President Donald Trump isn’t happy that a federal judge — U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick in San Francisco, that is — has temporarily halted his executive order cutting funds to sanctuary cities and other communities that refuse to cooperate with immigration authorities.
Not surprisingly, he vented his wrath through his favorite medium — Twitter.
First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities-both ridiculous rulings. See you in the Supreme Court!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2017
Out of our very big country, with many choices, does everyone notice that both the "ban" case and now the "sanctuary" case is brought in …
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2017
…the Ninth Circuit, which has a terrible record of being overturned (close to 80%). They used to call this "judge shopping!" Messy system.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2017
Notice that all of these tweets were sent out in the early morning. Trump also got wrong the court in which his order was struck down.
Uh, this was a district court ruling. It hasn't gotten to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals yet. https://t.co/Xeoa2fREaT
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) April 26, 2017
The judge emphasized the rhetoric used by President Trump and top officials within his administration to demonstrate that the order could be unconstitutional, according to a report by The Washington Post. Although the government claimed that the order was merely an attempt to “highlight a changed approach to immigration enforcement,” Orrick insisted that the order does attempt to circumvent the law with the “intent to defund sanctuary jurisdictions in compliance with the executive order.”
There were a few instances cited by the order of Trump telegraphing his moves over the past few months. He told former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly that “if they’re going to have sanctuary cities, we may have to do that. Certainly that would be a weapon.” Press secretary Sean Spicer said that “counties and other institutions that remain sanctuary cities don’t get federal government funding.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that they would “claw back any funds” that would normally go to cities which violated the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told reporters on Tuesday that “it’s the 9th Circuit going bananas. The idea that an agency can’t put in some reasonable restriction on how some of these monies are spent is going to be overturned eventually, and we’ll win at the Supreme Court level at some point.”
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