Trump's New Travel Ban Is More Incoherent and Just as Useless As the Old
Throwing North Korea and Venezuela on the list doesn't make it less discriminatory or America more safe
Donald Trump's latest travel ban is much more likely to withstand legal challenges against it on grounds that it
imposes an unconstitutional religious test on foreigners than its initial iterations. But that's not because it is any less discriminatory than the previous "Muslim" ban. It is because it found a clever way to whitewash its actual intent by also throwing in the mix non-Muslim countries like North Korea and Venezuela that are on the president's shit list for other reasons.
Turning foreign policy into a tool for settling personal vendettas might be politically clever, I note in my morning column at The Week. But it won't make America safe from terrorists.
Motivated terrorists don't need a permission slip from the government to enter the country. They will find ways to do so. But the foreigners whom the ban will manage to keep out are precisely the ones who mean America no harm and are fleeing the very terrorists that threaten this country. Indeed, foreigners from the banned countries killed precisely zero Americans on American soil from 1975 to 2015.
In short, the ban won't Make America Safe Again. It will just raise the hysteria level yet again.
Go here to read the whole thing.
