up U.S. drone production, and on rushing to get drone defense resources fielded aren't wrong. Developing hypersonic missiles also makes sense. 

Developing new anti-ship tactical nuclear missiles, however, is a bad call and doesn't meet a real military need since existing anti-ship missiles are more than adequate to sink any ship in existence.

The decision to fund development of Elon Musk's SpaceX Rocket Cargo program which is technologically challenging, doesn't have a proven track record of quality control, and doesn't meet an urgent need, is less wise. This contract is just political payback.

It is honestly still hard to tell, more than seven months into the administration, what it's naval policy is. The Navy is appropriately looking at a major increase in unmanned ships and submarines, and at containerized anti-ship missiles for ships that wouldn't ordinarily have any missiles. Is the successor to the F-35C on or off? Is the Constellation class frigate on or off? Where is the Littoral Combat Ship program? Do we really need more old model Arleigh Burke destroyers? Does spending big bucks on maintaining a large scale amphibious attack capability really make sense?

Trump has talked big about using the U.S. military against cartels in Latin America, but the Department of Defense has apparently done nothing to prepare for this historically law enforcement and Coast Guard mission.

Labor Day Musings

* The state of labor in one chart:

The failure of businesses to share productivity increases with their workers starting in the early 1970s is the root cause of a lot of the current political reality in the United States. In my view, the decline of private sector union membership is more a product of declining worker economic power than a cause of this shift, but that's an open question in economics.

* The number of immigrants in the U.S. labor force has fallen by 1.2 million since Trump started his second term. According to the Wall Street Journal: "With zero net immigration, Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok estimates, the U.S. economy would be able to sustainably add only about 24,000 nonfarm jobs a month, compared with an average 155,000 from 2015 through 2024."

Agriculture (overwhelmingly in "red America") in the U.S. is particularly suffering both due to tariffs and due to the immigration crackdown that is cutting into the agricultural labor workforce. Nebraska and Iowa saw their state GDPs fall at an annualized rate of 6.1% in the first quarter of 2025.  Those tariffs were found to be mostly illegal by the U.S. Court of International Trade in a ruling affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a 7-4 ruling. The effect of the ruling is on hold until mid-October pending a petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court which has consistently ruled in favor of Trump despite his weak legal arguments.

The anti-immigrant fervor is driven by two main factors: (1) the economic stagnation of working age men without any college education who native born white men attribute to immigrants, international trade, and civil rights for women and minorities, and (2) the fear of white protestants in places with few immigrants that their culture will cease to be dominant.

* Courts in India are very slow.

[I]n one recent example a Delhi court concluded a property dispute after 66 years. Both the original litigants were dead. Still, the lawyer for one of the warring parties cautioned that the conclusion was in fact not the end, as the ruling would be appealed.

Three years ago, after pondering a dispute for 16 years, the supreme court sent back a 60-year-old land case for fresh adjudication to a lower court, which had already taken over 30 years to give its judgment in 2006.

A 2021 study of Mumbai real estate found that more than a quarter of the projects under planning or construction and 43 per cent of all “built-up spaces” in the city were under some litigation. My apartment block was one of them.

…One of the reasons for this accumulation is human resources. India has around 16 judges per million people, compared to over 150 for the US. In 2016, the issue brought the country’s chief justice, TS Thakur, to tears during a speech as he requested that the government hire more judges to wade through the “avalanche” of backlog.

For what it is worth, there are far fewer judges per capita in the U.S. than in Europe, even though the total number of legally trained professionals in the U.S. and in Europe per capita are similar.

The lack of state capacity in the area of courts means that property and contract rights and other forms of private law are weaker, which is bad for the economy.

* Adults in the U.S. are having sex less often (the decline is at least as great among high school students). It is basically a coincidence, but my children were conceived right around "peak sex" in the recent history of the United states.

* Wildfires are at record high in Europe due to climate change.

* The U.S. housing market is starting to favor smaller single family homes again after a peak in roughly 2014. Single family houses in the U.S. are still, on average, much larger than they were 30 years ago.

* A mere 6.0 magnitude earthquake in Afghanistan, shortly before midnight on August 31, 2025, was enough to cause at least 800 deaths and 2500 injuries.

* "Flukewarm": That feeling when you're reluctant to make a recipe, because the last time you made it, it came out perfectly. But it was a fluke, you're not sure what you did right, and you're worried you won't be able to repeat your past success.

* Last Saturday, I went to a store to buy a blind spot warning system for my car. They weren't available in 2015 when I bought it. But, I couldn't. Tariffs have delays shipments of cars parts like that one by more than a month and have greatly increased the price of those parts.

* As our country devolves into a civil war, ICE agents in unmarked cars wearing masks and not displaying their badges are unlawful combatants, and are thus they are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Instead, they are terrorists who are not entitled to the protections of legitimate combatants under the laws of war. They also aren't entitled to the peacetime protections and privileges of law enforcement officers.

* Rhode Island has the lowest state murder rate in the United States. Louisiana has the highest (or very nearly so) and has about ten times as many murders per capita.

* The lion's share of the counties in the U.S. with life expectancies lower than North Korea are (1) in the South and majority black or nearly so, (2) include Indian Reservations (or the Alaskan equivalent), or (3) are in Appalachia. The outliers are still in the South.

* Non-U.S. central banks are substituting gold for U.S. Treasury Bonds.

* The U.K. electrical wall plug design is safer than the U.S. design.

* People are dying on overloaded boats trying to emigrate from Gambia (in West Africa) to Europe. "More Than 130 People Are Feared Dead in West Africa Boat Tragedy: Around 150 people boarded a boat in Gambia that was thought to have been headed for Europe. The boat capsized after traveling about 380 miles."

* A judge ordered Alligator Alcatraz in Florida closed on the petition of an Indian tribe with an interest in the land, because an environmental impact statement wasn't done. The debacle cost $250 million. All detainees at the location which was inhuman and defective have been moved to other detention centers in Florida.

* Finland (which is the source of about half of my genetic ancestry) is a genetic outlier in Europe (for reasons that are well understood and closely related to the fact that it is also a linguistic outlier). 23andme was able to correctly pinpoint the place of origin of my Finnish ancestors to a region about the size of a U.S. county. The other half of my ancestry (which I know to some detail due to genealogy) is basically a European mutt that can't be localized from genetics much at all.

Other places with significant Uralic populations, Basque country, historically Celtic areas (despite the putative cultural origin of the Celts in the vicinity of Czechia which is being used as a baseline in the chart above), and places with significant Islamic migration since the 700s CE, also stand out in  this map. Sardinia is the closest modern match to the genetics of Europe prior to the arrival of the Indo-Europeans.

* It doesn't take a history genius to understand why South America, in general, and Argentina, in particular, has so much Italian ancestry (to a significant extent, because a lot of Italian Nazis fled there after World War II).

* The Holocaust has an immense effect:

* New Mexico is, by a variety of measures like education and poverty, much more like red states than blue states. But it has stayed blue because the GOP has historically made its Hispanic and Native American residents feel unwelcome and tried to persecute them. 

Utah is, by a variety of measures like education and poverty, much more like blue states than red states. But, its predominantly Mormon religion's conservative tenets have kept it out of the Democratic party fold.

* The cost of living is about 30% greater in the highest cost of living states in the U.S. than in the lowest cost of living state (Arkansas). Most of the difference is due to real estate prices.

* A plausible observation:

* Louisiana still hasn't recovered from Hurricane Katrina twenty years ago. It permanently reduced the population of the state, and of New Orleans, in particular (predominantly due to migration away from it, not due to the fatalities themselves).

* Almost every country in Western Europe has supplied Ukraine with military equipment. So have quite a few other countries (mostly in what could be called the Western European diaspora).

* Most of North America was once home to Buffalo, although the size of the herds may have been exceptionally large because the Native American populations that hunted them were decimated by European diseases not long before European migrants first documented them.

* Almost all of the land on Earth was connected about 200 million years ago.

* Republicans in Congress have grown less likely to have attended elite universities (while Democrats have grown more likely to have done so), mirroring the shift in college educated people towards the Democratic party.

* Data centers v. office building construction.

* Soil quality in Europe.

* Firefighting employment in Europe.

The U.S. figure is 0.2% (there are about 1.019 million firefighters out of 163.3 million employees, but two-thirds of them, who are not included in the 0.2%, are volunteers). This is similar to the European average.

* The twenty years from 1807 to 1827 did a lot to shape the political map of the Americas.

* Squirrels v. people.

* Women didn't start wearing underwear (i.e. panties and bras) in Europe until the 19th century, for the most part.

* Modern musical notation was invented by a Benedictine monk, Guido of Arezzo in 1025 CE and he also invented the Do-Re-Me system. Recognizable modern musical notation is older than Middle English.

* Billionaires have lower effective tax rates than the upper middle class and even less than for the average person.

We estimate income and taxes for the wealthiest group of US households by matching Forbes 400 data to the individual, business, estate, and gift tax returns of the corresponding group in 2010–2020. In our benchmark estimate, the total effective tax rate—all taxes paid relative to economic income—of the top 0.0002% (approximately the “top 400”) averaged 24% in 2018–2020 compared with 30% for the full population and 45% for top labor income earners. 

This lower total effective tax rate on the wealthiest is substantially driven by low taxable individual income relative to economic income. First, the C-corporations owned by the wealthiest distributed relatively little in dividends, limiting their individual income tax unless they sell their stocks. Second, top-owned passthrough businesses reported negative taxable income on average in spite of positive book income, further limiting their individual income tax. The top-400 effective tax rate fell from 30% in 2010–2017 to 24% in 2018–2020, explained both by a smaller share of business income being taxed and by that income being subject to lower tax rates. 

Estate and gift taxes contributed relatively little to their effective tax rate. Top-400 decedents paid 0.8% of their wealth in estate tax when married and 7% when single. Annual charitable contributions equalled 0.6% of wealth and 11% of economic income in 2018–20.

* Japan has the lowest housing prices in its major metropolitan areas of any comparable cities in the world. It isn't clear to me how much of this is due to lax land use laws arising from handling that function at a regional level rather than locally, and how much of this is due to its low birthrates and modest immigration rates.

A Non-Constitutional Revolution

The Founders in their ignorance, made the U.S. Constitution extremely hard to amend. This post is a quick recap of some of the more transformative way our constitutional and political order could be remade without constitutional amendments.

Disposition Of U.S. Territory Outside U.S. States

* Admit the District of Columbia, which has a population of roughly 679,000, as a U.S. state (once this was done, repealing the 23rd amendment to the U.S. Constitution that gives the District of Columbia three electoral votes would be easily passed).

* Require Puerto Rico, which has a population of roughly 3.2 million, to choose between independence and becoming a U.S. state. Deprived of an option to continue its current Commonwealth status, it would choose statehood.

* Grant statehood to the U.S. Virgin Islands, which has a population of approximately 104,000.

* Return the Guantanamo Naval Base to Cuba.

* Admit Guam and the Northern Mariana Island as a single new U.S. state (they are basically contiguous) with a population of approximately 221,000.

* Transfer American Samoa with a population of 44,000 to the adjacent sovereign country of Samoa, if it will accept it. Anyone dissatisfied with this could migrate to the United States and retain their citizenship.

* Collectively, this would mean that there would be 108 seats in the U.S. Senate (excluding the U.S. Vice-President's role as a tie breaker) and that there are no permanently inhabited U.S. territories that are not within U.S. states.

Congress

* Expand the U.S. House from 435 seats plus six non-voting delegates to a fixed 991 seats with no non-voting delegates. This would mean that there would be roughly 340,000 people per average seat in the U.S. House of Representatives (compared to a current average of about 790,000 people per seat), so only the Virgin Islands would have more house seats than the number it would be entitled to without a minimum of one seat per state rule, and even then, only by about a factor of three less than the average. This would also increase the size of the Electoral College to 999 electors (with the four new U.S. states), would greatly reducing the risk of a tie vote in the Electoral College (since it is an odd number), and would roughly cut in half the benefit that small states have relative to large states in the Electoral College. The number of U.S. House seats would not be changed if a state were allowed to split into more than one state or was merged with another state.

* Enact a statute requiring U.S. states with more than one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives to elect those seats in a party list proportional representation system (with each party's list determined in primary elections held in advance of the election). States with 50 seats or more would be required divide themselves into two or more regions with a number of seats proportional to the region's population of at least 20 seats and not more than 50 seats each. Currently, those states would be California (98 seats) with 2 to 4 regions, Texas (90 seats) with 2 to 4 regions, Florida (67 seats) with 2 to 3 regions, and New York (57 seats) with 2 regions. Smaller population states would be "at large". This would end gerrymandering of all kinds and would make the federal government a multi-party democracy. Doing this for Congressional delegations on a state by state level rather than nationally, would eliminate the need for a constitutional amendment, would de facto create a minimum threshold that would be much higher than it would be in a national proportional representation election, and would keep the states in charge of election administration.

* Enact a statute requiring candidates for U.S. House in states with just one representative (probably only the Virgin Islands and Guam), and for U.S. Senate, to win a majority of the vote to be elected in a general election and to hold a runoff election of the two two candidates if no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the first round. This would largely end spoiler effects as the shift in the House to what would become a multi-party system would increase the likelihood non-majority first round results.

* End the filibuster and Senatorial holds in the U.S. Senate.

Presidential Elections and Disability

* Require states to allocate their electoral votes proportionately to each candidate's popular vote, rather than by a winner take all method for a whole state, or by Congressional district.

* Pass a law implementing Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution (concerning Presidential disability), to create a Presidential disability commission in connection with the language giving "the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers or the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may be law provide" the authority to determine that the President is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office" and to keep that determination in force pending a Congressional determination of the question if the President disputes it. This commission might be made up the active judges, collectively, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and would have subpoena power in connection with carrying out its duties in this capacity, and would act on the Petition of the Vice President delivered under seal to the clerk of that court.

Qualifications For Public Office

* Enact a law implementing the insurgency disqualification from office in the 14th Amendment (or on any other ground) allowing any court or tribunal with jurisdiction over election administration to determine this by a preponderance of the evidence in a civil action, and allowing states courts and U.S. District Courts from a state where the official was elected to determine this after an election or appointment. For the President and Vice President, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia would have exclusive jurisdiction after they were elected (and even before they were sworn in). For federal appointed officials, the U.S. District Court with jurisdiction over the place where the official's primary office address is located would have exclusive jurisdiction. For state and local appointed officials, the state courts of general jurisdiction and U.S. District Courts with jurisdiction over the place where the official's primary office address is located would have exclusive jurisdiction.

Election Administration 

* Restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act expanding the protections historically applied only in places with a history of discrimination to the entire country.

* Create a right to have a state ID issued free of charge at some government office within their county at least every five years, with replacement costs limited to the actual direct cost of preparing a new ID between times. Automatically register anyone who is a citizens with a state ID or driver's license to vote. 

* Allow citizenship for voting purpose to be proven by means including any record of a previous voter registration, a passport, an expired passport, a birth certificate, a naturalization document, a tribal membership, a Social Security number, a marriage certificate to a U.S. citizen, or an affidavit establishing facts necessary to prove U.S. citizenship.

* Establish a right to an absentee ballot without proof of need for any registered voter, if a mail-in ballot is not otherwise made available to them.

* Encourage states to reduce the voting age in federal elections to sixteen years old.

* Classify people who are incarcerated as residents of their domicile immediately prior to their incarceration for purposes of state and local redistricting and for census purposes.

* Allow U.S. citizens who have no previous domicile in any U.S. state as residents of the U.S. state of their choice for purposes of federal elections.

* Prohibit election administration by elected officials (partisan or not), and also by partisan political appointees for whom one party controls the highest governing body of the election administration agency.

Courts

* Pack the court. Add another seven justices to the U.S. Supreme Court to end the distortions arising from having a 6-3 ultraconservative and hyper-conservative majority there. This should be done before any of the rest of this agenda is enacted.

* Establish criminal penalties that include disqualification from office for ethics violations by U.S. Supreme Court judges and other judges, with special venue provisions.

* Repeal the general federal diversity jurisdiction statute. 28 U.S.C. § 1332. As a result, federal court diversity jurisdiction would be allowed only in very specialized cases like class actions and cases where the parties claim ownership of land under the laws of two different states.

* Repeal the general federal question statute. 28 U.S.C. § 1331. This would end federal court jurisdiction over most lawsuits arising under federal law between private parties outside some very specific circumstances such as civil rights, election laws, intellectual property, and bankruptcy cases. The biggest impact of this would be to limit employment discrimination lawsuits to state court.

* Abolish the federal Article I immigration courts and give the U.S. District Courts exclusive jurisdiction over all immigration cases.

* Create a specialized national U.S. District Court for Indian Country which would have jurisdictions from multiple venues in cases where the U.S. District Courts currently have jurisdiction (i.e. felonies committed in Indian territory) and over other civil matters of Indian law, from which appeals would be taken to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

* Statutorily end qualified immunity to lawsuits filed under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

* End a law parallel to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violations of civil rights under color of federal law, thus codifying and expanding the scope of Bivens actions.

* Establish vicarious liability for the employers of government officials or contractors held liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 or its new federal counterpart.

* Enact a federal law entitling someone to relief in the form of compensatory money damages, injunctive relief, and declaratory relief from governmental entities that deprive someone of a constitutional or federal statutory right, even in the absence of fault or an intent to do so, including any deprivation of liberty arising from pre-conviction or post-conviction incarceration from someone who was wrongfully convicted, either due to procedural violations giving rise to the conviction or due to their innocence of the charges giving rise to their conviction.

* Enact a law creating a private right of action to seek injunctive relief enforcing the Posse Comitatus Act (which prohibits the use of the federal military to enforce laws domestically) in the appropriate U.S. District Court, to any person impacted by it or to any governmental entity within whose territory military personnel are used for this purpose, with expedited proceedings.

* Prohibit the activation and deployment of national guard troops in a state without the permission of its Governor, absent a notice to the Governor that troops will be deployed at least twenty-four hours in advance and a showing that law and order have collapsed to a point where civilian efforts are insufficient, or that an insurgency is in progress, or that the state is defying federal court orders. If a Governor contests this within twenty-four hours in the relevant U.S. District Court, this activation and deployment shall be stayed until an expedited hearing on the merits can be held to determine if the President has the authority to do so.

* Give U.S. District Court judges broad statutory authority to impose national injunctions against the U.S. federal government.

* Establish a judicial process required to claim the state secrets doctrine in an adversarial proceeding with a specially qualified bar of people having national security clearance at the time of their admission.

* Require an adversarial proceeding affording a personal with national security clearance with due process to revoke a national security clearance for more than five weeks (if this is not done, the temporary revocation would automatically expire).

* A U.S. District Court should be granted the authority to place any federal government agency whose senior officer has defied a court order to place that agency under court receivership, and to remove that government official from office, until a replacement who acknowledges the authority of the court and personally commits to obey that court order can be appointed. 

* Prohibit "bounty" laws that allow someone who would otherwise have no standing to bring a civil action to sue someone for a fine that enforces a state law (which are designed to circumvent judicial review of such laws).

Immigration Laws

* Immediately and automatically grant U.S. citizenship to all legal permanent residents of the U.S. (i.e. green card holders) and to all U.S. nationals who are not U.S. citizens. Allow anyone qualified to get a green card now to immediately get U.S. citizenship.

* Immediately and automatically grant U.S. citizenship to the spouse of any U.S. citizen.

* Grant automatic U.S. citizenship to any member of any recognized Native American tribe, regardless of place of birth, in accordance with the membership rules of the tribe.

* Grant citizenship at birth to a child anyone who is a U.S. citizen, or is serving in the U.S. military at the time of conception or birth. Proof of paternity may be established from the DNA records of the U.S. military kept for people serving in the U.S. military for post-humous identification purposes without the consent of the service member alleged to be a parent (or from a comparison to the DNA of all U.S. service members if the identity of the service member is not known).

* Establish a ten year statute of limitations from first entry into the U.S. (even if interrupted by period abroad of less than one year at a time) on deportations, and allow anyone for whom the statute of limitations has passed to apply for U.S. citizenship on that basis without any civics and English language test.

* Make a passport available free of charge a first time and every time it expires to every U.S. citizen.

* Eliminate authority to denaturalize someone for fraud in the immigration process for any reason, and replace that with criminal penalties for doing so that do not deprive someone of their U.S. citizenship.

* Allow a visa to be revoked after clearing an immigration checkpoint upon entry to the U.S. only with a civil action filed by the United States government in a U.S. District Court at which a valid legal basis to do so, that is not unduly vague and does not violate constitutional rights such as the right to free speech, is established by a preponderance of the evidence.

* Allow someone with a valid visa who is denied entry to the U.S. at an immigration checkpoint to obtain an award of money damages and injunctive relief if the denial of entry is without probable cause to do so, and to obtain injunctive relief reinstating the visa with no right of immigration officials to deny entry if entry is denied with probable cause but the articulated probable cause concern is later overcome. A person with a valid visa who is denied entry could elect to litigate the matter either from a temporary detention center near the place of entry, or from a U.S. embassy in another country such as the country from which they arrived.

* Prohibit deportation of someone, even when valid grounds exist to deport them, to a country where the person is not a national without their consent.

* Establish by statute (regardless of any constitutionally permissible alternatives) that probable cause that someone is deportable is requires to detain someone for immigration violations and that no one may be deported for any reason without notice and a hearing in an Article III court.

* State and local elected officials with immigration detention facilities located in their government's territory, and members of Congress from any state, shall have the right to enter and inspect an immigration detention facility and record by any meaning the people there, what the detainees have to say, and the conditions of the facility, and to demand responses from any person employed there to their questions about the facility, the authority for operating the facility, and the status of the people in the facility.

* The location and status of everyone detained for immigration purposes shall be available to the public.

* Immigration officials and any other private or public person working with them or on their behalf on on their authority shall have a duty to immediately release anyone detained for immigration purposes who presents to them proof that they are U.S. citizens or have a valid visa that has not been revoked by a court. 

Health Care

* Expand Medicare to everyone (without requiring any proof of eligibility), financing it with an increased Medicare payroll tax rate and an Obamacare tax on investment income at the same rate as for self-employed persons. Failure to make a required copayment would not be a basis for denying care but would give rise to an unsecured debt that could be discharged in bankruptcy. Convert VA Hospitals to non-profit independent hospitals financed with Medicare. Repeal Medicaid. End private for profit insurance Medicare providers. Reduce all employee health benefits to Medicare supplemental plans. Require Medicare supplemental plan providers to use standardized claim forms with providers and insureds to simplify provider paperwork.

* End lawsuits seeking to recover the costs of medical care paid for by Medicare brought by any party but the Medicare subrogation division in each state, which could bring subrogation lawsuits in state court to recover medical costs caused by tortious conduct when it determined that it was cost effective to do so.

* Expand Medicare to include long term nursing home care with a deductible not to exceed the median rent in the metropolitan area (or outside of metropolitan areas, in the rural area of that state), which can be paid with a federally guaranteed loan at the one year U.S. Treasury bond interest rate with no payments due until death, secured by a junior mortgage on the patient's personal residence, if any, if the patient is unable to pay.

Labor Laws

* Increase the federal minimum wage to $16 per hour ($32,000 per year for a full-time employee which is roughly the federal poverty line outside Alaska and Hawaii), index it to the consumer price index, and extend it to independent contractors who are providing personal services.

* The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) entitles eligible employees to twelve workweeks of leave in a 12-month period for the birth of a child and to care for the newborn child within one year of birth, the placement with the employee of a child for adoption or foster care and to care for the newly placed child within one year of placement,  to care for the employee’s spouse, child, or parent who has a serious health condition (a serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform the essential functions of his or her job), any qualifying exigency arising out of the fact that the employee’s spouse, son, daughter, or parent is a covered military member on “covered active duty;” or twenty-six work weeks of leave during a single 12-month period to care for a covered service member with a serious injury or illness if the eligible employee is the service member’s spouse, son, daughter, parent, or next of kin (military caregiver leave). Extend FMLA coverage to include being seven months pregnant or more. Expend the duration to up to eight months in a two year period. Create a federal grant equivalent to full-time minimum wage to anyone taking time off under the FMLA.

* Mandate a prorated 80 hours per year of paid time off for employees working 2,000 hours per year (i.e. 1 hour per 25 hours worked).

Controlled Substances

* End the status of marijuana as a federally controlled substance.

Reproductive Rights

* Statutorily clarify that states may not prohibit someone from prescribing and mailing abortion or contraception drugs across state lines or from crossing state lines to obtain an abortion drug or contraception drug obtained from out of state.

* Clarify that federal government health care facilities (e.g. prison medical centers, military hospitals, historically veteran's hospitals) can provide abortions and other reproductive health care notwithstanding state or local law.

* Clarify that the Emergency Medical Treatment Act requires states to allow abortions as part of a medical emergency, pre-empting state law.