We've been testing these checks and balances a heck of a lot lately, and they haven't always worked.

And even when they do, the fear and confusion caused in the meantime in a case like this is devastating to many thousands of people.

It is not normal nor good for an administration to be floating so many terrible and illegal ideas so regularly.

Until the next judge -appointed by the President —gets to decide and rubber stamps his decision.

Depending on judges with lifetime appointments isn’t a good system.

Why could this decision be made in the first place by non elected officials? Why didn’t such a drastic decision have to be passed via the legislative process?

> Why didn’t such a drastic decision have to be passed via the legislative process?

The legislature can stop pretty much any form of bad executive overreach, by passing a bill.

The problem is that (enough of) the legislature did not want to stop this.

Is the US set up such that the executive can do anything they want unless the legislative branch has put in restrictions?

I'm not that familiar with the structure of the US government, but I thought it was the opposite, and the executive has an approve list of powers rather than a deny list

There are laws and there are regulations. Laws are created by Congress and signed by the President.

Most of the time, laws are very vague and the specifics of the laws - the regulations - are written by government regulatory agencies. The president appoints heads of the regulatory agencies that are approved by the Senate (upper house).

Congress can pass a law that overrides a regulation or it can be struck down by court.

So the President by himself has limited power but he has a lot of influence over regulatory agencies based on who he appoints.

That isn’t very reassuring. He shouldn’t have had the power to unilaterally make this decision in the first place. While the legislature might have not passed a law that overrode his decision. I doubt they would have passed a law saying it was permissible.

The executive branch has the power to execute laws and regulations. I think what they're doing here is choosing to execute a law/regulation that they should've waived due to the pandemic.

That's why it's not necessarily an overreach, but instead just an inhumane choice to not take special circumstances into account when choosing to execute a particular regulation.

> The courts proved exactly the opposite. The system of checks and balances worked. I don't follow your assertion.

The courts worked as a balance. But they can only do as much as the laws allow. The tendency of the executive is heard loud and clear. No serious student would want to jeopardize their lives in an environment and society that displays xenophobia.

I cannot explain it much better than this https://themargins.substack.com/p/the-international-student-...

I'm not disputing that it's bad, but I'm not really convinced it's the death of American international student programs either. A student looking for a country with no xenophobia is bound to be disappointed no matter where they go. The article you referenced seems to largely agree with my perspective, noting that "there are still millions of people who’d do anything to come to this country".