What a delightfully unenlightened and meaningless phrase! I do appreciate, however, that you have at least attempted to read the decision(s), even if you have deliberately missed my point(s). More on that in a minute.
Rest assured, words in the phrase has meaning. Let me assist:
Shameless means: flagrant · brazen · brash · audacious · outrageous · undisguised · unconcealed · transparent
Poppycock means: nonsense · claptrap · balderdash · blather · moonshine · foolishness · silliness · rubbish · rot · tripe · hogwash · baloney · drivel
The two words mean in a phrase means (for example): undisguised nonsense, brazen claptrap, audacious hogwash, and unconcealed baloney. You're welcome.
And, by the way, I wrote seven paragraphs, one or more refuting most of your assertions. However, if you have points that you didn't make you shouldn't rely on others to read your mind.
Here I'll quibble a bit. There is no question that the new standards of the Attorney General were intended to encourage acceptance of a federal mandate to comply with federal demands (that, by the way, is coercive in nature, but I don't want to go too far down that path). The issue that SHOULD have informed the court was not whether the criteria were coercive, but whether they were consonant with the statute Congress passed - the conservative analytical matrix, I might add.
First, imprecise characterizations are not arguments. Blather over "new standards", mind reading of their "intentions", and sematic contradictions like "encouraged mandates" are hopeless, some of it meaningless on their face. For example, a government "mandate" is not "encouragement", its a legal requirement. If a federal policy requires the purchase of cooperation, such as the promise of money to a state, and the state has the ability to decline the money, its not a "mandate to comply". That is a ridiculous syntactical ploy.
Second, there is no consonant (consistency?) legal doctrine by that name. However, the competitive grant's general purpose is consistent with that of the general purpose of the grant Act, that is to enhance the crime prevention in state and local law enforcement and to enhance public safety through community policing. In particular the act states that its purpose is "to expand and improve cooperative efforts between law enforcement agencies" and to "address crime and disorder problems, and otherwise enhance public safety". And "Nothing in the Act precludes DOJ from allocating federal funds to state or local governments to focus on problems raised by the presence of illegal aliens within their jurisdictions.8" (opinion of the court).
A footnote in the majority opinion sums it up nicely:
In addition to listing the immigration focus area, the Application Guidelines list multiple other focus areas, including violent crime, traffic and pedestrian problems, and “quality of life policing.” While the Act does not expressly mention any of these focus areas, its gives DOJ broad discretion to identify and rank such a range of goals. Given DOJ’s authority to administer the grant program along these lines, the dissent’s argument that immigration enforcement cannot be a permissible focus area because the Act makes no mention of immigration enforcement, Dissent at 42, is meritless.
In other words, there is nothing in this grant program that is unlike any other competitive grant program for any agency, and in all cases once a law provide general goals and a methodology for providing a competitive grant the technical gaps are, as usual, filled in by the agency's expertise - as intended by the ACT.
I don't have any general objection to a complaint about Congress not doing its job, and in fact feel strongly that the Courts should have routinely slapped Congress and returned incoherent and contradiction filled legislation to Congress as null and void. The sloppiness on Obamacare, for example, was inexcusable. That said, you can't fault the administration or the courts on this particular grant without faulting ALL grants and much other legislation for the same sins - and until you are willing to do that, this 'complaint' is purely "whose ox is gored" grandstanding.
Finally, the ACT is not especially ambiguous and, for the reasons stated, the grant is not in violation of any of its text. And if the text is unambiguous you don't need to go fishing for legislative intentions (or purpose).
PS The comparison to Gundy, which was not by Bybee, seems rather far fetched. Frankly, I found Gorsuch (as I often do) to be difficult to read and unclear. Whereas reading and understanding Alito, Thomas, Roberts, Ginsburg, Bryer and especially Scalia have been pain free, Gorsuch is not the great writer he was reputed to be.
If there was single and precise analytical doctrine in the Gorsuch opinion, I failed to find it.