President Trump's second week in office has arguably been just as tumultuous as the first. Last Friday, Trump signed an executive order that restricted immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries, and suspended the resettlement of Syrian refugees on American soil indefinitely. In response, protests broke out across the country and across the nation's airports, most massive of which took place at JFK where individuals were being detained. A number of companies took sides on the issue, including Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), which created a $4 million crisis fund), Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX), which committed to hiring ten thousand refugees, and Lyft, which donated $1 million to the ACLU. When Acting Attorney General Sally Yates refused to defend the immigration ban, citing its unlawfulness, Trump fired her (the first president to do so since Richard Nixon). Yates has been temporarily replaced until the Senate confirmsAlabama Senator Fess Sessions, Trump's nominee for the position. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer stated on Monday that only 109 individuals were "slowed down" by the executive order. However, estimates from the Department of Justice place the number of individuals who have lost their visas as a result of the executive order in the tens of thousands.
The Senate confirmed Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State. Tillerson is the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp. To fill the empty ninth seat on the Supreme Court, Trump has tapped Neil Gorsuch. Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley publicly described Gorsuch as, "an extreme right-wing jurist who has ruled dozens of times for the powerful and against the less fortunate". Democrats are expected to fight the nomination, especially as former President Barrack Obama's nominee (Merrick Garland) was barred by the Republican Party from having a hearing, keeping the Supreme Court empty until the nomination of a Republican president. Ari Berman, senior contributing writer for The Nation, penned in response to Gorsuch's nomination, "It was unprecedented and outrageous that a judge as qualified and mainstream as Garland didn't even get a hearing. And it's more than a little ironic that a president who won 5 million more votes than his opponent in 2012 couldn't make the selection but one who got 2.9 million fewer votes than his opponent can". Democrats in the Senate have skipped the committee votes on Treasury Secretary nominee Steve Mnunchin and Health and Human Services nominee Tom Price, but to no avail. The Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee elected to suspend the rules of the panel and pushed the nominees through to the full Senate regardless. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee did the same in order to get Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency nominee, to the full Senate vote as well. However, party lines are wavering ever so slightly regarding Trump's pick for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos: two Republican senators have defected and stated that they will vote against her.