Donald Trump won the presidential election fair and square, but there is a well-funded movement to resist his victory and challenge the recent president’s authority over the executive branch of our government. Now, a federal judge sitting nearly 3,000 miles away in the “other” Washington has upped the ante by ordering federal bureaucrats to disobey President Trump’s lawful order.
The reckless decision by Judge James L. Robart shocked legal scholars because courts have held in numerous previous decisions that the president has the right to keep foreigners out of the United States. If taken literally, the judge’s decision gives anyone in the world the right to sue in our courts for the right to enter and remain in our country.
“I just can’t believe a judge would put our Country in such danger,” Trump tweeted from Mar-a-Lago. “If anything happens, blame him and the judicial system. People are pouring in. Bad!”
A few minutes later, he tweeted again: “I have instructed Homeland Security to screen people entering our country VERY CAREFULLY. The courts are making it very difficult!”
It should be obvious that we must stop accepting refugees and others from known terrorist havens, and Donald Trump was elected on the promise of a short-lived ban followed by “extreme vetting” of future visitors. The American people have a right to get what we voted for.
Orlando, San Bernardino, and Chattanooga are just a few of our cities scarred by atrocities committed by refugees or newcomers from known terrorist hotbeds, or by their spouses or children who grew up among us. The Boston Marathon killers were the sons of refugees, and the recent attack on Ohio State University was carried out by an 18-year-old refugee from Somalia.
“Where is our country coming from when a judge can halt Homeland Security’s travel ban and anyone, even with malicious intent, can enter the US?” Trump tweeted. “When the country can no longer say who can and can’t come in, especially for security reasons – big trouble!”
The president’s common-sense views, so recently endorsed by the American people, have not won the respect of a federal judge in Seattle. Although nominally appointed by President George W. Bush in 2004, Judge Robart was actually selected for the position by Washington’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.
In the most offensive part of the ruling, the judge embraced the wild argument that Washington state has the right to protect its “residents” (not citizens) from the lawful enforcement of federal law. The Supreme Court rejected that idea in the 1960s when South Carolina tried to avoid the federal Voting Rights Act and should do so again in this case.
The Supreme Court also ruled that foreigners outside the United States have no right to sue to enter our country. The president can even revoke their visas if he determines it is in the national interest. And if the foreigners themselves do not have the right to sue, no one else has the right to sue on their behalf.
A notable Quinnipiac poll recently surveyed 899 registered voters and found that by a margin of 48 to 42 percent, voters supported “suspending immigration from regions prone to terrorism, even if it means turning away refugees.” By a margin of 53 to 41 percent, voters also said they would support requiring immigrants from Muslim-majority countries to register with U.S. officials.
Rasmussen reported similar results from a poll of 1,000 likely voters, with 57 percent supporting a short-lived halt to refugees from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, while only 33 percent opposed it. The president’s proposal was supported by 82 percent of Republicans, 59 percent of independents and 34 percent of Democrats.
Newsweek magazine sent a reporter to Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, which went from a 5-point swing in 2012 to a 20-point Trump victory in 2016. Voters overwhelmingly support the president’s policies, with one former Bernie Sanders supporter saying of Trump: “I don’t think he chose religion, he chose countries that need more control.”
While the president’s executive order is working its way through the courts, the Syrian mayor of Prospect Park, N.J., has signed his own executive order that prohibits the exploit of “any Borough funds or resources to assist in enforcing federal immigration law.” A rebellious refugee from Aleppo proves Ann Coulter’s recent commentary true: “We let one ethnic group in out of compassion, and then they form an ethnic power bloc to demand that all of their countrymen be let in as well.”
