Trump, Donald J

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      How a Major Democratic Law Firm Ended Up Bowing to Trump

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      Paul Weiss was targeted by an executive order from President Trump. Its chairman, who had worked against Mr. Trump during his first term, then went to the Oval Office and cut a deal.Since President Trump’s first term, Brad S. Karp, the chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, championed himself as a bulwark against what he saw as an unlawful and unpredictable presidency.Mr. Karp, who has a long history of fund-raising for Democrats, sought to unite major law firms in “a call to arms” to fight Mr. Trump in court on issues like his administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents. He publicly said lawyers were obligated to defend the rule of law.He hosted a “Lawyers for Biden” fund-raiser in 2023, and one of his top partners prepared Vice President Kamala Harris for her debates with Mr. Trump.So it was not surprising that Mr. Trump targeted Paul Weiss with an executive order last week that created a potential existential threat for the firm, although the order was legally dubious and undercut fundamental principles of the justice system. In response, Mr. Karp began discussions with another big firm about presenting a unified and bipartisan front and challenging the order in court.But on Wednesday, Mr. Karp walked into the Oval Office around 8:30 a.m., leaving behind the adversarial approach.Now, he wanted to make a deal.A day later, Mr. Trump announced that Mr. Karp had agreed to pledge $40 million in pro bono legal services to issues the president has championed, including a task force being run by the Justice Department aimed at combating antisemitism “and other mutually agreed projects.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Paul Weiss Deal With Trump Faces Backlash From Legal Profession

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      Some lawyers said the deal was driven by profit. Others said it was enabling autocracy. One said the move had prompted her to quit her legal job in disgust.All over the legal world, lawyers on Friday were talking about the deal that Paul Weiss, one of the nation’s most prominent law firms, had made with President Trump to escape an onerous executive order that would have prevented it from representing many clients before the federal government. To avoid the hit to its business, the firm agreed to do $40 million worth of pro bono work for causes favored by the White House.It was a striking development in the White House’s broad retribution campaign against big law firms that represented lawyers or prosecutors in the criminal cases against Mr. Trump before the 2024 election.Paul Weiss’s move was a particular point of contention because of the firm’s standing in the legal community. The firm has long been dominated by Democrats and prided itself on being at the forefront of fights against the government for civil rights.“They have all the resources they need to fight an unlawful order,” said John Moscow, who was a top prosecutor at the Manhattan district attorney’s office under Robert Morgenthau. “The example they are setting is to surrender to unlawful orders rather than fight them in court.”Lawyers at firms both large and small took to social media to denounce the firm.“Absolutely shameful and spineless behavior,” one lawyer posted on X.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Administration Halts Funding for Legal Representation of Migrant Children

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      The Trump administration notified aid organizations across the country on Friday that it would cancel a contract that funds the legal representation of more than 25,000 children who entered the United States alone, a decision that leaves them vulnerable to swift deportation.In a memo reviewed by The New York Times, the government instructed more than 100 nonprofits to immediately cease their work representing the minors. It terminated a contract that was up for renewal on March 29.Advocates said the move would fast-track the children’s court cases, to their disadvantage, because many would be left without counsel in adversarial immigration proceedings. Children as young as 2 who are survivors of trafficking, trauma and abuse, and who are often too young to understand their legal rights, would be returned to countries where they could face harm, the advocates said.“Children cannot be expected to navigate the harsh and complicated immigration legal system without an attorney,” said Ashley Harrington, managing attorney for the children’s program at Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network in Colorado.“This brazen, heartless act endangers children’s lives,” she said.The nonprofit represents about 200 minors, including three siblings, ages 7 to 13, who fled to the United States from Honduras alone last year after their parents were killed by gang members.The number of children who have crossed the southern U.S. border each year without a parent or legal guardian has increased sharply in the last decade or so, reaching 128,000 in the 2022 fiscal year, according to government data. Most of them are from Central America.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Administration Dropped Policy Prohibiting Contractors From Having Segregated Facilities

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      A bus station in Durham, N.C., in 1940.Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group, via Getty ImagesIn 1962, removing a restroom sign at Montgomery Municipal Airport in Alabama, in compliance with a federal court order banning segregation.Associated PressThe Trump administration has removed a longstanding directive from the civil rights era that explicitly prohibited federal contractors from allowing segregated facilities, the latest move to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion policies from government operations that has drawn fierce rebuke.The removal of the segregated-facilities policy was included in a memo last month from the General Services Administration, which manages federal property and oversees procurement for the federal government. The memo, which applies to all civilian federal agencies, was among the many directives from agencies aiming to purge safeguards put in place in the 1960s to comply with executive orders issued by President Trump on race and gender identity. In his first days in office, Mr. Trump directed agencies to rid themselves of “harmful” and “wasteful” diversity policies, and “gender ideology extremism.”The memo, which came to light after it was reported by National Public Radio this week, drops several clauses from the G.S.A.’s Federal Acquisition Regulation, which is used to solicit contracts for services and supplies. The memo said the wording was “not consistent with the direction of the president.” Among the deletions is a policy, last updated in 2015, that stipulated federal contractors couldn’t have “segregated facilities,” such as waiting rooms, work areas, restrooms, lunchrooms and water fountains.The Civil Rights Act of 1964 still bars discrimination, and segregated facilities, in the United States. But civil rights groups have feared that Mr. Trump’s war on D.E.I. programs has signaled the federal government’s willingness to retreat from enforcing it.Dariely Rodriguez, the acting co-chief counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that like Mr. Trump’s revocation of a decades-old order issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson barring discrimination in hiring for government contractors, the stripping of the segregation provision “weakens the very safeguards that promote equity and inclusion across multiple sectors, including workplaces.”“The Trump administration’s actions are pressure-testing our democracy, eroding more than 60 years of progress,” Ms. Rodriguez said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why the Pentagon Scuttled Its Briefing of Elon Musk on China War Plans

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      “You wouldn’t show it to a businessman,” President Trump said in denying that Elon Musk was to be briefed on top-secret plans in the event of war with China.Over the past 24 hours, my colleagues’ report that Elon Musk was set to be briefed on the military’s top-secret plans in the event of war with China has shaken Washington. It even seemed to take President Trump by surprise.Musk’s planned visit to a secure room in the Pentagon was called off after The Times published its article on the visit, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.This morning, Trump denied the briefing had been planned. But he also made clear that he thought Musk should not have access to such war plans.“Certainly, you wouldn’t show it to a businessman who is helping us so much,” Trump said. He added, “Elon has businesses in China, and he would be susceptible perhaps to that.”I called Eric Schmitt, a Times national security reporter, who kindly stepped into one of the few Pentagon hallways where you can actually get cell service, and asked him to bring us up to speed.JB: Let’s start at the beginning. What did you learn yesterday about what was originally planned?ES: The Pentagon was scheduled to give a briefing to Musk this morning on the classified war plan for China. We were told it was going to be in this secure conference room called the Tank, which is typically where you’ll have very high-level military briefings with members of the Joint Chiefs or senior commanders. The idea that a civilian like Elon Musk, who’s not in the chain of command, would be getting any briefing in the Tank — much less on highly sensitive war plans for China — was certainly unusual, and it was alarming to some people.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Tariffs Against Canada Can’t Be About Trade

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      I’ll admit that I was sympathetic to Donald Trump’s heresy on trade, during his first term. His tariffs on China and his bid to renegotiate NAFTA prompted much pearl clutching from economists and pundits, but I knew from my reporting how many people in factory towns across America wanted him to do those things. The renegotiation of NAFTA was, ultimately, a bipartisan success story. It passed overwhelmingly. By the end of his first term, many people — including Democrats — acknowledged quietly that tariffs on China and updating NAFTA were necessary. President Joe Biden didn’t reverse them. He built on them. But now Trump seems to have lost the plot.He is tearing up that deal that he himself created by imposing 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, our largest trading partners. What gives?In the case of Mexico, there have been legitimate concerns that China is getting around U.S. tariffs by building or taking over factories in Mexico. That’s one of a few reasons the U.S. trade deficit with China has declined — to $295 billion last year from $418 billion in 2018 — at the same time the trade deficit with Mexico ballooned to $172 billion last year from roughly $78 billion in 2018, according to Census Bureau data.If you worry about chronic trade deficits, as Trump does, that’s a problem. But Trump’s ire at Canada is a mystery. The U.S. trade deficit with Canada is one of the smallest that we have — it was about $19 billion in 2018 and $63 billion last year. Virtually all of it can be explained by U.S. purchases of oil, gas and electricity, a reminder that Canada is critical to U.S. energy security.Without energy, the United States actually runs a trade surplus with Canada. Canada is the top export market for 34 states — or at least it was.Trump’s targeting of Canada has bewildered even his own political allies on trade. “On Canada, he’s just wrong,” one told me. I can’t pretend to understand what goes on in Trump’s brain. But this much is clear: It ain’t about trade.If you listen to his words, Trump is declaring economic war on Canada, our loyal and peaceful neighbor, because he wants to bring it to its knees and take it over as a 51st state. He’s wielding tariffs as a weapon, not to defend American workers, but to execute a hostile takeover of a country. It is a move so bizarre and shocking that nobody can quite believe it is happening.I was in Indiana this week, which is full of factory towns that supported Trump. Canada is the state’s largest trading partner by far. I didn’t met a soul who thinks beating up on Canada is a good idea. More

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      Judge to Consider Block on Trump’s Use of Wartime Law to Deport Venezuelans

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      A hearing has been set for Friday afternoon to debate whether a federal judge in Washington acted correctly when he temporarily stopped the Trump administration last weekend from summarily deporting scores of Venezuelan immigrants under a powerful but rarely invoked wartime statute.The hearing, scheduled for 2:30 p.m. in Federal District Court in Washington, could also include some discussion about the Justice Department’s repeated recalcitrance in responding to the judge’s demands. He has been requesting information about two deportation flights in particular, which officials say carried members of a Venezuelan street gang, Tren de Aragua, to El Salvador.The judge, James E. Boasberg, scolded the department in a stern order on Thursday for having “evaded its obligations” to provide him with data about the flights. He wants that information as he seeks to determine whether the Trump administration violated his initial instructions to turn the planes around after they left the United States on Saturday evening.Most of the courtroom conversation, however, is likely to concern Judge Boasberg’s underlying decision to stop the White House for now from using the wartime law, known as the Alien Enemies Act, to pursue its immigration agenda. The statute, passed in 1798, gives the government expansive powers during an invasion or a declared war to round up and summarily remove any subjects of a “hostile nation” over the age of 14 as “alien enemies.”Almost from the moment Judge Boasberg entered his provisional decision barring President Trump from using the law, the White House and the Justice Department have accused him of overstepping his authority by improperly inserting himself into the president’s ability to conduct foreign affairs.But Judge Boasberg imposed the order in the first place to give himself time to figure out whether Mr. Trump himself overstepped by stretching or even ignoring several of the statute’s provisions, which place checks on how and when it can be used.The administration has repeatedly claimed, for instance, that members of Tren de Aragua should be considered subjects of a hostile nation because they are closely aligned with the Venezuelan government. The White House, echoing a position that Mr. Trump pushed during his campaign, has also insisted that the arrival to the United States of dozens of members of the gang constitutes an invasion.But lawyers for some of the deported Venezuelans dispute those claims, saying that their clients are not gang members and should have the opportunity to prove it. The lawyers also say that while Tren de Aragua may be a dangerous criminal organization, which was recently designated as a terrorist organization, it is not a nation state.Moreover, they have argued that even if the members of the group have come to the United States en masse, that does not fit the traditional definition of an invasion. More

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      Justice Dept. Tries to Intervene on Trump’s Behalf in Jan. 6 Lawsuits

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      The department employed a maneuver that could protect the president from legal and financial consequences in a series of civil suits.The Justice Department made an unusual effort on Thursday to short-circuit a series of civil lawsuits seeking to hold President Trump accountable for his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Department lawyers argued in court papers filed to the judge overseeing the cases that Mr. Trump was acting in his official capacity as president on Jan. 6 and so the federal government itself should take his place as the defendant. That move, if successful, could protect Mr. Trump from having to face judgment for his role in the Capitol attack and from having to pay financial damages if he were found liable.The legal maneuver appeared to be Mr. Trump’s latest effort to use the powers of the Justice Department to his advantage by effectively having himself removed from the lawsuits, which were brought against him by groups of Capitol Police officers and lawmakers who claim they were injured when the mob stormed the building.The suits are the last remaining effort to hold Mr. Trump responsible for his role in the Capitol attack after two Jan. 6-related criminal cases against him collapsed last year.The department’s attempt to place the federal government itself in the lawsuits’ line of fire instead of Mr. Trump hinges on whether lawyers can persuade the federal judge overseeing the suits, Amit P. Mehta, that Mr. Trump was in fact acting in his official capacity as president on Jan. 6.The department has argued that under the law federal officials acting within the scope of their office or employment cannot be sued personally, and that in such instances the government is the only entity that can be targeted.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More