President Donald Trump signed an executive order yesterday that revoked and replaced the executive order from Jan. 27 instituting what has popularly become known as a “travel ban” restricting travel from seven predominately-Muslim countries.
I wrote the article about the new order for this issue of the Daily Titan. It was one of the harder articles I’ve had to write, however not so much because of the content. Last night’s production I was essentially on my own running the News desk due to my co-editor dealing with some personal problems and had to get by with a little help from my friends in the newsroom.
Beatles reference too much? Maybe. But I’ll leave it in anyway. Because I like it.
Anyway, I had to split my time between writing this article, calling and interviewing multiple subjects for a series of stories we’re planning to write in the future and juggling the many ever-sporadic balls of writers doing deadline stories, laying out pages and keeping the ship as a whole afloat while things fall through at the last minute.
If nothing else it was an exciting night, and the fact that we didn’t get out super late I feel is a testament to the strength of our staff working as a team.
In terms of the story itself, after reading through and annotating the order, I talked with CSUF assistant political science professor Dr. Robert Robinson to find out more about the new order and about the idea of repealing and replacing an executive order as a whole. Personally, I feel like I learned a lot from the experience, which by itself is always a marker of a good story for me.
However, in this case, I’d say the more weighty indicator of this being a good story was the fact that it was a pretty hefty same-day report on an issue of national importance. Covering President Trump may already seem like an exhausting task just three months into his presidency, but the job remains as important as ever.
Digging into this new executive order helped remind me of that, since it was an interesting mix of looking into new writing being put out and seeing how the order differs from its predecessor, Executive Order 13769. There are a number of key differences, such as the removal of Iraq as one of the restricted countries and a more in-depth description of the scope of the ban.
Because the original order will be revoked as of the official start date for this new order, March 16, the 90-day ban will also reset that day, extending the period of time the Trump Administration has given itself to figure out how to improve the immigrant vetting process.
Whether or not they succeed in that goal is yet to be seen, but I’ll be interested to watch how it plays out going into the future.
If you want to see the article in its entirety, you can see it here. You can also check out my full archive of work for the Daily Titan over on the right!
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