War on Universities, Lawyers & Expertise| Trump Admin sues Harvard again

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rodoheel said:
Gee it's almost like this outcome was fairly obvious and the firms who capitulated are craven cowards
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This is probably a coincidence but worth noting:

IMG_5426.jpeg

www.pbs.org

Chairman of prominent law firm Paul Weiss resigns after release of emails linking him to Epstein

He said in a statement from the firm that "recent reporting has created a distraction and has placed a focus on me that is not in the best interests" of Paul Weiss.
www.pbs.org www.pbs.org

“… In his return to the White House, Trump has sought to exercise retribution against firms whose lawyers have performed legal work with which he disagrees. Paul Weiss was among the targets.

That order noted that a former Paul Weiss attorney, Mark Pomerantz, had been a central player in an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney's office into Trump's finances before Trump became president. …

… Karp was initially prepared to sue over the order, saying his firm "would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the Administration."

Karp later cut a deal with Trump, saying that he did so to save the firm. The move was ridiculed by lawyers outside Paul Weiss, and more than 140 alums of the firm signed a letter assailing it as well.“
 
nycfan said:
This is probably a coincidence but worth noting:

IMG_5426.jpeg

www.pbs.org

Chairman of prominent law firm Paul Weiss resigns after release of emails linking him to Epstein

He said in a statement from the firm that "recent reporting has created a distraction and has placed a focus on me that is not in the best interests" of Paul Weiss.
www.pbs.org www.pbs.org

“… In his return to the White House, Trump has sought to exercise retribution against firms whose lawyers have performed legal work with which he disagrees. Paul Weiss was among the targets.

That order noted that a former Paul Weiss attorney, Mark Pomerantz, had been a central player in an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney's office into Trump's finances before Trump became president. …

… Karp was initially prepared to sue over the order, saying his firm "would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the Administration."

Karp later cut a deal with Trump, saying that he did so to save the firm. The move was ridiculed by lawyers outside Paul Weiss, and more than 140 alums of the firm signed a letter assailing it as well.“
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I agree it's probably a coincidence - I think Karp was motivated almost entirely by financial self-interest to cut a deal - btu still feels like some delicious karma, no?
 
rodoheel said:
I agree it's probably a coincidence - I think Karp was motivated almost entirely by financial self-interest to cut a deal - btu still feels like some delicious karma, no?
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Indeed. And it further infuriates PW attorneys who were outraged when he cut this deal, which in turn signaled to other big firms they should do the same for competitive reasons.

But the karmic retribution is pretty limited. He is still a partner at PW making millions a year and his resignation didn’t void the agreement with the Trump Administration. Hell, he probably still coordinates all the free legal time they agreed to donate to MAGA causes.
 
Calheel said:
Guess Trump didn't know about this, or else he changed his mind overnight.
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it's the Harvard thing all over again. Every time Trump sees a headline suggesting that he's backing down on anything, he immediately gets mad and insists on dialing everything back up to 10.

I can't imagine how there are any lawyers left at DOJ. Even if you're a conservative ideologue the job is just a nightmare right now - you are constantly being put in terrible positions by the admin, and they are constantly undermining your authority and the things you say to the court.\

ETA: I suspect the authors of that article are also on to something when they indicate that the Trump DOJ may not have realized, when initially deciding to dismiss their case, that if and when it loses those cases, the result could be that the settlements it negotiated with the other firms are unenforceable.
 
nycfan said:
But the karmic retribution is pretty limited. He is still a partner at PW making millions a year and his resignation didn’t void the agreement with the Trump Administration. Hell, he probably still coordinates all the free legal time they agreed to donate to MAGA causes.
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What I do not understand is this: the administration cannot enforce that contract. It doesn't matter if Paul Weiss signed the deal. If they say, sorry we don't want to contribute pro bono hours to your cause, the administration cannot make them. It is still viewpoint discrimination.
 
superrific said:
What I do not understand is this: the administration cannot enforce that contract. It doesn't matter if Paul Weiss signed the deal. If they say, sorry we don't want to contribute pro bono hours to your cause, the administration cannot make them. It is still viewpoint discrimination.
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Sure, sure, cite the law. A lot depends on how may partners risk losing business if they engage in that legal dust-up, I’m sure. A lot of them won’t feel any direct risk to their book of business but would see a prolonged fight of creating more risk than keeping their head down and telling themselves that the deal is unenforceable if something too egregious is ever demanded. Meanwhile, a lot of folks are getting great networking opportunities in the current administration …
 
nycfan said:
Sure, sure, cite the law. A lot depends on how may partners risk losing business if they engage in that legal dust-up, I’m sure. A lot of them won’t feel any direct risk to their book of business but would see a prolonged fight of creating more risk than keeping their head down and telling themselves that the deal is unenforceable if something too egregious is ever demanded. Meanwhile, a lot of folks are getting great networking opportunities in the current administration …
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Well, possession being 9/10 of the law and all -- it's PW that would have the possession. The government would have to sue to force compliance.
 

Justice Department Denounces Federal Judges in Fight Against Law Firms​

The Trump administration had signaled earlier this week that it was ready to abandon four executive orders seeking to punish law firms, but abruptly reversed course the next day.

www.nytimes.com

Justice Dept. Denounces Federal Judges in Fight Against Law Firms

The Trump administration had signaled earlier this week that it was ready to abandon four executive orders seeking to punish law firms, but abruptly reversed course the next day.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

“… “Courts cannot tell the president what to say,” the 97-page legal brief began, adding that four federal judges had “bent over backwards” to rule against Mr. Trump and were “encroaching on the constitutional power of the president,” in what the document described as “a grave error for the district courts.”

The blistering court filing came as the Trump administration encounters heightened scrutiny from district courts across the country. Its officials have grown ever more bellicose, including in criticizing the Supreme Court after it ruled against Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

…
The tone and language of the brief were remarkable as Justice Department lawyers opened an argument to federal appeals court judges by attacking those judges’ lower court colleagues.

Its ferocity came as a surprise given that, earlier this week, the Justice Department indicated that it was ready to abandon the case entirely. On Monday, it filed a motion with the D.C. court, asking it to dismiss the case.

But the next day, after the department’s decision to leave the appeal behind had received extensive news coverage, it reversed course. …”
 
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I'm writing to share significant news about the lawsuit we filed in May 2025 with the American Council of Learned Societies and the Modern Language Association opposing the illegal dismantling of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

On Friday night, the American Historical Association and our co-plaintiffs filed a motion for summary judgment. Depositions and records obtained through the discovery process detail the role of DOGE staff in cancelling humanities grants, and how both the Federal Equal Protection Clause of the 5th Amendment and the Federal Records Acts were violated in the process. These findings, described in more detail on our website and in the press release below, underscore why this case matters, not only for historians and educators, but also for documenting this moment for the historical record and for the future of public support for the humanities.

We continue to pursue this case and will keep you informed as it develops. In the meantime, we invite you to stand with historians defending the humanities by joining the AHA or making a contribution to the AHA Advocacy Fund. The strength of our membership community and the generosity of our donors make legal efforts like this possible.

Sincerely,​
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Sarah Weicksel
Executive Director

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DISCOVERY RELEASED IN LAWSUIT BY HUMANITIES GROUPS REVEALS CHATGPT-POWERED PROCESS BY DOGE IN CANCELLING GRANTS FOR SCHOOLS, LIBRARIES, AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS​

Motion Filed by Plaintiffs for Summary Judgment in Lawsuit to Restore National Endowment for the Humanities Previous Function and Funding​

For immediate release / March 7, 2026 (New York, NY) — The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) used a flawed ChatGPT process to identify “DEI programs” and inform decisions to terminate grants awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). This development was revealed in discovery documents made available as part of a motion for a summary judgment filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The filing by the plaintiffs—the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the American Historical Association (AHA), and the Modern Language Association (MLA)—included depositions by two key members of the DOGE team, as well as Adam Wolfson (NEH Assistant Chair for Programs) and Michael McDonald (NEH General Counsel and Acting Chair of the NEH from March 2025 to January 2026). Depositions reveal that DOGE team members made the decisions about funding—despite having no legal authority to do so; document the use of Signal by DOGE and NEH staff to communicate about their process in violation of the Federal Records Act; and make clear that some grants were terminated despite NEH staff concluding that they did not conflict with new policies coming from the Trump Administration.

Discovery in this lawsuit has uncovered egregious and illegal actions that affect organizations and residents in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
  • The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led the termination of previously awarded grants. The acting chair, Michael McDonald, ceded his authority over this process to DOGE, writing to DOGE staffer Justin Fox, “as you’ve made clear, it’s your decision on whether to discontinue funding any of the projects on this list.”
  • Michael McDonald cut out any Congressional role and asserted the authority of the Executive Branch to end funding. Grants representing hundreds of millions of dollars of congressionally appropriated funds were cancelled without statutory authority.
  • McDonald and key members of the DOGE team bypassed authorized record preservation requirements and violated the Federal Records Act by conducting official government business regarding the cuts using Signal, a messaging application unauthorized for federal employees, and intentionally set to automatically delete messages.
  • DOGE fed grant descriptions into OpenAI’s ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence chatbot, asking it to decide if grants were “DEI.” They then entered ChatGPT’s responses into a spreadsheet compiling all NEH grants, including its “DEI rationale” and “Yes / No DEI?” replies. This ChatGPT-generated list was used in place of the list created by NEH staffers to identify which grants to cut. Projects Grants that were flagged as “DEI” and then terminated included a documentary sharing the story of Jewish women's slave labor during the Holocaust; an archival project on the lives of Italian Americans; a project to digitize photograph collections of Appalachian residents; and multiple projects to preserve endangered Native American languages and cultures.
  • DOGE staffers violated the Federal Equal Protection Clause of the 5th Amendment by flagging grant descriptions as “DEI” solely because they included “BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color),” “homosexual,” “LGBTQ,” and “Tribal,” among other terms.
  • DOGE staffers also flagged grants that NEH leaders concede had no connection to DEI, including grants that had been awarded for collections management after a natural disaster, preservation training, and improving HVAC systems.
  • After the termination of previously awarded grants, Michael McDonald asked an NEH staff member to solicit the Tikvah Fund's application for a single-source award; the NEH ultimately granted it $10 million.
In the motion, the plaintiffs present three claims: violations of the First Amendment; violations of the Equal Protection Clause; and violation of the separation of powers, as DOGE carried out the termination of the grants, not the NEH Chair, and without approval from Congress.

Their case, which has been joined to a similar case brought by the Authors Guild, seeks a judgment restoring the unlawfully terminated funding to their constituents, whose research and livelihoods have been threatened by the cancellation of their grants.

"The principle that knowledge of history, literature, religion, philosophy, and the arts is necessary to sustain a strong and resilient nation drove Congress to establish the NEH,” said ACLS President Joy Connolly. “Our lawsuit reveals this administration’s contempt for that principle and for public investment in research for the common good. DOGE employees’ use of ChatGPT to identify ‘wasteful’ grants is perhaps the biggest advertisement for the need for humanities education, which builds skills in critical thinking.”

“The manner in which NEH grants were terminated is in direct opposition to the agency’s founding legislation, which asserted that ‘it is necessary and appropriate for the Federal Government to help create and sustain...a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry,’” said AHA Executive Director, Sarah Weicksel. “Terminating the grants of scholars and institutions for reasons ranging from the nature of the questions posed to the race or gender of the historical figures they intended to study, quashes freedom of thought, stifles imagination, prevents inquiry, and thereby threatens the study of history and the humanities more broadly.”

“The facts in this case have exposed the administration’s total disregard for the democratic process and for the value of the humanities that the NEH exists to promote,” said the MLA’s executive director, Paula M. Krebs. “Through this lawsuit, we have been able to document in detail the haphazard and unlawful actions of DOGE as these unqualified agents undermined the separation of powers and denied the American people access to vital public programming and research.”

Established in 1965, the NEH has been a cornerstone investor in the advancement and accessibility of humanities knowledge and programs, providing funding to museums, historic sites, colleges, universities, libraries, public television and radio stations, research institutions, and scholars. In April of 2025, the NEH eliminated grants, grant programs, much of its staff, and entire divisions. The ACLS, AHA, and MLA filed a lawsuit on May 1, 2025, seeking to reverse these actions, which affect access to humanities programming, resources, and research for millions of Americans across the United States.

Cont.
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The plaintiffs, represented by the Jacobson Lawyers Group, are associations represented on the National Humanities Alliance executive committee. The Phi Beta Kappa Society is also contributing to this effort.

More information about the lawsuit is available online. Visit the ACLS, AHA, and MLA websites to view the original complaint, FAQs about the case, and more.

About the American Council of Learned Societies
Formed a century ago, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is a nonprofit federation of 81 scholarly organizations. As the leading representative of American scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, ACLS upholds the core principle that knowledge is a public good. In supporting its member organizations, ACLS expands the forms, content, and flow of scholarly knowledge, reflecting its commitment to diversity of identity and experience. ACLS collaborates with institutions, associations, and individuals to strengthen the evolving infrastructure for scholarship.

About the American Historical Association
Founded in 1884 and incorporated by Congress in 1889 for the promotion of historical studies, the American Historical Association provides leadership for the discipline and promotes the critical role of historical thinking in public life. The association defends academic freedom, develops professional standards, supports innovative scholarship and teaching, and helps to sustain and enhance the work of historians. As the largest membership association of professional historians in the world (nearly 11,000 members), the AHA serves historians in a wide variety of professions and represents every historical era and geographical area. Learn more at historians.org.
 
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