MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
President Trump has signed a new travel ban. Travelers from 12 countries will be barred from entering the U.S. People from an additional seven countries will face partial travel restrictions. Well, Trump broke this news last night in a video message on Truth Social.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We will not allow people to enter our country who wish to do us harm. And nothing will stop us from keeping America safe.
KELLY: The proclamation goes into effect on Monday, and it fulfills something Trump has long promised - to bring back the travel ban from his first term. Now that ban, you may recall, was subject to all kinds of legal challenges. Some legal scholars say President Trump has learned a lot since then, among them, Stephen Vladeck. He's a law professor at Georgetown University, and he's paid close attention to Trump's legal moves over the years. Stephen Vladeck, welcome.
STEPHEN VLADECK: Thanks for having me.
KELLY: Your initial reaction to this new proclamation, I'm curious if there's anything in particular that sticks out.
VLADECK: Yeah, I mean, I think what's really striking about the latest iteration of this kind of travel ban is really how radically different it looks from the clumsier, I think, less careful attempts we saw during the first Trump administration. You know, the government in 2017, 2018 really had to try three different versions before they found one that the Supreme Court would uphold. It really does seem like this version is based on some of the lessons learned from that. It doesn't single out Muslim-majority countries. It tries to at least offer some kind of factual basis for why these countries and not others. You know, I think there will still be plenty of litigation challenging this, but it's not at least as obviously and facially vulnerable to litigation as we saw back in 2017.
KELLY: Right. I'm thinking of the original travel ban which everyone referred to as the so-called Muslim ban. And that's something that looks quite different this time, in terms of the countries that are included. I will note that in the video that he dropped last night announcing this, he cited the attack this past Sunday in Boulder, saying that that attack underscored the dangers posed to the U.S. by foreign nationals. The man charged with that attack is from Egypt, which is not among the countries listed in this new ban.
VLADECK: Yeah, I mean, as is always the case with President Trump, there is a fair amount of daylight between what he says publicly and the actual policies to which he affixes his signature. But, you know, I think the problem here for those who think that's a legal defect and not just an optical one, is, you know, the U.S. Supreme Court, back in 2018, when it upheld the third iteration of the first Trump administration's travel ban, really did say that the president's actual motive is not that relevant to whether the underlying policy is lawful; that the president's entitled to fairly broad deference when it comes to these kinds of immigration decisions about who's allowed to enter the United States in the first place.
I think that's why it's important, although perhaps not ultimately sufficient, that this new travel ban carves out folks who have green cards, carves out folks who already have, you know, approved visas of various sorts. Because those were some of the real stumbling blocks last time around that really led the courts, you know, to stop the policy before it could get off the ground. I think this time around, the litigation is probably going to focus far more specifically on the particular factual grounds that the government has come up with for why, for example, you know, Laos is on the list but Egypt is not, whether the sort of the visa overstay data that the president purported to rely upon in his proclamation is actually both accurate and a legitimate basis. You know, I think that, Mary Louise, is where we're going to see a lot of the action.
KELLY: So we're talking around this a little bit, but I'll just ask directly the central question about how strong the legal underpinning for this latest ban is. In your view, will it stand up in court?
VLADECK: So I think the distinction that we should draw here is, I do think, on its face, this version is stronger than, certainly, the first two rounds we saw in the first Trump administration. And it's probably on par with the third one, which is the one that the Supreme Court, back in 2018, upheld. This Supreme Court that we have in 2025 is not going to be any more skeptical of this kind of policy than the one we had, you know, seven years ago. But, Mary Louise, as is so often the case, a lot of the devil will be in the details. And, you know, I would not put it past this administration to implement this policy in a, you know, ham-handed, clumsy, if not even affirmatively malicious way that opens it up to other kinds of, you know, what the lawyers would call as applied legal challenges.
KELLY: So you're saying that there is what is actually written in the ban - the words - and then there's how it is enforced, how it is applied.
VLADECK: That's exactly the distinction. And so it's - you know, my own view is that I think the words of this policy are probably going to do relatively well in court, but, you know, I would not put it past this administration to enforce it in a way that invites further lawsuits.
KELLY: Last thing - when you say we should expect legal challenges, from what corner? Where will you be keeping an eye on?
VLADECK: So I think we're going to see, you know, efforts from folks maybe who are already in the United States, but whose continuing ability to stay here is called into question by the travel ban, perhaps try to bring a lawsuit. Maybe folks who have a particular type of visa that's not one of the visa categories that is exempted from the travel ban - maybe from, you know, refugee groups or other you know, human rights-driven immigration focused groups for whom, you know, this is a real problem for folks who might not yet have a visa but might have very strong legal arguments for why they should be allowed to come to the United States. You know, that's really where we saw the plaintiffs emerge back in the first Trump administration, in the challenges to the first, second and third travel bans. You know, if we're going to call this the fourth Trump travel ban, I suspect we're going to see similar plaintiffs, perhaps, you know, from different countries this time around.
KELLY: Stephen Vladeck is a law professor at Georgetown University. Thanks so much.
VLADECK: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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