A U.S. appeals court has granted a White House request for a pause in the legal fight over its order temporarily banning refugees and some travelers so it can issue a replacement order.
No details of the new order were available on February 16 but Trump administration officials have said they might move to ban only foreigners from seven predominantly Muslim countries who have never previously entered the United States, ensuring legal U.S. residents from those countries would not be touched.
By issuing a new order, "the president will clear the way for immediately protecting the country rather than pursuing further, potentially time-consuming litigation," U.S. attorneys argued. The U.S. appeals court in San Francisco agreed to their request to suspend the case.
President Donald Trump said at the news conference that a new order next week will be "tailored" to avoid the constitutional problems raised in "bad decisions" by the courts.
"I will not back down from defending our country. I got elected on defense of our country," he said.
Bob Ferguson, the Washington state attorney general who led the court challenge to the original Trump order, said the administration's latest moves amounted to "conceding defeat."