For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.





Remember those seven countries that President Trump singled out for a travel ban? He asked the Department of Homeland Security to check them out and explain why they deserved to be on a no-entry list. Here’s what he got:

Oops. “Rarely implicated” means a grand total of six people out of 82. That’s one per year since 2011. And not one terrorist plot per year, either. One “terrorism related offense” per year. In many of these cases, it’s probably a material support charge for sending a hundred bucks to some warlord back home.

This comes via the AP, which got this comment:

Homeland Security spokeswoman Gillian Christensen on Friday did not dispute the report’s authenticity, but said it was not a final comprehensive review of the government’s intelligence. “While DHS was asked to draft a comprehensive report on this issue, the document you’re referencing was commentary from a single intelligence source versus an official, robust document with thorough interagency sourcing,” Christensen said. “The … report does not include data from other intelligence community sources. It is incomplete.”

I have a feeling that once the “interagency sourcing” is finished, there might be a different spin on these numbers. This is very definitely not what the boss wants to hear.