The Note: Trump's travel ban 0 for 2

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March 16, 2017

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Trump's travel ban 0 for 2

The Big Story

It feels like deja vu. President Trump's revised travel ban was blocked once again, this time by a federal judge in Hawaii who Wednesday issued a nationwide temporary restraining order on one of the president's signature initiatives. The president didn't hesitate to slam the decision while on the campaign trail in Nashville, Tennessee, Wednesday night: "We are going to fight this terrible rule. We are going to take our case as far as it needs to go, including all the way up to the Supreme Court." Calling it a "watered-down version of the first order," Trump said he believes the judge's decision is based in politics not law: "You don't think this was done by a judge for political reasons, do you? Nooooo. This ruling makes us look weak." The plaintiffs even cited a quote from senior adviser to the president Stephen Miller to back their position, noting a Feb. 21 Fox News interview during which Miller said, "Fundamentally, you're still going to have the same basic policy outcome for the country." This version was, no doubt, harder to challenge in court, but because the plaintiffs came back to the fact they believe this was a discriminatory Muslim ban, thanks to not just Miller's comments, but the president himself while on the campaign trail last year, it's going to expose any version of this policy, watered down or not, to a court challenge. And it's not just Hawaii, early Thursday morning, a Maryland judge blocked the executive order's 90-day pause on the issuance of visas to citizens of six Muslim majority countries. The question now is what does the administration do? We should get more of those answers today.

The Sleeper Story

The president's budget blueprint will be released this morning, but reporters got a sneak peek from budget director Mick Mulvaney and even he described the cuts to the State Department as "fairly dramatic." It cuts the State Department by 28 percent, while giving the Defense Department a 10 percent spending increase. What else do we learn? The much-talked-about border wall gets $1.5 billion in the blueprint, which Mulvaney describes as "the America first" budget. Who else is on the chopping block? Sesame Street. The blueprint proposes phasing out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting altogether over time. It's been talked about by Republicans for what seems like the longest time, but this actually will hack away at the CPB. This budget shouldn't be a surprise because Mulvaney said they went through Trump's speeches and used the "president's own words" to turn "those policies into numbers." Even Rex Tillerson in his first official press conference as secretary of state said he would make sure the department would be "much more effective, much more efficient, and be able to do a lot with fewer dollars." The budget blueprint and those cuts are already facing bipartisan pushback, but how far will critics go on this fight?

The Shiny Story

It's the story that just keeps going. In his first interview since the president claimed he was wiretapped by President Obama, but without providing any evidence, Trump said his information came from the news: "Well, I've been reading about things," he said on Fox News. "I said, wait a minute, there's a lot of wiretapping being talked about. I've been seeing a lot of things." The article he cites never claimed the previous resident of the White House ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower. And the White House still has provided no evidence to back up the president's explosive tweets, but he hinted Wednesday night that it could be coming: "I mean, let's see whether or not I prove it," he said. "But I think we have some very good stuff. And we're in the process of putting it together, and I think it's going to be very demonstrative." On Monday, FBI Director James Comey will testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee and there's no doubt he will be asked about the president's claims. This story won't go away until the president or the White House provides evidence, more of an explanation, or it's uncovered or definitively shot down. But the top Republican and Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee Wednesday said they have seen no evidence of any wiretap at Trump Tower during the campaign or transition.

TLDR

A federal judge in Hawaii put Trump's travel ban 2.0 on a temporary pause using the president and his advisers' words as "direct evidence of the executive order's discriminatory motivations" against Muslims.