Western allies are abandoning American leadership while we stand by, morally bankrupt and intellectually spent, watching children starve in Gaza with weapons we provided to a corrupt authoritarian we’re too cowardly to constrain. Meanwhile, the same brilliant minds who assured us Trump was a master negotiator who’d never actually implement his policies are already preparing their next round of false equivalencies.
The progression is as predictable as it is pathetic. These are the people who convinced themselves that a man who bankrupted casinos—businesses literally designed to print money—would somehow master the complexities of global economics. Who looked at his fraud convictions, his scam university, his shuttered charity, and saw business acumen. Who insisted his tariff threats were just “negotiating tactics” and that “adults in the room” would contain his worst impulses.
They were wrong about everything. Catastrophically, obviously wrong. Trump is implementing exactly the policies he promised, wreaking exactly the havoc any sentient observer could have predicted. He’s using Air Force One to hawk his golf courses while conducting trade wars that are already cratering American competitiveness. He’s hawking cryptocurrency from the Oval Office while our allies move to recognize Palestinian statehood without us.
But rather than acknowledge their staggering failure of judgment, these same voices are already preparing their next dodge. If democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani becomes New York’s mayor, they’ll suddenly discover they can’t tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans. A young progressive who wants to tax rich people will become morally equivalent to a president who tried to overturn an election.
This is the epistemic closure in action—the same intellectual cowardice that led them to normalize Trump’s corruption because the alternative was admitting they’d been played by a obvious con man. Now they’ll normalize whatever comes next rather than confront the reality that their worldview produces nothing but disasters.
Let me be clear: I’m no socialist. The twentieth century showed us that centralized economic planning leads to misery. But regulated markets aren’t socialism. Progressive taxation isn’t Marxism. And a young mayor who believes in public services isn’t equivalent to a corrupt president who sells access for meme coins.
The refusal to make these basic distinctions isn’t sophistication—it’s moral and intellectual bankruptcy. It’s the same false equivalence that treats Netanyahu’s documented corruption as equivalent to criticism of his policies, that equates starving children with geopolitical complexity, that transforms every clear moral choice into an impossible both-sides dilemma.
Meanwhile, our allies watch in horror as America becomes the unreliable partner, the unstable democracy, the country that can’t maintain consistent policies from one administration to the next. Britain threatens to recognize Palestinian statehood. European leaders distance themselves from our erratic leadership. We’re becoming what we once opposed: the rogue state that can’t be trusted.
How do we lecture other countries about democracy when we elect someone who tried to overturn an election? How do we lead on human rights when we enable war crimes? How do we promote international law when we ignore it whenever convenient?
The answer is simple: we can’t. And our enemies are taking notes.
The price of American epistemic collapse isn’t just domestic chaos—it’s the collapse of the international order we spent decades building. When the world’s supposed moral leader becomes a corrupt autocracy run by grifters and defended by intellectual cowards, the whole system breaks down.
Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And the people who told you Trump would moderate, who assured you his corruption was competence, who promised his authoritarianism was strategy, were wrong about everything.
Don’t let them gaslight you about what comes next.
Remember what’s real.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
While this latest bit of low-key embarrassment may not be a black eye for the administration, it certainly isn’t putting any more lipstick on this pig. Whatever you may think about the recent summit meeting between these two international besties, you can be assured that some of the attendees thought even less of it than you did.
Is this how we’re leaking things to the press now? Seems careless, since there are multiple ways of identifying who left these documents behind. That being said, no one is named in the NPR reporting, which covers what was uncovered by hotel guests who happened to find these documents just sitting in a tray of one of the hotel’s public printers.
Papers with U.S. State Department markings, found Friday morning in the business center of an Alaskan hotel, revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the Aug. 15 meetings between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Anchorage.
Eight pages, that appear to have been produced by U.S. staff and left behind accidentally, shared precise locations and meeting times of the summit and phone numbers of U.S. government employees.
The documents [PDF] are embedded below. What’s exposed in them is indeed sensitive information, but the sensitivity is directly proportionate to a specific time frame, which means a discovery that happened after the summit was over isn’t nearly as problematic as anything discovered before or during. The dates, times, and specific rooms used for meetings don’t mean nearly as much as they might have while this summit was still ongoing.
One of things that immediately stands out as having Trump’s tiny fingerprints all over it is the menu for the luncheon that never happened.
During the summit Friday, lunch was apparently cancelled. But it was intended to be a simple, three-course meal, the documents showed. After a green salad, the world leaders would dine on filet mignon and halibut olympia. Crème brûlée would be served for dessert.
Not just any green salad, mind you, but one served with “champagne vinaigrette.” I’m sure it’s the word “champagne” that earned Trump’s approval, not that he probably cares one way or another what’s served on a salad he isn’t going to eat.
Here’s the menu as it was printed (and left on a public printer):
Between the font selection and the menu options, this looks like something being offered by Waldorf Astoria in 1925, rather than by the most powerful nation in the world in 2025. And one assumes the filet mignon would have been served a la Trump (charred into submission; walloped with ketchup). Fortunately for Putin, the lunch was cancelled, preventing him from a.) having to witness Trump “enjoy” a steak, and b.) having to experience a fish swimming in mayonnaise. (Your mileage may vary.)
Low-hanging mockery aside, it’s still a problem. And since it is actually a problem, the White House is, of course, pretending it’s not a problem, calling the eight pages of information nothing more than a “multi-page lunch menu.” Even if you ignore all the information specifying who will be in which rooms at what particular times, there’s plenty of other information that generally doesn’t appear in lunch menus, no matter how many pages they run.
Pages 2 through 5 of the documents listed the names and phone numbers of three U.S. staff members as well as the names of 13 U.S. and Russian state leaders. The list provided phonetic pronouncers for all the Russian men expected at the summit, including “Mr. President POO-tihn.”
Even if this (perhaps intentional!) leak didn’t threaten national security, it’s emblematic of an administration that tends to operate with all the finesse of a bludgeon wielded by a bull in the china shop that is the world we live in. To expect better than this is human. To expect to see better than this, from this administration, is self-delusion.
Donald Trump has declared war on American cities, and he’s sending in the troops to prove it. As Rolling Stone rightly notes regarding Trump seizing direct control of DC law enforcement by deploying the National Guard:
PresidentDonald Trumphas expanded his military campaign against the United States by deploying armed troops to yet another major metropolitan area,announcing on Mondaythat he is sending the National Guard into Washington, D.C., to “liberate” the city.
This isn’t some emergency response to rising crime. This is the culmination of years of MAGA fantasies about using federal force against cities that refuse to kiss Trump’s ass.
It’s no secret that there’s a noticeable “urban/rural divide” in America, which has mostly been led by ambitious politicians who seek to stoke nonsense fears in rural voters by lying to them about life in American cities. But the divide has certainly expanded from “city voters lean this way while rural voters lean that way” to “the federal government needs to invade American cities.”
The irony is thick. The idea that the federal government might use the US military against American citizens has long been a conspiracy theory of the QAnon/MAGA crowd. Now it’s happening, with the QAnon/MAGA folks doing it to cities they view as insufficiently loyal to their dear leader.
Remember the massive conspiracy theory around the Jade Helm exercises a decade ago? Early MAGA types (helped along by political shitposters like Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Senator Ted Cruz) pretended it was an effort by Democrats to impose martial law by first “getting people used to seeing military forces on the streets.”
This ignored that the only ones who seem interested in actually putting the military in the streets have been similarly bad faith Republicans, like Senator Tom Cotton, who has been publicly advocating for US military forces to invade American cities for years, just because non-white people were protesting for their rights.
This latest military campaign, based entirely on lies about the state of crime in the cities, followed a similarly stupid campaign in LA, also based on lies. As Radley Balko points out in a recent post, the lies are just very, very sloppy. For example in the oft-repeated line (including in our comments by MAGA fans!) that DC has the 4th highest murder rate, nope, not even close:
Nope. The linked study is only a sampling of 23 cities. It does not purport to be a list of the 23 most dangerous or murderous or crime-ridden cities. It does not purport to be a comprehensive list of any kind. The point of the study was to compare year-over-year statistics among a diverse selection of cities around the country. D.C.’s homicide rate was the fourth highest out of these 23 cities. Not out of all U.S. cities.
This first bullet point also fails to contextualize the 27.3 per 100,000 figure for 2024. It was down from 39 in 2023. It’s down to about 22.7 this year. This matters, because Trump’s argument is that crime in the city is out of control due to poor leadership. That isn’t what’s happening.
Trump has also claimed that homicides in D.C. in 2023 were the “highest ever.” Not even close. The city’s murder rate topped 80 per 100,000 in 1991.
As of April, D.C.’s murder rate this year ranked not fourth highest, but 19th. It ranked behind red state cities like New Orleans, Cleveland, Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, Tulsa, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati.
The lack of an actual rise in violent crime to justify these moves doesn’t matter. And silly people arguing that Democrats need to accept Trump’s framing of this being about crime are being very, very short-sighted.
If it wasn’t lies about crime, Trump and friends would come up with other lies. It would be about immigration. Or culture. Or architecture. The reasons don’t matter. The truth doesn’t matter. This is entirely about the MAGA base wanting to invade and take over American cities because they hate the fact that those cities tend not to vote for them.
That’s it.
Two weeks ago the New Republic got a leaked DHS memo that made it clear that the Trump administration wasn’t reacting to any emergency, but has been deliberately planning to invade US cities.
It suggests that DHS is anticipating many more uses of the military in urban centers, noting that L.A.-style operations may be needed “for years to come.”
And Trump made it clear he’s itching to send troops to basically any city in a Democratic-leaning state that just (coincidentally!) has a Black mayor.
At a press conference Monday announcing that the federal government had seized “direct” control of D.C.’s police department and that the National Guard would soon occupy the city, Trump warned that if he and his officials decide they “need to,” he will deploy military forces to other Democratic cities, too. The president named a few, including Chicago, Oakland, and Baltimore.
Again, if this were actually about crime, then Republicans might look at how the mayors in those cities have been very successfully reducing crime, often by refocusing the problem.
Baltimore, for example, has seen its murder rate drop at an astounding rate, hitting its lowest level in many, many years, and it’s in large part due to Mayor Brandon Scott realizing that you don’t stop crime by increasing policing, but by treating crime as a type of public health crisis that you fix by treating the actual symptoms, including poverty, racism, and historical violence (some of which is perpetrated by law enforcement).
Baltimore’s success in lowering violent crime rates not through increased law enforcement, but through better community support should be a lesson for anyone who actually wants to reduce crime.
Indeed, Balko’s piece also notes that if you look at the cities in the study Trump cited with the biggest increase in murder rates, more than half are in red states with Republican mayors:
Seven of the 23 cities in the study cited by the White House actually showed an increase in homicides last year. Four of those — including the top two (Indianapolis and Lexington) are in red states. The city with the largest increase — Lexington — has a Republican mayor. Send the National Guard to Lexington!
But MAGA folks don’t give a shit about crime in reality. It’s just a convenient excuse for them to exert control and power over those they see as refusing to kowtow to their unprecedented power grab.
Donald Trump has declared war on US cities because the people there don’t kiss his ass enough, and he’s sending in the troops, effectively saying that the military invasions will continue until the loyalty improves.
While there was a lot to criticize the Biden administration about, it did at least try to shift the balance back toward antitrust reform (see: Lina Khan), boosting competition, and occasionally trying to help labor (see: the noncompete ban). This desperately upset America’s richest assholes, which is why so many of them have rushed to throw their support behind dim authoritarian zealots.
As America’s richest assholes hoped, Trumpism has taken an absolute hatchet to environmental law, consumer protection, regulatory independence, and the last vestiges of U.S. corporate oversight, all while lying to gullible rubes about how this is actually looking out for the little guy.
This is, corporate media and a huge swath of the electorate will be surprised to learn, going to result in years of terrible things, including mass fatalities, institutional failures, and all sorts of avoidable chaos.
These initiatives had their warts but it was the closest the U.S. — with a Congress literally too corrupt to pass meaningful reform — had gotten to actual antitrust, labor, and competition reform in a generation.
Trump’s latest executive order takes a hatchet to all of that. The EO itself doesn’t bother to explain itself, but Trump’s DOJ lied to media outlets, insisting that destroying corporate oversight, popular consumer protections, and labor rights was an embrace of “America first antitrust”:
“The justice department welcomed Trump’s revocation of the order, saying it was pursuing an “America first antitrust” approach focused on free markets instead of what it called the “overly prescriptive and burdensome approach” of the Biden administration.”
That is absolute, incoherent gibberish. This idea that Trumpism cares about “antitrust reform” was a big lie pushed by the Trump camp during the last administration and during this latest election season, often propped up by a lazy press, and a smattering of useful idiots like Matt Stoller. This stuff was always pseudo-populist performance, designed to dress up fascism as somehow good for the everyman.
In reality Trumpism takes coddling industry to entirely new levels of extremism. Add in Trump’s desire to see companies punished if they’re not appropriately feckless or racist enough, and you’ve got a giant authoritarian mess that’s only getting worse.
Many major corporate executives still love this stuff. They view the rubber stamped mergers, tax cuts, and devastation of regulatory oversight as a net win. Most of them don’t really think that all the other stuff, like the destruction of democracy, the corruption of the legal system, or the racial profiling of minorities will impact them in their Soho town homes or oversized Palo Alto compounds.
This blind complicity, ignorant of the fact you can’t strike a bargain with authoritarianism, is precisely how Russia fell into its authoritarian hellscape, resulting in many prominent executives having their assets stolen by the state — or suffering accidental falls out of twenty-story windows. We’re not there yet, but we’re absolutely headed that direction and it’s not remotely subtle.
Before that, however, we have to live through a concussive series of systemic failures to government systems most of the public takes for granted. You’d like to hope that these shocks to the system wake up a heavily propagandized and befuddled electorate who don’t quite yet grasp the extremism at hand, or the mass suffering, fatalities, and widespread consumer and labor harms waiting just over the horizon.
It has been more than six months since Trump took office and kicked off his Musk-led rampage through the federal government. And more than six months that everyone has been turning to the courts to stop the DOGE destruction. These litigation efforts have led to some wins, although too many of them have been short-lived as either SCOTUS or even the motions panels at the appellate courts have all too often undone the protective injunctions that litigants finally managed to extract—albeit increasingly, as district courts’ hesitancy to restrain federal executive power has given way to the growing recognition of how much of that supposed executive power has been exercised illegitimately and harmfully.
Such a realization is at the heart of this decision discussed here, from a case that has been discussed before, Does 1-26 v. Musk, where an initial win of an injunction against Musk and DOGE’s ruination of the USAID agency was soon evaporated by the Fourth Circuit. The big reason why the Fourth Circuit overturned the injunction was due to an issue that has kept coming up in these challenges: ratification. Because while it’s bad enough for Musk and DOGE to tear through the government, despite no lawful authority to do anything, there is a separate problem when those with lawful authority follow along after them to do the same things. Even in this case, one of the several challenging the illicit destruction of USAID as a functioning agency despite all statutory language prohibiting anyone but Congress from doing anything to interfere with its function, we’ve seen the effects of this sort of ratification, as Musk and DOGE’s super-duper illegal RIF notices to staff were later reissued only super illegally by non-DOGE officials with actual authority when it comes to running the agency. Because even these officials’ authority is still limited; they cannot do something that the law does not allow (in this case: winding down the agency that they are supposed to run). So following the loss at the Fourth Circuit the plaintiffs amended their lawsuit to name the non-DOGE officials too in order to give the court jurisdiction over their participation in the overall wrongdoing.
And in this new decision the court gave the case the green light to continue, except without Trump himself as a named defendant.
Here, Plaintiffs’ request for declaratory relief against President Trump involves matters that are not as clearly ministerial. See id.; New Mexico, 2025 WL 1502747, at *19 (dismissing the President as a defendant from a case seeking declaratory relief where the duties implicated by the relief were “highly discretionary”). Moreover, courts considering whether to issue injunctive or declaratory relief against a President have recognized that the constitutional concerns associated with doing so “can be successfully bypassed” where the plaintiff’s injury “can be rectified by injunctive relief against” subordinate Executive Branch officials. See Swan v. Clinton, 100 F.3d 973, 976 & n.1, 978-79 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (recognizing that “similar considerations” apply to requests to obtain injunctive or declaratory relief against a President); NTEU, 492 F.2d at 606 (noting that “if it were possible” for the plaintiff to “enforce its rights by naming a defendant additional to or in substitution of the President,” the court “would exercise its discretion not to answer the question of whether the President is subject to mandamus by a federal court”). Where, as here, Plaintiffs’ requests for relief will proceed as to other Executive Branch officials with authority over the relevant issues in this case, the Court will dismiss the claims against President Trump. [p.47-48]
But everyone else named—Musk, Amy Gleason, Marco Rubio, and more—are all still on the hook, with the court rejecting all the arguments raised by the government for why the case should have been dismissed entirely. The most salient relate to standing, statutory preclusion, failure to state a claim, and claim splitting.
On standing, the court found that the plaintiffs had adequately pled that they had in fact been injured [p.32-34], that this injury was “traceable” to the defendants [p.34-37], and that it was redressable by holding the remaining defendants liable.
Here, the requested relief includes an injunction setting aside prior actions and barring further actions by Defendants to “modify, reorganize, or eliminate USAID,” as well as an injunction setting aside actions taken at USAID by Musk and DOGE personnel and barring them from “performing their significant and wide-ranging duties at USAID.” SAC ¶ 141. Even without a request for specific relief relating to the placements on administrative leave and the RIFs, these forms of relief could facilitate redress of Plaintiffs’ injuries because an order halting the elimination of USAID as an agency pursuant to either the Separation of Powers claim or the Appointments Clause claim would certainly “remov[e]” a significant “obstacle” to Plaintiffs’ regaining some form of employment at USAID or other relief. Sierra Club, 899 F.3d at 285. In addition, as to the Appointments Clause claim, where Plaintiffs have alleged that Musk directed the shutdown of USAID, an order undoing his actions and barring additional actions by Musk and DOGE at USAID would similarly contribute to providing Plaintiffs with relief by removing a force that has driven forward the process that has caused or will imminently cause Plaintiffs’ loss of employment. Accordingly, accepting the allegations as true and construing them in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs have satisfied all three requirements to establish standing at this stage of the case. [p.37-38]
On “failure to state a claim,” the court found the Appointments Clause and Separation of Powers claims that every DOGE action ends up implicating one way or another had been adequately pled in a way that the court could still provide relief, here through a declaratory judgment or another injunction. With respect to the Appointments Clause claim, the court made the point in particular that just because so many of the problematic actions had already happened did not make the sought after relief moot (“[W]here that episode occurred only a few months ago and there is no reason to conclude that DOGE has ceased all activity at USAID, it is premature to conclude that there is no basis. or need for injunctive or declaratory relief relating to this claim.” [p.42]). And as for Separation of Powers, that the agency has effectively already been shut down, despite Congress never authorizing such a fate, suggests such a claim remained viable.
The Second Amended Complaint contains allegations that substantially replicate the facts adduced in Does I to support the conclusion that “USAID has been effectively eliminated,” id. at 671; compare SAC TT 65, 74-75, 83-88,93-99, 102-17, with Does I, 771 F. Supp. 3d at 669-71, but also includes additional, more concrete allegations demonstrating that Defendants are acting to “eliminate[]” “substantially all non-statutory positions at USAID,” “decommission[]” USAID assets, and “wind-down” the agency’s independent operations, as described in the Lewin Memorandum and the Congressional Notification Letter, SAC ¶ 120. Accordingly, where the Court previously concluded that Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their Separation of Powers claim in Does I, see 771 F. Supp. 3d at 678, and where the Second Amended Complaint contains even more allegations about Defendants’ course of conduct to eliminate USAID outright than were available at that time, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have stated a plausible Separation of Powers claim. See Does 1, 771 F. Supp. 3d at 678. Cf. Nat’l Treasury Emps. Union v. Vought, 774 F. Supp. 3d 1, 57-58 (D.D.C. 2025) (finding that the Executive Branch’s actions to shut down of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau likely violated the Separation of Powers), stay granted in part, No. 25-5901, 2025 WL 1721068, at *1 (D.C. Cir. Apr. 11, 2025). [p.43-44]
Perhaps more interestingly the court also rejected the “statutory preclusion” arguments, or, put another way, the arguments that the plaintiffs’ claims are just employment disputes that have to be brought before specialized agencies tasked with adjudicating employment disputes for federal workers. Because the plaintiffs here were largely USAID staff being wrongfully terminated, the government argued that, per statute, courts could not hear the complaints.
We saw the government make similar arguments before, especially in the case brought by the union of foreign service officers in the D.C. district court, AFSA v. Trump. This case has unfortunately now been dismissed for lack of standing and is thus on appeal, but earlier this year the court there refused to enjoin the agency firings. But that was then, and this is now, found this court in this case. It observed that the harm being considered by that earlier court—loss of employment—was just financial in its nature, and thus less “irreparable,” since “the agency [was] still standing.” But since that ruling, things have changed, and the potential harm to the plaintiffs here is much more weighty. Because, even if before it could be presumed that illegally-terminated employees might still have a job to go back to at the agency if their claims were redressed, such is not the case now when there is about to be no more agency at all.
Defendants’ citation of American Foreign Service Association v. Trump (“AFSA”), 768 F. Supp. 3d 6 (D.D.C. 2025), does not alter the Court’s conclusion. In AFSA, in denying a motion for a preliminary injunction, the court found that it was likely that the CSRA precluded it from exercising jurisdiction over a Separation of Powers challenge to the dismantling of USAID brought by two unions representing USAID employees. Id. at 11, 14-15, 21. In so ruling, however, the court noted that even though “in the long run,” the unions’ harms could flow from “the alleged unlawful dismantling of USAID,” at that time, “the agency [was] still standing, and so” the unions’ alleged harms based on which they sought injunctive relief related only to the changes in their members’ employment conditions at that early stage of the case, such as placement on administrative leave and requirements to return to the United States on an expedited basis, which were “largely financial” in nature. Id. at 20. Since that time, however, through the Lewin Memorandum and the Congressional Notification Letter, Defendants have confirmed their plan imminently to abolish USAID as an independent agency. Thus, the present case differs in that it relates not to employees’ specific employment conditions, as was the case at the early stage of AFSA, but to the abolition of an entire federal agency. [p.19-20]
Ultimately the court here found that the plaintiffs would be in an impossible position if the district courts couldn’t hear their claims and they had to appeal to these other agencies instead, en masse, because they were set up to handle only routine matters of federal employment, like with respect to issues with seniority. They were not set up to address the wholesale firing of an entire agency’s worth of personnel!
Nevertheless, regardless of whether the claims are subject to the CSRA, the Court finds that the CSRA does not provide for meaningful judicial review of Plaintiffs’ claims. Specifically, as alleged in the Second Amended Complaint, Plaintiffs’ claims, and their injuries, flow not from any specific employment action, but from the decision to dismantle and abolish USAID entirely. Channeling the claims of the Civil Service Employee Plaintiffs to the MSPB would foreclose meaningful judicial review because even if they were able to prevail in the administrative proceedings as to any particular employment action, such as by securing reinstatement to a USAID position, that relief would be meaningless because if the dismantling and abolition of USAID remain unaddressed, the Civil Service Employee Plaintiffs would have no workplace to which to return. [p.15]
And adjudicating the Constitutional issues that these terminations implicated was not part of their expertise.
Plaintiffs’ claims fall outside the MSPB’s expertise. The MSPB’s expertise largely consists of addressing adverse employment actions and prohibited personnel practices that violate the merit system principles set forth in 5 U.S.C. § 2301(b). See 5 U.S.C. §§ 7513(d), 1214(b)(4)(A); N4/J, 139 F.4th at 313. As discussed above, however, Plaintiffs’ claims do not directly or indirectly involve the application of such principles and instead assert structural constitutional challenges grounded in the principle of the Sepration of Powers. The Supreme Court has recognized in the context of other administrative review schemes that “agency adjudications are generally ill suited to address structural constitutional challenges.” Axon, 143 S. Ct. at 905 (quoting Carr v. Saul, 141 S. Ct. 1352, 1360 (2021)). In Axon, where the plaintiffs brought Separation of Powers challenges to actions by certain federal agencies’ administrative law judges (“ALJs”) because (1) the ALJs were unconstitutionally insulated from the president’s supervision; and (2) combining prosecutorial and adjudicatory functions in a single agency was unconstitutional, the Court found that the claims were outside of the relevant agencies’ expertise because they raised questions of constitutional law that were “detached from `considerations of agency policy’ and “distant” from the agency’s “competence and expertise,” as the agency “knows . . . nothing special about the separation of powers.” Axon, 143 S. Ct. at 897, 905 (quoting Free Enter. Fund, 561 U.S. at 491). [p.18-19]
Furthermore, the employment review agencies themselves have also been gutted by DOGE firings, and it did not sit well with the court that the same illicit power that wrongfully fired federal workers could now effectively render them powerless to seek redress of it.
As to the first step of the test, in NAIJ, the Fourth Circuit held that although the Supreme Court “has recognized that the CSRA, when functioning as Congress intended, was designed to strip district courts of jurisdiction,” that conclusion may no longer be true because recent events, including President Trump’s removal of the Special Counsel and of two members of the MSPB such that it lacks a quorum, “raise serious questions as to whether the CSRA’s adjudicatory scheme continues to function as intended.” NAIJ, 139 F.4th at 304-05. Based on this conclusion, the Fourth Circuit remanded that case to the district court “to conduct a factual inquiry whether the CSRA continues to provide a functional adjudicatory scheme,” and, if warranted, “a new examination of Congressional intent” as to the CSRA in light of these recent events. Id. at 308. Where the Fourth Circuit’s decision in NAIJ was released after briefing on the Motion concluded, and where the Court finds, as discussed below, that the Civil Service Employee Plaintiffs’ claims do not meet the second step of the Thunder Basin test, the Court declines to make a determination on whether the CSRA meets the first step of the Thunder Basin test. See Free Enter. Fund, 561 U.S. at 489 (noting that the Supreme Court presumes “that Congress does not intend to limit jurisdiction” if the three Thunder Basin factors at step two of the inquiry weigh in favor of that result). [p.13]
While it is a big deal for this court to recognize that the statutory scheme is inapt for the types of harms at issue here, it is not the first to do so, and it cites another case that did.
In a recent opinion, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the MSPB could not provide meaningful judicial review of statutory and Separation of Powers challenges to large-scale RIFs across multiple federal agencies because even if an individual plaintiff could pursue an individual claim before the MSPB and appeal to the Federal Circuit, such a procedure would not provide meaningful judicial review because the alleged injury was not from the particular employment action, but “from subjection to [unlawful executive] authority” in violation of the Constitution. Am. Fed ‘n of Gov’t Emps. v. Trump (“AFGE”), 139 F.4th 1020, 15 Case 8:25-cv-00462-TDC Document 150 Filed 08/13/25 Page 16 of 48 .1028, 1032 (9th Cir. 2025) (quoting Axon, 143 S. Ct. at 906), stay granted on other grounds, Trump v. Am. Fed’n of Gov’t Emps., 145 S. Ct. 2635, 2635 (2025). Here, Plaintiffs notably seek no damages and do not even specifically request injunctive relief to allow them to retain or recover their positions. Even to the extent that Plaintiffs’ general request that the Court “set aside any actions taken by Defendants” to eliminate USAID could be construed as including such relief, SAC ¶ 141a, as in AFGE, “such a path to the federal courts would be meaningless where . . . entire offices and functions are being eliminated from federal agencies,’ such that a successful plaintiff “would return to an empty agency with no infrastructure to support a resumption of their work.” AFGE, 139 F.4th at 1032 (quoting Am. Fed’n of Gov’t Emps. v. Trump, No. 25-cv-03698-SI, 2025 WL 1482511, at *14 (N.D. Cal. May 22, 2025)); see Elev8 Balt., Inc. v. Corp. for Nat’l & Cmty. Serv., No. MJM-25-1458, 2025 WL 1865971, at *1, *17 (D. Md. July 7, 2025) (finding that the CSRA could not provide a union representing federal employees meaningful judicial review of its Separation of Powers challenges to the dismantling of AmeriCorps); cf. New York v. Kennedy, No. 25-cv-196-MRD-PAS, 2025 WL 1803260, at *1, *9 (D.R.I. July 1, 2025) (finding that the CSRA could not provide meaningful judicial review of states’ constitutional and statutory challenges to the large-scale terminations of employees at and reorganization of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, because there was “little to no value” in “requiring employees to bring individual claims about their employment status to MSPB” because even “successful Plaintiffs ‘would return to an empty agency’ (quoting AFGE, 139 F.4th at 1032)). [p.15-16]
Meanwhile, the existence of this other case in D.C. that had been trying to get USAID employees un-fired gets to the other interesting defense raised by the government in support of its motion to dismiss the case: claim-splitting. In this argument the government was charging that because there are multiple cases addressing very similar facts, it looks like plaintiffs may be getting multiple bites at the apple to try to get the judicial result they want, which is not something individual plaintiffs are allowed to do. But the court here noted that the plaintiffs aren’t actually the same in both cases. While there may be overlap in the classes the plaintiffs represent, the actual litigants animating and directing these cases are different and not in privity with each other.
Here, Defendants have not provided evidence that Plaintiffs are in privity with the organizations asserting the allegedly related claims in these other lawsuits. Indeed, they have not even demonstrated that Plaintiffs are all members of one of those organizations. The Court therefore declines to dismiss the Second Amended Complaint on this basis. Cf. Cooper v. Harris, 581 .U.S. 285, 297-98 (2017) (declining to dismiss claims brought by individual plaintiffs as barred by res judicata where the party asserting that defense “never satisfied the District Court that” the individual plaintiffs were members of an organization that had brought similar claims in a separate lawsuit). [p.39]
And such is the consequence an abusive government is likely to suffer, that it might find itself having to defend itself in multiple courts on similar questions, because had it taken aim at fewer people then there would be fewer people to take issue with it. And in no case should the government be able to benefit here from having attacked the rights of an agency’s entire workforce where, because it had victimized so many, it would now be impossible for any to seek redress.
In fact, there have had to be multiple cases, especially with respect to the illegal destruction of USAID, which suffered especially from being the agency Musk and DOGE “put through the woodchipper” first, as he unlawfully and unconstitutionally canceled contracts, laid off staff, and took away agency assets. Which meant that all the legal challenges to stop Musk and DOGE with respect to USAID also happened first, hitting the courts as matters of first impression before they had a chance to get their jurisprudential arms around the full extent of executive power abuse they were dealing with here, and before litigants figured out how to bring their challenges most effectively.
Because if everyone had to do it over again, knowing what we know now, presumably USAID would not now be standing on the precipice of being all but lost as an agency come September 2, when the last wave of RIFs kicks in to layoff the last of its now skeleton workforce from this once robust and valuable agency Congress established, and never closed.
For years we’ve talked about the serious problems of the Bayh-Dole Act, which encouraged universities to patent every damn idea that anyone associated with the university came up with in the hopes of “commercializing” it. In practice this has been a total disaster. Universities locked up a ton of (often publicly funded) research behind “patents” and set up “tech transfer offices” expecting to get rich.
It didn’t work out that way. University research suffered because professors were much less willing to share information that might get wrapped up into someone else’s patents. Meanwhile, outside of a very, very small number of top universities almost all university tech transfer offices lost money. They expected that the patents were valuable, but that misreads the reality of how innovation works where execution tends to matter much more than the idea, and simply selling patent licenses is effectively worthless.
The only major “innovation” that Bayh-Dole then created was enabling patent trolls. One of the largest patent trolling operations ever, Intellectual Ventures, basically based its entire business model on buying up a ton of university patents that were effectively worthless (but allowing tech transfer offices to finally show some revenue), and then shaking down actual companies by saying “we have so many patents, we’re sure you infringe some, so just pay us a blanket license fee.”
When Bayh-Dole was first written there were some (accurate!) concerns that this would allow for the privatization and locking up of publicly funded research. To deal with this possibility, the law included what’s known as “march-in rights” that would allow the federal government to require the patent holder of a patent based on federally funded research to license that patent to others if specific conditions are met (e.g., failure to achieve “practical application,” unmet health or safety needs, failure to meet public use requirements, or lack of US manufacturing for US use).
In the 45 years since the law has passed, those march-in rights have never been used. Any time it’s even considered, such as to lower drug prices, Big Pharma throws an absolute shitfit and laughingly claims it would destroy innovation in the pharma world. This ignores just how much Big Pharma actually is based on enclosing and getting monopoly rents from federally funded research. Multiple high-profile petitions (often around outrageously priced drugs) have been denied despite ticking obvious “alleviate health or safety needs” boxes.
Even during COVID, when the concept of march-in rights was mentioned as a way to help limit the spread of the pandemic, the pharma industry closed ranks and insisted that using march-in rights to help against the pandemic would destroy the industry.
So it’s quite something, now, to see that the Trump administration is looking to use march-in rights against Harvard as part of its pressure campaign to get the university to capitulate to the Trump administration’s plan to reshape American education to be more white and MAGA.
The Trump administration on Friday launched an investigation into Harvard’s patents derived from federally funded research, threatening intellectual property potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars and once again escalating a monthslong standoff between the University and the White House.
In a two-page letter to Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 — which was posted publicly on X — United States Commerce Secretary Howard W. Lutnick announced an “immediate comprehensive review” of Harvard’s compliance with the Bayh-Dole Act, a 1980 law governing inventions developed with federal research grants.
[….]
Lutnick specifically cited the federal government’s “march-in rights,” a provision of the Bayh-Dole Act that allows federal agencies to assume ownership of an entity’s intellectual property if it fails to meet the law’s requirements. No federal agency has ever exercised march-in rights — and the Friday move marks the first time patents have been used as a source of leverage in the White House’s crusade against higher education.
Quick reality check on the mechanics: “march‑in” under Bayh‑Dole (had it ever been used) compels licensing; it does not by itself “assume ownership” of a patent as the Harvard Crimson article suggests. Lutnick also threatens to “take title” over certain patents, implying he can do this under march-in rights, but that’s also wrong. Title can be threatened or reverted for certain compliance failures under different provisions, but march‑in is a licensing remedy, and it’s the funding agency (NIH, DoD, DoE, etc.) that actually marches in. Commerce, which Lutnick runs, (via NIST) sets guidance and can posture with “compliance reviews,” but it doesn’t unilaterally seize university IP no matter how much Lutnick implies otherwise.
Again, I want to make it quite clear how incredibly unprecedented this is. I think the Bayh-Dole Act has been an unmitigated disaster for innovation, and the only redeeming aspect of the law was the march-in rights to make sure that federally funded research couldn’t be locked up entirely away from innovation. But those rights have never been asserted, leading to the massive closing off of such taxpayer-funded research, enabling giant private companies to profit off taxpayer money for no direct return.
That’s the tell here: for decades agencies refused to use march‑in even where the statute explicitly contemplates it (lack of “practical application,” unmet health/safety needs). Now the White House is dangling a Commerce‑run “review” aimed not at unlocking life‑saving tech, but at punishing a disfavored university. If you wanted yet another case study in weaponizing an unused public-interest tool for raw political leverage, well, here you go.
In 45 years, the federal government has never—not once—been willing to use those rights to do things like lower drug pricing or to help people survive a global pandemic. And now Trump is exploring doing it only as a method of punishing Harvard for no damn reason at all beyond being scared that the people there are too smart and too diverse for him.
If you actually pay attention you might notice the right wing’s pearl-clutching over China is neither effective nor consistent.
The GOP, for years, made a giant stink about China’s Huawei network gear being a massive national security threat, and pushed through legislation to tear the inexpensive gear out of U.S. networks. Then just… forgot to fund the efforts, resulting in telecoms on the hook for billions in additional costs. Nobody really seems interested in following up on how that project is even going.
The Trump saber rattling over China is usually driven by a weird combination of xenophobia and greed that usually has nothing to do with national security or the public interest. Initiatives are incoherently proposed and retracted without reason or any logic, repeatedly. None of it is effective or well intentioned in any way, but you’d often be hard pressed to know this reading U.S. press coverage of it.
The latest case in point: after years of hyperventilating about the dangers of doing business with China and crowing about the protection of U.S. AI supremacy, the Trump administration has “allowed” Nvidia and AMD to sell their high-end chipsets to China, if the US government gets a fifteen percent cut of the proceeds:
“The Trump administration halted the sale of advanced computer chips to China in April over national security concerns, but Nvidia and AMD revealed in July that Washington would allow them to resume sales of the H20 and MI308 chips, which are used in artificial intelligence development.”
Transferring our top end chipsets and AI advantage to China is the worst thing in the world! Unless we get a cut. Then it’s magically all fine! A handful of Democrats, like Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, were quick to highlight how this makes no coherent sense:
“The administration cannot simultaneously treat semiconductor exports as both a national security threat and a revenue opportunity. By putting a price on our security concerns, we signal to China and our allies that American national security principles are negotiable for the right fee.”
But it makes perfect sense if you remember that authoritarian zealots don’t actually believe in much of anything beyond their own wealth and power. Trump despised TikTok until he realized he could get it to buckle to his whims (either by selling to one of his billionaire allies or imposing algorithms more aligned with right wing ideology). All of the national security stuff is theater. None of it is good faith.
Trump is a bigoted fascist operating at a third-grade reading level whose policies are completely incoherent. He believes in absolutely nothing but attention, wealth and power. The closest the NYT can get to coherently explaining this to readers is to proclaim “this isn’t your grandpa’s Republican party,” despite some obvious, fleeting concerns about any of this being, you know, legal.
Companies that signed up for Trumpism for mindless deregulation and tax cuts are, of course, unsettled by the unpredictable nature of the whole leopard-eating-faces experience they’re now enjoying. But that’s the nature of authoritarianism; you can’t strike any sort of coherent partnership in it, because the only thing an unpredictable authoritarian dullard zealot believes in is their own wealth and power.
Of course, the Trump administration isn’t saying where these new export taxes will actually go. And the costs will, as usual, be passed down to consumers of a chipset market where many major graphics cards are still going for double MSRP thanks to government-sanctioned price gouging.
The administration keeps signaling this incoherent bribery scheme is going to be expanded into other industries. With most of the costs being borne by the folks that can least afford them (small businesses, consumers, workers). Recall Trump has disemboweled all U.S. regulators, so protecting markets and consumers is no longer a thing, something the press also can’t coherently seem to explain to the public).
But again, this is authoritarianism. Companies, voters, and business leaders who signed up for this for some tax cuts and deregulation were warned repeatedly that this would be exponentially worse. And the orchestra is really only just getting warmed up. If you were hoodwinked or complicit with enabling authoritarians, it’s a moral imperative that you now play a major role in dismantling it.
“Hysterical.” “Alarmist.” “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” “He’ll be constrained by institutions.” “There are adults in the room.” “You’re overreacting.” “The generals won’t let him.” “Stop being so dramatic.”
Every single person who said we were being hysterical about Trump being an existential threat should be forced to explain how the President seizing control of the capital’s police force and deploying military units to forcibly relocate citizens represents normal democratic governance.
They called us hysterical when we said he’d use the military against civilians. He’s literally doing it right now.
They called us alarmist when we said he’d seize control of law enforcement. He just placed D.C. police under the direct command of his Attorney General.
They called us deranged when we said he’d create fake emergencies to justify authoritarian power grabs. He’s invoking emergency powers while violent crime is at a 30-year low.
They said the institutions would hold. The institutions are being commandeered in real time.
They said the generals would refuse illegal orders. The National Guard is already deployed.
They said we were exaggerating the fascist threat. He’s literally declaring “Liberation Day” while seizing control of the capital.
Remember who told you this was hysteria.
They told you that those of us warning about fascism were being hysterical. Now the President has seized control of the capital’s police force, deployed military units against citizens, and announced forced relocations of undesirables—and these same voices are explaining why it’s not really that bad, why it’s technically legal, why we should wait and see how it plays out.
The “hysteria” was prophecy. The “alarmism” was accuracy. The “derangement” was simply seeing clearly what was coming while others chose comfortable blindness.
They’ll never admit they were wrong. They’ll just keep moving the goalposts. “Sure, he seized control of D.C. police, but it’s only for 30 days.” “Yes, he deployed the military, but it’s just the National Guard.” “Okay, he’s forcibly relocating citizens, but he says they’ll be given places to stay.”
This is how normalization works—through the reasonable voices who explain why each new outrage isn’t quite outrageous enough to justify the alarm we’re expressing.
We weren’t hysterical. We were right.
We weren’t alarmist. We were accurate.
We weren’t deranged. We were paying attention.
And now, as military units patrol the capital under presidential command, as police forces answer to the President’s personal authority, as citizens are forcibly relocated for the crime of poverty—now they want us to remain calm, to trust the process, to avoid inflammatory language.
No.
This is fascism. We told you it was coming. You called us hysterical. And now it’s here.
Remember who saw it clearly. Remember who denied it. And never, ever let them forget that when American democracy needed defenders, they chose to police the tone of those sounding the alarm rather than confront the threat itself.
The existential threat wasn’t rhetorical. It was real. It’s here. It’s happening.
And everyone who called us hysterical for warning about it is complicit in its arrival.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
The CBS/Paramount/Skydance merger formally closed last Thursday, and the new “bias monitor” is presumably now hard at work ensuring the new CBS news division is appropriately feckless. The FCC’s lone Dem commissioner, Anna Gomez, was quick to (correctly) call the appointment of a government-appointed truth-nanny a “betrayal” of journalistic independence and the public trust:
A government-sanctioned "truth arbiter" will soon arrive at CBS. Their role will be to ensure that journalists do not criticize this Administration or express views that conflict with its agenda.This is a betrayal—not just of journalistic independence, but of the public trust. 🧵
It’s grotesque, ironic, dangerous, and foreboding that the authoritarian GOP has installed a “truth monitor” at a major media network, especially after spending decades whining about policies like the long-deceased Fairness Doctrine and even longer pretending to have read Orwell’s 1984.
But it’s also hugely problematic that in just 7 months the FCC has been converted from government consumer protection agency into a 24/7 Donald Trump earlobe nibbler and speech police (under the pretense of protecting free speech and “fighting media bias,” no less). No longer does the FCC even try to competently regulate media and telecom giants to protect markets or consumers; its entire function now is to bully companies that aren’t appropriately sexist, racist, or feckless enough for Donald’s liking.
All of that said, this monitor shouldn’t really have much of a job, assuming the incompetent administration ever gets around to actually appointing a full-time staffer in the first place.
In one, the Ellison family finds a way to competently combine TikTok, Bari Weiss’ Free Press, and CBS to create a modern right wing tech-savvy propaganda empire that rivals News Corporation. There’s some signs that’s already underway. This “news” and propaganda would be a money pit funded by the infotainment arm of the company (see: the $7.7 billion acquisition of MMA rights).
But there’s another path in which all the debt from this acquisition spree results in the usual waves of layoffs and cost cutting and quality erosion that drives potential viewers to the exits. A path in which Larry Ellison’s nepo baby son struggles to adapt to changing markets, over-estimates the public’s thirst for Bari-Weiss style authoritarian-apologist dog shit, and, like other recent disastrous media gambits (the Time Warner Discovery mess), drives the entire operation straight into the ocean.
Either way the FCC’s new “bias monitor” is dangerous extremism, but it’s going to be so much worse if the Ellison family authoritarian coddling and appeasement gambit is actually financially successful.
Two weeks into President Donald Trump’s second presidency, and just days after he pardoned hundreds of Capitol rioters, officials Trump had placed in charge of the Justice Department made a sweeping demand. They wanted the names of the thousands of FBI employees who had played a role in investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Fearing mass firings, or worse, retaliation by the people they helped prosecute, a group of agents scrambled to enlist a legal team who could stop the administration in court. Norm Eisen, a prominent ethics lawyer now leading dozens of lawsuits against the Trump administration, agreed within hours to represent the agents pro bono, along with Mark Zaid, a veteran whistleblower attorney. For more firepower, the two approached the giant Chicago-based law firm Winston & Strawn, which has a history of providing free representation to people and organizations that squared off against Trump’s first administration.
But Winston declined to represent the FBI agents, three people with knowledge of the matter said. It was one of several cases Winston turned down in quick succession, they added, that would have pitted the firm against an openly retributive president.
Some of the country’s largest law firms have declined to represent clients challenging the Trump administration, more than a dozen attorneys and nonprofit leaders told ProPublica, while others have sought to avoid any clients that Trump might perceive as his enemies. That includes both clients willing to pay the firms’ steep rates, and those who receive free representation. Big Law firms are also refusing to take on legal work involving environmental protections, LGBTQ+ rights and police accountability or to represent elected Democrats and federal workers purged in Trump’s war on the “deep state.” Advocacy groups say this is beginning to hamper their efforts to challenge the Trump administration.
Their fears intensified after Trump signed a battery of executive orders aimed at punishing top firms over old associations with his adversaries. But as the Winston episode shows, Big Law began to back away from some clients almost the minute he returned to power. The country’s top firms remain deeply wary, even though the president has lost all four initial court challenges to those executive orders.
“The President’s Policy is working as designed,” said a lawsuit the American Bar Association filed against the administration in June. “Even as federal judges have ruled over and over that the Law Firm Orders are plainly unconstitutional, law firms that once proudly contributed thousands of hours of pro bono work to a host of causes — including causes championed by the ABA — have withdrawn from such work because it is disfavored by the Administration.”
The bar association itself has struggled to find representation, the lawsuit said. One unnamed firm, which has represented the association since the 1980s in lawsuits related to ABA’s accreditation of law schools, “is no longer willing to represent the ABA in any litigation against or potentially adverse to the Administration and its policies.” Sidley Austin, the sixth-ranked corporate firm by revenue in the world, has represented the ABA in at least five lawsuits over its accreditation practices since 1989.
The ABA and Susman Godfrey, which is representing the association in its lawsuit against the administration, declined to comment. Winston, Sidley and the White House did not respond to questions sent in writing.
Trump’s grievances with Big Law stem partly from its role in blocking his first-term agenda. In his executive order targeting Jenner & Block, a firm with close ties to the Democratic Party that fought Trump on transgender rights and immigration, he assailed the firm for allegedly “abus[ing] its pro bono practice to engage in activities that undermine justice.” Another firm, WilmerHale, was where former Special Counsel Robert Mueller worked before and after leading the Russian interference investigation.
The executive orders barred attorneys working for the firms from entering federal buildings where they represent clients, terminated the firms’ government contracts, revoked partners’ security clearances and required government contractors to disclose if they work with the targeted firms. Perkins Coie, one of Trump’s first targets, began to lose business “within hours,” its suit said. The judge who halted the executive order against WilmerHale wrote that the firm “faces crippling losses and its very survival is at stake.”
“I just think that the law firms have to behave themselves,” Trump said at a press conference in late March.
Nine corporate law firms behaved themselves in the form of reaching public settlements with Trump. The deals require them to provide $940 million in total of pro bono support for Trump-approved causes. There has been no public indication of the White House calling on them to perform specific work, and Trump has not released any new executive orders against firms since April.
Yet organizations that challenge the government are still feeling the chill.
“There’s been a real, noticeable shift,” said Lauren Bonds, the executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, a national nonprofit that brings lawsuits over alleged police abuse and was a frequent pro bono client of Big Law.
In November, as soon as Trump won reelection, a top firm that was helping NPAP develop a lawsuit against a city’s police force abruptly stopped attending all planning calls, Bonds said. Later, the firm became one of the nine that struck a deal with Trump, after which the firm half-heartedly told Bonds, she said, that it would reconsider the case in the future. Bonds declined to identify the firm.
Activist nonprofits have long relied on free representation because they typically lack the resources to mount major lawsuits on their own. Civil rights cases in particular are complex undertakings usually lasting years. Many call for hundreds of hours spent deposing witnesses and performing research, as well as upfront costs of tens of thousands of dollars. Big Law, with its deep ranks of attorneys and paying clients to subsidize their volunteer work, is in a unique position to help. In exchange, the work burnishes the firm’s reputation and serves as a draw for idealistic young associates.
“I know that [cases] have been shot down that in Trump Administration 1, firms would crawl over each other to get our name at the top of the case so that we could get the New York Times headline,” said a Big Law partner whose firm has not been one of Trump’s targets. “That’s the environment. What’s become radioactive has grown from a very small number of things to anything this administration and Trump might notice and get angry about.”
Jill Collen Jefferson, the president and founder of Julian, a small nonprofit that investigates civil rights violations, has felt the chill too.
Three years ago, Julian partnered with the elite law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, the country’s No. 1 corporate firm most years by per-partner revenue, to bring lawsuits against the town of Lexington, Mississippi, and its police force for racial discrimination.
“It wasn’t hard at all to get help,” she recalled. George Floyd’s death had raised public support for police accountability, and the details Julian was exposing in Lexington were especially grim. The police chief was secretly recorded promising to cover for a fellow officer if he killed someone “in cold blood.” A DOJ investigation released in 2024 found Lexington police operated in “a system where officers can relentlessly violate the law.” (The town’s board fired the chief, Sam Dobbins, over the recording. In a court filing, Dobbins said he was not guilty of “any actionable conduct” and denied Julian’s characterization of the recording, asserting that “the recording speaks for itself.” Julian’s litigation is still ongoing.)
Since January, when Trump began gutting police accountability measures, Jefferson’s efforts to recruit pro bono help have yielded almost no commitments. The official explanation many firms offer is that they lack the capacity to help, she said, though lawyers at those firms have privately told her that was false. Wachtell did not respond to a request for comment.
Jefferson now doubts Julian’s ability to bring a police abuse lawsuit it had planned to file before the statute of limitations expires this month.
“It’s been a nightmare,” she said. “People don’t want to stand up, and because of that, people are suffering.”
NPAP ultimately joined forces with another civil rights organization to salvage the case after its co-counsel disappeared from planning calls last November. But the suit will be “less robust” without the firepower of a major law firm, Bonds said. And NPAP’s capacity to file future suits is in question. Civil rights attorneys in NPAP’s network have developed novel legal theories for challenging arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement under state constitutions, but they lack enough outside partnerships.
“There are cases that aren’t being brought at a time when civil rights abuses are maybe at the highest they’ve been in modern times,” Bonds said.
Big Law was often in the vanguard of fighting Trump’s first administration. After he signed the 2017 travel ban affecting several predominantly Muslim countries, partners from Kirkland & Ellis and Davis Polk rushed alongside hundreds of other lawyers to international airports to help travelers stuck in limbo. Kirkland teamed up with the LGBTQ+ legal advocacy organization Lambda Legal to challenge Trump’s transgender military ban.
Now, Davis Polk is among the many firms that are avoiding pro bono immigration cases, The New York Times reported. Kirkland, by some measures the top moneymaker in Big Law, entered a deal with Trump to provide $125 million in pro bono work, and the firm is notably absent from Lambda’s nearly identical challenge to Trump’s reinstated ban on transgender military service members. Kirkland and Davis Polk did not respond to requests for comment.
Winston & Strawn’s annual pro bono reports show how its focus — or at least, its language — has changed. The firm’s 2023 impact report highlighted its advocacy on behalf of a transgender competitive marathoner. “I am also pleased to report that Winston dedicated 30% of our pro bono hours to racial justice and equity matters in 2023,” nearly double its share in 2020, wrote Angela Smedley, the pro bono committee chair. The 2024 report, published after Trump’s reelection, contained zero mentions of “equity” and spotlighted attorneys who helped small nonprofits navigate “complex mergers and business challenges.”
Eisen and Zaid, the lawyers representing the FBI agents, themselves became the target of a presidential memorandum in March that revoked their access to classified material. Both have aggravated Trump for years. Zaid represented a whistleblower who helped bring about Trump’s first impeachment.
Zaid sued to restore his security clearance in May, in a case that is ongoing. His lawyer, Abbe Lowell, is a high-profile defense attorney who left Winston this spring in order to form his own firm. Lowell said his goal is to represent those “unlawfully and inappropriately targeted.” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who won a fraud judgment against Trump and is now a target of his DOJ, was one of his first clients.
“The Administration’s attempt at retribution against Mark for doing his job — representing whistleblowers without regard to politics — is as illegal as its similar efforts against law firms that have been enjoined in every case,” Lowell wrote in an email to ProPublica.
Good-government groups and small and mid-sized law firms have stepped into the breach, helping to file hundreds of lawsuits against the Trump administration. And the four firms that sued Trump over his executive orders are devoting thousands of pro bono hours to others challenging the administration. Perkins Coie, for example, has replaced Kirkland as Lambda Legal’s partner in challenging Trump’s transgender military ban.
But until they build up the capacity to fully replace Big Law, Bonds said, some of the administration’s legally dubious actions will go unchallenged.
“There’s a financial resources piece that we’re really missing when we can’t engage a firm,” Bonds said. “Even if there’s a big case and we feel really confident about it, we’ll just have to pass on it.”
