THE TRAVEL BAN’S NEW NORMAL | Masterpiece Cakeshop Owner Wonders If SCOTUS Will Uphold His Freedom
April 27, 2018
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|“Morally and practically, there is no question the ban is a bad idea. Legally, the Trump administration may yet prevail.” That’s the Editorial Board of The Washington Post making the argument against DONALD TRUMP’S travel ban that came before the Supreme Court Wednesday. “Statement after statement — mostly before the campaign but also after — suggests that Mr. Trump sought to implement a Muslim ban as far as possible in the guise of this travel ban. In the real world, a person’s nationality has little to do with the likelihood of their posing a danger, as a Department of Homeland Security assessment and a range of former intelligence officials confirmed. The common-sense conclusion from this record is that the travel ban is inspired by anti-Muslim animus and irrational on national security grounds.”
THE NEW NORMAL
|Vox’s Dara Lind explains how the travel ban became, well, normal. “Both the ban and the resistance to it have shrunk to the point that they can easily be encompassed within the typical scope of ‘political issues,’ not a fundamental shift in American daily life.”
FREEDOM! FREEDOM! I CAN'T MOVE
|The owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, JACK PHILLIPS, wonders in The Washington Post if the Supreme Court will uphold his freedom when they rule on this term’s big cake case. He makes his case and defends his position by writing, “Everyone is welcome in my shop — be it homeless folks (many of whom I’ve befriended over coffee, cookies and conversation), the two men who are suing me, or anyone else who finds their way in. The God that I serve, whose arms are open to all, expects that of me, and it is my joy to obey Him. But creating a cake that celebrates a view of marriage in conflict with my faith is not something that I can do.” A ruling in the case — Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission — is expected come June.
THE BEST LEGACY OF ALL
|Sahil Kapur and Laura Litvan with Bloomberg report on the legacy SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL is cementing for Trump by reshaping the courts with young conservatives who will mold American law for generations to come.
FUDGED UP
|Yesterday’s edition of SCOTUSDaily misattributed an editorial from the Los Angeles Times (h/t Scott Martelle) to The NY Times. In it, the LA Times Ed Board urged that no matter the outcome of Hawaii v. Trump, the travel ban is still bad policy. “Even if the court agrees — wrongly, in our view — that the ban can go forward legally, the fact remains that imposing such a broad exclusion based on discriminatory misconceptions is foolish and counterproductive policy.”
OTHER NEWS
Why Gerrymandering Is Going To Get Even Worse
The Washington Post“As the Supreme Court increasingly confronts cases challenging partisan gerrymandering, one underlying question appears to be: Is this getting worse? The answer is yes. There are some structural reasons for that.”
The White House Refuses To Disavow Trump's Muslim-Ban Promise
Slate“This is all important because it speaks to a bigger question at the heart of the First Amendment issues at stake in this case: Has Trump’s White House disavowed Trump’s promise to deliver a Muslim ban, or has it embraced that promise? The answer, through all three attempts now made by the president, is that this White House has consistently and affirmatively embraced Trump’s fundamental project of delivering on his campaign promise of a ‘shutdown of Muslims entering the United States’—even if incompletely, at least for now.”