This regime is terrible, will always be terrible, and given any opportunity to not be terrible, it chooses actively to be terrible. The latest example: turning the Wuhan coronavirus into cover for the regime's latest Muslim travel ban.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar declared a public health emergency in the United States at a White House press briefing on coronavirus Friday.
U.S. citizens returning from Hubei province in the previous 14 days will be subject to up to a 14-day quarantine. Foreign nationals, other than immediate family members of U.S. citizens, who have traveled to China in the previous 14 days will be denied entry into the country. The temporary measures take effect Feb. 2 at 5 p.m.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered a federal quarantine order for all 195 people who were evacuated from China and have been voluntarily quarantined at military base in California.
Those people were on a government-chartered flight earlier this week for American consulate staffers and private U.S. citizens from Wuhan. The quarantine, the first order of its kind in 50 years, will last for 14 days from when the plane left Wuhan, health officials said at a news conference Friday.
"We are preparing as if this was the next pandemic," Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said of the quarantine.
"If we take strong measures now, we may be able to blunt the impact of the virus on the United States," she added. "We would rather be remembered for overreacting than underreacting."
Messonnier stressed that Americans should not let panic or fear guide their actions and reiterated the CDC's recommendation that the general public does not need to wear face masks. She also called for people to not discriminate against Chinese Americans amid the outbreak.
This is effectively a standing ban on entry for any Chinese national, and anyone who has been to China, other than exceptions for immediate family members. There's no indication that this ban will be lifted anytime soon. That's blocking a couple billion people from entering the US.
But this grants instant cover to the Trump regime's actual permanent travel ban also announced this afternoon.
The Trump administration on Friday announced an expansion of the travel ban -- one of the President's signature policies, which has been derided by critics as an attempt to ban Muslims from the US -- to include six new countries.
Different immigration restrictions will be placed on Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar (known as Burma), Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania.
The latest iteration comes three years after President Donald Trump -- in one of his first moves in office -- signed the first travel ban, which caused chaos at airports and eventually landed at the Supreme Court. The announcement also comes at the end of a major week for Trump with the signing of the USMCA trade deal and expected acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial.
The updated ban has already sparked controversy over its targeting of African countries.
The administration has argued that the travel ban is vital to national security and ensures countries meet US security needs.
"The restrictions are tailored to country-specific deficiencies, as well as travel-related risks to the homeland," a Department of Homeland Security official told reporters Friday.
Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation, Tanzania is number six, Sudan is number 9. Those three African nations alone have about the same combined population as the US. Eritrea is another 6.5 million.
This is just Stephen Miller and his happy squad of racists closing the door to Africa's most populous and most prosperous country for no good reason other than yeah, half the population happens to be Muslim.
How long do you suppose it will take before other countries will start banning Americans?
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