Doug Emhoff’s Law Firm Bends the Knee to Trump

Former second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s law firm has cut a deal with the Trump administration, against Emhoff’s wishes—leading to calls from activists for him to resign.

Willkie Farr & Gallagher, where Emhoff is a partner, agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono services for causes the administration supports. The subjects would “represent the full political spectrum, including conservative ideals,” and the firm would also stop engaging in “illegal DEI discrimination and preferences” and choosing clients based on political views, according to a Truth Social post from the president Tuesday.

According to an internal memo, the firm’s executive committee knew that it would be targeted by the administration and believed that taking a deal, which other law firms have also done amid criticism, would be the best way to avoid “potentially grave consequences.”

“We know this news is not welcomed by some of you and you would have urged a different course of action. Needless to say, this was an incredibly difficult decision for Firm leadership,” the memo states.

Trump has used executive orders to target specific law firms in a shakedown attempt, with some, such as Paul, Weiss and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, cutting deals to avoid retribution from the administration. At least one other firm, Perkins Cole, is challenging Trump in court.

Emhoff has been a partner at Willkie Farr since January, following Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat in the 2024 presidential election. Emhoff reportedly told the firm’s leadership on Tuesday before the move that they shouldn’t make a deal with Trump and instead should fight, according to The New York Times.

At an event at Georgetown University Law School Tuesday night, Emhoff alluded to his firm’s decision, saying, “The rule of law is under attack. Democracy is under attack. And so, all of us lawyers need to do what we can to push back on that.” At a time when Trump is ignoring the law at every turn in an effort to increase his power, such resistance is needed by all in America.

If conservatives cared about Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, then they should be up in arms over Mike Waltz.

The national security adviser and his staff have been using Gmail to communicate, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Waltz and one of his senior aides relied on the commercial email service to discuss “sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict,” according to email receipts obtained by the Post.

But Gmail is not a secure platform to do so on. Users effectively sign away their privacy and metadata to Alphabet, Google’s parent company, when they sign up for a Gmail account.

“Every way you interact with your Gmail account can be monitored, such as the dates and times you email at, who you are talking to, and topics you choose to email about,” Rowenna Fielding, founder of privacy consultancy Miss IG Geek, told The Guardian in 2021.

It’s the latest in a growing series of flubs for Waltz, who made Donald Trump furious by accidentally inviting a journalist to a Cabinet group chat on Signal about bombing Yemen last month. Note here: Gmail is even less secure than Signal, which at least is an encrypted communication app.

In the days after the scandal broke, Wired reported that an account sharing the intelligence official’s name had seemingly left his Venmo profile public. In doing so, Waltz disclosed the names of hundreds of his personal and professional associates, including government officials and lobbyists.

And as the scandals pile up, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Waltz’s behavior is more than just a string of isolated mistakes—instead, they suggest a pattern of haphazard carelessness from an individual who should be one of America’s foremost security experts.

Last week, the German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that several senior administration officials had their personal data—including account passwords, cell phone numbers, and email addresses—listed online.

Some of the compromised Cabinet members include Waltz, as well as National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The foreign publication was able to track down their information via commercial search engines as well as databases composed of hacked customer data.

Clinton was excoriated by the right for using private email servers as opposed to her government issued address. But the American public has seemingly been able to spot the difference, with a majority of people believing that the Signal scandal matters more than Republicans’ scapegoats.

A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released Sunday suggested that 60 percent of polled Americans felt that the administration’s decision to use Signal was “wrong”—that included 73 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of independents, and 43 percent of Republicans.

A YouGov survey published last week found that 53 percent of nearly 6,000 polled Americans felt that the Trump administration’s Signal leak was “very serious,” while another 21 percent described it as “somewhat serious.”

Meanwhile, a survey conducted in the wake of Clinton’s email scandal by YouGov and The Economist in March 2015 found that 30 percent of polled Americans felt that Clinton’s server was “very serious.” Another 26 percent noted that it was “somewhat serious” to them.

A federal judge on Wednesday permanently dismissed the corruption case against embattled New York City Mayor Eric Adams, absolving him of his crimes while ensuring that his case will never be brought up again—eliminating any leverage that the Trump administration may have had over the mayor, who quickly capitulated to Trump and the MAGA agenda earlier this year in the hopes of a pardon.

Adams was indicted in September on charges of wire fraud, bribery, conspiracy, and soliciting campaign donations from Turkish officials. He pleaded not guilty and is up for reelection this November.

Trump’s Department of Justice had asked the case to be dismissed without prejudice, meaning the charges could be reinstated in the future. Judge Dale E. Ho of Manhattan refused, dismissing the case with prejudice so that going forward, the charges in the indictment cannot be used as leverage.

Ho also noted that he wanted to minimize the likelihood of Adams being bribed with freedom by the Trump administration.

“In light of DOJ’s rationales, dismissing the case without prejudice would create the unavoidable perception that the Mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents,” Ho wrote.

When Attorney General Emil Bove ordered state prosecutors to drop the charges against Adams in February, the request was for a dismissal without prejudice, setting up a blatant quid pro quo dynamic that led to multiple staff resignations in protest.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump has been looking at how to be president for a third term since at least October 2023.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Boris Ephsteyn, who worked in the White House in Trump’s first term and is now one of his personal attorneys, made the unfounded claim back then, during a meeting with an associate, that based on the law, he believed that Trump could run again in 2028.

Trump has asserted in recent weeks that he is “not joking” about staying in office past January 2029, when his second and final term is up, claiming that there are certain plans that would enable him to do so. Other White House officials are claiming it’s a nonissue, such as Karoline Leavitt last week, but only days later Trump contradicted her.

Others in the Trump orbit, such as Steve Bannon, think there’s merit in the idea, and some senior Republicans told the Journal that they believe him. Unnamed sources told the Journal that they see the lack of resistance from law firms, corporations, universities, and Congress as showing that he has the potential to bulldoze resistance to staying in office.

The Constitution bars presidents from being elected to more than two terms. Republican Representative Andy Ogles has introduced legislation to amend the Constitution to allow presidents to serve a third term if one is nonconsecutive. It would be a tall order, as a constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds vote from both the House and Senate, and ratification by three-fourths of the states. But Trump, unfortunately, has often found a way to get around checks to his power.

Elon Musk is on X trying to convince everyone that it was voter ID—and not the state Supreme Court race that he spent millions on—that mattered most, after conservative Judge Brad Schimel lost in Wisconsin to liberal Judge Susan Crawford on Monday night. 

“This was the most important thing,” the world’s richest man posted over the passing of Wisconsin’s voter ID amendment. This new spin goes against pretty much everything he’s said about the importance of the Supreme Court race since he started dumping time and money into it. 

“A Supreme Court election in Wisconsin might determine the fate of America,” Musk posted on X last Saturday. 

“This Wisconsin Supreme Court race might decide the future of America and Western Civilization!” he wrote on Sunday. “It’s a big deal.”

“Vote for Superjudge Brad Schimel in Wisconsin on Tuesday!! “ he posted, along with a very poorly animated image of Schimel. “The Republican House majority is razor thin and the Democrats want to redraw Wisconsin districts to flip the House and stop the government reforms. Super important to vote for Superjudge!!”

Musk even took his cheerleading offline. 

“The reason tonight’s elections are so important is that the judge race will decide whether the Wisconsin districts get redrawn, they’re gonna try to gerrymander Wisconsin to remove two Republican seats,” Musk said on Fox News Tuesday evening. “The House is currently Republican by a razor-thin margin, which means that losing this judge race has a good chance of causing Republicans to lose control of the House. If you lose control of the House, there will be nonstop impeachment hearings, there will be nonstop hearings and subpoenas … everything possible to stop the agenda that the American people voted for when they voted for President Trump.”  

A lot can change in a night. Now Musk is insisting that he “expected” to lose. “There is value to losing a piece for a positional gain,” he wrote on X at the crack of dawn on Wednesday. 

Musk was relentless in his support of Schimel. He appeared at a large rally wearing a cheesehead, paid canvassers $20 an hour to carry out an all-out door-to-door assault on Wisconsin voters, and handed out two $1 million checks, lottery-style, to people who signed his petition hating on liberal “activist” judges. He spent $25 million in total just to lose the race and pivot to saying that a secondary ballot initiative was actually the real prize. And for what it’s worth, Wisconsin has required voter ID for nearly a decade, it just isn’t a state constitutional amendment. That victory is marginal, at best. Schimel’s loss was a massive rejection of Musk and his infinite war chest.

Elon Musk came up short Tuesday when trying to buy a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court—and he has no one to blame but himself.

In the state election, Judge Susan Crawford secured a whopping 55 percent of the vote, while the Musk-backed Judge Brad Schimel captured only 45 percent. While the position is nonpartisan, this election still determined the court’s ideological lean. Crawford was backed by Democrats, while Schimel was backed by Republicans.

Musk, and the groups linked to him, poured out more than $20 million to back Schimel, including $4.3 million into canvassing efforts. Musk had personally appeared in Wisconsin ahead of the election, donning a cheese hat and ranting about the end of Western civilization. He offered cash rewards of $100 for filling out his petition against activist judges, $20 for canvassing, and $1 million in a sweepstakes (which was won by spokespeople). Still, the billionaire bureaucrat was unable to close the gaping 10-point margin, and now, some are speculating that it was Musk’s attempt to interfere with the election that secured Crawford’s win.

Politico’s senior political columnist Jonathan Martin wrote in the DC Playbook Wednesday morning that Musk had actually made things far worse for the conservative candidate.

“The margin in the Wisconsin court contest indicates that by inserting himself into the race so personally, Musk undermined the GOP-aligned candidate. Democrats’ internal polling had Crawford leading, but not by the 10-point margin she will win once all of Milwaukee has been counted,” Martin wrote.

“Insisting on showing up to campaign in the final weekend of the campaign was self-defeating enough. But it’s hard to think of another state, besides neighboring Minnesota, that would be less receptive to handing out money for votes. These are high-turnout, healthy civic culture states. Musk may not have known that—but why didn’t any Republicans who did steer him away from the cash gambit?” he added.

More than $98 million was spent on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race, making it the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history. More than $67 million went to advertisements, according to AdImpact. Democratic advertisers spent $36 million, and Republican advertisers spent more than $31 million.

It seems that Musk’s ploy to pay for votes with cash didn’t resonate with Wisconsin residents. In fact, The New York Times’ swing map saw a major statewide shift to the left compared to the 2024 presidential election.

“Today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections, and our Supreme Court. And Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price, our courts are not for sale,” Crawford declared in her victory speech Tuesday night.

While Musk was able to buy Donald Trump the presidency, it seems that he’s lost his touch. Musk’s messy work with the Department of Government Efficiency has tanked public opinion, while protesters across the country target their ire at the billionaire bureaucrat and his beloved Tesla dealerships. While his net worth plummets, Musk has taken to complaining about how hard he has it. Voters do not appear to be responding well.

“Please send @elonmusk to all the close races!” wrote Jon Favreau, former speechwriter and podcaster, in a post on X.

Donald Trump just made the rationale for his tariff “Liberation Day” crystal clear: revenge.

In a post on Truth Social late Tuesday, the president said that the tariffs were his administration’s “fight” against Democrats’ “wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl, by Tariffing the value of this horrible and deadly drug in order to make it more costly to distribute and buy.”

Approximately 0.2 percent of American fentanyl seizures occur at the Canadian border, according to federal statistics.

But Trump’s aggressive rhetoric and high levies on Canada have practically shattered the two neighbors’ long-standing allyship. On Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his country’s cozy relationship with the U.S. had come to an end, and that Canada would wean itself off American products and services “at speeds we haven’t seen in generations.”

Trump singled out four Republican senators in particular who have pushed back against his tariffs. “They are playing with the lives of the American people, and right into the hands of the Radical Left Democrats and Drug Cartels,” he said, referring to Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul.

“The Senate Bill is just a ploy of the Dems to show and expose the weakness of certain Republicans, namely these four, in that it is not going anywhere because the House will never approve it and I, as your President, will never sign it,” Trump said. “Why are they allowing Fentanyl to pour into our Country unchecked, and without penalty. What is wrong with them, other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly known as TDS?”

Trump and his allies have frequently accused anyone that critiques their work of being mentally ill, effectively undermining the legitimacy of critical thought in the groupthink of his already sycophantic base.

“Who can want this to happen to our beautiful families, and why? To the people of the Great States of Kentucky, Alaska, and Maine, please contact these Senators and get them to FINALLY adhere to Republican Values and Ideals,” Trump said. “They have been extremely difficult to deal with and unbelievably disloyal to hardworking Majority Leader John Thune, and the Republican Party itself. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford was elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court Tuesday, crushing Elon Musk’s attempt to buy yet another election.

Decision Desk HQ called the race after just 36 percent of the vote had been counted. Crawford held a decisive lead over conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel with 57.9 percent of the vote to his 42.1 percent.

Crawford’s win will ensure that the liberal majority on the court remains, as it tees up to weigh important questions about abortion, union power, election rules, and congressional maps.

Schimel has received more than $20 million from groups associated with Musk, including the more than $4.3 million Musk’s America PAC poured into the Schimel campaign’s canvassing efforts over the last eight weeks. Musk circulated a petition offering Wisconsin residents $100 to sign a statement condemning “activist judges” and giving them the chance to enter a $1 million sweepstakes.

At an America PAC event Sunday night in Green Bay, Musk gave away $1 million to a preselected spokesperson for the petition. Again, he offered people money to sign up to go door-to-door for him. “It’s … thumbs up and hold a picture of Judge Schimel. And that’s it, and you get $20,” Musk said, instructing them to take pictures as proof of their canvassing efforts.

As of Tuesday, more than $98 million had been spent in Wisconsin’s 2025 Supreme Court race, making it the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, according to Axios.

The results of this election will affect several hot-button issues in the state, with potentially national repercussions. The court is expected to weigh a question about whether abortion is protected by the Wisconsin state Constitution, which could potentially upend a preceding decision about a 1849 law banning abortion with no exceptions for rape and incest. While Crawford made supporting abortion access a cornerstone of her campaign, Schimel has supported leaving the ban in place and asserted that there is no constitutional right to abortion.

Musk has expressed particular interest in the court’s July decision to legalize the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in elections. “Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud!” Musk wrote on X in January. though there is no proven connection between the use of drop boxes and widespread voter fraud. The court’s decisions on election rules could have a significant impact on the midterm elections in 2026, and the 2028 presidential election.

The candidates also emphasized their role in approving proposed congressional maps. This is a crucial issue in Wisconsin, where Republicans have amassed six out of the state’s eight U.S. House seats, despite holding thin margins in state-wide races.

A liberal majority on the court could not only keep additional seats out of the hands of Republicans but also ensure that any legislative redistricting pitched by Democrats is readily approved.

In a stroke of revenge for Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., thousands of employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost their jobs Tuesday.

The “reduction in force” affected workers across many departments vital to U.S. public health, including the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the Division of Population Health, the Division of Reproductive Health, the Division of HIV Prevention, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, and the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, Wired reports.

Even programs at the centers on Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion as well as HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention were affected. The HIV program reportedly lost at least half of its workforce. Employees across the agency received notices via email beginning 5 a.m. Tuesday, with some workers showing up to their offices to find their ID badges didn’t work anymore.

“I regret to inform you that you are being affected by a reduction in force (RIF) action,” the email notice stated, according to Wired. “This RIF does not reflect directly on your service, performance, or conduct. It is being taken solely for the reasons stated in the memorandum. After you receive this notice you will be placed on administrative leave and will no longer have building access beginning Tuesday, April 1, unless directed otherwise by your leadership.”

One CDC employee told the magazine, “There has been no effort in allowing staff to transfer projects, programs, or responsibilities.” Even the Freedom of Information Act office at the CDC, as well as the FDA’s communications and web office, were cut.

The move comes among massive layoffs from Kennedy across the entire Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday. Those firings include people at the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Kennedy has long been an anti-vaccine activist, so the move is in line with his beliefs, especially since he has already revoked over $11 billion in Covid-19 aid funding from HHS. Trump has long held a grudge against the CDC and other public health agencies, blaming them for tanking his first term when it was really his own mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Now he and Kennedy are dealing a crippling blow to public health in America.

Nine House Republicans defected from their party on the parental proxy vote Tuesday in a direct rejection of Speaker Mike Johnson’s plans.

The vote was for a bill regarding whether to allow new parents in the House to have a proxy vote for them in the first 12 weeks after the birth of their child. The legislation, which would have helped new mothers and fathers, was put forth by MAGA Republican Anna Paulina Luna and Democrats Brittany Pettersen and Sara Jacobs. Luna and Pettersen each gave birth recently, and there is no parental leave for members of Congress.

When Johnson and other House Republican leaders went out of their way to block the bill, nine House Republicans—Luna, Kevin Kiley, Tim Burchett, Jeff Van Drew, Greg Steube, Mike Lawler, Ryan Mackenzie, Nick LaLota, and Max Miller—all turned on Johnson, torpedoing his plans and passing the parental proxy bill.

The nine betrayals bothered Johnson so much that he canceled votes in the House for the rest of the week.

Johnson, who doesn’t have the greatest working relationship with Luna, insisted that the parental proxy bill would lead to more representatives voting remotely.

“I believe it’s unconstitutional. I believe it violates more than two centuries of tradition in the institution, and I think that it opens a Pandora’s box where, ultimately, maybe no one is here, and we’re all voting remotely by AI or something. I don’t know,” Johnson said at a press conference last week. “I don’t think that’s what Congress is supposed to be. This is a deliberative body. You cannot deliberate with your colleagues if you’re out somewhere else.”

Republicans are weirdly obsessed with killing this bill, whether it be for anti–work from home reasons, anti-woman reasons, or both.

Pettersen, who is the thirteenth active House member to give birth, spoke in support of Luna’s bill on the House floor while holding her 9-week-old son, Sam, in her arms. Sam was born prematurely.

“No mom or dad should be in the position that I was in and so many parents have found themselves in. It is anti-woman, it’s anti-family, and we need to come together,” she said. “We have a long ways to go to make this place accessible for young families like mine.… For all of the parents here, we know that when we have newborns, it’s when they’re the most vulnerable in their life. It’s when they need 24-7 care.”