Politics
How Mar-a-Lago Became the Center of Gravity for the Hard Right
The ornate ballrooms and manicured lawns of Mar-a-Lago have hosted a variety of affairs for the wealthy and connected in the resort’s nearly 100-year history: philanthropic galas, lavish banquets, society lunches. During the presidency of Donald J. Trump, who has owned the property since 1985, the club drew a paying clientele of establishment Republicans and others currying favor from the president.
But since Mr. Trump left office in 2021, Mar-a-Lago has transformed into a White House in exile and the nerve center for some of the most extreme elements of the party’s MAGA wing. This includes a nearly steady stream of promoters of conspiracy theories that include lies that the 2020 election was stolen and that the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, was a federal setup.
This portrait of the company Mr. Trump keeps was assembled from a New York Times analysis of people and groups that have spent significant time and money at the resort, which has been his primary residence since his presidency ended.
The analysis, built on a review of videos, photos and other evidence of attendance at Mar-a-Lago, found that events hosted by ultra-right organizations and political fundraisers now dominate Mar-a-Lago’s calendar, and even officially non-political events can feel like rallies. In this gilded echo chamber, Mr. Trump enjoys unwavering devotion — and collects the staggering price of admission.
A compilation of date-stamped video clips filmed at Mar-a-Lago shows the following: Matt Gaetz, in Jan. 2023, saying “Mar-a-Lago is the touchstone, it is the bedrock of the America-first populist movement”; Sebastian Gorka, in Dec. 2023, saying “The headquarters for patriots, right here”; Donald J. Trump, in May 2022, saying “This group of people right here, these are the true patriots”; a crowd chanting “U.S.A.,” “U.S.A.,” as Mr. Trump greets members of a crowd; Forgiato Blow, in March 2024, singing “Party for Donald Trump, U.S.A.”; and Ryan Garcia, in April 2024, saying “Donald Trump 2024.”
At Mar-a-Lago, conspiracy theories and fearmongering take the ballroom stage. There, the “Pizzagate” hoax, centering on outlandish claims of a pedophilia ring among prominent Democrats, is real. The 2024 presidential election is more than a political contest — it is a struggle between good and evil.
A compilation of date-stamped video clips filmed at Mar-a-Lago shows the following: Glenn Beck, in Dec. 2022, saying “We are in a battle of good vs. evil”; Roger Stone, in March 2024, saying “Good and evil”; Liz Crokin, in March 2024, saying, “Pizza, indeed, is a pedophile code word”; and Michael T. Flynn, in May 2022, saying, “We are gonna fight. We’re gonna take them to the gates of hell.”
A vast majority of gala events held at the club since January 2021 have been sponsored by individuals and organizations aligned with Mr. Trump’s style of politics, The Times found. And those who oppose MAGA conservatism — and its pervasive insistence that the 2020 election was stolen — are excoriated.
A compilation of date-stamped video clips filmed during speeches at Mar-a-Lago shows the following: Vivek Ramaswamy, in April 2024, saying “A fringe minority who hates this country”; Matthew DePerno, in March 2022, saying “Bringing Communism to our shores”; Frank Pavone, in March 2023, saying “They destroy life and freedom and family”; Roger Stone, in March 2024, saying “Radical atheist Marxists”; Donald Trump, in April 2023, saying “These radical left lunatics want to interfere with our elections”; Kari Lake, in Nov. 2022, saying “They think they can continue to steal elections”; Joe Kent, in Feb. 2022, saying “The election that we all knew was stolen”; and Michael T. Flynn, in Dec. 2023, saying “If we don’t have a fair election, we don’t have a country.” “If there’s anyone who doesn’t support Trump, I don’t see it,” Cameron Moore, a Mar-a-Lago member, said last month on a podcast hosted by Alex Stone. Mr. Stone describes himself as an “adopted nephew” of Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime political operative and a regular at Mar-a-Lago.
A compilation of date-stamped video clips filmed at Mar-a-Lago shows the following: Donald Trump; Roseanne Barr saying from a podium in April 2024, “He’s the only hope we have in our country. That’s what I think, don’t you agree?” Mr. Trump holding a microphone while a crowd shouts “We love you!”; and Roger Stone speaking in March 2024, saying “The greatest president since Abraham Lincoln, Donald J. Trump.”
It wasn’t always this way.
From Black Tie to Red Hats
Before Mr. Trump became president, Mar-a-Lago was a magnet for Palm Beach society, hosting opulent galas from fall through spring that raised funds for some of the nation’s most prestigious charities.
Political events were rare. During the 2014-15 season — the last before Mr. Trump officially entered politics — The Times counted 52 fund-raiser events at Mar-a-Lago. Of them, just one was political: the Republican Party of Palm Beach County’s annual Lincoln Day dinner.
Non-political events “Lady in Red” Gala
Red Cross Gala
Winter gala seasons at Mar-a-Lago leading up to Trump’s presidency
Political events
This past winter, The Times found only six of those events were still being held at Mar-a-Lago — including the G.O.P.’s Lincoln Day event. Traditional charities began peeling away from the club in August 2017, after then-President Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of a violent rally to save a Confederate statue in Charlottesville, Va. Of the groups that departed, 10 moved their events to Mar-a-Lago’s chief rival in the Palm Beach banquet business: The Breakers resort.
Groups aligned with Mr. Trump’s politics have taken their place.
Turning Point USA, a right-wing student organization, began hosting an annual gala at Mar-a-Lago in 2018. America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit set up in 2021 by former Trump administration officials, has thrown an “America First Gala” at Mar-a-Lago every year since its founding. America’s Future Inc. — a group led by Michael T. Flynn that has amplified the false conspiracy theory that a global cabal of pedophiles controls the media and politics — has held two events, as has Border911, founded by Thomas D. Homan, who served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration.
Non-political events “2000 Mules” Premiere
America First Policy Institute
Border911 Gala
Winter gala seasons at Mar-a-Lago since Trump left office
Political events
“This is where we come to recharge our batteries and to know we will retake our nation,” Sebastian Gorka, a former White House aide for Mr. Trump, said from the Mar-a-Lago stage in December. Mr. Gorka is the host of a radio show that describes itself as “the new front lines in the ongoing Culture War against the Left.”
The “Founding Fathers Award” presented to Mr. Trump by the group Moms for America in December.
Event organizers, speakers and attendees use their proximity to display loyalty to and admiration for Mr. Trump. They say he is the “greatest president” (in “modern history,” “the history of America” or “since Abraham Lincoln”). They give him awards (“American Defender of Zion,” “Founding Fathers” and “America’s Champion for Children”). They tell him they love him and sing songs in his honor.
All Campaign Trails Lead to Palm Beach
The presidential race is not the only one rooted at Mar-a-Lago. A visit to the resort has become an essential rite for Republican candidates. Since 2021, more than 60 Republicans in or running for Congress or state office have spent money at Mar-a-Lago, most on fund-raisers. Their ultimate objective: securing an endorsement or a surprise appearance from Mr. Trump.
According to federal and state campaign finance filings through the first quarter of 2024, more than $4.7 million has been spent on the property by candidates and political committees since Mr. Trump left the White House and made Mar-a-Lago his permanent residence. Mr. Trump’s campaign, and super PACs supporting it, make up about a quarter of that total.
Campaign and other political spending at Mar-a-Lago has exploded in the past three years
Publicly, Mr. Trump has downplayed the idea that his club is a central political destination.
“We don’t do too many of these things at Mar-a-Lago,” Mr. Trump said in March 2022 at a Mar-a-Lago fund-raiser for Vernon Jones, who was running for the Republican nomination in Georgia’s 10th congressional district.
“I don’t want to make it a totally political place,” Mr. Trump added. But in reality, that’s largely what Mar-a-Lago had become. More than two dozen midterm candidates had already held fund-raisers on the property when Mr. Trump made that statement.
The Political Is Profitable
As Mar-a-Lago’s owner, Mr. Trump is the beneficiary of its profits — and the club’s evolution seems to have been good for his bottom line.
The Trump Organization is a private business, and, for years, very little was known publicly about the financial health of its clubs, including Mar-a-Lago. But that changed when Letitia James, the New York attorney general, sued Mr. Trump for exaggerating the value of his properties. Detailed records of the club’s finances were made public as evidence.
Those records show that Mar-a-Lago actually lost money in 2012, but then its profits began to climb as Mr. Trump entered politics. They hit a peak in 2017, as the club added new customers — including the U.S. government, which paid for bedrooms used by Secret Service agents and liquor drunk by Mr. Trump’s aides — without losing its existing ones, like the charities that rented out the club’s ballrooms for fund-raiser galas.
A bill showing more than $1,000 in charges for liquor, paid by the U.S. Department of State.
But many of those charity customers began to flee Mar-a-Lago during Mr. Trump’s presidency, with operating profits bottoming out at $4.2 million in the Covid-stunted year of 2020, according to an analysis by Laurence Hirsh, a consultant hired by Ms. James.
Since Mr. Trump left office, however, Mar-a-Lago’s profits have shot up again — even as the club has been in the headlines for its role in both the New York civil case and one of several criminal cases against Mr. Trump. (According to federal prosecutors, Mr. Trump used Mar-a-Lago to store classified documents — often in close proximity to partygoers — that he had illegally removed from the White House. Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty to these charges.)
Records entered into evidence in the New York fraud case by an analyst for the Trump Organization, Greg Christovich, showed that Mar-a-Lago had a net profit of $22 million in 2022. The analysis showed that profits at Mr. Trump’s 11 other U.S. clubs — most of them golf clubs he visits far less often than Mar-a-Lago — had also rebounded since their lows in 2020. But Mar-a-Lago still stands out: Its profits were more than double those of any other Trump club, according to Mr. Christovich’s analysis.
Source: Analysis by Greg Christovich entered into evidence in New York civil fraud case
Net profit by year at Donald J. Trump’s clubs
One major reason for that increase: Mr. Christovich said that Mar-a-Lago had raised its membership initiation fee to $600,000, the highest it had ever been. The fee, which entitles the club’s roughly 500 members to use its dining rooms, beach club, tennis courts and other facilities, had been just $100,000 when Mr. Trump won the 2016 election. The club’s new members paid $12 million in initiation fees in 2022, Mr. Christovich’s records showed — money that was effectively all profit for the club.
Another reason for the club’s surge: Mar-a-Lago reported $11 million in profits from its food and beverage operations, which appeared to include both the club’s member dining areas and its catering business. Mar-a-Lago has two large ballrooms that host banquets, weddings and private parties. The Trump Organization did not respond to questions about whether the club had raised its rates for banquets, and the turnover among its customers makes it hard to compare the cost of the same events from year to year. But one of the club’s steadiest customers, the Republican Party of Palm Beach County, reported paying more: its Lincoln Day dinner in 2023 cost $318,000, up from $158,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars seven years earlier, campaign finance records show.
“I believe there was an increase in the cost, steadily, over the years,” said Michael Barnett, who was the chairman of the county G.O.P. until 2023, and who is now an elected county commissioner. But Mr. Barnett said the cost increase had not deterred the party: “You can’t ask for a better venue,” he said. “We would never consider going anywhere else.”
Frank Vain, a consultant who advises private clubs, said that other clubs in Florida, with no connection to politics, had also seen huge increases in profits over the same period. “We’re calling this a bit of a golden age for private clubs,” he said.
A recent study by the firm RSM, which serves as a consultant to golf clubs, found that private clubs in the same area as Mar-a-Lago had also sharply raised their initiation fees, though their average fee was still far lower than Mar-a-Lago’s. The average initiation fee in the area increased to $176,000 in 2023 from about $126,000, adjusted for inflation, in 2021.
A MAGA Oasis
Of course, a key distinction sets Mar-a-Lago apart from other clubs a wealthy Palm Beach resident might consider joining. A motivation beyond luxury or privacy motivates the true believers who have flocked to South Ocean Boulevard: MAGA is a movement, and Mar-a-Lago is its epicenter.
Fred Rustmann, a former member of the club who supports Mr. Trump’s policies, said he canceled his membership in 2021 because the clientele had “started to change to people who were kissing his butt all the time,” he said, referring to Mr. Trump. And, unlike when Mr. Trump was president, “he was there a lot,” Mr. Rustmann said. “There was a lot of hand-shaking, and applause, and everybody stands up, and wow-wow-wow. It just wasn’t my kind of thing anymore.”
Since Mr. Trump left office, and as he has increasingly aligned with the extreme fringe of the Republican Party, photos posted on social media of people and events at Mar-a-Lago reflect that right-wing personalities have become more woven into the tapestry of the club. These are a few of them.
More than two dozen speakers from the ReAwaken America Tour, a far-right, Christian nationalist roadshow led in part by Mr. Flynn, have visited Mar-a-Lago since Mr. Trump left office. Many have been seen there more than once.
An assortment of five photographs shows pairs or small groups of people dressed in formalwear. Most are outlined in white and appear brightly, while several are not highlighted and appear darker in the background. A caption below the photos lists those highlighted, from left to right: Liz Crokin, Lara Logan, Greg Locke, Sean Feucht, Donald J. Trump and Shannon Kroner.
Dinesh D’Souza, a right-wing commentator turned filmmaker, has held premieres for at least two movies at Mar-a-Lago: “2000 Mules,” which promoted the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and “Police State,” which alleged high-level weaponization of the justice system against conservatives.
Two photos show Dinesh D’Souza in formalwear, outlined in white and appearing brightly. In one of the photos, Donald Trump is also highlighted. In each photo, a woman is not highlighted and appears darker in the background.
Siggy Flicker, a former Real Housewife of New Jersey and a current spokesperson for the right-wing Jewish organization JEXIT (“Jews Exiting the Democrat Party”), joined the club last year and has become a frequent presence. Three photos show Siggy Flicker, outlined in white and highlighted. In one, she appears alone; in another, with a crowd in the background; and in a third, with Donald Trump, who is also highlighted.
Jack Posobiec, a hard-right podcaster who has promoted disinformation, has had dinner with Mr. Trump and attended multiple galas.
Two photos show Jack Posobiec in formalwear, highlighted and outlined in white. In one, he appears with Donald Trump, who is also highlighted. In the other, he is with a woman who is not highlighted.
At an April fund-raiser for Kari Lake, Mr. Trump praised Laura Loomer, a provocateur who twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress and who has said she supports white nationalism.
Four photos show Laura Loomer in cocktail attire, outlined in white and highlighted. Across the photos, she is seen with Michael T. Flynn, Donald Trump and Roger Stone, as well as two other people who are not highlighted. The Times identified more than 130 people who have attended events at Mar-a-Lago three or more times since Mr. Trump left office. Some are members of the club, while others are frequent visitors.
The photos transition into a grid of many small headshots of individual people.
They come from all sorts of backgrounds. 15 are professional athletes or entertainers. Hover or tap to see their names.
The photo grid transitions to highlight 15 of the headshots.
38 are prominent figures in conservative media or social media. The photo grid transitions to highlight a different group of 38 people.
Dozens of politicians have made the pilgrimage. These 44 are current members of Congress or state officials, or candidates who ran or are running for those positions in 2022 or 2024.
The grid transitions to highlight a different group of 44 people.
34 of them received endorsements from Trump.
The grid transitions to reduce the 44 highlighted people to 34. Some were at the rallies in Washington in support of Mr. Trump on Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, that preceded the riot at the Capitol.
The grid transitions to highlight a different group of 21 people.
Many more have spread misinformation about the events of Jan. 6 — including characterizing it as an F.B.I. plot — or played down the seriousness of the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The grid transitions to highlight a different group of 56 people.
And the proportion who have questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election, or said it was rigged or stolen, is larger still. The grid transitions to highlight a different group of 107 people.
These are some of the people who are spending time in Mr. Trump’s home as this year’s election looms. For so many in the Mar-a-Lago universe, Mr. Trump has been the rightful president since 2017 — and the 2024 result is a foregone conclusion.
The grid zooms back out to show the entire gallery of small headshots.
Plaintiff Council for Opportunity in Education
Defendant U.S. Department of Education
Filed in the District of Columbia on Oct. 14, 2025
Injunction
Plaintiff Dallas County, Tex.
Defendant Kennedy
Filed in the District of Columbia on Dec. 5, 2025
Plaintiff Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Defendant Kennedy Jr.
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on July 21, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Colorado
Defendant Department of Health and Human Services
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on April 1, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Housing Authority of the County of San Diego
Defendant Turner
Filed in the Northern District of California on Oct. 15, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff National Alliance to End Homelessness
Defendant Department of Housing and Urban Development
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on Dec. 1, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Washington
Defendant Federal Emergency Management Agency
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on July 16, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Arizona
Defendant Environmental Protection Agency
Filed in the Western District of Washington on Oct. 16, 2025
Plaintiff Open Technology Fund
Defendant Lake
Filed in the District of Columbia on March 20, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff National Public Radio
Defendant Trump
Filed in the District of Columbia on May 27, 2025
Plaintiff San Francisco Unified School District
Defendant AmeriCorps
Filed in the Northern District of California on March 10, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Maine
Defendant National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Filed in the District of Maine on June 17, 2025
Plaintiff Rhode Island Latino Arts
Defendant National Endowment for the Arts
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on March 6, 2025
lost
President Trump has tried to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding to coerce states, punish opponents, remake programs and impose his views. His targets have repeatedly sued to stop him, and the courts have repeatedly rebuked him — only for the president to try again and again.
Take just these seven cases, all of them tied to the administration’s efforts to block funds from “sanctuary” communities, those that restrict cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Last February, a coalition of cities and counties sued over executive orders directing agencies to shut off such funds.
Plaintiff City and County of San Francisco
Defendant Trump
Filed in the Northern District of California on Feb. 7, 2025
injunction
A judge issued a preliminary injunction, halting those directives while the case proceeded.
The same day, the Department of Transportation told communities they must cooperate with immigration enforcement to get federal transportation dollars.
Twenty states, led by California, soon sued …
Plaintiff California
Defendant Department of Transportation
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on May 13, 2025
lost
… and the administration lost in district court.
The Department of Homeland Security tried to withhold emergency management funds. Another lawsuit followed …
Plaintiff Illinois
Defendant FEMA
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on May 13, 2025
lost
… and the administration lost.
Then D.H.S. tried reducing counterterrorism grants to sanctuary states instead …
Plaintiff Illinois
Defendant Noem
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on Sept. 29, 2025
lost
… and again, the administration lost.
In the past year, funds for housing, transit, health and public safety have all been conditioned on cooperation with immigration.
Plaintiff King County
Defendant Turner
Filed in the Western District of Washington on May 2, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Fresno
Defendant Turner
Filed in the Northern District of California on Aug. 20, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Chicago
Defendant Department of Justice
Filed in the Northern District of Illinois on Nov. 12, 2025
injunction
Injunctions regularly followed.
These are among 198 lawsuits in the past year identified by The New York Times that challenge how Mr. Trump has leveraged federal funding to carry out his agenda without the consent of Congress. And they reflect one remarkable feature of the campaign: It has proceeded undeterred by losses in court.
With that persistence, the administration has been hammering away at a new kind of reality in Washington, one where the president wields far more control over spending, and where his opponents aren’t entitled to the services of their federal government.
“Anyone in the country who relies on federal dollars is depending on the president to get that money,” said Matthew Lawrence, a law professor at Emory University. “And that’s a new thing.”
The president has threatened money to states that don’t adopt his policies, universities that don’t bend to his will, hospitals that don’t alter their services, school districts that don’t abandon diversity efforts, nonprofits that don’t embrace his gender views, and researchers who study the wrong subjects.
These moves have tested whether Congress, granted the “power of the purse,” still holds the ultimate authority over spending. And they have challenged the courts with a flood of cases — 37 separate suits from the state of California; four from the Association of American Universities on virtually the same question; one from King County, Wash., that has grown to include as plaintiffs 75 communities and agencies.
“You would think there would be some conditioning here: You do an action, you get sued, you lose, maybe you don’t do that action anymore,” said Rob Bonta, who as California’s attorney general has brought many of those suits. “He’s continued to repeat offend. And repeat lose.”
The administration’s approach has amounted to “a game of three-card monte” in the courts, said Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan. Each injunction covers the parties suing and the specific programs at issue, but doesn’t necessarily stop the administration from blocking funds to other groups it disfavors. The result, Mr. Bagenstos said: “‘Oh, well, you think I can’t do this thing over there? Well I’m going to do it over here.’”
Presidents have long sought to steer funding to advance their priorities, designing programs with Congress or awarding competitive grants to communities that emphasize certain ideas. But the Trump administration has gone much further: terminating en masse funds that were already awarded; imposing new conditions on future grants that flout federal rule making; and blocking money to whole programs and agencies created by Congress.
The groups that have sued represent a fraction of everyone affected; many have lacked the means or the will to go to court. But these 198 cases, as of the beginning of March, have pried open a public view into the breadth of the administration’s tactics. And one year in, they have produced a lopsided record of rulings.
When plaintiffs have sought immediate relief, district court judges have temporarily blocked the administration’s actions 79 percent of the time, signaling plaintiffs’ likely success on the merits. In the 26 instances where district judges have issued partial or final rulings, the administration lost 23.
Planned Parenthood of Greater New York v. Department of Health and Human Services
Just because a pronouncement comes from the president does not make it true, even if expressed in the form of an executive order, and even then, does not supersede the law.
lost
American Federation of Teachers v. U.S. Department of Education
By leapfrogging important procedural requirements, the government has unwittingly run headfirst into serious constitutional problems.
lost
Michigan v. Noem
None of this appears consistent with Congressional intent or FEMA’s mission.
lost
The administration declined to comment on the record. But a White House official authorized to describe the strategy said the Trump administration is restoring power to the presidency that previous presidents have shied away from, while tapping that power to prevent fraud and steward taxpayer dollars. The groups bringing all these lawsuits, that person said, are the ones using the courts in a hostile campaign to hamstring the president.
The administration has notably walked away from some defeats without appealing them. But it is counting on a better record before appeals court judges, as has been the case more broadly. Among cases it has appealed, appellate courts have reversed or paused orders against the administration in about 40 percent of their rulings, often with judges appointed by Mr. Trump in his favor.
But even when it is losing in court, plaintiffs’ attorneys and legal scholars said, the administration may still find it is winning on its own terms.
‘Undeserving recipients’
Alongside that first sanctuary cities directive, early executive orders outlining the president’s core agenda aimed to end all “diversity, equity and inclusion” in the government, to eradicate “gender ideology,” to reverse the “green new deal,” and to enforce “election integrity.” All of them proposed leveraging federal funds to do it.
These cases show the administration pulling that lever in numerous ways.
It has tried to set conditions with no clear relationship to program goals (like immigration requirements for highway funds). It has threatened funding to force states to share information (voter rolls, food aid lists). It has told grantees they must pledge to comply with orders the president hasn’t issued yet. And it has invoked criminal and financial penalties if they break those pledges.
It has terminated even small sums, targeting with laser precision opponents of the president (who then sued):
The American Bar Association lost $3.2 million in domestic violence training grants after the administration attacked the group.
Plaintiff American Bar Association
Defendant Department of Justice
Filed in the District of Columbia on April 23, 2025
injunction
The American Academy of Pediatrics lost nearly $12 million in grants in apparent retaliation for its advocacy of vaccines and gender-affirming care.
Plaintiff American Academy of Pediatrics
Defendant Department of Health and Human Services
Filed in the District of Columbia on Dec. 24, 2025
injunction
Maine lost access to support for school meals as Gov. Janet Mills was fighting with the president over transgender athletes.
Plaintiff Maine
Defendant Department of Agriculture
Filed in the District of Maine on April 7, 2025
injunction
The government backed down with the American Bar Association and Maine after judges issued initial rulings, only to turn its focus elsewhere.
“You can see that the government’s posture is essentially: Do the thing that’s going to make the White House happy, or get the press release about sticking it to trans people,” said Kevin Love Hubbard, a former D.O.J. attorney who represented the government before leaving in August. Agencies are doing that, he said, “without thinking about then having to go into court.”
Today, he is suing the government in several funding cases with the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island.
Most of these nearly 200 cases are about disfavored categories of recipients like sanctuary jurisdictions, Harvard researchers or organizations serving transgender people.
“We are the undeserving recipients, at least in the mind of our current administration,” said Leesa Manion, the prosecuting attorney in King County, Wash., which encompasses Seattle. “The goal all along was to ensure that we — the undesirables — do not get our fair share. Whether it works or doesn’t work, if that’s your overarching goal, you just keep evolving your technique.”
The administration is now increasingly targeting blue states as such a category, too.
That began during the government shutdown last October, when the White House budget director Russell Vought announced the administration would cancel nearly $8 billion in energy projects in 16 states — all where voters had supported Kamala Harris in 2024.
A small group of grantees, including the city of St. Paul, Minn., sued in response.
Plaintiff St. Paul, Minnesota
Defendant Wright
Filed in the District of Columbia on Nov. 10, 2025
lost
In January, the administration lost in district court, where a judge said it had violated the Constitution.
But officials were already preparing other cuts to blue states. H.H.S. froze $10 billion in child care and family assistance funds to five states. The states sued …
Plaintiff New York
Defendant Administration for Children and Families
Filed in the Southern District of New York on Jan. 8, 2026
injunction
… and a judge issued an injunction.
The D.O.T. suspended funding to the $16 billion Gateway Tunnel project connecting New Jersey and New York. Both states sued …
Plaintiff New Jersey
Defendant Department of Transportation
Filed in the Southern District of New York on Feb. 3, 2026
injunction
… and secured another injunction.
Even after those setbacks, in early February the administration told Congress it would cut more than $600 million in public health grants to four blue states. They sued …
Plaintiff Illinois
Defendant Vought
Filed in the Northern District of Illinois on Feb. 11, 2026
injunction
… and the next day, a judge issued another injunction in the form of a temporary restraining order.
Still, last week, the administration said it would withhold about $250 million in Medicaid funds from Minnesota (prompting another lawsuit).
These moves, citing a mix of fraud and immigration policies, follow the president’s vow to block all funding to sanctuary jurisdictions — a group, under the D.O.J.’s definition, that could encompass one-third of the U.S. population.
“They can sue us and maybe they’ll win,” the president said in January. “But we’re not giving money to sanctuary cities anymore.”
Arbitrary and capricious
At stake in many cases are weighty constitutional principles: the separation of powers; the right to due process when the government says grantees have done something wrong; the First Amendment protections for organizations to advocate their views without government retaliation.
In the St. Paul suit, a district judge, Amit P. Mehta, ruled in January for the first time in one of these cases that the administration had violated the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause by singling out states for their partisan lean. During the litigation, the government didn’t deny doing that. Rather, it argued it was allowed to.
St. Paul, Minnesota v. Wright
Defendants freely admit that they made grant-termination decisions primarily — if not exclusively — based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024. There is no rational relationship between that classification and defendants’ stated governmental interest.
lost
But that ruling covered only seven canceled grants worth about $27.5 million out of the nearly $8 billion total terminated. Now a coalition of 13 states is suing with the same constitutional argument in a new case about the same cuts.
The constant that is running through most of these cases, however, is the more mundane-sounding Administrative Procedure Act. That 1946 law says that the federal government must be reasoned and document its thinking according to transparent rules — in short, that it shouldn’t be slapdash and secretive.
These cases are full of examples of it doing just that. When the Department of Homeland Security tried last year to reduce counterterrorism grants to sanctuary states, the agency appeared to arrive at the lower award sums by simply lopping digits off the original values.
Illinois v. Noem
Neither a law degree nor a degree in mathematics is required to deduce that no plausible, rational formula could produce this result.
lost
Officials have sent out directives with copy-and-pasted typos, termination letters without agency letterhead and bare explanations with boilerplate rationale.
“You had literally grants for millions of dollars being canceled in a single vague paragraph: ‘This no longer comports with administration priorities, thank you very much,’” said Claudia Polsky, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who has led a class-action lawsuit among University of California researchers that has restored, for now, at least a thousand grants worth about a billion dollars.
The administration has given grantees new mandates — and prohibitions — so vague that they haven’t known how to comply.
“‘Promote gender ideology’ — what does that mean?” said Maria Corona, the head of the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which has challenged new conditions on grants. “When you’re talking about ‘violence against women,’ in the language itself we’re already talking about a gender issue.”
Last February, the National Institutes of Health issued a seismic policy change on a Friday night, to take effect the following Monday, slashing payments to universities for research overhead, drawing several lawsuits.
Plaintiff Massachusetts
Defendant National Institutes of Health
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on Feb. 10, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Medical Colleges
Defendant National Institutes of Health
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on Feb. 10, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant Department of Health and Human Services
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on Feb. 10, 2025
lost
In April, the administration lost these cases, consolidated under one judge (an appeals court upheld the decision this year).
But after the district court ruling, the Department of Energy, followed by the National Science Foundation and then the Department of Defense, each rolled out an identical policy.
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant Department of Energy
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on April 14, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant National Science Foundation
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on May 5, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant Department of Defense
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on June 16, 2025
lost
As these cases accumulated, so did the judges’ irritation.
Association of American Universities v. Department of Defense
The Court does not write upon a blank slate but instead follows three other courts in this district who have come to similar conclusions with respect to different federal agencies’ attempts to enact virtually identical policies. Notably, defendants ignored these obviously relevant — and at least reasonable — analyses before adopting this policy.
lost
Success for the administration has seldom involved winning on the merits. Rather, the administration has argued in most of these cases that district judges have no business hearing them at all. Cases seeking money, it says, belong instead in the Court of Federal Claims, a specialized court dedicated to financial contract disputes with the government.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett breathed life into that argument, concurring in a preliminary ruling last summer that surprised some legal experts. Her opinion — suggesting policies should be litigated in district court, while payouts resulting from them belong in the Court of Federal Claims — has further complicated these cases. So has the Supreme Court’s ruling last year ending nationwide injunctions.
Winning while losing
By the time grantees have gone to court, they have already lost much. Researchers have halted studies. Nonprofits have laid off staff. The core expectation that the government is a reliable partner has already been undercut.
“The result is a corrosive uncertainty that undermines the basic functioning of government,” said Jacob Leibenluft, a former official in the Biden White House budget office.
That uncertainty sets in the moment money isn’t on time, or when grantees start to think it won’t be in the future. Other changes take root, too: Grantees rethink what’s in their mission statements; professors shift what they teach.
American Association of University Professors v. Trump
Numerous U.C. faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the U.C. system.
injunction
The administration is advancing these changes even when it’s losing particular funding cases in court. And it has successfully blocked money to groups who haven’t sued, further entrenching the president’s expanded power over spending.
Whether this dynamic sticks depends as much on Congress as on the courts. If legislators were more actively guarding programs they had funded themselves, many of these lawsuits likely wouldn’t exist.
New York v. Trump
The interaction of the three co-equal branches of government is an intricate, delicate and sophisticated balance — but it is crucial to our form of constitutional governance. Here, the Executive put itself above Congress.
injunction
In rare cases, Republicans in Congress have pushed back against the administration and been able to reverse billions in cuts far more quickly than courts could, including from after-school programs and mental health and addiction treatment.
For most programs targeted by the administration, however, Republicans have publicly said little, and that’s unlikely to change as the president now targets blue states more explicitly. Republican and Democratic appropriators have together quietly tucked some new guardrails into spending bills this year. But it is Democrats, primarily, who have spoken up for the larger principle that lawmakers set the terms of federal spending — not the president.
“We have to guard that with our lives,” said Rosa DeLauro, the top Democratic appropriator in the House. The alternative, she said, is that funding becomes a tool to silence dissent. “‘Don’t speak out — or I’ll cancel your grant.’”
Absent bipartisan clamor in Congress, cases like King County v. Turner grind on. The case was brought last May by eight local governments challenging new conditions on housing and transportation grants. Then they added H.H.S. as a defendant. And 23 more local governments and transit and housing agencies joined as plaintiffs. Then another 29 came on board. Then 15 more. Each one has had to explain the harms it has faced. The judge has had to review each claim, alongside the details of dozens of grant programs, while crafting what are now four successive injunctions. All that is just one lawsuit.
“Should we have to do that 200 times, 300 times?” said Erin Overbey, the general counsel with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. “What’s the number where we reach critical mass?”
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AUSTIN, TEXAS – The expensive and contentious battle for the Republican Senate nomination in Texas is headed to a May runoff, after none of the three major candidates in the crowded field of contenders topped 50% of the vote in Tuesday’s primary election.
Longtime incumbent Sen. John Cornyn will face off with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton after they finished in the top two in the primary, with Rep. Wesley Hunt in third place, according to unofficial primary election results.
The winner will face off with either progressive firebrand Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a vocal critic and foil of President Donald Trump, or rising star state Rep. James Talarcio, who were vying for the Democratic Senate nomination. Both were trying to become the first Democrat in nearly four decades to win a Senate election in right-leaning Texas.
This year’s Senate showdown in Texas is one of a handful across the country that could determine if Republicans hold their majority in the chamber in the midterm elections. The GOP currently controls the chamber 53-47.
The Cornyn campaign and aligned super PACs spent nearly $100 million to run ads attacking Paxton and Hunt, with the senator charging in the closing weeks of the primary campaign that Democrats will flip the seat in the general election if Paxton’s the GOP’s nominee.
Cornyn, his allies, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP, repeatedly pointed to the slew of scandals and legal problems that have battered Paxton over the past decade, as well as his ongoing messy divorce.
TRUMP’S IRAN STRIKE ROCKS SENATE PRIMARIES IN TEXAS
“If I’m the nominee, I’ll help President Trump by making sure that we carry the five new congressional seats as well as maintain this Senate seat and will help him continue his agenda through the last two years of his term of office,” Cornyn touted in a Fox News Digital interview on Sunday.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, speaks during a campaign stop in The Woodlands, Texas, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Annie Mulligan/AP Photo)
And, he argued, “If the Democrats win, because we nominate a flawed candidate with incredible baggage like the attorney general, then that last two years of [Trump’s] agenda is jeopardized, as well as everybody down ballot that we need to continue to elect as Republicans.”
PAXTON DEMANDS STRICTER VETTING AFTER DEADLY TEXAS RAMPAGE
Paxton, a MAGA firebrand who grabbed significant national attention by filing lawsuits against the Obama and Biden administrations, pushed back, telling Fox News Digital on the eve of the primary that “I’m 3-0. I’ve won three statewide races.”
Pointing to public opinion polls suggesting he has the edge over Cornyn, Paxton argued, “it’s really easy for him to say that when he’s losing a primary, because he’s not delivered for the people of Texas, and he’s going to find out tomorrow what that means. He’s going to end up losing.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican Senate candidate, speaks to supporters at a campaign event on primary eve, in Waco, Texas, on March 2, 2026. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
“This idea that I can’t win a race is not true… there’s no evidence of what he’s saying is being true. As a matter of fact, the evidence is just the opposite,” Paxton added.
Paxton was boosted a few weeks ago by an endorsement from the political wing of Turning Point USA, the powerful grassroots conservative organization that was long steered by the late Charlie Kirk.
The GOP nomination battle was a two-person race until Hunt, a West Point graduate and military veteran who flew helicopters during his service and who represents a solidly red district in suburban Houston, announced his candidacy last autumn.
“I think there’s going to be a runoff, no matter what happens,” Cornyn predicted on Sunday.
Paxton, speaking to supporters on primary eve, touted that “if we go to a runoff, the odds get better for me,” as he pointed to what will likely be a smaller electorate for the May 26 runoff.
Republican Senate candidate Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas, at a primary eve campaign event, in Houston, Texas on March 2, 2026 (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
Hunt, in a Fox News Digital interview on the eve of the primary, argued that he’s “the best candidate to win the primary and win the general.”
TRUMP’S IRAN STRIKE ROCKS TEXAS SENATE RACE AS DEMS DEMAND ‘WAR POWERS,’ GOP APPLAUDS PRESIDENT
And pointing to the negative ads from Cornyn and his allies that have targeted him the past couple of weeks, Hunt said, “They have spent tens of millions of dollars against me in the state of Texas, which means that I must be doing the right thing, and I must be a threat. DC will not decide who will be the next senator from Texas. Texans will and that’s why I got in this race.”
But Hunt fell short, coming in third place.
Trump, whose clout over the GOP remains immense, stayed neutral to date in the Republican primary. All three candidates, who sought the president’s endorsement, were in attendance Friday as Trump held an event in Corpus Christi, Texas.
“They’re in a little race together,” Trump said of Cornyn and Paxton. “You know that, right? A little bit of a race. It’s going to be an interesting one, right? They’re both great people, too.”
Trump also complimented Hunt, and said that all three contenders were engaged in an “interesting election.”
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in a Whataburger restaurant in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Feb. 27, 2026. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
While Trump stayed neutral, his top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, helped the Cornyn campaign. And veteran Republican strategist Chris LaCivita, who served as co-campaign manager of Trump’s 2024 White House bid, consulted for a top Cornyn-aligned super PAC.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
The big questions going forward as the runoff campaign gets underway are whether Trump will make an endorsement, and whether the major outside groups that supported Cornyn will continue to throw resources into the extended nomination battle.
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NEW YORK — U.S. and Israeli officials are privately casting doubt on projections from the Trump administration that the war with Iran could end within a matter of weeks — instead warning that a months-long campaign may be required to destroy the country’s ballistic missile capabilities and install a pliant government, multiple sources told The Times.
The prospect of extended combat creates political risks and uncertainties for President Trump, whose penchant for dramatic, short-term military operations has suddenly given way to a full-scale assault on the Islamic Republic, shocking a MAGA base that for years supported his calls to end forever wars in the Middle East.
One Israeli official told The Times — despite internal guidance among Israeli officials to adhere to the U.S. president’s stated time frame — that the war “definitely could be longer” than the four-week window that Trump repeatedly offered to reporters.
A U.S. official said that in private conversations, top administration officials presume the campaign will require a longer runway now that remnants of Iran’s government have chosen to resist rather than acquiesce to Washington.
Protracted war was always a possibility. Trump was presented with U.S. intelligence assessments gaming out the potential conflict that emphasized how highly unpredictable the results of an attack would be — an analysis the intelligence community believes has borne out on the ground in the chaotic early days of the conflict.
A longer conflict could create diplomatic space between Trump and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has advocated for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic for over 30 years.
The Israeli leader has succeeded in convincing Trump to take military actions in Iran that American presidents have rejected for decades, from bombing its nuclear facilities to assassinating its leadership, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an opening strike over the weekend.
Goal of a change of government fades
Yet, mere days into the war, White House officials have all but ceased references to a democratic spring that could sweep Iran’s government aside.
A set of four U.S. goals for the mission no longer calls for changing the regime itself. Still, Netanyahu’s government remains keen on replacing the government, and the nation’s longest-serving premier sees the current war as his best opportunity to do so, one official said.
Speaking with reporters Tuesday, Trump rejected reports that the Israelis had convinced him to launch the attack.
“No, I might have forced their hand,” Trump said. “Based on the way the negotiations were going, I think they were going to attack first, and I didn’t want that to happen. So if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand, but Israel was ready, and we were ready, and we’ve had a very, very powerful impact because virtually everything they have has been knocked out.”
In a series of interviews this week, Trump said he had been given projections of a four- or five-week war, while noting he is prepared to go longer if necessary.
Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official who is Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said that projecting a deadline to the conflict at its start would be a strategic mistake for the Trump administration, as it would in effect give Iran’s remaining leadership an end date to wait out the fighting.
“Successive presidents have shown that America has strategic attention deficit disorder,” Rubin said. “If that was the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s especially true under Trump. He imposed a ceasefire on Gaza that let Hamas survive to fight another day; they still haven’t disarmed.”
The duration of the war will depend, in part, on Iran’s ability to resist and defend its remaining capabilities — but also on the president’s willingness to accept an outcome that leaves the Islamic Republic in place.
That decision has not yet been made by Trump, who has vacillated between calls for a democratic uprising across Iran — and U.S. military options to support resistance groups inside the country — as opposed to a shorter campaign that cripples Iran’s political leadership and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians, ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding,’” Trump told Axios.
One of Israel’s primary goals is to effectively eliminate the country’s ballistic missile program, and progress on that score is ahead of schedule, another source familiar with the operation said. “Things are going very well at the moment,” the source added. “Great pace.”
An Israeli military source noted to The Times that the stated goal of the mission is to significantly degrade, but not necessarily destroy, Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, a goal the source said could be accomplished within Trump’s preferred time frame.
“Israel was quite unhappy Trump ordered the [June 2025] 12-day war ended when it did,” said Patrick Clawson, director of the Iran program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He said he expected the current war would “take time” to comprehensively set back Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, after a series of Israeli missions in 2024 against the missile program failed to set them back by more than a matter of months.
“Some Israelis think before the recent strikes, Iranian production was fully restored,” Clawson said. “So a really comprehensive attack on Iranian missiles is an important Israeli objective.”
The Maduro model
But no one inside the Islamic Republic system has emerged so far to serve in a supplicant role to Trump in the way that Delcy Rodríguez has stepped in as acting president of Venezuela, after U.S. forces captured that country’s strongman president, Nicolás Maduro, in an audacious overnight raid in January.
Since then, the Stars and Stripes have flown alongside the Venezuelan tricolor at government buildings in Caracas, where senior Trump administration officials have been welcomed to discuss lucrative opportunities in Venezuela’s oil industry.
Trump is now looking for an Iranian counterpart to Rodríguez, he said Tuesday, suggesting he is willing to keep the Islamic Republic in place despite encouraging its citizens to rise up against their government.
“Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “We had some in mind from that group that is dead. And now we have another group. They may be dead also…. Pretty soon we’re not gonna know anybody.”
“I mean, Venezuela was so incredible because we did the attack and we kept the government totally intact,” he added.
Dennis Ross, a veteran diplomat on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict who served in the George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations, expressed doubt that Trump would be willing to proceed with a months-long campaign, regardless of Israel’s aspirational objectives.
“I believe President Trump doesn’t define clear objectives so he can decide to end the war at a time of his choosing, and declare the objective at that point, announcing we have achieved what we sought to do,” said Ross, noting that finding a figurehead in Iran as he did in Venezuela was always “a long shot.”
“Unilaterally, he could declare we made the regime pay a price for killing its citizens, and we have weakened Iran to the point that it is not any longer a threat to its neighbors,” Ross added. “He could then say, if Iran continues the war, we will hit them even harder.”
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