Dem
47
GOP
53
One of the "signature" policies of the first Trump administration was its partly successful attempts to ban
all travel to the United States by people from shithole selected countries. In case you were wondering
what happened to this aspect of Trumpian governance, wonder no more, because yesterday the administration
announced
a complete ban on citizens of 12 countries, and a partial ban on citizens of 7 others.
During Trump v1.0, the White House issued its first travel ban within days of the inauguration, and saw that and a second travel ban get tied up in court. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the president has fairly broad discretion to discriminate against visitors from foreign countries, if doing so protects national security. With that ruling in hand, the first Trump White House barred entrants from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, though Chad was eventually removed from the list. In 2021, Joe Biden lifted the restrictions, shortly after taking office.
This time around, the administration did some homework, so as to increase the chances that the ban will survive the
inevitable court challenges. Apparently, State Department employees have been working tirelessly to identify which
nations are full of Muslims, but not full of oil a threat to the United States. The 12 nations that are
completely blocked, as of yesterday, are Afghanistan, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti,
Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. The 7 nations that are partially blocked are Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra
Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. There are some complicated conditions for the partially blocked nations, and
there are even a few exceptions for some people from the 12 completely blocked nations. That said, if you've been having
trouble sleeping at night because you were worried you might be assaulted by someone from Equatorial Guinea, you can
probably rest easy now.
There is little doubt that the timing here is very much related to the attack in Colorado; in announcing the new ban, Trump said, "In my first term, my powerful travel restrictions were one of our most successful policies, and they were a key part of preventing major foreign terror attacks on American soil." True, he did not specify a particular "foreign terror attack on American soil," but Fox and the other right-wing media were there to connect the dots for anyone who could not do it themselves.
As to what is really going on here, we'll go with the Occam's razor explanation: It's political theater meant to "show" the base that the administration is doing something about those teeming hordes of dangerous foreigners. And by making headline news out of blocking travel from a bunch of countries that are not even in the top 50 among the nations that send the most visitors to the U.S., it does serve to distract attention from the administration's lack of success along the Mexican border, and from myriad other embarrassments that are unfolding right now (like the squabbling about the budget bill).
And now, get ready for the lawsuits to start flying. (Z)