Closing summary
This ends our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back on Thursday. Among the day’s developments:
Donald Trump issued a sweeping new travel ban, with the total exclusion of citizens of 12 countries from entering the United States, and the partial exclusion of nationals of seven others.
Trump also ordered an investigation of the validity of the actions of his predecessor, Joe Biden, based in part on a viral conspiracy theory.
In the most severe step yet in hi campaign against Harvard University, Trump said that no visas would be issued to foreign student to study there.
Elon Musk continued to rage-post against the spending and tax bill that Trump wants to sign.
In a video statement justifying the new travel bans, Trump lumped together economic migrants who might overstay tourist visas with terrorists plotting attacks as “national security threats”.
When we have more time to consider it, it might be interesting to explore what, if anything, the five nations that were included in Trump’s original travel ban, a list that was revised four times in his first term, but not on his new one, did in the meantime to get excluded.
Those nations are: Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, North Korea, Syria and Tanzania.
We know that the leaders of North Korea and Syria have impressed Trump, but what might explain the exclusion of those other three countries from the new list?
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