Late on election night, with Donald Trump way outperforming expectations, CNN turned to its panel of Trump and Hillary Clinton backers. Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord said that the Republican nominee edging toward the White House, especially in Rust Belt states, was Americans wanting to take their country back from the elites. Van Jones, a Clinton supporter, had a different view.

"You have people putting their kids to bed tonight, and they're afraid of breakfast," he said, on the verge of tears. After explaining that bullying is bad, he continued: "They're afraid of, how do I explain this to my children? I have Muslim friends who are texting me tonight, saying should I leave the country? I have families of immigrants that are terrified tonight. This was many things — this was a rebelling against the elites, true, it was a complete reinvention of politics and polls, it's true, but it was also something else." The CNN panel talked about class and region, he noted, but "we haven't talked about race. This was a white-lash. This was a white-lash against a changing country, it was a white-lash against a black president in part, and that's the part where the pain comes." Trump has a responsibility to assure those people, Jones said. "When you say that you want to take your country back, you've got a lot of people who feel that we're not represented well either." Watch. Peter Weber

The Trump administration has decided to fight a ruling by a federal court in Maryland, which earlier this week imposed a temporary restraining order against President Trump's revised travel ban. U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang ruled the executive order violated the First Amendment, The Washington Post reports.

Chuang's restraining order is narrower than a similar ruling against the ban that was made this week in Hawaii. However, if the Justice Department were to appeal the Hawaii ruling, the case would be sent to the same San Francisco appeals court that shot down the first version of Trump's travel ban last month. Chuang's ruling targets a portion of Trump's order that prevents citizens of the six majority-Muslim countries from being able to be issued a visa. Both the Maryland decision and the Hawaii decision invoke statements made by Trump and his advisers during the campaign, saying they proved "President Trump's animus toward Muslims and intention to impose a ban on Muslims entering the United States."

The ban was slated to go into effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, but the federal judges' rulings blockedit nationwide.

"We're going to fight this terrible ruling," Trump vowed in Nashville, shortly after the Hawaii judge reported his decision. "We're going to take our case as far as it needs to go, including all the way up to the Supreme Court." Jeva Lange

President Trump has no regrets about his tweets. During a joint press conference Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a German reporter asked Trump about his recent tweets baselessly claiming former President Barack Obama wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower during the presidential election. The reporter wanted to know: Had Trump ever had second thoughts about his social media posts? Before the reporter could even finish asking the question, Trump interjected with an answer: "Very seldom."

A recent Fox News poll found just 16 percent of Americans approve of the president's tweeting, but Trump insisted Friday that tweeting was a great tool to circumvent the media — or as he calls it, the "enemy of the American people." "We have a tremendous group of people that listen, and I can get around the media when the media doesn't tell the truth," Trump said, referring to the tens of millions of Twitter followers who are privy to his thoughts about rapper Snoop Dogg's latest music video and the "FAKE NEWS media."

Trump has continued to stand by his accusations against Obama, despite the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) all admitting zero evidence has been uncovered to suggest the wiretapping ever took place. Fox News — one of the White House's last defenses for Trump's claims — said Friday it "knows of no evidence of any kind" that Trump was "surveilled at any time." Becca Stanek

President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are, by the looks of things, probably not exactly going to be best friends. On Friday, when trying to highlight some common ground between them, Trump dredged up a major diplomatic scandal between the U.S. and Germany. "As far as wiretapping by this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps," Trump said, a reference to the National Security Agency secretly tapping phone calls of the German chancellery for decades, a revelation that first came to light in a 2013 WikiLeaks report.

In regards to Trump's own claims of being wiretapped by Obama, on Thursday the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said there are "no indications" that anything of the sort happened. Nevertheless, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer alleged Obama was able to get intelligence on Trump through the British spy agency GCHQ — a theory that was first floated by former judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News. Spicer quoted Napolitano as saying: "Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI, and he didn't use the Department of Justice, he used GCHQ." The United States later formally apologized to Britain for citing the untrue rumor, though Spicer denied later Friday that the White House regretted repeating the allegation.

When accused Friday of spreading the baseless accusations, Trump shrugged off responsibility. "We said nothing. All we did was quote a very talented legal mind ... So you shouldn't be talking to me you should be talking to Fox." In response, Fox News' Shepard Smith said Friday: "Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano's commentary. Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now-president of the United States was surveilled at any time, any way. Full stop." Jeva Lange

President Trump, who launched his presidency with a populist inaugural speech championing "America First," scoffed Friday when a German reporter asked him if he was an isolationist. "I am not an isolationist by any stretch of the imagination," Trump said at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during her visit to the White House on Friday. "So I don't know what newspaper you're reading, but I guess that would be another example of — as you say — 'fake news.'"

Trump insisted that he did not believe in an isolationist policy, but a "fair" trade policy. "The United States has been treated very, very unfairly by many countries over the years, and that's going to stop," Trump said. "But I'm not an isolationist. I'm a free trader, but I'm also a fair trader. And our free trade has led to a lot of bad things happening." Becca Stanek

Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was reportedly investigating Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price when he was fired by the Trump administration last week, ProPublica reports.

Price traded over $300,000 worth of health-related shares while he was voting on related legislation as a Georgia congressman in the House of Representatives. Price has argued his trades were lawful, while critics say he was using his office to make money.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York was reportedly investigating Price at the time of Bharara's dismissal, a person familiar with the investigation said. Bharara's firing last week came as a surprise as Bharara met with Trump shortly after the election and at the time, announced he had agreed to stay on under the incoming administration. Jeva Lange

House Speaker Paul Ryan took a trip down memory lane with the National Review's Rich Lowry on Friday at the National Review Institute's 2017 Ideas Summit in Washington, D.C. "So, Medicaid," Ryan said. "Sending it back to the states, capping its growth rate. We've been dreaming of this since I've been around — since you and I were drinking at a keg."

The Trump administration's analysis of the GOP health-care replacement estimates that 17 million people would lose Medicaid coverage, with even many Republicans thinking the cuts go too far. "If you're a Republican senator in, say, Ohio, do you really want to cut Medicaid benefits for hundreds of thousands of your constituents?" asks Jeff Spross at The Week. "Ryan is 47 years old, which means that, if he started 'drinking at a keg' early in his college career, he's fantasized about all the poor people who could be stripped of health care for nearly three decades," slammed the progressive blog ThinkProgress.

Admittedly, it's a bit of an odd thing to be considering at a kegger. "I was thinking about something else, he was thinking about reforming Medicaid," Lowry confessed.

"I've been thinking about this for a long time," Ryan said.

Spross wrote further on the GOP's plot to "drown Medicaid in the bathtub," which you can read here. Jeva Lange

The public affairs network C-SPAN has long argued for the Supreme Court to allow TV cameras to record its oral arguments, and in the sensitive days ahead of the hearings for Neil Gorsuch, C-SPAN has zeroed in on Trump's nominee as a potential ally to their cause.

On Friday, C-SPAN rolled out a video featuring the replies of all the current justices when asked about TV coverage of the Supreme Court. Answers range from Judge John Roberts claiming in 2005 that "television cameras are nothing to be afraid of but I don't have a set view on that" to Judge Anthony Kennedy arguing in 1987 that "it might make me and my colleagues behave differently than they would otherwise."

C-SPAN also released a survey showing that the decisions of the Supreme Court are of the upmost interest to the American people — 90 percent of respondents agreed that "decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court have an impact on my everyday life as a citizen." The survey also found that 76 percent of voters agree the Supreme Court "should allow television coverage of its oral arguments." The poll reached 1,032 likely voters between March 7-9 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.

Gorsuch will undoubtedly be required to answer the question himself. His confirmation hearings begin next week. Jeva Lange