Presenting President Donald Trump's stymied travel ban to
the Supreme Court last week, the Department of Justice requested the court reinstate
the travel ban until justices could rule on its constitutionality in October. Opponents to the travel ban have until June 12 to submit arguments about why the court should not reinstate
it while considering the case.
Trump may have thrown opponents a bone in a Twitter tirade over
the weekend and early Monday morning in the wake of London's terror attacks.
While lashing out at the U.S. court system as "slow and political," he
also hammered his own administration for the "watered down" and
"politically correct" version of his Jan. 27 executive order that originally had restricted citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the U.S. and
gave wider berth to the types of visas that could be restricted. In his tweets, Trump specifically appropriated the "travel ban" language his
administration had tried to distance from both the original order and the revised
March 6 version now in front of the court that would ban citizens from six majority-Muslim countries from
entering the U.S. for travel.
The President's tweets potentially showed contemporaneous "animus"
against Muslims, which could inform the Supreme Court decision. That's a problem
for Trump because the DOJ has argued that the President's campaign
rhetoric, which called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims
entering the country," should be off limits when considering the constitutionality
of the order and that the order as written is without animus toward any
particular religion.
Four justices must agree to take the case before the court
will formally review the ruling from the lower Fourth Circuit Court. Trump would prevail with the support of five justices. Should the court decide to stay the current
injunction while it considers the case, however, a formal ruling on the order could be purely academic. The current travel
ban is designed to restrict travel for 90 days and suspend refugee programs for 120 days to allow the administration to formally review visa processes for the affected countries. Presumably, that
review would conclude before the court would issue an official ruling.