President Donald Trump's new executive order banning travel from certain Muslim-majority countries dropped key points from his original order, according to the attorney general who sued to stop the first order.
"The president has capitulated on numerous key provisions blocked by our lawsuit, including bans on Green Card holders, visa holders, and dual citizens, an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees, and explicit preferences based on religion," Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, told The Hill on Monday, adding the initial ban was "indefensible — legally, constitutionally, and morally."
According to Ferguson, Trump's second order is an admittance his first went too far. Although Trump's administration vowed to fight the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that blocked the original action, they never mounted a defense, and instead opted to issue a new executive order, which no longer bans travel from Iraq and halts refugee acceptance for four months, with Syrians no longer barred indefinitely, and with no religious group receiving preference.
"We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas," Trump said outside the Pentagon Monday, according to The New York Times. "We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country, and love deeply our people."
"This is a retreat, but let's be clear — it's just another run at a Muslim ban," Omar Jadwat, who directs the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, told the Times.
"At its core, the second order looks very similar to the first, and I expect it will run into the same problems from the courts and the public that the first one did. They can't un-ring the bell."
Jadwat's organization was among the first to sue over Trump's original order.
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