There's a little brew haha happening in the city of Clovis, California, and I want to talk about it because I think it could have an impact on the state. More broadly, I think other local governments should think about this, and I think it impacts the national immigration issue. It has to do with whether or not local police, local sheriffs can or should declare themselves to not be a sanctuary jurisdiction.
Should local cities or county governments declare themselves not to be a sanctuary jurisdiction and declare that they're not going to follow California's various sanctuary state laws. All right, So let's I want to step back and explain all these things. What does it mean when California says that it is a sanctuary state? Okay, so what it means is that local police and let's remember this basic principle when you talk about local governments or county governments or city governments whatever.
All county government, all city government is a creation of state government. If the state says x, the county and the city have to do it. There's no kind of separate autonomy that local governments or county the city governments or county governments have from state governments. Okay, it's different from, say, the relationship between a state government and the federal government.
The state and the Feds are two different sovereigns that we live under, and each has its rights individually and has its visual spheres of autonomy separate from the other. Not so with local governments. Local governments are total creations of state government. So if state law says X, generally speaking, local governments have to agree with it, have to follow it.
What is California's sanctuary state law. California's Sanctuary State Law aka the California Values Act, which was signed into law passed in twenty seventeen, went into effect in twenty eighteen under Jerry Brown. Basically, what it does is it limits the ability of state and local law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration Well, excuse I should say, limits their ability to communicate, share information, cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
Now there's some extent to which they can communicate with federal immigration enforcement. For example, they can tip them off if someone who has committed a serious felony, someone convicted of a serious felony is about to be released from prison, but that's it. It doesn't seem to me that it doesn't allow for police on the front end to say, hey, we just picked up this guy in a raid. He's not even supposed to be, you know, in a gang raid or a drug raid or something. We just picked
up this guy. We don't think he's even supposed to be in the country legally. Why don't you guys just come pick him up Ice. So basically our sanctuary state law, it limits the ability of local police to communicate with ICE, or with I S or with the Border Patrol only for people who have committed serious felonies. And I believe from my reading of the law, and I want to actually see if I can get someone from local law
enforcement in. It seems like it's mostly just on the back end that after this person has been convicted of a serious felony, then then you can let them know, let the immigration authorities know after they're leaving. So it says in the law law enforcement officials shall have discretion to cooperate with immigration authorities only if doing so would not violate any federal, state of local law or local policy, and where permitted by the California Values Act. Additionally, the
specific activities shall only occur in the following circumstances. The person has been convicted of a serious or violent felony, and the person blah blah blah blah. So it's usually it's on the back end that you can then tell immigration authorities. But it's not on the front end where a police officer could pick up a guy in a drug rate. Can't just pick up a guy during a raid and say, hey, this person shouldn't even be in the country in the first place. Let's call Ice and
get this guy's rear end deported. Now, I think that local law enforcement should have the discretion to do that, to do precisely that. Diane Pearce, who's a closed city council member things likewise, Miss Pierce noticed that the city of Huntington Beach, California, had introduced and adopted a city resolution declaring Huntingdon Beach to be a non sanctuary city for illegal immigration for the prevention of crime. They issued big local resolution to that effect, and they introduce this
local resolution. It's got, you know, a couple pages. It's a couple pages long in which it lays out some legal arguments. It actually lays out the legal arguments for why they think California's sanctuary state law actually is in violation of controlling federal law, and they declare their intention to not follow the state's law and instead to follow federal law. So there Huntington Beach is making this argument.
We understand that the California Values Act is on the books, However, we don't think it's legal basically the way the Supreme Court has interpreted a lot of federal immigration law. I don't know that this was originally the case at the time of the founding, but this is sort of what the Supreme Court has decided a lot of controlling Supreme Court President basically just says that the federal government is in control of immigration matters, and there is federal law
on the books that would seem to me. Again, I haven't read into it super in depth. I'm not you know, I'm not claiming to be an expert on this area of law, but there does seem to me to be some federal statutes on the books that contradict what the state of California is doing. So the statute that Huntingdon Beach sites that I think is most relevant is eight USC.
Thirteen seventy three eight United States Code thirteen seventy three, which says, notwithstanding any other provision of federal state of local law, a federal, state or local government entity or official may not prohibit or in any way restrict any government entity or official from sending, two or receiving from the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or
immigration status lawful or unlawful of any individual. No person or agency may prohibit or in any way restrict a federal state of local government entity from doing any of the following with respect to information regarding the immigration status
lawful or unlawful of any individual. One sending such information, two or requesting or receiving such information from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, two, maintaining such information, three exchanging such information with any other federal, state of local government entity. So you've got at least this one federal law on the books that to me kind of looks like it's flatly contradicting California state law. Now, I'll admit that I haven't done a really deep dive on this. Maybe I'm
I'm missing something here, but here's this federal law. Several different federal statutes that would seem to say no, local governments, state governments cannot restrict local and state government officials from communicating with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. They're just not allowed. Just that you're not allowed to restrict it. I mean, I I think there's some kind of an issue there.
I mean, I guess I find it find it odd to think and the city resolution, the resolution by the City of Huntington Beach, sites other legal arguments, et cetera. All Right, So Diane Pierce raises this question on her She has like a Facebook page, and she raises it on there. Hey, do you guys think that Clovis should declare itself not to be a sanctuary city? Should Clovis police work with the I n S? Or should Clovis police operate in communication with ICE and with other immigration authorities?
Should we allow them to do that? Should we declare that we're going to sidestep state government? Now this seems to immediately be the dynamic on the city council and in Clovis, And I think it's a dynamic in a lot of places, and it's a dynamic that I hate. It's a Jerry Dyer dynamic. It's a dynamic of a lot of local government officials who basically, at the mere mention of some kind of broader conservative idea, put their tails between their legs and run away. You know, here's Clovis.
I don't know how familiar all of you listeners are with Clovis, but I don't think I'm breaking any great news to you to say Clovis is a really conservative city. It's a heavily Republican city. I don't know the breakdown Trump to Trump to Harris, but I have my suspicions that it was overwhelmingly pro Trump. All five of our city council members are at least in name, Republicans, run as Republicans. I deeply suspect at least one, if not several of them are actually not very conservative at all.
But one of the things that I keep seeing as soon as Diane Pierce joined the city council, it really shook things up. She used her platform to bring attention to the ridiculous stuff that was going on within Fresno County libraries. Because she goes to the Clovis Library and says, hey, look at all these books that are you know, borderline pornographic that are on the shelves here for you know
a seven year old to grab. She raises that question, and immediately all of her colleagues on the city council think, how horrible it is, How horrible. Oh, that's not something that we deal with on the Clover City Council. That's county government responsibility. Why are you doing that? Are you?
Why are you making this such a divisive issue. Well, oh, you're making people who work for city government feel uncomfortable, to which I would respond, and most Clovis citizens I know who are politically engaged, by the way, would have responded. I really appreciate Diane Pierce bringing attention to this. I appreciate the fact that she then proceeded to bring this to the attention of the County Board of Supervisors in a way that a local government official can that maybe
I can't. It resulted in Steve Brandau introducing his Library's Bill, which unfortunately got preempted by state law. But she actually did something about it. She noticed something bad and used the platform she has as a city government official to make a big to do something about it, propose a city council resolution saying that the County Board of Supervisors should do something about it, and both then and now you have foot dragging from other members of the Clover
City Council. So now it's Drew Bessinger, who's a Clovis City Council member, who proceeds to say, we can't, we can't declare ourselves not to be sanctuaries. And now this is as reported by Diane. Diane reported it very kindly and didn't have anything negative to say about mister Besseinger. She just said, you know, my friend Drew Bessinger says that he doesn't think this is a good idea and that this is not really something that we could do.
I disagree. So Diane was very kind and respectful to him.
I am not going to be so kind. I am tired of Clovis City Council members and local government figures throughout the San Joaquin Valley, whether that's Jerry Dyer or whoever, taking these sort of I guess I'm gonna call it classical liberal or almost Rollsian approach to government, that the work of local government is just fixing roads and hiring cops, and that there's no like great d ethical framework in which they operate, that big decisions of right and wrong
just aren't really the domain of local government officials in the San Joaquin Valley. No, no, no, that's a state question. We shouldn't We just shouldn't get involved. That it's gonna lead to a lot of people. It's gonna lead to a lot of ill feeling and disagreement. And that's not what the city council's about. Because they've accepted a certain sort of framework of looking at the world. They're goldfish thinking that the whole universe is only the parameters of
their goldfish bowl. And here's Diane saying, hey, maybe there's something more here. Okay, we're just accepting that state law says X, therefore we're gonna accept X. Well, maybe state law. Maybe the law passed by California is itself violative of federal law. The Supreme Court has been very open to the idea of immigration being exclusively the domain of the federal government. Now, I'll admit maybe there's some sticky legal issues between you know, what, can the Feds tell state
governments to do? Can Feds tell state governments not to tell local governments what to do? Does federal law here completely preempt any state efforts to insert itself into federal law? I think it raises some interesting legal questions when we return, what would it actually cost the City of Clovis to declare itself not a sanctuary city. Next on the John Girardi Show, the city of Huntington Beach, California declared itself not a sanctuary city, said they would not follow certain
provisions of the California Values Act. They say, they try to argue that federal law coulds in this area, and there's federal law in the books that says state and local jurisdictions cannot prohibit state and local officials from communicating with I N S. They say, Hey, we think federal
law controls here. The proposals put forward to the City of Clovis by City City of Clovis council member Diane Pierce, who is the mayor pro tem Clovis, passes the mayor title around to all the different members of the city council. It just basically Clovis doesn't have like a strong mayor like Fresno does. It's just basically a title you run the meetings. Basically you're just a member of the city council anyway. So Diane Pierce is introduced, has floated this idea.
She hasn't formally introduced anything, but she's floated this idea of, hey, should the City of Clovis join Huntington Beach and declare itself not to be a sanctuary city, and immediately is met with no, no, no, that's not the City of Clovis's responsibility or state law controls here. And we came and that's not what It's just going to create a bunch of ill feeling and all right, this is the response that her city council members, her city council colleagues
are giving her. Now, what would it act? Now? I would disagree with this on a number of fronts. One one of the actual key responsibilities of city government. Local
government is policing. And I guarantee you if police, as they're picking up bad guys, could you know, as they're picking up a bunch of bad guy, low life drug ye gang members in a raid, if they could just do a little check on this guy's immigration status and call up ICE, the world would be a better place if they had the freedom and latitude to do that.
It would be a good thing. Guarantee it now that so, at first I reject the contention from some of the folks on the Clover City Council who seem to be dragging their feet on this that well, those are really city responsibility. Well it is kind of part of your city responsibility. It would make one of these core functions of city government work better if City of Clovis police
could interact with the immigration authorities. Now, maybe we condition it internally within the police department in a way or within the city council in a way that makes it fair. They say, hey, you have the latitude, if you've under certain conditions where you have some sort of greater assurance of guilt or something or blah blah whatever, then you
contact immigration authorities. Again, I think it's a straw man to think that City of Clovis police would all of a sudden just be pulling over any group of Mexicans in a truck to try to check and see if they're in the country legally or not, and deport them if they aren't. I would say it makes tons of sense though, in the context of criminal law enforcement. You know, you're busting up a drug ring or a gang. You're doing a gang sting operation. Hey, you've got this guy
who's maybe has a prior criminal record. You know, call up Ice. I think there are ways you can condition it to ensure that it's really fair and really just, and that you're not sending you know, you're not just rounding up random groups of Mexicans or something like that. If you're concerned about fairness and justice, they're okay, let's talk. Let's come up with a reasonable policy. Now here's the question the city council members are. It's oh, this is
just would be bad. We shouldn't do it. It's not gonna work, It'll cost us money. Okay, what would it actually cost the City of Clovis? What would it actually cost the City of Clovis to say, Hey, we're gonna join with Huntington Beach and declare ourselves also not a sanctuary city. We'll combine our efforts with Huntington Beach in fact, Huntington Beach Clovis, and hey, maybe maybe we get twenty other Republican led cities or county governments, I mean county
governments could discuss this. Call up Gary Brettefeld. You think he wouldn't want to do this. See have the Fresno County Sheriff say, hey, we're not gonna be a you know, we're gonna communicate with I n s. We just don't think that we're prohibited from doing it. So instead of just one city challenging it, let's have twenty jurisdictions challenging it. Twenty cities and counties all joining together in this federal laws,
this hypothetical federal this hypothetical lawsuit that I'm envisioning. Because of course, once Huntington Beach does this, Rob Bonta will assuredly sue Huntington Beach. Maybe we combine the lawsuit all of us together. That'll minimize our attorney's fees costs. If we can pool our resources together, instead of one city paying for all the representation or just Clothes and Huntington Beach, have twenty cities reduce our legal costs significantly. Okay, pr costs.
Oh no, the residents of Clovis will be so upset with you, Clovi City Council, that you decided to try to sidestep this sanctuary city nonsense, which most of the citizens of Clothes don't like anyway. Oh, it'll lead to ill feeling. Well, okay, I mean, the fact remains that we have this four year win, have opportunity to actually
do something about illegal immigration. And I like the fact that Diane Pierce is actually willing to think of a creative solution to have the City of Clovis do something, have Clovis pde do something. Frankly, I feel like every city council should be thinking of outside the box ways of discussing this. Look, if the legal arguments advanced by Huntington Beach are totally garbage, Okay, I get it. Let's not participate if it's purely going to be a waste
of state money. Fine. And I'm not saying like, disobey, Like if a court gives us an order saying no, you may not enforce this policy until the lawsuits completed, Okay, follow the order. I'm not saying, like, have the City of Clovis engage in rebellion against the State of California. That's not how this would work. They would announce the policy, it would be challenged by the Attorney General, they would
have litigation. The court could order them to keep having the policy or not have the policy for the duration of the litigation. We follow what the court decides, But at the very least, like, why not push on this? It just seems like it could result in a big legal breakthrough, breaking the back of sanctuary jurisdiction law when we return our little Rawlsian public servants in local government
in California next on the John Gerardy Show. John Rawls is one of the most important political philosophers of our last one hundred years or so. He was born in nineteen twenty one. He died in two thousand and two, and his ideas of classic liberalism and progressivism have been extremely influential, far more influential than any of you might
guess who aren't philosophy majors or anything. A lot of the kind of built in assumptions to how the sort of Obamian left things and talks and acts are coming from Rolls. And one of the big one of Ralls's big ideas was from his book from nineteen ninety three called Political Liberalism. And he's not talking about liberal as in modern day American left wing. He's talking about the classical liberal tradition. And I think in many ways he's
highlighting the flaws of classical liberalism. A lot of conservatives act like, oh, I'm a classical liberal, that's what I am. I think Roles sort of shows he takes classical liberalism and in some ways sort of takes it to its logical conclusions in ways that are not particularly satisfactory. So one of the things he tries to do is exclude from public debate any kind of ideas or thought that isn't part of our accepted kind of lowest common denominator
accepted political and ethical framework. So any sort of arguments coming from religion, if they are in any way not agreeing with his conception of what we believe as a polity, that gets thrown out and that that well, and this leads you probably to ask, well, how is he defining? What is he defined as our sort of accepted political reality. Good question. It's basically the sort of lowest common denominator ethical libertarianism, freedom and equality and all these things that
everyone sort of agrees with. But when liberals talk about freedom, equality, et cetera, they include things like, and I use this example because of something I think about a lot, Liberals would say that basic rereadom basic equality would include things like legal abortion, oh, letting people have the freedom and equality to make decisions about their own bodily autonomy. And when conservatives say, well, well, no, that doesn't seem right. Wouldn't you say that the unborn child is created in
the image and likeness of God? Oh? Whoa, We're not bringing God into this. Hey, you can't be talking about God. Hey. In our little rollsy and political universe, we can only talk about these things that are sort of part of our accepted public, you know, part of the public political forum. We have to commit ourselves to the ideal of public reason, only debating these things in terms of reasons whose status as reasons is shared between ourselves. So, oh, you bring
up God, I don't like God. I don't care all you say about this person's made the image likeness of God. I don't care. Or if you bring up well, there's a fundamental dignity in human purses. WHOA, who's talking about fundamental dignity. No, I'm just talking about freedom and people should be free to make their decisions and it's it's choice.
So a lot of modern day political liberalism frames itself as like this is just a value neutral proposition of what we're doing, like all the big questions have been answered already, All the big questions have been answered about who, what are human rights and who has them? That's all answered. Don't be coming in here with your big time sort of fundamentalist theories, whether it's religious ideas or fundamental big
you know, big overriding ideas about anthropology and human dignity. No, no, no, no, no, we're just engage. We limit our political discussions to basically these kind of technocratic questions about the effective ordering of what's what's supposed to be. It's amazing how much his political thought has infiltrated its way throughout our discourse. Where
I find this all the time. It's not that the left engages with and rejects conservative ideas about say, gay marriage, or transgenderism, or abortion, or are any of these big sort of social questions. No, they just kind of bypass it as obviously wrong, just bypass it as obviously what
we think is right. Just totally don't even engage because so as they basically think any one of these conservative arguments that's appealing to some kind of overriding conception of the good or of human nature, of what is human good, of what is right and what is wrong. No, no, no, no, no, we're just restricting ourselves to these lowest common denominator ideas
about freedom and equality and that's it. If you try to argue for anything, for any kind of concept that's beyond like freedom and equality, you're violating this sort of Rawlsian conception of the universe. And this stuff is coming from John Rawls and it has infiltrated all the way down to say the Clovist City Council or the president of city Council. Okay, I remember this with the president city Council a bunch of times, a couple of years ago.
Joaquin Arambula, who's a California State Assembly member, doctor, Joaquin Arambula, an actual medical doctor, unlike Jill Biden, who's a phony doctor. He got I believe this was in twenty twenty two, so the state was flush with COVID cash. And while quin Arambula got a one million dollar grant for the Planned Parenthood Clinic on Fulton Street, A million bucks. There you go. And the idea for this grant was it needed a local government to be the pass through entity
to give the money to Planned Parentood. Apparently there's some reason why it couldn't just come directly from the state. And members of our city council propose there was some combo between Arambula and members of the City Council to propose that the President of City Council be the pass through entity. So as a result, you had the liberals
on the presdent of City Council. Nelson is sparz. Uh Uh, how come I'm completely Miguel Arius all the most the four most liberal members of the present City Council all banded together to get this passed. Luis Chavez and they
banded together to get this passed. And the reactions there were only two people willing to really stand up in opposition to it, and that was Mere Dier and then City Council Member Gary Brettefeld now council member Brettafeld was very vigorous in saying we shouldn't do this because abortion is wrong. Dire his whole approach to it was, Oh, this just isn't the kind of thing that the city should get itself involved in. This isn't what we should
get ourselves involved in. And Dire constantly seems to try to sidestep any kind of urgent, like cultural or ethical question by trying to make some argument that this isn't a thing that we should concern ourselves with. This isn't a thing we should concern ourselves with. Oh, this isn't part of what the city is supposed to be caring about. And it's almost as if he takes this stance that the city government is basically just a technocratic thing where
all the big moral questions are already already decided. The city shouldn't involve itself in any kind of moral questions whatsoever, And all we do is fix potholes and higher cops. Although not recognizing that even then, whether to hire cops, whether to fix potholes is itself something that's contingent on broader ethical ideas about what is good and what is right. Hiring cops was three or four years ago, if I recall correctly, a pretty controversial stance to take. For a
couple of minutes, city of Clovis doing the same thing. Oh, Diane Pearce is getting angry about pornographic books in the kid's library. That's right next to our city council. Oh, she shouldn't do that. That's not an area of our concern. As if the only role of the Clovis City Council is again just hiring cops and fixing potholes. I just don't think that local government figures should think of their jobs that way. There's this desire to reduce your job
to this lowest common denominator function. And yes, I get it, like it would be better in some ways, it would be better for local government figures to focus their attention on fixing potholes and hiring cops rather than getting themselves
wrapped up in insane left wing cultural nonsense. But the only way you're going to fight against insane left wing cultural nonsense is if you have some solid right wing cultural principles ideas, and if you sort of say from the top, oh, I'm gonna exclude these things from public debate because people might disagree or not everyone agrees with my viewpoints, or you know, this is not really the role of government. The role of government here is just to fix the roads, and let's focus on just what.
Let's not focus on these big cultural fights and these culture war issues. I don't know people who call big ethical questions culture war issues like dismissively. I can't stand people who's who talk like that it is it is actually really important these things. So in short, I reject this kind of this sort of little rollsy in attitude that seems to infect our local government figures, state government figure whatever, who try to make this claim, well that's
not something for us to get involved. But you see at the federal level too, Now you got all these Republican politicis, oh, you know, abortion legislation, that's just for the states, that's just for the states. I'm just here to you know, cut spending and like trying to act as if what they're doing is this sort of value neutral proposition of just trying to, you know, make the
mechanism of government work better. And no, there are actually big overriding ideas that if you are going to be in politics in government, you should concern yourselves with and if you don't have a strong conviction about those things, then you should have never run for public office to begin with. When we return, why I am skeptical of the libertarian freak out over Trump's tariffs? Next on the John Grardy Show, all right, I subscribe to National Review. I read it a lot, I use it a lot
as show prep. I like it, but it is much more libertarian leaning than I am. And I open up National review dot com this morning to start looking for topics for show prep boom, the North American trade war begins. President Trump is promising pain for US. So Trump's tariffs are terrible. This at the terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible. Libertarians hate tariffs. They're all convinced that tariffs are the worst thing in the world, that limiting free trade is a
terrible idea. Tariffs are bad. It violates all these libertarian principles. Tariffs are just bad and you shouldn't do them. And it's attacks on people via on goods becoming more expensive and blah blah blah blah. It's terrible. How dared Trump do this? Well, the president of Mexico apparently just agreed in exchange for Trump only delaying the tariffs by a month on Mexico, the twenty five percent tariffs on Mexico
that we're proposed. Claudia stein Shinbaum, the president of Mexico, is going to supply ten thousand Mexican soldiers to the border. Soldiers will specifically be designated to stop the flow of fentanyl and illegal migrants into the country. Of course, this is a truth social post from Trump. They're gonna pause the tariffs for a month, and they're gonna have negotiations. I don't know, guys, Trump's kind of kicking butt with
all this international diplomacy stuff. Maybe he knows what he's doing. That'll do it. John G already shows see next time on Power Talk