Second corrupt Obama judge enjoins new Trump travel ban, enables Muslim terrorists

That portion had already been blocked by another federal judge in Hawaii on Wednesday, who also halted a 120-day freeze of the U.S. refugee program hours before the order was set to take effect at 12:01 a.m.

Other components of the executive order, including a reduction in the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the U.S. this fiscal year from 110,000 to 50,000, were allowed to go forward.

Judge Theodore D. Chuang, based in Greenbelt, Md., not far from Washington, D.C., was appointed by President Obama in 2014. Like Honolulu-based U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Kahala Watson, who was appointed to his post by President Obama in 2013, Chuang ignored the applicable federal law. This is what happens when Harvard-educated lawyers, thoroughly indoctrinated by the Left, get appointed to the judiciary. (Obama also got his law degree from Harvard.) According to 8 U.S. Code § 1182:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may … suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

In such matters, judges are not entitled to second-guess the president who is entitled to great judicial deference in matters of national security. The president was elected by the American people to safeguard the nation; federal judges aren’t. Judge Chuang looked beyond the so-called four corners of EO 13780 and took judicial notice of remarks made by the president and his inner circle regarding this important national security matter. That’s a huge no-no as anyone who ever took a course in American constitutional law knows. The president has access to intelligence that judges don’t have. They are not in a position necessarily to know the right course of action. To go further, it’s none of their business. Chuang wrote in his decision that statements then-candidate Trump made in December 2015 after the mass shooting by Muslim terrorists in San Bernardino, Calif. constituted “explicit, direct statements” of his “animus towards Muslims and intention to impose a ban on Muslims entering the United States.” “The fact that the White House took the highly irregular step of first introducing the travel ban without receiving the input and judgment of the relevant national security agencies strongly suggests that the religious purpose was primary, and the national security purpose, even if legitimate, is a secondary post hoc rationale,” Chuang wrote. But even if the first travel ban, EO 13769, issued soon after Trump’s inauguration, was somehow suspect for lack of expert input, the new directive, EO 13780, certainly wasn’t. Trump consulted with a phalanx of advisers and lawyers who redrew EO 13769 to take care of various infirmities judges who enjoined the latter order cited.

In other words, like the rest of the black-robed politicians appointed for life, Chuang just made up the law himself, violating his oath to uphold the Constitution. Chuang, like the rest of them, should be impeached and removed from the bench. There is only one positive thing I can say about what Chuang did. At least this judge actually took some time to consider the arguments. On Wednesday, Judge Watson heard oral arguments from counsel and then rendered his 43-page decision at record speech — merely two hours later, as has been reported. (And here I thought I was a fast writer! As noted above, President Trump’s Executive Order 13780 was drafted to temporarily prevent visas from being issued to individuals from Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Libya, and Syria to provide the government with an opportunity to implement Trump’s “extreme vetting” measures aimed at weeding out visa applicants who pose a threat to U.S. national security. The order was also to suspend refugee processing for 120 days. The new order differs from Trump’s previous, broader directive, Executive Order 13769, also enjoined by the courts, because it dropped Iraq from the list of nations affected, and ensured current visa or green-card holders and others would be allowed exceptions. Judge Watson issued a temporary restraining order against EO 13780, signed by Trump on March 6, and scheduled to take yesterday, ruling that a lawsuit pursued by Hawaii and Egyptian-born Muslim cleric Ismail Elshikh was likely to succeed on religious discrimination grounds. Elshikh serves as imam to the Muslim Association of Hawaii and “is a member of the North American Imam Federation (NAIF), a fringe Islamic organization that has a board and current leadership stacked with radical Islamic connections.” “Given NAIF’s history it should come as no surprise that the end goal of this lawsuit is, ultimately, weakening American counter-terrorism or immigration security efforts,” said terrorism expert Kyle Shideler, director of the Threat Information Office at the Center for Security Policy. I wrote about Watson’s ruling yesterday at FrontPageMag.