Michael Warren is on vacation this week, and Andrew Egger is filling in for him on White House Watch. Michael will be back in the saddle on July 3.
The White House announced late on Monday that it had learned of “potential preparations” by Syria’s Assad regime to carry out another chemical attack “that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children.”
Several outlets reported that U.S. defense officials were taken by surprise by the statement, which they said was not coordinated across defense departments as is typical prior to the release. (The White House denied this in a Tuesday morning statement: “We want to clarify that all relevant agencies … were involved in the process from the beginning. Anonymous leaks to the contrary are false.”)
“The United States is in Syria to eliminate the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” press secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement. “If, however, Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.”
President Trump authorized a military strike against Syria last April after the Syrian government apparently carried out a similar attack against their own people.
The administration’s statement comes at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and Syria, which is allied with both Russia and Iran. U.S. forces last week shot down a Syrian warplane that had dropped bombs near American-supported fighters, leading Russia’s defense ministry to threaten to target U.S. aircraft.
White House Attacks Congressional Budget Office After Health care Projection
The Trump administration went on the attack after the Congressional Budget Office reported Monday afternoon that the Senate’s Obamacare replacement bill would lead to an estimated 22 million more Americans uninsured by 2026.
“The CBO has consistently proven it cannot accurately predict how health care legislation will impact insurance coverage,” a White House statement said. “This history of inaccuracy, as demonstrated by its flawed report on coverage, premiums, and predicted deficit arising out of Obamacare, reminds us that its analysis must not be trusted blindly.”
As the CBO released their statement, GOP Senate leaders were making plans to add a provision to the bill that would impose a six-month waiting period before regaining coverage on consumers who had allowed their insurance to lapse.
CBO scores of both House and Senate health care bills have attributed much of the drop in coverage to the elimination of the individual mandate. Even though Senate Republicans have added a provision to stabilize markets by incentivizing the purchase of health insurance—those who go two months without coverage would have a six-month waiting period when they tried to sign back up—CBO analysts believe this will ultimately be much less effective keeping Americans enrolled than the individual mandate.
Sen. Susan Collins is the most recent Republican senator to announce she plans to vote “no” on the bill, bringing the total to six. For the bill to pass, Senate leadership and the White House must woo four back—an extremely tall order.
Supreme Court Partially Reinstates Trump’s Travel Ban—For Now
On a brighter note for the Trump administration, the Supreme Court gave the president’s revised travel ban its first legal victory Monday morning, agreeing unanimously to consider the ban this October and allowing the ban to go partially into effect until then.
Two lower courts recently ruled against the ban, which stops travel from six Muslim-majority countries, and fully blocked its implementation. But the government will now be able to enforce the travel ban “with respect to foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States” until the Supreme Court hears the case later this year.
“When it comes to refugees who lack any such connection to the United States,” the per curiam brief reads, “for the reasons we have set out, the balance tips in favor of the Government’s compelling need to provide for the Nation’s security.”
The White House released a statement from President Trump celebrating the decision.
“Today’s unanimous Supreme Court decision is a clear victory for our national security,” Trump said. “It allows the travel suspension for the six terror-prone countries and the refugee suspension to become largely active. As President, I cannot allow people into our country who want to do us harm. … Today’s ruling allows me to use an important tool for protecting our Nation’s homeland.”
In effect, this opinion, to which none of the court’s liberal justices dissented, amounts to a nearly total reversal of the lower courts’ stay, as the criteria for a “bona fide relationship” are relatively strict.
“For individuals, a close familial relationship is required,” the brief reads. “A foreign national who wishes to enter the United States to live with or visit a family member … clearly has such a relationship. As for entities, the relationship must be formal, documented, and formed in the ordinary course, rather than for the purpose of avoiding” the president’s travel ban.
No members of the court dissented from the injunction, but Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the ban should been reinstated entirely in a partially concurring, partially dissenting opinion joined by Justices Alito and Gorsuch.
“Weighing the Government’s interest in preserving national security against the hardships caused to respondents by temporary denials of entry into the country, the balance of the equities favors the Government,” Thomas wrote. “I would thus grant the Government’s application for a stay in their entirety.”
What Comes After the Travel Ban?
Although the travel ban is finally going into effect, the Trump administration will still face questions about what comes next. When Trump proposed the ban, he portrayed it as a temporary stop-gap measure in a longer effort to prevent domestic terrorism.
“We must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place,” Trump said in his presidential nomination acceptance speech last July. “We don’t want them in our country.”
But on June 5, the president, while complaining that the revised travel ban was “watered down” and “politically correct,” tweeted that such vetting was already taking place.
“In any event, we are EXTREME VETTING people coming into the U.S. in order to help keep our country safe,” Trump tweeted. “The courts are slow and political!”
If the U.S. has already begun “extreme vetting,” as Trump claimed, then the administration will have to show the public why the travel ban remains necessary. The president initially claimed that the first executive order instituting a ban, signed only five days after he took office in January, was only intended to last for 90 days.
“We will be issuing all visas to all countries once we are sure we have reviewed and implemented the most secure policies over the next 90 days,” Trump said in a statement then.
On June 5, Sean Spicer said questions about the vetting process should be directed to the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department. Neither department has yet answered THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s repeated questions about whether the implementation of extreme vetting is proceeding according to schedule.
Trump Hosts Indian Prime Minister Modi
While the Senate and the Court were thus occupied, the president himself spent most of Monday hosting a delegation from India that includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The two leaders met one-on-one in the afternoon to discuss issues affecting both countries, such as Islamic extremism, infrastructure development, and expanded U.S.-India trade. The two also held a joint press conference in the Rose Garden, where each leader applauded the other’s work in office and pledged to work closely to pursue their shared interests.
“I’m proud to announce to the media, to the American people, and to the Indian people, that Prime Minister Modi and I are world leaders in social media,” Trump said. “We’re believers in giving the citizens of our countries the opportunity to hear directly from their elected officials, and for us to hear directly from them. I guess it’s worked very well in both cases.”
The president also announced that Modi had invited Ivanka Trump to lead the U.S. delegation to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in India this fall.
This post has been updated to include the White House’s follow-up statement on Syria released Tuesday morning.
