I just read the federal court’s decision to stop the 100-day deportation pause. The court granted a temporary restraining order blocking the Biden administration from implementing its 100-day deportation pause. The TRO applies for 14 days.

The court concluded that Texas is likely to win its argument that the pause 1) violates the Immigration & Nationality Act’s requirement that migrants ordered removed from the USA be removed within 90 days, and...
2) DHS acted arbitrarily & capriciously by suddenly shifting immigration policy from the prior administration.
As a preliminary matter, the court found that Texas has standing to sue because it provided evidence “of damage to its public fisc by causing it to increase its spending on public services to illegal aliens.”
In particular, the court pointed to state expenses on emergency Medicaid, the Family Violence Program, the state’s health insurance program for children, and educational costs.
The court was also swayed by the state’s claim that the 100-day pause would impose costs on Texas “because of those who may find their way to Texas from other states in the near future.”
On the first substantive point, the court jettisoned existing regulations and procedures that inject flexibility into the removal process.
Instead, the court says that federal law “clearly accords no discretion to the Attorney General to blatantly disregard the 90-day removal rule without finding that an enumerated exception applies.”
Because DHS has no discretion to ignore this requirement, the January 20 Memo “appearing to do so is reviewable.”
On the second point, the court acknowledged DHS did provide some reasons for adopting a pause on removals, from Covid-19 to “operational challenges at the southwest border.”
However, the court found that DHS acted arbitrarily and capriciously by failing to provide a reasoned explanation for choosing 100 days. In the court’s words, “DHS did not state or explain why 100 days specifically is needed to accomplish these goals.”
Since the court found that unauthorized migrants might move to Texas from other states, it concluded that a nationwide injunction was appropriate.
As the court put it, “many individuals who are subject to an order of removal in other states whose removal is delayed or ultimately deferred may migrate to Texas.”
The court did not decide this based on the weird agreement that the Trump DHS entered into with Texas. That’s interesting because that was the basis of the lawsuit. Instead, the court turned to standard administrative law doctrine.
It took issue with the blanket pause & downplayed the 4 exemptions listed in the January 20 memo. In this way, the decision reminds me of the challenges against DACA, which shouldn’t come as a surprise given that Paxton is also leading that effort.

More from Biden

U.S. president-elect Joe Biden has indicated plans to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline permit via executive action on his first day in office, sources tell CBC News.

This weekend stakeholders have seen a longer list of Biden’s planned executive actions than what was publicly reported in a memo from incoming chief of staff Ron Klain.

That purported list includes a reference to cancelling Keystone XL on Day 1 — Wednesday.

Here is what the Biden transition team has publicly reported so far. From a memo by his Chief of Staff Ron Klain — that dozens of executive orders are planned in the first few days.
https://t.co/gEi3qHJnD1

The Biden team has publicly /

/ publicly announced its intention to sign climate orders on Day 1 including rejoining the Paris accord

What hasn’t been publicly reported, and it’s apparently something the transition team has indicated in stakeholder briefings, is that an order to kill KXL is coming on Day 1

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney raises the prospect of legal action if Biden cancels KXL.

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THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less.
https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)