Donald Trump's revamped Muslim travel ban is reportedly coming today
President Trump’s retooled ban targeting residents from six largely Muslim countries and a total ban on Syrian refugees entering the U.S. is expected to be introduced on Monday.
The revamped executive order, drafted as Trump’s first attempt remains embroiled in legal challenges, will no longer affect travelers from Iraq, Kellyanne Conway, White House counselor, confirmed in an interview on Fox News.
The order is also expected to make clear that green card holders or those holding valid visas when the new rules are signed are not included in the ban, according to reporting from The New York Times.
News of the ban is already buoying spirits where they count the most: at Trump’s “winter White House,” Mar-a-Lago. After members of the media–and Trump’s own party–responded to the president’s tweets alleging former President Obama ordered Watergate-style phone tapping of Trump Tower during the election like you’d respond to a person talking to themselves on the street, his closest aides apparently used the new ban as a shiny new thing to cheer him up.
As The Washington Post reports:
That night at Mar-a-Lago, Trump had dinner with Sessions, Bannon, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly and White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, among others. They tried to put Trump in a better mood by going over their implementation plans for the travel ban, according to a White House official.
Trump was brighter Sunday morning as he read several newspapers, pleased that his allegations against Obama were the dominant story, the official said.
While Trump’s first Muslim ban was blocked from implementation by the courts, it’s hard to say at this point whether its newest incarnation will withstand legal scrutiny as it’s intended to. This is, after all, a White House that’s having a hard time doing almost anything right.