Washington (CNN) US President Donald Trump signed a new executive order Monday that bans immigration from six Muslim-majority countries, dropping Iraq from January's previous order, and reinstates a temporary blanket ban on all refugees. 
 
 The new travel ban comes six weeks after Trump's original executive order caused chaos at airports nationwide before it was blocked by federal courts. It removes out language in the original order that indefinitely banned Syrian refugees and called for prioritizing the admission of refugees who are religious minorities in their home countries. That provision drew criticism of a religious test for entry and would have prioritized Christians over Muslims fleeing war-torn countries in the Middle East. 
 
 The new ban, which takes effect March 16, also explicitly exempts citizens of the six banned countries who are legal US permanent residents or have valid visas to enter the US -- including those whose visas were revoked during the original implementation of the ban, senior administration officials said. 
 
 "We cannot compromise our nation's security by allowing visitors entry when their own governments are unable or unwilling to provide the information we need to vet them responsibly, or when those governments actively support terrorism," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday. 
 
 The new measures will block citizens of Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from obtaining visas for at least 90 days. The order also suspends admission of refugees into the US for 120 days, directing US officials to improve vetting measures for a program that is already widely regarded as extremely stringent. 
 
 Trump signed the executive order earlier Monday in the Oval Office outside the view of reporters and news cameras, after more than three weeks of repeated delays, the latest of which came after White House officials decided last week to delay the signing to avoid cutting into positive coverage of Trump's joint address to Congress. 
 
 The delays also came amid an intense lobbying effort from Iraqi government officials, including from the country's prime minister, to remove Iraq from the original seven-state list of banned countries. 
 
 Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Iraq's removal from the list came after an intense review from the State Department to improve vetting of Iraqi citizens in collaboration with the Iraqi government, though he did not specify how vetting had been improved. 
 
 "The United States welcomes this kind of close cooperation," he said. "This revised order will bolster the security of the United States and our allies." 
 
 The rollout of the revised travel ban marks an important moment for the administration, which has little room for error after the chaotic debut of the original plan. That failure raised questions about the new White House's capacity to govern and to master the political intricacies needed to manage complicated political endeavors in Washington. It also brought Trump into conflict with the judiciary in the first sign of how constitutional checks and balances could challenge his vision of a powerful presidency built on expansive executive authority. 
 
 The original order came under intense criticism as an attempt to bar Muslims from entering the country, and Trump's call during the campaign for a "Muslim Ban" was cited in court cases attacking the ban. 
 
 The new order does not prioritize religious minorities when considering refugee admissions cases. 
 
 Administration officials Monday stressed they do not see the ban as targeting a specific religion. 
 
 "(The order is) not any way targeted as a Muslim ban ... we want to make sure everyone understands that," an official told reporters. 
 
 "The Department of Justice believes that this executive order just as the first executive order is a lawful and proper exercise of presidential authority," Sessions said. 
 
 Democrats responded by calling Trump's order a repeat version of the first attempt. 
 
 "Here we go again...Muslim Ban 2.0 #NoBanNoWall" tweeted Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana, one of two Muslims serving in the House of Representatives. 
 
 Working to contain fallout 
 
 The newly crafted order also revealed that the administration wasn't just paying attention to the legal criticism in the courts, but also recalibrating in light of the heavy political fire they faced after the first order's messy rollout. 
 
 While administration lawyers argued the original travel ban went into effect immediately to prevent terrorists from rushing into the country, the revised ban will phase in after 10 days. The previous order will be rescinded on that date. 
 
 Trump had previously said he opposed giving any advance notice of the ban. 
 
 "If the ban were announced with a one week notice, the "bad" would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad "dudes" out there!" he tweeted on January 30 
 
 The White House also abandoned the sense of urgency with which it implemented the first travel ban, delaying the signing of a new executive order multiple times over the last three weeks. Politics also came into play as White House officials delayed the signing from last Wednesday in part to allow positive coverage of the President's joint address to Congress to continue uninterrupted. 
 
 "We want the (executive order) to have its own 'moment,'" a senior administration official told CNN last week. 
 
 The President signed the action Monday morning without the fanfare he has given to other executive orders. No media was present during the signing at the White House, an administration official confirmed. White House spokesman Sean Spicer tweeted a picture of Trump signing the order. 
 
 White House officials collaborated for several weeks with officials at the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and kept congressional leaders apprised of their progress this time around after the White House drew a backlash for keeping Congress and relevant federal agencies almost entirely in the dark during the first rollout. 
 
 To bolster its national security claims, the new executive order also states FBI has reported that approximately 300 people who entered the United States as refugees are "currently the subjects of counter-terrorism investigations." 
 
 "The fact remains that we are not immune to terrorist threats and that our enemies often use our own freedoms and generosity against us," Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said. "We cannot risk the prospect of malevolent actors using our immigration system to take American lives." 
 
 Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee, said the ban "has the same fundamental flaws" as the first order. 
 
 "We know that country of origin is a poor predictor of a propensity to commit acts of terror. If it were, Pakistan has been a far more problematic source of attack planning and would be at the top of the President's list, but that country merits not even a mention in the order," Schiff said in a statement. 
 
 Why Iraq was removed 
 
 But the new order was also delayed in part because of a debate within the administration over how to handle Iraq. 
 
 Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and national security adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster had all advocated for Iraq to be removed from the Trump administration's list of banned countries in the new executive order for diplomatic reasons, including Iraq's role in fighting ISIS, sources told CNN's Elise Labott and Evan Perez. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly also supported the move. 
 
 Iraq was removed from the revised travel ban executive order after intensive lobbying from the Iraqi government at the highest levels, according to a senior US official. 
 
 That included a phone call between Trump and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on February 10 and an in-person conversation between Abadi and Vice President Mike Pence in Munich on February 18. 
 
 Those conversations were followed by discussions between Tillerson and members of the Iraqi government about vetting measures in place that would prevent suspected terrorists from leaving Iraq and coming to the United States. Iraq did not implement new measures; rather, the country provided more detail to US officials about how it screens travelers. 
 
 In Trump's call with Abadi, the President vowed to seek a resolution to his counterpart's concerns about his citizens' being unable to enter the United States, according to a readout of the phone call from Baghdad. The US official said Trump asked Tillerson to get greater clarity on vetting measures in Iraq. 
 
 Trump also faced pressure to remove Iraq from the order from some American national security officials, who argued the restriction burdened a key anti-ISIS partner. Some of those voices were holdovers from the Obama administration. 
 
 Iraq's Foreign Ministry welcomed reports of its removal from the list of countries affected by the travel ban. 
 
 "(The) Iraqi Foreign Ministry expresses deep relief regarding the executive order that was issued by the American president Donald Trump, which excludes the Iraqis from the travel ban to the United States," said Iraqi Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Ahmad Jamal. "This is considered an important step in the right direction that strengthen and reinforces the strategic alliance between Baghdad and Washington in many fields, in particular the fight against terrorism." 
 
 This story is breaking and will be updated. 
 
 CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct Kelly's name. ||||| President Donald Trump salutes as he stands on the tarmac after disembarking Air Force One as he arrives Sunday, March 5, 2017, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. Trump is returning from Mar-a-Largo, Fla.... (Associated Press) 
 
 President Donald Trump salutes as he stands on the tarmac after disembarking Air Force One as he arrives Sunday, March 5, 2017, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. Trump is returning from Mar-a-Largo, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (Associated Press) 
 
 President Donald Trump salutes as he stands on the tarmac after disembarking Air Force One as he arrives Sunday, March 5, 2017, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. Trump is returning from Mar-a-Largo, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (Associated Press) President Donald Trump salutes as he stands on the tarmac after disembarking Air Force One as he arrives Sunday, March 5, 2017, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. Trump is returning from Mar-a-Largo, Fla.... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's revised travel ban will temporarily halt entry to the United States for people from six Muslim-majority nations who are seeking new visas, allowing those with current visas to travel freely, according to a fact sheet obtained by The Associated Press. 
 
 Trump was to sign the new executive order on Monday. The directive aims to address legal issues with the original order, which caused confusion at airports, sparked protests around the country and was ultimately blocked by the courts. 
 
 The revised order is narrower and specifies that a 90-day ban on people from Sudan, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen does not apply to those who already have valid visas. The White House also dropped Iraq from the list of targeted countries, following pressure from the Pentagon and State Department, which had urged the White House to reconsider, given Iraq's key role in fighting the Islamic State group. 
 
 The fact sheet cites negotiations that resulted in Iraq agreeing to "increase cooperation with the U.S. government on the vetting of its citizens applying for a visa to travel to the United States." 
 
 A fact sheet detailing the order was distributed to lawmakers and obtained by the AP. 
 
 The mere existence of a fact sheet signaled that the White House was taking steps to improve the rollout of the reworked directive. The initial measure was hastily signed at the end of Trump's first week in office, and the White House was roundly criticized for not providing lawmakers, Cabinet officials and others with information ahead of the signing. 
 
 Notably, Trump was not expected to hold a public signing ceremony for the new measure. Instead, several Cabinet secretaries — Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — planned to discuss the order at an event late Monday morning. 
 
 Trump administration officials say that even with the changes, the goal of the new order is the same as the first: keeping would-be terrorists out of the United States while the government reviews the vetting system for refugees and visa applicants from certain parts of the world. 
 
 According to the fact sheet, the Department of Homeland Security will conduct a country-by-country review of the information the six targeted nations provide to the U.S. for visa and immigration decisions. Those countries will then have 50 days to comply with U.S. government requests to update or improve that information. 
 
 Additionally, Trump's order suspends the entire U.S. refugee program for 120 days, though refugees already formally scheduled for travel by the State Department will be allowed entry. When the suspension is lifted, the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. will be capped at 50,000 for fiscal year 2017. 
 
 Other changes are also expected, including no longer singling out Syrian refugees for an indefinite ban. Syrian refugees will now be treated like other refugees and be subjected to the 120-day suspension of the refugee program. 
 
 The new version is also expected to remove language that would give priority to religious minorities. Critics had accused the administration of adding such language to help Christians get into the United States while excluding Muslims. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writer Alicia A. Caldwell contributed to this report. 
 
 _ 
 
 Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and Jill Colvin at http://twitter.com/colvinj ||||| President Trump signed a new travel ban Monday that administration officials said they hope will end legal challenges over the matter by imposing a 90-day ban on the issuance of new visas for citizens of six majority-Muslim nations. 
 
 In addition, the nation’s refu­gee program will be suspended for 120 days, and the United States will not accept more than 50,000 refugees in a year, down from the 110,000 cap set by the Obama administration. 
 
 The new guidelines mark a dramatic departure from Trump’s original ban, issued in January and immediately met by massive protests and then ordered frozen by the courts. The new ban lays out a far more specific national security basis for the order, blocks the issuance only of new visas, and names just six of the seven countries included in the first executive order, omitting Iraq. 
 
 [Read the full text of the revised executive order] 
 
 Trump signed the new ban out of public view, according to White House officials. The order will take effect March 16. 
 
 “This executive order responsibly provides a needed pause so we can carefully review how we scrutinize people coming here from these countries of concern,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in announcing that the order had been signed. 
 
 The order also details specific sets of people who would be able to apply for case-by-case waivers to the order, including those previously admitted to the United States for “a continuous period of work, study, or other long-term activity”; those with “significant business or professional obligations”; and those seeking to visit or live with family. 
 
 Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, sent out an email asking people to sign a petition in support of the new order. 
 
 “As your President, I made a solemn promise to keep America safe,” the email signed by Trump said. “And I will NEVER stop fighting until we implement the policies you — and millions of Americans like you — voted for.” 
 
 Democrats and civil liberties groups said Monday that the new order was legally tainted in the same way as the first one: It was a thinly disguised Muslim ban. Trump, in his email, used the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” to describe his concern with the countries whose citizens would be blocked from acquiring visas. 
 
 That seems to portend more litigation — though how soon remains unclear. The attorney general of Washington state, Bob Ferguson, who successfully sued to have the first ban blocked, said he was still reviewing what to do. 
 
 The new order, Ferguson said, represented a “significant victory” for Washington state because the administration had “capitulated on numerous key provisions that we contested in court.” But he said state lawyers would need two or three days to see what action they would take in the court case. 
 
 (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) 
 
 “We’re reviewing it carefully, and still have concerns with the new order,” Ferguson said. 
 
 The Justice Department argued in a court filing that even if the litigation were to move forward, it should do so at a slower pace, and with the new ban in place. The government noted that visa applicants typically have to wait months and asserted there was “no imminent harm” from the president’s temporary suspension of the issuance of new visas to certain people. 
 
 That assertion, though, did little to assuage the concerns of Democrats and civil liberties groups, who said the new ban was just like the old. 
 
 Karen Tumlin, the legal director of the National Immigration Law Center, predicted that federal judges who ordered a restraining order on the earlier ban are likely to do so again, and that pending lawsuits filed by her organization and others will not need to be filed anew. “From our vantage point, that litigation lives on,” she said. 
 
 New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman (D), who joined the legal fight against the first ban, said, “While the White House may have made changes to the ban, the intent to discriminate against Muslims remains clear.” 
 
 Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said, “The only way to actually fix the Muslim ban is not to have a Muslim ban. Instead, President Trump has recommitted himself to religious discrimination, and he can expect continued disapproval from both the courts and the people.” 
 
 The revised travel ban also came under quick fire from refugee advocates, who said it unfairly penalizes refugees without improving U.S. security. 
 
 “President Trump still seems to believe you can determine who’s a terrorist by knowing which country a man, woman or child is from,” said Grace Meng, an immigration researcher with Human Rights Watch. “Putting this executive order into effect will only create a false sense of security that genuine steps are being taken to protect Americans from attack, while undermining the standing of the U.S. as a refuge for those at greatest risk.” 
 
 Officials from the State, Homeland Security and Justice departments defended the new order as a necessary measure to improve public safety. They said the countries named — Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen — were either state sponsors of terrorism, or their territories were so compromised that they were effectively havens for terrorist groups. Iraq was omitted, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, because it is an “important ally in the fight to defeat ISIS” — the Islamic State militant organization — and Iraq’s leaders had agreed to implement new, unspecified security measures. 
 
 [Iraq, excluded from travel ban, praises new White House executive order] 
 
 The ban is among several measures the administration has introduced in the name of border security. Also Monday, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly said he was “considering” separating undocumented immigrant parents from their children to deter people from trying to enter the country. Those people, he said, are often moved to the United States by a “terribly dangerous network” that originates in Central America. 
 
 Civil rights advocates said Monday that the new ban’s sudden exclusion of Iraq, as well as the omission of other countries with active terrorist groups — such as Colombia, Venezuela, Pakistan and the Philippines — underscored the ban’s arbitrariness as a national security measure. 
 
 The new order provides other exceptions not contained explicitly in previous versions: for travelers from those countries who are legal permanent residents of the United States, dual nationals who use a passport from another country, and those who have been granted asylum or refu­gee status. It removes an exception to the refu­gee ban for members of religious minority groups — which critics had pointed to as evidence the first ban was meant to discriminate against Muslims — and it no longer imposes an indefinite prohibition on travelers from Syria. 
 
 Anyone who holds a visa now should be able to get into the country without any problems, although those whose visas expire will have to reapply, officials said. 
 
 The order claims that since 2001, hundreds of people born abroad have been convicted of terrorism-related crimes in the United States. It cites two specific examples: Two Iraqi nationals who came to the United States as refugees in 2009, it says, were convicted of terrorism-related offenses, and in October 2014, a Somali native brought to the country as a child refu­gee was sentenced to 30 years in prison for plotting to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Oregon. That man became a naturalized U.S. citizen. 
 
 [Trump’s new travel ban still wouldn’t have kept out anyone behind deadly U.S. terrorist attacks] 
 
 “We cannot risk the prospect of malevolent actors using our immigration system to take American lives,” Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly said. 
 
 The new ban also says that more than 300 people who entered the country as refugees were the subject of active counterterrorism investigations. U.S. officials declined to specify the countries of origin of those being investigated, their immigration status, or whether they had been charged with crimes. 
 
 Charles Kurzman, a sociology professor who studies violent ­extremism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, there have been no fatalities caused by Muslim extremists with family backgrounds in the six countries covered by the new ban. A Department of Homeland Security report assessing the terrorist threat posed by people from the seven countries covered by the president’s original travel ban had cast doubt on the necessity of the executive order, concluding that citizenship was an “unreliable” threat indicator and that people from the affected countries had rarely been implicated in U.S.-based terrorism. 
 
 The Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, criticized the report as being incomplete and not vetted with other agencies, and he said the administration should not be pressed by the judiciary to unveil sensitive national security details to justify the ban. 
 
 The order represents an attempt by the Trump administration to tighten security requirements for travelers from nations that officials said represent a terrorism threat. A more sweeping attempt in January provoked mass protests across the country as travelers en route to the United States were detained at airports after the surprise order was announced. The State Department had provisionally revoked tens of thousands of visas all at once. 
 
 [Read the fact sheet and Q&A on the new travel executive order] 
 
 Officials sought to dismiss the idea that there would be any confusion surrounding the implementation of the new order. They said they delayed implementation so the government could go through the appropriate legal processes and ensure that no government employee would face “legal jeopardy” for enforcing the order. 
 
 The revisions to the order will make it more defensible in court — limiting the number of people with standing to sue — but the changes might not allay all the concerns raised by judges across the country. The three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, for example, said that exempting green-card and current visa holders from the ban would not address the court’s concern about U.S. citizens with an interest in noncitizens’ travel. 
 
 The administration, too, will have to wrestle with comments by the president and top adviser Rudolph W. Giuliani that seemed to indicate the intent of the order was to ban Muslims from entering the United States, which could run afoul of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. 
 
 On the campaign trail, Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” After the election, Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, said: “So when [Trump] first announced it, he said, ‘Muslim ban.’ He called me up. He said, ‘Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.’ ” 
 
 A federal judge in Virginia referenced those comments in ordering the ban frozen with respect to Virginia residents and institutions, calling it “unrebutted evidence” that Trump’s directive might violate the First Amendment. 
 
 Carol Morello, Matea Gold, Missy Ryan, Mark Berman and Rachel Weiner contributed to this report. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 Federal appeals court rules 3 to 0 against Trump on travel ban 
 
 This is what it takes for a refugee to be admitted into the U.S. 
 
 Denied Entry: Stories of refugees and immigrants barred from the U.S.
– The White House is rolling out its new travel ban after the first one got hung up in the courts. The big difference, as expected, is that Iraq is no longer on the banned list after promising to beef up screening, reports the AP. That leaves six Muslim-majority nations: Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. The new directive, scheduled to take effect March 16, will prohibit new visas from being issued to travelers from those nations for 90 days, but those with current visas won't be affected. The revised order generally makes more exceptions than the first one, notes the Washington Post, including for those who are permanent legal residents of the US. President Trump signed it Monday, though not in a public ceremony as with the first. "If you have travel docs, if you actually have a visa, if you are a legal permanent resident, you are not covered under this particular executive action," adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox News on Monday, per CNN. The order also will suspend the nation's refugee program for 120 days, making exceptions for those already cleared, and it will cap the total number of refugees at 50,000 for fiscal 2017, down about half from last year. So will the narrower scope appease critics? Early reaction suggests not. "The president has said he would ban Muslims, and this revised version—in these preliminary fact sheets—still does that, even if they have removed Iraq from the list," says the director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.