The United Kingdom's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned a Transport for London (TfL) Facebook ad because it showed a black teenage boy verbally harassing a white girl, which the ASA said reinforced a negative racial stereotype about black men as threatening. The ad was part of a campaign meant to get people to intervene safely if they see sexual harassment or hate crimes on public transport, but the ASA ruled it could cause serious offense and was irresponsible, even though TfL noted the full campaign included other scenes showing people of different races and situations.

The post Brickbat: Not Getting the Full Picture appeared first on Reason.com.

In the days following [the October 7] attack, several members of Northwestern's faculty in Evanston posted about the attack on social media, with one stating "resistance is justified when a people are occupied." Another professor, Steven Thrasher, said a New York Times story on sexual assault allegations relating to the October 7 attack was "widely discredited," and noted that a story by the Guardian was disturbingly "similar."

School programs like the Northwestern Women's Center and the Asian American Studies Program also made statements on social media. The Women's Center shared a brochure from the Palestinian Feminist Collective with short articles on protests and advocacy, protest chants, hashtags like #AlAqsaFlood, and website links to suggested readings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Asian American Studies Program made a statement on Islamophobia and disputed reports that Hamas had "beheaded babies." Student groups like Students for Justice in Palestine ("SJP") issued statements accusing "Zionists" of "whitewashing" and legitimizing the "genocide" of Palestinians, which several Northwestern faculty members signed onto.

Northwestern maintains a satellite campus in Qatar ("Northwestern Qatar"), through which students and faculty in Evanston and Qatar may visit the other campus in exchange programs. At Northwestern Qatar, faculty also posted on social media about the Hamas terror attack. Professor in Residence Khaled AL-Hroub called for a Third Intifada to "sweep away the occupier," while an assistant professor in residence tweeted the "chain must be broken," in reference to the Hamas incursion into Israel. AL-Hroub also participated in a radio interview where he said he had not seen "any credible media reporting" that Hamas killed women and children on October 7th, prompting Northwestern to issue a statement condemning the "attempt to minimize or misrepresent the horrific killing of Israeli civilians by Hamas."

On April 25, 2024, student demonstrators at Northwestern's Evanston campus organized an encampment of tents, protest signs, and flags on Dearing Meadow, the campus' central lawn. Within the encampment, several individuals dressed up as members of Hamas, demanding to know whether others spoke Hebrew. Some of the signs featured blatant antisemitic imagery, like a slashed-out Star of David or a drawing of Northwestern's President Schilll—a Jewish man—with horns and blood dripping from his mouth.

In and around the encampment, several demonstrators physically assaulted or shouted slurs at Jewish students. During the encampment, participants also shouted slogans like "Intifada, Intifada, Long live the Intifada," "Globalize the Intifada," "Resistance is justified when people are occupied," and "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." When Jewish students attempted to document the encampment, they were physically assaulted, blocked from entering, or had phones and cameras knocked out of their possession. In a video statement to the Northwestern community, President Schill condemned such incidents of antisemitism, stating that the signs with a slashed-out Star of David or the drawing of him with horns left "no ambiguity" about their antisemitic nature.

On the first day of the encampment, Northwestern issued statements declaring the encampment was prohibited and that students who refused to remove their tents would be subject to arrest. Northwestern Police cited several students who refused to remove their tents.

Despite these efforts, the encampment persisted, and demonstrators declined Northwestern's offer to "peacefully assemble" in compliance with Northwestern policies. Seeing this, Northwestern decided to "move forward with other options to protect the safety of the community." While the encampment continued, Northwestern turned off the regularly scheduled lawn sprinklers on Dearing Meadow. Northwestern also allowed demonstrators, some not affiliated with the school, to access the Multicultural Center, normally accessible only to students.

On April 29, 2025, four days after the encampment began, Northwestern reached an "agreement" with the encampment organizers. Under the agreement, demonstrators removed their tents from Deering Meadow, while Northwestern promised to cover the undergraduate tuition of five Palestinians, and to renovate a house for Middle Eastern, North African, and Muslim students.

Northwestern also condemned the doxing of "any community member" and advised employers not to rescind job offers for students engaging in speech "protected by the First Amendment." {"Doxing" involves releasing someone's personal details onto the Internet in an easily accessible form and it may be used to humiliate, intimidate, threaten, or punish the identified individual.} Following the agreement, Northwestern SJP held an overnight sleepover on the lawn.

Two days later, on May 1, 2024, student demonstrators held a "Strike for Gaza" on Northwestern's Evanston campus. Some professors cancelled classes so students could participate, while others lectured at the demonstration. Some of the posters at the demonstration stated, "resistance is justified when people are occupied #AlAqsaFlood," and participants repeated similar messages. During these on-campus demonstrations, Northwestern's school library asked demonstrators to "please consider saving your protest materials," inviting student demonstrators to submit materials for preservation in the University Archives.

Northwestern also maintains a Campus Violence Prevention Plan aimed at disciplining any "community member" who engages in "unacceptable behavior" like "intimidating, threatening, or violent behaviors that affect the ability to learn, work, or live in the University environment." Under the plan, community members who display material that degrades a person or group, or causes harm or fear for one's safety remains "subject to disciplinary action."

[2.] The court rejected plaintiffs' Title VI hostile environment harassment claim (though, as with the other claims, they can try to replead it with more specific factual allegations, if they think those allegations are well-founded):

A school "can only be liable for harassment about which it has actual knowledge." School officials have actual knowledge "only of the incidents that they witness, or those that have been reported to them." Courts, therefore, have "focused on reports or observations in the record of inappropriate behavior to determine when school officials had actual notice." As a predicate matter, Plaintiffs must allege that a school official was aware of the "severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive" harassment. Yet in many instances here, Plaintiffs have not done so in the current complaint.

Plaintiffs allege liability and predicate their claims of loss of access to educational benefits on a variety of incidents, all relating to demonstrations in the wake of Hamas' October 7 terrorist attack. They allege a Title VI violation based upon "many other incidents on campus" which contributed to the hostility they endured. But Plaintiffs do not plead any facts about what these "other incidents" involve; nor do they allege how these "other incidents" were reported to Northwestern officials, or that those officials otherwise had actual knowledge of such incidents.

For example, John Doe 2 alleges that he was the subject of a "derogatory and harassing online post." Yet Plaintiffs do not allege anyone reported this post to Northwestern officials, or that Northwestern officials had actual knowledge of the post.

Likewise, John Doe 3 attributes his loss of access to educational benefits to a variety of events, including "antisemitic rhetoric" being "shouted at him," online harassment, false accusations, his observation of posters at a May 1, 2024 demonstration, and an interaction with a protestor at that demonstration where the protestor said to him, "resistance is justified when people are occupied." Again, however, Plaintiffs do not allege that Northwestern had actual knowledge of the antisemitic rhetoric, online harassment, or false accusations John Doe 3 faced, or knowledge of the substance of his alleged harassment.

Plaintiffs similarly do not allege that Northwestern officials had actual knowledge of the interaction between John Doe 3 and the protester at the May 1, 2024 demonstration. With no allegations that Northwestern had the requisite actual knowledge of these specific instances of harassment, Plaintiffs fail to properly allege a Title VI claim in connection with these incidents.

Across all the alleged instances of severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive conduct (that certainly deprived Plaintiffs of access to educational opportunities as alleged), there is just one—the encampment—where Plaintiffs allege facts to show school officials had actual knowledge. There, Plaintiffs' claims of deliberate indifference [an element of the hostile educational environment claim -EV] also lack sufficient factual detail, but for a different reason.

At the Deering Meadow encampment, numerous participants engaged in antisemitic harassment: dressing up as members of Hamas, displaying antisemitic signs, and assaulting or verbally harassing Jewish students. For Title VI liability to attach, however, Northwestern must have not only known about the conduct but been deliberately indifferent to it. Plaintiffs allege that Northwestern did nothing in the face of such offensive conduct and "allowed" the encampment to "clamor for five days uninterrupted." Plaintiffs add that Northwestern even encouraged, "accommodated," and "acquiesced to" the protesters: turning off its lawn sprinklers and awarding the protesters with "a bundle of goodies" in its negotiations to end the encampment. All of this, Plaintiffs argue, shows Northwestern was deliberately indifferent.

Deliberate indifference is a "stringent standard of fault." The deliberate indifference standard "requires that the school's response not be clearly unreasonable, which is a higher standard than reasonableness." A school's response is sufficient "so long as it is not so unreasonable, under all the circumstances, as to constitute an 'official decision' to permit discrimination." CA school's response does not need to be perfect or successful to clear this standard, and even a negligent response is not necessarily unreasonable under Title VI. Depending upon the circumstances, a school's ultimate decision to impose no remedial measures could suffice and might not be "clearly unreasonable" or constitute deliberate indifference….

As currently alleged, … the allegations do not explain how Northwestern's conduct was clearly unreasonable or deliberately indifferent. Indeed, in the paragraphs immediately following Plaintiffs' allegations that Northwestern "allowed" the encampment to clamor "uninterrupted," Plaintiffs describe efforts by Northwestern officials to bring the encampment to an end…. Northwestern officials also publicly denounced the encampment and told demonstrators that the encampment was prohibited. Thereafter, some protestors refused demands to remove their tents, and they received citations from Northwestern Police; and then, after this initial approach failed to end the encampment, Northwestern explored "other options to protect the safety of the community and the continued operations of the Evanston campus."

Working over the weekend, Northwestern officials negotiated the end of the encampment in four days, "a relatively short period compared to similar encampment activity on other college campuses." … Northwestern officials did not leave the encampment totally "undisturbed" or otherwise order law enforcement to stand down in the face of unlawful conduct. Instead, Northwestern unsuccessfully tried to discourage protesters with warnings and police citations, before negotiating for the encampment's conclusion, with a "purpose in returning civil order."

Plaintiffs take issue with Northwestern's decision to explore "other options," and accuse Northwestern of accommodating or acquiescing to the encampment. But Title VI does not mandate a specific set of increasingly punitive measures to remove hostile environments, and courts "must hesitate to second guess" officials' judgments to find the appropriate response. [Northwestern] officials came to the "defensible conclusion that intervention could have triggered an even larger and more disruptive backlash," … deciding that a negotiation would bring a quicker and more peaceful resolution.

In short, the legal question is not whether Northwestern "could have handled each situation better," but rather was Northwestern "so indifferent to known acts of harassment that it caused students to undergo harassment or made them more vulnerable to it, and thereby undermined the students' education." The current complaint lacks the requisite allegation to show Northwestern's indifference.

{In the current complaint, the Plaintiffs also lack detail regarding the concrete deprivations of access to Northwestern's educational benefits. To state a valid Title VI claim, Plaintiffs must "plead with specificity that the conduct at issue had some 'concrete, negative effect' on their education." Courts have found concrete deprivations existed where plaintiffs alleged they "were forced to change their study habits or change schools, where they had a measurable drop in grades or increase in absenteeism, or where they developed anxiety sufficient to require intervention." For example, in Gartenberg [a previous case involving Cooper Union in New York], plaintiffs alleged they suffered from "intense anxiety and panic attacks," "engaged therapists, missed and/or dropped assignments," and one student delayed completion of their degree. There, the court concluded plaintiffs plausibly alleged a loss of educational benefits and opportunities. Similarly, in Canaan v. Carnegie Mellon University, the plaintiff alleged that she missed numerous lectures and many hours of an 18-credit course, was denied meetings with a mentor, and avoided community events associated with her school program. This, too, was sufficient to show a loss of educational benefits and opportunities. So too in Frankel v. Regents of University of California, where plaintiffs were blocked from entering classrooms and ultimately missed their final exams….

Here, among other things, Plaintiffs allege that they "heard hateful expressions when walking near the encampment," that they were subjected to verbal or online harassment, that they viewed a friend being struck by a protester, and that they generally observed unspecified "other incidents" but, again, lack details of the denials of access to Northwestern's resources or opportunities.}

[3.] The court also concluded that plaintiffs hadn't plausibly alleged facts necessary to prevail under a straight-up intentional discrimination theory:

Plaintiffs claim they have alleged discriminatory intent, through "discriminatory conduct of official Northwestern departments, and the school's lucrative partnership with Qatar and Al-Jazeera." Plaintiffs add that Northwestern's "lucrative partnership with Qatar and Al-Jazeera" provides further "motive" for Northwestern to overlook antisemitism, and to "placate its major overseas donor and institutional partners." Plaintiffs further claim, "faculty and staff at Northwestern Qatar call for violence against Jews and support Hamas, consistent with the Qatari government."

Plaintiffs argue, then, that the "back-and-forth flow of Northwestern Qatar's faculty and students with Northwestern's Illinois campuses," combined with Northwestern's refusal to discipline "discriminatory conduct of its Northwestern Qatar faculty," "results in an unsafe campus for Jews at Northwestern." The unsafe campus ultimately leads to Plaintiffs' alleged deprivation of access to educational benefits: "a harassing campus climate that is a direct result of Northwestern's lopsided and discriminatory policy enforcement."

Plaintiffs' theory, however, does not explain how Northwestern's decision to establish a campus in Qatar demonstrates discriminatory intent on the part of Northwestern, and their arguments remain predicated upon conclusory allegations. Plaintiffs also plead no facts explaining how Northwestern is acting to "placate" Qatar, and they allege no non-conclusory facts plausibly showing a connection between Northwestern's foreign partnerships and its actions toward antisemitism on its Evanston campus. At this stage, Plaintiffs must allege "adequate factual detail to lift" their claims "from mere speculative possibility to plausibility." Plaintiffs have not.

The alleged connection between Qatari faculty and students and Northwestern's Evanston campus is also conclusory. Plaintiffs repeatedly complain that the relationship between Northwestern-Qatar and Northwestern-Evanston contributes to an unsafe environment for Plaintiffs in Evanston, but they plead no facts as to how. Though Plaintiffs complain that students from Qatar "participated in the major antisemitic event on campus"—the encampment—Plaintiffs' only factual support for this allegation is an image of a poster stating, "NU Qatar 4 a Free Palestine." By itself, this poster fails to plausibly show discriminatory harassment under Title VI.

Plaintiffs complain that Qatari faculty sometimes speak at "lectures and presentations" on the Evanston campus through Northwestern's exchange program, but Plaintiffs plead no facts about any event in Evanston with a Qatari faculty member who engaged in discrimination. Plaintiffs also plead no facts showing that any of the Qatari faculty members named in the Complaint ever visited Northwestern's Evanston campus. In short, Plaintiffs' current allegations do not plausibly show how Qatari faculty and students created an unsafe environment for Plaintiffs in Evanston.

Finally, even where the complaint alleges individual Northwestern faculty and staff made offensive posts on social media, it fails to allege how those posts precluded Plaintiffs from participating in, or denied them the benefits of, an educational program. Plaintiffs do not explain the details of how the social media posts "so eroded" their experience at Northwestern that they were "denied equal access to its resources or opportunities." Without any allegations that Plaintiffs even encountered the posts, or that the posts affected the programs Plaintiffs were enrolled in, the posts, without more, cannot form the basis of a Title VI claim.

[4.] The court likewise concluded that plaintiffs hadn't sufficiently alleged that Northwestern "enforce[ed] its policies in one manner when it comes to Jewish students, while enforcing them in another when it comes to all other protected classes":

Specifically, Plaintiffs alleged two comparator cases as evidence of this lopsided enforcement. First, when Northwestern responded to white supremacist stickers on campus by filing police reports, working with local authorities, and issuing a condemnation of the behavior. Second, when Northwestern announced its opposition to racism and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd's murder. Without more, however, these two comparators are insufficient to demonstrate discrimination under the indirect method, because Plaintiffs have not put forth "a single example of a similarly situated individual" outside their protected class that "received the response" Plaintiffs sought from Northwestern upon complaining of harassment.

Here, Plaintiffs' reliance on the encampment also lacks the temporal connection to show that Northwestern's disciplinary decisions led to the "harassing campus climate." Plaintiffs' suggestion that Northwestern's past disciplinary decisions somehow led to the encampment is too conclusory to impose Title VI liability as alleged. Plaintiffs plead no facts establishing a plausible inference that past disciplinary decisions were a cause of the Deering Meadow encampment.

[5.] Plaintiffs also sued for breach of contract, but the court didn't consider that issue:

Having determined that Plaintiffs' federal claim must be dismissed, the Court need not yet decide whether to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Plaintiffs' state-law breach of contract claim…. "The usual practice is to dismiss without prejudice state supplemental claims whenever all federal claims have been dismissed prior to trial." …

Casey T. Grabenstein, Elizabeth Anne Thompson, James A. Morsch, Joshua W. B. Richards, and Megan Quinn Warshawsky (Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP) represent Northwestern.

The post Court Dismisses Discrimination Claims Against Northwestern Over Alleged Post-Oct. 7 Anti-Semitism appeared first on Reason.com.

Effective January 1, 2027, providers of computer operating systems in California will be required to implement age verification. That's just part of a wave of state and national laws attempting to limit children's access to potentially risky content without considering the perils such laws themselves pose. Now, not a moment too soon, over 400 computer scientists have signed an open letter warning that the rush to protect children from online dangers threatens to introduce new risks including censorship, centralized power, and loss of privacy. They caution that age-verification requirements "might cause more harm than good."

It's Always for the Children

When he signed A.B. 1043 in October 2025, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the legislation "will assist parents in ensuring that their children are downloading and using age-appropriate applications." State Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D–Oakland), who co-sponsored the bill, similarly promised that "AB 1043 offers a scalable, privacy-first approach that helps keep kids safe while holding tech companies accountable."

But vowing to help kids isn't the same thing as writing coherent legislation. The California law requires, in part, that any "operating system provider" must "provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user's age bracket to applications available in a covered application store."

Writing for PC Gamer, Andy Edser noted, "that's likely no big deal for Windows, which already requires you to enter your date of birth during the Microsoft Account setup procedure." But not all operating systems are provided by large tech companies that centralize the implementation of legal requirements. "The idea that all operating system providers need to comply (in California) has drawn a fair degree of ire from certain Linux communities," he added, with reference to the popular open-source family of operating systems. The requirement could impose burdens on small developers who work with Linux while being largely ignored by the larger, decentralized community—unless they draw official notice. This echoes warnings from computer scientists.

Age Verification 'Could be Used To Censor Information'

Published on March 2, an open letter signed by over 400 computer scientists from around the world cautions that "those deciding which age-based controls need to exist, and those enforcing them gain a tremendous influence on what content is accessible to whom on the internet." They add that "this influence could be used to censor information and prevent users from accessing services." Even short of the most authoritarian controls, they warn, age-verification mandates encourage centralization and favor large companies and services over smaller providers.

The computer scientists aren't just responding to California's law. Age-verification requirements are spreading across the world. "The age-gating wave is coming along with calls for stronger child safety measures online, despite concerns about privacy, security, and censorship," The Verge's Stevie Bonifield reported last week. Last year, Australia introduced high-profile age restrictions on social media that inspired young people to creatively work around the law with bogus birthdays and unregulated apps.

Regulations Meet Evasion

"We all knew circumventing the ban was going to be possible, but it was so much easier than we could have expected," 14-year-old Sarai Ades told The Guardian last month about Australia's law.

Similarly, the U.K.'s recent age-verification requirements resulted in a surge in virtual private network (VPN) use as Britons sought to make their internet searches appear to come from unregulated jurisdictions. "Five VPN apps have experienced particularly 'explosive growth' and reached the top 10 free apps on Apple's UK App Store by Monday," noted Wired's Lily Hay Newman and Matt Burgess.

In response, U.K. officials targeted U.S.-based websites, arguing that anything reachable online from Britain is subject to that country's laws. The U.K. is also considering restrictions on VPNs.

"VPN usage more than doubled in the UK following highly effective age assurance requirements becoming mandatory, rising from about 650,000 daily users before 25 July 2025 and peaking at over 1.4 million users in mid-August 2025," frets a March 2026 U.K. government report.

Regulatory Threats to Privacy

"Regulating the use of VPNs, or subjecting their use to age assurance controls, will decrease the capability of users to defend their privacy online," warns the March 2 open letter. "This will not only force regular users to leave a larger footprint on the network, but will leave a number of at-risk populations unprotected, such as journalists, activists, or domestic abuse victims." Technology restrictions come down hardest on the least dangerous members of society, the letter adds. "We note that we do not believe that trying to regulate VPN use for non-compliant users would be any more effective than trying to forbid the use of end-to-end encrypted communication for criminals. Secure cryptography is widely available and can no longer be put back into a box."

People don't only evade age and content restrictions by cloaking their identities behind forbidden but still accessible technologies. They also turn to corners of the internet that exist beyond the reach of the state.

"If minors or adults are deplatformed via age-related bans, they are likely to migrate to find similar services," warn the scientists. "Since the main platforms would all be regulated, it is likely that they would migrate to fringe sites that escape regulation."

Meanwhile, in the course of implementing age restrictions, mainstream platforms gather data from everybody in order to implement restrictions on the activities of minors. "This in itself increases privacy risks, with data being potentially abused by the provider itself or its subcontractors, or third parties that get access to it, e.g., after a data breach, like the 70K users that had their government ID photos leaked after appealing age assessment errors on Discord."

Rather than reflexively mandate age restrictions on internet platforms, the letter's signers urge lawmakers to consider the dangers of such requirements. They suggest regulation of social media algorithms as a potential alternative. Also, and importantly, they recommend "support for parents to locally prevent access to non-age-appropriate content or apps, without age-based control needing to be implemented by service providers." In the end families, not governments, are responsible for children.

The post Computer Scientists Caution Against Internet Age-Verification Mandates appeared first on Reason.com.

Last year in a series of executive orders, President Donald Trump targeted numerous law firms that had represented Democrats. Several of the firms fought back, and this week, his administration decided to drop its appeals, before apparently changing its mind within 24 hours.

While dropping the case would be a welcome development, it would do nothing to address the underlying abuse of power.

"The Trump administration plans to abandon its defense of the president's executive orders sanctioning several law firms," Erin Mulvaney and C. Ryan Barber reported Monday at The Wall Street Journal. "The Justice Department as soon as Monday was expected to drop its appeals of four trial-court rulings that struck down President Trump's actions against law firms Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey."

Later that day, the administration filed a motion to "voluntarily dismiss" its appeals in all four cases. But the following morning, "in an email to the four firms contesting the orders, a [Department of Justice] official apologized for the short notice and said it would file a motion to withdraw its voluntary dismissal," according to The New York Times.

The capricious nature of the case, with the government reversing and then unreversing course, underlies the inherent problem with imbuing so much power in a single person.

After reentering office last year, Trump issued executive orders against more than a dozen law firms favored by Democrats. The orders imposed unworkable restrictions that would have prevented the firms from representing any clients in federal cases—namely, revoking the security clearances of all of the firms' attorneys, banning them from federal buildings, and barring any federal agencies or contractors from retaining their services.

In many of the orders, Trump claimed these firms presented a grave threat to the country: In a March 2025 order, he claimed law firms such as Jenner & Block "engage in conduct detrimental to critical American interests" and "take actions that threaten public safety and national security, limit constitutional freedoms, degrade the quality of American elections, or undermine bedrock American principles."

But within the text, the order noted that Jenner had represented clients challenging Trump's orders on immigration. Whether those orders were right or wrong, everyone is entitled to legal representation under the U.S. Constitution—in fact, that's one of the "bedrock American principles" Trump alluded to.

It also singled out attorney Andrew Weissman, who served as a lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, during Trump's first term. "Jenner was 'thrilled' to re-hire the unethical Andrew Weissmann after his time engaging in partisan prosecution as part of Robert Mueller's entirely unjustified investigation," the order complained.

Put another way, Trump punished a multinational law firm with over 500 attorneys, based on a job one employee took while he didn't work there.

Ultimately, despite claiming the law firms were engaged in acts injurious to the country, the orders simply recycled Trump's grievances at facing any sort of opposition. The administration's order targeting Perkins Coie said it "worked with activist donors including George Soros to judicially overturn popular, necessary, and democratically enacted election laws, including those requiring voter identification."

Some law firms sued, and federal judges struck down four of the executive orders for the clearly unconstitutional speech infringements they were. These were the still-pending cases the administration chose this week to drop (before apparently reconsidering).

Of course, as with many of Trump's initiatives, the purpose was not to achieve a policy outcome but to send a message while extracting a measure of pain. Even if the law firms prevail in the end, the victory would only come after a year or more spent defending themselves and their livelihoods from a clearly unconstitutional check on their free speech from the highest levels of the federal government.

Nine targeted law firms acceded to the president's extortive demands, agreeing to provide a collective $940 million in free legal services to Trump's favored causes. One firm—Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison—garnered Trump's ire for employing Mark Pomerantz, who left in 2021 to oversee the Manhattan District Attorney's Office investigation into Trump. He later rejoined Paul Weiss but left again in 2022.

But according to Trump's executive order, the firm's choice to briefly rehire the "unethical" Pomerantz—who had worked on the Manhattan investigation "solely to manufacture a prosecution against [Trump]"—constituted a grave threat to the nation. ("I engaged in no wrongdoing by working as a prosecutor to uphold the rule of law," Pomerantz said in a statement.)

And yet just days later, Trump rescinded the order, apparently deciding the threat had been mitigated when the firm agreed to contribute $40 million of pro bono legal work to Trump-approved causes.

In the end, it would be a positive sign for law firms to no longer be subject to the punitive whims of the executive branch simply as a result of representing clients or employing individuals the president doesn't like. But that would still do nothing to address the original problem: The president, with a stroke of his pen, enacted ruinous penalties on private companies simply for displeasing him. In the end, nothing would stop him from doing so again, and the only ones who have suffered any reprisal are the companies themselves.

"Even if you share the president's dim view of Big Law, consider that his actions set a dangerous precedent that will outlast his administration," Aaron Terr of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression wrote last year. "In the future, perhaps lawyers who represented Republican politicians, challenged mail-in voting procedures, or defended abortion restrictions will face retribution instead."

The post DOJ Briefly Abandons Trump's Unconstitutional Orders Targeting Law Firms appeared first on Reason.com.

On his second inauguration day, in January 2025, President Donald Trump signaled one of his administration's highest priorities by issuing an executive order titled "Protecting the American People Against Invasion."

His declaration directed executive agencies to "employ all lawful means to ensure the faithful execution of the immigration laws of the United States against all inadmissible and removable aliens," and to "ensur[e] the successful enforcement of final orders of removal." Ironically, the Trump administration's definition of "lawful means" has often crossed the border of legality.

Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025, which appropriated over $170 billion for immigration enforcement over the next four years. Nearly $75 billion of that total went to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) alone—nearly tripling the agency's budget from FY 2024. Trump's mandate to ICE was clear: Increase arrests and detentions to reach 1 million deportations by the end of 2025, whatever the cost.

Even the cost of constitutional rights, evidently.

From January 20 through October 15, 2025, ICE made an estimated 217,518 arrests, compared to 149,070 arrests throughout all of 2024. The constitutionality of many of these arrests has been questioned as ICE protocols have pushed the limits of the Fourth Amendment.

Arrests stemming from stops motivated by racial profiling, although seemingly blessed by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh last year in his concurrence in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, are believed by many legal experts to violate the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Such stops are particularly troublesome given ICE's proclivity to conduct unlawful warrantless arrests without first establishing probable cause as defined by federal law. That practice was so pervasive in Chicago that a federal judge ordered over 600 people to be released from immigration detention after finding ICE agents made warrantless arrests without probable cause.

ICE is even testing Fourth Amendment limitations when agents have an administrative arrest warrant in hand. An ICE memo leaked in January 2026 claimed certain administrative warrants (issued by officials within ICE itself) grant sweeping authority to use force to enter a home and circumvent the need for an actual court official's approval. The guidance, allegedly taught to thousands of new ICE recruits, is the exact opposite of Fourth Amendment case law and ICE's own training materials. Indeed, a federal judge in Minnesota recently ruled that a highly publicized forcible entry into an immigrant man's home without a judicial warrant clearly violated the Fourth Amendment and ordered his release from custody.

Prior to Trump taking office, ICE held around 40,000 people in detention. As of mid-January 2026, ICE is imprisoning a record-breaking 73,000 individuals, most of whom have no criminal conviction. This includes over 1,300 children who, according to The Marshall Project, have been held in detention longer than 20 days, in violation of a legal agreement that provides protections for children in detention.

Overcrowded conditions at facilities resulted in at least 20 deaths, marking the agency's deadliest year since 2004, when 32 deaths were recorded. Subsequently, many lawsuits have been filed alleging substandard medical care and inadequate food and water. And as ICE fails to provide humane conditions for detainees, it has also seemingly abandoned due process rights, and has been accused of denying attorneys access to clients housed inside facilities.

On the one-year anniversary of Trump's executive order, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed more than 675,000 immigrants had been removed from the country in 2025, compared to 271,484 in FY 2024. However, DHS' improbably high number has been questioned by experts. Whatever the number, all deportations under the Trump administration are suspect given the due process violations immigrants face, from initial contact with ICE agents all the way to their right to a fair hearing in immigration court.

As Americans have spoken out against ICE's unconstitutional tactics, agents have used increasingly excessive
force to silence citizens, violating First and Fourth Amendment rights. It's no
wonder the popularity of Trump's immigration policies has plummeted. In January alone, two U.S. citizens—
37-year-old Minneapolis mother Renée Good, and 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti—were killed while observing immigration enforcement operations, fueling national outrage and leading to a Reuters/Ipsos poll finding that 58 percent of respondents say ICE agents have gone "too far."

The post Trump Ordered Using 'All Lawful Means' To Remove Immigrants. Many ICE Arrests Go Beyond the Law. appeared first on Reason.com.