Rush of Trump orders resurrects travel ban and targets Biden

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German chancellor Friedrich Merz will be visiting Donald Trump today as the estrangement between Washington and Europe hangs over the future of the western alliance. In the meantime, let’s talk about:

Trump’s burst of proclamations

The president’s attacks on Columbia University

What Dems can learn from a small Pennsylvania town

In a rush of proclamations issued last night Donald Trump banned citizens of 12 countries from entering the US and launched an investigation into Joe Biden’s aides for allegedly concealing his mental decline.

The actions mark a sharp expansion of the president’s anti-immigrant policies and retribution against his political foes, and signal a new divisive turn in his second term in office.

The sweeping ban on entry for foreign nationals from certain countries evoked the “Muslim ban” of his first term, while the probe into Biden and his aides followed through on his campaign pledge to investigate his predecessor.

Also on Wednesday evening, Trump renewed his assault on Harvard University, scrapping visas for foreign students looking to study at the elite institution.

The ban on entry into the US applies to citizens of Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Myanmar — which the administration referred to as Burma. Citizens from those countries will be barred from coming into the US starting June 9.

Citizens of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela will also be subject to some restrictions on entering the US.

As with Trump’s first-term ban on entry for citizens of certain Muslim-majority countries, the restrictions are likely to face legal challenges.

Trump said the new ban would allow the US government to “protect its citizens from terrorist attacks and other national security or public-safety threats”.

He said an attack against the Jewish community in Boulder, Colorado — for which an Egyptian immigrant was charged and which left 15 people injured at the weekend — “underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted” or those who overstayed temporary visas.

“We don’t want them. We will not let what happened in Europe happen to America.”

The latest headlines

Donald Trump’s landmark tax bill will add $2.4tn to US national debt by 2034, the congressional fiscal watchdog has warned.

The Trump administration claimed Columbia University no longer meets accreditation standards, threatening the school’s access to millions of dollars in tuition fees from government-issued student grants and loans.

Trump said after talking with Vladimir Putin that the Russian president was not ready for an “immediate peace” and was planning to retaliate against Ukraine for Kyiv’s big drone attack at the weekend.

The US president has described his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping as “extremely hard to make a deal with” as the two countries face off over Washington’s claims that Beijing is breaking their trade ceasefire.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has hit back at a US proposal on Tehran’s nuclear programme, calling the Trump administration “rude” and “thoughtless”.

As Europe confronts Trump’s triple threat on Ukraine, Nato and trade, negotiators are increasingly concerned that the president will demand concessions in one area in exchange for support in another.

What we’re hearing

Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, a picturesque and tiny town of 5,819 people, is a spot of progressive Democratic blue enveloped by Republican red. It is emblematic of the thousands of local communities throughout the country whose resilience is being tested by Trump’s spending cuts and the Maga culture wars.

It could offer Democrats — who are still discombobulated after their sweeping loss in November — some much needed mojo. How? By getting back to basics and demonstrating to voters that the party can govern effectively.

Democrats took another blow yesterday after Karine Jean-Pierre, who was one of Joe Biden’s press secretaries, left the party and is writing a tell-all book about her time at the White House.

If Stroudsburg’s Democratic local officials can successfully govern a place they are deeply invested in emotionally, it could offer their party a road map for a reset. It could also undermine Trump’s support in crucial swing states.

“It’s easy to be hateful of something that you aren’t forced to encounter,” Michael Moreno, Stroudsburg’s millennial mayor, told the FT’s Oliver Roeder. “If lawmakers were forced to confront the people they make poor decisions about, then they might think twice.”

Stroudsburg has already felt the effects of cuts engineered at a lightning pace by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). Federal grants are disappearing in “a noticeable drying up of funds”, Moreno said.

The mayor and other officials are still making plans for the town’s future — if funding can be secured.

“Good governance moves slowly,” Moreno said.

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