New travel ban comes without the chaos of first one

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson smiles during a news conference about President Trump’s new executive order

When President Donald Trump signed his first travel ban with scant warning and little planning seven days into his presidency, he meant to signal he was a man of action. After the lawsuits, chaos at airports and international criticism, Trump’s rewritten travel ban sent a different message: The White House has learned some lessons.

The Trump administration’s unveiling of its revised restrictions on travel and refugees was deliberate and cautious, an implicit acknowledgement of some of the unforced errors from the first rollout. The executive order was announced by Trump’s Cabinet officials, some of whom felt cut out of consultations on the earlier version. It does not go into effect immediately, giving the world time to assess its impact.

The White House took weeks of consultation with agency heads about how best to withstand expected legal challenges.

The scaled-back order will still face fire from critics. It bars new visas for people from six Muslim- majority countries and temporarily shuts down America’s refugee program, affecting would-be visitors and immigrants from Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Libya.

Department of Homeland Security intelligence analysts have questioned the rationale behind it, concluding that citizenship is an “unlikely indicator” of terrorism threats to the United States.

But the new ban does eliminate many of the original order’s most contentious elements. It removes Iraq from the list of banned countries — at the urging of U.S. military and diplomatic leaders — and it makes clear that current visa holders will not be impacted. It also removes language that would give priority to religious minorities — a provision some interpreted as a way to help Christians get into the U.S. while excluding Muslims.

Trump signed the order without fanfare in a closed-press ceremony in the Oval Office.

Legal experts say the new order addresses some of the constitutional concerns raised by a federal appeals court about the initial ban but leaves room for more legal challenges. AP