By Mark Landler Feb 4, 2017 WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A federal appeals court early Sunday rejected a request by the Justice Department to immediately restore President Trump’s targeted travel ban, deepening a legal showdown over his authority to tighten the nation’s borders in the name of protecting Americans from terrorism.   CLICK IMAGE FOR LINK TO STORY

In the legal back and forth over the travel ban, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco said a reply from the Trump administration was now due on Monday.

The ruling meant that travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — as well as vetted refugees from all nations could, for now, continue to enter the country. Those foreigners had been barred by an executive order signed by the president on Jan. 27.

After a Federal District Court in Seattle blocked Mr. Trump’s order nationwide on Friday, the Justice Department appealed the ruling late Saturday, saying that the president had the constitutional authority to order the ban and that the court ruling “second-guesses the president’s national security judgment.” 

On Saturday night, as Mr. Trump arrived at a Red Cross gala at Mar-a-Lago, his waterfront Florida resort, where he was spending the first getaway weekend of his presidency, reporters asked him if he was confident he would prevail in the government’s appeal. “We’ll win,” he replied. “For the safety of the country, we’ll win.”

The legal maneuvering led Mr. Trump to lash out at Judge James Robart of the Federal District Court in Seattle throughout the day, prompting criticism that the president had failed to respect the judicial branch and its power to check on his authority.

In a Twitter post on Saturday, Mr. Trump wrote, “The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!”

The Justice Department’s filing sought to have the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit block the Seattle judge’s decision and asked that the lower court’s ruling be stayed pending the appeal. 

In its argument for an appeal, the Justice Department had said the president had an “unreviewable authority” to suspend the entry of any class of foreigners. It said the ruling by Judge Robart was too broad, “untethered” to the claims of the State of Washington, and in conflict with a ruling by another federal district judge, in Boston, who had upheld the order.

The Ninth Circuit court moved quickly to reject the administration’s appeal, a measure of the urgency and intense interest in the case.

The Justice Department argued that the president acted well within his constitutional authority. Blocking the order, it concluded, “immediately harms the public by thwarting enforcement of an Executive Order issued by the President, based on his national security judgment.”

Judge Ro