Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
27.07.2023 - 18:26 / smartertravel.com / Tim Winship
Just hours before it was to take effect, the Trump administration’s revised travel ban was blocked by a federal judge in Hawaii. A second judge, in Maryland, followed suit.
Of the two court orders, Hawaii’s (full text here) is the broader, arguing that the Trump ban discriminates on the basis of nationality and, separately, that it would harm the state’s tourism industry.
The Hawaii judge’s ruling made extensive reference to candidate and President Trump’s repeated characterizations of the ban as based first and foremost on religion. An example, from a December news release on donaldtrump.com: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” That violates the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from discriminating, positively or negatively, on the basis of religion.
Related:Who Has the Newest Planes? (And Does Anyone Care?)The travel ban is also under review by a court in Washington state.
The ban, which affects citizens of six mostly Muslim countries, is the administration’s second attempt to craft a policy that passed muster with the country’s legal community. The first version was blocked by a federal court in Seattle in January. The new version removed Iraq from the list of affected countries, exempted green-card and visa holders, and removed language favoring Christians. But it remains, according to the Hawaii and Maryland courts, a policy of religious discrimination at its core.
The court rulings are temporary restraining orders, which require further hearings to be extended. The Justice department is expected to appeal.
Reader Reality Check
Would a travel ban, as envisioned by Trump, make America safer?
More from SmarterTravel: Free Coach Meals on American’s Transcontinental Flights. Yay Is Any Rewards Card Worth a $550 Annual Fee? Travel Hackers Beware, American Express Has Its Eyes on YouAfter 20 years working in the travel industry, and 15 years writing about it, Tim Winship knows a thing or two about travel. Follow him on Twitter @twinship.
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Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
With no sign of relief in sight, the TSA’s inability to effectively and efficiently manage airport security screening promises to remain this summer’s biggest bad-news travel story.
When Muslim Advocates and the NAACP issue a joint letter accusing the U.S. airline industry of racism, it’s big news. And when the NAACP, the “nation’s oldest and largest nonpartisan civil rights organization,” follows that up with an advisory specifically questioning the racial policies of the nation’s largest airline, American, it’s nothing less than a media firestorm. Indeed, all the major news media covered the story exhaustively. And “American Airlines” has been a trending Twitter topic for several days.
Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.
Could Spirit, the airline everybody loves to hate, become a bit less hateful? If the company’s new CEO has his way, it will do just that.
In its latest effort to capture the hearts, minds, and expense accounts of the travel universe’s most privileged 1 percent, American is raising the bar for airport lounges.
For U.S. News & World Report, the road from weekly news magazine to publisher of company rankings has been a long and winding one. The key, though, to its shift toward data-driven ratings of companies and institutions was its 1983 publication of “America’s Best Colleges.”
Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.