Trumps First Defeat: immigration order creates an international mess & political embarrassment
Politico
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Now, what was meant as a bold assertion of presidential prerogative and a down payment on his promise to “eradicate radical Islamic terrorism from the face of the Earth” has dealt President Trump his first political defeat, and energized his opponents after a week of demoralizing developments. And it has sharpened divisions between those Americans willing to take extreme measures to prevent the possibility of future attacks--and those who view such steps as abhorrent and misguided.
On the left, the outrage exploded immediately. Civil liberties groups, Democratic governors and members of Congress denounced Trump’s executive order as an unconscionable attack on American values. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee called it “cruelty”; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said there were “tears running down the cheeks of the Statue of Liberty”; even Hillary Clinton, last seen enduring Trump’s inauguration, emerged from mourning to tweet, “I stand with the people gathered across the country tonight defending our values & our Constitution. This is not who we are.”
Silicon Valley titans, who had gone all in for Clinton before clamming up after Trump’s victory, rallied to the immigrants’ cause. Apple, Facebook and Google, who employ thousands of foreign software engineers, spoke out against its impact on their business; Elon Musk condemned it in moral terms; AirBnB offered free housing to those caught up in the maelstrom. Chris Sacca, an early investor in Twitter, matched his followers and donated $150,000 to the ACLU. Even the NBA got into the act: The Milwaukee Bucks made a point of starting center Thon Maker, a Sudanese immigrant, and the league said it had raised concerns about the executive order with State Department officials.
Republicans have been largely silent, though Sens. Susan Collins, Ben Sasse and Jeff Flake, as well as Reps. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania and Justin Amash of Michigan, criticized the president’s move. House Speaker Paul Ryan, despite speaking out against a similar proposal during the campaign, hailed Trump for making “sure we are doing everything possible to know exactly who is entering our country.”
For the president, who limited his comments on the ban to his afternoon remarks, the optics were not good. One of the first people detained, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, was an Iraqi interpreter who served the U.S. military for over a decade. (“What I do for this country? They put the cuffs on,” a tearful Darweesh told reporters at JFK after his release.) One Iranian woman barred from the United States, Samira Asgari, was coming to Harvard Medical School to work on a cure for tuberculosis. (“I was pretty excited to join @soumya_boston's lab but denied boarding due to my Iranian nationality,” she tweeted. “Feeling safer?”) The media was flooded all day with tales of shocked families finding themselves locked out of the United States; if any of them were terrorists, they were awfully well-disguised.
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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/president-trumps-first-defeat-214707
