Vice President Pence, President Trump, and Defense Secretary James Mattis at the executive order signing
Carlos Barria / Reuters
—President Trump signed an executive order that among things suspends the U.S. refugee program for 120 days and bars all Syrian refugees until further notice. More here
—British Prime Minister Theresa May became the first foreign leader to meet with President Trump at the White House. More here
—We’re tracking the news stories of the day below. All updates are in Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5).
Trump Signs Executive Order Suspending U.S. Refugee Intake
Defense Secretary James Mattis greets President Trump at the Pentagon on Friday. (Carlos Barria / Reuters)
President Trump signed an executive order Friday that among things suspends the U.S. refugee program for 120 days and bars all Syrian refugees until further notice—an expected move that comes on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which honors the millions of victims of Nazi genocide, including the tens of thousands of Jews who were denied asylum in the U.S. at the time.
The move explicitly appears to target Muslims refugees—though the White House has shied way from calling it a Muslim ban, as Trump had done during the presidential campaign. But in an interview with CBN’s Brody Files, Trump said persecuted Christians will be given a priority over others. The executive order also appears to suspend immigration from some Muslim-majority countries, with some exceptions. The secretary of Homeland Security will submit a report of countries within 30 days.
Officials have previously said the Trump administration will suspend the issuance of visas from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. The seven countries account for an insignificant number of people entering the U.S.—though they account for about 40 percent of the U.S. refugee intake. Refugee and human rights groups have sharply criticized the move.
UPDATE: Theresa May Meets Trump at the White House
(Mark Makela / Reuters)
British Prime Minister Theresa May became the first foreign leader to meet with President Trump at the White House. The two leaders are expected Friday to discuss, among other things, a trade deal, NATO, and Russia. Trump has said he’ll negotiate directly with May over a trade deal, which the U.K. needs following its vote last summer to withdraw from the European Union. Statements from both London and Brussels in recent days suggest the process of withdrawing from the EU is likely to be anything but smooth; a trade deal the U.S. would boost May’s credentials at home ahead of an expected parliamentary vote on Brexit. Both countries remain members of NATO, and while May has called the Atlantic alliance invaluable, Trump has described it as “obsolete.” As for Russia, which Trump has said he wants to work with, May, perhaps paraphrasing a former U.S. president, said: “My advice is to engage but beware.”
Al-Shabaab Attacks a Kenyan Military Base and Kills Dozens
Feisal Omar / Reuters
The militant Islamist group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for an attack on a military base Friday that reportedly killed dozens of Kenyan soldiers. A spokesman for Kenya’s military said the terrorist group had used vehicles laden with explosives to gain access to the base, located in the southern town of Kulbiyow, which is on the border of Kenya and Somalia, then raided it with their fighters. A spokesman for al-Shabaab told Reuters its fighters killed at least 66 soldiers at the base, who were deployed with a regional peacekeeping mission. These numbers have not been confirmed by the Kenyan government, and al-Shabaab’s death tolls typically differ from official counts. The militant group has waged a war in the region near Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia for more than a decade. Recently, as the African Union’s security forces clamp down on the terrorists, they have stuck back with more violence. This week alone, al-Shabaab claimed credit for an attack on a hotel in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, that killed 28 people.
President Trump is expected Friday to urge defense officials to devise a plan in 30 days to defeat ISIS. The plan, according to The New York Times, could include “American artillery on the ground in Syria and Army attack helicopters to support an assault on the group’s capital, Raqqa.” Trump makes his first visit to the Pentagon today. On Thursday, Trump renewed his calls for a wall on the southern border with Mexico and addressed Republican lawmakers at their annual retreat.
Google recalls staffers after Trump’s travel ban, Chicago’s Police Superintendent reveals he needs a kidney transplant, and Italy’s former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, will stand trial on charges he bribed witnesses to stay silent in a sex case.
—President Donald Trump’s ban on travel to the U.S. from seven majority Muslim countries prompted Google to recall employees in the affected countries.
—Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson revealed after a public dizzy spell that he needs a kidney transplant.
—Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy, will stand trial on charges he bribed witnesses to stay silent in a case that accused him of paying young women for sex.
—We’re tracking the news stories of the day below. All updates are in Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5).
American citizens are not affected; green-card holders and others from seven Muslim countries are.
President Trump signed on Friday an executive order that severely restricts immigration from seven Muslim countries, suspends all refugee admission for 120 days, and bars all Syrian refugees indefinitely. The order has been widely criticized and praised. Here’s what it does and doesn’t do.
Who is not affected?
Anyone with U.S. citizenship—whether that person in natural-born or naturalized.
Who is affected?
For 120 days, the order bars the entry of any refugee who is awaiting resettlement in the U.S. It also prohibits all Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. until further notice. Additionally, it bans the citizens of seven countries—Iraq, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, and Yemen—from entering the U.S. on any visa category. This appears to include those individuals who are permanent residents of the U.S. (green-card holders) who may have been traveling overseas to visit family or for work—though their applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis, a senior administration official said Saturday.
The liberal scorn for nationhood and refusal to adapt immigration policy to changing circumstances enables the rise of extremism in the West.
The Orlando nightclub shooter, the worst mass-casualty gunman in US history, was the son of immigrants from Afghanistan. The San Bernardino shooters were first and second generation immigrants from Pakistan. Nidal Hassan, the Fort Hood killer, was the son of Palestinian immigrants. The Tsarnaev brothers who detonated bombs at the 2013 Boston marathon held Kyrgyz nationality. The would-be 2010 Times Square car bomber was a naturalized immigrant from Pakistan. The ringleader of the Paris attacks of November 2015, about which Donald Trump spoke so much on the campaign trail, was a Belgian national of Moroccan origins.
If the goal is to exclude radical Muslims from the United States, the executive order President Trump announced on Friday seems a highly ineffective way to achieve it. The Trump White House has incurred all the odium of an anti-Muslim religious test, without any attendant real-world benefit. The measure amounts to symbolic politics at its most stupid and counterproductive. Its most likely practical effect will be to aggravate the political difficulty of dealing directly and speaking without euphemisms about Islamic terrorism. As ridiculous as was the former Obama position that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, the new Trump position that all Muslims are potential terrorists is vastly worse.
Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity—a psychologist investigates how Trump’s extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency.
In 2006, Donald Trump made plans to purchase the Menie Estate, near Aberdeen, Scotland, aiming to convert the dunes and grassland into a luxury golf resort. He and the estate’s owner, Tom Griffin, sat down to discuss the transaction at the Cock & Bull restaurant. Griffin recalls that Trump was a hard-nosed negotiator, reluctant to give in on even the tiniest details. But, as Michael D’Antonio writes in his recent biography of Trump, Never Enough, Griffin’s most vivid recollection of the evening pertains to the theatrics. It was as if the golden-haired guest sitting across the table were an actor playing a part on the London stage.
“It was Donald Trump playing Donald Trump,” Griffin observed. There was something unreal about it.
The president is taking the United States back to the nightmares of the world before the Second World War: closed borders, limited trade, and a go-it-alone national race to the bottom.
Despite all the lies and distortions, President Donald Trump has spent his first week in office assembling a coherent and well-planned framework for foreign policy. It is hiding in plain sight—frequently missed in the storm of tweets and the attacks on domestic enemies. Read as a whole and in detail, with attention to their larger single-minded purpose, Trump’s executive orders are the blueprints for the most significant shift in American foreign policy since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
The latest drafts of executive orders, several of which the president will reportedly sign Friday at the Pentagon, are bold and breathtaking in their reach. They are strategic and transformative. They are also poised to destroy the foundations for the last 70 years of American-led peace and prosperity. The orders question the very ideas of cooperation and democracy, embodying an aggressive commitment to “America First” above all else. So much for the “defense of the free world,” and the “march of freedom”—obvious soft-headed “loser” ideas for the new team of White House cynics.
Via memes, jokes, and fan fictions, many Americans have taken it upon themselves to feel bad for their new first lady. She is not in need of the sympathy.
Did you see the gif? The one that features Melania Trump, the newly installed first lady of the United States, radiantly smiling as her husband gazes upon her … and then, as he turns away, allowing the grin to melt into a frown? Grin-grimace, grin-grimace, grin-grimace, looping into eternity.
Call it a Kinsley gif: The image seemed to reveal, in its frozen fluidity, an unspoken truth—about Melania, about her marriage, about all of us. During a time of Much News, it quickly became conversation fodder. Slate offered “A Detailed Forensic Analysis of Melania Trump’s Creepy, Devastating Inauguration Smile/Frown.” Jezebel shared it with the sardonic declaration that “Melania Trump Definitely Loves Her Husband and Is Very Happy to Be Here.” New York magazine did a fact-check of the video the gif came from to assure us, finally, that “That Awkward Clip of Donald and Melania at the Inauguration Is Definitely Real.” (Snopesagreed, but warned that the video is inconclusive when it comes to its ability to reveal Melania’s emotions.) #FreeMelania trended.
Many religious groups have urged the president not to give Christians priority in seeking asylum, but some conservative political organizations back his new ban on refugees.
Updated on January 28 at at 10:41 a.m. EST
President Trump has signed an executive order that temporarily suspends the U.S. refugee program and bars Syrian refugees. It will likely suspend immigration from certain Muslim-majority countries and bars the admission of anyone who engages in “acts of bigotry or hatred,” including “the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own.” It also allows the the secretaries of State and Homeland Security to jointly admit individuals on a case-by-case basis, “including when the person is a religious minority ... facing religious persecution.”
In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network on Friday, Trump clarified what this means: Christians refugees will be given priority status. “They’ve been horribly treated,” the president said. “Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough, to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible.” People overseas “were chopping off the heads of everybody, but more so the Christians,” he added, “so we are going to help them.”
Some 40 people were indicted as a result of the Watergate scandal. Among those sentenced to prison: the attorney general of the United States, the White House counsel, and President Nixon’s two most senior White House aides. A dozen men were convicted or pled guilty to a range of charges after the Iran-Contra affair.
White Houses can be dangerous places under leadership that does not respect the law. When friends ask me, “Should I accept a job under President Trump?” it’s not merely a philosophical question. Answer the question wrong, and they may find themselves two or three years later facing a congressional investigation or possibly even a grand jury. Even those who never face charges—let alone conviction—can see their lives up-ended: As the saying goes, in Washington, the process is the punishment.
A new social-media project commemorates refugees turned away by the United States in 1939.
Software developer Russel Neiss and Rabbi Charlie Schwartz have collaborated on a number of projects that use technology to bring awareness to Jewish issues, history, and culture.
But last night they dreamt up the St. Louis Manifest, a Twitter project sharing the story of some 900 Jews who fled Nazi Germany in 1939 on the MS St. Louis in an attempt to gain entry into the United States. After having to turn back, the passengers were forced to return to Europe, where a number of countries accepted them as refugees; 254 of them were killed in the Holocaust. This story, Neiss and Schwartz believe, serves as a fitting tribute to International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday, and a reminder of a time in American history when the country closed its doors to refugees.
For my money, one of the more interesting maps appearing recently came from the personal-finance website Wallet Hub. Analysts there set out to determine how states compare in terms of their reliance on federal funding. *The states deemed "most dependent" by the analysis are light gray on the map, those "least dependent" are bright blue. You can move your cursor around on the map to see how each state ranks. (There were some ties.)
