The 9th Circuit is handling the Trump administration’s appeal of a District Court stay on their fascist Muslim ban. They received the argument today:
Lawyers for the Justice Department told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that the states of Washington and Minnesota should not have been allowed to challenge the ban and that a judge was wrong to stop Trump’s executive order, issued just more than a week ago.
“Judicial second-guessing of the President’s determination that a temporary suspension of entry of certain classes of aliens was necessary at this time to protect national security would constitute an impermissible intrusion on the political branches’ plenary constitutional authority over foreign affairs, national security, and immigration,” Acting Solicitor General Noel Francisco said in a brief.
They refused to grant an immediate stay of the stay and set an aggressive briefing schedule for tomorrow. The immediate problem is simple. No one sentient and mentally competent actually believes that the president issued his Muslim ban to apply to these particular countries at this particular time in order to protect national security.
And, it’s really a low bar here. Normally, if the president says we have a national security threat, no judge is going to argue that the president is wrong and that no threat exists. But that’s exactly what judge after judge (excepting one in Boston) has concluded. And the reason for this is simple. The Trump administration has been quite transparent that the motivation is based on nonspecific opposition to letting Muslims come into this country. The countries weren’t picked based on any threat assessment from the intelligence community. Refugees were cut off without any fine-grained threat assessment.
The administration believes that there is a vague threat that grows incrementally larger every time a new Muslim sets foot on our soil, and they believe there is a long term threat that we could wind up with large disaffected Muslim communities like Europe has created for themselves. It’s really the latter threat that is motivating them, but their solution isn’t fitted to the problem, which remains theoretical in any case.
Their objection is much more cultural than about national security, and this is obvious enough that they aren’t getting the normal deference a president would receive.
Imagine if President Obama had emerged from a meeting with the National Security Council and announced that they had intelligence about plans to infiltrate terror cells from Yemen into the country and therefore called for an immediate and temporary ban of all travelers from Yemen. He would have been believed. His order would have won the day in court.
It’s only because Trump’s order isn’t fitted to any credible and specific threat and that his ulterior motives are plain for all to see that he isn’t convincing these judges.
Another key tell is that Mr No-Drama Obama released a statement – from vacation! – praising the protests. He had all the same information 10 days before the order was issued, and absolutely no one has claimed that a new threat developed within those 10 days.
Trump fired off the EOs with little or no prep, with the intention of blasting holes in Obama’s newest laws and shaking everyone up. That they also fed red meat to Muslim haters was a bonus.
I’m glad there are judges who will take a stand while the Republicans sit on their thumbs, petrified of challenging Trump and his minions. Trump will continue to issue these mindless executive orders and hope that some stick. He doesn’t know what his powers actually are; he knows zero about governance or the Constitution, for that matter. He thinks he’s a monarch and should be obeyed regardless. We have to keep reminding him that he’s a huge failure and is despised across the country and in the world.
I’m encouraged to see resistance in my home town and everywhere else. We have to be ready to punch holes in their plans every day. It won’t likely get easier.
Looks like the perfect set-up to expanding the scope of the state secrets privilege.
Especially after spawn of Ann Gorsuch gets on the Supreme Court.
Cheeto Benito has tweeted the word “ban” in reference to the EO four times in the last couple of days, while his press secretary lambasts the media for using the word to describe the EO.
This is fine with his base, but this sort of thing is torching his credibility with anyone who has eyes willing to see, including political independents. It puts new data behind BooMan’s point that it weakens the position of his Justice Department attorneys before the Federal courts.
Trump is still rated favorably by 90% of Republicans. For comparison, Bush was at 60% approval among Republicans at his 28%. Hopefully this trend continues right up to 2018:
Maybe it’s me, but I just can’t understand what you’re saying here. It’s mostly your second sentence. Could there be a typo in here somewhere? Those stats don’t sound right to me, and I can’t follow the logic of how you’re matching them up. (Apologies if I’m missing something obvious.)
Sorry, the trend that pushed Bush into his record low approvals. The only thing holding up Trump from George Bush’s record low approval ratings is a small number of independents, and Republicans. It’s important to remember how long it took for Bush to actually have shit approval with his party, and how resilient his own party was to his failure.
Anyway, I’m hoping this is a sign of just how quickly the bottom could potentially fall out because of how unpopular with most independents and Democrats he is already. All that’s left are Republicans, and they’re resilient, until they aren’t:
Bush Approval at 60% among Republicans; May 2008
He was at 73% in March.
Thank you.
“they believe there is a long term threat that we could wind up with large disaffected Muslim communities like Europe has created for themselves. It’s really the latter threat that is motivating them … “
Sure, because Bannon’s wired to the European fascist movement and wants to re-create it here.
If it really were a threat it would motivate me but its not.
Does anyone know of any evidence that the Trump Administration is actually doing anything towards writing new, more extreme, rules for vetting? They keep saying about how we’re going to have EXTREME VETTING, but I haven’t seen any evidence.
Maybe Trump is still lining up his crayons.
I’m surprised he didn’t simply make up a (more-or-less) credible threat. Probably it just didn’t occur to him and his partners in crime that it would be useful, or maybe they couldn’t trust the CIA to not challenge a story about a fake threat.
Oops, I see Booman essentially pointed this out a couple of days ago.