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Any reasonable American could objectively ask what exactly President Donald Trump’s new travel ban , which affects a dozen countries, is about.

Is it about protecting Americans from “murderers,” as Trump said Thursday, or punishing small countries for a modest number of students who overstayed their visas?

The drive for Trump’s first-term travel ban in 2017 and 2018 was clear.

He was seeking to deliver on an ugly campaign promise to ban all Muslims from entering the US. That morphed, over the course of years as the administration adapted to court cases, into a ban on travel to the US by people from certain countries, most of which were majority-Muslim

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