Attorney General Jeff Sessions made President Trump's decision to rescind DACA official this morning, announcing that the federal government would accept no new permit applications and would subject the program to an "orderly wind-down" before its scheduled expiration date of March 5, 2018. This is a gratuitously barbaric stunt with nothing in its "PRO" column except for "It will probably cause white people who are afraid of brown people to pump their fists wildly," and even for Sessions—a man who the United States Senate once essentially decided was too racist to be a federal judge—the rationales he offered at today's press conference were spectacularly dishonest.

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First, the attorney general forcefully declared that DACA has denied jobs to "hundreds of thousands" of Americans, an assertion he apparently makes based on the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of DACA permit-holders who have jobs, all of which he assumes would instantaneously and effortlessly flow to American citizens as soon as the policy is rescinded, or something. Even right-leaning think tanks warn that terminating DACA would eliminate jobs, devastate employers, and reduce economic growth by $280 billion over the next ten years, but Jeff Sessions has never been one to allow details to get in the way of a compelling nativist narrative, and he's sure as hell not about to start now.

From there, Sessions continued playing the hits, strenuously arguing that expelling DACA permit-holders—again, many of whom are children—from the country is vital to protecting Americans from "crime, violence, and terrorism," alluding to the marauding bands of criminal undocumented immigrants about which Sessions loves to speak in the direst of tones, but which exist only in the attorney general's wildest post-apocalyptic fever dreams. This is a pernicious, slanderous, race-baiting lie: Anyone convicted of a felony, a "significant" misdemeanor, or multiple misdemeanors of any type is ineligible to obtain a DACA permit, but Sessions knows well that if being truthful about the facts would immediately cause his argument to collapse, blowing his trusty dog whistle as loudly and forcefully as he can is his next-best option. "The compassionate thing to do is end the lawlessness and enforce our laws," he said, while peering sternly over his glasses, ably demonstrating in one sentence that his grasp of the definitions of both "compassionate" and "lawlessness" is shaky at best.

Perhaps the attorney general's most outrageously disingenuous bit of drivel, though, came when he blasted DACA as an "unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch" in the area of immigration policy—a particularly rich claim coming from a man whose flagrantly unlawful Muslim ban has been repeatedly and contemptuously jammed in the garbage can by seemingly every federal court in the nation at this point. (Strange how when implementing its own immigration policy, the Trump administration crows loudly and righteously that the executive's powers will "not be questioned," but when it comes to the immigration policy implemented by the previous officeholder, Jeff Sessions suddenly transmogrifies into the world's most vocal champion of separation of powers.)

Here is the attorney general patiently explaining the ideological underpinnings of a decision that threatens to uproot hundreds of thousands of hardworking young people, all of whom came to the United States as children, and force them to go live in a country that they probably don't even remember:

Societies where the rule of law is treasured are societies that tend to flourish and succeed. Societies where the rule of law is subject to political whims and personal biases tend to become societies afflicted by corruption, poverty, and human suffering.

For once, Jeff Sessions is right: Mixing unchecked executive power with the political whims and personal biases of those who wield it uncritically and thoughtlessly will lead to tremendous human suffering. Should he wish to see an illustration of this principle in action, he need only find the closest mirror.

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