The Daily - Friday, March 17, 2017

As a candidate, Donald J. Trump called for a total Muslim ban. Now that he’s president, the courts won’t let him forget it. And as the White House fights to protect the travel ban, we discuss the immigration story of our vice president, Mike Pence. Guests: Adam Liptak, the Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times; Sheryl Gay Stolberg, The Times’s domestic affairs correspondent. For more information on today’s episode, visit http://nyti.ms/2nQS8lw.

Duration: 25m
Broadcast on: 17 Mar 2017
Audio Format: other

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

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With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank Guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply, see CapitalOne.com/BankGuy, Capital One NA. Member FDIC. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, as a candidate, Donald Trump called for a total Muslim ban. Now that he's president, the courts won't let him forget it. And as the White House fights to protect the travel ban, the immigration story of our vice president, Mike Pence. It's Friday, March 17th. We have seen the devastation from 9/11 to Boston, to San Bernardino. Hundreds upon hundreds of people from outside our country have been convicted of terrorism, related offenses. In Nashville, Tennessee this week, President Trump laid out a familiar case for his travel ban. For this reason, I issued an executive order to temporarily suspend immigration from places where it cannot safely occur. But then a development. But let me give you the bad news. We don't like bad news, right? I don't want to hear it. And I'll turn it into good.

But let me give you the bad, the sad news. Moments ago, I learned that a district judge in Hawaii, a judge in the Ninth Circuit Court, a judge has just blocked our executive order on travel and refugees coming into our country from certain countries.

It was the second time, the second time that Donald Trump issued a ban on travel from predominantly Muslim countries, the second time that a federal court blocked the ban, and the second time that a judge gave this explanation for the decision. The basic idea was that President Trump and his allies and supporters have said so many things about wanting to bar Muslims that even a revised and on its face neutral travel ban order is animated by hostility to Muslims and religious discrimination. Adam Liptak writes about the law for the New York Times. So what you have on the one hand is a piece of paper that on its face looks fine. The judges say if this is all I knew, this would be fine. But because of all the statements and during the campaign and afterwards, the courts look behind what's on the face of the piece of paper, to find religious discrimination. Are the judges looking at any language in particular from the president, a comment or a speech or a tweet? Give me one sec. I'm imagining this is the sound of a New York Times legal reporter leafing through a court record. I know what I want to get to. I just want to get it exactly right. So the statement they really focus on is a press release from the campaign, which is still up on the Trump side. It's still on the Trump website. Yeah, it says this. Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shut down of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. You know, that's fairly categorical. And it's a little hard to ignore even as the administration first put out what courts found to be a quite overbroad travel man. Then they revised it and stripped out all of the stuff on its face talking about religion. But these statements still come back to haunt the Trump administration. So that press release, which is I recall was issued pretty early on in the campaign, essentially taints the actions today. Yes, that's what these courts are finding. The court is raising the idea that that press release is religiously discriminatory, that that was the aim of that original campaign language. But what we're talking about here is an immigration issue in the law. So is this case about religious discrimination or immigration? Very good question. And depending on what box you put it in, you might get a different answer. So the courts have said, if we're talking about immigration, if we're talking about national security, we don't look behind the face of the official action. We take the government in its word, and if the policy is constitutional on its face, that's good enough for us. In the religion context, the courts are more probing. They want to know whether there's a secret motive, whether there's an attempt to discriminate against religious groups, even if the face of the official action is neutral.

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