The list of evidence-free claims from President Trump and his administration is long and growing. “Millions” of people voted illegally. Inauguration turnout was the “biggest ever.” All negative polls are “fake news.”
Trump’s defiance might work well as political theater, and there’s no denying that it made for an effective presidential campaign. But as a legal strategy, it’s already hitting roadblocks. The first came last week, when a federal judge froze his controversial executive order shutting U.S. borders to refugees and migrants from seven mostly Muslim countries. But the real blow came Thursday, when an appeals court upheld that freeze. In a unanimous opinion, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit found that the government had failed to show why the travel ban needed to be immediately reinstated. To arrive at that decision, the appeals court did something close to what fact-checkers, journalists, scholars and others do every day when Trump and his surrogates make extraordinary claims: It demanded extraordinary evidence — or at least some evidence — for the administration’s arguments.
