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Category: Law/Crime

Trump’s plan to crush the academic left is meeting little resistance

Trump’s plan to crush the academic left is meeting little resistance

Michelle Goldberg writes: Last year, Chris Rufo, the influential right-wing strategist who spearheaded the campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I., initiatives, told me about his ambitions for a second Trump presidency. He hoped, he said, to see Donald Trump’s administration aggressively investigate Ivy League institutions that, according to Rufo, practice “rampant” discrimination against white, Jewish and Asian students and faculty members, particularly through D.E.I. programs, which aim to boost the representation of groups deemed underprivileged. If they were…

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Federal judges in Jan. 6 cases issue scathingly critical statements about Trump’s pardons

Federal judges in Jan. 6 cases issue scathingly critical statements about Trump’s pardons

Politico reports: A prominent federal judge on Wednesday ripped President Donald Trump’s mass clemency for Jan. 6 rioters, saying the justification he offered in his proclamation — to correct an “injustice” and trigger a “national reconciliation” — was “flatly wrong” and a “revisionist myth.” “No ‘national injustice’ occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election,” U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote in an eight-page order in the case of two Jan. 6 defendants who…

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Convicted U.S. Capitol rioter turns down Trump pardon ‘because I was guilty’

Convicted U.S. Capitol rioter turns down Trump pardon ‘because I was guilty’

BBC News reports: One of the people who served jail time for taking part in the US Capitol riot four years ago has refused a pardon from President Donald Trump, saying: “We were wrong that day.” Pamela Hemphill, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 60 days in prison, told the BBC that there should be no pardons for the riot on 6 January 2021. “Accepting a pardon would only insult the Capitol police officers, rule of law and, of…

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The legal status of Elon Musk’s government waste panel is already being challenged in federal court

The legal status of Elon Musk’s government waste panel is already being challenged in federal court

The Washington Post reports: A lawsuit claiming billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” violates federal transparency rules was filed within minutes of President Donald Trump’s inauguration Monday, kicking off a legal battle over a key aspect of the incoming administration’s agenda. In a 30-page complaint obtained by The Washington Post ahead of its filing, the public interest law firm National Security Counselors says that the nongovernmental DOGE panel is breaking a 1972 law that requires advisory committees to the…

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Will Biden pardon this human rights lawyer, Steven Donziger, who beat Big Oil in court?

Will Biden pardon this human rights lawyer, Steven Donziger, who beat Big Oil in court?

Rolling Stone reports: In the last few days of Joe Biden’s presidency, Steven Donziger hopes Biden will pardon him — as do dozens of progressive lawmakers in Congress, as well as human rights and environmental activists across the world. Donziger’s story is unique. “I’m the only person in the country to be criminally prosecuted by a private corporation,” Donziger tells Rolling Stone. As a lawyer, he helped secure a historic judgment against the oil giant Chevron on behalf of 30,000…

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Biden administration reaches deal limiting controversial protections for multinational corporations

Biden administration reaches deal limiting controversial protections for multinational corporations

Inside Climate News reports: The Biden administration announced a last-minute deal on trade this week, reaching an agreement with Colombia to limit protections for investors between the two countries. The move represents a small step toward reforming a system that has awarded multinational corporations more than $100 billion in taxpayer funds from countries around the globe. Investor state dispute settlement, or ISDS, allows foreign companies to bypass national courts and sue governments before panels of arbitrators if they believe their…

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The January 6 crime paid off for Trump

The January 6 crime paid off for Trump

David Frum writes: Early this morning, the Department of Justice released the report of Special Counsel Jack Smith on his investigation of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. The saga of the U.S. criminal-justice system’s effort to hold the coup instigator accountable is thus closed. No prosecution will take place. Compared with the present outcome, it would have been better if President Joe Biden had pardoned Trump for the January 6 coup attempt. A…

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Could other countries prosecute soldiers in Gaza?

Could other countries prosecute soldiers in Gaza?

Annie Hylton writes: Last spring, a video spread across social media. Filmed at night, it shows several soldiers in olive-green army fatigues transporting a group of prisoners. The captured men wear white jumpsuits and blindfolds, and they have their hands tied behind their backs. The person holding the camera begins to narrate, in French, “Did you see those motherfuckers?” Referring to a prisoner whose jumpsuit has fallen to his waist, he says, “Look, he’s pissed himself. . . . I…

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The CIA’s use of Sednaya and other prisons for outsourcing torture

The CIA’s use of Sednaya and other prisons for outsourcing torture

Barbara Koeppel reports: As rebel forces poured into Syria’s capital and President Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia, Syrians surged to the streets to celebrate. Some rushed to Sednaya, the military prison they tagged “the human slaughterhouse” to search for missing family. Sadly, few were found. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, more than 30,000 people died there from 2011 to 2013 “either by execution, torture or starvation” and “at least 500 more died from 2018 to 2021.” Other…

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Team Trump plans a racist terror campaign to make undocumented immigrants flee from the U.S.

Team Trump plans a racist terror campaign to make undocumented immigrants flee from the U.S.

Rolling Stone reports: Donald Trump is coming back into office this month on a vow to initiate the “largest” mass deportation operation in American history, and says he plans to unleash the U.S. military to help him do it. But according to three sources familiar with internal policy discussions in Trump’s circle, the president-elect and several of his key lieutenants are aware that their desired, larger-scale crackdowns — which could involve a new network of militarized “camps” — will take…

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Zuckerberg hopes Trump will enable Meta to violate antitrust laws

Zuckerberg hopes Trump will enable Meta to violate antitrust laws

Politico reports: The U.S. government under incoming President Donald Trump should intervene to stop the EU from fining American tech companies for breaching antitrust rules and committing other violations, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said late Friday. “I think it’s a strategic advantage for the United States that we have a lot of the strongest companies in the world, and I think it should be part of the U.S. strategy going forward to defend that,” Zuckerberg said during an appearance…

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Trump Organization hires top white collar defense lawyer to handle conflicts of interest

Trump Organization hires top white collar defense lawyer to handle conflicts of interest

The Associated Press reports: The Trump family business released a voluntary ethics agreement Friday that allows it to strike deals with private foreign companies, a move that could help outside actors try to buy influence with the new administration. The so-called ethics white paper bars the Trump Organization from striking deals directly with foreign governments, but allows ones with private companies abroad, a significant departure from President-elect Donald Trump’s first term. An ethics pact that Trump signed eight years ago…

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Trump will continue his assault on international law

Trump will continue his assault on international law

Mark Lawrence Schrad writes: Jan. 20, 2025, will mark the second inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Coincidentally, it will also mark my 20th year of teaching international law. Since many of my international politics students—now college juniors and seniors—were still in middle school during Trump’s first inauguration, they are largely unsure of what to expect from a second Trump administration. If history is any guide, the primary target of his foreign policy ire will be not…

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The media isn’t ready for Trump’s mass deportation moment

The media isn’t ready for Trump’s mass deportation moment

Adrian Carrasquillo writes: Imagine this scenario: Department of Homeland Security agents storm a meatpacking plant in the South, a show of force in the largest workplace raid in a decade. Rounding up workers, they target those who appear to be Latinos, without regard for citizenship. They don’t ask for documentation until hours later. A worker, overcome by fear, makes a run for it and is tackled by immigration agents, with one putting a boot on the worker’s neck for over…

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The law can still constrain Trump

The law can still constrain Trump

Quinta Jurecic writes: Donald Trump wasted little time after the election in claiming an “unprecedented and powerful mandate” and floating a series of extreme proposals with varying degrees of legal dubiousness. The president-elect has already winkingly suggested that he might stay in office for an unconstitutional third term, indicated that he intends to end the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, and said that he plans to deport U.S. citizens. If the mood on the right is triumphant, the atmosphere among…

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Victims of the Jan. 6 riot feel ‘betrayed’ as Trump rewrites history

Victims of the Jan. 6 riot feel ‘betrayed’ as Trump rewrites history

NPR reports: For the millions of Americans who watch the presidential inauguration every four years, the Lower West Terrace Tunnel of the U.S. Capitol is a familiar site. The incoming president walks through that tunnel and on to the inaugural platform, before taking the oath of office. On Jan. 6, 2021, it was a crime scene – the site of a bloody, hourslong struggle between law enforcement and a mob of supporters of President-elect Donald Trump. “My fellow officers and…

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