Donald Trump's First 100 Days
Tracking the start of the Trump presidency
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States, Justice Dept. set to argue whether Trump's travel ban should stay suspended
— By Camila Domonoske, NPRThe 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday evening over whether President Trump's travel ban should remain on hold or go back into effect.Trump's executive order temporarily barred visa holders from seven majority-Muslim countries, as well as all refugees, from entering the country. It was signed on Jan. 27 and quickly challenged by an array of lawsuits.
One of those cases resulted in a temporary restraining order, blocking the ban — for now — from going into effect. It's that restraining order, not the ban as a whole, that lawyers will be arguing over Tuesday.A three-judge panel heard the arguments telephone at 5 p.m. CST.You can stream the hearing here:Here are a few things to know before the arguments get going:How did we get here?
Trump's original executive order bars travelers from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia for 90 days, suspends new refugee admissions for 120 days, and blocks refugees from Syria indefinitely.
The White House denies that this amounts to a "Muslim ban," as Trump called for during the presidential election. But all seven of the listed countries are majority Muslim. The order calls for the eventual prioritization of refugee claims from people of "minority religions" in their country of origin — and in an interview Trump said that Christians from the Middle East would be prioritized.On Jan. 30, Washington became the first state to sue the administration, arguing that the order is discriminatory and violates the Constitution as well as federal law. (The lawsuit is one of many challenging the travel ban.)
That case — with Minnesota joining Washington — resulted in Judge James L. Robart siding with the states in granting a temporary restraining order that blocked the ban from being enforced until the court case could move forward.The Department of Justice asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to immediately reinstate the ban. The court refused to immediately intervene but asked the states and the DOJ to make more arguments for and against the restraining order.
Both sides have filed briefs to try to make their case.Who are the judges who will decide?The arguments on each side will be presented to a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit: William Canby Jr., Richard Clifton and Michelle T. Friedland.Canby was appointed by Jimmy Carter, Clifton by George W. Bush and Friedland by Obama.What happens next?As the appeals court considers the DOJ's request to reimpose the executive order, the case continues to move forward at the district level.A host of other lawsuits challenging the executive order are also unfolding across the country — The Hill reports that there are more than 50 such lawsuits brought by state attorneys general, religious groups and individuals.
Eventually, one of the cases might well make it before the U.S. Supreme Court. Bob Ferguson, the attorney general of Washington state, told NPR's Michel Martin he sees that as "entirely possible."As NPR's Nina Totenberg has reported, Senate Democrats have signaled that the executive order might factor into confirmation hearings for Judge Neil Gorsuch, Trump's nominee for the court's open seat, as they weigh his position on the legality and constitutionality of the travel ban.






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President-elect Donald Trump
MPR News: Rolling coverage of the transition from President Obama to President Trump from flyover country. -
Trump inauguration sparks global march for women
MPR News: Live coverage of the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States and related celebrations and protests. -
Why Trump's Meetings With CEOs Seeking Mergers Trouble Observers
by Justin Elliott and Jesse Eisinger ProPublica, Jan. 25, 2017, 11 a.m.
When the CEOs of Monsanto and Bayer met now-President Donald Trump earlier this month, eager for a nod of assent for their controversial merger into an agrochemical and seed giant, they promised jobs and investment.
Sure enough, a week later, the companies and a Trump spokesman announced that the combined company would create several thousand new U.S. jobs. Trump himself Twitter-touted the companies' pledge.
But as Trump talked with the CEOs from his perch on Fifth Avenue, antitrust experts shook their heads.
By meeting with the CEOs of Monsanto and Bayer as well as the head of AT&T, which is trying to merge with Time Warner, Trump has violated decades of White House practice by injecting himself directly into mergers awaiting Justice Department review.
"The public should be concerned that the career attorneys' and economists' analysis of the deals is not what the decision is going to be made on," said Holt Lackey, a former antitrust counsel to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee.
Several former Justice Department antitrust officials said in interviews they are worried that Trump will cut deals with companies that could hurt American consumers.
"If a transaction is harmful to competition and merging companies raise prices to consumers by 10 to 15 percent, it would not be good to allow that to happen just because the merged companies created some jobs," said Gene Kimmelman, who was chief counsel in the Antitrust Division during the Obama administration. "That would be a horrible trade-off."
Critics of the roughly $60 billion Monsanto-Bayer deal say that it will give the combined company too much pricing power, particularly in the seed and pesticide markets. While Bayer is known for its aspirin and other consumer products, the German conglomerate is also a big player in agriculture.
"I am concerned that the merger will curtail chemical and seed choices, and raise prices for farmers and the American consumer," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, in a letter to the Justice Department.
Bayer and Monsanto together control 70 percent of the U.S. market for cotton seeds.
Monsanto and Bayer announced after the Trump meeting that the combined company would spend $16 billion on research and development "over the next six years with at least half of this investment made in the United States."
But it's not at all clear that this investment is tied to the merger. As the Wall Street Journal has noted, that figure is not any higher than the rate at which the companies are already spending on R&D.
It's also unclear what, if anything, Trump promised the CEOs in return for the jobs pledge. There have been conflicting reports about what happened in the meeting. The transition team didn't respond to a request for comment. The companies declined to comment beyond a public statement that says they will "create several thousand new high-tech, well-paying jobs after integration is complete."
Merging companies typically tout the benefits of proposed deals. But antitrust enforcers spend a lot of time scrutinizing whether those benefits would actually result from the merger, rather than from business decisions that would have been made anyway.
And antitrust experts said that if Trump pushed the Department of Justice to allow a merger through in exchange for a promise of job creation, such a pledge would be difficult to enforce. What would happen, for example, if the company reneged on adding jobs after the merger had been completed?
Trump's meetings with CEOs have raised concerns inside the Justice Department itself.
"It is troubling that presidents of companies whose cases are before the Antitrust Division would be meeting with the president-elect," said one DOJ antitrust staffer. "We're a law enforcement agency and we pride ourselves on enforcing the law and looking at a case objectively and deciding whether it would or would not violate the antitrust laws."
Republicans have also raised concerns about Trump's meetings. "Businesses are entitled to predictability as it relates to transactions and potential mergers and acquisitions," said Larry Thompson, the first deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration.
The Department of Justice's rulings "always reflect the prevailing administration's policy views about certain things," he said. But they "should be free of direct political intervention." Thompson noted that he had no insight into what was said during Trump's recent meetings with the CEOs.
During the campaign, Trump came out against AT&T's proposed acquisition of Time Warner "because it's too much concentration of power in the hands of too few." Time Warner owns CNN, a frequent target of Trump's ire.
Since the campaign, Trump has moderated his tone on the AT&T-Time Warner deal. He also appointed transition antitrust experts who are friendlier to corporate consolidation than the Obama administration. What wasn't anticipated is the possibility that Trump might cut his own deals on mergers typically scrutinized by the Justice Department.
As president, Trump has the authority to set antitrust policy. But direct intervention by a president in specific cases has been almost unheard of for decades.
The Justice Department has extensive guidelines for how it assesses whether a particular merger violates antitrust law. Teams of DOJ lawyers and economists study company documents and interview competitors and customers to determine whether a merger will lead to price increases or harm innovation. If the review concludes that the merger is harmful, the department can sue in federal court.
As ProPublica reported last year, some Antitrust Division staffers were upset after DOJ approved the 2013 merger of American Airlines and U.S. Airways. The merger was the focus of an intense lobbying effort by former Obama administration officials. But there were no allegations that President Obama or the White House intervened in that case.
Last year, an Obama White House spokesperson told us that antitrust "enforcement decisions are made independently. The White House does not play a role in those decisions."
In decades past, presidential intervention in specific antitrust cases has been connected to scandal.
In late 1963, Lyndon Johnson leaned on the president of the Houston Chronicle 2014 which had long been critical of Democrats 2014 to support him in the pages of the newspaper in exchange for antitrust approval of a bank merger. The president of the newspaper owned one of the banks. As recounted by Johnson biographer Robert Caro, the newspaper executive agreed to Johnson's demand for a letter promising editorial support in exchange for letting the merger through. The Antitrust Division had been critical of the deal but was overruled by Johnson.
Nearly a decade later, in 1972, a scandal erupted around President Richard Nixon's intervention in an antitrust case involving International Telephone and Telegraph, ITT. Columnist Jack Anderson reported that the case against the company had been dropped in exchange for a large donation related to the upcoming Republican convention.
Tapes later emerged showing that Nixon had called the deputy attorney general and told him:
"I want something clearly understood, and, if it is not understood, [Antitrust Division chief Richard] McLaren's ass is to be out within one hour. The IT&T thing 2014 stay the hell out of it. Is that clear? That's an order. The order is to leave the God damned thing alone. 2026 I do not want McLaren to run around prosecuting people, raising hell about conglomerates, stirring things up at this point."
James Rill, who headed the Antitrust Division under George H.W. Bush, in 2014 wrote that the Johnson and Nixon interventions were "plainly on the inappropriate, possibly illegal, side of the line."
It's possible that contacts between the White House and the Justice Department under Trump could run afoul of existing Justice Department policy. In 2007, after the Bush administration U.S. attorney firings scandal, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey wrote a memo laying out rules governing communications between the White House and the Justice Department. "Communications with respect to pending criminal or civil-enforcement matters" between the White House and the Justice Department "must be limited," the memo states.
The memo goes on to say that with the exception of national security matters, "all initial communications between the White House staff and the Justice Department regarding any specific pending Department investigation or criminal or civil-enforcement matter should involve only the Counsel to the President or Deputy Counsel to the President and the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General."
During Jeff Sessions' recent confirmation hearing to be attorney general, he said: "I have no hesitation to enforce antitrust law 2026 and there will not be political influence in that process."
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for their newsletter.
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Hard to see this on the uncertainty-in-journalism pile, too. NPR/PBS stations at my alma mater where I cut my teeth dailyegyptian.com/64953/showcase…by Tom Weber via twitter 1/25/2017 10:29:14 PM
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SCHEDULE ALERT: We're airing #MaryTylerMoore : A Celebration at 7 pm instead of @pbsnature . Catch the show about slo… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…by Twin Cities PBS via twitter retweeted by CathyWurzer 1/25/2017 10:34:32 PM
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Well wishing messages to Gov Mark Dayton since Monday from: http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3C8_UvXAAEK8MO.jpg
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Where are America's sanctuary cities, and how much federal funding do they actually get? bit.ly/2jqvd0jby Marketplace via twitter 1/25/2017 10:42:49 PM
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Trump to move on border security, immigration enforcement buff.ly/2jRgWbE http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3DQN0sWgAArcHy.jpg
by On MPR News via twitter 1/25/2017 10:45:26 PM -
Conversation in dental hygienist chair went from teeth to kids to protests to Trump to Target cartwheel, then back to Trump.by Riham Feshir via twitter 1/25/2017 10:45:52 PM
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In Nogales, Mexico, there have been mixed responses to Trump's campaign rhetoric for a border and more deportations. bit.ly/2jSv0BMby Marketplace via twitter 1/25/2017 10:50:26 PM
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Something to share when a source says "You're not going to record me are you? I hate the sound of my voice!" nyti.ms/2jFsYDoby dan kraker via twitter 1/25/2017 11:05:42 PM
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Three trends buried in the December jobs report: Long term unemployment, black unemployment buff.ly/2jZIWvM http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3DWIMpXcAAQwhu.jpg
by On MPR News via twitter 1/25/2017 11:11:14 PM -
Eleven percent Syrian immigrants own businesses in the U.S., compared to 4 percent of all immigrants. bit.ly/2j5nENXby Marketplace via twitter 1/25/2017 11:18:43 PM
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EPA science under scrutiny by Trump political staff
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"[Trump] is a Marxist," says Brown University professor Mark Blyth. bit.ly/2jqg1jE http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3DdvfwXcAAHqvZ.jpg
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Last pipeline protesters weigh whether to fight or leave "DAPL @NicholsonBlake apne.ws/2k1swToby AP_NorthDakota via twitter retweeted by gundersondan 1/25/2017 11:50:21 PM
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How Mary Tyler Moore made Minneapolis a star | Minnesota Public Radio News mprnews.org/story/2017/01/…by Mike Edgerly via twitter 1/25/2017 11:50:57 PM
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POTUS is challenging, with no credible evidence, the integrity of an election he won. mprnews.org/story/2017/01/… http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3CFAd0UUAAaJ9y.jpg
by MPRnews via twitter retweeted by edgerlyMPRNews 1/25/2017 11:51:50 PM -
A chuckle for Mary dlvr.it/NCCPkQ http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3C2GbaVUAAP_gh.jpg
by NewsCut via twitter retweeted by edgerlyMPRNews 1/25/2017 11:51:54 PM -
From @mspairport : 37.5M people flew in/out in 2016, just shy of 2005, all time high w/ 37.6M passengers. Number was up 2.6% from 2015.by Tim Nelson via twitter retweeted by edgerlyMPRNews 1/25/2017 11:52:01 PM
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So much news going on today, but make sure to make time to listen to @EmmaSapong ' lovely barbershop feature. mprnews.org/story/2017/01/…by Laura Yuen via twitter retweeted by EmmaSapong 1/25/2017 11:52:05 PM
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Even if you are not from the forest, you can come live in the forest because the forest is for everybody.by A bear via twitter retweeted by edgerlyMPRNews 1/25/2017 11:52:38 PM
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Mary Tyler Moore, star of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," has died at 80. She is shown here being given an award by Go… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…by MNHistoricalSociety via twitter retweeted by edgerlyMPRNews 1/25/2017 11:52:44 PM
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17 months in a row: January will finish warmer than average in Twin Cities. Snow totals and climate updates. blogs.mprnews.org/updraft/ #mnwx http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3Dfn6oUoAAzx1F.jpg
by MPR Weather via twitter 1/25/2017 11:52:52 PM -
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I just realized that 10 years ago this month I started doing weather chats on MPR News. Time flies when you're having fun! #mnwx http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3Df9x7UoAAQrn6.jpg
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So much news going on today, but make sure to make time to listen to @EmmaSapong ' lovely barbershop feature. mprnews.org/story/2017/01/…by Laura Yuen via twitter retweeted by edgerlyMPRNews 1/25/2017 11:55:15 PM
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I just realized that 10 years ago this month I started doing weather chats on MPR News. Time flies when you're havi… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…by MPR Weather via twitter retweeted by edgerlyMPRNews 1/25/2017 11:55:31 PM
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Nnamdi Ogbonnaya's new single "dOn't turn me Off" is dripping with positivity. Hear it now. n.pr/2ktaGGa http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3CrjnrWIAEl5jl.jpg
by nprmusic via twitter retweeted by codyleenelson 1/25/2017 11:56:46 PM -
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Loved #MTM ! Gracious lady, great show! Enjoy the iconic opening sequence strib.mn/2kuGxKu then watch @tpt at 7p for an MTM tribute.by Cathy Wurzer via twitter 1/26/2017 12:01:40 AM
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Rest in peace to TV icon and Smart Girl #MaryTylerMoore ????✨ http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3Di-OtUYAAqFHw.jpg
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“If we pull the plug on that, then people are at risk.” bit.ly/2j5s3AIby Marketplace via twitter 1/26/2017 12:13:42 AM
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Congratulations, Paul! twitter.com/MPRweather/sta…by Tom Crann, MPR News via twitter 1/26/2017 12:14:24 AM
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by Brian Bakst via twitter 1/26/2017 12:21:57 AM
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IT FEELS LIKE SOMEONE PRESSED THE ALL CAPS BUTTON ON THE WORLD AND FORGOT TO SHUT IT OFF AND NOW IT’S STUCK FOREVERby MiriamElder via twitter retweeted by mukhtaryare 1/26/2017 12:26:52 AM
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The “black site” plan that circulated today is a near verbatim match from the Romney campaign buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/th…by MiriamElder via twitter retweeted by mukhtaryare 1/26/2017 12:27:02 AM
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“I have no idea where it came from.” - White House press secretary Sean Spicer. twitter.com/MiriamElder/st…by Mukhtar M. Ibrahim via twitter 1/26/2017 12:33:56 AM
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Will Trump's pipeline order really bring more U.S. steel jobs? bit.ly/2jqjkrj http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3DqO3NWEAEnXJb.jpg
by Marketplace via twitter 1/26/2017 12:39:04 AM -
Trump draft uses “strikethrough” feature to change the word “jihadist” to “Islamist” and “radical Islamist” groups. buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/th…by Mukhtar M. Ibrahim via twitter 1/26/2017 12:39:51 AM
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