A judge blocks Donald Trump's revised travel ban

JUST hours before it was set to go into effect at the stroke of midnight on March 16th, Donald Trump's second try at an executive order to pause travel from several Muslim-majority countries was batted down by a federal district court in Hawaii. Judge Derrick Watson, nominated to the bench by Barack Obama and confirmed unanimously by the Senate in 2013, was unimpressed with Mr Trump's attempt to immunise his revised ban from its illicit discriminatory origin. The 43-page order did not mince words. 'The illogic of the Government's contentions', Mr Watson wrote, 'is palpable'.The judge began by noting that the new ban differed in certain respects from the first. Travel restrictions on America's lawful permanent residents and on people already holding visas abroad were lifted. Language suggesting that Christian refugees would be favoured over Muslims was deleted. And Iraq was removed from the list of banned countries, leaving six: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. But Mr Watson wrote that the plaintiffs made a good case for their claim that the heart of Mr Trump's order'a 90-day suspension of all travel from those countries, and a 120-day pause on...Continue reading
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