Donald Doesn't Understand SCOTUS' Ruling on His Travel Ban (and Neither Do Many Journalists)

Donald claimed in a tweet that SCOTUS ruled 9-0 in favor of his travel ban. That's untrue.

They ruled Per Curiam to grant certiorari -- meaning they will formally take on the case -- and preliminarily maintained the portion of the injunction that would continue to grant relief to those who'd previously held standing in their respective cases (and others in a similar position).

Since it was a Per Curiam decision, no one actually knows whether it was 5-4 or 9-0. Of course, Donald got the details wrong; he doesn't understand and doesn't care about the details. (The dumbest person, ever, to occupy the White House.)

What we do know is that three -- Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito -- justices separately stated that they would have allowed the entire ban to move forward. This possibly points to the Court eventually ruling 6-3 against some portion of Donald's EO.

Taken in its truest form, SCOTUS just rebuked Donald's (and Ted Cruz's, BTW) argument that SCOTUS cannot review his decisions under §212(f) of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. By allowing people who have "bona fide" ties to US relatives or entities, SCOTUS has both reviewed and preliminarily adjudicated Donald's EO.

Additionally, by allowing the 4th Circuit's injunction to partially remain, SCOTUS has preliminarily knocked down POTUS' argument against standing in that case. If SCOTUS had concluded that the petitioner in the 4th Circuit did not have standing, the 90-day ban would have been reinstated in its entirety.

Furthermore, I strongly believe that this is an issue of the principles of freedom, not of practicalities of defense. Let's take 1944's SCOTUS decision in Korematsu v. United States.

At the very least, one can reasonably ascribe the SCOTUS deferment of the internment of Japanese-Americans to the practicalities of defense of the nation, owing to the fact that the United States was in the middle of a war against Japan, with American blood spilled on December 7, 1941. It wasn't the right and moral decision, but it could be reasonably attributed to the practicalities of defense in a war with Japan.

This is not true of 2017.

We are not "at war" with the six countries (Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, and Iran) in Donald's EO. Even if you believe that the US is at war with Muslim extremists, those six countries are not protectorates of extremism; that's just where opportunistic extremists have flocked to, to fight a war between religious ideologies. Five of those countries are engaged in a civil war of sorts, of which, the majority of combatants are foreigners. Those fighters in Syria come from all over the world. What good does it do to block Syrian nationals from entering the United States when a hardened extremist from France, upon returning from Syria, books a suicide flight to the US? Or Australia? Or Belgium? Or Pakistan? Or China? Or Russia? Or Saudi Arabia?

If the basis of the EO is fear of Muslim extremists, we have to question the rationality of the practicalities of defense -- which is at the heart of 1952 INA §212(f). As such, SCOTUS has every right to intervene and judge the merits of the EO, even blocking it, on the basis of the principles of freedom.

#RESIST