Trump blamed “big problems at airports” on other factors, including demonstrators and an airline’s technical problems.
Former president Barack Obama became the latest high-profile voice to weigh in on the issue, offering his first public criticism of his successor while backing the protests.
Refugee groups worried that 20,000 people could be affected by the 120-day suspension of refugee admission.
The disarray underscored the increasingly strained relationship between the new president and congressional Republicans, with some key GOP aides saying they felt the administration was moving too swiftly and without respect for critical protocol for vetting executive actions that have been in place for decades.
The opposition party has all but abandoned their pledge to find common ground with the new president, pledging a protracted fight against Cabinet confirmations and Trump’s imminent pick for the Supreme Court.
The quiet senator from Alabama — Trump’s nominee for attorney general — has become a singular power in the new Washington, with his aides and allies accelerating the president’s most dramatic early moves, including the controversial travel ban.
Before becoming the first sitting senator to support Trump, Sessions had the reputation as someone on the ideological edge of his own party, more conservative than even his fellow Republicans — a lawmaker who opposed even some forms of legal immigration and was denied a federal judgeship in the 1980s because of accusations he made racially insensitive comments.
Now, Sessions is center stage. He's Trump's pick to be attorney general, and three of the president's top policy and political advisers have close ties to Sessions. The Post's Philip Rucker and Robert Costa lay out how so many roads in the Trump White House lead back to Sessions.