WASHINGTON — The executive order against one of the country's most prestigious law firms followed a well-worn template as President Donald Trump roared down the road to retribution.
Reaching far beyond government, Trump has set out to impose his will across a broad swath of American life, from individuals who have been targeted to institutions known for their own flexes of power and intimidation.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport on March 28 in West Palm Beach, Fla.Â
Paul Weiss, a New York law firm born in 1875, got the word that it was in trouble.
Trump ordered that federal security clearances of Paul Weiss attorneys be reviewed for suspension, federal contracts terminated and employee access to federal buildings restricted. One of its former lawyers once investigated Trump as a Manhattan prosecutor.
The decree was averted in the most Trumpian of ways — with a deal.
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After a White House meeting with the firm's chairman yielded various commitments, including $40 million worth of legal work to support the administration's causes, the order was rescinded.
The episode showed not only Trump's aggressive use of the power of the presidency to police dissent and punish adversaries but also his success in extracting concessions from law firms, academia, Silicon Valley, corporate boardrooms and more.
Just one day after Paul Weiss' deal, Columbia University disclosed major policy changes at the risk of losing billions in federal money. Before that, ABC News and Meta reached multimillion-dollar settlements to resolve lawsuits from Trump.
“The more of them that cave, the more extortion that that invites,†said Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer in Trump’s first term and now a critic. “You’ll see other universities and other law firms and other enemies of Trump assaulted and attacked into submission because of that."
Some within the conservative legal community, by contrast, think Trump is operating within his rights.
Other targets have taken the opposite tack, with two different law firms since the Paul Weiss deal suing over the executive orders. Judges on March 28 temporarily blocked enforcement of key sections of those orders against Jenner & Block and WilmerHale.
If the submissions have been surprising, then Trump's interest in reprisal was less so, telegraphed as it was during the campaign. “I am your retribution,†he told supporters in March 2023.
But retribution for what, exactly? Against whom? How?
The answers would come soon.
Fresh off four federal and state indictments that threatened his political career, Trump came immediately for the prosecutors who investigated him and the law firms he saw as sheltering them.
Out went members of special counsel Jack Smith's team and some prosecutors who handled cases arising from the Jan. 6 riot.
Then an executive order stripped security clearances from lawyers from Covington & Burling who provided legal representation for Smith himself during the threat of government investigations.
A subsequent order punished Perkins Coie for representing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.
Its business in the balance, Perkins Coie hired Williams Connolly, a firm with an aggressive litigation style, to contest the order. A federal judge said the administration’s action sent “chills down my spine" and blocked portions of it. The decision could have been a precedent for other firms to rely on.
The Paul Weiss chairman said it, too, initially intended to sue over the order that targeted the firm in part because former partner Mark Pomerantz had several years earlier overseen an investigation into Trump’s finances for the Manhattan district attorney. But even a courtroom victory wouldn't erase clients' perception that it was “persona non grata†with the administration, according to an internal email from the firm's chairman, Brad Karp.
Support from fellow firms never materialized and some even sought to exploit Paul Weiss' woes, Karp said.
When the opportunity came to cut a deal in a White House meeting, he took it, pledging free legal services for causes Trump supports, like the fight against antisemitism.
The outcry was swift. Lawyers outside the firm ridiculed what they saw as a weak-kneed response. More than 140 alumni of the firm assailed the capitulation in a letter.
Within days, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale were hit with executive orders over their affiliation with prosecutors on Robert Mueller’s special counsel team that investigated him during his first term. Both sued and got orders blocking sections of the edicts. Trump, meanwhile, has unleashed a new directive to sanction any lawyer who brings “frivolous†litigation against the government.
“I just think,†Trump said, “that law firms need to behave themselves.â€
On Tuesday, the White House said it had reached a deal with another major international law firm, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, to dedicate at least $100 million in free legal services to causes such as supporting veterans and combating antisemitism. Under the agreement, Willkie also agreed to disavow the use of equity, diversity and inclusion considerations in its hiring decisions.
The deal was reached just two days after leaders at Willkie learned that the White House intended to issue a executive order against the firm, an action that could have carried "potentially grave consequences," according to an internal email from the firm's executive committee obtained by The Associated Press.
Willkie is home to Doug Emhoff, the husband of 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, and Timothy Heaphy, who was chief investigative counsel to the House of Representatives committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. The firm also represented two former Georgia election workers in a successful defamation lawsuit against former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
How Trump is trying to expand the already colossal U.S. prison system
How Trump is trying to expand the already colossal U.S. prison system
During his first month in office, President Donald Trump has made moves to expand the United States' already gargantuan carceral system. The Trump administration's goals, from mass deportation to harsher punishments for some crimes, are reliant on the federal government having access to more prison and jail cells. Without that carceral infrastructure, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to enact his promises on immigration and crime and punishment.
During his presidential campaign, Trump vowed to deport a . And while Trump's focus so far has been on undocumented immigrants, his criminalization efforts extend to U.S. citizens too. Attorney General Pam Bondi has that could encourage federal prosecutors to seek harsher sentences in many circumstances.
Detaining and incarcerating more people necessitates more places to put them, and the administration is already hitting limits, reports. During the first week of February, space inside Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities reached .
This lack of space is one of the major barriers to ramping up deportations, and ICE is limited by its budget. But Trump is now considering tapping into defense funds. Those funds "would allow civilian-run companies to quickly and rapidly expand temporary detention facilities," such as tents, .
ICE has also begun . But the BOP was already in crisis before Trump took office, . The of staff to incarcerated people has to provide security and basic services to the people imprisoned in its facilities, putting their safety—and that of employees—at risk.
Private prison companies are celebrating the Trump administration's need for more cells. In a Feb. 10 and earnings call, CoreCivic's CEO told investors that this was one of the most exciting periods of his career, and it may lead to the ." The company, which has contracts to detain people for ICE, said they expect the immigration agency to .
Company officials believe they may also see growth in the Bureau of Prisons, . One of Trump's first actions as president was to , after then-President Joe Biden canceled BOP private prison contracts. (The use of private detention for immigration has continued under both Democratic and Republican administrations, with for much of the infrastructure .)
Yet another sign of a private prison infrastructure expansion is a report that the Trump administration is preparing to restart family immigrant detention, including incarcerating families with young children, and is expected to ask companies to bid for contracts, .
While much attention has been given to private companies, local jails are the most common type of detention facility that ICE uses, , an advocacy organization working to end mass incarceration. The Biden administration already had agreements with local jails to house ICE detainees. But Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, has been encouraging sheriffs to make even more space available for immigrant detention. At the the first week of February, he told sheriffs: "We need your bed space."
Homan promised to make it easier for local jails to incarcerate people for ICE by lowering detention standards and limiting the number of federal inspections. He said he hoped to eliminate federal rules and instead defer to state-level standards. "If that's good enough for a U.S. citizen in your county, it's good enough for an illegal immigrant detained for us," Homan said.
Local officials are often incentivized to provide jail space to ICE because of reimbursement rates. Sheriffs and politicians have talked about how . Other sheriffs have said they will to do what the federal government is asking counties to do. Some local politicians are offering space because of ideological support for Trump's goals. An Arizona state senator said he plans to introduce a bill allowing ICE to use two empty state prisons for just a . And Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has offered Trump the use of .
Other state politicians have resisted cooperation with ICE. A law in Illinois prohibits local sheriffs from renting jail space for immigrant detention. Trump is now .
The president's search for more prison and jail cells for imprisoning both citizens and undocumented immigrants extends beyond U.S. borders.
In early February, Trump said he was considering El Salvador's offer to incarcerate both deported immigrants from any nationality and U.S. citizens in its infamous prisons. Trump said the Central American country offered to detain people for a "small fee." He also said, "." Experts , and while it is, in some cases, legal to deport a non-citizen to a third country, it's a complicated process.
Trump has also indicated that he wants to house more than in Cuba. The naval base has a long history of allegations of , and lawyers have that immigrants are being sent into a "," according to The Washington Post. Around three dozen people have already been sent to Guantánamo, but there are major hurdles to reaching the numbers Trump has projected. The most the facility has ever held is , according to NPR, and housing more would be incredibly expensive. In addition, the administration has already hit legal hurdles— a judge in New Mexico blocked, for now, the administration's effort to send three Venezuelan men to Guantánamo.
Many have speculated that Trump's sending people to Guantánamo, , is an attempt to intended to project power and instill fear.
But despite the significant legal and practical barriers, the Trump administration's numerous efforts to find more jail and prison cells indicate a clear desire to build a larger carceral system.
Trump has styled himself as a "law and order" president and is using that frame in his efforts at expanded incarceration. But despite his wide-ranging moves to increase prison and jail space, he has been selective in who should be imprisoned or punished for illegal behavior.
Trump himself has been convicted of numerous felonies. On the first day of his administration, he granted clemency to . And at the beginning of February, the Justice Department ordered prosecutors to against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was accused in September of . Multiple department employees have . A Justice Department memo, obtained by The Associated Press, said the charges should be dropped because they were interfering with Adams' ."
was produced by , a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system, and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
