WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump has launched an assault on the independence of the judiciary, accusing federal judges of playing politics by suspending his travel ban and suggesting they risk national security by restricting his ability to block visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries.
He punctuated a flurry of tweets and statements in recent days with a high-profile speech Wednesday that marked an escalation of the president's use of the bully pulpit, with Trump attacking judges personally.
"If these judges wanted to, in my opinion, help the court, in terms of respect for the court, they do what they should be doing," Trump said, coaxing judges to rule in his favor with a typically free-form remark to a gathering of police chiefs in Washington.
He put on a highly public show of trying to sway the judges as well as public opinion. He read aloud 73 words of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which lays out the president's capacity to stop legal entry into the U.S. in times of crisis, in arguing that the law gives him expansive power to block foreigners.
"A bad high school student would understand this," Trump said.
Trump's aggressive approach suggested he is uncertain about his prospects of winning the current case and is trying to fight back outside the courtroom.
"It's a sad day," Trump said. "I think our security is at risk today, and it will be at risk until we get what we are entitled to."
He said he had listened Tuesday night to a broadcast of the arguments before judges from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and pronounced the proceedings "disgraceful."
The three-judge panel will decide whether to strike down or uphold a lower-court ruling suspending the enforcement of Trump's travel ban. Several courts around the country blocked aspects of Trump's order, but the ruling from a federal judge in Seattle on Friday halted the directive entirely.
When U.S. District Judge James L. Robart, an appointee of President George W. Bush, ruled in favor of the states suing Trump over the order, Washington and Minnesota, he pointed to a 2015 appeals court decision that blocked President Barack Obama's attempt to expand protections from deportation for some people in the U.S. illegally. That decision upheld that the judiciary can limit executive power.
Obama himself took heat when, during his 2010 State of the Union address, he criticized the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision allowing unions and corporations to give more freely to political causes. As Obama spoke to Congress, Justice Samuel Alito shook his head, and mouthed the words: "not true."
Trump, however, made his criticisms far more personal.
The day Robart issued his order, Trump called him a "so-called judge" on Twitter and said the ruling "essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!"
"Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!" Trump wrote the next day.
"If the U.S. does not win this case as it so obviously should, we can never have the security and safety to which we are entitled. Politics!" Trump tweeted earlier Wednesday.
He also called the court decision suspending his ban "horrible, dangerous and wrong."
Civil liberties advocates and Democrats have argued that Trump's travel ban unfairly blocks entry for Muslims, as he promised during the campaign. They see that as a violation of the constitutional restriction on the government favoring one religion over another.
