A Wall Order

In one of the most cited comments during the election, Silicon Valley billionaire and early Trump supporter Peter Thiel suggested Trump should be taken seriously, but not literally: “I think one thing that should be distinguished here is that the media is always taking Trump literally. It never takes him seriously but it always takes him literally. I think a lot of the voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously but not literally. So when they hear things like the Muslim comment or the wall comment, or things like that, the question is not are you going to build a wall like the Great Wall of China, or how exactly are you going to enforce these tests. What they hear is we’re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration policy.” On Wednesday, Trump signed executive orders to begin building the literal wall along the US border with Mexico, and is considering limits on immigration from Muslim countries. From the LA Times: “President Trump directed federal workers Wednesday to start building a border wall and begin punishing so-called sanctuary cities and is considering dramatically limiting the flow of people from other countries, including a ban on Syrian refugees.” Trump also signed an order to “strip federal funding to [sanctuary] cities that refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement.”

+ In a sit-down interview with ABC News, Trump indicated the building would begin in a matter of months, and insisted Mexico would ultimately pay for the wall (“perhaps in a complicated form”).

+ Alexis Madrigal: What I learned from a week at the Mexico border wall (Yes, there is a wall there.)

+ AP: Trump draft order could lead to new CIA-run black sites. “He said he had asked top intelligence officials in the past day: ‘Does torture work?’ And the answer was ‘yes, absolutely'”

+ Trump also threatened to “send in the Feds!” if Chicago “doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on.”