A new travel ban is in the offing. Will it pass legal muster?

President Donald Trump’s travel ban has been frozen by the courts, but the White House has promised a new executive order that officials say will address concerns raised by judges that have put the policy on hold. The first order was met by legal challenges, confusion at airports and mass protests. The White House has forecast smoother sailing the second time around. But no matter what the new policy says, lawsuits challenging its aims are expected.

When is the order coming? The White House says it expects to issue a new order this week. Trump aide Stephen Miller said last week that the new order would be very similar to the first, with “mostly minor technical differences.” The Justice Department has said the Trump administration would be abandoning the original order, which should render moot ongoing court challenges to that order. Thenewordercouldgointoeffectimmediately and would not be blocked by the court ruling that has kept the existing order on hold, said David Levine, a professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Levine said new regulations and laws are assumed to be legal until a court says otherwise.

Can we expect legal challenges to the new order? Yes. But four officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the new order will remove Iraq from the list of countries facing a temporary US travel ban. They said it would also no longer single out Syrian refugees for an indefinite ban and instead include them in a general, 120-day suspension of new refugee admissions. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity. There are likely to be various, other technical changes to try to head off any attempt by Washington state and Minnesota, the two states whose lawsuit led to a court order that halted the order, from moving quickly for a court order putting any new ban on hold. The new order maintains the ban for the other six countries — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen.

Will the new travel ban pass constitutional muster? That is hard to say. The 9th Circuit decision, for instance, said the first order may have violated the constitutional rights of green-card holders to a notice and a hearing before their travel was restricted. Any new policy may have to address that concern. The Justice Department has argued that a ban that exempts green-card holders and focuses only on foreigners from the seven nations who have never entered the US would be entirely legal. But the court said Washington state and Minnesota might have a valid claim that even some of those foreigners have a constitutional right to challenge the ban.

To beat the religious discrimination argument, the government may also have to overcome statements outside of court by Trump and aides, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Challengers of the ban have held those statements up as evidence of discriminatory intent. The statements include Giuliani's claim that Trump had asked him how to legally pull off a “Muslim ban,” and Trump’s own interview statements that Christian refugees had been disadvantaged.

The 9th Circuit did not fully address the issue, but did note that courts assessing the motive of a government action can take into account statements by decision-makers.

What might happen to the existing challenges? If the original executive order is formally rescinded and replaced, then lawsuits challenging it would be effectively nullified as the focus turns to the new policy, legal experts say. Even so, arguments made by lawyers for Washington state and Minnesota that appeared to sway the 9th Circuit could easily be recycled in another or amended legal challenge. AP

The earlier ban led to protests across US