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Federal judge strikes down Trump order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie
President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on March 6, including an order terminating the security clearances of those who work at the law firm Perkins Coie.
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A federal judge on Friday struck down President Trump’s executive order targeting the prominent law firm of Perkins Coie, finding it unconstitutional and declaring it an attack on the foundational principles of the American legal system.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell is the first to permanently block an executive order issued by Trump punishing a law firm for representing clients or causes that he dislikes.
“No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions to be executed by all Executive branch agencies,” Howell wrote in her 102-page ruling.
“But, in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’”

Perkins Coie was the first law firm targeted with a sweeping executive order that imposed potentially existential punitive measures on it. Trump’s order suspended security clearances for the firm’s employees, barred its attorneys from access to government buildings and officials, and ended government contracts with the firm.
Trump has issued similar executive orders against several other prominent law firms that he views as political enemies. Three of those firms, in addition to Perkins Coie, have sued to challenge Trump’s actions, and won court orders temporarily blocking enforcement of the orders.
Perkins Coie’s case is the first to be permanently blocked.
In her ruling, Judge Howell framed the targeting of Perkins as an attack on the independence of the legal profession and the judicial system.

“The importance of independent lawyers to ensuring the American judicial system’s fair and impartial administration of justice has been recognized in this country since its founding era,” she said in her ruling.
This case, she added, “presents an unprecedented attack on these foundational principles.”
Trump’s order, the judge wrote, “stigmatizes and penalizes a particular law firm and its employees,” from partners through mailroom attendants because of the firm’s representation of clients pursuing claims and taking positions that Trump doesn’t like.
“In a cringe-worthy twist on the theatrical phrase ‘let’s kill all the lawyers,’” she adds, Trump’s executive order “takes the approach of ‘let’s kill the lawyers I don’t like,’ sending the clear message: lawyers must stick to the party line, or else.”
Perkins Coie welcomed her ruling.

“This ruling affirms core constitutional freedoms all Americans hold dear, including free speech, due process, and the right to select counsel without the fear of retribution,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “We are pleased with this decision and are immensely grateful to those who spoke up in support of our positions. As we move forward, we remain guided by the same commitments that first compelled us to bring this challenge: to protect our firm, safeguard the interests of our clients, and uphold the rule of law.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While Perkins and three other firms have challenged Trump’s orders, at least nine other firms have either cut deals with the president to get him to lift an order against them or to avoid the possibility of one. In return, they’ve agreed to provide hundreds of millions of dollars combined in free legal work on causes they and the president support.
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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.
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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.
In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.
The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.
Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

The disclosures also report gifts, travel, food and lodging that the justices received in 2025. Jackson and Sotomayor were the only two to report gifts. Jackson was given a painting for her chambers valued at $2,500, and Sotomayor reported a trip to Kansas City to watch the opening of a musical based on her children’s book, Just Ask.
In addition, she reported receiving free tickets worth $4,333 while on “a private trip to Puerto Rico.” The tickets were from the record label that represents Bad Bunny, and her trip coincided with the artist’s months-long concert series in San Juan. Sotomayor’s parents were from Puerto Rico, and she has spent much time there over the years.
The justices also disclosed significant reimbursements for travel throughout 2025. Thomas’ travel, food and lodging expenses were paid for by the Hoover Institution for speaking at a celebration of conservative economist Thomas Sowell.
Sotomayor, Gorsuch, Barrett and Jackson were reimbursed for international travel, where they gave speeches, spoke about their books or taught. Roberts was the only sitting member of the court not to report any gifts or travel reimbursements.
The annual filings also shed some light on the justices’ activities off the bench. Kavanaugh reported that in addition to his duties as a Supreme Court justice, he serves as a coach to multiple D.C.-area Catholic Youth Organization girls’ basketball teams. Coach K, as he is known by his players, wrote the court’s June decision declaring that states can ban transgender women and girl athletes from playing on women’s and girls’ sports teams.

The justices’ salaries are established by law. The chief justice earns the most, at $320,700 per year. The eight associate justices earn $306,600 per year. While that is a lot of money to most Americans, the justices and even their law clerks could earn more the minute they leave their Supreme Court jobs for large law firms.
Roberts was the only member of the court to report investing in individual stocks. Alito in the past has also owned shares of individual stocks, but his report is not due for three months when his extension runs out. For the most part, the justices do not own individual stocks, but do invest in index funds, mutual funds and other such investment programs in order to both make money and limit potential conflicts of interest that would require their recusal from certain cases.
However — and this is a big however — the financial reporting forms the justices are required to fill out are so unspecific and the reporting ranges for investment earnings are so broad that it is impossible to determine any justice’s overall wealth. In addition, the current value of the justices’ homes isn’t reported. Neither is their spouses’ income, which in the case of the chief justice, for instance, likely far exceeds his take-home pay.
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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show
At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.
A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.
City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”
Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.
Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.
“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.
Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.
Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.
“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.
The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.
Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.
“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.
Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”
He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.
Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.
On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.
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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote
The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.
The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”
“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.
Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.
The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.
“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.
Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”
“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”
The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.
While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.
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