The Rich Zeoli Show- Hour 1:

• On Tuesday, the Supreme Court decided to temporarily permit Texas’s Senate Bill 4 to take effect. The bill makes it a crime for migrants to illegally enter the United States—allowing for Texas officials to arrest and/or deport anyone who recently entered the state unlawfully. Adam Liptak of The New York Times writes: “The Supreme Court temporarily sided with Texas on Tuesday in its increasingly bitter fight with the Biden administration over immigration policy, allowing an expansive state law to go into effect that makes it a crime for migrants to enter Texas without authorization. As is typical when the court acts on emergency applications, its order gave no reasons. But Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, filed a concurring opinion that seemed to express the majority’s bottom line. They were returning the case to an appeals court for a prompt ruling on whether the law should be paused while an appeal moves forward, Justice Barrett wrote. ‘If a decision does not issue soon,’ she wrote, ‘the applicants may return to this court.’ The three liberal members of the court—Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor—dissented.” You can read the full article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/us/supreme-court-texas-immigration.html
• What is Texas State Bill 4? Maria Mendez of The Texas Tribune writes that the “law would make it a state crime to cross the Texas-Mexico border between ports of entry. If a police officer has probable cause to believe a person illegally crossed the Rio Grande, that person could be charged with a Class B misdemeanor, which carries a punishment of up to six months in jail. For subsequent offenses, the person could be charged with a second-degree felony and face up to 20 years in prison. If the migrant is convicted and has served their sentence, a judge would be required to order police to transport them to a port of entry. A judge could drop the charges if a migrant agrees to return to Mexico, and police could turn over migrant families to Border Patrol agents to avoid separating children from their parents instead of arresting them.” You can read Menendez’s full report here: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/18/texas-sb-4-immigration-arrest-law/
• Craig Rucker—President of The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT)—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss a lawsuit his organization, alongside The Heartland Institute, recently filed against the Biden Administration “seeking to overturn their approval of Dominion Energy’s plans to start construction of a massive offshore wind project off Virginia that ignores the obvious harm of the endangered North Atlantic right whale. The project consists of the 176 giant wind turbines—each tower taller than the Washington Monument, with turbine blades longer than a football field—to be constructed in the open ocean 25 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. If completed, the project would be the largest of its kind in the world. This Dominion Energy project is one of many offshore wind projects mandated by an executive order issued by President Biden, declaring that a ‘climate crisis’ exists that ‘threatens mankind’s existence.’” You can read The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow’s (CFACT) full statement here: https://www.cfact.org/2024/03/18/coalition-sues-to-block-virginia-offshore-wind-project-to-protect-the-right-whale/