🚨NEW I spent nearly a year investigating Russ Vought, the Trump adviser and Project 2025 architect who wants to put civil servants "in trauma." I obtained new audio recordings & videos. This is the most definitive profile yet. @propublica + @NewYorker

Eleanor Holmes Norton is a ghost amid the fierce discussion over deploying federal forces in DC. Great reporting from @nicholaswu12

Do you have information about Big Law spurning clients who might incur Trump's anger? Get in touch: molly.redden@propublica.org or on Signal at mollyredden.14

…“People don’t want to stand up, and because of that, people are suffering.” Read my story here:

…with Trump ghosted a police accountability nonprofit in the middle of preparations for a major lawsuit ⚖️Wachtell and Kirkland — two of corporate law's biggest moneymakers — are conspicuously absent from pro bono matters they championed in the past “It’s been a nightmare…

Some key examples: ⚖️Winston & Strawn turned down FBI agents trying to stop the DOJ from building a list of employees who worked on Jan 6 ⚖️A firm that sounds a lot like Sidley Austin is refusing to represent the ABA against the Trump admin ⚖️One of the 9 firms that cut a deal…

New from me: Big Law is fearful of representing anyone Trump sees as his enemies, and it's thwarting challenges to his agenda.  “There are cases that aren’t being brought at a time when civil rights abuses are maybe at the highest they’ve been.”

Tips are *very* welcome. Are you in Big Law or a Trump-aligned firm? Struggling to recruit pro bono partners to sue the administration? Former or current DOJ/OCR? Leonard Leo? Get in my DMs!

I'm launching a new @propublica beat! Legal affairs under Trump: his assault on Big Law, his judicial nominees, his defiance of the courts, the politicization of executive branch legal offices, favor-trading for dropped investigations, White House legal strategy—you name it.

“One of the reasons why we were very, so insistent about coming up with the whole notion of the border being an ‘invasion’ [is] there were Constitutional authorities that were a part of being able to call it an invasion.” Read about how we got here:

This strategy deliberately serves Trump's power grab. Russ Vought, WH budget chief/Project 2025 architect, said he champions this theory specifically to “unlock” immense executive power. In a private speech revealed by @ItsDocumented, @AndyKroll and me last year, Vought said…

Courts have never bought this idea. As recently as a decade ago, it was a completely fringe theory, laughed out of court whenever it surfaced. Now, it's Trump's central argument for ending immigrants' due process, shipping some off to CECOT, and threatening to suspend habeas.

For years, Trump's top aides have been secretly hustling to convince courts the US is under "invasion" by immigrants. Not just in the Fox News talking head sense—literally, legally under invasion, a distinction that would allow Trump to invoke wartime laws & attack habeas corpus.

As Tennessee defends its ban on trans youth care at SCOTUS, it will rely on testimony from 4 roundly discredited experts—including one who said some children may be “born to suffer and die” I wrote about their lucrative role in pushing misinformation:

But impoundments is the big question mark. "That is just not the constitutional design," one source said. "The president doesn’t have the authority to go into the budget bit by bit and pull out the stuff he doesn’t like.”

Short of impoundments, the admin may test all sorts of ways to kill programs they don't like. Grants getting held up indefinitely. Funding rules suddenly shifting. If you work in federal government and spot these kinds of changes, reach out:

Hard to overstate what a massive power grab this would be if they pull it off. Which is not a sure thing. They need Congress to roll over, give up its most essential power—the power of the purse—and repeal the post-Watergate impoundment ban, OR, an extremely compliant SCOTUS.

It's called "impoundment," and courts and Congress prohibited it in the Watergate era, after Nixon tried to gut federal funding for highways, clean water, and disaster relief. But Elon, Vivek, and Trump's future budget director are serious about knocking that precedent down.

New from me: As they prepare to cut trillions in government services, Trump + team are planning to test a radical legal theory which claims the president can unilaterally choke off funding from programs he opposes.

If you're heading to Bluesky you can find me there too: https://t.co/ZVCaMPTsem