In the wake of a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that ruled against President Trump’s efforts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Trump railed against “horrible & politically charged decisions” coming from the court — calling them “shotgun blasts into the face” of conservatives.
The court ruled Thursday that Trump’s reversal of President Obama’s executive order – that shielded illegal immigrants who came to the country as children from deportation – was in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which sets out rulemaking procedures for federal agencies.
SUPREME COURT RULES AGAINST TRUMP ADMINISTRATION BID TO END DACA PROGRAM
Earlier in the week, the Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that an employer who fires a worker for being gay or transgender violates Title VII of the Civil RIghts Act, with Justice Neil Gorsuch writing the majority opinion. Together the decisions riled both social conservatives and immigration hawks on the right. And Trump echoed their discontent in a pair of blistering tweets.
“These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives,” he tweeted. “We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!”
Later, he tweeted more flippantly: “Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?”
READ: SUPREME COURT OPINION ON TRUMP EFFORT TO END DACA
The court decisions are politically perilous for Trump, who has touted his Supreme Court picks as a top achievement of his first term. While both Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s two Supreme Court nominees, voted in dissent to the DACA ruling, Gorsuch’s siding with the majority on Monday infuriated many conservatives and reinforced a perception that liberals on the court stick together while conservative justices end up peeling off.
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh called that ruling “be the biggest sellout of conservatism by conservative justices in the history of the Supreme Court.”
On Thursday, conservatives took aim at the DACA ruling, with Judicial Crisis Network decrying a “double standard” and taking direct aim at Chief Justice Chief Roberts, a Bush-era nominee who again sided with liberals to form the majority.
“Chief Justice Roberts once again has failed to stand up for the institutional interests of the Court by allowing it to be weaponized for partisan ends,” President Carrie Severino said.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which calls for lower levels of immigration overall, called the ruling an “enormous setback for efforts to enforce U.S. immigration laws, as well as for the Constitution’s Separation of Powers doctrine.”
“If presidents can overrule laws with policy memos that are hard to reverse, we are on a slippery slope toward the sort of unchecked executive power our founders feared,” FAIR President Dan Stein said in a statement.
“On a practical level, today’s ruling will likely lead to future waves of illegal immigration, as people around the world see the opportunity to bring minor children to the United States illegally in the expectation that they will be granted permission to remain permanently,” he said.
Democrats in Congress, meanwhile, cheered the ruling. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY., said he “cried tears of joy a few minutes ago when I heard the decision of the Supreme Court on DACA.”
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“These wonderful DACA kids and their families have a huge burden lifted off their shoulders. They don't have to worry about being deported. They can do their jobs, and I believe—I do believe this—someday, someday soon, they will be American citizens,” he said on the Senate floor.
Republican lawmakers saw it differently, with Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., calling it “the most disappointing week at #SCOTUS in years.”
“#Scotus continues to invent and rewrite statutes at will,” he wrote.
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