No one is fooled by the Trump administration’s feigned concern for the safety of the American people. If they were really worried about our well-being, they’d all resign and put an end to this disgraceful and hideously dangerous presidency instead of passing Muslim bans that are immoral, illegal, and ignorant of actual facts. In fact, it turns out that last month Don the Con chose to ignore an intelligence report which countered his claims that the travel ban would improve national security—simply because he didn’t like what it said.
Compiled by the Department of Homeland Security, the report said that banning all citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries was an ineffective way of stopping terrorists coming to the US because “country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity.”
This means that (surprise, surprise) a Muslim ban is not actually likely to keep us safe, since where someone is born does not necessarily equate to whether or not they will become a terrorist. Those are actual words from intelligence professionals. Perhaps their words were too bigly for Donald to understand.
At any rate, since it’s unlikely that we can get rid of him and his dreadful friends anytime soon, we might be able to make headway in terms of undoing some of the harmful policies that this administration is trying to put in place.
Leading the way is Hawaii, the latest state to contest the Muslim ban in its new, “softer” version. Today the state will ask a federal judge for a temporary restraining order.
Neal Katyal, one of the attorneys representing the state, told CNN that while "the new executive order covers fewer people than the old one" the replacement travel ban still "suffers from the same constitutional and statutory defects."
One of the state’s arguments is that contrary to the administration’s claims that this is a necessary step to keep the nation safe, the ban does not go into effect until next week. If this were really such an urgent and important step to take, wouldn’t the ban need to go into effect immediately?
"Of course, this time not only did he take a week but he took 10 days," Katyal said. "So I really think it just underscores the lack of national security justification here — this isn't about protecting us from bad guys rushing into the country, this is about politics."
Less than 50 days into this administration and we already know it’s a disaster. And until we can impeach him (in which case he absolutely must take Mike Pence with him), we can at least do our best to continue to fight his asinine and unsafe policies in court.