Trump formally asks SCOTUS to overturn lower-court rulings against travel ban

Understand what's at stake here, because it's a lot more than the implementation of one policy. What the administration is asserting here is exactly what they should be - that the lower courts should not be mindreading the president's intentions based on statements on the campaign trail or anything else. If his action is legal and he has the authority to take it, that's it, full stop. Game over. Whatever you might think he really wants to do is irrelevant. It seems almost inconceivable to me that SCOTUS doesn't deliver at least five votes affirming that argument. It ought to deliver nine. But the first step was in asking them, and that has now happened:

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Thursday's filing reflects many of the same arguments that administration lawyers have made in the lower courts. The filing asserts that the court "should not consider campaign-trail comments" and that "virtually all of the president's statements on which the court of appeals relied were made before he assumed office" and before he took an oath to defend the Constitution. "Taking that oath marks a profound transition from private life to the nation's highest public office, and manifests the singular responsibility and independent authority to protect the welfare of the nation that the Constitution reposes in the president," it reads. The administration is asking for quick action from the high court that would freeze the lower court rulings and allow the policy to be put in place. Both sides would file their legal arguments about whether the policy violates the Constitution or federal law over the summer and the justices could hear argument as early as the fall, under the schedule proposed by the administration Thursday. The Supreme Court is almost certain to step into the case because it almost always has the final say when a lower court strikes down a federal law or presidential action.

Assuming the Supremes find in favor of the White House here, they're doing more than just allowing the travel ban. They're telling the lower courts that they have to follow the law, and not attempt to guess the motives of the president - for good or for ill.

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What the liberal judges who ruled in these cases were saying is that Trump should not even be allowed to take legal actions clearly within his authority

This would be an affirmation of the checks and balances already baked into our system of government via the Constitution. Let's say for the sake of argument that President Trump, in his heart of hearts, really wanted to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. His actual rhetoric doesn't support that belief, but for the sake of argument let's say he did. Having won the election and gained the power of the presidency, he put an executive order in place, but the order did not attempt to ban all Muslims. It stuck to a very narrow and temporary ban on people from six countries identified by the previous administration as tied to terrorism. So why didn't the man who dreamed of banning Muslims actually do so? Because he didn't have the authority to do so, and he knew it, so he limited his order to only what he had the authority to do. In other words, our system of government already did its job. It doesn't allow evil men to do evil things just because they win elections and they feel like it. What the liberal judges who ruled in these cases were saying is that Trump should not even be allowed to take legal actions clearly within his authority, because he is a bad man and he would do terrible things with his authority if he could. In other words, because of what these judges think about the president, he should not be allowed to govern at all. Even the clear authority granted to the president must not be allowed to be exercised by this president, or so say the lower court judges. The Supremes need to do much more than reinstate the travel ban, although they certainly need to do that. They need to also smack down once and for all the idea that federal judges can block clearly legal actions because of the motives they imagine, or because of their personal opinions of the president. If they don't, no president will be able to govern, because any federal judge who feels like it will be able to strike down his actions using whatever legal rationale he decides to come up with. That makes this one of the most important cases SCOTUS has taken on in a very long time.

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