Following the Supreme Court’s decision Monday morning to reject a bid from the Justice Department to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, leaving the fate of the program in the hands of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the White House hit back at the judicial branch.
White House spokesman Raj Shah called the lower court injunction of Trump’s DACA termination—a court decision based on evidence that Trump was more motivated by animus toward immigrants than constitutional law—a “usurpation of legislative authority.”
“The fact that this occurs at a time when elected representatives in Congress are actively debating this policy only underscores that the district judge has unwisely intervened in the legislative process,” Shah said. “We look forward to having this case expeditiously heard by the appeals court and, if necessary, the Supreme Court, where we fully expect to prevail.”
The White House did not mention that the President has repeatedly worked to undermine efforts on Capitol Hill to pass a bill to protect DACA recipients as the Justice Department was litigating to have the injunction on President Trump’s termination of the program overturned.
Speaking to Republican governors later on Monday, President Trump went on an extended tangent denouncing the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is currently considering DACA’s fate.
“Nothing’s as bad as the 9th Circuit,” he said. “Speaking of that, DACA is going to be put back into the 9th Circuit. We tried to get it moved quickly because we’d like to help DACA. I think everybody in this room wants to help with DACA, but the Supreme Court just ruled it has to go through the normal channels. So it’s going back in.”
Trump then seemed to allude to previous 9th Circuit ruling against his administration, including multiple actions to block Trump from implementing a travel ban on people from majority-Muslim countries.
“It’s really sad when every single case filed against us is in the 9th Circuit, we lose, we lose, we lose, then we do fine in the Supreme Court,” he said Monday. “But what does that tell you about our court system? It’s a very, very sad thing.”
The remarks, which come as the Trump administration is working with Senate Republicans to rapidly pack the federal courts with staunch conservatives, are in keeping with the President’s past attacks on the judicial branch of government. Trump has a pattern of targeting individual federal judges for public condemnation, and has complained that any ruling against his administration is “unfair.”
