Trump touts security goal

While condemning yesterday’s “tragic” terror attack in Egypt that left at least 235 people dead, President Trump pointed to his latest travel ban proposal and yetto-be-built border wall as the kind of security measures that would help prevent similar bloodshed in the United States.

“We have to get TOUGHER AND SMARTER than ever before, and we will,” Trump tweeted yesterday. “Need the WALL, need the BAN! God bless the people of Egypt.”

Trump’s comments after extremists unleashed a deadly attack on a crowded Sufi mosque with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire come as both his travel ban and border wall are slated to be weighed by appeals court judges and Congress next month.

The third version of Trump’s travel ban — which blocks nationals from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen and Somalia — will be the subject of legal arguments in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Dec. 6 and the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on Dec. 8.

Lower courts in Maryland and Hawaii blocked the travel ban, for differing reasons, hours before the measure was set to take effect on Oct. 18. The Supreme Court has set aside challenges to earlier versions of the travel ban, waiting instead for arguments on the current ban to reach the court.

Meanwhile, funding for the border wall is likely to be pressed into the high-stakes negotiations over a spending bill to keep the government open. That bill needs to be passed by Dec. 8.