Ian Millhiser writes:

Few organizations have profited as handsomely off of President Donald Trump’s rise to power as the Federalist Society, a kind of bar association for right-wing lawyers.

“We’re going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society,” Trump announced during his first campaign for president — and boy did he deliver. Trump spent his first term filling the bench, including three seats on the Supreme Court, with the society’s luminaries.

And yet, at a Federalist Society gathering last Wednesday, which focused on the executive branch of the federal government, both the speakers and attendees seemed far more ambivalent about their president’s second term than one might expect after such a fruitful partnership.

To be sure, few speakers criticized Trump’s policies — except for his tariffs, which several attacked quite directly. But many were quite troubled by what speaker Susan Dudley, an expert on regulatory policy at George Washington University, labeled “the chaos.”

That chaos, the society’s speakers warned, could lead to Trump’s second term becoming a missed opportunity, with a once in a generation chance for deregulation squandered through sheer ineptitude. “They are going to have the same level of success they had in the last administration” with getting rid of long-standing rules and regulations, George Washington University law professor Richard Pierce told the conference, “which is virtually none.” [Continue reading…]