Someone Put Trump in His Place

Someone+Put+Trump+in+His+Place

Written By Troy Patrick

This week’s newspapers have been plastered with the heated debate happening between the Trump administration and the federal courts over the recent travel ban concerning seven Muslim majority countries. This order rides dangerously close to unconstitutional since it is a blatant attempt at legalizing the use of religious discrimination in immigration vetting, which would be out of line with the establishment clause of the first amendment.

We know that Trump has had plans to block Muslims from entering the United States since December of 2015 when he announced his wish for a “Total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” which is an unconstitutional action, and thus sent uproar across the nation. Paul Ryan even stated this disqualified him from running for president; of course, this was obviously not taken seriously enough.

We also know that this is Trump’s official attempt at trying to achieve this unconstitutional and un-American action thanks to Rudy Giuliani, one of his advisors, who said recently, “So when [Mr. Trump] first announced it, he said, ‘Muslim ban.’ He called me up. He said: ‘Put a commission together, show me the right way to do it legally.’ ”

And the result of that call is the ban we are now facing. So it is quite obvious this is a ban against Muslims and has nothing to do with the countries themselves. Trump was just trying to find a way to get around the constitution and legally discriminate by religion so he could come through on his promise to his voters.

The counter-argument, of course, is that these countries have been rated as “countries of concern” by both congress and the Obama Administration, which issued a law enforcing the use of visas for all entering the U.S. from those countries. The Trump administration has used this as proof that the ban is needed. However, there is no reason at all for a total ban because, as Judge Canby pointed out in the court hearing of Washington v. Trump, there are no documented acts of terror in the US stemming from citizens of any of those countries.

The reason congress and Obama labeled them as “countries of concern” was so they could enforce the use of visas, which they did, so the objective was achieved. Trump’s insistence that the ban is absolutely necessary for national security has no backing or evidence, making this ban overkill for a problem already solved, which has been so elegantly displayed in the court hearing.

Trump’s response to the court hearings, which have placed a restraining order on the ban, has been ignorant and disrespectful but not unexpected given his history of thin skin. He has said the judges weighing the Washington v. Trump case were questioning legal principles that even “a bad high school student would understand.”

When Judge Robart first blocked the travel ban Trump attacked with tweets, calling him a “so called judge” and that his ruling was “ridiculous…and will be overturned.” He also said that Robart was “stepping over the line” between the executive and judiciary.

The administration has also said several times that it was not the duty of the judiciary branch to check the executives decisions, which I would like to point out is completely wrong. The whole reason the Supreme Court was put into place was in fact to keep tabs on the actions of the government, including the executive branch, to ensure that they are in line with the constitution.

Trump is undermining the credibility and the independence of the judiciary branch, which I find to be tyrannical and dangerous. The judiciary branch has simply been doing its job by seeing the deep-rooted problems within this travel ban and putting a stop to it.

Later, Trump continued his attacks on the judiciary branch saying, “Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and the court system.”

Inept statements like these are not only outrageously disrespectful but also alarming, because it suggests that these travel bans made the US more secure when in actuality, as I discussed earlier, there is no evidence that immigrants from these countries have posed any threat to the US.

And to make matters worse the president just told citizens to blame the Judiciary branch if there is any kind of terrorist attack on our soil. We have seen in the past year how talented Trump is at turning a society against itself, and this is yet another example of that element of him.

He has not gotten his way, and in response, he is attacking our government system for it.

Despite the fact that Trump has lost the court case he still declares that there will be a repeal in the Supreme Court. As one of his most recent tweets said, “SEE YOU IN COURT THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE.”