Trump Signs Travel Ban Full of Contradictions

Donald Trump’s new travel ban is hard to make sense of.

In a sweeping order Wednesday night, Trump fully banned travel from 12 countries: Afghanistan, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.

The order, which is set to go into effect on June 9, targets mostly African and Muslim-majority countries, and many of the banned countries were also on Trump’s original travel ban in his first term. The new ban also partially restricts travel by nationals from an additional seven countries: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.

The order includes exceptions for lawful permanent residents, existing visa holders, and certain visa holders such as Special Immigrant Visas (which many Afghans received after helping U.S. forces).

Trump framed the ban as necessary to combat terrorism and strengthen national security in a video announcement posted to social media. But if that’s the case, the order is full of contradictions.

In his video, Trump specifically cited Sunday’s attack in Colorado as why the ban is needed. “The recent attack in Boulder, Colorado, has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas,” he said.

But the man charged in that attack was an Egyptian national who initially arrived on a tourist visa, and Egypt isn’t even on Trump’s list of banned countries.

Trump’s order also cites visa oversays as a reason why multiple countries were targeted. But as The Washington Post reported, it’s not clear why some countries were added to the list while others with higher visa overstay rates weren’t. In some cases, the visa overstay rate was high but the total number of overstays was relatively low.

The justification listed for specific countries was a mess. The order cited the establishment of “criminal networks” and “national security threats” as justification for the ban on nationals from Haiti. But there is little evidence that Haitian gangs are taking over the U.S., nor is there much evidence that Haitian gang members are among the small number of Haitians entering the country.

“Haitians as a group have not exerted any kind of violence,” Renata Segura, director of the Latin America and Caribbean program at the International Crisis Group, told the Post. “The idea that Haitian gangs could be traveling to the U.S. by legal means is completely out of the realm of the possible.”

And in the case of Venezuela, which is facing partial restrictions, Trump’s order claims the country has “historically refused to accept back its removable nationals.” But in the past few months of Trump’s second term, Venezuela has repeatedly accepted Trump’s deportation flights, even sending Venezuelan planes to pick up immigrant deportees from the U.S.

For those trying to make sense of Trump’s logic with this order, don’t even bother.

President Trump is still trying to turn President Joe Biden’s autopen use into a real scandal, announcing an investigation Wednesday into the pen and its role in an alleged coverup of Biden’s cognitive decline. The former president immediately slammed the move.

“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations,” Biden said in a statement. “Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.... This is nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans who are working to push disastrous legislation that would cut essential programs like Medicaid and raise costs on American families, all to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations.”

Trump has been accusing Biden of using an autopen—essentially a signature machine to aid presidents in signing multiple bills in one sitting—for months now, in an attempt to create both a corruption scandal and a cognitive decline scandal around the former president. At one point, Trump even suggested that Senator Elizabeth Warren was using the autopen in place of Biden.

“With the exception of the RIGGED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020, THE AUTOPEN IS THE BIGGEST POLITICAL SCANDAL IN AMERICAN HISTORY!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social Wednesday.

The autopen is nowhere near as big of a deal as Trump is making it out to be, if at all. Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, and Trump himself have all used it, although Trump swears it’s “only for very important papers.”

For this to be at the top of Trump’s mind while his One Big Beautiful Bill Act is in the midst of Senate gridlock shows how much of a nothingburger this issue is—especially compared to the myriad of scandalous events surrounding Trump’s own tenure as president.

Despite kowtowing and bowing its head, Columbia University is now the victim of more attacks from the Trump administration.

The Department of Education challenged the Ivy League school’s accreditation Wednesday, writing to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which accredits Columbia, that the university had violated civil rights law in its handling of on-campus protests supporting Palestine.

“After Hamas’ October 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel, Columbia University’s leadership acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students on its campus,” said Education Secretary Linda McMahon in a statement. “This is not only immoral, but also unlawful.”

“Just as the Department of Education has an obligation to uphold federal antidiscrimination law, university accreditors have an obligation to ensure member institutions abide by their standards,” McMahon noted.

The request itself does not revoke Columbia’s accreditation. However, the government urged the Middle States Commission to “take appropriate action” if Columbia failed to come into compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The university would be unable to operate without its accreditation.

The challenge comes as Columbia continues its fight to recoup hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding canceled by the White House in March on claims that university leadership had promulgated antisemitism.

But Columbia University has proven to be just one of many targets that the Trump administration has singled out in its quest to subdue criticism of America’s involvement in Palestinian genocide. Individually, the administration went after Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil, Palestinian student leaders at Columbia University who participated in the protests.

In April, a federal judge handed Mahdawi his freedom after he was arrested at what he thought was his citizenship interview, claiming that the uncharged scholar’s two-week detention was unfounded.

Last week, a district judge denied Khalil—a Columbia graduate student and green card holder—his request for a preliminary injunction to temporarily halt his deportation proceedings.

In March, the Trump administration raided what they called a Tren de Arauga gang gathering in Texas, arresting dozens of people at five in the morning.

Two months later, The Texas Tribune reports that none of the people they arrested had any gang ties or even criminal records, and that the “Tren de Aragua gathering” they busted was in fact a birthday party. Forty-seven people were arrested in total, including nine children, although it’s unclear if every person taken in was at the birthday party.

The ICE agents and Texas police who raided the birthday party even went so far as to attack the families with flash grenades, scaring them and their children.

“We all started shouting that there were babies—‘Babies, there’s babies,’” said one of the arrested men, who said he was celebrating the fifth birthday of his son and the 28th birthday of his best friend at a house they rented for the weekend. “They were like bombs, like boom.”

ICE also profiled one of the party attendees for his tattoos, based on a thoroughly debunked theory that Tren de Aragua members have specific ink.

“They told me to my face: ‘You know what those stars mean? Those stars are styled by gangsters in your country,’” he told the Tribune. “I said, no. I got these stars when—no kidding—I was starting to leave adolescence, started working. I got them because I liked them and I wanted to get them.”

While ICE has refused to name the detained Venezuelans, the Tribune identified 35 of them. Some were in ICE detention for weeks and were released with ankle monitors. One of the children was even kicked out of school due to missing too many days in detainment. Again, none were charged criminally.

“This is about something much bigger. If it happens to a person who is accused of being a (gang member) today, tomorrow it could happen to you and me,” said Migration Policy Institute director Muzaffar Chishti. “And if the alleged member of this gang does not have the right to contest [charges against them], how can you know I’ll have it? The next person will have it?”

ICE has been putting innocent people through hellish, traumatic arrest events for months now, as Trump, border czar Tom Homan, and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller march blindly ahead with trying to deport as many people as they possibly can, truth be damned.

Biden White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has decided she’s no longer a Democrat, pointing to the party’s “betrayal” of President Joe Biden for her rationale.

Instead, Jean-Pierre will become a registered independent, she revealed Wednesday.

The news came by way of the announcement of Jean-Pierre’s new book, Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines, which is set to be published October 21.

“Jean-Pierre didn’t come to her decision to be an Independent lightly, she has served two American presidents, Obama and Biden,” her publisher, Legacy Lit, wrote in a press blurb for the book. “In 2020, she joined Biden’s campaign as a senior adviser, becoming Harris’s chief of staff and then, two years later, White House press secretary.

“She takes us through the three weeks that led to Biden’s abandoning his bid for a second term and the betrayal by the Democratic Party that led to his decision,” the publisher continued.

Independent promises to spill tea on the internal party drama that led to Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential nomination, as told by the Biden official most frequently positioned to defend his health and ongoing candidacy.

Swapping party affiliation is definitely an unorthodox way to market one’s upcoming book, but considering the wide range of texts focusing on Biden’s final hour that are already competing for bookstore shelf space, perhaps an unconventional approach is needed. Jean-Pierre’s will be one of many analyses of Biden’s tenure in the White House, with a particular focus on the historic end of his bid for reelection.

Last month, Axios’s national political correspondent Alex Thompson and CNN host Jake Tapper released Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, the culmination of interviews with more than 200 individuals attached to the Biden White House. Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, co-authored by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, was published April 1.

Chris Whipple, who examined Biden’s 2020 win, wrote a slim investigation called Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History. Another book, 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, is the result of more than 300 interviews conducted over an 18-month period. It’s co-written by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf, and is expected out July 3.

And Biden himself has promised to pen his own account, with plans to publish a book next year, according to sources that spoke with The Guardian.

But the decision to exit the Democratic Party comes at a particularly awkward time for Jeane-Pierre, who was the first Black and openly LGBTQ individual to serve as White House press secretary. She will be pulling her support from the only major LGBTQ-friendly party at a time when the Trump administration continues to attack and rescind gay and transgender rights, and weeks before she is scheduled to act as one of the grand marshalls of the New York City Pride march, alongside TV personality Michelle Visage, transgender activists Miss Major and Raquel Willis, and GLAAD executive DaShawn Usher.

Donald Trump’s tariffs on China have sent automakers scrambling to keep production lines moving—and their main solution is the exact opposite of what the U.S. president intended.

When Trump announced his sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs on almost every country (and a few uninhabited islands) in April, he promised that “jobs in factories will come roaring back into our country.” Apparently, part of his goal was to make it so expensive to import certain products that companies would simply start manufacturing them in the U.S.

But so far, the opposite is coming true. Four major automakers are rushing to find a way to keep procuring rare-earth magnets, a key component of car motors, which are primarily made in China. Without the magnets, the companies fear car production could shut down in a matter of weeks.

Several carmakers, both traditional and electric, are considering moving part of the manufacturing process to China, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

This could include building electric motors in Chinese factories or shipping American-made motors to China to have the magnets installed, according to the Journal. Trump’s restrictions only cover the Chinese-made magnets, not finished parts such as a fully built motor.

“While efforts are under way to bolster supply chains and suppliers of these elements outside of China, this will take additional time and will not alleviate the immediate shortage of elements vital for automotive components used to produce vehicles here at home,” the heads of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation and MEMA, the Vehicle Suppliers Association, warned in a letter.

China had agreed to reduce export controls on rare-earth magnets as part of a 90-day tariff pause with the United States. Trump has since accused China of dragging its feet on license approvals for magnets, while broader trade talks between the two nations appear to have come to a total standstill.

Trump complained about the state of trade talks at 2:17 a.m. Wednesday. “I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Trump said he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone for over an hour on Wednesday, just to confirm that Putin will continue to carry out attacks on Ukraine.

“I just finished speaking, by telephone, with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia. The call lasted approximately one hour and 15 minutes. We discussed the attack on Russia’s docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides. It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”

The president is referring to Ukraine’s successful drone attacks on multiple Russian airfields over the weekend, which destroyed 40 Russian aircraft.

Trump then provided an update on Iran nuclear deal talks.

“We also discussed Iran, and the fact that time is running out on Iran’s decision pertaining to nuclear weapons, which must be made quickly! I stated to President Putin that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and, on this, I believe that we were in agreement,” Trump said, using much harsher language than he did in the first half of his post.

“President Putin suggested that he will participate in the discussions with Iran and that he could, perhaps, be helpful in getting this brought to a rapid conclusion. It is my opinion that Iran has been slowwalking their decision on this very important matter, and we will need a definitive answer in a very short period of time!”

Trump is displaying much more trust and deference toward Putin here than he was just days ago, when he wrote that the Russian president was “playing with fire” by continuing to attack Ukraine.

The president continues to waffle in his support of Putin, oscillating between praise and rebuke all while getting nowhere closer to actually ending the war in Ukraine.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon wants the modern American canon to include alternative histories of some of the world’s most egregious tragedies.

Speaking before the House Education and Workforce Committee Wednesday, amid the White House’s efforts to dismantle her agency, McMahon claimed that the Trump administration’s treatment of Harvard University—which includes orders for the university to introduce conservative viewpoints into its curriculum—has been fair.

“You’re saying Harvard can have its funding and its international students back if and when it teaches what the Trump administration demands,” said California Representative Mark Takano, citing an April 11 letter from the Education Department, which effectively ransomed the university’s federal funding until Harvard abolished “all criteria, preferences, and practices … that function as ideological litmus tests.”

“Does refusing to hire a Holocaust denier as a member of Harvard’s history department faculty count as an ideological litmus test?” asked Takano.

“I believe that there should be diversity of viewpoints relative to teachings and opinions on campuses,” McMahon said.

“But what about this situation.… Would being a Holocaust denier count as that?” Takano continued.

But McMahon deflected answering the question directly, pointing instead to Harvard’s decision to fire the leaders of its center for Middle Eastern studies.

Takano also pressed McMahon on whether the ordinance would compel Harvard to hire faculty that reject the results of the 2020 presidential election or the efficacy of vaccines. In response, the education secretary insisted that there “should be different viewpoints” in America’s most elite universities—even if those viewpoints are not based in any matter of science, fact, or proof. McMahon also scolded Takano for impressing a “political ideology” that she argued was a “false narrative.”

Pennsylvania Representative Summer Lee also torched McMahon for using the Education Department to introduce dangerous and unfounded ideas into American history, asking the former professional wrestling promoter to explain what “both sides” of African American history would be.

“During your confirmation hearing you were asked by Senator Chris Murphy if an African American history class violated the administration’s position on diversity, equity, and inclusion. You said you would look into it,” said Lee. “Have you looked into it?”

“I do not think that African studies or Middle East studies or Chinese studies are part of DEI—if they are taught as the total history package,” responded McMahon. “So that if you’re giving the facts on both sides, of course they’re not DEI.”

“I don’t know what both sides of African American history would be,” Lee said.

“Well if African American history is part of—” McMahon started, before Lee interjected to argue that it would be impossible to teach the whole of history in singular semesters.

“Do you not agree that it makes sense that there would be separate courses for these courses of study?” Lee said, pointing out that the same teaching philosophy exists across areas of study, from literature to music. “One wouldn’t study baroque music and necessarily have to learn about African studies at the same time.”

McMahon eventually conceded that she agreed African history could be taught as an isolated area of study without being considered a “DEI course.”

Trump signed an executive order to strip the Education Department for parts in March. The order had McMahon’s approval.

The agency has historically been responsible for approving, monitoring, and distributing federal financial aid, such as Pell Grants and other aid made available to the public via the FAFSA. It’s also been responsible for assessing and analyzing America’s K-12 systems, as well as aggregating data and research on American educational policies. The department also oversaw the implementation of Title IX, and ensured that the American public had equal access to a valuable education.

In the immediate wake of the order, McMahon penned the mass layoff of more than half the agency’s staff.

The Education Department was already the smallest Cabinet agency, with just over 4,000 employees. Its budget cost American taxpayers $268 billion in 2024, roughly 4 percent of overall spending.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the architect behind Donald Trump’s chaotic tariff policy, admitted in a Senate hearing Wednesday that there’s no real logic in how the trade talks are being conducted.

In a damning line of questioning, Republican Senator John Kennedy exposed that the Trump administration doesn’t even have a clear goal in mind, in terms of what it wants to see from other countries in the trade talks.

“If Vietnam, for example, came to you tomorrow and said, ‘OK, Mr. Secretary, you win. We’re gonna remove all tariffs and all trade barriers. Would the U.S. please do the same?’ Would you accept that deal?” Kennedy asked Lutnick.

“Absolutely not,” Lutnick quickly replied. “That would be the silliest thing we could do.”

“Vietnam has $125 billion exports to us,” he continued, his voice rising. “It imports from us $12.5 million. And you’re thinking, Vietnam exports $125 billion? But where do they get it from? They buy $90 billion from China, then they mark it up and send it to us. It’s just a pathway from China to us.”

“So you wouldn’t accept that deal?” Kennedy pressed.

“No, it’s a terrible deal. We’re the one with the money,” Lutnick said.

“What’s the purpose of reciprocity then?” Kennedy asked, surprised by Lutnick’s confession. “Is reciprocity not one of your goals? Are you telling the president that we shouldn’t seek reciprocity? If that’s what you’re telling me, why are you trying to do these trade deals?”

“What do we want?” Lunick asked in response, trying to answer Kennedy’s question as if he had never thought about it before. “We want to encourage Vietnam to get back to producing products they’re great at producing.”

“But I want to get back to reciprocity,” Kennedy pushed. “You just said you don’t believe in, you don’t accept reciprocity as a goal. What are you negotiating in these trade deals?”

“Why would we open our bank account and their bank account when ours is 10 times bigger?”

“Why are you negotiating trade deals? You’re trying to get other countries to lower their tariffs and trade barriers in return for us lowering ours. That’s called reciprocity,” Kennedy repeated, trying to explain to Trump’s commerce secretary the administration’s own talking point.

“Of course,” Lutnick replied.

“So are you or are you not seeking reciprocity in these trade deals?”

Kennedy’s line of questioning continued for a bit longer, until Lutnick said the Trump administration would “consider” a deal from Vietnam if they said they’d stop purchasing products from China.

The pivot is certainly different from what Trump said in April when he announced his tariffs on countries around the world (as well as uninhabited islands near Africa). At the time, Trump called his tariffs “reciprocal” and said they would remain in place until other countries remove their trade barriers for the U.S. Now it seems Trump’s logic has changed entirely—if there is any logic at all.

Chaos in the White House is preventing federal disaster relief from reaching its recipients, sparking fears that the government may face more delays and lapses during the upcoming hurricane season.

The Trump administration issued millions of dollars in relief to Virginia in early April after the state was battered by severe winter storms, but in doing so, the West Wing failed to alert a key player responsible for actually distributing the relief: the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Unidentified FEMA officials told CNN Wednesday that they only knew of the order thanks to newspaper headlines. Direct and official communication from the White House, according to the sources, did not reach FEMA for another four days. That left Old Dominion communities waiting an extra week for direly needed assistance.

Officials at FEMA claim that this is just one instance in a troubling pattern of miscommunication between the disaster relief agency and the Trump administration.

Typically, FEMA advises the White House as to which sites around the nation require federal assistance. That’s been true for practically every other administration, as well as Donald Trump’s first term. But since the MAGA leader has returned to the Oval Office, that relationship has been flipped.

“This is more than just who gets to tell who,” one longtime FEMA official told CNN. “There are regulatory timelines, especially for individual assistance, that are in play, and these delays do affect the delivery of assistance. It is very frustrating to the state and local partners because they think we should be doing things, but without the paperwork we cannot execute on the declaration.”

A similar slipup happened in early May, when the Trump administration failed to notify FEMA officials that it had reversed course on Arkansas’s aid request, approving distribution to the state. That stalled the process for an additional five days.

“A five-day lag is unheard of, as it prevents FEMA from fulfilling its statutory roles,” another longtime FEMA official told CNN. “It feels like a way to make it look like FEMA is being slow when we’re not yet authorized to act.”

Exactly who receives FEMA aid—and when they receive it—is no longer a guarantee under Trump’s direction.

In April, FEMA rejected North Carolina’s application for an emergency aid extension as the state grappled with recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm that killed 250 people in September. It was the deadliest hurricane in state history.

Even Trump’s voting base has been left in the lurch. Months into his presidency, residents of devastated communities are still begging the president to send relief.

Since Helene, Trump and his allies have spread unfounded conspiracies that the lead response agency had run out of money and that the Biden administration had diverted funds from FEMA to assist undocumented immigrants enter the country. (FEMA administrators have fervently and repeatedly denied this.) Conservatives, at the time of the storm, claimed that working with the Biden White House to expedite disaster relief “seemed political” and even conspiratorially suggested that the hurricanes were a government manipulation.

Days after his inauguration, Trump pitched that it would be better to do away with FEMA altogether, in favor of handing the money directly to the states, though that plan never seemed to gain traction.

Since then, Trump has actively worked to dismantle the agency. The administration has blocked states across the nation, including California and Michigan, from accessing preapproved relief. A coalition of Democratic-led states have sued the federal government, claiming that “hundreds of millions of dollars in FEMA grants” are still inaccessible.