Tag: Indigenous peoples of the United States

(3) To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes; but neither this, nor any other clause contained in the Constitution, shall ever be construed to delegate the power to Congress to appropriate money for any internal improvement intended to facilitate commerce; except for the purpose of furnishing lights, beacons, and buoys, and other aids to navigation upon the coasts, and the improvement of harbors and the removing of obstructions in river navigation; in all which cases such duties shall be laid on the navigation facilitated thereby as may be necessary to pay the costs and expenses thereof. This goes a long way to cutting down the power of the commerce clause, and would likely have resulted in a different SCOTCS ruling on the power of the federal government to fuck with theinner workings of the states. (9) Congress shall appropriate no money from the Treasury except by a vote of two-thirds of both Houses, taken by yeas and nays, unless it be asked and estimated for by some one of the heads of departments and submitted to Congress by the President; or for the purpose of paying its own expenses and contingencies; or for the payment of claims against the Confederate States, the justice of which shall have been judicially declared by a tribunal for the investigation of claims against the Government, which it is hereby made the duty of Congress to establish. (10) All bills appropriating money shall specify in Federal currency the exact amount of each appropriation and the purposes for which it is made; and Congress shall grant no extra compensation to any public contractor, officer, agent, or servant, after such contract shall have been made or such service rendered. So while the Confederate government had a lot of power to tell states what laws they could and could not pass, it lacked a lot of the federal muscle of taxation of the USA.

It hasn’t been easy for Torres Small, a moderate Democrat, to talk about immigration in a way that appeals to both sides of her solidly purple district: to the immigration advocates who accuse Border Patrol of actively contributing to the deaths of Jakelin and Felipe and to the agents who say they did everything they could to save them. She’s here to meet with Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, the newly elected member from El Paso, and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. ICE and Border Patrol agents abuse children and lie about it. So Torres Small says it again, and again and again. The morning after Jakelin died, Torres Small drove two hours from Las Cruces to Lordsburg, where Jakelin had been taken for medical attention, and another 90 minutes to Antelope Wells, where she had entered into the United States from Mexico. Lordsburg, home to just under 2,500 people, has the nearest hospital. Jakelin arrived at the port with 162 people, too many for one bus. Torres Small is happy that so many of her colleagues want to come to her district. But sometimes she feels like the trips just serve to further divide the border conversation. “You should be able to see the border, somewhere around there,” she says.