One bad ban

The Trump administration’s third, or is it fourth, travel ban makes no more sense as counterterrorism policy than its cobbledtogether predecessors. At a time when the chief threat to the United States comes from homegrown terrorists, the administration instead chooses to advertise a handful of nations from which it will refuse entry.

And this still includes not a single home country of an individual who has committed an act of deadly jihadist terrorism since 9/11. Saudi Arabians have; they are free to enter. Egyptians, Lebanese and Emiratis have; they’re also A-OK.

Instead, immigrants, visitors, government officials or all three are blocked, permanently, from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, plus — new to the list — North Korea, Venezuela and Chad.

The one country to come off the naughty list is Sudan. Due to progress in fighting terror? Sophisticated new vetting of visas by Khartoum? The administration makes no such claim.

Most head-scratching of all, but par for Mar-aLago, is the inclusion of the central African nation of Chad — previously recognized by the Pentagon and the State Department as a key U.S. ally in fighting extremist groups.

Sure, Chad happens to be from a region where Boko Haram terror is active, but that didn’t wind up dinging its more dysfunctional neighbors.

After the eleventh-hour scramble, the Supreme Court was forced to scrap oral arguments planned for next month — and demand written briefs explaining why this latest policy doesn’t render consideration of the previous ban moot.

Legally speaking, the President’s authority here is broad. But this is no way to protect a nation.