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Vox
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Vox
Why Trump's big legislative win could be short-lived
is a senior politics reporter at Vox, where he covers the Democratic Party. He joined Vox in 2022 after reporting on national and international politics for the Atlantic's politics, global, and ideas teams, including the role of Latino voters in the 2020 election. President Donald Trump speaks during an address to a joint session of Congress at the US Capitol on March 4, 2025. Allison Robbert/AFP via Getty Images President Donald Trump is about to achieve his biggest legislative victory yet: His 'big, beautiful bill' — the massive tax- and Medicaid-cutting, immigration and border spending bill passed the Senate on Tuesday — is on the verge of passing the House of Representatives. It's a massive piece of legislation, likely to increase the national debt by at least $3 trillion, mostly through tax cuts, and leave 17 million Americans without health coverage — and it's really unpopular. Majorities in nearly every reputable poll taken this month disapprove of the bill, ranging from 42 percent who oppose the bill in an Ipsos poll (compared to 23 percent who support) to 64 percent who oppose it in a KFF poll. Today, Explained Understand the world with a daily explainer, plus the most compelling stories of the day. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. And if history is any indication, it's not going to get any better for Trump and the Republicans from here on out. In modern American politics, few things are more unpopular with the public than big, messy bills forged under a bright spotlight. That's especially true of bills passed through a Senate mechanism called 'budget reconciliation,' a Senate procedure that allows the governing party to bypass filibuster rules with a simple majority vote. They tend to have a negative effect on presidents and their political parties in the following months as policies are implemented and campaign seasons begin. Part of that effect is due to the public's general tendency to dislike any kind of legislation as it gets more publicity and becomes better understood. But reconciliation bills in the modern era seem to create a self-fulfilling prophecy: forcing presidents to be maximally ambitious at the outset, before they lose popular support for the legislation and eventually lose the congressional majorities that delivered passage. Presidents and their parties tend to be punished after passing big spending bills The budget reconciliation process, created in 1974, has gradually been used to accomplish broader and bigger policy goals. Because it offers a workaround for a Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to break, it has become the primary way that presidents and their parties implement their economic and social welfare visions. The public, however, doesn't tend to reward the governing party after these bills are passed. As political writer and analyst Ron Brownstein recently pointed out, presidents who successfully pass a major reconciliation bill in the first year of their presidency lose control of Congress, usually the House, the following year. In 1982, Ronald Reagan lost his governing majority in the House after using reconciliation to pass large spending cuts as part of his Reaganomics vision (the original 'big, beautiful' bill). And the pattern would repeat itself for George H.W. Bush (whose reconciliation bill contradicted his campaign promise not to raise taxes), for Bill Clinton in 1994 (deficit reductions and tax reform), for Barack Obama in 2010 (after the passage of the Affordable Care Act), for Trump in 2018 (tax cuts), and for Biden in 2022 (the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act). The exception in this list of modern presidents is George W. Bush, who did pass a set of tax cuts in a reconciliation bill, but whose approval rating rose after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Increasing polarization, and the general anti-incumbent party energy that tends to run through midterm elections, of course, explains part of this overall popular and electoral backlash. But reconciliation bills themselves seem to intensify this effect. Why reconciliation bills do so much political damage First, there's the actual substance of these bills, which has been growing in scope over time. Because they tend to be the first, and likely only, major piece of domestic legislation that can execute a president's agenda, they are often highly ideological, partisan projects that try to implement as much of a governing party's vision as possible. These highly ideological pieces of legislation, Matt Grossman, the director of Michigan State University's Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, and his partners have found, tend to kick into gear a 'thermostatic' response from the public — that is, that public opinion moves in the opposite direction of policymaking when the public perceives one side is going too far to the right or left. Because these bills have actually been growing in reach, from mere tax code adjustments to massive tax-and-spend, program-creating bills, and becoming more ideological projects, the public, in turn, seems to be reacting more harshly. These big reconciliation bills also run into an issue that afflicts all kinds of legislation: It has a PR problem. Media coverage of proposed legislation tends to emphasize its partisanship, portraying the party in power as pursuing its domestic agenda at all costs and emphasizing that parties are fighting against each other. This elevates process over policy substance. Political scientist Mary Layton Atkinson has found that just like campaign reporting is inclined to focus on the horse race, coverage of legislation in Congress and policy debates often focuses on conflict and procedure, adding to a sense in the public mind that Congress is extreme, dysfunctional, and hyperpartisan. Adding to this dynamic is a quirk of public opinion toward legislation and referenda: Proposals tend to get less popular, and lose public support, between proposal and passage, as the public learns more about the actual content of initiatives and as they hear more about the political negotiations and struggles taking place behind the scenes as these bills are ironed out. Lawmakers and key political figures also 'tend to highlight the benefits less than the things that they are upset about in the course of negotiations,' Grossman told me. 'That [also] occurs when a bill passes: You have the people who are against it saying all the terrible things about it, and actually the people who are for it are often saying, 'I didn't get all that I wanted, I would have liked it to be slightly different.' So the message that comes out of it is actually pretty negative on the whole, because no one is out there saying this is the greatest thing and exactly what they wanted.' Even with the current One Big Beautiful Bill, polling analysis shows that the public tends not to be very knowledgeable about what is in the legislative package, but gets even more hostile to it once they learn or are provided more information about specific policy details. Big reconciliation bills exist at the intersection of all three of these public image problems: They tend to be the first major legislative challenge a new president and Congress take on, they suck up all the media's attention, they direct the public's attention to one major piece of legislation, and they take a pretty long time to iron out — further extending the timeline in which the bill can get more unpopular.
Vox
14 hours ago
- Business
- Vox
Trump's legislative win could make him a political loser
is a senior politics reporter at Vox, where he covers the Democratic Party. He joined Vox in 2022 after reporting on national and international politics for the Atlantic's politics, global, and ideas teams, including the role of Latino voters in the 2020 election. President Donald Trump speaks during an address to a joint session of Congress at the US Capitol on March 4, 2025. Allison Robbert/AFP via Getty Images President Donald Trump is about to achieve his biggest legislative victory yet: his 'one big, beautiful bill' — the massive tax- and Medicaid-cutting, immigration and border spending bill passed the Senate on Tuesday — is on the verge of passing the House of Representatives. It's a massive piece of legislation, likely to increase the national debt by at least $3 trillion, mostly through tax cuts, and leave 17 million Americans without health coverage — and it's really unpopular. Majorities in nearly every reputable poll taken this month disapprove of the bill, ranging from 42 percent who oppose the bill in an Ipsos poll (compared to 23 percent who support) to 64 percent who oppose it in a KFF poll. And if history is any indication, it's not going to get any better for Trump and the Republicans from here on out. In modern American politics, few things are more unpopular with the public than big, messy bills forged under a bright spotlight. That's especially true of bills passed through a Senate mechanism called 'budget reconciliation,' a Senate procedure that allows the governing party to bypass filibuster rules with a simple majority vote. They tend to have a negative effect on presidents and their political parties in the following months as policies are implemented and campaign seasons begin. Part of that effect is due to the public's general tendency to dislike any kind of legislation as it gets more publicity and becomes better understood. But reconciliation bills in the modern era seem to create a self-fulfilling prophecy: forcing presidents to be maximally ambitious at the outset, before they lose popular support for the legislation and eventually lose the congressional majorities that delivered passage. Presidents and their parties tend to be punished after passing big spending bills The budget reconciliation process, created in 1974, has gradually been used to accomplish broader and bigger policy goals. Because it offers a workaround for a Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to break, it has become the primary way that presidents and their parties implement their economic and social welfare visions. The public, however, doesn't tend to reward the governing party after these bills are passed. As political writer and analyst Ron Brownstein recently pointed out, presidents who successfully pass a major reconciliation bill in the first year of their presidency lose control of Congress, usually the House, the following year. In 1982, Ronald Reagan lost his governing majority in the House after using reconciliation to pass large spending cuts as part of his Reaganomics vision (the original 'big, beautiful' bill). And the pattern would repeat itself for George H.W. Bush (whose reconciliation bill contradicted his campaign promise not to raise taxes), for Bill Clinton in 1994 (deficit reductions and tax reform), for Barack Obama in 2010 (after the passage of the Affordable Care Act), for Trump in 2018 (tax cuts), and for Biden in 2022 (the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act). The exception in this list of modern presidents is George W. Bush, who did pass a set of tax cuts in a reconciliation bill, but whose approval rating rose after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Increasing polarization, and the general anti-incumbent party energy that tends to run through midterm elections, of course, explains part of this overall popular and electoral backlash. But reconciliation bills themselves seem to intensify this effect. Why reconciliation bills do so much political damage First, there's the actual substance of these bills, which has been growing in scope over time. Because they tend to be the first, and likely only, major piece of domestic legislation that can execute a president's agenda, they are often highly ideological, partisan projects that try to implement as much of a governing party's vision as possible. These highly ideological pieces of legislation, Matt Grossman, the director of Michigan State University's Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, and his partners have found, tend to kick into gear a 'thermostatic' response from the public — that is, that public opinion moves in the opposite direction of policymaking when the public perceives one side is going too far to the right or left. Because these bills have actually been growing in reach, from mere tax code adjustments to massive tax-and-spend, program-creating bills, and becoming more ideological projects, the public, in turn, seems to be reacting more harshly. These big reconciliation bills also run into an issue that afflicts all kinds of legislation: It has a PR problem. Media coverage of proposed legislation tends to emphasize its partisanship, portraying the party in power as pursuing its domestic agenda at all costs and emphasizing that parties are fighting against each other. This elevates process over policy substance. Political scientist Mary Layton Atkinson has found that just like campaign reporting is inclined to focus on the horse race, coverage of legislation in Congress and policy debates often focuses on conflict and procedure, adding to a sense in the public mind that Congress is extreme, dysfunctional, and hyperpartisan. Adding to this dynamic is a quirk of public opinion toward legislation and referenda: Proposals tend to get less popular, and lose public support, between proposal and passage, as the public learns more about the actual content of initiatives and as they hear more about the political negotiations and struggles taking place behind the scenes as these bills are ironed out. Lawmakers and key political figures also 'tend to highlight the benefits less than the things that they are upset about in the course of negotiations,' Grossman told me. 'That [also] occurs when a bill passes: You have the people who are against it saying all the terrible things about it, and actually the people who are for it are often saying, 'I didn't get all that I wanted, I would have liked it to be slightly different.' So the message that comes out of it is actually pretty negative on the whole, because no one is out there saying this is the greatest thing and exactly what they wanted.' Even with the current One Big Beautiful Bill, polling analysis shows that the public tends not to be very knowledgeable about what is in the legislative package, but gets even more hostile to it once they learn or are provided more information about specific policy details. Big reconciliation bills exist at the intersection of all three of these public image problems: They tend to be the first major legislative challenge a new president and Congress take on, they suck up all the media's attention, they direct the public's attention to one major piece of legislation, and they take a pretty long time to iron out — further extending the timeline in which the bill can get more unpopular.
Yomiuri Shimbun
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yomiuri Shimbun
DOGE Vowed to Make Government More ‘Efficient' — but It's Doing the opposite
Allison Robbert/For The Washington Post President Donald Trump returns to the White House from a trip to his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, on May 25. Somewhere in the world last month, a State Department employee began the routine process of hiring a vendor for an upcoming embassy event – but quickly ran into a problem. The vendor was refusing to sign paperwork certifying that it did not promote diversity, equity and inclusion, or 'DEI,' a new requirement under President Donald Trump's executive order eradicating DEI from the government. The State employee – who spoke on the condition that neither he nor the location of his embassy be named, for fear of retaliation – sighed. Then he got busy: The work-around, he knew, would take time. First, he got his ambassador's signed approval to hire the vendor anyway. Next, he filled out an Office 365 form justifying the expense in 250 words before selecting which 'pillar' of necessary spending it fell under, choosing from options including 'Safer, Stronger, More Prosperous.' After submitting that to higher-ups and getting their sign-off, he filled out yet another form – this one destined for political appointees back in Washington. A week later, the vendor was secured. Under any previous administration, it would have taken one day, the employee said. Similar layers of new red tape are plaguing federal staffers throughout the government under the second Trump administration, stymieing work and delaying simple transactions, according to interviews with more than three dozen federal workers across 19 agencies and records obtained by The Washington Post. Many of the new hurdles, federal workers said, stem from changes imposed by the U.S. DOGE Service, Elon Musk's cost-cutting team, which burst into government promising to eradicate waste, fraud and abuse and trim staff and spending. The team's overarching goal was in its name: DOGE stands for Department of Government Efficiency, although it is not part of the Cabinet. But as Musk departed government on Friday, many federal workers said DOGE has in many ways had the opposite effect. DOGE's intense scrutiny of federal spending is forcing employees to spend hours justifying even the most basic purchases. New rules mandating review and approval by political appointees are leaving thousands of contracts and projects on ice for months. Large-scale firings spearheaded by DOGE have cut support offices – especially IT shops – that assisted federal workers with issues ranging from glitching computers to broken desk chairs. And the piecemeal reassignment of staff is causing significant lags in work in some agencies, notably Social Security, as inexperienced workers adjust to new roles. Meanwhile, most everyone, across every agency, is dealing with fallout from new policies or executive orders – even as colleagues continue to resign or retire, increasing the workload for those who remain. 'Leadership is overcome with meetings and questions from people on how this will all work. The Human Resource teams have conflicting information, and confusion reigns,' said one Defense Department employee who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job. Every day, he said, it feels like 'each person still standing is battling a dozen fires.' Many presidents try to reshape the sprawling federal bureaucracy to achieve their specific policy goals, said George Krause, a University of Georgia professor who studies public administration. Such efforts span Democratic and Republican administrations back to Richard M. Nixon, whose political appointees were known for clashing with career federal executives, Krause said. But the DOGE-driven efforts appear to be backfiring in ways that other initiatives did not. 'What Musk showed is that you cannot do this without a plan, and if you do it without a plan that respects some of the functions of government that everybody wants, then what's going to happen is you'll end up making the government less efficient, and not more efficient,' said Elaine Kamarck, director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution and a former Clinton administration official. White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement that, through DOGE, 'President Trump is curbing government waste and reforming a system that has long burdened American taxpayers.' He added: 'Anyone resistant to these critical reforms has had ample opportunity to step aside, but the work of DOGE will press forward unobstructed.' The State Department on Saturday shared an emailed statement from a 'senior official' it declined to name: 'The State Department will never apologize for putting processes in place to ensure taxpayer dollars are used correctly. It's what the American people expect and deserve.' But on Friday, almost exactly 24 hours after a Post reporter asked about the requirement that international vendors certify they do not promote DEI, State had issued guidance rescinding that mandate for staff overseas, according to a directive obtained by The Post. 'Holding up everything' At NASA, employees recently wrote several detailed paragraphs, across multiple rounds of emails, to win approval to buy simple fastening bolts, according to a staffer and records obtained by The Post. Within the General Services Administration, the government's real estate arm, more than 1,500 project requests – included fully executed leases and notices saying construction can begin – backed up in an internal tracker awaiting political appointees' attention, records show. Some items waited for months, and almost 200 are still on hold, while about 300 were never approved, an employee said. And at the Food and Drug Administration, once-routine tests on food – monitoring for accuracy in labeling, coloring and exposure to heavy metals – were delayed significantly, a former employee said. That's because the agency began requiring department-level approval for expenses at every step: Purchasing samples to test. Paying to ship samples between labs. Buying lab supplies. This hands-on approach reflects the Trump administration's drive to rein in what officials see as decades of unsupervised, wasteful federal spending. Speaking in the Oval Office in early February, Trump said, without providing evidence, that there are 'billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse … That's one of the reasons I got elected.' Citing the example of the Treasury Department, Musk claimed the government is missing 'basic controls that should be in place that are in place in any company,' such as categorizing payments by code and providing justifications for each expense. (Systems to do both already existed across agencies.) And so shortly after Trump's inauguration, DOGE imposed a $1 federal credit card freeze and limited purchasing power to only a handful of people in many departments, decisions that have incapacitated parts of agencies as varied as the National Park Service and the Pentagon. Soon, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Commerce Department required that political appointees green-light many funds before disbursement. In April, DOGE wrested control of a federal grants website used to dole out billions each year. Many federal employees said they supported closer inspections of how the government spends money. But in practice, they said, the Trump administration's chokehold is tangling up basic, everyday tasks. The results seem to run counter to the goal of efficiency. At air traffic control towers at two dozen West Coast airports, officials are unable to easily pay to have the windows washed and shades cleaned, said a Federal Aviation Administration employee. A DOGE-ordered overhaul of the payments system means FAA staffers must write statements justifying all expenditures, the employee said – not just for window-washing, but also elevator maintenance and even pens and pencils, the employee said. Purchase orders that used to take 15 or 20 minutes to fill out now consume 1 or 2 hours for each tower. 'These are things that people don't think about, but clean windows are crucial for controllers,' the employee said. Because he is so often busy with purchase justifications, he has fallen behind on landscaping, fire alarm safety and pest control, all of which are 'staples in the air traffic towers,' he said. The added reviews extend beyond financial issues to questions of policy and political speech, including press releases. At some parts of the National Institutes of Health, per an employee there, every grant must now be fed through an AI tool to screen for references to concepts deemed unpalatable by the Trump administration, such as 'DEI, transgender, China, or vaccine hesitancy,' the employee said. Further delaying grants is another new requirement: NIH staff must check to ensure the recipient isn't on the list of colleges and universities that have drawn Trump's wrath, including Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern, Brown and Cornell. At the State Department, employees are spending hours combing through official documents to remove the words 'diverse,' equitable' and 'inclusive,' said a staffer there, months after Trump issued his executive order ending diversity efforts. NASA, the NIH, GSA, the FDA and the FAA did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 'Nobody is working at top efficiency' The administration's ongoing shake-ups of the workforce, from buyout offers to firings to sweeping reorganizations, are also undermining efficiency. At the Social Security Administration, for example, Trump officials and DOGE pushed thousands of central-office workers to take lower-level positions answering phones in field offices, threatening to fire whoever did not make the jump, according to emails reviewed by The Post and interviews with a half dozen agency employees. Chaos has ensued across field offices in the weeks since the reassignments took effect, staffers said. Claims processing has bogged down as regular field office staff – already overburdened because of widespread resignations and retirements – are pulled off their normal duties to train incoming administrators and analysts. But the backlog means the trainings are being shortened and rushed through, employees said, so inexperienced, reassigned staffers start work unprepared. That leads to more mistakes, more requests for help and more backed-up claims – and more time wasted all around. To sum it up, 'you now have half the staff with very little knowledge of how to do the work,' one relocated staffer said. 'And the other half of staff overwhelmed with work and unable to really train or mentor these new folks.' Asked about the reassignments, Social Security provided an emailed statement from an unnamed official, whom it declined to identify. The statement said DOGE's work at Social Security had charted a new, better course for the agency. 'The voluntary reassignment of approximately 2,000 employees to direct service positions has not caused disruptions at the agency,' the statement read. 'As these employees complete their training and become fully proficient in their new positions, they will further accelerate the progress the agency is making.' DOGE reorganized other agencies by dismissing gobs of technical staffers, or incentivizing them to resign, and centralizing IT services. Although it sounded good in theory, said one Interior Department staffer, in practice, it meant he lost his in-office IT contact. He used to pop around the corner to ask for assistance – now, help tickets take up to three days. In other places, staff dismissals or departures are tripping up operations, as employees struggle to keep up with a sharply increased workload. One office in the Transportation Department lost nearly 15 percent of its staff, who were fired as probationary employees, then rehired, then promptly took advantage of the administration's second-round deferred resignation offer to leave for good, said a worker there. 'Now, all those jobs and responsibilities [have fallen on] everyone left,' the worker said. 'There's a learning curve, no knowledge transfer, and in some cases no access to do the job for a while. Lots of productivity lost.' Within one FDA office, a reduction in force removed everyone who worked in administrative support, a former staffer said: The people who coordinated travel, ran purchasing and processed personnel paperwork. Remaining staff were given general email addresses to contact, the staffer said, 'but no names.' Asked for comment, a range of agencies asserted that Trump was improving efficiency, not hurting it. 'President Trump's decisive actions have allowed us to eliminate bureaucratic waste,' said an Interior department spokesperson. 'We are replacing outdated, sluggish systems with streamlined, mission-driven operations,' said an HHS spokesperson, 'following years of unchecked spending, bureaucratic bloat, and ideologically driven initiatives that strayed from serving the American people.' But other employees say that strict imposition of Trump's return-to-office rule and requirements that federal workers must be in their seats from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. sharp are frustrating staffers, who say their productivity and drive have dropped. Within a research arm of the Defense Department, staff no longer take work home or travel to conferences on weekends, noted one employee. At FEMA, people have to take a day off or work a half-day to make medical appointments, rather than working remotely and missing fewer hours, said a staffer there. One Department of Homeland Security staffer noted that after her hours were changed to 9-5, it briefly prevented her from attending an 8 a.m. meeting – until higher-ups realized the problem and changed it. (DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote in a statement that 'meetings being moved is a small price to pay for federal employees to finally be back in their taxpayer funded offices to do their work for the American people.') Atop everything else, frayed, fatigued federal workers have little capacity left to do their jobs well, or at all, they said. 'People are so demoralized, anxious and sleep deprived,' said a NASA employee. 'Nobody is working at top efficiency.'
Washington Post
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Waltz bounced, Trump's 100 days, Dems eye 2028
Protesters gather for an anti-Trump protest outside the White House on April 19. (Allison Robbert for The Washington Post) President Donald Trump's second term started with a record-breaking pace of executive actions. Today, senior political reporter Aaron Blake talks with White House reporter Natalie Allison and national reporter Maeve Reston about Trump's 100-day record and how the American public feels about some of his signature actions so far. They also discuss Trump's decision to switch out national security adviser Michael Waltz, and some early and very different recent maneuvers from some ambitious Democrats who could lead the party into the 2028 election – including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Today's show was produced and mixed by Ted Muldoon. It was edited by Laura Benshoff. Subscribe to The Washington Post here.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
What to Know About the Law Firms Targeted by Trump
President Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on Mar. 6, 2025. Credit - Allison Robbert—ThePresident Donald Trump was expected to go after his enemies when he returned to the White House. But few predicted he would target 'Big Law' the way he has. 'Lawyers and law firms that engage in actions that violate the laws of the United States or rules governing attorney conduct must be efficiently and effectively held accountable,' Trump wrote in a March 22 memorandum. But the American Bar Association, which oversees academic standards for law schools and ethical codes for lawyers in the U.S., has pushed back at the idea that his actions taken against specific firms is about professional conduct. 'Lawyers must be free to represent clients and perform their ethical duty without fear of retribution,' ABA President William R. Bay said in a statement on March 3, after reports that the government 'decided to punish a prominent Washington, D.C., law firm because it represents a party that the administration does not like' and 'that actions may be taken against more law firms' in the weeks to come. 'We will not stay silent in the face of efforts to remake the legal profession into something that rewards those who agree with the government and punishes those who do not,' Bay's statement, which also addressed efforts by the Trump Administration to 'undermine the courts' or 'punish judges who rule certain ways.' But that didn't stop Trump. Over the past couple of weeks, the President has, through a series of executive actions, sought to punish several specific law firms that have been involved in any capacity in working against him, primarily by cancelling their national security clearances, which can impede the firms' work. Here's what to know about the law firms that Trump has issued orders against so far, why he's done so, and how each firm has responded. On March 27, Trump ordered the federal government to stop working with Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP (WilmerHale)—suspending the law firm's security clearances, directing federal agencies to terminate contracts they have with the firm, and limiting WilmerHale employees' access to government buildings. Trump lambasted the firm for employing former special counsel Robert Mueller—who led the special investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign's ties with Russia. Trump said WilmerHale 'rewarded' Mueller and his colleagues by 'welcoming them to the firm after they wielded the power of the Federal Government to lead one of the most partisan investigations in American history.' The President's order also criticized WilmerHale's diversity efforts, and claimed it worked against American interests as it 'engages in obvious partisan representations' and 'backs the obstruction of efforts' against illegal immigrants and drug trafficking. In a statement to the media, a spokesperson for WilmerHale called the order 'unlawful' and said the firm will pursue 'all appropriate remedies' to countermand it. The spokesperson added that Mueller 'retired from our firm in 2021.' 'Our firm has a longstanding tradition of representing a wide range of clients, including in matters against administrations of both parties,' the WilmerHale spokesperson said. On March 25, Trump issued an executive order against Chicago-headquartered firm Jenner & Block. Trump suspended security clearances for the firm's employees and restricted the firm's access to federal buildings and contracting work. In his order, Trump singled out Andrew Weissmann —a longtime deputy of Mueller and a top prosecutor in the Russia investigation—whom he says Jenner & Block was ''thrilled' to re-hire.' Weissmann worked for the firm from 2006 to 2011 and then again from 2020 to 2021 between stints in government. A spokesperson for Jenner & Block responded to the order: 'We remain focused on serving and safeguarding our clients' interests with the dedication, integrity, and expertise that has defined our firm for more than one hundred years and will pursue all appropriate remedies.' The firm added in its statement that the executive order resembled one that 'has already been declared unconstitutional' by a federal judge. On March 14, Trump extended similar revocations of security clearances and government building access to Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (Paul, Weiss), which is headquartered in New York. In the order, Trump cited Paul, Weiss' former lawyer Mark Pomerantz, who investigated Trump for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office from 2021. Pomerantz looked into Trump's finances and his links to adult film star Stormy Daniels but resigned from the DA Office in 2022, despite believing he had sufficient evidence against Trump, after DA Alvin Bragg opted not to pursue charges. In a surprise move, Trump rescinded the order against Paul, Weiss on March 21 after Paul, Weiss 'acknowledged the wrongdoing' of former partner Pomerantz and vowed to some policy changes, including the dedication of $40 million worth of pro bono legal services to 'support causes' of the Trump Administration like anti-Semitism efforts and 'fairness in the justice system.' Other law firms and lawyers described Paul, Weiss' response as cowing to Trump. Former associates wrote a letter calling the deal 'a permanent stain on the face of a great firm that sought to gain a profit by forfeiting its soul.' But the firm's chairman Brad Karp defended the agreement with Trump in an internal email to its employees, the New York Times reported, arguing the firm 'would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the administration.' On March 6, Trump targeted Perkins Coie LLP, similarly suspending security clearances for the Seattle-headquartered law firm and ordering federal agencies to stop business with it. In the order, the President criticized the firm's 'dishonest and dangerous activity.' The firm is known in Washington for working with the Democratic Party, including commissioning a research and intelligence firm to look into Trump's ties to Russia for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign. Trump also criticized the firm for its diversity initiatives and for taking on clients that work against the Administration's agenda. Perkins filed a suit on March 11 challenging the constitutionality of Trump's order, claiming that '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.' A day later, a federal judge temporarily blocked part of Trump's order. On February 25, Trump signed an executive action stripping the security clearances of and reviewing all work the federal government has with Covington & Burling LLP, the largest law firm in D.C. In the memorandum, Trump named Peter Koski—a partner at the firm who represented former special prosecutor Jack Smith. Smith brought two criminal cases against the President, though they were dropped after Trump's election victory last November. Read More: How Trump Got Away With It, According to Jack Smith Politico reported that Smith received $140,000 in pro bono legal services from Covington before he resigned in January. A spokesperson for Covington said in a statement to ABC News that the firm agreed to represent Smith 'when it became apparent that he would become a subject of a government investigation' and that the firm serves as defense counsel to Smith 'in his personal, individual capacity.' The spokesperson added: "We look forward to defending Mr. Smith's interests and appreciate the trust he has placed in us to do so.' Contact us at letters@
