‘Little more than a bait and switch’: Trump admin bashed for trying to ‘avoid’ court order with ‘meaningless’ rescission in lawsuit targeting federal spending freeze

Donald Trump throws sign pens to a crowd.

FILE – President Donald Trump throws pens used to sign executive orders to the crowd during an indoor Presidential Inauguration parade event in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025 (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File).

A federal appeals court in California on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration’s request to allow the government to implement and enforce President Donald Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship.

A three-judge panel on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined an emergency motion from the administration seeking a partial stay of a lower court’s nationwide injunction on the measure, writing that the Justice Department had “not made a strong showing that [they are] likely to succeed on the merits” of the appeal. The panel ordered the case to remain on schedule with arguments slated to take place in June.

The appeal came in response to Seattle-based U.S. District John Coughenour last week issuing a second nationwide injunction halting the citizenship ban in a case brought by Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon. This injunction followed Coughenour’s issuance of a temporary restraining order issued in late January — the first court order to bar the policy.

“Citizenship by birth is an unequivocal Constitutional right,” the injunction reads. “It is one of the precious principles that makes the United States the great nation that it is. The President cannot change, limit, or qualify this Constitutional right via an executive order.”

U.S. Circuit Judge Danielle J. Forrest, who was appointed to the court by Trump during his first term, penned a concurring opinion defending the panel’s decision not to intervene. Forrest reasoned that the administration failed to show that it was entitled to emergency relief because there was no showing that “irreparable harm will occur immediately” without such relief, emphasizing that the executive order would drastically change the understanding of U.S. citizenship.

“Here, the Government has not shown that it is entitled to immediate relief,” she wrote. “Its sole basis for seeking emergency action from this court is that ‘[t]he district court has … stymied the implementation of an Executive Branch policy … nationwide for almost three weeks.’ That alone is insufficient. It is routine for both executive and legislative policies to be challenged in court, particularly where a new policy is a significant shift from prior understanding and practice.”

Forrest went on to point out that when the judiciary halts a policy advanced by another branch of government, it may be controversial, but “an emergency, not necessarily.”

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