Two federal judges blocked the Trump administration's revised travel ban, and they're using President Donald Trump's own words to do it.
On Wednesday evening, a judge in Hawaii halted the new executive order nationwide, citing religious discrimination.
The judge called the government's defense of the travel ban "palpable." He wrote any "reasonable, objective observer" would see the primary purpose of the order as a temporary Muslim ban, as Trump had called it during the campaign.
Later, a judge in Maryland issued a separate block specifically targeting the 90-day ban on immigration from six Muslim-majority countries.
He also cited Trump's "Muslim ban" rhetoric during the campaign cycle as a reason for his decision.
In his opinion, Maryland Judge Theodore D. Chuang wrote, "The travel ban bears no resemblance to any response to a national security risk in recent history, it bears a clear resemblance to the precise action that President Trump described as effectuating his Muslim ban."
At a campaign rally in December 2015, Trump said, "Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."
The Maryland judge argued Trump's repeated statements show national security "is not the primary purpose for the travel ban."
During a rally in Nashville on Wednesday evening, Trump called the second executive order a "watered-down version of the first."
"The best way to keep foreign terrorists — or as some people would say, in certain instances, 'radical Islamic terrorists' — from attacking our country is to stop them from entering our country in the first place," Trump said.
Since 9/11, no citizen of any country in the ban has carried out a deadly terror attack on U.S. soil.
Trump pledged to take the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court.
