US federal judge blocks Trump's revised travel ban

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - President Donald Trump was dealt a resounding legal blow on Wednesday when a federal judge in Hawaii agreed to place a temporary nationwide freeze on his revised travel ban.

The ban on new visas for residents of six Muslim-majority countries was set to go into effect just hours before Judge Derrick Watson placed the hold on the order, which many have criticized for being another "Muslim ban". The new travel ban will now be unable to go into effect on its intended date.

Hawaii had argued that the new travel ban would damage its bustling tourism sectors, and its public university system.

Earlier Wednesday, Watson heard oral arguments from both sides, reportedly appearing skeptical of the government's case that Trump's prior statements promising a Muslim ban should be omitted from the case.

In his 43-page decision, Watson said the Trump administration's defense of the ban on the grounds of its religiously neutral language and geographic limitations is lacking.

"The illogic of the Government’s contentions is palpable," he wrote. "The notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at
once is fundamentally flawed."

"Equally flawed is the notion that the Executive Order cannot be found to have targeted Islam because it applies to all individuals in the six referenced countries. It is undisputed, using the primary source upon which the Government itself relies, that these six countries have overwhelmingly Muslim populations that range from 90.7% to 99.8%," he wrote.

"It would therefore be no paradigmatic leap to conclude that targeting these countries likewise targets Islam," added Watson.

The decision comes just over a week after Trump signed the new executive order into effect on March 6, seeking to make it more legally sound by narrowing the original's focus while dropping some of its most controversial aspects.