title:  It’s Official: Trump Just Created His Muslim Ban Without Ever Creating An Actual Ban On Muslims
text: We know that Trump wants to ban Muslims from being able to enter the U.S. at all, but faces significant hurdles to actually do it. So he just did an end run around all those obstacles by instituting what he keeps calling  extreme vetting,  because he apparently believes that our current vetting process for refugees is not only non-existent, but preferential towards Muslims, and discriminatory towards Christians.Today, he signed two executive orders   one to spur new defense spending, and another to ban visa entries from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Sudan and Yemen (but not countries where he has business, because of course), and to institute  extreme vetting  for refugees: I am establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America. We don t want them here.We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas. We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country and love deeply our people. Can we say Muslim ban? There s the above, plus Trump actually told the Christian Broadcasting Network s David Brody the following: [Syrian Christians have] been horribly treated. Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them. There are a lot of conclusions that can be drawn from that alone, but aside from Trump s insane lie namely that we deliberately discriminate against Christians this action sounds an awful lot like a precursor to his Muslim ban. If he were to support Sen. Tom Cotton s bill that would allow religious minorities to apply directly for refugee status here, while Muslim refugees would likely still have to go through the U.N., suddenly Muslims have a harder time getting here than anyone else.It s true that we get a lot more Muslim refugees than Christian refugees, but there s a reason for that and it s not because we re favoring Muslims. Currently, refugees are generally referred to the United States via the United Nations  refugee camp in Jordan   they don t apply to the U.S. directly. It s a majority Muslim region   therefore most applicants are going to be Muslims.Christians then go to the more urban areas where they re likely to be safer, and they might be coming into the U.S. by way of other immigration pathways.Put all of these things together, along with Republicans  desire to end funding for the U.N., and we re most of the way to an out-and-out Muslim ban without actually creating a law or an edict that bans Muslims.Featured image by Olivier Douliery via Getty Images