Edition · June 26, 2017
June 26, 2017: Trump’s travel ban got a partial Supreme Court reprieve — and a reminder that even when he wins, he loses
On the exact day the Supreme Court let parts of the administration’s travel restrictions move forward, the broader Trump operation was still tripping over its own foreign-policy contradictions and a widening health-care mess on Capitol Hill.
June 26, 2017 was one of those days when the Trump White House could claim a tactical win and still look strategically broken. The Supreme Court allowed a narrowed version of the travel ban to go into effect, but only after the administration’s policy had already been pared down by lower courts and redefined by the justices themselves. In the background, Trump’s team was still dealing with the political damage from the health-care drive and the growing perception that the president was always one tweet, one leak, or one congressional ambush away from undercutting his own agenda. This edition focuses on the most consequential Trump-world screwups that were clearly visible on that date and the fallout they were already generating.
Closing take
The headline on June 26 was not that Trump had suddenly become a disciplined president. It was that his biggest signature fights were either being narrowed by the courts, stalled by Congress, or damaged by the chaos around him. Even the partial travel-ban win came with a bright red asterisk: the government could enforce it only against some people, not all, and the fight was headed right back into court in the fall. That is what a Trump victory looked like in mid-2017 — a thinner, messier, and far more brittle version of whatever the president had promised.
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Travel ban asterisk
Confidence 5/5
★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5
Serious fuckup
The Supreme Court allowed parts of Trump’s travel restrictions to take effect on June 26, 2017, but only in a sharply limited form. The justices said the government could not enforce the ban against people with a credible claim of a bona fide relationship to a U.S. person or entity, which cut the administration’s supposed victory down to size. The result was a legal and political win with a giant asterisk: Trump got movement, but not the sweeping authority he wanted, and the case was set to return in the fall.
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Russia squeeze
Confidence 4/5
★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5
Serious fuckup
The Russia sanctions fight was still hanging over Trump on June 26, 2017, with Congress moving aggressively and the White House boxed in by its own contradictions. Senate Republicans and Democrats had already lined up behind tougher sanctions over Russian election interference and aggression, and the administration’s ability to soften or delay them was shrinking. The screwup was not that Trump lost one vote that day; it was that his preferred posture toward Moscow had become politically radioactive enough to force Congress into a bipartisan counterattack.
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Health-care collapse
Confidence 4/5
★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5
Serious fuckup
By June 26, 2017, Trump’s health-care effort was still stuck between a hostile public and an unsteady Senate Republican conference. The administration had spent months promising repeal-and-replace, but the political coalition around it was fraying, and the bill’s prospects were sliding into full-blown uncertainty. The screwup was not a single vote that day so much as the cumulative collapse of a presidential promise that had been sold as easy and was turning out to be anything but.
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