If you’re confused about what’s going on with the travel ban, here is the latest — As you no doubt heard, on Friday a federal judge issued a nationwide temporary restraining order blocking Trump’s executive action. The Justice Department appealed, but early Sunday an appeals court refused to reinstate the ban.

However, ABC News says, “the court still has to rule on the department’s request to place an emergency stay on the judge’s order to allow the government to resume enforcing the ban.” The Sunday ruling was a temporary thing. The appeals court, which sits in San Francisco, asked for additional briefs, which are supposed to be filed this afternoon.

CNN reports,

The judges who will hear the case — most likely conferring by telephone — are expected to issue a ruling as early as Tuesday. The three-judge panel includes Judge William C. Canby Jr, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, Judge Michelle T. Friedland, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, and Judge Richard R. Clifton, an appointee of President George W. Bush. It is likely that they will make their decisions based on the legal briefs they receive and not ask for a hearing.

Among the many persons and entities filing briefs with the court are two former secretaries of state, John Kerry and Madeleine Albright. Their brief was joined by two Obama Administration officials, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Leon E. Panetta, who served as secretary of defense and head of the C.I.A. The New York Times says of the brief,

With President Trump’s executive order, “we risk placing our military efforts at risk by sending an insulting message” to Iraqis working with American forces battling the Islamic State there, the legal filing to the court said. “The order will likely feed the recruitment narrative of ISIL and other extremists that portray the United States as at war with Islam,” it said, using another name for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

However the three-judge panel rules, the case will probably end up being decided by the Supreme Court, just about everybody says. This could be drawn out for weeks.

If the Trumpettes had any sense they’d let this one go; several polls say the public is against the travel ban. This is a war they would lose by winning.

However, I think we’re all clear by now that the Trumpettes have no sense. Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman report for the New York Times that this administration is not exactly a well-oiled machine:

Aides confer in the dark because they cannot figure out how to operate the light switches in the cabinet room. Visitors conclude their meetings and then wander around, testing doorknobs until finding one that leads to an exit. In a darkened, mostly empty West Wing, Mr. Trump’s provocative chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, finishes another 16-hour day planning new lines of attack.

Trump is working with “a surprisingly small crew of no more than a half-dozen empowered aides with virtually no familiarity with the workings of the White House or federal government,” Thrush and Haberman say.

We also learn from the article that Trump likes the Oval Office:

He will linger on the opulence of the newly hung golden drapes, which he told a recent visitor were once used by Franklin D. Roosevelt but in fact were patterned for Bill Clinton. For a man who sometimes has trouble concentrating on policy memos, Mr. Trump was delighted to page through a book that offered him 17 window covering options.

Really, it’s a weird but interesting article. Worth reading.

Update: Two states and about 100 tech companies also have filed briefs against the ban.

Update: The appeals court decided to hear oral arguments tomorrow evening.

Melissa McCarthy destroyed Sean Spicer last night:

If I were Spicer I wouldn’t crawl out from under my rock for a month.

This just in — the White House announced it would honor a deal made with Australia to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center. However, as he made this announcement Official White House Apologist Sean Spicer repeatedly mispronounced Prime Minister Turnbull’s name as “Trunbull.”

The backstory: You probably heard that yesterday Donald Trump managed to further embarrass the United States by insulting, and then hanging up on, the Prime Minister of Australia. Trump later doubled down on his “get tough with the Aussies” strategy. The Sydney Morning Herald reports,

President Donald Trump has defended his “tough” approach to speaking with foreign leaders in his first public remarks since details of his tense phone conversation with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull were revealed, even as criticism mounted over the president’s treatment of a stalwart US ally.

One senior Republican colleague, senator John McCain, even took the step of calling the Australian ambassador to reaffirm the alliance on Thursday.

Speaking at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Mr Trump strayed from his prepared remarks several times and addressed the intense media coverage of his phone call with Mr Turnbull – which turned sour during a discussion over an Obama-era agreement to take 1250 refugees from Australia’s offshore detention camps – as well as an equally controversial conversation with the Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

“When you hear about the tough phone calls I’m having, don’t worry about it,” Mr Trump said. “Just don’t worry about it. They’re tough. We have to be tough.”

Well, no, we don’t have to be tough. We can be nice sometimes, you know, especially with leaders of countries we’ve long had good relationships with and who do us favors sometimes.

Regarding the Mexican President — There was a report from the Associated Press that Trump also had called President Enrique Pena Nieto and threatened to invade Mexico, but Mexico is denying this is true. But then, the White House today said that yes, Trump did say something like that, but he was joking.

Anyway, Trump said we have to get tough with Australia. On the other hand, it seems Russia is testing the U.S. with new military aggressions in the Ukraine, and in that situation Trump is not being tough at all.

The Trump administration is facing its first major test on the international stage as volleys of Russian artillery and rockets continue to pound Ukrainian forces in the country’s contested east, reigniting the frozen conflict and killing about a dozen Ukrainian soldiers since Sunday.

The barrages, along with renewed pushes by Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces near the government-held industrial town of Avdiyivka, spiked dramatically on Sunday. The day before, Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held their first phone call, reportedly talking about forming a new alliance against the Islamic State and working together on a range of other issues.

Trump possibly assumes this isn’t actually happening.

Poor John McCain is once again being called on to call for a return to the good old days when things were normal.

“That this surge of attacks began the day after he talked with you by phone is a clear indication that Vladimir Putin is moving quickly to test you as commander in chief. America’s response will have lasting consequences,” McCain said in a letter to Trump released by his office.

Washington has supplied aid to Ukraine including drones, radar, first-aid kits, night vision and communications gear as part Democratic President Barack Obama’s strategy of providing non-lethal military assistance while focusing on sanctions and diplomacy to end the war.

McCain urged Trump to use his authority under an existing defense policy law to provide lethal assistance to Ukraine.

“Vladimir Putin’s violent campaign to destabilize and dismember the sovereign nation of Ukraine will not stop unless and until he meets a strong and determined response,” McCain wrote.

Will Trump “get tough” with Putin? Are you joking?

Back to the Sydney Morning Herald — quoting Dear Leader, before he apparently caved under threat of Aussie derision, or something:

“It’s time we’re going to be a little tough folks. We’re taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. It’s not going to happen anymore. It’s not going to happen anymore.”

The call with Mr Turnbull and a subsequent tweet from the president condemning the “dumb deal” on refugees was greeted with more confusion and condemnation in the US on Thursday.

Senator McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate who has clashed with Mr Trump on issues of foreign policy before, described the president’s treatment of Australia as “harmful.”

“It was an unnecessary and frankly harmful open dispute over an issue which is not nearly as important as United States-Australian cooperation and working together, including training of our marines in Australia and other areas of military cooperation and intelligence,” he said during a doorstop interview in Washington DC.

WaPo says this is what happened with the phone call:

President Trump blasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a refu­gee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral college win, according to senior U.S. officials briefed on the Saturday exchange. Then, 25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it.

At one point, Trump informed Turnbull that he had spoken with four other world leaders that day — including Russian President Vladi­mir Putin — and that “this was the worst call by far.”

Did Donnie and Vlad talk about the Ukraine, I wonder?

I have to say the Trump Maladministration is every bit as awful as I thought it would be. Keep this in mind, however:

We hear people constantly saying ‘Nothing will change his supporters’ minds. They’re with him no matter what.’ First of all this is enervating defeatism which is demoralizing and loserish. But it also misses the point. It is factually wrong. For the supporters those people have in mind, they’re right. They’re true believers, authoritarians who are energized by Trump’s destructive behavior. But there are not that many of those people. A big chunk of Trump’s voters voted for him in spite of their dislike. Those people can be carved away.

This cannot be emphasized enough. Not everyone who voted for Trump is a neonazi Klan sympathizer. Some of them were just foolish. Frankly, some of them probably would have voted for the Democrat had the nominee not been Hillary Clinton.

Gallup’s Daily Tracking Approval poll has Trump at 43 percent. How low can he go?

A number of bloggers are reporting that Stephen Bannon cannot be appointed to a permanent seat on the National Security Council without Senate confirmation. But so far I haven’t seen this in the mainstream press anywhere.

Here’s the pertinent statute, from the Cornell Law School site — 50 U.S. Code § 3021:

(a) Establishment; presiding officer; functions; composition

There is established a council to be known as the National Security Council (hereinafter in this section referred to as the “Council”).

The President of the United States shall preside over meetings of the Council: Provided, That in his absence he may designate a member of the Council to preside in his place.

The function of the Council shall be to advise the President with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national security so as to enable the military services and the other departments and agencies of the Government to cooperate more effectively in matters involving the national security.

The Council shall be composed of–

(1) the President;

(2) the Vice President;

(3) the Secretary of State;

(4) the Secretary of Defense;

(5) the Secretary of Energy; and

(6) the Secretaries and Under Secretaries of other executive departments and of the military departments, when appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to serve at his pleasure.

Now, that seems to say that anyone appointed to the NSC as a permanent member who is not covered by (1) through (5) requires Senate confirmation. So why is nobody talking about holding a hearing for Bannon’s appointment to the Council?

It might be that someone like the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who apparently used to be a regular member, was not subject to confirmation, so maybe this rule gets waived a lot. But it also seems to me that someone who is, in effect, one of the President’s flunkies (officially, he is Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the un-POTUS, an obvious political role) would not be automatically waived.

Does anyone want to chime in on this?

This just happened:

President Trump fired his acting attorney general on Monday after she defiantly refused to defend his immigration executive order, accusing the Democratic holdover of trying to obstruct his agenda for political reasons.

Taking action in an escalating crisis for his 10-day-old administration, Mr. Trump declared that Sally Q. Yates had “betrayed” the administration, the White House said in a statement.

The president appointed Dana J. Boente, United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to serve as acting attorney general until Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama is confirmed.

Ms. Yates’s decision confronted the president with a stinging challenge to his authority and laid bare a deep divide at the Justice Department, within the diplomatic corps and elsewhere in the government over the wisdom of his order.

And it’s only going to get worse, folks.

Per Josh Marshall, this New York Times story about Steve Bannon is a multi-layered thing that isn’t so much about Bannon as about the raging pathology that is the Trump Maladministration. Josh writes:

So this happened:

President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum Saturday that removed the nation’s top military and intelligence advisers as regular attendees of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, the interagency forum that deals with policy issues affecting national security.

The executive measure established Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon as a regular attendee, whereas the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence will be allowed to participate only “where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed.”

“This is unusual,” John Bellinger, an adjunct senior fellow in International and National Security Law at the Council on Foreign Relations and former legal adviser to the National Security Council, wrote on Saturday.

“Unusual” is not the word I would have used. But I can’t think of the right word. What’s the word that signifies “Holy shit these people are going to massively screw up the planet?” But that’s not even strong enough.

“In the Bush administration, Karl Rove would not attend NSC meetings,” Bellinger said. “According to former Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, President Bush did not want to appear, especially to the military, to insert domestic politics into national security decision-making.”

With his permanent seat at the NSC meetings, Bannon has been elevated above the director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, who was not offered an open invitation.

“The CIA Director is typically invited to NSC and Principals Committee meetings,” Bellinger said, though he added that President Barack Obama’s list of invitees to such meetings did not include the CIA director.

It had already been reported that Bannon, trust fund brat and felon by proxy son-in-law Jared Kushner, and anagram Reince Priebus comprised an informal “shadow national security council” that “sits atop the Trump transition team’s executive committee and has the final say on national-security personnel appointments.” And the State Department has already been relieved of senior management. So our foreign policy is now firmly in the hands of fools and amateurs, with no grown ups around to spoil the fun.