Trump Celebrates as Another Law Firm Bends the Knee

Donald Trump has successfully bullied yet another big law firm into doing his bidding—but this time, Trump didn’t even have to threaten them.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom agreed to a slate of major concessions to Trump Friday, after the president targeted two other majors firms with executive orders in retaliation for their alleged “obvious partisan representations,” use of DEI hiring practices, and affiliation with lawyers who had investigated Trump in the past.  

Trump announced on Truth Social that the firm has offered $100 million worth of pro bono services and agreed to “not engage in illegal DEI discrimination and preferences.” 

Skadden, Arps’s decision to preemptively fold to Trump follows two lawsuits from WilmerHale and Jenner & Block earlier Friday challenging the Trump administration over a pair of retaliatory executive orders threatening to suspend the firms’ security clearances, end their federal contracts, and bar federal employees from engaging with firm members.

Trump hadn’t actually issued an executive order targeting Skadden, Arps, but last week, Elon Musk mentioned it in a post on X, saying the firm needed to “stop” litigation against conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza. 

According to Trump, the firm said it would “not deny representation to clients, such as members of politically disenfranchised groups,” including in pro bono work, due to the “personal political views of individual lawyers.” The firm also agreed to fund no fewer than five fellows to projects related to “Assisting Veterans; ensuring fairness in our Justice System; combatting Antisemitism, and other similar types of projects.” 

In a statement shared by Trump, Skadden, Arps executive partner Jeremy London said that his firm had “engaged proactively” with the Trump administration. 

A statement from Skadden, Arps ironically “declared the Firm’s strong commitment to ending the Weaponization of the Justice System and the Legal Profession.” It seems clear that Trump’s blatant attempts to bully law firms for defending clients and causes he dislikes or employing lawyers he’s deemed as enemies is definitionally the weaponization of the justice system and legal profession. 

An open letter to the legal community, organized by Delaware Attorney General Kathleen Jennings and signed by 21 state attorneys general, urged firms to “refuse to bow to illegal and unconstitutional threats of retribution for having the temerity to represent clients and cases opposing the administration.” 

“Lawyers are not spectators to the Constitution; we are its agents. We cannot allow the President to scare law firms and lawyers into silence,” the letter, which was released Friday, read. 

Last week, Skadden, Arps associate Rachel Cohen submitted a conditional resignation in a scathing letter urging her firm to stand against Trump’s attempts to intimidate major law firms. Her letter came after another firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, caved to the administration and offered $40 million in free legal services, revoked their own DEI practices, and sold one of their own lawyers down the river, simply because he’d once investigated Trump for alleged financial crimes. The Trump administration rescinded its order against the firm, and in light of the huge pro bono commitment from Skadden, Arps, it appears Paul, Weiss made away like bandits. 

Another law firm, Perkins Coie, which was targeted for representing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, challenged a similar order earlier this month and was granted a temporary injunction against the Trump administration’s threat to revoke clearances and access. 

A federal judge in Massachusetts has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting people to third countries.

U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy issued a temporary restraining order Friday requiring the government to provide written notice and an opportunity for detainees to apply for protection before deporting them to a third country.

The ruling is a clear rebuke of the Trump administration’s deal with El Salvador, the recent deportation of Venezuelans to the megaprison there, as well as previous cases where the government has deported immigrants to countries where they had no connection, with no advance notice or ability to raise a legal challenge.

Assuming the administration abides by the ruling, it should at least slow down the mass deportations, which are now beginning to target legal immigrants who have had their visas revoked. The government has also swept up hosts of immigrants and sent them to El Savador for flimsy reasons, claiming that having tattoos reflected gang affiliation.

In one case, a paperwork error led to a Venezuelan national being deported to El Salvador, and in another, a tattoo of a soccer ball was enough to justify a deportation. For now, cases like these will at least be slowed pending a legal appeal, and MAGA officials like Kristi Noem won’t be using El Salvador as a propaganda backdrop again, at least for the near future. Is a more definitive, permanent rebuke of the Trump administration’s legally questionable immigration policy coming?

Vice President JD Vance spent his time in Greenland doubling down on the Trump administration’s threats to take the territory from Denmark.

“Our message to Denmark is very simple,” Vance said at a press conference in Greenland on Friday. “You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland, you have underinvested in the people of Greenland, and you have underinvested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful land mass filled with incredible people. That has to change.

“The president said we have to have Greenland, and I think that we do have to be more serious about the security of Greenland,” Vance continued. “We respect the self-determination of the people of Greenland, but my argument to them is: I think that you’d be a lot better coming under the United States’ security umbrella than you have been under Denmark’s security umbrella. Because what Denmark’s security umbrella has meant is effectively they’ve passed it all off to brave Americans and hoped that we would pick up the tab.”

Vance traveled to Greenland—a Danish-controlled territory—with his wife, Usha, and national security adviser and Signalgate catalyst Mike Waltz, among others. No one in Greenland wanted to meet the group, forcing them to cancel all their events with locals, including a historic tour and a dogsled race.

Vance’s animosity highlights the Trump administration’s policy of “What have you done for me lately?” toward European allies, abandoning them on issues like Ukraine and challenging them on issues like Greenland, on the grounds that they have not committed equally to stopping the perceived threats of Russia and China.

In honor of Women’s History Month, Donald Trump weighed in Friday on an extremely inane question that plagues conservatives. 

During a press conference in the Oval Office, one reporter tried to lob Trump a softball question, asking, “What is a woman, and why is it important that we understand the difference between men and women?”

“Well it’s sort of easy to answer for me because a woman is someone who can have a baby under certain circumstances,” Trump replied. 

“A woman is a person who is much smarter than a man, I’ve always had … a woman is a person that doesn’t give a man even a chance of success,” Trump said, to some laughter.

“A woman is a person that in many cases has been treated very badly,” Trump added, referring to women who sometimes had transgender women on their sports teams. Trump banned trans women from playing women’s sports in an executive order.  

When it comes to treating women “very badly,” Trump is clearly speaking from experience. 

Trump was found liable for sexual abuse, battery, and defamation of author E. Jean Carroll in 2023. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan even went so far as to specifically clarify that the president did indeed “rape” Carroll based on the common definition of the word. In December, a federal appeals court shut down Trump’s request for a new trial. 

At least 27 other women have accused the president of sexual misconduct, according to Axios. Suddenly, his comment about the “certain circumstances” surrounding pregnancy reads as far more sinister than folksy. 

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order establishing the definition of “women” as adult human females and the definition of females as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.” 

It is widely acknowledged that women can possess a range of reproductive organs and sex characteristics that don’t fit neatly into a binary, and that a person’s gender is not contingent on their sex. 

Despite Trump’s insistence that he was protecting women and children with his repeated attacks on transgender athletes, the issue he purports to address doesn’t actually exist. His administration is simply targeting the transgender community to score culture-war points, and provide a useful scapegoat from the criticism mounting against it. 

Meanwhile, Trump’s emphasis on transgender women has only made life less safe for all women by empowering violent transphobes intent on infringing on women’s right to privacy.

Elon Musk deleted an X post made early Friday morning offering two $1 million checks to Wisconsin voters attending a “talk” that he is giving in the state on Sunday amid a special election for a seat on the state’s Supreme Court.

The post is a reminder that Musk pushed a similar scheme ahead of the 2024 presidential election in battleground states, where he gave away $1 million each day to registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin, from early October until Election Day in November. The plan was met with a legal challenge in Pennsylvania but was ultimately allowed to continue.

This time around, after facing criticism that his post may have violated election laws against paying people to vote, Musk deleted it. In a follow-up post, he sought to backtrack, saying he is offering two $1 million checks to two people attending the talk to be “spokesmen” for a petition against activist judges that he is touting. Only people who have signed the petition are allowed to attend the event.

The petition sparked legal controversy when Musk announced it last week, as signatories in Wisconsin are being paid $100 each to sign it and effectively hand over their personal information to Musk. The tech oligarch and fascism enthusiast has already spent $20 million to back conservative candidate Brad Schimel in the election.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is set to weigh in on several issues with national implications, including the use of voter drop boxes in elections, abortion access, and redrawing congressional maps, and a Republican majority on the court would strengthen Trump and the MAGA agenda. Musk’s cash handouts are another brazen attempt by the billionaire to buy an election, and his deep pockets will probably insulate him from the possibility of any consequences.