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Law enforcement doesn’t make the laws. They enforce the laws the legislature creates.
There is a reason those processes are separated.
The law should be revoked. I would not assume that the legislature is more legitimate than the local prosecutor who decides not to enforce. Often this situation happens when the legislature is captured by special interests who are unconcerned with popular will (and the risk of resistance), or by a national government trying to micromanage local and personal affairs.
One of the reasons immigration is so fucked in the US is because of selective enforcement of the immigration laws that occurred for decades.
Just fix the law or risk a new administration coming in and deciding to start enforcing the laws as you have to watch the chaos and pain.
The 'selective enforcement' occurred because strict enforcement would be much more expensive than what anyone wanted -- yet a fanatical minority was able to play games in Congress to repeatedly block bipartisan deals for "comprehensive immigration reform" (under Bush, Obama, and Biden).
It's always confused me how USians refer to different congressional periods as happening "under" certain presidents as if they have any actual part to play in the legislative process itself. I live in a country where the head of government is the Prime Minister, whose equivalent would be the House Majority Leader, and actually has a lot to say about the legislative agenda.
The President in the USA can veto laws. In a Constitutional sense, this gives them more power than any other single legislator. They are also the leader of their party, which can make them just as influential as the Speaker of the House (House Majority leader) when their party has the majority. The public also pays more attention to the President than the Speaker. For these reasons, and because Presidents have defined terms, it's convenient shorthand to describe a period of time.
The Speaker of the House is not the same as the House Majority Leader. The current Speaker is Mike Johnson and the current Majority Leader is Steve Scalise.
This kind of thing can be considered a form of “checks and balances”. If one branch of the government passes a law and another branch enforces it, both branches have to agree for the law to function.
No, that isn't a balance, because in that situation only one branch is deciding what gets enforced
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2025
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