Color me surprised that he bowed to pressure. Pleasantly. Though the wording of this EO leaves an awful lot to the discretion of the DHS Secretary…

But.

Don’t forget that at it’s most fundamental, this was a manufactured crisis from a White House that specializes in manufacturing crises. They literally set the fire, they should not get any praise for putting it out. They should also get a lot of criticism for causing confusion in the first place.

So much of the Trump administration is Trump creating crises then partially solving them. The travel ban, trade wars, escalation with North Korea, Obamacare subsidies, family separation…

Again and again, Trump triggers disaster, then demands credit for semi-averting it.

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) June 20, 2018

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Don’t forget that the policies and underlying ethno-nationalistic sentiments this administration came to power on…are still in power.

Don’t forget that there are children right now who need to be immediately reunited with parents and guardians and the pressure needs to stay up until that happens and can be confirmed and documented publicly.

Don’t forget that the administration has other crackdowns planned between now and November, because a certain part of their base wants them (and because certain key members of the administration genuinely believe in them).

Don’t forget that the president has spent the last 72 hours lying about how this policy came to be and how he couldn’t do a thing to change it. This untruth of this needs to be hammered home.

Don’t forget who backed up those lies and tried to reinforce a demonstrably false narrative, up to and including the Secretary of Homeland Security on whose word are supposed to rely in the event of national emergency or threat.

Don’t forget this administration tried something as extreme as taking hostages. On some level, it all feels like a trial balloon to test what they can get away with and what their control over the media narrative really is.

And finally do not forget how quickly this timeline moved. Only three days ago, Secretary Neilsen said that this policy didn’t exist. 72 hours later, the president is issuing an executive order to dismantle aspects of it.

This is farcical.

Midterms are coming sooner than you think.