On Thursday's New Day, during a panel discussion of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that is a victory for the Trump administration, CNN regulars fretted about the Supreme Court's willingness to hear the case more quickly than usual. CNN legal analyst Laura Coates even twice called the speed of the ruling "ridiculous,"
At 6:15 a.m. .Eastern, co-host Alisyn Camerota set up the segment: "It's a big legal victory for President Trump. The Court allowing the President to drastically limit the ability of Central American migrants to claim asylum in the United States."
After bringing in her panel, she added:
This is a big win. This is what President Trump had wanted. He wanted them -- if you're transiting through a different country -- say, Mexico -- then not to be able to apply for asylum once you get to the U,S. This is what he was referring to many months ago when he said basically, 'Why do we have to take migrants from blank-hole countries?" El Salvador was one of them that he was referring to, and the Supreme Court has, it sounds like, agreed.
Coates soon recalled that the case had "sidestepped" the normal appellate process and gone to the U.S. Supreme Court more quickly than normal, and soon recalled a comment from liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissenting opinion, which the CNN analyst praised as "great." Here was Coates:
Sotomayor had a great dissent. And I know you and me were talking about this in the green room, John (Berman), about this, the notion that she's saying, 'Hold on a second -- are we really not going to have a judicial process? You're going to be able to come to us whenever you don't get decisions you like?"
After senior political analyst John Avlon commented that the Court has "reversed four decades of U.S. policy as well as the spirit of America's opening to refugees," co-host John Berman stated that ruling would be more effective than a wall in cutting down the number of immigrants entering the U.S. to seek asylum:
This is a huge policy change. This will effect tens of thousands of people. This will fundamentally -- you know, you talk about a wall -- a wall will do nothing compared to what this change will do legally. It means tens of thousands of people who would be coming to the border to seek asylum would not be allowed in the United States. Now, you could argue whether it's good or bad, but this is a huge shift that will take place immediately.
Avlon complained about President Trump "fearmongering" about illegal immigration as he jumped in: "Yeah, and it's designed to really stop the caravans that he's been, you know, fearmongering about in cohort with folks in the conservative movement."
Berman added: "And it's counter to 200 years of U.S. history -- how it's been treated in the past."
Avlon jumped back in to boast of the Emma Lazarus poem at the Statue of Liberty as if it's the Constitution (versus the real one): "That's my point. This is the Statue of Liberty Emma Lazarus poem, you know, that's got a sticker slapped on it."
Camerota asked if it was "unusual" for the Supreme Court to hear such a case so quickly, leading Coates to respond: "It's highly unusual, which is what Sonia Sotomayor talked about. This is not the precedent that should be set, nor should it be."
She soon added:
So the Supreme Court now takes cases that haven't even fully briefed, and no one has decided below. Well, that's more than novel, it's ridiculous. And the Ninth Circuit already said, 'We hear you, Mr. President. We're going to limit our injunction to just the Ninth Circuit, which wouldn't even have included Texas. It wouldn't even include another state. And so this is ridiculous, and she pointed it out.
