Trump Fires Attorney General

President Donald Trump fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates Monday night for "refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States,"

The move set up a clash between the White House and Yates, who was appointed by President Barack Obama and was set to serve until Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump's nominee for attorney general, if confirmed.

Trump's executive order, signed Friday, bars citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for the next 90 days, suspends the admission of all refugees for 120 days and indefinitely suspends the Syrian refugee program. Yates' decision came amid a flood of protests against the executive order nationwide and after four federal judges ruled against Trump's order, staying its impact on people who were detained at US airports over the weekend.

White House policy director Stephen Miller, who helped craft the executive order, called Yates' decision "a further demonstration of how politicized our legal system has become."

"It's sad that our politics have become so politicized, that you have people refusing to enforce our laws," Miller said Monday night on MSNBC.

Miller also defended the executive order's legality, insisting that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the President "the ability to exclude any class of would-be visitors or immigrants to our country based on our national security interests."

But the decision didn't face the same criticism from Rep. Pete Sessions, a top House Republican, who said Yates' decision was likely similar "to an evaluation that we made."