It was a bad day for #populism on Wednesday in the States and across the world.
In the Netherlands, the far right nationalism candidate #Geert Wilders lost to the reigning Dutch prime minister name, a more temperate center right political traditionalist. Also on Wednesday, two Federal Judges #struck down Trump's travel ban, finding it discriminatory.
Europe sighed with relief as #Dutch voters overwhelmingly denied the far right populist party a victory.
The Dutch election has been watched throughout the world as a measurement of the Continent's willingness to take on what many saw as a growing nationalistic movement.
It was the first European election since Americans voted for Donald Trump. And Geert Wilders, who branded himself a “Dutch Trump,” fared much worse than previously expected, with Dutch voters spurning his particular brand of chipper nationalism, #anti-immigration sentiment and weariness of the European union.
The winning vote went to #Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who took a similarly tough line on immigration without lending it an extreme voice.
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was “a good day for democracy.”
The declining appeal of populism was further reinforced in December when Austria voted against Norbert Hofer, head of the far-right Nazi-aligned Freedom Party. The more temperate and restrained #Green Party leader Alexander Van der Bellen won.
Analysts claimed that in the shocking wake of Brexit and Trump, Dutch voters were more strategic in their options and less inclined to try their hand at a new option that, like Brexit, may have been an untested and desperate plea for change.
Two federal judges block Trump's travel ban
Also on Wednesday, #Hawaiian federal judge gave a national order that blocked President Trump’s travel ban from Muslim-majority countries.
This was seen as a loss to the Oval Office and also highlights how Trump's vicious rhetoric about Islam will have to be examined in court.
A second federal judge in #Maryland also voted against Trump's travel ban overnight, filing an independent order that prohibits the central tenet of the travel ban from going into effect.
These rulings were seen as a huge setback for Trump's pursuit of what many see as an unconstitutional policy that he has co-opted as a case for national security. The #travel ban has already ricocheted around a courtroom once before, when it was halted by a federal court in Seattle.
Judges in Hawaii and Maryland take issue
#Judge Derrick K Watson, the Federal Judge in Hawaii's Honolulu District Court, claimed that a “reasonable, objective observer” could read the new version of the travel ban as having been “issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion, in spite of its stated, religiously neutral purpose.”
Maryland's #Judge Theodore Chuang reflected that same view a few hours later, with a case forwarded by nonprofit groups associated with refugees and immigrants.
He said that the aim of the order was “the effectuation of the proposed Muslim ban” that Trump pledged when he was campaigning last year.
#Judge Watson, an Obama appointee, ruled that Hawaii and the plaintiff Ismail Elshikh would show reasonable grounds to challenge the order which they describe as religious discrimination. Elshikh is the imam of the Muslim Association of Hawaii and Watson said that the ban would cause people like him irreparable harm.