Donald Trump aboard the Air Force One. Pic/AFP
Washington: A federal district court judge in Hawaii has issued a temporary restraining order against President Donald Trumps new travel ban, hours before it was due to take effect. The move was slammed by the President as “unprecedented judicial overreach”. The new ban was announced earlier this month and was set to take effect Thursday.
In a 43-page ruling on Wednesday, US District Court Judge Derrick Watson concluded that the new executive order failed to pass legal muster at this stage and the state had established “a strong likelihood of success” on their claims of religious discrimination. Watson wrote that any “reasonable, objective observer” would view even the new order as “issued with a purpose to disfavour a particular religion, in spite of its stated, religiously neutral purpose.” He lambasted the government, in particular, for asserting that because the ban did not apply to all Muslims in the world, it could not be construed as discriminating against Muslims, reported the Washington Post.
Trump decried the ruling during a rally Wednesday night in Nashville, introducing his statement as “the bad, the sad news.” “The order he blocked was a watered-down version of the first one,” Trump said, as the crowd booed the news. “This is, in the opinion of many, an unprecedented judicial overreach,” he added, before pledging to take the issue to the Supreme Court if necessary. “We’re going to fight this terrible ruling. We’re going to take this as far as we need to, right up to the Supreme Court. We’re going to win and we’re going to keep our citizens safe,” the President said at the rally.
Trump proposes $1.1 trillion budget
US President Donald Trump yesterday proposed a USD 1.1 trillion budget, requesting a massive $54 billion increase in defence spending and a substantial cut in the State Department allocations, particularly foreign aid. The budgetary request includes an additional $30 billion for the Department of Defence to rebuild the US Armed Forces.
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