Trump Abuses Power To Target Law Firm In Retribution Spree

INSIDE: Ed Martin ... Elon Musk ... Mike Lindell

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Dangerous Times

In a dramatic escalation of his lawlessness, President Trump issued a new executive order targeting the Seattle-based international law firm Perkins Coie in an act of retribution for what he labeled its “dishonest and dangerous activity.”

It’s the firm’s past work in DC and in Democratic Party politics that has put it on Trump’s radar for years. Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias used to work at Perkins Coie. Trump blames the law firm for the Steele dossier. Former Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann was criminally charged in Trump’ first term then acquitted by a DC jury.

Among other acts of targeted retribution, the executive order:

• blackballs the firm’s employees from government jobs and strips them of their security clearances;

• targets law firms like Perkins Coie (if not explicitly Perkins Coie itself) for an EEOC investigation for racial discrimination (which we should understand to mean discriminating against whites);

• terminates where possible Perkins Coie’s contracts with the federal government and denies its employees access to federal buildings and facilities.

The executive order is breathtaking abuse of power by a sitting president. It has no precedent in American history other than his executive order last month targeting another major firm, Covington & Burling, for daring to represent former Special Counsel Jack Smith.

For years, we’ve warned of what’s to come in a Trump II presidency. It’s here. This is it. We are in the thick of it now.

Georgetown Law Dean Sets Ed Martin Straight

Don’t mess with the Jesuits.

Georgetown Law School Dean William Treanor sent a steely letter back to acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, who bumbled his way into a First Amendment minefield by threatening to blackball the university’s students if it didn’t drop all DEI efforts:

Senate Dems File Ethics Complaints Against Trump DOJers

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have filed separate ethics complaints with the attorney disciplinary bodies in New York and Washington, D.C., against two key Trump DOJ figures:

• Emil Bove

• Ed Martin

A Crazy Story Of Defiance

The obscure US African Development Foundation has mustered a so-far-unusual level of defiance to efforts by the Trump administration to dismantle it. On Wednesday, USADF refused to allow DOGE emissaries access to its DC office. On Thursday, the DOGE team returned with U.S. marshals in tow and were able to gain access.

The president of USADF immediately filed a highly readable federal lawsuit detailing the dramatic events , and a judge in DC quickly issued a short stay of any further efforts by the Trump administration to take over or dismantle USADF.

It was a rapid-fire series of events that stretched well beyond the boundaries of the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, raised questions about the proper role of the U.S. marshals in the takeover effort, and yielded this memorable scene in downtown DC:

The staffers inside the office exited the building via a stairwell — bypassing the elevators because of an ongoing power outage — leaving behind their personal belongings to avoid confrontation with DOGE employees and U.S. Marshals, USADF officials said.

As agency personnel waited outside and huddled together at a nearby business, some received calls from Nate Cavanaugh, the 28-year-old tech entrepreneur working with the U.S. DOGE Service, who was on-site and had claimed for a second day to be a USADF employee and requested employees to return and grant him access to the computer systems. But no USADF officials returned to the office, a senior USADF official said.

Quote Of The Day

“When you see important societal actors — be it university presidents, media outlets, C.E.O.s, mayors, governors — changing their behavior in order to avoid the wrath of the government, that’s a sign that we’ve crossed the line into some form of authoritarianism.”–Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard who co-authored 2018’s “How Democracies Die.”

What The Courts Did Yesterday

• NLRB: U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell ordered Gwynne Wilcox reinstated to her position on the National Labor Relations Board after finding Trump’s firing of her was unlawful in a blistering ruling that’s worth a read.

• USAID: In the big USAID case, U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali set out a timeline for the Trump administration to begin paying out tens of million of dollars owed contractors after weeks of delay despite his earlier orders.

• OMB: U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. extended his order blocking the OMB’s indiscriminate spending freeze, writing: “Here, the executive put itself above Congress. It imposed a categorical mandate on the spending of congressionally appropriated and obligated funds without regard to Congress’s authority to control spending.”

If Trump Defies the Courts, Then What?

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC-Berkeley School of Law, does not offer any reassuring answers.

Fired U.S. Special Counsel Abandons Effort To Get Job Back

Hampton Dellinger, the fired U.S. special counsel who was temporarily reinstated to his job by a federal judge, has dropped his lawsuit against the Trump administration after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that he could not remain in his post while the case was on appeal.

This is a win for the Trump administration, but it may have been a strategic decision by Dellinger to allow more promising cases protecting agency independence to get to the Supreme Court first rather than his own less favorable one.

Did Elon Musk Go Too Far Even For Trump?

It’s possible, but yesterday’s declaration by President Trump that cabinet secretaries – not Elon Musk – have hiring and firing authority seemed primarily intended to cure problems with the Trump administration’s legal defenses to the DOGE lawsuits. The problem is that Trump immediately undid whatever clean up his initial comments had achieved:

DOGE Watch

• WaPo: DOGE is driving Social Security cuts and will make mistakes, acting head says privately

• WaPo: DOGE targets child support database full of income data

• WaPo: DOGE wants them ‘gone’ but makes it hard for federal workers to move on

• WaPo: DOGE uses bogus claims of fraud to justify purges.

The Purges

Your occasional reminder that the purges are a precursor to installing loyalists and demanding fealty from government workers. Among the current loyalty tests being administered to potential political hires, according to Bloomberg:

Would you be willing to serve as a spokesperson for mass deportations? Which of Trump’s executive orders is your favorite? Who won the 2020 presidential election? And which Trump policy do you disagree with?

In other purge news:

• FEMA: The brand new acting chief counsel of FEMA has been placed on leave for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.

• IRI: Republicans quiet as DOGE slashes GOP-backed International Republican Institute, a pro-democracy group

• IC: The intelligence community braces for a Trump purge.

• Reverse purge: Some federal agencies have quickly reversed course and begun reinstating workers.

The Destruction

• Wired: A Sensitive Complex Housing a CIA Facility Was on GSA’s List of US Properties for Sale

• NYT: The State Departments plans to close at least a dozen consulates and fire local employees.

• NYT: “The Ebola outbreak in Uganda has worsened significantly, and the country’s ability to contain the spread has been severely weakened by the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign assistance, American officials said this week.”

The Retribution

A perfunctory four-day pretextual Trump Education Department investigation targeting Maine for its policy on trans athletes has quickly concluded the state is in violation of Title IX, without having contacted the governor’s office or the state Department of Education.

Ugh …

President Trump has a new anti-NATO refrain that strikes at the mutual defense agreement that lays at the heart of the military alliance: “If they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them.”

Is Trump Aggression Against Canada For Real?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to think so, speaking of the Trump tariffs earlier this week: “What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that’ll make it easier to annex us.”

The 2020 Election Never Ends

A federal judge in Minnesota held My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell in contempt of court for failing to turn over discovery materials in Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit against him.

Trumpism Is As Stupid As It Is Scary

Keyword searches for suspected DEI terms have swept up the Enola Gay – get it? “gay” – in a Pentagon purge of online photos and posts.

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