Trump Floats Breaking Up 9th Circuit Court Of Appeals

President Donald Trump speaks before signing the Education Federalism Executive Order during a federalism event with governors in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, April 26, 2017. (AP Ph... President Donald Trump speaks before signing the Education Federalism Executive Order during a federalism event with governors in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, April 26, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) MORE LESS
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President Donald Trump floated the idea of breaking up the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday, misidentifying it yet again as the court responsible for the nationwide injunction issued Tuesday against his executive order regarding so-called sanctuary cities.

“There are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit,” Trump told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “It’s outrageous.”

On Tuesday, Judge Williams Orrick III of the Northern District of California issued a preliminary nationwide injunction against part of an executive order that threatened to withhold federal funding from localities that refused to comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer requests.

On Wednesday, Trump misidentified Orrick as a judge on the 9th Circuit, when in fact the sanctuary cities case would only move to the 9th Circuit if the government chose to appeal Orrick’s decision.

Trump told the Washington Examiner that opponents of his policies had gone “judge shopping” in the circuit. Many Republicans who want to break it up say that it is too liberal. The Examiner noted that 18 of the circuit’s 25 active judges were appointed by Democratic presidents.

“Everybody immediately runs to the 9th Circuit,” he said. “And we have a big country. We have lots of other locations. But they immediately run to the 9th Circuit. Because they know that’s like, semi-automatic.”

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