Trump passes executive order restricting immigration, in violation of the Constitution.

[Simon_Jester]

TimothyC, what would you expect a government official who genuinely believed they were being ordered to violate their oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution" in a case like this?

Do this and be ready to be canned faster than you can say "revolt" or resign.

So... basically what Yates did then, or am I missing something?

Okay.

Fire her, and preemptively pardon those conducting any of the surveillance until such time as Sessions is confirmed.[/url]

Ever since learning that the president could pardon people I've always wondered why, theoretically speaking, the president couldn't have their minions murder anyone who opposes him and then pardon them afterward.

Guess maybe I'm going to find out!

I will note that TimothyC appears to be about people who carry out foreign surveillance in the absence of an Attorney General to sign off on it. Not, apparently, about any other order.

I'm not sure if TimothyC means the type of surveillance that the US government has been doing on a routine basis for many years with the Attorney General's rubberstamp. Or if he means other surveillance of different categories of foreign persons. Or both. Or something completely different.

This is neither agreement with, nor disagreement with, his position. It is, to the best of my ability, a clarification.

Trump's incompetence here is stunning. What did he think would happen? Everyone would just go along with his power grab, even holdovers from the previous administration? He couldn't even wait until his own cronies were in place.

It's a pretty effective way to sort out the obedient from the disobedient. And to keep up a non-stop stream of outrages to make sure everyone constantly on edge and drain people's energy for the next batch.

Trump hasn't exactly lost anything and he's set a precedent that he can do things like this without consequences. Assuming he's not impeached or something. Which he won't be.

That depends. It's entirely possible that continuing to ignore court orders on his behalf will result in some of his subordinates getting arrested for contempt of court. For a guy who can't do anything directly unless his minions are willing to do it for him, that's a pretty serious consequence. Because it means every Trump appointee is going to be looking over their shoulder nervously when they carry out his instructions.

Unless he figures he can just pardon them for the contempt of court, but that then leads to more constitutional crisis and we'll have to see how that goes.

Basically, the presidential pardon does have a fairly long history of being abused for political reasons. And it has, on at least one occasion, been used by a president to protect one of his own subordinates (Scooter Libby). If Trump starts spamming pardons or pre-emptive pardons ("What has been done, has been done for the good of the state...") Well, again, that triggers more constitutional crisis, but the outcome is not obvious.

I'm pretty sure the pardon has never been used before someone was convicted of a crime, and I'm not sure it can be or that anyone would honor it if it were.

[Flagg]

This is the same guy who joked (poorly, I mean it was a South Park reference from one of their weakest episodes ever, not that that's saying much) about being "HIV Positive". I think the bar for him is pretty low.

Hey, I have nothing against him having a low bar. He can stock the cheapest liquor in his low bar in his glass house that he wants. And I won't say a word against it. I just don't recommend him throwing rocks at other people's houses and bars while doing so.

What did I ever do to you to deserve that?

[Flagg]

TimothyC, what would you expect a government official who genuinely believed they were being ordered to violate their oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution" in a case like this?

Do this and be ready to be canned faster than you can say "revolt" or resign.

So... basically what Yates did then, or am I missing something?

Okay.

Fire her, and preemptively pardon those conducting any of the surveillance until such time as Sessions is confirmed.[/url]

Ever since learning that the president could pardon people I've always wondered why, theoretically speaking, the president couldn't have their minions murder anyone who opposes him and then pardon them afterward.

Guess maybe I'm going to find out!

I will note that TimothyC appears to be about people who carry out foreign surveillance in the absence of an Attorney General to sign off on it. Not, apparently, about any other order.

I'm not sure if TimothyC means the type of surveillance that the US government has been doing on a routine basis for many years with the Attorney General's rubberstamp. Or if he means other surveillance of different categories of foreign persons. Or both. Or something completely different.

This is neither agreement with, nor disagreement with, his position. It is, to the best of my ability, a clarification.

Trump's incompetence here is stunning. What did he think would happen? Everyone would just go along with his power grab, even holdovers from the previous administration? He couldn't even wait until his own cronies were in place.

It's a pretty effective way to sort out the obedient from the disobedient. And to keep up a non-stop stream of outrages to make sure everyone constantly on edge and drain people's energy for the next batch.

Trump hasn't exactly lost anything and he's set a precedent that he can do things like this without consequences. Assuming he's not impeached or something. Which he won't be.

That depends. It's entirely possible that continuing to ignore court orders on his behalf will result in some of his subordinates getting arrested for contempt of court. For a guy who can't do anything directly unless his minions are willing to do it for him, that's a pretty serious consequence. Because it means every Trump appointee is going to be looking over their shoulder nervously when they carry out his instructions.

Unless he figures he can just pardon them for the contempt of court, but that then leads to more constitutional crisis and we'll have to see how that goes.

Basically, the presidential pardon does have a fairly long history of being abused for political reasons. And it has, on at least one occasion, been used by a president to protect one of his own subordinates (Scooter Libby). If Trump starts spamming pardons or pre-emptive pardons ("What has been done, has been done for the good of the state...") Well, again, that triggers more constitutional crisis, but the outcome is not obvious.

I'm pretty sure the pardon has never been used before someone was convicted of a crime, and I'm not sure it can be or that anyone would honor it if it were.

I give Dubya credit for not fully pardoning Scooter Libby. I fully expected him to. The commutation was bullshit, but aside from not having to spend some years in a federally funded country club, he still will have a hard time doing certain things until he gets it expunged.

As far as President Pussygrabber goes, I fully expect him to have a hotline created right next to the twitter button on his phone to pardon his minions. Hell, he may just issue blanket pardons and tell SCOTUS to fuck itself. It's not like he'd have to answer to anyone unless Congress goes Democratic (which I expect to happen to the Senate at least, due to people being revolted at the Play-Doh Cunt in Chief after 2 years) or the people wearing the decaying skin of the GOP have enough of him. But as long as he's their rubber stamp on crazy unconstitutional legislation, I think they'll put up with it.

But I think the majority of Americans will prefer a Military Coup over Donnie Douchebag in 6 months.

[Broomstick]

Trump's incompetence here is stunning. What did he think would happen? Everyone would just go along with his power grab, even holdovers from the previous administration? He couldn't even wait until his own cronies were in place. That's the level of stupid we have to deal with now. Hopefully Trump learns nothing from this and manages to kneecap his fascict lite ambitions for as long as he remains in power.

What was Trump thinking? He was thinking that he could run government exactly like one of his businesses where, indeed, employees are expected to follow orders or be fired. He's acting like an American CEO.

What did people expect?

They elected an American CEO, who is acting like an American CEO. Moreover, he's CEO with zero empathy for anyone lower on the corporate government ladder. His statement that "only" about 190 people were "inconvenienced" by his executive order displays that - he honestly seems to think it's OK to violate rights and do illegal/unconstitutional shit so long as it only affects a number of a people lower than some arbitrary number.

He is now performing a purge of uncooperative employees government officials. This potentially dangerous, because the more this occurs the fewer people in high positions will be left to oppose what should be illegal orders.

Think about that - the American government is undergoing a purge.

[Simon_Jester]

This specific person who's being kicked out, Yates, was going to get 'fired' anyway, because she's a transitional, acting attorney general. What's going to become problematic is if Trump starts just randomly firing as many federal employees as he wants at the upper, mid-, or lower levels of the government.

I'm pretty sure he's going to end up trying to do that sooner or later, so the question is, "what happens then?" At the moment, he legally can't fire civil servants as far as I can determine, but obviously there are efforts to change that in the works in the Republican congress.

This is one of the consequences of electing a man whose catch phrase is "you're fired," because of all those concerned Americans who wanted a president that would create jobs...

[Flagg]

This specific person who's being kicked out, Yates, was going to get 'fired' anyway, because she's a transitional, acting attorney general. What's going to become problematic is if Trump starts just randomly firing as many federal employees as he wants at the upper, mid-, or lower levels of the government.

I'm pretty sure he's going to end up trying to do that sooner or later, so the question is, "what happens then?" At the moment, he legally can't fire civil servants as far as I can determine, but obviously there are efforts to change that in the works in the Republican congress.

This is one of the consequences of electing a man whose catch phrase is "you're fired," because of all those concerned Americans who wanted a president that would create jobs...

(Bolding & Enlargement mine)

You mean the guy who made it "OK" to openly be a racist, misogynist, ableist, shit-chugging fuckbag? What's going to be really interesting is how all of them feel when their jobs are outsourced to China. I'm sure they'll blame Obama, just like they blamed Clinton for 9/11.

[Imperial528]

I'm sure they'll blame Obama, just like they blamed Clinton for 9/11.

You give them too much credit. A not insignificant number of them blame Obama for 9/11, and experience extreme confusion when reminded who was president when 9/11 actually happened. Undeterred, they attempt to blame Obama regardless once the confusion has successfully been strangled by their long standing cognitive dissonance.

[Flagg]

I'm sure they'll blame Obama, just like they blamed Clinton for 9/11.

You give them too much credit. A not insignificant number of them blame Obama for 9/11, and experience extreme confusion when reminded who was president when 9/11 actually happened. Undeterred, they attempt to blame Obama regardless once the confusion has successfully been strangled by their long standing cognitive dissonance.

I remember on 9/11 the liberal talk radio show had dipshit after dipshit calling in and blaming Clinton for "making us weak". These were the same people claiming that when Clinton was actively trying to kill Bin Laden with cruise missiles he was just doing it to distract from his farcical Impeachment. The trying to kill him stopped on the day Dubya was sworn in. Of course if SCOTUS hadn't illegally prevented FL from counting all the votes and Gore had become President, Clinton was going to send troops into Afghanistan.

But my favorite thing ever are the "people" who say that "We never had a terrorist attack while Bush was in office!" which is downright laughable and instantly identifies that "person" as a raving moron. Same with the chucklefucks who think 9/11 was ordered by Saddam Hussein.

[mr friendly guy]

This type of stupidity sadly isn't confined to the US. There were old white British folks saying that the UK never had terrorism until Muslims came.

I remember the IRA terror attacks and I was in Australia and a kid in primary school. It made so much international news that even here in our isolation I have heard of it. That old guy has got several decades on me, so there is no excuse.

[Kon_El]

I'm pretty sure the pardon has never been used before someone was convicted of a crime, and I'm not sure it can be or that anyone would honor it if it were.

Ford pardoned Nixon before he could be convicted of anything.

[Flagg]

I'm pretty sure the pardon has never been used before someone was convicted of a crime, and I'm not sure it can be or that anyone would honor it if it were.

Ford pardoned Nixon before he could be convicted of anything.

Yeah. The President can pardon anyone for any reason, at least theoretically. IIRC, there's never actually been a legal challenge to the Executives power to pardon whomever, whenever, or for whatever. Though that may change.

[TimothyC]

TimothyC, what would you expect a government official who genuinely believed they were being ordered to violate their oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution" in a case like this?

Do this and be ready to be canned faster than you can say "revolt" or resign.

So... basically what Yates did then, or am I missing something?

Okay.

I would have preferred that she resign herself, but the way it happened is no skin off of my back.

I will note that TimothyC appears to be about people who carry out foreign surveillance in the absence of an Attorney General to sign off on it. Not, apparently, about any other order.

I'm not sure if TimothyC means the type of surveillance that the US government has been doing on a routine basis for many years with the Attorney General's rubberstamp. Or if he means other surveillance of different categories of foreign persons. Or both. Or something completely different.

FISA Court warrants are the issue in question. They have to be signed by the AG or an Acting AG that has been confirmed by Congress (The AG, The Deputy AG, the Solicitor General, the Associate AG, or one of the Assistant AGs*). So the answer to your question of one or the other is "Yes."

*It may or may not include the Assistant AGs, as I have not reviewed the relevant parts of the US Code.

[Gandalf]

Good for her. She'll make an excellent SCOTUS appointment assuming we have elections in 4 years.

Oh, there's going to be elections. It's just that the voter rolls will have been sufficiently "cleaned up."

Thankfully for them there's been sufficient propaganda over the years to convince the GOP rank and file that fraud is endemic, and that the handful of cases are evidence of a vast liberal conspiracy.

[Zaune]

Yeah. The President can pardon anyone for any reason, at least theoretically. IIRC, there's never actually been a legal challenge to the Executives power to pardon whomever, whenever, or for whatever. Though that may change.

I'm pretty sure there's a clause somewhere in the US legal code that prevents the President taking bribes in return for doing stuff, so it's probably covered by that.

[Highlord Laan]

The issue with Trump firing the acting Attorney General isn't that the President fired her for not defending in court an order he considered to be valid.

Its that the President issued an executive order in a non-emergency situation apparently without consulting with legal staff if the order was legal. Thus point the acting Attorney General in the position to defend such a poorly drafted order in the first place.

The primary issue here is utter and complete incompetence from the Chief Executive, creating an unnescessary and far-ranging crisis.

Il Duce isn't making the policies. Bannon is.

[Beowulf]

I'm pretty sure the pardon has never been used before someone was convicted of a crime, and I'm not sure it can be or that anyone would honor it if it were.

Ford pardoned Nixon before he could be convicted of anything.

Yeah. The President can pardon anyone for any reason, at least theoretically. IIRC, there's never actually been a legal challenge to the Executives power to pardon whomever, whenever, or for whatever. Though that may change.

The flipside of a pre-emptive pardon is that the fifth amendment no longer applies. Nothing said can be used against them, therefore they can be compelled to testify. And if the idea is that Trump will tell minions to do stuff, then pardon them before they can get prosecuted, then they can be called before Congress in impeachment proceedings. You might go "But Congress is full of Republicans!" but that probably won't matter if the above starts happening. After all, there's always Pence. Or the Speaker of the House.

That might explain why he issued this edict on Holocaust Remembrance Day while not mentioning Jews for that either.

I've seen no actual evidence for this claim.

Which part? There is no exception for jews in the order, and the holocaust remembrance declaration did omit jews. This is a matter of public record at this point, would you like the text, or are you smart enough to look them up?

As for the inference...well... that is an inference.

I don't see Christians being singled out for special processing, but rather minority religion. So, any evidence that it's specifically Christian refugees that get priority, and Jews don't count?

[Simon_Jester]

I'm pretty sure the pardon has never been used before someone was convicted of a crime, and I'm not sure it can be or that anyone would honor it if it were.

Ford pardoned Nixon before he could be convicted of anything.

Hm. Point.

There's one catch. This was done after Nixon had resigned, an unprecedented action for a president. So while Nixon avoided jail time, he did not get to remain in office as though nothing had gone wrong. So it was accepted as a compromise move by many Americans from both parties- the crook did not remain in office.

Here, we're basically talking about Trump pre-emptively empowering his agents to completely ignore the law and giving them immunity from the laws they'd be breaking by following his orders. That is a whole new level of bad, from the point of view of someone who likes living in a republic with a constitution.

The issue with Trump firing the acting Attorney General isn't that the President fired her for not defending in court an order he considered to be valid.

Its that the President issued an executive order in a non-emergency situation apparently without consulting with legal staff if the order was legal. Thus point the acting Attorney General in the position to defend such a poorly drafted order in the first place.

The primary issue here is utter and complete incompetence from the Chief Executive, creating an unnescessary and far-ranging crisis.

Il Duce isn't making the policies. Bannon is.

I'd bet on them taking turns. Bannon gets to make 'helpful suggestions' that amount to setting policy. But nobody can stay a 'trusted advisor' to a man like Trumpolini for long, if he doesn't spend a lot of time pushing the guy in directions that he's already going.

The flipside of a pre-emptive pardon is that the fifth amendment no longer applies. Nothing said can be used against them, therefore they can be compelled to testify. And if the idea is that Trump will tell minions to do stuff, then pardon them before they can get prosecuted, then they can be called before Congress in impeachment proceedings. You might go "But Congress is full of Republicans!" but that probably won't matter if the above starts happening. After all, there's always Pence. Or the Speaker of the House.

Yeah. The trigger for impeachment is "when will roughly 30-40% of Republicans in Congress decide they'd rather replace Trump with Pence, at the cost of breaking party unity by supporting impeachment of a man from their own party?"

Of course, even THAT trigger may never fire. Because if Republican office-holders had any significant scruples about signing on to do whatever Trump wants, then he wouldn't have made it to the White House in the first place.

[Flagg]

Ford pardoned Nixon before he could be convicted of anything.

Yeah. The President can pardon anyone for any reason, at least theoretically. IIRC, there's never actually been a legal challenge to the Executives power to pardon whomever, whenever, or for whatever. Though that may change.

The flipside of a pre-emptive pardon is that the fifth amendment no longer applies. Nothing said can be used against them, therefore they can be compelled to testify. And if the idea is that Trump will tell minions to do stuff, then pardon them before they can get prosecuted, then they can be called before Congress in impeachment proceedings. You might go "But Congress is full of Republicans!" but that probably won't matter if the above starts happening. After all, there's always Pence. Or the Speaker of the House.

Yeah, but that doesn't contradict what I said, it just points out the stupidity of doing it. And since I have a devious mind, the Executive could easily issue pardons for perjury. I mean like I said, to my knowledge there is no limit on Presidential pardons and it's never gone before a court, let alone SCOTUS. Which again, doing so is incredibly stupid politically, but theoretically it could be done as far as I'm aware.

[Terralthra]

I've seen no actual evidence for this claim.

Which part? There is no exception for jews in the order, and the holocaust remembrance declaration did omit jews. This is a matter of public record at this point, would you like the text, or are you smart enough to look them up?

As for the inference...well... that is an inference.

I don't see Christians being singled out for special processing, but rather minority religion. So, any evidence that it's specifically Christian refugees that get priority, and Jews don't count?

BRODY: "Persecuted Christians, we've talked about this, the refugees overseas. The refugee program, or the refugee changes you're looking to make. As it relates to persecuted Christians, do you see them as kind of a priority here?"
TRUMP: "Yes."
BRODY: "You do?"
TRUMP: "They've been horribly treated. Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them."

[Beowulf]

Which part? There is no exception for jews in the order, and the holocaust remembrance declaration did omit jews. This is a matter of public record at this point, would you like the text, or are you smart enough to look them up?

As for the inference...well... that is an inference.

I don't see Christians being singled out for special processing, but rather minority religion. So, any evidence that it's specifically Christian refugees that get priority, and Jews don't count?

BRODY: "Persecuted Christians, we've talked about this, the refugees overseas. The refugee program, or the refugee changes you're looking to make. As it relates to persecuted Christians, do you see them as kind of a priority here?"
TRUMP: "Yes."
BRODY: "You do?"
TRUMP: "They've been horribly treated. Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them."

Congrats. Christians do get special treatment, as a member of a minority religion. How does mean that Jews don't? We've got the text earlier in this thread. It doesn't mention Christians. It mentions members of minority religions. So again, where do you get that Jews don't count?

[Terralthra]

As has been said before, inference from the fact that Mr. Trump talked explicitly about making things easier for and helping Christians, and from the fact that the Holocaust Remembrance Day statement made literally no mention of Judaism or Jews. Immigrant detainees over the past 4 days have reported they were asked if they were Christian, not if they were Jewish. If you're waiting for these assholes to come out and say "Jews aren't welcome", you're going to be waiting a while, because they've gotten smarter than to say such things out loud. There will simply coincidentally be very few Jewish refugees approved, while Christian refugees are approved in much larger numbers.

[The Jester]

Stay consistent, Republicans.

[Gerald Tarrant]

As has been said before, inference from the fact that Mr. Trump talked explicitly about making things easier for and helping Christians, and from the fact that the Holocaust Remembrance Day statement made literally no mention of Judaism or Jews. Immigrant detainees over the past 4 days have reported they were asked if they were Christian, not if they were Jewish. If you're waiting for these assholes to come out and say "Jews aren't welcome", you're going to be waiting a while, because they've gotten smarter than to say such things out loud. There will simply coincidentally be very few Jewish refugees approved, while Christian refugees are approved in much larger numbers.

I count three mentions of Jews in President Trump's remarks

“It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.

Unless it's your argument that no Jews fit in the category of victim, survivor, or hero, in which case fuck you. There has been a long-standing tradition of giving special mention to their losses during the holocaust, I personally thought we ought to continue that practice, but a bad rhetorical device doesn't make Trump a Secret Anti-Semite.

Additionally, fuck you're stupid. Israel has a long standing policy of all Jews being welcome, the "Law of Return", there's some quibbles on who counts and who doesn't, but the upshot is Jewish refugees have a country that will gladly welcome them. Personally I'm upset that the Yezidis don't get special refugee consideration, the shit ISIS did and is doing to them is awful. But it makes perfect sense to protect a minority religion from an oppressive semi-state that's targeting people for their religion. Shiite's have a place to go in the Mid-East, away from ISIS towards Shiite dominated areas in the south of Iraq, Yezidis don't, and Christians don't, unless someone founded a new Christian state when I wasn't looking. It's callous and stupid, and the arbitrary caps that President Obama instituted on refugees (which President Trump hasn't chosen to raise) are stupidly low. If the caps were raised that would be ideal, in the absence of that; a decision to pick the refugees most likely to face persecution is just triage. I've read stories about ISIS imposing the jizya tax, so the organized targeting of Christians by ISIS seems plausible, there's an argument to be made that they're facing worse danger as a result of their faith.

Next, Jared Kushner President Trump' s son in law is an Orthodox Jew, grandson of holocaust survivors. Ivanka converted. If President Trump is a secret anti-Semite he's done a very bad job of it. His grandkids are Jewish (religiously, and if anyone cares about how Jewish by blood then Fuck them).

Next, the following

''So the Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep.''

Feb 2000, Donald Trump dropping out of the reform party presidential race. Link

“I don’t need his endorsement,” Trump told Bloomberg TV of Duke’s praise. “I certainly wouldn’t want his endorsement. I don’t need anybody’s endorsement.”

/link

Restricting immigration as a policy predates Donald Trump, the Executive Order Trump signed is a more stringent version of a bill which was attempted in 2015 Link. Sometimes bad policy happens regardless of whether or not someone is a racist. Also before you list this bill as discriminating against Muslims, a reminder that Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country and is not on the list of restricted countries.

[Simon_Jester]

Funny, Trump seemed relatively happy to keep the company of Klansmen and Neo-Nazis when they were supporting a presidential bid with better chances at success sixteen years later... I think what it comes down to is that if he has private opinions they don't matter, because he's willing to throw anyone to the pack of dogs he uses as a core support base.

This bill does, very blatantly, discriminate against Muslims. It doesn't exclude Muslims from every country in the world, but it certainly excludes the Muslims coming from the countries people are fleeing. There isn't a flood of Muslim refugees pouring out of Indonesia any more than there is a flood of refugee unicorns pouring out of La-La Land. There ARE such refugees coming out of Syria and Iraq, some of them people who have aided the United States in the past.

And telling them that they are summarily banned from entering the US because they aren't Christians (or maybe Jews) is utterly blatant discrimination.

Furthermore, in addition to being discrimination, we have examples of Muslims from these countries being detained without evidence and not allowed to speak to a lawyer. This is why there's a court order out against Trump's executive order in the first place. The thing I want to bring to your attention here is... Why is this his first resort? If he cares about people's rights, his actions make no sense. If he cares about securing America, well, he's not really accomplishing much of anything with this kind of action. What interests and agenda are served here except something along the lines of "fuck you and fuck your Constitution, I do what I want?"

[Dragon Angel]

But it makes perfect sense to protect a minority religion from an oppressive semi-state that's targeting people for their religion. Shiite's have a place to go in the Mid-East, away from ISIS towards Shiite dominated areas in the south of Iraq, Yezidis don't, and Christians don't, unless someone founded a new Christian state when I wasn't looking. It's callous and stupid, and the arbitrary caps that President Obama instituted on refugees (which President Trump hasn't chosen to raise) are stupidly low. If the caps were raised that would be ideal, in the absence of that; a decision to pick the refugees most likely to face persecution is just triage. I've read stories about ISIS imposing the jizya tax, so the organized targeting of Christians by ISIS seems plausible, there's an argument to be made that they're facing worse danger as a result of their faith.

The cap was lowered per Trump's executive order. So, in fact, Trump has worsened your little triage situation. How unfortunate then, that Christians exclusively will have the opportunity to take up those "stupidly lower" slots.

Also, are you implying the United States is a Christian state or supposed to be a Christian state? Your statement would only make sense if the United States fit that category, as opposed to a nation where many religions converge into one body. Your "triage" is still a violation of the First Amendment and it's awfully convenient that Christians will get to take up all those stupidly low slots.