A three-judge panel in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court’s order blocking the Trump administration from enforcing its immigration and refugee order, handing the president his highest-profile legal defeat yet over the controversial ban.
In an unsigned opinion, the panel decisively rejected the Justice Department’s arguments against the restraining order. “We hold that the Government has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its appeal, nor has it shown that failure to enter a stay would cause irreparable injury, and we therefore deny its emergency motion for a stay,” the three judges wrote in their 29-page decision...
It's telling that the decision is unanimous: even in a small, three-judge paneling there would have been room for at least one dissenter. What's more telling is what they focused on:
“The Government has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the Order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States,” the panel wrote. “Rather than present evidence to explain the need for the Executive Order, the Government has taken the position that we must not review its decision at all.”
“We disagree,” they added.
This part is where the judicial system gives Trump a straight-up middle finger. They are noting Trump's dictatorial need to issues orders without question, and they are reminding him that the Presidency isn't a dictatorship.
Trump, of course, isn't having any of it: His Twitter response - lacking any legal nuance - was "SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!"
Of course Trump would frame the matter as "National Security" instead of the raging violation of civil liberties to our nation's own legal residents his Executive Order really is. To him, the only way towards "better security" is to bully everyone he deems an enemy (both real and imagined) and make them suffer for his fears. Rather than the slow, tedious effective methods of screening already in place - as the Appeals Court noted, the affected nations on Trump's list have NOT turned out to be sources of terrorists in the US - Trump would rather enjoin an emotional, harsh, crass practice of humiliation, arrest, deportation...
Trump would rather give the haters who follow him targets of their fear and rage rather than taking the harder, better path of inclusion and acceptance of immigrants and refugees who WANT to be American, who WANT to be safe here...
This fight isn't over. The haters are still out there, angry and smarting now from the public denial by our courts they'll claim as foolish and disastrous, and every other trigger word they can throw out there to the Fox Not-News and Breitbart crowds.
This is still a big win for the lovers and the fighters for justice. We just need to keep winning more of these fights.
2 comments:
Uh, Donald? This isn't like running a business. We've been trying to tell you that for years now. There are three "coequal" branches of government, and you are only in charge of one of them. And you're making a hash of it, by the way. You get to enforce the laws as interpreted by the judiciary, and perhaps as president you might be able to ask the supreme court to review this case, but as there are only eight justices just now (see also: McTurdle, Mitch), in the likely event of a four-four split, the case will be sent back to judge Robart's court.
Any marginally competent politician would understand this. I am neither of those things, yet even I understand this.
When Molly Ivins said that guys who have made a lot of money in business have a very hard time working in a system of checks and balances, this is what she was talking about.
-Doug in Oakland
So Robart made the stay of "indefinite length" this morning, and trolled Trump hard in his wording.
-Doug in Oakland
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