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    Trump order targeting law firm Perkins Coie is unconstitutional, judge rules

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    A federal judge on Friday permanently struck down Donald Trump’s executive order that targeted the firm Perkins Coie, which once worked with his 2016 presidential election rival Hillary Clinton, after declaring in an extraordinary ruling that the order was unconstitutional and unlawful.The decision from the US district judge Beryl Howell, which criticized virtually every aspect of the order in a 102-page opinion, marks a major victory for Perkins Coie and could be used as a model by other judges weighing cases brought by other law firms in similar orders.“No American president has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue,” she wrote, adding: “In purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’”Howell found in particular that the executive order violated the first, fifth and sixth amendments and permanently barred its implementation. She also raised alarm at other law firms that opted to strike deals with the Trump administration rather than face the possibility of being targeted themselves.Perkins Coie was the first law firm to end up in the crosshairs of Trump’s executive orders aimed at law firms that terminated any government contracts and barred federal employees from engaging with its attorneys or allowing them access to federal buildings, including courthouses.The administration said at the time that Perkins Coie was a national security risk principally because it had hired Fusions GPS on behalf of the Clinton presidential campaign in 2016, which produced the “dossier” that pushed discredited claims about Trump’s connections to Russia.Howell rejected that contention outright in her decision, citing Trump’s own attacks against Perkins Coie and the stunning breadth of everyone from the attorneys to the assistants at the firm facing restrictions as evidence that the executive order was retaliatory.The provision in the executive order that barred its lawyers from entering federal government buildings and engaging with government employees in particular was not speculative, Howell said, in part because the government had cancelled meetings within days of it being issued.The attempt by the administration to argue that it was limited to only when such access would threaten national security or in the national interest of the US was unconvincing, Howell said, since the executive order itself said working with Perkins Coie was not in the national interest.“That is unconstitutional retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, plain and simple,” she wrote.Howell also rebuked Trump over the requirement in the executive order for any private companies that had government contracts to disclose whether they had ever worked with Perkins Coie, regardless of whether it was related to their government contract work.The requirement, Howell suggested, was at odds with the first amendment protection to freely use any lawyer, since the need to disclose any possible work with Perkins Coie could mean firms that contracted with the government would be dissuaded from using them at all.And the order was unlawfully broad, Howell said, since it required disclosure “whether the contract is for crucial classified military equipment costing millions of dollars per item delivered or for paper clips costing pennies, and no matter whether the disclosure of association with plaintiff had anything to do with a government contract”.The Trump administration is almost certain to appeal to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit. The ruling comes weeks after Howell previously issued a temporary restraining order that blocked Trump’s order from taking effect after a hearing last month in federal district court in Washington.That temporary injunction followed an emergency lawsuit filed by Perkins Coie on the advice of Williams and Connolly, another elite firm in the nation’s capital known for taking cases against government overreach.Perkins Coie had initially reached out to the firm Quinn Emanuel, which has previously represented people in Trump’s orbit, including Elon Musk, the Trump Organization itself, and the New York mayor, Eric Adams, whose corruption charges were dropped by the justice department last month.But Quinn Emanuel declined to take Perkins Coie as a client, as its top partners decided not to become involved in a politically sensitive issue that could make themselves a target by association just as they have been on the rise as a power center in Washington DC.While other law firms discussed whether to file amicus briefs or declarations supporting Perkins Coie, the firm was ultimately taken on by Williams and Connolly. They advised Perkins Coie to ask for an emergency hearing and temporary restraining order, both of which Howell granted. More

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      Puerto Rico drops climate lawsuit after DoJ sues states to block threats to big oil

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      Puerto Rico has voluntarily dismissed its 2024 climate lawsuit against big oil, a Friday legal filing shows, just two days after the US justice department sued two states over planned litigation against oil companies for their role in the climate crisis.Puerto Rico’s lawsuit, filed in July, alleged that the oil and gas giants had misled the public about the climate dangers associated with their products. It came as part of a wave of litigation filed by dozens of US states, cities and municipalities in recent years.Donald Trump’s administration has pledged to put an end to these cases, which he has called “frivolous” and claimed are unconstitutional. In court filings on Wednesday, his justice department claimed the Clean Air Act “displaces” states’ ability to regulate greenhouse gas outside their borders.The agency specifically targeted Michigan, whose Democratic attorney general last year tapped private law firms to work on such a case, and Hawaii, whose Democratic governor filed its suit on Thursday. Officials from both states condemned the justice department’s filings.Friday’s filing from Puerto Rico did not list a reason for the lawsuit’s dismissal. The Guardian has contacted the territory’s attorney general’s office for comment and asked whether it was related to the Trump administration’s moves on Wednesday.Reached for comment, John Lamson, a spokesperson for the San Francisco-based law firm Sher Edling, which filed the 2024 suit on behalf of Puerto Rico said: “We serve under the direction and control, and at the pleasure, of our clients in all of our representations.”Puerto Rico in November elected as governor the Republican Jenniffer González-Colón, a Trump ally. In February, González-Colón tapped Janet Parra-Mercado as the territory’s new attorney general.Climate-accountability litigation has also faced recent attacks in the media. Last month, an oilfield services executive published an op-ed in Forbes saying the Puerto Rico lawsuit “may derail” efforts to improve grid reliability.Groups tied to the far-right legal architect Leonard Leo have also campaigned against the lawsuits. And just days before the voluntary dismissal, the rightwing, pro-fossil fuel advocacy group American Energy Institute (AEI) sent a letter to González-Colón, Fox News reported, calling for an end to climate-focused “coordinated lawfare”.“Their goal is to bankrupt energy companies or to leverage the threat of tort damages to force outcomes that would be disastrous for Puerto Rico and the rest of the nation,” AEI’s CEO, Jason Isaac, wrote of the plaintiffs.AEI has attacked climate-focused legal efforts and has been linked to Leo, the Guardian has reported.In December, a California-based trade association of commercial fishers voluntarily dismissed a lawsuit accusing big oil of climate deception.In two earlier lawsuits, 37 Puerto Rico municipalities and the capital city of San Juan accused fossil fuel companies of conspiring to deceive the public about the climate crisis, seeking to hold them accountable for the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria. More

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      Pam Bondi turning DoJ into Trump’s ‘personal law firm’, top experts warn

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      Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has taken radical steps to target his political foes, back a harsh agenda against undocumented immigrants and help business allies – steps which underscore its politicization under the attorney general Pam Bondi and undermine the rule of law, say ex-prosecutors and legal experts.Some even say that the department has in effect become Trump’s “personal law firm”.Since taking office a second time, Trump has relied on staunch loyalist Bondi and an elite group of justice department lawyers to investigate critics from his first administration plus political opponents and curb prosecutions of US business bribery overseas.Ex-prosecutors point to how Bondi and the department’s top lawyers have halted some major prosecutions, fired or forced out lawyers who didn’t meet Maga litmus tests, and were instructed by Trump to investigate a key Democratic fundraising vehicle as examples of how Trump and Bondi have politicized the justice department.Critics note that once Bondi became attorney general, she issued a memo establishing a “weaponization working group”, which pushed a false narrative that investigations by a special counsel into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election and his improperly retaining classified documents were politically motivated.The transformation of the Department of Justice under Bondi has put a premium for staff on “personal loyalty” to Trump, say ex-prosecutors, which has damaged the rule of law and provoked multiple rebukes from courts and the resignations or firings of veteran prosecutors.“The steps Trump and Bondi have taken using DoJ to punish enemies and reward allies while firing those who object radically transforms and politicizes DoJ in a way that not even the worst who have gone before them ever contemplated,” the former federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig said.“Trump’s transmuting DoJ into his personal law firm is, in effect, a rejection of the founding principle of the rule of law.”Other ex-prosecutors see the department marching in dangerous legal lockstep with Trump’s agenda and damaging its mission to protect the rule of law.“Bondi and DoJ lawyers have certainly tried to make personal loyalty to Trump the justice department’s guiding principle,” said the Columbia law professor and ex-federal prosecutor Daniel Richman.Critics note Bondi has also echoed Trump’s dangerous rhetorical blasts against judges who have ruled against his administration’s sweeping and haphazard drive to deport undocumented immigrants by labeling them “low-level leftist judges who are trying to dictate President Trump’s executive powers”.After the FBI arrested a Milwaukee judge for allegedly obstructing the arrest of an undocumented immigrant, Bondi went on Fox News to threaten other judges who may defy their agenda. “They’re deranged. I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not. We will come after you and we will prosecute you,” she said.Hundreds of lawyers and staff in the justice department’s civil rights division are now leaving the storied unit as its focus has shifted to Trump priorities such as pursuing cases against elite universities and student protesters, while curbing some civil and voting rights cases it has traditionally pursued, say critics.Other actions by the department under Bondi, an ex-Florida attorney general who later worked on Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment trial in 2020, and some elite justice department lawyers reflect its strong allegiance to Trump and have sparked strong criticism.They include an investigation of two officials, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, who served in his first term and clashed with him for, respectively, not backing his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and for voicing strong concerns in a 2018 New York Times op ed about how Trump threatened democracy.In another radical move, Trump issued an executive order in April telling the justice department to investigate unverified allegations that ActBlue, a major Democratic online fundraising vehicle, had engaged in improper fundraising schemes.Trump also reportedly prodded the Department of Justice to drop a five-count criminal fraud prosecution of the New York mayor, Eric Adams, that the elite justice department southern district had worked on for months, as Trump was eager to secure public support from Adams for his immigration agenda in the city.Some actions also appear aimed at helping allied business interests. In April, the justice department abruptly closed a cryptocurrency unit that was launched in 2022 and had successfully prosecuted dangerous criminal schemes involving North Korean hackers and other fraudsters, but which had come under fire from cryptocurrency leaders who helped fund Trump’s campaign last year.Trump’s justice department also has paused for six months prosecuting businesses that have been charged with violating the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which bars paying bribes to win deals abroad.Other moves seem to reflect Trump’s enmity towards journalists who report critically about his administration. In a reversal of recent department policy, Bondi revoked journalists’ free-speech protections by greenlighting authorities to force journalists to reveal confidential sources in leak investigations. Meanwhile, Bondi also seems willing to protect political allies, such as when she declined to open an investigation into “Signalgate” despite extensive documentation that top national security officials had improperly shared classified information as an attack was imminent in Yemen against the Houthis.Ex-prosecutors say that Bondi and the justice department’s willingness to make personal loyalty to Trump paramount damages the rule of law.Critics note the justice department has been rebuked by federal courts for stonewalling court orders and questions about some of its deportation actions and for not bringing home a Maryland man originally from El Salvador who was sent to a notorious Salvadorian prison as a result of what Ice has called an “administrative error”.“Never in history has DoJ broken so defiantly from respecting, as it’s obligated to do, the decisions of federal courts,” said the former prosecutor Ty Cobb, who was a counsel in the White House during Trump’s first term. “This is a war that Trump and Bondi are waging against the rule of law.”Richman noted more broadly that “outside the immigration area, most of what Bondi has actually done so far, however, has been negative – like dropping the case against Mayor Adams and cases against FCPA defendants and firing prosecutors”.Richman added: “We will soon see how this administration fares when it actually seeks a result in court, even if it’s only defensive. As the proceedings in the recent Maryland deportation case highlighted, courts demand a candor and respect for law that the justice department’s leadership finds inconsistent with the loyalty it demands.”Some veteran prosecutors who quit the department after Trump and Bondi took office say that the pair’s first moves raised red flags that prompted their departures.“Bondi has made clear – before becoming attorney general, and since – that she wants the Department of Justice to support President Trump unconditionally,” said Mike Romano, who resigned from the department in late March.Before he quit, Romano spent almost four years working on the prosecutions of Trump allies who stormed Congress on 6 January 2021 in an effort to thwart Joe Biden’s certification by Congress.Romano said that the night Bondi was confirmed “she issued a memorandum to all justice department employees in which she threatened to fire employees who refuse to defend the Trump administration’s actions, advance its arguments or sign its briefs. She and her subordinates have made good on those threats by firing people and forcing them to resign.”Romano stressed that “some of my colleagues were fired, and others were demoted, because they prosecuted people who rioted at the Capitol. At the public integrity section, four of my managers resigned, in lieu of being fired, when they refused to sign a motion to dismiss the case against Mayor Adams. These actions send a clear message to people still at the department: if you want to keep your job, disagreement won’t be tolerated.”Similarly, Barbara McQuade, a former prosecutor for Michigan’s eastern district who now teaches law at the University of Michigan, warned that Bondi’s memo setting up a “weaponization working group” actually “weaponizes law enforcement and undermines public confidence in government” because it pushes a “false narrative” about the two investigations of Trump by the former special counsel Jack Smith.McQuade emphasized that “in fact federal grand juries returned indictments in both cases, meaning that they found probable cause that the crimes were committed. DoJ’s Principles of Federal Prosecution prohibit prosecutors from making charging decisions on the basis of partisan politics.”Pointing to a further symbol of the justice department’s politicization under Bondi, McQuade cited her statement that a federal judge “supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans” and charged he “cannot be objective” because he issued a temporary restraining order blocking deportation of Venezuelan men to El Salvador without due process.“There is no evidence to suggest that the judge did anything other than apply the law to the case,” McQuade stressed. “He was applying the law to a highly suspect use of the Alien Enemies Act, a statute to be used during wartime.”Assessing Trump’s politicization of the Department of Justice, Rosenzweig said the department was betraying its historic mission to protect the rule of law.“DoJ isn’t just another department like agriculture or HHS. It has a unique place in the US government as the home of the ‘rule of law’ and the guardian of what makes America special,” he said.“Thomas Paine said: ‘In America, the law is king.’ Trump wants to make his word the law and himself the king.” More

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      Pam Bondi rescinds Biden-era protections for journalists

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      Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, has revoked a Biden administration-era policy that restricted subpoenas of reporters’ phone records in criminal investigations.An internal memo, first reported by ABC News, shows Bondi rescinding protections issued by her predecessor, Merrick Garland, for members of the media from having their records seized or being forced to testify in the course of leak investigations.The memo says federal employees who leak sensitive information to the media “for the purposes of personal enrichment and undermining our foreign policy, national security, and government effectiveness” are engaging in conduct that could be characterized as “treasonous”.“This conduct is illegal and wrong, and it must stop,” the memo states. The justice department “will not tolerate disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people”.Bondi’s memo states that she has concluded that “it is necessary to rescind Merrick Garland’s policies precluding the Department of Justice from seeking records and compelling testimony from members of the news media in order to identify and punish the source of improper leaks”.But, she said, the department would continue to employ procedural protections to “limit the use of compulsory legal process” to obtain journalists’ records, acknowledging that a “free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy”.Under the new policy, Bondi wrote, the attorney general “must also approve efforts to question or arrest members of the news media”.The move comes after Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said she had made multiple criminal referrals to the justice department related to alleged leaks in the intelligence community.One of the leaks included information leaked to the Washington Post, Gabbard told Fox News on Wednesday. She went on to describe the leakers as “deep-state criminals” with “partisan political purposes to undermine President Trump’s agenda”.In 2022, Garland issued regulations to restrict how federal prosecutors could pursue leak investigations, following revelations that justice department officials under the previous Trump administration had secretly obtained the phone records of reporters at the Washington Post, CNN and the New York Times.Bondi’s memo comes as Donald Trump, who has frequently branded journalists “the enemy of the people”, has escalated his attacks on the US media landscape since returning to the White House in January.The new Trump administration’s war on the press has included seizing control of the White House press pool from news organisations, engaging in a highly publicized dispute with the Associated Press over the wire agency’s decision not to adopt the name Gulf of America instead of Gulf of Mexico into its stylebook, and moving to dismantle Voice of America (VoA).The justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      ‘Bad for democracy’: North Carolina could throw out valid ballots in tight election

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      More than five months after the 2024 election, a swath of voters in North Carolina are still unsure whether their votes will count in an unprecedented effort to overturn a valid US election.Democrat Allison Riggs defeated Republican Jefferson Griffin in a contest for the state supreme court. But after the election, Griffin challenged the eligibility of tens of thousands of voters. A ruling from the North Carolina supreme court on Friday paved the way for as many as 1,675 voters to have their ballots thrown out in the election – more than double Riggs’s margin of victory.The challenged voters include someone who grew up in the state, a professor who was there for two decades, a lifelong resident studying abroad, and someone who still owns a home there and plans to move back, according to Guardian interviews.But Griffin claims they are “never-residents”, people who voted in North Carolina who had no previous residency in or attachments to the state.The Guardian spoke with several voters, first identified by the publication Anderson Alerts with their list later expanded upon by Popular Information, who were all living overseas when they cast their ballots in the North Carolina state supreme court race.At risk are two groups: 1,409 overseas voters from Guilford county, a Democratic-leaning area, who voted without showing photo ID – something that the law allows. Then, there are 266 overseas voters whom Griffin alleges have never lived in North Carolina, according to the North Carolina state board of elections.View image in fullscreenThe court gave 30 days for elections officials to get more information from the overseas voters. It said that the 266 voters suspected of never being residents in the state should have their ballots thrown out.That would mean that the vote cast by Josey Wright, a 25-year-old PhD student studying in the UK, wouldn’t count.Wright lived in North Carolina from early childhood until age 18. Her parents still live there, and she visits most years, typically spending summers there. She voted from abroad using a web portal available to US citizens who now live overseas, as she has done in several local and national elections since she moved to the UK to study.She found out her vote may not be counted after a reporter contacted her in recent days.“It’s a bit frustrating because it’s already a bit more difficult, I think, to vote as an overseas voter,” Wright said. “You have to be paying attention to US elections and also submit quite a bit of paperwork in order to get your ballot and to sign up for the portal. It’s a bit disheartening that, after all that effort, my vote actually might not be counted.”The legal battle has drawn attention nationwide and protests locally because the courts could potentially overturn Riggs’s victory by changing the rules of election procedure after the election happened. It’s a road map that election challengers in other states, and in much bigger contests, could use in the future, if it’s successful. If Trump had lost North Carolina, he was expected to make similar arguments.The ruling also set off a scramble to figure out next steps for the unprecedented election challenge. There’s confusion over how to find these voters, how to cure their ballots, and what next steps will look like.The state board of elections said in a court filing yesterday that these voters would be reviewed by elections officials to see whether they have claims of residency in North Carolina, and whether, if they were found to be one-time residents and otherwise valid, their ballots would count.Multiple lawsuits have been filed in federal court to stop the ruling from taking effect. Plaintiffs in one of the cases include a military spouse living in Italy who was born and raised in North Carolina; a lifelong resident who moved to Switzerland for her husband’s PhD program who is in the process of moving back to the state; a North Carolinian teaching English abroad on a one-year contract and a teacher at an air force base in Japan who lived in the state until last year.A federal court in North Carolina said elections officials should begin the ballot curing process but otherwise hold off on certifying any results pending the court process. The judge in that case, a Trump appointee, would not issue a stay of the case.State law has long allowed overseas voters who claim North Carolina residency to vote in the state.But in interviews, several of those voters said they actually had lived in the US and were confused about the challenge to their eligibility and unsure how, or whether, they could fix it.Josiah Young, 20, was studying abroad in Spain when he cast an absentee ballot online, voting in his first presidential election. He is a freshman at American University in Washington DC, but a lifelong North Carolinian. He voted in his home state, which he still has listed as his permanent residence.Young found out his vote had been challenged a couple of months ago, after one of his father’s colleagues shared a PDF that included voters challenged by Jefferson Griffin in a lawsuit. “Lo and behold, at the bottom of the list is a couple pages dedicated just to me. I was definitely surprised,” he said.“It’s pretty disappointing. As a first-time voter, I feel like I pretty much did everything that I was supposed to do. I cast my ballot legally, and then just to find out that someone, or anyone, is challenging my vote is pretty disappointing,” Young said.He believes he accidentally checked a box that said he had never lived in the US and didn’t plan on returning. He’s not sure there’s any way to remedy the situation and get his vote counted. He has not been notified about his inclusion on the list by any elections officials or challengers, he said. He could have remedied the problem quickly, as he voted early, so he wishes he had known.One North Carolina voter who requested to speak anonymously said they believed they had accidentally checked the wrong box on the form to request a ballot. Instead of saying that they intended to return to the US or were uncertain whether they would return, the voter said they had never lived in the US.The voter, who was abroad for six years but has since returned to the US, first learned about the challenge last fall and tried to notify their local election office, but never heard back. “I’m really upset that he would try to change the rules after losing the election,” the voter said. “I think that’s just very bad form for democracy.”Another challenged voter, Neil McWilliam, taught at Duke University for two decades before moving to France with his family in 2023. Originally from the UK, McWilliam, his wife and his son were naturalized in 2013, and he has voted in every state and federal election since. He is a Democrat, and his wife is registered as an independent. His vote was challenged, and hers was not.“Political operatives like Griffin hope to instill cynicism and hopelessness in those who oppose them,” McWilliam said. “The answer is not to reject voting as a waste of time, but to redouble efforts to ensure that everybody who is eligible can and does vote in fair elections free from partisan manipulation.”David Eberhard, also challenged by Griffin, is a former North Carolina resident who moved to Italy for his son’s education but still owns his home in the state and intends to return. He voted while living in Italy in 2024 using the online forms provided by local officials, he said. He found out he had been challenged in January, has no idea why, and updated his information with North Carolina local officials. He’s unsure of exactly what he’s supposed to do.“If I am supposed to present my credentials to a local official in person, I will have to travel at considerable expense and inconvenience, just because Griffin couldn’t bother with the inconvenience of ensuring that the names on his list were in fact improperly registered,” he said. More

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      Wisconsin supreme court race: liberal Susan Crawford beats Musk-backed candidate

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      Susan Crawford won the race for a seat on the Wisconsin supreme court on Tuesday, a major win for Democrats who had framed the race as a referendum on Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s popularity.Crawford, a liberal judge from Dane county, defeated Brad Schimel, a former Republican attorney general and conservative judge from Waukesha county, after Musk and groups associated with the tech billionaire spent millions to boost his candidacy in what became the most expensive judicial contest in American history.“Today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy,” Crawford said in a speech at her victory night event in Madison. “Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale.”With more than 84% of the vote tallied, Crawford led Schimel by nearly 10 percentage points.In remarks on Tuesday night, Schimel said he and his team “didn’t leave anything on the field” and announced that he had conceded the race in a call to his opponent before taking the stage. When his supporters began to boo, Schimel stopped them. “No, you gotta accept the results,” he said, adding: “The numbers aren’t gonna turn around. They’re too bad, and we’re not gonna pull this off.”Musk said hours after the result that “The long con of the left is corruption of the judiciary” and that the most important thing was that a vote on the addition of voter ID requirements passed.The result means that liberals will keep a 4-3 ideological majority on the state supreme court. That majority is hugely significant because the court will hear major cases on abortion and collective bargaining rights. The court could also potentially consider cases that could cause the state to redraw its eight congressional districts, which are currently drawn to advantage Republicans.View image in fullscreenMilwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city, reported “historic turnout” for a spring election, with election officials saying in a statement Tuesday evening that due to the “unprecedented high turnout,” seven polling places ran out of ballots. The city’s elections commission said it was working to replenish resources to voters during the evening rush.A combined more than $80m was spent on the race, topping the previous record of some $51m that was spent in the 2023 Wisconsin state supreme court race. Elon Musk and affiliated groups spent more than $20m alone. Musk reprised some of the tactics that he used last fall to help Trump win, including offering $100 to people who signed a petition opposing “activist judges” and offering $1 million checks to voters.Pointing to the potential to redraw House districts, Musk had said the race “might decide the future of America and western civilization”.Democrats seized on Musk’s involvement in the race to energize voters who were upset about the wrecking ball he and his unofficial “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, have taken to federal agencies. They raised the stakes of an already high-stakes contest by holding out Wisconsin as a test case for Musk, saying that if he succeeded, he would take his model across the country.“Growing up in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, I never thought I would be taking on the richest man in the world for justice,” Crawford said on Tuesday night. “And we won.”After Musk’s involvement became public, Democrats saw an explosion in grassroots donations and people “coming out of the woodwork” to get involved in the race, Ben Wikler, the state’s Democratic party chair, said last month. When the party tested its messaging, Wikler said, messages that highlighted Musk’s involvement in the race motivated voters who were otherwise disengaged from politics.Jeannine Ramsey, 65, voted in Madison on Tuesday for Crawford because she said the “Elon Musk-supported Brad Schimel” wouldn’t rule fairly on the issues most important to her.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I think it’s shameful that Elon Musk can come here and spend millions of dollars and try to bribe the citizens,” Ramsey said. “I don’t think it should be allowed. He doesn’t live in our state, and I don’t think he should be able to buy this election. It makes me angry.”Trump won Wisconsin in the presidential election in November by less than 1 percentage point – the closest margin of any battleground state.Because turnout in a state supreme court election is lower than that of a typical election and those who vote tend to be highly-engaged, experts have cautioned against trying to read too much into the election results for national political sentiment. Still, there were encouraging signs for Democrats.“The hard work of reaching the voters who pay the least attention to politics is going to take years for Democrats to build that kind of communications strength that can puncture the Republican propaganda bubble,” Wikler said in March. “But for laying the groundwork for flipping the House and the Senate in 2026 and winning governorships and state legislative majorities, the supreme court race can really point the way.”Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, also celebrated the result.“Tonight, the people of Wisconsin squarely rejected the influence of Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and billionaire special interests. And their message? Stay out of our elections and stay away from our courts,” he said in a statement.In Madison, Crawford said she was ready to turn from the campaign trail, which she described as a “life-altering experience,” to the bench, where she promised to “deliver fair and impartial decisions”. Concluding her remarks, Crawford wished her mother, watching from home, a happy birthday and quipped: “I know how glad you are to see the TV ads end.”Jenny Peek contributed reporting from Madison, Wisconsin More

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      Pro-Palestinian British Cornell student says he will leave US citing fear of detention

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      A Cornell University student who participated in pro-Palestinian protests and was asked to surrender by United States immigration officials has said he is leaving the US, citing fear of detention and threats to his personal safety.Momodou Taal, a doctoral candidate in Africana studies and dual citizen of the UK and the Gambia, has participated in pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza after the October 2023 Hamas attack. His attorneys said last month that he was asked to turn himself in and that his student visa was being revoked.President Donald Trump has pledged to deport foreign pro-Palestinian protesters and accused them of supporting militant group Hamas, being antisemitic and posing foreign policy hurdles.Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the Trump administration wrongly conflates their criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights with antisemitism and support for Hamas.Last year, Taal was in a group of activists who disrupted a career fair on campus that featured weapons manufacturers and the university thereafter ordered him to study remotely. He previously posted online that “colonised peoples have the right to resist by any means necessary”.Taal filed a lawsuit in mid-March to block deportations of protesters, a bid that was denied by a judge last week.“Given what we have seen across the United States, I have lost faith that a favourable ruling from the courts would guarantee my personal safety and ability to express my beliefs,” Taal said on X on Monday.Trump’s administration has attempted to crack down on pro-Palestinian voices. Rights advocates condemn the moves.Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil was arrested in early March and is legally challenging his detention. Trump, without evidence, accused Khalil of supporting Hamas. Khalil denies links to the militant group that Washington considers a “foreign terrorist organisation”.Badar Khan Suri, an Indian studying at Georgetown University, was detained earlier in March. Suri’s lawyer denies he supported Hamas. A federal judge barred Suri’s deportation.The legal team of Yunseo Chung, a Korean American student of Columbia University, said last week her lawful permanent resident status was being revoked. A judge ruled she could not be detained for now.A judge on Friday temporarily barred the deportation of a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University named Rumeysa Ozturk, who was taken into custody by immigration officials and who, a year ago, co-authored an opinion piece calling to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide”.The Trump administration says it may have revoked more than 300 visas. More

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      Elon Musk hands out $1m checks to voters amid Wisconsin supreme court election race

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      Elon Musk gave out $1m checks on Sunday to two Wisconsin voters, declaring them spokespeople for his political group, ahead of a Wisconsin supreme court election that the tech billionaire cast as critical to Donald Trump’s agenda and “the future of civilization”.“It’s a super big deal,” he told a roughly 2,000-person crowd in Green Bay on Sunday night, taking the stage in a yellow cheesehead hat. “I’m not phoning it in. I’m here in person.”Musk and groups he supports have spent more than $20m to help conservative favourite Brad Schimel in Tuesday’s race, which will determine the ideological makeup of a court likely to decide key issues in a perennial battleground state. Musk has increasingly become the center of the contest, with liberal favourite Susan Crawford and her allies protesting Musk and what they say is the influence he wants to have on the court.“I think this will be important for the future of civilization,” he said. “It’s that’s significant.”He noted that the state high court may well take up redistricting of congressional districts, which could ultimately affect which party controls the US House.“And if the [Wisconsin] supreme court is able to redraw the districts, they will gerrymander the district and deprive Wisconsin of two seats on the Republican side,” Musk claimed. “Then they will try to stop all the government reforms we are getting done for you, the American people.”A unanimous state supreme court on Sunday refused to hear a last-minute attempt by the state’s Democratic attorney general to stop Musk from handing over the checks to two voters, a ruling that came just minutes before the planned start of the rally.Two lower courts had already rejected the legal challenge by Democrat Josh Kaul, who argues that Musk’s offer violates a state law. “Wisconsin law prohibits offering anything of value to induce anyone to vote,” Kaul argued in his filing. “Yet, Elon Musk did just that.”But the state supreme court, which is now controlled four-to-three by liberal justices, declined to take the case as an original action. The court gave no rationale for its decision. All four liberal justices have endorsed Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, the Democratic-backed candidate.Kaul had no immediate comment on the court’s order.Musk’s attorneys argued in filings with the court that Musk was exercising his free speech rights with the giveaways and any attempt to restrict that would violate both the Wisconsin and US constitutions.The payments are “intended to generate a grassroots movement in opposition to activist judges, not to expressly advocate for or against any candidate,” Musk’s attorneys argued in court filings.Musk’s political action committee used a nearly identical tactic before the presidential election last year, offering to pay $1m a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states who signed a petition supporting the First and Second amendments. A judge in Pennsylvania said prosecutors failed to show the effort was an illegal lottery and allowed it to continue through Election Day.Musk’s attorneys, about four hours before the rally was to begin, asked that two liberal justices who have campaigned for Crawford – Jill Karofsky and Rebecca Dallet – recuse themselves from the case. His attorneys argued their work for Crawford creates “the spectre of inappropriate bias.” If they did recuse, that would leave the court with a three-two conservative majority.Both justices rejected the request and said they would spell out their reasons why at a later date.One of the court’s conservative justices has endorsed Schimel, who wore a “Make America Great Again” hat while campaigning Sunday.Schimel said in a national television interview that he does not control “any of the spending from any outside group, whether it’s Elon Musk or anyone else” and that all Trump asked was whether he would “reject activist judges” and follow the law.“That’s exactly what I’ve committed to anybody, whether it’s President Trump, Elon Musk or any donors and donors or supporters or voters in Wisconsin. That’s my commitment,” Schimel told Fox News Sunday.The contest has shattered national spending records for a judicial election, with more than $81m in spending.It comes as Wisconsin’s highest court is expected to rule on abortion rights, congressional redistricting, union power and voting rules that could affect the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election in the state. More

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      The Guardian view on attacks on lawyers: democracies must stand up for justice | Editorial

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      What the law says on paper is irrelevant if it cannot be upheld, or even stated clearly. That is why lawyers are targeted – with harassment, disbarment from the profession or even jail – by repressive regimes.Russia’s attempts to suppress the voice of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny did not end with his death in an Arctic prison colony. In a bleak coda, three of his lawyers have been jailed for several years. Vadim  Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin were found guilty of participating in an “extremist organisation” for relaying his messages to the outside world.The Center for Human Rights in Iran warned earlier this year that Iranian lawyers were being kicked out of the profession, arrested and jailed for representing protesters and dissidents. As its executive director, Hadi Ghaemi, noted: “Every lawyer imprisoned or disbarred represents many defendants whose rights have been trampled and now lack legal defence.”In China, where more than 300 human rights lawyers who had dared to take on sensitive cases were detained in 2015’s “709” crackdown, the pressure continues. As a grim joke had it at the height of the campaign, “even lawyers’ lawyers need lawyers” – those who represented arrested friends were then seized themselves.The unrelenting nature of the clampdown is particularly striking when, as one Chinese lawyer, Liang Xiaojun, observed: “We know we can’t win.” When the verdict is clear before a case has started, lawyers can only offer solidarity, spread their clients’ stories, and highlight the gulf between legal theory and reality. But in doing so, they challenge the official narrative. Targeting these lawyers didn’t just signal that resistance only invites further trouble. It attacked the concept of the rule of law itself, which lawyers had attempted to assert, hammering home the message that the party’s power was unassailable.The Council of Europe warned earlier this month that there are increasing reports of harassment, threats and other attacks on the practice of law internationally. The human rights body has adopted the first international treaty aiming to protect the profession of lawyer. Member states should now ratify this. Lawyers must be defended, as they defend others and the concepts of rules and justice.That message is more important than ever as the Trump administration turns on lawyers and judges as part of its broader assault on the institutions of US democracy and the principles that underpin them. The sanctioning of staff at the international criminal court is only the most flagrant example. William R Bay, president of the American Bar Association, told members in a recent letter: “Government actions evidence a clear and disconcerting pattern. If a court issues a decision this administration does not agree with, the judge is targeted. If a lawyer represents parties in a dispute with the administration, or … represents parties the administration does not like, lawyers are targeted.” Government lawyers too have faced “personal attacks, intimidation, firings and demotions for simply fulfilling their professional responsibilities”.Democratic governments and civil society must speak up for the law wherever it is threatened. Mr Bay is right to urge those in the profession to stand up and be counted. “If we don’t speak now, when will we speak?” he asks. The law still counts – both materially and culturally – in the US. Those who practise it need some of the courage in resisting abuses that their counterparts have shown elsewhere.  More