After DHS determined Trump's immigration ban didn't apply to green card holders, Steve Bannon intervened so it would https://t.co/OqXVplZ4fp pic.twitter.com/YnHKbNiUn9
— Nathan McDermott (@natemcdermott) January 29, 2017
The new catchphrase for a bad idea poorly executed, more evocative even than goat rodeo, ought to be Trumpstunt. CNN [warning: autoplay] reports:
When President Donald Trump declared at the Pentagon Friday he was enacting strict new measures to prevent domestic terror attacks, there were few within his government who knew exactly what he meant.
Administration officials weren’t immediately sure which countries’ citizens would be barred from entering the United States. The Department of Homeland Security was left making a legal analysis on the order after Trump signed it. A Border Patrol agent, confronted with arriving refugees, referred questions only to the President himself, according to court filings.
Saturday night, a federal judge granted an emergency stay for citizens of the affected countries who had already arrived in the US and those who are in transit and hold valid visas, ruling they can legally enter the US…
It wasn’t until Friday — the day Trump signed the order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days and suspending all refugee admission for 120 days — that career homeland security staff were allowed to see the final details of the order, a person familiar with the matter said. The result was widespread confusion across the country on Saturday as airports struggled to adjust to the new directives…
The policy team at the White House developed the executive order on refugees and visas, and largely avoided the traditional interagency process that would have allowed the Justice Department and homeland security agencies to provide operational guidance, according to numerous officials who spoke to CNN on Saturday.
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Department of Homeland Security leadership saw the final details shortly before the order was finalized, government officials said…
Before the President issued the order, the White House did not seek the legal guidance of the Office of Legal Counsel, the Justice Department office that interprets the law for the executive branch. A source said the executive order did not follow the standard agency review process that’s typically overseen by the National Security Council, though the source couldn’t specifically say if that included the decision to not have the order go through the Office of Legal Counsel.
Separately, a person familiar with the matter said career officials in charge of enforcing the executive order were not fully briefed on the specifics until Friday. The officials were caught off guard by some of the specifics and raised questions about how to handle the new banned passengers on US-bound planes.
Regarding the green card holders and some of the confusion about whether they were impacted, the person familiar with the matter said if career officials had known more about the executive order earlier, some of the confusion could have been avoided and a better plan could be in place…
But that wouldn’t have been nearly so much fun for Bannon and Miller and their would-be-Nazi fanbois. Best thing we can hope to come out of this mess would be Trump (or his favorite kids, Ivanka and Jared) decide it’s time to purge some of the most high-profile Breitbart white supremacists for getting too greedy too fast… before it’s too late for them to win that contest.
And let’s never let it be forgotten: THIS IS ON YOU, REPUBLICANS!
Congrats, @realDonaldTrump. You came close to causing a de-facto shut down of US-int'l air travel. Last guy to achieve that was Bin Laden!
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) January 29, 2017
Early Morning Open Thread: On Beyond FustercluckPost + Comments (58)