TRUMP AGENDA: “Confusion, angst, and a wave of protests”
The Washington Post: “President Trump’s executive order temporarily prohibiting entry into the United States for migrants from seven mostly Muslim countries and refugees from around the world fueled confusion, angst and a wave of protests across the country Sunday. Even as administration officials tried to clarify the reach of Trump’s action — “This is not a Muslim ban,” the president said in a statement — the exact limits of its scope and legal questions over its constitutionality remained unresolved. So did the question of whether the administration would comply with orders from federal judges to temporarily halt the travel ban.”
The New York Times: “Travelers were stranded around the world, protests escalated in the United States and anxiety rose within President Trump’s party on Sunday as his order closing the nation to refugees and people from certain predominantly Muslim countries provoked a crisis just days into his administration. The White House pulled back on part of Mr. Trump’s temporary ban on visitors from seven countries by saying that it would not apply to those with green cards granting them permanent residence in the United States. By the end of the day, the Department of Homeland Security formally issued an order declaring legal residents exempt from the order.”
The Wall Street Journal: “Inside President Donald Trump’s political team, the travel ban was something of a secret. Even before Mr. Trump won the election, aides were working up a plan to make good on a campaign pledge to keep potential terrorists from slipping into the U.S. They kept the circle tight as the work stretched from the campaign to the transition and then the White House. If word seeped out, they said, terrorists would enter the country before the new barriers were in place. There was another benefit of staying mum: It would keep opponents guessing about precisely what the incoming president had in mind.”
“Immigrant rights groups scored a series of early court victories against President Donald Trump’s terrorism-focused executive order limiting travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, but legal experts and administration officials said the impact of those initial legal victories could prove fleeting,” writes POLITICO.
The White House says the implementation of the ban was “a massive success story.”
POLITICO writes on how Steve Bannon has “rapidly amassed power in the West Wing.”
Here’s how Trump defended the immigration executive order over the weekend.
And here’s how some Republicans started pushing back.
Trump voters are shrugging off the global uproar over the Trump executive orders, writes Reuters.
There’s also this from the New York Times: “President Trump’s executive order on immigration is straining relations with the partner the United States needs most to reclaim the Islamic State’s stronghold in Mosul: the Iraqis. Iraqi officials were taken aback by the directive, which they learned about through the American news media because they had not been consulted first.”
The New York Times on Steve Bannon’s elevation: “the defining moment for Mr. Bannon came Saturday night in the form of an executive order giving the rumpled right-wing agitator a full seat on the “principals committee” of the National Security Council — while downgrading the roles of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence, who will now attend only when the council is considering issues in their direct areas of responsibilities. It is a startling elevation of a political adviser, to a status alongside the secretaries of state and defense, and over the president’s top military and intelligence advisers.”
From NBC’s Alex Jaffe: “During his first week in office, President Donald Trump upended U.S. trade policy, directed officials to begin making plans to build a wall on the southern border and ordered an investigation into vote fraud, all with the stroke of a pen. But experts warn the flurry of activity from the Oval Office could slow to a grind when it comes to the implementation of many of those plans if Trump doesn't pick up the pace in selecting nominees for hundreds of appointed posts that fill out the executive branch.”
The lead on AP’s Trump’s analysis today: “Donald Trump campaigned as a disrupter. Now he's governing by chaos.”