SEATTLE -- More than a half-dozen states trying to block President Trump’s revised travel ban moved forward Monday with a pair of lawsuits while the government asked that the order be allowed to take effect this week. Trump's first ban barred citizens of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen for 90 days, all refugees for 120 days and Syrian citizens indefinitely. It also shuttered the U.S.’s refugee program by banning asylum-seekers from Syria indefinitely and refugees from every other country for 120 days. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said last week that the administration believes the revised travel ban will stand up to legal scrutiny. WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department on Monday laid out its first significant legal defense of President Donald Trump's revised travel ban, arguing in a court filing that the harm opponents say it causes is "speculative" and that the president was well within his authority to issue the directive. Unlike the original order, it says people with visas won’t be affected and removes language that would have given priority to religious minorities for entry to the US Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, joined in his lawsuit by heavily Democratic California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Oregon, said the revised ban is still flawed and harms residents, universities and businesses, especially tech companies such as Washington state-based

Microsoft and Amazon that rely on foreign workers. They argue that the ban will hurt their economies by limiting students and professors who can work and study at state universities, reducing tourism from the Middle East and curbing employment from those countries. In a new complaint filed in U.S. District Court Monday, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson asked for a hearing with the judge based in Seattle on Tuesday, two days before the revised travel ban is scheduled to begin. A hearing in a separate lawsuit by Hawaii already has been scheduled for Wednesday. Opponents of Trump's executive order have asked federal judges in several states to block the administration from enforcing the directive, and two judges have scheduled hearings for Wednesday to hear arguments on the matter. Travelers from the seven newly banned countries were detained when they landed; some were green card holders, meaning that, while they hold passports from foreign countries, they had legal status to work and live in the U.S. Unlike the original order, the new one says current visa holders won’t be affected, and it removes language that would give priority to religious minorities. The administration has argued that the ban is necessary for national security reasons, though many diplomatic and national security professionals have said they disagree with that assessment and that the new ban would probably not have kept out anyone responsible for a fatal terrorist attack since 2001.
The state of Washington, joined by the states of California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Oregon, asks a federal judge to stop, on constitutional grounds, the revised federal immigration/refugee rules from taking effect on Thursday, March 16. The state of Hawaii has filed a separate, similar request.