How to Watch Trump’s Defense of Travel Ban on TV
Federal appeals court hearing arguments
A second federal appeals court will hear arguments Monday over whether the Trump administration should be able to implement its revised travel ban, this time with an expected audience of millions watching via live video stream.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit hears one hour of arguments on the case starting at 12:30 p.m. ET in a Seattle courtroom. Interested viewers can tune in via the court’s live stream or on C-SPAN’s website.
Fox News, CNN News, NBC News Washington, ABC News and CBS Network News have also received permission to broadcast the proceedings live.
The appeals court will consider a March order from U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson, who sided with the state of Hawaii and barred the Trump administration from stopping the issuance of new visas from the predominantly Muslim countries of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Trump’s controversial executive order, which he revised to address legal concerns, also would temporarily stop all refugees from entering the United States.
Hawaii says the ban unconstitutionally targets Muslims. Watson pointed to statements from President Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign and statements from other administration officials to conclude the ban was adopted in a context “full of religious animus, invective, and obvious pretext.”
In that way, the arguments in the 9th Circuit will feature comments from Trump and his administration. This was also a major theme at oral arguments last week in Richmond, Va., where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit heard a separate legal challenge to Trump’s executive order.
In the 4th Circuit case, the Justice Department argued that judges should not consider Trump’s campaign statements but look only to the text of the revised ban, which cites national security reasoning and makes no mention of religion. And the government argued that courts should respect the political branches of government when it comes to national security decisions.
The three judges randomly assigned to hear the 9th Circuit case — Michael D. Hawkins, Ronald M. Gould and Richard A. Paez — were all appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton.
The revised ban, signed by Trump on March 6, was a response to the botched rollout of the initial executive order in January that sparked protests around the world and lawsuits. It is more limited in scope, dropping travelers from Iraq as one of the affected majority-Muslim countries.