The Feds' Unconstitutional Land Grab

The definition of a vigilante is someone who acts through force and outside the law to apply his version of “justice.” This is exactly what Joe Biden is doing with his "climate change" policies, the Constitution and democracy be damned. We’ve written before of the land confiscation by the Biden regime as it strives for its Net-Zero chimera, supported only by those demanding authoritarian power and those naïve enough to believe them. Well, America’s Vigilante-In-Chief just effectively confiscated 13 million acres of Alaska:

The Department of the Interior today took two actions to help ensure millions of acres in Alaska are appropriately managed to protect the subsistence economy important to Alaska Native people and rural communities; conserve important fish and wildlife habitat; and balance extractive activities on public lands. These steps follow President Biden’s actions to protect millions of acres of lands and waters in the Arctic, including withdrawing approximately 2.8 million acres of the Beaufort Sea, ensuring the entire United States Arctic Ocean is off limits to new oil and gas leasing.

CNN reports that the area is “home to protected animal species,” as though the climate cult cares about protected species as they clear cut forests and build windmills annihilating hundreds of thousands of “protected” birds and bats.

America does not have a “national” government, but a federal government of constitutionally-enumerate powers. These powers are listed in the Constitution in Article 1, Section 8. In that section, Clause 17, the “Enclave Clause,” address the issues regarding states' land:

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;

Forget about it.

Did the Alaska legislature consent to the purchase of this land? No. Did the federal government purchase this land? No. Does the federal government intend to use this land for any of its limited Constitutional powers? No.

Confiscation of land by the federal government from a state, any state, is an act of vigilantism unsupported by law and prohibited by the Constitution. How is it “prohibited?” The final Amendment in the Bill of Rights, the Tenth Amendment, is quite specific as to powers the states chose not to delegate to the federal government, the reserved powers:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.

Because the States did not delegate to the federal government any authority to confiscate land, Biden's confiscation of this land, like any “federal land” on which this administration has “banned” mineral exploration and exploitation, is illegitimate. The “Supremacy Clause” on which the feds like to stand when disregarding the Constitution applies only to the enumerated powers. Otherwise, we would have a government unrestrained by law or limits. In other words, a dictatorship.

We don't act like it much these days, but the fifty united states remain theoretically sovereign entities. No state transferred sovereignty, an act requiring written surrender of same, to the federal government. Confiscation of their land by the federal government is an affront to their sovereignty. The Supreme Court has specifically held on eminent domain -- government takings of land for the general welfare:

Under Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the Court held that states could not contract away their sovereign powers, including their powers of eminent domain.

Alaska, therefore, cannot contract away its power of eminent domain, and the federal government cannot infringe the sovereignty of the State to take that land. Had China seized 13 million acres of sovereign Alaska territory, the difference would be one of degree, not of kind.