“If Trump decided he wanted to hold onto power past 2028, there are at least four paths he could try:
He could generate a movement to repeal the 22nd Amendment directly.
He could exploit a little-noticed loophole in the amendment that might allow him to run for vice president and then immediately ascend back to the presidency.
He could run for president again on the bet that a pliant Supreme Court won’t stop him.
Or he could simply refuse to leave — and put a formal end to America’s democratic experiment.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/31/trump-defy-constitution-third-term-00200239
“A third major law firm has reached an agreement with the Trump administration to escape a punishing executive order that would cost it government business.
Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, which has more than 1,200 attorneys, will provide at least $100 million in legal services to causes favored by the White House and end diversity programs under terms of a deal President Donald Trump announced Tuesday on social media.”
…
“Trump has deployed executive orders and memos to punish law firms he views as adversaries. Among them are longtime Democratic Party partner Perkins Coie and Covington and Burling — which provided legal services to former special counsel Jack Smith.
Several firms, including Jenner & Block and WilmerHale, have fought back against Trump’s punishing orders, suing to block the orders.”
“In recent weeks, two large law firms reached settlements with the Trump administration that stunned the legal profession — the first with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, which pledged to commit $40 million in free legal work “to support the Administration’s initiatives,” and the second with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which upped the ante to a $100 million commitment. The deals allowed the firms to avoid sanctions imposed by Trump’s executive orders, including revocations of government security clearances held by the firms’ lawyers and prohibitions on entering federal buildings.”
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“You can attribute the two deals mostly to the fact that what Trump is doing — using the power of the presidency to target law firms that he personally dislikes — is legitimately unprecedented. The full scope of the consequences from Trump’s orders are far from clear, and large law firms are temperamentally conservative by nature. Faced with such uncertainty, surrender becomes an option.
The bottom line is that large law firms exist to make money — ideally lots of it — and they are generally not paragons of virtue, principle or self-sacrifice.”
…
“it is a crime under federal law for public officials to engage in extortion, and the Justice Department’s public guidance explains that the theory has been used against public officials “serving on the federal, state and local levels.”
Trump is not the direct beneficiary of the pro bono work agreed to by the firms, but the DOJ guidance explains that the law applies even if the “corrupt payment went to a third party.” Moreover, a person or company can be liable under the law if they are “truly the instigator of the transaction,” so both sides of these deals could conceivably be held accountable.
You could make similar arguments under federal bribery law — the line between bribery and extortion is often hard to parse in particular fact patterns — but of course, the Justice Department is not going to do anything about it, and Trump enjoys broad criminal immunity even after he leaves office. In theory, the law firms are at greater risk — a Justice Department in a new administration could always take an interest — but that seems highly unlikely.”
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“two effects are conceivable, at least at the margins. The first is that law firms will be less willing to take on political clients. The second is that law firms may prove less willing to hire former government lawyers involved in politically controversial cases — or even lawyers who they think may go on to do that sort of work.
More broadly, law firms may pull back on supporting pro bono work that could be controversial with the Trump administration or the Republican Party, including immigration-related cases.”
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” In a democratic society, lawyers should not have to worry about whether the government will punish them for having clients or colleagues who are somehow associated with the political opposition. Likewise, private parties should be free to choose their own lawyers without having to worry that the government will be biased against their attorneys or will hamper their work for improper reasons.”
“The Trump administration conceded in a court filing Monday that it mistakenly deported a Maryland father to El Salvador “because of an administrative error” and argued it could not return him because he’s now in Salvadoran custody.”
“The American Bar Association and dozens of other bar groups this week slammed President Donald Trump’s continued crackdown on the legal system as an attack on the rule of law.
“Words and actions matter,” the groups wrote in an open letter on Wednesday, which did not mention the president by name. “And the intimidating words and actions we have heard and seen must end. They are designed to cow our country’s judges, our country’s courts and our legal profession.””
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“Trump has come down hard on Democratic-leaning law firms, signing executive orders and memos suspending security clearances and barring the federal government from hiring employees from firms like Perkins Coie and Covington and Burling. One firm initially in Trump’s crosshairs — Paul, Weiss — saw its sanctions lifted after agreeing to perform pro bono legal work for conservative clients and ending diversity policies.
The retribution tour has now made its way to Congress, with GOP Senate offices told to take note of the blacklisted firms in an email sent last Friday.”
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““If lawyers do not speak, who will speak for our judges? Who will protect our bedrock of justice? If we do not speak now, when will we speak? Now is the time. That is why we stand together with the ABA in support of the rule of law,” the groups wrote.”
The Trump administration are not free speech extremists.
“Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that the State Department has revoked more than 300 student visas, as the Trump administration continues to detain and deport pro-Palestinian student activists at universities across the country.”
“The senators made clear that spending bills approved by Congress and signed into law by the president must be regarded as law, not an optional recommendation to the executive branch: “Just as the President does not have a line-item veto, he does not have the ability to pick and choose which emergency spending to designate.”
They said they are “concerned” about “sudden changes to OMB’s interpretation of long-standing statutory provisions,” adding it could be “disruptive to the appropriations process and make it more difficult for the Appropriations Committee to work in a collaborative fashion with the Administration.”
They also scolded Vought for not bringing this issue to them directly: “Collaboration will become even more challenging when the Committee is first informed of such developments through the press, rather than notified through official channels, as was the case here.””
“there is extraordinarily little support for the idea that the president could simply disregard orders from the courts. That is true across the public, according to recent polls, with more than 80 percent of Americans rejecting the idea.
I also found similar responses from an informal survey of conservative legal thinkers, including from those generally sympathetic or otherwise open to the administration’s legal positions.
“The Constitution implicitly requires the executive branch to … comply with judicial judgments when the executive is part of the case,” Saikrishna Prakash, a law professor at the University of Virginia and onetime clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told me.
“It’s never permissible for a president to defy a court order,” said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow and legal analyst at the Manhattan Institute.”
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“There are other practical reasons for the Trump administration to stay on the right side of the courts.
“What’s laying in the background is that they probably perceive, rightly or wrongly, that they’re going to win 70, 60 percent of the time in the Supreme Court,” Prakash told me, referring to the array of ongoing disputes that may wind up before the justices. “So why would you want to trash the judiciary if you think you’re ultimately going to win most of the time?”
Just as important, if not more so, is that a confrontation between Trump and the courts would imperil the successful, decades-long project by Republicans and conservatives to shift the Supreme Court to the right. In just the last few years, the six GOP appointees have revamped constitutional law in a host of areas — from abortion to affirmative action to the administrative state — but there are plenty of issues that are still on conservatives’ wish list and facing action at the Supreme Court.”
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“None of this works particularly well if Trump ends up antagonizing potential swing-vote justices like Roberts or Amy Coney Barrett. As former Gov. Chris Christie recently noted to ABC News, “He’s going to tick off the Supreme Court so much that they may not give him everything he wants.””