Vox Sentences: SEE YOU IN COURT (again)

West Coast court cases make for West Coast–timed Sentences.

Unanimous

Joshua Lott/AFP/Getty Images

• In a unanimous ruling issued Thursday night, a panel of three judges for the Ninth Circuit rejected the Trump administration's request to stay a previous court order over the president's refugee and visa ban. [Vox / Dara Lind]
• The ruling means the ban will be kept on hold for a couple of weeks, and quite possibly longer.
• The Ninth Circuit didn't rule on the constitutionality of the executive order. But it did issue a couple of pretty thorough rebukes to the way the Trump administration has defended it in court. [Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals]
• Most notably — in a passage that's hard not to read as a subtweet of the president's Twitter attacks on the judicial branch — they reminded the Trump administration that “It is the role of the judiciary to interpret the law.” [Vox / Dara Lind]
• The president's response was, predictably, not pleased, delivered via Twitter, and written in all caps: "SEE YOU IN COURT!" [President Donald J. Trump via Twitter]
• What's next for the court case is a little tricky. The administration can ask the Supreme Court to grant the stay the Ninth Circuit wouldn't — but it's unlikely. [Ian Samuel via Twitter]
• Meanwhile, the lower court is still considering whether to issue a longer-term injunction. But given what the lower court and the Ninth Circuit have said already (and how liberal the circuit is), the prospect for the Trump administration is not looking good. [Slate / Mark Joseph Stern]
• The administration's best hope would probably be that by the time the case comes up for full review by the Supreme Court, nominee Neil Gorsuch has been seated. But Gorsuch has not always been deferential to the executive branch when it comes to immigration. [Reason / Jacob Sullum]

"Hold on..."

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

• President Trump reportedly paused a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin to ask aides what the New START nuclear arms treaty was. [Reuters / Jonathan Landay and David Rohde]
• The White House disputes this characterization, saying Trump was just asking for an opinion on the treaty (which he proceeded to tell Putin was a bad deal). [AP]
• This is hardly reassuring. For one thing, that opinion would appear to contradict Trump's (admittedly inconsistent) prior positions on nuclear proliferation. [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]
• More alarmingly, though, it's just the latest in what's become a series of phone calls to world leaders in which Trump has been unbriefed and ill-prepared, and, generally, talking more like a politician at a rally (or in an interview) than a diplomat making deals. [Politico / Tara Palmeri, Kenneth P. Vogel, Josh Dawsey, and Nahal Toosi]
• The most alarming thing about these calls is that the public knows so much about them. It's an indication that people within Trump's White House are so surprised by his behavior that they're leaking evidence that makes him seem unfit to serve. [Huffington Post / S.V. Date and Christina Wilkie]
• There is, as it happens, a constitutional amendment that provides for this possibility. But it's not something to be floated lightly — there's a fine line between taking over for a president who's genuinely incapacitated, and a Cabinet coup. [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

Blue Lives Matter, signed, Donald Trump

Andrew Katz/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

• President Donald Trump signed three executive orders Thursday, all pertaining to crime in America. Except ... they didn’t change any laws or create new policies. Instead, it seems to be a lot of signaling before Trump actually makes a push on his “tough on crime” agenda. [Vox / German Lopez]
• The three orders all make various demands to Attorney General Jeff Sessions (sworn in Thursday) and federal agencies to set up task forces to report back on crime, anti-police violence, and international drug cartels. [Wall Street Journal / Carol E. Lee and Aruna Viswanatha]
• Sessions was a welcomed attorney general pick for law enforcement; the Fraternal Order of Police testified in support at his nomination hearing. It's not too surprising — law enforcement as a whole has been a strong part of the Trump coalition, and Trump has been quick to take on the "Blue Lives Matter" mantle. [Vox / Dara Lind]
• The orders could end up being helpful to criminal justice wonks and crime reformers. Among other things, they ask for a review of federal crime data — and there's a lot that can be done to improve federal crime data. [The Marshall Project / Tom Meagher]
• But it's hard to imagine the Trump administration will do much to improve crime data when it has an occasionally casual relationship with the data it already has. AG Sessions confidently predicted that a recent uptick in murders is "permanent"; President Trump continues to claim, erroneously, that the murder rate is at a 45-year-high. [Vox / German Lopez]

Miscellaneous

• The odd rise of our newest senator, Luther Strange, whose real name on legal documents is "Luther Strange." [The Atlantic / Russell Berman]
• Microbreweries in North Korea: They exist. [Wired / Ian Steadman]
• W.E.B. Du Bois made some gorgeous full-color infographics on black communities in Georgia in 1900. [Public Domain Review]
• Why some keyboards are louder than others, explained. [Gizmodo]
• Reminder: There's literally zero evidence that immigration increases crime, and it could in fact suppress it. [The Conversation]

Verbatim

• "I've always said the only way to change anyone's opinion is to make him laugh first. It still is." [John Waters to The Ringer / Alan Siegel]
• "The restaurants offer turkey burgers, which one of his marketing executives calls 'food for women.'" [Bloomberg Businessweek / Susan Berfield and Craig Giammona]
• "I hate Duke with an infernal passion undying. I hate every leaf of every tree on that sickening campus. I hate every fake cherub Gothic piece of crap that litters the buildings like hemorrhoidal testaments to imagined superiority." [The Daily Tar Heel / Ian Williams]
• "Cory was a brand-new intern with Universal Music Group, and it had been her job to put the disco ball together earlier that morning, audio player inside, then babysit it all day long, taking photos of people listening to 'Chained To the Rhythm' and sharing them accordingly on social media. She explained apologetically that she had been at Dolores Park earlier, until an officer from San Francisco Rec and Park came by and asked if she had a permit. She did not. He directed her to unchain the rhythm, so to speak, and move on." [KQED / Emma Silvers]
• "A Labour source said, 'It's perfectly simple. We are in favour of Britain leaving the EU because that's what people voted for, and we're trying to win back the trust of the British people, but we also want to make clear that a lot of us think it's going to be a disaster and that although we're voting for it because the British people want us to we also want to make clear that if it is a disaster we wanted them not to do it, although not enough that we were willing to vote against it, because we want people to trust us and see that we are willing to do something we think is not in their best interest to prove that we have their best interest at heart and should be put in charge of the country. Clear?'" [Private Eye via Alex Massie]

Watch this: Do I have ADHD?

Google can’t tell if you have ADHD or not. [YouTube / Dion Lee]

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