For the far-Left, this case wasn't so much a protest of Trump's refugee policy -- but the fact that he's president at all. And since his opponents can't remedy that fact for at least the next two years, they've tried the next best thing: using the courts to strip him of the authority he does have. We've seen this same strategy play out on the military, immigration policy, and now, national security. Fortunately, there are five justices on the Supreme Court who understand that Donald Trump may be the most unconventional president America's ever had, but that doesn't mean he isn't entitled to the same powers. And one of those powers is keeping the country safe, secure, and protected.
When Donald Trump became president, he promised that one of his first priorities would be preventing terrorist attacks on American soil. The obvious way to do that is by stopping terrorists from entering the country in the first place. So, the White House issued an order (not a ban) that put a temporary, 90-day hold on the people streaming into America from countries who pose the greatest threat to U.S. security: Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Somalia. Of course, that was a major departure from the Obama administration, which let refugees (or radicals posing as refugees) pour through our borders without vetting them.
Democrats came unglued, insisting that the president was somehow barring Muslims from America. A) The order doesn't ban anyone. It delays them. All the Trump administration asked for was a more thorough screening process, which, under any other White House, would have been seen as a reasonable request. B) Nothing in the order even mentions Muslims, a fact the Supreme Court highlighted when it said, "The text says nothing about religion." If this is a ban on Muslims, it's not a very good one, since there are dozens of Muslim-dominated nations who aren't even included. And, if Trump was targeting Islam, what are North Korea and Venezuela doing on the list? The point is, Trump isn't banning Muslims, he's banning terrorists -- who don't subscribe to a faith so much as a doctrine of radicalism. It's not the president's fault that the majority of terrorists carry out their violence in the name of Islam. If Democrats want a more diverse terrorist corps, they'll have to take it up with the jihadists.
Now there are those, including Justice Sonya Sotomayor, who suggested that the same five-justice majority who ruled in favor of Christian baker Jack Phillips should have ruled against Trump's travel policy for the same reason: religious animus. "Unlike Masterpiece [Cakes]," she writes in her dissent, where the majority considered the state commissioners' statements about religion to be persuasive evidence of unconstitutional government action, the majority here completely sets aside the president's charged statements about Muslims as irrelevant." Here's the problem with Sotomayor's argument (and there are several): Jack Phillips didn't want to commit violence in the name of his religion. And if he had, he couldn't claim a First Amendment defense to it.
The legal justifications that we make in the context of protecting the First Amendment don't automatically apply when it comes to letting unsafe actors into our borders. Everyone, from all backgrounds and faiths, has the same free exercise of religion. But they have to be willing to respect the Constitution that gives us that right. If they want to destroy it (and us), then we have every reason to deny them entry into our country. That's what President Trump is trying to do -- prevent a threat, not the expression of a certain faith.
Meanwhile, as even the justices pointed out, "...The twelve-page proclamation was more detailed with factual findings than any ever issued under the statute. The restrictions imposed were not based on nationality per se, much less religion, but on inadequacies in addressing risks." In other words, this controversy was less about the actual policy than it was about Trump issuing it. The plaintiffs here, Kyle Sammin writes in the Federalist, say "the Supreme Court must ignore the text entirely when the motives behind an action are impure. Hillary Clinton could have issued this order were she president because she is good; Trump is bad, so he cannot. And who would determine bad and good? The unelected courts, of course." He, like a lot of people, think the most astounding part of the ruling was the final vote.
"What is shocking is that the decision was 5-4, not 9-0. That four justices -- including the more thoughtful members of the court's Left -- were willing to adopt a radical theory of intent-based law shows how deep the rot of Trump Derangement Syndrome goes, and how far activists in the judiciary will go to thwart the man they hate, even when he acts strictly within the rule of law."
Perhaps the most maddening part of the Left's effort is that they're trying to tie Trump's hands when he has the benefit of intelligence that most people don't, including the justices deciding this case. Even so, it's not – and never has been -- the role of courts to substitute their judgment for the president's. "There is no special jurisprudence of Trump, no judicially legislated exemption that denies this duly elected president the legitimate constitutional and statutory powers of his office," the editors at NRO point out. "Federal judges do not have to like the president, but their allegiance is supposed to be to the law, not to the Resistance."
The Democrats' dramatics over the situation are completely overblown. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) went so far as to say, "Tears are running down the cheeks of the Statue of Liberty." But better the Statue of Liberty, victims' families would say, than thousands more grieving families who will never see their loved ones again because their president was more concerned about being politically correct than protecting their citizens.
[bold, italics and colored emphasis mine
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