Reacting to criticism about his broad, chaotically rolled-out executive order indefinitely banning refugees and immigrants from Syria, suspending entry of all refugees for 120 days, and putting a 90-day stop to all travelers from six other majority-Muslim countries, President Trump protested that former President Barack Obama did it first. "My policy is similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months," Trump wrote. "The seven countries named in the executive order are the same countries previously identified by the Obama administration as sources of terror."
There is some truth to that. But as Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler said in awarding Trump two "Pinocchios" for the Obama comparison, the comparison is "facile" and misleading. If you don't remember Obama's 2011 executive order — the administration did not publicize it — it involved slowing down the approval of new visas for Iraqi nationals, following investigative findings that two Iraqi refugees were implicated in making improvised bombs targeting U.S. troops in Iraq. The policy also included re-vetting 58,000 Iraqi refugees already settled in the U.S., as then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano explained to Congress in September 2011.
The slowdown in approving Iraqi visas did prompt negative news stories and complaints from civil liberties and refugee advocacy groups at the time, and did appear to result in many fewer Iraqi refugees arriving in the U.S. in 2011, though the numbers rebounded in 2012. It did not stop all visitors from Iraq from traveling to the U.S. or halt refugee or visa applications, and unlike Trump's order, it was tied to a specific threat.
Trump identified only Syria by name in his executive order, and the other six nations covered in the ban — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen — did come from a list of countries "of concern" identified by the Obama administration under a visa-related law enacted in December 2015, the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act. The list did not affect nationals of those seven countries, though; it meant that some citizens of the 38 allied (mostly Western) countries eligible for a special visa waiver program who had spent time in the seven "countries of concern" had to "obtain a visa for travel to the United States, which generally includes an in-person interview at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate," as U.S. Customs and Border Patrol explained.
The last major difference between the Trump and Obama actions are that Trump's small group of advisers, led by Stephen Bannon, reportedly did not consult or prepare any officials at the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and State when writing the executive order, and DHS Secretary John Kelly learned about the major policy shift he was supposed to enact on a briefing call as Trump was signing it, The New York Times reports. CBP officials are still figuring out what the policy covers. Obama, meanwhile, "ran executive orders through a painstaking weeks-long process of soliciting feedback from agencies and briefing lawmakers," a "former official" tells Politico. "Sometimes it even asked expert lawyers in the private sector to check its work." Peter Weber
At this point in the 2020 presidential race, you'd probably rather be Democratic nominee Joe Biden than President Trump. "Polls are getting worse and worse for Trump," showing him tied in Texas and drowning in must-win Pennsylvania, John Harris and Daniel Lippman write at Politico. "Still, journalists just can't bring themselves to count him out." That's one reason Trump's advisers still see "gleams of hope," Annie Karni reports at The New York Times.
Trump's "internal numbers over the past three weeks have stabilized after the double whammy of the first presidential debate" and his "subsequent hospitalization for the coronavirus," Karni reports. And Biden isn't "breaking decisively into a double-digit lead" in places like Wisconsin and Arizona, "leaving open the possibility that the race will tighten on Election Day, when in-person ballots come in." Thursday's debate also gives Trump one last chance to reset the race. And, of course, Trump proved everyone wrong in 2016.
Despite Trump's constant feuding with the press, including individuals like CBS's Lesley Stahl and Thursday's moderator Kristen Welker, "by historical standards, Trump's press coverage is actually favorable," Politico's Harris and Lippman argue. Thanks to the ghosts of 2016, self-doubting journalists and political professionals are "giving generous allowance for the possibility that things aren't as bad as they seem for the incumbent, and that he may yet have another surprise in store for anyone who thinks that conventional dynamics of politics apply to him."
That's a big gift, says veteran GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsberg. It "helps Trump because he can hold out a sliver of hope for his supporters so they don't give up the ship. Nobody likes a loser; you're not going to admit you're a loser."
A comeback isn't impossible, "but if Trump loses, the biggest factor won't be COVID-19 or the economic meltdown or the social unrest," Tim Alberta argues at Politico Magazine. "It will be his unlikability." Pollsters and journalists have long "fixated on the question of which candidate voters would rather have a beer with — a window into how personality translates into political success," he explains. But Trump is "like the drunk at the bar, he won't shut up. Whatever appeal his unfiltered thoughts once held has now worn off. Americans are tired of having beers with Trump. His own supporters are tired of having beers with Trump," and it's probably too late to change that. Peter Weber
The Supreme Court late Wednesday lifted an injunction put in place by a federal judge, allowing Alabama to ban curbside voting in counties that wanted to allow it this election. The court's five conservative justices did not give a reason for their decision, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor explained in a dissent she would have left the injunction in place to allow people with disabilities or other risk factors to vote from their cars during the COVID-19 pandemic. The court's two other liberal justices signed on to her dissent.
"The Alabama dispute is the latest in a flurry of election-related fights to reach the justices in recent weeks," including a 4-4 deadlocked decision Monday that allowed Pennsylvania to count mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day for three days after the election, Politico reports. "The series of decisions suggests the high court, in its current configuration after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month, is poised to block election-related changes ordered by federal courts, while allowing state officials to make adjustments even without clear buy-in from the state legislature."
Democrats lost another voting rights battle on Wednesday when the Iowa Supreme Court upheld a state law that makes it harder for county officials to process absentee ballot requests with information missing, Reuters notes. "Opinion polls suggest a larger share of Democrats will cast absentee ballots — which include those returned by mail — than will Republicans." Peter Weber