Let's pray.

Father God, creator of Heavens and Earth, I just pray that you'll be with us tonight

as we conduct this meeting.

When the County Commission in Bismarck, North Dakota, met to vote on immigration last month,

they opened the meeting with a prayer for calmness.

And we do the solemn year's son's name.

Amen.

Thank you.

They were talking about immigration because every year this county accepts a couple

dozen refugees.

North Dakota is actually a bit of a refugee hub.

But a new executive order from the Trump administration was forcing them to decide whether they should

continue to welcome these people or start to turn them away.

You know, typically the question of resettling refugees has never really been controversial.

Jonathan Blitzer writes for the New Yorker.

He's been keeping an eye on meetings like this one.

They're happening all over the country, state by state, county by county, because that's

the way the Trump administration wanted it.

And so the logic behind this, of course, was, okay, let's try to isolate the states and

the municipalities who want to resettle refugees so we can sort of expose them and maybe

take political shots at them.

And so the expectation was Republicans would kind of cleave to the White House line, Democratic

...