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      I worked in Trump’s first administration. Here’s why his team is using Signal | Kevin Carroll

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      No senior US government official in the now-infamous “Houthi PC Small Group” Signal chat seemed new to that kind of group, nor surprised by the sensitivity of the subject discussed in that insecure forum, not even when the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, chimed in with details of a coming airstrike. No one objected – not the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who was abroad and using her personal cellphone to discuss pending military operations; not even the presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, who was in Moscow at the time. Yet most of these officials enjoy the luxury of access to secure government communications systems 24/7/365.Reasonable conclusions may be drawn from these facts. First, Trump’s national security cabinet commonly discusses secret information on insecure personal devices. Second, sophisticated adversaries such as Russia and China intercept such communications, especially those sent or received in their countries. Third, as a result, hostile intelligence services now probably possess blackmail material regarding these officials’ indiscreet past conversations on similar topics. Fourth, as a first-term Trump administration official and ex-CIA officer, I believe the reason these officials risk interacting in this way is to prevent their communications from being preserved as required by the Presidential Records Act, and avoid them being discoverable in litigation, or subject to a subpoena or Freedom of Information Act request. And fifth, no one seems to have feared being investigated by the justice department for what appears to be a violation of the Espionage Act’s Section 793(f), which makes gross negligence in mishandling classified information a felony; the FBI director, Kash Patel, and attorney general, Pam Bondi, quickly confirmed that hunch. Remarkably, the CIA director John Ratcliffe wouldn’t even admit to Congress that he and his colleagues had made a mistake.The knock-on effects of this are many. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, needs to address his colleagues’ characterization of European partners as “pathetic” with foreign ministers now dubious of the US’s intentions. Allies already hesitant to share their countries’ secrets with the US, because of valid counterintelligence concerns regarding Trump’s affinity for Vladimir Putin, will clam up even more rather than risk their sources being compromised by Trump’s appointees. Gabbard and Ratcliffe may have perjured themselves before Congress regarding whether their Signal chat included classified national defense information; certainly, their credibility on Capitol Hill is shredded. As a former CIA case officer, I suspect these directors’ own subordinates will prefer not to share restricted handling information with them going forward. Hegseth, confirmed as secretary by a vote of 51-50 despite concerns over his character and sobriety, lost any moral authority to lead the defense department by reflexively lying about his misconduct, claiming that the story by Jeffrey Goldberg, the unsuspecting Atlantic editor improvidently included in the text chain, is somehow a “hoax” despite the fact the White House contemporaneously confirmed its authenticity.Trump dismisses this scandal, now under investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general, as a witch-hunt, and his followers will fall in line. But every senator who voted to confirm these national security officials, despite doubts regarding their temperaments and qualifications, quietly knows that they own part of this debacle. For fear of facing Republican primary challengers funded by Elon Musk, these senators failed in their solemn constitutional duty to independently provide wise advice and consent regarding nominations to the US’s most important war cabinet posts. How would the senators have explained their misfeasance to service members’ bereaved families – their constituents, perhaps – had the Houthis used information from the Signal chat, such as the time a particular target was to be engaged, to reorient their antiaircraft systems to intercept the inbound aircraft?I happen to have served in Yemen as a sensitive activities officer for special operations command (central). Conspicuous in their absence from the Signal chat were uniformed officers responsible for the recent combat mission: the acting chair of the joint chiefs of staff Adm Christopher Grady, central command’s Gen Michael Kurilla and special operations command’s Gen Bryan Fenton. These good men would have raised the obvious objection: loose talk on insecure phones about a coming operation jeopardizes the lives of US sailors and marines standing watch on warships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, naval aviators flying over the beach towards the target, and likely special operators, intelligence officers and human sources working in the shadows on the ground.You don’t need 30-plus years in uniform to know that holding a detailed yet insecure discussion about a pending military mission is wrong; the participants in the chat knew, too. They just didn’t care, not as much as they cared about keeping their communications from being legally discoverable. They’re safe in the knowledge that in a new era without benefit of the rule of law, Patel’s FBI and Bondi’s justice department will never bring charges against them, for a crime which uniformed service members are routinely prosecuted for vastly smaller infractions. As the attorney general made plain in her remarks about this matter, federal law enforcement is now entirely subservient to Trump’s personal and political interests.Most senior US government officials in 2025 are, unfortunately, far gone from the fine old gentleman’s tradition of honorable resignation. But participants in the Signal chat should consider the Hollywood producer character Jack Woltz’s pained observation to the mafia lawyer Tom Hagen in The Godfather about his indiscreetly wayward mistress: “A man in my position cannot afford to be made to look ridiculous.” Trump, the justice department and the Republican Congress may not make them resign, but to the US’s allies and adversaries, and to their own subordinates, these officials now look ridiculous.

      Kevin Carroll served as senior counselor to the former homeland security secretary John Kelly and as a CIA and army officer 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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      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

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      US judge temporarily blocks Trump from firing Voice of America staff

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      A federal judge on Friday ordered Donald Trump’s administration to temporarily pause its efforts to shut down Voice of America, stopping the government from firing 1,300 journalists and other employees at the US news service that were abruptly placed on leave earlier this month.District judge J Paul Oetken said in a Friday opinion that the Trump administration could not unilaterally terminate Voice of America and related radio programs that were approved and funded by Congress. Rescinding funds for those programs would require congressional approval, the judge wrote.Oetken did not require Voice of America to resume broadcasts, but his order made clear that employees should not be fired until further court proceedings could determine whether the shutdown was “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of federal law.“This is a decisive victory for press freedom and the First Amendment, and a sharp rebuke to an administration that has shown utter disregard for the principles that define our democracy,” said Andrew Celli, an attorney for the plaintiffs.The US Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other government-funded media, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.The agency had told unions that it was about to terminate 623 Voice of America employees, a number that “entirely forecloses” any attempt to resume broadcasts at the level envisioned by Congress, according to court documents filed by the plaintiffs.Voice of America was founded to combat Nazi propaganda at the height of the second world war, and it has grown to become an international media broadcaster, operating in more than 40 languages and spreading U.S. news narratives into countries lacking a free press. As a group, US Agency for Global Media employed roughly 3,500 workers with an $886m budget in 2024, according to its latest report to Congress.Voice of America journalists and their unions sued the US Agency for Global Media, its acting director, Victor Morales, and special adviser Kari Lake last week, saying that their shutdown violated the workers’ constitutional first amendment right to free speech.The Voice of America employees’ lawsuit is one of four pending challenges to the Trump administration’s attempted shutdown of government-funded media programs. Other challenges have been filed by Radio Free Europe, a separate group of Voice of America employees, and grant recipient Open Technology Fund.US Agency for Global Media had argued that it had not violated the laws that governed Voice of America’s operations. The agency said in court filings that it had reduced operations to a “statutory minimum” by restoring broadcasts in Cuba and reinstating 33 employees at the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. More

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      US Naval Academy to no longer consider race when evaluating candidates

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      The US Naval Academy has changed its policy and will no longer consider race as a factor when evaluating candidates to attend the elite military school, a practice it maintained even after the US supreme court barred civilian colleges from employing similar affirmative action policies.The Trump administration detailed the policy change in a filing on Friday asking a court to suspend an appeal lodged by a group opposed to affirmative action against a judge’s decision last year upholding the Annapolis, Maryland-based Naval Academy’s race-conscious admissions program.Days after returning to office in January, Donald Trump signed an executive order, on 27 January, that eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs from the military.The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, two days later issued guidance barring the military from establishing “sex-based, race-based or ethnicity-based goals for organizational composition, academic admission or career fields”.The US Department of Justice said that in light of those directives, V Adm Yvette Davids, the Naval Academy’s superintendent, issued guidance barring the consideration of race, ethnicity or sex as a factor in its admissions process.The justice department said that policy change could affect the lawsuit filed by Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by affirmative action opponent Edward Blum, which has also been challenging race-conscious admissions practices at other military academies.Blum’s group had been seeking to build on its June 2023 victory at the supreme court, when the court’s 6-3 conservative majority sided with it by barring policies used by colleges and universities for decades to increase the number of Black, Hispanic and other minority students on US campuses.That ruling invalidated race-conscious admissions policies used by Harvard and the University of North Carolina. But it explicitly did not address the consideration of race as a factor in admissions at military academies, which the conservative supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, said had “potentially distinct interests”.After the ruling, Blum’s group filed three lawsuits seeking to block the carve-out for military schools. The case the group filed against the Naval Academy was the first to go to trial.But a federal judge in Baltimore, Richard Bennett, sided with then president Joe Biden’s administration in finding that the Naval Academy’s policy was constitutional. More

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      White House asks supreme court to allow deportations under wartime law

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      The Trump administration on Friday asked the US supreme court to intervene to allow the government to continue to deport immigrants using the obscure Alien Enemies Act.The request came one day after a federal appeals court upheld a Washington DC federal judge’s temporary block on immigrant expulsions via a wartime act that allows the administration to bypass normal due process, for example by allowing people a court hearing before shipping them out of the US.Friday’s emergency request claims that the federal court’s order temporarily blocking the removal of Venezuelans forces the US to “harbor individuals whom national-security officials have identified as members of a foreign terrorist organization bent upon grievously harming Americans”.Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act has spurred a legal battle between the executive and judiciary branches of the US federal government.“We will urge the supreme court to preserve the status quo to give the courts time to hear this case, so that more individuals are not sent off to a notorious foreign prison without any process, based on an unprecedented and unlawful use of a wartime authority,” said Lee Gelernt in a statement on Friday afternoon. Gelernt is the deputy director of the ACLU’s immigrants’ rights project and lead counsel in the case.As the executive branch continues to battle the constitutionally coequal judiciary branch for primacy, the US justice department said in its filing on Friday that the case presents the question of who decides how to conduct sensitive national security-related operations, the president or the judiciary.“The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the President,” the department wrote. “The republic cannot afford a different choice.“On 15 March, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime statute allowing the government to expel foreign nationals considered to be enemies to the US. When invoking the act, Trump, without proof, claimed that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had “infiltrated” the US at the behest of the Venezuelan government.A US intelligence document accessed by the New York Times contradicts Trump’s claim about the Venezuelan government’s ties to the gang.That day, attorneys filed an emergency motion to block the use of the Alien Enemies Act to expel migrants to El Salvador. Then planes took off from the US, transporting the nearly 300 immigrants accused of being gang members. As the planes were in mid-air, a federal judge in Washington blocked the use of the Alien Enemies Act to expel the immigrants, but the Venezuelans were not returned to the US.Despite the Trump administration in its supreme court filing claiming that it engaged in a “rigorous process” to identify members of the Venezuelan gang, news stories are increasingly placing those claims into question. Family members of many of the deported Venezuelan migrants deny the alleged gang ties. This month, the US district judge James Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to engage in “individualized hearings” for immigrants accused of being members of Tren de Aragua. More

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      ‘A capitalistic cowardice’: big law firms being threatened by Trump face pressure to speak out

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      Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms and attorneys who challenge his priorities are roiling the legal community, with some capitulating to the administration’s demands amid mounting pressure on the US’s biggest firms to speak out.The president signed an executive order on Tuesday targeting the firm Jenner & Block over its previous employment of Andrew Weissmann, a prosecutor who worked on Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s connections to Russia. The order came after Trump issued similar executive orders targeting three other firms – Covington and Burling, Perkins Coie, and Paul Weiss – over their representation of his political rivals.Those orders have threatened to cripple the firms by revoking the security clearances of their lawyers, ending access to government buildings and forcing clients who do business with the government to disclose if they are represented by the firm. Trump also issued a separate executive order on Friday directing US attorney general Pam Bondi to investigate lawyers taking actions to block the administration’s priorities.Scholars and experts say there is little doubt that Trump’s executive orders are a thinly-veiled effort to intimidate lawyers who might otherwise challenge the administration. The actions undermine a key element of the American democratic system by limiting the ability of potential adversaries to access the judicial system, one of the most powerful checks on executive power.Trump got a huge boost last week when the firm Paul Weiss accepted demands from Trump in exchange for withdrawing the executive order targeting the firm. The White House was gleeful at that result and the administration reportedly already has a list of other firms it may subject to similar treatment.“Paul Weiss’s deal emboldened him to ratchet up his attack on one of the strongest checks on his power: lawyers and the rule of law,” David Perez, a partner at Perkins Coie, wrote in a post on Sunday on LinkedIn. “Now more than ever law firms and lawyers across the political spectrum have to stand up for our timeless values.” Perkins Coie is suing the administration over the order and won a temporary restraining order blocking it.US district judge Beryl Howell said during a hearing in the Perkins Coie suit that the order “sends little chills down my spine” and wrote in her ruling “such a circumstance threatens the very foundation of our legal system”.Trump’s intimidation campaign may be working. There has been no unified response from the country’s biggest and most well-known law firms. “We waited for firms to support us in the wake of the President’s executive order targeting Paul Weiss,” Brad Karp, the firm’s chair, wrote in an email to employees on Sunday. “Disappointingly, far from support, we learned that certain other firms were seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities by aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys.”Former Biden administration officials are having trouble finding lawyers to represent them, the Washington Post reported. And civil rights and non-profit lawyers, who traditionally get pro bono assistance from major firms, say there is a general wariness from big law firms on challenging the administration. And when firms do help, they want to keep it quiet and don’t want their names on publicly filed court documents.Some firms also appear to be revising their web pages that detail their pro bono work. The firm Davis Polk, for example, appears to have recently removed references to racial justice and immigration from the pro bono page on its website, according to a Guardian review of an archived version of the page. As of 17 March, the firm’s pro-bono page included the statement: “We are proud to have a large team of full-time pro bono lawyers, with members focusing on litigation, corporate and transactional, racial justice, and humanitarian immigration matters.” Today, it no longer exists.Davis Polk did not immediately return a request for comment on the changes.The law firms’ fears are well founded. Elon Musk, a top Trump adviser, has already suggested targeting the firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom because of its pro bono work representing a Georgia man who was falsely accused of voter fraud in the film 2,000 Mules. The conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, who made the movie, apologized to Andrews last year, but nonetheless recommended targeting Skadden.“Skadden Arps is the firm engaged in systematic lawfare against ‘2000 Mules.’ They have an army of 17 attorneys working pro-bono against me. I have 2 lawyers. The Left’s game is to ruin us through protracted, costly litigation,” he wrote on Twitter/X. Musk reposted the comment and said “Skadden this needs to stop now.”The law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson is said to be organizing an amicus brief joined by several other firms in support of Perkins Coie. It is unclear, however, which firms will sign it and when it will be filed.Some firms are also beginning to speak out separately.“Our liberties depend on lawyers’ willingness to represent unpopular people and causes, including in matters adverse to the Federal Government,” Keker, Van Nest & Peters Partnership, a San Francisco-based firm, said in a statement on Saturday. “An attack on lawyers who perform this work is inexcusable and despicable. Our profession owes every client zealous legal representation without fear of retribution, regardless of their political affiliation or ability to pay.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPaul Weiss has faced significant backlash after reaching an agreement with Trump to rescind the executive order. The agreement came days after Perkins Coie successfully got a court order blocking the executive order that targeted it.More than 140 alumni of Paul Weiss signed a letter to the law firm’s chair on Monday condemning the agreement the law firm reached with Trump last week and said it was complicit in “what is perhaps the gravest threat to the independence of the legal profession since at least the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy”.“The very independence of lawyers and the legal profession is at stake. We are therefore profoundly saddened, and deeply outraged, that the firm in which we heretofore took pride has cowardly allowed itself to become instead a poster child for the administration’s efforts to silence dissent and impose a loyalty test on attorneys,” they wrote in the letter.Rachel Cohen, an associate at Skadden, resigned after the Paul Weiss agreement became public. She had organized an open letter signed by hundreds of lawyers urging major law firms to do more. Her resignation letter calling out Skadden for not doing more went viral.“It’s a capitalistic cowardice,” she said. “It is fear for the bottom line of firms that already clear billions and billions of dollars a year in revenue.”Deepak Gupta, a Washington-based appellate lawyer noted that the settlement itself also threatened to harm the firm’s reputation. “Would you want to be represented by a law firm that can’t even stand up for itself? a law firm that might sell you out to the federal government to save its own skin?,” he wrote in a post on the social media platform Bluesky.In his email to employees on Sunday, Karp defended Paul Weiss’s decision to reach an agreement with the Trump administration. The firm faced an “existential crisis”, he wrote, and the executive order could have “destroyed our firm”. The firm, he said, was guided by two principles in reaching the settlement: the firms’s obligation to its client’s interests and its fiduciary responsibility to its employees.For a firm targeted by one of Trump’s executive orders, the economic consequences can be severe.“Clients perceived our firm as being persona non grata with the Administration. We could prevent the executive order from taking effect, but we couldn’t erase it,” Karp wrote in his email to employees on Sunday. “Clients had told us that they were not going to be able to stay with us, even though they wanted to. It was very likely that our firm would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the Administration.”In its lawsuit challenging the executive order against it, Perkins Coie also detailed some of the financial toll the firm had taken. Nearly a quarter of the firm’s revenue was at risk – more than $343m in 2024 – because of the executive order, the lawyers wrote. Trump announced the executive order on 6 March and by the time Perkins Coie sued over it five days later, at half a dozen – some who had been with the firm for years – had left the firm.Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic election lawyer who has been targeted by Trump, issued a statement on Saturday that his firm would not negotiate with the White House over who it represented.“President Trump is attempting to dismantle the constitution and attack the rule of law in his obsessive pursuit of retribution against his political opponents. Today’s White House Memo targets not only me and my law firm, but every attorney and law firm who dares to challenge his assault on the rule of law,” his statement said. “President Trump’s goal is clear. He wants lawyers and law firms to capitulate and cower until there is no one left to oppose his Administration in court.” More

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      Columbia protester suit raises questions about free speech rights: ‘Immigration enforcement as a bludgeon’

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      In a matter of days, Yunseo Chung was sent into hiding.On 5 March, Chung – a 21-year-old student at Columbia University – attended a sit-in to protest the expulsion of several students involved in pro-Palestinian activism at the famed New York university. Four days later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents showed up at her parents’ home.When they couldn’t find her there, Ice sought help from federal prosecutors and searched her dormitory – using a warrant that cited a criminal law against “harboring noncitizens”. They revoked her green card and accused her of posing a threat to US foreign policy interests.On Monday, Chung sued Donald Trump and other high-ranking administrations to stop their targeting of her and other students. And on Tuesday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt its efforts to arrest and deport Chung, saying “nothing in the record” indicated that Chung posed a danger to the community.“After the constant dread in the back of my mind over the past few weeks, this decision feels like a million pounds off of my chest. I feel like I could fly,” she shared in a statement to the Guardian after the ruling.Her location remains undisclosed, and Chung herself has remained shielded – for her own protection – from the public. But she has nonetheless made a powerful statement, by raising a simple question: if the administration can arbitrarily and unilaterally threaten immigrants over political views they disagree with, if it can disregard the free speech rights of lawful permanent residents – what limits, if any, remain on its power?“Officials at the highest echelons of government are attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon to suppress speech that they dislike, including Ms. Chung’s speech,” her lawyers write in the suit.Unlike some of the other students the administration has targeted for pro-Palestinian activism, including recent graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who led protests on campus, and Cornell PhD student Momodou Taal, who delivered speeches at his university’s pro-Palestinian encampment, Chung’s involvement in the movement was low-profile. She didn’t play an organizing or leading role in any of the protest efforts; she didn’t speak to the media about her activism.“She was, rather, one of a large group of college students raising, expressing, and discussing shared concerns,” her lawyers write.Chung moved to the US from South Korea when she was seven, and has lived in the country ever since. She was a valedictorian in high school; at Columbia, she had contributed to a literary magazine and an undergraduate law journal. She has maintained a 3.99 GPA and interned with a number of legal non-profits including the Innocence Project.Last spring, Chung was one of hundreds of students and other activists who set up the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the university campus, and hundreds of others visited the space to attend speeches, community events and protests. As the university began meting out disciplinary actions against protesters, hundreds of students and faculty also joined in a walkout in solidarity with student activists, demanding amnesty to student protesters.View image in fullscreenIn May last year, Chung and other students faced disciplinary proceedings for posting flyers on school campus – but the university ultimately found that Chung had not violated policies, according to the lawsuit.After that, Chung continued her studies, and it wasn’t until earlier this month that she came onto immigration officials’ radar.Earlier this year, Barnard College, a sister school to Columbia, announced the expulsions of several protesters – amid a renewed, nationwide crackdown on student protesters that came following pressures from the Trump administration to tamp down pro-Palestinian activism on campus.Chung attended a sit-in demonstration calling on Barnard to reverse the expulsions. Chung became trapped between a crowd of students and New York police department officers investigating a bomb threat, according to the suit. She, and others, were charged by the NYPD for “obstruction of governmental administration”.Days later, immigration officials obtained a warrant to track down and arrest Chung. In a statement on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security characterized the sit-in she attended as a “pro-Hamas protest at Barnard College”.In a press conference after a hearing on Chung’s case Tuesday, Ramzi Kassem, one of her lawyers, said that Chung “remained a resident of the Southern District of New York” and had been “keeping up with her coursework” even amid Ice’s efforts to track her down and arrest her.In a lawsuit filed Monday, Chung’s lawyers wrote that the prospect of arrest and detention has “chilled her speech” – and note that the administration’s pursuit of non-citizen students had overall dampened free expression.“Ms. Chung is now concerned about speaking up about the ongoing ordeal of Palestinians in Gaza as well as what is happening on her own campus: the targeting of her fellow students,” the suit alleges.Scores of other students could also be silenced with similar threats, the suit argues. Faculty at Columbia and universities across the US have reported that international students and green card holders have been worried about attending classes, and are reconsidering plans to visit family, study abroad or travel for research.The administration has also placed immense pressure on universities to cooperate with its crackdown on protesters. Last week, the university agreed to overhaul its protest policies and hire an internal security force of 36 “special officers” who will be empowered to remove people from campus after the administration revoked $400m in funding for the university, which many faculty have taken as a dangerous capitulation that will endanger academic freedom.And the threat of deportation against her is a powerful one, the suit continues. If she is sent to South Korea, she would be arriving in a country she hardly knows – separated from her parents and community, and a sister who is about the start college as well.“Yunseo no longer has to fear that Ice will spirit her away to a distant prison simply because she spoke up for Palestinian human rights,” said Kassem in a statement to the Guardian. “The court’s temporary restraining order is both sensible and fair, to preserve the status quo as we litigate the serious constitutional issues at stake not just for Yunseo, but for our society as a whole.” More