A judge has issued an order temporarily staying portions of Donald Trump’s executive order, signed yesterday. The order is here. Relevant government officials are:

ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED from, in any manner or by any means, removing individuals with refugee applications approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as part of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, holders of valid immigrant and non-immigrant visas, and other individuals from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen, legally authorized to enter the United States.

The bottom line here is that people already approved to come into the country are not going to be put on a plane tonight and taken back.

More as developments occur.

[guest post by Dana]

A little confessional from NBC’s Chuck Todd about the media’s lack of honesty in reporting about the presidential campaign:

“Where I think political correctness got in the way of what we all knew as reporters and didn’t fully deliver was how hated the Clintons were in the heartland,” the “Meet the Press” host admitted Thursday to former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer in a interview for the “1947” podcast.

“And I think it was a fear of, ‘Oh, is it going to look like it’s sexist, anti-woman if we say that?’” he added, pointing out that on the hustings he saw numerous “Hillary for Prison” signs adorning the front yards of rural America.

“I think we underplayed it a little bit out of political correctness fears,” Mr. Todd said. “No member of the press corps wants to look like they’re singling out a group and making a group feel bad, right, whatever that [group] is.

“If we sort of were straight-up honest and blunt about hey do we understand the level of hatred that’s out there and you know, all the Hillary for Prison signs that are out there, we certainly would have at least made the viewer know, hey, you know, she’s not well-liked in some places in this country in ways that’s times 10 when it comes to Trump,” he said.

It’s deliciously rich that the liberal media was rattled by fears of a potential backlash from the liberal P.C. crowd. So much so, they willfully chose to be less than truthful about what was happening in real America, not only to give cover to Hillary Clinton but to protect themselves from being attacked by the more powerful faction of their tribe. Unbelievable! A bunch of junior high school girls dressed up as professional journalists who were afraid they wouldn’t get to eat lunch at the popular table if they spoke the truth. Not only does this again confirm that the media worked to protect a candidate, but they also worked to project a more favorable public image of that candidate as well. Ultimately, this capitulation to political correctness only served to give more power to the insatiable appetites of America’s unique social caste system. It also served to give a clear reminder to Americans just where the mainstream media’s loyalty continues to reside. Fools that they are, though, because of the media’s weakness, they ended up feeding the very beast they were afraid of being devoured by.

In addition, the hypocrisy of Todd’s claims cannot go ignored. To even give voice to an asserted belief that the press corps didn’t want people to think they were singling out a particular group and make them feel badly is disgraceful. Because, as any resident of the heartland who still has his teeth can tell you, by not accurately reflecting the views of those in that place of America, Todd and his colleagues willfully made a value judgement about the worth and relevance of one group of Americans versus another. By doing this, the media dismissed as less valuable, and inconsequential, a group of Americans that did not reflect their own tribe’s preferences, nor the preferences of their favored candidate. Also, by doing this, these members of the press did, with full intent, invalidate a large swath of the population’s own truth. How on earth does that not evidence a singling out of a particular group and make them feel badly?

Unfortunately, the media followed their own spineless need to self-protect and were willing to sacrifice truth to do so. But if that decision also happened to protect their candidate, then hey, silver lining.

The interview with Todd concludes with this jewel of self-indictment:

Mr. Todd rejected the premise that NBC News or the media in general is driven to “undermine” Donald Trump’s presidency, but admitted there was a “coastal” bias in story selection during the 2016 presidential campaign that poorly served a national audience.

“What do I think we did wrong in this election? The biggest thing is we didn’t tell the stories of all Americans,” Mr. Todd said. “We told the stories of coastal Americans. And ultimately, that’s like the larger trust issue.”

“We were more likely to do a story about the Dreamer that might get deported with new policies than we were about the 19-year-old opioid addict who feels hopeless in Rolla, Missouri. And, I’m not, I don’t pick on Rolla, Missouri, it’s, my point is that we just, we did not equally tell those stories very well, right, and, we were not, that is an out-of-touch issue.”

Oh for godsake, how does someone become so deaf, dumb and blind to their own foolishness? Even in his effort to flesh out his quasi-mea culpa, he remains absurdly clueless. A 19-year-old opioid addict in Rolla, Missouri? Because that’s the only kind of story coming out of a Southern hillbilly haven?

“Coastal Americans.” It reads like a new line from Ralph Lauren: Coastal Americans: Money, education, class, and of course, year-round tans. Of course, with a pedigree like that, there could only be stories that reflect selfless efforts at protecting the underprivileged and persecuted, right? Like, say, Dreamers.

It’s simply breathtaking that even when analyzing the reporting by the press during the 2016 Presidential campaign and admitting it was flawed and biased, Chuck Todd reveals he still hasn’t got a damn clue.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

There is good reason to cheer the policy behind the executive order on immigration signed yesterday by President Trump. One need only consider the continual problems European countries are having assimilating refugees — and the likelihood that ISIS is sending sleeper terrorists among them — to be skeptical of a policy that would admit tens of thousands of these folks within our borders. One suspects that the Obama administration did not do enough to ensure that they would be properly vetted.

But is the order legal?

That’s another question entirely, and this op-ed makes a good argument that it is not:

President Trump signed an executive order on Friday that purports to bar for at least 90 days almost all permanent immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, including Syria and Iraq, and asserts the power to extend the ban indefinitely.

But the order is illegal. More than 50 years ago, Congress outlawed such discrimination against immigrants based on national origin. . . . The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 banned all discrimination against immigrants on the basis of national origin, replacing the old prejudicial system and giving each country an equal shot at the quotas. In signing the new law, President Lyndon B. Johnson said that “the harsh injustice” of the national-origins quota system had been “abolished.”

Trump would likely point to a law that says he can determine certain aliens are detrimental to the country, but the writer says that doesn’t wash:

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump asserts that he still has the power to discriminate, pointing to a 1952 law that allows the president the ability to “suspend the entry” of “any class of aliens” that he finds are detrimental to the interest of the United States.

But the president ignores the fact that Congress then restricted this power in 1965, stating plainly that no person could be “discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person’s race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence.” The only exceptions are those provided for by Congress (such as the preference for Cuban asylum seekers).

. . . .

Mr. Trump may want to revive discrimination based on national origin by asserting a distinction between “the issuance of a visa” and the “entry” of the immigrant. But this is nonsense. Immigrants cannot legally be issued a visa if they are barred from entry. Thus, all orders under the 1952 law apply equally to entry and visa issuance, as his executive order acknowledges.

I’d be open to reading a contrary argument, but this one looks pretty convincing.

If no convincing counterargument can be mounted, this order will still perform a service: identifying hypocrisy. A lot of Republicans complained about Obama’s executive overreach. This is where we find out which of those critics were sincerely concerned about the separation of powers and the rule of law . . . and which ones were just cheap partisan hacks who didn’t like Obama.

I suspect a distressingly large number will fall into the latter category, unfortunately.

Me, I’m with Charles C.W. Cooke:

Congress is largely free from judicial interference in the realm of immigration, so it’s chosen to give up its powers to the executive.

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) January 28, 2017

I find that extraordinary. And—and, no, I don’t care who the president is—I think it needs to be reversed as soon as is possible. Fin.

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) January 28, 2017

If the order is illegal — and I stress that one cannot reach a firm conclusion about that from one op-ed — it should be condemned by anyone in Congress who still cares about limiting executive overreach. That group includes Senator Mike Lee, Representative Justin Amash, and — for the next four years — Democrats.

Then they should craft their own legislative measure, which should look a lot like the one signed by Trump yesterday . . . with this exception: its legality will be beyond debate.

UPDATE: Here is Andrew McCarthy arguing against the op-ed. I’m not totally convinced by McCarthy’s argument, but it will take a new post to explain why.

[Cross-posted at RedState and The Jury Talks Back]