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President Donald Trumps courtroom opponents are adopting a flood-the-zone approach, filing dozens of legal cases over the travel ban. | Getty

The suits objecting to the president's executive order are modeled on complaints that halted earlier efforts to grant status to undocumented immigrants.

By Josh Gerstein

02/07/17 01:59 PM EST

Liberals looking to shut down President Donald Trumps travel ban executive order have a clear model for their legal strategythe one conservatives used to shut down executive actions signed by former President Barack Obama.

The techniques liberals have copied include asking judges for nationwide injunctions against the federal government, using state governments as a vehicle to challenge the presidents actions, filing suits in ideologically friendly jurisdictions and deliberately multiplying the number of suits to maximize the chances of winning legal relief.

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The legal assault on Trumps Jan. 27 order, which barred entry to the U.S. for all refugees as well as for visa holders from seven majority-Muslim countries, mirrors the successful legal drive by Texas and 25 other states to cripple Obamas effort to give undocumented immigrants quasi-legal status.

There certainly is a role reversal, said former 10th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Michael McConnell. Folks who were indignant that Texas would file its lawsuit then are not so indignant that Washington [state] would file its lawsuit nowand vice versa.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments starting at 6pm on whether to let stand a ruling by a federal judge in Seattle blocking the federal government from enforcing Trumps order, which caused chaos at airports across the U.S. as visa and green card holders were detained or turned back.

The Texas-led case against Obamas 2014 executive actions on undocumented immigrantswhich he signed after immigration reform legislation failed in Congresshas been cited repeatedly by state officials fighting Trumps travel ban.

We believe that nationwide relief is appropriate here for the same reasons that it was in United States v. Texas, Washington state solicitor general Noah Purcell told U.S. District Court Judge James Robart shortly before he issued his Feb. 3 injunction, which twice mentioned the Texas case. Washington was one of a dozen states that went to court to oppose Texas in the Obama immigration case.

Theyre ripping the playbook out of Texas hands, observed South Texas College of Law in Houston law professor Josh Blackman. Theyre adopting the very arguments they said were ridiculous a year ago.

In the waning months of Obamas presidency, federal courts in Texas blocked at least five significant Obama administration actions. At least four of those wins came at the behest of Texas and other states.

In June, states helped get a judge to block the Labor Departments so-called persuader rule affecting union organizing campaigns. In August, they won a hold on Labor and Education Department guidance protecting transgender individuals from discrimination was put on hold. In November, states joined others persuading a judge to block Labors overtime rule, which would have boosted the pay of millions of managers at the low end of the pay scale. And in December, states won a court order blocking transgender protections being implemented through Obamacare.

In each instance, the judges involved issued orders blocking the federal policies from being implemented anywhere in the nation.

States lawsuits against Obamas executive actions became a rallying point for small-government conservatives, many of whom had railed for years against activist judges and policymaking in the courts. A Texas Tribune tally found the Lone Star state filed suit against the feds at least 48 times after Obama was sworn in in 2009.

Now, Trumps courtroom opponents are adopting a flood-the-zone approach, filing dozens of legal cases over the travel ban. With some judges willing to issue temporary or even permanent nationwide restraining orders against aspects of Trumps travel ban directive, going to many courts at once virtually guarantees that some portions of the order will be blocked. Indeed, about a half dozen such orders have been entered in the ten days since the travel ban was imposed, although some affected only the litigants who brought the cases.

I call it shop til the statute drops or in this case shop til the order drops, said University of California at Los Angeles law professor Samuel Bray.

The throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks strategy is reminiscent of one conservatives used to maximize the political pain as the controversy over Hillary Clintons use of a private email account unfolded during the recent presidential campaign. Groups like Judicial Watch, Citizens United and the Republican National Committee filed scores of lawsuits, which were assigned to every active federal district judge in Washington, D.C., and some of the senior ones as well.

Many of the cases could have been consolidated, but bringing them all separately meant that a number of judges had the power to initiate a discovery process, forcing Clinton aides to testify under oath. Three judges approved of discovery and several top Clinton aides were forced to testify, although Clinton only answered written questions under oath.

The dynamic fueling the flurry of travel ban suits is similar, with litigants fishing for judges willing to take on Trump. The ACLU, for example, has filed cases in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

The flood of cases also creates another advantage for Trump opponents as the Justice Department struggles to field lawyers in each jurisdiction and meet a dizzying array of courtroom deadlines.

However, some legal scholars warn that the practice of individual judges issuing nationwide injunctions is an unhealthy one for the legal system.

For one thing, it can create confusing results. Hours before Robart issued his broad ruling halting the Trump directive, a federal judge hearing a case in Boston declined to extend a restraining order other federal judges in that court had issued against the travel ban pending further hearings. Trump cited the Boston case in tweets criticizing the Seattle ruling.

If the 9th Circuit upholds the Seattle restraining order, the federal government may appeal it to the Supreme Court. With only eight justices, the Court may deadlock on the issue, which would leave the original Seattle decision intactexactly what happened to the ruling blocking Obamas program for undocumented immigrants.

The difference for Trump is that he has a chance of filling the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death a year ago of Justice Antonin Scalia. Republicans successfully blocked hearings for Obamas nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, but if Trump nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch is confirmed, hed be able to break a deadlock on the travel banand any other executive orders challenged in a similar fashion.

But some say no matter what the final court result, Trumps opponents have scored a victory with the Seattle injunction. I think the purpose of the lawsuit has already been achieved, said McConnell, now a professor at Stanford Law School. Even if it is reversed, the state has succeeded in introducing doubt about the legality of the program.

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Liberals exploiting anti-Obama tactics to thwart Trump's travel ban - Politico

A long-standing Liberal policy to putOne Nation last on how-to-votetickets is likely to be dumped by the Victorian branch of the party, amid warningsthe Coalition is bleeding votes to the hard right.

The impact of demographic change, high unemployment and industrial collapse has left party hardheads worried One Nation could cut as much as 10per cent from the primary vote of the Liberal or Nationals in some seats.

State president Michael Kroger said the Victorian Liberal Party was considering a policy of preferencingcandidates whose values most closely aligned with the Liberal Party in such key areas as law and order, energy prices and security, budget repair and border protection.

"The person whose policies are most in line with our views on those issues is likely to be preferenced," Mr Kroger told The Age."It will be done on an individual candidate basis. Hard-left Greens candidates are extremely likely to be put last."

While the Liberals famously put the Greens last in the 2010 state election, the "case-by-case" policy would mark a significant change from past practice put in place in 2001 by former prime minister John Howard of putting One Nation on the bottom of how-to-vote cards.

The Latrobe Valley Nationals seat ofMorwell is seen as vulnerable. Unemployment in the town is as high as 20.2 per cent, before factoring in job losses linked to the looming closure of the Hazelwood power plant.

Incumbent RussellNorthe, who clung onwith a 1.8 per cent margin at the 2014 state election, said in December he was leaving the shadow ministry to spend more time in his electorate.

The Liberal rural seat of Ripon, held byjust 0.8 per cent, is also under a cloud.Labor strategists are also eyeing the Liberal seat of Bass, which stretches from outer Melbourne to South Gippsland, and is held by a margin of 4.6 per cent.

According to a senior Labor strategist, if the federal results in voting booths overlying the state seat of Bass are extrapolated, Labor is on track to win the seat.

It follows alarm about the growing influence of One Nation in Victoria, withsome polls suggesting the hard-right partyis on track to capture as much as 9.4 per cent of the state vote.

The worry is that only 55to 60 per cent of One Nation primary votes tend to flow back to the Coalition. "If we don't accept we have to deal with One Nation, it will gobble up 8 to 10 per cent of our primary vote in some seats," a senior Liberal source said.

The move follows a decision by the West Australian Liberals to end the long standing policy of putting One Nation last. According to some reports, One Nation could be placed as high as second on the ballot in some WA seats, ahead of the Nationals.

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Victorian Liberals prepare to do business with One Nation - The Age

Canada will be spending more on defence, but how much more, and inwhat areas remained unclear Tuesday as Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan made the media rounds in Ottawa following his first-ever sit-down with his new U.S. counterpart.

"We are committed to investing in our defence," Sajjan said in an interview with CBC News Network'sPower & Politics, a message he repeated on other news programs, andin front of reporters on Parliament Hill.

That the message needed to be hammered home in public following his meeting on Monday with U.S. Defence Secretary James Mattis should be no surprise.

The Trump administration has made it clear it expects allies to put more money into military spending, but the Trudeau government has been decidedly fuzzy on what it intends to do in the upcoming federal budget.

Last year, the newly-elected Liberals were able to claim justifiably that their military spending plans would be calibrated after they had conducted a defence policy review something that's now largely completed.

Sajjan candidly acknowledged Tuesday that Washington had significant input into the review, which is expected to be released sometime in the next few months.

"We get input from all our allies, particularly in the Five Eyes community," Sajjan told host Rosemary Barton, referring to the U.S., Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canadian intelligence sharing pact.

The British were also heavily involved in giving advice to Canadian defence planners.

How the opinions of the country's two longest-standing allies helped shape the Liberal views on defence spending and global engagement, remains to be seen.

At the 2015 Natosummit in Wales, both the Obamaadministration and the government of former British prime minister David Cameron, leaned on Canada to meet the Natobenchmark of spending two per cent of gross domestic product on defence.

Former prime minister Stephen Harper countered the pressure by saying allies should look at what Canada is doing for the alliance, the kind of equipment it brings to missions and the fact that it can always be counted on to show up.

It is an argument that the Trudeau government has also adopted and Sajjan has often repeated, including on Tuesday.

But it is a line that many experts in the defence community don't believe will wash with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has often questioned the relevancy of Nato.

During the last election campaign, the Liberals promised to hold the line on defence spending, which runs in the vicinity of $21 billion per year. Their platform also pledged to carry on with military budget increases outlined in the last budget tabled by Harper's government in 2015.

That fiscal plan allowed for a gradual increase over 10 years of $11.8 billion to the baseline appropriation at National Defence, beginning in the 2017-18 fiscal year.

According to former finance minister Joe Oliver's projections, that would mean a $184 million increase this year, with the cash ramping up gradually to $2.3 billion per year by 2026-27.

Sajjan was asked directly on Tuesday byBarton whether the Liberals still intended to live up to that pledge he deflected the question and talked about what Canada contributes to international missions.

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Sajjan says Liberals 'committed to investing in defence,' but won't say by how much - CBC.ca

By Noah Strote By Noah Strote February 7 at 6:00 AM

Noah Strote, an assistant professor of history at North Carolina State University, is the author of the forthcoming Lions and Lambs: Conflict in Weimar and the Creation of Post-Nazi Germany.

The left is struggling to define a strategy of resistance against the radical agenda of Donald Trump and his Cabinet. Some are calling for the adoption of tea party-style tactics of total obstruction. Congressional Democrats seem to be taking a more pragmatic approach. Since the inauguration, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) has pledged that his caucus is ready to work with the Trump administration on policies that align with Democratic values.

Twentieth-century German history provides a useful perspective. While comparisons between Trumps America and Adolf Hitlers Germany should be made cautiously, we can learn something from the anti-Nazi resistance: The left should not only be fighting extreme measures coming from the regime, but it should also peeling off conservatives to create an anti-Trump coalition.

Unfortunately, the German example also shows that such coalitions can require painful compromises on core values precisely the kind of compromises Democrats currently appear unwilling to make. More than anything, the analogy shows that false moves during a resistance can haunt a nation for decades.

Like Trump, Hitler took control of a democratic system in crisis. Establishment politicians on the left and the right were fighting over what seemed like mutually exclusive visions for the countrys future. The left argued that Germany had been founded on secular ideals of pluralism and socialism; the right considered Christianity and capitalism the basis of national community. Hitler, an outsider with no government experience, took advantage of this situation by allying himself with the right and blaming the left for the countrys polarization.

For a short while, the alliance between the Nazis and the right-wing establishment held. Conservatives trusted Hitlers promise to restore Christian values to German society. They raised no objection when the Nazi-led government smeared left-wing politicians as traitors and drafted laws intended to isolate groups that had allegedly eaten away at the countrys cultural fabric. Similarly, congressional Republicans remain mum as Trump declares war on the liberal media, lambastes dissenting civil servants who betrayed their jobs, and bars some Muslims and refugees from entering the United States.

The Third Reichs founding coalition began to falter when conservatives saw that their new leader showed little commitment to traditional Christian values. Fewer than two years into the regime, after a fateful event known as the Night of the Long Knives during which Nazi security forces purged a number of key conservative politicians Hitler made clear that he considered race, not Christian spirit, to be the true source of national unity.

Germans on the left found themselves at a crossroads. Two paths lay open: They could double down in their struggle against the right or try to woo disillusioned conservatives.

A minority, mainly communists, chose the first path. They excluded conservatives from a popular front of anti-Nazi resistance and insisted on the strict application of left-wing values, such as the socialization of private property and the complete separation of church and state.

But most left-wing leaders chose the second path. In the years between 1935 and 1945, they quietly began recruiting conservatives to build an anti-Hitler coalition and plan for the post-Nazi order. To achieve that goal, however, they needed to develop ideas and craft policies that would attract religious Germans.

This required some painful ideological compromises. Many left-wing leaders gave up their struggle against religion in public schools and abandoned their previous goal of socializing key industries. The more radical left criticized them as betraying the socialist cause. But after Hitlers demise and the end of World War II, their decisions helped to provide a stable foundation for what became known as West Germany, and ultimately todays reunified Germany, which by most measures is one of the least politically polarized societies in the world.

Meanwhile, the left-wing resisters who refused to compromise with conservatives found themselves isolated and dependent on support from the Soviet Union, whose leaders proved just as ideologically intransigent. These were the men and women who ended up founding East Germany, a state that survived only as long as communist Russia remained economically viable.

The current American situation is not identical to the German case. But Trumps ascendancy is a symptom of societal crisis, just as Hitlers was in Germany. At least since the 1980s and the entry of a religious right into politics, there has been polarization over the question of the countrys bedrock values. And for the past eight years, Republicans establishment politicians and the tea party insurgents who brought them to heel have run a successful campaign of no compromise with the left. Living in North Carolina, the so-called belly of the beast, I have seen how many on the right speak about liberals as enemies (and vice versa). They embrace Trump despite their skepticism because they think he can finally push through their agenda with no left-wing interference.

Liberals could emulate the pragmatic wing of the anti-Nazi resistance by appealing to conservatives. But this would require something more agonizing than normal bipartisan compromises. It would mean finding common ground on the very social issues that have riven politics for the past three or four decades.

Liberals might have to alter, or at least sideline, some of their most prized platforms on abortion or secularism in the public sphere. Conservatives might need to consider welfare policy proposals they have long condemned, such as single-payer health care. Compromise on that profound level seems almost impossible at the moment. But Trumps threat to the republic grows in proportion to the widening ideological fissure between left and right. As the German example shows, bridging the worldviews of former enemies may be the only way to avoid the abyss.

Holocaust survivors are gathering in Auschwitz to mark the 72nd anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp. (Reuters)

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What American liberals can learn from the anti-Nazi resistance - The ... - Washington Post

Liberals are so busy confessing and denouncing privilege they've forgotten to fix it Quartz When an author writes a book about privilege, many questions quickly arise: How privileged is the author, and are they self-aware of their privilege? What is their socioeconomic background, and what disadvantages have they overcome? If she thinks ...

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Liberals are so busy confessing and denouncing privilege they've forgotten to fix it - Quartz