A New Trail of Tears

   Who's in charge here? That's the question currently bedeviling the government, as the president tries to work around the Constitution and Supreme Court rulings.
   One answer is that, ultimately, the Supreme Court is, but only to the extent the president and all American citizens follow its rulings. Currently, the president maintains that only citizens should be counted in the upcoming Census, and the Supreme Court ruled that the government has not provided a good enough reason to do that. Moreover, the Constitution stipulates that Congress, not the president, is in charge of the Census.
   But this would not be the first time a president has ignored the Supreme Court, or even the second.
   In the 1830s, President Andrew Jackson refused to obey a Supreme Court ruling that deporting members of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and other tribes from their homelands in the Southeast to what was then called "Indian Territory" in the Oklahoma region was unconstitutional.
   One hundred years later, in the 1930s, President Franklin W. Roosevelt bypassed several Supreme Court rulings against his programs to help the nation recover from the Great Depression. FDR simply gave the programs different names, and continued.
   Was the president right in each instance? That's for scholars and historians to decide. Some believe that while FDR may have been constitutionally wrong, desperate times required desperate measures.
   Is the same true for President Jackson, that citizens of America needed new territory so much that forcing the native tribes out was essential?
   Besides, some would argue, the Cherokee and the other tribes were not American citizens. "America for the Americans" was the more recent attitude, and those who were not "true Americans" should leave.
   Also in the 19th Century, that attitude saw former slaves deported to Africa.
   Later, immigration quota systems were set up establishing how newcomers from which country -- with a preference for Northern European whites -- could come to America.
   We now see a replay of those attitudes.
   "There's no more room" for newcomers, they say, and "the door is closed."
   Now, America has a president who insists that only citizens be counted in the national Census.
   But the Constitution specifies that the Census, taken every ten years, count all residents. It makes no reference to citizenship or the right to vote.
   So does the president mean that only those eligible to vote be counted in the Census? If so, that means that children under 18 somehow don't count. They don't matter. They don't exist.
   One important result will be that families in low income areas will get no help from government antipoverty programs. So if there is no poverty, according to "official" Census figures, government aid programs can be eliminated, and taxes on the wealthy can be reduced.
   Meanwhile, those seeking refuge and opportunity in what used to be called "the land of the free" are arrested and confined to prison-like facilities without sufficient food, water, clothing or other necessities.
   The new trail of tears has led to more weeping.