On July 1st, San Francisco’s minimum wage will increase from $13 to $14. One year after that, the Golden City will fulfill its promise of a $15 floor. And before too long, it won’t be just San Franciscans who will be earning $15 per hour at minimum. By 2022, the state of California will have raised its minimum from the current $10 rate to $15.

“Fight for $15,” an organization championing the movement to increase minimum wage, argues that employees earning less than $15 are being “robbed on the job by our employers looking to cut corners. Employers that are multi-billion dollar corporations.” But this, in truth, is little more than rhetoric. Not every employer represents a multi-billion-dollar corporation. And many – especially the mom-and-pop outfits that are the backbone of the American economy — simply can’t afford such a drastic minimum-wage hike in the span of just a few years.

According to a study published last week by the Harvard Business School, “Survival of the Fittest: The Impact of the Minimum Wage on Firm Exit,” “a $1 increase in the minimum wage [in the San Francisco Bay Area] leads to an approximate 14 percent increase in the likelihood of exit [from the industry] for the median 3.5-star restaurant.” The study utilized Yelp, a website on which customers review restaurants and businesses, when defining its one-to-five-star rating scale.

The study examined restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area between 2008 and 2016, and concluded that restaurants with lower Yelp ratings are more likely to go out of business during a time in which the city’s minimum wage is increasing on average $1 per year. The conclusion: That over the next two years, San Francisco’s restaurant industry — the industry with the highest percentage of minimum-wage workers — will likely shrink, as nearly 6,000 restaurant employers contemplate whether paying $15 per hour salaries is feasible.

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President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13768, “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” just five days after he took the oath of office. He instructed U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to prioritize the removal of illegal aliens with criminal records, but made clear that the executive branch intends to execute U.S. immigration laws “against all removable aliens.”

On Sunday, the Washington Post obtained statistics on the illegal immigrants arrested by ICE officers between January 20 and March 13. The paper hoped to use them to confirm whether the Trump administration truly “cracked down” on illegal immigration during his first few months in office.

“ICE immigration arrests of noncriminals double under Trump,” the headline stated. And technically, this is true. The number of illegal immigrants without criminal records arrested was 5,441, which was double in comparison to the number of arrests from that same period last year. But it’s important to emphasize that the number of ICE arrests has increased significantly when comparing these time periods — from 16,104 to 21,363 — and that nearly 75 percent of the 21,363 arrests under the Trump administration involved illegal immigrants with criminal records. Meanwhile, the Obama administration hardly prioritized arresting illegal immigrants with criminal records; during that same period in 2016, only 60 percent of those arrested were criminals.

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In January, California’s Jerry Brown became the first governor in the state’s history to declare a state of emergency for a drought and a flood simultaneously. On Friday, Brown lifted the drought emergency in all but four counties (Fresno, Kings, Tulare, and Tuolumne counties). But, rather than lift the burdensome water regulations implemented to cope with the drought, he announced that many of those regulations would remain intact, even though the flood emergency remains.

Brown’s latest plan, “Making Water Conservation a California Way of Life,” allows the state to oversee conservation goals it sets in urban water-management agencies, as well as to permanently prohibit activities it deems wasteful of the water supply. It also creates more stringent standards for establishing these water-use goals.

Brown has indicated that he hopes to expand the state’s water supply with new sources of water, but his focus on making conservation “a way of life” — in a time when California’s streets are flooding — suggests otherwise. Certainly, Californians — and everyone else — ought to find ways to responsibly use natural resources such as water. Mandating conservation, however, is drastically different from incentivizing it.

Even though there is no longer a drought state of emergency in their state, Californians will be fined if they wash their automobiles with hoses “not equipped with a shut-off nozzle,” water lawns in a way that results in water run-off, or hose off sidewalks. The plan also gives urban government agencies until 2025 to comply with their conservation targets, limiting the water usage of Californians.

But water conservation can only go so far. California ought to begin expanding its water supply rather than incessantly regulate how citizens use water, especially now that the governor doesn’t retain the broad powers spelled out under the drought state of emergency (Brown’s flood state of emergency doesn’t give him the same power to regulate water use).

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On Thursday, President Donald Trump responded to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons on his own people by ordering a military strike on the airbase from which the chemical attack was launched. Most members of Congress gave the Trump administration their full-fledged support, suggesting that the administration’s response to Assad’s barbaric crime was just. Only a few members of Congress expressed an interest in enforcing Congress’s power to authorize a military strike; some were frustrated that Trump didn’t receive congressional authorization for yesterday’s attack, and others questioned when Congress ought to intervene if the conflict escalates into war.

Speaker Paul Ryan, for example, praised Trump after the attack. “Earlier this week the Assad regime murdered dozens of innocent men, women, and children in a barbaric chemical weapons attack,” he said. “Tonight the United States responded. This action was appropriate and just.” Ryan didn’t decry Trump for not seeking congressional approval before ordering 59 Tomahawk missiles to blow up the Syrian airbase. Rather, he praised Trump for his “appropriate and just” response.

House majority whip Steve Scalise also praised the Trump administration’s military strike without mentioning the president’s sidestepping of Congress. “The United States sent a clear message that we will not tolerate the slaughter of innocent citizens by the Assad regime,” Scalise tweeted. “I support President Trump for taking this strong and measured action.”

Other legislators espoused similar sentiments as Ryan and Scalise — but, interesting enough, some of them signed a letter in 2013 asking Obama to seek Congressional approval if military strikes in Syria were to be conducted. For example, South Carolina representative Joe Wilson, one of the nearly 100 legislators who signed the letter to Obama just four years ago, wrote, “This administration was clear — the United States would not tolerate the Syrian dictatorship committing atrocities against its own people. I commend President Donald Trump for his swift action, standing strong to protect American families from future missile attacks.”

On November 8, voters in the State of Washington approved Ballot Initiative 1501, the Seniors and Vulnerable Individuals’ Safety and Financial Crimes Prevention Act. At the time, the measure’s advocates argued that the measure would increase criminal penalties for targeting seniors and vulnerable individuals in acts of identity theft and consumer fraud, and prohibit the release of any public records that may facilitate such crimes. I-1501 passed by a large margin: Most Washingtonians did not oppose what seemed to be an honest effort by I-1501 proponents to close loopholes allowing identity theft.

As previously reported at National Review, however, I-1501 did not in fact seek to protect vulnerable individuals. Rather, it was a last-ditch effort by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to block the Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank, from obtaining its membership list of home-care providers. In other words, I-1501 was a Trojan horse that relied on the ignorance of voters to amend the Public Records Act, and it worked.

On Wednesday, the Freedom Foundation filed a lawsuit against the State of Washington and requested a temporary restraining order to prevent I-1501 from being enforced until a judge decides whether I-1501 is constitutional.

The feud between the SEIU and the Freedom Foundation began when the Freedom Foundation strategically informed thousands of state-employed care-providers of their constitutional right — outlined in Harris v. Quinn, a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court case — to leave their union. First, the Freedom Foundation made public-records requests to obtain membership lists from union chapters. Then, it simply notified union members who had been left in the dark and explained that they could opt out of paying into a union. This basic formula resulted in SEIU 925, the local SEIU chapter representing family child-care providers, losing over 60 percent of its members.

“Providers often express gratitude to the Foundation for these communications,” the Freedom Foundation explained in its court filing, “because they learn, for the first time, that they have unwittingly paid Union dues for years.”

To avoid a similar fate, SEIU 775, the local SEIU chapter representing home-care providers, battled ruthlessly in court for over two years in order to prohibit the Freedom Foundation from obtaining its updated membership list. After the Freedom Foundation prevailed in court, the SEIU chose a different path to accomplish its objective: to help create and finance I-1501, a deceptive ballot initiative that amends the Public Records Act. The Freedom Foundation’s court filing revealed that SEIU 775 paid the law firm that wrote I-1501. And, as David Dewhirst, Freedom Foundation’s litigation counsel, tells National Review, “SEIU [chapters 775 and 925] financed 1501 at the tune of nearly $1.9 million.” A mere $50 of the $1.9 million was donated from a person or organization unaffiliated with the SEIU.

“If this law stands,” Dewhirst says, “thousands of providers will never learn their rights, never have the opportunity to democratically replace their unions, and free speech will become markedly less free in Washington State.”

“It was clearly an abuse of the ballot-initiative process,” Dewhirst adds. But rather than sue the SEIU for its wrongdoing, the Freedom Foundation is suing the State of Washington for enforcing a law that is unconstitutional.

The Freedom Foundation is arguing that I-1501 violates the First Amendment because it both constitutes viewpoint discrimination and is unconstitutionally broad. Per the organization, the initiative also violates the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment because it treats “similarly situated groups differently” and “interferes with plaintiffs’ fundamental rights.”

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British prime minister Theresa May triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty on Wednesday, beginning the two-year process in which the U.K. must negotiate an agreement for its withdrawal from the European Union. During this process, the U.K. government must decide the most efficient way to keep, repeal, or amend the thousands of EU regulations on the books.

One day after May triggered Article 50, the U.K. announced its intent to repeal the European Communities Act of 1972, which grants supremacy to EU law over U.K. law, and introduce a Great Repeal Bill that will incorporate EU law into U.K. law. Having imported the whole kit and caboodle, the British Parliament will begin the arduous task of scrapping any statutes it considers superfluous.

Iain Murray, co-author of “Cutting the Gordian Knot” and the vice president for strategy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), argues that the “Great Repeal Bill will begin what may prove to be the greatest deregulatory endeavor undertaken by any modern government.” But that deregulatory effort will be successful only if Parliament chooses to cut these overbearing regulations; otherwise, these same laws will simply be enforced by legislators in Westminster rather than EU bureaucrats in Brussels.

Here, the “how?” is as important as the “what?” Asking Parliament to vote to keep, repeal, or amend each law separately would be impractical and could take years. In practice, such an approach would likely lead to few laws’ being repealed. In consequence, Murray and his colleague Rory Broomfield argue that the British government should establish a Royal Commission on Regulatory Reduction and assign it the daunting job of deregulation. The committee would be chaired by a current or former justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, and members would represent both the governing and opposition parties.

The commission “would essentially depoliticize the process of regulatory reduction,” Murray tells National Review. Each year, it would provide regulatory revisions to be voted on by Parliament — and, to keep the process efficient, members of Parliament would be prohibited from amending the commission’s proposal.

If such a commission is formed — and if, as Murray hopes, it ends up successfully repealing a quarter of the regulations imported from the EU — the U.K. economy would save between £33 billion ($43 billion) and £140 billion ($182 billion) annually.

There is a lot of work to do before Britain reaches that point. The U.K. “won’t be able to cut the rules until they are formally out of the EU,” Murray says. Thus, as the U.K. moves toward a deal that restores sovereignty to the British people, U.K. leaders such as Theresa May must decide sooner rather than later how they expect Brexit will impact the economy, the environment, trade negotiations, and more.

It is possible that each area of regulation will require a different approach. In their report, Murray and Broomfield argue that some environmental rules — for example, the directive on Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH), “the most wide-ranging and restrictive in the world on chemical innovation and use” — ought to be repealed outright. Among other things, REACH places the burden of proof on chemical companies, not the government, to show that the products being used are safe — including products that have been in use for many years with no harmful effects.

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California’s secession movement, CalExit, gained momentum immediately following Donald Trump’s victory in November, but it seems to have already fizzled out.

“Yes California,” the leading political action committee fighting for California’s independence from the union, capitalized on the shift in public opinion after Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly carried the state on Election Day. Last January, for example, the campaign committee submitted a proposal to Secretary of State Alex Padilla, allowing it to collect the signatures necessary to create a ballot-box measure for the November 2018 election. The proposal, intended to repeal the provision in California’s Constitution that describes the state’s relationship to the union, must receive 585,407 signatures by July 25 in order to qualify for the ballot.

According to a Berkeley IGS Poll published on Monday, nearly 70 percent of Californians say they will oppose the CalExit provisions if it makes it onto the 2018 ballot. The majority of Californians may loathe Trump, but not enough to declare their state’s independence.

The leaders of “Yes California” argue that “the United States of America represents so many things that conflict with Californian values.” Kevin de León, the Democratic leader of the California State Senate, has echoed this sentiment: He and his Democratic legislators — who hold a super majority in both legislative chambers — argue that they ought to resist the Trump administration to safeguard “the values of the people of California.”

Read More at National Review

During this week’s Supreme Court nomination hearings, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, portrayed Judge Neil Gorsuch as a biased judge who has consistently ruled in favor of corporations. If Gorsuch is not for the “little guy,” Feinstein’s line of questioning went, how could he be an acceptable nominee for the Supreme Court?

Gorsuch vehemently denied having some sort of pro-corporate agenda, explaining that as a judge his “job is to apply and enforce the law,” regardless of who the parties are in a particular case. Solely ruling based on the law and facts in question — and not allowing his personal beliefs to influence his ruling — sometimes results in outcomes that he, too, does not necessarily like. This answer wasn’t sufficient for Feinstein. She continued to question whether he would be a justice for “the big corporations” throughout Gorsuch’s nomination hearing.

Feinstein’s implication was that she, by contrast, is a true champion of the “little guy,” who stands opposed to the interests of large corporations. But a glance at her campaign donations from 2011 to 2016 suggests otherwise, as she has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporate employees and lobbyists.

Feinstein’s campaign committee has accepted large campaign donations from employees of and lobbyists representing Edison International, PG&E, Wells Fargo, Time Warner, DISH Network, Intel, Sony, Oracle, Comcast, Chevron, and JPMorgan Chase & Co, to name a few.

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In today’s Supreme Court nomination hearing for Judge Neil Gorsuch, Republican senator Ben Sasse (Neb.) questioned Gorsuch on a variety of issues, and chastised his Democratic colleagues for asking Gorsuch to set his legal ethics aside to “play politician on TV today.”

Watch the whole video here:

Senator Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, unwaveringly questioned Judge Neil Gorsuch in his Supreme Court nomination hearing today. But rather than grill Gorsuch on his former rulings, or ask questions that would reaffirm his impartiality if nominated to the bench, Feinstein used her time to ask questions pertaining to his political beliefs.

Feinstein received nearly identical answers — that Gorsuch strives for impartiality and it would be unfair to future litigants if he revealed his political beliefs — time and time again.

On the Second Amendment, Feinstein asked whether Gorsuch agreed with Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, a Supreme Court ruling that affirmed an individual’s right to possess firearms, or Justice John Paul Stevens’s dissenting opinion.

“Both Justice Scalia and Justice Stevens wrote excellent opinions in that case,” Gorsuch said. But, he explained, a nod in agreement with one opinion or the other would indicate to future litigants that he has already determined the outcome of their cases. “Whatever is in Heller is the law, and I follow the law,” he said.

Feinstein’s follow-up question? Whether Gorsuch agreed with Scalia’s opinion in Heller, specifically regarding his decision that military-style weapons may be banned.

Read More at National Review