On Saturday, January 28, cameras across the nation were trained on airports as huge crowds of protesters filled arrival terminals to protest President Donald Trump’s travel ban. The executive order that Trump had signed the night before barred entry to immigrants, refugees, and even those holding green cards from seven majority-Muslim nations. On the ground, the reaction arrived swiftly and in force. At Sea-Tac International Airport, 3,000 people gathered, holding signs and chanting, “Let them in!”
That day, as the nationwide protest response was beginning to build, Washington State attorney general Bob Ferguson was in the air. The reedy, 52-year-old former state chess champ was flying back from a conference of attorneys general in Florida, and although he didn’t know it, his phone was blowing up with messages about the ban, about a press conference with Governor Jay Inslee, about what to do next. Ferguson, an unflappable character who appears to have maintained the same boyish haircut since the 1980s, touched down at Sea-Tac just in time. His first major decision: skip the press conference. Instead, he checked in with his solicitor general, Noah Purcell, went home to say hi to his wife and kids, and then got to work on the first and only lawsuit that would end up blocking the rollout of Trump’s ban nationwide.