Trump’s virtual wall to block Muslim immigrants

Trump is expected to order the construction of the border wall with Mexico, the first in a series of actions to bolster national security. The border wall was a signature promise of Trump’s campaign to control the illegal flow of immigrants. His actions would also include slashing the number of refugees who can resettle in the US and blocking Syrians and others from “terror prone” nations from entering, at least temporarily. 

He may suspend some immigration from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, either temporarily or “indefinitely,” sources familiar with the plans  that have been under consideration were quoted as saying. Trump also plans to review whether to resume the once-secret “black site” detention programme; keep open the prison at Guantanamo Bay; and designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation. 

Trump is expected to target legal immigrants as early as this week, White House officials said, by halting a decades-old programme that grants refuge to the world’s most vulnerable people. The refugee policy under consideration would halt admissions from Syria and suspend it from other majority-Muslim nations until the administration can study how to properly vet them. The plan is believed to be in line with a ban on Muslim immigrants that Trump proposed during his campaign, arguing that such a step was warranted given concerns about terrorism. 

The expected actions drew strong criticism from immigrant advocates and human rights groups, which called them discriminatory moves that rejected the American tradition of welcoming immigrants of all backgrounds.

EPA told to cut climate page from website 

Trump’s administration has instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to remove the climate change page from its website in the latest move by the newly minted leadership to erase ex-President Barack Obama’s climate change initiatives.

The employees were notified by EPA officials on Tuesday that the administration had instructed EPA’s communications team to remove the website’s climate change page, which contains links to scientific global warming research, as well as detailed data on emissions. The page is could go down as early as Wednesday, the sources said. 

“If the website goes dark, years of work we have done on climate change will disappear,” one of the EPA staffers told the media, who added some employees were scrambling to save some of the information housed on the website, or convince the Trump administration to preserve parts of it.