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Sally Yates just testified for the first time about her now-legendary refusal to defend Trump's travel ban — and, predictably, she didn't come to play around.

Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images.

In the key exchange, the former acting-attorney general calmly explained to Sen. John Cornyn why she refused to defend what she called an "unlawful" executive order.

She couldn't, in good conscious, she said, send Department of Justice attorneys in to lie on the administration's behalf about what the purpose of the executive order really was: an attempt to discriminate against Muslims.

SALLY YATES: All arguments have to be based on truth because we're the Department of Justice. We're not just a law firm. We're the Department of Justice.
CORNYN: Do you distinguish the truth from lawful?
YATES: Yes, because in this instance, in looking at what the intent was of the executive order, which was derived in part from an analysis of facts outside the face of the order, that is part of what led to our conclusion that it was not lawful.

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The outside facts Yates considered in making her decision were public statements made by officials involved with the drafting of the order — statements that contradicted the administration's assertion that the order was not intentionally discriminatory.

Though Yates didn't clarify which statements she was referring to, possible candidates include President Trump's call for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" and campaign advisor Rudy Giuliani's admission that, following the election, Trump had asked him about instituting a Muslim travel ban — specifically "how to do it legally."

Basically, Yates believed that Trump's insistence that the order wasn't a Muslim ban was BS and felt it would be unprofessional to argue that BS in court.

"I believed that any argument that we would have to make in its defense would not be grounded in the truth," she said, bluntly, later in the May 8, 2017, hearing.

Yates metaphorically dunking on her Senate critics was more than satisfying to watch — it was a model of principled resistance.

The former Justice Department official drove her point home by clarifying her belief that following orders, even compelling ones, is less important than sticking up for the truth — no matter what the professional consequences might be.

Image via C-SPAN3.

"I looked at this, I made a determination that I believed that it was unlawful," Yates said of the executive order. "I also thought that it was inconsistent with the principles of the Department of Justice. And I said no. And that's what I promised you I would do, and that's what I did."

In the end, by refusing to defend an order she felt was unlawful, Yates didn't just do the right thing.

"I did my job," she explained. Thankfully, someone did.

The United States has more people living in prisons than any other country.

According to some estimates, 25% of the planet's prison population is in the USA — nearly 7 million people in 2013.

Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images.

Despite the fact that violent crime has been steadily declining in recent years, America's incarceration rate has tripled since 1980.

We've been locking people away with such regularity that we actually started to run out of space. That's why about 10 years ago, the government began working with private contractors to open up private or "for profit" prisons for housing excess of inmates — a practice that has soared into a $70 billion industry.

But that's about to change: On Aug. 18, 2016, Sally Yatesannounced the Department of Justice will phase out the federal use of private prisons.

As you might be able to imagine, when you add the words "privately owned" to a prison, the effects aren't great. What was once a correctional system has turned into a profit-engine whose fuel is prisoners.

Time and time again, the prison industrial complex has been found to be corrupt, abusive, inhumane, and unsafe.

Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images.

"Private prisons served an important role during a difficult period," said Deputy Attorney General Yates in her memo.

"But time has shown thatthey compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities. They simply do not provide the same level ofcorrectional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and asnoted in a recent report by the Department's Office of Inspector General, they do not maintainthe same level of safety and security."

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

This isn't the only positive change we've seen in the prison system lately either.

In recent years, prison populations have been declining. There are many factors to this: crime reduction, policy reforms, and improved public safety, to name a few.

There's also the fact that the vast majority of people we lock up have committed drug offenses, and in 2010, more than half of the drug arrests made were for marijuana — a drug that's now legal in many states. As we decriminalize marijuana, prison population numbers are likely to drop even lower — yet another reason to close private prisons.

While these prisons won't be closing overnight, DOJ officialshave been ordered to end or "substantially reduce" their contracts with them.

Yates speaking in June 2016. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.

There are still many problems to fix within our justice system, including (and especially) the rulings and laws that caused these high prison population problems and necessitated the use of private prisons in the first place.

But this is a big step in the right direction.

It's easy to feel hopeful when the federal government, of all things, can move you to tears in the name of justice.

It's pretty rare that a Department of Justice press conference will bring people to tears — today was a rare and historic exception.

Today, Attorney General Loretta Lynch issued a formal response to HB2, North Carolina's anti-transgender law. In it, she said:

Lynch rightly called out that the sudden push in anti-trans legislation appears to be in response to the recent progress being made for LGBT rights, and she recalled other situations where backlash followed great progress.

Which brings us to today's conflict, about North Carolina's new discriminatory law aimed at trans people.

"This is not a time to act out of fear. This is a time to summon our national virtues of inclusivity, diversity, compassion and open-mindedness. What we must not do — what we must never do — is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans, for something they cannot control, and deny what makes them human."

"This is why none of us can stand by when a state enters the business of legislating identity and insists that a person pretend to be something they are not, or invents a problem that doesn’t exist as a pretext for discrimination and harassment."

She also urged the state not to repeat the mistakes of the past, pointing out that it wasn't so long ago that restrooms were segregated on the basis of race.

The whole speech was a moving statement, with trans people receiving support from the federal government in a way that would would have seemed truly impossible just a few years ago.

Head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, Vanita Gupta added a touching quote of her own (emphasis mine).

"Calling H.B.2 a 'bathroom bill' trivializes what this is really about. H.B.2 translates into discrimination in the real world. The complaint we filed today speaks to public employees who feel afraid and stigmatized on the job. It speaks to students who feel like their campus treats them differently because of who they are. It speaks to sports fans who feel forced to choose between their gender identity and their identity as a Tar Heel. And it speaks to all of us who have ever been made to feel inferior — like somehow we just don’t belong in our community, like somehow we just don’t fit in. Let me reassure every transgender individual, right here in America, that you belong just as you are. You are supported. And you are protected."

These statements from Lynch and from Gupta signal a remarkable moment in American history and are likely to go down as oratory highlights of their careers.

Announcing the filing of a lawsuit rarely moves people, but these were no ordinary speeches. These were speeches that should go down in history, reminiscent of those delivered by Presidents Kennedy, Reagan, and Obama.

In his inaugural address, John F. Kennedy made the call for a more involved America.

Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. ... My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

In Ronald Reagan's farewell address, he offered hope and reaffirmed the ideals America was built on.

Photo by J. David Ake/AFP/Getty Images.

"The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the 'shining city upon a hill.' ... I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here."

In Barack Obama's keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he rejected false dichotomies.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

"There are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America — there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America."

In all these calls, whether we stand by the deliverer's politics or not, we have been inspired to be our best selves, to see others with value.

Today, Lynch wants us to find empathy for those who may be different from us. Obama urged compromise. Reagan wanted us to create a welcoming America. Kennedy pushed teamwork. The messages are abundantly clear.

Here's hoping Lynch's words made their way not just into the North Carolina statehouse but into our collective history, as the progress toward a more inclusive, just, and tolerant America marches on.

It was a good day.