Five more major law firms have succumbed to President Donald Trump’s punitive threats as he continues his blatantly illegal intimidation of legal professionals. 

Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling US LLP, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, and Latham & Watkins LLP will provide pro bono services of at least $500 million, Trump boasted in a Truth Social post Friday afternoon. In a separate post, Trump revealed another $100 million deal with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP. 

The firms will provide services to causes “President Trump and the Law Firms both support and agree to work on, including in the following areas: Assisting Veterans and other Public Servants, including, among others, members of the Military, Gold Star families, Law Enforcement, and First Responders; ensuring fairness in our Justice System; and combatting Antisemitism,” Trump wrote, adding that the firms will not engage in “illegal” diversity, equity, and inclusion practices either.  

“The Law Firms will take on a wide range of pro bono matters that represent the full political spectrum, including Conservative ideals,” the post continues. In other words, the law firms will aid the Trump administration’s volatile attack on free speech, civil liberties, and the Constitution—for free. 

“Concurrent with these agreements, the EEOC has withdrawn the March 17, 2025 letters to the Law Firms, and will not pursue any claims related to those issues,” Trump noted, referring to his intimidation of the firms.

The announcements come as part of Trump’s widespread attack on law firms, punishing them for filing lawsuits he disagrees with or hiring attorneys he doesn’t like. He’s issued executive orders penalizing some of the country’s top law firms, many of which have bent to the president’s will—including Wilkie Farr & Gallagher, the law firm of former second gentleman Doug Emhoff. 

The total amount of free services pledged by law firms has now reached more than $900 million, a concerning statistic not only for other law firms but for the rule of law itself.

The Department of Justice offered a flimsy excuse Friday for why it couldn’t comply with an order to present plans to return the Maryland father wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

The Supreme Court upheld an order from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis Thursday night directing the DOJ to deliver plans to the court by 9:30 a.m Friday morning “to facilitate and effectuate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Lawyers for the DOJ asked to have the hearing delayed to provide time to “evaluate” the Supreme Court’s order. When the clock elapsed on the government’s deadline, lawyers for Abrego Garcia argued that the DOJ had no excuse for being unprepared because it already had been under order to deliver their plans before Chief Justice John Roberts issued a stay on the order on Monday. Xinis granted the government’s request for an extension, which then elapsed again.

Finally, in a brief two-page filing Friday, lawyers for the government claimed that the court had set an “impractical” deadline and that they had been provided “insufficient” time to draw up plans.

The lawyers claimed that they didn’t fully understand Xinis’s order (“The Court has not yet clarified what it means to ‘facilitate’ or ‘effectuate’ the return,”) and that their perfect compliance with Roberts’s stay had prevented them from doing their homework.

The Supreme Court had instructed Xinis to clarify “the intended scope of the term ‘effectuate’” and warned that it “may exceed the District Court’s authority.” But the high court ruled that Xinis had “properly” ordered the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.

In its insistence not to share its plan going forward, the government completely ignored Xinis’s request to share “what it can concerning the steps it has taken” prior to the order, according to Kyle Cheney, Politico’s senior legal correspondent.

“Defendants are not in a position where they ‘can’ share any information requested by the Court. That is the reality,” the government’s lawyers wrote in its filing, arguing that the order had come in too late in the evening Thursday.

“Foreign affairs cannot operate on judicial timelines, in part because it involves sensitive country-specific considerations wholly inappropriate for judicial review,” the DOJ added.

The Trump administration is desperate to convince Americans that Donald Trump’s trade war won’t affect their wallets.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer took to Fox News Friday, attempting to claim that the tariff plan had not destabilized the U.S. economy—but even on his favorite network, Trump’s policies faced heat.

“They say tariffs are gonna cost the American household $4,800,” prompted co-host Brian Kilmeade. “What do you say to those households?”

“First of all, I would say, with respect to those projections, a lot of those are Wall Street analysts who have a lot to lose themselves,” Greer said.

Except those numbers didn’t come from Wall Street analysts. Instead, the prediction came from a new report by the Yale Budget Lab, which assessed that Trump’s tariffs would raise the cost of goods by 2.9 percent, “the equivalent of a loss of purchasing power of $4,700 per household on average in 2024 dollars.”

And Greer’s point that it’d be men on Wall Street rejecting Trump’s roller-coaster ride of a market agenda rings especially hollow in light of the fact that the market has already seen its fair share of winners and losers. Some of the biggest winners,........

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