Own party critical of Trump’s ban
Opposition to US president rises
SEVERAL congressional Republicans have spoken out against President Donald Trump’s immigration and refugee restrictions, reflecting unease within the president’s party about the direction he is taking in his first weeks in office.
But it was not immediately clear if such internal opposition to Trump policy signals a crack in broader Republican support for the new president as he takes several controversial turns in steering his administration in the post-Barack Obama era.
By Monday at least 30 Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives had publicly opposed or criticised the executive order signed last Friday which led to the detention of more than 100 people at US airports and mass protests in many cities, and prompted a near unanimous castigation by Democrats.
Trump’s executive order at the conclusion of his first week in office bars US entry for travellers from seven mainly Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – for 90 days. It also suspends the arrival of all refugees for at least 120 days, and Syrian refugees indefinitely.
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer, who like several Democratic lawmakers met with newly arrived refugees at the weekend to highlight what they see as the danger of Trump’s order, warned on the Senate floor that the “ill-conceived” order would only “encourage lone wolves here in America”.
Schumer urged a vote on a bill that would rescind Trump’s temporary arrival ban. His effort was blocked, but numerous Republicans have called out the new president over the action.
“There was an executive order that was put in place that was overly broad, and it needs to be fixed,” Senator Cory Gardner, a Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters, adding that he did not know about the order ahead of time.
That committee’s chairman, Senator Bob Corker, said he too was in the dark until Trump signed the document in a ceremony broadcast live on US television.
Corker’s remarks suggested he believed the administration fumbled the roll out of the document, which reportedly was not cleared by relevant senior officials such as the secretary of homeland security.
Senator John McCain, an occasional harsh critic of Trump, issued a statement on Sunday warning the order could serve as a “self-inflicted wound” in the US fight against terrorism. He moderated his criticism after the White House clarified over the weekend that holders of green cards, which makes them legal US residents, would not be affected. — AFP