On another day of chaotic developments over the week-old order, the State Department reversed its cancellation of visas for people from the affected countries and began efforts to resettle refugees, small numbers of travelers began venturing to airports to try to fly to the United States, and Mr. Trump mounted a harsh personal attack on the judge.
.. Judge Robart, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, declared in his ruling that “there’s no support” for the administration’s argument that “we have to protect the U.S. from individuals” from the affected countries, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and Libya.
.. The White House appeared determined to have Judge Robart’s ruling struck down swiftly. In his first statement on the matter on Friday evening, the press secretary, Sean Spicer, described the judge’s action as “outrageous.” Minutes later, the White House issued a new statement deleting the word outrageous.
.. It recalled the attacks he made during the presidential campaign on a federal district judge in California who was presiding over a class-action lawsuit involving Trump University.
.. Democrats said the president’s criticism of Judge Robart was a dangerous development. Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that Mr. Trump seemed “intent on precipitating a constitutional crisis.” Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, whose state filed the suit that led to the injunction, said the attack was “beneath the dignity” of the presidency and could “lead America to calamity.”
.. And in a third message, he asserted, without evidence, that some Middle Eastern countries supported the immigration order. “Interesting that certain Middle-Eastern countries agree with the ban,” he wrote. “They know that if certain people are allowed in it’s death & destruction!”
.. “The executive order adversely affects the states’ residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations and freedom to travel,” Judge Robart wrote. He said the states had been hurt because the order affected their public universities and their tax base.
.. The judge also barred the administration from enforcing its limits on accepting refugees, including “any action that prioritizes the refugee claims of certain religious minorities.”
.. The next question at the trial court level will be whether Judge Robart will make the temporary restraining order more permanent by issuing a preliminary injunction.
Putin’s incredible shrinking circle
on the 12th it was announced that Vladimir Putin’s chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, was leaving his position as head of the Presidential Administration (AP) and taking up the new and rather less pivotal job of presidential representative for transport and the environment. In his place, Putin elevated one of Ivanov’s deputies, the essentially-unknown 44-year old Anton Vaino. Whatever Vaino’s strengths, this points to the way Putin is hollowing out his inner elite, surrounding himself with fewer but also less substantial peers, who are unlikely to challenge his worldview and opinions.
.. A shrewd and polished operator, Ivanov seemed at once ambitious and indispensable (asked whom he trusted back in 1999, Putin’s immediate response: “Sergei Ivanov”).
.. But his departure could also be part of Putin’s clearing of the old guard in advance of the 2018 presidential elections. The Kremlin was caught by surprise when the rigged presidential elections in 2011 led to the “Bolotnaya protests”. This time, although they do not seem to know quite what to expect, there is a clear intention to be ready, come what may
.. Putin, less trusting of the elite, is taking the opportunity to install a new cadre of officials who are younger and have more to prove and less to lose.
.. he is recruiting disproportionately from the people he knows. Given his cloistered lifestyle, that often means bodyguards, personal assistants, and the like. Vaino, for example, was head of his personal protocol office (and even memorably carried his umbrella from time to time).
.. The inexorable logic of Putin’s personalised, de-institutionalised and essentially ruthless regime is that he must periodically devour his favourites — where Yakunin and Ivanov go, other past cronies such as Rosneft head Igor Sechin and deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov may well follow — as they become tiresome, embarrassing or a threat.
.. What makes this iteration more noteworthy and worrying than most, though, is that it takes place at a volatile time when Putin himself is increasingly willing to sacrifice the immediate interests of the Russian people for his vision of a powerful, “sovereign” Russia and his own historical legacy. In their own self-interested and sometimes wrong-headed way, the boyars are one of the few checks and balances.