President Trump is expected to sign today a revised version of his executive order banning travel of people from certain nations to the U.S., scaling back a policy that prompted widespread protests and court challenges, the Wall Street Journal reports. The changes are aimed at putting the order on stronger legal and political footing. They are the result of greater collaboration among government agencies than preceded the first order, issued less than a week after Trump took office. Still, the new version will face a fresh court challenge.
Several key provisions of the original executive order were put on hold last month by the the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The new version is expected still to ban travel from several Muslim-majority nations, but unlike the original, it will leave Iraq off the list. Lobbying by senior administration officials, diplomats and Iraqis warned that including Iraq risked doing lasting harm to bilateral relations at a critical moment in the war with Islamic State. The White House has said banning entry from these countries is necessary to prevent terrorist attacks in the U.S. In another change, the new order is expected to apply only to future visa applicants from the targeted countries, with current visa holders and legal permanent residents, or green-card holders, unaffected. That is a significant rollback from the original, which affected nearly 60,000 existing visa holders from seven nations.