Trump Won't Keep Fighting For Old Travel Ban, Tells Court He's Writing A New One

Does anybody think the Trump administration appreciates why the ban was wrong?

onFebruary 16, 2017 at 4:41 PMFebruary 16, 2017 at 4:00 PM

Protestors at JFK Airport (photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images).

Okay, I think we can now all agree that Trump’s executive order banning Muslims from 7 countries was unconstitutional. In papers filed Thursday, Justice Department lawyers told the Ninth Circuit not to bother reconsidering it’s decision blocking the ban. Instead, Trump plans to rescind the old one and issue a new one “in the near future.” From Reuters:

Given the upcoming executive order, the Justice Department said a federal appeals court should not reconsider a ruling that suspended Trump’s Jan. 27 order.

“In so doing, the President will clear the way for immediately protecting the country rather than pursuing further, potentially time-consuming litigation,” the Justice Department said in its filing…

In a news conference on Thursday, Trump said his rollout of the travel ban was “very smooth” but the administration got a bad court decision. He said his new order would be written to conform to legal rulings.

“The new order is going to be very much tailored to what I consider to be a very bad decision,” he said. “We can tailor the order to that decision and get just about everything, in some ways more.”

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From Pilot and Above The Law

Does anybody know what we can “get just about everything, in some ways more,” means? Or, let me ask the question this way: does anybody think the Trump administration appreciates why the ban was wrong, or do they just think that using different words to accomplish the same goals will pass constitutional muster?

Take the list of countries: it’s pretty clear that the seven countries were chosen nearly at random, with special dispensations for countries where Trump does business. One interpretation of “in some ways more” is that Trump intends to expand the list. But at the point that Trump is just picking Muslim-majority countries off a map, then he further loses the ability to call it a “travel ban” as it becomes even more clear that it’s a “Muslim ban.” Is just banning every Middle-Eastern country besides Israel really going to make this ban look lawful?

Many people speculate that Trump is going to explicitly exclude green card holders, because he kind of freaking has to. But what about people with valid Visas? We’re getting into spring break time. If an Iranian student goes to Cancun and can’t come back to school at Berkeley… I imagine we’ll be looking at another TRO.

It kind of goes back to what Trump and his people are trying to “get” with this ban. If they’re goal is just to exclude people based on religion, the remix is going to be as problematic as the original.