A federal judge once again cites Trump’s tweets in blocking Trump’s latest travel ban

A federal judge in Hawaii blocked President Donald Trump’s latest travel ban, which sought to permanently bar people from eight countries from entering the United States, Politico reported.

The new travel ban — which is stricter than the initial ban that only temporarily banned travel — was scheduled to take effect Wednesday.

It sought to restrict most citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea from traveling to the U.S. It also blocked some Venezuelan government officials from traveling to the U.S.

In his decision to block the ban, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson said the ban, “suffers from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor.”

He also cited Trump’s tweets about the ban as evidence that the ban is discriminatory.

Watson said the latest travel ban, “plainly discriminates based on nationality in the manner that the Ninth Circuit has found antithetical to ... the founding principles of this nation.”

This is not the first time Watson has blocked a Trump travel ban. The judge blocked a previous Trump travel ban back in March, penning a scathing decision that alleged the ban was intended to “disfavor” Muslims, leading to a rebuke from Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

It’s also not the first time Trump’s Twitter has played into a judge’s decision to block the travel ban. In June, a California judge cited the president’s tweets in a ruling that declined to reinstate the ban.