By Robert Hornak
Donald Trump was re-elected President for essentially one reason, to bring radical change to the country, radical change to reverse the radical change that Obama and Biden tried to make permanent when they were in office but that the American people now reject.
And while most countries around the world are trying to work with Trump for their own long-term benefit, the strongest resistance we see to the Trump agenda is here at home, from blue states like New York.
It seems that the past instances where certain states were allowed to ignore the supremacy clause – that little part of the constitution found in Article VI, Paragraph 2 that says federal law reigns supreme – made that section of our key founding document irrelevant and enabled them to just pick and choose which federal laws they were going to abide by.
It started with early sanctuary city laws, but they had very good reason for being adopted, including by the Giuliani administration in the 1990’s. Sanctuary laws actually helped fight crime as they protected the victims if they were here illegally. NYC would not turn over an illegal alien just for being a victim of crime. That made perfect sense.
But then former mayor Bill de Blasio and his radical allies in the city council decided that having the federal government enforce federal immigration laws in NYC wasn’t to their liking. Which surely had much to do with the fact that NY has been losing congressional seats steadily after each census for over 60 years. They successfully won a fight in the 1980’s to have illegal aliens counted for purposes of the census and figure that the more illegal aliens they can bring to NYC the better chance they have to hold on to the seats currently allocated to NY.
Now, with Trump on office and taking seriously the enforcement of immigration laws, Democrats are freaking out that there won’t be enough people here for the next census to bolster the number of House seats from NY. They are doing everything they can, whether it complies with federal law or not, to stop Trump. That includes instructing illegal aliens how to avoid ICE enforcement, thwarting ICE agents from doing their job, and blocking the reopening of the ICE office on Rikers to facilitate the capture and deportation of the criminals in the city jails.
Then there is the fight over the congestion tax for drivers entering Manhattan below 60th street. The federal Dept of Transportation recently terminated its approval for the tax scheme and ordered it shut down. But in their lust for revenue, the MTA and Kathy Hochul are ignoring the order and fighting for the right to tax drivers for driving. Now Trump is threatening to cut federal funding as a penalty, which will be another unnecessary fight that Hochul will wage against our own government.
And there is the fight over expensive and inefficient offshore wind generators. They are not only incredibly inefficient but harm whales, fish and birds and require the running of power lines that also has negative effects on aquatic life. Trump is working on killing federal plans and funding to build new offshore wind farms, including one just a few miles off Jones Beach. Hochul has pledged to “fight” Trump on this too.
Trump has indicated a strong interest in expanding our reliance on nuclear power, the only reliable, efficient and scalable renewable energy source we have. But in spite of the skyrocketing electricity cost for NY since the Indian Point nuclear facility was closed, Hochul has not taken the opportunity to try to work with Trump and address NY’s energy crisis in a constructive way.
As they say, with friends like this, who needs enemies. It appears Trump will have a much easier time working out deals with nations both friend and foe around the globe than he will getting any cooperation from the governor of New York, much to the chagrin of most New Yorkers who want cheaper energy, freedom to drive without another tax, and criminal illegal aliens deported.
Robert Hornak is a veteran political consultant who has previously served as the Deputy Director of the Republican Assembly Leader’s NYC office and as Executive Director of the Queens Republican Party. He can be reached at rahornak@gmail.com and @RobertHornak on X.
