Top Democrat pushes vote on repealing Trump’s travel ban

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) said he will ask for a floor vote Monday to reverse US President Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban.

“This evening, I will ask for vote on the floor of the Senate to repeal this,” the New York Democrat told NBC’s Matt Lauer. “This is a blanket ban. It hurts innocent people and doesn’t stop terrorism. It’s just appalling.”

Schumer said California Sen. Diane Feinstein (D) has “very carefully thought out legislation” that would rescind the executive action Trump took Friday to follow through with his controversial campaign pledge to halt immigration from areas where terror groups have a foothold.

The president’s order bars individuals from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States for 90 days and indefinitely bars Syrian refugees.

On Sunday, Schumer said during an emotional press conference that he was planning to fight the order. “My middle name is Ellis. I was named after Uncle Ellis, who was named after Ellis Island,” he said. “So this fight’s in my bones. It’s on my birth certificate.”

“This executive order was mean-spirited and un-American,” he added.

Later in the day, Trump mocked the senator for tearing up during that appearance. “Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning,” he wrote on Twitter. “Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage, protesters and the tears of Senator Schumer.”

On the trail, Trump’s proposal initially started off as a full-fledged “Muslim ban,” but then morphed into a more territorial-focused measure amidst pressure from the vast majority of the American polity — including members of his own party — to back away from that policy.

While Democrats will be pushing hard to overturn the order — officially titled “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States” — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) now controls the Feinstein motion’s fate, as it is up to him to allow the vote in the Senate.

“I hope Mitch McConnell allows that vote,” Schumer said Monday morning. “Already 11 Republicans … have spoken out against it.”

Indeed, several Republicans have voiced strong objection to the ban, which has sown chaos and dissent at airports and in the streets all across the country over the weekend.

Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) issued a joint statement Sunday castigating the president’s action.

While noting the US government “has a responsibility” to defend its borders, they said they were “particularly concerned by reports that this order went into effect with little to no consultation with the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security.”

“We fear this executive order may do more to help terrorist recruitment than improve our security.” they added. “We must do so in a way that makes us safer and upholds all that is decent and exceptional about our nation.”

Trump responded quickly via Twitter, calling them “wrong” and “sadly weak on immigration.”

The president also defended his order Sunday amid the strong backlash from all over the world.

“This is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting,” he said in a statement. “This is not about religion — this is about terror and keeping our country safe. There are over 40 different countries worldwide that are majority Muslim that are not affected by this order.”

The measure has elicited fierce opposition from the US Jewish community, and some see traces of their own history reflected in the treatment of Muslim refugees, especially as the announcement came on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Some likened the moment to when the MS St. Louis, a German ship filled with 937 Jewish refugees, was denied entry into the United States, as well as Cuba and Canada, in 1939.

“It’s impossible to ignore, whether intentional or not, the tragic irony in executing the kind of order that kept Jews out of America, like those who perished on the St. Louis and countless others, on the day when we remember the unspeakable tragedy that befell European Jewry and the Jewish people,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told The Times of Israel Saturday.