Can Trump ever stop tweeting? His tendency to take to Twitter to air grievances and pick fights got him in trouble well before he took office. Hopes that he’d stop were quickly dashed, and now his Twitter might not just put him in for another cycle of mockery: It might also torpedo his controversial ban on Muslims entering the country.
Ars Technica has a look at the cases against Trump and his executive order, which mostly boil down to the order being a de facto ban on Muslims. That’s a violation of the First Amendment, which prohibits “prohibiting the free exercise of” religion. Normally, the problem would be proving that in a court of law. Unfortunately for Trump, well, he’s said, publicly, he wants to limit Muslim immigration on Twitter. Multiple times. Justin Cox of the Immigration Law Center, who’s suing Trump in New York, sums it up rather bluntly:
“Politicians aren’t dumb enough to capture things in explicitly racist terms. The case law on these types of claims—you’re talking about other types of evidence, deviations from normal procedures. Politicians don’t say stupid sh*t like this out loud, so [Trump’s] bucking that trend.”
This isn’t the only problem Trump will face in court. The executive order explicitly exempts members of minority religions from the seven countries Trump attempted to slam the door on, every single one of which is a Muslim-majority country. That alone might put Trump in the judicial doghouse, but his tweets about the matter, and the fact that Rudy Guiliani said Trump asked him about how to ban Muslims “legally,” will likely just make things worse.
(via Ars Technica)