It’s a good morning for: Egypt. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam isn’t going to miraculously disappear overnight, but we took what could be an important step toward normalization of relations after President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn issued a joint statement yesterday (pdf). Notably, Desalegn will visit Egypt “in the near future” and the statement is big on verbiage about the “brotherly and strategic nature” of bilateral ties — wording usually reserved for close Arab allies. The meeting took place on the sidelines of the 28th African Union summit in Addis Ababa, where El Sisi also met with the leaders of Kenya, Zambia and Congo-Brazzaville.

Also this morning: RenCap loves us and thinks we’re on par with Russia as a “Trump trade.” We have more on the RenCap report in this morning’s Speed Round.

It’s not a good morning for: The Donald. The acting Attorney General of the United States, Sally Q. Yates, is a person of great moral character, telling her staff she isn’t convinced US President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration is “lawful” and that her department will not defend it on her watch. Yates is an Obama administration holdover — and was promptly fired earlier this morning. Also: More than 100 US diplomats have reportedly endorsed a “dissent cable” coming out of Foggy Bottom saying that “that Mr. Trump’s executive order closing the nation’s doors to more than 200 mn people to weed out a handful of would-be terrorists would not make the nation safer and might instead deepen the threat,” the New York Times reports. The news prompted the White House to invite anyone who disagrees with US policy under Trump to hand in their resignations.

“Perhaps other countries need to be added” … Could Egypt be next on Trump’s so-called Muslim ban? Trump’s staff faced a media storm over the past two days following the imposed restrictions on people traveling to the US from seven predominantly Muslim countries. In trying to find any logic behind the move, almost all news anchors mentioned that statistically there were smaller numbers of terrorist coming from the banned countries than from countries considered as “US allies,” naming Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the UAE. The White House’s talking points were clear, with Press Secretary Sean Spicer on ABC (runtime 14:30), Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on NBC (runtime 12:59), and Advisor Kellyanne Conway on Fox (runtime 17:50) all said the list is just an initial one put by the Obama administration and congress and could be expanded to include other countries whenever “threats” and “risks” are identified going forward.

Hoping for an H-1B to Amreeka? Act now — and don’t hold your breath. Trump’s administration is apparently working on a new executive order on immigration, this time taking aim at the H-1B work visa program, upon which tech companies depend to “hire tens of thousands of employees each year,” Peter Elstrom and Saritha Rai write for Bloomberg. The draft order would force companies to try to hire Americans first before looking to global talent.

Sound smart: The Donald is due to announce his choice of Supreme Court nominee, and the two reported finalists couldn’t be more different. One is the privileged son of a Reagan-era cabinet member who went to Harvard and Oxford and is the pick of conservative jurists. The other, “has blue-collar roots that his backers say would make him a quintessential Trump nominee: A native of a working-class industrial town in Massachusetts, the first in his family to graduate from college, and upwardly mobile without passing through the corridors of the Ivy League.” Read more at Politico.

Public service announcement for residents of Giza: Many of you will be without water for 24 hours on Wednesday. In the only useful information to emerge from Lamees El Hadidy’s show last night, the Holding Company for Water and Wastewater warned that water will be cut for 24 hours on Wednesday in 22 Giza districts due to construction work on the Mohandiseen Metro line (watch, runtime: 7:08).

Happy last day of January. There are 74 days and 18 hours left until our next scheduled vacation. (That would be Easter and Sham El Nessim on Sunday, 16 April and Monday, 17 April.)