ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

[N]o matter how much Trump rails against the courts, the executive order's fundamental flaws will keep tripping him up. And although the Maryland court appears to have ruled more narrowly, the logic of that ruling is exactly the same, and seems likely to eventually support a complete injunction on the second executive order.

The district court in Hawaii painstakingly laid out the facts and the law. After reviewing voluminous evidence of Trump and his advisors' intent to institute a ban on Muslims entering the United States, Judge Derrick K. Watson explained in his 43-page order that the record "includes significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus driving the promulgation of the Executive Order and its related predecessor" and a "dearth of evidence indicating a national security purpose." 

"Any reasonable, objective observer would conclude, as does the Court for purposes of the instant Motion for TRO, that the stated secular purpose of the Executive Order is, at the very least, 'secondary to a religious objective' of temporarily suspending the entry of Muslims," he wrote, citing the 2005 Supreme Court case of McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky.

Despite the changes made to the second order, which removed explicit references to religion, for example, "the Court cannot find the actions taken during the interval between revoked Executive Order No. 13,769 and the new Executive Order to be 'genuine changes in constitutionally significant conditions,' " he said, again citing McCreary.

The Hawaii court accordingly halted sections 2 and 6 of the order, which suspend for 90 days entry of nationals of six specified Muslim-majority countries, and suspend for 120 days the entire U.S. refugee resettlement program, and reduce by more than half the total number of refugees admissible in fiscal year 2017- from 110,000 to 50,000.

Shortly thereafter, at a rally in Tennessee, Trump reinforced the court's central point: that the second ban had the same intent as the first one. He did this by publicly criticizing the Hawaii ruling and insisting he'd wanted to stick with his initial order all along. "My lawyers told me this is a watered-down version of the first one...I think we ought to go back to the first one and go all the way, which is what I wanted to do in the first place."

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