Hi, and welcome to Amicus. I'm Dahlia Lithwick, and I cover the courts and the law, or what we used to call the law for slate.com.

Now, if memory serves, there was a time on this show not that long ago when we would have to really think hard about some case that was interesting or important

enough or accessible enough to our listeners to cover on this show.

Times are changing.

Since President Donald Trump took office only three weeks ago, news from the courts has been

coming at us so fast and so furious, we have no weekends anymore at Slate.

And so we are coming at you today, Friday, on what in normal times would have been an off week for this show.

But there's a lot going on.

And so I am here with two of my fellow court watchers at Slate to try to take stock of this week's huge legal news, the

ruling that came down Thursday night from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,

that extended a temporary restraining order on Donald Trump's immigration ban.

Now, this was a per curiam unanimous decision by three judges across the spectrum in favor of the states of

Washington and Minnesota who were challenging parts of President Trump's executive order that

banned travel from a handful of majority Muslim countries. The appeal was argued at the beginning

of this week over the old tiny phone.

And it is worth mentioning that people actually watched a YouTube video of nothing happening

for an entire hour as judges pummeled attorneys for both sides who ably tried to defend

each of their own positions. Again, over the phone, old-timey.

Here's a little taste of what some of that sounded like. Here we have Justice Department lawyer,

August Flengey, who was defending the Justice Department's stance on this case, being pounded

by Judge Michelle Friedland of the Ninth Circuit

on this question of whether this was a Muslim ban or something else. Have a listen.

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