The third time wasn’t the charm for the Trump administration’s travel ban, which was temporarily halted by a federal judge in Hawaii Tuesday.Judge Derrick K. Watson, one of two federal judges to halt the administration’s previous travel ban, didn’t rule on the policy’s constitutionality, instead holding that the latest ban oversteps the president’s statutory authority to set immigration policy and “plainly discriminates based on nationality” without providing compelling reasons to do so.The policy, he wrote, “suffers from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor: it lacks sufficient findings that the entry of more than 150 million nationals from six specified countries would be ‘detrimental to the interests of the United States.’”The Trump administration established the new ban, which would’ve gone into effect Wednesday morning, and would have set permanent limits on almost all travel from Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia, North Korea, and Venezuela.“Today’s dangerously flawed district court order undercuts the President’s efforts to keep the American people safe and enforce minimum security standards for entry into the United States,” the White House said in a statement. The Department of Justice will appeal the ruling.The suit in Hawaii only covers the six Muslim-majority countries on that list, and doesn’t include North Korea or Venezuela.It’s not the first time Watson has been a thorn in the side of the president. In March, the judge issued a temporary nationwide restraining order of the administration’s second travel ban, which was headed for a full test in the Supreme Court, until Trump announced his third version in September.The first phase of the ban met resistance in Hawaii too. The state challenged the policy, though arguments over the policy were cancelled following a federal ruling in Washington state that had halted the administration’s first travel ban.
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