From David Robertson at The Moderate Voice:
The collective wailing and gnashing of teeth that you hear is coming from Democrats who want SCOTUS justices to legislate from the judicial bench.
From Politico:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld President Donald Trump’s travel ban, a major victory in the administration’s quest to restrict the flow of immigrants and visitors into the United States. . . The latest version of the ban levels a range of travel restrictions against five majority-Muslim countries — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen — as well as North Korea and Venezuela. Chad, another majority-Muslim nation, was removed from the list in April.
There are at least 50 Muslim nations in the world. The travel ban affects only 5 Muslim nations. If President Trump were really anti-Muslim, then the ban would affect all Muslim nations.
“The Proclamation is expressly premised on legitimate purposes: preventing entry of nationals who cannot be adequately vetted and inducing other nations to improve their practices,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. “The text says nothing about religion.”
None of this is moderate; all of it is idiotic.
Whatever one thinks of the travel ban, it is the sort of thing that one would expect from someone who (1) *is* anti-Muslim and (2) wants his policy to have a chance of getting past the courts. The question is whether the president’s well-documented thoughts and feelings about Muslims should have any bearing on the legality of a policy that does not actually ban all Muslims, i.e. whether the intent of the law or the letter of the law matters more.
As for the ruling on the California law, it’s ridiculous that so-called health clinics are free to provide inaccurate information, but the state cannot force them to inform people of health options from the state itself.
I’m surprised that the union ruling, which should be even more palatable to moderates, wasn’t mentioned. In any case, we can look forward to even more of this after Kennedy’s retirement, as Trump and Republicans rush to fill his spot with a young conservative who would never be a swing vote. Never mind the looming midterms, which, as McConnell argued regarding the more distant 2016 election at the time, would give Americans “their say on this issue.” Scum, the lot of them.