#JudgeHowell really threw the book at #DOJ.
EO against #PerkinsCoie ruled #Unconstitutional . Summary judgment.
#JudgeHowell really threw the book at #DOJ.
EO against #PerkinsCoie ruled #Unconstitutional . Summary judgment.
According to an explosive Dutch media report, a former Bellingcat researcher who led investigations into MH17 and child abuse was a sex abuser of children – including his own daughter
‘Daniel Romein’ reportedly killed himself after being sentenced to jail
https://thegrayzone.com/2025/05/02/bellingcat-operative-dies-conviction/
#bellingcat #mh17 #malaysia #geopolitics #dutch #holland #amsterdam
#AntiImperialism #tiktok #cdnpoli
#canada #usa #yemen
@blackmastodon #lawfare #stateterrorism
@politics
#aviation #security #safety
On #DOGE, Directives, and #DOJ
"A new court filing reveals the most compelling evidence yet that the government has been spinning a fiction about DOGE in federal court."
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/on-doge--directives--and-doj
After Attorney General Pam Bondi spoke favorably about arresting judges, Joyce Vance wrote:
"No attorney general should ever speak like this. She's Trump's advocate, not the people's lawyer, which is what the AG's job is. Whatever state she is barred in should start disciplinary proceedings immediately. This isn't subtle or arguable, it's wrong."
#lawfare #injustice #disbar #politics
BREAKING: The Trump administration just hid data that lets communities know about dangerous chemical facilities in their midst.
https://www.levernews.com/the-governments-chemical-disaster-tracking-tool-just-went-dark/
https://x.com/davidsirota/status/1914409728421122558
#trump #usa #tiktok #cdnpoli #canada #blackmastodon #indigenous @environment
@blackmastodon
@BLKNewsNow
#health #democracy #climate #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAction #environment #nature #pollution #lawfare #law #ecocide #deregulation #economy #oligarchy #capitalism #socialism #nature
This photo captures the horror of the mega-prison in El Salvador called CECOT where Trump forcibly and illegally sent 250 men after abducting them from the streets and detention centers of this country.
https://x.com/SDonziger/status/1913064516352688305
#fascism #antifascism #Genocide #geopolitics #lawfare #unconstitutional
@palestine @yemen #SettlerColonialism
#whitesupremacy
#AntiImperialism #tiktok #cdnpoli
#xenophobia #canada #usa #prison #immigration #humanrights
@blackmastodon
"Law Firms Made Deals With Trump. Now He Wants More From Them." They agreed to "do some free legal work on behalf of largely uncontroversial causes like helping veterans." Now Trump wants the free legal service from them to be used "as a legal war chest to be used as he wishes" including "representing Mr. Trump or his allies if they became ensnared in investigations":
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/law-firms-deals-trump.html
#MakingADealWithTheDevil #lawfare #politics
Shawn Fain, a union leader who is sometimes a Trump apologist, said:
"We have seen the right to due process disappear as working people are deported* for no crime and no reason. That's not good for the working class. Mahmoud Khalil, who has now been detained for over a month for protesting the war, is a former UAW member."
*by Trump
#immigration #lawfare #politics
"Pres. Donald Trump blacklisted three firms for representing his perceived political opponents, for litigating in opposition to his priorities, and for hiring lawyers who were involved in investigations against the president before he was elected. But we’ve also seen three federal judges issue temporary restraining orders declaring provisions of those executive orders unconstitutional":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/04/07/trump-war-biglaw-lawyers-law-firms/ #lawfare #extremism #politics
Donde se acaba la ley, empieza la tiranía
"California law firm where Usha Vance worked leads 500 firms to warn of ‘grave threat to our system of constitutional governance and to the rule of law' from Trump":
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/usha-vance-former-firm-warns-trump-20259287.php
“For our system of justice to operate, members of the bar must be free to advocate zealously for all of their clients, large and small, rich and poor, without fear of retribution.”
#democracy #lawfare #politics
@mattblaze
I would submit that the members of the signal group do not trust their regulator to regulate them fairly/reasonably (by their definition of such). If I were an adversary, I would view this as a fantastically welcome chink in the armour of the US.
I'm usually a bit wary of boosting news articles where I'd like to know more of the story before forming an opinion. For this story though, I think it worthy of a boost regardless. Sadly I can't expect to ask anyone for the minutes of the meeting because, well, it got raided by the police. I'd dearly love to know if any of the police thought "Gee, we're going to break into a quaker meeting house and arrest people... are we modestly sure this is a proportional use of force?".
I hate to reduce things to pithy memes, and we have some superb civilian police officers in the UK who do a very difficult job, but I can't help but think of the Mitchell & Webb "Hans... Are we the baddies?" sketch.
I'm told it takes a very special person to flourish in the met police, and I assume policing a capital has nuances that are less relevant elsewhere. I'm disappointed that their surveillance apparatus was not felt capable of monitoring them adequately, and that it was felt force was necessitated.
"Are we the baddies?": https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
"Pres. Donald Trump’s attacks on law firms ... could uproot a central tenet of the U.S. political system, the right to counsel":
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/donald-trump-biglaw-20239927.php
The American Bar Association criticized Trump: “We can choose to remain silent and allow these acts to continue or we can stand for the rule of law and the values we hold dear.” #lawfare #politics #rights
After securing the craven surrender of high profile liberal law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP without even entering a courtroom, an emboldened Downmarket Mussolini has ordered his comically corrupt Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to seek disciplinary actions against lawyers who are "filing frivolous claims designed to cause delays." What's a "frivolous claim?" Only Trump and Bondi know, but the note about delays makes it clear that Der Führer is angry that his fascist agenda is being blocked by numerous judicial restraining orders and hopes to do an end around the courts by threatening lawyers and law firms into not even filing suits to halt the regime in the first place.
Trump ramps up retribution campaign against legal community
"The memo, as a result, created a formal mechanism for Trump to unilaterally decide whether to impose politically charged sanctions through executive orders that strip lawyers of the security clearances they need to perform their jobs or prevent them from working on federal contracts.
Multiple legal experts suggested the memo would theoretically allow Bondi to decide a particular lawsuit that triggered a temporary injunction was causing an unnecessary delay, and refer the firm that filed the suit to face the effects of a punitive executive order.
That could cause a chilling effect and lead to the volume of litigation against the Trump administration to decline, the experts said. Even if the lawsuits are in fact for a legitimate purpose, there’s fear that their representation could put them in the president’s cross hairs and endanger their legal practices.
Trump also directed Bondi to open a review into the “conduct” of lawyers and their respective law firms in litigation against the federal government reaching back to the start of his first term in 2017 – and recommend whether it warranted additional punitive actions.
The memo comes as Trump in recent weeks has used executive orders targeting law firms to great effect."
Frankly, I don't have much to add here that we didn't already look at when I wrote up the Paul Weiss surrender situation we discussed a few days ago. The fact is that Trump has no legal authority to harass and punish lawyers for bringing cases before a judge to stop the Trump regime's often illegal, and frequently unconstitutional activities. Providing a check to the executive branch's power when it violates our civil rights, exceeds the President's authority, or is just straight up criming, is literally the prescribed role of the judiciary branch in the American system of government; the lawyers filing suits to stop Trump's fascist agenda aren't doing anything wrong, they're in fact doing their job as defined in the US Constitution. Trump just doesn't give a shit, and if he can't break the judges ruling against him, he'll happily try to further his authoritarian agenda by using his Department of Justice to harass the lawyers filing against his actions, and starving the law firms of federal access and contracts.
The good news here is that unlike some of their cowardly brethren in white shoe DC law firms, numerous legal advocacy organizations more closely associated with civil rights litigation, are openly stating that they have no intention of backing down. Groups like the ACLU, the Center for Reproductive Rights, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and Democracy Forward, have all issued statements pushing back on Trump's claims and promising to not only continue the fight, but also to keep bringing more cases against an overreaching Trump regime now acting unlawfully pretty much every day.
I'm not sure how much faith I have in the lawyers and the courts to stop fascism; after all, none of these folks have an army or a police force at their disposal to enforce court orders against a fascist regime and a president already granted virtual legal immunity by a 6-3 fascist high SCOTUS. But as I mentioned elsewhere, you can't win if you don't fight, and it is impossible to install a fascist dictatorship without a whole lot of collaboration, cowardice, and capitulation by the society the fascists are trying to dominate. Win or lose, fighting back is the first step towards stopping fascism, and as a society our best hope of resisting remains acting in infinite ways, across every sector, to make it cost more in time, effort, money, and if necessary in blood, to impose fascism, than the folks doing so stand to benefit from that fascism. Saying "no" is at least a start.
Pacific Rim was the largest, most complex #cybercrime investigation of my career. I'm very proud of the work - and of the outcomes from that work: Indictments of the perpetrators; A call-to-action to an entire industry; Collaboration among competitors to counter a common foe.
#Lawfare published a blog today analyzing the consequences and repercussions of what we did to counter a nation-state threat actor. It's a good read!
Came here to say this. Those inclined to read this thread might perhaps find more interesting the UK's early problems with the EULA for the (US) DSMAC navigation database used in Stormshadow cruise missiles donated to Ukrainian forces in the Russian invasion of Ukraine: without US permission for long range strikes into Russia, the missiles could only use GPS to navigate, and GPS can be "jammed".
This is why they keep dropping the term #lawfare.
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zehd7si3ipmvfvmyuvq53gti/post/3lk7ohhin7s2m