Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Trump's Immigration Order Unleashed a Policy Disaster

The new president gets an old lesson in relying far too heavily on White House staff.

January 30, 2017 at 12:24 PM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

Executive order disorder.
Photographer: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

The Trump administration's first attempt at implementing complex policy via executive order has been blowing up on them since it was signed on Friday. As Benjamin Wittes put it at Lawfare, the immigration ban targeting seven Muslim-dominated countries was "malevolence tempered by incompetence," and it was met by massive protests, several legal setbacks, denunciation by most major religious movements (yes, including evangelicals), practically unanimous condemnation by Democrats along with a fair number of Republicans (including members of Congress), and a partial (so far) retreat by the administration.

So why is the new administration botching things so badly?