The Nuclear Option: Trump Exec Order Sets Showdown Between Executive, Judicial Branches

Democrats should be very, very careful what they wish for.

Just as Hillary Clinton and all her rotten operatives at the highest levels of the Democratic Party smugly prayed that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee, those same Democrats now take gleeful joy watching President Trump’s so-called travel ban picked apart by federal judges on the Left Coast.

Those appellate judges — such as federal District Judge James Robart who first imposed the stay — apparently believe that the president of the United States does not have the authority to determine who is allowed to come into the country, even during this time of war.

And — even more spectacularly — these crazy judges do not believe the president has this authority even though he just won a nearly two-year national political campaign explicitly promising the American people that he would do exactly as he has done.

This is incontrovertible proof that these judges, and far too many other judges, simply do not believe that the American people have the right to govern themselves. Of course, these power-hungry judges have long been aided and abetted by Democratic politicians who grew weary after years of losing policy fights in the political arena.

So they took their fights to the judicial branch and invented the notion that the Constitution is a “living document,” meaning it doesn’t actually mean what it says. Rather, it means whatever you can get some flunky judge from Haight-Ashbury to say what it means. This is how the courts discovered a constitutional right to abortion in a constitution that says never mentions a single medical procedure.

They found it in the refracted glow — or “penumbra” — of the document. Put another way, they made it up in thin air.

For more than 40 years now, Democratic politicians have not only defended this reckless shredding of the Constitution in public, but they also have been winning the fight. That probably says more about the stupidity and timidity of Republicans than anything else.

One of the chief reasons Mr. Trump is president today is because Democratic politicians are such constitutional whores and Republican politicians are so stupid.

But what we have coming into sharp focus today is a clear, black-and-white, good-versus-evil showdown between the executive branch and the judicial branch in which Mr. Trump is absolutely right and these federal judges — along with all the cheering Democrats — are absolutely wrong. Even a “bad high school student” knows this, as Mr. Trump pointed out.

It is a fight the American people understand on a visceral level.

It looks likely that this latest ruling will go to the Supreme Court, which should rule unanimously in Mr. Trump’s favor. But because of the decades of partisanship on the Supreme Court, it could easily come down to a 4-4 tie.

That would mean that Neil Gorsuch, Mr. Trump’s constitutionalist nominee to the high court, would be poised to eventually cast the deciding vote in favor of the Constitution.

This, in turn, would clearly set the stage for Mr. Trump to push through a similarly principled constitutionalist to the high court if there is another vacancy in the next four years, finally tilting the court in favor of the Constitution, the American people and the right of self-governance.

So remember, all you Democratic politicians and judicial tyrants: You are laughing now, just as you were laughing back when Mr. Trump was winning the Republican nomination.

• Charles Hurt can be reached at churt@washingtontimes.com; follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt.