The Trump administration announced new restrictions Sunday on visitors from eight countries — an expansion of the preexisting travel ban that has spurred fierce legal debates over security, immigration and discrimination.
In announcing the new rules, officials said they are meant to be both tough and targeted. The move comes on the day the key portion of President Trump’s travel ban, one which bars the issuance of visas to citizens of six majority-Muslim countries, was due to expire.
“As president, I must act to protect the security and interests of the United States and its people,” Trump wrote in a proclamation announcing the changes for visitors from specific nations. On Twitter, he added: “Making America Safe is my number one priority. We will not admit those into our country we cannot safely vet.”
Trump’s original travel ban, signed as an executive order in the first days of his presidency, was always meant to be a temporary measure while his administration crafted more permanent rules. A senior administration official cautioned the new restrictions are not meant to last forever, but are “necessary and conditions-based, not time-based.’’
The new travel ban represents the third version offered by the Trump administration.
Three nations were added to the list of countries whose citizens will face the restrictions: Chad, North Korea and Venezuela — although the restrictions on Venezuela are narrowly crafted, targeting that country’s leadership and their family members.
One country, Sudan, fell off the travel ban list issued at the beginning of the year. Senior administration officials said a review of Sudan’s cooperation with the U.S. government on national security and information-sharing showed it was appropriate to remove it from the list.
The new restrictions will be phased in over time, officials said, and the restrictions will not affect anyone who already holds a U.S. visa. For those visitors affected by the changed restrictions, the new rules will go into effect Oct. 18, according to the proclamation.
The new rules vary per country, barring entry into the United States of immigrants and non-immigrants from Chad, Libya and Yemen, on business, tourist or business-tourist visas. It bars entry of Iranian citizens, as immigrants or non-immigrants, but provides an exception for Iranian students, provided they receive extra screening. The proclamation bars immigrants and non-immigrants from North Korea and Syria. It bars immigration by citizens of Somalia.
Critics of the administration have argued that the travel bans are an unconstitutional attempt to deliver on Trump’s campaign promise of “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Administration officials deny any of the bans were aimed at Muslims, saying they are based on security concerns about visitors from countries with failing or weak governments.
“The restrictions either previously or now were never, ever ever based on race, religion or creed,’’ one senior administration official said. “Those governments are simply not compliant with our basic security requirements.”
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said adding North Korea and Venezuela to the administration’s list does not fix the travel ban’s core problem.
“President Trump’s original sin of targeting Muslims,” he said, “cannot be cured by throwing other countries onto his enemies list.”
The original version, signed as an executive order in January, blocked citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries — Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen and Syria — as well as all refugees across the globe.
When that measure was blocked in court, Trump signed a revised order removing Iraq from the banned list and only barring the issuance of visas to citizens of the six remaining countries and all refugees.
The second order, too, was blocked by judges, but the Supreme Court in June allowed it to go into effect with a significant caveat. The administration, the court said, could not block from entering the country those with a “bona fide” connection to the United States, such as family members or those with firm offers of employment.
The ban on citizens of the six countries was to last 90 days; the ban on refugees was to last 120 days. The refugee ban is set to expire Oct. 24, and it was not immediately clear what impact the new restrictions might have on it.
The Supreme Court has scheduled arguments for Oct. 10 on whether the measure, at its core, is legal. The Justice Department signaled Sunday night that the new rules could affect how the court handles the case — lawyers for the administration filed a letter asking for new court briefs to address issues raised by the new rules.
In explaining how the administration came to cite these eight countries, officials said many governments already met U.S. requests — using secure biometric passports, for example, and willingly passing along terrorism and criminal-history information. Others agreed to make changes and share more data. But some were either unable or unwilling to give the United States what it needed, officials said.
The president had signaled earlier this month that an expansion of the travel ban was likely. Citing an attack in London, Trump wrote on Twitter, “The travel ban into the United States should be far larger, tougher and more specific — but stupidly, that would not be politically correct!”
Should the Graham-Cassidy measure die, it would almost surely end the long Republican quest to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Obama’s signature domestic achievement. If the Senate does not vote by Sept. 30, the drive to kill the Affordable Care Act will lose special protections under Senate rules that allow it to pass with a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster.
The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled a hearing on the measure for Monday, and proponents of the repeal bill say they are not giving up.
“The deadline is still a week away,” said Tommy Binion, who handles government relations for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy organization. “It is one of the last trains leaving the station, and it is a political imperative for the Republican Party. I think we are going to go through a couple more loop de loops on this roller coaster before we are all done.”
In a series of tweets early Saturday, President Trump, who has embraced the legislation in recent days, appeared to be nurturing hopes that the legislative effort could be kept alive. He voiced optimism that Mr. Paul would rethink his opposition “for the good of the party.” He also indicated that he thought Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, who had wavered publicly about the measure, would support it, though her spokeswoman has said only that the senator was studying the bill.
But at the same time, the president vented his frustration with Mr. McCain, saying he had let his state down and been deceived by Democrats into abandoning a promise.
John McCain never had any intention of voting for this Bill, which his Governor loves. He campaigned on Repeal Replace. Let Arizona down!
Patient advocacy groups, who also oppose the Graham-Cassidy measure, say they will continue their fight. “We are certainly not relaxing our efforts, because the vote count is not clear,” said Sue Nelson, a vice president of the American Heart Association, which is fighting to preserve the 2010 health law. “We are going full steam ahead with advertising, lobbying and grass-roots efforts to contact members of Congress.”
And in an unusual joint statement on Saturday, groups representing doctors, hospitals and health plans urged the Senate to reject the bill.
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“While we sometimes disagree on important issues in health care, we are in total agreement that Americans deserve a stable health care market that provides access to high-quality care and affordable coverage for all,” the groups, which included the American Medical Association and America’s Health Insurance Plans, said. The bill, they added, “does not move us closer to that goal.”
Still, the pressure on Republicans to fulfill their promise has been intense — not only from the voters who helped elect them, but also from conservative donors. Doug Deason, a wealthy Dallas businessman who manages money for his billionaire father, said he had formed a loose-knit coalition of donors who warned senior Republicans — including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader — that contributions would dry up if Congress did not overhaul the tax code and repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“We said we’re not interested in meeting with him until he gets something done,” Mr. Deason said, recounting a telephone conversation he had with Mr. McConnell over the summer. “He needs to lead.”
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Senator John McCain of Arizona in Washington on Tuesday. Mr. McCain announced on Friday that he could not “in good conscience” vote for the bill. Credit
Al Drago for The New York Times
The drive for repeal of the Affordable Care Act appeared to be dead at the end of July, after Mr. McCain’s “no” vote on a “skinny repeal” measure that was designed purely as a vehicle to permit negotiations with the House, which had passed a much more ambitious bill. That measure also had critics who called it unworkable and potentially disastrous for the insurance market, but Republican leaders could argue that they never intended to actually enact it. They were prepared to discard their handiwork as soon as House-Senate negotiations could start.
The talks never did.
“It is time to move on,” a dejected Mr. McConnell declared at the time.
But behind the scenes, Mr. Graham, whose main expertise is in military affairs, and Mr. Cassidy, a gastroenterologist, had already been working with Rick Santorum, a Republican former senator from Pennsylvania, on a measure that morphed into the Graham-Cassidy bill.
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Their collaboration, Mr. Santorum said, grew out of a chance meeting between him and Mr. Graham in the Senate barbershop last spring. Mr. Santorum had already been working with members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus on a bill to take much of the money spent under the Affordable Care Act and send it to states, with vast discretion over how to use it for health care.
“I thought maybe I should bounce this idea off Lindsey and see what he thinks,” Mr. Santorum said, adding that he thought the measure could attract the votes of Senate Republican moderates.
Mr. Santorum argues that giving governors control over how to spend health care dollars will create efficiencies in the system, and disputes as a “false narrative” the idea that states will get less money under the bill.
The bill would require states to organize their own health care systems by 2020 — a time frame that many health care experts say is unworkable — and would also give states a way to roll back protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
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If enacted, the measure would constitute “the largest transfer of financial risk from the federal government to the states in our country’s history,” said the National Association of Medicaid Directors, whose members run the program for more than 70 million Americans.
Beyond that fast time frame, the bill faces other hurdles, said Mr. Fiedler of the Brookings Institution. Politically, it almost appears designed to fail, because many more states would lose money under it than would gain. Many of those losing states are represented by Republican senators whose votes are vital: Rob Portman of Ohio, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Mr. McCain and Ms. Collins, to name a few.
And the legislation would set a cap on how much federal support states would receive per person enrolled in the Medicaid program, while health care costs are rising more quickly than the scheduled growth rate for the cap.
“One of the objectives that Republicans have come to this debate with is to reduce federal spending on health care, and it is very difficult to do that, ultimately, without reducing the people covered,” Mr. Fiedler said. “If you’re not making the underlying health care delivery system more efficient, all you’re doing is shifting around the costs.”
The bill would take money spent under the Affordable Care Act and give it to states in the form of block grants. State officials, including some who initially supported the Graham-Cassidy bill, were dismayed when they saw how much money their states could lose.
“We equalize how much each American receives toward her care, irrespective of where she lives,” Mr. Cassidy said. “I don’t see why a lower-income American in Mississippi should receive so much less than a lower-income American in Massachusetts.”
The bill would, in effect, penalize states that have expanded coverage through Medicaid and the public marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act. An analysis by the consulting firm Avalere Health found the measure would reduce overall federal funding to states by $215 billion through 2026, and by more than $4 trillion over a 20-year period.
Mr. Graham and Mr. Cassidy, unlike some Republicans, have tried to explain and defend their proposal. But they have been overwhelmed by a tidal wave of criticism from doctors, hospitals, insurers, governors and patients — and even the late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel. Critics object to these provisions:
The bill could weaken consumer protections in the Affordable Care Act. It envisions waivers of federal law that would allow insurers to charge higher premiums to sick people or omit some of the benefits that are now guaranteed, such as maternity care, mental health services or treatment for drug addiction.
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It would eliminate the federal tax credits and other subsidies that make health insurance more affordable for people with low and moderate incomes, letting states decide how to use the money.
It would end the expansion of Medicaid, which has provided insurance to low-income people in 31 states of all political hues. The states include Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, New York and West Virginia.
“People are scared,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio. “They read in the paper, they see on TV, they see online that their insurance might be taken away. There’s a lot of fear in this society injected by government, and they should be ashamed of themselves.”
