Lawsuit Sue Trump

includes trump admin estb 4 25 DOD HEGSETH

I THINK THIS IS PPL/ORGS SUING TRUMP, VS TRUMP LAWFARE

MERRI OK

see law firms

SEE ARIZ MAYES

see universities Harvard

public sector union

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an 8 26

Despite what furious North Carolina Republicans might say, N.C. Attorney General Jeff Jackson says he follows a strict checklist before prosecuting a target — and none of it involves partisanship.

“We use an objective criteria here,” the Democratic AG told Spectrum News 1. “It’s, ‘Did someone break the law?’ ‘Did they hurt the state?’ And, ‘Can I prove both of those things?’ And if I can check all three of those boxes, we’re going to take you to court.”

That checklist, so far, has put President Donald Trump in Jackson’s sights for a total of 25 lawsuits, and his office has confirmed he’s already won 10 — despite Trump being only hallway through his term. The others are still pending except for one Jackson agreed to dismiss.

Spectrum News said Jackson walloped Trump on The Federal Emergency Management Agency's cancellation of $200 million in disaster preparedness grants, the halting of AmeriCorps program’s funding and the cut-off of more than $165 million in Education Department funding, all halted due to successful lawsuits that Jackson involved himself in.

Even more of Jackson's successful litigation involves restoring food assistance during the nation’s longest federal government shutdown last year, reports Spectrum News. At that time, Trump tried to punish Democrats (and Americans) by freezing the nation’s largest food aid program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, claiming the program had “run out of money” due to Democrats’ refusal to fund Trump's controversial budget.

Dozens of Democratic-led states took the administration to court — Jackson among them — arguing that contingency funds could fund the benefits. A series of favorable lower-court rulings soon prompted states to issue full or partial SNAP benefits before the government even reopened.

White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis, speaking to Spectrum News, argued that President Trump’s obliging conservative U.S. Supreme Court, filled with Republican-appointed justices, has delivered favorable decisions to Trump “over 20 times,” and she called lower court rulings against the White House “lawless.”

“The Administration’s policies have been consistently upheld as lawful, despite some lower courts issuing an unprecedented number of lawless injunctions,” said Bis, a former communications director of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, known for suing states to purge voters from election rolls. “Instead of bragging about filing frivolous lawsuits against the Trump Administration, these radical Democrat State AGs should focus on addressing problems in their own states — like the countless criminal illegal aliens Democrats allow to roam free and terrorize innocent Americans.”

But while Jackson keeps racking up wins against Trump, state Republicans complain he spends too much time suing the president. North Carolina Senate Republicans even passed legislation that would have barred him from initiating lawsuits against the president over executive orders had the bill not stalled in the state House.

Jackson, meanwhile, is unapologetic about his belt notches.

“I think it’s hard to say that against someone who is so far undefeated. I think that our record speaks for itself,” said Jackson.

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AN 8 26

Lawsuit filed against Trump's 'blatantly corrupt' Truth Social scheme

100K$ FOR EARLY ACCESS FOR INSIDER TRADING PRED MKT; LOSING USERS 28%?

A lawsuit filed on Wednesday is challenging the legality of Truth API, a recently unveiled initiative to allow Wall Street firms to pay up to $100,000 per month in exchange for early access to potentially market-moving social media posts from President Donald Trump.

The complaint, filed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) and The Intercept, alleges Truth API violates the US Constitution’s First Amendment by granting insiders special access to the president’s announcements.

The scheme also violates the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment by “charging unreasonable sums that cannot be justified to offset the cost” of receiving the benefit of information from the president, the complaint states.

The lawsuit describes Truth API as “profoundly corrupt,” given that “the president stands to gain financially by giving ‘market-moving’ government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company.”

In establishing the plaintiffs’ standing, the complaint argues that The Intercept is being put at a competitive disadvantage by the scheme, given that the news outlet is “both unable and unwilling to subscribe” to it, even though it risks “losing out on timely news to competing organizations.”

Ben Muessig, editor-in-chief of The Intercept, accused the president of “trying to enrich himself by privatizing government information that he has no right to sell,” while vowing that “we won’t let that stand.”

David Bralow, chief legal officer for The Intercept, said that “nothing could be more antithetical to the free, independent press than the president charging for early access to his public announcements,” emphasizing that “public information belongs to the public.”

Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at FPF, said Truth API “is so blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional that it would have been hard to even fathom just a few years ago.”

“Trump’s crooked scheme is particularly outrageous,” Stern added, “because, as documented by our Trump Anti-Press Social Media Tracker, he frequently uses his Truth Social account to berate journalists and even to announce his plans to sue them and criminally investigate them. Then, he makes them wait in line behind paying customers to find out about it unless they’re willing to subsidize the platform he uses to attack them.”

The Intercept and the FPF are being represented in the case by attorneys from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, the Public Integrity Project, and Altshuler Berzon LLP.

Nikhel Sus, chief counsel at CREW, said his organization was “proud to represent our clients in their effort to end this corrupt and unconstitutional scheme” because “all Americans are entitled to timely access to their president’s public statements, not just those willing to pay the president’s company $100,000 a month.”

Truth API has also drawn the attention of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the US House Judiciary Committee, who announced a probe into the initiative last month, describing it as an “insider-information scheme” that “will enable Wall Street to profit from the president’s frequent market-moving posts on major businesses.”

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AN 7 26

Democratic Arizona AG Kris Mayes walked into office all but declaring war on President Donald Trump and his policies. But apparently, she’s done more than declare war — she’s killing it.

“The Democrat has filed 43 lawsuits against the Trump administration since he took office one year ago,” reports the Phoenix New Times. “She’s been a frequent filer since … Trump took office in January, pushing back on his attempts to systematically change the entire U.S. government.”

The Times reports Trump used the Department of Government Efficiency as a “machete” to slash grants, lay-off thousands of employees and dismantled entire government agencies. And while “a Republican-controlled Congress has essentially stood by and let it happen,” Democratic state attorneys general — including Mayes — have picked up the slack.

“Arizona has filed several lawsuits over the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze federal funding, much of which is previously allocated in Arizona. [Mayes] has also filed suit to protect the personal data of Arizona residents and successfully sued to stop the Trump administration’s attempt to rewrite birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the Constitution,” the Times reports.

And “every other day, it seems, Mayes is announcing another lawsuit against Trump,” said the Times, with Mayes claiming her office’s “success rate is 80 percent, with wins, temporary restraining orders, permanent injunctions or the government dropping the change entirely.”

Most recently, Mayes helped beat back Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship, having joined four other blue states in trouncing his plan this week.

In a separate case involving Trump’s attempt to block federal funding, on March 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals largely affirmed a lower court’s decision to grant Mayes’ preliminary injunction to block the administration’s policy to freeze funding while the case plays out. As of now, nearly $1.4 billion in federal funding remains unfrozen for several Arizona state agencies.

In a separate bid to protect Social Security numbers and veteran benefits from DOGE snoops, a district judge granted a preliminary injunction in February to block Musk and employees from accessing sensitive personal information.

Trump also moved to cut “indirect cost” reimbursements that cover medical and public health research at universities and research institutions. But Mayes argued in court that the cuts would cause Arizona students and universities to “miss out on millions of dollars in critical funding and research support” that is “owed to Arizonans by law.” In January, the Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s ruling to permanently prevent the Trump administration from cutting NIH grants, preventing Trump from slicing $35 million in NIH grants in Arizona.

Trump and his cohorts also worked to dismantle the federal Department of Education, but guess who jumped up to be a nuisance? Mayes filed her lawsuit to stop the dismantling in March of 2025, and In May 2025, the district judge hearing the case granted Mayes and other plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. That decision alone prevents the government from firing department staff while the case plays out.

The administration must also reinstate employees and “restore the Department to the status quo,” reports the Times. That case is still moving toward trial.

One of Mayes’ cases that infuriated Trump the most was a Supreme Court order upholding a lower court’s decision to strike down Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose his widely panned tariffs.

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BROOKE ROLLINS SUED OVER EASTER LTR HE IS RISEN 5 26

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AN 5 26

President Donald Trump and his administration have openly preached for Christianity to shape national policy since he began his second term — yet the vast majority of Americans do not share this agenda.

“The religious right has been ascendant during the second presidency of Donald Trump, and they’ve harnessed his disdain for rules and norms to blur the lines between church and state,” reported Vox's Christian Paz on Thursday. “Inside the White House, the secretary of defense has framed the war in Iran and American military action abroad as sanctioned and guided by God. Outside the government, this alliance between church and state often skirts near the edge of outright idolatry. Conservative pastors are erecting golden statues of Trump (but insisting it does not mirror the infamous golden calf of the Old Testament). They’re extending their hands over the president in prayer after comparing him to Jesus and standing by him, with some mild criticism, after he cast himself as an AI-slop Messiah.”

Yet despite this open call for religion to dictate American policy, Paz reported that a recent survey by Pew Research Center reveals that most Americans do not want this to happen. A mere 10 percent identify as Christian nationalists, compared to 31 percent who oppose them and 59 percent who have no opinion. When it comes to the division between church and state, 13 percent want it weakened while 54 percent support it and 32 percent have no opinion.

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SAME DAY 4 1 26

Yesterday, U.S. district judge Richard Leon blocked Trump from proceeding with construction of his $400 million ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing. This has halted, at least for now, one of Trump’s most visible efforts to reshape the symbolic center of the federal government’s executive branch.

In a 35-page opinion, Judge Leon — an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush — wrote that Trump likely did not have the authority to make changes to the White House that could endure for generations, without consulting Congress.

This marks, by my calculation, the 89th time since the start of Trump’s second term that a federal judge has ruled that he cannot simply do whatever he wants; his actions must be authorized by Congress.

Focus for a moment on the word authorized.It’s from the Latin auctoritas and auctor — to originate, the originator.

In our system of government, a president is notthe originator of power. Power comes from the people. And among the three branches of government, the people are most clearly represented by Congress. This was the founders’ design in the Constitution, which is why the very first article enumerates Congress’s powers.

The decision by Judge Leon puts the ballroom project on hold while the lawsuit continues. When a federal judge grants a preliminary injunction, it means that the judge views it likely that plaintiffs (in this case, the National Trust for Historic Preservation) will prevail on the merits of the case, and that allowing whatever is going on to continue (in this case, construction of Trump’s enormous 90,000-square-foot ballroom) will cause the plaintiffs irreparable harm.

In December, the National Trust sued Trump after he razed the East Wing (originally constructed in 1902 and expanded during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency) to make way for what Trump says will be the “finest” ballroom in the country.

As designed, that ballroom is larger than the Executive Residence and the West Wing combined. If constructed, it would be the dominant edifice of the White House — symbolically shifting its focus from where the president works and lives to where a president might lavishly entertain, as in a king’s throne room.

Trump has repeatedly emphasized that his ballroom is funded entirely by private donors, so its cost won’t be borne by taxpayers and it doesn’t need a congressional appropriation. He says he’s raised more than $350 million from personal backers and around two dozen tech, cryptocurrency, and defense corporations to fund the structure without government support.

Translated: He’s extorted $350 million from monied interests eager to suck up to him.

But Judge Leon insists this doesn’t give Trump authorityto destroy part of the White House and erect a giant ballroom in its place: “No statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have.”

Judge Leon adds: “The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” [exclamation included]

The idea that Trump is the steward of anythingfor future generations rather than an owner must seem odd to Trump. I doubt that the former real-estate developer has ever once thought of the presidency as a stewardship.

Which is why the notion that he’s not authorizedto do whatever he wants — raze the White House for a grand ballroom, deploy ICE and Border Patrol agents to terrorize immigrants and murder Americans trying to protect them, attack Iran — is inconceivable to him.

In his first public reaction to the court order, Trump called the National Trust “a Radical Left Group of Lunatics” that’s suing him for a “ballroom that is under budget, ahead of schedule, being built at no cost to the Taxpayer, and will be the finest Building of its kind anywhere in the World.”

To real-estate developer Trump, all that matters is being under budget, ahead of schedule, and at no cost to taxpayers. Even if he demolishes the entire White House and erects a Trump Tower in its place. Even if he extorts every CEO in America to pay for it. Even if he erects a giant arch across the Potomac with his name emblazoned on it.

But the peoplehave not authorized him to do any of this. Which means — as long as we have an independent federal judiciary, and any hope for a Congress that will stand up to him — he cannot.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.*

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3 26 ANTHROPIC REFUSED US MASS SURVEILLANCE, USED IN VENEZ AND IRAN TARGET; SUE TRUMP ADMIN BC BLACKLIST SUPPLY CHAIN BS ~ HEGS

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an 2 26

Donald Trump appears to have made a major mistake with his purge of top lawyers from the Department of Justice, as many of these "all-star" professionals are now joining the institutions fighting back against his presidency, in a turn of events one former attorney dubbed "idiocy."

On Tuesday, CBS News' top justice correspondent Scott MacFarlane shared a video to X and BlueSky detailing this trend, likening it to a sports team trading its best players to rival teams.

"It's hard enough to get by without your best players on the field, but you certainly don't want to play against them, and have huge adversaries when you play your opponents," MacFarlane explained.

The Trump administration, he argued, "has been getting rid of some of its all-stars" in the DOJ, and it is starting to become a huge "problem" as they join the efforts to "challenge the administration," essentially "joining the rival team." That is on top of the severe drain of professional experience and "institutional memory" that these hiring purges have cost the government across every department.

As MacFarlane laid out in the video, Trump's purge of these top lawyers was driven primarily by political motivations and a desire for personal retribution. Many of the attorneys who got the ax when Trump returned to the White House were the ones who had worked to convict Jan. 6 rioters, whom he gave a mass pardon early on in his term. He also cut many individuals who took part in the federal investigation of him during his time away from Washington, D.C.

"Some have been fired, some have been pushed out, some have said, 'You know what? I've had about enough of this politicized Department of Justice, I'm out of here,'" MacFarlane said. "I'm moving on to greener pastures."

MacFarlane gave the example of Mike Romano, a "storied, prolific" former DOJ lawyer known for his "incredible record" prosecuting Jan. 6 defendants. Since leaving the federal government in 2025, he has joined a firm handling "labor cases, among other things." He also recently testified before the Senate last week in a hearing where he "reinforced the truth about Jan. 6, that it was a righteous prosecution and an important prosecution, pushing back on the administration's false claims and lies."

He also highlighted the Washington Litigation Group, a nonprofit staffed with many individuals who previously worked with Jack Smithon the criminal cases against Trump. This group is now taking part in the fight against such things as Trump's effort to add his name to the Kennedy Center and the closure of a "key civil rights division" within the DOJ.

"These nonprofits and firms are capitalizing on the Department of Justice's idiocy," one anonymous former prosecutor told MacFarlane.

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AN 2 26

Teacher sues after GOP policy labels 'everyone is welcome' sign as anti-Trump resistance

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AN 2 26

Former ethics czar and Democracy Defenders Fund founder Norm Eisen is after President Donald Trump in court with a new lawsuit to block a pay-to-play scheme.

On Bluesky, Eisen wrote that his group is suing Trump over the so-called "gold card" visa that allows anyone to fast-track citizenship for $1 million.

"This is about the rule of law — the president can't auction U.S. visas to the highest bidder," Eisen complained on the social media site.

The longtime Trump foe spoke to *The New York Times*_{ }_about the program's illegality: it bypasses key congressional requirements and prioritizes the wealthy over those with high abilities or intellect.

“Rather than reserving those visas for the world’s best and brightest, the Gold Card program converts those visas into revenue-generating commodities sold to the highest bidder,” the lawsuit claims.

One of those who has taken advantage of the program is Nicki Minaj, a native of the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, who wants U.S. citizenship. While she's a permanent resident, she came to the U.S. illegally as a child, she said on Instagram in 2018.

“If you look at the statute, you can tell Congress made some pretty deliberate decisions about how they wanted to structure the availability of these visas,” Sarah Wilson, one of the lawyers who brought the lawsuit with Eisen.

The statute puts merit-based visas into either the EB-1 or EB-2 categories.

“None of those categories include ‘give us a million dollars,’” Wilson added.

*Read the full report here.

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maddow? 1 13 26 just lost 4 ct cases? norm eisen says 2/3rd TRUMP LOSS

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AN 1 26

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — who is infamous for broadcasting secret military meetings and military strikes — again likely accidentally released comment about ongoing litigation despite the Defense Department’s widely accepted rule not to comment on court battles.

CNN reporter Haley Britzky posted on X that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth let slip the news in a social media post targeting Sen. Mark Kelly (R-Ariz.)

“Asked about this lawsuit yesterday, a Pentagon official said that ‘as a matter of policy, the Department does not comment on ongoing litigation,’” said Britzky, who then followed that up with Hegseth’s bitter insight.

“’Captain’ Kelly knows exactly what he did, and that he will be held to account. That’s [sic] why he’s so worried and cranky,” Hegseth stated on X.

Hegseth was responding to Kelly’s X post excoriating Hegseth and announcing his lawsuit against Hegseth and the Pentagon over a move to punish him for a video Kelly released with other lawmakers reminding military members that they must not follow illegal orders.

“Now, Pete Hegseth wants our longest-serving military veterans to live with the constant threat that they could be deprived of their rank and pay years or even decades after they leave the military just because he or another Secretary of Defense doesn’t like what they’ve said,” said Kelly. “That’s not the way things work in the United States of America, and I won’t stand for it.

The Defense Department announced last week that it was taking administrative action against Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut who is serving his first full term in the Senate. The action could reduce Kelly’s retirement rank and bottleneck his military pension.

The lawsuit Kelly filed in Washington asked a federal judge to block the Pentagon’s punish, however, arguing that the move is “unlawful and unconstitutional.”

“The First Amendment forbids the government and its officials from punishing disfavored expression or retaliating against protected speech,” the complaint stated. “That prohibition applies with particular force to legislators speaking on matters of public policy.”

The Defense Department declined to comment on the ongoing litigation to reporters. However, Hegseth could not help but be baited into revealing a snap, in contradiction to department policy.

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AN 1 26

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is now taking Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to court, accusing him of violating a provision of the U.S. Constitution protecting the free speech rights of lawmakers.

CNBC reported Monday that Kelly filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, with both Hegseth and the Department of Defense (DoD) named as defendants. The suit comes one week after Hegseth announced the DoD was cutting Kelly's military pension in retaliation for Kelly — a retired captain in the U.S. Navy and former astronaut — encouraging active-duty members of the military to remember their duty to disobey illegal orders.

The senior U.S. senator from Arizona argued in the lawsuit that the DoD's actions "trample on protections the Constitution singles out as essential to legislative independence," specifically the U.S. Constitution's speech or debate clause. That provision is found in Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution and reads that members of Congress "shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place."

"It appears that never in our nation’s history has the Executive Branch imposed military sanctions on a Member of Congress for engaging in disfavored political speech," Kelly's attorneys asserted in the lawsuit.

Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney noted that Kelly defended his position by quoting one of his Senate colleagues from across the political aisle. One portion of the complaint noted that Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) referred to Hegseth's censure letter to Kelly as having "a chilling effect on speech."

Kelly and five other Democratic members of Congress issued the call for members of the military to disobey illegal orders in a video posted in November. After President Donald Trump reposted a call for those lawmakers to be hanged, several of them received numerous death threats from Trump supporters, leading several to file official reports with the U.S. Capitol Police Department.

Click here to read CNBC's report in its entirety.

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AN 1 26

Donald Trump and his Department of Justice's efforts to attack voting rights are facing a new legal threat in South Carolina, according to a letter obtained by the Post & Courier newspaper.

The DOJ is in the process of requesting that states purge their voter rolls of individuals flagged for removal by a federal audit, a move the administration says is meant to target voter fraud and to "ensure ineligible people are kept off state voter rolls and that only citizens are voting." Critics, conversely, have decried this as an effort to target lawfully registered voters. The agency has sent draft letters of this agreement to several states, including South Carolina.

On Friday, the Post & Courier reported on a letter sent to South Carolina's office of elections director, Jenny Wooten, from the Democratic National Committee. In it, the DNC warned that such a purge of voter rolls could inevitably lead to properly registered voters being removed, in violation of the National Voter Registration Act, and that it was prepared to sue the state if it agreed to the federal government's demands.

The letter further alleged that conducting a purge of the state's voter rolls "would harm the DNC and its members," and require the committee to "divert resources" intended for voter outreach efforts to identifying and re-registering any unlawfully purged voters.

DNC Chair Ken Martin said that the DOJ's effort amounts to a “big government power grab," attempting to bring control of voter rolls under federal oversight, despite the Constitution allocating that power to the states.

“The DNC won’t stand idly by as the Trump DOJ seeks access to South Carolina voters’ sensitive information and puts eligible voters at risk of being wrongly purged from the rolls,” Martin said in a statement to the paper. “Which is why we are calling on the South Carolina State Election Commission to stand up for South Carolinians and reject the Trump administration’s illegal agreement.”

As of Friday, the South Carolina Election Commission had taken no action in response to the DOJ's request.

"Nothing has happened to this point, and nothing will happen without it going through our commission in a public meeting," spokesman TJ Lundeen said in a statement to the paper.

The Trump administration's attempts to seize election authorities from the states are among the numerous efforts to undermine free and fair elections that experts and pundits have raised alarms over.

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President Donald Trump's administration is now responding to a lawsuit seeking to halt construction of his proposed new White House ballroom.

The Associated Press (AP) reported Monday that Trump is now justifying the construction of his $300 million ballroom – which would replace the demolished East Wing of the White House — by claiming it's necessary for "national security" purposes. U.S. Secret Service officials told the judge assigned to a lawsuit filed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States that construction on the site where the East Wing used to stand had to continue to meet unspecified "safety and security requirements."

The administration's claim of needing the ballroom for "national security" purposes was roundly mocked on social media. Rep. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), who sits on the House Foreign Relations Committee, asserted on her official X account that Trump's ballroom was "not a national security priority."

"His vanity project is only a distraction from resolving global crises in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Afghanistan, and the list goes on," Johnson wrote.

Former Democratic campaign worker Gerald M. LeRoy also piled on, observing that the news of the day was "so insane that I do appreciate the humor of a breaking news headline essentially being 'Trump opposes someone opposing him.'"

"There is no bottom to the mendacity of these scoundrels," Chicago-based writer Lynn Becker posted.

Florida-based attorney Steve Kerins responded to the news by also pointing to Trump's recent executive order classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD).

"National security ballroom. Fentanyl WMDs. We're really on a roll of authoritarian consolidation today," Kerins wrote.

Vox.com senior writer Elias Isquith took a different direction, sarcastically wondering if Trump was the "physical embodiment of a larger metaphysical force" that was "designed to ruthlessly exploit the most obvious flaws in our constitution & our society & thus force us to address glaring defects."

Click here to read the AP's full report.

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AN 12 25

A democracy advocacy organization is stepping up pressure on the federal government to release more information on President Donald Trump’s scheme to receive a $230 million payout from the US Department of Justice.

Democracy Forward on Monday filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) complaint against the DOJ and the US Department of Treasury, alleging that both agencies have so far refused to turn over any records related to what the group describes as Trump’s “stunning effort to obtain a $230 million taxpayer-funded payout for investigations into his own misconduct.”

The group notes that it has already filed multiple FOIA requests over the last several weeks, and in response neither DOJ or Treasury has “produced a single substantial record or issued a legally required determination.”

The complaint asks courts to compel DOJ and Treasury “to conduct searches for any and all responsive records” related to Democracy Forward’s past FOIA requests, and also to force the government “to produce, by a date certain, any and all non-exempt responsive records,” and to create an index “of any responsive records withheld under a claim of exemption.”

Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said her organization’s lawsuit was a simple demand for government transparency.

“People in America deserve to know whether the Department of Justice is entertaining the president’s request to cut himself a taxpayer-funded $230 million check,” Perryman said. “If senior officials are processing this grift behind closed doors—including officials who used to represent him—that is not just bad optics, it is a direct threat to government integrity.”

Democracy Forward’s complaint stems from an October New York Times report that Trump was lobbying DOJ to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars to him as compensation for the purported hardships he endured throughout the multiple criminal investigations and indictments leveled against him.

Trump was indicted in 2023 on federal charges related to his mishandling of top-secret government documents that he’d stashed in his Mar-a-Lago resort, as well as his efforts to illegally remain in power after losing the 2020 presidential election. Both cases were dropped after Trump won the 2024 presidential election.

When asked about the DOJ payout scheme in the wake of the Times report, Trump insisted he would give any money paid out by the department to charity and asserted that he had been “damaged very greatly” by past criminal probes.

Perryman, however, insisted that Trump was not entitled to enrich himself off taxpayer funds.

“President Trump may think he can invoice people for the consequences of his own actions,” she said, “but this country still has laws, and we demand they be enforced.”

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an 7 25 bewaRE

In the Democratic Party, critics of President Donald Trump have found that many conservatives and libertarians they fought and argued with in the past are now joining them in their opposition to Trump and the MAGA movement.

Those unlikely allies include, among many others, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), attorney George Conway, retired Republican-appointed U.S. Circuit Judge J. Michael Luttig, GOP strategist Rick Wilson and The Bulwark's Bill Kristol. And some of the hosts on liberal-leaning MSNBC were prominent figures in the Republican Party of the past, including former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.), former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele and Nicolle Wallace (former White House communications director in the George W. Bush administration).

Now, in a Friday article published by the conservative Washington Examiner, journalist Kaelan Deese is taking a closer look at right-wing attorneys who are suing the Trump administration.

"Some of the most prominent minds behind the conservative legal movement are fighting a Republican president and his administration in court, and it's putting these elite attorneys, many champions of the right for their past efforts to combat the administrative state, on President Donald Trump's bad side," Deese explains. "In a series of lawsuits spanning trade, higher education, and legal ethics, historically conservative-leaning lawyers and libertarian public-interest groups are testing the limits of Trump's executive authority during his second term. They argue that constitutional guardrails must apply regardless of who holds power."

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Deese adds, "This spring, former Solicitor General Paul Clement joined one of the highest-profile challenges: defending WilmerHale, a major law firm blacklisted by the Trump administration under an executive order targeting firms that represented disfavored clients. The administration accused WilmerHale of undermining national interests due to its past legal work and personnel ties to Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation."

Trump reflexively attacks his critics on the right as RINOs: Republicans In Name Only. But Deese notes that Clement's "conservative credentials are impeccable": Clement spent four years as solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration, and he has fought against gun control in court.

"However, Clement is a vocal advocate of the principle that all legal clients, even those who are unpopular, deserve representation," Deese explains. "Now, representing multiple clients who are challenging Trump administration actions, Clement is not alone."

Deese continues, "A growing list of conservative and libertarian-aligned attorneys are arguing that fidelity to the Constitution doesn't evaporate when a Republican sits in the White House…. One of the sharpest legal rebukes to Trump's claimed authority comes from the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which has received donations from organizations tied to Federalist Society Co-Chairman Leonard Leo and Koch-affiliated networks…. Now, NCLA is fighting the Trump administration over what it sees as stretching the bounds of what Congress wrote under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The group also has sued in Pensacola, Florida, against Trump's imposition of new tariffs on Chinese imports."

*Read the full Washington Examiner article at this link (subscription required).

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email 6 25 moveon

Here's the news: Federal courts ruled against the Trump administration 96% of the time in May.¹ Yes, 96%!

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cnbc

A federal judge on Tuesday angrily tore into President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting the top law firm WilmerHale and struck down the entire order as unconstitutional.

“The cornerstone of the American system of justice is an independent judiciary and an independent bar willing to tackle unpopular cases, however daunting. The Founding Fathers knew this!” wrote Judge Richard Leon in the scathing, exclamation-point-filled opinion in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

To let Trump’s order stand, Leon wrote, “would be unfaithful to the judgment and vision of the Founding Fathers!”

The judge, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President George W. Bush, suffused his 73-page order with a tone of open fury rarely seen in judicial pronouncements.

“Please—that dog won’t hunt!” Leon wrote in response to arguments from the Trump administration that WilmerHale’s claims of harm resulting from the executive order were merely speculation.

“This argument is absurd!” the judge later wrote, balking at the administration’s attempt to dispute whether Trump’s order caused WilmerHale to lose clients.

Since becoming president a second time, Trump has issued a laundry list of presidential orders and memos targeting law firms that have either worked on cases brought against him or hired his political enemies.

Trump’s order targeting WilmerHale explicitly criticized the firm for hiring Robert Mueller, who served as Department of Justice special counsel and oversaw a probe of possible coordination between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.

As part of the order, Trump instructed the U.S. attorney general to suspend security clearances for the firm’s lawyers and he commanded federal agency heads to terminate WilmerHale’s government contracts. Trump’s order also barred WilmerHale employees from entering U.S. government buildings and prohibited federal agencies from hiring the firm’s lawyers.

The law firm sued in late March, calling the order an “unprecedented assault” on the foundations of the judicial system and seeking to have it invalidated.

″The Court’s decision to permanently block the unlawful executive order in its entirety strongly affirms our foundational constitutional rights and those of our clients,” WilmerHale said in a statement after Leon’s ruling Tuesday afternoon. “We remain proud to defend our firm, our people, and our clients.”

The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Leon’s opinion.

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reuters

Summary

Association of more than 700 partners files court brief assailing Trump orders
Signatories include lawyers at three firms that struck deals with Trump
Judges are weighing whether to strike down Trump's law firm orders

April 25 (Reuters) - An association of more than 700 partners at major U.S. law firms submitted a court brief on Friday supporting Susman Godfrey in its federal lawsuit challenging U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order against the firm.

Trump's punitive orders targeting Susman and other law firms "threaten the legal profession, the judiciary, and the rule of law itself," the filing said.

The friend-of-the-court brief, opens new tab, filed in Susman's case in Washington, D.C., by the non-profit Law Firm Partners United, comes as some lawyers have split with their firms over the response to Trump's intensifying crackdown on the legal profession.

At least 110 individual law partners signed the brief. The filing said the association's more than 700 members, all partners at the 200 largest law firms in the US by revenue, were supporting Susman in their personal capacities, not on behalf of their firms.

The signatories included three partners from law firms that reached deals with Trump to avoid White House actions like the Susman executive order. The partners and their firms - Cadwalader, Simpson Thacher and Willkie Farr - did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The lawyers' organization said in a statement that its members "are driven by a collective commitment to protect the rule of law in the United States."

Susman Godfrey sued earlier this month to block Trump's order, which restricted its lawyers' access to government buildings and officials, and threatened to cancel federal contracts held by its clients.

The executive order accused Susman Godfrey of undermining U.S. elections, which it has denied. The firm has represented machine voting company Dominion Voting Systems in defamation lawsuits against Trump's allies who repeated false claims that the 2020 election was rigged in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.

"Orders like this tell the entire profession that taking on cases and clients that are out of favor with the current administration may result in severe retaliation," Friday's brief said.

Judges have already issued rulings temporarily blocking key provisions of Trump's similar orders against Susman; Perkins Coie; WilmerHale; and Jenner & Block; finding that the president's actions likely violated constitutional protections for free speech and due process.

Wednesday's ruling from the Manhattan-based Court of International Trade ...

All four firms have asked the federal court in Washington to permanently strike down Trump's orders. The Justice Department has argued that Trump acted within his authority to penalize the firms for allegedly working to "weaponize" the legal system against him and his allies.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawyers' brief.

Nine other law firms have pledged $940 million so far in free legal work and made other concessions to Trump in efforts to rescind or avoid punitive measures against them, leading some lawyers at the firms to quit in response.

Most of the largest U.S. law firms have remained on the sidelines. Only a handful of major firms have joined court briefs supporting law firms that are suing the Trump administration.

Law professors, advocacy groups, state attorneys general, former top legal executives at large companies and others have also filed court briefs in support of the challenges.

Reporting by Sara Merken, David Thomas and Mike Scarcella

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an 5 25

'It's working!' New Yorkers celebrate as Trump officially loses legal battle against city

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an 5 25

'A clear violation of the Constitution': NPR sues Trump

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LOSS WILMER HALE 5 25

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'Throwing out votes': Trump DOJ sues NC elections board — recalling failed election lawsuit

AN 5 25

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loss on harvard, also ---dept ed

pOLITICO writer Josh Gerstein reports a federal judge is demanding the Trump administration explain what looks like misinformation they shared with the court.

Proclaiming “I will not be strung along,” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes set a hearing this morning to determine if the Trump administration is trying to shutter three important Department of Homeland Security (DHS) oversight offices in defiance of Constitutional arguments that only Congress has that power.

Reyes opted to set a follow-up hearing this morning after back-and-forth between the court and government attorneys at a May 22 hearing.

“I don’t appreciate being lied to,” Reyes said yesterday. “If that is indeed what has happened, there will be serious consequences.”

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Attorneys for the Trump administration allegedly told the court last week that the U.S. ombudsman offices for the Citizenship & Immigration Services and the Office of Immigration Detention were still intact despite layoffs of hundreds of DHS employees, part-time employees and contract workers.

But a DHS staffer who department leaders had scheduled for termination submitted to the court an internal document saying “the entirety of the offices were eliminated.”

Reyes demanded DHS leaders immediately file statements to the court, under penalty of perjury, explaining the mixed information.

Gerstein reports DHS Human Resources officials Nicole Barksdale-Perry said the contentious internal memo “was not intended to suggest that DHS had long-term plans for the elimination of these offices,” that it merely spoke to the lack of slots for potential transfers.

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5 25 email

the AFT, along with AFT-Maryland, the American Sociological Association and Eugene (Ore.) School District 4J, has won a temporary pause on the Trump administration’s threat to take funding away from universities and school districts that teach lessons referencing race and racism, or provide support to students through diversity, equity and inclusion programming. The preliminary injunction addresses a “Dear Colleague” letter from the Department of Education that required institutions to demonstrate compliance or lose funding. Read more here.

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an 525

Two Democratic antitrust commissioners fighting in court for their jobs this week blasted Trump’s attempt to fire them. In a court filing, they said the move would destabilize the economy and “brush aside a century of precedent.”

The Federal Trade Commission is one of two federal agencies tasked with enforcing antitrust law. In the past several years it has sued huge health care conglomerates, as well as big tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta.

It also blocked the merger of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons. So the FTC might not be terribly popular in some corporate boardrooms these days. Anticompetitive practices by giant players are thought to have resulted in lower wages and higher prices for consumers.

The other federal antitrust watchdog, the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, has roots going back to 1903. But that department is overseen by the Attorney General, a presidential appointee.

In 1914, Congress passed the Federal Trade Commission Act creating an antitrust watchdog that is more insulated from politics. It provided for a minimum number of appointees from each party, provided them with seven-year terms and allowed reappointment. Crucially, presidents can only remove them for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

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Despite that, news broke in March that Trump was trying to fire commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter, both Democratic appointees. Trump was doing so without alleging any of the deficiencies required by the law to allow for their dismissal.

In a social media post, Bedoya said Trump was trying to do a favor for his ultra-rich supporters.

“Now, the president wants the FTC to be a lapdog for his golfing buddies,” Bedoya wrote.

Trump has also tried to remove commissioners from independent agencies such as the Federal Election Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protections Board and the National Transportation Safety Board. Critics, including Slaughter and Bedoya, said that undermining such independent agencies would undermine faith in and the stability of the national economy.

In a court brief justifying the FTC firings, Trump’s lawyers wrote that following the provisions of the Federal Trade Commission Act would improperly limit the president’s authority.

“An order requiring the president to reinstate officials he has chosen to remove from office would be an extraordinary intrusion on the president’s exclusive authority to exercise control over the executive branch,” the filing said, according to Newsweek.

Lawyers for the Democratic FTC commissioners said that’s a gross misreading of the law and history.

Trump is asking the court “to brush aside a century of precedent in favor of an untenable reading of (the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Seila Law v Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) that ignores broad swaths of that opinion, misconstrues the FTC’s authority, side-steps much of U.S. history, and would overturn several Supreme Court decisions and invalidate two-dozen statutes adopted and adhered to by nearly every President and Congress over the last 150 years,” Bedoya and Slaughter’s lawyers said in a court filing.

Late last month, a Trump ally, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, made another move that critics said was intended to protect the president’s wealthy supporters — particularly Elon Musk, the world’s richest man — from antitrust enforcement. From his perch as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jordan tried to insert in a spending bill a measure that would move the FTC’s personnel and funding to the Justice Department.

However, it wouldn’t have moved the FTC’s unique enforcement powers along with them. Jordan later withdrew the measure.

The Democratic FTC commissioners are fighting in court to stop Trump’s attempt to fire them, calling it “blatantly illegal.” They and lawyers for the president are asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to decide the case on an expedited basis.

In a written statement, a lawyer for a firm representing the Democratic commissioners, Clarick, Gueron, Reisbaum, said Trump is ignoring past decisions of the judiciary.

“… it’s undisputed that his attempted firings violate the plain language of the FTC Act, and the President’s claim to inherent executive authority to fire FTC Commissioners defies 90 years of Supreme Court precedent,” the lawyer, Aaron Crowell, said.

A lawyer for another group representing Slaughter and Bedoya, Protect Democracy, said Trump is trying to ignore not only the courts, but Congress as well. And in so doing, the president threatens to destabilize the U.S. economy, said the lawyer, Amit Agarwal.

“Congress had good reasons for protecting regulators from at-will removal, not the least of which is that agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve need to have the ability to make critical decisions with integrity and to apply the law without fear or favor,”Agarwal said. “When the Supreme Court settled this dispute nine decades ago, it decided in favor of Congress’s right to protect the public interest. We hope the courts do so again.”

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Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.

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AN 4 25

The New York Times reports the Trump administration is firing its own attorneys over alleged incompetence.

The U.S. Department of Transportation on Thursday made the peculiar move of replacing its federal lawyers defending it in a lawsuit over New York City’s congestion pricing program, allegedly because the lawyers undermined the department’s case.

New York wants to impose a $9 entrance fee to Manhattan to reduce gridlock, cut pollution and fund critical transit projects — but Trump called the program "illegal," and has demanded the state halt the plan or risk the White House slashing federal funding and approval for transit projects. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy wrote a letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul warning she has until May 21 to explain why his department should not withhold federal funding, with a promise to begin penalizing the state May 28.

New York sued the U.S. government over the threats in federal court, but yesterday the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office reported it had mistakenly filed a confidential memo that criticized the department’s legal strategy.

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Strategy arguments are usually limited to client/attorney discussions and do not find themselves publicly submitted in court. Nevertheless, the court faced an 11-page letter suggesting the federal department build a stronger case by terminating the federal government’s approval of the tolling program “as a matter of changed agency priorities” rather than questioning the legality of the toll — which could be a difficult argument to establish in court.

The Department of Transportation raised the possibility of sabotage by its own attorneys in a statement today, calling the filing “legal malpractice.”

“Are S.D.N.Y. lawyers on this case incompetent or was this their attempt to RESIST?” a federal spokeswoman wrote, according to the NY Times.

U.S. attorney’s office spokesman Nicholas Biase assured the filing “was a completely honest error and was not intentional in any way,” but New York University Law School professor Roderick M. Hills Jr called the filing “a gigantic, obvious, objective blunder.”

“Oh my god — very embarrassing,” Hills told the NYTimes.

Read the full NY Times story here.

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an 4 25

In an open letter published Wednesday, amid the Trump administration's unprecedented scrutiny on Big Law, multiple legal groups are calling on elite American law firms to convene and coordinate a unified response to U.S. President Donald Trump's "unconstitutional actions" and "threats to the rule of law and system of justice."

The legal groups include the coalition Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD), the coalition Lawyers Allied Under Rule of Law, and the Steady State—which, according to the executive director of LDAD, "formed in the first Trump term as a loose association that maintained a low internet profile because many members were in government," but has "become much more organized and active" in response to the president's Department of Government Efficiency.

The groups drew a distinction between the several elite law firms who in recent weeks have negotiated deals with the Trump administration either in response to punishments imposed via executive order or to avoid the prospect of an executive order, and law firms who have resisted the Trump administration's pressure.

The law firms Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey have all filed suits challenging Trump's executive orders targeting them. All four have won initial relief in court.

According to the letter, more than 800 other firms, including 17 firms on the Am Law 200—a ranking of top law firms based on gross revenue—have joined amicus briefs in defense of the firms that have sued.

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"Lawyers Defending American Democracy calls on the 170 undeclared Am Law 200 firms to avoid the path of those now notorious nine," the letter states.

"If you are one of these firms, you understand that the threatened executive edicts are not legal or enforceable. Rather, they are a tactic designed to enlist you in undermining the rule of law. Any concession by your prestigious firms only helps the administration intimidate the legal profession from challenging its actions," according to the legal groups.

The letter states that negotiating with the administration is futile in part because "there exists no reasonable terms for resolving this dispute."

The letter also points to the fact that all four courts that have heard the cases from firms challenging Trump "have held that the likelihood of these law firms succeeding on the merits is so great that they have taken the extraordinary step of issuing temporary restraining orders against the government’s enforcement." This is evidence, according to the letter, that negotiation is unnecessary.

"If you band together and agree to support one another, the White House strategy will collapse," the letter states. "These threats reveal the administration's own fear. They don't want you in court where they will lose. They are afraid to find out what happens if you and other firms stand together as a profession."

"We must fight because if lawyers don't stand up for the rule of law, who will? If we don't fight for the principles that we have devoted our professional lives to—and that make us a free society—those principles will be forever compromised," the letter concludes.

According to a statement from LDAD, the legal groups behind the letter collectively represent over 1,000 lawyers who who have worked as senior partners, judges, state attorneys general, senior officials at the U.S. Department of Justice, as general counsel for major companies, and state bar presidents.

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rww David Badash @ The New Civil Rights Movement: Trump’s Latest Target: The Watchdog That Keeps Suing Him

From the outset of his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump signaled that a central focus of his presidency would be targeting and exacting retribution against his critics.

ref

From the outset of his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump signaled that a central focus of his presidency would be targeting and exacting retribution against his critics.

“In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice,’” Trump told attendees at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2023. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

In keeping his retribution vow, Trump in just three months—often with the use of the power of his executive orders—has targeted for retribution numerous top law firms, revoked the security clearances of dozens of top national security experts, former government officials, and former political opponents. He has targeted top universities, threaten to defund millions of dollars or more in critical research grants, and declared top news outlets CNN and MSNBC “corrupt” and “illegal.”

Just days after the 2024 election, NPR reported that during the campaign, “Trump made more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived enemies, including political opponents and private citizens.”

On Thursday, Trump threatened to go after one of his top legal critics: CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit legal and ethics watchdog that has been working for years to hold him (and others) to account, often by suing.

Asked by a reporter what group he would like to see have their tax exempt status removed, Trump replied, “Well, we’ll be making some statements, but it’s a big deal.”

“They’re so rich and so strong, and then they go so bad, they’ve earned so much by being a member of this country, you know, a member of this group, this beautiful group of people in this country, and then they go and they abuse their power like that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Thursday afternoon. “I think it’s, you know, I think it’s very sad.”

“I have a group named CREW,” he continued. “CREW. You ever hear of it? I think it’s CREW, and they have a guy that heads CREW. It’s supposed to be a charitable organization. The only charity they had is going after Donald Trump. So we’re looking at that.”

“We’re looking at a lot of things, but if you take a look at CREW, what they’ve done, and I think it was a very big abuse, but we’re going to be finding out pretty soon.”

During Trump’s first and second terms, CREW sued Trump or his administration for alleged emoluments clause violations, alleged Presidential Records Act noncompliance, and challenged some of his executive orders. It also represented voters in a lawsuit attempting to use the 14th Amendment to remove him from the ballot, claiming his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection was constitutionally disqualifying.

In January, CREW was part of a lawsuit suing to “block Trump’s illegal plan to fire government workers,” and in February, CREW sued the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “to compel transparency.”

CREW, in a statement to NCRM, vowed to continue its work.

“For more than 20 years, CREW has exposed government corruption from politicians of both parties who violate the public trust and has worked to promote an ethical, transparent government,” CREW Vice President of Communications Jordan Libowitz said. “Good governance groups are the heart of a healthy democracy. We will continue to do our work to ensure Americans have an ethical and accountable government.”

Legal experts are blasting Trump’s threat.

“It is literally a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison for the President, VP, or any senior White House employee, to ‘request, directly or indirectly, any officer or employee of the IRS to conduct … an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer,'” wrote attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.

“The Trump administration has gone after law firms, they’ve gone after universities, and they’re now going after civil society, including groups like @CREWcrew. They want to silence any opposition to their extreme agenda,” added the National Women’s Law Center.

“President Trump is now threatening to weaponize the IRS against nonprofit organizations like @CREWcrew,” wrote Public Citizen. “He is attacking our most basic right: to say what we believe without fear of government prosecution. We proudly stand in solidarity with our friends at CREW.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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calif sue on tariffs 4 17 25

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an 4 25

'I could not abide': Military mom suing Trump admin over her kids' 'right to learn'

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an 4 25

'Unconstitutional usurpation of power': Small businesses sue Trump over 'devastating' tariffs

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