Trump bets big on obscure constitutional power that judges keep shutting down: expert

The Trump administration is invoking the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution to assert broad authority over states, and so far courts aren’t buying it, The New Republic’s Matt Ford argued in an analysis published Wednesday.The clause says the Constitution and federal laws made under it are “the supreme Law of the Land.” Ford writes that the administration has taken “a much more aggressive view of the clause, wielding it as a tool to bludgeon Democratic-led state governments into compliance with its own policy agenda or, more accurately, self-serving desires.”The first test was a lawsuit against New York City’s sanctuary policies. Last week, Judge Ramon Reyes ruled against the administration. He found the federal law at issue regulates governments, not private parties, so preemption doesn’t apply, and that the government would lose anyway because the Tenth Amendment prohibits forcing states to carry out federal enforcement.“There is nothing within federal law...