While Trump's stupid Muslim ban is morally repugnant and self-defeating, it's also really bad for business.
A broad group of the nation's largest tech companies have filed an amicus brief with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to support the state of Washington in their lawsuit against Trump's Muslim ban.
According to these companies, Trump's ban "disrupts ongoing business operations."
On Sunday night, technology giants Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Uber and many others filed a legal brief opposing the administration’s contentious entry ban, according to people familiar with the matter. [...]
Companies backing the filing also include Lyft, Pinterest, Yelp, Square, Reddit, Kickstarter, Github, Glassdoor, Box, Mozilla, Dropbox, Twilio, Zynga, Medium, Pinterest, and Salesforce, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the filing was still being finalized Sunday. [...]
"The Order represents a significant departure from the principles of fairness and predictability that have governed the immigration system of the United States for more than fifty years ...," the brief said. "The Order makes it more difficult and expensive for U.S. companies to recruit, hire, and retain some of the world’s best employees. It disrupts ongoing business operations. And it threatens companies’ ability to attract talent, business, and investment to the United States."
It's remarkable that opponents of Trump's ban are arguing that it harms the public interest because lawyers representing the Trump regime are arguing that blocking the ban harms the public.
You almost certainly don't need me to tell you which argument is going to hold up in court. On one hand, there's a mountain of evidence that Trump's ban is harmful to the public interest and, on the other hand, there's absolutely no evidence to support his ban in the context that government lawyers are arguing.
The key flaw of Trump's ban may be the fact that it names specific countries that should be targeted, because no terrorist attacks since 9/11 have been carried out by anyone who fled, immigrated, or traveled from those countries. Trump's ban didn't even include the host countries of the 9/11 attackers who were predominately Saudi. And not-coincidentally, Trump's ban also doesn't include any country that he does business in.
Another wrinkle in the Trump regime's argument is Rudy Giuliani and his big stupid mouth. Giuliani, who helped draft Trump's order, openly admitted on national television that creating a list of specific countries to ban was their way of crafting a Muslim ban in all but name. Giuliani's admission has been used in several federal court filings.
It's not impossible that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will rule in favor of the Trump regime, but it's difficult to imagine they will.
Trump's ban isn't just legally dubious and morally wrong, the people arguing in favor of it are also morons. The state of Washington and the above mentioned tech companies have much better lawyers than the White House does now, for better or worse.
The only lawyers willing to work for Trump and the GOP are bad at their jobs, they rely almost solely on the rulings of conservative crank judges like those who sit on the bench in Texas. This has been true for many years. Republicans filed almost all of their challenges of President Obama in Texas for this very reason. Their legal arguments are bad.
The party that almost entirely depends on so-called "activist judges" is going to do a lot of whining in the near future.