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In one of the most ruthless opinions issued of fellow panel judges, five judges from across the political spectrum in the Ninth Circuit went out of their way to issue an opinion about a dismissed appeal, to remind everybody just how embarrassingly bad the prior Ninth Circuit stay panel decision was on Trump’s travel ban. The five judges included the famed, and most respected intellectual amongst the Ninth Circuit, Alex Kozinski. The others included Jay Bybee, Consuelo Callahan, Carlos Bea and Sandra Ikuta. Nobody other than the original panel came to the defense of the original panel decision, a less...

Washington v. Trump, No. 17-35105 (Motions Panel–February 9, 2017) U.S. COURT OF APPEALS BYBEE, Circuit Judge, with whom KOZINSKI, CALLAHAN, BEA, and IKUTA, Circuit Judges, join, dissenting from the denial of reconsideration en banc. I regret that we did not decide to reconsider this case en banc for the purpose of vacating the panel’s opinion. We have an obligation to correct our own errors, particularly when those errors so confound Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit precedent that neither we nor our district courts will know what law to apply in the future.

The White House seems poised to issue a revised executive order restricting visas from seven terrorist havens until sufficient vetting procedures are in place. Yet one related issue has not been fully explored: The way the arguments over the original order may have been sabotaged in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. On its way to upholding an injunction issued against the original executive order, the Ninth Circuit failed to even discuss the relevant federal immigration provision that authorized the president’s action. At oral argument, the government was represented by career lawyer August Flentje. As Paul Mirengoff at Powerline...

<p>A draft document obtained by The Associated Press concludes that citizenship is an "unlikely indicator" of terrorism threats to the United States and that few people from the countries Trump listed in his travel ban have carried out attacks or been involved in terrorism-related activities in the U.S. since Syria's civil war started in 2011.</p>

Still smarting from a federal appeals court's refusal to reinstate President Trump's controversial ban of nationals from seven predominantly Muslim nations, White House lawyers are working on a rewrite of his executive order that could pass legal muster, NBC News has learned. The work began several days before the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals shot down the White House's bid to lift a temporary restraining order on Trump's plan to bar nationals from Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iraq and Yemen from entering the country for 90 days, a senior administration official told NBC. Trump's legal team still believes...

Federal District Judge James Robart violated the Constitution in issuing a TRO (temporary restraining order) against President Trump’s temporary entry ban for citizens of seven countries. Now a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed that stay. What we have here is a creeping constitutional coup. As long as President Obama was in charge and had a massive open door policy at our borders and at our airports, in violation of statutory law, the judiciary was content to be silent. But when Donald Trump became president and tried to use the powers of the Presidency to...

A top lawyer for internet retailer Amazon is taking a victory lap for the company’s role in the Ninth Circuit Court’s decision to retain the temporary restraining order halting President Trump’s travel ban. “Proud of @AGOWA, the Amazon legal team that helped on the case, and amici — who all made today’s 9th Circuit ruling possible,” David Zapolsky, Amazon general counsel, wrote Thursday night on Twitter. It’s unknown what precise role, if any, Zapolsky’s team played in the appeals court decision. But there has been bad blood between Trump and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos for over a year. On...

The Trump administration can wage a legal battle in the lower courts to address more squarely whether the president's immigration directive violates the Constitution. The White House is also mulling whether to rewrite the executive order. No matter what, the administration faces a difficult fight to restore the ban. This is a developing story. It will be updated.

The White House on Wednesday afternoon released a list of 24 terror suspects who previously entered the U.S. from the seven countries named in President Trump's Jan. 27 executive order. The document lists 24 refugees and other immigrants from Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria and Libya who entered the U.S. in the last eight years and were later arrested by U.S. law enforcement officials on terrorism charges after being admitted. {..snip..}

The State Department has more than doubled the rate of refugees from Iraq, Syria and other suspect countries in the week since a federal judge’s reprieve, in what analysts said appears to be a push to admit as many people as possible before another court puts the program back on ice. A staggering 77 percent of the 1,100 refugees let in since Judge James L. Robart’s Feb. 3 order have been from the seven suspect countries. Nearly a third are from Syria alone — a country that Mr. Trump has ordered be banned altogether from the refugee program. Another 21...

Let’s look at sections of the Opinion Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for Arizona v. United States 567 U.S. ___ (2012)The Government of the United States has broad, undoubted power over the subject of immigration and the status of aliens. See Toll v. Moreno, 458 U. S. 1, 10 (1982) ; see generally S. Legomsky & C. Rodríguez, Immigration and Refugee Law and Policy 115–132 (5th ed. 2009). This authority rests, in part, on the National Government’s constitutional power to “establish an uniform Rule of Nat- uralization,” U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 4, and its inher- ent power as...

Why is Washington State mounting such a vigorous challenge to President Trump's executive order temporarily suspending non-American entry from seven terrorism-plagued countries? Of course there are several lawsuits against the president, and there are lots of motives among the various litigants. But Washington State's is the suit that stopped the order, at least temporarily. And a look at the state's case suggests that, behind high-minded rhetoric about religious liberty and constitutional protections, there is a lot of money at stake. Judging by the briefs filed by Washington State, as well as statements made by its representatives, some of the state's...

Watch live: 17-35105 State of Washington v. Trump 3:00 PM 2/7

If you want to see the difference between a federal judge who follows the rule of law and a federal judge who ignores laws he doesn’t like in order to reach a preferred public policy outcome, just compare the two district court decisions issued in Washington state and Massachusetts over President Donald Trump’s immigration executive order.Contrary to the “travel ban” label, the executive order temporarily suspended the granting of visas from seven failed and failing countries that are supplying many of the terrorists plaguing the world.Despite what Judge James Robart of the Western District of Washington says, Trump acted fully...

In a series of nine tweets over the weekend, President Donald Trump defended his executive order temporarily suspending immigration from seven terrorist-infiltrated countries, and he slammed the federal judge in Washington State who temporarily blocked the order, calling him a “so-called judge” in one of his tweets. The liberal media seized on that remark. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), asked if he had “concerns” about Trump’s comment, told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, “Yes, I think it is best not to single out judges for criticism. We all get disappointed from time to time at the outcome...

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly says he wishes that the rollout of President Donald Trump's travel ban had been delayed until he had a chance to prepare lawmakers for what was coming. Kelly's comment was the most direct acknowledgment by a high-level administration official that the rollout of Trump's executive order had been mishandled. Kelly was speaking Tuesday at a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing examining the order, which temporarily stopped entry to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority nations and also temporarily bars the admission of refugees. A court has blocked the order, but the administration is appealing.

James Robart, the U.S. district judge in Washington State, offered little explanation for his decision to stop President Trump's executive order temporarily suspending non-American entry from seven terror-plagued countries. Robart simply declared his belief that Washington State, which in its lawsuit against Trump argued that the order is both illegal and unconstitutional, would likely win the case when it is tried. Beginning with the big picture, the Justice Department argued that Robart's restraining order violates the separation of powers, encroaches on the president's constitutional and legal authority in the areas of foreign affairs, national security, and immigration, and "second-guesses the...

In a series of polls conducted for Chatham House that will send shockwaves through Europe, an average of 55% of citizens across 10 different European nations have backed a total end to migration from predominantly Islamic countries. The figures included 71% of those in Poland, 53% in Germany, 51% in Italy and 47% of Brits.

Pastor Dan Scott of Christ Church Nashville, 30 percent of whose congregation is made up of immigrants, says President Donald Trump's attempts at a travel ban for refugees is "at odds with the Gospel." Scott told The Christian Post in a phone interview that Christ Church, a "spirit-filled evangelical Christian community" in Tennessee, has been helping refugees from different nations settle into the United States for many years now. Christ Church, he explained, has been assisting many people from Nepal, as well as from a number of nations in Africa and Asia, along with Latin America, learn the language and...

The US president's measure has had precisely the result he intended, giving succour to those engaged in an existential war against jihadist elements Critics of President Trump’s temporary travel ban on seven Muslim nations should remember the Chinese proverb, “Kill the chicken and let the monkey watch.” The much-criticized measure was a warning to the governments of the Gulf States, Turkey and Pakistan, who walk a fine line between support for Western counter-terrorism efforts and concessions to jihadists. It has had precisely the result that the White House intended, as a Dubai security official indicated on January 29. As Reuters’...