Trump Prepares to Add Two New Countries to His Travel Ban

Donald Trump may introduce a new travel ban similar to the “Muslim ban” from his first term, possibly as soon as next week.

Reuters reports that the order would bar people from Afghanistan and Pakistan from entering the United States, based on a government review of security and vetting risks, citing three anonymous sources, who also said that other countries could be included.

In his first term, Trump used a series of executive orders that infamously banned visitors from the Muslim-majority countries of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Iraq was initially included, but later dropped after the country promised to improve vetting for its own citizens. Despite several legal challenges, the Supreme Court ultimately approved the ban in 2018, and Trump later added six more countries with large Muslim populations to the list.

If Trump’s new ban becomes a reality, it will complicate efforts to resettle tens of thousands of Afghans cleared to come to the U.S. as refugees or on “special immigrant visas” because they worked for the U.S. and fear retribution after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.

According to one of the sources, the State Department Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts is trying to get an exemption for special immigrant visa holders, “but it’s not assumed likely to be granted,” especially since that office was told to plan for its closure by April.

While campaigning for president in 2023, Trump floated the idea of reinstating and expanding the “Muslim ban,” calling for a “strong ideological screening of all immigrants to the United States” and saying he would ban immigrants from Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, “or anywhere else that threatens our security.”

In Trump’s first term, the travel ban caused a lot of confusion and chaos, with thousands of people, including immigration lawyers, gathering at airports to protest the move. If the ban comes back, Trump will have a more compliant judiciary. The question is whether protesters will show up in the same numbers with support from Democratic politicians.

Democrats’ so-called resistance to Donald Trump is getting bad reviews among voters.

A new survey from Blueprint, a liberal research firm, found that registered voters have lost the plot on what—if anything—Democratic lawmakers are doing to oppose Trump’s sweeping agenda to shrink the federal workforce, slash essential government programs, and roll back regulations and rights.

A whopping 40 percent of respondents said that the Democratic Party doesn’t have any strategy at all for responding to Trump. Meanwhile, 24 percent of respondents said that the party did have a strategy but that it wasn’t working, and only 10 percent of respondents said that it had a good strategy.

The poll of 1,383 registered voters was conducted between February 16 and 17. Since then, the Democrats’ means of resistance have only gotten more confused.

Ahead of Trump’s address to Congress Tuesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries urged his party to take a measured approach and have a “strong” and “dignified” presence at the president’s Capitol appearance. Still, Democratic lawmakers protested in several increasingly small ways. Some lawmakers, such as Florida Representative Maxwell Frost and Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett, walked out of Trump’s address. Others held up small signs with slogans such as, “Musk Steals,” “False,” and “Save Medicaid.” A small contingent wore pink, a failed signal of unity and a devastating blow to absolutely no one.

Only Texas Representative Al Green managed to do any actual protesting, waving his cane and crying out that Trump had “no mandate” to cut Medicaid. Green was escorted out of the chamber, and on Thursday, he was formally censured by his colleagues—including 10 Democrats.

Evan Roth Smith, Blueprint’s top pollster, told Politico that voters had “correctly identified that the Democratic Party has lost its way.”

“The Democratic response [Tuesday] night was more or less a continuation of what we’ve seen from Democrats so far,” Smith explained. “Which is, there was nothing overtly wrong about it, but it didn’t actually do anything to ameliorate this core issue Democrats face, which is voters aren’t quite sure what we stand for and would like us to get back to the basic principles of the party.”

Sixty-five percent of respondents agreed with the statement that the Democratic Party “needs to get back to basics” of protecting Social Security and Medicare, reproductive freedom, and workers’ rights. Sixty-five percent of respondents also agreed with the statement that “no one has any idea what the Democratic Party stands for anymore, other than opposing Donald Trump. Democrats have no message, no plan of their own, and no one knows what they would do if they got back into power.”

Ten Democrats joined the Republican-led House in censuring Representative Al Green for disrupting Donald Trump’s speech to Congress on Tuesday and protesting the president’s aggressive cuts to Medicaid.

“You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!” the Texas Democrat yelled while waving his cane. Green was later removed from the chamber, becoming the first member of Congress to be removed during a presidential address.

“I did it from my heart and I will suffer whatever the consequences are,” he told reporters the next day. “But truthfully, I would do it again.”

Republican Representative Dan Newhouse quickly introduced a censure against Green, which Democrats failed to block Wednesday.

On Thursday, the House voted 224 to 198, with 10 Democrats joining the GOP in punishing one of their own. Green and Democratic Representative Shomari Figures voted present.

The following Democrats voted to censure Green:

1. Ami Bera—California
2. Ed Case—Hawaii
   
3. Jim Costa—California
4. Laura Gillen—New York
5. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez—Washington
   
6. Jim Himes—Connecticut
7. Chrissy Houlahan—Pennsylvania
   
8. Marcy Kaptur—Ohio
   
9. Jared Moskowitz—Florida
10. Tom Suozzi—New York

Donald Trump is planning to give Israel everything it needs in order to “finish” Gaza.

In a harrowing post to Truth Social Wednesday, the president threatened Hamas, as well as the Palestinian public, to release the hostages—or be “dead.”

“‘Shalom Hamas’ means Hello and Goodbye—You can choose,” Trump wrote. “Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you. Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted!

“I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say. I have just met with your former Hostages whose lives you have destroyed,” Trump continued. “This is your last warning! For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, while you still have a chance. Also, to the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!”

Trump then signed the message: “DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”

Hamas has been in direct talks with U.S. presidential envoy for hostage affairs Adam Boehler to release several American-Israeli dual citizens who were taken hostage during the October 7 attack, Axios reported Wednesday. It’s the first time the U.S. has backtracked on its unofficial mantra of not dealing with terrorists. The U.S. designated Hamas as a terrorist organization in 1997.

“This saves time and effort and minimizes obstacles. Talks are not going very easily, but this is positive,” a Hamas official told NPR, adding that the U.S. had asked the militant group to remain quiet about the deal.

There are currently 59 hostages remaining in Gaza. Fifty-eight of them were abducted during the October 7 attack, while one more was captured before that.

But Trump’s interest in pushing Gazans out of their homeland isn’t so altruistic. Last month, the president said he was “committed to buying and owning Gaza.”

“We’re committed to owning it, taking it, and making sure that Hamas doesn’t move back,” Trump said at the time. “There’s nothing to move back into—the place is a demolition site. The remainder will be demolished. Everything’s demolished.”

The real estate mogul then added that he intended to make it a “very good site for future development.”

That somebody could be Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has been eyeing the region for potential real estate projects since at least the beginning of last year. In March 2024, Kushner praised Gaza’s waterfront beachfront property as “very valuable,” advocating at the time for the same plan that Trump touted last week: ethnic cleansing.

Meanwhile, American culture seems misaligned with the new mission. On Sunday, No Other Land—a film about an Israeli and a Palestinian who work in tandem to rebuild homes and communities in the West Bank’s Masafer Yatta after they are systemically claimed and destroyed by Israeli soldiers and settlers—won best documentary feature film at the Oscars.

Elon Musk is claiming that the Department of Government Efficiency isn’t actually behind the sweeping cuts to the federal workforce, instead placing the blame on the agency heads who order the firings.

Republican Representative Derrick Van Orden told CNN that during a private meeting with GOP lawmakers Wednesday, Musk told the group that the recently announced elimination of more than 70,000 jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs “wasn’t a DOGE decision.”

The Wisconsin Republican said that Musk had told lawmakers that the “individual departments” had made their own plans to cut positions and that DOGE had made the “assumption” that those departments intended to “reward the people that are being productive.”

The billionaire bureaucrat has claimed this defense to his organization’s cost-cutting measures before, saying that DOGE simply makes recommendations for cuts to agency heads, and then it’s up to those heads to execute them. It’s unclear what fate would befall the agencies that failed to act in accordance with DOGE directives or the Trump administration’s mission to shrink the federal workforce.

However, Musk privately acknowledged that he’d made some massive missteps, and that he “can’t bat a thousand all the time,” four people familiar with his remarks told Politico. But when Musk misses a swing, people lose their livelihoods.

Republican Representative Russell Fry told CNN that Musk promised to make things right. “He said, like, you know, there’s going to be mistakes along the way. He has said that publicly before too. And then when those are identified, they will be corrected,” Fry said.

Already, Musk-directed massive firings have been rescinded. The Trump administration’s Office of Personnel Management, which has been attempting to manage the entire federal workforce even though it lacks the authority to do so, issued a memo Tuesday instructing federal agency heads that they did not have to comply with instructions to fire probationary employees who have held their jobs for one year or less.

The Department of Government Efficiency’s influence at the Social Security Administration is growing to be too much even for the agency’s Trump-loving acting commissioner, who privately warned that Elon Musk and his team will soon make serious mistakes.

“I am relying on longtime career people to inform my work, but I am receiving decisions that are made without my input. I have to effectuate those decisions,” acting Commissioner Leland Dudek said in a staff meeting Tuesday, The Washington Post reported.

He described Musk’s cronies as “outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs,” and warned that their aggressive approach could hurt the some 73 million Americans who receive Social Security benefits, according to meeting notes from the Post.

Still, he said Musk’s DOGE minions should be given a chance. “DOGE people are learning, and they will make mistakes, but we have to let them see what is going on at SSA,” he told staff.

Dudek has only been acting commissioner for two weeks, and has been open about his views on the “bureaucratic stagnation, inefficiency, and a lack of meaningful service improvements,” at the SSA. Previously a mid-level staffer, Dudek was rewarded the position because he cooperated with DOGE’s demand for information. Trump’s official nominee to run the SSA, Frank Bisigano, is yet to be confirmed by Congress.

Last month, Dudek announced the SSA was cutting over 7,000 jobs, despite staffing levels already being at a 50-year low. Still, DOGE’s reckless approach is too much for the former data analyst, who told his staff things are “currently operating in a way I have never seen in government before.”

The president has repeatedly promised Social Security will be safeguarded in his government-wide assault on federal agencies, but Musk is clearly on a mission to change the safety-net program. He and his team have reportedly tried to access sensitive information at the SSA, which the billionaire described as “the greatest Ponzi scheme of all time.” Musk has also made numerous fraudulent claims against the agency, including that dead people receive Social Security checks.

U.S. workers are being laid off at levels not seen since the Great Recession in 2009, all thanks to Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

A new report from Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, an international firm that helps laid-off workers find new jobs, said that job losses spiked a whopping 245 percent to 172,017 last month, higher than any month since the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic in July 2020, and the highest in any February since 2009.

The biggest source of lost jobs comes from the federal government, with 62,242 announced cuts from 17 different agencies, according to Challenger. Government layoffs amounted to 62,530 workers in January and February, a staggering 41,311 percent increase over 2024. Challenger’s report said that DOGE was the top reason for job cuts, responsible for 63,583 layoffs of federal employees and contractors.

Fortunately for the Trump administration, federal government layoffs won’t show up in the government’s February monthly jobs report because they took place outside of the survey week. Meanwhile, administration officials are discussing how to fudge the numbers and remove government spending from gross domestic product reports to hide how much DOGE’s government cuts have hurt the economy.

DOGE’s mass purge of federal workers is going to have ripple effects on the economy, especially since more cuts are expected. The newly unemployed will be spending much less, hurting other businesses, particularly in areas with a lot of federal employees, such as the Washington, D.C., metro area.

Trump said during his speech to Congress Tuesday that his economic actions, including ill-advised tariffs, may cause “a little bit of an adjustment period.”

“There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that. It won’t be much,” Trump added. We’re all about to find out how little that disturbance will be, and how many Americans will suffer as a result.

Donald Trump plans to revoke the legal status of some 240,000 Ukrainian refugees, Reuters reported Thursday.

A senior Trump official and three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that the Trump administration intended to target Ukrainians welcomed under President Joe Biden’s parole programs, who’d fled their country amid Russia’s invasion.

The move could be expected as soon as April, according to Reuters.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denied the report shortly after it was published. “This is more fake news from Reuters based on anonymous sources who have no idea what they are talking about,” Leavitt wrote on X. “The truth: no decision has been made at this time.”

U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told Reuters that her agency had no announcements at this time.

In January, Trump signed an executive order terminating “all categorical parole programs that are contrary to the policies of the United States established in my Executive Orders,” including humanitarian parole programs helping migrants fleeing from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Apparently, plans to place Ukrainian refugees on the fast-track to deportation were in the works before the talks between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy detonated last week, following an explosive meeting in the Oval Office.

During the meeting, Trump and Vice President JD Vance barely let Zelenskiy get a word in, both clearly incensed after the Ukrainian president tried to remind them that Russia didn’t always keep its word about ceasefires.

The U.S. president has since questioned Zelenskiy’s commitment to “peace,” even though he was the one to blow up during the meeting. Zelenskiy has since said the meeting was “regrettable,” and that it was “time to make things right.”

During Trump’s address to Congress Tuesday night, he read a letter from Zelenskiy stating that his country was “ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians.”

Zelenskiy wrote that he was willing to sign an “agreement on minerals and security,” which has become a key feature in negotiations, as Trump hopes to recoup the billions in aid provided to Ukraine by the U.S.

Meanwhile, Trump has demanded absolutely nothing from Russian President Vladimir Putin, the “bad guy” who ordered the deadly and destructive invasion into Ukrainian territory, simply saying that he had received “strong signals” Russia was ready for peace.

But Trump has already started taking his petty revenge against the wartime president for his supposed show of disrespect. On Monday, he suspended military aid to Ukraine, in defiance of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which the U.S. agreed to defend Ukraine’s borders in return for Kyiv’s surrender of nuclear weapons. The White House has also ordered a pause on intelligence sharing with Kyiv.

It’s clear that Trump is interested in making Zelenskiy beg for help, and in return, maybe he’ll see a reward from Russia—or maybe not.

This story has been updated.

Democratic firebrand Representative Jasmine Crockett went after her Republican colleagues Wednesday for holding a sham hearing about crime in sanctuary cities.

During the hearing before the Republican-led House Oversight Committee, in which four Democratic mayors defended their cities’ immigration polices, the Texas Democrat called out Republicans over their hypocritical focus on so-called migrant crime.

“I know that many of you prepared for today’s hearing by making sure that you got a little bit of information about immigrants and crime in your cities. Let me ask each of the mayors, just yes or no,” Crockett said.

“Have any of you been made aware of any immigrant that has had 34 felony convictions … that has still been able to roam in your cities?” she asked.

Each of the four mayors predictably answered, “No,” or said nothing, and so Crockett continued.

“I’m just curious because we are so concerned about crime, and I know that my Republican colleagues would never want anybody with 34 felony convictions roaming around, because that could be a danger to the community,” she said.

Crockett has been known for stirring the pot among her Republican colleagues, and was one of the Democratic lawmakers to walk out on Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday night.

The mayors who testified Wednesday were Mike Johnston of Denver, Brandon Johnson of Chicago, Michelle Wu of Boston, and the embattled Eric Adams of New York, who recently agreed to walk back certain measures protecting undocumented immigrants after the Department of Justice moved to drop his public corruption indictment, leading to allegations there had been a quid pro quo agreement. Adams continued to deny those claims Wednesday.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu slammed Republican lawmakers for harming millions of Americans as she defended her city’s immigration policies at a House Oversight Committee hearing on sanctuary cities Wednesday.

In one particular exchange, Republican Representative Paul Gosar pressed Wu on federal immigration laws taking priority over local ones.

“Respectfully, Congressman, you could pass bipartisan legislation, and that would be comprehensive immigration law,” she replied.

“If you wanted to make us safe, pass gun reforms, stop cutting Medicaid, stop cutting cancer research, stop cutting funds for veterans. That is what will make our city safe,” she added as Gosar rolled his eyes.

She praised her city’s health care, low crime rates, higher education, and winning sports teams.

“We are the cradle of democracy and the city of champions. We are all of these things, not in spite of our immigrants but because of them,” Wu said.

The Boston mayor testified alongside the Democratic mayors of New York City, Denver, and Chicago, all of which are sanctuary cities, or jurisdictions with policies that limit information sharing with federal law enforcement to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation or prosecution. There are more than 600 sanctuary jurisdictions nationwide.

James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, and other Republicans, accused each city of putting its residents at risk and failing to comply with Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan. Comer is currently leading an investigation into sanctuary cities and their impact on federal immigration enforcement.

“Sanctuary cities make us all less safe and are a public safety nightmare,” Comer said at the hearing. “We cannot let pro-criminal alien policies of obstructionist sanctuary cities continue to endanger American communities and the safety of federal immigration enforcement officers.”

The attack on sanctuary jurisdictions is part of Trump’s larger war on immigration. On his first day in office, the president signed an executive order that included a directive to end federal funding to sanctuary jurisdictions. The order also threatens criminal investigation of any local official who does not assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Despite clear hostility from Republican lawmakers at the hearing, the Democratic mayors did not back down.

“We know there are myths about these laws. But we must not let mischaracterizations and fearmongering obscure the reality that Chicago’s crime rates are trending down,” said Brandon Johnson, the mayor of Chicago.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston added that Denver’s crime rates went down when the city’s immigration population increased.

And, as Wu pointed out, much of the danger to Americans right now is coming from Republicans themselves, not the people they’re trying to deport.

“This federal administration is making hardworking, tax-paying, God-fearing residents afraid to live their lives,” Wu said. “A city that’s scared is not a city that’s safe. A land ruled by fear is not the land of the free.”