Beep beep
Trump is pining to break up the Ninth Circuit.
President Donald Trump is threatening to break up the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which blocked his executive order banning travel from several nations with large Muslim populations and restricted the acceptance of refugees.
Asked by the Washington Examiner if he had considered proposals to split the court, Trump replied: “Absolutely, I have.”
“There are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit. It’s outrageous,” Trump told the website. “Everybody immediately runs to the 9th Circuit. And we have a big country. We have lots of other locations. But they immediately run to the 9th Circuit. Because they know that’s like, semi-automatic.”
Trump claimed that those who oppose him are “shopping” for sympathetic judges by going to the 9th Circuit, where 18 of the 25 jurists were appointed by Democratic presidents.
“You see judge-shopping, or what’s gone on with these people, they immediately run to the 9th Circuit,” he said. “It’s got close to an 80 percent reversal period, and what’s going on in the 9th Circuit is a shame.”
Anything that impedes Trump’s ability to say “do it” and have it be done is “a shame” in his eyes. He thinks he’s the boss of all the things.
The statistic Trump cited about the appeals court’s rulings being overturned 80 percent of the time was also misleading.
According to The Washington Post, 80 percent of the 9th Circuit decisions taken up by the Supreme Court were reversed in 2015-2016. Yet only one-tenth of 1 percent of the 9th Circuit’s decisions were heard by the Supreme Court. In addition, other circuit courts had even higher reversal rates.
That’s not “misleading,” it’s wildly wrong. The difference between 80% of decisions and 80% of .01% of decisions is an enormous difference.
It’s an odd thing about Trump that his own ignorance seems never to give him pause, no matter what. I don’t understand that. You’d think that he would, being so vain, be careful not to expose himself to the risk of being shown up by trying to do things he’s not equipped to do.
But maybe to him it’s all like driving the big truck. You just sit in the seat and blow the horn and scream, and that’s all it takes.
Splitting the Ninth is such a non-solution (for a non-problem) though. Those liberal justices will end up in one circuit or the other, and most likely the circuit that includes California will have most of them. To the extent that anyone is “judge shopping” they will still know which circuit to go to.
Trump can’t even game the system correctly, no wonder his casinos failed.
Aha, so that’s why he has all those chips on his shoulder.
Also, one has to wonder if he thinks the 9th circuit is like the shorter golf round? Tee he — that’s him.
All fun and games until it’s not.