This week’s rulings against President Trump’s revised executive order on travel and refugees have sparked heated pushback from Republicans on Capitol Hill, who say judges have crossed the line to become adversaries of this White House — and suggested retribution could be coming.
Even some judges seemed worried about the tenor of recent rulings, saying their colleagues appeared to be letting personal beliefs taint their legal reasoning.
“As tempting as it is to use the judicial power to balance those competing interests as we see fit, we cannot let our personal inclinations get ahead of important, overarching principles about who gets to make decisions in our democracy,” Judge Jay Bybee, of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote in a dissent Wednesday. He said his colleagues erred in not agreeing to rehear Mr. Trump’s defense of his original executive order.
Mr. Trump has now battled the courts for a month and a half over his vetting policy. He lost in a federal court in Seattle, won in a Boston court, then lost in the 9th Circuit.
He went back to the drawing board and rewrote his order to accommodate the appeals court’s objections. The revised order limited the number of countries from which the administration sought to suspend travel and exempted immigrants and visitors who already have ties to the U.S.
Late Wednesday, a federal judge in Hawaii said it wasn’t good enough and that Mr. Trump’s harsh rhetoric about Muslims during the presidential campaign has poisoned his efforts. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson issued a nationwide temporary restraining order.
(via: Washington Times)
