Trump assails sanctuary cities ruling, judge
Decision blocking plan to refuse federal grants blasted as ‘ridiculous’
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s latest legal defeat has provoked him into another round of judge-baiting.
It’s a case potentially headed for the Supreme Court, whose newest member had to distance himself from Trump’s prior judiciary bashing.
In public comments and an early morning tweet-storm Wednesday and an angry latenight White House statement Tuesday, Trump blasted the “egregious overreach” and “ridiculous” ruling by an “unelected” federal judge based “in San Francisco,” following a decision that blocked the administration’s plans to financially punish socalled sanctuary cities.
“We’ll see them at the Supreme Court,” Trump said Wednesday.
Gorsuch may be on the spot
If Trump is right about the ultimate destination of the sanctuary cities case, he’ll face a court reinforced by his own nominee, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch. It could prove touchy for the court’s rookie, who has been pressed to separate himself from the president’s heated comments about other federal judges.
“When anyone criticizes the honesty or integrity of the motives of a federal judge, I find that disheartening,” Gorsuch told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month. “I find that demoralizing, because I know the truth.”
Trump is using a different blend of brute force and code words in his attacks on U.S. District Judge William Orrick, the 63-year-old Obama administration appointee who ruled against the president Tuesday. A term such as “ridiculous” hits like a cudgel, while the White House’s reference to “this San Francisco judge” seems more of a dog whistle to the president’s conservative allies.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Wednesday on Fox News that “anybody that’s got a basic understanding of the Constitution” would agree with Trump and disagree with the judge, a former Justice Department attorney.
The White House’s characterization of Orrick as “unelected,” meanwhile, casts in a negative light the system of judicial appointments spelled out in the U.S. Constitution.
Ruled against Trump
In his 49-page opinion Tuesday, Orrick sided with Santa Clara County and the city and county of San Francisco in their challenge to Trump’s sanctuary cities executive order. The initial order, issued Jan. 25, included a provision declaring that “sanctuary jurisdictions shall be ineligible to receive federal grants.”
“If there was doubt about the scope of the order, the president and attorney general have erased it with their public comments,” Orrick wrote.
“The president has called it ‘a weapon’ to use against jurisdictions that disagree with his preferred policies of immigration enforcement.”
Asked about Orrick’s ruling Wednesday, Trump averred that he is “never surprised by the 9th Circuit,” reinforcing an early morning tweet in which he declared that it “has a terrible record of being overturned (close to 80 percent).”
Orrick is a district court judge and is not part of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, although the latter will hear the Trump administration’s appeal.