Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence: Trumps Horrifying Executive Order on Refugees and Visas
This article describes the stream of conscience manner in which Trump's order was drafted and implemented, and this incompetence helps mitigate some of its potential impact. However, when you think about Trump's desire to abolish federal agencies and eliminate federal regulations, what you see is that this process is an illustration of Trump's approach to government. Who needs intra-agency review? Who needs to consult with career officers in the State Department. Just demand that a major policy change be implemented, and deal with the mess on the fly.
Can you imagine if he has to deal with a disaster that he himself did not generate?
https://lawfareblog.com/malevolence-tempered-incompetence-trumps-horrifying-executive-order-refugees-and-visas
The malevolence of President Trump’s Executive Order on visas and refugees is mitigated chiefly—and perhaps only—by the astonishing incompetence of its drafting and construction.
NBC is reporting that the document was not reviewed by DHS, the Justice Department, the State Department, or the Department of Defense, and that National Security Council lawyers were prevented from evaluating it. Moreover, the New York Times writes that Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, the agencies tasked with carrying out the policy, were only given a briefing call while Trump was actually signing the order itself. Yesterday, the Department of Justice gave a “no comment” when asked whether the Office of Legal Counsel had reviewed Trump’s executive orders—including the order at hand. (OLC normally reviews every executive order.)
This order reads to me, frankly, as though it was not reviewed by competent counsel at all.
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As I shall explain, in the short term, the incompetence is actually good news for people who believe in visa and refugee policies based on criteria other than—let’s not be coy about this—bigotry and religious discrimination. The President has created a target-rich environment for litigation that will make his policies, I suspect, less effective than they would have been had he subjected his order to vetting one percent as extreme as the vetting to which he proposes to subject refugees from Bashar al-Assad and the bombing raids of Vladimir Putin.
