Oddbean

#politics #flashback When Donald Trump took power in 2017, one of the first things he did was to temporarily halt immigration (and entry of foreign nationals) from seven countries (Executive Order 13769). The news media invariably called them "Muslim-majority countries" and called the order a "Muslim ban" and then called Trump a racist. Many people today who I respect on many issues believe this fabrication, believe that Donald Trump was the architect of the Muslim ban so "of course he is racist." Trump was legally challenged and it went to the Supreme Court, twice, where they determined both times that the president does have the power to enact such an order. The executive order does not mention religion, neither muslim nor Islam. It doesn't even name the countries (other than Syria)! Rather, it refers to pre-existing legislation: 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12). 8 U.S.C. 1187, mentioned in the executive order, was amended by H.R. 158 on December 9, 2015, by congress during the Obama administration. H.R. 158 was titled the "Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015". That act specifically named Iraq and Syria, but it also included any "country that is designated by the Secretary of State ... as a country, the government of which has repeatedly provided support of acts of international terrorism...". (8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12)(A)(i)(II)). So this by reference included Iran and Sudan. A few months later on 18 February 2016, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified three additional countries that would also be covered by the limitation on Visa Waiver Program travel, those being Libya, Somalia and Yemen, because in those countries the government "has repeatedly provided support of acts of international terrorism" (8 U.S.C. 1187) And thus the seven countries were identified and travel restricted more than a year before Donald Trump took office. PLEASE NOTE: I do not agree with the United States' labels for these countries. This is very much an Israeli view of who are the terrorists that I think you all know that I disagree with. However, what I am saying is that the countries were chosen not-at-all due to their majority religion, but rather entirely because they were the ones that Homeland Security had determined (prior to Trump) to be supporting terrorism. If he wanted to ban Islam he would have included another 30-odd countries. But he didn't even pick the countries. What is most shocking about this story, however, isn't the mistaken belief of the Trump-haters, nor the propaganda of the news media, but that four supreme court justices felt there was enough "racial animus" to rule the other way in the face of these obvious facts I have laid out. To me, that makes these justices dishonorable: Sotomayor, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan.