Trump Plans to Use Travel Ban for Chilling New Immigration Rule

The Trump administration is planning to make it harder for immigrants to get green cards and other benefits if they are from any of the countries on the president’s travel ban.

The New York Times, citing documents from the Department of Homeland Security, reports that the plan is to view “country-specific factors,” referring to countries in Trump’s June travel ban, as “significant negative factors” in applications from immigrants. The policy is still being finalized, but would essentially restrict permanent resident status, and subsequent citizenship, by the basis of national origin.

The countries named in the ban were Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Partial restrictions were placed on Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela, with citizens of those countries barred from entering the United States permanently or receiving specific visas. The new rule would affect immigrants who came to the U.S. legally prior to Trump’s ban.

Administration officials claim that the countries on the list have poor screening and vetting practices, but critics, such as American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, say that it makes “national origin discrimination … official government policy.”

“Having something that applies to you based on your country is absurd,” Doug Rand, a senior official at Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Biden administration, told the Times. “This is a radical change.”

Last month, the administration cut the number of refugees that the U.S. accepts to a record low of 7,500 for next year, prioritizing white South Africans at the expense of people fleeing war zones and persecution. In June, it said it would screen the social media accounts of immigrant applications for anti-American activity. Now, it is trying to restrict legal immigration even further.

Republicans in a red state have failed to initiate their pro-Trump gerrymandering efforts for the second time this month.

On Friday, Indiana’s state Senate Republicans announced that they failed to gather enough votes to redistrict their state in their favor ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

“Over the last several months, Senate Republicans have given very serious and thoughtful consideration to the concept of redrawing our state’s congressional maps,” state Senator Rodric Bray said, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle’s Niki Kelly. “Today, I’m announcing there are not enough votes to move that idea forward, and the Senate will not reconvene.”

This is a massive failure in the GOP’s plan to redraw districts in the middle of the decade to help it gain more seats in Congress. Last week, Kansas Republicans gave up on a weeks-long effort to accelerate the redrawing of their state’s congressional map. Days later, a Utah judge rejected a Republican-drawn map and instead instituted the state’s first blue-leaning one in 25 years.

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were apparently so close that the billionaire child sex offender once paid the now-president a hefty bet.  

Emails released by the House Oversight Committee show an exchange between Epstein and alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra discussing a time to video chat, when Chopra asked Epstein if he knew Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples. Epstein replied, “Yes  ,  in fact when she told donald she was pregnant. I lost a 10k dollar bet with him, and sent him a truck of baby food in payment. but i have not spoken to her in many years since then.”

The email, dated July 29, 2016, didn’t end there. Epstein added that “she can tell you the story of her friend who was caught having sex with her shoes. yes-shoes.” 

The entire exchange took place months before Trump would win the presidential election for the first time, and details the extent of the president’s relationship with the now-dead Epstein. When Trump and Maples got married in 1993 at the New York Plaza Hotel, Epstein was in attendance. Maples and Trump would divorce in 1999 after having one child together, Tiffany. 

Chopra and Maples spoke together at a “Sages & Sciences Symposium” in 2010, and Maples posted a picture of the two together on Instagram in 2016, in which she called him her friend. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told The Independent that “These emails prove literally nothing.”

On the contrary, these emails show that Epstein and Trump have a long-standing relationship, refuting the president’s denials. They may have even spent time together while Trump was president. With every new release of Epstein’s correspondence, Trump’s denials are looking more and more pathetic. 

Jeffrey Epstein’s victims are pleading with Congress to release the Epstein files.

In a haunting letter, the family members of deceased abuse survivor Virginia Giuffre—along with several victims who have accused Donald Trump of participating in Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring—asked lawmakers to “be brave” in the coming days as they vote to potentially make the case files public.

“There is no middle ground here. There is no hiding behind party affiliation,” they said, in a letter jointly addressed to members of the House and Senate.

“Epstein and [Ghislaine] Maxwell’s crimes exposed a double standard of justice, where rich and powerful men and women evade repercussions. Despite years of work to bring them to justice, most of Epstein and Maxwell’s co-conspirators remain completely free, continuing to amass power and prestige, living without apparent shame.

“As you gather with your family this season, remember that your primary duty is to your constituents,” the writers continued. “Look into the eyes of your children, your sisters, your mothers, and your aunts. Imagine if they had been preyed upon. Imagine if you yourself were a survivor. What would you want for them? What would you want for yourself? When you vote, we will remember your decision at the ballot box.”

Pressure on lawmakers dramatically ramped up this week after a discharge petition to force a vote on the files’ release succeeded. Just ahead of the petition passing, the House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 documents Wednesday that it had obtained from Epstein’s estate, revealing that Trump was a frequent topic in correspondence between Epstein and his pen pals.

In a 2011 email, Epstein expressed he was grateful Trump had stayed quiet about details of his life. The “dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote, despite the fact that Trump had spent hours at one of Epstein’s properties with a known victim.

In a 2017 exchange with former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Epstein said that Trump was the worst individual he knew.

“I have met some very bad people, none as bad as Trump,” Epstein wrote. “Not one decent cell in his body.”

When queried by Trump biographer Michael Wolff in 2019 about the extent of the president’s knowledge of abductions of young girls, Epstein remarked: “Of course he knew about the girls he asked Ghislaine to stop.”

The White House immediately brushed off the reports, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisting that the emails prove nothing. Trump, in turn, has accused Democrats of inventing the Trump-Epstein connection, repeatedly referring to it as a “hoax.”

In the halls of Congress, conservative lawmakers are turning on Trump. Senior Republicans privately expect dozens of their party members—“possibly 100 or more”—to vote in favor of a bill that would make the federal government’s trove of Epstein files publicly available, Politico reported Wednesday. A handful have already voiced their intention to back the forthcoming bill, including Representatives Eli Crane, Don Bacon, and Warren Davidson.

Border Protection commander Gregory Bovino has finally left Chicago, after a federal judge said he’d lied about using excessive force to target protesters opposing immigration operations.

During an appearance on Fox News Thursday, Bovino, who’d been tasked with leading “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, said that he had retreated to West Virginia, where he was “undergoing training with several hundred border patrol agents.” Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, is home to Custom and Border Protection’s Advanced Training Center.

The CBP chief said he could soon redeploy in either New York, Chicago, or Charlotte, North Carolina, adding that he could “guarantee” that Illinois Governor Pritzker would see “a lot more” immigration enforcement in Chicago.

Earlier this week, officials told CBS News that Bovino planned to leave, taking many of his Border Patrol agents with him.

It seems that Bovino left with his tail between his legs, after suffering a lashing from a federal judge. Last week, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a preliminary injunction barring federal agents from using tear gas and other riot prevention methods against protesters, “unless such force is objectively necessary to stop an immediate threat.”

Ellis said that Bovino had admitted to lying about being hit in the head with a rock before deploying tear gas canisters on protesters in Little Village, during his hourslong deposition, and that she’d reviewed video that “disproved” his prior claim. Ellis also said she’d reviewed a trove of evidence that federal agents had used excessive force against protesters, despite little evidence of any actual criminal activity.

Her preliminary injunction requires officers to issue two clear warnings before administering crowd-control measures, to place identifiers conspicuously on their person, and to wear a body camera. In line with her request from a previous hearing, the government’s lawyer confirmed that Bovino would now wear a body camera.