Federal judge smacks down travel ban: Trump can't just "do as he pleases"

In a brutal order temporarily blocking the ban, U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson ruled that Trump’s third executive order is likely to fail on the merits and that the government’s supposed reasons for the ban are “troubling.”

Trump’s lawyers, Watson writes, “ask this Court to ignore its fundamental responsibility to ensure the legality and constitutionality of [Executive Order-3].”

From the beginning of Trump’s egregious and lawless orders to ban Muslims, the courts have repeatedly found that the orders are not about national security but about discrimination.

And this latest order is no different. It “plainly discriminates based on nationality in the manner that the Ninth Circuit has found antithetical to both Section 1152(a) and the founding principles of this nation.”

Further, the order “contains internal incoherencies that markedly undermine its stated ‘national security’ rationale.”

In other words, claims that Trump is discriminating against predominantly Muslim countries for the sake of “national security” are simply not credible.

Trump’s lawyers keep trying to tweak the order to make it look less bigoted — much to his disappointment — but those tweaks are not fooling the courts.

In May, the 4th Circuit ruled that Trump’s ban “drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.” It was clear then, from Trump’s own words during his campaign and into his presidency, that his bans reflected “Trump’s desire to exclude Muslims from the United States.”

In June, the 9th Circuit cited Trump’s own tweets as evidence of his obvious intention to discriminate against Muslims.

Despite his repeated defeats, Trump has continued to fight for his bigoted ban, with his lawyers arguing that he has the authority to do whatever he wants in the name of national security.

That, Watson writes, is simply not true either. “Under the law of this Circuit, these provisions do not afford the President unbridled discretion to do as he pleases.”

From day one, Trump ran on a platform of racism, bigotry, and hate. His shameful attempts to turn that agenda into law have failed at every turn.

Trump praises and admires dictators and strongmen and certainly seems to want to emulate them. But as this latest judicial smack-down clearly states, he does not have unbridled power to do whatever he pleases — especially when what he is doing is contradicts and undermines the “founding principles of this nation.”