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Doug Rand Profile picture
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6 Jan, 6 tweets, 4 min read
If Dems control the Senate, then the Congressional Review Act (CRA) suddenly snaps into major relevance as a blunt instrument to eliminate Trump-era rules—at least from the past 6 months or so.

The details are complex, but @CRS4Congress has an FAQ!
1/
 fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R…
The CRA lets Congress take a simple majority vote on eliminating most any rule from the past 60 "days of continuous session"—when you include recess days, that ends up being several months.

Here's the @USGAO database of duly delivered rules:
2/
 gao.gov/legal/other-le…
The CRA is a two-way bazooka: It destroys the existing rule *&* in the future prevents the agency from issuing a "new rule that is substantially the same" or reissuing the rule in "substantially the same form."

What does that mean? It's untested!
3/
I just ran a search for all rules either published in the Federal Register or received by @USGAO since 7/20/2020 (roughly 60 legislative days before Inauguration).

There appear to be ~700 potentially CRA-destroyable rules:

4/
 gao.gov/legal/other-le…
Trump's last-ditch push for anti-asylum regulations could be especially susceptible to CRA rollback, if Congress so chose. (cc @ReichlinMelnick)

Here's an immigration reg roundup from @chooseboundless, including Federal Register publication dates:

5/5
 boundless.com/blog/trump-lam…
Oh, and thanks to @PerezDRPerez, we have some certainty that Aug. 21, 2020 is the earliest date for rules that are eligible for CRA clawback/evisceration.

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More from @doug_rand

Doug Rand Profile picture
6 Dec 20
Here's a thoughtful—& therefore damning—analysis of the Trump administration's 11th-hour changes to the civics exam for aspiring US citizens.

Steven Lubet of @NorthwesternLaw susses out some truly fatal flaws beyond those widely reported already.

1/
 politico.com/news/magazine/…
Here's an error worthy of Encyclopedia Brown: The Federalist Papers came *after* the Constitution was written, so this shouldn't be an acceptable answer.

2/
Name 3 "rights of everyone living in the United States"—but don't sweat anything after the 1st & 2nd amendments, like, say, equal protection or due process.

Can you imagine the uproar if a Democratic administration put forward a list of rights & left out the 2nd amendment?

3/
Read 6 tweets
Doug Rand Profile picture
17 Nov 20
🚨DHS just changed the policy manual for @USCIS officers, making it much more difficult & confusing to get a green card (and ultimately US citizenship).

Let's dive into what is changing, & then why this is happening now...

1/
 uscis.gov/news/alerts/us…
Bottom line: USCIS officers are being ordered to exercise their "discretion" to deny a lot more green card applications.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it's because USCIS made similar moves in July regarding work permit applications:

2/
Today's update begins with some picayune xenophobic edits to the Policy Manual:

* Changing every instance of "foreign national" to "alien"

* Listing "national security & public safety" as more important than "family unity" as a Congressional goal for permanent residency

3/
Read 10 tweets
Doug Rand Profile picture
13 Nov 20
🚨Surprise! The Trump admin just released a new civics test that all aspiring US citizens must pass if applying after Dec 1.

Quoth DHS: "offering a fair test...is of upmost [sic] importance to our agency."

Let's look at what's changing...

1/
uscis.gov/news/news-rele…
Superficially, the 60% threshold for correct answers is the same.

But studying the new 128 (more complicated) questions will be harder than studying the old 100 (more straightforward) questions.

And scoring 12/20 will be harder than scoring 6/10.

2/
 uscis.gov/citizenship-re…
But the new civics test isn't just more difficult for no apparent reason—it also contains straight-up errors.

Q: Who does a Senator represent?

Old test: "All people of the state" [true]

New test: "Citizens of their state" [ideologically extreme & not true!]

3/
Read 9 tweets
Doug Rand Profile picture
10 Nov 20
🚨On Trump's way out, expect yet another barrier to immigrants becoming US citizens: @priscialva reports a plan to double the number of questions on the civics test, from 10-->20, & (apparently) make them considerably harder.

1/
 cnn.com/2020/11/10/pol…
First of all, the civics questions for US citizenship are already pretty hard—see for yourself!

2/
 nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Second, Congress requires naturalized US citizens to demonstrate "a knowledge & understanding of the fundamentals of the history, & of the principles & form of government, of the United States."

That leaves much discretion to DHS, which it's likely to abuse.

3/
Read 5 tweets
Doug Rand Profile picture
9 Nov 20
At last! Instead of poring over Trump's regulatory agenda for new outrages, I present to you an overview of how the Biden administration can reverse it all.

Trump has made >400 changes to the immigration system without Congress, per @MigrationPolicy.

1/
 migrationpolicy.org/research/us-im…
All of these changes are "executive actions." That's a catch-all term for anything done by the executive branch, including:

*Executive Orders (a specific kind of White House doc)
*Regulations
*Policy memos
*Other subregulatory actions

Some are easy to rescind; others not.

2/
Let's start where Trump started: Presidential Proclamations.

The vast majority of them are purely symbolic, bestowing honorifics on various months of the year.

There's at least one big exception, though, as we all learned the hard way in January 2017...

3/ Image
Read 21 tweets
Doug Rand Profile picture
1 Oct 20
🚨DHS just released yet another proposed rule intended to restrict access to permanent residency (green cards) for hundreds of thousands of family-based immigrants each year.

Trump's team will race to finalize this before Jan 20, if he loses.

1/
 federalregister.gov/documents/2020…
Most immigrants are already required to have a financial sponsor (eg a close relative) who shows income >125% of the federal poverty line & promises to pay back the gov't if the immigrant uses public benefits.

More on this "Affidavit of Support":
2/
 boundless.com/immigration-re…
DHS wants to make it much harder for would-be immigrants to have an eligible financial sponsor—& therefore green cards—& ultimately citizenship.

3/
 boundless.com/immigration-re…
Read 6 tweets

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