Gorsuch pays off

Supreme Court upholds Trump's travel ban

The congressional GOP refused to confirm O's last nominee to save the seat for the next president, hoping Trump would win.

He did, and he put up Gorsuch, whom they quickly confirmed.

And Trump got his Muslim ban, 4 conservatives plus Kennedy to 4 liberals.

It looks like the court avoided the question whether the US constitution guarantees foreigners seeking to travel here against religious or other forms of discrimination in immigration law or policy or in policy regarding visas, accepting the administration's claim that it was all about national security and inadequate vetting of applicants in the countries affected.

That is, they accepted it was not a Muslim ban per se.

How Trump’s immigration ban threatens health care, in 3 charts

But these dissenters addressed that issue, claiming the First Amendment does apply and prohibits the ban.

Sotomayor, Ginsburg Issue Strong Dissent of Travel Ban Decision

While the court’s opinion stated the president had “sufficient national security justification” to order the travel ban, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a scorching dissent calling attention to Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric on the campaign road.

“The United States of America is a Nation built upon the promise of religious liberty,” they wrote.

"Our Founders honored that core promise by embedding the principle of religious neutrality in the First Amendment. 

"The Court’s decision today fails to safeguard that fundamental principle. 

 "It leaves undisturbed a policy first advertised openly and unequivocally as a ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States’ because the policy now masquerades behind a façade of national-security concerns.”

Rulings Are a Victory for G.O.P. Tactics on Gorsuch

The consequences of President Trump’s nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court — and the Republican blockade of President Obama’s nomination of Merrick B. Garland in 2016 for that seat — reverberated powerfully on Tuesday as the court’s conservative majority handed down major decisions on Mr. Trump’s travel ban and on abortion rights.

Social conservatives cheered the court’s ruling that a California law requiring “crisis pregnancy centers” to provide abortion information likely violates the First Amendment, their latest win to advance their anti-abortion cause since Mr. Trump has taken office. 

Some conservatives also viewed the ruling as another opportunity for them to energize their base ahead of the November elections.

. . . .

For many social conservatives, the court’s support of their anti-abortion cause justifies their decision to vote for Mr. Trump in 2016, despite widespread misgivings. 

For many liberals, the decisions underscored their worst fears about the audacious Republican tactics in 2016 to block President Obama’s more progressive nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Garland, following Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. 

The Republican majority in the Senate refused to convene a hearing or a vote on Judge Garland’s nomination, insisting that the next president should fill the seat — a highly controversial move that some legal scholars called unprecedented.