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BOB FERGUSON was ready. It was the end of January, and the Washington state attorney general had been concerned that President Donald Trump would soon issue a sweeping executive order targeting immigration. A bespectacled former chess champion, Ferguson had been plotting for weeks with various immigrant rights groups in the state about how to combat Trump’s i rst move. Then, on the last Friday in January, the White House issued its now infamous executive order targeting immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
Ferguson was home that weekend but went into his oi ce to work on an appeal. His solicitor general, Noah Purcell, a former U.S. Supreme Court clerk, guzzled cof ee from a full-sized Starbucks box in his office, as opposed to the chain’s ubiquitous white cup. Within a day, they had lined up two of the state’s most prominent employers, Amazon and Expedia, to sign on, and soon they had persuaded a federal judge in Seattle to put the Trump ban on hold nationwide. Just before that ruling, Ferguson told Newsweek, “I’m going to keep going where the law takes me.”