Another win for Democracy Docket!
The Department of Justice (DOJ) abandoned its defense of President Donald Trump’s retribution campaign against law firms that challenged his political agenda or represented his political opponents over the years.
This makes the big law firms that rolled over the administration look even more weak and cowardly and feckless than they did before.
Well, hang on, maybe I spoke in haste. They were completely weak and cowardly and feckless before; I’m not sure they could look worse. But somehow they do!
The Department of Justice (DOJ) abandoned its defense of President Donald Trump’s retribution campaign against law firms that challenged his political agenda or represented his political opponents over the years.
The DOJ dropped its appeals of four lower court rulings that found Trump’s executive orders sanctioning Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie* and Susman Godfrey were unlawful and issued specifically to punish the firms for exercising their constitutional rights.
Last year, Trump attempted to paralyze the firms’ ability to represent clients in dealings with the federal government by signing a series of orders that terminated contracts and stripped their lawyers of security clearances and access to government buildings.
In addition to firms, Trump also targeted individual lawyers through his orders.
The DOJ dropping its defense of the orders represents a major win for the rule of law. By targeting firms based on the clients they represented, Trump’s orders represented a direct assault on the country’s adversarial system of justice.
Some law firms — including Paul, Weiss — folded in the face of the orders and pledged tens of millions of dollars worth of pro bono legal work for causes favored by the White House in order to get Trump’s sanctions lifted.
Other firms successfully sued. The first to do so was Perkins Coie, which argued that it was being illegally targeted because it challenged the Trump campaign’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and for its work on voting rights cases.
“The government’s decision to dismiss its appeal is clearly the right one,” WilmerHale said in a statement. “As we said from the outset, our challenge to the unlawful Executive Order was about defending our clients’ constitutional right to retain the counsel of their choosing and defending the rule of law. We are pleased these foundational principles were vindicated.”
Several district court judges overseeing the suits gave impassioned defenses of the rule of law and warned that Trump’s orders risked intimidating attorneys or law firms that might represent the president’s political opponents.
In a March hearing on Perkins Coie’s complaint, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, said the government’s defense of Trump’s order sent “chills” down her spine. A DOJ attorney had claimed that the president could also issue a retaliatory order against Williams & Connolly, a major law firm that was representing Perkins Coie in its suit.
Talk about people and institutions rising to the occasion. Where would we be without Marc Elias and Democracy Docket?
I would love to hear from our legal peeps about whether and how this has affected the world of big law. Have the big firms that rolled over lost standing in the legal world?
I’m tired. You’re tired. We’re all tired. But we have to keep on fighting the good fight.
Steve LaBonne
I regret to inform you…
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
I hope the court rejects their about face.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: Moi aussi.
Timill
@Steve LaBonne: You should have seen the ketchup fly when they told him…
stinger
WaterGirl — so pleased that Balloon Juice reached its goal for Mary Peltola!
What’s next?
sab
What was the asterix on Perkins Coie about. Didn’t both Barak Obama and Michelle Robinson work in their Chicago office?
Suzanne
@sab: No, they worked at Sidley Austin.
raven
And from down here:
A father whose son is accused of fatally shooting two teachers and two classmates at a Georgia high school in 2024 was found guilty of murder, manslaughter and other charges he faced after providing his son the gun allegedly used in the shooting.
sab
@raven: In Georgia! Don’t arm your disgruntled adolescents. Such a novel thought.
sab
@Suzanne: Thank you. I have been wrong on this for years.
Baud
@raven:
Good. Thanks for the news.
JaySinWA
@Steve LaBonne: No backsies. Hopefully.
kindness
I read elsewhere the DOJ has changed course & decided to appeal those losses as of this morning.
Baud
Ramalama
@raven: I was thinking of how precarious things are when you’re responsible for children, the things they do, and so on. I say this as a proud weird auntie. And then I read the article,(paywall with Apple News, sorry)
Parfigliano
@raven: The law….
Dad buys kid gun and kid uses gun to kill other kid so dad gets found guilty of crime along with son.
Meanwhile gun manufacturer and gun dealer who sold dad gun count their profits and sell different gun to someone else.
sab
@Parfigliano: Don’t arm your angry adolescent. This isn’t rocket science
ETA My stepchildren were angry and nuts in their teens. Now in their forties the are lovely people.
raven
@Ramalama: The kid had a shrine to school shooters.
Skerry
@raven: More of this please
Belafon
@Parfigliano: There are lots of things gun dealers should be held more responsibility for, but, unless stupid dad had a record, they’re not responsible for this.
Ramalama
@raven: I mean, Jesus.
Maybe if they get sent to the same max-prison, prison-max they will become closer together.
raven
@sab: I was an angry teen and the Army gave me weapons.
narya
Since it’s an OT: the guys who refinished my windows and sunroom door are bringing them back/installing them today through Thursday. They do such meticulous work; I’m excited to see the finished installation! The ONLY thing this company does is restore windows in old houses/buildings, and they’re so good at it.
sab
@raven: Didn’t it also control your access to them when you weren’t in actual combat?
Baud
But no health insurance for you.
sab
@narya: I am wanting to do that in our 1960s new-to-us house. Keep us informed.
SFAW
@Steve LaBonne:
CNN is reporting that President Miller had a big mad when he heard the DOJ was not pursuing it further, hence the reversal.
No doubt some intrepid reporter will ask Piggy “Why did President Miller order the reversal?”
Yeah, right …
sab
@Baud: We are trying for Canadian citizenship because great-grandmother was Canadian. The new lost Canadian law is on our side. I hope they don’t think we want it for the healthcare.
I want it because I always wanted to be Canadian but I am too old now to actually make the move.
cmorenc
@Timill:
I’ll bet soon as Trump had smashed the ketchup against the wall, he was on the phone throwing verbal ketchup at Pam Bondi yelling at her that unless she about-faced immediately, she would soon be the ex-USAG back in Florida, with no MAGA welfare job prospects, trying to make a living as an attorney out of a shitty shopping-mall office defending walk-in clients in traffic court
Kudos to the federal judges upholding the rule of law by standing up to Trump, although it’s troubling that the longer he remains in office appointing still more fedeal judges, his model appointee is the likes of Ailleen Cannon, not the likes of these judges upholding the rule of law.
rikyrah
those who capitulated and didn’t fight, should never be trusted again.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: Does anybody believe they’ll pay out on claims? I bet no shipping company believes it.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
I’d sooner trust United Healthcare to pay claims.
MisterForkbeard
@SFAW: In another administration, the news that the President had personally intervened with the DOJ to explicitly cause them to go after his enemies would be news.
Baud
@MisterForkbeard:
BREAKING: TRUMP SUCCESSFULLY OWNS LIBS!
MattF
OT. The whales of Wall Street are feeling uneasy. NYT gift link.
Gin & Tonic
Came home last night from a long weekend with two of the grandkids, and my dear wife said she noticed a funky smell. We made nothing of it and went to bed, being tired from a long trip. This morning I went to get my usual glass of orange juice, and noticed it wasn’t as cold as normal. So at some point in our absence, the refrigerator shit the bed and we just didn’t notice it yesterday. Since it’s somewhere between 15 and 20 years old, repairing it seems pointless, so we spent the morning trying to salvage what can be salvaged, moving stuff to the (smaller) basement fridge, and then going shopping. Not how I wanted to spend the day, but sometimes you get handed a lemon.
Jerszy
This is, in effect, an entirely different type of News Item.
The DOJ attempted to do the right & smart thing – even if only to best-utilize resources – and quietly cut bait on a loser case.
But the media trumpeted it, one of T’s more-evil henchmen brought it to his attention, and – as a consequence of the coverage itself – the DOJ is re-charged with continuing to wage the loser, bad-faith case, solely to harass and inflict more financial pain on the victim-parties as long as possible.
narya
@sab: here’s a link to their website: tmcwindows.com/
sorry; not on a good device for embedding the link
WaterGirl
@stinger: The short answer is that we are in touch with several of the organizations we have supported in the past, and I should have some points up this week with the broad outlines for our 2026 efforts.
Thanks for asking!
WaterGirl
@raven: That is good news. Accountability.
Ohio Mom
@sab: A friend just —. today in fact — received citizenship in Austria for herself and her two sons — her mother was Austrian. Now they have to figure out what to do about her husband. I don’t know what part of Eastern Europe his family hailed from but obviously it wasn’t Austria.
We spent a few minutes marveling at the irony of Friend being relieved to have this potential ticket out of the U.S. She only exists because as a young child, her mother was sent out of Austria on the Kindertransport*. It’s a wierd circle to think about closing.
* The Kindertransport was a rescue operation by the English, where Jewish children from Nazi occupied areas were put on trains to England and placed with foster families. A lot of them never saw their families again.
I don’t know if Friend’s mother was in that group or not but I do know the trauma of the separation haunted her her whole life. She was a very erratic mother.
WaterGirl
@Ohio Mom: Tragic.
MattF
@WaterGirl: It goes beyond accountability. The shooter, a 14-year old boy, was obviously mentally ill and may have been seeking help. His dad bought him an assault weapon. I just don’t know how to deal with that.
Eolirin
@MattF: I’m deeply disturbed that he felt the only way he could bond with his clearly troubled son was with a tool designed for slaughter. I think it speaks to a deeper pathology in our culture.
KrackenJack
@Gin & Tonic: My Jr High science teacher was a marine biologist, so he taught anatomy with frozen squid. The freezers were on a circuit with a light switch clearly marked and taped up. One long weekend someone turned it off. They closed off that end of the corridor for cleaning. However, when the attempted to shift one of the freezers it sloshed over – sending everyone fleeing along with some projectile vomiting. Ah, those halcyon days…
Matt McIrvin
@Jerszy: As sadistic cops say when arresting the innocent, you can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride.
And with this Supreme Court there’s always a chance they’ll win on repeated appeal. They just have to be able to push it all the way to the top.
WaterGirl
@MattF: Yeah, the whole thing is fucked up. These parents who think giving a gun to a troubled kid is a good idea – it’s mind boggling. I think it indicates a pretty bizarre relationship with guns.
catclub
I thought it said keep up the food fight.
raven
@sab: Yep, everywhere I was had weapons secured.
rikyrah
@Baud:
They will never see a phucking dime of that money
Mingobat (f/k/a KareninGa)
@raven: I wonder from a legal standpoint, though — can the state say Colin Gray is responsible, and charge his kid as an adult at the same time? If the state says “the kid is old enough to know right from wrong,” then inherent in that is “he should know not to use a gun on his classmates.” Which would logically lead to asking if it even matters where Colt got the gun.
I mean, yeah, this guy is a useless waste of protoplasm and his stupidity has ruined lives. But I wonder if this is going to be a big appeals court mess.
Ruckus
@Eolirin:
I thinkIt speaks to a deeper pathology in our culture.
Fixed it for you.
Geminid
US officials have identified four soldiers who were killed Sunday in Kuwait, in an Iranian drone strike:
Captain Cody A. Khork, 35, from Winter Haven, Florida;
1st Sergeant Noah A. Tietjens, 42, from Bellevue, Nebraska;
1st Sergeant Nicole M. Amor, 39, from White Bear Lake, Minnesota; and
Sgt. Declan J. Cody, 20, from West Des Moine, Iowa,
Reports are that they working in a temporary building surrounded by concrete blast walls, but with no protection above.
scav
@Mingobat (f/k/a KareninGa): Why must responsibility be binary, one or the other? Can’t we charge both the drunk driver and the bartender who kept serving them?
Ruckus
@raven:
In the USN, (a very long time ago…..Vietnam era) I carried a loaded .45 pistol on in port watch, no matter where the port was. Now slightly later on, when I was in the Shore Patrol for a short time, we only carried a nightstick.
Mingobat (f/k/a KareninGa)
@scav: I’m fine with that for the most part, but I wonder if the state is contradicting itself here, and whether that will matter at any point in the future.
I live about 15 minutes from the school. This community was absolutely body slammed by the shooting, as you can imagine. I just really want to know the state isn’t screwing this up.
raven
@Mingobat (f/k/a KareninGa): Proly
WaterGirl
@Mingobat (f/k/a KareninGa): Just yesterday I was thinking about those sweet exchanges with your pets that you used to post.
Jackie
@Geminid:
OMG! Winter Haven is my new home. It’s not a large community; population is between 55,000 and 64,600 residents. I’m going to have to watch the local news this evening. That’s how I’m getting acquainted with my new community. This will be sad, major news for this community.
WendyBinFL
@narya: Congrats on your home improvements! When my husband and I bought our current place 16 years ago, we had the whole house repainted inside and out. Last month, we had the exterior repainted, and our double front doors refurbished, with new hardware and the wood sanded and revarnished. SOOO worthwhile! A new friend visited for the first time and volunteered, “Oh, your doors are so beautiful!”
Mingobat (f/k/a KareninGa)
@WaterGirl: I post them on Facebook a lot. I just got kind of tired of WordPress and never went back to it.
Iggy’s 14 now, diabetic, had cataracts and went blind for a couple of months, had to lose his left eye but they restored the sight in his right, has a heart murmur, medication to keep his liver values in check, had two ACL surgeries on the same leg, and was just diagnosed with canine cognitive dysfunction (doggie dementia — I’m still in denial about this diagnosis, but two vets aren’t). All this in the past two years. But he’s still here. He’s a tough little boy.
I might post on the old blog again after his final vet visit, whenever that is. I hope not for a while.
sab
@narya: We found with our last house that replacing windows saves much more on heating costs than better insulation ever could.
narya
@sab: one of the neighbors actually replaced the old windows with something new (they had to maintain the look), but I wanted to restore the old wood (possibly old growth wood).
kalakal
@narya: Congrats – we’ve just had 3 doors and 2 skylights replaced. Florida has a Safe Florida program whereby you can a grant to storm proof your home. In our case they’ll pay 2/3rds of up to $15,000. So we spent $15,000*. We spent a small fortune a few years ago doing all the windows and French doors at the back but it really needed doing – they dated back to 1983 and were a real danger in hurricane central. You’ll save a lot on heating/ cooling costs and it really cuts down on noise levels
*now we wait for the cheque
Jerszy
@Matt McIrvin: Yup – hadn’t heard that saw since doing crim defense in the mid-90s.
And, yep – when the SC is crooked in your direction, everything can just be reduced to a cost of doing business.