On a night that the national election results had her discouraged, Seattle resident Anne Johnson had at least one ballot measure to celebrate: ST3, which will raise the local sales tax in the Seattle-Tacoma area to help pump $54 billion into expanding the region’s rail and bus systems. It passed by a wide margin.

“That is awesome, and we’ve put a lot of work into that, and I’m excited for the direction that that will take Seattle,” says Johnson, who adds that the transit improvements will help people get to their jobs, to school and will have environmental benefits, too.

And Seattle voters aren’t alone in approving new transit funding. San Francisco Bay area voters OK’d a tax increase to upgrade the aging BART system. Los Angeles County voters backed a tax increase to expand light rail, commuter rail and bus rapid transit service. And Atlanta voters approved expanding that city’s transit lines.

One of the unheralded national stories from Election Day is just how well trains and buses did at the ballot box, as voters in dozens of cities approved local tax increases to expand and improve public transit.

“Election Day 2016 was historic for ballot measures that supported investment in public transportation,” says Jason Jordan, director of the Center for Transportation Excellence, which tracks such ballot initiatives.

“We saw a record number of measures on ballots,” Jordan says. “There were 77 measures nationwide; 71 percent of those passed. That accounts for almost $170 billion in new transit funding.”

That’s funding that would come directly out of local residents’ pockets, not from Washington.

Transit didn’t just win in big cities and blue states, Jordan adds. Voters approved referendums to boost spend more money on transit in more traditionally car-centric cities, too, including measures for new rail and bus rapid transit in Raleigh, N.C., public transportation projects in Charleston, S.C., and transit expansions in Columbus and Toledo, Ohio, and Indianapolis, among other cities.

“There’s an infrastructure deficit out there, and that’s existing everywhere, red state or blue state,” says Art Guzzetti of the American Public Transportation Association.

Now transit advocates hope to capitalize on President-elect Donald Trump’s call to spend up to $1 trillion on infrastructure, a plan which Guzzetti says should now gain bipartisan support in Washington.

“Both sides have an inclination of getting this issue on the agenda early. Both sides believe in infrastructure, and it’s definitely going to be one of the first issues taken up by the next Congress,” Guzzetti says.

Trump’s call to spend big on infrastructure might be the only plan of his that congressional Democrats agree with, and many Republicans, who rejected most of the same kinds of infrastructure funding plans proposed by the Obama administration, now seem to be on board, too.

So what could go wrong?

“It very quickly gets to be much more difficult and complicated when we talk about how we’re gonna pay for this,” says Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski of Chicago, who sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

He’s not so sure his Republican colleagues will go along with funding public transit in big Democratic-voting cities such as his, and even if they do, he’s skeptical about one of the possible funding sources.

Trump wants to create an infrastructure bank, using tax credits to leverage private investment in infrastructure projects. But Lipinski says those are essentially loans that would have to be paid back with revenue from something like tolls.

“We do not, first of all, want to make every road a toll road,” says Lipinski. “And there are things such as public transportation which would not ever get funded in this manner.”

Transportation consultant Steve Schlickman says infrastructure banks are good for toll roads, airports, port facilities and other projects that generate revenue from their users.

Schlickman, who is also former executive director of Chicago’s Regional Transportation Authority and the former director of the Urban Transportation Center at the University of Illinois-Chicago, says any project funded through an infrastructure bank must have the ability to generate enough revenue to pay back the loan.

“The vast majority of our public infrastructure can’t do that,” he says. “What about free roads, mass transit, pedestrian ways, bike ways. They don’t pay for themselves.”

Trump also suggests another funding source for infrastructure projects: repatriation of profits corporations hold overseas. But there are big disagreements over how much to tax those profits and how much money it would really bring in.

Plus, Schlickman says that’s just a one-time source of funds.

“That’s not the type of revenue stream that you would want to rely on,” he says. “But at this point, if that’s all that’s politically doable, then fine, let’s do it.”

Schlickman and other transportation experts say while a long-term funding source, like an increase in the gas tax, is still needed, now is not the time for transit advocates to quibble over such matters.

“I’m very, very happy that we have a president-elect that wants to do something big in infrastructure,” Schlickman says. “Now let’s try and take advantage of that enthusiasm and that leadership and let’s work with him and try to get the best deal we can for everyone.”

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Donald Trump’s extensive business dealings around the globe have focused attention on an obscure provision of the Constitution most law professors barely look at – the Emoluments Clause. Now, one of the hottest legal debates around is whether the President-Elect is going to be violating the Constitution if he continues doing business with companies controlled by foreign governments.

Who even used the word “emolument” in an actual sentence before November 2016?

“Emolument” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the returns arising from office or employment usually in the form of compensation or perquisites.”

The Foreign Emoluments Clause can be found in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution. It provides that “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States] shall, without Consent of Congress, accept … any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

The clause has been interpreted as an anti-bribery provision by constitutional scholars.

“The underlying concern of the clause is divided loyalties,” said Erik Jensen, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University. “The Founders wanted U.S. officials not to have any arrangements under which there could be questions about whether they were acting in the best interests of the United States, or in the interests of a foreign state.”

Trump’s companies do deal with businesses that are controlled or influenced by foreign government officials. And legal experts say the potential for constitutional violations is high.

Take the Bank of China, for example. It’s a lender for one of Trump’s buildings in Midtown Manhattan. If the Bank of China were to offer Trump a lower interest rate on that loan after he takes office, it might raise an Emoluments Clause issue. Some legal scholars say it could be perceived as an attempt to curry favor with the President or influence policy.

So what is a violation of the Emoluments Clause?

Problem is, what constitutes a violation of the Emoluments Clause is a tangled conversation that very quickly involves lots of hypotheticals – because there is virtually no case law on the subject.

Not only have prior Presidents been careful to steer clear of any perceived violations of the clause, there’s never been a President like Trump whose companies have such vast global reach. And Trump hasn’t fully disclosed the full extent of his global business dealings.

So all legal experts can do now is pose possible scenarios.

Objects Versus Services

Richard Painter, who was chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007, likes to use this example: Imagine the President sells a car to the Queen of England. If the Queen pays the President fair market value for the car, it’s not a violation of the Emoluments Clause. If the payment the President receives exceeds the fair market value of the car, there could be a violation. The amount of over-payment could be seen as a gift, or “present,” under the clause.

But let’s say we’re not talking about an object, like a car. What if the President renders services for a foreign government and receives compensation for those services? That would fall under the definition of “emolument.” And in that case, Painter says, it doesn’t matter if the compensation amounts to fair market value. It’s straight-up compensation for services rendered, so it’s banned as an emolument under the clause.

Here’s how a President Trump might one day render services for foreign government officials. Say a bunch of diplomats from a foreign country stay at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. Painter says you could interpret that as services rendered by Trump – and under the Emoluments Clause, he can’t enrich himself from those rendered services.

“The services theory would be along the lines of, ‘Well, if Donald Trump himself as President could not perform services for the foreign government, he can’t have his hired help – people who work for him in that hotel – provide those services and then he receives the payment.’ That would be an end-run around the prohibition on any type of emolument,” said Painter.

The issue of whether a U.S. government official is violating the Emoluments Clause for services rendered actually does comes up in real life now, says Ken Gross, a government ethics lawyer in Washington, D.C. Sometimes government officials go on a foreign detail or sabbatical and want to earn compensation for teaching at a government-funded university in that foreign country. In those cases, Gross said, U.S. government officials have had to forego pay to avoid violations of the clause.

The role of Congress

Under the clause, Congress has the power to consent to any business dealings that raise questions. But if even legal experts are scratching their heads about what constitutes a violation of the Emoluments Clause, imagine how lawmakers would feel entering this legal morass.

“What this does is put Congress in an almost impossible situation of judging the fair market value of financial transactions between state-run entities and the Trump Organization,” said Zephyr Teachout, a law professor at Fordham University. She was a Democratic candidate for Congress in New York this year.

And if Congress dodges its duty under this clause – and refrains from ever voting to approve or reject possible Emolument Clause violations — Teachout says Congress will be acting unconstitutionally.

“This is an active obligation on the part of Congress,” said Teachout. “So if Trump goes forward with his plan to maintain a Trump Organization with relationships to state-controlled companies, it’s not just Trump, but it’s Congress that is in violation.”

Who can bring a legal claim against Trump for a violation?

Because there’s been no real litigation of the Emoluments Clause, legal experts say it’s hard to define who has legal standing to bring a claim for any possible violation.

Legal standing depends on how you articulate the injury. Here’s one theory of injury: Trump is enriching himself at the expense of companies that can’t compete for business the way the President of the United States can. So maybe a company that’s lost business because of some financial transaction between Trump Organization and a foreign government could articulate a legal claim.

Or, the perceived harm could be more nebulous. Here’s another theory of injury: Trump is opening himself up to attempts by foreign governments that want to influence U.S. policy. But who would have standing to bring a legal claim in that case? Legal experts say it’s not clear.

So how does Trump avoid any violations of the Emoluments Clause?

Painter says the best option for Trump is to simply liquidate his stake in his company – that is, take the company public, sell off all his shares and put the cash proceeds in a blind trust. That way, if there are any entanglements between the Trump Organization and foreign countries – he’ll be cleared of any conflicts.

But nobody’s holding their breath for that to happen anytime soon.

Jensen says he can already hear Trump’s counterargument. “He’s going to make at least two points. One, ‘You force somebody like me to do that, and you’re providing a tremendous disincentive for people who have been successful in business to enter the public sphere,'” said Jensen. “He also might say, ‘If I have to sell everything very quickly, in effect a fire sale, … I will end up getting a lot less than the real value.'”

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Earlier Monday at Trump Tower in New York City, President-elect Donald Trump, top aides and advisers including Kellyanne Conway, Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer met with executives and anchors from five major television networks. Trump used the opportunity to admonish the network’s journalists and executives for what he said was the networks’ unfair coverage of him. But he also said he wanted to re-frame his relationship with the press and took extensive questions about policy and his intentions in office.

This account is largely based on an interview with an attendee who took detailed notes.

Among the participants from the news side were ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and David Muir, NBC’s Lester Holt and NBC news president Deborah Turness, CBS’s John Dickerson, Gayle King, and Norah O’Donnell, Fox News’ Bill Shine and Jay Wallace, MSNBC’s Phil Griffin, and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Jeff Zucker. The meeting’s content was to be off-the-record but many participants were photographed as they entered through the Trump Tower lobby. The New York Post’s Page Six gossip site had a detailed version that appeared to put the event in the most contentious light possible.

Trump started the meeting by saying how great it was for so many network news anchors to be there, calling it unprecedented and citing it as a reflection of the importance of his election. Ultimately, Blitzer noted that such meetings were a fairly common annual ritual between presidents and anchors ahead of State of the Union addresses. Trump then said the presence of the executives made the meeting unprecedented.

Trump lit out after Zucker, criticizing his former business partner (Zucker was head of NBC during Trump’s Apprentice franchise on the network) for CNN. He turned then to NBC, saying it was the worst, criticizing its reporters, and saying it could not even come up with a flattering picture to broadcast. His complaint: the network’s photographs showed him with multiple chins. NBC President Deborah Turness replied that wasn’t true – NBC right now is using a photograph that shows Trump in very flattering way, she said. Trump also criticized a reporter who he said was in the room who had moderated a debate but who he had been told was very upset when Clinton lost. Presumably that was a reference to ABC’s Martha Raddatz or NBC’s Lester Holt.

Conway interceded to say that the new Trump administration appreciated the press corps’s hard work during the campaign and wanted a reset on its relationship to the press. Trump concurred and repeated the point, though he said he disliked the phrase “reset” because it reminded him of Hillary Clinton’s initial outreach to the Russians when she was starting as Secretary of State.

Trump said he wanted a relationship with the press that was “cordial and productive.” CBS’s Gayle King asked what would constitute such a relationship but it wasn’t clear what that meant beyond off the record meetings such as that one.

After that first 10 to 15 minutes, according to this attendee, Trump invited questions about his policies, appointments, and intentions, showing an interest in detail and implications.

The participant who spoke to NPR said Trump appeared as though he was irritated but working the refs, as when then President George W. Bush complained the press was acting as the filter of his remarks and policies. However a second source – a network official debriefed by colleagues who attended – said it did not feel like a reset of the relationship to them.

The off-the-record meeting lasted about an hour. And Trump posted a video on social media – bypassing the conventional press – to explain to the public, on the record, how the presidential transition was proceeding.

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