WASHINGTON: Legal advocacy groups sounded alarms on Saturday after US President Donald Trump threatened new actions against lawyers and law firms that bring immigration lawsuits and other cases against the government that he deems unethical.
In a memorandum to US Attorney General Pam Bondi late on Friday, Trump said lawyers were helping to fuel “rampant fraud and meritless claims” in the immigration system, and directed the Justice Department to seek sanctions against attorneys for professional misconduct.
The order also took aim at law firms that sue the administration in what Trump, a Republican, called “baseless partisan” lawsuits. He asked Bondi to refer such firms to the White House to be stripped of security clearances, and for federal contracts they worked on to be terminated.
Ben Wizner, a senior lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the new directive sought to “chill and intimidate” lawyers who challenge the president’s agenda. Trump has separately mounted attacks on law firms over their internal diversity policies and their ties to his political adversaries. “Courts have been the only institution so far that have stood up to Trump’s onslaught,” Wizner said. “Courts can’t play that role without lawyers bringing cases in front of them.”
The ACLU is involved in litigation against the administration over immigrant deportations, including the expulsion of alleged Venezuelan gang members.
The Trump administration has been hit with more than 100 lawsuits challenging White House actions on immigration, transgender rights and other issues since the start of the president’s second term. Legal advocacy groups, along with at least 12 major law firms, have brought many of the cases.
A White House spokesperson, Taylor Rogers, said “President Trump is delivering on his promise to ensure the judicial system is no longer weaponized against the American people.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the memorandum, which directed Bondi to assess lawyers and firms that brought cases against the government over the past eight years.
Law firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters, which is working with the ACLU in an immigrant rights case against the administration, said in a statement that it was “inexcusable and despicable” for Trump to attack lawyers based on their clients or legal work opposing the federal government.
Representatives from other prominent law firms that are representing clients in cases against Trump’s administration, including Hogan Lovells, Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie and WilmerHale, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump issued executive orders this month against law firms Perkins Coie and Paul Weiss, suspending their lawyers’ security clearances and restricting their access to government buildings, officials and federal contracting work.
The president also last month suspended security clearances of lawyers at Covington & Burling, in each case citing the firms’ past work for his political or legal opponents.
The Keker firm on Saturday called on law firms to sign a joint court brief supporting a lawsuit by Perkins Coie challenging the executive order against it.
Paul Weiss on Thursday struck a deal with Trump to rescind the executive order against it, pledging to donate the equivalent of $40 million in free legal work to support some of the administration’s causes such as support for veterans and combating antisemitism.
Lawyers are bound by professional ethics rules that require them to investigate allegations before filing lawsuits and not deceive the courts. Imposing disciplinary sanctions on lawyers who violate such rules falls on the court system, not federal prosecutors, though prosecutors can charge lawyers with criminal misconduct.
Some lawyers aligned with Trump faced professional discipline over claims that they violated legal ethics rules in challenging Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election win over Trump.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who later was an attorney for Trump, was disbarred in New York and in the District of Columbia over baseless claims he made alleging the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Lawyers for Civil Rights, a legal advocacy group suing the administration over deportations, called Trump’s sanctions threat hypocritical in a statement to Reuters, saying Trump and his allies “have repeatedly thumbed their noses at the rule of law.”
Trump targets lawyers in immigration cases, lawsuits against administration
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Trump targets lawyers in immigration cases, lawsuits against administration
- The Trump administration has been hit with more than 100 lawsuits challenging White House actions on immigration, transgender rights and other issues since the start of the president’s second term
30 people dead from effects of winter storm as more freezing cold pummels US
Many in the US faced another night of below-freezing temperatures and no electricity after a colossal winter storm heaped more snow Monday on the Northeast and kept parts of the South coated in ice. At least 30 deaths were reported in states afflicted with severe cold.
Deep snow — over a foot extending in a 1,300-mile swath from Arkansas to New England — halted traffic, canceled flights and triggered wide school closures Monday. The National Weather Service said areas north of Pittsburgh got up to 20 inches of snow and faced wind chills as low as minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit late Monday into Tuesday.
The bitter cold afflicting two-thirds of the US wasn’t going away. The weather service said Monday that a fresh influx of artic air is expected to sustain freezing temperatures in places already covered in snow and ice. And forecasters said it’s possible another winter storm could hit parts of the East Coast this weekend.
A rising death toll included two people run over by snowplows in Massachusetts and Ohio, fatal sledding accidents that killed teenagers in Arkansas and Texas, and a woman whose body was found covered in snow by police with bloodhounds after she was last seen leaving a Kansas bar. In New York City, officials said eight people were found dead outdoors over the frigid weekend.
Hundreds of thousands without power
There were still more than 560,000 power outages in the nation Monday evening, according to poweroutage.com. Most of them were in the South, where weekend blasts of freezing rain caused tree limbs and power lines to snap, inflicting crippling outages on northern Mississippi and parts of Tennessee. Officials warned that it could take days for power to be restored.
In Mississippi, officials scrambled to get cots, blankets, bottled water and generators to warming stations in hard-hit areas in the aftermath of the state’s worst ice storm since 1994. At least 14 homes, one business and 20 public roads had major damage, Gov. Tate Reeves said Monday evening.
The University of Mississippi, where most students hunkered down without power Monday, canceled classes for the entire week as its Oxford campus remained coated in treacherous ice. Oxford Mayor Robyn Tannehill said on social media that so many trees, limbs and power lines had fallen that “it looks like a tornado went down every street.”
A pair of burly, falling tree branches damaged real estate agent Tim Phillips’ new garage, broke a window and cut off power to his home in Oxford.
“It’s just one of those things that you try to prepare for,” Phillips said, “but this one was just unreal.”
The US had more than 12,000 flight delays or cancelations nationwide Monday, according to flight tracker flightaware.com. On Sunday, 45 percent of US flights got canceled, making it the highest day for cancelations since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
The impact extended far beyond the storm’s reach because such major hubs as the Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport were clobbered by the storm, stranding planes and flight crews.
More light to moderate snow was forecast in New England through Monday evening.
New York City saw its snowiest day in years, with neighborhoods recording 8 to 15 inches of snow. Though public schools shut down, roughly 500,000 students were told to log in for online lessons Monday. The nation’s largest public school system saw snow days stripped away after remote learning gained traction during the coronavirus pandemic.
Bitter cold grips much of the nation
Meanwhile, bitter cold followed in the storm’s wake. Communities across the Midwest, South, and Northeast awakened Monday to subzero weather. The entire Lower 48 states were forecast to have their coldest average low temperature of minus 9.8 F since January 2014.
In the Nashville, Tennessee, area, electricity returned for thousands of homes and businesses Monday, while about 146,000 others still didn’t have power Monday evening after subfreezing temperatures overnight. Many hotels were sold out overnight to residents escaping dark and frigid homes.
Alex Murray booked a Nashville hotel room for his family to ensure they had a working freezer to preserve pumped breast milk to feed their 6-month-old daughter. Anticipating a long wait until power gets restored at his home, Murray planned to extend their hotel stay through Wednesday.
“I know there’s many people that may not be able to find a place or pay for a place or anything like that, or even travel,” Murray said Monday. “So, we were really fortunate.”
Storm leads to deaths in a number of states
In Emporia, Kansas, police found a 28-year-old teacher dead in the snow after she was seen leaving a bar without her coat and phone.
Police said snowplows backed into two people who died in Norwood, Massachusetts, and Dayton, Ohio. Arkansas and Texas reported two deaths apiece.
The cause of deaths for the eight people found outside in New York City as temperatures plunged between Saturday and Monday morning remained under investigation.
Officials reported four deaths in Tennessee, three deaths apiece in Louisiana and Pennsylvania; two deaths in Mississippi; and one each in New Jersey, South Carolina and Kentucky.
