Gorsuch calls Trump scolding ‘disheartening’

Tribune News Service

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump has launched an assault on the independence of the judiciary, accusing federal judges of playing politics by suspending his travel ban and suggesting they risk national security by restricting his ability to block visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries.

He punctuated a flurry of tweets and statements in recent days with a high-profile speech Wednesday that marked an escalation of the president’s use of the bully pulpit, with Trump attacking judges personally.

“If these judges wanted to, in my opinion, help the court, in terms of respect for the court, they do what they should be doing,” Trump said, coaxing judges to rule in his favor with a typically free-form remark to a gathering of police chiefs in Washington.

In response, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch told a Democratic senator he found Trump’s comments “disheartening” and “demoralizing.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told reporters about Gorsuch’s comments after meeting privately Wednesday with Trump’s first U.S. high court nominee. Ron Bonjean, a spokesman aiding Gorsuch in the confirmation process, confirmed Blumenthal’s account of their conversation in an email and said Gorsuch “used the words disheartening and demoralizing.”

“He certainly expressed to me that he is disheartened by demoralizing, abhorrent comments made by President Trump about the judiciary,” Blumenthal said.

Trump put on a highly public show of trying to sway the judges as well as public opinion. He read aloud 73 words of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which lays out the president’s capacity to stop legal entry into the U.S. in times of crisis, in arguing that the law gives him expansive power to block foreigners.

“A bad high school student would understand this,” Trump said.

Trump’s aggressive approach suggested he is uncertain about his prospects of winning the current case and is trying to fight back outside the courtroom.

“It’s a sad day,” Trump said. “I think our security is at risk today, and it will be at risk until we get what we are entitled to.”

He said he had listened Tuesday night to a broadcast of the arguments before judges from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and pronounced the proceedings “disgraceful.”

The three-judge panel will decide whether to strike down or uphold a lower-court ruling suspending the enforcement of Trump’s travel ban. Several courts around the country blocked aspects of Trump’s order, but the ruling from a federal judge in Seattle on Friday halted the directive entirely.

When U.S. District Judge James L. Robart, an appointee of President George W. Bush, ruled in favor of the states suing Trump over the order, Washington and Minnesota, he pointed to a 2015 appeals court decision that blocked President Barack Obama’s attempt to expand protections from deportation for some people in the U.S. illegally. That decision upheld that the judiciary can limit executive power.

Obama himself took heat when, during his 2010 State of the Union address, he criticized the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowing unions and corporations to give more freely to political causes. As Obama spoke to Congress, Justice Samuel Alito shook his head, and mouthed the words: “not true.”

Trump, however, made his criticisms far more personal.