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8. It Was Apparently Interpreted by Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and Top Advisor Steven Miller To Cover Those With Green Cards. When questions began to stream in about whether the order applied to legal residents from the seven countries at issue, the Department of Homeland Security immediately said yes. Then, apparently, Bannon and Miller overruled them, leading to confusion. Here’s the CNN report:

The White House overruled that guidance overnight, according to officials familiar with the rollout. That order came from the President’s inner circle, led by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. Their decision held that, on a case by case basis, DHS could allow green card holders to enter the US…. Before the President issued the order, the White House did not seek the legal guidance of the Office of Legal Counsel, the Justice Department office that interprets the law for the executive branch. A source said the executive order did not follow the standard agency review process that’s typically overseen by the National Security Council, though the source couldn’t specifically say if that included the decision to not have the order go through the Office of Legal Counsel.

This is incompetence, plain and simple. There is no way this order should have applied to legal permanent residents of the United States traveling abroad. The order also should have included clear lines of entry for allies of the United States military (e.g. Iraqi interpreters). But the order wasn’t written by lawyers or even vetted by the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, reportedly.

Is this order as insane as the media have portrayed it? Absolutely not. It’s a temporary stay, not a permanent one; it doesn’t religiously discriminate, despite accusations to the contrary. But it was incompetently rolled out, and apparently interpreted in amateur fashion by Trump’s White House. That undermines Trump’s actual national security agenda pretty severely. 

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