President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday restricting certain categories of immigrants from entering the United States for 60 days as the country reels from the coronavirus outbreak, but the measure contains broad exceptions and is more limited than the sweeping closure he proclaimed on Twitter earlier in the week. The order, which takes effect Thursday, will not apply to immigrants who already are living and working in the United States and are seeking to become legal permanent residents. Medical professionals, farmworkers and others who enter on temporary “nonimmigrant” visas are unaffected, and the suspension also exempts the spouses and underage children of U.S. citizens, among other carve-outs.

It is hard to figure out who is affected by this, given that it does not affect the majority of green card holders who are already in the United States. Not even hard-core anti-immigration activists were impressed.

This transparent and ineffective effort, thrown out there on Twitter on a whim, has nothing to do with the coronavirus. As the pro-immigration group FWD.us said in a written statement: “Slashing legal immigration in response to a public health crisis is as ridiculous as it is dangerous. Let’s be honest: this has nothing to do with public health or economic well-being during the COVID-19 crisis.” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and the chair of the immigration and citizenship subcommittee, Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), released their own statement, pointing out that “this executive order is not about protecting American workers. The only thing it really accomplishes is keeping families apart.” They added: "The order is also an illegal and shocking usurpation of power. Under our Constitution, Congress writes the laws, and the President must enforce them as written. This executive order turns that bedrock principle of separation of powers on its head.”

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When not race-baiting and stirring up xenophobia, Trump is trying to silence or talk over his own scientific advisers. After Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Post that an outbreak of the virus could be worse next winter, Trump tried to force him to declare at the Wednesday news briefing that he had been misquoted. Instead, Redfield confirmed the Post report’s accuracy. To boot, Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said point blank that the virus would definitely return in the fall.

Even more embarrassing for Trump, a whistleblower who objected to his quack medical advice stepped forward. The New York Times reports:

Dr. Rick Bright was abruptly dismissed this week as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and removed as the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response. . . . In a scorching statement, Dr. Bright assailed the leadership at the health department, saying he was pressured to direct money toward hydroxychloroquine, one of several “potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections” and repeatedly described by the president as a potential “game changer” in the fight against the virus.

Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice ineffectively rushing around to stop a flood that deepens by the minute, Trump cannot muzzle experts fast enough to prevent the truth from seeping out: The pandemic is not going away soon, and there is no magic fix.

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And finally, when Trump is caught in a grossly unpopular and untenable position (denigrating testing, egging on governors to open up businesses), he does an about-face (insisting that no one wants testing more than he does, hammering Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia). In this case, Kemp was the unlucky victim as Trump summarily threw him to the curb. “I told the governor of Georgia Brian Kemp that I disagree strongly with his decision to open certain facilities which are in violation of the phase one guidelines for the incredible people of Georgia,” Trump insisted at his Wednesday briefing. Umm, hasn’t he been urging states to “liberate” themselves from stay-at-home restrictions?

These frantic efforts — distract with xenophobia, muzzle or dismiss the scientists, wildly contradict himself — suggest Trump is in deep political trouble. No doubt his internal polling matches public polling in key battleground states. (Fox News polls had him trailing former vice president Joe Biden in Michigan and in Pennsylvania by 8 points; Reuters showed him trailing Biden by 8 in Michigan, 6 in Pennsylvania and 3 in Wisconsin; and Quinnipiac had him behind Biden by 4 in Florida.) His approval rating is underwater nationally, as is his handling of the pandemic. In the end, there simply is no way to spin a pandemic that has already killed more than 45,000 Americans and sent us spiraling into a recession.

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