According to The Daily Beast, Brian Morrissey, the Treasury Department’s general counsel and a Trump appointee, resigned shortly after the administration announced a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” intended to compensate individuals who claim they were unfairly targeted by the Biden administration, including people charged in connection with January 6. The article frames Morrissey’s departure as …
In a May 12 speech at Southern Methodist University, reported by the Baltimore Sun on May 13, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that political attacks on judges and the broader judicial system are “really an attack on our society,” and urged Americans to defend judicial independence. Her remarks came as President Trump publicly criticized judges …
On May 14, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard oral arguments in the consolidated challenges brought by Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey against executive orders that stripped their attorneys of security clearances, barred them from federal buildings, and directed reviews of their clients’ …
Slate interviews federal judges who describe an unprecedented climate of intimidation, doxing, swatting, and impeachment threats against members of the bench. The reporting highlights statements by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche calling for “war” with the judiciary, the Attorney General’s public attacks on judges who rule against the administration, and congressional calls to impeach at …
The Kathmandu Post’s May 14 opinion column reviews the cumulative damage that the 26th and 27th Constitutional Amendments — pushed through Pakistan’s parliament by political and military elites — have done to judicial independence. The piece details how the amendments empower a Special Parliamentary Committee to choose the Chief Justice, create a new Federal Constitutional …
CNN reports that federal judges in Rhode Island took the unusual step of appointing a special counsel to investigate alleged misconduct by a senior Justice Department attorney in an immigration case. The piece situates the appointment within a broader pattern: judges in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C., have tried to hold the Trump Justice Department …
The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Washington, DC’s attorney disciplinary authorities over their recommendation to disbar Jeffrey Clark, a Trump ally and former assistant attorney general, for his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results. Clark had drafted a letter urging Georgia’s state legislature to investigate alleged election irregularities and potentially appoint electors …
President Trump’s legal battle to sanction four major law firms—Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey, and WilmerHale—continues after an appellate court heard arguments Thursday on whether to uphold lower-court decisions blocking the sanctions. The firms targeted attorneys who had opposed Trump or been associated with prosecutors who investigated the president. Paul Clement, representing the …
CBS News reports that Judge Lady Gissela Pachar Huanga of the Santa Rosa Criminal Judicial Unit was shot and killed on May 11 in Machala, Ecuador, while travelling by car to a gym. Her assigned bodyguards were not present at the time of the attack. According to the reporting, Pachar had received death threats since …
Published May 8 in TIME, this essay surveys a global wave of state-sponsored attacks on lawyers, framing them as a deliberate authoritarian tactic to disable democratic checks. It highlights the April 2026 re-arrest of Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh — a Sakharov Prize laureate previously sentenced to 33 years and 148 lashes — and …