Trump’s Executive Order on Religious Liberty Is Worse Than Useless

[ABX]

I have not read the actual order yet so I don't have an opinion on this. It is just National Review's take from the Right...

Freedom must be written into law, not wish-cast through commands that a later president can reverse. Fresh on the heels of a budget deal that fully funds Planned Parenthood, Donald Trump has signed a religious-liberty executive order that — if reports are correct — is constitutionally dubious, dangerously misleading, and ultimately harmful to the very cause that it purports to protect. In fact, he should tear it up, not start over, and do the actual real statutory and regulatory work that truly protects religious liberty....

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447338/trump-religious-liberty-executive-order-failure?utm_source=social&utm_medium=french&utm_campaign=french&utm_content=religious-liberty-order

[EasyAce]

From the article:

The Johnson Amendment is constitutionally problematic (to put it mildly). Lyndon Johnson rammed it through
Congress for the noble purpose of stopping nonprofits from supporting his primary opponent and preserving his own
political hide, and it’s been on the books ever since. Though it’s rarely enforced, it hangs like the Sword of Damocles
over the heads not just of churches but of every 501(c)(3) in the United States. First Amendment lawyers are desperate
to find a good test case to challenge it, but the IRS’s general lack of enforcement means that the right case is elusive.
So the amendment remains.

The answer to the Johnson Amendment, however, is to either repeal the statute or overturn it in court. This order does
neither. In fact, a lawyer will commit malpractice if he tells a pastor or director of a nonprofit that this order allows a
church or nonprofit to use its resources to support or oppose a candidate. Even if the Trump administration chooses
not to enforce the law, a later administration can tear up Trump’s order and begin vigorous enforcement based on
actions undertaken during the Trump administration.

Imagine, for example, that churches rely on this order to mobilize support for Trump in his 2020 reelection campaign.
Imagine he loses to Kamala Harris. Then, suddenly, churches across the land would be instantly vulnerable to IRS
enforcement action. Thinking they were protected, churches would find themselves in the worst of predicaments, with
their rights and possibly even existences dependent on the capricious mercies of the federal courts.

Even worse, to the extent the Trump administration is using its “prosecutorial discretion” not to enforce the Johnson
Amendment, how is that any different from the Obama administration’s decision to use its alleged prosecutorial discretion
not to enforce immigration laws? Legislative problems demand legislative or judicial solutions.

(Emphasis mine.---EA.)

A bad product of lazy thinking is all the order seems to be. Lazy thinking leaving prospectively dangerous
consequences.