There was a time in this country when thousands of Native American children were forced from their homes by public and private agencies, then sent to boarding schools where the school founder’s motto was “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” This practice wiped out cultural ties and traditions from an entire generation on which tribes depended to carry on their legacies. In 1978, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act, a law meant to ensure that Native American children stay with Native American families, especially when placed in foster care.

But an NPR investigation reveals that 32 states are “failing to abide by the act,” with the most egregious violations occurring in South Dakota. In this state, “Native American children make up only 15 percent of the child population, yet they make up more than half the children in foster care.” According to the investigation, “the state is removing 700 native children a year, sometimes in questionable circumstances,” claiming generic “neglect” when there isn’t any. State records reveal that “almost 90 percent of the kids in family foster care are in non-native homes or group care.”

Meanwhile, these questionable decisions to break up families create a massive inflow of federal money into the state:

Every time a state puts a child in foster care, the federal government sends money. Because South Dakota is poor, it receives even more money than other states – almost a hundred million dollars a year.[...]

Then there’s the bonus money. Take for example something the federal government calls the “adoption incentive bonus.” States receive money if they move kids out of foster care and into adoption — about $4,000 a child. But according to federal records, if the child has “special needs,” a state can get as much as $12,000.

A decade ago, South Dakota designated all Native American children “special needs,” which means Native American children who are permanently removed from their homes are worth more financially to the state than other children.

In 10 years, this adoption bonus program has brought South Dakota almost a million dollars.

As an example, the Children’s Home Society, the state’s largest foster care provider, has close ties to the state. As NPR notes, the foster home used to be run by state Gov. Dennis Daugard who “was on the group’s payroll while he was a lieutenant governor — and while the group received tens of millions of dollars in no-bid state contracts.” Meanwhile, tribal foster homes remain empty.

State officials insist that the money never played a part in the state’s decision to remove a child. “The state doesn’t financially benefit from kids being in care,” said one official. “The state is always paying some part of it.” But as state records show, the federal government reimbursed the state “for almost three quarters of the money it spent on foster care.”

Essentially, the state is removing children under nebulous circumstances and getting a huge pay out in return. As on tribal social worker put it, “they make a living off off our children.”

The following is the third in a multi-part series on former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s speech to the Values Voter Summit. Part I of this series is available here. Part II is here.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich began his speech to the Values Voter Summit by attacking a landmark Supreme Court decision desegregating a Little Rock high school. He then belittled slavery by comparing the greatest evil in American history to an inconsequential-by-comparison lower court decision that would have removed the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance if the Supreme Court had not unanimously reversed it on appeal.

Having thus demonstrated his agreement with some of the worst and most harmful legal doctrines in American history, he then endorses another one: massive resistance.

“Massive resistance” is the label arch-segregationist Sen. Harry Byrd (D-VA) gave to his state’s plan to openly defy Brown v. Board of Education and maintain Virginia’s segregated schools. Although Gingrich’s speech gives no indication that he supports segregation, the former speaker proudly embraces Byrd’s tactic of simply refusing to comply with court decisions that he disagrees with:

I would instruct the national security officials in a Gingrich administration to ignore the recent decisions of the Supreme Court on national security matters, and I would interpose the presidency in saying, as the commander in chief, we will not enforce this. And by the way, for our liberal friends, the source of that is Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In 1942 a group of German saboteurs were landed in Florida and Long Island. They were all picked up within two weeks. Roosevelt brought in his attorney general and said: They will be tried in a military court, they will be executed, it should happen within three weeks, and tell the Supreme Court if they issue a writ of habeas corpus, I will not honor, and therefore they should not issue it. I am the commander in chief in wartime. They aren’t.

Watch it:

President Roosevelt lifted America out of the Great Depression. He laid the foundation of a modern social safety net and ushered in three generations of American dominance and prosperity — and he defeated the most horrific dictator the world has even known to boot. Roosevelt rightfully is remembered as one of America’s greatest presidents, but anyone with even a passing understanding of FDR’s record on civil liberties in wartime knows that it stands as a shameful stain on an otherwise heroic record.

Moreover, Gingrich’s account of Roosevelt and the German saboteurs leaves out several very important details. Most notably, the Supreme Court upheld Roosevelt’s decision to use a military tribunal to try, convict and sentence the Nazi agents in a case known as Ex parte Quirin. Accordingly, Roosevelt never did what Gingrich suggests — openly defying a decision of the Supreme Court.

If presidents have the power to simply ignore court decisions they disapprove of, then literally no law is safe. If Gingrich can defy national security decisions, than he can defy court orders requiring his administration to pay Medicare benefits despite Republican opposition to that program. His Department of Justice can refuse to enforce voting rights or even actively come to the aide of efforts to disenfranchise poor and minority voters, no matter how many times he is ordered to obey the law.

And he can also do things that are far, far worse.

Elsewhere in the speech, Gingrich praises President Andrew Jackson’s contempt for a Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of a national bank, but Jackson is also infamous for a much more significant conflict with the justices. After the Supreme Court determined in Worcester v. Georgia that Native Americans retain their rights to their tribal lands, Jackson probably never actually uttered the words “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” But he did forcibly relocate tens of thousands of Natives in open defiance of the Supreme Court. Thousands died during Jackson’s Trail of Tears.

Obedience to the rule of law is what separates American presidents from dictators and what ensures that our most fundamental freedoms are not vulnerable to a powerful official’s mere whim. If a president can defy one court decision, he can defy any court decision, and the Constitution and the law itself are the ultimate casualties.