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pam bondi
Trump Lawyers Behaving Badly
The White House attorneys who drafted Trump’s executive orders targeting Big Law firms—and the Justice Department lawyers trying to defend them—should consider the oath they took to defend the Constitution.
May 04, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi “to seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation,” including legal filings for improper purposes and statements that are not based on evidence.
Bondi should start with the White House attorneys who drafted Trump’s executive orders targeting Big Law firms—and her Justice Department lawyers trying to defend them.
Did Real Lawyers Write These Orders?
Cloaked in empty rhetoric about “conduct detrimental to critical American interests,” retribution is at the core of Trump’s edicts.
For example, the only detailed rationale for Trump’s Jenner & Block order was the firm’s association with Andrew Weissmann, who returned to the firm in 2020 after completing his work for Special Counsel Robert Mueller on the Trump-Russia investigation. Other than the Weissmann diatribe, Trump’s order merely recited vague and unsupported assertions about alleged “partisan ‘lawfare,’” “abuse of its pro bono practice,” and “racial discrimination.”
But on that basis, Trump directed all federal agencies to: 1) limit the entire firm’s engagement with federal employees; 2) limit the entire firm’s access to federal buildings; 3) suspend the entire firm’s security clearances; 4) terminate the firm’s government contracts; and 5) require all government contractors to disclose any business that they do with Jenner—with an eye toward terminating those contracts as well.
Zealous advocacy on behalf of any client—even the president of the United States—has limits.
Four law firms have challenged Trump’s similar orders. In stark language, four separate federal courts have granted immediate relief:
- “Disturbing”
- “It sends little chills down my spine.”
- “It threatens to significantly undermine our entire legal system and the ability of all people to access justice.”
- “There is no doubt this retaliatory action chills speech and legal advocacy, or that it qualifies as a constitutional harm.”
- “The framers of our Constitution would see this as a shocking abuse of power.”
In three recent hearings, Deputy Associate Attorney General Richard Lawson—Bondi’s longtime Florida colleague and Trump loyalist—struggled to answer judges’ basic questions about the orders targeting Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and Jenner & Block:
- Do law firms have to make deals with Trump to avoid executive orders?
- “I can’t speak to that.”
- Are the deals in writing?
- “I have not been privy to this.”
- Has Trump achieved $1 billion in deals yet?
- “I do not know.”
When Lawson argued that Trump could target Jenner because it “discriminates against its employees based on race,” U.S. District Court Judge John Bates, an appointee of President George W. Bush, snapped back, “Give me a break.”
In fairness to Lawson, Trump and his White House attorneys who wrote the orders hadn’t given him much to work with.
Jenner: A Case Study
Take a closer look at Jenner’s claims, followed by selected highlights of the government’s 37-page response:
The First Amendment:
- Prohibits retaliatory actions for protected speech and viewpoint discrimination;
- Bars government interference with a client’s right to associate; and
- Prevents the government from imposing unconstitutional conditions on access to government services and benefits.
The government says that Trump was just exercising his free speech rights. It asserts that Jenner’s lawsuit “carries with it a dangerous risk of muzzling the Executive.” The government also argues that Jenner’s speech is not protected insofar as it “consists of employment practices involving racial discrimination [favoring women and minorities].”
The Fifth and Sixth Amendments guarantee a litigant the unfettered right to the effective assistance of counsel of his or her choice.
The government says that: 1) clients (not law firms) have to assert such claims; 2) any impact of barring Jenner from federal buildings or its clients from federal contracts is speculative; and 3) Trump’s order does not violate those rights in any event.
Due Process is required before the government can deprive a person of liberty or property interests. It requires notice of the claims, clarity about their meaning, and the opportunity to be heard before the deprivation occurs. None of that occurred. The resulting harm, including damage to the firm’s reputation, was immediate and ongoing.
The government says that: 1) the order is sufficiently clear; 2) it has not yet harmed the firm; and 3) the firm will receive any required notice before the order actually injures it.
Equal Protection requires the government to treat similarly-situated entities similarly or, at a minimum, have a rational basis for failing to do so.
The government insists that Jenner is not being singled out for unfair treatment.
The Constitution’s Separation of Powers prohibits Trump from acting as accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner. But he wore all of those hats in his executive order.
The government says that Trump’s order is an appropriate exercise of presidential power.
Attention All Trump Lawyers: It’s Time for a Gut Check
Zealous advocacy on behalf of any client—even the president of the United States—has limits. Upon admission to the bar, every attorney swears an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution and to uphold the rule of law. A code of professional ethics requires any legal argument to be “warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument” for changing it. Attorneys must ensure that their statements about facts are “reasonably based” on evidentiary support.
Trump’s retaliatory orders seek to intimidate lawyers and law firms into submission and thereby undermine the legal system. His own conduct refutes his lawyers’ contrary arguments. As other firms have capitulated, pledged “political neutrality,” and collectively committed to provide almost $1 billion in free legal services to Trump-designated causes, his executive orders’ stated concerns about those firms’ “conduct detrimental to critical American interests” miraculously disappeared.
Trump even boasted, “And I agree they’ve done nothing wrong. But what the hell—they give me a lot of money, considering.”
In one of the many amicus briefs supporting Jenner’s challenge, more than 800 law firms—including Deputy Associate Attorney General Lawson’s former firm, Manatt, Phelps, & Phillips—urged that Trump’s executive order “should be permanently enjoined as a violation of core First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment guarantees, as well as bedrock separation-of-powers principles.”
“But something even more fundamental is at stake… [Trump’s] Orders pose a grave threat to our system of constitutional governance and to the rule of law itself.”
I don’t know what Trump’s lawyers see when they look into a mirror. But I know this: History will not be kind to them.
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Reporters Without Borders Sounds Alarm Over Trump Effort to 'Bring the Press Into Line'
RSF says Trump's moves "have jeopardized the country's news outlets and indicate that he intends to follow through on his threats, setting up a potential crisis for American journalism."
May 02, 2025
Press freedom in the United States has fallen to its lowest level since Reporters Without Borders began publishing its annual ranking more than 20 years ago, with President Donald Trump's return to power "greatly exacerbating the situation," RSF said Friday.
The U.S. fell from 55th to 57th place on RSF's World Press Freedom Index, marking the second straight year that the situation in the country which lists freedom of the press first in its Bill of Rights has been classified as "problematic." The report comes ahead of World Press Freedom Day on May 3.
The U.S. has been trending downward on RSF's index since 2013, when it ranked 32nd in global press freedom. A decade later, it had fallen to 45th place before plunging to 55th place last year amid Trump's attacks on the media.
"Trump was elected to a second term after a campaign in which he denigrated the press on a daily basis and made explicit threats to weaponize the federal government against the media," the report states.
Press freedom in the United States has hit a record low, according to the latest World Press Freedom Index published annually by Reporters Without Borders.
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— Axios (@axios.com) May 1, 2025 at 9:03 PM
"His early moves in his second mandate to politicize the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), banThe Associated Press from the White House, or dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, for example, have jeopardized the country's news outlets and indicate that he intends to follow through on his threats, setting up a potential crisis for American journalism," the publication continues, accusing Trump of using "false economic pretexts" to "bring the press into line."
"The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides broad protections for the press. However, no meaningful press freedom legislation has been passed at the national level in recent years despite the country's consistent slide on the Press Freedom Index," the report notes. "The PRESS Act, a federal shield law, failed to pass for a second successive time in 2024. More than a dozen states and communities have proposed or enacted laws to limit journalists' access to public spaces, including barring them from legislative meetings and preventing them from recording the police."
RSF continued:
Economic constraints have a considerable impact on journalists. Roughly one-third of the American newspapers operating in 2005 have now shuttered. While some public media outlets, and radio stations in particular, have been able to offset this decline thanks to online subscription models, others have found ways to sustain growth through individual donations. Massive waves of layoffs swept the U.S. media throughout 2023 and 2024 and have continued into 2025, affecting both local newsrooms and major legacy outlets. Many parts of the country are now considered news deserts, with the disappearance of local news outlets reaching crisis levels. Since 2022, more than 8,000 journalists have been laid off in the U.S.
Furthermore, "more Americans have no trust in the media than trust it a fair amount. Online harassment, particularly towards women and minorities, is also a serious issue for journalists and can impact their quality of life and safety."
"Politicians' open disdain for the media has trickled down to the public," RSF added. "Journalists reporting on the ground can face harassment, intimidation, and assault while working. When covering demonstrations, journalists are sometimes attacked and physically assaulted by protestors or wrongfully arrested by police. According to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, there were 49 journalist arrests in 2024 compared to only 15 in 2023. The last journalist to be killed in the course of his work was Dylan Lyons in February of 2023."
RSF paints a grim picture for journalism around the world.
"The conditions for practicing journalism are bad in half of the world's countries," as "less than 1% of the world's population lives in a country where press freedom is fully guaranteed," the report states.
Noting that economic self-sufficiency is critical to a free press, RSF editorial director Anne Bocandé said in a statement that "guaranteeing freedom, independence,s and plurality in today's media landscape requires stable and transparent financial conditions."
"Without economic independence, there can be no free press," Bocandé continued. "When news media are financially strained, they are drawn into a race to attract audiences at the expense of quality reporting, and can fall prey to the oligarchs and public authorities who seek to exploit them. When journalists are impoverished, they no longer have the means to resist the enemies of the press—those who champion disinformation and propaganda."
"The media economy must urgently be restored to a state that is conducive to journalism and ensures the production of reliable information, which is inherently costly," she added. "Solutions exist and must be deployed on a large scale. The media's financial independence is a necessary condition for ensuring free, trustworthy information that serves the public interest."
RSF's new rankings come days after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi ended a Biden administration policy that strictly limited the Justice Department's authority to seize journalists' records and compel them to testify in leak investigations.
On Wednesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) published a report on Trump's first 100 days in office, which the group said were "marked by a flurry of executive actions that have created a chilling effect and have the potential to curtail media freedoms."
"It is disturbing that, on the eve of #WorldPressFreedomDay, the Trump administration has dealt major blows to journalists and the public they serve." — Katherine Jacobsen, CPJ's U.S., Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator
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— Committee to Protect Journalists (@pressfreedom.bsky.social) May 2, 2025 at 9:09 AM
"From denying access to upending respect for the independence of a free press to vilifying news organizations to threatening reprisals, this administration has begun to exert its power to punish or reward based on coverage," CPJ said. "Whether in the states or on the streets, this behavior is setting a new standard for how the public can treat journalists."
"The uncertainty and fear resulting from these actions have caused requests for safety advice to increase as journalists and newsrooms aim to prepare for what might be next," the group added. "These moves represent a notable escalation from the first Trump administration, which also pursued banning and deriding elements of the press. After nearly a decade of repeating insults and falsehoods, and filing lawsuits, Trump has normalized disdain for media to an alarming degree."
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Trump DOJ Attacks 'Fundamental Fabric' of Democracy by Gutting Voting Rights Unit
"The upheaval and loss of experience will leave the division unable to enforce the nation's civil rights laws," said one voting rights advocate.
Apr 29, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's Justice Department has reportedly gutted the leadership of the agency's voting rights unit and ordered attorneys to drop all active cases, the latest signal that the administration is hellbent on undercutting civil rights protections and abandoning federal enforcement of key election laws.
The Guardianreported Monday that Trump appointees at the Department of Justice "have removed all of the senior civil servants working as managers in the department's Voting Section," reassigning most of them to a DOJ office that handles employee complaints.
"Political appointees have also instructed career employees to dismiss all of their active cases without meeting with them and offering a rationale—a significant break with the department's practices and norms," The Guardian added.
Angelina Clapp, campaign advocacy manager for election protection at Issue One, said in a statement Monday that "our democracy must be accessible for all eligible voters to participate in and make their voices heard, but these recent moves by President Trump's appointees at the Justice Department take us further away from those goals."
"This decision to dismiss all active cases threatens to erode public trust in the very department tasked with protecting Americans' freedom to vote and sends the message that the rule of law is not being upheld," said Clapp. "These actions are part of a broader trend of the second Trump administration dismantling and interfering with federal agencies dedicated to protecting our elections and democracy."
"In the end," Clapp added, "all Americans will suffer as a result of decisions like these because taken together, they undermine the fundamental fabric of our democracy—the idea that the government should be by, of, and for the people."
"If regular Americans think that this administration is going to protect their rights, they're just wrong."
The DOJ's Voting Section is housed within the department's Civil Rights Division, which is now led by Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer who aided Trump's unsuccessful bid to overturn his 2020 election loss. Dhillon, who is not a civil rights attorney, was confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate in a largely party-line vote earlier this month.
Since her confirmation, she has moved quickly to do Trump's bidding at the department, prompting a mass exodus of lawyers from the Civil Rights Division. CNNreported Monday that roughly 70% of division staffers are "expected to accept a second offer to federal workers that allows them to resign from their positions and be paid through September."
Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, wrote Monday that "when the career people, the experts at civil and criminal enforcement in this area, are removed from their positions, there is no one there to protect us."
"And as we've learned from Trump's deportations to El Salvador, when due process is denied to one person, we are all at risk," Vance added. "The news from the Justice Department tonight, on the eve of Trump's 100th day in office, is deeply disturbing."
The departures come after Dhillon issued a series of internal memos indicating, as NBC News put it, "a 180-degree shift in the direction of the department from its original mission: enforcing laws that prohibit discrimination in hiring, housing, and voting rights."
One unnamed Civil Rights Division lawyer who recently left their DOJ toldNBC News that "if regular Americans think that this administration is going to protect their rights, they're just wrong."
The progressive advocacy group Common Cause noted Tuesday that the DOJ's Voting Section "enforces the federal laws protecting the right to vote, including the Voting Rights Act, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act, and the Civil Rights Act."
Omar Noureldin, Common Cause's senior vice president for policy and litigation, said Monday that "the Trump administration’s gutting of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division is doing profound and lasting damage to the protection of voting rights in the United States."
"The removal and reassignment of the section's leadership and the dismissal of cases are themselves attacks on the voting rights of every American," said Noureldin. "Attorney General Pam Bondi's systematic removal of career attorneys and staff is not confined to the voting section—it extends to the entire Civil Rights Division. The upheaval and loss of experience will leave the division unable to enforce the nation's civil rights laws."
This story has been updated to correct Angelina Clapp's title.
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