Supreme Court Allows Trump’s Travel Ban to Take Effect, With Significant Limits
Today we’re seeing one of the worst effects of the advent of the Trump Horror, a Supreme Court now stacked with right wing justices who will make decisions that favor conservative causes for years to come.
The first such decision is on Trump’s travel ban, and SCOTUS has ruled that it can go into effect with some significant limits. The Trump gang has 90 days to review their vetting procedures and the court made it clear that they expect this time limit to be honored.
The court said it would hear the case when it reconvenes in October. But it also indicated in the ruling that things may change dramatically by then. It asked the parties to address whether the case would be moot by the time it hears it; the ban is supposed to be a temporary one while the government reviews its vetting procedures.
And the justices said they “fully expect” the government to be able to conduct its review within the 90-day span the executive order proposes.
Personally, I doubt the Trump gang ever had any intention of honoring this 90-day “vetting review,” and I fully expect them to do everything in their power to make the ban permanent.
The Court also imposed some exceptions on the ban; it can’t be used against “foreign nationals who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”
In the unsigned opinion, the court said that a foreign national who wants to visit or live with a family member would have such a relationship, and so would students from the designated countries — Libya, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — who were admitted to a U.S. university.
But in an ominous sign of what’s to come from the Trump-flavored SCOTUS, three of the justices objected to these limits and would have let Trump’s ban take effect with no restrictions: Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Trump’s newly appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch.
To anyone who bought the propaganda that Gorsuch would be a “moderate” who wouldn’t decide on party lines: you were conned. Again.