RUSH: Making the complex understandable, that's what we do, that will be the essence of much of today's program. Greetings, my friends, and welcome. You are tuned to the most listened to radio talk show in America, hosted by me, Rush Limbaugh, the most talked about host in America. Great to have you here. The telephone number is 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
"A federal judge in South Texas has temporarily --" and that is a keyword here "-- temporarily blocked President Barack Obama's executive action on immigration, giving a coalition of 26 states time to pursue a lawsuit that aims to permanently stop the orders." This is, by the way, an AP story. And not all of this is correct, obviously.
But this is an umbrella under which everything is gonna be discussed here today. The judge's name is Andrew Hanen. His decision comes after a hearing in Brownsville in January and "puts on hold Obama's orders that could spare from deportation as many as five million people
who are in the US illegally. Hanen wrote in a memorandum accompanying his order that the lawsuit should go forward and that without a preliminary injunction the states would 'suffer irreparable harm in this case.'"
who are in the US illegally. Hanen wrote in a memorandum accompanying his order that the lawsuit should go forward and that without a preliminary injunction the states would 'suffer irreparable harm in this case.'"
He said, "The genie would be impossible to put back into the bottle." So basically he wants to put everything on hold until the lawsuit's dealt with. And that makes this whole thing -- and I can't emphasize this enough. This is a temporary order. It is not, much as everybody would like to think it is, it is not -- and I've consulted legal experts on this because I wanted to make sure that I got this right. It is not a ruling on the merits of the lawsuit brought by the 26 states.
This is not a ruling on the merits of the whole subsidy argument.Let me restate what that case is. This is Obama and the left being caught by their own brilliance. Obamacare clearly states that only the states can set up exchanges that offer subsidies; the federal government cannot do it. That's in the law. Well, 26 states did not set up exchanges. They're suing on the basis that Obamacare is unconstitutional and they can't be forced to incur all these new expenses, and they can't be forced to implement all of this.
So 26 states do not feature exchanges where citizens, slash, customers can qualify for subsidies. When the Regime saw that, they said, "Well, okay, well, we'll just set up a federal exchange and we'll get people subsidies there." But they can't do that. That's not in Obamacare. That's against the law, per se. And that's what the lawsuit's about, is having a court rule on the original intent, if I may put it that way, of Obamacare and the subsidies.
It's very clear Gruber, the idiot who thinks we're all stupid, made it clear, this was a political ploy. It was intended to put pressure on states, Republican governors, to go ahead and implement Obamacare because the political pressure was their citizens are gonna be demanding these subsidies so that Obamacare's affordable. They specifically, specifically in Obamacare mandated that only the states could provide subsidies for Obamacare. That was to force any recalcitrant Republican governor into going along with it.
Well, 26 Republican governors -- well, 26 governors, not sure all Republican, think they are, said, "No way." So that left citizens in 26 states without access to subsidies. Well, when the Regime saw that, when they saw their political ploy fail, they just said, "Well, we'll offer the subsidies at HealthCare.gov. Screw it." But that's against the law. And that's what this Supreme Court case is going to decide.
Now, we're still in the midst of great peril here on this. The Supreme Court -- the only reason we're here is because the Supreme Court started all this by being gutless in dealing with the very first case, constitutionality dealing with the Fourth Amendment and the Commerce Clause. They punted on -- they didn't punt. They rewrote the law from the bench to make it quasi-constitutional, rather than rule on it as a strict case of law up and down, for a host of reasons.
Now, what's gonna happen next is that the Regime is going to oppose this judge in Texas's order, gonna appeal, and that will happen at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and I believe the Fifth Circuit's in New Orleans. Doesn't matter where it is; I'm just throwing that out as a tidbit. And according to some legal people I've spoken to and based on precedent, they expect -- and I'm not trying to be a downer here, and I hope this is wrong -- they expect the Justice Department to win the appeal. They expect the Justice Department to win at the Fifth Circuit based on the way this case, this law has fared in courts previous.
One of the reasons for this, I'm told, is that the circuit courts and the supreme courts do not want these lower district courts having anything of real import to say in terms of determining whether or not Obamacare's constitutional. They want that for themselves. And one of the ways -- and you've heard this phrase before -- one of the ways that cases have been thrown out, legitimate cases have been thrown out, is for a higher court to say that the plaintiff doesn't have standing. And if the plaintiff doesn't have standing, then he can't legally be in court making the case, and therefore there is no case and therefore it gets thrown out, and therefore it may as well never have happened. And that is one of the -- I don't know if it's a legitimate fear. One of the possible things people are looking for to happen here.
My friend Andy McCarthy thinks that we might even get a decision from the Fifth Circuit late this afternoon. And this judge in Texas, this is a gutsy guy. This is a gutsy guy, and he's doing the right thing. I think when people like this stand up and do the right thing, they need to be applauded, even though I must stress this is, again, this is not a ruling on the merits of the lawsuit brought by the 26 states that claim they will suffer profound financial and other damage from the president's lawless executive action demanding they provide subsidies and so forth.
So the Justice Department will seek an emergency order from the Fifth Circuit to block the injunction, which is what Judge Hanen's decision is, it's a temporary stay, it's an injunction. If the Fifth Circuit does indeed block the injunction, that would not be a ruling on the merits of the case. The merits of the case are not yet being ruled on here. It would just mean, if the Fifth Circuit rejects the state judge, the federal judge of Texas, it would just take us back to the status quo that allows Obama to go ahead with the implementation of his amnesty decree, and that would take us right where we are back to the Senate, the only place this can really be stopped.
The only place this can be stopped is in the Senate, and that is problematic because the Democrats in the Senate can't get a vote out of there. And it doesn't appear to be all that great a desire on the part of the Republicans in the Senate to get a vote out of there. So you hear the words "shutdown" being bandied about now, and shutdown supposedly automatically attaches to the Republicans, no matter who's shutting it. If the Department of Homeland Security ends up not being funded in all of this, it's gonna be because of Obama and the Democrats.
Now, that will not reported. The Republicans are gonna get blamed for it. But the fact of the matter is, if the Democrats refuse to vote for this thing in the Senate or if it somehow goes to Obama and he vetoes it, doesn't matter, it's going to be the Democrats that will be defunding Homeland Security during this reign of terror being sponsored by ISIS and other terror groups.
It's an absolute mess, and many people think that the only ultimate way to stop Obama from implementing this amnesty -- it's risky, it's dicey to rely on the courts simply because of the way the courts have dealt with this issue before today. I mean, look how excited everybody is because one judge in Texas finally did the right thing. This may make the third or fourth judge who has done the right thing. And previous to this judge, there were federal district court judges who claimed Obamacare was unconstitutional. They were countered by other federal district court judges. That's why it went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court essentially punted.
But the idea, everybody gets excited 'cause one judge has finally said that Obama doesn't have the right to do this and wants to wait for the Supreme Court decision on the 26-state lawsuit. His thinking is very smart. If we start implementing this, and the Supreme Court finds against the Regime down the road, the judge's point is, well, it's gonna be pointless if the Regime already begins to operate by providing subsidies when they're not allowed to. And the Supreme Court says that's unconstitutional, it's against the law because Obamacare doesn't state that. Well, sorry, it's too late, it's already been implemented. You can't pull the subsidies back. We're not gonna withdraw an entitlement per se.
So the judge wants to just bring this all to a screeching halt until the Supreme Court rules on that lawsuit. But what if that doesn't go our way? That takes us right back to where we are in the Senate on this whole thing and right back to where the only -- since the Republicans have said that they're not going to use impeachment, the only way to stop Obama is to deny him the money to implement the amnesty. And that ball is now in the Senate. Some are suggesting that Republicans start playing with the filibuster rule the same way the Democrats did. (interruption) Well, it would be lovely. It would be poetic justice, among other things, but it would also be good. It would work.
It's the way that you take the Democrats out of the power position in the Senate on this, is by eliminating the filibuster, which Harry Reid did all the time. Harry Reid threw out -- you know, the filibuster is not in the Constitution. The filibuster is a Senate rule. The Senate can change its own rules at any time. If Mitch McConnell wanted to go for it, he could eliminate the filibuster just like Harry Reid said, "What you know? We're not gonna allow filibusters on judges here, 'cause I want Obama's nominees to get through and appointed, nominated, and confirmed and all that, so we're gonna get rid of the filibuster." And everybody belly ached and moaned about how this is selective application of the rules and the Democrats changing the rules on the fly.
Well, we ought to do the same thing since we're now the majority in the Senate, but I don't know whether that would ever happen. Depending on who you talk to you get different interpretations of the degree of courage, amount of courage that exists in the Republican leadership in the Senate. And then there are others who are saying on our side, "You know, all this is crazy. We can't sit here and be arguing over money for the Department of Homeland Security when we've got ISIS and its reign of terror out there. Just pass the bill and send it up to Obama, let him have it." This is the open borders crowd. It's gonna happen anyway, they say. Obama's gonna get his amnesty. All this is a waste of time. Just go ahead and fund the department rather than play these games.
There's all kinds of pressure, all kinds of different opinions on the conservative, slash, Republican side inside the Beltway over what to do about this. So we'll have to wait for the next phase of this, which is the Fifth Circuit court of appeal to rule on the Regime's request to overturn the judge in Texas and his decision. And again, that could happen sometime late this afternoon.
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RUSH: Sorry for the confusion, folks. I ended up combining two things here, and for those of you that are profoundly informed, I'm sure you thought, "What the heck is Rush talking about?" I got confused on the lawsuit brought by 26 states. There is an Obamacare lawsuit involving subsidies by 26 states, and there's also another one involving the number 26, and I ended up confusing these two issues.
This is about amnesty.
This is totally about executive amnesty.
The judge in Texas has issued an order to temporarily -- temporarily -- prevent the Regime from implementing the executive action. Specifically, it would prevent Obama from issuing work permits for illegal aliens who do not have statutory authorization. The stay that he has ordered would allow himself, the judge, a chance to issue a final ruling on the merits of the case, which his ruling does not do.
He has not said that Obama's executive amnesty violates the Constitution yet. That's not what his ruling did. It just brought it to a screeching halt until a lawsuit involving this is decided. The thinking of the judge is that if we go ahead and Obama grants his amnesty and then the lawsuit rules against Obama, it's gonna be difficult because the genie's out of the bottle. The toothpaste is out of the tube. How do you put it back in?
So the judge is simple saying, "Hey, I'm gonna stop all this until we get an effective ruling." Now, in the process, the judge, when he issued the stay, he had to decide that the states that brought the lawsuit demonstrated the likelihood of success on the merits. Any time a judge issues a stay, it's because the judge has assumed that the people that are bringing the lawsuit are gonna win.
So in his judgment, the 26 states have shown that they have standing to sue the government. In his judgment, they have shown that Obama violated the law -- and, third, they have shown that they will suffer concrete harm from the violation, particularly the economic harm. That's the basis for the stay, and it's temporary. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal is granting an emergency hearing on this, and the decision on it could come sometime late this afternoon.
That's basically the upshot of it.
The important thing here is it's a gutsy move by the judge. It's a profoundly gutsy move by the judge. But it does not deal with the merits of the lawsuit brought by the states that claim they will suffer profound financial and other damage from this lawless executive amnesty. Don't forget, Obama himself several times, while on Univision or Telemundo or maybe combination of both... Obama himself has said numerous times that he doesn't have the constitutional authority to do this.
He's told audiences that were mad at him for not acting sooner on amnesty (impression), "Hey, I'm not an emperor. Hey, I'm not a king. We have laws, and I just can't violate 'em." Well, now, the Republicans have signaled they're not gonna stop him, and he's into his final two years where theoretically he's not running for anything ever again, and nobody's gonna stop him.
Why should he stop? So what's become clear here? As Axelrod made clear, Obama was always in favor of gay marriage. He just lied about it so as not to be harmed electorally. Same thing with this. He's always wanted amnesty, and he's always known he was gonna do it. He just said back when he had to face voters, "Sorry, I can't do it. I'm not a king." Well, he's always thought he's a king, he's always wanted to act like one, and now he is in the last two years.
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RUSH: I think, by my count, Obama has said that he doesn't have constitutional authority to grant amnesty, over 22 times. It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. This guy makes Brian Williams look like a piker. Nobody cares. You can't get people revved up over this guy's lies. You can't get people revved up over what he makes up, his statements of grandiosity.
You can't get people revved up over his violation -- well, not true. The sad fact is that the vast majority of people are revved up. It's just there is no similar media focus on Obama like there is, for example, on Brian Williams. I'm just here to tell you if the media were examining and scrutinizing Obama like they've been Brian Williams it would be a whole different ball game we're talking about. You know it and I know it. It's just a sad reality of what we're all up against and what we're dealing with. And so many people, I think, have given up.
I think it explains in part the recalcitrance of the GOP in Washington, "Hey, we're not gonna beat the media. It's foolish to even try. All we're gonna do is aggravate 'em even more, people are end up hating us even more." It's an obvious circumstance. It can be overcome.
I talked with Scott Walker yesterday for about 45 minutes after the program, and he had a great line. I instructed the editrix of the Limbaugh Letter for a pull quote, something he said, and I'm gonna have to paraphrase it. I don't have it right off the top of my head. He said that you don't triumph by running to the middle and trying to gain support of moderates, centrists, or liberals. You win by fighting and with bold leadership. Now, obviously it's common sense. The reason it is such a dynamic quote is there isn't any leadership, bold or otherwise. There is almost an abdication to the reality that we can't beat the media, and so the best we can do is limit the damage. It's just got everybody frustrated.
Here's A.B. Stoddard. She was on Fox News this morning. Jon Scott. This is just about an hour ago. And it's not that A.B. Stoddard is anything special. It's just that she has, this little sound bite encapsulates the thinking inside the Beltway on the judge's ruling in Texas and what the Republicans ought to do now. Here's the question she was asked: "Does this judge's ruling take Republicans off a bit of the hook? I mean, they were looking at the potential shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security next week because they don't want to fund Obama's executive actions, but if the judge has said that you can't do these executive actions now, do Republicans find their way clear to go ahead and restore full funding to the Department of Homeland Security?"
And this is the trick that is going to be employed. The pressure is gonna mount on the Republicans, "Hey, look, the judge ruled in your favor. Now you can go ahead and fully fund the damn thing. You don't have to play these games with defunding these three parts of this department. Go ahead and fund the whole thing 'cause the judge is gonna take care of it for you." This is essentially what she's saying.
STODDARD: I think the smart thing would be for them to get out of the corner that they boxed themselves into and pass a clean DHS funding bill when they return next Monday, the 23rd. Their attempts to pass the House-passed bill, which includes those policy writers which blocked the president's executive action, have failed three times in the Senate. Democrats are not going to budge. They continue to say in a time of heightened threat, Republicans are threatening our national security by withholding DHS funding. It's a political loser.
RUSH: She knows it's not the Republicans withholding the funding. It is the Democrats, by refusing to vote on the bill, and the president would veto it. She knows that, but yet here is the way it's being portrayed. It's the Republicans withholding funding for the Department of Homeland Security. That's really the only weapon they've got, unless they're gonna suspend the filibuster in order to take that weapon away from the Democrats in this, which is what Harry Reid did. And the media and the left of course applauded that, anything to stop the Republicans.
Well, conversely, anything to stop the Republicans also means anything to assist Obama, anything to help Obama. So in this case what we must do, what the Republicans must do is anything and everything that satisfies and meets the demands and desires of Obama. So it would be going against a huge current. This is the pressure that's being applied.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One of the reasons the Regime is so ticked off about the Texas judge in addition to just in general, is the judge in Texas's ruling came just hours before the federal government was set to begin accepting from illegal immigrants applications for amnesty. And this is what the judge meant. If that process started, if we start the process of giving them work permits, if they're granted amnesty -- and all of a sudden the courts rule that that's unconstitutional -- what do we do? He's already started it. The judge, in a very commonsensical ruling said, "Let's pull back here and let's wait 'til we get the final ruling on all this," and so he had a temporary stay.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You gotta hear this. Eric Holder has commented on the judge's decision in Texas. He's at the National Press Club today. He had some kind of address there, and afterwards in the Q&A, the moderator said, "What is the practical effect of this judge's ruling in Texas on the president's immigration order," the executive amnesty? "How much of a setback is this judge's ruling?"
HOLDER: We are still in the process of looking at the opinion, um, and trying to decide what steps we might take next. The solicitor general will ultimately make that decision, in consultation with me. I think that we have to look at this, um, decision for what it is. It is the, um, a decision by one, uh, federal district court judge. I expect... I've always expected that this is a matter that will ultimately be decided by a higher court. If not the Supreme Court, than a federal court of appeals. And so I think it has to be seen, um, in that context. This I would view as an interim step in a process that will, uh... That has more to play out.
RUSH: In other words, "This guy's a peon; we're not worried. It's one federal district court judge -- in Texas, of all places. What do you do expect? Bunch of racists! Texas? Give me a break. We're not worried about it. This guy's gonna be overruled before sundown tonight. We know that the higher court's gonna have the final say on this -- the Fifth Circuit, Supreme Court, whatever. We're not worried." That's how to translate what Holder said.
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