Trump dumps attorney-general for refusing to implement travel ban
Yates said late on Monday that the Justice Department would not defend the order against court challenges
US President Donald Trump fired top federal government lawyer Sally Yates on Monday after she took the extraordinarily rare step of defying the White House and refused to defend new travel restrictions targeting seven Muslim-majority nations. It was another dramatic twist in the unusually raucous roll-out of Trump's directive that put a 120-day hold on allowing refugees into the country, an indefinite ban on refugees from Syria and a 90-day bar on citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The Friday night ban prompted protests and chaos at airports on the weekend as customs officials struggled to put the order into practise, and the fallout spread to U.S. markets on Monday, where stocks suffered their biggest drop of 2017 and companies affected by the change spoke out against it. Yates said late on Monday that the Justice Department would not defend the order against court challenges, saying that she did not believe it would be "consistent with this instituti...
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