Perkins Coie files suit to block Trump executive order aimed at punishing firm
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(WASHINGTON) — The law firm Perkins Coie has filed suit against the Trump administration over an executive order signed by President Donald Trump last week that targeted the firm for its work representing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Attorneys representing Perkins Coie filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, along with a request for a temporary restraining order to bar enforcement of the executive order.
“The Order is an affront to the Constitution and our adversarial system of justice,” the lawsuit said. “Its plain purpose is to bully those who advocate points of view that the President perceives as adverse to the views of his Administration, whether those views are presented on behalf of paying or pro bono clients.”
It’s the first legal challenge in what Trump has previewed will be a wave of executive actions seeking to punish law firms that have represented his perceived political enemies.
The order, signed by Trump on March 6, mandates that lawyers working for Perkins Coie have their security clearances stripped and aims to terminate any government contracts that might exist with the firm or other entities that it represents. It further bars agencies from hiring employees of Perkins Coie and prohibits employees from the firm from accessing government buildings.
“Perkins Coie brings this case reluctantly,” the lawsuit said. “The firm is comprised of lawyers who advocate for clients; its attorneys and employees are not activists or partisans. But Perkins Coie’s ability to represent the interests of its clients — and its ability to operate as a legal-services business at all — are under direct and imminent threat. Perkins Coie cannot allow its clients to be bullied.”
In his signing of the order, Trump pointed to Perkins Coie’s work in the 2016 campaign and ties to the “Steele Dossier,” which detailed a series of highly salacious allegations about Trump that were later investigated by the FBI and determined to be unsubstantiated.
Marc Elias, who left Perkins Coie to start his own firm in 2021, brokered an agreement with the research and intelligence firm Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research on Trump leading up to the 2016 election. Fusion then hired a former British spy, Christopher Steele, who compiled the dossier.
As Perkins Coie’s lawsuit noted, however, the two attorneys singled out in the executive order’s actual text “have not been with the firm for years.”
“The retaliatory aim of the Order is intentionally obvious to the general public and the press because the very goal is to chill future lawyers from representing particular clients,” the lawsuit said.
As Joe Biden’s presidency draws to a close, the reviews are being written — what will become the first draft of history.
And the reviews from most Americans are not good.
Surveys show they have mixed views on his four years at the pinnacle of power, the culmination of a career in public service that spans more than five decades.
Gallup found 54% of U.S. adults think Biden will be remembered as a below average or poor president; 19% say he’ll be remembered as outstanding or above average and 26% think he will be viewed as average.
Historians, though, say it will take years to fully assess Biden’s legacy and his lasting imprint on American politics. Several spoke to ABC News to offer a preliminary take on how they regard his presidency as he prepares to make his exit.
COVID recovery and legislative wins
“I think it is likely Joe Biden’s legacy will be assessed far more generously than some would have it today,” said Ellen Fitzpatrick, professor of history at the University of New Hampshire.
“His quick action upon taking office to address the COVID-19 pandemic, including expediting vaccinations and steering the American Rescue Plan to passage, contributed to a ‘first 100 days’ more robust in achievement than perhaps any president since FDR,” Fitzpatrick added.
The American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion relief bill that provided stimulus checks directly to Americans, support for state and local governments and billions of dollars in vaccine distribution, was signed just months after he took office. By mid-May 2021, his administration announced 250 million vaccines had been administered.
“That activism continued with successes in expanding federal investment in clean energy and improved infrastructure, new job creation, efforts to address climate change, curb health care costs and expand insurance coverage among many initiatives,” Fitzpatrick said.
By the end of his second year in office, he’d also signed the Inflation Reduction Act, a massive climate, health and tax law; the CHIPS Act, a multibillion-dollar law to boost domestic computer chip manufacturing; the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major gun safety bill in decades; and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which provides funding to rebuild the country’s bridges, roads and public transportation.
But some economists question how much the big-ticket bills contributed to inflation, which reached a 40-year high during his time in office though has since cooled.
“He spent a lot of money, but didn’t really change the authorities of government and change the structure of government,” said Tevi Troy, a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute. “I don’t think people are gonna look at the inflation Reduction Act, which everybody acknowledged was misnamed, the same way that we look at the Great Society legislation that Lyndon B. Johnson passed.”
Plus, Americans may not feel the full impact of Biden’s signature policies — such as infrastructure improvements or drug-pricing reforms — for years to come.
“They experienced all the disruptions without any of the payoff,” said Russell Riley, the co-chair of the Miller Center’s Presidential Oral History Program. “And what I think those who are supporters of Biden will count on is that in the long scope of history, once these projects stop being ongoing ventures with all the headaches associated with it and you see the good that came out of it, that his image will be rehabilitated some.”
Foreign policy footprint
“The things that I think will probably stand up as positives were a return to alliances and the importance of engaging in positive relationships with nations around the globe,” said presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky. “That was something that both our allies really want and is in America’s best interest.”
Biden made support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion a key issue, framing it as a battle for democracy against authoritarianism. He made a surprise visit to wartime Kyiv to stand alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after a year of war.
In the Middle East, Biden tried to balance unwavering support for Israel after Hamas’ terror attack in Oct. 2023 while also pushing for humanitarian assistance for Palestinians inside Gaza. He faced anger from all sides as the conflict unfolded, but managed to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas at the very end of his presidency.
Biden has also touted ending America’s longest war by removing remaining troops in Afghanistan. But the chaos that accompanied the withdrawal, including the deaths of 13 American service members, cast a pall over his presidency.
“On the flip side, the way in which the departure from Afghanistan unfolded — not so much the departure itself but the way it was conducted and that administration’s inability to take responsibility for that — I think really annoyed a lot of people and continued to color their perspective of the administration,” Chervinsky said.
His decision to run for reelection — and later drop out
Biden announced he was running for reelection in April 2023. At the time, he was 80 years old.
There was no competitive Democratic primary and he was on a glide path to become the party’s nominee until his June 2024 debate performance against Donald Trump.
The poor showing stoked concern among Democrats about Biden’s age and ability to campaign. He fought off the growing panic for weeks, but ultimately withdrew from the campaign on July 21 and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place.
“He has sort of two presidencies: before the debate and then after the debate,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston and co-creator of the Presidential Greatness Project.
Riley said he believed this chapter of Biden’s presidency could overshadow his accomplishments.
“I think this is where the light of history will probably be especially harsh, particularly for those who believe that the disruptions of Trumpism are historically significant and adversely impact our constitutional system,” he added.
Biden has maintained a belief that he could have beaten Trump had he stayed in the race. He said he decided to drop out to help unify the Democratic Party.
“The tragic irony of Joe Biden is that he wanted to be president his whole life, certainly his whole Senate career, and when he finally got it, he was too old for the job,” said Troy.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Thursday claimed, without citing evidence, that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration — under Democratic presidents — were partly to blame for the tragic plane and helicopter collision in Washington on Wednesday night.
The air disaster occurred as an American Airlines passenger jet approaching Reagan Washington National Airport collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on a routine training flight.
“I put safety first, Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen,” Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room, referring to the policies, even as the investigation into what happened is just getting underway.
This is the first major commercial airline crash in the United States since 2009, when 50 people died after a plane crashed while landing near Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
“I had to say that it’s terrible,” he said, citing what he called a story about a group within the FAA that had “determined that the [FAA] workforce was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately. This was in the Obama administration, just prior to my getting there, and we took care of African Americans, Hispanic Americans.”
Trump then signed an executive order later Thursday that appointed Christopher Rocheleau, a 22-year veteran of the FAA, as acting commissioner of the agency, which he had said he would do in the briefing. And he signed a second executive order “aimed at undoing all of that damage” caused by the “Biden administration’s DEI and woke policies.”
“We want the most competent people. We don’t care what race they are,” the president said. “If they don’t have a great brain, a great power of the brain, they’re not going to be very good at what they do and bad things will happen.”
When asked by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce whether he was saying the crash was the result of diversity hiring, Trump said, “we don’t know” what caused the crash, adding investigators are still looking into that. “It just could have been. We have a high standard. We’ve had a higher, much higher standard than anybody else.”
Even as he made unfounded claims about the FAA’s diversity initiatives being a factor in the disaster, he then said the Army helicopter crew could be at fault — and claimed he wasn’t blaming the air traffic controller who communicated with the helicopter.
When asked how he could come to the conclusion that FAA diversity policies had something to do with the disaster, he said, “Because I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately a lot of people don’t.”
No determination of fault in the crash has been made, and the National Transportation Safety Board is conducting an investigation.
However, the NTSB declined to say whether DEI initiatives were a factor in the crash when asked by reporters later Thursday.
“As part of any investigation, we look at the human, the machine and the environment,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said. “So we will look at all the humans that were involved in this accident. Again, we will look at the aircraft. We will look at the helicopter. We will look at the environment in which they were operating in. That is part of that is standard in any part of our investigation.”
In the White House briefing, several Cabinet officials spoke after Trump to address the crash, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy saying, “What happened yesterday shouldn’t have happened.”
“And when Americans take off in airplanes, they should expect to land at their destination,” he added. “That didn’t happen yesterday. That’s not acceptable, and so we will not accept excuses. We will not accept passing the buck. We are going to take responsibility at the Department of Transportation and the FAA to make sure we have the reforms that have been dictated by President Trump in place to make sure that these mistakes do not happen again.”
However, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, while noting that a “mistake was made” in the crash, said the Department of Defense must be “colorblind and merit-based … whether it’s flying Black Hawks, and flying airplanes, leading platoons or in government.”
“The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department, and we need the best and brightest, whether it’s in our air traffic control or whether it’s in our generals, or whether it’s throughout government,” he said.
Vice President J.D. Vance, too, alluded to DEI having a part in the crash, saying, “We want the best people at air traffic control.”
“If you go back to just some of the headlines over the past 10 years, you have many hundreds of people suing the government because they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the color of their skin,” Vance said.
“That policy ends under Donald Trump’s leadership, because safety is the first priority of our aviation industry.”
But when a reporter pressed Trump, saying that similar language on DEI policies existed on the FAA’s website under Trump’s entire first term, Trump shot back, “I changed the Obama policy, and we had a very good policy and then Biden came in and he changed it. And then when I came in two days, three days ago, I said, a new order, bringing it to the highest level of intelligence.”
Trump said Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary in the Biden administration, “just got a good line of bulls—” and said he had “run [the Department of Transportation] right into the ground with his diversity.”
“Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” Buttigieg responded in a statement on X. “We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch. President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”
Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly called Trump’s comments “dangerous, racist, and ignorant.”
“President Trump twisted a terrible tragedy — while families are mourning their loved ones — to insert his own political agenda and sow division,” Kelly said in a statement. “This is not leadership. We need to investigate how this plane crash happened to give a sense of closure to grieving families and prevent future crashes.
“Trump would rather point fingers than look in the mirror and face the fact that he just cut a committee responsible for aviation security,” she added. “The issue with our country is not its diversity. It’s the lack of leadership in the White House and unqualified Cabinet. Trump’s actions and words are dangerous, racist, and ignorant — simply un-American.”
(WASHINGTON) — While President Donald Trump’s proudest supporters on Capitol Hill shower him with legislation proposing putting his portrait on a $250 bill, declaring his birthday a national holiday or adding his likeness to Mount Rushmore — a new effort across the aisle isn’t as flattering — as House Democrats take aim at the president’s $TRUMP meme coin.
Since launching a little over a month ago, the $TRUMP coin has tanked in value after early investors dumped the cryptocurrency. Members of Congress have noticed as hundreds of thousands of investors have taken hard hits and billions in value have quickly vanished.
California freshman Democrat Rep. Sam Liccardo told ABC News on Thursday he will introduce legislation to prohibit the country’s top officials and their families — from Congress to the White House — from capitalizing on personal meme coins.
The Modern Emoluments and Malfeasance Enforcement (MEME) Act would prohibit the president, vice president, members of Congress, senior executive branch officials and their spouses and dependent children from issuing, sponsoring or endorsing a security, future, commodity or digital asset.
Liccardo said he believes that the president and first lady Melania Trump cashed in on their meme coins and enriched investors around the world who initially supported the cryptocurrency.
Trump launched the coin in January, days before he took office. A similar Melania coin had been issued a week earlier. Trump in July said he wanted to turn the U.S. into the “crypto capital of the planet.”
While Liccardo’s legislation is not expected to become law over the next two years under Republican majorities in the House and Senate, the freshman Democrat said that the president and first lady made a windfall on their respective meme coins and is working to build support that culminates behind a Democrat majority.
“Let’s make corruption criminal again,” Liccardo, a former federal and local criminal prosecutor, said. “Our public offices belong to the public, not the officeholders, nor should they leverage their political authority for financial gain. The Trumps’ issuance of meme coins financially exploits the public for personal gain, and raises the specter of insider trading and foreign influence over the Executive Branch.”
The proposal would forbid federal officials from promoting a range of financial assets or from participating in any conduct likely to financially benefit themselves, according to Liccardo. The legislation would impose criminal and civil penalties and includes a prohibition that applies to any financial asset, such as the stock of Truth Social.
Liccardo wants to subject violators to criminal and civil penalties while stopping them from profiting from an asset issued before the bill’s enactment — giving it retroactive element intended to address the launch of $TRUMP.
Liccardo said he has a dozen Democratic cosponsors as he prepares to introduce the legislation on Thursday.
