“Not only is it unconstitutional, but the administration has no authority to enter into such a relationship,” von Spakovsky said. “It is a sign of how the Obama administration believes in official discrimination and sanctions it. They continue to divide up our country and raise the walls between different races. I find it disgusting that they want to do this.”

◼ Obama Administration Circumvents Congress, Faces Backlash Over Native Hawaiians Proposal - Daily Signal

HONOLULU—A proposal by the Obama administration to create a new relationship with ethnic Hawaiians may have backfired.

The U.S. Department of Interior is holding a series of hearings about the plan, which, it said in a statement, would determine “the best path forward for honoring the trust relationship that Congress has created specifically to benefit Native Hawaiians.”

...Hawaiian activist Bumpy Kanahele, who heads the organization Nation of Hawaii, told Interior officials: “We don’t need you to come in to tell us how to govern ourselves. Let us figure it out.”

University of Hawaii Hawaiian studies professor Jonathan Osorio said the feds shouldn’t intervene and impose additional “aggression upon our nation.”

While the debate is stirring up an already racially divided community, constitutional experts argue President Obama and the Department of Interior have no legal right to create such a relationship and has no business holding these hearings in the first place....

“The current effort to recognize a separate ethnic tribe by the Department of the Interior is unconstitutional because, under the Constitution, it is the Congress that has the plenary power to recognize tribes and ratify treaties,” Lilly said. “That power does not reside in the executive branch of the federal government or with the various states. So the current effort aimed at creating a tribe of Hawaiians has no legal basis.”